Work Text:
In the wee hours of the magpies in the nighttime, January waited in a field of cowslip and cudweed, in full bloom even though the softness of snowflakes tickled her nose. She waited, staring at the small arch formed beneath the boughs of an impossibly tall tree. She waited with a small frown on her face, hands itching to scribble upon her notebook instead of feeling the soft rise and fall of Bad's chest upon her lap.
Her feet pulled her towards home, elsewhere, anywhere but here, where she could drown her sorrows in ten thousand worlds, all ripe for her plucking.
Even still, she waited for the boy who gave her company, sweets, and an unflinchingly loyal dog. Who smuggled her books to read in the darkest hours of every solitary midnight. Who marveled at her wild and witchy self, wonderous and bound for the great wide unknown.
Who had been unraveled, cursed and blessed to live a quiet life as a supposedly worthless delivery boy when January knew him for so, so much more.
Beneath a spaning of stars, she wondered if he even bothered to follow her map, written with care and wanting, all to lead him to this quiet expanse in the middle of the Arcadian wilderness. Did he dismiss it as a mere scrap of nothing? Did he even see it at all? Maybe he was too spooked after reading her book, dismissed her as a (very imaginative and very talented) madwoman before going on about his life as normal?
But he didn’t. He followed her map, certainty carved into each ink fleck. It led to a small alleyway, insignificant to anyone without a map written by a Wordworker, all the way to the back door of a butcher's shop. Except it did not lead him to a butcher's shop, for if the right person opened it it would lead to a field of cowslip and cudweed beneath a spanning of stars, a girl in the midst of it, a missile of a dog in her lap.
When at last he came, she stood quietly, letting Bad rest his head upon the soft snow and cold blooms. He stared back, dark eyes agape.
January did not know how to hold herself. She knew how her parents met, a collision of two planets; voyaging, at first, after each other, before sailing into the great wide unknown, certain of only one thing — a hand upon their own.
But at least they knew each other. At least they had known what wonders they sought. January did not know what to expect, nor did Samuel know anything after his unraveling.
The vastness between their worlds stretched like a too-taut string, and January pondered again what would have happened had she written her own love story. Had she written of how he remembered everything. Had he sought her in a field of thornless roses, reaching for each other under the rising dawn, the way lovers long separated do in her books. She was strong enough then — to have written it, to have believed it into having happened, to have unraveled the world to her liking.
She reminded herself of the romance books she read beneath the barest slices of moonlight, snuck under the noses of her nursemaids and hidden below her plain-sheeted mattress. She recalled what made them so sweet, so lovely to dream in — the pandemonium of heartbeats, the savoring of seconds, the way love hung tense in the air for so long until it quickened into a living, tender violence.
January knew she could not live with making a love so entirely for her own.
What she did not notice, deep in her dreaming, was that Samuel remembered something himself. She did not notice how tightly he gripped the little book he held, parchment bound with brown string, a rag and a scrap of fencing wire. She did not know how he leafed through the book each night, memorizing every curve and scratch of ink, a little scrap of his mind coming undone to be restored upon browsing its pages, knowing for certain that this book meant something to him.
"You."
It was not a question. January knew it was a statement, ending with a period, a full stop, an article of definition, bound with certainty. Certainty of who she was. Certainty of who he was.
It was at that moment that Bad, the loveliest little beast, awoke so conveniently as to see Samuel and hurtle towards him, that all the unraveled threads connected the dots in Samuel's head.
Mr. Locke and his pale mirror eyes. The manor, a thousand creeping doors, dark and hollow. Jane, a warrior of a woman, fierce and homebound. Arcadia, with its wide-winged eagles and stone valleys, touched with a steady kindness even through the greatest struggle. Bad, a wonderful missile of a dog, unflinchingly loyal.
And January, wonderfully wild and witchy, wonderous and bound for the great unknown. The girl he would give a lifetime of books to read under the barest sliver of moonlight, only to watch her smile shine when she read about adventure. To see her forehead contort when she was bit with loss. To glimpse her cheeks blush when she wondered about love.
Samuel fell with Bad, dark eyes wide with wonder.
"January."
January felt the seams of her heart, bound by string, a rag and a scrap of fencing wire, gouge open at the way his mouth held her name.
"Samuel."
Samuel's heart fell into a warm pulse, feeling its way into what it had been before it was left cold and unbound. It grew into a familliar thing, definite and certain.
"Where have you been, January? Why come back?"
January had practiced this speech ten thousand times, and yet she still stuttered. "I-I have been voyaging, to wherever the wind and seas take me. Towards the mad horizon; to other worlds, dyed rich from the colors of ten thousand stars in the sky. And wherever I end up, I can't help asking the same question." — they savored the seconds, something hanging tense in the air for what felt like forever (though Bad never noticed, for he kept licking Samuel's face) — "Samuel Zappia, will you — would you like to come with me?"
Samuel stood up, Bad yapping at his heels. The world held its breath for a moment as he hesitated. "Yes," — he smiled, a glorious, beaming thing — "my answer is yes. For always."
When January was a child, she dreamed of kisses that would shake the foundations of the universe, kisses that would alter fates and lifetimes, kisses that would change the world as one knew it. In her coming-of-age, she grew cynical, knowing that kisses were only the meeting of lips and the swapping of spit, a singular moment among the rest of time.
But in that moment, hot with a living, tender violence, January felt the world shift. Not enough to shake universes. Not enough to alter fate and lifetimes. Not enough to change worlds. Merely a minuscule step into a world that felt righter. But it was enough.
"I must warn you," January held the barest amount of hesitation and the tiniest frown. "There will be danger. There will be monsters. We will find ourselves lost and uncertain. Would — would you rather live a life safe, tame and free from the strange magics of other worlds?"
Samuel smiled wider, bewildered. "I have not come all this way to find you for safe and tame, and certainly not to be free from all the strange magics you hold yourself, my Strega."
Samuel held his arm out, covered in dog saliva. January beamed back.
"Lead the way, January Wordworker."
In the wee hours of the magpies at nighttime, when the spanning of stars grew thin and the cowslip and cudweed grew plump in the spring-winters of this world, January and Samuel (and perhaps Bad too) danced.
They bound towards nowhere in particular, dreaming of the coming of dawn and the taste of dusk. Dreaming of Doors and otherworlds, ripe for their plucking. Dreaming of the great wide unknown, certain only of three things — adventure, loss and each other.