The Light Within Ch. 03

Half a day later the sliver of sun had burned away what remained of the clouds and I'd seen three small herds of those weird three-legged creatures Perikos had thought were extinct. The terrain was the same as the where I'd holed up during the storm, except now it was wetter. The spongy ground was pockmarked with waterholes and the long, thin green grasses grew in dense tufts in some parts and absent in others, like the valley had a comb-over.

I wasn't sure how much ground I had covered. True, no part of my body actually hurt, but for some reason I was feeling the heavier gravity more today. I was sweating in the hot sun and my feet were swollen and my back was aching from the extra weight I was carrying. The mystery behind how my broken arm could have healed in less than three days was needling me and making it hard to concentrate on anything else, like not tripping in ditches and keeping an eye out for Kragosi merc ships.

For his part Perikos had kept his trap shut all morning – or was it afternoon? Time had as little meaning in perpetual sunlight as it had in absolute darkness. I hadn't spoken to Perikos either, so he might have been taking the hint or maybe he just had nothing to say.

An hour later I found a giant bug-free tuft of grass and lay down on my back. Whatever was up with my arm was more complicated than mutant powers of instant-healing since my back, feet, belly and knees were plenty sore from all the walking. I touched the skin of my right arm, then pinched it lightly. It hurt as much as it ought to. Hmm.

I stood up again and ambled onwards. How long would I take at this rate? A few weeks? Or months or years? Surviving off fungus was hard enough to do in the Rebel camps when all I did was sleep and fuck and I doubted very much my eating habits would be sustainable when I was walking for nine hours at a time. Unlike Kragosa, I couldn't just wait till dark so Perikos could come out and kill something tasty for me and the way I was feeling about him right now, I liked him better where he was. Was I going to have to learn to lasso one of those three-legged bug-eating things? Without a rope or knife or anything to cook with? What had I gotten myself into? This was so overwhelmingly impossible!

I stumbled forward, eyes watering and felt my foot hit something slick as I lost my balance. My knees slid out from under me and I landed on my side on particularly thick, spongy slick surface. It was a raised circular bit of brown and white fungus poking out of the ground beneath me, twice as wide as I was tall. I got on my hands and knees and moved to stand up when I felt a searing pain on my arm. My skin was bubbling under a thick glob of grey mucousy ooze. The fungus had sprayed me so quickly I hadn't realized what had happened at first. Teeth clenched, eyes wide, I tried to shake it off but it stuck to my skin like sap. I used the back of my hand to flick it off, feeling the skin around my knuckles blister and crack. I sprung up from my knees and lost my balance again but I managed to avoid landing on the fungus again. It was sticky, but not stickier than I was strong and it wasn't going to chase me. Just to be sure though, I turned and ran till it was a good fifty feet behind me before turning to check the damage from its acid.

The bubbling was gone and the blistering was negligible. The skin that was badly burned not a minute ago was pink and a little puffy, but besides that it was fine. I looked at the back of my hand and I couldn't even tell where it'd touched the stuff. My heart was pounding hard in my chest and I was starting to feel like my head was full of cobwebs again.

"P-Perikos? Any insight to offer on this?" My adrenaline was so off the chart I figured I could cross the sunlight zone by tomorrow if I started now.

"Are you feeling all right? I did not anticipate that fungus would attack you or I would have warned you away from it."

"Perikos, my arm!"

"It is your heart rate I'm concerned about, Jayn. You are under a great deal of stress –"

"No fucking kidding! Now what the hell wrong is wrong with me?" I was shouting now but that wasn't enough either. I started searching the ground frantically. I needed to know, needed to see it happen.

"Jayn? Perhaps you should rest a moment. You're going to hyperventilate if you continue like this."

I found what I what I was searching for. It would be too small to catch anything with but the pebble was large enough and sharp enough for what I needed. I took a deep breath and jabbed it into my right arm, hard.

"Jayn! Stop that! What is wrong with you?"

I raked it across my bare skin as hard as I could but it was pretty dull and the cut wasn't that deep. I pulled the pebble away and watched blood welling up from the cut turn a deep, aubergine black before sealing itself right in front of my eyes.

"This! This is exactly what's wrong with me! Or are you going to keep bullshitting me and pretending that you have no idea why this happening to me?"

Perikos said nothing and I threw the rock down to the ground. My eyes felt wet and my face was hot but I wasn't sad, I was furious. And terrified. I curled up into a tight ball but even that felt wrong. It was like I was protecting him and he was leaving me out in the cold.

A couple minutes passed as I wept and seethed and plotted improbable revenge so that when I heard his tune in my ear again I very nearly flew into a fresh rage.

"I am sorry but I do not know what to tell you."

I had to scream before I could respond just to get it out of my system. "If you really didn't know what was happening, you'd just tell me exactly that but you think you can lie by omission instead. Why are you doing this to me?"

"I am not doing anything to you on purpose."

"What?" There it was again, the truth closing in on me. It was always worse than I imagined. "What are you doing by accident then?"

I felt him shift inside me and it felt good in spite of my rage. "Protecting you, I suppose. I can feel it in you, moving through your bloodstream, guiding your cells Being your cells."

"What! The thing from the stitches that you –? The thing in my ear? BEING my cells?" This was too much. I didn't care what it meant, I didn't want the prognosis. I dissolved completely.

"I am sorry, Jayn, but we should not jump to conclusions,"his song was whisper-soft and unusually gentle, though he didn't deny I was right. "I did not speak to you about my suspicions because you were angry with me and I assumed this conversation would alarm you. As far as I know that part of me that has physically bonded with you is trying to protect you."

Shadow had been right, anything could happen. It managed to bind seamlessly into my body, so much so that its healing extended to me. It was controlling me, controlling the cells that made me. It was parasitic and if a better opportunity came along, to hell with me, it could probably shut down every cell in my body and my immune system wouldn't even fight it because itwasme.

Perikos' melody was as achingly sad as I felt when he answered my unspoken thoughts. "No, that would never happen."

"Get out of my head!" My voice broke as the words tore out of me.

"I can't."

Perikos let me cry myself out. I took a couple heaving breaths and wiped my face. Okay, we did the denial and anger part, I was feeling good about moving onto the bargaining and depression.

"You can read my thoughts?" I sniffed and rolled onto my back.

"Not as such. You were projecting your feelings so strongly I could not help but understand them. I could no sooner ignore your speech. You were in such obvious distress."

Okay, good. For now I have some privacy, so long as I wasn't 'distressed'. "How long have you been able to...read my thoughts?"

"Since before the storm."

"I see," I said, since there wasn't much else I could say. He absolutely knowingly inflicted that crap on me and then neglected to say anything was up and just tuned in to my anger and private thoughts for the last seven hours or whatever.

"You do not have to hide any part of yourself from me, you know."

"Do you really not get it? It's about the luxury of privacy.Youget to keep your thoughts and feelings to yourself. You've known for hours and hours what I've been freaking out about and you know what's causing it and still you said nothing. I can't make you tell me anything but you get an all-access pass."

Perikos shifted inside me again and I closed my eyes and tried to remember a time when this seemed less complicated but I couldn't think of anything except how it might end.

"You are right. I am sorry. I am accustomed to considering fear, particularly your fear, beneficial. There is nothing beneficial about how you are feeling now. You feel as though you cannot trust me to tell you everything, even if I do not have the answers. Even if it leaves you feeling uncertain."

I felt my entire body relax a little. I might be completely fucked but I didn't want to fight anymore. I wasn't sure I wanted to do anything besides sleep.

"Please know this, Jayn: I do not know what is happening to you or how but if you decide to expose the piece of my flesh on the outside of your ear, it may stop it from spreading internally and kill any bond between it and you. There is also the possibility that it would not kill the bond, just the exposed flesh and I even surmise the possibility that you will experience its pain if you try to kill it. I support your decision if you decide to do this, since all of these potentialities are alarming. No matter what you decide, the bond between you and I will not change. I cannot claim to understand what has taken place here but that piece of me I left with you would never harm you. If for any reason it tried I would destroy it myself."

That was a lot to take in. What if I did kill it? What if it didn't really die? I thought about what it would mean to expose it to sunlight. The best case scenario was for it to shrivel up and die and for communication between Perikos and I to sever until we got away from the sun. I knew Perikos would feel all of it too. It would feel like he was dying, like he was being burned alive from the inside out but he wanted me to do it if it calmed my fears. I didn't know if I even could.

I rolled onto my heels and got to my feet. There was nothing more to be accomplished from lying around, crying like a little girl. If I wanted to try and stop it I could. Perikos couldn't even stop me if he wanted to but I still had my own responsibilities. I had to get us away from the danger of the sun and judging by how long I could expect that to take, I had all kinds of time to decide what to do about the thing inside me. Hmm, make that the twothings inside me.

Perikos and I barely spoke over the next few days. He corrected my course twice, wished me goodnight and good morning before and after I slept, and once warned me off a mushroom I had apparently tried once before and gotten extremely sick from, though they had all begun to look the same to me now. Mostly though we kept to ourselves, though it was distinctly possible he was reading my every thought.

For my part, I made my way through what I could only describe as a minefield of gigantic acid-shooting carnivorous mushrooms all by myself without resorting to any more girlish hysterics. I had found enough food and water for myself each day and had not complained about my swollen ankles, sore knees or aching hips since our fight.

I had so many questions about the nature of this semi-parasitic invasion of Perikos flesh that he couldn't answer that I couldn't help but feel resentful. I spent silent hours walking, constructing elaborate internal dialogues between Perikos and myself where I told him exactly what a raw deal I was getting. Then I spent the next couple hours reliving it all as I worried he was reading my mind. I began to wonder who wasn't talking to who and then felt an entirely non-physical weight in my gut that forced me to admit I was only okay with being furious with Perikos' controlling ways provided he wasn't angry with me. What if he had spent the last few days listening to every frustrated, resentful thought I had and had decided to get rid of me as soon as we got to dark side of the planet? Sometimes, when I was feeling particularly adept or pleased with my survival skills I told myself I didn't care, that I might even be better off. The rest of time the thought haunted me like a cold shadow hanging over my head. I just wanted to be mad at Perikos in peace.

It was only day five of our cold war the landscape became more barren. The patches of greenery disappeared, giving way to small, cup-shaped mushrooms that seemed to pulse with a vague, reddish tinge. The sky seemed darker too, like late afternoon, and in the farthest distance I could make out the twinkling gleam of a star on the horizon. How could we be so close already?

"That is Rhydia," Perikos hummed softly and I realized he could see the star through my eyes or brain or whatever.

"It's so bright because it's relatively close," I told him, which wasn't exactly romantic, but it was true. How weird must it be to see stars for the first time? I wondered.

I kept walking, scanning the skies more carefully now. If we were in fact getting closer to dark side of the planet, then before long we were bound to find trouble.

I bedded down curled into a tight ball. I hadn't made it to the dark zone yet, but I might tomorrow. I was happy the sun was still visible, still warm – it was colder here than on the other side of the sea and the farther east I walked, the colder it got.

"Goodnight, Jayn,"Perikos had been so formal with me lately but I wasn't sure what it meant. Damn him to hell for making me thinkIwas the one on thin ice.

I looked up at the faint twinkling right Perikos said was Rhydia. "Hey, are we really almost there? This is a big planet. I expected this to take longer."

"Indeed it would have,"Perikos' music was soft, rhythmic like a lullaby. "We have been astonishingly fortunate. I incorrectly calculated our position on the shores of the Greedy Sea. The sea itself extends some six thousand miles south and although I knew we could not have accidently drifted such a vast distance, I miscalculated the position of our meeting by no few than four hundred and twenty three and a half kilometers south. I instructed you to travel directly east, though the Star itself is on south-eastern trajectory so it has only ever risen just above the horizon. You have walked approximately three hundred and twenty kilometers and I believe if you push yourself we can reach darkness before you must sleep again."

"I'll try," I mumbled, and it was true. For now though I needed to sleep. I was grateful that for the last five nights the one place Perikos hadn't dominated my mind was in my dreams.

I had no idea how long I had slept, only that it took me a few hours to wake up properly even after I began walking. I hoped Perikos was paying attention for me because I was having trouble focusing on anything beyond putting one foot in front of the other. On the plus side, my sleep-drenched mind was blissfully empty; I couldn't concentrate on being angry at Perikos or what he might be thinking about me until well after I stopped for lunch.

The mushrooms' glow became more apparent as the sky got darker. I felt Perikos shift in me and felt a little surge of anticipation that didn't feel like my own. I shouldn't be surprised if he felt bored or restless – I wouldn't want to be trapped inside my own body for a week, never mind anyone else's.

'Afternoon' moved into 'evening' and 'evening' became 'night' and I still hadn't managed to reach the edge of the Light. All around me felt dim and my anxiety at facing down perpetual night felt freshly renewed but we weren't far enough away to escape the ultra-violet radiation. The swelling in my ankles and knees was worse than before and I felt exhaustion closing in but this was a dangerous place to sleep. We were beyond the reach of the Loyalists but the Kragosi mercs had had time to work out what might have happened in the sea and if they were smart they'd be patrolling liminal zones like this one. There'd be all the benefits of catching Perikos and I at high noon in path of the sun, except a lot less space to patrol and here I would have the illusion of safety because of the encroaching darkness. I had to keep walking till Perikos could take over.

After another hour I had to stop for more water. It tasted sweeter than usual, less metallic. I scanned the skies again, looking for that telltale red light.

"How much farther can you go, Jayn?"Perikos asked as I rose to my feet again, apparently projecting nothing so much as an overwhelming urge to lie down. What I actually wanted was an enormous duvet made of heschva fur, a hot mug of cacao and a steaming bowl of rice noodles, but none of those things were ever going to happen again.

"I can make it. It can't be much farther." I answered briskly, hoping to remind him I was doing this all for him.

I walked in silence a few more minutes, then I heard his song again, measured and tentative. "Perhaps we should talk."

Great. Not what I needed right now. "Couldn't this wait? Wouldn't you rather do this face to face?" I was fishing now and hoped I wasn't being obvious. I had no idea what he wanted to talk about or if it was bad.

"I do not think so. I do not have a 'face' as you say, but I comprehend your meaning. More to the point, I understand you well enough to know you will need to sleep once I can take over and yet you will be unable to relax in my care until we have...cleared the air between us."

There was nothing I could do to distract myself from where this was going besides scanning the skies for merc vessels and for a moment I wondered if I wouldn't prefer the distraction. Then again, as much as I didn't want to have a heart to heart at the moment, I wanted to end up back at Kragosa even less.

"I would like to explain myself because I feel I owe you an explanation of my actions," Perikos said softly. I felt him shift inside me and my breath caught a little in my throat.

"From the first moment we were mutually aware of each others' sentience our relationship has been predicated on our mutual needs. My need for sustenance has matched your sexual desires and at times my appetite has exceeded your own. Given the potent flavor of your combined excitement and anticipation, I concluded that the dynamic we shared was a natural and important one."

I kept walking, one foot after another. What was he going to say? I felt my heart thrumming in my chest, felt my palms and the back of my knees sweat in spite of the chill in the air.

"My bond with you was very rapid and intense and I felt very sorry for myself at the prospect of losing you. When you agreed to accompany me here I was delighted but it was not until those first days among my people that I fully comprehended the nature of my responsibility to you."

"And what's that, exactly?" I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper, more to conserve what little energy I had left than anything else.

"Naturally I was afraid for your physical form. You are, or were until quite recently, the most physically fragile being I have ever interacted with and I realized that I it was my responsibility to tend to your need for sustenance, pleasure, safety, and wellness."

What could I really say? I was alive and I wasn't deathly ill; the pleasure had come and gone and come again, no pun intended, and though my safety track record had been less than impeccable, I had lived to tell the tale. Maybe Perikos was a complete success and I was an ingrate and a whiner to boot.