The Old Story - Part 6c
[Conclusion of Part 6.]
***
It is a bright morning. Ly awakens in her room. The house is oddly silent. Usually there would be the scuffling and small voices of the little guys...
She gets up and goes to Rayman’s room.
He turns to look at her as she comes in. He is – for the first time in weeks – sitting up, he is in his reclining chair, set up by the huge window in his room that overlooks the bay, with its view of the great mountains across the water.
His eyes are shining, they are beautiful. They are almost free of pain. He keeps his gaze on her as she comes to sit in the chair beside his. He is smiling, almost glowing.
She gazes at him with satisfaction. “Hello, Rayman,” she says.
He grins at her. “Hello, Ly.”
She looks out over the water. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it.”
He takes a deep breath. “I feel so good today, Ly. I could almost walk out to the beach.”
They sit in silence for a little while. She says, “You know ... your friend Maulda – she asked if she could visit you again – when you felt up to it.”
He turns in his chair – how rarely he twists his body like that now – and touches her arm. She gets up and stands beside him. He fingers her arm, her hand, gently; looks up into her eyes.
“What I would really like,” he says, “is to spend a day with you.”
***
His eyes aglow as he holds her, glorying in the feeling of her body against his, stroking her head, face, body, arms, anything he can reach, as though in awe that he can actually touch her.
“I never, all my life, believed I would ever find the mate for me... and I never did. Sure, there were flings, and they were delightful... but I never found anyone who was my – my – counterpart. Is that the word? Someone who could play off me as an equal. Someone who would follow me faster than I was going. Someone who could fight me to the death in the same moment that we were utterly united. Someone who – contained – everything...” He laughed. “Someone who could cope with my ego!”
Ly was tickling him gently. She had not seen him this alive since the first day or two that they arrived at his home. He turned to look at her excitedly.
“When I saw you – the very first instant I saw you – I knew it was you. I mean, that you were the one I thought I’d never find. You looked at me with a kind of horror, and I knew you would laugh at me, scorn me, think I was ridiculous. Well, after all... in your world, I am. But I knew you also had that in you that could see... what was in me.”
He put his hands around her head, gazed into her eyes with almost unbearable tenderness. “But... I never dreamed... that you actually would... that you really would look past all of that – that you would be willing to – lower yourself – stoop to something as contemptible, as absurd, as hideous as me...”
“Rayman,” she protested. “Don’t talk about yourself like that.”
He laid his head down, burrowing like a puppy against her side. She heard his soft chuckle, and winced.
“Well... whose thoughts were those? Not mine, really...” She winced again, he laughed softly. His smooth cheek came up to rub sweetly against hers.
“Let me torture you with it just this once, Ly.” Smiling. “Let me rub it in just one time. God knows how often you...” He silenced suddenly, lowering his eyes. And she felt the sudden withdrawal.
She turned, took hold of his head fiercely.
“Damn it,” she whispered. “You can run me through with a sword if you want to, I’ll get you one. I deserve to be roasted in hell for that – loathsome arrogance I treated you with. For every time I hurt you, I should be stabbed with a red-hot dagger —”
He stopped her with a hand on her mouth. “No. What matters, the only thing that matters, is that after all that, you – finally saw me, and – changed your mind.” He put his hands around her head again, his beautiful eyes smiling, reaching deep into hers. “Didn’t we win that battle, Ly? It’s over.”
***
His clear, smiling eyes steady on her, a faint touch of mischief in them, he wants to try to make love.
“It’s the last chance we’ll get, Ly.”
She’s horrified at the thought. How can they possibly, when he is so —
“But, Rayman, are you up to it? Isn’t it too much —?”
“I don’t know... Let’s find out.”
“But, but, Rayman...”
The smile, the mischief, die out of his face, he looks like a slapped child. “Don’t you want to?”
She shivers. “Rayman, yes, oh – my love, yes, of course I would want to – if only you weren’t —”
And his clear eyes turn dark. He lies back, looking suddenly much more ill. He moves his hand in a helpless gesture, and turns his sombre gaze on her. Quietly he says, “Ly. Look at me. I’m still alive. I’m alive, Ly. Yes, we know that won’t last. But – does damned death have to rule every moment of our lives? Kill what few moments of freedom we still have? Oh, Ly, can’t we – put it aside, just once? Live, while we’re still alive? Do what we want, instead of what it wants? Must you – must you at every instant keep shoving me back into dying, Ly, oh, my darling Ly, do you have to rub my face in death as though I – might forget?” Tears in his eyes now.
“Oh, my god, Rayman...” She takes his hand and presses it to her cheek.
Timidly, they smile at each other a little. Then a little more. He cups his hand around her face, that sweet touch.
***
And he frightens her by the intensity of the sensation he creates in her.
“Oh, god, Rayman, don’t – don’t hurt yourself – I don’t want to lose you —”
“Ly – Ly —” Pressing against her, he is in tears. “Let me give you something in return, Ly, something, Ly, please.”
And it hits her hard, to what degree he is doing this purely for her sake, as a gift, the only thing he has to offer – although certainly it does give him tremendous joy to have this contact with her. Along with the effort and pain.
Afterwards he nearly dies, overcome with exhaustion. He lies half comatose in her arms, while she gently, anxiously tries to bring him back... but, ebbing in and out of consciousness, he is smiling, his loving hands make helpless little motions to embrace her, his struggling breath comes out in faint gasps of laughter...
***
She, clutching him as he lies on his back gasping, fading – “If you die because of this I’ll never forgive you, Rayman!” But gradually, his convulsive, weak breaths metamorphose into little gasps of laughter... his eyes open, he looks at her, still weak but smiling, ruefully and joyously, the exhausted laughter bubbling irrepressibly out of him.
***
He is lying on his side, eyes scrunched closed, holding her hand with both of his, giving little exhausted laughs. He looks up at her. “We got away with it,” he grins, gasping. “We got away with it.”
He is sitting up, still unable to stop laughing. Holding on to her. “It’s such a beautiful day... let’s go outside, Ly, it’s so beautiful today...” He rebounds surprisingly, still feels surprisingly well.
***
They are out on the wooden deck, he in his rolling reclined chair, she in a deck chair beside him. He won’t let go of her hand, but otherwise his attention is directed at the bright warm sky; the passing clouds, the sea, the birds. Although he is panting with the effort, he keeps talking and talking.
He tells her the names of all the mountains they can see across the bay, tells her the little traditional stories about each one.
“And you see that one – sort of squarish – next to the Great Lady, that one is the Magician’s Hat. It’s said to be bad luck to turn your back on it at twilight because...”
She realizes after a while that there is one mountain he has not mentioned – the tallest, the most conspicuous and imposing of the range.
“What about that one?”
He pauses. “Which?”
“Why, Rayman, the tallest one, how can you miss it? What’s that one called?”
He squirms a little.
“Oh – that one ... its proper name is the Home of the Gods.”
She is suspicious for sure now.
“What do you mean, its ‘proper’ name?”
He turns away from her. “It was always called that.”
She gets up and moves so she can look him in the face. He is blushing faintly, avoids her eyes.
“Oh, yeah? It was called that, was it? What’s it called now?”
He gives her a brief pleading glance and retreats. “They’ll go back to its real name in a few years, I’m sure. I wish they hadn’t changed it – that one particularly. I always loved that peak, climbed it so many times... painted it so many times...” He smiles a little, facing into the back of his chair. “In all its many moods...”
She pulls him round to face her. “All right, Rayman. What are you hiding?”
He shakes his head dismissively. “Ahh – a few years ago – they went and renamed it Rayman’s Peak.” He shakes his head again, looking disgusted. “Big ceremony – god, I’ve never been so embarrassed. It was wrong... that peak is the home of the gods, that’s what it is.”
She kisses him gently, lays him back in his chair. He is quiet now, looking up at the drifting clouds.
After a while, he says, softly, distantly, “I wonder ... what stories they tell now...”
For the first time that day a real spasm of pain takes him. He trembles. Tears in his eyes.
“Ly... don’t listen to them... when they try to tell you... when they try to make me a sort of god...”
He turns to her, shuddering, quivering, clutches her hand.
“We know better... oh – oh god – oh –” He sobs briefly, kisses her palm, holds it with shaking hands against his face. She has moved closer to him, stroking his head, alarmed at his sharp agony.
“Ly... Ly... tell me I’m just a person – just a living being like you—” He gasps.
She kisses him, kisses him, gently, urgently, holding her body lightly against his. “I know what you are, love, I know what you are.” He moans faintly. “Rayman – you are a god – you’re a living being, and a god, both – like all of us...” He looks at her now, apprehensively. She strokes his head. “There’s just more god in you – and more being – than in most of us.” He raises one finger to stroke her face above him. He is looking at her a little perplexed, not quite accepting, reserving judgement. “Even now, my love, even the way you are now—” Now it is her eyes that are full of tears, she who sobs briefly, “There’s more life in you than in the rest of us put together.” She presses herself to him, although she knows that causes him pain. He puts his big hands around her, is quiet for a while.
He says, very softly, as they lie still, “Ly... don’t ever make less of yourself than you are... Don’t put anyone above yourself, Ly.” He presses her closer, she kisses his face, and they rest in the gentle heat of the late afternoon.