Chapter 23: What the Tongue Remembers
The licking went on, but it had changed its mind about something. Between one pass and the next the gaps stretched, until Liam could lie still and count three of his own heartbeats before the tongue came back along his ribs.
He kept counting. Four. Five.
He was on his back with his arms out and the wet soaking up the collar of his shirt. The bumps under his shoulder blades had gone warm as river stones in the sun. Above him the mouth breathed in, and out, and the whole floor of it moved him a fraction up and a fraction down.
It had been a family joke for one week. Da had asked at the table what the kitten was doing, and Kaelen had gone red to the ears, and the three of them had laughed until Telisa had to hold her side. Liam had laughed hardest of anyone.
It stopped being funny somewhere in October. He had never said so to Kaelen, and Kaelen had never asked, and that was the arrangement they had kept ever since.
The tongue came up under him again. It was almost idle now, working along his thigh the way a hand strokes a cat while its owner reads, and Liam lay in it and let it finish.
Then he rolled onto his front and got his knees under him.
The tongue let him up. He found the ridge on the left side where tongue met floor, a long seam of muscle slick as a wet rope, and took hold of it with both hands. His feet found the bumps behind him and pushed.
Up the length of it, hand over hand. His palms slipped twice and caught again. The muscle held its shape under him and did not roll him off, and once the tip came up behind him and steadied him at the small of his back, which he ignored.
At the root the floor of the mouth rose into a hard arch and turned over into the roof. He climbed the last of the slope on his hands and knees, and then he was standing under the vault of it, in the dark, with his hands flat on the ridges of the palate.
The ridges ran front to back in smooth ribs, like the underside of a bridge. He put both palms flat across two of them and pressed down hard.
The purr was in there. Not moving through it. Living in it. It came up the bones of his wrists and into his forearms and settled behind his sternum, and for a moment he could not tell his own pulse apart from it.
"Kae."
The word came back off the vault of the mouth, small and flat.
"Mm."
"Can you feel me up here?"
"Every step."
Liam kept both hands pressed flat. The wet had gone cool on his back, and the air moving in and out of him was coming from deep in the chest now, slow, careful, as if his brother had decided to breathe quietly and forgotten how.
There was one question he had carried for a long time. He had never once said it out loud. He had walked around it on the couch, and in the meadow, and under the wool of Gran's blanket, and he had always found something else to say first.
He said it now.
"Do you want me in there, or do you just let me?"
The purr stopped.
It did not fade, or drop away by degrees. It cut out between one beat and the next, as if a hand had been laid over the whole of it, and the silence that came after had a shape to it. Liam felt his own pulse stand alone in the dark, much faster than the one under him.
The palate under his palms stayed still. He kept his hands where they were and waited, and the wet dried on his back, and far below him his brother's breath went in through the nose and stayed there.
"You think I've been letting you," Kaelen said at last.
It came down the throat from somewhere under the floorboards of the sound. Liam did not answer it. He pressed his palms down harder instead.
The pouch woke up.
He felt it start below and behind him, under the root of the tongue, along the fold that had been lying quiet since the hearing. The fold parted. Warm air came up out of it, damp and close, smelling of his brother's skin.
Kaelen's voice came down again. It was thick and slow and it caught once in the middle.
"Do you want to go back in?"
Liam took his hands off the ridges. He came down the arch on his backside, skidding a little on the wet, and got his feet under him at the root of the tongue. Then he walked forward, down the long slope of it, into the heat.
It took him the way it always did. Slow, and with no hurry in it at all, the way a thing takes what it has been carrying for years. The lining came up his legs first and then his back and then his shoulders. It found the shape of him along his arms and closed in behind his heels.
The entrance drew together and shut with a small wet sound, and the dark inside was total, and the purr came back up through the whole of it, through the muscle and the bone both, and did not stop.
Inside, the dark had no up to it and no edges. Liam lay on the fold of the lining with the wet up over his calves and stopped trying to see.
The pouch held him the way it had held him at the mill and the two nights before that. Along his back, along the backs of his legs, up over the soles of his feet. Warm, and firm, and in no hurry at all.
He lay still and counted. The pulse came up through the floor of it, slower than his own, and every beat moved him where he lay.
Kaelen had still not said anything.
So Liam waited. Somewhere out in the house a length of timber let go of its nail, and the sound reached him through the muscle so altered he barely knew it for a knock. He turned his face into the lining and waited past that, and past the next one.
The purr was not an answer. He had known that much for two days. It came up out of his brother whether his brother wanted it to or not.
Then the muscle went.
It started under the root of the tongue and drew the whole pouch in at once, top and bottom together. It took up the slack at his sides. It found the small of his back and closed there, and then it held, exactly as tight as it needed to be and no tighter.
Kaelen spoke.
"Not let."
Two words, come down through the wet. Liam lay flat with both palms pressed into the lining and turned them over one way and then the other.
"What's the difference?"
Above him the breath went in through the nose and stopped. The pouch stayed closed around him. The purr went on underneath, and that was the whole of the answer for a long while.
Then it came.
"I've never let you do anything. Not since you were sixteen."
It landed flat and slow, the way he talked about the stump that pulled or the ice on the road. Liam felt his own heart knock twice against the lining.
"You told me it was for my comfort."
"I know what I told you."
Liam did not answer that. He lay in the dark with both hands flat and let it sit there, and the lining around him loosened by one notch, as if something heavy had been set down after a long time being carried.
Then the tongue came up.
It lifted him clear of the bumps and set him back down the length of a hand further along, and then it started in on him, slow. Down the backs of his legs, where two days of standing on a mill floor had put their knots. Up his spine, one link at a time. Out along both arms to the wrists, and back, and over again.
He did not ask it to stop.
It knew where he was hurt. That was the thing he could not get past, lying there with the wet up to his collar. It went past the whole of him three times before it slowed, and every pass found the same places, and every pass stayed in them a little longer than it needed to.
Four years of it, held back behind teeth. He could feel the size of what had been kept in, the way you can feel the weight of a door when it finally opens.
So he rolled onto his front and got his knees under him.
The tongue let him up. He found the seam where it met the floor of the mouth, took hold with both hands, and climbed. His feet found the bumps behind him and pushed, and the muscle held its shape and did not roll him off.
At the root the floor rose into a hard arch and turned over into the roof. He went up the last of it on his hands and knees, and then he was standing under the vault of the palate with his palms flat on the ridges.
The purr lived in there. It came up the bones of his wrists and into his forearms and settled behind his sternum, and he could not tell his own pulse apart from it.
"Kae."
"Mm."
"How long?"
The palate under his hands stayed still. Below him the breath went in and out twice before anything came back up the throat.
"Since the night by the stove. Not before it."
Liam pressed down harder on the ridges. Four years was longer than he had allowed himself to work out.
He had laughed at the table for a week. Da had asked what the kitten was doing and Kaelen had gone red to the ears and Telisa had held her side, and Liam had laughed hardest of anyone because everyone else was.
It stopped being funny somewhere in October, and he had never said a word about it to anyone.
He said it now.
"October."
The word went down the throat and came back changed, and the silence after it went on long enough that he could hear the wet drying on his arms.
"Mm," Kaelen said.
"That's it?"
"I know."
Liam took his hands off the ridges and sat back on his heels under the roof of his brother's mouth. It was close in there and dark, and the air was warm and used, and he had climbed that slope to get an answer of some kind.
"How do you know?"
"For the last four years," Kaelen said, "every night you've been in here, I've lain awake till you were under. Every one. I know what you sound like when you're pretending to be asleep."
Liam did not move.
"I've counted them," Kaelen said. It came down slow and flat and enormous, from somewhere under the floorboards of the sound. "I've counted every one."
The mouth went still around him. Somewhere below, out past the throat and the collarbone, the house ticked and the yard was empty and there was nothing on either of their lists for the morning.
Liam turned and came back down the arch on his backside, skidding a little on the wet, and got his feet under him at the root of the tongue.
Then he walked forward, down the long slope of it, into the heat.
It took him the way it always took him. Slow, and with no hurry in it, the way a thing takes what it has been carrying for years. The lining came up his legs first and then his back and then his shoulders, and it found the shape of him along his arms and closed in behind his heels.
The tongue came up under him once, the whole length of him at the same time, and set him down gently on the fold.
"I'm not pretending," Liam said.
"No."
The entrance drew together over his head with a small wet sound, and the dark inside went total, and the purr came back up through the muscle and the bone both.
Then the tongue started again.
Away up above him, muffled and half under, his brother said something that did not make it through the throat intact, and Liam stopped trying to hear the words and pressed his cheek down flat on the wet instead, and did not count the beats.