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“I see.” He stares at our joint hands morosely. “Will you at the very least spend this one night in my arms? I will return you to your home first thing in the morning.”
“Alright, but... I won’t have sex with you.”
He laughs sadly. “I am quite aware of that.”
We stay like this for a long time. His thumb strokes the palm of my hand while his tail caresses my cheek. Eventually, my eyes drop to the book on the side table. “What’s this book you have there, Kirimor?”
“This is a collection of revelations from our goddess Taya, put together by holy priests who received her wisdom over a millennium ago. I like to read them and meditate when I am here alone.”
“Read me something from it.”
“Very well.” He picks up the book and leafs through it, settling on a page, then starts to read.
“Why,” he asked, “does calamity befall me but not others? Where is the justice in that?”
And Taya replied, “Do not look with envy upon others, for you do not know fully what path they tread. The rich, the blissful and carefree, the blessed in good looks and health—they may all appear to have greater fortune than you, but that is an illusion. What you see on the surface is not all that there is to be seen. Always remember. No person walks this life without calamity to endure and good fortune to enjoy. No person is given more calamity than they can endure and more good fortune than is just and fair. So do not look upon others but look to yourself. Nourish your soul and body so that you may endure the hard times, for hard times there will be. Cherish each moment of joy that comes, for surely in time you will be gifted with joy. Remember all this and you will have a life well lived.”
Kirimor closes the book and puts it back on the table.
“Wise words,” I say.
“I like to read this passage to remind myself not to envy the good fortune of others or bemoan the hardships in my life.”
“Do you need to remind yourself of this often?”
“No, not very. I have come to terms with the path my life has taken. It has taken me a long time to do so, Melinda. This life of a sicortar is not one I ever wanted.”
“What did you want?”
He shrugs then draws me into his arms so my head lies on his chest, and threads feather light fingers through my hair. With the gentle, soothing touch, I become ever more mellow and content.
“I do not know. I was only seventeen sun rotations old when my gift was discovered, and I was sent to the temple. I wanted what most others wanted. A mate. Good friends. A successful career. I had ambitions to become a technological inventor. This last, I have managed to do in my own time. The cooling system in my house—that is one of my inventions.”
I think back to what he said he wanted. “Why are sicortars not allowed to mate?”
“Melinda, it is not just your kind that believe in fidelity between life partners. In my culture, mates are faithful and exclusive. It would not be possible to have such a relationship and keep drashas.”
“And drashas are a must if you are sicortar?”
He kisses the top of my head. “Yes, my love, they are.”
“Because your holy trances make you horny? Why can’t your mate be with you at such times?”
“It is difficult to explain. Unless you have experienced it, you do not know what it is like to go into a holy trance. In that state, I am able to see the most secret and wicked thoughts of the people I am scanning. With my gift, I can draw that wickedness toward me and absorb it into my being, but it is not a painless process. What my body goes through when I am taking that evil into me is hard to describe. It is like an internal shriek of agony. It takes supreme effort to clamp down on the evil and break it up. And then a reaction sets in. I become like a ravenous beast, needing to fuck all traces of that evil out of me. I can be rough, and I am insatiable. One female would not cope with all the pounding I need to give. Once, in the early days of my career when I only had two drashas, Merostena was taken sick, and I went into a holy trance with just Jalimara with me—Kirilor’s mother. By the end of it, she could barely walk, and it took her many rotations to recover from the damage to her internal passage. I learned my lesson and have never since gone into a trance without at least two drashas with me. This meant, of course, that I needed to keep more drashas, as a backup.”
“How long have you been sicortar?”
“I am now entering my twenty-fourth sun rotation in this role.”
“And when do you get to retire?”
“Whenever a replacement is found. I hope it will not be much longer, but I cannot know for sure.”
“There are lots of sicors. Why can’t the most experienced of them step into your shoes?”
“Not all sicors have my gift. They can only draw evil from someone in the room with them, while I can do so from a great distance.”
“But there are a few out there that have this gift?”
