120 - Drowning in the Desert

“Mariush! Wait, Brienz is on his way!”  Shashi called out just as Mariush snatched up Homa from Eredat’s arms.  The young mother’s eyes were wild.  She coughed and sank down on a divan, rocking her baby back and forth.

“She’s so hot.  My ants say she’s under attack!  Shashi, Eredat, help me!”

One of the secret doors snapped open so hard that the hinge broke, leaving it hanging open and obvious.  Diryish reached Mariush in three strides, caught her and the baby up and all but carried them both into the labyrinth of his Loggia, calling back over his shoulder. “Shashi! Bring Brienz to my bath the conventional way!  Tell him he’ll have to deal with drowning!” His voice was a grim snarl, full of rage.

“What?”  But he and Mariush were gone.

“Hold on, baby girl,” Diryish said to the baby coughing on his left.  "No. No."  Never again.  Not while I'm still walking and breathing and not shut into my white mountain.  Never again you unenlightened asshole, whoever you are. I will not stand by and see this child go into the long dark so early, like all the others.  My children and my grandchildren and my great grandchildren have all died.  You are my daughter.  I will fight for you, sweetling, Homa Raghnall.  “You are my girl and a fighter.” He turned his head to her mother, on his other side, clinging to the arm he had around her waist, her arms around his neck and the baby, clutching his bedrobes and her swaddling.  “Mariush, you know and I know this girl is mine.  No more lies.  Someone is trying to kill her, and you, because of me.  Breathe.  Keep breathing!”

Homa coughed again, her phlegm a fine mist of blood on her mother’s veil.  Diryish’s face was bare but he didn’t flinch at the spatter.  “I have to get the attacking mites out of your lungs, both of you!  Mariush... listen to me.  Listen!  You need to inhale the water.  You need to pull the water into your lungs.  Listen to me! The baby is drowning as her lungs break down.  I can fix the damage water does.  Mariush!”

Her knees gave way just on the threshold of his bath, the bowl of deep water suspended more than five hundred metres above the river.  He swung Homa onto her mother’s chest and bent, picking them both up.  The Great Hive roared its distress, bees coming to sting antidotes and support into all three of them.  It was a dozen steps across the blue tiled floor.  He could feel them failing every step.  They grew heavier and heavier and he didn’t, couldn't, waste time with stairs.  He stepped off the edge, flinging them all underwater.

Mariush twitched and tried to struggle to the surface, the baby opened eyes and mouth wide in the shock, bubbles bursting out of her wide open mouth.  Deep water was as rare as blue sky on Chishiki, but she was from a line of swimming primates and would not inhale.  Mariush thrashed next to him and struck upward toward the air.  Diryish was forced to hold both of them down in the water with him.  Inhale, endarken it, enlighten it INHALE.

Mariush clawed at his arm where he held Homa underwater, and raked her nails across his cheek, the long jewels ripping through his skin, clouding the water red, she stared at him, blue eyes full of shock and betrayal.  She can't have heard me. I’m not killing you, woman.  I’m trying to save you.  Please, let me save you! He hadn’t begged the universe for anything for years, but he had watched with anguish as someone had misinterpreted an act of his and ceased trusting him more times than he could remember.  Let me save you, even if it hurts.

He forced himself to watch, as his daughter’s green eyes closed, sucked water and went limp. Mariush collapsed almost at the same time.  Holding tight to his surviving family, Diryish set his feet on the floor of his bath and lunged for the surface.