The Green's Hill Novellas (7 page)

Whim looked longingly at the picnic basket and the sleeping bag sitting forlornly in what appeared to be an abandoned back lot. In the light of day, it needed some serious magic to take on the glamour of the Litha night.

CHARLIE WAS
seriously worried by the time Whim showed up. The note itself had sounded sad, almost like a desperate promise. Charlie wondered what was going on in Whim’s life to take up so much of a night that even Charlie could see meant the world to Whim. He could still remember the terrible (but not bitter) disappointment on Whim’s face when he’d said, “You’re happy, so you have to stay.”

All those years of wishing that he could follow Whim, and now his life was too good to leave? Whim didn’t have to feel bitterness. Charlie felt it for him. Damn… damn, damn, damn, and damn. After living with that moment in his heart for a year, Charlie was pretty much ready to drop everything not to have to live with it again. He was working as a high school counselor these days, doing his music and his drama as extracurricular activities, and he was prepared to simply not show up for work one day, leave his house and, hell, leave his cat, and simply walk away, a victim of the night, to make sure he never had to feel Whim’s abandonment again.

And now, Charlie thought he’d do all that plus walk on fire just to be sure Whim was all right.

He was and he wasn’t.

He arrived in the cold of the night. Charlie, who had long since abandoned the ratty trench coat, was wrapped in the blanket, sitting with his back propped up against their tree and nodding off, when Whim appeared at the far side of the clearing, walking unevenly and dazedly to where Charlie was sitting. For a moment, Charlie’s breath froze in his throat. It looked like Whim was covered in blood.

He was across the clearing in moments, and Whim put up his hands to hold him off. “It’s not mine,” he said abstractedly. “You don’t need to get it on you.”

“Fuck that.” Charlie evaded the warning hands and took Whim’s arm, leading him to their place with gentle movements. Looking up, he could see the tracks Whim’s tears had made through the even spatter of blood on Whim’s face. “C’mon, Whim. Come here. Come tell me what happened.”

But Whim didn’t, not right away. He sat on the sleeping bag and let Charlie cover his shoulders with the blanket, and when that didn’t seem to work, he let Charlie get under the blanket with him and just sit, warming their bodies in the soft breeze. Eventually Whim laid his head on Charlie’s shoulder and murmured, “You humans here, you don’t have princes. You have presidents. You had one you thought of like a prince, didn’t you?”

Charlie was confused for a moment. “Like JFK?” he asked, completely thrown out of his element.

“Yes,” Whim said. “Do you think when that prince died, it was worse for the people who ate breakfast with him? Who saw him be happy with his family? Who maybe shared his bed? Although that’s frowned upon, I know. Do you think those people grieved for a friend
and
a prince? Do you think they wondered which one hurt more?”

Something about this question was making Whim openly weep, and Charlie could only answer honestly. “I think they probably did, yeah,” he said softly. “I think the leader and the man were probably very, very different, but they’d miss them both. I think they maybe grieved more for their prince than for other men. Why?”

“Because my prince died tonight,” Whim told him on a sob. “My prince died tonight, so horribly and so quickly that I’m wearing….” He shuddered. “We’re
all
wearing his blood. And his mates… they did such horrible things in the wake of his death. Green… Green
sang
the hearts of his enemies into his hands, and the girl-sorceress… Goddess….” Whim turned a helpless face to Charlie. “She’s barely older than you were, Charlie. She’s a child. And she did such a terrible thing out of grief. And I’m glad. Isn’t that awful? I’m glad she did it, because he was my friend and my prince and I wanted to kill and kill and kill and I didn’t have to. She did it for me. She just pulled magic out of the air and did such horrible things and I was
glad.
Oh, Charlie… there’s a big shredded emptiness where my heart is supposed to be, and the only way I know it’s beating is because you’re next to me to hear it.”

Charlie was helpless in the face of Whim’s grief. He could barely track the events as they tumbled out of Whim’s mouth in a disorganized jumble, but he’d heard of Adrian. He’d heard of Green. In the same way Whim asked about Charlie’s life, Charlie heard bits and snippets of life on Green’s hill and of the gentle men who inspired such loyalty from his Whim. And now Adrian was dead, and Green was in pain, and this girl-sorceress Cory (who was new, granted) was lost like a child, and Whim was not much better.

There was nothing to do but hold him, comfort him, tell him that Charlie would be there for as long as Whim needed him.

Whim turned a tear-ravaged face to him with the slightly open mouth of a six-year-old. “But I’ll always need you, Charlie,” he said with such stricken earnestness that Charlie had no recourse but to believe him with his whole heart.

“I’ll always need you too,” Charlie told him, and whatever that was worth, it seemed to quiet Whim down. The sobs eventually ceased, and Charlie eased Whim’s head into his lap and sat there, still leaning against the tree, and watched the sun rise. Charlie was half expecting him to just vaporize in the gold light of dawn, but the reassuring weight stayed there on his thighs, and the lovely curtain of hair stayed under his hand like coarse satin. When the sky was truly light, Charlie looked down and saw that the hair was scarlet and black today—the color of old blood.

“Whim?” he said softly. “Whim, we need to leave. I don’t want you to just go away, not like this. Can you come home with me, just for a day or two? I’ll take care of you, Whim. I swear, nobody will know you’re there. You’ll be just as secret at my house as you’ve always been.”

Whim sighed. “Everybody at my house knows you,” he said, surprising Charlie badly. “But yes. I don’t want to leave you. Not yet. Not like this.” There was a pause, and Charlie felt guilty because a corner of his heart was overjoyed to hear this. Then Whim said, on a note of complete practicality, “But we’ll have to take my car.”

“Car?” Another surprise. “You drove a car?”

Whim nodded and sat up, pushing his tangled hair out of his face. The color had changed a little—it was now a murky, mottled brown. Grief, yes, but not so fresh. “It’s specially treated,” he explained, and then he shrugged. “If we drive cars that haven’t been blessed with a salt wash and herbs, the cold iron in the engine eventually makes us sick.”

Charlie blinked and stood up, offering his hand to Whim, who took it and rose gracefully. Charlie was almost surprised to see Whim turning and gathering the sleeping bag and the blanket, putting them in his own picnic box. He turned to Charlie suddenly, and now his hair flashed a bright orange.

“Did you see the box?” he asked, a trace of the joy that Charlie was used to in his voice.

Charlie nodded. “It was beautiful,” he said earnestly. “They’re always beautiful. I have a shelf for them, you know. A place of honor in my house. I’m glad you’ll get to see it.”

Whim nodded and continued packing, hoisting the box and the sleeping bag up easily. He turned toward the car, but not before casting a baleful look at the sun.

“It’s hot already,” he sighed. “The heat isn’t good for us either.”

“That doesn’t surprise me in the least,” Charlie said with a slight smile. Everything about Whim pointed to the fact that he was very strong and very fragile. That he should have great magic and great physical vulnerabilities was pretty much par for the course. They walked across the field and then took a gap in the graffiti wall to the suburban neighborhood that sat behind their magic place. In the daylight, the suburb looked older and a little worn down, and Whim’s car, a fairly new SUV but not too fancy, didn’t look particularly out of place on the curbside. Charlie should know—his own car, a white Honda, was parked about a block away in front of a friend’s house.

He might have seen Whim’s car, or one of them, every Litha night for the last eleven years. The thought was somehow disturbing.

“Whim, if you drive here, how is it you just disappear?”

Whim paused in the act of throwing the stuff in the back hatch and fished out Charlie’s toy before he closed the hatch. “We can run really, really fast,” he said simply. “It only looks like I disappear.”

Charlie held an imperious hand out. “Here, give me the keys,” he said, and Whim pulled them out of his pocket. “Why do that? Why not just walk with me back out to our cars?”

Whim got into the car first and did the seat belt just like Charlie, although Charlie was pretty sure Whim had told him they were almost invulnerable to things like car crashes.

“I was hurt that first night—and you needed magic,” he said when Charlie had started the car. “Something beautiful. I didn’t have much I could give you. And after that… well, you expected it, and I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

Charlie shook his head, and then he shook his head again when Whim reached out and pressed play on the iPod sitting in the jack. Christmas music started to play, and Whim began to bob his head happily.

“You are magic,” Charlie told him, smiling sadly. “And you have never disappointed me.”

Whim looked at him, his smile old and wise. “I will,” he said with certainty. “You’re a grown-up now. You have higher expectations.”

Whim seemed both happy and sad to see Charlie’s little white-painted house sitting on the half acre of unfenced land. He definitely approved of all he saw, including the nicely mown, well-watered lawn, which he sank his bare feet into blissfully.

“It’s beautiful, Charlie,” he said sincerely. “Do you think your cat will like me? We have werecats at the hill, and I like them very much. Mitch and Renny like to curl up at my feet when I work.” Suddenly he made a hurt whimper, and Charlie looked at him sharply. “Mitch isn’t alive anymore,” he remembered. “And Renny’s damaged. Oh damn.”

Charlie looked at him in alarm. Whim had stopped still on Charlie’s lawn, a tall, pale man with alien features and hair the color of old blood. His neck drooped with dejection, and his whole body was smeared with the rust-colored remains of his fallen prince.

“We need to get you inside,” Charlie said gruffly. “Let’s give you a shower, get some food into you. You’ll feel better then.”

“Do you have oatmeal?” he asked hopefully, and Charlie was relieved to remember that he did.

After the shower and the oatmeal—Whim liked his with honey and butter and walnuts, but Charlie didn’t have any walnuts—Whim fell asleep in Charlie’s bed, wrapping his long body around Charlie and holding him to his chest like a teddy bear.

Charlie was tired too, but he spent long moments in that secure embrace just staring at that lovely, inhumanly beautiful profile. Even in sleep, he looked sad. Whim had loved the house, Charlie thought with a tight swallow. He’d loved the hardwood floor, he’d loved the comfortable furniture in eclectic colors, and he’d really loved the specially carved shelf Charlie had made for his toys. He even loved the cat. But his face, his heart, had been so transparent, even as he’d said, “This window is wonderful, Charlie. You must be happy to eat your oatmeal here every day.” He’d loved it, but it had hurt him, because Whim was obviously not suited for this world, and Charlie’s nice house and happy life were not things he’d ask Charlie to leave.

Over the next three days, though, Charlie found a reason to leave them. Whim woke up after only a few hours of sleep, ready to make love. He hadn’t cared about Charlie’s morning breath or the sweat that invariably coated his body in the summer. He just wanted to touch skin to skin, to put his mouth on Charlie’s body, from his ears (sensitive!) to his chest to his, well, everywhere. Charlie had let him, had reciprocated, had ended up doing a sleepy, happy, awkward (Whim’s body was
very
long) sixty-nine before he was even close to awake. And that was only a prelude.

Whim grieved. He lapsed into stunned silences in the middle of conversation, and he could be found at any moment, standing or sitting starkly still, staring into space and weeping. He also helped with the dinner dishes, petted the cat to distraction, put on work gloves and helped Charlie with the bathroom repair he’d been planning, and painted a playful and stunning—Charlie was forever impressed by Whim’s artistic gift—mural of cats lounging in magnificence on Charlie’s bathroom wall. And yes, Charlie was a little surprised at that one. But Whim asked for the latex paints and nonmetal equipment, and Charlie obliged. Two hours later, the bathroom wall was a living testimonial to Texas the ginger cat and any friends or relatives Texas might have.

He also made love with a frequency that would have left a rabbit sore, but Charlie wasn’t complaining. Every touch, every smile, every time Charlie came in his mouth (Whim was unfailingly generous—it was almost as though he’d been taught “sex manners”) convinced Charlie that Lithas weren’t an anomaly; they weren’t a magic pocket of time with a mystery lover. Litha was magical because of Whim. Whim was magical in broad daylight, in the dark of a moonless night, or when he was ambling over Charlie’s lawn in his bare feet on a bright, dry morning, singing a plaintive version of “The Little Drummer Boy.”

The morning of Whim’s fourth day, Whim woke up suddenly from a dead sleep and said, “They’re missing me. Oh, Charlie, Green is worried sick. I need to go.”

Charlie was caught flat-footed, horrified. “Go? Go? Whim—you… now?”

Whim’s smile added a whole new level to the mourning he’d been doing since he’d arrived. “I want to take you with me.”

“In a heartbeat.”

“But I can’t.”

Charlie’s beating heart plummeted to his toes. No. Not a rejection. Not after this.

“I wanted to…. Goddess, Charlie, I was going to ask you this year. Small”—a little quirk of his lips—“wonderful house be damned, I… I need you. I miss you. My years used to fly by, without anything to anchor them. Now they crawl by, from Litha to Litha. I was going to ask you. Beg you. I was going to make you every offer under the sun, fall to my knees if I had to—”