‘I didn't understand,' she said, and reached out to touch his face.
Not since the first night they'd met had she thought of him as unhuman; his hunger to soak up the trivialities of the Kingdom had further obscured that fact. Now she remembered it. Saw before her another species; another history. The thought made her heart pound. He sensed - or saw - the arousal in her, and his earlier hesitancy evaporated. He took a half step towards her, until his tongue could run along her lips. She opened her mouth to taste him, embracing him as she did so. The mystery embraced her in return.
Their previous coupling had been comforting, but unremarkable. Now - as though released by the statement of his love - he took a new lead, undressing her almost ritualistically, kissing her over and over and between the kisses whispering words in a language he must have known she couldn't understand, but which he spoke in a voice of infinite dexterity so that, uncomprehending, she understood. It was his love he spoke; erotic rhymes and promises; words that were the shape of his desire.
His phallus, a word; his semen, a word; her cunt, which he poured his poems into, a dozen words or more.
She closed her eyes and felt his recital consuming her. She answered him, in her way, sighs and nonsenses that found their place in the swell of his magic. When her eyes flickered open again she found the exchange had ignited the very air about them, their words - and the feelings they conveyed -writing a lexicon of light which flattered their nakedness.
It was as if the room was suddenly filled with lanterns, made of smoke and paper. They drifted up on the heat of their makers' bodies, their lights bringing every part of the room to exquisite life. She saw the tightly curled hairs he'd shed on the pillow, describing their own alphabet; saw the simple weave of the sheet extolled; saw everywhere a subtle intercourse of form with form: the walls' congress with the space they contained; the curtains' passion for the window; the chair for the coat that lay upon it, and the shoes beneath.
But mostly she saw him, and he was a wonder.
She caught the minute fluctuations of his iris when his gaze moved from the darkness of her hair to the pillow upon which it was spread; saw the pulse of his heart in the corrugation of his lips, and at his throat. The skin of his chest had an almost eerie smoothness to it, but was deeply muscled; his arms were sinewy, and would not countenance unbinding her a moment, but held her as tight as she held him. There was no show of machismo in this possessiveness, only an urgency which she more than equalled.
Outside, darkness was upon the hemisphere, but they were bright.
And though he had no breath for words now, their tenderness fuelled the lights that cradled them, and they didn't dim, but echoed the lovers - marrying colour to colour, light to light, until the room blazed.
They loved, and slept, and loved again, and the words kept vigil around them, mellowing their show to a soothing flicker as sleep came a second time.
When she woke the next morning, and opened the curtains on another anxious day, she remembered the previous night as a vision of pure spirit.
2
‘I was beginning to forget, lady,' he said that day. ‘You kept what you were doing clear in your head. But I was letting it slip. The Kingdom is so strong. It can take your mind away.'
‘You wouldn't have forgotten,' she said.
He touched her face, ran his finger-tip down the rim of her ear.
‘Not you.'
Later, he said:
‘I wish you could come with me to see the Prophet.'
‘I do too; but it's not wise.'
‘I know.'
‘I'll be here, Jerichau.'
That'll make me quick.'
Ill
CHARISMA
Nimrod was waiting for him at the rendezvous they'd arranged two days before. It seemed to Jerichau his fervour had intensified in the intervening time.
‘It's going to be the biggest meeting so far...' he said. ‘Our numbers are growing all the time. The day's at hand, Jerichau. Our people are ready and waiting.' ‘I'll believe it when I see it.'
See it he did.
As evening fell Nimrod took him by an elaborate route to a vast ruin of a building, far from any sign of human habitation. The place had been a foundry in its prime; but its heroic scale had doomed it when times got leaner. Now its walls would supposedly see the kindling of another heat entirely.
As they drew closer, it became apparent that there were lights burning in the interior, but there was no sound or sign of the immense gathering Nimrod had promised. A few solitary figures lurked amongst the rubble of service buildings; otherwise the place seemed to be deserted.
Once through the door, however, Jerichau faced the first shock of a night that would bring many: the vast building was filled to capacity with hundreds of the Kind. He saw members of every Root, Babu and Ye-me, Lo and Aia; he saw old men and women, he saw babes in arms. Some he knew had been in the Weave at the beginning, and had apparently elected the previous summer to try their luck in the Kingdom; others he guessed were descendants of those who'd rejected the Weave at the outset; they had a look about them which marked them out as strangers to their homeland. Many of them stood quite separately from their fellow devotees, as if nervous of rejection.
It was disorienting to see physiognomies that carried the subtle signature of his fellow Seerkind primped and painted a la mode; Seerkind dressed in jeans and leather jackets, in print dresses and high heels. To judge by their condition many of them had survived well enough in the Kingdom; perhaps even prospered. Yet they were here. A whisper of liberation had found them in their hiding places amongst the Cuckoos, and they'd come, bringing their children and their prayers. Kind who could only know of the Fugue from rumour and hearsay, drawn by the hope of seeing a place their hearts had never forgotten.
Despite his initial cynicism, he could not help but be moved by this silent and expectant multitude.
‘I told you,' Nimrod whispered, as he led Jerichau through the throng. ‘We'll get as close as we can, eh?'
At the end of the vast hall a rostrum had been set up, littered with flowers. Lights hovered in the air, Babu raptures, throwing a flickering luminescence on the stage beneath.
‘He'll come soon,' said Nimrod.
Jerichau didn't doubt it. Even now there was some movement at the far end of the hall; several figures, dressed in the same dark blue, were ordering the crowd a few yards back from the vicinity of the rostrum. The devotees obeyed the instruction without question.
‘Who are they?' said Jerichau, nodding towards the uniformed figures.
‘The Prophet's Elite,' Nimrod returned. They're with him night and day. To keep him from harm.'
Jerichau had no time to ask any further questions. A door was opening in the bare brick wall at the back of the platform, a tremor of excitement passing through the hall. The congre-
gation started to surge towards the platform. The swell of emotion was contagious; try as he might to keep his critical faculties sharp Jerichau found his heart pounding with excitement.
One of the Elite had appeared through the open door, carrying a plain wooden chair. This he set at the front of the platform. The crowd was pressing at Jerichau's back; he was hemmed in to right and left. Every face but his was turned towards the stage. Some had tears on their cheeks: the tension of waiting had been too much. Others were speaking silent prayers.
And now, two more Elite stepped through the door, parting to reveal a figure in pale yellow, the sight of whom brought a tide of sound from the crowd. It was not the jubilant shout of welcome Jerichau had been anticipating, but an intensification of the murmur that had begun a while earlier; a soft, yearning sound which stirred the gut.
Above the platform, the floating flames became brighter. The murmur grew in depth and resonance. Jerichau had to make a fierce effort not to join in.