But it was too late. Miles roared, and with the image of Harry plowing him roughly shaking his mind, he came hard, filling Terris with his cum. When he finished, he fell off him and onto the petals, still twitching and moaning from the thrill of the phallus inside him.
Harry. Oh, Harry.
Terris leapt on him, but not in lust; he grabbed Miles’s shoulders and bore down on him, his face twisted in rage.
“You’re ruining everything!” he shouted, and Miles just looked up at him in confusion as the dream began to fade and he found himself back in his room once again.
He was lying naked on his bed, which was full of white rose petals. There was the distinct pressure of something hard and huge in his ass, and when he reached down for it, he felt the belt Terris had tied, and with a gasp and a grunt, he pulled out the phallus Terris had put there.
It was silver.
Chapter Seven
Do not let me face my past.
Hold me close and hold me fast.
Tie my body to the mast.
Let me see only pleasure everlast.
MILES DIDN’T TELL Katie or anyone else about the dream. He gathered up every last rose petal in a garbage bag and hid it in his closet, and he put the silver phallus in a drawer with his underwear. After that, he simply got dressed, ate breakfast with Julie, then headed over to work with Patty. He worked hard, helping her as much as he could, but it was not out of a desire to please or to thank her. He worked to escape.
If he didn’t think about it, he told himself for the thousandth time as he unpacked the last of the estate sale boxes, then it would go away. If he just kept himself busy, if he didn’t think about silver or sleighs or the perfect way Terris tasted or the way his heart had lifted up when he thought of Harry pressing him down into the petals, kissing him deeply as he rubbed their cocks together—
Falling forward and resting his forehead against an unopened crate, Miles admitted his strategy was not only dubious, it wasn’t working. He was thinking about Terris and Harry all the time now.
The only way he didn’t think of them was to murmur out loud like a madman, “Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.” If he did that and imagined a big black square, he could drag himself off course for about fifteen minutes, tops.
He was so fucked.
Julie noticed that he was upset, but Miles deflected all her concerns. It wasn’t that he didn’t want help. He just didn’t want to go back to Katie’s again, because her “go to sleep” strategy so did not work, and neither did her charm, which Miles had eventually just thrown away. Julie couldn’t help him either. No one could.
But once Patty was in bed that night, Julie came back out to the TV room where Miles was trying to think about the evening news instead of Terris and failing miserably. She curled up on the couch beside him and said nothing, just reached out and took his hand.
Miles stayed rigid for a minute, then gave in and let his head fall to her shoulder.
“I’m scared,” he admitted in a whisper.
Julie kissed his hair and waited for him to speak again.
Miles stared down at the carpet, his eyes seeing dull brown fibers, his mind remembering a blanket of petals. “It pulls at me, Julie. All the time. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing or what I try. It’s like I can’t win no matter what I do. I don’t know why I’m even trying. And, really, I’m not. I haven’t used the flute. I’m scared to. But I just keep slipping away, a little deeper each time. And all the while I ache, feeling like if I don’t go to find Terris I’ll die. It’s ridiculous, and I know that, but I can’t help it. And I don’t know how to stop this. I’m too scared to try anything, so I do nothing. I’m being dragged down to hell an inch at a time instead of all at once.” He shut his eyes and sighed, a little raggedly. “And I’m so tired. But the worst thing I can do is go to sleep. That much I know.”
“I can help you with the sleeping part,” Julie said gently. She was stroking his hair. “But first I want to talk to you about something.”
Miles lifted his head and looked at her. “What’s that?”
Her hand never stopped stroking his hair, but she looked out across the room at nothing in particular, her eyes soft and sad as she said, “Being scared.”
Miles stilled. He wasn’t sure why, but he had the feeling they were on something of the edge of a precipice here. “Okay,” he said at last.
Julie kept her gaze unfocused, still lifted across the room as she continued. “I know that Patty and Katie don’t really quite believe you, or that they believe you but keep thinking there’s some rational explanation. I expected that from Patty. I’m a little surprised at Katie, but then, when I really think about it, it makes sense. Katie likes ritual, and she likes control. She doesn’t like the mystical side of magick—not the true mystery. She believes in a universe she can master, and she deliberately narrows the world to fit that mental image. The idea that some Lord of Dreams could randomly kidnap men and enslave them upsets her. I had hoped it would do so enough for her to challenge it, but—” Julie flattened her lips and shook her head.
Then she turned toward him and looked directly into his eyes.
“I believe you, Miles,” she said. “I believe you because I know there are worlds out there we cannot see or understand. I know, because I’ve seen them myself.”
Miles’s eyes widened. “You mean you’ve seen him too? Terris? Or the Lord of Dreams?”
“Not that world, no. But I’ve seen others. I’ve seen them all the time since I was little. Not worlds outside of our own as much as worlds within, though I’ve seen the other kind too. I can talk to animals. Not with my mouth, but it’s like I look into their eyes and we’re talking to each other. I look into anthills and know what they’re doing, why they’re moving, and I feel what they feel. It’s not feeling like we know it, but there’s something there, much more than we think there is. I can see the worlds that layer over our own too. I’ve seen fairies, and I’ve seen angels. I’ve seen the pixies that live in flowers. I’ve seen all the things that aren’t supposed to be true but are. And I’ve never told anyone else about this before. Not once. Not even Patty.”
That didn’t surprise Miles. Patty would never understand something like this. Miles couldn’t have either as early as a week ago. Now, though—now he understood completely.
“That’s why you’re vegan. Because of the animals. And—the pixies, and things.” She nodded, but then he frowned. “Wait, but you raise chickens! And you send them to be slaughtered! And I’ve seen you prepare beef!”
Julie sighed. “It’s the compromise I’ve had to make. I can’t make everyone vegan, much as I would like to sometimes. I can’t even make most people vegan. I can’t even run my bakery completely vegan. Oh, some people will buy my vegan goods, but not enough to keep us solvent. So I do my best. I keep vegan myself, and I encourage others to follow my example, but I use eggs and cheese and yes, sometimes even meat because it’s what brings us money. I try to use only products from good practice. And yes, sometimes I have to kill a chicken to pay the light bill. I do my best to ease their pain, to make it as clean a death as possible. I talk to them the whole time, and I do what I can. That’s what I’ve had to do, Miles, to survive. I used to lie in bed, worried about all the horrible things I knew were happening but I couldn’t stop. I used to despair over what I could not fix. I do my best, and I do what I can. I listen to my heart, and I find ways to be compassionate to those other worlds, the worlds of animals and fairies and all the wonders, and when I can’t, I apologize, and I mourn. I’ve found my peace in compromise.” She took his hand. “You can too.”
She nodded at the silver flute lying on the coffee table. “Don’t stall yourself by focusing on what you can’t do or what might go wrong. Use what you know. Use what you have. Use your intelligence, Miles. Use your wit. Use your handiness. You’re good at puzzles, at fixing things. Use that. Use all of it. And above all”—she reached out and put a h
and to his chest, right over his heart—“use this.”
Miles tucked his head so he could look down at her hand, so small and slender, so fragile but so warm, so gentle—and all of a sudden his eyes were blurry from unshed tears.
“I don’t want to screw up again,” he whispered. He held the tears back by sheer force of will, but his voice broke as he added, “I can’t take that, not anymore.”
“You didn’t screw up, Miles,” Julie said gently. “You had bad luck.”
“I don’t have anything,” he said, gruffly. “Nothing, Julie. No money, no career, no boyfriend, no confidence—I have nothing but this horrible aching for a man who might want to kill me, who may be turning me over to a man who wants to enslave me.”
“You have me,” Julie pointed out, “and Patty. And even Katie. Don’t listen to the shadows of your heart, Miles, the yearnings. Listen to its beat. Feel its pulse. Feel the life inside you that connects you to all life. Feel the part of you that no one can hurt, no one can destroy. Feel your soul, Miles, and trust in its wisdom.” She brushed a kiss across his cheek. “Come on. Let me help you sleep.”
Miles had his doubts about this, but it turned out she knew what she was doing. She laid him on a blanket on the floor, and as he held himself rigid, she whispered, calling to people he could not see, asking them to come watch over him. Miles didn’t know if she was calling ghosts or pixies or angels or something else entirely. He didn’t ask, and very soon he didn’t care. He was just grateful. Because as the invisible visitors circled around him, he could feel them. He couldn’t see them, but he could feel their warmth and their protection. He felt the safe space they created for him, and most importantly, he felt the pull of the Lord of Dreams cease. It was temporary, he knew. But it was enough.
He dreamed of tiny little people who held his hands and danced with him in a circle all night long.
When he woke, he was refreshed. He didn’t know anything more than when he’d gone to sleep, but he felt collected and recharged, and he felt positive for the first time. He had a plan, too, and he was going to pursue it right after breakfast.
Julie waited for him in the kitchen, and she smiled warmly as he pulled up a stool at the breakfast bar. “Hungry?” she asked, but she was already pulling a carton of eggs out of the refrigerator.
But as she set them down to get a bowl, Miles stared at the eggs with new eyes. He thought of the chicks the eggs could have been. He thought of the horrible living conditions chickens had in factory farms, a fact which he’d known the night before, but this morning somehow seemed more poignant. He thought of the little people who had danced in his dreams, the people Julie had called for him.
He thought of Julie.
When she reached for the eggs, he caught her hand and stopped her. She looked at him, surprised.
“Could I—” He glanced at the eggs again, thought of how good they tasted, but then thought of what it would mean for Julie to make them for him, of the apologies she would have to make. There wasn’t any contest.
He cleared his throat. “Can I just have what you’re having?”
Julie’s face went soft, and she kissed him hard and full on the mouth. When he blinked, she laughed, face flushed with happiness. Then she put the eggs back into the fridge and began pulling out supplies in earnest.
“You won’t miss them,” she promised, and Miles smiled, his heart full, knowing that she was right. He wouldn’t.
Miles rose and crossed the room and started rooting around in the drawer underneath the microwave.
“What are you doing?” Julie asked as she measured out potatoes and onion and tofu.
“Looking for my tools. I’m going to fix your food processor,” he said. He paused long enough to accept her kiss, then began to search in earnest.
AFTER BREAKFAST, MILES went to the library and researched silver.
It would have taken him ten minutes on Google, but he still didn’t trust himself with computers, so he did it the old-fashioned way—he looked up the information in books. He sat for an hour with a notebook and a pen and a pile of science books and encyclopedias, and when he had all the notes he could take, he headed over to the café, ordered a bottomless cup of coffee, spread his notes out over the table, and tried to make it all make sense. It wasn’t an easy task.
Silver, he quickly learned, was an interesting metal full of useful properties, but nothing he learned about it explained Terris, Harry, or the elusive Lord of Dreams. He learned silver was a great conductor of electricity, that it was used in photography because it was the best refractor of light. Silver had antibacterial properties and had been used in wound dressing for a long, long time. It wasn’t poisonous, but vapors could make you sick and eventually dead. Electrospinning technology allowed silver to be used in fabrics. The alchemical symbol for silver was once the same as the symbol for the moon. It was stable in water. It was vulnerable to nitric acid and concentrated sulfuric acid. It was an ideal catalyst. It was used in mirrors, cutlery, and jewelry.
And phalluses.
Miles leaned back and tossed his pen onto the table. None of this was helping. He was barking up the wrong tree, clearly, no closer to an answer than he’d been when he began.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” a voice said from across the table.
Miles jerked his head up and saw Terris sitting on the other side of his booth. “Oh God. I’m dreaming again.”
“You’re always dreaming, darling.” Terris put his chin in his hand and leaned over the table, surveying the mess of Miles’s notes. He was wearing his white coat again, and his long silver hair spilled over his shoulders, shining in the dull light of the café. He extended an elegant finger toward the paper in front of Miles where he’d begun cataloging all the silver things he’d seen since this whole business started. “Here. You want to keep focusing here.”
Miles glanced around. There weren’t many people in the café in the middle of the afternoon, but there were a few. “Can anyone else see you?”
“That’s a good question,” Terris observed without looking up from Miles’s notes. He reached for a styrofoam cup which looked like it had a vanilla milkshake in it and took an absentminded sip from the straw. He made a face, swallowed, then nodded. “Yes, you’re very thorough, aren’t you? I’m not sure there’s a property of silver that you missed here. You have everything but the Old English translation, I think.”
Miles frowned down at his notes. “How in the world would that help anything?”
“You might as well ask how knowing that ‘silver is stable in water’ will be helpful,” Terris said.
Miles threw down his pencil and glared at his companion. “Certainly you aren’t going to be much of an assistance. You work for him, that Lord of Dreams. You’re trying to serve me up for his lunch.”
Terris clucked his tongue. “He knows so much about silver, but so little about anything else.”
“Then tell me.” A few people from nearby tables glanced at Miles, but he ignored them. “Tell me what the hell is going on here!”
“Why would you trust me, if you think I’m serving you up for lunch?”
“I don’t, but at this point I’ll take any information I can get, even lies.”
Terris regarded him coolly for several minutes. Miles tried to look defiant, but he knew it was worthless because Terris could read his mind. That’d be a nice start, he thought, bitterly, knowing why he can read my mind. Not that he’s going to tell me.
“Why isn’t half as interesting as how.” Terris sounded amused, like always, but this time there was a funny edge about him. He picked up his milkshake again, took a sip, then passed it over to Miles. “Here. Try it.”
Miles gave him a withering look. “You expect me to believe that you’re reading my mind with a vanilla milkshake?”
Terris arched an eyebrow and shook the cup enticingly.
Would he try to kill me? Miles wondered, and Terris rolled his eyes. Miles sighed and took a sip.
He gagged.
Terris took the cup back and helped himself again, then looked curiously into the cup. “Do you think vanilla would mask it? I have my doubts, but it could be worth a try.” He passed it back over to Miles and tilted his head to the side. “Is that any better?”
Miles, still cringing from his first sip, hesitantly took another. If anything, it was worse than the first time. “It tastes like I’m licking the back of a filmstrip,” he said, gagging. “With a hint of vanilla.”
Terris shrugged, resigned, and took the cup back. But his eyes were dancing, and he stared hard at Miles, as if waiting for something. Miles fidgeted under the scrutiny, half-afraid to find out what Terris was going to do now. Nothing happened. The only thing that changed was that there was this faint buzzing sensation in his head, probably from stress.
Terris pursed his lips and shook his head. He passed the cup over again. “Just one more sip, but not a big one. Despite your fears, I have no interest in hurting you.”
Miles wanted to tell him to fuck off and take his disgusting milkshake with him, but there was something in Terris’s expression that made him hesitate. The buzzing grew louder, and he started to feel dizzy. He looked warily at the cup. What the hell was in there?
“What did you tell me it tasted like?” Terris asked, in a question that wasn’t a question so much as a prompt. Then his hand strayed to Miles’s notes and pointed to a paragraph.
Miles read through them out loud, frowning and pressing his fingers against his temple to ward off the headache that had crept up out of nowhere. “Refractor. Used in photography as silver nitrate, silver bromide, silver iodine—” Miles stopped short. Like licking a filmstrip. He looked up at Terris, eyes wide. There was silver in this milkshake?
“Sorry, darling, I was pointing to the paragraph where you said that it was a conductor.” Except that he hadn’t—that wasn’t even on that page. Terris kept his stare leveled at Miles. “High concentrations cause dizziness, disorientation, headaches, and unconsciousness.” Terris tilted the cup toward Miles. “Just a tiny sip more.”
Miles and the Magic Flute Page 11