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Hanish interrupted, speaking in a flippant tone that ignored the import of her argument altogether. “Will you dance with me?”
Cori
“So you would dance, had we the proper music?”
When she did not answer immediately, Hanish took her by the wrist. He squeezed her fine bones between his thumb and forefinger and tugged her toward the center of the room. “In all the many centuries that musicians have played Meinish tunes, I’m sure that someone has danced to this one. Someone has felt within the sounds a rhythm suited to the movement of two bodies. That’s how I like to think of it. One must find rhythms others’ ears don’t hear.”
The hand at her wrist slid somehow into the grip of her palm. The other swept around her back. He pulled her close. She yanked her arm to loose it from his and stepped back, but instead of breaking free she found Hanish swept forward, the movement of her arm a gesture in what was suddenly choreography. Her backward step had been so perfectly timed to his forward motion that she almost believed she had initiated the intimacy. Try as she might she could not manage to break the flow of their movements. Before long she stopped trying. It was amazing, really, how well he moved and how much her body enjoyed the swirling pattern they cut across the floor.
“Cori
“I suppose that’s my fault also.”
Hanish waited a few moments after this, moving through the dance, his eyes furtive in a way Cori
“Santoth,” Cori
Hanish nodded. “Tinhadin had a gift that perhaps you have as well, if you knew how to use it. He cursed the line of Mein with everlasting purgatory. No man of my family has found peace in death since-not one in over twenty generations. Our bodies don’t rot. Our dead flesh doesn’t burn. Our souls remain trapped within. We’re not alive, but we linger. Just linger.”
Several other couples had joined them in the open space. They twirled about in imitation of Hanish’s dance, their faces eager for the eye contact he denied them. Cori
“There is no greater curse than being forever trapped between life and death,” he said, “allowed neither one nor the other. Can you imagine what it means to be a spirit contained within a corpse for year after year, no end of it in sight? Death comes for all things. All things-humans and beasts, trees and fish-everything is promised release except my ancestors. Except me. This is what the Tunishnevre is. This is why it grows greater with each passing year. This is why your people make sure their own corpses are made into dust and cast out into the wind. Your customs remember the curse and fear it, even if you don’t. I find that’s often the way of things. Collective memory has a wisdom individuals ca
“Me?”
Hanish nodded. “You may have an importance you have not yet imagined.” “Is it true that you speak with them?”
“In a ma
“What do they tell you?”
They bumped against a couple that had gotten too close. Hanish stopped moving, dropped his arms, and spoke quietly in a way that made his voice an intimacy. “They tell me a great many things, Cori
They spent the entirety of the next day together. Hanish seemed to have nothing to do except entertain her. On horseback they rode the coast road to the north, flowing over the contours of the plateau, sea to one side, manicured farmland stretching off to the west. His escort of Punisari guards kept a good distance behind them, well out of earshot of their conversation. For the first time they truly spoke without the possibility of anybody overhearing them. They did not, however, use the solitude to speak of anything of any significance.
At a famous spot they stood above a fissure in the rock face that cha
When he proposed that they refuse the evening’s invitation to di
Later, they shared a sweet liqueur on the villa’s main balcony. Below them the sea darkened as the sun passed from view. Before long the moon appeared and shone behind a lacy weave of thin clouds. The breeze carried a chill with it, but not uncomfortably so. Just enough to pimple the skin. Cori
Holding her small glass out to accept Hanish’s offer of a refill, Cori
The question was posed playfully, but Hanish rubbed the grain of the weathered balcony abutment nervously, looking for a moment like a child trying to leave an indentation with just the pressure of his fingers. “Never.”
“Did you bring me here to seduce me? Is that what this is all about?”
Blood rose to Hanish’s cheeks. Even his forehead reddened. She had never seen such an involuntary display register on his features before. “I brought you here to offer you a gift. I fear you’ll throw it back in my face.”