fahye | (for retrieval later)

A letter from Carme Risk to her father, in the year 2008.

Here is what I know:

I know that one cold night when I was five or thereabouts, I pretended to have had bad dreams so that I could cross the hallway (tripping on the rug, in the dark) and crawl into bed with you and Dev. I've never pretended to have Fidela's autonomy, but even so, the deception was necessary. It implied protection within boundaries - a trick that I learnt from you. But I grew out of it. You never did.

I crossed the hall and slipped in next to you, trying not to shift you (Dev's hand on your hip, like he was reaching across to wave the lamp out and fell asleep midway). You woke up, though, and murmured at my cold feet. Moved to hold me - waking Dev, always far too dependent on your states as guides to his own. Continuing my deception, I feigned sleep and felt your fingers in my hair.

Dev's voice, his shallow ringing whisper - I swear, she's bigger every day.

You - And less like her mother, thank God. Not to speak ill of the dead.

Dev - Genevieve never cared what you thought when she was alive, love. I doubt she's any touchier in death.

And your laugh, the weird freedom of tone that you used only with him - That's true.

And then I was, actually, asleep.

All this is true.

What I believe, however, must fill the gaps in my knowledge of the world before I was born. Dev's words. (You knew I told him more than I told you, but you never realised how much he told me, storing your lives in my head as though he'd be retrieving them later. I think he felt - knew - more than anyone else.) He gave me the framework. I'm embellishing, of course, but that's what we do in this family. Stories, and stories within stories.

I believe that on the night after Dev had thrown you down a cliff and seen your bruised face in the dirty light of your burning motorcycle (so romantic! Astrella would say; I can hear her sarcasm) - that night, or maybe the next, you put your hands on either side of his face and said something about salvation. You, seventeen and timeless. And Devlin Hughes, who had nothing in his armory of calm self-avoidance to defend himself against your touch, lifted his hands and covered yours, slowly, engulfed your thin fingers in his own.

I think that's important. The engulfment. It was the first time you had found someone capable of surrounding you so completely, without leaks, the way you were accustomed to surrounding the world itself. You always had a little of Fernando's desperation, but not the same Taoscal focus on the act of ingestion. He said that you wanted to put the whole world in your mouth. I don't think you wanted to swallow. Just press your lips together and create a sealed space in which it could exist.

I believe that Dev whispered Abra Cadaver like the silly magic charm that it was, and dissolved your name in the sound of its syllables. You know that he hardly used it, after that. Always you and always love and nothing less impassioned and personal. I feel as though I should have picked up on it sooner. Anything imposed on you just fell away. Falls away. Falls away. Sometimes I wonder if I'm not one of those impositions.

(for retrieval later)

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