Any Man So Daring

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  He’d never thought of Silver as anything much but another part of himself. She had always there, always immutable. Her face had changed from infant to child, from child to woman. He’d thought nothing of her looks. She was simply Silver.

  Yet, here she was, standing before him, silk-black hair whipping around in the cold, magic-laden wind, and broad silver eyes staring out at him with a pleading look.

  Here she stood, so beautiful that he felt an ache in his heart as if it would break with delight at the sight of her, with pain at having lost her for aye.

  Here she was, her high breasts rounded and looking large above a ridiculously small waist. Beneath the green skirt that the wind played with, long white legs stretched -- creamy white, velvet-soft. Quicksilver could remember touching the legs, with those pale hands at the end of the lady’s pale arms. He remembered feeling both the touch and the touching — velvet on velvet, a softness like newly opened rose petals, and the joy of touching.

  She was a stranger and, as a stranger, beautiful. How odd it felt, seeing her like that. Like being one in two and two in one, and yet none. Now was he none. For who was Quicksilver if not half of Silver?

  She stood in front of him, apart from him, a pale, bodied ghost.

  The lady was not him now and he not the lady.

  He remembered the touch of her hands upon her skin, the feel of that black hair spilling down his back and over his breasts -- her breasts -- and the thoughts felt like going mad — like a memory of the impossible.

  He looked into her wide silver eyes, confused, divided.

  She was so lovely. A loveliness that went beyond her looks, the contrast between her pale skin and her black hair, the eerie beauty of her reflective eyes. Her beauty resonated with a grace that Quicksilver could only remember in her steps, but could not recover in this, his heavier body.

  Her fascination, woven of charm and magic and echoing mystery, filled him with awe.

  No wonder Christopher Marlowe had fallen at the sight of her and that even Will, honest Will, wedded to his wife and faithful to his word, had fallen abed with Silver as sure as a stricken bird fell when the hunter’s arrow found its heart.

  Yet, for all her wondrous beauty, she looked cold. She looked infinitely sad, the Lady Silver.

  Like staring upon a mirror that reflected only feelings, Quicksilver saw in Silver’s eyes his own pain, his own stricken division. He wanted to be whole again. He longed for the feeling of the two of them conjoined.

  Tears blurred his vision.

  Tears filled her eyes and dropped down the gentle slope of her face, and Quicksilver felt the echo of those tears rolling down his face, hot and moist, to drip from his masculine, bearded cheek onto the frayed collar above his black doublet.

  Without meaning to, needing to feel her presence, he stretched towards her small, soft face his calloused, strong hand, used to battle and wielding the heavy magical sword that now depended from his waist. The sword weighed down his belt like a stone -- like the memory of past sins upon the stricken soul.

  When their hands met, he recoiled, shocked. He’d expected that she’d be a vision, a passing phantom, an illusion of his overstretched mind, his breaking heart. He expected a feeling of coldness, a chilling fog where his hand reached.

  Instead, he touched silky skin upon Silver’s perfect face.

  Silver’s tears redoubled at his touch, as though springing from an inner force that his hand had woken.

  In that springing, his own grief found expression and loosened the pressure of tears behind his eyes, making them fall faster, a torrent of water sprung from grief and fear and terrible wonder. It rolled, uncontrollable, down his face.

  Her hands, soft and small and yielding, both came up to envelop his hand that touched her face.

  Her hands were warm and gentle and full of tenderness. Their touch was like velvet, their warmth like the fire of a mortal cottage, late at night, when it was raining outside and the mortal had tired himself in a long day’s work.

  A smell of lilacs, strong and intoxicating, surrounded Quicksilver. The smell of magic, the smell of fairykind love.

  In his memory, it was a summer night, and Quicksilver walked through it, free and careless, to his first assignation, Silver’s first love.

  He remembered that night well, and the freedom, the youth, the speeding heartbeat, the warm, dry air, the excitement and anxiety of the moment that came with it. In his mind, now all of it mingled, fear and excitement and the smell of summer, on remembering became aching nostalgia, the missing of the youth he’d never again be, of the maiden innocence that Silver would never again recapture.

  His heart ached with longing and memory.

  He reached for her, and her hands met his.

  Had Silver moved closer?

  How had she come so near?

  He hadn’t noticed Silver moving closer, nor yet his moving closer to her, but she was there in his arms, her body soft and yielding, warm in his arms, pliant against his body.

  She pushed against him, her body warm, warm through his jacket and shirt, pressing against his body limb for limb. Warming her, he felt himself warmer, their bodies’ touch recalling their natural union.

  Her breasts pressed against his hard, battle-scarred chest, where the magical swords of the enemy had more than once done their worst and where only the great ability and magical strength of elven healers had stopped death from cutting short the days of the king of fairyland.

  For the moment Quicksilver had forgotten he was king, forgotten all but this lady in his arms -- this warm, enveloping body against his.

  His body, and not his, hers and yet not hers only.

  He could feel her breath as she breathed. Breath by breath, it was his own breath, flavored with the same scent of fairyland — the spices of the Indies, the heat of the sun. His heart and her heart beat one on one, each beat one beat and two beats and then three beats together, a drum beat speeding up, closer and closer, chasing its own echoes, as it climbed a slope of misguided passion.

  His free hand squeezed her sleeve and caressed her silky hair, and slid, with knowing, exact need down the slope of her low-cut dress to cup her full breast.

  He remembered what it felt like, having a hand on her breast. He knew the tingle and pressure as the nipple tightened. He guessed at the moist rush below.

  He knew what her sharp intake of breath meant, why she suddenly straightened up and reached for him — her eyes half closed and her lips half-parted, the tip of her pink tongue peeking between.

  The hunger in her lips that searched for his with blind, eager need, was his hunger. The craving in the tongue that searched her mouth was her craving.

  He knew her desire as she knew the need that now surged through his veins and made him crave more than he ever had.

  Oh, he needed her body and his body, both bodies conjoined, each knowing with every movement what the other felt. Together, again, together at last.

  Both of his pleasures, his and hers, would feed his pleasure. He needed those joined pleasures for his comfort. Without her, he was lonely and divided. He craved the mingling of his divided self.

  He was married and he’d promised Ariel fidelity forever, a rare enough vow in fairyland.

  Forever stretched out of sight into the nearly endless span of elvenkind lives. Alone, without Silver, forever seemed to Quicksilver like death, like unending punishment. His body echoed with loneliness as though it were a resounding palace built for a large court, through whose vast halls and monumental rooms he walked alone and exiled.

  And how could you be unfaithful with yourself?

  Silver’s lips were salty with the salt of his tears and her tongue that searched his tongue was the incarnation of his own desperate desire.

  He sucked at her lips and moaned at her pleasure, and searched for the ties of her dress that he knew as well as the fastenings of his own, masculine clothes.

  The knots felt unaccustomed, from this position, from outside, and
he remembered this was how they had all fumbled -- Kit, and Will and the others, the many others who, through Quicksilver’s wild and free adolescence, had served the Lady’s pleasure.

  He undressed her, pursuing his pleasure, paying little mind to her own hands undressing him.

  His craving, his need, resided upon her naked body and sprang from her flesh. He needed to view again that white, unbroken skin that he knew like his own -- that had been his. Unable to step into Silver’s skin, to be Silver, he wanted Silver as close as she could be — as near as he could hold her, till the texture of her skin, the taste of her, were part of him again, inextricable, inseparable.

  If he joined with her, wouldn’t it all be solved? Wouldn’t their bodies slip together and become one again, like the wayfarer who, on returning home, becomes again at ease with his routine?

  Wouldn’t he be Quicksilver — Quicksilver again, as he had been before the horrible war?

  He sucked at her nipples, and ran his hands along her slim, naked waist. She tasted of sweat and sugar-sweet dew upon newly opened roses.

  His hands lingered upon her, trying to absorb the skin that felt like velvet beneath his hands — the skin that by rights was his own, as well as hers.

  His own — his own — how could they live apart?

  Her hands, that played along his arms, his chest, his neck, his buttocks, were the unneeded kindling to his flaming passion.

  He laid her down upon the surface of the magical lake, taking care to set down a spell first, so that neither of them touched the magic beneath. By the power and virtue of fairyland, a bed of fogs and mist supported them both.

  A smell of lilac writhed around them, a living fog hot with their desire, moist with their tears, frantic like their passion, touching their skin all over, more intimate than even the other’s reach

  Upon the mists he joined her, his body in hers, her passion echoing in his cries.

  Together they climbed this passion that could not be tamed, ascending need on need and craving on craving — his hands in her hair, her nails raking the length of his already scarred back — till there was no pinnacle to climb and nowhere to go. There, pausing for a moment of wondrous pleasure, with a scream they released passion like a fleeting bird to the magical skies of the crux.

  Time stopped, then resumed.

  Spent, exhausted, Quicksilver lay on Silver.

  First came breath, returning to his lips like life returning to a body it had fled.

  He breathed in small, hungry gasps, and felt a great sadness, a great fear, a great anger come over him, blinding him.

  He didn’t know why or whence the anger came, yet he saw it in her eyes: in the tears forming, the disappointed, immense loss that made her lips tremble and her whole face sag, like wax too near a candle flame.

  He bit his tongue, to prevent the same tears from forming in his eyes. He felt his lips tremble.

  His anger, his disappointment, his heartbreak, gathered into words.

  Alas, I am betrayed, he thought. But betrayed by whom?

  He could not answer. He could get no nearer to it than this feeling that both he and Silver had been grossly abused.

  This joining had been no less — no more — than his many encounters with elf and mortal alike.

  How could you make love to your other half and feel no more than when you joined with a stranger?

  Looking down on Silver, he knew her no more and no less than he had known his mortal lovers, or his other elf couplings.

  There was her face, filled with disappointment, like the face of a child who feels eternal loss. He could guess that she, like him, felt grief at union denied.

  But her thoughts remained locked behind the wall of otherness that kept him out.

  She was not him. She might never be him, again.

  This union, rushed, craved, had served only to underline their separation, their awful, aching separation.

  He saw her hands go to her breasts and cover them in belated modesty, while they remained joined, and he still above her.

  He saw her hands touch her breasts, but he could not feel what those hands felt, or those breasts, when her hands covered them.

  He was bereft. Yet something in him — he was sure of it — had resisted their reunion.

  But what?

  When had it happened, and why had she fled? When had she left his body and his soul, ripping herself from him like new cloth from an unsound old patch?

  Was it the death of Vargmar, when Quicksilver had felt as though a long-held cord broke within him?

  Was it the death of Vargmar that had expelled the lady, for good, from Quicksilver’s being?

  But how could it be when the Lady, like Quicksilver, knew the need for defense and blood and death in that defense? Though neither of them had sought the kingship that had fallen upon their conjoined shoulders like a mantle of lead, Quicksilver had understood the need for serving kingship.

  Yet Silver had thought kingship should serve them.

  And thus, divided, over tradition as over their own nature, they had started their painful separation.

  Thinking on the crown that he only wore for ceremonies of state, it seemed to Quicksilver that he could still feel its weight — old and accustomed, heavy gold and spells woven through all the centuries in which it had symbolized the responsibility and power of fairyland.

  As the keeper of the power and souls of elves and fairies and those grosser, inferior races — trolls and centaurs and mountain dwarves — Quicksilver would always feel the crown upon his brow.

  But Silver had felt it not, nor did she see any reason to conform to the tradition of the kings before them. As though Quicksilver, alone, could make a better system than what his ancestors had devised over countless generations.

  It had started with the crown, Quicksilver thought. And their disagreement over how a king should behave.

  Refusing to concede, Silver had distanced herself, and Quicksilver had remained alone to wear the crown and sit in audience and receive guests, and be King Quicksilver, not the Lady Silver with her flirtatious ways, her carefree laughter, her caprices, her loves...her love for Will.

  He thought of how she loved Will and flinched, as a wounded man will flinch from touching raw flesh.

  It had started like that, thus. Now it wasn’t convenient and then it wasn’t proper, and then again they disagreed. Silver had bled away from within him like a man’s life leaving through an open vein that he heeds not.

  Little by little she’d trickled away, and he’d never felt it, till they were divided, separated.

  How could a man be so oblivious to his own self, to the currents of his own soul?

  How could an elf reign who knew himself so little?

  Quicksilver looked down at the perfect face of Lady Silver, crumpled in grief, her eyes overflowing with woe.

  He lowered his own face to hers and kissed her gently, tasting the salt of her tears.

  She cried still.

  Had the loss of her brought about his other woes?

  Was it his lack of her that had brought about the war, the hill deaths, the destruction? Would Silver’s irreverent, experimental approach to kingship have been better?

  He’d been a man divided, who knew not himself. Little by little, trickle by trickle. He’d lost Silver, and then his soul appeared to have fled after her. When was the last time he had felt alive? When was the last time he’d laughed?

  Fair Ariel had seen him as though dead. And she’d been right. He’d become naught but the crown on his head that crushed all thought and stopped all feeling.

  He’d become a king, a king and nothing more, and, as a king, he’d ruled heavily, his hand resting in crushing weight upon the hills of fairyland.

  There had been no dissent allowed, and no jokes, and no one could mention that the king was two and could become, at will, the Queen Silver, of fairyland.

  Fairyland, Quicksilver had determined, would have only one queen and one king — and those in dif
ferent bodies.

  And in that decision, how humorless he’d become, quenching jest and flirting as though they were crimes, and allowing no elf speak his mind, unless his mind met with Quicksilver’s own.

  There, there, Vargmar’s treason had found fodder.

  Alone, Vargmar would not have been able to rebel.

  His early attempt at killing Quicksilver would have ended as it did end, in a midnight discovery with everyone watching.

  But his attempt at raising an army would have died ere it began, were it not that Quicksilver had long nurtured discontent amid the ranks and squelched the voice of the little ones of elfland, till the little ones rose against him like a tide, like an unstoppable storm. The odd ones, those who didn’t fit in — trolls and centaurs, Pucks and brownies — had Quicksilver allowed himself to be who he truly was, would he have understood them better?

  Had he shown himself for what he truly was — an impetuous, imperfect shape changer — would they have loved him better?

  He looked at Silver’s crying face, and felt her sobs.

  It was too late now. He’d shown himself a perfect, unassailable, cold king, and they’d turned their hearts from him and wholeheartedly served Vargmar.

  Oh, Vargmar had been guilty and deserved death.

  But then, what of Quicksilver, who’d encouraged and created the division as much as Vargmar ever had? The division that had led to the war, for which the youth of fairyland had bled?

  If Vargmar had earned death, what had Quicksilver earned?

  He saw, in Silver’s eyes, that her thought, traveling the like path had arrived at a similar destination.

  He saw her small hands clench into fists, and the fists lift to pound upon his battle-scarred chest.

  Had he not earned it?

  He had killed her, had he not? He’d pulled her from him, and in fairyland she could not appear and had no expression.

  Only here, in the crux, where magic was free and rampant, could he see her.

  No more would the Lady Silver’s laughter echo in the glades and circles of fairyland. No more would she dance, graceful and happy, in the ceremonies of her people.

  No more would she jest and smile and joke and with her cheering encourage all around her — inspire them to courage, show them the way of love.