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There are mushrooms growing in the backyard of their new house, just at the edge of the overgrown lawn that stretches towards the forest’s unkempt edge where shadows fade and deepen into something unsettling.
Gyuvin notices the mushrooms first but he doesn’t say anything to his parents.
They’re stressed about the move, about their new jobs, about the house that is creaky and ancient and leaking water in the shape of sickle moons on the kitchen walls. They’re busy sweeping up piles of salt from the windowsills and removing the horseshoe hung over the front door and dusting spiderwebs from every corner.
He only inspects the mushrooms, pale as parchment and veined in blue, and then offers to be in charge of mowing the lawn. His parents are happy to agree, happy to leave him with harried instructions before they rush out of the house to their jobs or the paint store or the town offices, to complain yet again that the electricity is faulty because the lights never seem to stay on for long.
Gyuvin isn’t so busy.
It’s summer, sweltering and riper than a rotting fish floating belly-up in still water, and he doesn’t know anyone in this place. His books are fat with humidity, spines groaning and cracked, and he feels like a ghost haunting the house’s dilapidated rooms when he stays inside.
He retreats to the lawn, speckled in tiny white flowers and patches of wild clover, and inspects the mushroom circle.
They are a circle, he decides almost immediately, although the pale caps don’t grow in a perfect shape. Some are tall, some are very tiny, and some cluster together like warts pushing forth from the soil, knobbly and distorted, flesh slick as the inside of his mouth when he touches them curiously.
Gyuvin sprawls on the grass, lazily drinking soda that’s gone flat, and watches the shadows creep towards him, fingers of dark emerald reaching from the forest. He can smell something rotten, sickly sweet like perfume layered over a corpse, but he’s too bored to move, the sun hot beneath his temples and the trees seeming to bend ever closer.
His parents tell him not to go into the forest. The last family to live here, years and years ago, had a kid that disappeared. That’s why the house was so cheap, and why it’s falling down into a pile of splinters and rusty nails.
Gyuvin isn’t sure he believes the stories he found online but there’s something about the circle of mushrooms, pale as sun-bleached bone or teeth plucked from a gaping mouth, that has him interested. He studies the pale blue speckles, the tiny veins that pulse like the lines beneath his own skin, and he wonders what would happen if he swallowed a few.
His parents come home, and hammer new nails that aren’t made of iron into the walls, and they paint over the water stains with creamy white paint the same color as all the milk in their fridge before it spoils. Gyuvin takes the milk outside, rancid and thick with yellow lumps, and pours it into the circle.
His parents won’t notice, and it’s not like they have neighbors to be mad either. He’s curious to see what’ll happen, if the mushrooms will grow taller, and it turns out his hunch is right. The mushrooms must like the spoiled milk because they grow a little, and the blue spots on their caps get darker. He even finds a few new clusters of tiny, delicate baby mushrooms among the grass.
Sometimes late at night, when his parents are asleep and the house is swollen with dreams, humid and heavy, Gyuvin sits by his open window and watches the mushroom circle. They glow at night, electric blue like nothing he’s ever seen before, and he’s always too sweaty to sleep much.
Plus, there’s the tapping sounds.
His parents say they can’t hear the sounds, and start to look worried after a few days, so Gyuvin gives up on telling them. The tapping’s never reached his room, always distant and echoing as if there’s someone buried beneath the house’s floorboards, choking on soil and desperately waiting to be heard, but it still makes the fine dusting of hair on his body stand on end. Gyuvin doesn’t want to know what might be down there, with the worms and the beetles and the other ancient, buried things.
He sits by the window, and lets the night air dry the sweat at his temples, and he watches the mushrooms. He can’t figure out why they glow but he’s noticed that nothing living comes close to them. Not the occasional hares, not the squirrels or even the few ragged-wing butterflies managing to drag themselves through the sweltering air.
Sometimes, when the moon slips behind clouds, Gyuvin thinks about padding downstairs and opening the back door, his shadow stretching before him like a wraith. He thinks about crossing the dew-damp grass and stepping into the circle of mushrooms, about standing wreathed in glowing blue just to see what happens.
He thinks about this so often, and so vividly, that sometimes he can’t be sure it hasn’t happened.
Maybe he’s ripped the tiny fungi from the ground in his sleep, dirt beneath his nails and tiny spidery roots dangling, caught in his teeth because he gobbled all the mushrooms down too fast to chew properly. Maybe there are already new caps growing inside him, rooted into the walls of his stomach and the pink coils of his intestines, glowing faintly blue.
Gyuvin doesn’t say anything to his parents when they ask if he’s sleeping enough.
He finds strands of dried berries draped over the windows in the musty study and deposits them all in the trash, every last one. He mows around the mushroom circle, and ignores the shadows watching him from between the trees, ignores the sweat sticking his shirt to his back and the pewter shade of the sky.
That night he sits cross-legged atop his bed, the sheets damp with humidity and too soft to be comfortable, and listens to the tapping inside the walls. It’s moved, closer now, as if the thing buried beneath the floorboards has managed to claw its way up, still searching and searching for escape.
There’s a rhythm to the tapping, starts and stops and the loud scrape of nails against wood. Gyuvin listens, and he watches his mushrooms through the window, and he wonders where the bones are of the last child to live in this house.
He wants to stand inside the circle. Just for a moment, just for a few seconds and then his curiosity will be sated and summer will be over and he’ll have school and new friends and everything will smell of lemon cleaner and chalk and the world will be normal again.
Gyuvin stands up. He makes it to the bottom of the creaky stairs, silent as a cat, before he realizes what he’s doing.
There’s a blue film over his eyes, the taste of earth in his mouth, but he shakes his head until his ears are ringing and forces himself back up the stairs, step by step. The tapping’s gone silent now, and Gyuvin falls asleep the instant he collapses onto his sweat-damp sheets.
The next night, he wakes up in the kitchen, fingers curled around the knob of the door that leads out into the yard. The tiles are cold against his toes, icy, but the air is thick and warm and smells of moss, so green he almost chokes on it.
Gyuvin stands there, blinking in the darkness for a long while, trying to escape the muddled heaviness of dreams.
It’s real, he tells himself, but when he finally takes his hand away from the door, he realizes the aging wood is spotted in tiny speckles of moss, fuzzy bumps that turn his nails green when he tries to scratch them away.
He goes back to bed and sleeps past noon, waking slicked in sweat and with a mouth so dry he can hardly breathe. Downstairs he gulps lukewarm water straight from the tap, sticking his head under the tarnished metal like a dog, flecks of water in his hair and ears and tracing down his temples.
It tastes like iron, like blood, but he fills his belly anyways.
When Gyuvin straightens, he finds a note from his parents taped to the whirring fridge and an empty driveway, both of them off on errands. Alone again, just Gyuvin and the rotting house and the walls waiting to devour him and suck his bones clean of meat.
He escapes into the backyard and sinks down next to the mushroom circle without really thinking, flopping in the grass. The mushrooms are taller now, larger, blue veins and spots and ruffled bellies darker. Gyuvin still has the oddest urge to take a bite, to run his tongue over the silky smoothness of a spotted cap.
The day passes in hot sunlight and humming cicadas, louder than electricity, his skin gradually burning as he lies in the grass and refuses to move. He feels like he belongs out there in the yard more than he belongs inside the rotting house and yellowed, bulging walls.
The house is a body swollen with summer’s heat, filling up on maggots and worms and decay before it eventually explodes.
His parents come home late, after the streetlights have turned on, driving through rusty orange puddles and navy shadows, unloading bags of paint and carpet samples and chemical cleaning spray so stringent that Gyuvin’s eyes water. They make burgers but the stove is ancient and so Gyuvin’s dinner weeps a pool of watery blood where it sits on his plate, gradually mixing with the ketchup. He manages two bites, working his teeth through gristle and pink meat, but somehow all he tastes is river-silt.
When he brushes his teeth after dinner and spits into the sink, the suds come out dark brown and gritty. Gyuvin gags, bending over the edge, coughing again and again as something thick and wet works its way up his throat.
When he spits into the ceramic basin at last a clump of last-fall’s withered skeleton leaves, coated in silt, comes up.
His mouth tastes like bracken and iron and rotting things, gritty mud dripping down his chin as if he’s swallowed a stream. Gyuvin stands there, panting, hands shaking as he looks at the wad of wet leaves, the bits of bark and decaying sludge staining the white porcelain.
His dad knocks on the bathroom door, wanting to brush his teeth, and Gyuvin startles into frantic motion. He scoops the leaves up with toilet paper and flushes them, turns the faucet on full blast and rinses his mouth out again and again until the basin is clean and his mouth tastes of nothing strange. His toothbrush is brown with silt so he throws it away beneath a pile of tissues, and only once his fingers have stopped trembling so badly does he open the door and let his dad in.
He doesn’t try to sleep. He carefully changes into blue cotton pajama pants and an old t-shirt of his mom’s, something about a long dead band. He climbs up onto his mattress and sits, cross-legged, back straight and eyes bright as the sounds of the house gradually settle down. His parents snore in their sleep, cars rumble past a few streets over occasionally, and a tiny breeze slipping through the old walls makes the house sound like it’s sighing in the darkness.
Gyuvin waits until the new moon rises, an empty eye-socket in the inky sky, and then he slips from his bed and creeps down the stairs, avoiding each creaky section of wood. He’s as sure-footed and sly as a thief, darting across the kitchen and out the back door before he can stop to be afraid, making for the circle of mushrooms.
They’re glowing again, electric blue, but the night air feels good against his skin. The hems of Gyuvin’s pajamas are heavy with dew when he carefully steps into the circle, but the night is humid enough that he doesn’t mind the slick grass beneath his bare feet.
Gyuvin stops, wrapping his arms round himself as a sudden shiver works down his spine. He'd thought he might taste magic tonight, but all he can smell is the rotten tang of ancient buried things and silt still on his own breath, mud and tiny pebbles and buried, sleeping turtles.
He's so disappointed that he bows his head, twin tears carving tracks down his face before they splash into the grass.
And then-- the ground falls out from under him.
Gyuvin tumbles through air and earth, feeling the damp brush of pink worms against his skin and the skittering of beetles caught in his hair as he plummets, roots snagging his clothes and scraping his skin raw. He falls for what feels like ages, and also only a blink of an eye, and he lands in a heap on a hard, earth-packed floor glittering with mica.
Groaning, he sits up, mud streaking his pajamas and an earwig pinching his finger until he shakes it off, spiders and tiny roly-polies already skittering away from him.
He's landed in an enormous underground chamber, wide and long as a banquet hall, the roots of many trees woven into the ceiling and keeping the soft earth from collapsing. Music fills the air, high and hauntingly-sweet and just shrill enough that Gyuvin winces, his teeth set on edge.
He can't stop blinking, looking around at the glowing mushrooms sprouting from the walls and casting everything in eerie blue light, spiders weaving webs from wall to wall that glitter like diamonds and are dotted in dismembered butterfly wings and cicada husks. Moss spreads across the edges of the chamber, emerald green and incredibly inviting, but it's the people filling the space that have robbed the breath from Gyuvin's lungs.
People-- or creatures, perhaps, is a better word.
They do not move like humans, their limbs too long and spindly and oddly distorted, too many joints or not enough, mottled-green carapaces and ragged wings dripping tree sap and pale skin furred in tiny, dusty feathers. Their mouths have are crammed with jagged teeth and some of them move in the air, held aloft by gossamer thin wings, while others slither or scuttle along the packed earth floor.
They are dressed in scales and woven poison ivy gowns and curling birch-bark armor, heads adorned in feathers and sun-bleached wolf skulls and magenta foxglove blossoms.
They are stranger and more terrifying than his brain can understand, but they move to the shrill music in a slow mimicry of human dances, spinning dizzying circles across the packed earth, undisturbed by the instruments strung in intestines and played by invisible musicians.
Gyuvin swallows hard, grit crunching between his teeth, and wonders if this is the secret that has been hidden in the house’s basement all along, his darkest musings and dreams come true in a night of macabre revelry.
He stands, slowly, knees aching and bare feet cold against the earth, and looks round at the dancers again.
They don’t seem to have noticed his arrival but their eyes are so different— faceted, glossy-black, reflective as drops of oil and depthless vernal pools— that he cannot be sure of what they see, what they perceive. Perhaps to them he is simply another scuttling ant, a useless bother to be crushed beneath their claws and fangs.
They’re so beautiful that his eyes ache, like he’s dared to gaze directly into the sun. The shrill music burrows into his ears, pounding lightly at his temples, flashes of pain skittering through his head as the creatures spin and bow, spin and curtsy, spin and tear a floating member of their company to shreds, gossamer wings and moon-beam fabric drifting through the air like motes of dust.
Gyuvin curls his fingers against his palms, presses his spine to the cool earthen wall of the chamber, and sidles left.
His firetruck patterned sheets and sleeping parents feel very far away here in the damp air, a film of blue crossing his lids with each blink and each new fractal of the celebration he takes in. Necklaces of bone strung between shriveled acorns, feet covered in tiny green scales and open, oozing sores, an empty throne tucked at the far end of the chamber that’s constructed entirely from thorny vines weeping deep, amethyst drops.
A stray pebble slices Gyuvin’s bare foot and he cries out, instantly trying to stifle himself, stuffing his fingers into his mouth.
The instruments shriek a final crescendo, the viscera holding a violin together snapping beneath the tension and spraying the nearest dancers in drops of green-black blood as they bow to one another, dipping monstrous heads so deeply that they almost cause one another harm. Gyuvin watches them, breathless, the wet trickle of blood between his toes secondary to the loveliness of the creatures as they flow into a large circle, joining hands and claws and wingtips in expectation of a new dance.
When the music begins again it is off-kilter, soaring into strange peaks and dipping into such low valleys that the entire earthen chamber seems to shake. Clods of dirt fall from the roots overhead and the pressure at Gyuvin’s temples increases, almost blinding, as if there is an arrow pierced from one side of his skull to the other.
He gasps and presses his hands to his head, doubling over, earth on his tongue and blood beneath his feet, the rising shriek of the music threatening to flay his skin.
It is a creature crowned in antlers who finally steps forward, cloven hooves barely denting the earth as it curves wicked black talons towards its own belly.
Tiny, wizened wings flutter from its shoulders, bald save for a few feathers, but the shriek it lets out when it carves its skin open and draws out a rope of gleaming intestine is terrible enough that blood begins to drip from Gyuvin’s nose.
He watches through lidded, hazy eyes as the creature severs its innards and begins to string the violin anew, coating the polished wood in green-black blood. It struggles with the slippery material for a few moments, determined, yet when it steps back the music is sweeter and softer, a gentle trill tripping in lazy circles.
The dancers still holding hands let out a ripple of laughter and open again to allow their comrade in, ignoring the blood still weeping from the antlered creature’s belly as they take its clawed hands.
Gyuvin, breathing hard and trying to clear the sapphire from his vision, gags at the sight of the violin bow glancing off the gleaming, still-wet intestine. The music no longer sounds sweet to him, too raw and jagged, and as he exhales the trickle of blood from his nose reaches his mouth and stains the crease of his lips in crimson and iron, blossoming salt upon his tongue.
He’d been curious but he doesn’t think he belongs here. If he stays in this room with these creatures he’ll end up a feast for them, his fingerbones and teeth turned into jewelry and the last scraps of his gristle buried beneath the rotting house to haunt his parents’ dreams.
Gyuvin breathes in soil and moss, swallows warm iron, and cranes his neck as he takes in the room critically. He can’t see how he’d entered the space, no holes in the ceiling or walls, but perhaps at the far end of the room where the throne sits empty…
His pajama pants, muddy and speckled in red, drag against the floor as he begins to move again, sliding carefully along the packed earthen walls. Hanging vines brush against his skin, leaves in lurid colors that shift and become normal when he blinks again, electric blue caught in his lashes. He almost screams when a fat pink worm wriggles across his toe, uncomfortably damp as it searches blindly for something, and then he gags when a tiny creature no bigger than his fist swoops down and reels the worm into its mouth with a bright green tongue.
The creature blinks at him, hundreds of iridescent eyes covering its head, somehow fitting the enormous tongue back into its torso, then flies away.
This place is nothing like the fairy tales his mother read to him at bedtime; it is darker and far more unbridled than his dreams, a decaying frenzy of hunger and animalistic urges. Gyuvin feels sick to his stomach as he forces his stiff, aching body to move again, shivering from the cold or trembling from fear because all he can do is hope that the dancers will not take notice of him.
He doesn’t wish to be torn to pieces in his blue pajamas, doesn’t want to watch them lick his blood from his feet with forked and barbed tongues before plucking his nails free like kernels of corn.
Gyuvin’s almost made it to the far end of the chamber when the music ends and the creatures— people— break free of their circle, mingling and chattering in a thousand language he’s heard only in his earliest memories.
He freezes, cold sweat slicking his skin and mica sparkling on his hands, terrified of being hunted like prey. There is nowhere to turn beneath the earth’s crust, nowhere to run or hide now that the music no longer shrieks to distract the dancers.
Gyuvin breathes so shallowly that his body doesn’t move and stares down at his pajamas, the tiny faded blue stars and missing ties at the waist, wondering if these are the clothes he will die in.
He thinks he knows what happened to the last kid to live in the rotting house now.
He thinks he knows what’s buried in the basement, what taps against the walls at night and cries out to the wind until it sighs mournfully through the boards.
He knows too, now, why the mushroom circle glowed such a brilliantly vivid blue. He’s learned about poisonous frogs in his science classes, their impossible colors and speckled marking that warn off any creatures that might wish to devour them.
Danger, the circle of mushrooms in the yard had meant, and yet he’d ignored the warning.
He’d tended to that danger, had cared for the tiny fungi and grown them tall and fat on spoiled milk. He’d removed the protections inside the house one by one, sweeping up piles of salt and throwing away strands of roman berries, his parents tearing down the horseshoes meant to shed bad luck.
Even the iron nails are gone, the last slivers of strength holding the molded walls together.
Gyuvin understands now, a sick feeling in his belly that might just be the mushrooms dissolving into his bloodstream. He’d bitten into the slick flesh, had swallowed brilliant sapphire poison and now he’s trapped in this nightmare revel of fangs and claws and death.
“It’s not real,” he whispers to himself, digging his fingernails deeper into his palms, cutting away at his own lifelines. “It’s not real, it’s not real. It’s just a bad dream.”
It’s easier to move if he just tells himself that he’s caught in a nightmare.
He slides along the wall, ignoring the brush of hundreds of tiny legs against the nape of his neck, refusing to flinch when fresh blood wets his foot. He moves slowly, carefully, and he believes so hard that this is all a terrible dream that he fades into darkness and shadows, reaching the empty throne without being sniffed out.
The creatures have paused their dancing to turn to a feast laid out upon long tables, pried-open mussels gleaming with pollution and squirrel carcasses stuffed with oak leaves, the delicacies not so very different from the guests consuming them with relish.
Gyuvin eyes the last stretch of open air to the thorny throne, and the outline of a door he thinks he can glimpse beyond it. His foot aches and his stomach is cramping, blue fracturing his vision, but he can almost hear how comforting his parents’ will sound when he wakes them.
He waits until the guests seem truly engrossed in their feast and then he darts forward, ducking behind the throne, wickedly curved barbs catching at his shirt and bare arms, dragging long scratches over him that bead with crimson blood like tiny chips of ruby.
Gyuvin pants into his knees, heart hammering painfully against the base of his throat, and ignores the crackle of drying blood in his nose.
There’s definitely a door pressed into the earth behind the throne, a faint outline hidden behind draping vines of poison ivy and bleeding heart flowers, and Gyuvin’s fingers itch as he considers how to pry it open. He can hear the faint strains of music echoing from the invisible players and so if he waits just a few minutes more, waits until the monsters are distracted with their mimicry—
“I smell blood.”
Gyuvin trembles, squeezing his eyes shut tight like that’ll protect him from the monsters. It’s a childish belief because he can’t do anything but listen as the music halts and the creatures hiss to one another, blood staining the earthen floor in a path that leads straight to where he crouches.
“Dirty blood,” a creature growls, guttural and deep as a rushing river, “but young.”
He can hear them moving around the underground hall, can feel the vibrations of their wicked talons and slithering underbellies in his own soles, can smell the heat of feathers and fur as they approach. Words he doesn’t understand tumble like creek rocks, the sound of wind sighing through weeping willow branches winding into his head, wistful and wanton for just a drop of his sweet blood.
Gyuvin claps his hands over his ears, shaking, trying to shut out the sound of his approaching death. His blood feels very hot and he’s more aware than ever of how vulnerable he is, his peach skin and delicate organs and all the soft spaces that can be carved away by spindly green fingers.
“Little beastie,” a sweet voice croons, slipping through his fingers and blanketing his thoughts in mist. “Come out come out wherever you are.”
“It must be a sly thing,” another creature murmurs, almost amused, “to have crept into our den.”
“An intruder,” a third guest interjects, gnashing their fangs loudly. “A thief. No manners at all.”
“Beasties are ugly, dirty things,” the creature with the deep voice agrees, “but they char nicely. Smoke and dill and the first drops of moonlight hide the nastiness in beastie blood.”
“I want its bones!”
“Shan’t share its bones,” the first creature replies, sniffing so loudly that Gyuvin has to bite back a whimper, digging his teeth painfully into his lower lip. “Beasties are small for tearing in two.”
Gyuvin doesn’t hear the rest of their argument because he decides to open his eyes and is immediately met with a great, furred face peering round the thorny throne at him, horns spiraling away from a head shaped like a goat’s and covered in tiny moth feathers the exact shade of a waning moon.
The creature grins at him, needle teeth stained black crowding its mouth, and blinks slitted eyes that reflect his own terrified face.
“Found you, beastie,” it coos, rancid breath that stinks of rotting meat washing over him. “No tricksy icksy hiding.”
A great clawed hand descends and Gyuvin finds himself dragged after the creature before the scream in his throat can dislodge, sluggish blood from his foot creating a new path as his captor marches him towards the center of the chamber. The other creatures crowd in, peering at him with hollow eye sockets and gaping, fanged mouths, tongues flickering out to taste the tang of his sweat and blood.
Gyuvin’s whimpering, too terrified for words, heart frantically thrumming as his captor hauls him upright in the center of the chamber by his hair and bends over him, inspecting him with its lurid yellow eyes. It is somehow a cross between a goat and a moth, coarse fur covering its arms and delicate legs which end in dainty hooves, but two large feathered antennae sprout behind its horns and it lifts a pair of ragged, opalescent wings in excitement.
“Foolish beastie,” another creature croons as the dancers circle round them, inspecting him and clicking to one another in their strange languages. “Far from the nest. Your wings will break.”
“Please,” Gyuvin gasps, though barely a sound leaves his bloodless lips. “Please.”
“A roast,” another creature, spindly green arms plucking at his shirt as it leers at him, suggests. “A toasty roast for our spineless beastie!”
Laughter ripples through the creatures at a joke Gyuvin can’t understand and he feels his knees give way at last, only the goat dancer’s claws in his hair keeping him upright. He sags like a sack of potatoes, too cold to even tremble in fright, half-resigned to his death and dismemberment at the claws of this motley party.
“Such pale skin,” a tiny creature with a wizened face and rabbit ears whispers, dragging wickedly sharp talons across his ankle and licking away the beads of blood that rise, staining its fur red. “Smooth like milk. Crack it and eat the yolk whole and plant its heart under an oak tree. Yes, good beastie.”
Gyuvin’s heart hammers against his breastbone, loud as a drum in the last few moments he’ll be allowed to possess it.
He shies away from the creatures, panting, gaze darting wildly from scaly limbs to curling birch armor to curtains of magenta hair flowing with poisonous foxglove blossoms. The creatures are overwhelming in their beauty, in their nearness, snagging his clothes and touching his hair and lifting up his limp arms as if he is a strange specimen on display, a curiosity they must dissect to understand.
“Poor little beastie, dressed in blue,” a lovely girl wearing a crown of clover and covered in silk bandages, lady-slipper flowers upon her feet, sings to him. “How sweetly we will devour you.”
“It’s my beastie,” his captor protests crossly, tugging Gyuvin’s hair so harshly that some strands rip free. “I’ll keep it as a pet.”
“A pet,” another creature echoes, forked tongues flicking across his cheeks until he lets out an airy cry, terrified and sick. “Can it dance?”
The creatures pause in their inspection, shreds of Gyuvin’s t-shirt caught on their pointed claws and strands of his hair already being ferried away by the tiny winged sprites. They peer at one another, oil-drop eyes reflecting gruesome grins and wicked intentions, wings and claws and long furred tails rustling as across the chamber the invisible musicians ready their instruments once again.
“A dance,” the creature with foxgloves in its hair sighs, ragged wings flapping until it lifts off the packed floor. “Many moons have passed without a beastie in our midst.”
“Make it dance,” the creature with the rumbling voice agrees, scratching at a patch of rotting skin hanging off its antler. “Taste its mettle.”
“And then taste its metal,” the rabbit creatures giggles, other creatures breaking into wild laughter, clapping one another’s shoulders until more green-black blood splatters the floor and sprouts anew as tiny daisies.
“Sweet, salty, succulent little beastie.”
“Please,” Gyuvin begs, lifting his heavy head and staring at the circling creatures, their inhuman features and depthless eyes and wicked, gleaming teeth. “Please let me go home. I didn’t mean to interrupt your dance! I don’t know how I ended up here.”
His captor snaps its teeth beside his ear, hot breath washing over him again and making him gag. “Nasty beastie,” it hisses, talons digging painfully into his shoulder, “wants to trick us.”
“Hurt us with iron, scar us with rowan,” another creature with the face of a bobcat and the skeletal body of a deer snarls, scoring three deep lines into his kneecap and lapping at the blood that instantly spills until he’s groaning in pain, barbed tongue digging into his raw flesh. “Taste the lies in your bones. Icksy, rotten lies.”
“I’m not lying,” Gyuvin pants, writhing, white with terror and the sight of his own blood staining the fur and talons of so many creatures, their hot bodies pressing close until he feels like he’s drowning among feathers and scales and rotten bark.
“I’m not! It was an accident! Please, please let me go— I won’t taste good. I’ll make you sick!”
“Sicker than sick,” a small creature moving on hinged grasshopper legs whispers, nibbling his finger until he snatches his hand away with a cry. “Drain the blood, suck the bones dry. Taste so nice.”
“But make it dance first!”
“Beastie wants to play,” his captor croons, stroking the shell of his ear with its claws. “Shall it dance for us?”
“I can dance,” Gyuvin agrees breathlessly, grasping onto anything that will delay the slicing and dicing and dining upon his body. “Just— just teach me how, and I’ll dance for you!”
The creatures laugh at him, lyrical as a summer breeze, and begin to usher him and his captor towards the center of the chamber, uncaring of the blood still seeping from his knee. Gyuvin’s dragged along like a sack of potatoes, bruised and scraped and still so terrified that dark spots flash across his vision, the pounding of his heart erratic in his ears.
He slumps when the goat creature lets go of him and lies prostrate on the earth for a moment, trembling, before slowly pushing up to his knees and then unsteadily standing.
“Brave little beastie,” the rabbit creature whispers, hopping round his bare feet and peering up at him with enormous, milky white eyes. “Standing all on its own. Topple and fall and break your jaw.”
His goat-like captor clicks its claws at the invisible musicians and instantly notes spill from the fleshy strings, fleet as a butterfly’s wings, setting an impossibly fast pace. The creatures, though, tip their monstrous heads back and drink in the music like ambrosia, moving to take their places in a the intricate beginning of a dance Gyuvin doesn’t know.
He’s roughly pulled along, talons dimpling his arms as a purple-haired boy places him in the center of the dancers like a dessert and retreats, leaving Gyuvin alone while everyone else clasps their partners’ hand.
The music reverberates off the earth walls and heats his blood, setting his heart racing faster than a trapped rabbit because even as the creatures bow to him, a mockery of good manners, Gyuvin is certain this dance will end only when his legs give out.
“I don’t know the steps,” Gyuvin cries to no one, his fractured thoughts circling on this tiny problem as his chest squeezes painfully tight, the rising music slicing through him in silver slivers.
He winces, clutching his aching head and shifting his weight to his uninjured leg, the drying blood on his foot tacky. “Please, please, I don’t know what’s happen—”
One of the tiny chameleon-sprites wraps its tongue round his neck, choking him, the slippery texture disgusting under his fingers as he scrabbles at it, desperate for air. The waiting creatures bow to one another, a stately dipping of horned and feathered heads, and then as the music sharpens to a wild thing, roaring notes and glistening crescendos, they begin to dance.
It is nothing like Gyuvin has ever witnessed before.
Perhaps the creatures have whetted their appetite on his blood, or more likely they mean to frighten him into his grave, but there is an unbridled energy curling through the chamber, dark and enchanting and entirely unhuman.
They dip and twirl and draw beads of blood as partners change, delicate cloven hooves kicking high and feathered wings flaring, ducking under skeletal arms and leaping across scaled spines in a caper as ancient as the roots holding the ceiling up. Bones snap as partners draw one another in with too much gusto, antlers clashing and locking while two dancers tussle for dominance until one emerges victorious, the other suddenly uncrowned.
Vicious teeth and talons are bared, dresses and gossamer wings and birch-bark armor shredded, but it is a ruination so lovely that Gyuvin cannot help but sway towards the dancers in longing.
A note teeters high in the air, drawn out and out as the rest of the music falls away, a clarion call he does not understand but which drives the dancers into an even wilder frenzy. They circle and press inward, thrashing, limbs jutting out in violent bursts until drops of blood rain upon the floor and are greedily soaked up.
Gyuvin whimpers, drawings his arms in tight, searching for a path to escape, but it is too late.
The monsters have already descended.
Spindly fingers and wizened claws close around his wrists, his arms, his shoulders, plucking him up and tossing him into the fray. He is instantly swallowed, drowning in coarse hair and green sap and slimy scales, enveloped in the tangy richness of the forest.
He is surrounded, ribs and delicate wrist bones and the knobs of his spine crushed under the weight of intemperate magic, blue flashing across his vision as he is spun and pushed and moved like flotsam on a roaring tide until his thoughts are spinning and he can barely keep his bile down.
Foxglove blossoms whip across his cheek as a girl with a laughing face and jagged teeth spins him in her arms, pushing him towards a hulking creature with the head of a bear who pulls on his wrists until his shoulders pop and tosses him to his next partner, a trio of scaled dancers that pull at his hair with curious fingers and shove him unceremoniously towards the tiny wizened rabbit, whose tongue lashes across his swollen knee.
He is battered and bruised and thrown to and fro like a plaything, like a doll, dancers laughing in his face with their serrated teeth and forked tongues, pinching his arms and tugging out tufts of hair and drawing beads of blood from him as if they do not understand that he feels pain.
Gyuvin is tossed high into the air, flailing and crying out, and caught in the talons of a winged boy with enormous mandibles protruding from his jaw and too many sets of arms to count. The boy tries to gnaw his cheek but lets go when Gyuvin squirms away, panting, falling for only a moment before a stately creature covered in poison ivy vines snatches him and pulls out a few of his eyelashes, tucking the tiny hairs away in a pocket.
There is no time to breathe, to bargain for a rest, to cry for help.
Gyuvin is forcibly shoved through the steps of a dance he doesn’t understand, the collar of his shirt torn and only a path of bloody prints marking his wild progress across the chamber as dancers tussle over him and pull him in opposite directions until he feels as if his bones are bound to separate.
And all the while, as he is shoved and snatched and hurt by terrifying monsters, sweet music thrashes through the chamber in a tune of dark destruction.
Pinpricks of blood litter his bare arms from claws and talons, his knee aches and his head is pounding in time with the furious tempo of the music, and he is spun and moved and shoved at such a relentlessly breathless pace that Gyuvin catches only snatches of his tormenters.
A flash of oil-black eyes, a curving grin dripping red, tawny wings and yellowish sores and skeletal bones held together by creeping ivy.
His neck snaps from side to side, blood trickling from his nose as the packed floor under their feet is churned into filthy mud, and all Gyuvin can do is try to breathe and keep his feet under him.
If he falls he’ll be trampled to death. The creatures will dance atop his corpse or perhaps carve his chest open and string several new instruments with his intestines, argue over his bones and make bracelets of his teeth and grind what’s left into meal for their morning bread.
Gyuvin has to keep dancing. It’s a compulsion that travels through his bloody feet and up his legs, a shuddering vibration that matches the wild frenzy of the achingly sweet music and pushes his body onward even when his eyes slip closed, even when the air is knocked from his lungs and blue spots dance across his vision.
The music is so lovely, so hauntingly enticing even as it sings along his nerves like silver daggers wrapped in silk, pleasure and pain ramming his heart against his breastbone.
Gyuvin pants, his ribs aching and the floor slippery beneath his bloody toes, and entwines his fingers with a beaming girl’s eagle talons, mindless of the blood she draws from his skin.
They turn, whipping through the air until his head feels light as bubbles, and then vines creep across his chest and yank him backwards into a dip, each vertebrae of his spine popping in protest as he hovers above the filth in the arms of an impossible creature, the stink of rotting meat filling his nose.
He almost doesn’t care.
The music is so sweet, so lovely, piercing his thoughts and glossing his pain until the taste of iron in his throat is almost delicious.
Gyuvin licks his lips and exhales heavily as a leather wing punches his gut and turns on the slick balls of his feet, imagining himself light as air, imagining himself dressed in spider silk and dewdrops and strong enough to last until sunrise.
It’s a child’s fancy, though, and when he finds himself in the arms of his captor, slitted eyes peering down at him and sharp teeth gnashing in his face, he is no longer so steady. The music calls to him, a haunting mockery of his earliest bedtime stories, but even the sweet notes cannot mend torn muscles and burst blood vessels and Gyuvin finds himself too dizzy, too overheated, too unsteady on his weak human legs.
Please, he tries to stutter, tries to wrap his tongue around the begging words that might free him from this prison but his captor latches keen teeth round his wrist, swallowing his hand whole, and bites down before Gyuvin can even gather air into his chest.
He screams, shrill as the music, and the haze retreats from his thoughts as a new breed of pain knifes up his arm and sets his brain afire.
He jerks back, skin shredding on the creature’s slicing teeth, and manages to free himself only when a scaled dancer careens into his captor. The dance has lost its pattern around them, devolving into true chaos, creatures just as likely to kiss as they are to begin an outright duel in the churned up mud under the music’s haunting, terrible influence.
Gyuvin clutches his bloodied hand to his chest, panting for breath even as no air enters his lungs, feverish and terrified beyond words, eyes darting round wildly for any chance of freedom.
He spots a tiny corridor of air between two creatures with the iridescent green carapaces of beetles and shoves his way forward, struggling against the tide of uninhibited revelry, fighting the siren-song notes spilling through the humid, moist air.
Something wriggles under his foot, disgustingly soft, and Gyuvin begins to fall, body sagging and muscles gone slack as he surrenders himself to the magic.
He’s so tired and no one is coming to save him and so, perhaps, it’s better to simply close his eyes and wait for the darkness.
Hands swoop round his chest and pull him backward against a slim chest, moving him with remarkable gentleness as he’s saved from drowning in the blood-frothed mud.
The music, high and shrill and wavering on the edge of a knife’s blade, dips lower, the aching pain in his head lessening. Gyuvin isn’t fooled, though— he keeps his eyes shut tight and braces himself to be punched or bitten or pushed forcefully into a furry body, expecting only pain from the bodies writhing nearby.
Cool fingers brush across his warm forehead, tracing the curve of his eyebrow and ghosting down his cheekbone as if he is a marvel, a treasure, a faceted jewel rather than an insignificant life to be squashed and devoured.
“Will you open your eyes, little beast?”
Gyuvin flinches, trying to curl away from whoever has captured him, but those same cool fingers slip beneath his chin and gently turn his face, a featherlight touch on his bloody mouth.
"I wish to see you.”
Despite himself, despite the bruises already blooming beneath his skin and his blood whetting the earth below them, Gyuvin opens his eyes. He’s breathing shallowly, terrified and exhausted and on the verge of tears, so his first glimpse of the boy holding him is filtered through crystalline salt and the blue glow of the many mushrooms illuminating the chamber.
His captor is impossibly lovely. More beautiful than all the fairies careening past in whorls of green skin and tawny feathers, prettier than art framed in famous museums or a rope of pearls.
He is painful to behold, faceted and sharp and so perfect that Gyuvin must glance at him through his lashes, taking in tiny bits of the boy’s beauty.
Cutting cheekbones and a deliciously full mouth and eyes so glossy that Gyuvin sees his own pale face reflected in their depths. His captor is manageable like this, his pale skin and the secondary set of eyes blinking back at Gyuvin not so terrible, silky hair falling round his throat and brushing the flickering pulse there.
He is almost normal in his appearance, not nearly so frightening until Gyuvin raises his head and beholds the boy in all his uncanny beauty.
He cannot be real.
He is an amalgamation of angles and jutting bones, ribs breaking through his skin at his midsection where the velvet of his dove gray suit is cut away, white roses blooming in the spaces where organs and viscera should rest, filling Gyuvin’s nose with perfumed sweetness. He tilts his head and blinks at Gyuvin with all four eyes, a forked tongue flickering in the air as if he is tasting Gyuvin’s fear, and so the human boy cannot hold back the whimper that passes his lips.
“You are bleeding.” His captor’s voice is deep and rich, wings the color of smoky quartz rising behind his back as he draws closer to Gyuvin but they look like no animal he has ever seen before, leathery skin stretched between curved talons.
“Please,” Gyuvin whispers, his knees turning to jelly as all his weight suddenly comes to rest in the boy’s arms, “please don’t hurt me anymore.”
The boy studies him, his hands carefully wrapped round Gyuvin’s waist, and then dips his head in a tiny nod. “I wished to beg your hand for a dance.”
He speaks with such politeness and when a snake creature comes too close he folds his wings round them, ensuring Gyuvin isn’t touched. In fact all of the dancers have given them a wide berth, their movements beginning to slow as the music gradually calms, only a minor trill when compared to the silk of this boy’s voice.
Gyuvin licks his bloody lips, trying to think. Is this boy-shaped creature safe, or is he only a deadly threat veiled in velvet and roses? “You want… to dance?”
“With you.” The boy’s dark eyes seem sincere, all four trained on Gyuvin, but he is a monstrous thing and monstrous things lie. Perhaps he wants to dance so that he may claim Gyuvin’s blood and bones all for himself when he eventually falls.
Gyuvin tries so hard but he simple can’t organize his thoughts. He frowns at the boy, exhausted and confused, weary beyond words. “I’m a human.”
The boy’s full mouth curves. “Yes.”
Gyuvin’s heart stutters, but he still feels sick. He can’t trust anyone here. “If I dance with you… will you bring me home?”
The boy’s dark eyes glitter, a little shiver of excitement running through his leathery wings. “You wish to make a bargain.”
“Sure,” Gyuvin agrees, breathing in deeply and trying to get his feet under himself again, wanting to stand up straight without this creature’s hands on his body— he is fearful of looking down and finding claws piercing his skin. “A bargain. One dance and you take me home, tonight, without hurting me.”
The boy cocks his head, forked tongue flickering out again. The flesh of his it is a deep purple, slick and supple. “That is all you wish for? I could give you so many more treasures, little beast.”
Gyuvin flinches again at the name but only nods in stubborn silence, trying not to shake. He needs this to be real, he needs a way to escape—
“The dance may last as long as I wish,” the boy clarifies, tucking his tongue back into his mouth and lifting his lips in a tiny, coy smile. “I accept.”
Gyuvin feels like he’s missing something, a missing clue nudging at his thoughts, but he’s desperate to go home and simply leave this terrifying place, to forget it all and burn the mushroom circle in the morning.
“It’s a deal,” he agrees, keeping his chin high and refusing to blink. “I accept too.”
Instantly the music spilling through the chamber falls silent, dancers around them freezing before lowering their wings and limbs and slinking towards the edges of the space, leaving behind a pit of mud scattered with feathers and teeth and, in the center of it all, Gyuvin and his captor.
The boy bows to him, one arm folding across his blooming ribs and the other held behind his back, wings tucking in until Gyuvin can see the crown of his head. It is such a ridiculously unbelievable image that Gyuvin has to swallow laughter, mirth bubbling up inside him like water.
He cannot fathom that this is real and so, when the boy straightens and extends a pale hand, gazing at Gyuvin expectantly, he easily dips his head and places his own bloody fingers into the boy’s palm.
His captor is a skilled dancer, his feet nimble and arms steady as he cradles Gyuvin close and turns them into the first steps of a dance he does not know, guiding their bodies with such fluid grace that Gyuvin is not allowed to stumble or fall.
White roses brush his belly when his captor dips him lightly, bending over him with a gleam in his eyes and his silky hair falling round their faces like a curtain of moonlight, wings flaring high to keep them from gravity’s claws, and the cloying sweetness of the flowers fills his bloody nose even as damp air rushes past them.
Somehow the boy moves his feet in intricate patterns, half-waltz and half made-up as they spin and spin, then pause, clasped hands raised high so that his captor may pace a perfect circle round him. Gyuvin trembles until those cool fingers slide across his waist again and then trembles all the more when his captor suddenly tugs them down the length of the chamber in long, gliding steps.
Mud squishes between his toes and his knee protests with each jump and twist, air rushing past them and the silence of the feral guests watching them oppressive, yet Gyuvin is not in such terrible pain.
He is not battered or crushed or bruised, and the hands with which his captor touch him are gentle and sweet as moonlight.
Gradually the invisible musicians set their bows against raw pink viscera, accompanying their dance with gliding notes and sweetly tripping melodies, soft and easy as the first blooms of spring. Gyuvin turns on his bloodied heal, trampling the meadow of tiny flowers that have sprung up beneath them, daisies and buttercups and purple blossoms he doesn’t know the name of.
He’s too frightened to raise his face to his partner but so too is he frightened of the revelers lining the walls, leafy vines obscuring their snarls and beady eyes as they watch in eerie, thick silence. He is surrounded on all sides by gaping mouths ready to tear him to bits and even one faltering misstep will send him to a forgotten grave, his safety an illusion held in his captor’s pale, delicate hands.
Gyuvin darts glances at the other creatures and focuses on his feet, on the raspy sound of his own breathing, on the pain lancing his kneecap with each step and keeping his thoughts from floating away with the tantalizing music.
He flinches when a low-hanging root brushes his spine, pale and limp as a rotting hand and feels the other boy’s arms tighten around him.
“Do not be frightened, little beast,” his captor murmurs, gazing at Gyuvin even as he continues to guide them through the intricate, gliding steps of the dance, their clasped hands raised high. “Look only at me.”
Gyuvin trembles, his heart quivering in his chest, but finally raises his chin. He stares at the boy’s eyes, glossy drops of oil in his pale, beautiful face, and he takes terrible comfort in the gentle press of cool fingers at his waist.
“I’m not,” he lies, blood in his throat. “I came here, didn’t I?”
The boy grins, his teeth suspiciously normal, and spins them in a dizzying circle that whites out Gyuvin’s hearing for a moment.
“You did,” he agrees cordially as they fall back into the rhythm of their dance, traversing the chamber in perfectly matched steps. “Brave little beast. We have forgotten how to properly welcome a guest.”
Gyuvin snorts, turning his face away. There’s still blood between his toes and his kneecap aches, puffy and swollen, countless bruises and pinpricks of red littering his body. He is lucky to still be in one piece.
“Yeah. They want to eat me.”
Glittering eyes track him, hungrily devouring him even as he’s caged within his newest captor’s arms and wings. Gyuvin can smell them, their damp fur and slimy scales and rotting, rancid sweetness, can taste the fetid heat of them upon his tongue.
He holds no illusions.
The creatures ceased their blood-frenzy only because of the boy currently holding him close, dipping his fingers over the tail of Gyuvin’s spine, his power somehow holding back the other dancers.
If he had not appeared— if this boy had not snatched Gyuvin from the air, his intestines would already be setting the tune of the next song.
“You are soft.” His captor bends close to whisper the words in Gyuvin’s rounded ear like a lover’s caress, sliding his palm up the line of Gyuvin’s spine. “And very sweet. They desire but a taste.”
Gyuvin swallows hard, allowing himself to dip over the boy’s arm like a drooping lily, and speaks only when he is pulled to his feet once more, their watchful audience a blur of colors round them. “You sound like you want a taste too.”
His captor laughs, and the sound is so lovely that for a moment Gyuvin is entranced, able only to stare at him in adoration. He would burn himself at the stake for this creature, would conquer armies with a silver sword and— he shakes himself, breathing heavily, trying to stop the musical ringing in his ears.
“You are hungrier than us all, little beast,” his captor muses, perfectly composed even when his wings rise and Gyuvin feels their feet leave the ground for a second. “It is you who hungers for a taste of our world.”
“I don’t,” Gyuvin snaps, curling his blunt nails against the boy’s velvet jacket and glaring up at him, refusing to lose himself to the music and beauty again. “I don’t want any of this. I want to go home.”
His captor brings them to a sudden halt, smiling at Gyuvin with eyes so sparkly and glossy that his heart jumps in his chest. Cool fingers slide across his shoulders and curl over the nape of his neck, lightly pinching the skin until he gasps and jolts forward, inadvertently pressing their chests together.
“You lie so sweetly,” his captor whispers, ghosting his nose over the apple of Gyuvin’s cheek, something wet flickering across his skin a moment later— his captor’s tongue, he realizes, lapping his emotions up like sugar.
“Little beast. Lie to me again and I will keep you here forever. I do so love to dance.”
Gyuvin trembles, holding himself very still under the weight of this threat, and a moment later his captor guides them into their dance again, though he does not release the skin of Gyuvin’s neck. His smoky gray wings cocoon them, wrapped close enough that they are hidden from the dark eyes of the creatures, and their faces are barely a breath apart.
They share the same air, inhaling one another’s oxygen, a kiss lingering in the scant space between their lips.
They dance in silence for minutes or hours, moving like water because of the boy’s skill, Gyuvin studiously avoiding his dark eyes even as his heart thrums beneath his ribs and jolts at each pinch upon his nape. There are a thousand frenzied butterflies in his belly, hatching and searching for escape and battering themselves to death against his insides, but Gyuvin refuses to speak first.
Tonight is nothing more than a nightmare. He will survive and he will return home and he will never, ever again think of this place.
“You are angry with me.” His captor sounds amused, lips curving faintly. There are tiny pearlescent speckles covering his pale skin, only visible now that they press so close.
Gyuvin bites his tongue until he tastes familiar iron and then shakes his head, keeping his captor’s threat in mind. His feet will wear out in an eternal dance, will become stubs of exposed bone and weeping, bloodied wounds. He will not survive another lie.
“I prefer sweetness,” the boy whispers, his nose brushing Gyuvin’s as he dips closer, closer, four eyes half-lidded and inky dark. “Lie to me, little beast. I want to taste your honey.”
Gyuvin shudders in his arms, stomach tightening, and finally looks up at his captor through his lashes. His heart is caged within his bones, squeezed tighter and tighter, and he’s so terrified of dying in this strange place but somehow this pale boy feels like the most dangerous thing in all the world.
“I’m not scared of you,” he breathes, tilting his chin up proudly, uncaring of the blood cracking at the corner of his mouth. “No matter what you say.”
His captor’s lashes flutter, smile growing. “Mm. Sweet as sunshine.”
Gyuvin’s lip curls while they circle round one another, fingers clasped, and then join together again. He regards his captor with cold, clear eyes, ignoring the electric vibrations of his heart. “I think you’re the ugliest creature I’ve ever seen.”
His captor giggles, sweet and clear as bells, a faint lavender sheen coloring his cheeks. “Again, little beast. Your words are so delightfully sharp.”
Gyuvin draws himself up in anger even as butterflies alight upon his liver and kidneys, iridescent wings coating his insides in sparkling radiance. “You’re a monster.”
His captor draws back, regarding him with suddenly sharp eyes, the muscles in his pale face tightening. “Ah. Not so sweet, beastie. You have cut me most grievously.”
Gyuvin snorts and turns his face away, grinding his teeth together. “Whatever. I have a name, you know. I’m a person.”
It’s all an act, a grand facade of bravado that can’t quite hide the tremble of his fingers against his captor’s pale knuckles, or how badly his head spins with each turn of their bodies. Gyuvin is certain his captor can feel the telltale tremors in his body too, the quivering of a fading heart, yet the boy grants him the gift of feigned ignorance.
If he were to ask for help, Gyuvin wonders, blood staining his tattered pajama pants red, a warm trickle against his icy skin, would this boy-creature grant it? Or would he simply laugh at Gyuvin and then flay him open to lick over his slick, still-beating heart?
“Little beastie, dressed in blue,” his captor sings under his breath, a merry twinkle in his four eyes as he lifts Gyuvin gently off the floor, waltzing him over mud and flowers as if he weighs nothing. “Look at how they envy you.”
Gyuvin doesn’t care to understand, not when this is all a nightmare. He petulantly refuses to look at his dance partner, curls his fingers into claws against the boy’s pale knuckles and ignores the sweetness of blooming roses on his tongue.
His stubbornness is rewarded with quiet laughter and those delicate, cool fingers sliding round his throat to pluck at his pulse, smoothing over the betrayal wrought by his pitiful, quivering human heart.
A reminder that he is weak, that he breathes still only because this beautiful creature wants to play.
“Beastie,” his captor croons, pressing his fingerprint into Gyuvin’s throat until he can feel the ridges and whorls of the boy’s skin imprinting upon his heart, curving his veins and changing the flow of his blood.
“It isn’t polite to hide something as pretty as your face.”
Gyuvin snaps his head around, glowering at his captor with all the rage and fear and resentment he couldn’t rain down on the other dancers who’d toyed with him and teased him so brutishly. It isn’t smart at all but he’s fed up with being weak and afraid and human.
“Don’t call me that!” His nails dig into the pale boy’s skin, scoring little crescent moons that well with green-black blood, dripping down his wrist to stain the lace cuff of his jacket.
His captor smiles at him, sharp teeth gleaming blue in the mushroom’s glow, and inclines his head in a stately bow. “As you like it.”
“I’m not a beast,” Gyuvin pants, his chest rising and falling too fast in anger, hot eyes prickling. “I’m not like you.”
His captor continues to smile, though his dark eyes seem flat and dead. Perhaps just a trick of the uneven light. “You have made that perfectly clear.”
They turn in a sweeping circle, his captor’s delicate hands the only steady anchor as everything blurs and shifts around them, gray velvet and silky rose petals brushing Gyuvin’s belly when he accidentally leans too close. His breath hitches and he stretches away, tugging at their laced fingers, terrified of inhaling sweet perfume and falling under his captor’s silvery spell.
The space between them is taut and silence as they continue to dance, his captor’s dark eyes fixed on a distant point over Gyuvin’s shoulder, their bodies tense and stiff even as the music continues to flow over them. Gyuvin’s mostly forgotten about the monstrous spectators but he can’t help peering at his partner’s chin, memorizing the luminescent speckles on his skin and the silvery lashes lining all four of his eyes.
“Why’d you want to dance with me, anyways?” He blurts the question before he can think better, the butterflies in his belly desperate for his captor to just look at him.
He feels his captor shift and sees it in the tremor that runs through the roses blooming from his exposed ribs, thorny vines piercing through his skin and curling round his torso in a living recreation of bone.
“Don’t answer that,” Gyuvin mumbles, biting his tongue until he can taste blood again, heat burning his cheeks. “It doesn’t matter. I know you think I’m just some dumb animal to play with.”
The fingers slotted between his own tighten and a moment later his captor answers him, silvery voice soft as moonlight. “You are my guest. I believe it is polite to request a dance.”
Gyuvin frowns at the mud and tiny buttercups they circle through, confused. “You don’t wanna eat me, or— or grind my bones up?”
His captor laughs, nudging an inch closer so that the hem of his dove gray jacket brushes Gyuvin’s ratty t-shirt. “No. I am not so bloodthirsty as my court.”
At that Gyuvin’s head snaps up, almost hitting his captor’s chin. “Your court? Do you mean—”
His captor’s fine nose wrinkles, and his wings rise higher in agitation. “Yes. I do apologize.”
“Oh,” Gyuvin replies faintly, “no worries. I mean— like, definitely don’t let them eat me, but… it’s fine. Sorry for getting blood on your throne.”
The pale creature laughs again, as intoxicating as starlight, and Gyuvin almost finds himself smiling in response. It’s just such a pretty sound and he looks so lovely when he does it, too, sharp teeth flashing and glossy eyes gently closed, silver lashes brushing his high cheekbones.
“You are delightful, little human,” his captor—savior?— tells him once he’s finished laughing, the thorny vines at his sides shaking lightly. “My throne is, as you say, fine.”
Gyuvin nods a bit awkwardly, unsure how to reconcile this terrible place with the person holding him gently and talking to him as if he matters and ensuring his bloody toes only skim the churned mud floor.
“You haven’t actually introduced yourself,” he realizes as they glide across a particularly large pile of trampled, bloody feathers. “I’m—”
Their twined hands press suddenly against his mouth, tasting of salt and morning dew, his captor leaning in until Gyuvin almost goes cross-eyed trying to look at him in dawning horror. Is this when he finally gets eaten?
“Quiet as a mouse,” his captor breathes, glossy eyes and flared wings blotting out the chamber and the monsters and the blood. “Do not ever give your name away, little human.”
Gyuvin exhales a little shakily. “Okay. Um. I won’t.”
They’re still spinning, even as his captor pulls away, and Gyuvin feels dizzy and sick, his energy flagging so low that he almost crumples in the creature’s arms. His captor notices, of course, and his pale brow furrows; he raises their joined hands to Gyuvin’s forehead and feels his clammy skin in a movement so reminiscent of childhood that Gyuvin’s eyes fill with unexpected tears.
“You are unwell,” his captor announces after a moment, other hand sliding down Gyuvin’s spine and holding him more tightly, keeping him upright. “Do you wish to return home now?”
The tears tremble on Gyuvin’s lashes, diamond drops refracting blue light into his vision, and he makes an embarrassing snuffling sound. “What about— our dance? Is it almost finished?”
His captor’s gaze darts to the invisible musicians, then he inclines his head in a tiny nod. “Very nearly, darling.”
Gyuvin thinks about it, his limbs heavy and ears ringing with the sweet-sharp notes, pain following each trilling measure, so homesick for his bed and safety and the mortal world that he can feel his face scrunching up.
But his captor is here— keeping him safe, keeping him within the protective cage of his arms, keeping him like a treasure rather than a secret—
“No,” Gyuvin decides, trying to square his shoulders even though he’s dressed in torn and bloodied pajamas. “It’s okay. I’ll stay until the end of the dance. That was our deal, right?”
His captor’s eyes gleam, one of the thorny vines growing from his ribs affectionately brushing Gyuvin’s wrist. “Yes. That is our bargain.”
Gyuvin steels himself, gathers up all his energy and lifts his chin high as they continue their dance despite the blood wetting the soles of his feet and the pain blossoming across his body. He allows his captor to lift him high into the air, to twirl him round and round down the length of the chamber as if he wears the finest silks and jewels in the world, to gently gather the tears from his lashes so that none of the monsters will see.
It is a silent battle they fight with the music, his captor’s hand drawing Gyuvin in closer and closer while the notes soar ever-higher, sharp and painful as tiny silver blades driven into his ears.
Around and around, gouging tracks into the bloodied earth, until the blue glow of the mushrooms blurs in his eyes and casts everything in strange, shimmering sapphire.
“Only a few moments more,” his captor breathes in Gyuvin’s ear, their cheeks brushing— where Gyuvin is flushed and clammy, the other boy feels cool as ice. “You have been very brave.”
Yes, Gyuvin has been brave. He’s survived the hungry monsters and their lashing tongues and he’s made it through this endless dance, though his feet are bloodied and blistered.
He lays his cheek against his captor’s shoulder and allows his eyes to drift closed, just trying to make it through the last eternity of pain.
If he’s eaten now, he might not even mind. His captor can swallow him whole and lock him away within his thorn-and-rose ribs and Gyuvin will sleep there peacefully for a hundred years.
Fingertips brush delicately down his spine as the spinning of the world slows around them, though pain still rings in his ears. “It is finished, little human. Your bargain is made.”
Gyuvin refuses to open his eyes. “Okay,” he murmurs, pressing his face more firmly into cool velvet. “Take me home please?”
He doesn’t want to see any more magic. He doesn’t want to breathe the blue glow into his lungs, doesn’t want to gorge himself on the terrible beauty of this place and these creatures until he can never leave.
In a rush of cool air, his captor’s arms cradling him close, his request is granted.
There’s an instant difference in the air, summer’s humidity thick against his skin.
Gyuvin opens his eyes and finds them standing in the middle of the cursed mushroom circle— which he decides he’ll dig up or burn into sludge in the morning— in the backyard of the rotting house, which suddenly looks much more welcoming. He lets out a little grunt and strains against his captor’s arms, desperate for the safety of his parents’ and his familiar sheets and mundane, boring human things.
“So quick to abandon me, little human,” his captor murmurs, though he sounds amused. His hands slide over Gyuvin’s ribs, toying with the ripped hem of his shirt, and then fall away so that he is no longer trapped.
He can go, if he wants to. He can run away now.
Instead Gyuvin turns and steels himself, looking the other boy full in his pale, strange face. He is even more impossible in the shadows of the regular world, his sharp beauty and glossy, oil-drop eyes difficult to fathom as real.
He should not be here. He should not exist at all; he is a snarl in this world’s weft, a knot of blue thread.
Gyuvin holds out his muddy, scratched hand. “Walk me to bed? You did bargain to take me home safely.”
Their deal was quite vague and so there is space among the words they’d agreed upon for Gyuvin to push, to play his own little game, silly as it may be. Still, he is home in his world and he feels more powerful here.
His captor blinks at him with all four eyes and inclines his head in that endearingly polite manner. He takes Gyuvin’s hand, carefully, and twines their fingers together, delicately.
“As you like it.”
Gyuvin is the one to lead his captor from the glowing blue mushroom circle, the one to guide them across the dewy grass to the hulking shadow of the house. He can smell rotting wood and mildew as they approach and the backdoor creaks loudly when he pushes it open, unoiled hinges creaking in protest at the magical boy he’s allowed to enter, but Gyuvin doesn’t care.
He simply doesn’t want to go to his bed alone.
He needs someone to hold onto, to cling to until the sun rises and tonight can fade into the shadowed territory of bad nightmares, and his captor has kept him safe so far, has kept his promise and kept Gyuvin’s heart safely between his pale hands.
Gyuvin will trust him just a bit further.
“My room is this way,” Gyuvin whispers, tugging his captor towards the dilapidated staircase. “Ignore the mess.”
His captor looks around with wide eyes, forked tongue flickering out to take in the scents of the house. “It smells of salt and iron.”
Gyuvin hums, beginning to climb the stairs. “Yeah, I think whoever lived here before knew what was under the mushrooms.”
His captor laughs, quiet as a breeze, and brushes the small of Gyuvin’s back with his cool fingers. “And how did you find my court, little human?”
They reach the top of the stairs, Gyuvin slightly out of breath. He turns to his captor, their hands twisted and caught between their chests, shadows dripping from the walls and stretching over them like the extended wings of an owl.
“Monstrous,” he whispers, tilting his chin up until their lips almost brush, his heart thrumming in his chest. “You’re monsters, all of you.”
His captor’s full mouth spreads in a curling, disastrous smile. The points of his teeth glitter as he breathes Gyuvin in, the tips of his tongue flickering across Gyuvin’s waiting lips.
“What sweet lies you tell me, little human. They taste of sugar.”
Gyuvin blinks blue from his eyes and steps back, unsure if his human heart can handle any more tonight. They tiptoe across the creaky landing, passing his parents’ door and the faint vibration of snoring, and enter his dark bedroom chest to spine, the pale boy pressed curiously against him so he can peek over Gyuvin’s shoulder.
Everything is as he left it, his bed a tangle of blue sheets and dog-eared books strewn across the desk, half unpacked boxes stacked at the foot of his bed. This house isn’t quite his, yet, but Gyuvin’s heart prickles with fondness as he watches his captor reach out to gently caress the spines of his books.
“How very human,” the pale boy murmurs, ghosting his fingertips along the edge of a photo of Gyuvin with his parents. “Lovely.”
Gyuvin looks at him, and thinks about forgetting everything that’s happened and the blue glow of magic, and then sinks onto his bed with a tired sigh. The blood at his slashed kneecap has dried and crusted, staining his pajama pants in splashes of dark ruby.
“Is our bargain finished?” He asks, his voice scratchy, and he doesn’t look away when his captor turns to him with something wistful caught in his four gleaming eyes.
“Yes.”
“Okay.” Gyuvin lets out a deeper sigh, expelling air that smells of fresh soil and green growing things from his lungs, leaning back on his scratched palms. “My name is Gyuvin.”
His captor’s face turns pale lilac, the roses at his ribs trembling and sprouting new buds that burst forth into silky, sickly-sweet white petals. He is very still, and his silvery lashes do not even blink as he gazes at Gyuvin, taking in his bared throat and vulnerable belly and the loose sprawl of his limbs, the little human who would be so easy to snap up in a single mouthful.
Gyuvin knows he has bared his own heart to this dangerous, lovely, impossible creature and yet he does not mind. He sinks deeper into the worn fabric of his firetruck sheets and blinks slowly, sleepily, convinced that his captor will keep his name as a treasure upon his tongue.
“You should not have spoken it,” his captor murmurs at last, approaching and slotting himself between Gyuvin’s knees, looking down upon him solemnly. “But now that I have it, I will guard your name with my life.”
Gyuvin smiles, inching towards the edge of the bed and tipping his head back to look up at his lovely fairy captor, tugging lightly on the hem of his velvet jacket. “Can I give you one, too?”
“One…?”
“A name,” he explains lightly, petting the silky petals of one of the blooming roses and peeking up through his lashes at his fairy, who is reacting as if he can feel the flowers. “I want something to call you.”
If this pale boy has a name, Gyuvin can claim him. He can call the fairy his own and call him to his window on moonless nights, can command him and curse him and keep him all his own, locked up in his own chest.
A name means everything, and he intends to take this monstrous fairy captive by it.
His fairy seems to no longer be breathing, though several thorny vines have twined gently as scraps of silk round Gyuvin’s wandering fingers, tethering them together. He would be forced to rend his own skin if he wished to tear them apart, would have to shred delicate muscle on wickedly curving vines.
Perhaps they both wish to keep one another, to hold and to guard and to remain jealously possessive.
Gyuvin considers his pale, lovely fairy, his moonbeam skin and oil-drop eyes and the roses blooming from his body, and decides on a name that will mantle him in humanity.
“Your name is Ricky.”
Ricky blinks four eyes at him, one after another in a series of gleaming winks, and then inclines his stately head. “It is the most precious treasure I have been given. Thank you.”
Gyuvin grins at Ricky, this fairy he has named and will now keep forevermore— mine, mine, mine, he thinks— but is surprised by an enormous yawn. His eyes squeeze shut and his jaw cracks and he finds himself so utterly exhausted that he sways lightly, leaning against Ricky’s arm.
“You must rest your eyes, little beastie,” Ricky whispers, pressing his nose to Gyuvin’s hair and stroking featherlight fingers across his back, sweet as the perfume of roses hanging heavy in the air. “Dreams of better things await you.”
“Okay,” Gyuvin mumbles, allowing himself to be maneuvered into his sheets, rolling onto his side and rubbing his cheek against the worn cotton of his pillowcase.
His eyes are barely open but he feels Ricky drawing the blankets up over him, tucking him in carefully and brushing a hand through his hair. Everything is quiet and dreamy in the pre-dawn light, and so it isn’t a shock at all when he feels a fingertip tracing the curve of his lips, and then Ricky’s cool mouth brushing his own.
“Sleep well, Gyuvin,” his fairy whispers in his ear, a white rose laid upon his bedside table. “If you wish to dance again, you need only call my name.”
And then, in a whisper of velvet and bony wings, Ricky vanishes into the rising mist and swirling, dove-gray dawn.
Gyuvin is already asleep, though, a fairy king’s kiss lingering on his lips and dreams of waltzing beneath blue mushrooms filling his head.