

USELESS TEARS



by M. C. A. Hogarth


Smashwords Edition 
Copyright 2010 M.C.A. Hogarth

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He knew within an instant that she’d been extinguished; between one breath and the next, her scream shattered the somnolent murmurs of the Vague. Agile Storm twisted back, his shape bleeding away into the gray trees and white ice as the negated link ripped a wound across his soulstuff.
When Agile Storm regained himself, he was on his hands and knees in the snow. His control over his shape fluttered with each of his ragged heart-beats, and icicles clung to his braided mane.
“No,” he whispered. But the link did not resume. Sacred Sand was gan-la’en: destroyed, her soul scattered to the winds of the void. “NO!”
He ran, phasing out of his body in his madness. A smear of iron gray and ash black, he blurred through the winter stillness and none marked his passing--the mortals on this world were too young yet to recognize such as he: Le’enle, not bound by the rules of their existence. Bound instead, by a rigid set of their own. One that included one mate only, for all eternity.
Agile Storm grabbed the trunks of two denuded larches to stop himself from flying into the snow-spread clearing. The tiniest of whimpers forced itself from between the teeth of his First Form.
Her body had been dumped there, glorious sun-yellow hair shorn roughly at her neck. The coppery scales he’d so often admired at her throat had been ripped away, along with all the others that had covered her back, arms and legs. Her tail was a stump, her back-sloping horn missing, and a hollowed gash bisected her body lengthwise, from chin to crotch, as if some animal had dug a hole in her abdomen.
Agile Storm stumbled to his knees beside her body. The blade that had been used to kill her had been left beside her body, a dirk made of the only metal that could mark his kind, suidhi. Loath to touch it but revolted at its nearness, he flicked it away with a foot.
He reached a trembling hand to touch her shoulder.
“My love,” he whispered.
Which was when the human sprang from behind a bush and fled. Agile Storm’s head jerked up and he snarled through his opaque tears. “Stop!”
When the girl did not, the Le’enle drew on the waning power of the winter-doused earth and grabbed her with it, ignoring the pain of Sacred Sand’s absence. He pulled her all the way back into the clearing and forced her to the ground, to her knees, bending her over backwards. Shaking with rage, he approached her.
“You,” he said, his voice so low it was a bare hiss. “You did this. You killed her! Poached her for her fluids and thought I wouldn’t come to kill you for it!”
Her dark brown eyes widened. “My l-l-lord! I didn’t kill no one! I swear it!”
“LIAR!” He grabbed her by her blouse and pulled her up. “You have the look of a poacher. We tracked them here. They thought they could hide with other humans on a human world. Did you think you could get away with killing one of us? Where did you hide her blood? Her tears? Is it on one of your cohorts, stolen away?” Infuriated, Agile Storm reached to search for the fading traces of his mate’s life-stuff, but the wound and the stink of suidhi mazed his mind.
“W-w-what are you talking about, milord?” the girl asked, grabbing at his scaled wrist. Her body arched from the ground to his fist. “Blood? Tears? What would a body want with such gruesome things?”
“Pretend you don’t know!” Agile Storm stared into her eyes. “What would a body want? Only the power to heal poisons. Paralysis. Heal bodies and souls. Grant dreams and visions. Don’t you think I know what treasures my kind’s humors provide for yours? Idiot mortal! How would you like to die by the same blade you used on my soulmate?”
The girl stared, petrified, as he dragged her to the discarded suidhi dirk. Agile Storm scooped it from the snow despite the way it burned. He pressed it to her throat. “Can you feel its hunger? It does not discriminate. Suidhi takes what it can, mortal or immortal. It may prefer to destroy the souls of Le’enle, but a mortal soul will please it just as well.”
The terror in her eyes satisfied him. She hung in his grasp, her small cold hands wrapped around his wrist. The metal whispered promises to him of her death; not just any death, but her utter annihilation.
“I caught you, little human. You did poorly to be found here. Have you nothing to say before I wipe your soul from the fabric of God’s Creation?”
“My lord, p-please... I didn’t do it! I... I just heard the scream, came to see... I only meant to help!”
“You think I’d believe such an obvious fabrication?” Agile Storm snarled. His anger and the dirk’s hunger wove together headily. He flipped the lapels of her blouse apart with the suidhi point and pressed at the junction of her collar bones. “I deal to you the same you dealt to mine, with so little thought for me.”
Tears ran from her eyes as the girl shook, useless mortal tears that could not be distilled for sleep-inducing potions or pain-killing balms. Agile Storm cursed the magic that made the bodies of the Le’enle so potent when rendered. He cursed the tears that ran from his own eyes. His biceps tightened as the motion that would kill her began to ripple down his arm.
The glitter near her throat distracted him. A gold chain. Frowning, he dropped her and scraped it from her exposed chest until he found the weight at its end: a locket. As she stared, quaking, he opened it. His brows drew closer together: a laughing man, tow-headed, and two children with large brown eyes, painted in exquisite detail by a fine brush. The smile on the man’s face struck Agile Storm almost physically.
“Is this... your family?” he asked, huskily.
The girl swallowed. “A-a-aye, milord. I... I married young, but I loved him powerful strong, sir. I did.”
“He’ll miss you,” Agile Storm said, staring at it.
She gulped. “Please, sir, don’t kill me.”
With a growl, Agile Storm flung the locket at her chest and threw the dirk from his burning hand. He turned his back on the whimpering human and knelt beside Sacred Sand. Weeping his sedative tears, he gathered her broken body tenderly to his chest and walked away. He would take her home... home to the world they had met, where they had cried the Black Tears for one another, where they had been joined for the life of the universe in the presence of all of the Le’enle, there to bury the remains of one half of his heart.
Silent, he dissolved into the Vague, and took her corpse with him.

#

In the quiet clearing, the human girl slid to the icy ground and curled up there until the shuddering and nausea dissipated. Then she stumbled to the edge of the clearing and began to dig.
Ten minutes later, she withdrew the pouches and vials and stored them in her pack. She kicked the dirt back over the hole and then stopped beside the suidhi dirk, frowning. It had clotted the inside of her head with its wailing, and she hadn’t enjoyed using it, much less being touched by it... but she had paid a fortune to prize it away from the offworlder who’d swept through town fleeing his pursuers. The girl pulled off her scarf, grabbed the dirk and wrapped it in the wool. Ignoring its moans, she cinched it on her belt, then turned back toward town and the old man who had promised her so much in return for her booty.
As she left the clearing, she turned the locket over in her hand. She would have to leave flowers on the grave of the soldier who’d died defending his coin chest from her. He’d served her powerful well.

***

About the author:

M.C.A. Hogarth has been many things--a web database architect, product manager, technical writer and massage therapist--but is currently a parent, artist, writer and anthropologist to aliens.

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Connect with Me Online:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/mcahogarth

Website: http:/www.stardancer.org

My blog: http://haikujaguar.livejournal.com
