by A. H. Lee
The play started with a great deal of noise and light—a simulated battle, in which it soon became obvious that a young child was about to be orphaned. In spite of his morose mood, Mal found himself caught up in the story. Two armies were fighting over a village, and peasants were caught in the crossfire. The child protagonist huddled in the ruins of his home beside his wounded dog. His parents and siblings left one by one to get help or provisions and never returned. The dog seemed likely to die. The boy refused to leave the animal in spite of mortar shells falling all around them.
Then, to the delight of the audience, the boy reached deep inside himself, to a power he had not known he possessed, and cast his first spell. The dog transformed into an enormous wolf, instantly healed. The boy climbed onto its back and they raced away as the last traces of their village were beaten into rubble.
At some point during this exciting sequence, Mal became aware that Azrael’s arm was resting beside his own on the generously broad armrest. Out of the corner of one eye, Mal saw their hands, lying side by side an inch apart, their sleeves brushing. It would be so easy…
Mal stopped himself. So I can feel disappointed when he pulls away? Or ignores me later? Mal swallowed an unfamiliar lump in his throat and focused his full attention on the play. It was a good story.
Something grazed his hand, light as the touch of a moth’s wing. Mal’s eyes flicked unwillingly to the armrest. Azrael had turned his hand over, palm up. Mal felt as though his heart had turned over with it. Azrael was still watching the play, but his thumb was resting against Mal’s little finger.
Mal knew, logically, that this was an invitation. He knew. But he couldn’t quite make himself believe it. As though in a dream, he moved his little finger enough to hook it delicately around Azrael’s thumb. You can’t mean it; you never mean it.
Azrael slid his hand under Mal’s.
Mal finally understood what people meant when they talked about butterflies in their stomachs. He laced his fingers through Azrael’s, and Azrael’s hand curled in response—not limp, not indifferent, but alive, holding him.
Mal was floating. This was the best play he had ever seen in his entire life. He wondered how long it was—hours and hours, he hoped. Mal felt suddenly grateful to everyone involved—the actors, the musicians, the stagehands, the janitors. He could feel himself grinning like an idiot.
His palm against Azrael’s felt as intimate as sex. How is that possible? Why did I never know?
Because he didn’t know, Mal answered himself. We raised each other, and he didn’t know, either. Mal loosened his grip a little, let the sides of their fingers brush past each other, back and forth.
You crawled underneath me. The idea made him shiver.
On stage, the boy was being introduced to a pack of wolves by his former dog. He was using magic to talk to them. They were becoming his family.
Mal raised his hand enough to run his thumb around Azrael’s wrist, and he felt him tremble. Mal was suddenly too shy to look his master—friend, he corrected himself—in the face, but he glanced at him sidelong, and saw that Azrael had shut his eyes.
Jessica’s words: “He needs to be touched.”
She was right. And I’d bet anything it was her idea for him to sit beside me.
Mal enjoyed foreplay a great deal, but always as a lead-up to sex. Ordinarily, when someone initiated sexual activity that was not actually sex, Mal was focused on the next step, the progression. Now, for the first time, he felt no need to progress to anything. He felt as though he were making love with his hands. He could have done this all night.
On stage, the boy lived with the wolves and the wild creatures, but he missed his own kind. He longed to go to a magic school, but magicians would never take a feral child, raised by wolves. They tried to hunt him down like one of the wild animals.
Mal let his fingertips trail over Azrael’s. He was delighted when Azrael curled his fingers enough to trail them over Mal’s palm. You are touching me! As a man! On purpose!
On stage, the school was holding some kind of contest—a wizard tournament—and the boy entered secretly. There was a series of improbable misunderstandings and subterfuge. Mal was not entirely following along. He sat there, holding Azrael’s hand, and hoped the play would never end.
Chapter 28
Jessica
Mal and Azrael were holding hands. Jessica wasn’t sure at first, and she didn’t want to openly peer at them. But then an explosion on stage lit everything, and she definitely glimpsed their hands entwined on the armrest. Mal was grinning. He was practically glowing.
Jessica smiled.
The play was well-performed, although somewhat cloying at the end, with all the woodland creatures coming to help the hero win his place in polite society. The imitation magic was fun to watch. Jessica wanted to ask Azrael what he thought of it, but she was pretty sure his attention was entirely elsewhere.
When the houselights came up, Jessica thought for a moment that Azrael would not retrieve his hand long enough to clap. He did, finally. However, as they stood, Jessica thought he slipped his hand back into Mal’s. Her suspicion was confirmed when they spilled onto the lawn in front of the theater with the rest of the happy, chatting crowd. Mal and Azrael were still hand-in-hand.
Lucy gave Jessica an eye roll, but Jessica countered with a whispered, “Maybe not such a blunt instrument?”
Lucy just shook her head.
Azrael and Mal had gotten a little ahead of them in the crowd, and Azrael stopped to look around. “We should probably get a cab back. I don’t want the new clothes ruined. Do they have cabs here?”
Jessica nodded. “Mostly horse-drawn.”
“Lucy,” continued Azrael, “do you want to ride back with us or are you ready to go to sleep?”
“I’m ready for bed,” said Lucy with a hint of acid. “If you can find two hands to get me back in my bottle.”
Chapter 29
Mal
They held hands all the way home in the cab. Mal stopped worrying that every time Azrael needed his left hand for something, he would never give it back. Azrael sounded perfectly normal when he spoke to Lucy or Jessica, perfectly normal when he traded pleasantries with the taxi driver, perfectly normal when he paid for their ride. But every now and then, as Mal stroked his hand, his fingers trembled. I am doing something to you. I am having an effect, and you can hide it from everyone else, but not me, not now.
It was ten o’clock when they reached the cottage. Mal did not feel in the least bit sleepy. He felt jittery, tipsy, electric. Azrael let go of Mal’s hand as he headed towards the sitting room. Mal followed him.
Azrael crouched over his trunk, rummaging among his things. “Well, it’s late, and we’ll have a long day tomorrow. Good night.”
Mal stood there, staring at him.
Azrael straightened up, holding a nightshirt. “Do you need something, Mal?”
Mal was too baffled to even feel wounded this time. Are we really not going to talk about this? Are we going to keep having one conversation with our hands and an entirely different conversation with our mouths?
Azrael looked at him, and Mal thought he saw something flicker in his eyes. Pleading? For what?
Jessica poked her head into the room. She’d already changed out of the ball gown into her pajamas. “Time for a chapter!”
“Not tonight,” said Azrael.
“Oh, come on. You said you got a lot done today.”
Azrael hesitated. “We did. In spite of…a slow start.”
“Then surely you can afford to stay up half an hour to read a chapter and get up half an hour later tomorrow.”
“I’ll be a panther if you like,” ventured Mal. Panthers don’t have hands.
Azrael’s eyes shifted away from him. “You don’t have to.”
“But I’m always a panther when you read to me.”
That made Azrael smile. He stopped smiling abruptly. “Do not turn into a panther while you’re wearing those clothes.
Gods.”
So Mal took off the clothes in the bedroom and hung them up neatly. Then he turned into a panther, and by the time Azrael came in, he was stretched out across the bed with his head on his paws. Jessica was nestled among the pillows behind him, her hair a tumble of golden curls. Azrael was wearing his long-sleeved nightshirt over an undershirt and a pair of worn trousers. “Is there a rule against lighting the fireplaces?” he asked.
“No,” said Jessica. “But people don’t usually stay here in winter, and there’s no firewood. I keep meaning to buy some. Mal thinks he can find some in the woods, but he has no idea what he’s doing.”
Azrael crawled onto the bed. “You might end up filling the cottage with smoke.” He yawned. “But I can look for firewood tomorrow if you like. Or chop it.”
“You know how?” Mal stretched out his head and one paw across Azrael’s lap.
“Of course I know how,” said Azrael, wriggling his hips to get comfortable. “Janitor, remember?”
Mal grunted. He thought about wrapping his paws around Azrael’s waist. Was that the same as grabbing him with his hands? Surely not.
Azrael started to read in that low, smooth voice that always made Mal feel lulled and safe. After a while, he started stroking Mal’s head—not just a couple of pats, but really petting him, rubbing behind his ears and along his nose. Mal decided that being a panther wasn’t such a sacrifice after all.
In the story, the pilot pursued the wounded dragon into the desert. She was closing in, when a dust storm hit them. In spite of all her skill, the pilot was driven from the sky. She woke disoriented and began to struggle from her plane.
“You shouldn’t do that,” came a voice.
The pilot was shocked to see the dragon, half buried in sand some distance away. “It’s quicksand,” said the dragon. “My poor rider has already drowned. If you step in, you’ll go the same way.”
The pilot saw that they were in a rocky bowl, filled with light, blowing sand. The dragon was being very careful not to struggle, but he’d already sunk halfway.
“If you take your plane to pieces, you can make a path to walk on,” said the dragon. “Get out of here.”
The pilot fairly sobbed at the idea of taking her plane to pieces, but she could see that he was right. “It will be a long, hike, though,” she said, “and I have very little food. I think I had better kill you and take the meat with me.”
“Why would you do that?” asked the dragon. “I just told you how to get out.”
“Why do you care?” asked the pilot. “You are dying slowly and painfully.” But in her heart, she thought, Dragons are wily tricksters. Did he expect this? He must be hungry, too. She wished that the guns on her plane still worked, but they had all been destroyed, and her only handgun was full of sand. She had a hunting knife; that was all.
“Well, then, I suppose you will come and kill me,” said the dragon as the pilot began the difficult task of disassembling her plane without stepping down into the sand. “But in the meantime, at least I will have someone to talk to.”
“I am not going to talk to you,” said the pilot.
“Of course you are. There’s no one else here.”
“I don’t have to talk to anyone.”
“And yet you are. My name is Featherdoodle, what’s yours?”
The pilot couldn’t help but stop and look at him. “That is not a dragon name.”
“I am a dragon last I checked.”
“I don’t believe that’s your name.”
“Believe anything you like. Perhaps I am actually a sandworm disguised as a dragon. And anyway, why does it matter what you call me, since you’re just going to eat me?”
Mal interrupted. “Am I the pilot or the dragon?”
Azrael went still.
“At first,” continued Mal, “I thought I was the dragon, but now I feel sort of like the pilot.”
Azrael put down the book and leaned backwards on his hands, staring at Mal. “I have waited twenty-three years for you to say that.”
Mal blinked at him. “To say that I feel like a pilot?”
“No. To…to identify with characters in a story. To make extrapolations, to have insights. To empathize.”
“Oh.” Mal considered. “I might have tried harder if I’d known you were waiting for that.”
Azrael laughed. It came out strangely raw. “I’m sure you would have.”
Mal leaned into him. Azrael’s hands slid on the bedspread. “Nah, you think I’m a wily dragon who only shows you what you want to see.”
“Aren’t you?”
Jessica had scooted closer to them. “I know you don’t think so, Ren, but you’re pretty wily yourself.”
Azrael looked at the ceiling. “Oh, I know I am. I’d be dead otherwise.” He thought for a moment. “Mal, you asked me how I knew to make the collar. Maybe that story would mean something to you now.”
“Oh, yes!” Mal was instantly excited. “Tell me about when I was a baby!”
“You were never a baby. You were even less of a baby back then.”
Mal inched his head further onto Azrael’s stomach, and Azrael sank onto his elbows. Jessica shoved a pillow under his head. “Tell us!”
He gave a weary sigh, glanced behind him at the pillow. “Do you two never stop?”
“Stop what?” asked Mal.
Azrael, now half covered in panther, turned a baleful eye towards Jessica. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Trying to make you feel comfortable and safe? Yes, you have deduced my nefarious plan.”
Mal raised his head. “Are you like the boy in the play? Are we the wolves?”
“I certainly feel like I am surrounded by wolves.”
“You wanted me to extrapolate. I’m extrapolating.”
Azrael dragged himself out from under Mal. He put the pillow in his lap instead of lying down on it. “Maybe. A little. Real life isn’t that tidy. Do you want to hear this story, or not?”
“Yes!”
Azrael took a deep breath. “I helped all over the school grounds at Polois, but I liked the library, and I found things to do there whenever I could. When I was eleven, I discovered a book in the history section—a memoir by a sorceress about her experiences and adventures with a summoned incubus. It was a love story of sorts. The text ended when she freed him. The reader was left to wonder whether he ate her, but I felt certain that he didn’t. I kept looking for the next volume, but I never found it. I read the book over and over and finally stole it from the library. I ended up taping it back together a few times.”
Mal cocked his head. “I don’t remember you reading me that one.”
“I didn’t.”
Mal thought a little longer. “She told you how to make the collar?”
Azrael nodded. “The instructions weren’t exact, but they were close enough for me to puzzle it out. I was not so foolish as to romanticize you just because of that book, but…” Azrael’s eyes flicked away. “The demon’s name was Azrael.”
Mal felt strangely flattered, although he could not have said why. “You named yourself after a demon?”
Azrael picked at the bedspread. “I was fifteen. It was my favorite book.”
Jessica grinned. “That’s adorable.”
“I knew right away that Mal was more dangerous than anything that book had described, but it still predisposed me to think of him as a…a person. I doubt we’d be here today without that book.”
“Did you try to find the author?” asked Jessica. “Did she really survive setting him loose?”
Azrael folded his hands on the pillow. “I did try to find her. After a few years on the Shrouded Isle, I felt settled enough to really look…only to learn that the book had been misfiled in our library. It was fiction.”
Jessica put her hand over her mouth. “You made important decisions about an astral demon…based on a novel?”
Azrael laughed.
Mal cocked his head. “But…it worked, righ
t? How did she…?”
“I don’t know,” said Azrael. “I find it difficult to believe that the entire book is invention. But the magical community certainly thinks so. Even if parts of it are true, I doubt it happened exactly as described.” He cast a weary smile at Jessica. “So, yes, fifteen-year-old me made important life-or-death decisions about an astral demon based on a romantic fantasy. Extrapolation.”
Mal didn’t quite like his tone. “Well, it worked out alright. Tell me about when I was a baby.”
“I’d like to hear the whole thing from the beginning,” said Jessica. “How you ended up in that school, why Wallace hated you so much, how you summoned an incubus…”
“How you learned to dance like a girl!” interjected Mal.
Azrael wasn’t quite looking at them. He wasn’t quite looking at anything. He’d curled himself around the pillow. “Another time?”
“Sure,” said Jessica, her expression softening. “You don’t have to tell us at all if you don’t want to.”
“Is it sad?” asked Mal. “You look sad. Is it because of something I did?”
“Yes, it is mostly sad,” said Azrael, “but not because of you. Shall I finish this chapter?”
“Yes, please.”
The dragon was plotting something, but Mal couldn’t tell what. The dragon talked, and after a while the pilot talked. She took the siding off her airplane one screw at a time and laid the pieces flat on the sand. It was like building a bridge of boats. There was nothing to do but work and talk.
Mal drifted off listening to the murmur of Azrael’s voice as the characters told their histories. He dreamed of two people—unable to trust each other, but trapped together under desert stars.
Chapter 30
Mal
Mal woke disoriented. The lamp was still on. Someone was moving against him. Mal blinked hard. He was a man. He’d gone to sleep as a panther, but he’d woken up as a man.
Oh.
Azrael was lying beside him. Mal had one arm around his waist and Azrael was trying to extricate himself. Jessica had her head half on Azrael’s chest, fast asleep, one breast soft and warm against Mal’s bicep. The book was lying on Azrael’s stomach where he must have dropped it. Mal felt profoundly content and comfortable, but Azrael was trying to sit up.