The Old Story - Leftovers
Rayman, the Village, and Ly
There is so much I didn’t write down, peripheral stuff about Rayman and his life and people. I have the urge to just note these things so they don’t get lost...
– Maulda – “Mother” – had a long talk with Ly one time, telling her something of how Rayman was as a child, and how he simply came out of the forest into the village one day, as a baby barely able to walk. He didn’t belong to anyone. They knew more or less who he was, though; there had always been a few beings of their kind who appeared spontaneously without parents, once or twice in a generation. That had once been the way of all their kind, no childhood or any of that; but gradually the fashion of having families and growing up had come in. Rayman was one of those who was able to live the old way; such beings were always extraordinary. Maulda adopted him, more or less, though he was always very clearly recognized by her and by himself, as well as everyone else, as not being her child; she was only his caretaker. He was probably brought to her, as being the one most suitable to bring him up. Her adoration of him is quite evident even now; she felt to have had him under her care was a great privilege. Even though he wasn’t necessarily the easiest child to deal with. She had a number of children of her own, but Rayman was the one she loved most.
– Another time, a young mother comes in to see Rayman when he is receiving visitors, and he greets her with great joy and affection. It turns out she was someone he had a youthful romance with. She was wildly in love with him at the time and believed that they might become permanent partners. But although he was tremendously fond of her and still is, it had been through affairs like that one, that he had realized early on that what he was looking for wasn’t in the village.
Ly, of course, is almost mad with jealousy once she realizes who this young woman had been. But neither Rayman nor the young woman, though they embrace and look at each other with fondness, have any possessiveness or regret or leftover emotions of any kind. The young woman talks calmly and collectedly afterwards with Ly, telling her quite honestly how much she had loved Rayman and how bitter it had been for her when it didn’t work out, but she doesn’t feel that she has any claim over him now and she is very happy with her mate and children. She also feels that Rayman had needed something more, something beyond the quiet sweetness of the people of the village, and she looks at Ly with admiration, saying that she was glad Rayman had found a mate who was worthy of him. (Ly and Rayman are not, however, really mated at this point.) She is so completely matter of fact about it all that Ly has to calm down. And when Ly sees Rayman afterwards, he looks at her a bit mischievously, knowing how she will react, but he is very pleased when she talks about the young woman with some trace of genuine respect.
(She shows her two young children to Rayman, and he beams at them affectionately. He is very fond of children, anyway.)
He had a number of liaisons of one kind or another in his youth, as is normal among his people, lighthearted affairs that might have led to something permanent but not necessarily. But as he says, he never made love to anyone he didn’t really have love for; and they were all wonderful individuals. He remembers them all with undiminished affection. And as Ly meets them, she realizes that in fact they all are wonderful people, as are most of the villagers.
What he feels for Ly is of another kind entirely. It goes far beyond affection and liking, though those are there too. He feels a visceral passion for her that goes far beyond the body; an overwhelming urge to unite with her, to become spiritually and physically one with her, in fact, that though they have never met before in this lifetime, they already are one – and in the early part of their acquaintance, the torment for him was to get her to recognize and admit to that. He is absolutely uncompromising about this feeling, although at the same time he is very afraid of overstepping his rights and offending her, of presuming upon her freedom, of asking anything he has no right to or implying that he has a right to anything. He sees clearly that what he feels for her is what he feels, and though he is certain she feels the same whether she realizes it or not, it would be unthinkable to try to force her to realize it. Particularly because she finds him repellent when they first meet, he is not very forthcoming to her – partly out of hurt, and very much out of pride. He teases her sometimes, even attacks her a little (this was in the early days, when they had gotten free but were still fighting the pirates); he plays off her, they develop a kind of half-joking, half-sincere combative, sparring relationship that is the best he can do to relieve his frustration. At this point, he is sure she will never care for him, that she will never allow herself to realize how she actually does feel about him, and he is bitter about it, although his extreme (though never stated, never acknowledged) pride will never allow him to express that bitterness openly, or stoop to attacking or disgracing her outright or doing anything to show disappointment or unhappiness. He takes a wickedly comic, satiric approach. Oddly enough, though at first she dislikes him, later on starts to resent and hate him because of his unwelcome “attentions” to her, his sardonic clowning and pseudo-admiration, his near expressions of contempt at times, though always done with a kind of cold restraint that makes it clear his real feelings – whether of love or more likely hatred – are not being expressed – despite all this, he gradually grows on her. Particularly after she sees him fight and realizes that there is something to this guy, that he is not at all what he seems; and also, occasional moments when she sees the tremendous kindness and generosity in his nature – usually directed at someone else, but she sees it. And also she gets glimpses of his intense, passionate, though entirely unpretentious, even self-mocking pride; his utter unwillingness to compromise on anything important although equal willingness to give in on anything he doesn’t consider important; his unselfconscious integrity. He is like a king incognito, she thinks; his power is immense, but masked, showing only at rare moments of necessity.
Gradually, intuitively, she begins to understand what is going on with him. (She knew right from the start how he felt about her – his first glance at her, the stunned, then immediately hopeless, look on his face – lasted only a moment, but was all too clear. But then he spent the next weeks annihilating that moment of weakness as best he could, comically punishing her for it.) By the time she begins to realize, to her own horror, that she loves him, she is afraid to do anything about it – he is liable to attack her for real if she tries, he will think she is finally mocking him openly and with outright, straightforward, wilfully cruel malice. But, the necessity of working together and with others to free themselves and their friends and the whole shipful of captives keeps them on some sort of cordial basis, and they do have inevitable moments of helping each other which enable moments of more honest communication, and so on ... So eventually they are able to overcome the antagonistic game they had gotten into. But she is the one who has to overcome it mostly. He is very mistrustful of her for a long time. She must have said something that cut him very deeply; perhaps even more, it was the look in her eyes when she first saw him, the blend of astonishment, horror, and unkind laughter, that made nothing of him. That she didn’t recognize him, but looked only at his body. That she didn’t recognize him. That hurt and angered him, that made him very angry at her for this unworthy persona she was carrying around. And at the same time, it shamed him a little for being what he was, which was also infuriating, but which he couldn’t help – he couldn’t help, for the first time in his life, feeling a little ashamed of being this comic, unromantic, unheroic looking creature (as he had learned to see through others’ eyes, since he had been taken away from his own people), and it infuriated him that she should dare make him feel that way, and even more that he should give in to it.
– As a child and youth he was notable for sweetness of temper but also a staggering independence. He could never be controlled by anyone; he simply cooperated, or he occasionally didn’t. Threats had no effect on him, but he would usually cooperate out of affection – unless it went against his better judgement. It was almost impossible to get him into a fight; he seemed from a very early age to realize that he was far more powerful than anyone else around him (long before he physically was), and so he could not be shamed or antagonized or taunted into battle, even into an argument; even when he was tiny, it was as though he was untouchable by the mocking of those who weren’t up to dealing with him. He was thought by many of his peers to be a coward, and he didn’t even care about that. It was a huge shock to a lot of them one day when he finally, probably in defense of somebody else, did fight, and flatten someone much bigger than himself without any effort and without even getting particularly interested. All attitudes about him altered abruptly at that point, both of children and adults – except for a few who had been expecting something like that all along.
– One thing, along this line and beyond it – Rayman knew, which Ly didn’t, that she herself was capable of having any ability he had. He sometimes reawakened abilities in her she didn’t know she had. Yet, in fact, she was already far more able, had far more abilities, than most solid-bodies, which was why she was considered a magical being. But her magic was quite limited, though conversely sometimes she could do things he couldn’t. She called it magic, perhaps, and so did the Fairy and the Magician; Rayman didn’t call it that, he mostly just referred to it as himself.
That is one of the reasons she came to love him with such adoration – Rayman always validated the truth of her, which was of course always the same truth of everyone – that she had unlimited native ability and undying beauty and affinity and love. Regardless of what nonsense she might be trying to display instead. He would see through that in an instant, and it could scarcely manage to exist in his presence. Particularly after he became ill, which yanked him out of the usual pretences and egotisms of normal life. He just didn’t have time or strength for those kind of games any more, he was in a desperate state that could only be sustained by raw truth.
– Incidentally, he always referred to the incident on the ship in which he was shot by the energy cannon as his death. He considered he had been killed, but had contacted the body again, either automatically because it was in a position as if alive, or because he really could not endure to leave Ly. The body had been too severely damaged to continue to live, but he was forcing it to anyhow. There is some sort of “energy skeleton” or structure to the body, a non-visible, intangible, more or less immaterial pattern to it, in which the core and “brain” if you like, or heart – anyway, they called it the “nexus,” and it was the center of the body, and all energies flowed through there, and all motion of the body originated from there. His hands and feet and head existed in sort of electron valences – I forget what they’re called, but they each had more or less roughly defined areas of operation around his body. He didn’t have sticklike limbs controlling the extremities, they existed in fields, each operating usually in a certain quadrant of space around the body. But he could make them move beyond those areas, though as they got further and further away from the body it became more difficult, and if stretched by some external force beyond his area of control, could lead to pain. (Much more so after he was injured and the energy structure became crippled and tenuous. Then his area of control contracted very greatly, to only a short distance away from his body, and moving his extremities even a small distance beyond that would hurt him.) The body parts themselves, although they feel similar to flesh, are not made of flesh. They are a kind of condensed energy, a form of matter, but of something not really similar to anything else we’re familiar with. They don’t quite follow the properties of matter as we know it. They are much more able to sustain hits from energy or physical blows, they don’t shatter easily, and the energy structure of the body, too, (before he’s injured) is extremely tough. The strength of action of his body, which doesn’t come from the body parts anyway but from the energy field containing them, is also very much greater than we would expect.
Rayman is able to create pretty strong effects, emanate energy from his hands, and do things like perceive and control the emotions and sensations of another he’s close to, all through his ability to directly manipulate energy. He has considerably more ability in this way than most of his people, though all of them have more of this sort of ability than we solid-bodies do.
***
This was a very early idea and somewhat contradictory with the rest of the story – The trip from the planet where Rayman was hurt, back to his own planet. The first part was by spaceship (an interplanetary liner ), which took its toll on him, but was bearable. Then there was a very long train journey of some days on his own planet, from the big city where the terminal was to the remote area where his village was. That was terrible. The vibration, bumping, and jerking of the train was agonizing and exhausting to him, though it wouldn’t seem very severe to a healthy person. Ly had taken a private compartment on the train, and she sat with him, as he lay in a bed, trying to ease him as much as possible, talking to him when he was awake – or conscious – and generally struggling to get him through it. He desperately wanted to go home, was holding on with all his strength, but even he didn’t always think he would be able to make it. (Still, he told her, he would rather die on the journey than to have stayed back on that other planet.)
At last, as she saw him weakening, saw him losing the fight, as he became too exhausted to speak or open his eyes, she left him asleep or unconscious and went out to find help. She got hold of a steward and told him she had a companion who was very ill, who couldn’t tolerate the motion of the train, and begged him for something to help, perhaps another mattress or extra pillows and blankets, anything that might cushion him. The steward looked skeptical, said they really didn’t have anything extra.
There are actually different versions ... in one, she mentioned Rayman’s name and was shocked at the response. “He’s on the train? –He’s – sick?” And everything changed. Suddenly the top person on board the train was involved, and suddenly three huge feather beds appeared out of nowhere, and a couple of silent, deeply respectful, almost trembly men helped Ly lift Rayman’s unconscious body up and settle him onto the feather beds. “Please, please don’t tell any of the passengers he’s here,” she begged them (having grasped what would likely happen if the news got out), “Please He has to have quiet. You can see that.” And they all did keep the secret, but a few train employees were generally to be spotted walking by or hanging around in the corridor near his compartment, for no apparent reason. The original steward Ly had approached asked her humbly if he could, just for a moment, meet Rayman, just once? Just silently look at him sleeping? Rayman, more awake now – the feather beds, though they certainly didn’t remove all the strain, did help quite a lot – told Ly he would like to talk to him, and he did – they had a short conversation. Rayman asked about his children and so on. I think Rayman gave him something, but I can’t remember what – some little token or memento – and pressed his hand affectionately. The steward was almost in tears. Rayman asked him quietly to make sure that no one heard that he had been on the train until he had left it and was well away. He didn’t want any receptions waiting for him or any publicity of any kind. When he left the train, the head person there told Ly to keep the very expensive feather beds. She would only take one, to wrap his near-comatose body in for the last leg of the journey.
[In the other version, the steward didn’t know who it was until Ly dragged him in to see for himself what straits the dying passenger was in. The steward glanced at the barely conscious body on the bed, went rigid with shock. Then stepped quickly out of the compartment, leaning against the wall, even crouching down to the floor, gasping. Ly followed him out in consternation. “It’s him,” gasped the steward, “oh, my god, it is Rayman, it couldn’t be anyone else ...” “You know him?” Ly says, bewildered. “Know him? Is there anyone who doesn’t know him? – What happened to him?” But these people are city people, they don’t know Rayman personally, only through stories and pictures. And their attitude to him is different from that of the people of his village – to them, Rayman is a celebrity, more than that, a hero, a legendary figure, someone remote and worshipped for saving the planet. In his village, he is certainly respected, and valued for what he has done, but also he is very much known and loved just as an individual, himself, someone they grew up with who has made himself beloved by his personality, his actions towards his friends, his quirks and jokes, his music and playfulness. There is no “celebrity” status here. Which is why Rayman has rarely been seen far from this area.]
(This of course contradicts the scene with the doctor in which Ly was unaware of Rayman’s planetary fame. So take your pick XD.)
–There was the trip taken to see a doctor in town – after Rayman & Ly arrived at Rayman’s house. After he had recovered for a few days, the idea came up to have him seen by a doctor of his own people. There was none in the village; the nearest one was many hours’ journey away in a city. Rayman was not very eager, but Ly was adamant, and he was willing to try. I forget how they got out there – a trip by cart was unthinkable, the train was probably the only way to go. He was seen by the doctor there, as somewhat described – the doctor recognized the condition, but could do nothing about it. Rayman was anxious to get home again, but fell into such terminal exhaustion that the trip home would be very dangerous. The doctor ended by telling Ly where she could get a litter – a hand-carried device to carry him home in. If Rayman had been aware of what was going on, he probably would have violently objected, but he wasn’t, so Ly had him carried home by four big men (big Ray type men? To carry her too, would likely need at least six) ... all walking, their paces carefully matched as closely as possible. Sometimes she got into the litter along with him to give him water and make sure he was all right. He knew her, but was not too aware of where he was or what was going on. It was a terrible journey, worse than the initial trip to the village – the last little spark of hope dampened, Rayman’s as well as Ly’s, after this gruelling trip out and back all in a single full day. They arrived home early in the morning, Ly holding him in her arms, talking to him softly, almost breathing for him. She knew if she had not been close to him, he would have given up. Once they were home, though, he did recover.
***
– After Rayman got well – by a miracle, as he always insisted, cured by Ly, though she didn’t think it was a miracle – he seemed to be his old self again. However, he was not easy in his mind about his ability to go back to being a guardian of his planet. He felt a reluctance to have so much depending on him when he was not certain that he could count on his body. And true – after perhaps a year, he had an episode when he was alone, out wandering around in the woods. One minute he was standing by a stream, in the warm late afternoon; the next moment, he was pulling himself up off the riverbank, bone-cold, muddy, and damp, with his head only a few inches from the water, and it seemed to be faint dawn. He felt ghastly. It took a bit of time before he realized what must have happened, and he was so distraught that he didn’t go home, but stayed where he was, looking into the mocking-bright water rippling before him. It was late that day that Ly finally found him.
“Rayman, where have you been all this time?”
“Here.”
“What’s wrong?”
He tries to smile at her but the effort is the saddest thing she’s ever seen. “Ly, I think – I seem to have had a seizure...” He points to the spot where he fell. “I don’t remember how it happened... I could have drowned...” And he tells her everything. She puts her arms around him. He’s shaking. The hand of death on him again...
He seems to be fine after this, but he takes quiet steps to seek out someone to take his place as guardian. Although there are many healthy young specimens all starry-eyed about the idea, it is not easy to find someone who can really take on that job. There are very few beings like Rayman. Indeed, perhaps he always is the one who holds that job... and it’s most rare for him to die other than in battle, or to outlive his ability to continue being a Guardian. If that were really true, he might have a severe ethical problem in allowing himself to continue to go on living in that state.
–Also, he does not have any other “job.” The people of the village supply most of his food. Even after he more or less retires, they continue to take care of him. This makes Ly nervous, but he tells her it would be unkind to prevent them from making their own contribution. He paints a good deal, he plays a lot; he also, as I have mentioned somewhere, spends a lot of time educating the young ones of the village. That is partly how he is able to look for potential new guardians, but he devotes considerable attention to those who never will be guardians also. He enjoys the children. He also gets involved with group projects of the village, helping to build new houses or other buildings, working on a breakwater for the fishing boats docking area, even helping out in a pinch during harvest time, though he isn’t much of a farmer. He does have a garden for vegetables, but Ly and some of the village women spend more time in it than he does.
(Though I think he spends more time in the flower part of the garden than in the vegetables – if they are even separate, probably not, though all carefully laid out according to some obscure logic of his own – and regardless of what he does in there, the whole garden flourishes to a degree that is downright intimidating. And as annuals die off, the garden is continually metamophosing, things shifting around mysteriously as though the plants themselves got up when no one was looking and moved around, and species come and go. The edible plants are arranged as ornamentally as the rest, their fruits and flowers and leaves and vines all part of the effect along with the plants that no one would consider food. Sometimes one stumbles upon an edible plant whose produce was never eaten simply because it had craftily hidden behind or under various bushes or grasses, and even Rayman couldn’t find it, if indeed anyone even remembered it was supposed to be there ... or the zucchinis weren’t discovered until they had grown so big they might have been hollowed out into children’s canoes. And there are species in there that Ly calls weeds but Rayman defends vigorously as essential elements of his microcosm. Not to mention the various creeping, crawling, hopping, or otherwise locomoting creatures, sometimes startlingly discovered lurking under big leaves or streaking past an unsuspectingly placed foot – beings whose right to participate Rayman also stoutly defends.)
–Everybody in the village has at least one or two of his paintings or sketches, given to them because they admired it. He makes these things prolifically, certainly doesn’t force them on anyone, but the fact is that most of the villagers do admire his pictures. And he is somewhat famous beyond the village for his painting, if only for the notoriety of a guardian being a painter as well. Sometimes city people have come wanting to see his pictures, and he always lets anyone see them who wants to, unless for some reason he takes a real dislike to the person; but he laughingly rejects any effort to get up an exhibition in the city, or sell any of the pictures. He will occasionally give one away to such people, but quite often not; he has very little tolerance for people who think of him as a celebrity or a hero. A few of his pictures he keeps decidedly for himself, the rest he will be willing to part with on occasion. He keeps many displayed in the house, changing them from time to time. Ly, though she comes to accept his various talents and pastimes, is never quite able to get over her sheer awe that he can turn so effortlessly to the transfiguration of reality – that is how she sees his painting – his ability to instantly throw off a sketch, like a bird shedding a plume, and in the process completely alter her viewpoint of something. He will do it sometimes even as part of a conversation or in an argument. To her, it is the most magical thing he does. He can make her see.
***
A few more notes about when Ly & Rayman were living together in his village after he was well again...
Certainly, there were times when he drove her crazy – particularly the way he had, when under pressure, of becoming all of a sudden entirely frivolous, abandoning the serious matter at hand, and going off to play, to paint, to disappear for several hours into the forest or for a day or more into the mountains. Or, even if he didn’t make an overt escape, he would suddenly seem incapable of giving her a sensible answer to anything; would reply to the most earnest and emphatic statements with complete irrelevancies; would make jokes at the most annoying times; would, even while the very words were coming out of her mouth, suddenly turn and kiss her; or slouch over to his hammock and collapse into a little universe of oblivion. He wouldn’t ignore her, but he could not be ruffled by anything, in such a mood. He would lie there, eyes shut, and just smile a little, or pass off the emergency with a shrug.
All the same, whenever anything really needed doing by him, it would – despite his evidently not doing it – somehow get done. But it would get done in his own time and his own way. And there were many times when she realized, after all, that – although the situation might be serious, and although she might feel a panic of urgency, the times he saw fit to respond urgently were rare, and the rest of the times, things were after all the better for his halting in the middle of her agitation, looking her with laconic humour in the eye, and just starting to laugh. Even if at first that hurt her, after a moment, she would have to laugh too. Because nobody could hear Rayman laugh and not be forced at least to smile. And things would settle into better perspective.
***
Another thing about Rayman – he loves sweets. I don’t know why I keep getting that picture. Loves frivolous foods. But actually eats very little.
When there is no emergency and he is not “employed,” he spends a lot of his time in the village with the children and youth, teaching them whatever he can – about surviving in the wilds, about art, about – probably more than anything – observing closely. And how to work together. And to “hold their position in space” – that is, keep their integrity under pressure, not give in to either ideas or violence that they consider wrong. Some people think that what he does with the young people is worth ten times anything he ever did as a roving fighter.
He loves to be with people, enjoys social events and especially parties – he will improvise a party at the drop of a hat – but he is just as happy to be alone.
Even when he is with Ly – and he is most intensely there, when he is with her – she always knows that he is capable of a degree of reserve, that some part of him is furiously busy in the background on private thoughts, observations, and conclusions. Of which he at that moment is scarcely aware, but which may show up later in expected changes in his actions towards her, in his painting, in anything he might do.
Ly has learned – actually, she knew from the start – that there were times when he might retire to his hammock (which by the way was slung outside, in the back of the house, on the deck under the roof) and he should just be left alone. Not that he would get angry if disturbed, but there is something in the dynamics of his personality that requires that time, that freedom, that space, that peace; and he is not quite himself if he can’t have it. He stops being fun to be around.
Which is perhaps her main reason for being around him. For he is liable to come out with the most outrageous things, completely unexpectedly – statements, comments, suggestions, projects, propositions, jokes, occasionally practical jokes. And – though she has been nonplussed, taken aback, once in a while, even infuriated – they always end up laughing together crazily, sometimes until they literally fall to the floor. (Which may in turn lead to other things.) For there is never any meanness in his antics. Though they do at times stretch one – physically, emotionally, or intellectually.
He will take the most inordinate trouble just to surprise her. (Once he painted the entire interior of the house black and put up shades over all the windows as part of a scheme to convince her that it was the middle of the night, or that the sun had never come up, or some such nonsense – easier to do given that aside from candles and fireplace there was no artificial lighting in the house. He later had to scrape off all the paint and refinish the wood. All for a look of shock on her face that lasted perhaps 20 seconds, if that. But he was happy. And they spent that evening, a beautiful summer evening, nestling in his small boat in the middle of the lagoon, looking up at a sunset that set fire to the whole sky, embracing them, the lagoon, the entire world.)
And there was the time that he stunned her by having her wake into an extravagance, an explosion, a luxuriance of shape and colour and a shock of disbelieving recognition of herself. He had painted dozens of pictures of her, and had filled nearly every square inch of her bedroom with them, large and small, light and dark, some in fact huge – so that she was greeted upon opening her eyes (how he ever sneaked all this into her room without waking her, she never could figure out) by an overwhelm of herself in all kinds of positions and moods – domestic, fighting, motherly, romantic, magical, flippant, majestic – of lighting, backgrounds, and even colours, some of which were emotive rather than realistic. And they were all, even the scary ones, so dazzlingly beautiful. “So much more beautiful than I am,” she thought. No two were in the least alike, even though she was the major subject of them all, though often along with other characters. And through these things, she saw his eye on her, his ironical, skeptical, respectful, adoring, blissfully infatuated, detachedly amused and deeply affectionate eye. The variety of him displayed in the variety of her.
She welled up so much with love for him in that moment – seeing not herself in all those images, but purely Rayman, her uncanny, overflowing, glorious Rayman – that she simply sat in her bed and cried.
There is so much I didn’t write down, peripheral stuff about Rayman and his life and people. I have the urge to just note these things so they don’t get lost...
– Maulda – “Mother” – had a long talk with Ly one time, telling her something of how Rayman was as a child, and how he simply came out of the forest into the village one day, as a baby barely able to walk. He didn’t belong to anyone. They knew more or less who he was, though; there had always been a few beings of their kind who appeared spontaneously without parents, once or twice in a generation. That had once been the way of all their kind, no childhood or any of that; but gradually the fashion of having families and growing up had come in. Rayman was one of those who was able to live the old way; such beings were always extraordinary. Maulda adopted him, more or less, though he was always very clearly recognized by her and by himself, as well as everyone else, as not being her child; she was only his caretaker. He was probably brought to her, as being the one most suitable to bring him up. Her adoration of him is quite evident even now; she felt to have had him under her care was a great privilege. Even though he wasn’t necessarily the easiest child to deal with. She had a number of children of her own, but Rayman was the one she loved most.
– Another time, a young mother comes in to see Rayman when he is receiving visitors, and he greets her with great joy and affection. It turns out she was someone he had a youthful romance with. She was wildly in love with him at the time and believed that they might become permanent partners. But although he was tremendously fond of her and still is, it had been through affairs like that one, that he had realized early on that what he was looking for wasn’t in the village.
Ly, of course, is almost mad with jealousy once she realizes who this young woman had been. But neither Rayman nor the young woman, though they embrace and look at each other with fondness, have any possessiveness or regret or leftover emotions of any kind. The young woman talks calmly and collectedly afterwards with Ly, telling her quite honestly how much she had loved Rayman and how bitter it had been for her when it didn’t work out, but she doesn’t feel that she has any claim over him now and she is very happy with her mate and children. She also feels that Rayman had needed something more, something beyond the quiet sweetness of the people of the village, and she looks at Ly with admiration, saying that she was glad Rayman had found a mate who was worthy of him. (Ly and Rayman are not, however, really mated at this point.) She is so completely matter of fact about it all that Ly has to calm down. And when Ly sees Rayman afterwards, he looks at her a bit mischievously, knowing how she will react, but he is very pleased when she talks about the young woman with some trace of genuine respect.
(She shows her two young children to Rayman, and he beams at them affectionately. He is very fond of children, anyway.)
He had a number of liaisons of one kind or another in his youth, as is normal among his people, lighthearted affairs that might have led to something permanent but not necessarily. But as he says, he never made love to anyone he didn’t really have love for; and they were all wonderful individuals. He remembers them all with undiminished affection. And as Ly meets them, she realizes that in fact they all are wonderful people, as are most of the villagers.
What he feels for Ly is of another kind entirely. It goes far beyond affection and liking, though those are there too. He feels a visceral passion for her that goes far beyond the body; an overwhelming urge to unite with her, to become spiritually and physically one with her, in fact, that though they have never met before in this lifetime, they already are one – and in the early part of their acquaintance, the torment for him was to get her to recognize and admit to that. He is absolutely uncompromising about this feeling, although at the same time he is very afraid of overstepping his rights and offending her, of presuming upon her freedom, of asking anything he has no right to or implying that he has a right to anything. He sees clearly that what he feels for her is what he feels, and though he is certain she feels the same whether she realizes it or not, it would be unthinkable to try to force her to realize it. Particularly because she finds him repellent when they first meet, he is not very forthcoming to her – partly out of hurt, and very much out of pride. He teases her sometimes, even attacks her a little (this was in the early days, when they had gotten free but were still fighting the pirates); he plays off her, they develop a kind of half-joking, half-sincere combative, sparring relationship that is the best he can do to relieve his frustration. At this point, he is sure she will never care for him, that she will never allow herself to realize how she actually does feel about him, and he is bitter about it, although his extreme (though never stated, never acknowledged) pride will never allow him to express that bitterness openly, or stoop to attacking or disgracing her outright or doing anything to show disappointment or unhappiness. He takes a wickedly comic, satiric approach. Oddly enough, though at first she dislikes him, later on starts to resent and hate him because of his unwelcome “attentions” to her, his sardonic clowning and pseudo-admiration, his near expressions of contempt at times, though always done with a kind of cold restraint that makes it clear his real feelings – whether of love or more likely hatred – are not being expressed – despite all this, he gradually grows on her. Particularly after she sees him fight and realizes that there is something to this guy, that he is not at all what he seems; and also, occasional moments when she sees the tremendous kindness and generosity in his nature – usually directed at someone else, but she sees it. And also she gets glimpses of his intense, passionate, though entirely unpretentious, even self-mocking pride; his utter unwillingness to compromise on anything important although equal willingness to give in on anything he doesn’t consider important; his unselfconscious integrity. He is like a king incognito, she thinks; his power is immense, but masked, showing only at rare moments of necessity.
Gradually, intuitively, she begins to understand what is going on with him. (She knew right from the start how he felt about her – his first glance at her, the stunned, then immediately hopeless, look on his face – lasted only a moment, but was all too clear. But then he spent the next weeks annihilating that moment of weakness as best he could, comically punishing her for it.) By the time she begins to realize, to her own horror, that she loves him, she is afraid to do anything about it – he is liable to attack her for real if she tries, he will think she is finally mocking him openly and with outright, straightforward, wilfully cruel malice. But, the necessity of working together and with others to free themselves and their friends and the whole shipful of captives keeps them on some sort of cordial basis, and they do have inevitable moments of helping each other which enable moments of more honest communication, and so on ... So eventually they are able to overcome the antagonistic game they had gotten into. But she is the one who has to overcome it mostly. He is very mistrustful of her for a long time. She must have said something that cut him very deeply; perhaps even more, it was the look in her eyes when she first saw him, the blend of astonishment, horror, and unkind laughter, that made nothing of him. That she didn’t recognize him, but looked only at his body. That she didn’t recognize him. That hurt and angered him, that made him very angry at her for this unworthy persona she was carrying around. And at the same time, it shamed him a little for being what he was, which was also infuriating, but which he couldn’t help – he couldn’t help, for the first time in his life, feeling a little ashamed of being this comic, unromantic, unheroic looking creature (as he had learned to see through others’ eyes, since he had been taken away from his own people), and it infuriated him that she should dare make him feel that way, and even more that he should give in to it.
– As a child and youth he was notable for sweetness of temper but also a staggering independence. He could never be controlled by anyone; he simply cooperated, or he occasionally didn’t. Threats had no effect on him, but he would usually cooperate out of affection – unless it went against his better judgement. It was almost impossible to get him into a fight; he seemed from a very early age to realize that he was far more powerful than anyone else around him (long before he physically was), and so he could not be shamed or antagonized or taunted into battle, even into an argument; even when he was tiny, it was as though he was untouchable by the mocking of those who weren’t up to dealing with him. He was thought by many of his peers to be a coward, and he didn’t even care about that. It was a huge shock to a lot of them one day when he finally, probably in defense of somebody else, did fight, and flatten someone much bigger than himself without any effort and without even getting particularly interested. All attitudes about him altered abruptly at that point, both of children and adults – except for a few who had been expecting something like that all along.
– One thing, along this line and beyond it – Rayman knew, which Ly didn’t, that she herself was capable of having any ability he had. He sometimes reawakened abilities in her she didn’t know she had. Yet, in fact, she was already far more able, had far more abilities, than most solid-bodies, which was why she was considered a magical being. But her magic was quite limited, though conversely sometimes she could do things he couldn’t. She called it magic, perhaps, and so did the Fairy and the Magician; Rayman didn’t call it that, he mostly just referred to it as himself.
That is one of the reasons she came to love him with such adoration – Rayman always validated the truth of her, which was of course always the same truth of everyone – that she had unlimited native ability and undying beauty and affinity and love. Regardless of what nonsense she might be trying to display instead. He would see through that in an instant, and it could scarcely manage to exist in his presence. Particularly after he became ill, which yanked him out of the usual pretences and egotisms of normal life. He just didn’t have time or strength for those kind of games any more, he was in a desperate state that could only be sustained by raw truth.
– Incidentally, he always referred to the incident on the ship in which he was shot by the energy cannon as his death. He considered he had been killed, but had contacted the body again, either automatically because it was in a position as if alive, or because he really could not endure to leave Ly. The body had been too severely damaged to continue to live, but he was forcing it to anyhow. There is some sort of “energy skeleton” or structure to the body, a non-visible, intangible, more or less immaterial pattern to it, in which the core and “brain” if you like, or heart – anyway, they called it the “nexus,” and it was the center of the body, and all energies flowed through there, and all motion of the body originated from there. His hands and feet and head existed in sort of electron valences – I forget what they’re called, but they each had more or less roughly defined areas of operation around his body. He didn’t have sticklike limbs controlling the extremities, they existed in fields, each operating usually in a certain quadrant of space around the body. But he could make them move beyond those areas, though as they got further and further away from the body it became more difficult, and if stretched by some external force beyond his area of control, could lead to pain. (Much more so after he was injured and the energy structure became crippled and tenuous. Then his area of control contracted very greatly, to only a short distance away from his body, and moving his extremities even a small distance beyond that would hurt him.) The body parts themselves, although they feel similar to flesh, are not made of flesh. They are a kind of condensed energy, a form of matter, but of something not really similar to anything else we’re familiar with. They don’t quite follow the properties of matter as we know it. They are much more able to sustain hits from energy or physical blows, they don’t shatter easily, and the energy structure of the body, too, (before he’s injured) is extremely tough. The strength of action of his body, which doesn’t come from the body parts anyway but from the energy field containing them, is also very much greater than we would expect.
Rayman is able to create pretty strong effects, emanate energy from his hands, and do things like perceive and control the emotions and sensations of another he’s close to, all through his ability to directly manipulate energy. He has considerably more ability in this way than most of his people, though all of them have more of this sort of ability than we solid-bodies do.
***
This was a very early idea and somewhat contradictory with the rest of the story – The trip from the planet where Rayman was hurt, back to his own planet. The first part was by spaceship (an interplanetary liner ), which took its toll on him, but was bearable. Then there was a very long train journey of some days on his own planet, from the big city where the terminal was to the remote area where his village was. That was terrible. The vibration, bumping, and jerking of the train was agonizing and exhausting to him, though it wouldn’t seem very severe to a healthy person. Ly had taken a private compartment on the train, and she sat with him, as he lay in a bed, trying to ease him as much as possible, talking to him when he was awake – or conscious – and generally struggling to get him through it. He desperately wanted to go home, was holding on with all his strength, but even he didn’t always think he would be able to make it. (Still, he told her, he would rather die on the journey than to have stayed back on that other planet.)
At last, as she saw him weakening, saw him losing the fight, as he became too exhausted to speak or open his eyes, she left him asleep or unconscious and went out to find help. She got hold of a steward and told him she had a companion who was very ill, who couldn’t tolerate the motion of the train, and begged him for something to help, perhaps another mattress or extra pillows and blankets, anything that might cushion him. The steward looked skeptical, said they really didn’t have anything extra.
There are actually different versions ... in one, she mentioned Rayman’s name and was shocked at the response. “He’s on the train? –He’s – sick?” And everything changed. Suddenly the top person on board the train was involved, and suddenly three huge feather beds appeared out of nowhere, and a couple of silent, deeply respectful, almost trembly men helped Ly lift Rayman’s unconscious body up and settle him onto the feather beds. “Please, please don’t tell any of the passengers he’s here,” she begged them (having grasped what would likely happen if the news got out), “Please He has to have quiet. You can see that.” And they all did keep the secret, but a few train employees were generally to be spotted walking by or hanging around in the corridor near his compartment, for no apparent reason. The original steward Ly had approached asked her humbly if he could, just for a moment, meet Rayman, just once? Just silently look at him sleeping? Rayman, more awake now – the feather beds, though they certainly didn’t remove all the strain, did help quite a lot – told Ly he would like to talk to him, and he did – they had a short conversation. Rayman asked about his children and so on. I think Rayman gave him something, but I can’t remember what – some little token or memento – and pressed his hand affectionately. The steward was almost in tears. Rayman asked him quietly to make sure that no one heard that he had been on the train until he had left it and was well away. He didn’t want any receptions waiting for him or any publicity of any kind. When he left the train, the head person there told Ly to keep the very expensive feather beds. She would only take one, to wrap his near-comatose body in for the last leg of the journey.
[In the other version, the steward didn’t know who it was until Ly dragged him in to see for himself what straits the dying passenger was in. The steward glanced at the barely conscious body on the bed, went rigid with shock. Then stepped quickly out of the compartment, leaning against the wall, even crouching down to the floor, gasping. Ly followed him out in consternation. “It’s him,” gasped the steward, “oh, my god, it is Rayman, it couldn’t be anyone else ...” “You know him?” Ly says, bewildered. “Know him? Is there anyone who doesn’t know him? – What happened to him?” But these people are city people, they don’t know Rayman personally, only through stories and pictures. And their attitude to him is different from that of the people of his village – to them, Rayman is a celebrity, more than that, a hero, a legendary figure, someone remote and worshipped for saving the planet. In his village, he is certainly respected, and valued for what he has done, but also he is very much known and loved just as an individual, himself, someone they grew up with who has made himself beloved by his personality, his actions towards his friends, his quirks and jokes, his music and playfulness. There is no “celebrity” status here. Which is why Rayman has rarely been seen far from this area.]
(This of course contradicts the scene with the doctor in which Ly was unaware of Rayman’s planetary fame. So take your pick XD.)
–There was the trip taken to see a doctor in town – after Rayman & Ly arrived at Rayman’s house. After he had recovered for a few days, the idea came up to have him seen by a doctor of his own people. There was none in the village; the nearest one was many hours’ journey away in a city. Rayman was not very eager, but Ly was adamant, and he was willing to try. I forget how they got out there – a trip by cart was unthinkable, the train was probably the only way to go. He was seen by the doctor there, as somewhat described – the doctor recognized the condition, but could do nothing about it. Rayman was anxious to get home again, but fell into such terminal exhaustion that the trip home would be very dangerous. The doctor ended by telling Ly where she could get a litter – a hand-carried device to carry him home in. If Rayman had been aware of what was going on, he probably would have violently objected, but he wasn’t, so Ly had him carried home by four big men (big Ray type men? To carry her too, would likely need at least six) ... all walking, their paces carefully matched as closely as possible. Sometimes she got into the litter along with him to give him water and make sure he was all right. He knew her, but was not too aware of where he was or what was going on. It was a terrible journey, worse than the initial trip to the village – the last little spark of hope dampened, Rayman’s as well as Ly’s, after this gruelling trip out and back all in a single full day. They arrived home early in the morning, Ly holding him in her arms, talking to him softly, almost breathing for him. She knew if she had not been close to him, he would have given up. Once they were home, though, he did recover.
***
– After Rayman got well – by a miracle, as he always insisted, cured by Ly, though she didn’t think it was a miracle – he seemed to be his old self again. However, he was not easy in his mind about his ability to go back to being a guardian of his planet. He felt a reluctance to have so much depending on him when he was not certain that he could count on his body. And true – after perhaps a year, he had an episode when he was alone, out wandering around in the woods. One minute he was standing by a stream, in the warm late afternoon; the next moment, he was pulling himself up off the riverbank, bone-cold, muddy, and damp, with his head only a few inches from the water, and it seemed to be faint dawn. He felt ghastly. It took a bit of time before he realized what must have happened, and he was so distraught that he didn’t go home, but stayed where he was, looking into the mocking-bright water rippling before him. It was late that day that Ly finally found him.
“Rayman, where have you been all this time?”
“Here.”
“What’s wrong?”
He tries to smile at her but the effort is the saddest thing she’s ever seen. “Ly, I think – I seem to have had a seizure...” He points to the spot where he fell. “I don’t remember how it happened... I could have drowned...” And he tells her everything. She puts her arms around him. He’s shaking. The hand of death on him again...
He seems to be fine after this, but he takes quiet steps to seek out someone to take his place as guardian. Although there are many healthy young specimens all starry-eyed about the idea, it is not easy to find someone who can really take on that job. There are very few beings like Rayman. Indeed, perhaps he always is the one who holds that job... and it’s most rare for him to die other than in battle, or to outlive his ability to continue being a Guardian. If that were really true, he might have a severe ethical problem in allowing himself to continue to go on living in that state.
–Also, he does not have any other “job.” The people of the village supply most of his food. Even after he more or less retires, they continue to take care of him. This makes Ly nervous, but he tells her it would be unkind to prevent them from making their own contribution. He paints a good deal, he plays a lot; he also, as I have mentioned somewhere, spends a lot of time educating the young ones of the village. That is partly how he is able to look for potential new guardians, but he devotes considerable attention to those who never will be guardians also. He enjoys the children. He also gets involved with group projects of the village, helping to build new houses or other buildings, working on a breakwater for the fishing boats docking area, even helping out in a pinch during harvest time, though he isn’t much of a farmer. He does have a garden for vegetables, but Ly and some of the village women spend more time in it than he does.
(Though I think he spends more time in the flower part of the garden than in the vegetables – if they are even separate, probably not, though all carefully laid out according to some obscure logic of his own – and regardless of what he does in there, the whole garden flourishes to a degree that is downright intimidating. And as annuals die off, the garden is continually metamophosing, things shifting around mysteriously as though the plants themselves got up when no one was looking and moved around, and species come and go. The edible plants are arranged as ornamentally as the rest, their fruits and flowers and leaves and vines all part of the effect along with the plants that no one would consider food. Sometimes one stumbles upon an edible plant whose produce was never eaten simply because it had craftily hidden behind or under various bushes or grasses, and even Rayman couldn’t find it, if indeed anyone even remembered it was supposed to be there ... or the zucchinis weren’t discovered until they had grown so big they might have been hollowed out into children’s canoes. And there are species in there that Ly calls weeds but Rayman defends vigorously as essential elements of his microcosm. Not to mention the various creeping, crawling, hopping, or otherwise locomoting creatures, sometimes startlingly discovered lurking under big leaves or streaking past an unsuspectingly placed foot – beings whose right to participate Rayman also stoutly defends.)
–Everybody in the village has at least one or two of his paintings or sketches, given to them because they admired it. He makes these things prolifically, certainly doesn’t force them on anyone, but the fact is that most of the villagers do admire his pictures. And he is somewhat famous beyond the village for his painting, if only for the notoriety of a guardian being a painter as well. Sometimes city people have come wanting to see his pictures, and he always lets anyone see them who wants to, unless for some reason he takes a real dislike to the person; but he laughingly rejects any effort to get up an exhibition in the city, or sell any of the pictures. He will occasionally give one away to such people, but quite often not; he has very little tolerance for people who think of him as a celebrity or a hero. A few of his pictures he keeps decidedly for himself, the rest he will be willing to part with on occasion. He keeps many displayed in the house, changing them from time to time. Ly, though she comes to accept his various talents and pastimes, is never quite able to get over her sheer awe that he can turn so effortlessly to the transfiguration of reality – that is how she sees his painting – his ability to instantly throw off a sketch, like a bird shedding a plume, and in the process completely alter her viewpoint of something. He will do it sometimes even as part of a conversation or in an argument. To her, it is the most magical thing he does. He can make her see.
***
A few more notes about when Ly & Rayman were living together in his village after he was well again...
Certainly, there were times when he drove her crazy – particularly the way he had, when under pressure, of becoming all of a sudden entirely frivolous, abandoning the serious matter at hand, and going off to play, to paint, to disappear for several hours into the forest or for a day or more into the mountains. Or, even if he didn’t make an overt escape, he would suddenly seem incapable of giving her a sensible answer to anything; would reply to the most earnest and emphatic statements with complete irrelevancies; would make jokes at the most annoying times; would, even while the very words were coming out of her mouth, suddenly turn and kiss her; or slouch over to his hammock and collapse into a little universe of oblivion. He wouldn’t ignore her, but he could not be ruffled by anything, in such a mood. He would lie there, eyes shut, and just smile a little, or pass off the emergency with a shrug.
All the same, whenever anything really needed doing by him, it would – despite his evidently not doing it – somehow get done. But it would get done in his own time and his own way. And there were many times when she realized, after all, that – although the situation might be serious, and although she might feel a panic of urgency, the times he saw fit to respond urgently were rare, and the rest of the times, things were after all the better for his halting in the middle of her agitation, looking her with laconic humour in the eye, and just starting to laugh. Even if at first that hurt her, after a moment, she would have to laugh too. Because nobody could hear Rayman laugh and not be forced at least to smile. And things would settle into better perspective.
***
Another thing about Rayman – he loves sweets. I don’t know why I keep getting that picture. Loves frivolous foods. But actually eats very little.
When there is no emergency and he is not “employed,” he spends a lot of his time in the village with the children and youth, teaching them whatever he can – about surviving in the wilds, about art, about – probably more than anything – observing closely. And how to work together. And to “hold their position in space” – that is, keep their integrity under pressure, not give in to either ideas or violence that they consider wrong. Some people think that what he does with the young people is worth ten times anything he ever did as a roving fighter.
He loves to be with people, enjoys social events and especially parties – he will improvise a party at the drop of a hat – but he is just as happy to be alone.
Even when he is with Ly – and he is most intensely there, when he is with her – she always knows that he is capable of a degree of reserve, that some part of him is furiously busy in the background on private thoughts, observations, and conclusions. Of which he at that moment is scarcely aware, but which may show up later in expected changes in his actions towards her, in his painting, in anything he might do.
Ly has learned – actually, she knew from the start – that there were times when he might retire to his hammock (which by the way was slung outside, in the back of the house, on the deck under the roof) and he should just be left alone. Not that he would get angry if disturbed, but there is something in the dynamics of his personality that requires that time, that freedom, that space, that peace; and he is not quite himself if he can’t have it. He stops being fun to be around.
Which is perhaps her main reason for being around him. For he is liable to come out with the most outrageous things, completely unexpectedly – statements, comments, suggestions, projects, propositions, jokes, occasionally practical jokes. And – though she has been nonplussed, taken aback, once in a while, even infuriated – they always end up laughing together crazily, sometimes until they literally fall to the floor. (Which may in turn lead to other things.) For there is never any meanness in his antics. Though they do at times stretch one – physically, emotionally, or intellectually.
He will take the most inordinate trouble just to surprise her. (Once he painted the entire interior of the house black and put up shades over all the windows as part of a scheme to convince her that it was the middle of the night, or that the sun had never come up, or some such nonsense – easier to do given that aside from candles and fireplace there was no artificial lighting in the house. He later had to scrape off all the paint and refinish the wood. All for a look of shock on her face that lasted perhaps 20 seconds, if that. But he was happy. And they spent that evening, a beautiful summer evening, nestling in his small boat in the middle of the lagoon, looking up at a sunset that set fire to the whole sky, embracing them, the lagoon, the entire world.)
And there was the time that he stunned her by having her wake into an extravagance, an explosion, a luxuriance of shape and colour and a shock of disbelieving recognition of herself. He had painted dozens of pictures of her, and had filled nearly every square inch of her bedroom with them, large and small, light and dark, some in fact huge – so that she was greeted upon opening her eyes (how he ever sneaked all this into her room without waking her, she never could figure out) by an overwhelm of herself in all kinds of positions and moods – domestic, fighting, motherly, romantic, magical, flippant, majestic – of lighting, backgrounds, and even colours, some of which were emotive rather than realistic. And they were all, even the scary ones, so dazzlingly beautiful. “So much more beautiful than I am,” she thought. No two were in the least alike, even though she was the major subject of them all, though often along with other characters. And through these things, she saw his eye on her, his ironical, skeptical, respectful, adoring, blissfully infatuated, detachedly amused and deeply affectionate eye. The variety of him displayed in the variety of her.
She welled up so much with love for him in that moment – seeing not herself in all those images, but purely Rayman, her uncanny, overflowing, glorious Rayman – that she simply sat in her bed and cried.