by Quil Carter
When he saw the look I was giving him, he giggled. “How do I look?”
“Like an idiot,” I said aloofly. “You better not wear that inside the apartment.”
Finn released another giggle, his face going red. He certainly was happy. “It’ll make me work faster,” he said through his grin, and the two of us, with Julian, Silas, Garrett, Jack, Apollo and Artemis, trailing behind, walked through the row of carnival games. We passed through many kiosks, and many more stuffed animals hanging from wooden beams, we walked past the shouting carnival workers and the trilling, chiming games, but Finn was content with his stuffed cat, and even more content with the cat ears resting on top of his head of golden curls.
Jack eventually ran up to walk beside us. “Master Silas says I can get some food now,” he said smiling. “I didn’t even throw up once on the ride! I screamed though, so loudly Silas says the operator asked Silas if he should stop the ride. He said no, and that I had to finish it to the end because I made a commitment. It was fucking terrifying though!” He proceeded to tell me every detail about the ride, and cleverly began walking ahead of us so he could lead the group to the food stalls. I didn’t usually eat such garbage, but it was a special day so once we’d found ourselves a table, I let Julian and Finn have at it with free reign for them to order me whatever they wanted.
Silas sat down beside me, he was still smiling, still lighthearted and in the best mood I’d seen him in in years. I surprised myself too, because usually when I saw Silas in this good of a mood, my mind automatically tempted me with ways I could bring him back into misery. But today, today I didn’t want to be the plotting mastermind, the spider in my garden looming over my raised beds and sprouting seeds. I think… today I just wanted to be Elish.
Whoever he was underneath all of that cold.
Julian and Finn came back with two trays heaping with food, and behind them, Tom and Kinny followed with more food. The tray was set down, and we all waited for Silas to choose what he wanted. When we were dishing up ourselves for dinner, we always did it according to hierarchy.
Less blood was shed that way.
Silas chose a corn dog, half of a philly cheese steak sandwich, a churro, an assortment of deep fried food whose identity was a mystery, and a funnel cake. I decided to make a plate for both Finn and myself since I didn’t want the food to be gone by the time the sengils ate. I settled down with two of the cheese steak sandwiches, a funnel cake, some poutine, and since he’d commented on Silas’s plate of mystery deep-fried things, a plate of them as well.
Finn looked like he was about to float out of his chair when he realized I’d made a plate for him as well. To show me how happy he was, he shuffled himself close to me, close enough that our legs were touching on the bench we were sitting on, and out of view of the others, he rubbed my leg caringly.
The family ate, talking amongst each other and laughing whenever Drake, or Ares and Siris did something stupid, which was often. Around us the winter carnival carried on, the busy air filled with the sounds of happy people and smelling heavily of deep fried food and popcorn.
“Oh my god,” Finn said, his mouth full. He was still wearing those ridiculous cat ears… but he did look kind of, well, cute. “It’s a deep fried M’Oreo.” He showed me the bitten ball of batter, and sure enough, inside was a mixture of black and white.
I chose one and bit it in half. It was… interesting. “I bet you Nero will be hounding the kitchen sengils to make this crap for him.”
“Damn straight!” Nero exclaimed. He was sitting beside Ceph on the other side of the table. “You better make me immortal quick, brosy. I’m going to have to kill myself every month or I’m going to become a fat ass.”
The table all laughed at Nero, Silas smiled and swallowed his mouth full of food. “Actually, lovely, it won’t work like that. If your immortality is anything like mine, it’ll heal your injuries, diseases, and sicknesses only. You’ll resurrect the same, unless your body is completely destroyed, then you’ll resurrect to how you were when you became immortal. I think at least. So you can’t get yourself fat, or else I’ll have to incinerate you.” The table of family, sengils, and Julian, all laughed some more.
“Master Silas, may I be excused?” Jack asked. He began to squirm in his seat. “I have to use the bathroom.” This request was joined with nods from Apollo, Artemis, and Valen.
“I’ll take them,” I said. I was finished eating anyway.
“Okay, love. Hurry back. I want to see just how scary their haunted house is,” Silas said. Then he looked at the younger chimeras. “I allowed them to use real dead bodies. Are you brave enough to come with me?”
Jack shouted yes, as did Felix, but Ludo, Rio, and Valen looked hesitant. I rose, Finn and Julian automatically getting up with me, and we began to walk towards the rows of portable bathrooms. There was a special portable bathroom reserved for the royal family and their helpers, the thought of sharing a washroom with the general public made my skin crawl.
We weaved through the crowd of curious people, the boys with their heads to the sky watching the Yo-Yo ride spin people around in their swings attached to chains. They all decided together to ride it afterwards, and as long as I wasn’t there to deal with the throw up that was bound to follow, I didn’t have a problem with it.
The bathroom that was for the royal family was separate from the blue port-a-potties. It was a structure made out of wood with a black roof, and there were even ceramic planter pots full of flowers.
I went first, then Finn, and we stood around the structure waiting for the boys and Julian to finish up.
“I’ve had a wonderful day today,” Finn said shyly. He smiled at me, love deeply embedded in his eyes. “The only one that trumps it… is the day you visited me in Autumnhome.”
“You do seem quite content, even though you look ridiculous with those ears,” I said, my eyes taking in the tall amusement park rides towering over us. They seemed massive, to touch the clouds, but then I glanced east and saw Alegria and was reminded just how small not only the rides were, but us as well. We were all but insects on the mange-riddled hide of a dying animal, and yet here we stood, after the world had gasped its last healthy breath, we were not just surviving, but thriving enough to be riding Ferris wheels with churros and cotton candy in our hands.
“I like them,” Finn laughed. He adjusted the cat ears on his head. “And I know, deep down inside, you think I look adorable, or you’d order them off of my head.”
I smiled, then looked down when Finn slipped his hand in mine. I didn’t pull away… I actually squeezed it back.
Then I heard Jack’s muffled voice from the bathroom stall. “Master Elish… I need help.”
I stared at the portable bathroom, unsure of just what he needed help with, and quite frankly, not wanting to find out. “With…?”
“My… my zipper got stuck and it won’t go up,” the boy said, his voice wobbling. Apollo and Artemis both put hands over their mouths to stifle their laughter, but Jack still heard and said, in an even more wobbly voice. “Shut up!”
“I’ll help him,” Julian laughed. “Your speciality lies in undoing zippers.”
“Mmhm,” I said. “We’ll be waiting.”
Julian walked off to help Jack with his problem and I turned back around to watch the busy amusement park in front of me. The business side of me was curious to see just how much money we’d make the Crown with this unique holiday perk, but as soon as I thought of that, I was reminded of the wages we were going to have to pay out since this was one of Skyfall’s few paid holidays. Not to mention there was also a second smaller amusement park in Nyx, one that was set up with shuttles so the Morosians could attend as well, that park was admission by donation only.
It wasn’t often that Silas treated the Morosians so nicely, his attitude had soured even more since a great deal of Morosians were greywaster immigrants, and according to Silas’s beliefs, I had been kidnapped by greywasters. This was a testament to Silas
’s jovial mood, or perhaps a testament to the fact that he really did seem to be a manic-depressive psychopath.
I watched Finn as he took off his cat ears and examined them, but grew suspicious when his eyes lifted to look up at me.
And I had a right to be suspicious. Finn giggled, and with a raise of his arms, he tried to put the ears on my head.
I recoiled away. “Dream on,” I chuckled. “Not going to happen.”
Finn’s grin widened. “Please? For a second!” he begged. “No one will see you.”
“Absolutely not!” I laughed when Finn quickly tried to place the cat ears on my head. I managed to duck and dodged him, but in doing so, the cat ear headband fell to the grassy ground.
“Maybe tonight if you’re good, I’ll wear them,” I said to Finn as he leaned down to pick them up. “That should make–”
Suddenly there was a loud thunder crack, one that shredded the air like an audible chainsaw, and at the same time, I felt an impact so hard on my chest it threw me off of my feet.
I landed hard on the ground, the wind getting knocked out of me. I gasped for air, my chest feeling like it was being crushed by an invisible force, worse than my heart attack six years ago, and when another ear-splitting break of noise boomed through the air, it was this time followed by a small explosion not two feet in front of me, an explosion that sent a chunk of grass high up into the air and rained dirt down onto me.
“ELISH!” I heard Finn shriek. “ELISH!” His voice was followed by other desperate tones. My ears were failing me though; a static was pushing itself out of my brain and leaking down my ear canals.
However, my eyes were working. I looked past Finn as tears streamed down his face, and saw Julian running towards me.
Julian took one look at my chest, then his eyes scanned the buildings that surrounded us.
“Get Elish to safety!” he barked to Finn, then he darted off in a full run and disappeared out of sight.
No, my brothers… they had to get to safety. Finn, I have to get Finn to safety.
I have to get up.
With Finn’s help, I struggled to my knees and tried to stand, but fear found its way through the static when I heard Jack scream.
“Finn, get them to the bathrooms!” I tried to yell, the strength needed to raise my voice sucking the breath from my lungs. I looked forward to try and find my brothers, and saw Apollo and Artemis hiding behind a tree, but I couldn’t see Jack.
Another thundercrack broke the chaotic air, and only a foot away, a chunk of grass flew up into the air, raining dirt on the two of us.
“Finn… leave me!” I gasped. He was too small; it was taking all of his strength to keep me steady. I couldn’t stand on my own, but he had to leave me.
“I won’t! I’m not fucking leaving you. They’re aiming for you!” Finn cried. He tried to pull me forward but my legs weighed a thousand pounds each. I couldn’t move them. Why the fuck couldn’t I move them?
“This is an order, dammit!” I yelled. “Leave!” I fell to my knees, and when I looked down, I saw my button-down was soaked through with blood.
I’d been shot. I’d been shot in the chest.
The next crack of gunfire was so close my ears rang. I dug deep, deeper than I ever had before, but it wasn’t to run. I grabbed Finn’s shirt and looked right into his eyes.
“You will leave me and you will do it now,” I said, my voice strangled with panic. “Finn, leave me. Leave me. That’s an ord-”
Our eyes had been locked when the bullet entered the side of his head. Two sets of eyes, each holding terror and desperation for the other person. Finn had been desperate to save me, as I had been desperate to save him.
But even though it was my duty as his master to save him…
I could not.
The side of his head jerked to the right, then his body was thrown off balance. As I screamed and caught him, adrenaline taking away the pain I was feeling from my gunshot wound, he fell to the ground, my arms thrown protectively over him.
Blood poured from the wound, and for what seemed like hours, I stared at the trickling red leaking from a golf ball size hole in his head.
I could see his skull.
“Finn.”
At first it was a whisper, a whisper that boomed in my head so loudly it drowned out the noises around me. But soon, I realized I was screaming it.
I was screaming. I was putting my hand over the hole in his skull in a desperate attempt to stem the flow of blood, I was patting his cheek which was becoming grey. I was screaming. I was shaking.
“FINN!”
“FINN!!?”
As if they’d appeared out of nowhere, people surrounded me, people I recognized, and a voice… a voice I’d heard since before I was born.
“Save him!” I screamed at Silas, my voice dying with a noose around its neck. And when Silas, now standing by Finn’s head, looked to me, his eyes large and fearful, I stared pleadingly back, a desperation taking over every puppet string I’d spent years attaching to him.
None of that mattered now. The only thing that mattered now… was my Finny.
“Save him,” I pleaded. “Save him.”
Save him. Please, Silas. Please, Master.
Save Finn.
I heard a flurry of handheld radios going off as the thiens attacked whoever it was that had rained those bullets down on me, but all noise faded into the back of my mind, replaced with a low roar that was expanding inside of my skull. There was no noise after that, no one else in this world but me, Silas, and Finn.
Silas knelt down, and when I saw the anguish in his eyes, I lost my mind.
When Silas was scared… when Silas was scared… it meant things… no…
“NO!” I sobbed. I looked down at Finn, glassy red coating my right hand so thoroughly there was no white skin.
And then I looked at his eyes, they slowly blinked.
They didn’t open.
“NO!” I screamed. I patted Finn’s cheek. “Finn. Finn! FINN!” There has to be something I can do. There has to fucking be something I can do!
I was helpless. The most powerful man in Skyfall, who had his seeds, his gardens, his silver strings that controlled the puppets around me – was helpless.
I can’t. No. No. I can’t. I can’t lose him. I can’t lose him.
“FINN!”
“Elish!” Silas’s hand came out of nowhere and grabbed my arm. I looked at him desperately, begging words caught in my throat, and felt him squeeze my arm.
His eyes… there was only agony in them. “Lovely,” he said, his voice breaking. “Lovely boy. Finn is going to die.” Tears filled my eyes, my head shaking back and forth. “You must make his last moments be as peaceful as possible. Let him not pass on to you screaming or with you running to get him to the hospital; he’s fading fast. Love, you’re his master and you must be strong for him. Hold him and tell him you love him. That’s the best thing you can do for Finn right now.”
I looked at him, tears distorting his image. My body was shaking, my clenched teeth the only thing keeping me from screaming.
But then I looked down. I looked down at Finn, at his eyes now half open, at his mouth that inhaled shallow breaths. And I did the hardest thing I had ever done.
I removed my hand, my soul crushing when I realized there was pink tissue mixed in with the blood, and with Silas’s help, I held Finn in my arms.
“I love you,” I whispered through a breaking voice. I stroked his greying cheek with my fingers, and I tried, I tried with all of me… to remain strong for him. “I love you, and I’m sorry I realized that too late.” I brushed back a spiral curl, and in the silence… I heard his fading heartbeat. “You… you…” My teeth clenched tighter and my shoulders trembled as I tried to force down the scream of anguish. “You’re going to go to a place I cannot follow, not yet. But I’ll be here, love, I’ll be right here with you the entire time.” I bowed my head and shut my eyes tight, trying to wake myself up from this nightmare. “I
love you.”
I heard his last breath, and I heard his last heartbeat. And when I knew he was gone, the hastily gathered resolve left with him, and I broke harder than I had ever broken before.
Somehow, when I was lost to the physical world, rendered a sobbing mess that could control nothing, not even my violently trembling body, I found myself in Silas’s arms. He held me like he used to hold me when I was young, but instead of consoling me, instead of being strong for me… Silas cried with me.
But in the throes of the greatest pain I had ever felt, I was comforted by that fact. Though I did not know why. I didn’t care to figure out why in that moment, my heart, my dead, dying, diseased heart, was with Finn.
And it would stay with him.
~
There is so much I want to say about Finneus. I could write a book alone on that boy, and I could write a series about just how much I loved him. Even now, fifty-eight years later, a man engaged and in love, my heart still aches for that boy with the curly blond hair, to the point where my cheeks are currently wet with tears.
Finn was a pure soul. He was good. Finn loved without limits, without strings. Finn gave all of himself to me, and asked little in return. That boy, he was a dying breed, and I would spend the rest of my life searching for boys like him to be my sengils, purely because the pain of not having him in my life was too great. But even though Finn was only the first in a line of willowy and gentle blond-haired sengils, it would be five decades before I had someone like him; someone with such a gentle temperament, yet fiercely protective of the master he had loved so much.
He was the bright light in my life, the sun in a world that had only seen brief glimpses of daylight. Finn wasn’t just a pure soul, he brought out the good in me.
But unfortunately when Finn died, all of the good that he had nurtured in this broken, decayed heart, all of the life he’d breathed back into me… died as well.
And this time there was no phoenix bursting out of the hot ash. Where there was resilience, where there was hope, love, drive, there was now nothing, just darkness… cold, dead, darkness.