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In the sliver of light that trickles through the crack under the door, the wood of the ceiling seems washed in purple. The air, heavy with the scent of a burnt candle, weighs on Oli’s skin, unstirred for hours. On the nightstand, the mushroom soup has gone cold. Next to it a piece of dark bread lies untouched. He hasn’t been able to stomach the thought of eating yet. The sight of the bowl threatens to make him hurl every time he looks over.
At this point, it would only be acid. He’s not sure he would even feel it scald the back of his throat, because his whole body has gone stiff with pain. Coals glow just beneath the skin of his injured leg. Blood throbs inside the wound. The sting is so sharp he can trace the shape of it in his mind, all the places where scab meets tissue. The scrapes and scattered bruises that litter the rest of him, collateral damage of being swept onto the rocky shore, sizzle like he rubbed them with magma cream. Every movement makes it worse.
So Oli doesn’t move. He stares at the ceiling – still dark – and lets unconsciousness press in on his senses like the waters of the undersea.
He’d love to pass out, actually. To not be for a while. But the string in his chest twinges against the inside of his ribs with the infuriating irregularity of a dripping tap.
It’s… it’s getting harder to ignore.
Oli furrows his brows and focuses on the sensations within. No, he’s not making this up. The ache swells, like a great big beast in his guts opening its maw. Alarmed, he sits up.
Dizziness hits him, shoving him back into the bed frame. He grits his teeth and pulls some air down through his nose. It singes his windpipe.
With a shaking hand, Oli reaches for the lantern on the nightstand. He needs to check his leg. If the injury has become infected, on top of everything else…
His nails scratch the glass casing. At the noise, the soul flame inside stirs, casting the room in a soft, blue glow. For a split-second, Oli’s fingertips look nightshade black, as if he dipped them in ink up to the first knuckle.
He blinks and it’s gone, his digits returned to their normal pasty white.
He shoves the blanket off his leg, bunching the fabric over his shins. Then he tugs the edge of his shorts up to untangle the bandage by his hip. Eddie didn’t tie or tape it when he put it on, he just gently tucked the end between two layers of gauze.
It comes off easily at first. The lower parts stick to the wound, though, which Oli doesn’t notice before ripping it off. Pain shoots through him like a filleting knife stabbing into his thigh. He cries out. For a moment, it feels like he’s going to faint.
The ceiling spins. When he comes to again, he’s panting and clutching the bandage. He keeps going.
It might just be the dim light, but the injury looks redder than it did earlier. The centres of the cut are swollen. He taps the rim, moving from the outside in. Heat radiates off the skin, but it’s dry.
His flesh, still tender, used to hurt most when it was being touched. When Eddie first changed his dressings, the pain flared up sharply, but dissipated as long as Oli held still, allowing him to forget about it completely for long stretches of time. Now it has burrowed under the surface, finding a wealth of new nerve endings to torture.
Oli wants to twitch. He wants to scream. He wants to hold his breath until it stops hurting so damn much – but he’s done all three and none of it helped. He can’t focus enough to distract himself with music, either. He wants… Eddie.
Miserable, Oli slumps into his pillow.
He knows his wounds wouldn’t be hurting nearly as badly if Eddie were here. But he’s not coming. He didn’t look at Oli at all when he carried him from the roof terrace in stony silence. Oli’s own thoughts had been spinning too fast to crystallise anything to say.
Eddie had sat him on his bed, bid him ‘good night’ and… well. It’s Robin who brings him food now. If that isn’t a statement, what is?
Oli’s chest aches. His arms and legs feel like they have anvils tied to them. He makes a soft whimpering noise and presses the heels of his palms over his eyes. Breathe. In and out, just like with the flute.
It doesn’t work. Maybe he was supposed to be in this much pain the entire time. He merely didn’t notice, because all of his thoughts were centred around Eddie.
He doesn’t want to imagine what it’d be like, being in the same room with him again. His throat would go tight as his pathetic little heart beat its yearning staccato against his ribs, like a bird throwing itself into the metal bars of its cage. One day, it will find the hatch. It’ll flutter its way right out of Oli’s mouth and into Eddie’s safe, warm hands, desperate for something that already belongs to someone else.
That’s the crux of the matter, really: if he stays in Sanctuary, it’s going to break him.
The door flies open. ‘Dude, are you okay? You were shouting!’
Oli jumps almost a foot. But it’s just Robin, staring at him with ramrod-straight ears.
‘I’m– I’m fine,’ he squeaks.
Robin exhales. ‘Oh, Santa,’ she mutters. Her gaze finds the nightstand. ‘Wait, you didn’t eat any of your dinner.’
Oli shrugs. ‘Wasn’t hungry.’
Robin’s whiskers quiver. She bites the inside of her cheek. ‘Skipping meals is not going to help–’
‘Hey, can I ask you a favour?’ Oli interrupts. ‘Without telling Eddie?’
She squirms. ‘Depends on what it is.’
The only thing that will save him is distance.
‘I need something. A cane.’
*
Now that Oli knows the empire gathers for worship once a week, the quiet days don’t feel so strange any more. Instead, a sense of peace fills the building, and everything goes silent, because nobody’s home. Which is exactly the reason why he picked today for his great escape.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Oli considers the items spread out before him.
The first is the cane that Robin snuck in for him. It’s a slightly crooked, wooden rod with a metal grip in the form of the head of a Phantom. Going by the dark smudges in the grooves around the creature’s eyes, it must be made of pure silver.
The other bits are Eddie’s instruments: the tin whistle with the shrieking trill, the ocarina that made him cry, the harmonica and the egg-shaped rattle that don’t have any trauma attached to them yet. Further down the bed lies Gem’s Horn of Dawn.
Oli runs his fingertips over its furrowed curves. The dips and nooks are familiar, soothing. Outside, the sun must be high in the sky. There’s rarely a cloudy day in Sanctuary, but today, the thick dust is shifting just so, stirred by the increased heat and humidity.
Oli gets up, takes the Horn of Dawn and the cane and heads for the door, then hesitates.
A stack of books towers high on the nightstand, unread. Next to them sit a cup of tea and a plate of carrots. He did his best to fluff the pillow and fold the blanket. The tin whistle’s slim body twinkles at him, bright and sharp like its voice in his mind.
He stumbles back to the bed without thinking. Since he needs his hands free, he stuffs the rattle and ocarina into the pockets of his shorts. The whistle and the harmonica he squeezes under the waistband.
Instruments thus secured, he bolts.
*
The first thing Oli notices when he opens the tavern door is the twitter of the birds. The branches of the greenery lining the streets must be dripping with local avifauna, that’s how loud their screeching chrous is.
Thankfully, the streets are as recognizable from below as from above. All around, viridian bushes, verdant bamboo and flowering vines crawl out of their hanging pots to reach thin, dark tendrils towards the apricot-coloured masonry that looks just as lush as they did from up on the roof. Oli turns left, leaning heavily onto his cane as he sets one foot in front of the other.
A warm breeze brushes his cheeks. There’s a wind corridor, he realizes, all the way from the tavern across the market, past the church and up into the mountains beyond, to keep the city well ventilated. Congratulations, sir Architect, on that big brain of yours.
Halfway down the road, the sweat starts tickling his temples. Lightning zings up his leg with every step, but it’s dulling by the second. Maybe his nerve endings are getting fed-up, too. In that case, he’d just have to keep going for another hour and he’d be pain-free.
The smithy is not far. It’s a big building, wider than the tavern, with several chimneys and a sliding door on the side that would more befit a barn. The top floor protrudes over the lower one, as does the roof. A fenced-in area attached to the wall houses a mountain of packed coal and a massive stack of empty buckets. A thick rope holds the fence gate shut.
Since limping up to the front entrance seems a lot safer for a man in Oli’s condition than hopping over stray lumps of coal, he decides to ignore the challenge inherent in the “Keep Out” sign.
He can’t stop his eyes from wandering up the sandstone-and-tuff façade. He takes in the windows with the gossamer curtains and potted cacti on the upper sills, secured with yet more rope. Clearly, this place is a home as well as a workshop.
Eddie lives here. When he’s not out helping people, this is where he is. If Oli leaves the instruments here, Eddie will definitely find them – and he’ll know who put them there. Hopefully, he’ll even understand that Oli went through the extra effort of bringing them back because it’s the only way he knows how to say “thank you.”
Three stone steps lead up to the door. Its handle is an iron strand twirled around itself. A metal hook serves to latch it, but it’s unlocked. The people of Sanctuary are too trusting by half, a part of Oli whispers. He’s already reaching to push it open when a different thought makes him halt in his tracks.
This is Eddie’s place. If he lives here, he’s probably not doing so alone.
Oli’s head whips up, as if he could see it from the outside: a picture frame or a dream catcher or a child’s toy behind the glass, doll hair or dice or chalk on the ground. Proof of the family that inhabits these walls.
He can’t spot anything. Maybe Eddie made them clean up before worship?
The wind picks up and Oli shudders. He makes to nudge the door, but finds that he can’t move.
What if they’re home? What if they decided not to accompany Eddie to church today? What if they never do and he has to meet them, has to look them in the eye and see the happiness on their faces that Eddie put there – and know exactly how they feel, except they got him when Oli doesn’t?
Maybe he should just leave the instruments out front. Eddie’ll discover them when he returns. If Oli’s lucky, he’ll have found Sanctuary’s Nether portal by then.
The door’s handle drops out from under his palm. Oli flinches.
A harengon’s face appears. Her cheeks are white as a meringue cookie, with pumpkin-coloured spots surrounding her eyes and the tip of her ears.
‘Oli?’
He catches himself on his cane. ‘H-hi, Robin.’
‘What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be walking around… Are you?’
Oli straightens and waves his free hand in a gesture of nonchalance. ‘I mean, who’s to say, really? I’ve been doing a lot better recently, that’s why I asked for the cane. Would I have done that, if I didn’t think myself capable of using it?’
Robin’s ears twitch. ‘I guess not?’
‘See? It’s totally fine,’ Oli says, louder. ‘Everything’s going according to plan.’
They stare at one another. Eventually, the harengon clears her throat. ‘Um, do you– You should come in.’
She retreats into the smithy’s dark, dusty interior. Or maybe it’s just dark because Oli’s leaving the bright, early-afternoon sunlight behind. Once his eyes adjust, he follows after Robin.
He finds himself in a surprisingly wide, sprawling space. To his left, down a shallow flight of stairs, lies the actual smithy, which, from here, looks much more like a workshop. Smooth stone slabs form long working tables clustered around a massive anvil. An open forge sits snugly against the back wall, next to the gate leading into the courtyard that Oli already spotted from the outside. Iron and diamond tools hang from hooks attached to steel bars overhead, right below a series of cut-outs that seem to be functioning as vents.
The part of the building where Oli’s standing must be the shop. There’s a counter with a till and a large book bound in green leather, possibly for accounting purposes, or for tracking commissions, or both.
Behind the counter, a circular staircase winds its way upwards. The steps and the banister are wrapped in delicately crafted golden leaves.
To Oli’s left lies what looks to be a reading nook, complete with two couches and a low coffee table. Thrown over one armrest is a lump of red-and-green chequered fabric he identifies as a jacket Lark once wore, when she dipped in to bring him lunch. The smell of smoke fills the interior, mixed with hot iron and ash. Oli scrunches up his nose.
‘No one’s here yet,’ says Robin. She’s hopping up and down on the balls of her feet. One of her ears is cocked in the direction of the fire crackling in the forge. ‘They’ll be back after the Hour of Song.’
‘Why aren’t you with them?’
She shrugs. ‘Wasn’t feeling it today.’
Her other ear flicks towards the workshop and her body kind of follows, as if pulled by a lead. She wrings her hands. ‘Eddie’s room is upstairs.’
Oli fakes surprise. ‘Um, why–?’
Robin’s whiskers tremble. ‘Sorry, I just assumed– I’m– I gotta finish up with this hoe.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘B-blades,’ she stammers. ‘For a mule-powered plough.’
That… makes more sense.
Oli blushes. ‘I, uh. I’ll leave you to it.’
Robin nods, sending her ears bouncing, whirls on her heels and all but bolts towards the forge. She must really like her job, Oli thinks, watching her go. At least she seems to be taking it exceedingly seriously, if she’s this eager to get back to it.
Then again, if that fire were a piano, he can kind of see her point.
Thus left to his own devices, there’s not much to do for him but to proceed with his plan. He wipes his brow with the side of his hand, careful not to drop the cane, and tries to lift his foot. It sticks to the floor.
He pulls harder. A fine sheen of sweat covers his face and fingers. Move, he tells his body. It’d look weird and suspicious if he just hung out here after being graciously let in.
Robin’s ear turns in his direction. Oli’s heel comes unglued so suddenly he nearly kisses the planks.
It takes him six steps to reach the stairs. He curls his palm around the banister and lowers his head, pretending to be out of breath. Through his bangs, he squints at the counter with the register. There’s an open space below the top, where a drawer would fit, crammed to bursting with stacks of paper scraps, quills, ink jars and several clumps of redstone dust. A locked metal box presumably holds the shop’s stock of emeralds and diamonds, or whatever currency they use in Sanctuary. Again, it’s nothing out of the ordinary.
Oli looks up into the shadows of the upper floor. A shudder runs down his spine. This is it. Eddie’s private rooms. Where he lives. Where he sleeps.
… and also probably cooks his breakfasts, showers, and keeps all the books he brought for Oli’s entertainment. Where he stores his laundry, his memorabilia and everything else that makes up the most mundane, yet most important part of Eddie’s life – and those of the people close enough to share his space.
Oli’s fingers clench. His nails dig into the base of his thumb. He doesn’t want to do this.
But the lower end of the tin whistle is poking his guts and the rattle and harmonica are stretching out his pockets. He’s already in Eddie’s house. He’s made it this far. He’s going to finish what he started.
Taking a deep breath to steel himself, Oli takes the first agonizing step up the stairs.
*
The door at the top is open, not even pretending to give him the impression that he could turn back.
Sunlight shines through the flimsy curtains, illuminating a living space that seems to encompass the whole floor. Only the bits that would be right above the workshop have been walled off. A kitchenette sits to Oli’s left side, including a stove, a mountain of firewood perfectly cut to fit inside and a tap with actual running water on top of a super-sized bucket reworked into a sink. Two shelves stacked with preserving jars full of jam and pickled vegetables – beets, cherries, kale and apples – complete the ensemble, next to three fat-bellied ceramic canisters. One for sugar, one for flour and one for salt, probably.
Bushels of dried herbs hang from the ceiling, filling the room with a mixture of smells: sour parsley, earthy sage and pungent rosemary, undercut with the mild spicy aroma of thyme. Nether wart and mushrooms spill from mugs and bowls on the windowsill. A perfectly sorted arrangement of knives sticks to a metal board. The blades glint menacingly, sharp enough to cut air, as befits a weaponsmith.
The table by the window has three chairs around it. Oli’s guts twist.
It’s probably be best if he leaves the instruments in plain sight. He limps across the room, already reaching for the tin whistle with his free hand. He places it in the middle of the table, next to the brass candleholder. Or maybe it’s gold, he really can’t tell with all the wax covering it. Staring at it, a yawning chasm opens in Oli’s chest.
It takes him a moment to identify the feeling: recognition. Or rather, the absence of it. Is this Eddie, he thinks, tracing a solidified drop with his fingertips, or is it an aberration?
It chokes him in a completely new way, not knowing the answer.
The same goes for the room, he realizes. Is it all him, or is there someone else’s handwriting in the décor?
‘Um, Oli? Oli!’
Robin sounds agitated. Maybe the others have returned and he’s about to be caught red-handed? Wait, no. He didn’t tell her he left without permission.
Oli puts the remaining instruments beside the whistle and leans on his cane to turn around.
There’s an opening in the wall next to the staircase he came up through. It doesn’t have a door, just a halfway-closed green-and-white curtain. For privacy, most likely, since the room beyond is a bedroom.
A massive, four-poster bed in the corner takes up almost all of the available space. It’s covered in an autumn-coloured quilt. Two pillows peek out from under its edge. A floor-to-ceiling book-rack overflowing with brightly bound tomes dominates the rest of the room; one of its middle shelves having been repurposed into a nightstand with a lantern and a pitcher of water. A smaller window overlooks the courtyard and there’s a basket by the door frame, heaped with fabric. Laundry.
It probably smells like him.
The thought hits Oli like a lightning bolt, nailing him to the floor. The hairs on the back of his arms stand on end. He sways forwards, then clenches his fists by his sides.
This… is a boundary he shouldn’t cross. But he’s also leaving and going far away and never coming back. There’s an image of a beach burnt into the back of his eyelids, with a shack made of dirt and a sign carved with his name. Eddie’s going to live out the rest of his days without even remembering Oli, that guy who didn’t stay long enough to be a blip on the radar.
All Oli’s going to have of him is that one kiss on the roof. Nothing else.
The string smarts behind his sternum. The sensation swells and sharpens, cutting off his breath. But Oli’s not giving in. He inhales shallowly, forcing his constricting throat to open.
The air scratches the back of his tongue. Oli blinks. Wait.
That’s smoke.
Eyes widening, he hops for the door. ‘Robin,’ he yells into the darkness of the stairway.
A blast of heat hits him, thick enough to feel it hit his skin and singe off his eyebrows. Oli slaps a hand over his nose. ‘Robin!’
No reply.
Cold as needle pins, adrenaline shoots though his veins. He grasps the banister, which is noticeably warmer beneath his palm. In his rush to get downstairs, his ankle keeps hitting the cane. He drops it.
It bounces off the metal several times, clanking loudly before disappearing into the dark. He hopes it doesn’t accidentally hit Robin on the head or something.
Shit, his lungs are burning. He’s breathing smoke. Even Oli, who’s inhaled a great many things in life – the dragon’s mouth odour just being one of those, and the sulphuric fumes of the Nether are a completely different story – knows that this is dangerous. He grabs a corner of his shirt and presses it to his face.
Through the tears, the bottom of the stairs are a washed out blur. Oli clings to the banister and uses the arch of his foot to feel out the edge of every new step. He’s no help to anyone if he incapacitates himself by accident – any more than he already is. He needs to find Robin.
Flames spurt from the open forge, licking greedily towards the ceiling. Their glow reflects off the surfaces of the sharpened tools, bathing the whole smithy in yellow. The empty smithy.
Oli rubs a hand over his eyes. Wetness stains his knuckles.
There’s no body on the floor. No butch blacksmith’s apprentice hiding in a corner somewhere. He’s alone.
The smithy is on fire and Robin just left him there.
Seconds tick by.
A small explosion rocks the forge – damp wood, most likely – startling Oli to attention.
Shit, he needs to get out of here ASAP. He stumbles towards the door, all but dragging his injured leg behind him.
It’s locked. Oli looks for the bolt, then remembers that it’s on the outside. He turns his head around fast enough to give himself whiplash.
The windows are too tiny, but there’s the gate leading into the courtyard. The downside: it’s right past the burning forge. The flames have reached the coal storage next to it, spewing orange and red sparks in every direction. Shadows twist along the walls, grasping, seemingly, for pliers and tongs scattered across the floor; for fallen, empty buckets and stray lumps of raw iron.
There’s no other exit.
Oli grits his teeth. With the smoke filling up the room, it’s now or never. He starts making his way to the gate, doing his best to dodge the clutter.
The roaring of the fire seems to come from everywhere. Metal shrieks, stretching as it heats. Even the ceiling has begun to groan. Air so thick it feels like it’s denting Oli’s skin covers him like a burial shroud. Not that there will be a burial – he’ll be a black smudge on the floor if he doesn’t make it. His burnt bones will crumple to dust the moment someone tries to collect them.
Fuck, he hopes that won’t be Eddie.
A rumbling sound fills the smithy. The gates creak and shake as they bend to the fire. Oli catches a glimpse of sunlight ere the flames burst out of the forge, greedily throwing themselves at the oxygen pouring in. The wave of hot air flings him backwards. His foot gets stuck on something, sending him sprawling. He hits the ground hard, but with the adrenaline pumping through his veins, he barely feels it.
The blaze before him flares higher and doesn’t die down, blocking his exit.
Oli rolls onto his side, pressing his hand over his mouth. He’s dizzy. The tears on his cheeks seem to steam. Frantically, he runs through his options. Upstairs, maybe? But what would he do there, except wait for the fire to get to him? Would he even find the staircase, in the smoke?
Then again, if it keeps him from being roasted like a chicken for goblin-Thanksgiving – no, actually. This is worse. Because most poultry is already dead when it goes through this process. Which is probably not a big consolation for the chicken.
There has to be a window somewhere. He can’t breathe.
He yanks his shirt away from his mouth, but that exacerbates the dizziness. His chest constricts. Every inhale feels like it makes his lungs cramp.
He crawls backwards as best as he can, until his foot hits something that scrapes across the floor. It’s his cane. Oli reaches for it, but the moment his palm touches it, the heat of the metal grip sears right through his skin.
He lets out a shriek. The thundering of the flames swallows it whole.
This is how he dies. He survived falling from the sky, hitting the ground and being devoured by the sea, but apparently his luck doesn’t stretch to the last of the four elements. Prickling pain travels up his sides. Someone wrapped wire fencing around his body and is now pulling hard enough to cut flesh. He curls up on the floor.
‘Oli? Oli!’
His throat feels like a dust bowl in August. Is there grit on his tongue?
‘Where are you? Oh Perla, oh Santa, please.’
That’s… Eddie. Eddie is here. Or, more likely, Eddie is a smoke-induced hallucination, but Oli has to hand it to his subconscious: it’s a nice touch.
‘Oli! Madre! Either of you, give me a sign!’
Well, he would. If he could.
Oli’s heart lurches. He stretches his shaking fingers into the smog, finds his cane and bangs it onto the ground.
‘Oli?!’
He drops the cane.
‘Oh! It’s alright, I got you. I got you now.’
Shadows descend on him, surrounding him in heavy darkness. Their rough texture scratches his overheated skin, kindling a different kind of ache. He yowls.
The floor boards disappear from under him. First he’s moving, then the thing – cloth, probably designed not to burn – loosens. Oli flops to the ground like a piece of candy unwrapped by a toddler. Blinding blue fills his field of vision – sky and sunlight. Oh, and there’s Eddie’s face, peering down at him.
That wide, storm-tossed ocean gaze is cool water on Oli’s skin. His stomach flutters like a hundred fledglings taking flight at once. He’s sure it must show in his expression; in the dopey-ness of his smile.
Eddie’s mouth moves. No sound comes out.
Oli, whose head feels stuffed with cotton, frowns.
The harengon grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him. Like a million crystals under the blow of a machete, the silence shatters. A tsunami of noise surges around him – shouting, screaming, howling, a gong banging right next to his temples. He doubles over, frantically trying to cover his ears.
‘Breathe,’ Eddie yells. ‘You need to breathe.’
Oli would like to. He really would, but his world is turning itself inside out, and the spinning darkness pulls him under before he can comply.
*
Oli wakes to a splitting headache and Eddie’s nose directly in front of his own.
‘Don’t pass out again. Stay with me. Are you in pain?’
Oli blinks, trying to make sense of the situation.
He’s in Eddie’s arms. His throat feels like he swallowed a cheese grater and the warmth on his tongue is definitely blood from a cut lip. He wants to say something, but his mouth is so dry all that comes out is a scratchy groan.
A second face pushes in his field of view. It’s Robin. Her eyes are wide and her lips are open, showing off her long front teeth. ‘Oli, I am so sorry! I– I– I don’t know what happened. The fire, it, it was– I panicked.’
She breaks off, sobbing, and presses both paws over her eyes. ‘I just ran to find Eddie. I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s– ugh.’ Oli wheezes.
A hand appears on Robin’s shoulder. Gently, Eddie shoves her away, into the periphery of Oli’s attention. His whiskers tremble with every breath.
‘Are you hurting, Oli? Can you show me where?’
Oli runs his tongue across his lips, tasting copper. ‘Is everywhere a valid answer?’
Eddie flings his arms around him, crushing him to his chest. ‘Don’t do that again. Don’t you ever do that again, you hear me?’
‘N-not planning to.’
Eddie straightens. His mouth twitches, but the grin doesn’t reach his eyes. ‘Good. Because I would find you and make you regret it.’
His long ears turn sideways abruptly. His gaze follows. He shifts his grip on Oli to gesture with his free hand.
‘Open the auxiliary vents to get the smoke out. It’s the lever opposite the forge,’ he calls. ‘Take water when you go in; it doesn’t matter if anything gets destroyed.’
A chorus of voices answers him. Some are close, some further away. Oli doesn’t recognize any of them.
‘Start getting the coal out as soon as you can. We need to cut off its fuel,’ Eddie adds. He keeps watching for another moment, then his gaze drops to Oli. ‘Sorry. I need to have an eye on the situation. The fire’s almost out, but if it looks like anyone’s likely to get hurt, I’m going in.’
‘That’s okay,’ Oli rasps. It’s so quiet he’s not even sure Eddie hears it, since his attention is focused on his recently incinerated house.
Eddie nudges him. ‘Can I move you a little bit? I’d like to get you further away.’
Oli nods. His body feels like he spent a week sleeping on cobblestone in a lush cave with an arctic draft coming in twenty-four seven, but that’s nothing a good night’s rest on an actual bed won’t fix. He’s fit as a fiddle.
That’s probably still the adrenaline talking. Or his natural hubris.
Eddie pushes his free arm under Oli’s knees and picks him up. Oli’s head lolls against his apron. He leaves it there, because if he’s not obligated to lift the weight of his own skull right now, he won’t.
Thankfully, Eddie’s not taking him far. They stop close enough for Oli to be able to hear the commotion by the smithy. He can’t see it, though. All he sees is Eddie’s face, which, honestly? Worth it.
Eddie came for him. Eddie saved him.
Eddie’s also looking at him with a shimmer in the corners of his eyes. ‘Oli, I– Robin,’ he says. ‘She didn’t mean for this to happen. She ran because she was afraid. In her hurry, she didn’t notice the door falling shut.’
Oli frowns.
‘Please… If you have it in you, forgive her. She really didn’t want to hurt you. I know that’s cold comfort at best, but her actions will not go unpunished. I promise you that. I–,’ he pauses and sighs. ‘It doesn’t have to be now. Or even soon. Just– she–’
Oli raises a hand – the one he burnt earlier on his cane; the skin feels taut but not much else; maybe his nerve endings were so shocked by what happened they just collectively decided to quit – and places it on Eddie’s bicep.
‘I forgive her.’
Eddie gapes. ‘Oli, think about–’
Oli shakes his head. The movement knocks something loose in his throat. He doubles over, coughing.
Eddie makes an alarmed noise and pats his back.
Oli gags, but manages not to actually throw up.
‘I’m serious,’ he rasps, as soon as he’s able to. ‘She panicked, I don’t blame her for that. I would have done the same in her situation.’
Eddie shoots him a dubious look.
Oli’s hand is too stiff to wave it, so he wriggles his fingers instead. ‘I probably wouldn’t even have come back, so she already did way better than me.’
The harengon slumps. ‘Alright.’
Oli nods, satisfied. He means it: he doesn’t blame Robin. A kid like her, alone with a house in flames? Of course she’d run to get help and not look back.
‘Eddie,’ a chirpy voice calls. ‘The fire’s out.’
‘Lark. You shouldn’t be here. Your parents–’
‘–are on their way. I want to help; let me help!’
Oli can’t see her, but he hears her running away. Eddie lets out a breath. Oli’s about to do the same when it hits him. Oh, right. Now that the danger has passed, things between them aren’t okay any more. He… kissed Eddie and the other hasn’t spoken to him since.
Oli’s stomach twists, like a great big creature flapping its wings. He must have shifted or something, because there’s a change in the air all of a sudden. Eddie stiffens.
‘Oli.’
An icy shudder runs down his spine at the tone. His toes curl. He wants to jump to his feet and book it.
‘Y-yeah?’
Eddie clears his throat. Then he carefully eases Oli onto the ground. He remains crouched, but there’s now an arm’s length of distance between them.
‘I know I should have come to talk to you about this a lot sooner. After what happened on the roof…’
We don’t need to speak about it, Oli wants to scream. We don’t need to talk about anything at all.
Eddie doesn’t hear his unspoken plea. ‘I needed some time to sort my thoughts.’
‘That’s fine,’ says Oli. ‘Totally alright. Everyone needs some time to sort their thoughts every now and again, that’s completely normal. Human, even, I’d say, except you’re not. So it must be more of a universal trait. Like laughter – although I’ve never seen, say, a Creeper laugh. That’d be creepy. Or Creeper-y, I should say. Get it?’
‘Oli.’
He shuts his mouth.
‘What happened on the roof,’ Eddie begins and Oli’s so scared of what he might say next that he blurts ‘I’m sorry!’ before he can stop himself.
His heart claws against the inside of his ribcage. His palm is sweaty – at least the one he still has feeling in.
‘There’s no need to be sorry.’
He jolts. ‘No?’
Eddie nods. ‘It’s quite normal,’ he says, his voice carefully even, ‘to form an emotional attachment in your situation.’
Oh, no.
Oli’s head fills with the noise of shattering glass. It could be the windows of the forge. He knows it’s not.
‘You were injured and in pain and, moreover, socially isolated for both of those reasons. It wasn’t intentional.’
He didn’t feel socially isolated. He saw Robin and Lark on the regular and sometimes the tavern staff, too, when nobody else was around. Sure, Eddie visited him roughly eighty percent of the time, but it still felt like it wasn’t enough. Right now, he wishes Eddie were touching him. The hairs on the back of his arms rise, galvanized by the other’s proximity.
‘I took care of you,’ Eddie continues. ‘All of that attention and comfort created positive feelings which, over time, morphed into something else. This phenomenon isn’t uncommon here in Sanctuary, nor in other places of healing.’
That’s not how it happened at all. His love for Eddie hit him like a falling anvil, like a meteor, like the moon crashing into the Earth. The first time Oli laid eyes on him, the entire universe realigned itself. Suddenly the stars spinning in the night sky were moving backwards and he didn’t even mind, still doesn’t, because their twinkling, dazzling beauty feels so right from this angle. As if it was always meant to be this way. As if the world was wrong before, though logically, he knows it can’t have been.
‘It’s called transference.’
Oli can’t even protest, that’s how much he wants to throw up.
Eddie sighs. ‘The point is, those feelings you think you’re having for me… They will go away once you’re well again.’
They won’t. Not even if he runs forever. From the end of the world, his heart will still pull towards Eddie’s like a compass needle. It doesn’t matter what he’s doing, or how many people he takes to bed, or to whom else he tries to give his affection in the interim. His soul will always crave Eddie. That’s how the red string works.
There’s no amount of distance that will ever fix this. It was foolish of him to think otherwise.
The harengon pats his hand. ‘You’ll be right as rain without me.’
He smiles encouragingly, devastating all of Oli. Like old ruins, he crumples.
There’s a part of him that wants to scream. To cry. To get on his knees and beg for Eddie to believe him when he confesses his devotion. He doesn’t have to love him back. Oli’s not asking for anything but acknowledgement. Unfortunately, just doing that will probably convince Eddie that Oli’s really transference-ing all over the place. And worse, it would make him leave.
Oli doesn’t want him to leave. The past few days were agony without him. So he presses his lips together to keep the noise in. He can’t let it show. He can’t give the other any reason to go.
Eddie’s whiskers twitch. ‘Are we good?’
No. No, no, no.
Oli ignores the hollow ache below his sternum, where the string sits, forever tugging and trying to loop him closer. ‘Yeah, of course.’
Lies. Ash on his tongue.
Eddie heaves a big breath. ‘I’m glad,’ he says. ‘Thank you.’
‘Not a, uh, problem.’
The other’s eyes cut past him. ‘Things are dying down.’
Oli cranes his neck.
A plume of smoke towers high into the sky. Figures dance around it like fireflies: humans, harengon, others that Oli can’t quite make out. They’re converging on the smithy, which is, to his surprise, still standing. He’s not sure he wants to know what it looks like from the inside, though.
Eddie’s work and livelihood, charred to cinders. Oli’s stomach roils.
‘Your breathing sounds less wheezy than it did a few minutes ago. Do you think you’re okay to go back to your room?’
Oli takes stock of his body. His bad leg is aching, which he really should have expected. He can’t close the fingers over his burnt palm any more and the soles of both of his feet are scraped raw. Not that it matters; he won’t be going anywhere for a long time.
Eddie waits for him to nod before sliding his arm under his knees again. Oli leans into the other’s muscled chest, because this might be the last chance he’ll ever get to do that. Unless he keeps getting injured enough for Eddie to have to carry him, of course, which is a possibility he can’t help but consider for a solid few seconds.
‘Actually, there’s one more thing I wanted to talk to you about,’ Eddie says as they’re approaching the tavern.
Oli freezes. He’s not sure he can sustain another blow without bursting apart like an over-ripe cherry. ‘Um?’
‘It has to do with your current situation. Or rather, the situation you stoutly refuse to stay in, meaning: your bed.’
Oli blinks.
Eddie’s lips tug upwards into a lop-sided grin. ‘Since I apparently can’t keep you there for any amount of time and you seem to be determined to go gallivanting about the moment I take my eyes off of you, I’ve decided that the only way to reduce the risk of further injury is to get you mobile again as soon as possible. That means physical therapy, starting tomorrow.’