Chapter Text
At the age of seven, Will was an otter. It hurt, when Father made him a boy instead.
They met by the river Trent, the both of them splashing and strolling about. He was kneeling on the bank and pushing his toy boat in the water. She was a very fine boat, that Uncle Edward had given him, and Uncle Edward knew of boats, because he was in the Navy; she even had a name: the Benevolent. Bravely she fought against the unrelenting current; her captain was the bravest of all officers, and every one of his orders was just and duly thought through. His men loved him very much.
“Captain Laurence, a gale!” Will whispered. He threw a glance over his shoulder to make sure George could not hear—but George and his book had remained with the servant that brought them here, fighting boredom so as to let his little brother play his fill. George liked to make himself look wiser than he was, even though he was only four years older than Will.
“We cannot avoid it,” Will murmured, pushing his voice to the deepest it could go. “We shall have to fight through it: all hands to reef the sails!”
Unfortunately, he himself only possessed two hands to mime such an endeavour, and as he raised them the boat slipped out of his grasp and spun away in the merciless current. The river was slow, but deep, and Will knew not how to swim: seeing his dear Benevolent drift off toward the centre of the Trent, far out of reach even with a stick, he cried out in horror. He followed her along the bank, tears welling in his eyes, powerless to save his beloved ship. How shameful for a naval captain to lose his first command!
There: a splash of water, an inquisitive head peeking over the surface. By then he was near sobbing, and he only saw in that young otter a means of retrieving his toy. Clasping his hands in front of him as though in prayer, he sent his mind rushing forward, meeting that of the animal. Curiosity, surprise, and some concern that this creature on the bank may prove dangerous to her: Will felt, and did not draw back.
“Please,” he begged. His words echoed, aloud and directly in the otter’s mind. “Please, bring my boat back to the bank, and I will be forever grateful! I’ll even bring you food—please, before it’s too late!”
It was nothing more than a game. She dove, grabbed the toy in her flat little paws, and swam all the way to Will’s side of the river, although a safe distance from him. The very moment the boat touched the pebbles, she disappeared in the water. Will lost contact with her mind and was left with a last lingering trace of amusement.
He came back on the morrow with two slices of bacon hidden deep in his coat pockets. He had no way of knowing if such a gift would be appreciated by an otter, but stealing fish from the kitchens would have been much more difficult. As soon as the servant accompanying him settled to play cards with his back to a tree, he ran through the bushes to the water, out of sight, set the bacon on the ground and staggered back to sit still in the grass. He closed his eyes, opened his mind, and called.
She came. She still refused to approach him more than was necessary, but devoured the bacon with her sharp, shiny teeth. She was a youngling, just like him, all wet fur and short, flat paws. There was strength in the curve of her back, but youthful clumsiness in her demeanour. Will observed her as she ate. When she was done, she sat on her haunches and scrubbed at her nose with her front paws. Then she turned to him, and cocked her head. Their minds met. Her: wariness, but interest. Him: gratitude and admiration. Desire to play. She raised her whiskers.
Play? she offered.
Will hesitated, and turned to the servant. But the road was far away, and the temptation too great: he rose, and they played at chasing each other until the time to leave arose.
He visited her every day Father let him. Father did not know about the otter. Father did not know his mind remained by the river, even when his body did not.
Will liked the water. He tried to imagine the Trent growing, growing, devouring Wollaton Hall with all its horses, the music-room, the grand staircase, even Father’s study, until Nottinghamshire entire lay in the dark quivering depths as the new Atlantis, a submerged land under the waters, like in Mother’s story. He tried to imagine the sea.
Swiftwater, it soon appeared, had never seen the sea either. She did not know it existed. Will conjured an immensity of endless waves, a river larger than the world itself, but found his tightly-packed mind could not truly encompass it.
How do you know it exists, if you have never seen it? Swiftwater asked, sceptical.
Mother told me of it. Will sent: an image of Mother; a feeling of warmth; the thirst for knowledge, that only Mother could quench with her ever so rare stories. Swiftwater understood. She knew Mothers were to be trusted. Her own family lived up the river, and thought little good of the human smell now entangled with hers; they did not reject her, however, their love and loyalty running too deep for such a betrayal.
Will lay in the grass, Swiftwater slotted against his side, cold and wet against his cold and wet skin. Will sat in the parlour, bowing before Father’s prestigious guests. Will curled in his bed at night, slowly sinking into sleep. Will learned to ride a horse, patting his head and his mind both at once to reassure him. And always, always, always, Will remained by the river.
“I did not know you to enjoy fish so very much, William,” Uncle Edward said, laughing, one time they went to visit him. Will looked at his plate.
What food does one enjoy, if not fish? Swiftwater retorted.
“This fish in particular is very good, Uncle,” Will said docilely. “My congratulations to your cook.”
Father nodded and smiled. Of course, Will smiled back.
Months went by; a full year went by; Swiftwater did not see a difference; she did not care about time. She grew; he grew; they would grow together, Will had decided, forever. What Will decided rarely ever came true. How Father found out, he never knew—it had never been unusual for Will to play by the river, even before meeting his animal companion; but he did find out, and so he did strike.
Truth be told, Will did not recall much of those months with Swiftwater: he had crossed them out afterwards, spilled dark ink all over his pained being, to protect himself from the tear in his very core, threatening to devour him like the sea devoured Atlantis. Of that last day, he remembered the smell: that of the fresh fish Swiftwater had only just caught, and of clear dew slipping through his hair as they rolled about in the grass together. He remembered the steps of the servants Father had sent to stop them: stableboys, strong-armed and iron-willed, grasping him like they would a reluctant horse. He remembered the glint of the knife. He remembered dying.
Fresh fish and fresh blood do not smell the same.
It is surprisingly easy, being dead. One only needs to let go. Will let himself be carried back to the house, let them abandon Swiftwater’s small, still body by the river, let Father take one look at him and surge down on the servants in a roar of Skill-borne fury. They stumbled back. He grabbed Will’s shoulder, an iron grip he immediately yielded to, but Father’s rage had not yet turned to him.
“You killed it? You damned fools! Were my orders not clear? Were you not listening? Look at him: look at what you did to my son! By God, I should sack you this very moment! Did I not specify the beast had to live?”
“My lord, it bit my hand—”
Get out of my sight.
Wave of pure unrestrained Skill. Will’s back straightened of its own accord with a painful shiver, but the order was not directed at him. Both stableboys went slack, their eyes glassy, their arms limp. They turned and did not come back.
Lord Allendale knelt before Will, and leapt into his mind. He was everywhere and everywhen, squeezing around Will until Will stopped being Swiftwater, stopped being Will, stopped being altogether. And, once Father had seen and been everything there was to see and be in Will, he told him, very simply, For as long as I live, my son, you will never use beast magic again. It was true, of course. How could it not be?
That night, Will lay in bed—in bed and nowhere else. He cried in his pillow until the small hours of dawn, poured a sea of tears on his fine bedsheets, and wished to drown in it like the residents of Atlantis had drowned in the unforgiving ocean. Alone, alone, alone.
Swiftwater was never spoken of again at Wollaton Hall. The skillmaster came when Will reached the age of ten, to train him alongside both his brothers. Sir Gerald Caughey was a kind and patient Irishman, nearing sixty but aged beyond his years by his frequent use of the Skill; to Will, small and wide-eyed and held back by fearful admiration, he was the oldest and wisest man in the world.
Sir Gerald’s lessons were gentle, and his students’ progress steady. Will’s Skill was not as strong as Father’s, but it pleased his teacher in its blooming audacity. The flood was there, lurking at the frontiers of his consciousness, and he needed only open his mind to dive in: there stood the world, spread out before him, and although he yet lacked the strength to project his being wherever he pleased, he could feel the numerous paths stretching out in front of him.
“The Skill will never try to hold you back,” Sir Gerald told them. All four of them sat in the library for those sessions, where they would not be disturbed, and where he could easily access precious old tomes filled to the brim with illustrations and explanations to support his own demonstrations. To each his chair—Will sat hunched forward in his, leaning toward the skillmaster as though he could thus absorb more of his infinite knowledge. “The strain resides in directing the flow, rather than joining it. You must beware of the attraction inherent to such an art: the Skill is every pleasure in the world cradled at once in the palms of your hands; it is fulfilment and joy, it is all-encompassing bliss, and you must not let it sweep you off your feet, for if you fall in, you will nevermore be a man.” There was solemnity in the set of Sir Gerald’s mouth: he turned to each of the three boys in turn, grave and ominous, his words like that of a priest. “I know you to be strong enough to resist the temptation: do not prove me wrong, gentlemen.”
He set them to their exercises, one after the other, gently entering their minds and guiding them in the right direction. That same day, he taught them to connect with one another, then all three of them at once, and to exchange thoughts like they would have shared speech. Will could feel his brothers’ minds against his, and recognise their unique contact, the diffuse warmth of their respective identities. They paused for tea and biscuits, for skilling had drained them of their energy, then practised throwing their minds out of Wollaton Hall to glance at the lives of their father’s tenants. A farmer leaned against a tree, massaging the ache in his lower back but smiling as he conversed with his son; a girl taught her dog to fetch a branch; a young couple linked their fingers together where they sat on a bench: Will drew back with a flush from that last vision.
“There you are,” Sir Gerald said once they had all returned to their bodies. “You shared, if only for the briefest of times, the joys and burdens of your people: this, dear boys, is why God bestowed the gift of the Skill on the great houses of Britain—so that their members might understand the men and women they ruled over, and so rule them better. This, too, is why the King’s Skill is said to be more powerful than that of all of us. A monarch who knows his subjects can only be a better ruler.”
George nodded sententiously. Will wriggled on his chair.
“What of animals? Can the Skill link us to their minds?”
A vast coldness fell upon him at the look Sir Gerald gave him. The skillmaster’s voice was very sharp as he replied, “Men who speak with animals are no better than the beasts they bond with. That is no skill-user’s doing—it is vile beast magic, what the little people call the Wit, and you may thank the Lord every day that it does not taint your blood. Its users, do you know, are to be hanged above water, and their corpses burned.” He paused, and, with some disgust, added, “Aviators use such magic to control their beasts, if one is to believe the common hearsays. It is no surprise, then, that they should be as boisterous and vulgar as them.”
Aviators: Will paled. Father could have gotten rid of him, then, simply by sending him to the Corps—how grateful he was that Lord Allendale had chosen to keep him under his roof instead!
Sometimes, instead of studying, Will skilled towards the sea. What he had never seen with his own two eyes, he glimpsed through the eyes of others, and experienced its breathtaking beauty. Sometimes he fell asleep to the murmur of the waves in a distant sailor’s ears. Sometimes his lips shaped against his pillow the orders a lieutenant relayed on a faraway quarterdeck. Sometimes he breathed in the smell of salt and open space from his enclosed bedroom.
Then he ran away to sea, and let his body finally join the part of his mind which had been there for years already.