Once out of the Mnemosyne and dressed, Volya asked for an extra blanket, since his knees were knocking together uncontrollably. His shakes didn't come from chill, but from adrenaline pumping through his veins. He wanted to hide it, yet his excitement infected every face in the crowded trailer. They guessed that he'd experienced something extraordinary.
Liam was the first to move. He dashed away yelling, "One blanket coming right up. Don't say anything until I'm back."
The scientific crew filed outside after Liam, and swarmed Volya as he stumbled around looking for a good spot to sit down. Finally, he plopped on a bench by the row of trestle tables long enough to sit the entire expedition. It wasn't there before he went into the Mnemosyne, so they must have installed it under a khaki awning next to the kitchen tent while he was floating in his dreams.
"How long was I under?"
"Two hours," Lydia reported. "You had a vision?" Another second, and she'd chew her perfectly manicured nails—a sight Volya wouldn't miss for anything.
He tried to control his chattering teeth the best he could. "Y-yes. Let's... that is, I'll wait for L-liam to tell."
Damir pushed a glass of water into his hands. "Drink. Or do you want something stronger? Your lips are blue."
"No. I can't drink alcohol."
"Crap, I forgot." Damir sighed. Everyone always did.
Volya set the glass on the table after sloshing half of it onto himself. He instinctively touched his lips and jerked his finger away when the stubble prickled him. That's right, stubble. In his sad state, he forgot that he'd stopped shaving in imitation of Damir. The man waxed poetic about beards for the field season, and always in Marina's hearing.
While the most rise Damir had gotten out of Marina was a derisive snort, Volya couldn't resist experimenting. The result was more encouraging than the fuzz from a year ago that made the nicks from a razor a better option.
"Where is that blanket?" Sangha demanded, shuffling Damir out of the way. Her withering gaze made everyone who had sat down on the bench, jump up. They didn't go away though. Sangha wrapped the pressure sleeve around Volya's forearm to check his vitals and glared at her esteemed colleagues. "All of you, clear out."
"No!" Volya exclaimed. "No! I have to tell everyone what I saw s-soon. And I feel fine."
"You don't look fine."
A few tense moments passed in silence while Sangha did her measurements. "Hmm. Not as bad as I've feared, but—"
"One blanket coming right up!" Liam, who'd arrived earlier and froze while Sangha worked, wormed through the small crowd.
Volya listened to the familiar steps and stroked his facial hair. The nascent mustache was already curling, though a far cry from a hussar's brave look. If it were longer, he'd twirl it cockily. He had something valuable for Liam, something that justified the blind faith Liam had had in him all along. You bet, he'd twirl it!
The blanket coated his shoulders, but warmer than that, were Liam's hands. They smoothed the fabric to close over Volya's chest.
"Liam, I have it." Volya looked upward, happy to meet Liam's glance. For a second, all the other eyes, the tightening circle of other faces, tilted forward, waiting for his report, ceased to exist. Liam removed his hands, but squeezed himself onto the bench right next to him.
Marina squeaked her annoyance at being so unceremoniously displaced, but gave way.
"I'll try to speak in English," he told Marina, "but help me if I get lost, okay?"
Marina gave a grudging nod. For someone who insisted he speak English, she didn't look too happy about losing the interpreter's gig. Volya didn't give a damn about it. A pleasant sensation spread from the point where his and Liam's thighs touched, all throughout his core, as Volya started his tale.
Sure, he had decided not to pursue Liam, but just this once, it was okay to stay close. A sheepish grin from that contact didn't match the tragic events Volya related, but he couldn't stop it from spreading over his face. Akrum and Naktim could have lived to the ripe old age—and they would still have died millennia ago. And Liam was here, vibrantly young, charging him with his energy. He wanted to grin, squint and snuggle. He wanted to lead Liam away from the crowd and shout, "You see, you see? I have it! I was right to bring you here!"
Only they wouldn't let him snuggle with Liam, let alone leave with him. Lydia stuffed a notebook under his nose.
"What? Why?"
"Can you draw the runes?" she asked.
With a sigh, Volya obeyed, grasping the pencil tightly, but the lines squiggled, because his hands still shook. He persisted, despite Sangha's heavy, frustrated breathing down his neck. After some furious erasing, he had managed to recreate the patterns exactly, explaining what each symbol meant along the way. A bow loop for eternity, and stuff.
"Amazing," Lydia exclaimed. "This symbols persisted to the present day. Likely, it has to do with surrendering the male children to the wider community."
"I agree," Marina said, leaning over the table. "If the account Dr. Young had recorded was accurate, it might have been passed down through more than just the oral tradition. Maybe in the fragmented ancestral memories and such."
Several others spoke up at once, agitated and eager, but Volya stood up, interrupting their arguments. "I want to go back into the Mnemosyne as soon as possible."
"Absolutely not." This categorical response, of course, came from Sangha.
"I believe I can now focus myself on this specific event," Volya argued. "I must learn about the ritual they're preparing for."
"No," Sangha said. "You're borderline unfit. Another immersion would push you over."
"It won't. There is a crucial piece I'm missing and once I have it, I can lift the Isle from the mist."
Sangha's normally kind voice turned imperious. "You will not re-enter the Mnemosyne in the next 24 hours. Period."
She swept Anabelle, Liam and him with a stern look. "And no shenanigans."
The two siblings reacted by a torrent of assurances that they would never conceive of any mischief. Never did (except for that one time!) and never will. They were angels!
"I'm not twelve any more!" Anabelle exclaimed, tapping her hooves in her efforts to make her point. "I'm sixteen!"
By the expression on Sangha's face that distinction wasn't as consequential as Anabelle had hoped it would sound.
Liam wrapped a protective arm around Volya's shoulders. "I'll hold him down bodily if needed, to save him from harm. I'll tie him up and sit on him!"
"That's... excessive," Sangha said with an exasperated sigh.
A ridiculously pleasant shiver went up Volya's spine when he imagined Liam acting upon his threats. To be helpless in Liam's arms, to surrender to him would mean that he didn't have to bear the responsibility for getting what he wanted and couldn't have. Were Liam to restrain him...
Volya coughed to interrupt this line of thought. It was crazy, plus Liam would never take advantage of him. Maybe Liam wasn't an angel, but he wasn't that kind of a guy.
"Dr. Sangha, I don't think I'm in any danger," Volya pleaded.
Liam's brows shot up, his chin dipped down.
Volya grimaced. "Can't you just frigging trust me? For once?"
Liam leaned back, his arms sneaking away from Volya's shoulders to cross on his chest. Do what you will, Liam's eyes said, you're a big boy.
Sangha wasn't as easily bamboozled as Liam. "You're in imminent danger, Volya, I assure you. You need rest, and a post-stress treatment. I can't inject you with glucose, so it would take longer for you to recover from shock. And I haven't even done a blood work-up on you. "
Maybe what Liam's gaze channeled wasn't what Volya had thought it channeled. Maybe it was, don't be such an idiot.
Volya mouthed, vol'nomu—volya, 'do what you will', to fortify himself before rushing to explain his foolhardiness to Liam, to Sangha and to everyone who'd listen.
"If I go to sleep normally, I'll dream anyway, but it wouldn't be as focused as in the Mnemosyne. I would basically exhaust myself on some irrelevant bits of history." He couldn't understand how they didn't see it.
"I think we should trust the young man's assessment of his abilities," Lydia said, turning to daSilva. "The Mnemosyne has unlocked a potent stream of ancestral memories in him. His vital signs did shoot up, but then they leveled off."
"They were trending up!" Sangha's lips pinched into a tight line. "If he has a break-down, Lydia, where will it leave you? Leave all of us? What if he collapses? Do you know how far the nearest hospital is? How woefully under-equipped?"
A frustrated "I'm fine!" burst out of Volya.
"Liam, my friend, could you see that our intrepid young hero eats something and takes the supplements Dr. Sangha had prepared? " daSilva said smoothly, stroking his chin. "Meanwhile, we'll go over the data and confer. There is much to consider, and safety is paramount."
Volya opened his mouth to point out that they were right next to the kitchen tent, so where was Liam supposed to take him to eat, when his treacherous guts growled like a bear. He rolled his eyes. Frigging A for timing!
Liam stuffed the cross into his hand. "Let's go, Volya."
Volya got up to his feet, swayed and caught himself on Liam. Oops. His wobbly knees weren't helping his case at all. DaSilva's eyes said as much, let alone Sangha's.
"Go, go and eat, then we'll check your vitals again and decide on the safest course of actions," daSilva repeated, effectively finishing the argument.
***
Liam and Volya raided the fridge in the kitchen that was no longer a kitchen. It had become the de-facto headquarters of the expedition and a ground zero of a heated debate. If Baba Masha was the expedition's cook, she'd have chased the academics away with her ladle, but since Lydia and Anabelle shared that role, nobody bothered to restore the order.
They found a quieter spot in the trailer's shade with a view of the rolling hills and the blue width of the Don.
"I don't think you should go back today," Liam said, once he sprawled the blanket on the grass.
Liam looked so tragically serious, Volya wanted to press his lips to his, whispering, hush, hush, it's gonna be fine. But this was exactly the sort of temptation he'd promised himself to resist. Love was such a frustrating animal.
He squirted into his mouth some of the concoction Sangha created to combat his chronic malnourishment: vitamins, essential amino acids. It tasted sour and left a chalky aftertaste in his mouth. "You're not a doctor. Sangha is."
"Then listen to her, for God's sake!"
Volya squirted more elixir. "I'm on my home turf here, Liam." The dry grass they squashed prickled his butt through the blanket and the jeans to remind him of that. Its intoxicating scent lingered in the air.
"Great, we won't have to travel far to bury you home."
"I thought pessimism was my thing..." Volya opened the small cooler and browsed the gourmet selection. Once he found a choice morsel, he lifted it above his upturned face and dropped it down his mouth. Playing with his food was forbidden from the earliest childhood—for a good reason, yes—but it made it a hundred times more delicious. Did the same thing happen with the other sensual pleasures? The ones he couldn't stop imagining... and should.
He cleared his throat. "Look, Liam, I really don't need 24 hours to recover."
"What's your hurry anyway?"
"Mmgh, have you changed your mind about Anabelle being better off as a regular girl than the only centaur in existence?" Volya asked.
Liam bristled. "Don't joke about it."
"Okay, I won't. But if you want her beautiful human legs back, you should trust me. I know what I'm doing, Liam."
"Then explain, for God's sake."
"My poisoner can't be far behind us. Or they might have allies we don't know about."
Liam shrugged. "We are well protected."
"It's not just about protection. It's about interfering." Volya said before the mist-wolf echoed the same consideration in his head. "The moon is waxing. When the moon is full, my magic will be the strongest, but I'm very new to it. I can be thwarted."
See, he knew his stuff. He actually did. But this wasn't the only reason why he was ready to dive into the Mnemosyne's without Sangha's blessing, if he had to.
This ritual, this ancient story... it didn't excuse his abandonment as a baby, but at least it explained it. So, he needed to know, and he couldn't wait. Maybe knowing why his mother did what she did, would ease the growing sickness in his chest every time he woke up in the night and laid there, listening to Liam's soft snores. Yearning not to be alone, but unable to do anything about it.
He hugged himself for the sake of feeling human warmth when he slept next to Toshka in the dorm. He was doing it now, while sleeping a few steps away from Liam. He wanted to be held by someone and believe that they wanted him and he ran into that barrier. It would separate him, until he knew the truth about his mother.
"Okay," Liam said after a long pause. "Okay."
Something in the way he'd sighed afterwards, made Volya wonder if he wasn't the only one who stared into the darkness instead of sleep.
But no... every time he listened in, Liam's breathing was deep and even. Solitude didn't haunt Liam. It couldn't. For most of his life, he needed only to snap his fingers and a tidal wave of adoration headed his way. Sure, most of his fans' love was illusory, but he held his finger on the switch to make it real. Liam was in control of pretty much everything in his life, including affection. Liam wasn't inhibited like Volya, he was righteous. Sincere. Better.
And Volya wanted to be like that, only it slipped away from him every time he stared down the void hiding his birth.
He eyed the Mnemosyne's trailer hungrily and gorged on meat, taking small sips of Sangha's cocktail in between the bites. He'd show them. He'd recover so fast, their jaws would hung in amazement. They'd sing songs... ahem, write articles... about how fast he could recover.
When Sangha came to check on him, he gave her a cocky grin. "I'm fine, you'll see."
She marched him inside the lab without comment and drew blood samples. He stuck to her like glue, while the vials ran through centrifuges and what-not. The lights blinked... he didn't ask what it was.
His only question was, "Well?"
He repeated it so many times that Sangha threatened to call for Damir to escort him out of her lab. He jutted out his chin and wrapped his ankles around his stool. "Well? I'm fine, aren't I?"
Sangha sighed. "I can't find a single marker for stress or physical exhaustion. No abnormalities at all."
He pushed to his feet. "I'm good to go then."
"I still advise against it."
"Noted, Dr. Sangha, but could you please inform Dr. daSilva of your findings?" He knew he'd won. He would be allowed to enter the Mnemosyne soon.