Read Online Wolf's-own: Koan by Carole Cummings - Free Book Online Page A

me."
    "That's because you're supposed to decide that for yourself,” Caidi chirped.
    Jacin rolled his eyes. “That's what Malick says.” It was very nearly a sneer. Because Jacin really, honestly hated Malick for it sometimes.
    "Well,” Caidi put in with a sigh, “since there seems to be a consensus, maybe you should start trying to figure out how to do that, instead of wallowing in why you think you can't."
    Right. There was his guilty conscience talking. Maybe she was half ghost and half Jacin-being-self-pitying.
    "He wants something from me.” It sounded so weak, so shaky, that Jacin was almost ashamed, but fuck , it seemed to be Caidi's purpose to drive him to this kind of lost despair-through-hope at every opportunity, so shame seemed rather beside the point. “Maybe he does... love me...."
    He doesn't love you. Why do you go on lying to yourself, Jacin-rei? Why do you go on letting them lie to you?
    Not Beishin, but an echo of him, and yet somehow it didn't hurt any less.
    Jacin swallowed and squeezed his eyes tight. “But it won't matter in the end, because he brought us here for a reason. I just don't know what it is yet.” Jacin had been waiting for Malick to tell him what it was, just to get it over with, but Malick just kept not doing it, instead lulling Jacin with touch and comfort and showing him things he'd never had before and knew he wouldn't have for long, even if he took hold of them with both hands. Except Jacin had learned not to reach, so he didn't. Malick might be all kindness and gentle acceptance now, but he was a predator right down to bone—Jacin had seen that down in the baths of the Girou, and there was no mistaking it—so there had to be something else coming. “He wants something from me,” Jacin whispered.
    "And you'll give it when he asks,” Caidi told him gently. “Because that's what people do for each other. You don't know your own heart, Jacin, and you have no idea that it's not really yours anymore."
    Jacin's eyes snapped open, and he narrowed them over at Caidi. “What the hell's that supposed—?"
    He stopped, because she was gone. He didn't know why it surprised him when she did that, but it did. It kept him guessing— was she real? was she a ghost? was she his own sick mind making sure he didn't forget what a failure he was? —and he hated the doubt more than he thought he hated the dreams that Caidi's recent presence had seemed to stir. Joori thought it was some kind of new, cyclical depression, but it was really just exhaustion, because Jacin would much rather not sleep than watch her splatter on the cobbles over and over again, with Beishin's accusations still ringing in his ears and Beishin's blood warm and sticky on his hands. Nothing seemed quite so effective at dredging up things he didn't want to see-remember-think-about-know as Caidi telling him none of it was his fault, that he could be an actual person, that he deserved—
    He cut that one off and flicked the ash from his smoke into the saucer. Believing he deserved it would make him want it, which would make him see it where it wasn't. He didn't know what it looked like when it was real, and he was too cowardly to risk what was left of him on something that wasn't. Of course you know what it looks like , Caidi had told him just yesterday. Your brothers love you, why can't you believe others could too?
    Because they don't , Jacin had snapped back, and she'd shaken her head at him in frustrated disappointment, but he'd known at least that for truth.
    Joori loved someone who didn't exist anymore, maybe never did; Morin tolerated his “freaky” brother, because what choice did he have when his “freaky” brother's pseudo-lover was the one feeding, housing and clothing him? Jacin sometimes wondered if the too-intense obsession-fixation-halfway-hysteria he had with keeping them close and safe and alive was actual love or just some new twist on his own circuitous delusions.
    Maybe if Jacin had had the