“Nallah, sweetheart, do you remember how I told you that I feel like a completely different person since I, uh, woke up from the coma?” Harryx asked.
“Yes, oh my husband.” Nallah gave him a cautious look from the corner of her eye. Harryx had been quiet all day, almost subdued ever since the abrupt end to their love-making the night before.
Nallah thought it was probably her fault—she had spoiled the beautiful mood her husband had set and she kept waiting for him to turn angry and cold with her again. So far he hadn’t but she couldn’t help thinking that it could happen at any time.
“Well…” He cleared his throat and looked down at his hands, clasped loosely together. They were sitting in the living area and the silence in the room was almost deafening after the latest vid had ended.
After going to the fair the day before, today they had stayed quietly at home. Harryx had asked her if there was anywhere she wanted to go that morning but Nallah hadn’t felt like going out. The upcoming Ritual of Procreation was heavy on her mind and she couldn’t help thinking how awful it was going to be when Harryx placed her on all fours on the padded altar and forced himself inside her as he had for the past three years.
“Well,” Harryx said again and seemed uncertain how to continue. He sighed and ran a hand through his dark blond hair. “What if I told you I was a different person?”
Nallah frowned at him. “But…how can you be a different person, my husband? I don’t understand.”
“What if I told you I wasn’t really your husband?” Harryx looked at her intently, his eyes going from pale blue to midnight black. “What if I told you I’m just…just borrowing his body for a while?”
Nallah’s breath caught in her throat and dread filled her like icy water.
“You…you mean like a Hallorook?” she asked, barely able to squeeze the words out of a throat tight with fear.
“A Hallorook?” Harryx—or was it Harryx?—frowned.
“An evil spirit that takes over a person’s body.” Nallah forced the words out, her skin prickling all over with goosebumps. But her husband didn’t seem to notice.
“Evil? No.” He frowned. “But a spirit in someone else’s body, well…”
“Don’t!” Nallah jumped off the couch. Normally she would fear to act so abruptly with her easily-angered husband but now an older fear, a deeper dread had taken over.
The story of the Hallorook was a legend she had read once in a book of old tales as a child and it had given her nightmares so severe she woke up screaming for months. Her older brother, Chanx, had found out it frightened her and had spent years tormenting her, pretending he wasn’t her brother at all but only the shell of her brother, inhabited by the Hallorook.
Nallah could still see him, creeping after her in the darkness, could still hear that weird, creepy voice he spoke in when he cornered her in a shadowy hallway, his eyes glinting with a strange light…
“I’m not Chanx…your brother is dead. I’ve taken his body and soon I’ll take yours. I’m the Hallorook, little girl!”
Her father had finally found out what Chanx was doing and had chastised him, though the fears of girls were usually thought to be beneath anyone’s concern. But in the meantime, she had grown up fearing the awful old legend.
“Don’t,” she said to Harryx again. “Please, oh my husband! Don’t scare me like that! Did Chanx tell you how frightened I was of the Hallorook as a child?”
“Chanx?” For a moment he looked blank and then a look of understanding flooded his face. “Oh, your older brother.”
“He used to tease and taunt me with tales of the Hallorook,” Nallah explained with a shiver. “He used to pretend it had taken over his body and that soon it would take mine.”
“He did, did he?” Harryx sighed a frustrated sounding sigh and she heard him mutter, “Goddess damn it!” under his breath.
To Nallah these were warning signs that things were not going right and that she had only a short time to keep her husband from exploding into rage. Quickly she slid from the couch and knelt at his feet.
“Please, oh my husband, allow me to pleasure you with my mouth,” she said in her most appeasing tone.
“What?” Harryx looked at her as though she had never submitted before. “Why would you want to do that? What are you doing?”
“I…I’m submitting,” Nallah offered in a quavering voice. “I thought…you look upset. I thought you might feel better if you used me.”
But this only made Harryx look more upset. Sighing, he raked a hand through his hair again.
“Look, sweetheart, you don’t have to do that,” he said, leaning forward and looking at her intently. “Please don’t think that every time I get upset I’m going to hurt you.”
“I…I don’t think that,” Nallah whispered, although in truth, the possibility of violence was always uppermost in her mind. She couldn’t help it—despite his recent change, her husband had spent years arbitrarily punishing her for slights, real and imagined. She couldn’t lose the habit of fearing him in just a few days.
Harryx scrubbed one big hand across his face.
“Of course you think that,” he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose as though to drive back a headache. “What else would you think considering how that bastard treated you in the past?”
Nallah felt another cold shiver run down her spine. There he went again, talking of himself as though he was a different person—he had done that several times since waking from his coma. And there was the way his eyes changed color sometimes, from blue to black. Could it be the person she was speaking to really wasn’t her husband? Could it be that the legend of the Hallorook were real?
“My husband,” she said, her voice quivering. “Of…of whom are you speaking?”
“Hmm?” He looked at her, his eyes far away—and back to their normal blue color, Nallah saw. Maybe she was imagining the whole thing—letting her imagination run away with her as she had as a child.
Maybe you’re being foolish and you’ll be punished for it if you’re not careful, whispered a warning little voice in her head.
“Nothing.” Nallah looked down at her hands. “Perhaps I should go and prepare your dinner. Are you hungry?”
“Not especially.” Harryx sighed. “Look, sweetheart, we need to talk about the Ritual tomorrow.”
“The Ritual?” Nallah’s blood was suddenly icy in her veins. All thoughts of her childhood terror of the Hallorook left her, abruptly replaced by an all too real and present fear of what she must endure at the temple tomorrow.
“Yes, the Ritual of Procreation.” Harryx looked decidedly unhappy. “I can tell you’re not looking forward to it any more than I am.”
“Why…why would I not look forward to it?” Nallah tried to paste a smile on her face but it felt wooden and forced. “It is the one day a year that we are honored to show our devotion to the God-King through the performance of…of fertility.”
“Which basically involves me putting you on some kind of altar and forcing myself inside you.” Harryx spat the words, as though he hated the very thought. “Well, I won’t do that to you, baby. I swear I won’t.”
“But…” Nallah looked up at him, confused. “But you must, my husband. Anyone who refuses to partake in the performance of fertility is declared an enemy of the State and of the God-King himself. We will both be locked away if you refuse to…” She swallowed hard and heard a dry clicking in her throat. “To take me.”
Harryx got up and began striding around the room.
“There’s no way to get out of it? I mean, I just came out of a coma. What if we just tell them I’m too sick to perform?”
“That might have worked if you had not showed yourself at the offices of the Inner Circle the other day,” Nallah said cautiously. Honestly, she couldn’t understand why Harryx was so upset. Though they had never talked about it before—then again, they never talked about much of anything—she had always had the distinct impression that her husband liked performing the Ritual at the temple.
He seemed to take a fierce joy in riding her as hard as he could and leaving blood on her thighs mixed with his seed leaking out of her. Not that the priests came close enough to see the tell-tale scarlet streaks on her pale skin but it was a point of pride to her husband to use her thoroughly and hard during the performance of fertility.
But now the very idea of going to the temple to perform with her seemed to be extremely upsetting to Harryx.
“So there’s no getting out of it?” he demanded. “No way to avoid going and performing?”
“I…I’m afraid not,” Nallah faltered. Although the God-King knew if she was allowed she would certainly avoid it. “We…we must do what we must,” she said, which was exactly what her mother had always told her about a woman’s role once she was married.
“But I don’t want to hurt you like that!” Harryx exclaimed. “Goddess damn it—you’ve had enough rough treatment, sweetheart. I never want you to have to go through anything like that again!”
“You…you do not have to be rough, then, if you don’t wish it,” Nallah whispered, barely daring to look at him. “If…if you wish to be gentle this time, my husband…”
“I was being gentle last night when I entered you with my fingers and it still made you freeze up,” he pointed out roughly.
Nallah felt a thrill of fear. Here it was—the reason he was angry with her. Could a beating be far behind?
“Please, my husband,” she said quickly. “Forgive me for the way I acted. I only—”
“No, baby—no!” He sank to the floor beside her. Kneeling across from her, he took Nallah’s face in his hands and stared at her intensely. “I’m not saying I’m mad at you—it was all my fault! I’m saying I don’t want to enter you again—to penetrate you—until you’re ready. Do you understand?”
“I do and…and I don’t,” Nallah admitted. “You have always…always liked performing the Ritual before, my husband.”
“That’s because I was…was a different person. A real bastard.” He sighed. “I guess that’s the best way I can put it. But I’m not that person anymore—not since I woke up from the coma.” He placed a soft kiss on her forehead and stroked her cheek. “I don’t want to hurt you, baby,” he said in a low voice. “I’m just trying to think of a way not to.”
Nallah looked at him, uncertain how to feel. In the past few days she’d almost felt like she was falling in love with her husband all over again—if she had ever really loved him in the first place. She rather thought she hadn’t—she’d had a girlish infatuation with the tall, strong officer of the Inner Circle and had felt incredibly lucky when he picked her, of all girls, to buy as his wife. But infatuation wasn’t love.
Then later, when he had shown her his true self—the man who desired to hit and hurt her—she had lost that infatuation and felt nothing but fear. But now…now he was so different.
Hallorook? whispered a voice in her mind but Nallah pushed it away. There was no such thing as a Hallorook—it was just an old legend. She had to attribute her husband’s change of demeanor and attitude—indeed, the change of his entire personality—to the bump he’d taken to the head and the resulting coma.
But could she ever really love and trust a man who had done the things he had done to her? Could she feel for him the way she wanted to?
Nallah just wasn’t sure. But she did know one thing—there was no way to get out of the Ritual.