Walking on Water
Page 28
He licked his lips.
“I cannot let you believe the lie, if that is why you are here.”
“The—lie?”
Her hand withdrew.
“My surgeon lied,” Janez whispered. “He knew—he knew the only reason I would be forced to marry you or your sisters would be to sire children. To be bred. So he lied.”
“You are capable, then?”
“Perfectly so.”
Her lips pursed. “Why does the idea of children repel you?”
“It doesn’t,” Janez replied honestly. “I have had at least one before. But I am already in love. I love—utterly. And the notion of lying with another, of fathering children into a marriage that doesn’t want them—where nobody wants them…”
Father’s disdainful expression flashed in the back of his mind, and Janez flinched.
“I was the spare son,” he said quietly, “and I know how it feels to have one’s father despise you. I will not be that father, Carolina.”
She paused.
Her hands twisted in her lap, and she whispered, “Father loves us very much—but I can see it in his eyes. He wishes at least one of us were a boy.”
A silence swept between them. She seemed to be thinking. Janez, oddly, felt as though he’d little to lose. A princess—however bold—was not about to march before two kings and announce the state of his manhood. And if she left again, without her plan in place, what of it? Janez was, to the world, unwanted once more.
Except to Held. Who was, Janez supposed, a world unto himself.
“Do you wish to lie with me, Janez?”
The question was very soft. Very quiet.
Janez’s reply was the same. “No.”
“Would you?”
“If I did not love another, perhaps. But I do.”
“Will you always?”
Janez brought his gaze up to hers. She looked—afraid, almost. Afraid of his reply. Afraid of his lie.
“Yes.”
A simple truth. And true it was. He knew it. Held was under his skin, coiled about his heart like a serpent, and Janez would never be free of him.
And never try to be.
Her gloved fingers slipped once more over his.
“You may never touch me as a man would his wife,” she whispered, close and intimate but for the words, “and I will never submit to you.”
Janez laughed.
“Carolina,” he said, perfectly frankly, “this is rather more than I think you wish to know, but it bears saying—in such affairs, it is me who submits.”
She laughed, too, then. A flash of brilliance lit up those dark eyes, and her smile beamed white from that face Janez had thought beautiful, but was wrong about entirely. It was ethereal, not mere beauty. It was divinity in the physical, and quite perfect. Yet naught but warm affection beat in his chest, his body and mind already possessed by another.
“I fear I must ask for one kiss on our wedding day, to keep suspicion at bay.”
“All right. I will permit that one thing,” she said and patted his wrist. “And you are a fine dancer. If you find the art again, I reserve the right to own place as the lady you lead upon the floor.”
“Done.”
A bird shot past overhead, and Carolina rustled to her feet.
“Shall we, then?” she asked, extending a hand to help him rise. “Father will need some persuading.”
“Alarik, too, perhaps. He has become overprotective.”
“And when we have informed them of our supposed love,” Carolina continued peaceably, hand tucked once more against his elbow as they passed back into the coolness of the great hall, “would you show me the library? I have heard many things about the library here…”
“Of course,” Janez said. “And when the summer comes, I will show you the ships. Perhaps I will commandeer one last sloop and show you the way the sea kisses a stern at ten knots.”
He kept the smile upon his face as he entered the council room once more and spoke of their supposed love.
Perhaps princes could, in fact, have a happy ending.
Epilogue
THEY RETURNED TO the royal chambers together.
Held watched peaceably as Janez kissed Carolina’s hand, and the great doors closed behind them. And then they parted, mere friends, and Carolina bestowed a smile upon Held before taking her abandoned book from the dresser and vanishing into her adjoining rooms.
That door closed, too, and Janez turned once more—as he always did, in the end—to Held.
Held smiled.
The marriage ceremony had been a grand and lavish affair, and Held had stood through it as a mere manservant, nursing the secret closed in his breast. The kiss at the great stone plinth had been brief, and jealousy had sparked, but then it had been over.
Janez was married now.
“Liebst du sie?” Held asked coyly, as he undid the cloth at Janez’s throat. It dropped away; he kissed the skin beneath it and released the button of his collar.
“Nein.”
The reply was soft and simple, as it had been for the last hundred nights in a row, and Held kissed past each button as he removed undercoat and shirt. He worked determinedly and carefully, yet dropped the clothes to the floor like rags. And only when the prince had been stripped away, and the skyman stood naked before him, did Held speak again.
“Du liebst mich?”
Janez smiled.
“Ja.”
Held kissed him.
It was not like the hungry and desperate kisses of the Winter Palace. It was not like the shy and uncertain thing of the Summer ones.
It was simply—theirs.
They came together like smoke curling into the sky. They twisted about one another as though they relearned these forms anew every night. And so as the palace celebrations fell finally silent beneath them, it was Held who made love to the groom on his wedding night, while the bride slept alone in an adjoining room.
Lover. And wife.
Two people. Two beings. Never to be one. Holding this tiny world between them in perfect, absolute balance. A triangle of defence against anything the world—any world—had to offer.
And when Held’s form was sated, when the twist of their bodies demanded peace instead of pleasure, and he stroked the curly hair of the head resting upon his chest, he knew the map for the rest of his existence.
This place. Right here. Wherever that bed may be, Held would be bound to this skyman, this legend turned to flesh, until the end of his days. He’d lost everything he’d ever known, become a myth and learned to walk on water, left an entire world beneath the waves, bound his very existence to another, for this.
“Do you love her?” he whispered, in his own tongue. The only conversation he’d ever taught to Janez, in a language best forgotten now.
“No,” came the soft reply, mangled about a skyman’s throat.
“Do you love me?”
A smile against his neck. A hand that curled into the skin about his hip.
“Yes.”
And Held knew he would live forever.
Glossary of German Words
Bett, ja? - Bed, yes?
Bitte - Please
Blumen - Flowers
Das ist dein Werk! - This is your work!
Du bist mein. - You are mine.
Du liebst mich? - You love me?
Du. Verheiratet? - You. Married?
Eine Blume - A flower
Eine Frau für meinen Freund! - A woman for my friend!
Ein Pferd - A horse
Ein Vogel - A bird
Er kann nicht reiten. - He cannot ride.
Er lebt! - He lives!
Er lebt noch. - He is still alive.
Fisch - Fish
Geh nicht - Don’t go
Gehen wir sie überraschen. - Let’s go surprise them.
Guten Abend - Good evening
Guten Morgen, Biene. - Good morning, bee.
Hier - Here
Hier drüben - Over here
Hör auf mit dem Geheule! - Stop it with the wailing/crying/whining.
Ich bin hier. - I am here.
Ich bin hier, Janez. Ich bin hier. - I am here, Janez. I am here.
Ich bin hier, mein Bruder. - I’m here, my brother.
Ich liebe dich. - I love you.
Ich muss heiraten. - I have to get married.
Ich verdanke Ihnen mein Leben. - I owe you my life.
Ja - Yes
Jeder einfache Mann kann das, und du bist ein Prinz. - Every simple man can do that, and you are a prince.
Kannst du mich hören? - Can you hear me?
Komm - Come; categorical imperative singular/ familiar address/ command
Kommt - Come; 2nd person conjugation/formal address/request
Küss mich - Kiss me
Liebst du sie? - You love her?
Mein - Mine
Nein - No
Nicht tot - Not dead
Onki - Uncle/endearment
Pilz - Mushrooms
Ruhe - Quiet
Salat - Salad
Sie verstehen kein Wort von dem, was ich sage, oder? - You don’t understand a word of what I’m saying, do you?
Speck - Bacon
Still jetzt - Quiet now
Tot - Dead
Tot, tot, der Prinz ist tot. - Dead, dead, the prince is dead.
Und für mich, Kapitän! Eine Frau! - And me, captain! A woman!
Unverheiratet - Unmarried
Verheiratet - Married
Vorsichtig - Careful now
Was? - What?
Wasser - Water
Wir sind hier, Janez. - We’re here, Janez.
Wir sind hier, mein Bruder. - We’re here, my brother.
Zwei Blumen - Two flowers
About the Author
Matthew J. Metzger is an ace, trans author posing as a functional human being in the wilds of Yorkshire, England. Although mainly a writer of contemporary, working-class romance, he also strays into fantasy when the mood strikes. Whatever the genre, the focus is inevitably on queer characters and their relationships, be they familial, platonic, sexual, or romantic.
When not crunching numbers at his day job, or writing books by night, Matthew can be found tweeting from the gym, being used as a pillow by his cat, or trying to keep his website in some semblance of order.
Email: mattmetzger@hotmail.co.uk
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mattjmetzger
Twitter: @MatthewJMetzger
Website: www.matthewjmetzger.com
Other books by this author
Big Man (coming April 2018)
Coming soon from Matthew J. Metzger
Big Man
Excerpt
THIS WAS HOW everything started—on a Friday afternoon, at the very end of school, three days into the summer term and in the middle of an unreasonable, unseasonable heatwave. It had been a Friday like any other until Tom Fallowfield stuck his boot in.
Literally.
It went a bit like this, to Max’s admittedly patchy memory of the entire incident.
At three thirty-one, the bell rang, and he was dismissed out of his maths class. Friday was a notorious day for people being bored and at a loose end, so Max had—as was his habit—hurried off to his locker to try to get out of school before anyone caught up to him.
At three thirty-six, Max reached his locker. His fingers fumbled with the lock in a hurry, the metal loose in his grip because it was so ridiculously hot. Sweat was dampening the hair at his temples.
At three thirty-eight, his fingers slipped on the waxy cover of his geography textbook and sent the whole pile tumbling to the floor.
And at three thirty-eight-and-a-half, a dirty Adidas trainer pressed down on said textbook just as Max reached for it.
That was kind of when Max knew he was a bit fucked.
“All right, Fatso?”
He didn’t have to look up. The trainer narrowed it down to one of two people who would stomp on the textbook he was trying to pick up, and the deep, drawling voice—like some villain out of a film—narrowed it down to one. Jazz Coles. And Jazz Coles was bad news.
Max swallowed convulsively and gathered the rest of his things to his chest protectively. He staggered back to his feet and turned to shove them all back in his locker. His hands were shaking. There was sweat breaking out on the backs of his thighs and under his arms, pooling in the joints and fleshy bits.
“Oi. You gone deaf, Fatso? All that grease clogged your ears?”
“M’just in a hurry, Jazz,” he mumbled.
“You what?”
“I said, I’m just in a hurry,” he said a bit louder and squashed his other books into the locker haphazardly. The corridor was slowly emptying, and the emptier it got, the faster his heart was beating.
“You’re fucking rude, you are. You ought to look at someone when he’s talking to you. You want Tom to teach you some manners? Tom’s good with manners.”
“Sorry,” Max mumbled, turning hastily before the threat could be carried out. The metal of his locker bit uncomfortably into his back, pressing grooves into his fat, and he could feel his shirt beginning to stick to him. “I’m in a rush, that’s all.”
All three of them were there. Jazz Coles, Aidan Hooper, and Tom Fallowfield. Fallowfield was in Max’s year, the other two the year above. They went to some football club or something together—Max wasn’t sure. All he knew was that Jazz was the clever one, with the orders and the insults, while Aidan was the sidekick who screeched like a hyena and kept them supplied in fags and weed on a regular basis from his older brother’s grow, and Tom…
Tom was the dangerous one. When the insults stopped, Tom started. And nobody wanted Tom to start anything.
“Not got time to talk to us, then?” Jazz drawled. “Why’s that? You busy?”
“I—yes. Yes, just busy, that’s all, busy weekend…”
“Busy doing what? Got a new girlfriend?”
Tom snorted. Aidan cackled and said, “Eurgh, Jazz, man, I’ll bring up my lunch.”
“Imagine that sweaty sack of lard slithering and grunting on some poor girl. You’d crush her, wouldn’t you, Farrier?”
Max’s face heated up, and his hair stuck to his scalp. He could faintly smell his own underarms, and the metal glueing shirt to back was beginning to heat up too, at Jazz’s cool, slow delivery.
“Fatso Farrier, the flat-fucker. ’Cause that’s what she’d be once you were done. Best stick to boys, yeah? Let your boyfriend fuck you, then nobody’ll suffocate.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend.”
“Would you like one?”
“I—no, I, uh—”
“Just as well,” Jazz continued blithely. “Nobody has a drowning in folds fetish. So if it’s not a girlfriend or a boyfriend with some sick kinks, why’re you too busy to talk to us?”
The corridor was empty. Max started to panic.
“Answer me, Farrier!”
“I—just—plans, you know, plans…”
“What plans? Sale on at Greggs?” Jazz asked. “New bakery opened up? Or is Mummy taking pity on her lonely little wobblebottom, and baked you a chocolate cake?”
Aidan gave a whooping cackle, and Jazz kicked the forgotten geography book towards Max. It skittered across the dusty floor, hitting Max’s shoe with a dull thump.
“Best not leave that here,” Jazz said. Hands in his pockets, pale face regarding him through narrowed blue eyes, he looked calculating—and Max couldn’t figure out what he was calculating. “Oi! Fatso! Pick it up, then.”
“Thank you,” Max mumbled, hoping it would buy him a bit of a reprieve from…whatever Jazz was planning, and stooped to pick it up. His fingers scrabbled uselessly on the plastic cover, wet with anxiety.
“Thank you?” Jazz echoed. “Very polite, Fatso, might want to make it sound fucking sincere next time.”
“Here, Jazz, fancy a game?”
That deep rumble was the only warn
ing that Max got before Tom’s boot—because of course Tom, totally mad, sadistic Tom Fallowfield, wore boots to school on a regular basis—connected with the side of his head.
Hard.
Max would have liked to say that pain exploded in his head, that he saw visions of God or heard the heavenly choir, that it was like dropping into a Tim Burton movie.
Actually, he just heard a massive bang.
And then he woke up in the back of an ambulance, and knew he was in deep shit.
That was how it started.
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