Drakis offered his hand out in front of him. “Now all I know is that you are here. . and I am here. . and together we’re stuck in this hole. You need someone to hold you, and I need someone to hold. So if we can’t forgive our pasts or forget them, maybe we can just pretend-for a while at least-that I still love you and you still love me. Let’s pretend that all that happened before was just a bad dream and that all that matters is what’s happening right here and now.”
Mala did not move.
“We are who we are,” Drakis said quietly extending his hand once more. “But for today, can we pretend to be those people we were before we remembered?”
Mala reached out her small, dirty hand slowly, taking his large hand in hers. He climbed up onto the stone bier next to her and slowly, carefully, put his arms around her. She turned into him, leaning against his body and turning her face into his chest.
He held her there for many hours, doing his best to pretend that she loved him.
All the while, she shrank from his touch.
Drakis opened his eyes to a dream.
He sat facing walls that were the white of fine marble illuminated by soft balls of light floating in perfect stillness at set distances between narrow, fluted pillars. Carefully shaped trees and plants adorned the octagonal space in hues of green, augmented with brilliant flowers in orange, blue, yellow, and crimson. The pillars drew his eyes up toward a glorious and intricate ceiling twenty feet above him. Clouds drifted past the intricate latticework formed between the arches high overhead.
Somewhere in the distance, he could hear the soft echoes of musical pipes playing a gentle melody.
Mala was still at his side, though sleep had taken her at last, too. She leaned against him, quiet at last.
Drakis closed his eyes. So this is what peace feels like, he thought. Free from care or pain. Free from responsibilities. Free from your own past. He smiled and shifted slightly to relieve a muscle that was threatening to cramp in his lower back.
He seriously considered whether it might be possible to remain in this one spot forever. He supposed that eventually he would need to find water and food and other such bothersome necessities of life, but for now the relief that he felt in this one place was acute. He had been in pain for so long that it was not until now-when he let it go-that he realized just how large a burden it had been to him.
The hollow tones of the pipes continued to drift over him, carried from a distance on a gentle, sweet breeze.
Five notes. . Five notes. .
He wondered how he’d got here. He remembered finding Mala in the woods. He remembered following her into the glade, the rock fountain in the middle and drinking from it. His memories became more confused after that and it seemed like too much of an effort to remember. Then he remembered being in the terrible cell with Mala and. .
He shifted once more, frowning. He didn’t know how he got from that horrible cell to this place, but he knew that he didn’t care. For now, he thought, it is enough to just sit here, drink in the peace, rest, and listen to the sweet sounds of the. .
Nine notes. . Seven notes. .
He sat upright suddenly, his eyes open.
The song. . that song.
The distant pipes were playing the melody that had so often troubled his dreams and even his waking hours of late. He had tried so hard to push it from his thoughts for so long that he could scarcely mistake it now. It must be the dwarf, he thought. Jugar had been humming the tune around the Ninth Throne of the Dwarves when they first took him as a prize. It had to be him!
The peaceful, languid tones suddenly annoyed Drakis. That damnable little beast! He would be the one to spoil this.
Mala roused slowly, blinking as she awoke. “Drakis? What happened? Where are we?”