Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

I hoped they stayed willing to take me as I was. I didn’t know if I could explain that what they did wrapped in their blankets was like being offered the lees of fine wine. I could tell they thought I was still grieving for Ad, or Tom: Let them believe that, if it would obscure the truth of what I had become and what stirred me now. Keep your mouth shut, Mars, I told myself, and twisted onto my side away from them. They’ll never understand and you’d never he able to explain. They’ll think you’re insane or perverted or worse, and they’ll send you packing back to your no-name village before you can say “oh, go ahead and fuck me if that’s what it takes to let me stay with you.”

I never was much good at cheering myself up: But in spite of it all I finally fell asleep, and I woke to a hug from Braxis and pine tea from Ro, to a sleepy pat on the shoulder from Lucky, and for the first time in oh-so-long I felt the hope of belonging.

It took weeks to get to Lemon City, mostly because we were in no hurry. There was always so much to do each day, so much exploring and talking and the hands-on work of turning ourselves into a fighting partnership. And other kinds of work, as well. In spite of what they’d said, the three of them made a concerted effort to seduce me, and I did not know how to reassure them that they had already succeeded, that they had turned me into a banked coal with a constant fire in my belly. “Damn your cold heart, Mars,” Lucky spat at me one day, “I hope someday someone you really want turns you down flat, and then see how you like it!”

“Luck, it’s not like that!” I called out after her as she stalked off down a side trail into the woods.

“Leave her,” Ro advised. “She’ll accept it. We all will.” He and Brax exchanged a wry look, and I felt terrible. I must be cold, I thought, cold and selfish. It was such a small thing to ask, to make people I loved happy. But it wasn’t just my body they wanted, it was me, and they would never reach me that way, and then we would all still be unsatisfied. And I was not willing to explain. So it was my fault, my flaw. My failure.

I was packing my bedroll when Lucky came back. “Oh, stop,” she said impatiently. “You know what I’m like, Mars, don’t take it so personally. Just stay away from me tonight and I’ll be fine in the morning.” And she was; and the next afternoon, when she took hold of me so unknowingly, I gave her myself. I gave to all of them, a dozen times each day.

“The hardest part about all this,” Brax said one evening as we all stretched out near our fire, “is overcoming all the sword training.”

“Whaddya mean?” Ro mumbled around a mouthful of cheese.

“Well, the sword makes your arm longer and gives it a killing edge, so that you still strike or punch, sort of, but it’s with the blade. But the stormfighting, well, like Mars is always saying, the whole point is to become the center of the fight and bring your enemy in to you. So with the sword we keep people out far enough to slice them up, and with the storm art we bring them in close enough to kiss. It does my head in sometimes trying to figure out where I’m supposed to be when.”

“You think it’s hard for you?” I replied. “You’re not the one with half a dozen cuts on every arm and leg trying to learn it the other way around. I always let Lucky get too close.”

“So maybe there’s a way to do both.” Lucky reached out to swipe a piece of cheese from Ro’s lap.

“What do you mean?” Ro asked again.

“Pig. Give me some of that. I mean that maybe there’s a way to combine the moves. All the sword dances I do are based on wheels, being able to turn and move in any direction with your body and the sword like spokes on a wheel. It’s not that different from being at the center of a wind, or whatever.”

“Gods around us,” I said. She’d put a picture in my mind so clear that for a moment I wasn’t sure which was more real, the Lucky who smiled quizzically at me from across the fire, or the one who suddenly rolled over her own sword and came up slashing at her opponent’s knee. “She’s right. You could do both. Think about it! Just think about it!” They were all bright-eyed now, caught in the spiral of my excitement that drew them in as surely as one of the armlocks we’d worked on that afternoon. “Imagine being able to fight long or short, with an edge or a tip or just your bare hand. They’d never know what to expect, they couldn’t predict what you’d do next!”

“Okay, maybe,” Lucky said. “It might work with that whole series that’s based off the step in and behind, but what about the face-to-face? A sword’s always a handicap when you’re in that close.”