Pale: 5.b - Interlude
Author: Wildbow

Interlude

Normal people counted time by steady increments, like the serpent’s sway of the metronome.  Daniel studied the anatomy of a cloud against the night sky, backlit by the moon, and let it tell its inconsistent passage of time.

Easily an hour’s time passed in the time it took him to exhale once, slowly, watching the cloud.  Clementine continued her conversation with the Deer.  Clementine had pretty Eastern features, a fine Western way of holding herself and picking out her clothes, and scars here and there that didn’t hold to the notions of east or west or north or south.  They were scars that, if they were to be described with directions, and those directions were to get names, were a black direction, a death direction.  The road one walked to an early demise.  To the worst things.

Daniel had started in one place.  He didn’t remember what came before it, except what Shellie had made him hold onto.  His name, his relationship to her.

He’d traveled, and he’d stopped.  He’d reached the end of a road and all that surrounded him was freefall.  Horrendous and cold and lonely.

He had a direction he wanted to travel.  He wanted more of what he’d left behind.  Right now, on the cusp of freefall, he lay with his cheek on the picnic table in a park, his arms draped out across the surface, back arching uncomfortably to hold the position.  This was a place that smelled faintly of car exhaust, gasoline, fatty foods, smelled less faintly of grass and Faerie things, and smelled strongly of blood.  The wood was coarse and rough, carelessly hewn out.  His clothes were rougher still.  He could feel sweat in his eyes and it made his hair stick to him.

He had once dwelt in a place where there had been little freedom.  The singing had been hard and heartfelt, and every day had left him as less of the Daniel he’d once been.  But there, even in the Aulwasr Temere, where everything had been meant to intimidate and promise pain, there had been sweetness.  Sheets of wormsilk and skins taken from animals and people bathed in tears.  The hallways had been made to gather up and shape the flows of air, so they felt like silk and elicited goosebumps, if one was walking toward an important place, or chills followed by sweet relief, or touches of air against the fine hairs of the body, that felt like the caresses of hands all over.

There were things that were nice here.  Things that were beautiful.  He could appreciate a lot of it in the same way one could appreciate a bareknuckle brawl.

Wearing clothes felt like a bareknuckle brawl, compared to what he’d once been draped in.  Eating felt like a bareknuckle brawl, compared to what he’d once tasted.  This table felt like a bareknuckle brawl, compared to the art of the surfaces that once surrounded him.

His fingers twisted and contorted, forming claws that made his hands tremble with the exertion.  With those trembling claws, he reached toward the Deer, her rat, and Clementine, cheek still on the table, arms fully extended.

He wanted to drag his fingernails across her skin until he’d scraped away every last mote of dust.  Even traces, as bloody as they would be in the aftermath, would be sweet solace to what ailed him.  A taste of home, a brush of the familiar.  Even in his clumsy hands, he would do more, and he would find relief.

Clementine was in love, and Clementine had been good to him.  A potential lifetime of love in this gritty, ill-tempered world was worth more than any brief solace he might manage.

Their conversation continued while the four arms and two hearts of a cloud danced past the moon.  Their mouths didn’t move.  They were trapped in a different parcel of time.

He had learned patience from dealing with those who would never die and knew that to be their truth, but this still stood to be an interminably long wait.  Sharon had already gotten fed up with trying to call them and wait for them and had driven off.

He stood, stretching, peeling himself away from the coarse wooden table, and walked while still stretching.

Over to the watch that lay on the table.

If he was careful, turning his eye to finer, subtler details, and if he used his nose and the fine hairs of his arms to trace the movement of this blood-laced air, he could see that the world around the golden watch was broken, in very much the same way the watch’s face was broken.  A narrow sliver on the watch cast out boundaries to define a narrow slice of the town, and within that slice time was passing faster.

He shifted, ending his stretch and translating the movement into a momentary writhing, feeling the temperature and the movement of the air around him.  He stepped briefly into another part of the world where time was moving slower, and he luxuriated briefly in how different it was, fingers tugging at the roughness of his silk top, running through his hair.

Another step over, to another place where time moved at another speed.

He had a sense of it.  The air of the sky met the air of the ground with more of a rustle, the slightest of changes in direction.  Light was subtly different.  All across this town, people would go about their days, wondering how their evening had flown by, or finding they were getting a lot done.  But they wouldn’t realize.

It was subtle but he had been educated in the subtle.

He felt his way through the different spaces and passages of time, but the closest one he could find to Clementine’s wasn’t nearly enough to catch him up.  She moved the slowest, and his next best bet was to join her in that parcel of time.

Except she’d asked for privacy to talk.  He wouldn’t defy her.  It made him deeply uncomfortable to go against the express wishes of people he held in esteem.  Back where he’d come from, being disobedient, however well reasoned, was cause for terrible consequences.

By that same measure, he didn’t adjust or touch the golden watch.

Perhaps… perhaps he would take a detour.

He could see the way the light caught on some of the dust.  Even in the nighttime gloom, there were hints of a depth of color that normal human art could only aspire to.

Two faerie, here.  He had a good sense for that type of thing.

He found his way to the sliver of time that was passing fastest.  He could skip down that way, where the light of the town caught on the surface of the shallow river, explore a bit, and see if he couldn’t catch the trail, then come back.

When she was taking as much time as she was, then this was hardly a problem, was it?

There was a path that overlooked the water.  He walked it, walking down to the water, cupping some into his hands, and then quick-walking up the hill to stick to the places where time moved faster.  He cast some into the air, ducked into the next parcel of time, and caught it, then turned, trying to let the breeze catch the hairs on his arm in a way reminiscent of home.  In the doing, he forgot how long his legs were, and stumbled, nearly losing the water.

His long, skinny limbs felt like they were something unnatural, on him.  Time had moved differently there too.  Not in actuality, but in perception, in a place where perceptions could be crafted with more art than mankind could craft space shuttles and collide atoms.  He’d spent what felt like a lifetime as a boy, singing, and out here, the days slipped by without substance or meaningful event.  Here, the speed with which the days passed and his body grew caught him off guard.

He saw a movement in the grass, and crouched low.

A large insect or a rodent.  Which was it?

Insects followed, as if they were pulled along a string, but the strings were invisible, drawn out in pheromones, light and shadow.  He had known many insects back home.  Rodents, though, they froze in fear, and then they pushed themselves.

He wasn’t so good at this.  Especially so far from home, especially without a stage, or an appropriate audience, let alone accompaniment.  Had he been kept by another court, he might have mastered it, but he had only learned bits and pieces for dignitaries, singing on his ‘days off’ from the Great Lament.

He sang to it in a language it didn’t know it knew.  It took him three tries, and the second nearly scared it off.

It approached from the grass.  He took it into his hand and he touched it with a gentleness that alleviated it of a short lifetime of anxieties.

He continued singing, for himself now.  Picking words, sorting out verses.  He missed the boys he’d sung with.  He wished he’d known their names, but there had never been an opportunity to know them.  Then they had been consigned to grim endings for their failures as singers.

If his old keepers could hear him now, they would consign him a hundred times over to horrible fates, because he soiled what he had previously sung with the vulgarities he now uttered.  There were no acoustics, there was no instrumentation, no stage, no setting, no terrible irony in the specific pattern of calugeo on window and the lugeo of verse.

Daytime birds flew through the evening air.

He sang to them as he’d sung to the mouse.  It took him four tries, and one dipped low, and then they flew on their way.

He turned in the air.  There was a train station here in the world of men where a whisper could be heard like a shout.  Back home, those things were commonplace.  The right movements could catch and send the wind.  There, he would be able to turn the course of a distant bird.

He kept spiraling, mouse held close to his heart, as he walked down the gravel path, grass on both sides, vulgar rivets cut in where bicycle tires had passed.

Another bird passed.  He gave it his best attempt, putting the mouse at his side and letting its claws catch on his beltline.

It turned in the air, dipping low, and he beckoned.  He found the right movements in the air, dancing, the right intonation, whispers, pitch.  People nearby watched him.

He caught it out of the air, felt its heart beating in its tiny chest, and cupped it in his hands.  A stomp of his boot helped the mouse to push itself, and a turn of his body gave it a course.  It traveled from his beltline, only an elastic because the tightness and discomfort of a belt made him want to heave or excise pelvis from flesh, across his back, and up to his shoulder.  A movement of his arm helped guide it.  Tiny nails dug into flesh, and he turned to help disguise the mouse’s movements from his audience as it traveled down his arm.

Holding the captured robin within his hands, he placed it into a pocket, let the mouse travel to his hands, and then flourished, holding it high, his song reaching a proud crescendo.

To his audience, a bird had flown to his hands, he’d cupped it to his heart, then stretched his arms out, holding a mouse instead.

And his song- it lacked so much.  But here, in this world, without the necessary pieces, it was as good as it could get.  He’d captured their attention.

Only for a moment.  In another time and place, he’d have them wholly and completely, for as long as he could sing, and he could sing for hours.

He lowered his hand and let the little mouse go.

He was tired, restless from his time in the car, and from being so close to the Deer, who glittered with Faerie stuff.  Thirsty.

He looked around, trying to find a place he might quench that thirst.  The river’s water tasted like the pollution that had been delivered to it by the cars and runoff from streets.

It was a little girl.  One member of his audience.  He was so bad with ages, but she was half his height.  Even though he was tall in a way that continually surprised him, it still made her very young.  Three?  Five?  Eight?  He’d forgotten any and all points of reference for such things.

“How did you do that?  With the bird?”

He smiled.  “Trickery.”

“Tell me, child, is there any place I could buy a drink, nearby?”

“You mean… a bar?  My daddy goes to a bar but I don’t know where.”

“Water,” he said.  “I would take Faerie wine, but I must make do.”

“I… there’s a store that way.  It’s not very far.”

“You’re a stranger.”

“I am so strange I cannot even believe it’s the case.  Yes, I am a stranger, but I swear to you, I will not harm a hair on your head.  My sister did tell me I need someone to watch me, in case I get into trouble.”

“Or a guardian, a guard, a keeper.  If you would oblige me for a short time… even though time is a little bit broken in this place, I would pledge you a hint.  A peek at true magic.”

A woman shouted, a little bit away.

“…she’s calling me.”

“You’ll get into a bit of trouble, but I’m promising you magic.  I’ll open your eyes and you’ll see a bit more magic in the world for the rest of your life.  Isn’t that worth it?”

He hummed, and with a flourish that disguised his hand movement, took the robin from his pocket and placed it on her shoulder.

She startled as it flapped its wings, though it didn’t take off, and took a few quick steps, trying to walk away from something that was sitting on her.

“Hands, hands,” he said, touching her arms near the armpit and moving them up, bringing her hands together.  He whistled briefly.

The bird settled in her cupped hands.

He began walking away, singing a song in a language birds had supposedly known once and forgotten.

The bird flapped, moving as close to him as he could get, and rather than let it go away, the girl followed, holding it out.  She gave a quick look back in the direction of her mother.

“I may have been younger than you when I first saw magic,” he said.  “I saw more than you could imagine.  Are we on the right path, to get to the store?”

“I think?  It’s not far.  But I usually have someone take me.”

Not old enough to be on her own.  Well, she wasn’t on her own.  She had him and a bird that was happy to perch and listen to his song.  She kept looking back in the direction of her mom, but she followed behind as if she were in fetters.

He sang, tuneless and wordless, trying out vocal sounds.  The bird chirped, and he moved his hand, snapping his finger in response.  He sang, it chirped, he snapped.  He snapped, it chirped.

The convenience store came into view.  Singing to it in a language one of its forebearers had once heard, he soon had it chirping to accompany the singing.  The little girl was wide-eyed, taking it in.

The store came into view.  The door was open because the store was hot, the young lady at the counter sweaty.  He hid his distaste, knew that he himself had a shine to his skin.

He had to wrestle with himself to find that part of himself that could see the joy in it.  In ‘roughing it’ in such a situation, facing the elements, even if those elements were a small convenience store with peeling paint and a bored teenager at the counter.

He picked out a bottle of water for himself and his little companion, then patted himself down.  He had no gold coins, no curios, little magic things, motes of imagination or any tokens marking favors owed by faerie, fairy, man, or spider.

He turned to the little girl.  “Do you have any coin?”

“Hey, kid,” the girl at the counter said.  “Seen you around.  Where’s your mom?”

“She’s…” the kid trailed off, looking back in the direction of her mom.

“It’s a babysitting arrangement,” Daniel told the girl at the counter.  He approached her, and settled his elbow on the counter, chin on his elbow.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“I’m twenty-five.  I- I shouldn’t have answered that.”

“I don’t know how old I am, but I’ve been told I’m thirty.”

“Okay, um… I haven’t seen you around before.”

“And I haven’t seen you.  Funny how that works.”

He looked into her eyes, and his own eyes widened.

Her eyes were a light gray-blue, flecked with gold.  He could stare into them, and he could get lost in them, at least for a moment.

“I do love your eyes,” he told her.

She gave a nervous laugh.  “I’ve heard that before.  Usually from my mom.”

“They are eyes with stars in them, and they’re meant, in my expert opinion, to look out and look down on the world from a tall and fantastic natural place, on a night where the sky is filled with even more stars.”

“Haven’t heard that before.”

“Climb a mountain, young lady,” he told her, ordered her, with some intensity.  “Climb a mountain and sit atop it, accomplished and tired, and look out toward the horizon in the evening, far from any city.  You’ll be inspired.  A thought will connect.  It may be visual art, it may be music, it may be science, or a scene that must be captured on stage or film.  Then chase it. Chase it down until your legs can’t carry you and you lose all hope, break down into tears, then pick yourself up and find a way to keep chasing.”

He meant it, with every word, and she took it in without question.  She was silent for long moments, seemingly as lost in his eyes as he was in hers.

“Why?” she finally asked.

“Because you will make something beautiful.  Someone looked in my eyes once, and said something similar, but they saw a deeper darkness rather than stars, and they said I should sing.”

“Did you?” she asked.

“I did.  Then I stopped, to save my sister.  I walked away and it has been the second biggest tragedy I’ve ever experienced.  I could tell you more, but my throat is parched.  I would like this water.”

She stirred, as if shaking herself from a spell.  “It’s, um, one seventy six.  Each.”

“I don’t have any money.  I’d offer you a song in exchange for it, but I shouldn’t sing for others.  Would you take something else in trade?  Would it suffice if I struck a pretty enough pose?  I know people pay models and I’ve been told I’m very pretty.”

He adjusted his posture, taking light, shadow, and environment into account.  His fingers met his hair, almost clutching it, so the longer hair flowed through his fingers.  He projected intensity at her, wanting, and need.  It was less than a thousandth the artistry that some of his keepers back home had managed, and it was a thousand times what other people here typically experienced in their lifetime.

“I would like to hear you sing,” she said.

“You’d have to come with me.”

“Come.  You can’t remain here.  This is dismal and soul-crushing.  I’d rather give you wonder and expand your soul twofold.  You know, deep down inside, that you are meant for better than this humid, manufactured little box, with sweating refrigeration and false lights.”

“It pays the bills,” she said, with a half of a smile.

“And what does paying the bills do for you?” he asked her.  “Does it enrich the soul?  Does it expand you as a person?”

“It does make me feel a bit more like an adult.  I still feel like a teenager, most of the time.”

“It always seemed to me,” he mused, “that the more someone chases adulthood, the more their world shrinks.  They leave more behind, they close doors, and make the big life decisions that narrow down their options.  In love, in housing, in career…”

“Isn’t that the point?” she asked.  “To find your place in it all?”

“What if it wasn’t?  What if there was a way to hold onto childlike wonder, hopes, dreams, and avoid closing doors?  What if you could capture innocence or beauty or brilliance and build a world using those ideas, that imagination, and that wonder?”

“It sounds nice, but I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”

“Come with me, walk away from this.  I will show you wonder within the hour, one way or another.”

“That’s a heck of a pickup line, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t working on me a bit.”

“I’m told I’m very pretty, and I’m very sincere about believing in wonder.  I’m quite desperate for it, as a matter of fact, and I like your eyes.  I want to look into them more tonight.”

“Aren’t you babysitting?”  She looked at the kid, who stood in the doorway, holding the bird.  She looked surprised.  “Is that bird real?”

“I’m the one she’s babysitting,” Daniel told the girl at the counter.

“I need a lot of supervision, because I get into untold amounts of trouble if I get distracted.  It would be good, I think, if someone were to babysit her, while she babysits me.”

“Um, kid, where’s your mom?”

The kid looked back the way they’d come.

“Why don’t I give her a call?” the girl at the counter asked.  “What’s her number?”

“I don’t know.  He said he’d show me magic.  He did a magic trick before.”

“Do you want to, um, take a seat behind the counter?  I’ll give you a treat, and we’ll work out how to call your mom.  Does that sound like a plan?”

“Who would ever want to dwell in a place like this?” Daniel asked.  “Concrete and peeling paint, stains on the floor.  It makes the soul hurt.  Wouldn’t you rather learn magic?”

He walked over toward the little girl in the doorway, and the girl behind the counter rushed to circle around to get through the gate and follow.  He dropped a hand down, humming, and picked up the bird from the girl’s hands.  He turned, dancing around her, the bird at his hand, beneath his uncomfortable silk shirt, hidden, then back at his hand.  His humming became singing, more and more dramatic, the wordless verses becoming words, the tuneless singing becoming tunes.  The girl from the counter drew close to the little girl, putting a hand on her shoulder.  He beckoned them with song, walking backwards.

His foot found air, rather than ground, and he tumbled down the concrete steps at the front of the convenience store, the water bottles falling.

He lay there, hurting.  The hot night air felt oppressive.

The little girl rushed forward.  “The bird, is it-?”

He put a hand out.  The bird perched on his finger with one foot.  As the girl reached out, wanting to take it, the bird seized her fingertip.  It held his finger with one foot, the little girl’s with the other.

The bird, at least, knew there was something wondrous to hold onto.  It had captured his intent by way of the singing.

He sang, grabbing both bottles with one long-fingered hand, climbing to his feet, walking backwards.  The little girl was forced to either follow or to wrench her hand from the bird’s grip and risk hurting it.

Subtle, soft touches.  He was no brute, and much as a mouse needed a push… he had yet to meet a human being that was intact and whole, who did not know or feel that the world had to have more to it than what they’d seen and heard of it.

That made it easier to draw them closer.  The young lady from the store that had stars in her eyes followed, acting as if she were worried he’d hurt the child if she moved too fast or tried to grab her.

He did have an intense air about him when he was struck by a mood.

He sang, and with the bird helping, he moved his arm around the little girl, making her spin.  Bewildered, she obliged, nearly tripping on the grass by the sidewalk.

The song became a sad one.  He was always so much better at singing sad songs.  With the song, he could pull them along into the world he was trying to paint.  Even though they didn’t know the words in the languages he sang in, they could feel it, they could read his expression, and they could read the tone and catch the sentiment.

He could captivate them, seize their attention and their hearts, and-

They startled from their reverie.  His song halted.

“Hey!  What are you doing?”

They were a ways down the rocky beach, the river to one side of them, some scattered residences on a rise to the other side.  The convenience store, sitting by the bridge, was too far away to easily make out, even with Daniel’s keen eyes.  With his singing, he’d drawn them into his world, that was counted with the anatomy of clouds, not the steady tick of a metronome.  A place where time was subjective and the perception of subjects was something to be manipulated.

An old, white-haired man on the rise called down to them.  “What are you doing with that girl?”

He still held his hand out.  The bird still bridged the two of them, gripping tightly, listening intently, the little girl following out of concern that she might hurt the bird’s leg by pulling too hard.  The young lady from the store followed.

The air was heavy with dreams and lies, here.  It sparkled, almost, and it layered on the river like the oil of pollution, but it wasn’t of man.

He drank it in deep, while the older man made his way down wooden stairs to descend the slope.

“It’s too late for you to be out here making that noise!” the man barked.  “What are you doing with that girl!?”

Daniel whistled briefly, prompting a chirp from the robin, and once he had its attention, he raised his finger, making it adjust its perch and stand on his hand alone.  The little girl reached up and out for it, then withdrew her hand once she saw Daniel’s eyes.

“If we find ourselves disallowing singing, whatever the reason, this world has become far darker and uglier than I’d feared,” Daniel said.

“Are you cracked in the head?” the older man asked.  He had a slight stoop to him, and a redness to the face that contrasted the wispy white hair.  He looked like he’d done physical work for many years.  He’d retired recently.  He wore a ring, and he’d worn it for a long time, which suggested he’d loved.  But he had a look about him like he hadn’t been taken care of.  There was only so much a man with a once-doting wife could or would do to take care of themselves.  He was tidy, and well put together, but some things couldn’t be helped.

They were all at different stages of a journey.

“I’m abducting the girl,” Daniel said, to the old man.

“What?” the man asked, the word so curt the ending was almost chomped off.

“He said something about babysitting and I thought it was okay, he seemed harmless, and nice, but then he got intense and he started singing and I don’t know why I didn’t do more.”

“It’s okay,” the old man said.  “It’s okay.  It’s fine.  You did good, keeping eyes on her.”

Daniel knew she’d been watching him, not the girl.  And she had been listening more than she’d watched.  But that wasn’t her fault.

“These two young ladies need your help,” Daniel told the old man.  “Keep up.”

“Keep up?  What do you mean?” the man asked.

He felt dizzy, seeing the sparkles, knowing he was close.

But to be close or even to be there wasn’t enough.

His life was all crudeness and bareknuckle brawling through every little thing.  It was ugly and he was an artist.  They’d made him an artist, with his song as his art.  He lived in need and he was so close to having it.

“I’ll try to work it so you don’t remember the bad parts,” he told the little girl.

“You leave her alone!” the old man barked.  He advanced, feet periodically sliding on the slate rock of the riverbed.

“I did promise to give you a hint about my little magic trick,” he told her.  “I don’t have a mouse, so you will have to do.”

She looked up at him, confused.

He’d put the bird away, so his hands were free.  He took hers, and swept her around into a spin, carrying her into the air.

He’d studied humans more than he’d studied mice.  He knew what drew them in, how they tended to move.  His education was short and brutish, compared to the people back home, but it sufficed, here.

To anticipate her grabbing his shoulder, to let her move behind him, and match his body to those movements.

Turn, turn, with the girl.

Turn, turn, turn, with her movements now to keep her directly behind him, as far as their audience could see.  Only for a moment.

Just long enough to release the bird.

They, startled and confused, seemed to see the girl disappear in Daniel’s whirling, and a bird get released.  He laughed, and he pitched his laugh to be unsettling, eerie, and to carry.  To make the mysteriousness of the moment land, and to convince them he was closer than he was, as he made off with the little girl, holding her hand and tugging her after him.

He saw two trees and he could see how the air glittered around them, how every bit of moisture seemed to capture a flake of something more precious than gold.

His free hand caught the trunk, as he swung them around.  It was a waypoint, a gate, a framing for something else.  He spotted that something.  A cave.

The little girl ran with him because pulling away or stopping would mean falling against the jagged beach.  Into the cave.

Here, it was so much richer.  Here, the cave had been molded.

He laughed, and the sound carried.  He, here, was more himself.  Here, he could sing, and it wouldn’t fall so flat.

The other two caught up, an old man and a young woman.

“I’m calling the police,” the man said.

Daniel guessed, reached, and found a sword handle sticking from the ground, where he’d expected something to be dangling.  He turned it, and found room for adjustment.

Light from the outside reflected on the blade, and those reflections found other things to reflect off of.  The sum of light exceeded what had been put into this place.  The cave filled with soft moonlight.

Treasures lay everywhere.  And more than treasure…

“They wronged me,” Daniel called out.  “They stole me, they took my childhood and they filled it with magic instead.  I think I can get away with taking something from them and giving it back to the world.”

He picked up a knife and handed it handle-first to the little girl.  If a store could see it for what it was, they’d pay tens of thousands for it.  But they wouldn’t.

The child, though, the child could see.  The child could look around the cave and realize there was something more here.

“Did you do this?” the old man asked, looking around.  “I had no idea this cave was here.”

“You’d have trouble finding it again, if you didn’t retrace my steps,” Daniel said.  He was distracted.  His attention wasn’t on them, as much as it was on things more valuable than the individual treasure.

He wiped his cupped hand along a flat stone and came up with dust that glittered more than anything he’d seen in years.  He brushed a dusty hand along his arm and it was not dirtied, but cleaned.  Refreshed.

He touched face, and he touched features, he touched hair, luxuriating.  He danced a few steps over to the next flat surface where he could get more.  He fixated glowing eyes on the three guests.  “I want you three to help me.”

“I think we’re going to go,” the young lady from the convenience store said.  “I left the store unattended.”

“I thought this would be less than it is in actuality,” Daniel said, excited.  “I wanted you with, but now I need you with me.  I’ll leave you all better than I found you, or I’ll try, but I need you to cooperate.  You must.”

“Honey,” the girl from the counter said.  “Kid.  Come on.”

“Child,” he said, gathering up the dust.  The child turned to him, alarmed.  “I’d be grateful if you helped me.”

He reached out and she backed away.

“Sir- I don’t even know your name,” the girl from the counter said.  “But-”

“I need this,” he said, with hunger that seemed to take her aback.  His hand fell hard on the little girl’s shoulder.  The dust puffed up, but she didn’t cough.  He gave her a push, turning her in a tight circle, stepping between her and the other two.  The old man marched forward, picking up a rock.

He stopped dead in his tracks when Daniel stepped aside with intent.

The little girl was gone, and a flock of birds flew in a confused pattern through the air.  The girl from the store shrieked.

It was nice to be able to march, step forward, to walk, and to know that the stones had been shaped with intent and art.  This had all been arranged.  He could put a hand out, knowing that an artist had arranged this space and its decorations with something more elevated than geometry in mind.  To touch a spear, a chair, a draping of cloth.

“What happened to her!?” the girl from the store asked.

“I have my stage,” Daniel told her.  He collected more dust, luxuriating in the feel of it, more silky than the actual silk that felt like scrub-brush against his skin.  “She’ll be my accompaniment.  She’ll sing with, using nine throats.  You’ll look into my eyes and I’ll look into yours, and it’ll make the singing richer.  And you, sir…”

“I won’t cooperate with this madness.  This… prank.”

“You sir, will be my audience.  You’ve felt true loss, once.  You had love and familiarity and you lost it, and I can see in your eyes how strange and ill-fitting this world is to you.  You’ve been heartbroken, losing that love, and I want to break those two halves into a hundred, with but five or ten minutes of your time.  I need to, I’m sorry.”

“And if I don’t want to?”

“You should.  You’ll be richer for it.  You’ll be more.”

The birds had found places to settle.

He couldn’t get enough of it.  He was dizzy, collecting the dust, gathering it, turning and spinning and not stumbling.  He let his clothes change to something as comfortable as nudity.  He breathed it in, and it felt like the first breath of clean air he’d taken in for months.

“Follow along with me,” he told the songbirds.  “Watch my hands, use your instincts.  I gave you some good ones.”

“If you want someone to follow along with you,” a guttural voice told him, “I can help.”

The figure was no taller than the little girl had been.  Rotund, with spikes.  He had ears like a pig, and a glinting at one eye, and he kept to shadows, the lighting arrangement of this cave’s residents not quite touching him.

Daniel sang, a few experimental notes.  The cave carried the sound.

“Faaaaaaaaarrrrrrrtttttss,” the guttural voice sang.

“Faaaarrrrrrrrrtttttssssss!” the voice added, with more gusto, a deeper note.

Daniel went to a higher note.  The birds joined in with long sweet sounds.

“Faarrrrrrrrrrtttttttssssss!” the voice dropped another octave.

Daniel did a three-note sequence.

“Piiiiiiiiiccckkkkklllleeeesss!”

Daniel returned to a single note.

“Aaaannnndddd Taaaaaarrrrrrrttttttssss!”

Daniel sang in languages of sadness, words that would be alien to all but a select few.

“Messssyyy shiiiiiitttts!”

He accompanied the guttural, out-of-tune singing.

“Droooopppy tiiiiiittts!”

Daniel pushed himself a step further.

If his intruder here was a child plonking at the keyboard, then Daniel could be the master, who took that sound and played into it, accented it, and drowned out what needed to be drowned out.

Excited, his heart pounding, feeling like he was alive and capable of seeing, breathing, and being for the first time in a long time, he made the intruder sound good.

“Wooden nickelllllss!”

He took the sounds, captured the echoes, and played into them.

“And more taaaaaarrrrrttttts!”

“Like that, do ya?” the guttural voice asked.  It kicked over a spear that was embedded into stone, then picked it up. The spear being fallen made some of the light fall away, which let the little rotund thing with pig ears venture sideways into the cave.

The birds continued to sing, to draw out the long notes.

“I’m not one of them,” Daniel said.  “I wish that I were, but I was only baptized in their stuff of lies.  I came up sputtering, choking.  I’m still sputtering and choking.  This world is so vulgar already, why would more of it bother me any?  You don’t bother me.”

“You could.  But If you’d give me ugly, rude truths, I’d have to warn you… I know.  I know.  I’ve come to terms with it.  I want my glamorous lies, whatever the cost, and nothing you could do would bother me more than the fact I don’t have them.”

“Lies are fragile, gentle sir,” the voice growled.  “Pretty to look at, granted, but they all go to wet shit, given time.”

“I’m human,” Daniel said, spreading his arms.  “I’m only human.  I don’t have time.  A paltry hundred years.  Maybe ninety, maybe eighty, maybe seventy.  I won’t be around long enough to care.  I just want… I want beauty.”

He touched the cloth that was draped, tore it from the points it was hung from, and wrapped it around himself.  It felt better than the replacement clothes he’d made out of the dust.  So fine, cool, and draping so close to the skin it felt like the moment he leaned back into the bath, water at perfect temperature.

“It’s ass!  You only want it because you want it, you’re a ninny and a fuckwit!  It’s ass, and you’ve convinced yourself it’s not, and if you’d let go of that then you’d forget you ever cared!  Most of the poor souls who get dragged over there do.”

“He can’t,” a voice said, from the cave entrance.

With most of the light coming from outside, the man was only a silhouette.  A giant of a figure, with slightly pointed ears and lines to his body that were pure artistry.  He, like Daniel, had long hair.

“I’ll take over.  Can you go find the others and bring them here?”

The little fat thing scoffed.  “Your funeral, good sir, I hope.”

“Mmm,” the giant grunted.  “You two.”

The old man and the girl from the store turned to look at him.

“The little girl, she’s-”

The giant raised a foot, then stomped.  The cave shuddered, and layers of workings shuddered with it.

The birds tumbled.  Mid-fall, they were interconnected, as if sheets of paper extended between them, in complex origami, or threads, or something else.  By the time they touched the ground, they were a young girl.  She scrambled back.

“You should go,” the giant said, again.

The girl clambered to her feet and ran.  The girl from the store caught her.  The three left.

“Young lord of bright summer,” Daniel greeted the Faerie.  “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“I’m barely a lord.”

“But you are a lord.  I can see that much,” Daniel said, smiling.  “I give you my greetings.”

“Someone familiar with my ilk should be more careful with their words.”

“I am barely a someone.  I’m a greedy, good-for-nothing beggar, glamour-drowned, good for nothing but a song now and then.  I give you my thanks, in exchange for your audience, and would give you yet more if you would have me.  I pledge you my self, my pride, my art, my all.”

“Put me in a cage, if you will.  But you don’t need one, because I don’t imagine I’d run.  I’d sing for you, a songbird, a personal bard.”

There was no response from the shadowy figure.

Daniel sang, and, desperate, hopeless, he put his all into the singing.  He felt so inarticulate, since leaving the courts, as if his talent had no substance, and he’d chased it since.  At best, all he got were tastes, moments, glimpses.  Some of his bad singing was enough to entice mice and birds, and to capture the attention of two innocents, but that was not what he was being required to do here.

Here, he had to win the giant Faerie over.

Here, he sang of heartbreak and loneliness, of sickness over his long absence from the place he still thought of as home.  Because it was there he’d been baptized in lies and dust, grown into his full self, and he’d barely grown since.

He sang of longing, of restlessness.

The cave caught the sound, multiplying it, and he used it.

Tears touched his own cheeks.  He walked closer to the giant, until reflected light from across the cave let him see the great Faerie’s features.  The texture of skin, the material of kilt, a leather no doubt softer than skin.

The giant’s chin dropped a fraction.  He looked away and to the side.  Daniel was close enough to touch him and held back on doing so.

“You must miss it so,” Daniel murmured, almost singing the words.  “You must, because it is by its very definition, a place of qualities that one yearns for.  It is poetry and art and this world’s art, by comparison, is a child’s waste, finger-painted over a washroom wall.”

“Vulgar,” the giant said.  “But I do miss it.”

“I’m not without vulgarity, or the ability to hold that vulgarity back.  I can be what you need me to be.  But… I want to go home.  Even a dim shadow of it like what you’ve carved out here.  I know you like my singing.  Would you keep me?”

“Don’t you have a sister?” the giant asked.  He walked across the cave, into the shadows that the short guttural thing had created by knocking over the spear.

“She would understand.  She would mourn me, if I was lost to the Faerie once more, but I do know she would understand.”

“She likely would in time,” the giant Faerie told him.  “Does that make it right?”

“Is it because I lived in the courts below for so long that I’m surprised that you care about right and wrong, my lord?”

“I am not yours, Daniel Alitzer.  And your sister would mourn a bloody swathe between the point she learns of your going and the point she finds her understanding.  A long, path of shed Fae blood.”

“She-” Daniel started.  He stopped as his voice cracked.

It was a terrible, terrible thing, for his voice to crack.  Far worse than being ungainly and ungraceful.

“-she shouldn’t have to look after me,” Daniel said.

“She likely shouldn’t,” the giant told him.

“I can’t tell if you mean that, noble sir, or if it’s a facade.  So many of your kin would deflect.”

There was laughter off to the side.  Dark eyes in darker gloom slipped into the cave, up the walls and into the shadow by the ceiling.  Dust followed her, cascading down.  Daniel could see the wings.

Dark summer or dark fall.

The laughter rang through the chamber, amused.  A song of its own, in a cave that had been shaped specifically to cultivate that sound.

“You keep strange company, noble sir.  A faerie of a drastically different court.”

There was another titter.  The giant was quiet.

“You…” Daniel started.  He stopped.

He felt sadness swell in his chest.  “…You’re falling to Winter?  You stand on the cusp?”

Another titter from the other Faerie, and a silence from the giant.

Daniel touched every surface he could, for the trace faeriestuff that he could collect and drink into his skin, as he circled the cave.

“It’s why you’re staying away.  It’s why you’re keeping strange company.  Little else makes sense,” Daniel said, plaintive, reaching.

“I still have adventures and tasks I must see to their natural ends.”

“How many?  A handful?”

“Three?” Daniel asked.  “Two?”

At that last word, there was another laugh from the darkness.

“Please, sir, would you make me one of those tasks?  I’m a burden to my sister, and to dear Clementine, who shoulders so much already, however much she tries to keep it private.  I catch people’s attention and keep it, and lure them into whatever madness shines brightest.  I struggle to tell right from wrong.  I’m told I’m insufferable.”

“I have already taken in the drowned, as hero and as villain.  I’ve tried to mend them, and to ruin them.  I suspect the most merciful thing is to leave you alone.”

“No!” Daniel shouted.  “Not when I cost them joy.  Take me in or fix me or give me something.  But don’t- don’t tell me I have to inflict myself on them.  That is a cruelty too dark for a Bright Faerie.”

“The upper courts are so much crueler than the lower ones,” the giant said.  “For reasons much like this.”

Daniel shook his head, his hands going to his hair.  The dust he’d collected drenched him, powdering him, and decorated skin, hair, clothing, and everything else.  He breathed hard.

And then he began to sing.  A lament.

“Is this…” the giant timed his words so as not to interrupt a verse, turning the singing into punctuation, “…your lament… or is it mine?”

Daniel grabbed a spear that had been left aside.

He sang of wrongs, he sang of the wretchedness of Faerie.  He drank of the dust that he’d collected and he put it into the words, to give them impact.

The giant didn’t flinch.  The one in the shadows went very still.

He sang of siblings, of blood, of mankind and great kings brought low, peasant children spirited away.

His words almost a chant, because the verses were so perfunctory, he made it clear in presentation, in word, in spirit and in law, that if he were to be struck down, he would be a martyr, that it would be Wrong.  With verse, he asked the giant’s doings be undone as that Wrong came home to roost.  His final few adventures and stories spoiled.

With verse, he made it clear that if he struck down his enemy here, it would be Just.

With verse, he pledged that if he got neither of those outcomes, he would commit to destroying this place, this town, and its people.  If this faerie had found a moral center of any sort, if that wasn’t an act, then failing to stop him for good would destroy that center.  If it was an act, then this Faerie with so little left to hang onto would prove the act false, possibly losing one of his few remaining stories.

The giant stood tall, stepping into the faint moonlight that filled the chamber, reflected and refracted on various surfaces.  His eyes were moist, his hands empty.

Daniel finished singing, breathing hard.  The chamber carried the sound, an echo that didn’t stop, and wouldn’t stop for another hour.

He smiled, showing the giant his teeth.  His hair and clothing stirred in a wind that wasn’t there, so dense and heavy with glamour the parts of it close to his body stuck there.  Dry and wet at the same time.

“What will you do?” he whispered.  The chamber carried the sound.

“What will you give me!?  This world is a sandstorm, compared to what I once had!  It chews at me, fills my eyes and nose and mouth!  It steals all beauty from things, erodes everything fine!”

“I don’t know anything else.”

“Look,” the giant told him.

Daniel marched forward, holding the spear with both hands.  As he drew nearer, he picked up speed, jogging, then running.

At the last moment, the giant leaned to one side.

The spear penetrated his chest.  A handspan below the collarbone.  Dead center.  Nearly.  His knees buckled, and a large hand settled on the spear.

“Moving to make the blow into something less lethal is a decision,” Daniel said.  He slid his hand down the spear, and pressed a hand against the giant’s chest, the webbing between thumb and index finger touching the spear and the blood.  He licked up the blood.

“It tastes like spiced wine.”

“No, I’m- no.  Never.  Who could be, after what I’ve seen and heard and felt and touched?”

He looked down at the wound.  It wouldn’t be lethal.  The giant had moved.  But the blood spread oddly.

He reached up and let his fingernails catch the edge.

He had to pull it back the length of the spear.  Parchment.

“Is this one of your last adventures?” he asked, bitter.  He hauled back on the spear, pulling it free.  It clattered to the ground, and he kicked it away.  “A… letter of romantic correspondence.”

“I’ve tried to take in men like him, as a hero and as a villain,” the giant said.  “I’ve tried to mend them, and to ruin them.  With him, I did the least merciful thing I might have done.”

“Is that it then?  You keep it close to your heart?  Where’s the adventure in that?”

He turned, holding the bloody letter.  He looked around.

“Dark Fae!” he called out to the gloom.  “Are you part of this adventure, or does this leave him only his adventure with you?”

“If you were partner to it, he would have kept it where you could see.  I could see that tale.  The Fae of the dark fall who toyed with the lover, the Fae of high summer who loved him, keeping and protecting the memory on a pedestal.  But he kept it to himself.  Are you curious?  Do you want to see, now?  Are you wondering what it unlocks, what secrets of another court this lover might have told him?”

Dark eyes glared at him in the gloom.  They sat far apart.  Black, hairy legs crawled through hair and along the length of a slender body, while patterns on wings pulled away as venomous stingers, poised.

“Did I take one adventure from the both of you?  How many hundreds of years was that meant to play out over?”

“Several.  Are you satisfied with your restitution?  Would you go?” the giant asked.

“No,” Daniel said, shaking his head.  “You know what would satisfy me.”

“It would destroy several others.  You going back to the Faerie.”

“It destroys them, me being here.”

“If you would go find your sister, you could bring her here, and we could discuss options.  I could ration what you need.”

“I don’t want rations.”

“Once drowned, you may be resuscitated.  Twice drowned… it is rare to surface once again.”

“Then I will do my best to take that last adventure from you, noble sir, and sup on what I can.  Unless your friend wishes to devour me.”

“She will not,” the giant said.  “Maricica?  You will not.  Go.  He’s dangerous for you.”

“What about me?”  Another voice at the door.

A young girl, black, with marvelous hair, stood in the cave entrance.  A man with short blond hair, rumpled green clothes, almost her opposite in every way, stood beside her.  He and she both held guns.

Daniel moved his hands, gathering up the glamour like a cape, in anticipation.

The man with the gun shot.  Daniel caught the bullet and put it aside, like a trick of the eyes.

The bullet fell to the floor, far from Daniel.

He gathered it up and manipulated it, hiding and protecting himself as the gun continued to unload.  As Maricica started working against him, the giant grunted something inarticulate.  Daniel gathered up, chasing.  She could make barbs and he could throw himself along those barbs, chasing.  She would implant seeds in him for the long-term, but he didn’t care about the long-term.  He threw himself in her direction, using the workings she would use against him to drag himself closer, and he began to sing, a reminder of what was just and unjust, and what he’d pledged.

The bullets tore through the clouds of obfuscating mist, the fake versions of himself, and the other distractions.  They stirred the air and made every other working less coherent.

The gunman was narrowing him down as a target.

The giant spoke, “It would have been better to shoot without announcing yourself first.  His senses are keen enough he would have seen you, but you would have had a chance.”

“I did say,” the gunman said.

“Theatrics matter, and it feels wrong.”

“It is more wrong that he is about to leave and become Kennet’s problem.  Maricica, you stay.  Lucy, John, chase him.”

Daniel fled, carrying what he could with him.  He made a door where there wasn’t one and slipped through, drunk and lost and drowning.

The gunman and the girl chased.