by B. G. Thomas
And meth addiction and dying surely topped anything he’d dealt with, thought Wyatt. Gods! A sudden new perception hit him. Even shame.
“I don’t know, Kevin.” He got up and went to him and first laid a hand on his shoulder, and then cupped his cheek. “I mean, when we think we have it rough, sometimes it helps to get things put into their proper perspective. How did you stand listening to me go on about that man after what you’ve been through?” Wyatt went to one knee and gazed into the face of this beautiful man. “I am so sorry.”
“For what?” Kevin asked.
“What I was blathering on about must have seemed so fucking petty!”
“No!” Kevin cried. “And see? This is why I didn’t talk about Cauley. I didn’t want you to feel that way. That’s why I shouldn’t have said anything just now.”
“Isn’t that what friends are for?” Wyatt said. “To talk to? My mom has this movie she loves. And the big line in that one is, ‘ln a cold world, you need your friends to keep you warm.’” He glanced out the window. “It’s certainly cold out there. And Kevin, I haven’t felt as warm as I have with you in a long time.”
Kevin smiled. “Really?”
“Really,” said Wyatt and he hugged Kevin, and gods, Kevin hugged him back. Hugged him fiercely.
“Oh, Wyatt, you are such a beautiful man,” Kevin said into his shoulder.
They held each other for a long time.
AND IT was shortly after that when Wyatt very abruptly knew it was time.
Thinking about all he and Kevin had in common—who would have thought? And how he had come here to put things behind him. It was time.
He stood up straight, took a deep breath, squared his shoulders.
I’ll be alone all my life without you, Howard? Really? No one would want to be my friend? I have three of the best friends on the planet. And their lovers are becoming best friends as well. I work in a magical place with magical coworkers and a boss who is a mom. I have Men’s Festival and gods, I’ve been so afraid of what it’s going to be like this summer and how I would be treated, but if what this beautiful man says is true, I’ll be welcome. And Kevin likes me, he wants me. Why did you treat me so badly, Howard? Why? Kevin says you’re jealous of me. But why hurt me? Why?
“It’s time to stop asking,” Wyatt said aloud.
Kevin placed his hands on Wyatt’s hips and raised his eyebrows. “Stop asking what?”
Wyatt stood up even taller. “It’s time to say good-bye.”
Kevin’s brows came together. “You’re leaving? Wyatt, just because we’ve got the electricity back doesn’t mean we can still get out of—”
Wyatt shook his head.
“It’s time for me to go to Pax Place.”
Kevin’s mouth opened. Then shut. He nodded. But he didn’t say anything.
“And I need to go now. Before it gets dark.”
He shivered—not so much from the cold, but for what he was about to do.
“Yeah, you don’t want to be there in the cold and the dark.”
“I’ll take my bearskin.”
Kevin nodded. “I think that’s good. You are a bear.”
“Bear is one of my guides,” Wyatt said, and Kevin didn’t laugh. Of course he didn’t, and that gave Wyatt a little more strength.
I’m glad I’m wearing two pairs of socks, Wyatt thought. I’m glad one pair is Kevin’s.
Without thinking anymore—because gods, hadn’t he done enough thinking?—he prepared himself for the cold and for the big good-bye. He tugged a sweatshirt out of his bag and wiggled into it and then climbed into a pair of sweatpants as well. Two layers. Good. He nodded. Then came gloves and his bear hat—which Kevin liked!—and everything he would need for the ritual. Not much, really. His wand that he’d carved himself out of hawthorn from right here at Camp—hawthorn because of its masculine properties and fairy magick—and his athame. He wouldn’t need his chalice or pentacle plate. His fireplace lighter, of course; he’d need that. The tiny bottle of fuel in case the wood was wet, even though he’d prepared for that. Nothing else. It was all there.
Then he went to Kevin, and Kevin met him and kissed his furry cheeks and then his mouth, and the promise of more kisses made him tremble.
Kevin nodded and gave him an encouraging smile, and that was one more boost of strength.
Time.
It was time.
He turned and went to the bed, took up his bearskin, and swirled it around him with great ceremony, glanced one last time at his friend—because Kevin was that if nothing else—and then headed into the snow.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
GRYPHON AND Saffron had been right. It hadn’t snowed much that morning. There was just a gentle fluff on the path and, Wyatt supposed, everything else, although it was hard to tell, especially with the growing shadows.
And Kevin was right. The way he’d cleared with the snowblower went right to the break in the trees across the road and when Wyatt looked, he saw the path into Pax Pace was all but snow-free. Down the path he went, and while the path itself was magically and practically clear, to the left and right the snow was quite thick. The trees were tall but thin, and somehow it was only the path that was clear and heavy with pine needles and mulch. It looked like he was walking down a corridor through Snedronningen’s castle—gorgeous! Of course, the Egyptian statues painted a different picture from Hans Christian Andersen’s, but by then the image was already in his mind and heart.
There were two of the gold-painted statues only a few feet down the path, and he was surprised when he saw the next pair ten feet or so down the way. Normally, with the trees laden with leaves, the guardians would suddenly appear among the green. But now he could see them clearly.
There were short torches along the way, and even though it wasn’t dark yet, it would be soon. It was winter after all. One minute it was sunny, the next in shadow, the next it was dark. So to help on the way back, he bent to try to light one of the torches with his big lighter and was delighted when it lit almost immediately. Then—careful not to drag his bearskin through any of them—he lit each one as he went. He recalled and laughed at a line he remembered from one of Scott Cunningham’s books on ritual garments, how you needed to be very careful because they were unintentionally designed to be just ready to burst into flames.
It was at the second pair of statues that Wyatt stopped in his tracks.
If the path through Pax Place had been a corridor through the Snow Queen’s castle, what lay beyond was her throne room. He gasped at the beauty and wished he were a poet so he could describe what he was seeing to his friends later.
Only the other day, the open twenty-foot circular clearing had reminded him of a church. The intertwined branches of the trees had made a natural roof of the goddess’s creation. Normally it was a canopy of green above, but today it was ice. Snow was all above him, and there were already dozens of icicles of every size, like crystal stalactites, hanging from that white roof.
It was like being in a stunning white and crystalline room, and try as he might, he could find no true words to accurately describe its divine beauty.
The walls were curved outward and mixed with branches and trunks, and the ground, like the path, was relatively snow-free. There was a carpet of golden brown pine needles before him. But what was important was the stone fire pit. It had only a sugarcoating of snow upon it… and on Howard’s shirt.
He went to it straightaway and looked down at it.
Oh, he knew that shirt.
Howard had worn it until it got holes in the elbows and then he’d just torn the sleeves off. “What do you think, babe?” he’d said and popped those big wonderful biceps of his. “Think that’ll make the pups weak in the knees?”
“Yes,” Wyatt whispered to the cold air, his words turning to smoke.
He went to one knee and picked it up—it crackled slightly as the thin glaze of ice cracked—and unable to stop himself, brought it to his face and breathed it in.
&nbs
p; It smelled like earth and wet and leaves and—gods—beneath it all… Howard. Still. How could that be? Was it just his imagination?
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
Wyatt turned to almost see the big man before him. Really big. When had he arrived?
He’s never left.
Wow, he’d thought that day so long ago. He’s fucking hot!
He could almost see Howard’s eyes.
“And you can’t really afford anything, can you?”
And all he said he wanted in return was “…for you to take your shirt off.”
Wyatt shivered.
“You really want me to take my shirt off right here?” Wyatt said to the snowy room.
“Why not?” came the voice of memory.
Howard had told him that he liked his chest. Had he?
Yes.
He did.
Once.
Howard asked if he could touch me…. He was so gentle.
They’d talked and talked and talked. Wyatt had told him how the day had started—his father slapping him so hard he’d bled, and how he had kicked Wyatt out and called him an abomination. And Wyatt had just jumped in his piece-of-shit car and driven until it died—right outside The Watering Hole.
The first gay bar I ever went inside.
For one second Wyatt saw his mother, hysterical, in his rearview mirror.
Then it was Howard again.
In that first apartment.
Howard showing him his altar and Wyatt wondering how such a coincidence could happen that the man he met was both gay and pagan.
Howard reaching out and cupping his cheek and looking deeply into his eyes and then….
Then he kissed me.
And then he sucked my cock.
He swallowed.
Gods how important and magical that had seemed at the time.
“Is it going to hurt?” Wyatt had asked. Because Howard was going to fuck him.
“Yes. At first. But that’s part of it, my little bear.”
That was the first time Howard had ever called him that.
“But it gets better.”
And it had hurt. It had hurt so much. He’d felt like he was being torn apart.
But then it did get better.
It was like magick.
Howard had told him he was beautiful, and he believed it, and he stayed for eleven years.
Wyatt was crying then. Openly weeping.
Remembering Howard when he was magick.
But then other voices came.
“The only reason you get laid is because of me. I tell them they have to have sex with you if they want me.”
“Goddammit, Wy! Could you be a bigger faggot?”
“You are a fucking clingy, jealous little bitch!”
He felt Howard’s slap. Like his father’s slap. Tasted blood.
Howard said he would never hit me.
He was letting some man fuck him over our coffee table.
More echoes….
“I want you out. I am done with your shit! I want you out by the end of the month!”
And then…
You said you would take care of me forever.
You lied.
Why?
No. Wyatt pulled himself away from painful memories and questions that would never be answered.
It doesn’t matter.
And then Wyatt wiped the tears from his eyes with Howard’s shirt. He bent and checked the wood, and he thought it was all right, but he poured the little bottle of torch fluid on it anyway. He spread the shirt out over it and poured what fuel was left on top of it.
Wyatt stood.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
Time to say good-bye.
Then he saw Kevin’s eyes in his mind and saw him smile and felt his kiss and knew that even if what he saw there wasn’t real… there would be other men who would want him.
He was not alone.
Wyatt opened his eyes and began to slowly walk around the circle of stones.
Love has teeth; they bite… but the wound will close.
He took his wand from his pocket and let it guide his way.
“Queer Ones,” he said. “I ask that you attend to me today. Come to my Circle. Be with me. Join me. Join with me. Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Apollo and Hyacinth. Achilles and Patroclus. Heracles and Hylas. Zeus and Ganymede. Eros, Hermes, Dionysus, Ganesha, Odin…. Hadrian and deified Antinous. Akhenaten and deified Smenkhare. Men made gods, Alexander the Great and Hephaestion, he who is also you. Bagoas, too! I forget you not! And I don’t forget you, Edward, and nor your love for Piers Gaveston! All of you and more… I call on you to be witness, and if you will, my helpmates.”
Wyatt slipped the wand into his pocket and removed his athame, his ceremonial dagger. He raised it high above him. “Gods and men and Queer Ones!” he cried. “The time has come. The time for me to stop asking questions and put a part of my life behind!”
He began to make great slashing movements through the air.
“I cut away the old! I cut it away! It is behind me now! The past is the past!”
Wyatt stopped, heart pounding, face wet with tears.
“What’s done is done!”
He fell to his knees, placed his knife to the side, and took his lighter out at last.
“What’s past is past. What’s dead is dead. And to honor the good, I let it burn.”
The lighter started with one click. He touched it to Howard’s shirt, and it burst into flames. Then he took the lighter lower, lit the kindling beneath the wood, and instantly it too was aflame. Immediately Wyatt felt the heat, and he fell back on his haunches, barely missing going all the way onto his ass and back.
The flames went up with a huge Whoosh! and Wyatt had to scramble back or get burned. He marveled at the sight, a great twisting fire eating away at everything. The air was strong with the smell of citronella and wood and fabric and the sounds of popping and crackling wood, and it was almost as if he could hear the gods within.
What’s done is done! they seemed to say. Ashes to ashes! What’s past is past!
The music came to him then and Wyatt rose to his feet and began to sing.
Purple God, Queer God,
Green God, Fairy God,
Golden God, Faggot God,
I welcome You….
Purple God, Queer God,
Green God, Fairy God,
Golden God, Faggot God,
Come be with me….
Purple God, Queer God,
Green God, Fairy God,
Golden God, Faggot God,
I thank you…!
It began to rain then, and Wyatt looked up with a How can that be? And he saw how it could be. The snow! The heat of the flames! It was rising up and, trapped by the “roof,” had begun to melt the snow.
And it was raining!
Wyatt laughed.
He stood back.
He felt clean. For the first time in forever, he felt clean.
Wyatt stood and watched.
Howard’s shirt—and my tears—was all but gone, and the wood was burning as if it were some raging beast. Wyatt found that he had to step back and, in surprise, step back again.
Did that little bit of torch fluid do this? he wondered… forgetting all about the gods.
And then there was a mighty cracking sound. It filled the air, cracked again louder. Wyatt stepped back a third time and looked about him.
What? What?
Then a large branch, weary for days from the weight of snow, broke.
It fell down on Wyatt, knocking him facedown to the ground.
Then came the snow.
And buried Wyatt beneath it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
KEVIN WOKE with a start.
He’d been having a dream. He’d followed Wyatt to Pax Place. He had quite suddenly realized that he needed to go as well. It was a feverish need. A must! He would take something of Cauley’s and put it to the flame so that he too could sa
y good-bye to the lover who had hurt him so much.
But when he got there, Wyatt was naked, and there was no fire, but a huge four-poster bed fit for Historical Heloise himself—the Faerie who set up his tent and camp each year fit for a medieval king’s army encampment.
Wyatt was waiting for him, sprawled upon that great bed, and he was hard, stroking himself. “Come here,” Wyatt said.
And then Kevin knew he couldn’t wait another day, another moment, and if he had to return to New York alone, then that was what would happen.
But then the canopy over the bed broke, and just as he was about to climb upon the bed, that canopy fell upon him, heavy—heavy!—and so cold, suffocating, and Kevin had awoken, clawing, flailing and….
What time was it?
He found his cell phone, and God, it had been over an hour, and it was dark outside.
And for some reason that made the hair on his arms rise up and move like wheat in the wind.
Kevin checked his phone again.
He didn’t want to rush Wyatt, but really… it was cold outside. Dark.
Quite suddenly he knew he couldn’t wait. There was something wrong. It was the tickle. The one he had learned not to ignore. Quick as he could, he dressed in coat and gloves and stocking hat and left the cabin.
It was dark. If not for the porch lights of the cabin, he would not have been able to see. Yet the porch lights of the next cabins were not on, and he couldn’t see beyond that point, and fuck it all, if Wyatt was in trouble, he couldn’t help him if he couldn’t see!
Then he remembered the Coleman lantern he’d brought on a whim and dashed back inside and found it right there where he’d left it, under his cot. He nearly screamed when he couldn’t find the matches—he’d had them earlier, by God!—and then there they were, next to the stove. He lit the lantern and rushed back out into the cold, cold world.
You’re being silly.
There’s nothing wrong.
He’s going to be pissed when you go charging in and ruin the end of his ritual!
But none of that stopped him. He ran and slipped twice, then nearly fell on his ass on slick stones climbing down from the path to the road.