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Its friends had built this forest from the ground, and the trees were dead now and they were almost all somewhere that wasn’t, and Michael was there. Sunlight dripped from the bare canopy like egg yolk and spilled over the forest floor, and the ground was bright green in the dead of winter except for when it was just grey. It ate sometimes. Usually it didn’t, because usually nobody passed through the twisted forest at the edge of the world. It was hungry.
There was somebody on the path now. He’d thrown aside the shadow of his cloak when he came under the trees; Michael could see his face, all pretty angles and metal rings and dark eyes. Lovely, in a word. In more: exquisite, endangered, dangerous — a great danger to Michael, who had never seen anyone quite like him. Want was not an unfamiliar emotion to it, but it was focused now, on the planes of his face, the veins on the backs of his hands, the way he had stopped in a patch of sunlight and looked up and smiled, all the harshness in his face evaporating into something bright and gentle.
It wasn’t certain what exactly it wanted. His eyes glinted syrup-sweet in the brief flashes of sun and it knew they were taking in everything, so maybe it wanted to be seen. His lips were painted black and set, aside from that one brief smile, in an expression hovering somewhere between nerves and anger. So, perhaps, it wanted that expression gone, not least because it was giving him away as a stranger: fierce and antagonistic and easy to prey upon. He stopped every few paces to touch a leaf — a gentle brush of his fingers, eyes angled toward the light, still suspicious but curious, too — or to bend and trace the petals of a flower, soft colorful things barely yielding beneath how carefully he admired them. It wanted. It refused, for now, to define what it wanted.
He should not be here. That was the first thought in Michael’s mind. This was the wrong place for him, for someone so small who was so clearly burning with something enormous. He moved easily and for all intents and purposes looked nonchalant, but it was palpable. Something in the faint flexing of his fingers and the way his eyes moved. Something in the set of his mouth.
It wanted to talk to him. That was all. It could promise itself that, and the wanderer would be safer with it. It would protect him, see that nothing would harm or follow or watch him. He would be safe.
It didn’t know why it cared. It should eat him; there was paranoia there, and distrust, and exhaustion. He would be a perfect meal and it would eat and be sated and full and he would never leave the forest. But it wanted him safe — it thought it wanted him safe, it believed it wanted him safe — and it had to tell itself it didn’t have time to wonder why or if.
His eyes were driving it mad. It knew what that felt like, had reached in and scrambled the minds of enough people before, drawn their attention to one little detail, fixed them on perfection like pinning a butterfly or drawing a thread through skin. They were mesmerizing. Intense — piercing in a way that it could feel even from where it was, which wasn’t anywhere. It shivered. It wanted those eyes on it.
There was a form it could take with some difficulty. Soft around the edges, close to human. A lie, probably; Michael wasn’t certain any more than it was certain of its own name. But it was a friendly shape, unassuming and docile. It was a shape this traveller with his darting eyes and twitching hands could trust, a shape that smiled warm and laughed in a way that did not echo — a shape whose hair curled like sheep’s wool and whose cheeks blushed gentle pink and whose eyes were soft storm-grey — a shape with a dimpled smile and freckles like stars — a hard shape to hold, but an easy shape to trust. And it would just be until the wanderer was safe, or until he had seen enough of Michael to let it walk at his side unguarded, alone in the twisting forest at the edge of the world.
Whether it could trust itself was another matter. “Hello!” it said, walking up behind him like it had just emerged from another path. He started and turned around, and his eyes flashed and — oh — Michael was caught up in them, tangled in his vision and it forgot how to draw its unnecessary breaths for a moment and it felt its disguise blush pretty and pink and tried so hard to ignore the feeling which was something like hunger and something like desire.
“S-sorry to disturb you!” it said, gathering itself, picking up its disparate pieces and sewing them into something sweet that could pretend to be a friend. “I was just … it gets lonely. Here. In our — in the woods. I thought you might like a companion.”
“Who are you?” asked the traveller, and it watched the eyes tattooed over his cheekbones because his eyes were glinting and his mouth was perfect and he looked angry and so very afraid.
“Michael,” said Michael. It was building itself out of lies; it was always building itself out of lies, inventing itself and dissecting itself and layings its asymmetrical mismatched parts on the table, its double hearts and its false lungs, and half of them were plastic but they all rang hollow when it knocked and sometimes two would squelch and bleed.
“Gerry,” said the wanderer, some of the ferocity draining from his face. “You can walk with me.” He kept moving and Michael fell into step beside him, useful and harmless and seething with wants it didn’t know how to name.
“What brings you here?” asked Gerry, and it evaded the question and turned it back on him, and he didn’t answer. Michael saw his face, closed-off and suspicious, and was silent. Next time it spoke, it was about the birdsong, which Gerry could not hear. It was sick birdsong anyway; the notes did not exist.
Gerry looked at it when it mentioned the singing, and genuine concern was written into his features. It looked right on him — he saw things and Michael saw him notice, catalogue every nervous wonder in the forest and fret over them, and it marveled at a face that guarded itself so closely but would open so easy for others. It hated that Gerry would do that for its sake — loathed the worry in his features when there was nothing to fear for it, and much to fear from it.
The walk was long. The roads that wound under the turning trees doubled back on themselves, overlapped and spiralled and led out again, infinite loops that eventually found their end. He would leave the forest — Michael swore to itself that it would make certain of that — but it could do only so much. It would be a long time.
And the hours they wandered hurt. The soft shape it had pressed itself into cut at it, and it roiled in its pretty skin at the side of the wanderer Gerry. Gerry, who smiled more and more as they talked. Gerry, whose voice sounded bitter and light at the same time and whose hands moved when he spoke, sketching the outlines of his sentences in the air. His fingers were elegant and calloused and deliberate and Michael watched them and wanted.
It was hard to be like this. It watched Gerry bend to enjoy another flower, the barely-perceptible quirk of the corner of his mouth, the way his fingertips cupped the bell shape of its petals in a way that Michael could only conceive of as tender. Gerry talked of dark things, things like Michael that kept to the margins of the world and ate and ate and were never full. Michael hated itself and now it knew why, drew the answers for its wrongdoings from Gerry’s lips, saw them stitched into his eyes.
The things Gerry named could not be trusted and it knew it was their cousin and their friend and it had known from the moment it drew up a smile like the cloak he had lowered that it deserved no more faith than them. It had known that before — it took pride in that, in the way it could twist and lie and make itself false in a thousand different ways. It was a question of nature, and Michael wore its nature well by covering it.
Michael had never been soft. Michael loved to cut things and to eat things and to take their soft reaching minds in its hands and ply them to its delight. Michael was made for that feasting.
Gerry gave it a half-smile and it knew how it was and knew how it looked and it wanted to tear itself open and spill the truth of it at his feet, that there was no truth. It wanted to be seen for all the ways it was unseeable and it wanted to stuff itself into this lovely visible lie forever so Gerry would keep smiling at the thing that was not its nature nor itself nor its reality. It wanted to be content to walk in the presence of an ember that would warm the face that was not its own and talk half to the trees. It hoped desperately that the soft press of their tandem footsteps could be enough.
It hungered and more than that it wanted and it knew it would not be.
Then there was the way it sickened when Gerry’s eyes went dark — the churning at its core when he tensed — the hot clear flash of anger, one emotion that still made sense, when he mentioned offhand an old wound or a leaking scar. There were things it wanted that had to do with revenge and there were stranger things it wanted that meant care, that meant caution, that meant his beautiful hands in its and a promise of protection and a word of advice. It didn’t know what to do with that desire, because it was wrong. The hunger was faint but there still and it knew that, if it reached, it would reach too far and take him. There was nothing in itself that might let it believe otherwise. There was nothing of itself because it had no self other than the lies it forced together on the carpenter’s bench.
They rested on a corner that looked like all the others and Michael watched Gerry sprawl in a spiralling patch of light, which caught in his piercings and the veins in his eyelids, soft next to lashes that dropped stark shadows on his face. Cloak thrown aside, clothes dishevelled, a ribbon of skin where his tunic was torn. He looked vulnerable, cast alone on the moss in the sunlight and it wanted to hold him. Just to hold him — only to lie close and lace its fingers through his hair and feel something solid, the fragile reassurance of a body that drew breath and wrung dark blood through its veins.
If Michael touched him, Gerry would feel it, the sharp points of its fingers and the heaviness of its being, the rocks that tumbled where its blood and heart and strange naïveté used to be. So it would not.
It hated this want. Gerry was humming and a dry leaf landed on his face and he chuckled slightly, scrunched his nose and brushed it away. This want — it wanted to describe this want as love instead, and that was dangerous.
But its heart was expanding, crowding with every flower that Gerry’s fingers had brushed, heavy-laden with a strange thing that was deep and enormous but so new. It felt good. Michael felt good, felt better, felt ready to love in a way that was devoid of suspicion and empty of hunger and did not savor of the gnawing hatred that was its own nature defying its wants.
It was wrong. It was false and horrible in every way. It was made to confuse and to consume and to end, to draw scratches through the soft reforming flesh of a brain. There was a hole in the bottom of the thing that was not its stomach that meant it needed to eat, and there was an absence in its skull that meant it had to obscure and to lie.
The way Gerry’s eyes blinked open at it from the moss, the way his voice sounded when he murmured “should we go on?” made it want to be good. Gerry walked a little ahead of it along the path and it thought that if it were not made for wrongness, it would do right by him. He deserved that and more.
The paths stretched on for days. They rested and woke and Gerry ate less and less, rationing his food the longer the forest looped and kept them. Michael wanted him to leave, wanted him safe, wanted him tucked in and warm wherever he was heading. It wondered if it was making the forest keep him, shook its head at the idea. It didn’t want that — it didn’t want him here — it was trapped. If it examined the fear that it was the thing held him, it might make it true; if it looked away it would never know to stop were that the case.
Its skin was stretching. It doubted the disguise could hold long. The dimples in its cheeks were beginning to twist, and it hoped Gerry wouldn’t notice the spirals.
On the fifth day — or the third, or the sixth, or the hundredth, Gerry turned to it, without warning but also without alarm or demand. He had grown unexpectedly relaxed the longer they tarried in the forest and Michael wondered at that, at the mounting ease in his gait, the tension draining from his face until his smiles were frequent and his eyes were soft. Michael worried for him. Gerry was unguarded and he was making Michael unguarded, and it could only end badly for both of them.
“Michael,” said Gerry, and his smile was dandelion-bright, and his eyes were honey-sweet, and he looked nervous and eager all at once. “Can I kiss you?”
Michael’s heart stopped its frantic twisting and blinked for a moment, in and out of existence, just once. It spoke before it thought. It never thought. It didn’t have thoughts, only instincts and nature and it said “yes,” simply, lightly, fragile and delighted in the voice it had made which was shy and sweet and did not echo.
Gerry reached for it, relief cast across his face like the moon rising, wrapped an arm round its waist and buried another in its false tangle of hair and kissed it — and kissed it — it was like drinking the roots of the night sky, and Gerry was holding it like it was important and desirable and small enough to fit in his arms. And Michael, because it was weak and wanting and festering with the thing that it could no longer deny was love, kissed back. Put its hands on Gerry’s face and pulled him closer, loved him more.
And then they broke apart and the woods were brimming with invisible sounds and Gerry was flush-faced and breathing hard and looked like someone had poured the sky into his heart. “Michael,” he said, and then he didn’t say anything else, and Michael stood electrified, stricken, and wanting more.
It hated itself. It had let Gerry love it and all it could do from here was fall apart, as the rush of the moment died and Gerry felt in gentler touches the wrongness that sat just under its skin, the way its bones were sharp on every edge and its blood was yellow.
Michael smiled at him, because Michael was made of lies, and it wanted him to feel good. Gerry smiled back, and his lipstick was smudged in the vague shape of Michael’s lips on the corners of his mouth, and he swung back into motion with a disbelieving laugh that broke Michael to the core.
Michael followed, in silence, because he was safer still with it than on his own.
Michael only followed because it was selfish.
The day wore on. Gerry cast it fond glances and it returned them, trying and failing to ignore the guilt that was eating it from the inside out. He stopped now at the side of the road and picked flowers, severed their stems neatly and almost apologetically with perfect fingernails that Michael remembered, faintly, running over its scalp. One after another, Gerry gathered the flower blanket into his hands until he was overflowing with color and Michael had to draw him gently back to the path because the trees were yawning and doors were opening warm and inviting and hungry all around him.
He turned to Michael, drew close with his bundle of blossoms, brushed a stray curl from its face and started tucking them into its hair. “Hi,” he said, and his voice sounded bubbly and vulnerable and enamored.
Michael shook itself. Stumbled back and watched the flowers that had dislodged from its illusory curls tumble to the ground, shedding petals. It didn’t want this. The guilt rose knifelike from its gut and cut at its vocal cords until it had to speak of it or lose the ability entirely.
“Michael? What’s wrong?”
Michael choked. “I — I’m not. I —” It was panicking, and it hated the word
I
, and it felt awful and it hated the confusion and hurt on Gerry’s face and it was too hard to hold itself together in this gentle pleasing shape so it let itself collapse, which was the wrong way to confess but the easiest and Michael had always been wrong and a coward.
It shook and spun and twisted and unbecame and stood before Gerry tall and distorted with madness for hair and its fingers sharp and broken and longer by half than they had any right to be.
“Oh,” said Gerry, simply.
Michael laughed, and it sounded wrong, which was right.
“I know, Michael,” he said next, and that had to be wrong.
“No you don’t,” it said.
“Of course I do. Michael. Dear creature. You … you’re not subtle , love. I know where I am. I know — eyes and teeth when they can tear me apart.” He shrugged. “I waited. You didn’t try. Do you want to?”
It shook its head, and it thought maybe it should be crying, but happiness had hollowed it out and it stood shaken and hollow and ringing with light.
“Then come here,” said Gerry, and it was only an offer.
Michael did not consume him. Gerry put a hand on the angle of its jaw and pressed his lips against the echo of its laughter and it opened its mouth to his and not to hunger. It felt itself unwind, its disparate truths reeling out and surrounding them in color and gentle sound until the forest was gone. It gave in, finally, without regret, to want, its hands under Gerry’s cloak covering the length of his back and pressing him close, stark and distinct against everything he was wrapped in, which was Michael and the forest and the thing that it no longer feared to call love.