Timshel

by Lillian Turner

  Once Sierrach returned to coherency he regained his odd sense of humor, summoning them up to his room and taking on the persona of an actual lord. He ordered them about tasks they were already performing and elevated The Great Bloody Beast—currently curled up on Mara’s side of the bed with her nose tucked under her tail—to the office of deputy of the manor.

  “She shall be my eyes and ears.” He wagged a finger at them all from his sickbed. “I will have no tomfoolery or slacking at arms. And no dancing!”

  “I don’t think he can walk yet,” Mara observed.

  “We could set fire to the room,” Charon suggested.

  “Treachery! Mutiny! Vipers!”

  Sierrach did manage to walk the next day, though with help. He descended the staircase with one hand on the rail and his other arm slung tight around Charon’s shoulders.

  “Ahhh,” Sierrach said as they shuffled into the kitchen. “It’s still here! And remarkably free of scorch-marks.”

  “Oh, hush.” Mara flitted about to fetch cushions for his chair.

  “Oof,” Sierrach groaned as Charon eased him down. “Thank you, noble steed. And—thank you for everything else,” he added, uncharacteristically serious for once.

  “Thank Eiland,” Charon replied, taking his own seat at the table. “He did most of the real work.”

  He glanced across at Eiland, smiling. Eiland bit his lip and stepped closer to check Sierrach’s condition.

  There was very little swelling and none of it had even broken the surface, though Mara anxiously reported that he’d hardly kept down any food in the last three days.

  “There might not be enough vermillion in the draught,” Eiland suggested, chewing on his lip. “But that can only do so much. You really need to eat something when you take the draught, to ease the hesfast.”

  The corner of Sierrach’s mouth ticked up. “Which first, the chicken or the egg? A draught so that I can eat, or eat so I can take the draught?”

  Eiland conceded the point with a frown. “I’d suggest that you chew on the vermillion weed without actually swallowing it—”

  “Bleah,” Charon interjected.

  “—but I doubt you’d find that too pleasant.”

  “What about a paste, to put under his tongue?” Mara suggested. “If I mixed it with enough honey, you wouldn’t notice the taste so much.”

  “Darling, during the worst of it I couldn’t even think about food without wanting to vomit,” Sierrach replied. “Much less put anything in my mouth and hold it there a-long.”

  “There was a healer in Duvell who made incense of his herbs,” Charon said. “It didn’t really help me, any, but I was burning them out in the open. Maybe it’d work better in an enclosed space.”

  Mara looked at Eiland, her eyes sharp and hopeful.

  “Maybe?” He’d never seen his father burn any herbs; the priests had, but Eiland was not particularly inclined to take their advice on anything at this point.

  “That’s all very well and good,” Sierrach put in, “but do any of us actually know how to make incense?”

  Mara set her jaw. “We can figure it out. Or if we can’t, Charon—or I, I could go to Duvell and learn from this healer.”

  “Vermillion doesn’t grow around here.”

  “Then Eiland will go down to the valley and get it! You’d know where to find some, wouldn’t you, Eiland?”

  Eiland looked at her, momentarily taken aback. A trip to the valley for vermillion and back would take at least a week. She hadn’t said anything about it before now, but Mara had just made it abundantly clear that she assumed Eiland was staying for the winter, if not for good.

  Sierrach saved him from having to come up with a reply. “Or we could not spend weeks running all over the countryside after something that might not help at all.”

  Mara tossed up her hands. “Oh, well, why bother doing anything, then? Why not just sit around and let you get sick and die?”

  Rising from the table, she stomped over to the large cutting table, where she began chopping up several pears with a vengeance. Sierrach glanced at Charon and Eiland before swaying to his feet and shuffling over to join her.

  “Pretty lady.” Mara didn’t turn. “Hey pretty lady, pretty lady,” Sierrach crooned.

  “What?” she snapped.

  Sierrach leaned against the edge of the table beside her. “Don’t do this again, Mara,” he said, and his voice held a weariness that belied his light demeanor. “You almost drove yourself mad before, looking for a cure. So what if I don’t eat for a couple of days? So did you, when you caught cold last spring. It’s not worth so much effort to fix.”

  The sound of chopping stopped. Mara set the knife down; her shoulders rose and fell with a long breath and she turned, lifting her head to look up at Sierrach. “I hate seeing you like that.”

  “Good, because it’s no fun on my end, either. But it’s not the most terrible thing in the world.”

  “Oh? And what would that be?”

  Touching her cheek with the back of his knuckles, Sierrach quirked a smile. “If you had it, instead.”

  Mara’s expression started to crumple, but she visibly caught herself and rolled her eyes, huffing a small, broken laugh. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t be such a baby about taking my medicine.”

  They grinned at one another, brave and still smiling in the midst of something so awful. For a moment they existed inside their own little world and Eiland couldn’t bear to intrude. He looked away.

  Across the room, Charon was watching them, too. A hunger lurked in his face, and a hurt so old that Eiland knew he’d been here before a hundred times, on the outside with his nose pressed against the glass, peering in at what he did not have.

  When he noticed Eiland watching, Charon’s expression only intensified. For a moment he stared at Eiland like a starved animal would look at food, and then he tore his gaze away.

  Eiland gripped the bowl of water in his hands and swallowed hard.

  When he lifted his eyes again Mara had resumed cutting up the pears, while Sierrach’s watchful gaze rested on Eiland and Charon.

  * * *

  That night Eiland couldn’t settle. He squirmed in the great empty bed alone. Charon had stayed up with Sierrach, talking in low voices in the kitchen. It’d been months since Eiland had fallen asleep without the sound of Charon’s steady breathing, and now he found he couldn’t quite manage it.

  His mind kept racing in circles. His mother used to tell him that he had mice in his head, that once he got hold of a thought he couldn’t let it go; but she wasn’t here to tell him that now, so the mice ran round and round.

  He kept thinking back over all the things he’s seen and done. The Southern Starfire shifting its many-colored fingers across the sky. The village of Hador and their great, beautiful trees. Eom, smiling at Alis in their little hovel of a home. The great plains rolling on forever and ever. Firelight playing across the faces of the bandit clan. The two girls in their wagon, on their way to somewhere Eiland would never know. The glint of his father’s hunting knife. Bandit watching Charon juggle. Charon’s smile shining bright. The great river nudging at the sides of their ferry.

  His mother, weeping and frightened.

  It ran together in the space behind his eyes. It seemed such an impossible story, as if two months were not enough to contain all that, but he remembered it all.

  He couldn’t just forget.

  Somehow he must have slept because the next thing he knew Charon was shaking him awake.

  “Wha?” Eiland croaked.

  “I need to talk to you.” Charon sat on the edge of the bed at Eiland’s side. Lit only by the dim moonlight filtering in the window, he appeared insubstantial, as if Eiland could put a hand through him if he tried.

  Eiland struggled up to his elbows. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, nothing’s wrong.” Charon looked this way and that in the small room before he fixed his eyes on his hands in his lap.

  Eiland
sat up the rest of the way and scooted back against the headboard. “Charon?”

  Charon sucked in a deep breath. “When I was seven summers old, I threw a rock at an old man lying in the street. I was too young to know that he was Cursed or what that meant, I just didn’t like that he scared everyone in town, and took things from them. So I threw a rock, and it cut his head.

  “He Cursed me. My family—I stayed, for a while. Until I was ten and three. They tried so hard, but sooner or later the whole town found out. They wouldn’t do anything to me, of course, or even speak of it around me, and my family protected me whenever I had an Agony. But then the merchants stopped coming to my father’s smithy, and the mothers stopped bringing their sons around to plan matches with my sisters. My parents said they didn’t care, that we’d manage, but I—I couldn’t stay.”

  “Charon,” Eiland whispered. He reached to take Charon’s hands, twining their fingers together and pulling them up to rest on his own knees.

  He tried to think of himself at seven summers old and couldn’t. Instead he thought of one of his nieces and nephews and shuddered to imagine any of them screaming out in pain, their small bodies twisted and scarred.

  “I need you to understand why,” Charon whispered. “I know I’m not a good person, that I’ve done bad things, but. Do you understand why?”

  The long, aching nights of cold and damp and hunger ran through Eiland’s mind again. And Charon was ten-and-seven now, which meant that he’d been living with the Curse for over ten summers. He tried to imagine spending all those long nights alone, and squeezed Charon’s hands tight. “I do.”

  At that Charon finally lifted his head.

  For a hairsbreadth he hesitated, and then his mouth pressed against Eiland’s.

  It was nothing like the kiss in the orchard—and crickets, that felt like another lifetime. This kiss tasted of salt, and Eiland could feel the desperate hope behind it. His hands closed into involuntary fists, but Charon tugged his fingers free to plunge them into Eiland’s hair, cupping the back of his neck.

  A shiver burst from everywhere his fingertips scraped across Eiland’s skin; Eiland let his mouth open just slightly and Charon pressed closer, touching his tongue to Eiland’s bottom lip with such trepidation that Eiland couldn’t help making a soft noise in the back of his throat.

  When Charon pulled away, their mouths parted with a soft noise.

  “You want this. I knew you were different when I met you. Sierrach’s wrong, I had to—I couldn’t leave you there. You understand that, don’t you?” Charon asked pleadingly, holding Eiland’s face between his hands. “They would have hated you, too, for this. I had to take you.”

  Something cold and awful bloomed in Eiland’s stomach. The thought of his parents finding out, hating him…it was exactly what Charon had used before, to make Eiland come with him. It stilled his pounding heart.

  “But you didn’t ask,” he whispered. “You never asked me what I wanted, Charon. You told me to come with you. And when that wasn’t enough, you threatened to Curse my mother. My mother.”

  “I wouldn’t have done it!”

  Eiland pulled away. There wasn’t far to go; his back ran against the headboard of their bed. “But you said it, and I didn’t know you wouldn’t. You did it to scare me, and it did. I don’t know if I would have come with you, because you didn’t give me the choice.”

  Charon looked like he wanted to protest but visibly bit it back. “What about now? Would you choose to stay with me now?”

  “I—” Eiland floundered.

  “You would. You would, wouldn’t you? Eiland. Please tell me you’ll stay here with me.”

  He pressed close again to kiss Eiland, breathing in between their lips and taking the air straight from Eiland’s mouth greedily.

  This time Eiland didn’t kiss back. His heart pounded; his chest burned. Charon had him pushed against the wall, his feet pinned to the bed by the weight of Charon’s legs. Charon was nearly on top of him.

  He kept kissing Eiland, and there wasn’t enough air. Eiland felt frozen and trapped and then something in him snapped, and he shoved Charon away from him.

  Charon flailed, tumbling off the side of the bed onto the floor. He caught himself funny on one wrist and cried out.

  Eiland drew his knees up, scrambling away. “You call this a choice? I’m hundreds of miles away from my home. I don’t know the way back. I have no money, I’ve no food or shelter if your friends turn me out.

  “What am I supposed to do?” he demanded, raising his voice when Charon started to speak. “Never go home again? Should I let my parents think that I am dead?”

  Charon recoiled, rocking back on his heels and drawing his shoulders up. “Now you know how I feel every day!”

  “That doesn’t mean you get to do the same thing to me!” Eiland shouted, and Charon fell silent.

  Eiland sucked in a breath and felt it hitch in his chest. “That man who Cursed you. He took you away from your family. All right. It wasn’t fair. He didn’t give you a choice. But you took me away from my family, Charon, just as much as he did. You don’t get to ask me what I want now, because you never did before.”

  “Charon?” Mara said. She stood in the doorway, holding a small candle, her eyes wide and worried. She stepped back quickly when Eiland scrambled up, and he darted out past her.

  In the wake of his passing, her candle flickered and went out.

  * * *

  Eiland stumbled through the dark house, his bare toes catching on uneven floorboards.

  Somehow he found his way to the back door and sat down hard on the steps, shoving his hands into his hair. The night air was cold and he gulped it in gratefully, then started to cry.

  A cork inside of him had been tugged free, and all the pent-up fear and anger washed through him. He felt as though he could cry for days and that still wouldn’t be enough.

  Something soft brushed against his elbow. Eiland lifted his head and found The Great Bloody Beast hovering uncertainly at his side. She hunched low when he reached for her, but let him pick her up and settle her in his lap.

  Eiland sat on the back step staring out at the broken-down gate and the forest beyond. As the sky tipped toward morning he could see the little hesfast plant near the entrance to the cemetery.

  He thought about what Charon had said—that his parents would hate him, too, if they knew that Eiland desired other men. Eiland didn’t want to believe it, but he remembered when Della, his second-oldest sister, had quarreled with their parents after having her first child. The birth had been difficult and she’d asked Mama for something to keep her from bearing another.

  Mama had told Papa and they’d fought, all three of them. Papa had told Bernar, Della’s husband, and they’d quarreled too. A whole summer had gone by in which Della didn’t come to the house at all, and neither Mama nor Papa spoke her name even in their morning prayers. It was as though she had ceased to exist.

  Eventually Della had come back to the house but only then because she was with child again. Papa had made her a draught that he promised would help ease the birth pains.

  As much as Eiland wanted to say that Charon was wrong, in his heart he knew the truth. His parents truly would hate him for what he wanted, and the thought made Eiland shake.

  He tried to imagine going back to Summerton and resuming some kind of normal life instead—taking up a trade, building a home, marrying a woman, raising children—and he couldn’t.

  Part of him wanted to run away into the woods, escape from it all, but the longer he sat out on the step the more disgusted he became with that line of thinking. He was not a child, not anymore. Whatever anyone else thought of him, he must still live with himself.

  And he simply couldn’t do that if he knew that somewhere, his mother was weeping with fear and horror for him. Whatever she would think of him if she knew the truth, she was still his mother. Thus resolved, Eiland stood and went back inside the house.

  Of course he immediately
walked into the kitchen to find Charon sitting at the table.

  Eiland stood with his arms wrapped around The Great Bloody Beast. In the early morning light Charon looked ghostly. He sat with his hands resting on the table, palms up; his right hand was curled in his left, his fingers cradling the swollen wrist.

  “I’m sorry,” they both said at the same time.

  “I’m sorry,” Charon repeated. His voice sounded so soft and worn and defeated that Eiland had to look away. “Sierrach was right, I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry I did that. Do you want to go home?”

  For a long moment Eiland stood with his mouth open but empty of words. Finally he asked, “Would you go back to see your family if you could?”

  Charon lowered his gaze to the tabletop. He nodded a little, less in answer and more as though to confirm something to himself. “I’ll take you,” he said and his voice broke on the three words.

  Another apology bubbled up at the base of Eiland’s throat but it didn’t rise any further. He couldn’t apologize for wanting to see his family again, for wanting them to know that he wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere.

  “I’ll take you back.” Charon had his face angled away. “I’m sorry. We’ll leave today, as soon as it’s light.” He stood, holding himself as if his insides were full of knives ready to cut him open if he let his shoulders relax.

  “Charon!” Eiland said desperately, and Charon paused. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I would have chosen.”

  If that eased anything inside Charon, he didn’t show it. He stood for a moment longer in the dark kitchen, and then he turned and walked out.

  Eiland sat down at the small table and stayed there until the light outside turned golden, until Sierrach came in grim-faced to make breakfast. The Great Bloody Beast sensed his mood, because she squirmed out of Eiland’s lap to press against Sierrach’s ankles. Sierrach smiled at Eiland, sad and sympathetic and maybe a little guilty, too.

  “Is,” Eiland blurted out. “Will he be all right?”

  Sierrach sighed. “He hasn’t been all right in a long time, Eiland. It’s not your responsibility to make him better.”