Shades in Shadow Read Free

quietly, from afar. Not all of the children who love Nahadoth are imprisoned with him, because not all of them offended Itempas enough to merit punishment. Tempa is nothing if not fair in his cruelty. Nsana is the first to reach out to Nahadoth, and the instant he feels it, he knows Nsana has endangered himself, because Itempas watches. (No, Itempas does not watch their children. He watches Nahadoth, always, with a close and jealous eye.) But even Tempa cannot punish a dream, can he? Tempa cannot want Naha to go mad again. He cannot. He cannot. Not even if Tempa has gone mad himself.
    This dream is a memory, because Nsana knows better than to let Nahadoth’s mind roam where it will. (Memory of a face in ivory damask, eyes shut and lashes dewed, openmouthed in pleasure and abandon. Nahadoth was careful, careful, because dreams are fragile, but Nsana was stronger than he seemed.) Nsana understands him better than even Sieh does. This dream consists of a single sense: taste. Nahadoth closes his eyes and opens his body’s mouth and for a moment there is musk on his tongue, slightly bitter, not entirely pleasant. Aromatic. The taste of it radiates up through the body’s sinus cavity, offering an impression of itself to other senses: the redolence of old leather and dried leaves, the warmth of an afternoon sun. The last time he tasted this was long ago, but he remembers it because it was a beautiful day on a beautiful world, which he spent entirely absorbed in the sensations and pleasurable constrictions of mortal flesh. His own and that of two others. Smooth muscled arms clothed in black skin, holding him close from behind. A narrow burnished torso leaning close so that he can nuzzle tiny breasts; long strong fingers threading into his hair with no fear of being swallowed into the dark place that it contains. Hardness and heat, liquid and friction, bone and softness, teeth and tongue. A soft male voice in his ear
    (breath, moist; air, vibrating through chords; the brush of warm lips)
    murmuring between hard pants, “We shall always be one.”
    The taste of her, and him, and Them.
    The musky taste fades. Clever Nsana. In itself the dream was nothing: just a taste. Nothing Itempas can complain of. All its power comes from Nahadoth’s imagination. And, too, from the power of flesh—which was Nsana’s purpose, Nahadoth understands. A way of reminding Nahadoth that the body need not be a prison, if he can learn to embrace its joys.
    But the dream, the memory, is wrong. Always has ended. The Three are no longer one. Itempas lied, and Nsana’s attempt to comfort him has been worse than a failure.
    Nahadoth is too weary to mourn.
    *  *  *
    “What are you?” asks the boy who is not a boy.
    More time has passed. The boy is halfway to death now, by the usual length of a mortal life. His voice is deeper, his face roughly handsome rather than pretty. Nahadoth doubts he is warming anyone’s bed anymore—but such things are not always about beauty, so he might be wrong on that account.
    And such a question! No one has asked him that since…since Itempas, a thousand, thousand eternities ago. Since existence, trying to define itself, transformed into a new shape to accommodate his presence and defined him by doing so. He feels oddly flattered to be asked again.
    “I…,” Nahadoth tries to say, and stops, distracted. Voice. Soft flapping moist tissues, hard bone and enamel, vibration, breath. Pure sensation. He has always liked mortal form. “Want.”
    “What?”
    “I want .” Emphasis. Intent. Desire. The words make him ache within, a dull niggling torment paralleling the ongoing crush and grind of mortal flesh upon his soul. “I am wanting. It is…all that I can be.” Now. And forevermore? Then Itempas truly has damned him.
    Silence. Then: “They say you’re like the others, but you can’t be. They aren’t like this. They don’t sit in some room, in a…a puddle , and speak only in mad rants. You’re something