Page 57 of Thief of Roses
“Then show me, Baró.”She tugged on the tufted fur that ran down his spine.
He turned on the bench, head upright again, his gaze fixed elsewhere.Baró excelled at looking aloof and unaffected, but his shoulders and his arms were rock, his breathing irregular and shallow.She rose from the bench and stood in front of him, making a show of her inspection.The snout had expanded and elongated along with his jaw.The new configuration did not affect his voice, but then Baró produced sounds that seemed like speech, not speech itself.A bud of a horn protruded from the top of his snout, giving justification for its expansion.
“It’s not bad,” she told him as she had told him about his tongue that first time.And like that first time, it was not good either.She kissed the new horn tip on his snout and then set her brows in challenge.“See?”
“I never feared your reaction,” he confided.His brows furrowed as he met her gaze.“My own shame, not you, deludes me into thinking that you will turn from me one day.”
Rivani stroked his face, trying to be reassuring.The direction of his gifts and increase in development terrified her even if she had already imagined him with a hundred other changes.She did not understand the mechanics that made this happen and she did not pretend to understand the Magic and his relationship to It other than to know that It did him little good.
“What will make this stop?Can I offer anything?Would the Magic accept more time from me or could I do something more significant around the keep to spare you?”
“Oh no,” he breathed in horror, raising his hand towards her mouth, as if to silence her, but never touching her.“I fear that if you offer, She may accept to use it somehow against us.I thank you for your willingness, but I would bear this a hundred times over to keep you safe.Please, do nothing.”
Rivani left his side to find food for them, extracting jars and pumping water for the kettle, while she considered the situation.
“When you communicate with the Magic, does It always tell you the truth?”She asked.
“I have little way of knowing, but I suspect She lies.”
“And the Magic is female?You always refer to It as She.”
“When the Magic visits,” Baró explained as he took the kettle from Rivani and set it up in the hearth, “It presents, in sound and appearance, as a Woman although I think that is for my perceptions alone.”
“Do you think that the Magic would listen to me?”
“Rivani,” he worried she would do something rash, “the Magic already listens to you.I have asked that you bring me your requests so that I may phrase them.The Magic is volatile and hostile.If I ask, then I alone will suffer for it should it come out different than expected.”
“But the power you have here—”
“I have no power, Rivani.I can serve you and I have a line of communication that has consequences.”He spread his hands out, palms up.“I am a forest king with a domain I cannot leave, creatures I can intimidate but not command, and an existence I would end if I could.”
Rivani’s throat tightened.He had once told her that his existence was not so easily escaped.Like testing the boundaries of his prison, he had likely made attempts on his own life, much as he had confessed to contemplating when a man.If she found herself in his place, would she not despair after so long alone?Would she not curse a body that found new ways to hamper and shame her?Would she not be tempted to discard an immortal life of disappointment, pain, and abuse?Something needed to be done and he could give her no hint.Maybe the Magic would tell her.
When the water in the kettle started bubbling, she retrieved their drinking vessels and the dried mix of flowers and herbs she kept for tea.
“It’s Rivan Magic,” she observed a few minutes later, her mind still working over the problem.“Sometimes gender is a strange thing with Rivan Magic.A caster or a supplicant might get a different outcome to a work depending on how they present.Unlike the followers of the Great Holy who categorize everyone as either male and female regardless of spirit or physical ambiguity, the Rivani acknowledge a wide array of sexes and genders.Do you think someone who is a different sex or gender might have a better accord with the Magic since It is likely neither male nor female?”
“I do not know,” he admitted.“My inclination is to say that the Magic is not disposed to bargain kindly with anyone.But where would you even find such a one?”
“Here,” she said.She met his gaze, trying his game of looking unaffected.“I am such a one.”
“You are neither male nor female?”
“When I was born, my sex was indeterminate, leaning to what you might perceive as masculine attributes — so I have always been....”She bit her lip, uncertain how to teach this particular lesson.“One of the sexes is callednezhiyat.At my coming of age though, I started bleeding.That’s calledneavhiyat.We call my specific gendernahyide.For people who do not acknowledge the wide array of biological or spiritual variances, it’s easier and safer to say I am a woman most of the time, although it’s not the full truth.I have my days where I feel and present differently.And among the Rivani, not even all Mothers are women.”
She did not know how to explain it to a non-Rivani who had set ideas on sex and gender.
“Is that,” Baró hesitated, “why you would be an outcast among your own people?”
She returned to the bench to sit beside him, paying little heed to the faint whistle of the kettle.It could boil over for all she cared in the face of this new disclosure.Baró grew up in the teachings of the Great Holy and he might judge her for her birth.“No.Usually, we are celebrated.There are many ways of expressing gender and to be given a body and spirit that crosses boundaries is considered twice-blessed.I told you — the reason I am an outcast is that the omens at my birth did not speak of celebration.The healer told my parents that I would live a life alone as I was ‘not meant for mankind.’”
“The omens held more weight than the uniqueness of your existence?”
Rivani nodded, feeling like her head had come unhinged from her spine.What if Baró didn’t understand or didn’t accept it?He would turn her out, of course.He grew up as an acolyte of the Great Holy.Even if he did not subscribe to the teachings of the Great Holy now or ever, he would have to turn her out for failing to live up to some ideal of a noble savage.Isn’t that what the Rivani were to those of his breeding — uncultured, uncivilized people?And wasn’t she just some exception he had made in his own mind?She kissed him and cuddled with him and held him like a lover.He would hate her when he thought about it.She held her breath.
“I do not understand,” Baró said.
Her belly twisted.
