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“Your hands are bleeding,” Adam observes. In the grey summer light, Ronan’s skin is pale. He is washed out, drained. Cuts cling to his hands, and Adam thinks of the way his shoulders are blades.
“They’ll live,” Ronan scoffs, wiping his palm over the frayed material of his jeans. The denim is lifeless. His hands are listless. There’s something fragile in the purple of new bruises flowering on Ronan’s skin, something vulnerable in the way he holds his fingers to his chest.
Adam suppresses the urge to put Ronan’s thumbs to his lips.
“Spit it out,” Ronan says, teeth flashing in the dark, and Adam thinks of glow worms, and moths, and beacons. Adam thinks of smashing his mouth against Ronan’s.
“You should put something on them,” Adam says.
“I should do a lot of things,” Ronan shrugs, then winces. His skin looks electric. He picks up a shard of glass off his elbow and hands it to Adam. It’s bigger than a pebble, sharper than a rock, covered in Ronan’s blood from end to end. It burns in Adam’s hands, sizzling into the air like dry ice.
It feels like a peace offering. Adam doesn’t know what to do with it.
“Throw it away, asshole,” Ronan supplies. There’s no heat behind the words. Adam fingers the shard for another second, observing the way his skin itches when the shard catches the light, and then he hurls it across the field. A creature screeches in the distance, the night sticky with empty creation.
When Adam turns back to Ronan, he’s smirking at him.
“Bastard,” Ronan says. Tasting the word, drawing it out, filling it with intention. Adam quirks an eyebrow at him.
“You should name your night horror something better,” Adam says. The words slip out of his mouth, like thieves sliding down a barbed-wire fence. He wants to take them back and try again. He wants them to mean something.
“Bastard’s a perfectly good name for a night horror,” Ronan says, picking at the skin hanging off his thumb. Adam shrugs.
“Is there only one?” Adam asks. He’s meant to ask for a while now, and it isn’t in Ronan’s nature to deny him anything, but Adam doesn’t assume. Adam never assumes.
“The night is dark and full of terrors,” Ronan intones. Adam thinks of the bands of leather wrapped around Ronan’s wrist, the tart candy in Adam’s back pocket, the smell of thunder somewhere far away, and nods.
There’s a beat of silence, a second of Adam watching Ronan watching Adam. There’s a tendril of space between them, or a branch, or an ocean. The gap would be easy to bridge, if Adam believed in a god other than the one in front of him.
Then the second passes, and the spell is broken.
“Sit down,” Ronan says, looking at something above Adam’s shoulder. He pats the space next to him, and Adam wants to rub his knuckles into the nubs of Ronan’s fingers.
“It’s story time.”
Adam smiles to himself. It was Cinderella last time; a grotesque Cinderella, Bigfoot Cinderella, but still Cinderella. It was a lullaby last time, the kind that sets sleep free in a field of glow worms and warm moths.
If the Graywaren also turns out to be a Bard… and the Magician as the only one who knows.
It’s strange: Ronan has trouble sleeping. Ronan has a habit of bringing back fairytales from his dreams. Ronan: forbidden apples and desecrated altars and flat-footed gods.
Ronan: unknowable.
“Are you?” Ronan looks up at him, raising an eyebrow expectantly. Adam weighs the look. It’s a school night, after all, but Ronan knows it’s a school night. And besides, it isn’t in Adam’s nature to deny Ronan things.
He sits.
“No prop this time?” Adam asks.
The night is closing around them, and Adam can't trust his eyes, but he knows Ronan’s lips. So he knows when he smiles.
“Not this time.”
There’s a beat of silence, a second of iris and colour and ocean.
“So there was this dragon,” Ronan begins abruptly. The corners of Adam’s lips turn up. So it’s one of those stories.
“No once upon a time?” he asks. He can see the whites of Ronan’s eyes when he rolls them back.
“Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived this mighty fucking dragon,” Ronan spits out. Adam nods, grinning. Better.
Ronan flips him off.
“So the dragon,” Adam prompts.
“So the dragon,” Ronan says, “was big and brave and brilliant, and because this is somehow a thing that happens, his name was Stoolworm or Steelworm or some shit.”
“We’ll call him Stool,” Ronan says. Adam snorts.
“Stool ate too much and yawned seven times each morning, and every time he’d yawn, he’d suck in seven things from the village. Don’t ask me how that works, but the town got sick of it.”
“So,” Ronan pauses meaningfully, “a hero was needed.”
Adam wants to roll his eyes. Yawns and dragons and heroes. Ronan’s in a mood tonight.
“I'm guessing this is an allegory and you're the hero in the story?” Adam asks. Ronan smirks and puts a finger to Adam’s lips.
Immediately, Adam freezes. He can practically taste the gasoline on Ronan’s finger.
He doesn’t say anything.
“Patience,” Ronan sneers. Adam huffs, but gestures for Ronan to continue.
He’s mildly disappointed when Ronan withdraws his finger.
“The hero in this story,” Ronan says, “is a young boy, who stole a boat to row out into the ocean. Oh, right, the dragon’s a sea serpent. Probably should’ve told you that. Anyway, the boy rowed out his boat to the dragon’s lair, and he got swallowed up when the dragon yawned.”
Ronan’s mouth is set in a definite smirk now. Adam doesn’t dwell on the way Ronan pronounces ‘swallow’, like he’s not really saying swallow. Like he’s saying bite me, or fuck you, or really, bite me, that’s hot. Adam inhales once, twice, and then he sighs. Intention, the night whispers around them. Raze me, Adam thinks. Then he coughs.
Ronan slowly reaches into his pocket and takes out a blob of swindled cellophane. He cracks open the paper, and pops the tart lemon candy into his mouth. Adam can see the exact moment he bites down.
Adam’s back itches.
“Is that it?” Adam asks, eyebrows raised in a silent challenge. Ronan immediately takes him up on it.
“No,” he says. He flashes Adam a grin, his teeth little spots of white in a sea of dark, and gets up.
“Grab your shit, we’re going back,” Ronan says, offhand.
“What?” Adam asks, disconcerted. Ronan shrugs, already moving. Adam sits there, frozen, for one entire second, mouth slightly open.
Well, he thinks. A story left incomplete.
That’s new.
“You coming, or you wanna stay here tonight?” Ronan throws out, over his back. Adam shakes his head as he gets up, cursing Ronan under his breath.
He trips over a pebble as he walks, something sharp cutting into his feet, and stumbles. Ronan turns around, hands in his pockets, and locks eyes with Adam.
“Hey, Adam,” Ronan’s voice cuts through the night, “Don’t trust heroes.”
________
First period Latin. Bad start.
Adam’s head is on his table, his eyes on Ronan’s hands. He is mesmerized. Ronan’s writing something in the margins of his notebook over and over again, a reel of black and white images printed hundreds of times. He scrawls the words out quickly, looping and scratching and pushing, lather rinse repeat. Again and again and again.
Adam has to strain his eyes to make the words out. Ede faecem, he reads, the letters tight and insistent. Eat shit.
Adam laughs to himself.
Ronan’s hand stops abruptly. He tilts his head towards Adam and starts writing something else. Adam props his head on his hands for a better view. His eyes stray up Ronan’s neck, and he takes in his flushed face. His lips are soft in the morning light, and Adam wants to bite him. He looks down at the page instead.
And there, adorned in Ronan’s messy handwriting, lie his thoughts. Morde meum globes.
Bite my balls.
Adam blushes and turns his head away. Ronan laughs quietly, a sharp stab and a fade out. When he bites the inside of his cheek, he can taste lime.
The teacher says something, white noise. Adam ignores Ronan. Ronan taps Adam’s forehead, once, twice, sure and quick. It reminds Adam of morse code. He thinks Ronan might be trying to say fuck you, but he thinks Ronan wouldn’t need dots and dashes for that.
Then Ronan starts sketching something, pen scratching gently on paper, and Adam’s too curious not to look. Ronan’s hand is soft, darting across the page like a feather, like a bird. The ink spills, ruffles. Sleight of hand, here a curve, there a lake. The image takes shape. Ronan’s fingers curl around the pen as he starts drawing faster, lines falling in empty space. The art of misdirection is also the art of creation. Shadows dance across the page, swaying and twirling and unfurling.
Adam looks on in reverence. He’s never seen anything like this. He’s never seen anything- like Ronan.
“What are you doing?” he whispers.
Intention, he thinks.
“What are you drawing?” Adam tries again, louder this time.
Ronan turns the page towards Adam.
Oh, Adam thinks. And then, “it’s beautiful.”
Ronan smirks and flips Adam off. Adam doesn’t say anything, too absorbed in the outline to notice. It’s beautiful, because it’s Ronan. Every line, every blot, all of it. Adam has to move back to see the picture, but that doesn’t surprise him. It’s a dragon, he realizes. Or a man. Or a man inside a dragon. The image shifts again. He can only make out the silhouettes of this thing of sharp edges and clawing insides and life.
It’s a dream sketch.
“You made this in front of my eyes,” Adam says. It’s a question.
“Are they your eyes?” Ronan asks. His face twists suddenly, garish, skin melting into mouth. A wax candle coming undone, or a lace dress ripping open. Adam doesn’t have time to scream, time to blink, before the vision’s gone and Ronan’s face is inches from his.
It takes Adam a few seconds to realize he’s panting, and a couple more to realize that Ronan’s saying something.
“Huh?” Adam mutters. His mouth’s full of cotton wool.
“Are you fucking okay, Parrish?” Ronan snarls, eyes flashing. Adam closes his eyes, and nods.
“I think… I'm fine. I just, saw something,” Adam tries. His throat is hoarse. The picture, he remembers. He snatches Ronan’s notebook from his desk, frantic in a matter of seconds.
When he looks at the page, there’s nothing there.
________
Cabeswater, Adam calls. It’s never worked before, but he thinks today might be an exception. Today, he might need it enough.
He rests his head on his hands, trying to concentrate. I am unknowable, Adam thinks. I am outside. I am unknowable.
Adam rubs his eyes once, twice, three times. When he opens them, he can still see everything. Which is to say, he can't actually see anything.
Adam sighs. I am unknowable.
Adam repeats the words in his head over and over again, building up a crescendo with each clipped un, each punctuated know, each lilting able. He’s lifting, rocking on his heels.
He thinks of air and incense, of being a fly on the wall. A drop of water, zoomed in again and again, until all the atoms stand out. Buffeted by the wind, pulled in by ground.
He can smell dirt. A raven crows at his feet. Unknowable. He can feel the roots of gnarled trees coming to life, swaying in time with his heartbeat. Moss starts to grow under his toes. Thunder crackles in the air, and Adam can feel goose bumps rising all over his arms. Unknowable. The earth smells of fresh rain, of nights and stars and spades.
Adam is outside.
The wind sweeps him off his feet, throws him into the air. For a second, Adam is weightless, hands splayed, arms open. For a second, Adam is soaring, for a second, Adam is fr-
“What the fuck are you doing?” a voice cuts through the air, cracking the sky open. A whip appears in Adam’s vision. Adam recoils immediately, thrown back into his body even as his limbs shake.
“What?” Adam shouts. He was so close. So close.
Ronan bristles. Adam can see how pale his face is, how his fingers are clumped into tight fists. It’s worry, Adam realizes. The set of his jaw, the crinkling of his eyes, the darkness clouding his face- it’s worry.
“I was trying to call Cabeswater,” Adam forces the words out of his mouth before Ronan can start speaking. It’s the only kind of apology he knows.
He tenses as Ronan opens his mouth.
“You could have died,” Ronan snarls, still incensed. Ronan jabs at his leather bands, sharp and furious, and turns away.
“Do that again and I'm calling Gansey.” This time the words are empty. Ronan’s face is tight, drawn.
Adam thinks of the pull of Cabeswater, and almost falls to his knees.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” Adam breathes out, relief settling in his gut as the feeling returns to his limbs. He blinks slowly, pressing his head to the mirror. I tried to summon Cabeswater in school. I tried to summon Cabeswater. I summoned Cabeswater.
It’s chilling, now. How out of control he’d been, how easy it would have been to be swept away. Adam’s hands shake again, and he tastes bile in his throat. He’s safe. He’s here. He’s safe.
“Thanks,” Adam mutters. So quiet he isn’t sure Ronan heard him. But Ronan’s shoulders relax incrementally as he turns towards Adam, and Adam knows enough to know Ronan.
“What were you trying to do?” Ronan asks, voice low. They’re scraped-voice whispering even though the bathroom is empty, but Adam doesn’t question it.
“How did the story end?” Adam asks instead. He can feel the beginnings of a headache at the edges of his vision. He wants to go to sleep. He doesn’t.
“What?” Ronan asks.
“The story. The dragon. Stoolworm, Ronan, how did the fucking story end?” Adam asks. He needs to know. Nothing makes any sense.
“That?” Ronan recoils, wounded. Their forays into the Barns exist in a separate realm, a land between waking and dreams, a place neither of them can talk about.
Adam’s breaking all his rules today.
“I don’t know,” Ronan adds, when Adam doesn’t say anything. Adam shuts his eyes, pained.
“What do you mean, you don’t know? It was your story. How do you not fucking know?”
“I mean, I don’t fucking know,” Ronan spits out. His eyes are a little wild. Adam doesn’t blame him.
“Ronan,” Adam says. Quiet, forceful.
“You don’t understand, it wasn’t like that. Cabeswater put the story in my head,” Ronan says slowly, forcing the words out of his mouth like pellets, like thieves.
“What do you mean?” Adam asks, his heart beating faster. His chest is sinking, sinking, like he knows already. The knowledge that comes before knowledge, a million tiny shadows playing on his lids. Cabeswater, he thinks. He can only see silhouettes.
“I was the hero. I was the boy in the boat. I was the man in the dragon’s gut,” Ronan says, and the shadows dig in.
________
Adam eyes his slice of pizza warily. Ronan scoffs. Adam can tell that it’s supposed to be a sound of encouragement. He picks at the pepperoni absently and then folds the slice in half and puts it in his mouth.
“So, tell me what you know,” Adam begins. He’s surprised by how much he sounds like Gansey. He’s also surprised neither of them called either Gansey or Blue. This, though, feels like something that’s just for them.
“The dream… Cabeswater shows me things sometimes. Visions, I guess. Whatever,” Ronan says.
“You too?” Adam snorts. It’s funny, it’s written down, it’s all supposed to happen someday. The Magician watches through the folds of his cape, and the Dreamer watches through the gaps in clouds. One of them really should know better.
Ronan makes a face. “It’s not like that, exactly. I think. Cabeswater just changes my dreams. Sometimes I can bring things back, sometimes I can't.”
“And how many times has it happened?” Adam asks. He has the irrational urge to get a notebook out and take notes. He suspects it won't go down well with Ronan.
“You know,” Ronan shrugs. “Every story.”
It takes Adam apart a little, the easy way Ronan says it, like it isn’t strange for Adam to know. Like Ronan didn’t see visions in his dreams and share them with a boy who can hardly dare to look. It’s a punch to Adam’s gut; something trapped in his chest, exploding gentle. He thinks of a flock of birds and shivers. The claws inside his ribs disappear. A moment later, everything returns.
“Count with me, anyway,” Adam says. He presses his knee to Ronan’s. Ronan stills, then presses back.
“Fine,” Ronan says softly. He holds up his fist, waiting for Adam to speak.
“Okay. Cinderella, the coffin, the brook, and Stoolworm,” Adam says. Ronan raises a finger for each story.
Adam sighs. So close.
“There should be three,” he says. Persephone’s face flashes in front of his eyes, the ghost of a smile flitting across her lips. She looks pleased. Adam shakes his head gently. Only for our eyes, he thinks. Persephone vanishes.
It doesn’t surprise him that she’d understand.
“Yeah, well, there are four,” Ronan scoffs. Adam shrugs and takes Ronan’s wrist in his hands. Ronan’s index finger jerks slightly, but he gives no indication of noticing.
“So what do we do now?” Ronan asks after a moment.
Adam doesn’t know. Not really. He thinks of Persephone again, and she whispers in his ears. Non est ad astra mollis e terris via. Her Latin is strange, broken, a creature from a different plane. There is no easy way from the earth to the stars. Her Latin is tired, and brave. Adam doesn’t have to translate.
“Nunc,” Adam says, “sit nobis dormiamus.”
Now, let us sleep.
________
Adam opens his eyes in Cabeswater.
The forest is calm, quiet, the leaves swaying in the breeze. Dappled suns play on the ground. It’s autumn, and the clouds are crowns. It’s autumn, and the world is still. The trees reach out with gnarly fingers, and bees buzz about his feet.
“Took you a while,” Ronan says, appearing out of the foliage. His clothes are dirty, face crusted with grime. When he grins, something sharp rises in his eyes. A pearl and a blade. Ronan Lynch reminds Adam of a shrubbery death.
Adam shrugs. Ronan holds out his hand, and Adam takes it.
Instantly, they’re plunged into an ocean. Adam swallows brine and sinks. He flails for a second, thrashing both arms against the current. Something tugs at his gut and he sees barbed tentacles reach out. When he opens his eyes, he’s in Ronan’s arms, anchored to his body.
When they come up for air, it feels like choking.
Adam breathes deeply as Ronan disentangles him from his body. They’re in the middle of an ocean blue. The words land in his head like butterflies poised for flight. Ocean blue. He breathes and the image comes to life- the water spread out like tarmac, waves billowing with the wind. It’s so blue, so white. So.
“Where are we?” Adam gasps. Ronan shakes his head. There’s something different about him, too, something like fingernails or tourniquets. Unguibus et rostro, Adam thinks. The words are his, but they aren’t him.
“Look,” Ronan points. Adam follows his gaze, and stops short. Where there was only ocean, there now stands a pillar. A pillar made of fire.
The column glows breath-white, swaying in time with the tides. The flames lick out to the clouds, and dark smoke snakes around its edges. A tendril of ash flies by Adam’s eyes, and lands in the water. The water simmers, seared.
“Is it always like this?” Adam asks, hushed. He knows it isn’t just Cabeswater changing Ronan’s dreams. It’s Ronan himself.
“Sometimes,” Ronan breathes. His eyes are gleaming. There’s something electric about them, something apocalyptic.
Holy. He’s holy.
“Watch out!” Ronan barks suddenly, pushing Adam’s head underwater as something bright explodes in his vision. He swallows salt again, lips open and arms crossed. When he comes back up, the landscape has changed. This time, the ocean is lighter, the pillar is gone. And there’s something else, too.
An island. His brain tells him it’s an island.
But it doesn’t look anything like one. It’s a precipice, a vertical blossom; pale, smooth, unearthly. Fragile, he thinks. The whisper of something. Adam’s breath hitches in his throat, an odd yearning grabbing hold of his shoulders, making rivulets out of his eyes.
“Is that…?” Adam begins.
“It’s a tooth,” Ronan says.
Nothing makes any sense.
When Adam wakes up, Ronan’s face is inches from his.
________
“What happened?” Adam asks, dizzy. The ground comes up to meet him, or he falls to meet the ground. Ronan stops short, eyeing him. He shakes his head and offers Adam a hand.
When Adam’s fingers meet Ronan’s, his thoughts evaporate.
I am unknowable, Adam thinks. I am unshakable.
“Parrish, what the fuck?” Ronan says, giving him a look. It’s loaded with something, but Adam doesn’t have time for games.
“I'm fine,” he says, answering the actual question. It’s a direct admission, nothing like the way they usually go about in circles, communicating via lack of communication. It would be easy, in this moment, to add an I'm sorry to the sentence. Or a thank you. Or even-
“You’re beau-” Adam stops. Clears his throat.
“What happened there?” Adam tries again. Ronan sighs and presses his knuckles to Adam’s face. Immediately, images flood Adam’s mind. An ocean blue, two hands unsure, a rock, a fire, an island. A dragon’s pelt, a screaming man, a nymph, a serpent. Two faces aligned, the suit of knights.
Ronan removes his hand from Adam’s face, and Adam’s stomach swoops. He wants to fall down again, but one of Ronan’s arms is gathered around his shoulders, preventing him from sinking.
“What was that?” Adam says. He isn’t sure he’s asking the right questions, but Ronan nods anyway. He gestures for Adam to sit, and then sits down beside him.
Cabeswater is quiet. Adam can feel its power flowing under his skin, breathing in the gaps between his fingers. Easy, gentle. He doesn’t know why he’s surprised.
“I think… I think the man set the dragon on fire,” Ronan says. The words coil around his mouth, pulling it into a snarl. Adam feels a rush of white-hot anger claw its way into his throat. Shadows dance on the curtains of his skin; shadows war on the folds of his shins.
Life for life, the trees whisper around him. It sounds jagged, like dialogues from a movie after half the words have been obliterated.
“And the teeth?” Adam asks. Hollow.
“Isles. A perch for birds.”
Adam turns to look at Ronan. Ronan looks back.
“I don’t think the boy was a hero,” Adam says quietly. His tongue curls around the words, spitting boy out like blood.
“I think,” Ronan starts to speak, then closes his mouth. Closes his eyes.
For a second, the world is still. The world is sinking shoulders, sutured lips. The sun is soot- laden fingers, blood-white knees. The earth is Ronan, Ronan, Ronan.
Lonesome, Adam thinks with a pang.
“I think you should go home,” Ronan says.
________
Adam’s room is dark, empty. Adam’s window is bare, open. Adam’s sink is filled, clogged. Adam’s skin is stretched, pallid. Adam Parrish is tired, tired.
Cabeswater, Adam thinks. Cabeswater in the shadows, at the edges of his ripped sight, under the soles of his sticky shoes. Cabeswater is listening.
Ask and ye shall receive, a voice whispers in his ears. The room is still. The shadows waver.
“What do I ask for?” Adam asks. Nothing happens. Adam inhales slowly, calling, calling, and suddenly, the room splits with light.
You are dark & feral, a voice whispers in his ear.
The shadows tilt menacingly, trees turning to roots turning to fingers. A woman laughs, a raven crows, a man with a manger falls down on his feet. Twin hands lift up a chalice, twin arms lift up a corpse. A coffin falls open, and empty bones skitter out. A column of fire rages at the edges, pinning two boys in its midst. A dragon reaches out with both hands. A man with wings descends on a rock. The walls are shaking, breaking. The walls are beige, the walls do not speak. Nothing happens. Everything tilts. The shadows come to life again, frenzied and frozen, bound and gagged.
Everything stills.
“Speak,” Adam says, in a dream. The shadows stay frozen.
Adam wants to freeze, too. Adam wants to lay his head in grass and lull himself to sleep. Adam wants-
Ask, something whispers.
Immediately, Adam comes back to himself, his blood cold. Understanding falls like a tooth into his head.
It isn’t Cabeswater.
The room falls into darkness again. The wind quiets, and the silence roars. Adam falls on his knees. There is a card on the floor, and the card is a word, and the word is a sword, and the-
No, Adam thinks. These are my eyes.
The edges of the room turn pale.
There is a card on the floor.
Adam picks it up. The shadows jerk, then fall back again. There is a crown on a man’s head now, a cape on another’s. A rope bound around one’s neck, arms bound around another’s chest. A hero reaches out with both hands. A girl is frozen mid-laugh, a serpent is crawling on the floor.
My eyes, Adam repeats. Thinks of black curtains falling over his skin, enmeshed in his arms. When he opens his eyes, his room is his room. He can see everything.
“Show me,” Adam says, and a sliver of the moon falls into his hands. Beckoning, beckoning, giant. Silver eel, broken heel. Show me. A piece of the moon falls to the floor, bursts apart on the linoleum like a globe of fruit. Sickening, frightening, pliant. Show me. Words land in his head, fully poised for flight, and dark wings take his eyes.
No, Adam thinks. No, stop, my eyes, n-
The card falls from his hands. It’s a picture card, sketched tightly and menacingly- a ship wreck, a writhing ocean, a man inside a dragon. Adam gasps, stumbles. Adam reaches out with both hands.
In the beginning, there were two boys.
Adam reels, drawn in, pushed out. A rope coils around his neck, a petal falls over his eyes. He wants to breathe.
“This is about,” he begins. Stops.
In the beginning, there was one boy.
“Cinderella was a whore who danced with wolves. The pumpkin was a gypsy and the rats all had eyes,” Ronan’s voice cuts through Adam’s skin. Not his words, Adam thinks. He’s having trouble speaking.
“Cinderella dreamt of Ibormeith, of waking at midnight and dancing till sunrise. Cinderella wanted bigger feet, bigger hands. Cinderella wanted to be someone else,” Ronan’s voice says. Still not his words.
“Cinderella was fucked. Cinderella had a prince but that prince couldn’t remember her face. Cinderella lost her shoes and – I said shoes, Parrish, if you don’t shut up I'll shove the glass slipper up your ass- and she asked a fairy for tiny feet, but the fairy was a bitch, and she gave her hairy, monstrous feet. Kind of like Gansey’s. So Cinderella was fucked, and she wanted to kill herself, but love is love or whatever, and the prince came back. I guess he liked the sex,” Ronan says. Yes, Adam thinks. Closer.
In the beginning, there was a secret.
Adam exhales, his breath ragged. ‘What do you want?’ he thinks. The room shakes a little with the laughter in the belly of a giant.
You.
“Cinderella was fucking pissed with the fairy. Cinderella did not want to be Cinderella. Cinderella wanted to be bigger, Cinderella wanted something bigger. Cinderella wanted a god, a parish. Cinderella wanted – no, she didn’t want to fuck me, now shut up- Cinderella wanted- she. Cinderella. Somebody wanted-” a tapering off. Minutes later: “I don’t know.” Ronan said.
Adam’s eyes jerk open. This time, the room is empty. The card is blank.
This time, Adam is learning.
________
“This is about us,” Adam says. Ronan snorts, and turns his head.
“Ronan,” Adam says, “look at me.”
Ronan looks away, into the distance. His eyes follow the trajectory of the moon. Adam’s eyes follow the trajectory of Ronan’s fingers. Ronan’s mouth is twitching and twirling. Ronan’s teeth are feral in the moonlight.
“Do you think you could create something darker than Cabeswater?” Adam ventures. “Something with enough power to reach into the past?”
The trouble, Adam thinks, is intention. He can't reach out with both arms and pin it down under his skin, force the stars to give up their secrets as he watches from the earth. He can't separate malice from misdirection, or desperation from devastation. He can't imagine a forest of chalices and ropes wanting to strangle the breath from his ribs, even after it’s splayed his body onto walls and pushed him off cliffs and dug its hands into the pits of his skin.
The trouble, Adam thinks, is narration. Yesterday was a whirlwind of darkness and light, of the moon and the wolf, of razed land and new creation. Even at midnight, plagued by dreams. Even in the morning, two children looking for water in an empty brook, turning into gnomes before the moon. Even after, even so, stories getting tangled in each other, motive leaving thought at the front door.
The trouble, Adam thinks, is sifting the truth from the cracks, and the cracks from the flour. The dragon could be a ghost, could be the past, could be a boy who needed to burn his own wings off. A boy who needed to burn his own claws off.
And the hero could be a chalice, could be the catalyst, could be a boy who needed to burn his own history. A boy who needed to burn somebody else’s sea.
Of course, the story could be an allegory.
“I don’t know,” Ronan says, after a beat.
The trouble, Adam thinks, is Ronan.
“Look at me,” Adam says, taking Ronan’s wrist in his hand. He fingers the bands of leather wrapped around Ronan’s skin, and thinks of gasoline filling his bones to the brim.
This time, Ronan turns around.
“I think,” Adam says, going over the words in his head. Creating new syllables instead of voicing out the ones already there.
“I think you're the hero in the story,” he says. Ronan stiffens, and jerks back his hand. He looks at Adam, and Adam looks back.
“I don’t mean it like that,” Adam says. “Not the way you think I do.”
In the beginning, there was a snake.
Ronan is breathing faster now. Adam takes a moment, lets his gaze run over Ronan’s face, his hollowed out eyes and shaved head, the basins at the bottom of his throat.
And in the middle, there was a magician.
Adam breathes in.
And there was a story as old as time.
“This is about us,” Adam says, and every word says intention. Every word says love.
In the beginning, there were two boys.
Adam looks at Ronan, watching as understanding falls like a tooth into his eyes.
“You're the hero in the story,” Adam says, and then he closes the gap.