His hair never changed back, and neither did his eyes. And he couldn’t dye his hair, not at home or at a salon. No color would take. To be honest, he was secretly glad, even if it was just another reminder. He was glad because even though it hurt, he didn’t want to forget.
He wept for his life, for all that time he had spent chasing shadows. He wept for himself, because he was afraid that he had been lost so long he would not know how to live, that he could not, not anymore.
As time passed, he did find the bottom of the pain, and somehow he found a way to make a place for it, and eventually he did start to find his real life again. He worked at the pawn shop, and he didn’t complain, and in a way, he liked it. Part of it was because people started bringing things in for him to fix, and he did it because he might as well, and it turned out that once he stopped hating it so much, once he stopped seeing it as the sign of his decline—really, how could he fall any farther?—once that was gone, he kind of liked it. He fixed a lot of computers, but he fixed toasters too, and TVs, and even once a wheel on a kid’s wagon. He’d really enjoyed that one.
He also bought a house.
Julie and Patty had told him he didn’t need to move out, but it felt right, and so he did it. He worked on the place, fixing the plumbing and stripping the wallpaper, repairing the broken floorboards and re-plastering the ceilings. The pain was back, but he knew now how to feel the pain. He had learned how to live with it.
He started making friends in Summer Hill, and yes, some of them were very strange. Not a one of them was the sort of person that Miles would have looked for in the past. But they were honest, and most importantly, they were real.
He spent a lot of time with Katie. She was still annoying and bossy and crotchety, but she melted, he discovered, when he brought her fresh baked banana bread or fixed her microwave. She was softer with him, and even a year later, she looked at his white hair and gray eyes nervously, as if he were a piece of the universe she didn’t quite know what to do with. And Miles understood, so he was gentle with her, knowing it was hard to watch your illusions die around you. Because he was patient with her, she was patient with him. And it was good, in its way.
He even got along with Warren. His old nemesis had been wary of him ever since the bathroom encounter, and at first Miles had taken some joy in that. But after a while, even that didn’t do anything for him. Warren was just Warren. He’d never be a friend, no. But Miles didn’t want any enemies anymore. When he saw Warren, he smiled. Warren never did relax around him completely. But he did start waving back, and he never so much as murmured a slur at him again.
There was still a hole inside Miles, though, even after a year had passed, and he began to realize that time wasn’t making it any smaller. It was the place where Harry had been, where the love for the man who had helped him become himself still burned, love which in Harry’s absence was pain. Miles was learning how to live with it. Someday maybe he’d find someone else to fill that part of him, but for now it was just there. It wasn’t what he deserved, but life, he decided, wasn’t about getting what you deserved. It was about living. It was about being who you were and appreciating what you had.
And really, he’d have been fine if that had been the end of it, and in some universe, it probably was. But something else happened instead.
ONE DAY, WHILE Miles was working at Patty and Miles’s Pawn and Repair, the bell over the door jingled, and a man walked in. Miles sat behind his workbench, fiddling with a clock radio, and he glanced up briefly at the stranger and nodded before looking back down.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes,” the man said, in a rough voice that was oddly familiar and yet not at all. He plunked something down on the counter. “I’ve come in for a repair.”
Miles looked up, glanced at the item, then shook his head. “Sorry, I can’t do musical instruments.”
He realized what he’d just said, paused in a surreal moment, then shook his head. Nope. He was making it up. It didn’t even look like the same flute, not at all.
The man sighed and leaned forward against the counter. “Miles.”
Miles looked up, again, frowning because he didn’t know this man who knew his name. Then he got a better look at the man, and he faltered.
Good God, but the man looked like Terris. Except it was Terris with pale skin and bad pores and beard stubble. And black hair.
You’re imagining things, he scolded himself. It’s over. Don’t fuck yourself up again just when you’re back on track.
“There’s a music store on Main Street.” Miles pushed the flute back at the man who was not Terris. “I suggest you try there.”
The man’s eyes darkened, and he picked up the flute, waving it threateningly. “I will hit you with this, you know.”
“Hey.” Miles frowned.
The man ignored him. He looked angry. “It was every bit as awful as I told you it would be, and I didn’t enjoy it. None of it. It was like living in tar. And for the record, I didn’t have your cuddly little lesbians to nurse me through it. It was just me, all by myself, off in some ruined corner of the universe, blubbering like a fool. It was awful, damn you.”
“Who are you?” Miles asked carefully.
The man gripped the edge of the counter and leaned over it, his eyes all but shooting sparks at Miles. “Miles Michael Larson, stop being a simpering fool and help me!”
Patty burst through the back door of the shop, hands on her hips. “Is this guy giving you trouble, Miles?”
The man sneered at her. “Oh, please, do try to fine me for swearing. Because I’m just looking for an excuse to fill this damn shop with chickens. Or geese. Which poop more, do you think?”
“What?” Patty said, confused and irritated.
“Terris?” Miles whispered.
Terris turned to him and gave him a withering look. “No. It’s your Uncle Edward. Of course it’s me.” He waved impatiently at the flute. “Now. Fix it, and end this, please.”
Miles picked up the flute, his hands trembling, the tension coming back, the silent scream rising, and he beat it all down as quickly as he could. No. No. Don’t hope. It’s dangerous, and it will hurt. Don’t hope. Don’t. You’re imagining this. You’re—
I will shove that flute, Terris said inside his head, straight up your ass.
Miles shut his eyes and tightened his hand around the instrument. He was glad for Patty’s shouting, even glad for the geese and the chickens that suddenly filled the place when Patty tried to pull Terris away, because they gave him space to think. But it was dangerous, because the hope, which he had thought was carefully put away, came raging back as if it had never been beaten back at all.
If Terris was here, then Harry could be too.
It was a fracture, a fissure, a tiny spark of hope. It was a whisper that maybe Miles could be fully happy after all. That he wouldn’t have to feel torn in half, that he wouldn’t have to rebuild slowly, achingly putting his heart back into place, that he could have a miracle, something amazing and wonderful just like he always wanted.
But he knew, all the way down to the bottom of his shoes, that that was so much more than he deserved.
Terris sighed.
It isn’t about what you deserve, he whispered to Miles, but with more tenderness than Miles remembered. It’s about what you dare to take.
Miles swallowed hard and looked up at him. “I dared before, in Atlanta.”
Terris’s smile was wry. “You reached for ghosts and illusions. You reached for power, for safety. You reached for acceptance, but not of yourself. Your heart yearned, but your soul would not answer, because you only asked for dreams. Reach for something real this time. Reach for what you learned. With him.” His hand closed over Miles’s own. “For what you taught me to reach for too.”
Blinking back a sudden blurriness in his eyes, Miles knew that even though there was no guarantee, even though he was terrified, even though he knew if it didn’t work out it would open the wound all ove
r again, he still had to try.
“Get these birds out of here!” Patty was shouting, so loud that she drew Julie in, too, and through it all Terris just stood there, arms folded and waiting.
Miles turned the flute over several times in his hands. “It doesn’t look broken,” he said at last, over the din. “It’s just really tarnished.”
“It’s burned,” Terris replied, blithely removing a chicken from the counter.
“Then how am I supposed to fix it?” Miles asked.
Terris gave him a withering look. “Not fix the flute—fix this! Our lives! Play it and bring them back!”
Even with the chickens and geese, the room went eerily quiet, at least for Miles.
“Back?” he echoed, his voice hoarse.
“Yes,” Terris snapped. “Don’t you think it’s been long enough?”
“But—” Miles shook his head, his vision blurring, his chest hurting so very, very badly. “But I died—”
“You died in the dream world. In faerie. Not here. I used the pill and sent you back. But they’re there, and you need to call them. They can’t cross over until you bring them. Do it, Miles, and end this.”
All this time? All this time, he didn’t have to have suffered? All he would have had to do was play the flute, and it would have been over?
“Why have you been gone so long?” Miles demanded.
Terris snorted. “How good have you felt in the past year?”
Miles didn’t answer that. He just looked down at the flute, and the year fell away. All the pain was back, ready and waiting to kill him all over again.
“Why do I have to play it?” he asked quietly.
“Because it’s you Murali chose. Because you’re human. Because it’s just the way it worked out. Or because he wanted to drive me crazy. All options, plus several others, are equally as likely.” He waved a hand at Miles. “Play it already. Get this done.”
And then Miles knew. He looked up at Terris, his heart sinking again. “You aren’t sure. You don’t know for certain that they can come back. You’ve tried it yourself, but it didn’t work, and now you’re just hoping I can pull a miracle out of my ass.”
“Don’t make this worse,” Terris said tightly. “Just do it. We’ll find out if I’m right soon enough.”
That wasn’t the answer Miles wanted. He’d wanted assurance, a guarantee. He didn’t get it, and for a minute, he didn’t think he could do it, couldn’t play it and see, even if there was even a small chance. Better to live in pain managed than risk a chance of ending up worse than he was.
Or risk finding he could have the only thing he truly wanted.
Dreams are just illusions, he thought, fearful, and raised the flute to his lips, hands shaking. But may I please, just once, have this one?
There was no voice inside the flute, no whisper telling him what to play. There was no help, no hope, no guide, just a tarnished bit of silver with holes in it, which sounded frankly quite bad when he played. He tried a scale, up, and then down, and then he set the flute back down on the counter.
Nothing happened. Terris closed his eyes.
And then, like the end of a movie, like a rainbow across the sky, the door opened, and Murali and Harry walked in.
Miles thought he was dreaming. He feared he was, and his fear kept him in place, made him dig his fingers into the counter, made his knees lock and his heart pound, made him want to run even though it was Harry coming toward him, Harry with his arms held out tentatively, Harry with a sad, weary smile and tears in his eyes. Miles held himself still, afraid that this too would fade away.
Harry came around the counter, took him carefully in his arms, and it was real.
The dam Miles had gotten so used to holding up inside him burst, and he sobbed. When he lifted his head and looked into Harry’s eyes, he felt the hollow place inside him begin to fill with Harry’s love. And instead of aching and falling back into sorrow, he cried in joy, and he laughed, and he embraced Harry again, and kissed him.
On the other side of the counter, the same thing was happening, except Terris was more reserved, embracing Murali more elegantly, shutting his eyes and resting his forehead against his lover’s shoulder, using the tips of his fingers to wipe away the bits of tears he could not stop.
Miles turned back to Harry.
“You came,” Miles said, his voice shaking. “I didn’t think you would. I didn’t think you could.”
“It was tricky,” Harry admitted. “And sometimes unpleasant. We could not find you until someone played the flute with a pure heart. We kept waiting, and we kept hoping.”
“Did you really think,” Murali said, poking Terris in the chest, “that after the two of you sacrificed so much to save us, that we wouldn’t turn around and do the same for you?”
“My sacrifice was unwilling and accidental,” Terris said tartly, but there was a new edge to his barb, and Miles, who now understood pain very well, knew that he did not mean it, and thankfully, Murali did too.
“What,” Patty said, coming back in after shoving the last of the birds out the door, “the hell is going on?”
Murali slipped an arm around Terris’s waist and turned to smile handsomely at her. “Why, madam, I’ve come to grant you a wish.”
Patty gave him a wary look. “No thank you. You’re one of those faeries. I’ve heard about you. I’m fine with what I’ve got.”
Murali looked amused. He turned to Julie. “What about you, my lady?”
“Don’t answer him,” Patty said sharply.
But Julie stared at him, weeping silently. She looked shaken to her core, and when she was able, she shook her head. “What I long for your kind cannot give.”
Murali smiled a cryptic smile. “But that’s where you’re wrong. I am not your usual faerie, madam, and neither is my lover.” He turned and stroked the side of Terris’s face. “There is almost no limit to what we can do.”
Julie studied him a moment, and Terris, too. She took Patty’s hand, glanced at Miles, then spoke.
“I want harmony. I want the whole world to be able to see what I see, so that it harms itself no more.”
Murali laughed and shook his head. “You are as bad as Miles! But then, I should have suspected as much, because you both have the same soft heart. No, my lady. I cannot and will not grant your wish. For one, that power is not mine to grant because it is already there. The problem is that they do not wish to see it. Life is beauty, but it must be pain, too, and humans deal with that by choosing what they wish to see. However”—his eyes twinkled, and he reached for Terris’s hand—“I think there’s no harm in giving you a little respite from that.”
He let go of Terris’s hand, held up his arms, and a soft, warm wind began to swirl around them.
“I will ask this place, this space around us, to reflect the love it sees in us, to make the invisible visible. Love is the most powerful magic of all, and there are three sets of lovers here. On the count of three, we shall all kiss, and because of the spell, we will see in this place the visual representation of the love which we have made, simply by surrendering to each other, acknowledging both the beauty and the pain.”
“Are you going to make a mess?” Patty asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Possibly,” Murali acknowledged. “But if I do, I’ll clean it up. If I don’t, however—if you like what you see, may I have a job?”
“Job!” Julie said, aghast.
“Him too,” Murali said, pointing at Terris.
“No,” Terris and Patty said in unison.
“Me, then,” Harry said, placing a kiss on Miles’s cheek.
“No starting early,” Murali said, shaking a finger at him. He shut his eyes, then nodded. “There. It’s set.”
“I still don’t understand what is going to happen,” Patty groused.
Murali just winked at her. “Just remember, the more love there is, the better it will be. On your marks? Get set? Go!”
Miles had no idea what anyon
e else did, but he needed no further prompting to kiss Harry. He didn’t care if the world fell down, or if nothing more than some dust kicked up—he turned to Harry and kissed him, kissed him with all the ache he had known, with all the longing, with all the sorrow, and most of all, with all the love in his heart. He let it fill him, spilling over and over until it was a river, and he kissed his lover as if the world had no beginning and no end, for in that moment, in that kiss, he knew it was true.
When he had to breathe, he lifted his head and opened his eyes—and laughed.
It was still transforming as he watched, but the room was already vastly different than the one he had been in when he started the kiss. It was no longer dull and crowded with junk but full of merchandise, good merchandise that people would actually buy, priced affordably. The tools at Miles’s bench were good and strong. Not showy, just sturdy. He had shelves full of work to do still, but now Miles saw them not as bits of junk but as people’s prized possessions, the tools and objects which reflected people’s hearts and souls, and through Murali’s spell, he could see that truth clearly.
For a moment he felt puzzled. Had anything actually changed? Were these new tools, was this new merchandise? Or was he simply seeing it with new eyes?
Some things he knew were new. There were vases of flowers everywhere, mostly dried, and the back storeroom was gone, turned now into a huge kitchen filled with everything Julie would ever want to bake with. The door at the back didn’t lead outside anymore, either; it led to a greenhouse which was full of herbs and flowers.
Miles and the Magic Flute Page 19