by the scratches of flamingos wading. There was a lazy buzzing of flies. Everything seemed to be pulsing in time to his slow heart. Osidian had told him that they must wait out the heat of the day. Even with their paint the sun, in the last month of the year, was a danger to their skin.
Carnelian licked his lips, remembering the delicious melting sweetness of the forbidden fruit. He looked up into the branches that were their parasol. The apples there were as brown and wizened as the stony fruits that they had cleared to give them space to lie down. He wanted something filled with juice. He rose, his tunic sticking to his skin. Osidian swatted a fly from his face.
Carnelian pulled one of the purple cloaks from a pack and draped it over his head. Creeping from shadow to shadow, he searched the glowing dappled world for fresh fruit. His skin prickled. He felt the need to scratch himself everywhere. He made sure to look back every so often so as to know where he had left Osidian.
It was the red that drew him to the grove. A low wall ringed it. In many places its stones had tumbled into the weeds and were almost lost from view. Some of the trees had red flowers. He recognized the pomegranates nestling among the waxy green. He jumped the wall and, reaching up, felt the pregnant tautness of the fruit. He plucked one and then another and two more. Their skin was hard but it gave a little when he squeezed.
He returned with his treasures and woke Osidian'. He cut one open and offered half of it to him.
Osidian frowned. 'Where did you get these?'
Carnelian gestured vaguely.
The fruit here are bitter, poisonous.'
Carnelian looked at the pomegranate's womb, melting with juicy rubies. He sniffed it. 'Are you sure?'
'It is forbidden to eat from the trees outside the garden wall.'
'As it was forbidden to eat the golden fruit?' Osidian had to smile.
Carnelian looked into the moist jewelled fruit. He could not resist it. He scooped up some seeds, licked them off his fingers, sucked them free of pulp and spat them out. 'Sweet nectar,' he sighed.
Again, he offered Osidian the pomegranate half. 'I sinned for you.'
Osidian's eyes smouldered like emeralds hidden from the light. He took the pomegranate and slowly bit into its juicy heart.
Osidian awoke him when the shadow of the Sacred Wall had washed over them. He grinned. 'Come on.'
The sky was a cooler blue. Carnelian walked into a clearing and looked back. The Pillar of Heaven was spouting its fiery wall into the sky. He turned to follow Osidian off through the trees.
The ground began to grow soft. He could feel the delicious moisture squeezing out under his feet. He saw a circle of plate-leafed water lily. At its centre a column thrust up from the water flaring into a pink trumpet. More lilies spread their carpet off into the lagoon. Between the shore and the first pad lay a narrow strip of dark water. He saw Osidian hesitating, then in one swift movement leap across. The ridged leaf buckled a little but held. Osidian turned to grin at him. They still bear my weight. I was not sure, but they do.' He leant over to grasp the flowering column and, holding on to this, walked round from pad to pad. He stepped onto another plant further into the lagoon. It was larger and held him more steadily.
Carnelian jumped across. His feet bent a leaf rib like a bow. He followed Osidian, stepping from one pad to the next, the flower stalks waving above his head with each step. Slowly they moved away from the shore. The air cooled delightfully. Up ahead he saw that Osidian had stopped. As he drew closer he saw that the boy was at the edge of the lily pad floor. Beyond, clear unrippled water mirrored the sky. Carnelian reached a pad next to Osidian, who was looking off to the distant Sacred Wall. Its upper edge was still glowing with the sun but its rays were too weak to taint even unpainted skin. Osidian turned to Carnelian.
'You know, I have never even seen the world beyond that wall?'
Carnelian nodded.
Osidian's eyes searched the Sacred Wall as if he were counting its coombs. 'Even those, I can see but never visit.' His jade eyes fell again on Carnelian. 'Is it not paradoxical that the Skymere should be more difficult to cross than your sea?'
Carnelian could think of no answer. Osidian's melancholy left him and he grinned. 'I will teach you to swim.' 'I already know how.'
Osidian looked puzzled, then smiled. 'In the sea?' 'Since I was a child.'
'Last one in is a mud worm,' cried Osidian.
Carnelian watched him as he began to tear off his clothes. For a moment, the flashes of Osidian's cool white skin froze him, but then he yanked off his tunic. When he looked up, Osidian was standing on the pad edge, as naked as a bone spear. Laughing, he cast himself into the water and disappeared. Carnelian was left rocking on his leaf. He watched the ripples fade away and the smashed reflection re-form.
'Osidian,' he cried in alarm, then grinned as the edge of his leaf began folding into the water under the grip of ten white fingers. He tried to keep his balance, but he toppled, crying out, and the water slapped him cool in the face and he felt it envelop his body. He kicked around, found the surface, pushed up through it to gulp at air.
'Mud worm,' he heard, and then a hand on his head pushed him under. He struggled, feeling the vice around his chest, wriggled free, undulated away, opening his eyes and seeing the shadowy shapes, rose to the surface. He gasped air. His trousers clung to his legs. He searched and found the white head floating on the water, looking for him. He emptied his lungs, filled them, then went under. He swam strongly, peering until he found Osidian bright among the reeds. He rammed into his body, clasped it, yanked it downwards, caught the shoulders and, shoving, threw himself backwards onto the surface. He was rewarded by Osidian's startled face erupting out of the water. Seeing Carnelian, Osidian laughed, then sank for another underwater attack. Soon they were wrestling in and out of the water, drinking it, spluttering, until Osidian lifted his hand and cried for a truce.
Carnelian dragged himself up onto a pad and helped Osidian onto the neighbouring one. They lay back over the ribs, still laughing, coughing.
'Who is… a mud… worm?' Carnelian managed to say and the pads trembled with their laughter.
Back on shore they hung Carnelian's trousers up to dry. Carnelian was aware that he was noticing Osidian's smooth body too much and hid his blushes in the twilight.
Osidian pointed. 'You still carry vestiges of your paint.'
Carnelian looked down at his chest and could see a patch dulling the gleam of his skin. He looked up and saw that Osidian too looked like the moon passing behind tatters of cloud. He watched him walk away. His eyes slipped down his tensing and untensing back. Osidian had taint scars only on the father's side. He watched him crouch over one of their packs. Could he be marumaga? No, he had a blood-ring. He watched Osidian rummaging. Perhaps his sybling brother carried their mother's taint on his back. Carnelian decided it was time to ask Osidian who he was. He was coming back, a jar in one hand, a red lacquered box in the other.
'What are those?' Carnelian asked, his question ready, his heart quickening.
Osidian did not answer or look up until he was standing near enough for Carnelian to smell his body. This time he could not hide his blush even though he looked away. Osidian's hand took his face and turned it back. Carnelian watched him kneel down, open the jar, open the box and bring out a pad. He dipped it in the jar and stood up with it. Carnelian looked at the pad held at the ends of his fingers. He looked into Osidian's eyes. They swallowed him. He felt the pad moving towards his face. The sight of it freed him. He snatched Osidian's wrist and held it firmly.
'What're you doing?' he asked in Vulgate, his heart beating hard enough to make him shake.
'Your skin – it's still streaked with paint,' Osidian replied in the same language, smiling tentatively through a frown.
Carnelian shook his head. 'But… you can't. Not you.'
'I want to.' Osidian brought up his other hand to release his wrist softly from Carnelian's grip.
Carnelian let his arm drop. He closed his eyes and flinched as the cool pad touched his forehead. It slid first to one side and then to the other, each time moving further down. Carnelian opened his eyes. He watched Osidian's careful concentration. He closed his eyes as the pad moved into the hollows of his eyes. He opened them again when it moved out over his swelling cheeks and the ridge of his nose. Sometimes, at the end of a stroke, their eyes would meet. Osidian's would gently disengage and he would continue with the cleaning. The pad slipped up and over Carnelian's lip. It came back up and along the hollow between his chin and lower lip. It slid back finding the valley between his lips. Its pressure made them open so that he felt it brushing his teeth and could taste its bitterness. The pad moved away. Osidian came closer till his eyes were all that Carnelian could see: his
