by Beth Wirth
"Terry." Chris was loud and autocratic and people who didn't know him often thought he was perpetually angry. "We got a new place. Tadd will tell you where it is, Oh," Terry could almost hear him frowning over the phone, "and Tadd already told me you wouldn't like it but you are not allowed to pay for it. Just come back." Chris added, sounding as if he was making a huge concession, "I'll let you argue with me about it if you want to." There was jumbled noise as the phone was passed back to Tadd.
"Tadd," Terry protested.
"Just come back," Tadd said, sounding faintly amused. "Bring Alex and don't worry about it. Besides, I think we've got the perfect set up for him."
"Tadd," Terry protested again, running his free hand through his hair. "You know I can't just ..." But he was standing in front of a window looking out at the waning moon, and he thought suddenly that maybe he was supposed to.
"Terry," Tadd began, and there was a pause while Terry could hear him walking into another room before he continued. "You know how Chris is. I'll let Mr. Fathom know, since it's technically his house, but come back and don't worry about it." He paused again, then added, "Come back to your family."
Tadd's father had disowned him when Tadd had come out; if anyone understood what he was going through at the moment it was Tadd. Terry closed his eyes. "Alright."
*~*~*
Terry drove to the address Tadd had given him. It was a Victorian style house smack in the middle of Old Town, with a huge wraparound porch out front. The bus stopped right across the street and campus was just a twenty-five minute walk away. The house was bright yellow with dark trim. While he appreciated the old-fashioned style of it, Terry could tell Chris had picked out the house because of its unusual color scheme. Despite the late hour, in less than five minutes the entire household had come out to meet them. In addition to Tadd and Chris, their friend Brad was living there with his girlfriend of the moment, as well as his sister Abby and her girlfriend. They all greeted Alex with enthusiasm and helped Terry move everything from the car into their rooms. Alex, tired from traveling, took in the process with a dazed smile.
As Tadd had promised, a previous owner had remodeled what had been a sun-room and salon at the back of the house into a mother-in-law apartment, complete with handicapped-accessible bathroom and a ramp to the paved walk around the house. It would need a few minor adjustments to make it perfect, but Alex was amused.
"I never thought I'd be your mother-in-law," he teased Terry with a mischievous glint in his eye.
Thankfully there was already some furniture in the house. Shooing everyone out of the room, Alex threw himself on the bed with a contented sigh. "This is going to be nice," he murmured, and fell asleep before Terry drew a blanket over him. Terry watched his brother for a moment, contentment filling him as well.
Back in the kitchen, Terry found Tadd and Chris waiting for him. Everyone else had gone to bed, but Tadd passed him a cup of tea. Terry smiled; when he and Tadd had first met they'd been living in an apartment complex so cheap that most days it hadn't been safe to drink the water, and even boiling it didn't take away the bitter taste. They'd gotten so used to making tea before drinking any water that Tadd preferred it and almost never drank water straight, though now Chris bought him fancy teas from around the world instead of the cheap store brand he and Terry had lived on before. The cup was warm against Terry's fingers and he wrapped both hands around it. "Thanks."
Tadd nodded. "So, you want to tell us everything now, or should we wait to tie you down and interrogate you until after you've had some sleep?"
Chris, his chair leaned against the wall, grinned. "It would be nicer to wait," he observed in a detached voice. Tadd nodded agreement and the pair of them fixed their eyes on Terry.
Terry groaned in false protest. "Alright, alright." He sipped the tea and admitted, "This is going to sound crazy, so I might as well tell it while I'm half asleep." And, because it was them, he told them everything—everything that he'd never spoken of before concerning his family, and everything that had happened this trip as well. He told them about Isi and how he'd already felt the magic working, and about Uncle Martin, and Alex and the accident that wasn't an accident, and about his father and Gerald and Bill, and how he didn't think he was ever going back.
They listened silently; neither interrupted, though Chris occasionally looked puzzled. When Terry was done, Chris placed a hand on his arm. "When you meet this Isi again, I would like to sketch him," he said.
"Oh?" Tadd arched an eyebrow in mock jealousy.
"'When?'" Terry echoed.
Chris nodded and stood. "Go to bed," he told Terry and touched Tadd's shoulder softly.
Terry sighed and nodded, and followed the pair to the stairs. He'd already dropped his bags in his room —it was the last room available on the second floor. Terry fell on the bed and, in unconscious imitation of his brother, was asleep in moments.
*~*~*
Terry was sure he could have slept through the next day. He was technically still on break from work as well as from class, and the only thing he needed to get done was figure out what he needed to do to enroll Alex at the university—and sign him up for every available scholarship, because Alex was a shoe-in to win them all. As the university office was still on Winter Break, there was nothing he could get done today.
But about mid-morning he awoke from a disturbingly vivid dream and couldn't get back to sleep. The dream involved Isi and he was going to need a long, cold shower before anything else happened. It was then that he remembered Alex, and his shower was not as long as he'd hoped for. He stumbled downstairs to find his brother sitting on the edge of his bed regarding the wheelchair that was just out of reach with determined eyes. Alex looked desperately happy to see him.
"You're gonna need a rail," Terry mused, sketching in the air one of the needed alterations he'd noticed last night. "Here and here." He gave Alex a hand into the chair. "We can go get some stuff today." They were going to need a few more bars in the bathroom as well. After making sure everything his brother needed was in reach, Terry went to make a shopping list and get breakfast while Alex showered.
Brad was eating breakfast when Terry came in, and he decided to come with them to the hardware store. By the time they got back the rest of the household was awake and eager to help. Alex watched with amusement as the lot of them attempted the remodeling project, though in the end it was Abby's girlfriend, Tanya, who'd worked at her father's construction company, who managed to make sure the grab rails were installed correctly.
Terry watched Alex come alive under the influence of his friends. Life on the farm—in that town where the accident made him both famous and a pariah—had been lonely for Alex. Terry knew that, but he hadn't truly realized that his brother was a social creature, that the loneliness had been crushing him.
"I hate myself," Terry confessed to Tadd the next day as they sat on the front porch together, finishing a six pack, the house mercifully quiet as the others had taken Alex out to acquaint him with the town's sights. "For leaving him to that house, to that life."
"Terry, you're the one who got him out." Tadd passed him another bottle and Terry raised the beer to his lips even as he shook his head.
"I left him," he replied.
Tadd rolled his eyes. "Terry, sometimes you have to leave people. Sometimes they aren't ready to go with you." He raised an eyebrow significantly.
"What the fuck?" Terry snorted at him. "That is not the same kind of thing at all." He frowned, assuming that Tadd was referring to an incident a few months after they'd first met. Tadd's boyfriend at the time had been abusive and Terry had given his friend somewhere to go to get away. "And I didn't leave you."
Tadd sighed. "Because I needed to be the one who was ready to see my situation as a bad one, to recognize that it wasn't good for me. I was the one who left, but because I was ready. And you were there for me, Terry. You were there for Alex when he was ready."
Terry frowned, staring at the bare branches of the
trees in the yard as they reached for the sky. "I've been wondering," he said, the words flowing from the slight buzz of the alcohol, because even with his closest friend this wasn't something he would have confessed to without aid, "if maybe it wasn't all about him in the first place. Gerald said the usdi chose me. I wonder ... if he was choosing Alex, and I was just the ... the conduit. Because Alex couldn't be there." He was careful to not use Isi's name. Maybe too careful.
Tadd sat up from where he'd been leaning against the side of the house and leaned forward to stare into Terry's face. "What?" Terry asked, the word coming out a bit defensive.
Tadd quirked an eyebrow and raised his bottle instead of answering. After taking a drink he did say, "Terry, what you did over break is seriously the weirdest shit I've ever heard of, and you know the shit I used to get into so you can appreciate that statement. You were right to tell Chris and me that night because the story makes you sound like you've been doing acid and if you'd waited at all I might have needed to search your stuff before I could believe it. But that night, I could see the truth of it." He shrugged, with a grin. "Maybe you were right and it's something about the moonlight." He paused, and Terry felt that when he continued it was not with the words he was originally going to say. "You say that Isi promised you that Alex was going to get what he wanted, and it looks like he's keeping that promise. That affects both of you. It makes a bond between you." He hesitated, but added, "I think Chris is right. You'll see him again."
The words filled him with such hope that Terry was momentarily unable to remember what it was that he was hoping for. It was just a warm feeling that filled him to overflowing. But he couldn't bear to feel that, to let it fill him unchecked, if a feeling was all it was ever going to be. "That wasn't part of the wish," he reminded Tadd. "I could have asked him to come back, but I didn't."
Tadd laughed outright. "Terry, people don't do things just because someone asked them to. They do what they want to do. I'd have thought you, of all people, would know that."
*~*~*
Days passed and Terry thought about what Tadd had said. Alex did fit well in the house—almost better than Terry fit with his friends. Terry wasn't antisocial, but he wasn't a person who craved company either. When he'd left home initially, Alex wouldn't have fit, either with Terry's pre-college life or Terry's nonexistent budget. In addition, it would have been illegal for Terry to take the then fifteen-year-old kid away from his parents. Maybe Tadd was right, that there was a correct time for everything. But any joy he felt over watching Alex blossom now was still shadowed with guilt over leaving his brother alone in a hostile environment for years.
In the meantime, there'd been no trouble getting Alex enrolled in classes, and Terry only grit his teeth a little when he found out that a word from Warren Fathom had helped smooth the process. Chris' father was a good man, but Terry still had to remind himself that it was for Alex—he would accept any help if it was for Alex. Not that he was too proud to accept help, but in his experience such help rarely came without strings. He tried to remind himself that it was part of the wish, as if a wish made on a forest spirit captured under the moon made it any easier to accept and explain to himself. The surreality of the entire experience wasn't fading, only changing.
Of course one thing would have made accepting it all easier.
The best event of the week before classes started again, from Terry's point of view anyway, was that Brad broke up with his girlfriend. The separation led to him spending more time with Alex, which led to them discovering a shared love for an old science fiction show Terry had never heard of and couldn't bring himself to remember the name of. Almost every spare moment they had, the pair were hanging out, speaking half-sentence gibberish that only another fan of the show would have understood, and laughing their asses off. While Alex was friendly with everyone in the house, Terry was glad to see him making a real friend, before even meeting the rest of his classmates. Brad was three years younger than Terry, which put him closer to Alex's age, though he was classed as a junior with Terry since they'd started at the same time.
The last day of break, Terry was walking across campus, heading to the administration building, thinking about Alex and trying not to think about Isi.
Each day that passed it was becoming more and more obvious to Terry that the wish he'd made for Alex was coming true. From the big things—like Alex winning a full scholarship in his chosen field —to the little things—like Alex getting along so perfectly with all of his friends. Everything seemed to be aligning perfectly. Terry couldn't help but feel that he had been right—that helping Alex had been Isi's true goal and Terry just the easiest way to get to him. He was glad that Alex had gotten that help. Without Isi's push Terry might have just continued to feel bad for his brother without ever getting him out. But there was an emptiness in Terry, at the thought that he'd been used in that way.
He tried not to let himself dwell on thoughts of Isi, but beyond his raw physical attraction to the spirit there had been a strength and confidence in Isi that Terry longed to have present in his life. He would watch Tadd and Chris together sometimes, the way Tadd would lean into Chris and just breathe the other man in for a moment, Chris holding him and giving him that moment, that shared strength. Terry wanted that, he wanted someone in his life. He'd seen it in Bill and Darby as well, and, though it was something he'd wanted for far longer than the span of this winter, seeing them together had really cemented his focusing on his want for Isi's companionship.
It was stupid, and it wasn't fair to Isi, making him the focus of Terry's thoughts and desires. There were no signs that Isi felt anything, or that he even still remembered Terry. Isi didn't know him and he didn't know Isi, not really. And, Terry thought to himself, it was time he started thinking less about it. There were other things to think of. His degree was in Education, and he needed to start thinking of where he wanted to do his student teaching. His personal life came second to the goal he'd worked toward for so long. And everything came after Alex now.
Terry sighed, pulling himself out of his thoughts as he reached his destination, and he was about to open the door of the admin building when he noticed there was someone sitting on the stone bench by the door, watching him.
Terry stepped back from the door, sure that his eyes were playing tricks on him—so sure that there was already an apology on his lips as he turned to the figure sitting there. "Sorry, but you look just like someone I—" he stopped, because it was more than his eyes playing tricks. He would have sworn by all things holy that the man sitting on the bench was Isi.
He was sans antlers and wearing a sheepskin jacket (which seemed slightly incongruous), jeans, and dark, rough boots. He watched Terry with amusement and he seemed both uncertain and determined at the same time. The bright orange-brown of his hair looked odd next to the rich brown of his skin.
"Isi?" Terry asked. The word was little more than a breath on his lips and he was too full of hope to move.
Isi stood from the bench and stepped forward. "Terry," he said. He stepped closer again, and Terry was completely aware of Isi's height as he drew nearer. He stood to his full height, not crouched and tense the way Terry remembered him, and he moved with such an easy grace that Terry couldn't understand why no one else immediately saw him as more than human.
It was that last thought that broke Terry free of his paralysis and he grabbed Isi by the arm as he came nearer. "What are you doing here?" he hissed.
"I saw you coming from three buildings away," Isi replied, eyes still amused. "I wondered if you would see me or if I would have to reach out and touch you."
Terry frowned; that didn't answer his question. "What if someone sees you?"
Isi laughed at him. The sound was clear and light, and caused heads to turn their way in interest at the sheer amusement in his voice. "What if they do?" he asked, leaning into Terry, their faces inches apart.
Terry felt his throat go suddenly dry, his eyes drawn with desperate fascination to Isi's li
ps. He was going to kiss those lips ... Terry shook himself, pulled on the arm he had hold of, and dragged Isi away from the door to the admin building, around the corner to a place where they were mostly shielded from view by the building.
"It is alright. They do not see me as you do," Isi was saying, having noticed just how worried Terry was. "They see nothing but what they expect. Do not worry. No one will know my secrets unless I tell them."
Terry ran his hands roughly through his hair. "What are you doing here?" he demanded. Then, suddenly worried, he asked, "Is something wrong, for Alex?"
Isi's look of open amusement dimmed and he turned away, shoving his hands into his jacket's pockets. The motion was a perfect imitation of a human gesture, but it was obvious to Terry that it was just a studied imitation. "The power of the wish is greater than my own personal magic," Isi said. "Your brother's happiness is assured, as you asked for."
Terry breathed deep for a moment, then tried to catch Isi's eye. "So, what are you doing here?" he asked for a third time, the question laced with simple curiosity.
Isi wouldn't look at him. "Do I require a reason?"
Terry shook his head and leaned back, against the brick wall of the building. "No," he admitted, "but I didn't think this was a place you frequented without one. They try hard with the landscaping, but there isn't much here in the way of forest."
Isi did look at him then, as if curious himself. "You think among the trees is the only place I would wish to be?"
Terry shrugged without an answer, because he had thought that.
They were silent for a few moments, and they could hear the indistinct chatter of students moving around the campus. Isi took a deep breath and said suddenly, "I came to see you."