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Coustas was mumbling and writhing in his sleep, ripping off the blankets. Tartah lay in bed next to him. He cupped Coustas’s forehead, trailed his hand all the way to his cheeks. Coustas’s skin was blazing against his palm, perched with the heat of a feverish sleep. He could feel Coustas’s heart beat fast and strong, a ragged pulse. Reluctantly Tartah shook him awake.
Coustas eyes fluttered open, wandered around the room as if seeking something lost. Such was a common trait of his. The feverish impatience and anger that characterised his youth had deserted him; now he was calm, often silent, and only the anger remained, a caged sort.
“You were having nightmares?”
Coustas swept a hand over his face. “Thanks for waking me up.”
“What were you dreaming about?”
“I don’t remember.”
He was lying, Tartah knew it. He’d heard Coustas mumble Dagda’s name, which he so rarely did in daylight when he was awake. Dagda haunted his dreams and thoughts but was otherwise absent from daily musings.
“I could get you something to help you sleep,” Tartah said.
“Thanks, I don’t want anything.” Coustas collapsed on the mattress sprawled flat, looking up at the ceiling. “Do you sometimes forget where we are?” he said seamlessly. When I’m sleeping and then I wake, for a split second I forget.” He looked over at Tartah; his pupils were tiny, like poppy seeds. “I’m used to travelling, though. What’s it like for you?”
“I sometimes dreamed of leaving Kalhn.”
“Did you?”
“Doesn’t everyone dream that? To get away, have adventures, or – I don’t know . . .”
“Wish they could be someone else.”
When Tartah talked about these things he felt worse, he became overfilled with melancholy and worked himself into a clutch. He warned himself to be silent and accept his feelings for they were inevitable, they were a blotched marker on his soul. But he couldn’t help himself – a bottomless dejection seized him and he had to fill it.
“What was it like for you, with Dagda?”
He was pushing Coustas to do much the same, and it was wicked of him, despicable. This also he couldn’t help. When he was young and was in the presence of Coustas he felt a funny feeling in his stomach, like an invisible weight settling just under his ribcage. Tartah stifled a laugh. When he was young – he often thought like that, like he wasn’t still young, like fifteen years were anything to go by. They had no fixed place on the land to call home. Strangers they both were, nameless and faceless beings. Nomads, travelers – fugitives or even worse than that.
“He brought me to all kinds of different places,” Coustas said, surprising Tartah. “I remember thinking it was impossible for anyone to know the plains and the mountains so well, like he had a map drawn into his mind. I always wanted to stay longer. Later, he said. Said we would return eventually, it was only a matter of time.” He continued and changed voice to imitate Dagda, “‘The peninsula is not that big as it seems.’”
Tartah harrumphed in plain disagreement. Coustas smiled. It was the smile Tartah liked, thin where it had once been blithe, but not half-angry and crooked. That was not Coustas, it was another person, a wretch that impersonated his friend. Surely when he was a child Tartah would have believed it.
Tartah lay next to Coustas. Drew his knuckles over Coustas’ cheek, stopped at the throat. There underneath the skin was the heartbeat, steady and calm, like a melody.
“Do you know how to sing?”
Coustas laughed; his body reverberated with it. “What?”
“I like when people sing.”
“Then do it.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Everyone can learn.”
Did Dagda say that, Tartah wondered. He choked on the words, admonished himself. “If they have a good teacher I bet they can.”
Outside it was dark, and wind blew through the hinges; the fixtures swayed. The room seemed to be watching them, delicately and unobtrusively, stirring with a movement almost like a shudder. Tartah felt suffused with softness, cut out from the world and sank into something sweeter, inebriating.
His hand lay on Coustas’ chest, flat and steady. Was he asleep? No – somehow Tartah knew he wasn’t. Coustas flickered his tongue over his lips. His chest rose, quivering. A melody drew from his lips, delicate and unhurried. There was a warmth to it, to the knowledge that it was just for him, just for Tartah. I am alone, he thought. I am a traitor. I betrayed Coco, left my grandfather without a word. I deserve this loneliness and I deserve this hollowness.
Soft threads of sound wound their way through the dark; the room watched, listened. I don’t deserve this, Tartah thought as he was already closing his eyes, letting himself be lulled to sleep.