Nymphaea

Chapter 33: Family affairs

Alannah thought she went mad. And she couldn’t comprehend what was going on. It wasn’t the first time that Ayve was visiting his people. She’d never enjoyed the weeks she had to spend without being able to contact him but she had gotten along. Now she couldn’t fall asleep and the thought of food disgusted her. At times she was close to panicking. It didn’t make sense. All she could think about was where Ayve might be now and more importantly with whom. If she hadn’t been aware of how much Ayve emphasized on a healthy life style (he had only mocked her here and there when she showed up with fast food or in clothing inappropriate for certain weather conditions but Alannah was smart enough to understand that Ayve just didn’t wish to reprimand her like the elder he was in the end but indeed was bothered by her ways since she did not only risk her health but in the long run that of a future child), staying away from cigarettes or similarly destructive means of calming would have nearly been impossible.

At the end of the first week, Alannah went to a doctor to receive an attest for her employer and fled to her nymph aunt who lived in a purely non-human settlement on the western coast of Scotland. Perhaps she could help her with her problem; it wouldn’t be the first time.

Aunt Matha took her in with open arms. She lived in her own little house, only meeting with her nymph bond-mate in regular intervals and living together with him in certain periods. Within minutes, Alannah was seated in a comfortable seating corner on the floor of her aunt’s living room, huge windows with lovely colourful glass painting on them facing the garden. It was the end of November, there wasn’t much to be seen outside, but the whole setting rendered Alannah a sense of peace that was more than she had hoped to gain by visiting the place. A cello quartet sounded from the record player in the opposite corner. After a few moments, her aunt appeared with a tea tray.

Alannah started voicing her problems. After only a few sentences she started crying and cursed herself for it. She didn’t want to, she knew it was ridiculous and yet she couldn’t hold the tears back. Matha tried to soothe her with warm words. A hug would have helped better but Alannah knew she could expect that. The cultures of her mother and her father were very different there, although her father had had to adjust.

“Your Ayve must have a special charisma for you to suffer so much from his absence. I’ve never seen anyone that desperate,” her aunt admitted. “Perhaps it’s his mixed blood, and yours, that amplifies your attraction to him. Your mother’s race is much more physical, after all. I wish I could help you but I wouldn’t know where to procure the ingredients for the tea from and to be honest, I’ve never really found out the right mixture. I suppose your Ayve would be of more help here.”

After a moment of helpless on-looking she added: “Of course you can stay as long as you wish. Wouldn’t you feel better with someone around you? I’m a little lonely myself since Zoha has moved away.” Zoha was Alannah’s cousin who visited the university in his fifth semester these days.

After a day of thinking her options through, Alannah gladly accepted the invitation. She could as well try and get a job here in the area; London had – for all its merits – long since stopped appealing to her. She needed family to be around. And this was a settlement filled with her kin – odds were high that she was going to be able to build up a circle of friends here that would sustain a little longer than the friendships she’d had so far. Yes: it sounded good.

Alannah made arrangements for her things to be transported to Scotland and went back to London two days before they were to be fetched to pack them. Her aunt avoided big cities, so she had to shoulder the task alone. Fortunate as she was, her apartment was relatively small which meant her belongings were limited.

Despite her knowledge that Ayve’s trip would take a while, Alannah tried to call him several times each day. He’d purchased the mobile phone on her request for of course she her irrational worries concerning Ayve’s whereabouts hadn’t started abruptly. The idea he might arrive back earlier than expected and she sat at home needlessly anxious just because she hadn’t known he was already back in the country made her shiver.

To suddenly hear Ayve’s smooth, dark, soothing voice one day was perfect bliss. Alannah tried to remain calm and don’t give away her troubles but she still urged her bond-mate to come and see her. He promised he would be there the next morning and breakfast with her.

Aunt Matha had to work so she prepared breakfast for two. When the doorbell rang, Alannah hurried to let Ayve in and flung herself at him.

“Hello, nice to see you too,” he mumbled into her red curls. She clung to his shoulders for several long moments, only distantly aware of his hand on her hip, keeping her body at bay.

“I’m sorry,” she said with an embarrassed smile. “It’s just… I’ve been a total nerve wreck without you.”

He smiled at her benignly and led her back into the kitchen.

As she prepared the coffee, Ayve retrieved a small parcel out of his bag. She looked at him curiously when he handed it over to her.

“Just something you’ll find useful,” he explained shortly.

When she removed the cord and the wrapping, three smaller packs fell out of it. Ayve sized the smallest one.

“That’s a present from my sister to welcome you in the family,” he told Alannah and handed it over.

Her heart beat a little faster. The wrapping held several finely ornamented wooden pearls and a similarly adorned comb. Alannah had seen her aunt wear the traditional headdress at times and appreciated the gesture.

Ayve pointed to one of the other parcels. “You can share this one with your aunt, whereas you should keep this one,” he pointed to the last, “to yourself. I guess it’s best for you to be cautious at the beginning and drink only one cup a day, your body is not used to the herbs. We can’t know how you’ll react to it. But if it acts as it should, you’ll calm down soon.”

She eyed him gratefully and a little embarrassed.

“I’ll show you how the tea is prepared after we have finished breakfast.”

*

In the evening, Ayve stepped onto the train that took him to the southern coast of the Firth of Fourth. It took him one and a half hours of walking in the wet, cold December air until he reached his destination. No need to knock this time, Pheus awaited him.

“You could’ve taken a cab,” he said in the rough tongue of his kin. “Get in and take a warm shower, I’ve laid out fresh clothing already.”

Ayve was surprised by this kind of welcome – he had feared it might be less warm after his trip – and displayed a warm, amused smile as he passed his host on his way to the bathroom, disposing of his shoes and mantle on the way.

Half an hour later he reemerged, dressed in very comfortable clothing, his hair still wet, coughing because the warm shower had relaxed his respiratory passages and the pressure that had been settling there all day long had been loosened.

“You should know better,” a familiar, raspy voice sounded very close to him and made Ayve start. “And you should put your abilities to better use as well. Your carelessness could cost you,” it went on, holding out a cup of tea to him.

Only when he looked up, he noticed how close they stood by each other. “What if I had been overpowered by someone who wanted to get at you? You wouldn’t even have noticed the attacker.”

Ayve smirked, slightly uneasy because of the realisation that the close proximity of his former lover did not bother him as much now as it had a few months ago. I want to see the attacker who overpowers you. And you’d be a more likely target than me.

He took the cup and moved to the kitchen/living room area.

It had to have something to do with getting closer to Stephen or with opening up – or with both since that was interlinked anyway – that he hadn’t minded Pheus’ close proximity. Wasn’t that strange? Ayve made the final steps to give Pheus up and then…

He plumped down into the sea of dark brown and green cushions on the wooden floor and rested his back against the wall. Perhaps Pheus was right and he should have returned to the hotel that he had spent the last night in after visiting Alannah. The walk through the cold this night had probably given him the rest. He drew his legs closer and took in the aroma of his tea with closed eyes.

Pheus fed a few chunks of wood to the open fireplace to Ayve’s right. It consisted of eratic blocks that were held together by mortar. Above it, the wall was blackened by the grime but there were no wallpapers in this house anyway, it was only roughly painted in a crème tone and the process of painting had definitely taken place quite a few years ago so it didn’t matter. The house was clean, the bathroom had been renovated just recently, but Pheus had no mind for human extravagance.

The man fetched a blanket and threw it towards Ayve who took it gladly, knowing in a few minutes the fire would make him sweat but momentarily still feeling chilled in the cool room. They sat in companionable silence, Pheus leaning against the fireplace, Ayve looking past him into the flickering flames, the only light in the room. He felt green eyes resting on him but avoided them.

How does the project get along? Ayve asked after perhaps half an hour.

“Quite well,” his so far reticent host replied. “Can’t say there were no unwelcome incidents but that was to be expected. As soon as they realised cooperating equalled food, they calmed down.”

Ayve nodded silently, emptying his cup. The tea was nearly cold by now but since the room had been heated up in the meantime that was fine.

Where have you taken them?

Pheus got up, took Ayve’s empty cup and his own to the sink and fetched his laptop in answer. Ayve had been the one convincing him that human technology was the easiest way to communicate these days. And fast communication was important to reorganize their people who were scattered all over the planet. As long as Pheus had only been a private person he’d had the luxury to refuse such means but his new obligations made them necessary. Because of the assimilation to human culture most of his people had chosen as their way of survival, hardly anyone did not possess a computer.

With the same unmoved face he had worn the whole evening, Pheus booted the machine up and opened a map. “Ley’s sent me this.”

Ayve’s half-sister had been the one to convince their father that it was imperative to take care of their stray kinsmen after two of them had been caught by humans. Unfortunately the one who was responsible for the partly poor living conditions of their kinsmen was still their ‘leader’ (not that he led anywhere) until Ayve’s child would be born and therefore needed to agree to whatever measures Pheus and the rest of the family thought of to keep their people safe. The good thing was that the deal they had agreed upon seemed to have propitiated him so that he – after a few attempts to object – usually consented.

The map was huge and showed the whole planet. On every continent – apart from the Antarctica – there were a multitude of red, orange, as well as dark and light violet dots in different sizes. A legend explained what they symbolized: red dots stood for settlements that contained only their kind, orange dots marked human villages or cities where some of them lived, dark violet dots showed where places were situated in which their kind had mixed with nymphs and light violet points stood for settlements of all three kinds. The size of the dot referred to the size of the local population. It seemed to correlate with the number of humans as well as the prosperity in most places, especially bigger cities. New York City with about 8,2 million inhabitants, for example, alone held about ten thousand of their kinsmen, that meant one person out of 820 was not human. In London it was one out of 900. In Bombay the population was only 5000, making it one of their kind for every 2640 humans. The figures for Lagos were similar. Non-human townships were smaller, hardly ever surpassed 100 inhabitants.

I didn’t imagine there were so many, Ayve admitted.

Pheus, who sat next to him, half looking over his shoulder, nodded with furrowed brows. “I was surprised myself. We should have acted much earlier.”

Ayve took in the picture, ignoring the fact that Pheus once more was closer than usual and his reaction to that was noticeably dimmed. There was an impulse to expand the space between them but it was manageable.

And have you considered what to do now that you know? I mean, do they even accept the old claims for leadership?

The muscles in Pheus’ face tensed. “It’s still widely ‘known’ that we are the leading family though of course there are many questions about our legitimation, especially since ‘we’ haven’t been doing much in the last centuries. In the minds of the younger generation we have degenerated to a myth. Yet I believe – and Ley agrees with me – that we still have a good chance to win their trust back if we act quick and efficiently now and provide them with the feeling of unity many seem to desire. In great parts of the world the old social structures are still intact and will give us the power to re-establish ourselves as long as we realise what people have been dreaming of.”

Ayve nodded absent-mindedly. He thought about what would be necessary to reach their goal. Closer contact with people would be necessary. And they needed a means of giving people the opportunity to voice their problems and expectations. Before their family had been corrupted, the tribe had been living together in one place so that its members could talk to their leader face to face. Keeping communication flowing and prospering now would be a much greater challenge and at the same time a much greater necessity since most people these days were familiar with the concept of democracy and even if they didn’t generally agree with it would still feel more respected if they could voice their opinion.

Do you have a concept already?

Pheus shook his head minutely. “We’re still collecting information. Ley has proposed to have a meeting at the end of the year and discuss things in detail then - you, me, Ley and Shoa.”

Ayve once more nodded. I intended to visit my tribe then but I can do that earlier. I’ll need a few days to regain my health but that still leaves me enough time to do the trip and be back on time. Since when is Sho interested in politics?

Pheus smirked.

Shoa, short ‘Sho’, was one of Ayve’s half-brothers – the only bearable – and had fled his father’s grasp as soon as possible, since then showing perfect aversion towards politics. He held intermittent contact with the more moderate part of the family (Pheus wouldn’t dream of calling himself that but in comparison to his father and brother he supposed one could regard him that way) and had developed quite a liking for his bigger brother (Ayve; ‘bigger’ in this case related exclusively to the age, physically Sho had somehow managed to ignore his nymph heritage – he had a nymph mother as well – and grow to be a chunk of a man) on the few occasions they had met.

“I suppose he’s interested in change. As we all are. And it’s probably good to have him, no matter how inexperienced he might be, because he’s well regarded in the American circles.”

These arrows show where you have picked up strays and to which places you have transferred them? What do you do with them? Ayve abruptly turned back to the map.

Pheus sighed. There had been times when such verbal exchange hadn’t been necessary because they read each other’s minds. Pheus was still often able to read Ayve’s – he didn’t always bother guarding it – but Ayve refused to read his as it was an intimate act and Ayve shied from getting too close to him and Pheus was therefore forced to talk more in his presence than he cared for. He was a loner for reasons.

“They were checked first. Those who wanted it and proved to be able to function properly were provided with jobs as farm hands or the like, the rest were taken to inaccessible areas and told to keep away from human settlements. I fear it’s only a temporary solution and I refuse to force people to live like humans, you know my opinion. If that old coot had cared to die a few decades later, our people would lead a different life now, I’d have assured that.” Pheus’ raspy voice was most impressive when it was filled with bitterness and anger.

Ayve would have liked to put a hand on the younger man’s shoulder to console him but something still held him back. If he hadn’t died at that point in time you wouldn’t have been asked to find me. That means my tribe would be scattered all over the world by now and there’d be even less nymph offspring. One way or the other things would have gone amiss.

And Ayve wasn’t sure whether Pheus would have been up to the task back then. He was positively surprised that he paid heed to his and Ley’s advices now. Ayve had to recognize that he didn’t really know how to evaluate Pheus these days. They had not seen each other often enough in the last centuries and if it weren’t for his sultry outbursts, he’d reconsider his impression of his former lover. However, this mixture of a remarkable sense of duty, cold rationality and respectfully keeping distance on one side combined with Pheus’ intense stares and his violent outbursts on the other left Ayve absolutely confused.

Pheus wordlessly shut down the PC and announced he was going to bed. Ayve arranged the nest of soft pillows and lay down himself, pulling the cover over his body. It was strange, even unsettling to question his perception of a man he had always taken for granted. But he had to push that aside. He’d call Stephen tomorrow to meet with him before he went back to Asia.

*

Ayve called Stephen the next day. Of course he wasn’t happy to hear about Ayve’s schedule for the next weeks but they agreed on meeting in three days.

Afterwards he sank down and leaned back to lounge beside the fire again. Pheus had left for important business and wouldn’t return until their meeting at the end of the month. Ayve didn’t usually stay at his house; he’d never done so, so far. But he couldn’t deny that he liked the place. And it was good to know that he was welcome somewhere. During the last years Pheus and with him this house had become something like a safe haven, he had to acknowledge that.

Ayve booted up the laptop to look into the internet and see what had happened in the world while he had introduced Stephen to his culture. Of course he could have stayed updated if he’d wanted it but he found that a very wearisome process. That short telephone call had exhausted him already. Ayve was much more talented in telekinesis than in mind reading or influencing. It worked quite well in face to face situations but over longer distances it consumed a lot of energy.

Pheus’ talents were reversed. Only that he sometimes lacked the patience to take full advantage of them. What if he’d tried to persuade Stephen to stay away from Ayve? Ayve guessed that would have been a more effective method than the one Pheus had chosen. Well, ‘chosen’ was a word that indicated a conscious decision. Pheus had claimed that his mind had been fogged, that he hadn’t been capable of any cognitive performance, had only followed his instincts, and Ayve wanted to believe him. He knew Pheus did not regret the act itself but he was positive that he at least saw that the means were unfit. For whatever reasons. That sufficed in Ayve’s eyes because he needed to be able to trust Pheus. He knew he could.

Ayve gathered his strength and called Alannah. He wouldn’t be able to see her again before his trip but he wanted to hear how she was doing with the tea and propose she came to the meeting at the end of the month, in a manner of meeting his family, so to speak.

***


Comments, critical annotations and suggestions are welcome.