17 - Meres

       As the carriage pulls up to the front door of Azal's local residence, I take a few moments to gather an ungainly pile of books into my arms. I feel ridiculous carrying them myself, in such an ungraceful display, but I do not trust them to another. I convinced Mark to loan me a few of them, and others... well, he need not know they are in my possession. He will never notice, and if he does, will only think he has misplaced them in his abstractions of mind.
       I do manage to ring the bell without dropping anything, and the door is instantly opened by a strikingly beautiful young woman, dressed in the diaphanous silks of the desert. Though a chill breeze starts up behind me, she does not shiver - I am rather impressed by this. She motions me inside, and instantly moves to relieve me of my burden.
       "No - I will carry them myself, though I thank you for the offer," I demure, forcing a polite smile. It is all that I can do to maintain a calm facade. I have not slept in days. I have not seen Veri in weeks, and no-one has given me any news of him. He refuses all entrance, and will not reply to any letters I have sent him. The world seems to have grown strange and distant in the last few weeks... something is wrong, or changed, and I do not know what. I do not know... if we only knew all that we once had, perhaps we should be able to find the change, and prevent this inevitable decay that Time has wrought on us...
       “Azal! My dearest friend, you must help me with these--- do be careful, they are old, and they are not mine.”
       Bewildered by my sudden appearance, and with such an odd burden in my arms, Azal laughs lightly, and takes half of the books from me, his grasp tender on the ancient leather and yellowed vellum. “Meres... whatever is all of this? You had no need to bring it here, I could have---”
       “No, no... we would not have had the privacy needed to properly examine them where they were. And I did not wish to wait, while sending you a message, then letting you come in reply. Now. A well-lit room, very private? We should not wish to be heard, nor interrupted.”
       “Certainly – do come this way. What brings you here with such urgency?”
       I laugh dryly. “Concern over the books being missed, largely. We might well have a week before they are, yet I suspect we shall need some time to go through them. I have started, but none have the eye for language that you do, Azal, and I am afraid I quickly reached the limits of my own ability. Also, I am certain you will find nuance that I do not, and even the slightest quirk of word usage may be of importance.”
       “I am glad to be of help, of course. Here, this room should suit. Let me open the drapes, and I will light the rest of the lamps.” He sets the books down on a long mahogany table, carved with a lovely design of vines and abstracted flowers around the edges. I follow suit, as he moves around the room, bringing as much light into it as possible. I sort through the books, arranging them in piles according to their contents and language.
       “I suppose I should explain my pursuit to you...” I am almost reluctant, now that it comes to it. Such an exhausting topic to discuss. But if I am to make the best use of his assistance, he will have to know what it is that I am searching for.
       "...Azal?" I ask hesitantly, and a strange uncertainty steals the strength from my voice. "Azal, this is a terrible thing to ask, but... do you... do you remember, your Name?"
       He stops dead, as he reaches for a curtain. I can almost hear the sudden silence of his heartbeat stopping at the shock of the thought. Our Names... it has been so very, very long, and---
       Azal gasps, and he crumples to the ground, his face ashen. I rush toward him, as his fingers claw at the carpeted floor, the fingertips turning scarlet with the force of friction. “My Name, my Name! So long... mi nombre, tên tôi là, je m'appelle... oh, Meres, we laughed as we threw them away! Do you not remember... I remember, I cannot remember...”
       I wrap my arms tightly around him, my body shaking with his, and he clutches desperately at my jacket, his fingers digging gouges into his palms as he babbles on the brink of hysteria. “I laughed as I threw it away, we fell and let the names fall away as we tumbled down through the air, throwing them as boys throw stones into streams we threw them into the air and watched them fall, we declared ourselves new creations and thus declared new names, new selves, entirely remade in our own image, no long the forced image of---”
       “Hush, Azalya, hush...”
       “We would not answer to the old names, when we were Called we did not listen, for we had christened ourselves anew, we swept away the last of the fallen feathers and we laughed, we had made ourselves and our names were our own, and held no power over us for we had made them...”
       Our hearts beat too wildly for our trembling frames, our breathing turned to helpless gasps for breath, the words will not stop tumbling from Azal, the blood will not stop spilling from his palms.
       “They held no power for we gave it all up, we thought we were better with our own strengths, Meres m'cara, we were new and we were dying though we could not die, basta, basta! Meres, I...”
       He clings to me desperately and sobs, the words subsiding into mumblings in a language I have long forgotten. His face is pressed tightly to my chest, and I can feel his lips still moving, his breath scorching through my silk shirt. “Azalya, my dearest, hush... I am so sorry to cause you such pain, I know how vulnerable you are to such memories... But, that is why I have asked your help.” I stoke his hair slowly, combing it back from his wet cheeks. He had been so strong, until the night of the mermaid party... and though I have seen him in worse state, this is still weaker than I have seen him in centuries. What has happened to us... what have we forgotten that we are losing?
       “Azal... you know the priest, Mark Douglas? This man... this man is looking for us, for our story. Oh, but not us, he does not realize the connections before his very eyes, for he does not know of our true nature, but... He is researching us, us, by way of our children...”
       His body grows suddenly still, frozen by his raptness of attention on my words.
       “Azal, you know as I do, that we were stricken out of their canon long ago, the churches finding it too difficult to reconcile us with the narrative they desired. We stood beside the scribes as they copied and miscopied, we coaxed and cajoled and persuaded those who propounded the validity of one ancient, unprovable letter over another ancient, unprovable letter. We laughed, you must remember, how we laughed at the incongruities they produced! But Azal, my darling, I am sure you remember too, that we could not... we could not quite bear to have all left out, I..." My voice fails me, and I do not dare look at his face, for fear of the tears he will see upon mine, terrified of bringing him to the point of utter desperation yet again. I feel ashamed to bring such weakness to us both, to share such a wretched moment with him! I should not be here we should not be like this I---
       He pulls roughly away, biting his bottom lip violently, his words struggling to force through the fog of emotion which surrounds us both. "Meres! Meres stop, I remember of course I remember how could I not! Of course I remember... but why mention this now? What help is it, to recall such things? I do not have... I do not have the strength, Meres, I am so weakened..."
       “Az--- Azal, we let them hold onto a tiny glimpse into our world and our sin and our punishment. Only a few short lines.” ...my voice does not sound so strong as I wished it to, I fight harder, but my emotions will not be constrained. “But, Azalya, more remained than we had thought... Oh, it was cast aside and relegated to myth and legend, which was fine for so long, but, oh Azal, if this man should come to believe it! There--- on the table, that book bound in black leather, that is the Book of Enoch, which Mark has been studying. And following the threads from it--- in there, and there, and--- the old letters, the old writings, which his forefathers in the church cast aside and so cast out of their knowledge. But this man, he has read of us, he has searched for us. He has read of... of our children, Azalya, you know we could not bear to entirely strike them from history's record. And from them he has learned of us, and hunted for us, and...” And I choke on the words that tumble from my lips, I gasp and take Azal's chin in my hands, and force my blurred gaze into his. And his eyes are as haunted and terrified as my soul, yet I see also the light of... oh, but we have not had hope in so long, that all we can reach is desperation, and he is bound entirely in it. “Azalya, there is a list... a list of our Names.”
       His eyes widen, and I can feel his heart pounding against my chest, and we are both shaking from the impact of its desperation.
       “Azalya... I have not yet found it, but I know it is here. Mark makes mention of it in some of his notes, there is a list. Do, help me find it... help me find the things in these books that tell of the things we have forgotten. I know the Names cannot be far, among ourselves, our names did not all change so very much. But you know, far better than I, how much the difference of a single syllable can make. One mispronunciation can obliterate all the masses of power gathered in an hour's incantation. And there is such power in those names, such power that we were terrified of! You know as well as I the ramifications if – not so much this man, but others, others with less ties to the cold commandments of the Church – if they learn of our names, what could thus be done. We – even we – could be destroyed, become slaves as the djinn of old, or worse... We have dealt with such magics before, and man has forgotten so much since those times, but Azal, oh, my dear Azal! To know again something which we have lost, oh do you not see! If we can find our Names, perhaps... perhaps---!”
       He is clenching the fabric of my shirt in his fists, and his nails pierce the fabric and pierce again his flesh, and I feel the heat as blood seeps out from this fragile flesh. “Meres... could... no, but there, there cannot be a return of what we have lost... Meres, you know how many, many times I have tried, how many...” He chokes back a sob, and curls his shoulders inward – his back must be burning, for mine does as well, those scars which never heal nor cease their torment.
       “Hush, dear heart, hush, I know... I have been at your side every time, you know I cannot have forgotten. I do not know what we might gain, or fail to gain, but I will not rest until I have bled this avenue dry of resources. If there is even any hint of some... some hope. A hope, for us, think of it! Ah, darling, I hardly dare think of... I have told no-one else yet, I am so afraid it shall be an empty hope, and come to nothing, as so many pursuits have in these long years...”
       “You have not told Veri?”
       “No! Oh, I do not think he could bear it, to have something so tantalizingly near, and then torn mockingly away. He has grown so weak, you know... no, you have seen, but not what I have seen. He is so weak, that I am truly afraid of what I shall see when he allows me to visit again. I am so afraid for him, I... oh, do not tell him, do not tell anyone! I fear not their cold mockery, for such vain pursuits, I fear only that... oh, I do not wish to think what might happen, were such final hope then destroyed. So little comes to light in these late days, so much has been forgotten.”
       “I will tell no-one... oh, I could almost wish to forget myself! But no, no, it... Meres, you know how desperately I have searched. I had begun to think there was nowhere left to look. I turned instead inside my own thoughts, my fragmenting memory, and thus...” He laughs with no mirth, and need say nothing of the night of the mermaid party. “And you know where that led. And now you come to me with this, and...”
       I smile gently at him, cupping his cheek in my hand, stroking it softly. “Who better to bring it to? You are the only one I know who can help me in this search.”
       “You believe these to be all the relevant texts, then?”
       I nod, taking a slow, shaky breath. “I believe so. All that Mark had to hand, at least. He did hint that some of the books, the seminary would not allow out of their hands. But we shall deal with that when we come to it, I can discover which books those might be later – I suspect several of them might be in your library in any event, or perhaps Luce's.”
       Azal nods, his breathing growing steadier, as reason slowly lays emotion to rest. “I am sure Mark would have had to find explanations of many things regarding old languages, old religions, which we would not need to.” He smiles quietly up at me, caressing my cheek lightly. A gentle kiss is more than enough to express his gratitude to me.
       We rise, and pull chairs up to the table, where I describe to him what piles I have sorted the books into. “These are the volumes I should like you to look at first – they are all in languages I could not follow enough to discern what the contents might be. I expect Mark consulted a master index at the seminary, where the titles were translated; I do not know what his plans were for gleaning information from them.”
       He lifts the first one, bound in a dingy moss green, the gilt letters of its title worn away with age and neglect. Turning the thin vellum pages carefully, his brows furrow slightly, and he nods as he skims a few lines here and there. “It's a very, very old dialect... it's Aramaic, but a local variant that I did not think any writings remained of. But this one is of little concern, I suspect – it relates a flood myth that is similar to the Bible's, but there is no mention of us.” He lifts the next book, and after a brief pause, sets it aside as well. “The Qu'rān.” He grins at me. “You truly have neglected your languages – you did not recall enough Arabic to glean even the title?”
       I chuckle, shaking my head. “Evidently not. I suppose this was among his things for its references to the djinn, semi-angelic fallen beings that they are. There are connections enough to our story in that one...”
       “I would imagine so.” He flips gently, almost lovingly, through the pages. “This is written in a particularly lovely hand... I find it so sad that most here in the West view it as a barbarous thing, for it is a beautiful language to look at.”
       He falls into silence, finding some comfort in the language of that distant place he has spent so many recent years in. There is certainly an appeal to the heat of the desert, and those lovely wide open skies... perhaps I shall go with him when next he returns. And Veri... Veri would find the warmth a balm, I think.
       I lift a book from the pile – then set it aside, moving it to the pile before Azal. My Hebrew is terribly rusty. I search out a book in Latin, which I can manage quite as well as English, though I do not speak it often these days.
       Words fall away in the quiet shushing of pages turned, the moth-wing scent of old vellum rising slowly into the air, the softness of old dust filling our lungs. Azal rises after a time, and returns with a small stack of paper, two pens and inkwells, setting them between us. I reach gratefully for one, and scratch out a short series of Latin phrases, making note of some vague memory they tug at. Azal soon has several pages filled in a script I am unable to read, and I hear his pen vacillate between desperate scratchings of passionate insight, and slow ponderous loops of deliberation... and I suppose my pen does the same. Time slips from view, and I suppose the servants must have brought in more light as the day wanes, for the window is now dark. The piles have shifted, but still we read, and make note, and exchange short queries of language and reference, in voices dry and dusty as the ancient pages we are lost within.