Timshel

by Lillian Turner

  Sierrach swung one long leg over the top of the gate then the other, smooth and casual as rolling out of bed. “Hallo the home!” he called, taking The Beast back from Eiland. “M’lady, I need you to tell me where to find a good hole that needs filling.”

  “Well that depends on what’s doing the filling,” Mara shot back instantly. “How big shall we say it is?”

  “Alas, ‘tis just a wee fragile thing. Eiland, show her your wee fragile flower.”

  Eiland managed to choke on nothing but air. Charon groaned. “I’m sorry, I should have warned you—”

  “Nonsense, Charon. Ah, that’s such a pretty flower, Eiland. You should be right proud of it, and don’t let anyone tell you they could find one bigger. And how pale! Isn’t it quite pale, Sierrach?”

  “I thought so, too, my dear, when he first showed it to me in the woods. But look at how firm and straight the shaft is!”

  “Stop, you two,” Charon said, though he was laughing.

  Eiland’s ears felt hot; he held the hesfast plant out far away from him, not sure whether to run away or laugh. He didn’t know exactly what they were japing at, but he could guess.

  Charon’s eyes met his, and of a sudden Eiland remembered lying on Eom’s floor, his legs tangled up with Charon’s. He looked away quickly.

  Mara took the plant. “I shall be so very careful with your flower, Eiland.” She yelped when Charon shifted sideways and kicked the back of her thigh with his foot. “Oh fine. You’re no fun.”

  “Who’s that?” Eiland asked to cover up his embarrassment, nodding to the kitten in Charon’s lap.

  The tiny black kitten couldn’t be more than two weeks old. Its little tail stuck straight up and it tottered over Charon’s thighs on stiff legs. Charon used his arms as barriers, nudging the kitten back whenever it stumbled too near the cliff of his knees.

  “We haven’t named him, yet,” Charon replied. “Mara and I found him in the garden.”

  “All alone?” Sierrach asked, cupping a careful hand over Beast’s back. The fox kit seemed very curious about the kitten.

  “The mother had left them, or she’d been eaten by something,” Mara answered in a light voice. “The rest of the litter didn’t survive.”

  Eiland blinked at her, then kneeled down on the step beside Charon’s feet. He rubbed the kitten’s head gently with his thumb. “Luck be with you, little one.”

  “Maybe we should call him Lord Baron von Sir,” Charon suggested slyly.

  Eiland sighed. “I should never have told you about Lord Baron von Sir.”

  “What, what, what now?” Sierrach asked, insinuating himself closer to them both. He was an older brother, Eiland could tell: he knew good ammunition when he heard it.

  “When he was a child,” Charon said, grinning like the older brother that he was, too, “Eiland used to treat his pets as royalty. Up to and including their names.”

  “Lord Baron von Sir,” Eiland said with as much dignity as he could muster, “was a magnificent cat.”

  “Oh, I’m certain,” Sierrach said, completely straight-faced. Despite the jest, his gaze flickered between Eiland and Charon.

  Mara planted the hesfast just inside the edge of the manor’s cemetery. Eiland had noticed that the plants there grew a great deal bigger and thicker than elsewhere; he tried hard not to think of why.

  With that task complete, they all retired inside to eat, whereupon Sierrach asked them about their journey.

  This time Eiland kept quiet and looked at Charon, who hesitated a bare moment before launching into a retelling of their adventure with the bandits. To hear him tell it, Eiland had danced with every single one and went prancing off into the night hand in hand with the bandit leader and his wife Belatu.

  Unfortunately it was close enough to what Eiland remembered that he couldn’t argue his innocence. He settled for hiding his face in his hands while Sierrach and Mara laughed.

  “It was just dancing,” he interjected from between his fingers.

  “I’m sure,” Sierrach assured, patting his shoulder.

  Neither he nor Mara looked the slightest bit ruffled at Charon’s recounting of the Cursed bandit’s marriage proposal to his leader, nor of the suggestion of what, exactly, Eiland had gone off with the leader and his wife to do.

  Eiland looked at them both and at Charon. Maybe it would not be so strange, to them. To want…Eiland made himself think it, a mental push. To want to lie with a man rather than a woman.

  He knew, without having to even form the awful shape of the thought in his mind, what his parents’ reaction would have been. But the bandits hadn’t blanched, had played at it even. Or maybe it hadn’t been play; maybe none of it had been play at all.

  And Mara and Sierrach didn’t seem unsettled.

  And—and Charon.

  Charon had kissed him, in the orchard. Charon, who’d whispered, I think I loved him of his childhood friend, long lost to time and unknown distance.

  Charon, who’d taken him away from everything and anything Eiland had ever known or loved.

  For dessert they ate berries dipped in honey. It was sweet enough to bring Eiland out of his brooding silence; he described the bandits’ skin remedy.

  Charon predictably interjected with criticisms, but Sierrach was perfectly willing to follow Eiland to his pack upstairs and perfectly willing to let Eiland rub the cream on his skin despite its origins and more than willing to go back downstairs and tell Charon, “Why, I feel better already! It works better than anything in the world!”

  Charon straightened and rested his spoon on the table. He looked between the two of them. Sierrach and Eiland both stared back, smiling.

  Finally Charon sighed, put upon. “I hate you both.”

  He shucked his shirt, though, casting one last glare at Sierrach, who smiled back then winked at Eiland the moment Charon’s back was turned. Eiland grinned, happy to have found a new friend in the most unlikely place imaginable.

  Charon pulled up a chair and sat down in front of Eiland. The skin all over his back, shoulders, and arms was cracked with dryness. When Eiland touched a cream-covered hand to his back, Charon startled slightly and murmured, “Cold. And disgusting.”

  “Oh, hush.” Eiland swiped one hand across the width of his shoulders, leaving a trail of white cream and little bits of grass in his wake.

  Charon’s skin was surprisingly warm. Eiland swallowed convulsively and rubbed the cream in with quick, businesslike strokes. Charon’s upper back and shoulder blades and arms were no problem but then Eiland had to rub the cream down over the small of his back and his sides, where the line of Charon’s body narrowed, and gods, gods. Eiland tried to think of anything but how very pale the skin was under his hands, how untouched by the sun.

  Or by anyone else.

  He couldn’t. His mind was suddenly full of the span of Charon’s shoulders and the place just under his ribs that made Charon jump every time Eiland touched it.

  Eiland wanted to dig his fingers in there, to soothe rather than tease, but he made himself pull his hands away and walk around Charon’s chair, picking up his shirt. It was still warm from Charon’s body.

  Sierrach and Mara were saying something to each other, some new scandalous thing. Under the cover of their conversation Eiland turned to hand Charon his shirt with his eyes lowered, but that felt so cowardly that he pushed himself again and met Charon’s eye.

  That was a mistake too. Charon knew him too well by now and he cocked his head, staring back. The top of his chest flushed pink, and Eiland couldn’t help it, he looked.

  Charon took the shirt. Eiland turned away and sat at the table again, picking up a cup that he hoped was his. He sipped from it and pretended to have been listening to Mara and Sierrach’s conversation all along.

  The act didn’t work. He thought it did, for the rest of the meal, but then he helped Mara take their empty bowls to the small bucket of water outside the back door.

  He bent down to put them in the murky liquid
and when he straightened back up, Mara was right there.

  She put a hand on his face. Her palm was cool and dry, a balm. “It’s all right, Eiland.”

  Eiland’s skin went tight and cold, his stomach sick with too much food. In the back of his throat he tasted the strawberries they had eaten earlier. He suddenly, desperately, wanted his mother.

  Mara smiled at him like she knew—and she did, he could see it in her eyes. Someone else knew and Eiland cracked, choking out a sob from nowhere.

  She hauled him in close, her arms wrapped around his neck. If it were any other woman Eiland would be stammering and pulling away, worried that Sierrach would see and think—but she knew, so maybe Sierrach had seen it, too, maybe he knew.

  Maybe Charon knew.

  The thought made him shake, and he clutched at Mara’s waist, tucking his face into her neck. She was small, no bigger than him, but a solid comfort all the same.

  She petted his hair and murmured, “It’s all right to want that,” in his ear again and again, until the words ran together.

  By the time Eiland got hold of himself the shadows had started to lengthen. They went back inside to find Sierrach and Charon lighting the hundreds of small candles strewn about the kitchen, along the great hallway, and on the steps of the stairs.

  The four of them settled at the base of the stairs. The great tree chiseled into the wall at Eiland’s back had undoubtedly been carved by one of the noble names now carved on a tombstone outside the back door. Every time Eiland tilted his head back he could see its trunk looming over him.

  Sierrach pressed a cup into his hand. Eiland wrapped it up between his fingers and didn’t drink. He felt oddly hollow inside, but not in an entirely bad way—more like he’d been scrubbed as clean as the bowls, spotless and ready to be filled with something new.

  The doors and windows were all open and Eiland could hear the sounds of crickets and night birds and a distant chorus of frogs. It was a restful, strangely familiar sound. The sun took a great while to set, even this close to the mountains. Even after it finally dropped behind a peak the light in the sky went on and on, until Eiland thought the day might last forever.

  Charon and Sierrach were bickering loudly over some adventure involving goats. Eiland had trouble following the story. Mara draped herself over the bottom step of the staircase and put in sharp, hilarious comments here and there.

  Her foot rested on the floor near Eiland’s knee. After a while she nudged him with her toes. When he turned his head she smiled at him gently.

  Eiland forced a smile back. The rest of the time he spent watching Charon’s face in the candlelight, hoping the darkness hid his own expression.

  Chapter Fifteen

  When Mara had asked Eiland if he minded sharing a room with Charon he hadn’t quite realized that meant sharing a bed. Of course it did, even in a house this size it made no sense for any room to have more than one bed.

  Their room was directly below the master bedroom and above the main hall; it had probably served as lodgings for guests of the manor. Couches and chairs and window seats were scattered everywhere, as though their occupants might weary of resting in one position and wander to another.

  Their bed was almost as large as Mara and Sierrach’s; big enough that they could stretch out to their heart’s content and never brush fingers.

  Setting the kitten down on his pillow, Charon looked across the shadowed landscape of sheets at Eiland. He’d carried the candle, and the glow lit the bottom half of his face. “Are you sure…”

  “‘Course,” Eiland said, because it shouldn’t mean anything. He’d shared beds with his brothers. On the road he and Charon had slept in far closer quarters. This didn’t have to be any different.

  Stripping to his breeches, he climbed into his half of the bed, keeping all his movements steady and deliberate. He lay down on his side, facing away from Charon.

  The candlelight cast Charon’s shadow on the wall in front of Eiland. It dipped and rose, and then its uneven lines grew smoother and more distinct as he pulled off his shirt. Cloth rustled.

  Eiland’s heart sped up. It made no sense. He’d seen Charon’s naked skin itself and been unaffected, but shadow and sound alone set his whole body on edge, and when the bed dipped behind him he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth.

  Charon blew out the candle and the room went dark.

  The blackness rushed in tight around Eiland, and he held as still as he could, taking only the smallest breaths. Behind him, Charon held just as still, making no move to cross the plateau of bedding between them. He never had, save for that first night—and then he had asked to simply hold Eiland’s hand.

  Instead of easing, though, the disquiet in Eiland’s belly only grew. He hadn’t been afraid of the dark in years, yet that same unidentifiable terror had him peering into the corners of the room, craning his neck to check beside the bed.

  Charon breathed out sharply and murmured into the stillness of the bedroom, “I always forget how strange it is when I can’t see the stars.”

  Eiland blinked twice at the wall in front of him then carefully turned his eyes upward without moving his head. The flat expanse of the ceiling hung above them. In the dark it seemed a black, featureless void, empty of the celestial designs that had kept them company for the past month, guiding and sharing their journey. Even at Eom’s house, Eiland had glimpsed a few stars through holes in the weathered roof, but now they were well and truly hidden, leaving him untethered in the night.

  Knowledge drove away fear, and Eiland breathed out slowly, rolling onto his back. “It is.”

  His pillow dipped and Eiland tensed again, but it was only the kitten, drawn by his movement. His whiskers brushed against Eiland’s face, and Eiland wrinkled his nose, letting the kitten sniff him out.

  On the far side of the bed, all Eiland could see of Charon was the pale line of sheets that lay over him. Eiland thought of him lying alone in this great bed and asked, “Do you often stay here?”

  “In the winters, yes. They need more help with the manor then. If it’s a hard winter, they bring all the animals in from outside and put them in the northern wing. One year, the snow came up over the windows of the bottom floor, and we could only get out by a rope through that window.” The sheets rustled, but Eiland could perceive no movement in the dark. There was only one window in the room, overlooking the front garden. “I’ve never been so happy to see a spring. But, it’s far enough from any town that no soldiers would bother coming this far even if they’d heard someone was staying here.”

  Eiland frowned as the kitten, drawn to Charon’s voice, tottered back across the sheets to him. “Would they care? It seems like the family line is long gone.”

  “They’d care that a Cursed one has a place to live,” Charon replied. “The King’s law forbids us from owning land, or even traveling in or around the Capital.”

  Eiland bit down on his cheek. It didn’t surprise him anymore to hear of such things, but he doubted that he’d ever gain Charon’s weary acceptance.

  Instead of venting his spleen he asked, “Have you ever been to the Capital?”

  “Once. When I was very young. I don’t remember it that much. It was during some festival, so there were flags everywhere, and horns playing. Mama,” he stumbled a little then went on, “they said that we saw the King ride by, close enough that we got one of the coins his servants threw to the crowd. I don’t really remember him, though. Even…before, I never cared much about kings or princes or noblemen.”

  Eiland thought back to his own childhood, which had been full of stories about the royal court and their many adventures, how this duke had won the hand of that fair lady, and that knight had won his honor. The grand tales had dazzled him before, but now they seemed rather silly. He wondered if any of those great knights or princes had ever been kind to a servant, or had given a loaf of bread to a weary beggar.

  They’d left the window open, and now that Eiland had overcome his night terror he could
hear an owl hooting. From somewhere near his head, the kitten purred softly. Charon’s side of the bed shifted, and Eiland could hear the susurrus of fingertips rubbing fur.

  “Have you thought of a name for him?” Eiland asked softly.

  “No. I thought, maybe, Trouble. But I wouldn’t want to give him bad luck. He’s had enough of that already. What do you think?”

  As Eiland’s eyes grew more used to the darkness he could make out a small black smudge curled beside Charon’s head. “Shadow?” he suggested.

  He couldn’t see Charon’s face, but Eiland heard his smile in his voice. “Yeah. I like that.”

  It took Eiland a long time to fall asleep, but he woke at dawn with his forehead pressed against Charon’s shoulder. Charon breathed slow and deep, his mouth hanging open, so Eiland allowed himself to lie there a long moment, watching him sleep, before he eased out of bed and left their room.

  No one else was awake in the early dawn, so Eiland set off to explore the north wing of the manor. It was as richly furnished as the southern side, but all its finery had been caked in dust and neglect.

  It was hard to believe that a single family could have claimed this entire estate for themselves when now it housed so many creatures. Spider webs lined the high ceilings and Eiland turned a corner to find a great owl staring fixedly back at him. The bird sprang into flight, flapping down a hallway to a broken window, and Eiland stood still, watching it go.

  An impossible number of rooms branched off the hallways. Eiland did not venture into every one, but he nudged the doors open far enough to peer inside. Most were empty, but a few held withered signs of life: the portrait of a solemn, bearded man stared out from a wall; some kind of keyed instrument stood in the center of a room, silent and still; a dilapidated baby crib slumped in its nursery.

  Eiland wondered about the family that had once lived here. Had they been happy? Had the solemn man in the picture been a good husband? Had he loved his wife, and she him? Had they borne children and if so, where were they? Would he find all of their names on the gravestones behind the house?