#nqgs

“It is, matter of fact. Been my family’s for over a century.” Now, the man stubs his cigarette out on an ashtray resting on the windowsill and straightens, which reveals that he’s even taller than Matthew had thought. “Can I help you with anything?”

“I… Hm, maybe.”

“That’s intriguing.” He nods, gaze sweeping over Matthew. Gestures. “Come in.”

“What about Kuma?” Matthew holds the leash of his dog up, and Kuma lifts his great white head towards the man, tongue out. “He’s pretty gentle, but…”

“That’s no problem,” the man assures him, and turns to go into the antiques store.

Inside, the radio is on softly, and though there are many curious items on display, the small store doesn’t feel cluttered. There is no one else in at the moment, and Matthew follows the owner to the old-fashioned register, where the man leans on the dark wood with both hands.

“Alright, how might I be able to help?” he asks. His accent is local, which is probably good.

“Well, I’m working on an article about this town,” Matthew starts, gesturing as if to encompass the whole place. “For a travel magazine, you see? Anyway, I was hoping to learn more about the history of the place, and also to go out onto the lakes, but it’s, well…”

“It’s autumn.” The shop owner nods. “This place turns into a ghost town as soon as the tourists leave. You’re too late.”

Matthew pulls a pained face. “That was kind of the point.”

“I see, I see. And I guess… No, he’ll have closed up shop by now…” As he trails off, the man twists the bleached tips of his hair further up, frowning thoughtfully.

“I think the lakes would be gorgeous now. I’d wanted to take photos,” Matthew adds, petting Kuma’s head absently. He isn’t sure what to make of the antiquarian.

“They are amazin’,” he replies, then seems to decide something and leans forward again. “If you’d like, I could take you out on the lakes sometime. Haven’t used my boat in ages.”

Matthew smiles, somewhat startled by the offer. “Really?”

“Why not?” The man shrugs, although he smiles back slightly. He must be a few years older than Matthew, and seems both completely out of place and exactly at home in the antiques store. “I’ll need to check on the boat first, though, so give me a day or so.”

“Of course, no problem! Thank you, sir.”

The man grimaces. “Please, call me Maarten.”

“Right. I’m Matthew.”

“Good, Matthew, where are you staying? I can let them know when it’s ready.”

So Matthew tells him the name of his bed & breakfast, and Maarten promises to call. With that, he finds himself, and Kuma, back outside the shop on the still-unfamiliar street. Great. Now to find the way back.

The bell of the antique shop chimes when the door opens, and Maarten comes out.

“I… Do have some town maps, if that’d be helpful,” he says. “New ones, even.”

“I swear I’m not usually this bad at directions,” Matthew tells him, gratefully accepting a tourist map from him.

“No, I suppose that’d be a bad trait for a travel journalist. Don’t worry about it, happens to a lot of people.” With a nod and a brief pat on Kuma’s head, he ducks back into his store, and Matthew unfolds the map.

-

The next afternoon, Matthew returns to his bed & breakfast to find the hostess waiting there to tell him he has a message.

“Maarten van Dijk wants you to know he is ready to go out to the lakes,” the woman recites from a slip of paper. “He’ll be at the docks tomorrow morning at nine, unless that doesn’t work for you.”

“That should be fine,” Matthew mutters. “Thank you.”

“Mr Williams, are you sure…” She pauses, then shakes her head. “No, never mind.”

 “What?”

“No, it’s nothing. It’s beautiful out on the water. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.” She nods decisively and walks away, leaving Matthew frowning after her.

It must be some smalltown gossip he’s not to know about, he guesses. Shrugging, he goes to his room. He adds his notes from today to his work folder, checks that he has enough rolls of film for his camera, and sets out again. Apparently, there is a local museum.

-

It is a beautiful, clear autumn morning when Matthew makes his way to the town’s docks—well, dock. Only two boats are moored there at the moment, and he spots Maarten on the furthest one, smoking and looking at a map or a chart of some kind. At Matthew’s approach, he looks up. Matthew smiles.

“Good morning.”

“Mornin’. Come on board.” He jerks his chin and stands up to steady Matthew when he steps from the dock down into the boat.

It’s a small vessel—Matthew doesn’t know nearly enough about boats to know its actual name—painted a muted orange that fits right in with the autumn canopy. He sits on a bench so he doesn’t fall.

“Alright. Anywhere in particular— Hey, where’s your dog?” Maarten asks, pausing in untying the boat from the dock.

“Oh, the hostess of my B&B takes care of him if I can’t take him. I’m not sure if it’s safe for him, or if he could scare the wildlife.”

Maarten mumbles something as he sits at the back of the boat to start up the motor. After the initial roar of noise, it settles into a gentle hum as they start to drive away from town.

“He’d probably be fine, but you’d be the best judge of that,” Maarten says. “Anywhere in particular you want me to take you?”

“I don’t think so. You know the lakes, presumably.”

“Yeah. We’ll just do a loop around. Give a shout if you wanna stop somewhere for pictures or something.”

Lake is really a generous term for the waterways they start making their way through. While there are open areas every now and then, a lot of the place is marshy, leaving only relatively narrow swathes of deeper water for Maarten to drive his boat through.

“I used to go sailing a lot,” he tells Matthew. “But you can’t really do that around here.”

“No, I suppose not.” He has to duck out of the way of a tree branch full of golden leaves. “You used to live somewhere else?”

“Not that far away, by one of the larger lakes. Before I took over the shop from my mother.” He gestures ahead. “Left or right, Matthew?”

“Left.” Towards the sun.

“Exciting.” When Matthew turns to look at him, bemused, Maarten huffs a laugh but doesn’t say anything else.

By ten, they reach a solid patch of land that actually has a small, sandy beach, where Matthew asks to stop.

“Can I get off here?” he asks. “Just for a moment.”

“Sure.” Maarten looks over at the beach, and frowns. “God damn it. They’re havin’ parties again.”

Matthew watches him stalk over immediately after securing the boat to a tree and start to pick up trash from the sand, furiously putting it into a garbage bag he pulls from the pocket of his windbreaker. Somewhat charmed by this side of the curt antiquarian, Matthew takes a quick photo of him doing that, and makes a note of it in his flipover notepad, but then sets about doing a little circuit of the island they’re on.

The autumn colors are stunning in the sun; he really doesn’t understand why more people don’t come out to the Lake Valley after summer’s end. Although he’s read that many birds live in this area, he doesn’t find any at the moment—possibly, the noise of the engine scared them away. Or possibly Maarten’s grumbling as he comes up behind Matthew, garbage bag slung over his shoulder. It’s pretty filled.

“Stupid kids,” he says. “It’s one thing to party somewhere dangerous, but then to leave your trash everywhere too…”

“Dangerous?”

“Would you know the way to town from here?” Maarten asks, and Matthew shakes his head, understanding where he’s going with that. “No. Now imagine that, but in the dark, and you’re drunk and possibly high, and eighteen.”

“Did you ever get lost?”

Maarten raises his eyebrows, looking amused, and says, “No. I know the lakes. Not saying I didn’t do the other things, but not out here.”

“Well, that’s fair. I grew up in the mountains. You don’t do that out there, either.”

“I can imagine. Mountains terrify me.” He looks up suddenly, frowning. “Did you hear that?”

Matthew didn’t hear anything in particular, but he follows Maarten as he walks to the islet’s shoreline, on the opposite side of where the boat is, and watches him squint into the distance. There is another relatively open space here, although hemmed in on both sides by tall trees, bent over the dark water like a tunnel. The sun frames Maarten’s silhouette as he listens intently, head cocked.

“Some sort of bell,” he mutters.

“Like a church?” Maybe, one is tolling somewhere in a town. There doesn’t seem to be any wind, but Matthew knows that back home, sounds could echo off the mountains for ages, so who knows what this flat land could carry?

Maarten shakes his head. “Closer to a shop bell. Hm.” He spends a moment longer looking out over the water, then turns to Matthew abruptly. “Didn’t mean to interrupt your work, Matthew.”

“Oh no, it’s alright. Should we go find that bell?”

The antiquarian blinks slowly, lips parting as if he hadn’t considered it.

“Maybe we should.”

Although Matthew still can’t hear any bells, he’s content to sit in the front of the boat and look around while Maarten steers them towards the supposed sound. They pass underneath the arched trees and into an open area, filled with sunlight.

And there, on the shore of a larger island, hidden behind trees, Matthew sees a building. It looks fairly old, but in good condition, with walls of multicolored stones and a roof of red tiles. A large weeping willow dips its yellow leaves into the water next to the building, where there is a small wooden dock. Matthew turns to Maarten, notepad at the ready, to ask him what the building is, but the man looks baffled, green eyes wide and fixed on the little island.

“That’s where it’s comin’ from,” he mutters.

“The bell?”

Maarten startles, looking as though he forgot Matthew was there. He nods, though.

“You don’t hear it?”

“No.”

“Odd.” He frowns. “Do you mind if we go…”

Of course, Matthew doesn’t mind. If nothing else, a mysterious building that even a local doesn’t know about will make an interesting little detour in his article.

Maarten drives the boat to the dock and ties it to a post there. Before he disembarks, he pushes on the wood, but it seems sturdy, so he climbs off the boat and starts walking to the building. Matthew follows, camera at the ready.

The building has two floors, and the windows are small but quite clear—Maarten is peering through one, his sharp nose nearly against the glass.

Following a gravel path, Matthew walks around the building a bit. There are even flower boxes on some windows, all empty right now, and the place seems deserted. Around the corner from the boat, on the short side of the building, Matthew finds a door. A small bell hangs over it, gleaming in the sunlight as if newly polished, that would surely chime if the door opened, but the door is locked. A name has been painted on the wood in elegant, white cursive.

“Does this mean anything to you?” Matthew asks Maarten as he walks up. The man blinks at the name.

“Yes.” He frowns, bemused. “Van der Meer was my mother’s name.” He tries the door handle and runs his fingers over the silver lock. “I think I… I think I might have the key to this place. At the shop.”

He meets Matthew’s eyes, and both of them are equally intrigued.

-

Of course, Matthew absolutely has to come with Maarten when he goes to try out the key that he has at his antique shop, the next day. Having explored the museum, there isn’t a whole lot else left to do in town, anyway. He leaves Kuma with the B&B hostess again, having no idea what is inside the building.

The key is the same silver as the lock on the mysterious building’s door, but more than that, it’s shaped like a small bell.

“It’s always been there,” Maarten explains as he maneuvers his boat through the waterways. “In the register. Always thought it was for something that was sold ages ago. Kept it just in case.”

“Very curious,” Matthew says. He can’t wait to see if it works.

When they get to the door, Maarten reaches up and trails his long fingers over the name on it.

“Fifteen years,” he mumbles. He lifts the key to the lock. Hesitates. Matthew waits patiently; he might need a moment. But then, Maarten turns to him and holds the key out.

“What?”

“Go ahead, Matthew.” A hint of a smile flits across his face. “Isn’t that what journalism is all about?”

“Eh, not my kind.” Matthew takes the key from him and releases a long breath. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He pushes the key into the lock, sharing a look with Maarten when it fits, and then, Matthew slowly turns it. Without a hitch, without a creak of age, the door unlocks.

“Who’d have thought?” Matthew breathes. With a hand on the door handle, he looks at Maarten again.

“I wonder what this place is,” the antiquarian says. “I wonder if my mother knew.”

“Let’s find out.”

The door opens with, as expected, the gentle chime of the bell overhead, and they make their way inside. It’s warmer here, the sunlight lighting up the space in bright yellow beams, dust swirling. The interior of the building doesn’t match the outside; there is geometric wallpaper, shades of brown and green that remind Matthew of his childhood home, and a heavy wooden desk that incongruously has a Bakelite telephone sitting on it, along with a thin, leather-bound book.

Maarten lets out a long breath.

“Looks almost like a reception,” he says, walking slowly over to the desk. “I’ve got a phone just like this at the shop.”

“Phones are antiques already?” Matthew asks him while he is cautiously opening the little book. Maarten chuckles, not looking up.

“Curiosities. Look at this.”

It does seem to be a log, maybe a ledger, of some sort, Matthew sees. The first entries are in old-fashioned cursive he has a hard time reading, but Maarten points the words out with ease, along with a date: 1888. The same year his store was founded.

“So maybe… Your family came to the area then?” Matthew guesses. “One person opened a shop, another opened this…”

He gestures vaguely around. Maarten hums.

“Might be.” He carefully flips to the last page that has entries, the handwriting more modern, listing expenses in ballpoint pen. 1978. Fifteen years ago.

“What does this mean?” Matthew wonders, as he pulls his notepad out to take some notes about the place he’s found himself at.

“I… Have no idea. Let’s look around.”

They stick together as they make their way to a door off the left side of the entrance, and find themselves in a well-appointed kitchen, again with green tiles just like there had been in Matthew’s parents’ house. It’s spacious, a large table taking up most room.

In the sunlight, the space looks inviting. Matthew can imagine the guests of this place having breakfast here. He’s stayed in a lot of inns and hotels and B&Bs over the years he’s been a travel journalist, and would be quite happy if they looked like this.

“Huh,” Maarten is saying, having pushed aside one of the striped curtains beneath the kitchen counter and taken out an ornate serving dish. “There’s one just like this at the shop. 1870s, very good condition.”

“Odd.”

“Not necessarily. They were pretty popular.”

They continue their exploration of the building by going out into a hallway behind the possible reception desk that spans the length of the ground floor. Matthew counts six doors in total, but when they try them one by one, they find them all locked.

“Alright, where would you keep the keys?” Maarten wonders.

“At the reception, surely.”

The keys are indeed in a drawer of the desk, all on one big ring; some have the same little bell-shaped handle. That reminds Matthew.

“Do you still hear those bells?” It’s how they got back here, after all.

Blinking, Maarten shakes his head. “It stopped when… I think when you opened the door.”

That makes Matthew shiver. He was willing to accept that Maarten just has better hearing, but that seems like too weird of a coincidence. He quickly jots it down in his notepad. Maarten looks closely at one of the bell-shaped keys, frowning.

“Still wanna try these?” he asks.

“Well, we’re here now, aren’t we?” Matthew shrugs. It’s just an old… Inn, or hotel. If it’s haunted, it wouldn’t be the first place he’s encountered, he thinks. Tourists love ghosts.

One of the bell keys fits a room labeled with the number one, and just as expected, it is a cozy little hotel room. Dust swirls in the sunlight here too, but there isn’t actually much at all on the nightstands or the little vanity, and it smells just fine—Matthew swears he detects the faintest hint of potpourri. The bed is even made with cheerful floral linens.

“This is nice,” Matthew says, but when he looks at Maarten, the man is frowning. “Maarten?”

“It’s getting really strange, now.” He walks over to a small wooden table that’s next to the sink in the corner of the room. “I’ve got one just like this.”

“At your shop?”

Maarten looks at him and nods, expression baffled.

“So there’s more than one.”

“That’s just it. There shouldn’t be.” He peers at the table closely, even kneeling to inspect the underside. “And it doesn’t look like a replica. If it is, it’s a damn good one.”

“So…” Matthew isn’t sure what to make of that, so he winds up his camera and snaps a photo instead. The click of the shutter makes Maarten look up at him. He’s right in a beam of sunlight, and his green eyes are bright. In his mint green windbreaker and sensible hiking shoes, he looks amusingly out of place.

“Well,” he says, standing, “let’s try those other doors.”

He hands the key ring to Matthew and gestures for him to go ahead.

The other five doors yield two more hotel rooms, a bathroom with a few shower and toilet cubicles, a laundry room, and, lastly, a set of stairs. The rooms also yield a plethora of random items Maarten recognizes as being at his shop, apparently never having sold—which he only now seems to realize is odd. A delicate glass lampshade here, a painting there; even a bulky transistor radio in the laundry room.

The two of them stand at the bottom of the stairs for a while. The steps are steep, wooden, and bathed in darkness; there’s another door at the top. Maarten takes a deep breath, shoulders heaving.

“I don’t know if I want to go up there,” he says. “Not… Yet.”

“Alright,” Matthew replies, even though he’s dying to learn what else this strange place holds. He is a journalist, after all. But something in Maarten’s deep voice makes him hold his tongue. The antiquarian clears his throat, turning to him.

“Maybe we can look around outside.”

Around the inn, there is an overgrown garden. Apart from the old weeping willow, there are pine trees and wild hedges surrounding barely-visible cobble paths that lead through what once must have been neat flowerbeds. They even find some benches, and a fountain, and a small, mostly-intact greenhouse. There are some markers still in the ground around, indicating which plants grew there.

“I bet this was lovely,” Matthew says, taking a picture of the moss-grown greenhouse. “They must have used their crops in the kitchen.”

“Yeah. That’s nice. You know, my mother was always…” Maarten sighs. “She was always gardening. I helped her often when I was little.”

“Do you think, now, that she was here?” Matthew asks, following him back towards the little dock, and Maarten looks up at the building, eyebrows drawing together.

“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe, she never left.”

-

They make it back to town, and Matthew is surprised to find that it is dusky. It was still sunny when they left the inn, but he supposes they lost track of time out on the water.

Standing on the dock, Maarten looks down at him, clasping the back of his neck.

“Thanks for coming,” he says. “I appreciate—hm. I’m sure you got a lot of, uh, writin’ to do. So I’ll—how long are you staying?”

Matthew only has his room for three more nights, but he says, “However long I need,” and Maarten lets out a long breath, nodding.

“I’ll walk you to the B&B,” he offers. “Or… You know, I think we stayed out longer than I thought. Are you hungry?”

“Pretty hungry.”

“Let me get you something to eat,” he says, a hesitant smile tugging at his full lips. Matthew bites his own lip and nods slowly. He still isn’t entirely sure what to make of the antiquarian, who’s friendly and open one moment and impossible to read the next, but dinner is always good.

Maarten takes him to get fried fish from a takeout place, and they eat it at the lakeside, while Matthew obligingly recounts some stories about places he’s visited for his job. When the food’s gone, they walk to the bed & breakfast, where Matthew turns to Maarten on the small step out front of the old building.

“Are you going back tomorrow?”

“I think so. Will you come?”

“As I said, however long it takes.”

“Hm, of course, journalism.” Maarten smiles slightly. “I think you could probably bring your dog, right?”

That would be nice, so Matthew tells him as much, and promises to meet him at the dock.

-

Kuma sits quietly enough in the boat, but he’s excited when they disembark at the inn’s dock, sniffing around the walls and jumping eagerly when Maarten opens the door. The antiquarian has brought a large backpack, which, he showed Matthew on the way, contains a serving dish identical to the one in the kitchen, as well as some smaller items he says are the same as one found at the inn.

Once in the kitchen, Kuma immediately lies down in a sunbeam, stretching happily, and Maarten puts his bag on the table to pull the dish out.

“What the hell?” he mutters.

Having retrieved the other dish from the cabinet, Matthew turns to see that the two now don’t match at all. In the boat, the serving dish had glinted in the autumn sun, but now, it’s dull and tarnished. Especially next to the nearly-pristine one from the kitchen. Both Matthew and Maarten stare at the two items, dumbstruck. Maarten’s other items have similarly been affected, become rusted or tarnished.

“That’s not normal,” Matthew eventually breathes. “I think this place is haunted or something.”

Maarten shakes his head. “There’s no such thing.” He meets Matthew’s eye, frowning. There is, Matthew notices, a thin scar on his forehead that disrupts his furrowed brow slightly.

“Then what’s happening?” Matthew asks. Maarten opens and closes his mouth. Breathes out slowly.

“But it feels…” He looks down at Kuma, who tilts his head quizzically, tongue lolling out of his mouth. “It feels nice.”

It does. Matthew sits on a kitchen chair in the sun, scritching Kuma behind the ears, and he can hear birds outside, the breeze rushing through the branches of the weeping willow.

“You really don’t know anything about the history of this place?” he asks. And then, the more obvious question occurs to him. “Wait, what happened in 1978?”

Maarten leans on the table. He wets his lips and flexes his long fingers against the light wood. Hesitantly, Matthew touches his forearm, and the antiquarian looks at him.

“My mother disappeared. October, 1978. That’s when I came back, took over the shop. I was barely twenty.”

“I’m sorry,” Matthew says softly. Kuma makes a small noise and rises up, padding over on the tiled floor to push his shaggy head against Maarten’s leg.

“She left this note for me. Said she’d gone out… To the lakes.” He shakes his head, smiling bitterly, although he reaches down to pet Kuma.

“And her name is here.”

“Yeah. I don’t know what to think, Matthew.”

“You don’t believe…” Matthew wants to say ‘ghosts’, but it seems a little insensitive now, so he trails off, gesturing around, at which Maarten smiles bemusedly.

“I think, if I were to get haunted, it’d have happened before now. You don’t wanna know how many people insist their antiques are full of spirits.”

Despite the strangeness of the whole thing, Matthew laughs, and Maarten smiles, looking down at the tarnished silver dish.

“I don’t know what this place is, but I know I want to keep looking,” he says. “Guess I should thank you for asking to get out here in the first place.”

“Happy to help.” Matthew realizes he is still touching Maarten’s arm across the table. He leaves his fingers there, and neither of them move.

-

The B&B hostess seems concerned when Matthew mentions going out to the lakes with Mr Van Dijk again.

Yesterday, they had done some more exploring of the garden and found a generator, which Maarten said he couldn’t make heads nor tails of, but Matthew was pretty sure was still in working order, given some fuel, and they’d both agreed that the greenhouse looked usable given some cleaning.

Kuma never seemed concerned, and that is honestly good enough for Matthew; his dog has great instincts about dangerous places. The hostess, though, as she’s serving his breakfast, frowns and shuffles her feet.

“Tomorrow is your last day here,” she cautions. “Surely, there are better… Ventures?”

“Don’t worry, I will write a great review of this place,” Matthew just says, which is, of course, not a reply to her question but does seem to placate her. And he has written a solid draft of his article already. It doesn’t mention the mysterious inn on the lake.

Before he goes to the dock, Matthew stops at the local post office to send his draft off, along with his photo negatives. What to do tomorrow, is another question.

For now, they make their way through a foggy morning to the inn—Maarten mentions that he’d wanted to let Matthew take a swing at driving the boat, but not with visibility so low. That would be nice, Matthew thinks. He’s only ever been in charge of rowboats, or the occasional canoe.

The generator does, in fact, work, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, so do the inn’s electric appliances and lights, even if they are all pretty old.

With the fog clearing, Matthew and Maarten go around opening windows and doors and taking stock of what exactly is in the kitchen and the bathroom. Then Matthew, much to his delight, gets to climb up on the roof to check the tiles and the chimney, and Maarten said he’d go see what he could do about the greenhouse, but instead he’s by the wooden ladder every time Matthew checks, keeping an eye on him.

And that is also nice, really. People don’t tend to notice him much. It is useful as a journalist, sometimes, getting to be an observer, but other times, it’s good to know someone’s watching. Especially if that someone is a handsome, mysterious antiquarian.

He smiles gratefully at Maarten when he gets back down, and the man ducks his head, clasping the back of his neck.

“All good up there,” Matthew adds. “It should be safe to use the stove.”

“I don’t actually know how,” Maarten says slowly.

“I do! My family has a cabin up in the mountains with a wood stove just like it.”

“Great.” Maarten smiles, a little melancholic, but doesn’t say anything else. Hesitatingly, Matthew reaches out to briefly clasp his upper arm, then turns to go inside.

Later, as they are cleaning up the greenhouse a bit, Matthew mentions that he only has one night left at the B&B, and that makes Maarten pause in his scrubbing one of the glass panes overhead. He’s straddling a stepladder, and peers down at Matthew with his hands resting on his strong thighs.

“Feel like I’ve kept you from your work,” he eventually says.

“I got plenty done,” Matthew assures him, pushing his glasses up. Outside, Kuma is happily playing around in the garden, probably getting his white fur unreasonably dirty. “Besides, I’ve kept you from yours as well, then.”

Maarten hums. Wipes his hands on his jeans.

“Where will you be going next, then?” he asks, quite softly.

“Nowhere fast. I mean, if you’re… Not getting sick of me. There’s a lot more here, I think.”

At that, Maarten just gazes down at him with those bright green eyes, as if he’s trying to suss him out. Matthew doesn’t think he’s a complicated person, but Maarten looks nearly bewildered.

“Surely, you got something to get back to.”

“Nothing that can’t wait a bit.” Everyone at home is pretty used to him being gone for considerable stretches of time.

Maarten nods slowly, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

“Of course,” he says. “Journalism.”

“Honestly? This is the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Yeah,” Maarten agrees. And then, “Alright, which room do you want?”

“Which— Oh! I hadn’t…”

“It’s fine if you’d rather not. You know, haunted and all. But it is an inn.”

Actually, that sounds like a very good idea, so Matthew tells Maarten he isn’t picky about the room. Maybe, he’ll let Kuma pick one; he’s got good instincts, after all.

-

It is later than Matthew would have guessed when they return to town, but that’s alright. On the step out front of the B&B once more, Maarten asks him if he is sure he’d like to stay.

“People don’t tend to… Stick around town.” He laughs dryly. “Or around me.”

“Well, maybe they weren’t the right people,” Matthew replies, and shrugs helplessly when Maarten meets his eye, lips parted. The man doesn’t say anything, just nods, and touches Matthew’s arm, before he disappears into the night.

-

It’s easy, somehow, to lose track of time out on the lakes.

One day, Matthew is hauling his luggage into room 3, Kuma unhelpfully racing around his legs, and then another day, he’s taking Maarten into the woods to go mushroom foraging, and then he finally gets to drive the boat, after some instruction, back to town, where the B&B lady looks astonished to see him.

“More reporting to do,” he tells her, on his way to buy some rolls of film.

“More—?” She hurries after him. “Mr Williams, I have received some calls asking for you. Your employers, I think?”

“I’ll be back…” He wants to say ‘soon’, but feels strange putting an end date on his time at the inn. His time with Maarten. “But if my brother ever calls, please tell him I’ve found my thing. He’ll know. His name’s Alfred. Jones, not Williams.”

“Mr Williams…”

The town looks different, now. Less colorful, compared to the vibrant trees and cozy rooms at the inn. Even Maarten’s orange boat seems brighter once Matthew passes underneath the archway of trees. They’ve started losing their leaves, but still hide the inn from view well.

He finds Maarten in the garden plot, digging into the damp earth with floral gardening gloves and narrating, seemingly to Kuma, what crops he could plant where. The dog sits and listens obligingly. He likes Maarten.

Well, Matthew likes Maarten too. He seemed a little… Aloof, at first, but bit by bit, he keeps showing bits of wonder, and when his rare smiles reach his eyes, it feels like some sort of breakthrough.

Kuma notices Matthew first, bounding over to him for pets. Maarten looks up. Smiles. There is a smudge of dirt on his face.

“Town still standing?” he asks.

“Still there. Your store is alright.”

“Alright.” He hasn’t seemed too concerned about the antiques shop. Now, he gestures at the garden and starts his impassioned narration again.

-

Time keeps slipping by, it seems, in leaps and bounds, and Matthew can’t say how long it’s actually been but it’s started to snow, and the lake has started to freeze. They’ve made sure to get enough supplies, in case the waterways become impassable.

“Are you sure you want to stay?” Maarten asks, as he stands by a kitchen window, drying dishes and looking at the cloudy sky, while Matthew tends to the wood stove. His hair has grown, and the bleached ends have been cut off so it’s now all its natural dark blond, though still spiked up severely.

“I don’t see why not,” Matthew tells him, and he turns, holding the dishtowel with both hands.

“You’ve got a job. You have… Family.”

“It’s not been that long, Maarten. If you want me gone—”

“I don’t,” he says quickly. And, softer, barely audible over the wood crackling, “I promise you, I don’t, Matthew.”

“It just feels right,” Matthew says. He knows, when Maarten nods, that he gets it. Something about this place feels like exactly where they’re both supposed to be.

Still, as time slips by and they fall into a comfortable routine, neither of them goes up the stairs.

Matthew doesn’t have a reason not to, but Maarten is apprehensive, and he respects that. It does seem to be his building, after all, even if no official documents can be found in town, or indeed at Maarten’s store, about it even being built.

When Matthew comments on this, one day as they stand on the shore of the frozen lake, Maarten turns to him and looks down over the edge of his striped scarf for a long while, the tip of his nose red with cold.

“It’s yours too,” he eventually says, muffled through fabric. “For however long you want.”

He reaches for Matthew with his bare fingers. Hesitates. Matthew clasps his hand between both of his own and nods silently.

In different ways, he thinks they’ve both been lonely, and this strange place on the lake that seems so oddly suspended in time, so out of place yet completely at home, was exactly what they needed.

The strange place, or, perhaps, the company.

-

It doesn’t seem like a lot of time has passed, but Matthew finds himself learning Maarten’s little quirks; his tendency to sing odd little songs while he cleans, his elaborate bathtime routine, the very particular way he wants things arranged in the kitchen.

He’s a little surprised that Maarten, in return, knows exactly where he’s left his glasses every time he loses them, and how he takes his coffee, and when to pry him away from his latest project so he can eat.

The snow has gone in what feels like the blink of an eye, and Maarten’s crops are doing well, when Matthew finds the man at the foot of the stairs one day, key in hand.

He closes his eyes when Matthew touches his back, pressing his palm to his spine as he’s taken to doing. It seems every time that something slows when they touch. That it gets a little easier to breathe. Kuma curiously nudges Maarten’s leg, which makes the man smile.

He turns to Matthew. “I feel like…” He jerks his chin at the stairwell, trailing off.

“Kuma seems unconcerned,” Matthew says, his hand slipping to Maarten’s arm.

“Yeah. Matt…” He holds the key out to him without another word, and their fingers touch for much too long when Matthew takes it. He doesn’t ask if Maarten’s sure, because Matthew has learned by now that Maarten doesn’t do things he’s not sure about.

He quietly climbs the narrow staircase, the wood creaking under his weight. Kuma waits by Maarten’s side while Matthew fits the key into the lock, turns it, and opens the final door of the inn.

It’s… A room.

Just a room in the same style as the rest of the place, except this one feels lived in. There are books and photographs and paintings. A lounge chair by a modest fireplace, a record player, a large bed behind a beaded curtain underneath the slanted roof. There is even a small gas camping stove with a tea kettle on it. It’s nice.

Matthew pokes his head back through the doorway.

“Nothing unusual here,” he says, and Maarten’s shoulders sag. With a deep breath, the antiquarian starts to climb up too.

Kuma, with a delighted bark, races around the room before immediately lying down on the woven rug by the hearth. Maarten walks around the space, which spans the whole length of the building, fingertips dragging over furniture and windowsills.

“I don’t know what I thought,” he says softly.

Matthew has some ideas, mostly as they relate to his mother’s disappearance, but doesn’t voice them. Instead, he smiles when Maarten turns to him. The man inclines his head.

“Thank you, Matthew.”

“Of course!” He pushes his glasses up. “Journalism, remember?”

At that, Maarten smiles and shakes his head, coming closer. His fingertips now gently brush over Matthew’s wrist, his forearm, and he seems to be lost for words when Matthew meets his green eyes. His mouth opens and closes. Matthew swallows.

“Well, hey,” he says a little awkwardly, “you’ll have an actual living room, now.”

“Hm, we will.” Maarten seems to realize what he’s said, eyes widening. “Or, well—if you want that.”

“I… I do, Maarten.” Matthew touches his chest, running a hand up to his collar. He finds that his heartbeat thrums fast underneath the warm skin of his neck, just like Matthew’s own. “I’d love to.”

Maarten only nods, and when Matthew touches his jaw, he bends forward.

Time seems static for a moment, suspended as though in a sunbeam, and then Matthew reaches up and kisses him, finally and yet so soon. He swears he can hear a bell chime when their lips brush, but the sound is lost instantly when Maarten makes a wonderful, breathy noise and pulls him close, winding his arms around him as Matthew clings to his neck. Just like this place, it feels right, to stand there in the living room, exchanging slow kisses as if they’ve been doing it for years. Maybe they have been, or should have been. That’s what it feels like, in a sure way that makes Matthew shiver.

Slowly, Maarten pulls back to look at him, a flush on his cheeks that somehow smooths all his harsh angles. Matthew smiles, and he laughs softly, ducking his head.

“Glad you’re here,” he mumbles, pressing his lips to Matthew’s temple.

“Yeah. Me too.”

-

They have even more to explore now—each other, for one, but also the room. It becomes abundantly clear quickly that Maarten’s mother must have lived here for a while, possibly after she disappeared. There are photographs Maarten recognizes, of his parents and grandparents, even one of him as a grumpy toddler that makes Matthew laugh and tease him until Maarten kisses him silent. They listen to the records they find in a cupboard. Mostly things from the ‘60s and ‘70s. They open the windows while Maarten smokes in bed, and Kuma claims the lounge chair as his own.

Matthew thinks he means to go visit home, to pick up his things, to see his family and tell them about Maarten—they’ll be so happy for him—but every time, it seems, something comes up at the inn or in town, and he thinks it can’t have been that long anyway, and it doesn’t seem so important for a while. However long ‘a while’ really is.

Maarten starts working in the garden again. Matthew climbs up on the roof once more when a bird decides to nest in the chimney. This time, much to his delight, Maarten embraces him tightly as soon as he steps off the ladder, and just hums when Matthew assures him all is well. He is, it turns out, almost comically afraid of heights, barely able to listen to Matthew’s stories about his home in the mountains without shuddering.

“But I’ll come along if you want me,” he tells him anyway, and Matthew grins. There are so many things to show him.

Sometimes, when Matthew goes into town—Maarten hardly goes after a while—it will seem as though no time has passed at all since the previous trip, but other times, the seasons don’t even seem to line up, and it is disorienting.

But then, every time he gets back, it won’t seem so important.

And sometimes, out there on the lake, he hears those bells just like Maarten said back in the autumn.

He writes more notes, although he’s not sure what for, and takes pictures he doesn’t get developed. But that’s okay. It just doesn’t seem very important.

In the spring, they finally finish cleaning the greenhouse, and Maarten scolds Kuma for trying to eat some ducklings right before playing fetch with him on the lakeshore as Matthew watches from a kitchen window. He finds Maarten sketching sometimes, most often in ballpoint pen; he does pretty impressive depictions of the inn and the lake, of Kuma curled up in the sun.

In another time, Maarten says, he might have become a newspaper illustrator, and they might have worked together.

Matthew takes to hiking to look at birds, and fishing in the lake while Maarten putters in the garden. Kuma tends to scare the fish away, but occasionally, Matthew will catch something they can eat.

Then, it must be summer, although surely it cannot have been that long. The trees are densely, vibrantly green, and Matthew swims in the lake, splashing around with Kuma while Maarten reads one of his mother’s books on a garden bench. He makes them lunch with vegetables from the garden and tugs Matthew into the shower after Kuma shakes himself off and gets them both drenched.

They discuss many plans in the bed under the slanted beams of the roof, tangled together with the windows open and Kuma snoring in his chair. Plans to go to the mountains—even if Matthew will have to hold Maarten’s hand the whole time—to see Matthew’s family, to raise chickens or maybe another dog. To, one day, re-open the inn. Add ‘Williams’ to the door.

But those are all for later. Right now, Matthew is happy, and it never seems very important anyway.

-

On the day they realize it’s autumn, with the forest quite suddenly a picture-perfect riot of golds and reds, Kuma runs away.

He swims away, in fact, leaving both Matthew and Maarten to hurry after him in the boat. Matthew keeps trying to coax the dog back, to no avail. Kuma seems only to want to get away. He’s going quickly towards town.

Unexpectedly, the boat hits a tangle of driftwood and can’t continue, and Maarten hurriedly drives to shore so they can follow Kuma on foot, still calling out.

“He’s never done this before!” Matthew says, nearly in tears when they can’t seem to get through the underbrush.

“No, it’s—” Maarten jerks, looking up. “Did you hear that?”

“Kuma?”

“No, it’s… The bells.”

“The bells? Maarten, I don’t care about the bells!”

“I—of course.”

They continue to try and find the dog, to find their way off the lake, for what feels like hours. They have no luck. There is always something blocking the way. Brush, or water, or a hole, and Matthew can hear the bells as well, now. They’re chiming from the direction of the inn, and they’re louder than they ever have been.

“Why do you think he ran?” Maarten asks softly. Both of them are sitting despondently in the boat.

Matthew shakes his head, removing his glasses to rub his tired eyes. It’s getting dark. He tucks his knees between Maarten’s, and they sit quietly for a while, the bells chiming.

“I think his instincts told him something,” Matthew eventually says. “Something about this place changed.”

With a sigh, Maarten nods. They drive back to the inn.

It’s as lovely as ever, but seems too silent, now. Maarten traces his fingers over the name on the front door, and sighs again when Matthew embraces him from behind and leans his forehead against the man’s neck.

The bells still sound, now and again, close but not from the building itself.

“You know, I never knew my grandma,” Maarten says. “On my mother’s side, at least. 1948, I’ve been told she left. Grandpa supposedly died in ’63. There are pictures of them here.” He turns abruptly in Matthew’s arms. “I’m sorry, Matt.”

“No. Remember what I said? You’re the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“I don’t think that’s what you said,” Maarten replies softly.

“I just didn’t realize it yet.”

He breathes out slowly, eyes closing. Matthew watches him, arms around his waist. Eventually, Maarten reaches up to card his long fingers through Matthew’s unruly curls—longer now, than they ever have been. It’s familiar, the way he brushes over his scalp, tucks his hair behind his ear.

“So, what now?” he asks. “If Kuma doesn’t come back…”

Honestly, Matthew hopes he doesn’t. He hopes Kuma makes it back to town and stays there, safe and sound. He says as much. Maarten nods sadly. Kisses him. They go inside.

They both know that it is their last night, although neither is sure exactly what that means. Matthew orders all his notes and rolls of film, and some of Maarten’s sketches. Maarten diligently updates the ledger and tidies the inn. Maybe, it’ll take fifteen years for these things to be found. Maybe, since Maarten has no more family, they will never be discovered at all.

“You have me,” Matthew tells him, pressing him into the mattress, because, after all, it is their last night. “No matter what, you have me, and it’s been amazing.”

“I love you,” he whispers, and for a brief moment, the bells seem to pause.

“I—I love you, too.” That, at least, is important. Has always been important.

The next day, they consider going out to look for Kuma again, just in case, but a heavy fog has descended on the lake and the bells are louder than ever.

Matthew stands next to Maarten at the end of the dock. Maarten reaches down and tangles their fingers together.

“Follow the bells?” he asks.

“Follow the bells.” Matthew tugs at his hand so that he leans over and kisses him. “Wherever they make take us this time.”

“Journalism, huh?”

“And what a story I have.” Matthew smiles wryly.

“Glad to have been part of it.” Maarten squares his shoulders. Squeezes Matthew’s fingers.

The music drifted gently, and the children sat more forward when the musician began to sing in a soft and pleasant voice. Although he wasn’t singing in a language Tolys understood, it was clear that he was telling a story.

When it ended, leaving Tolys feeling bereft and oddly sad and the children unusually quiet, the musician looked up from his small audience and his instrument. Tolys breathed in sharply when eyes the color of the sea found him, unerringly. He quickly slunk back and hurried to finish his round of the market, hoping he hadn’t wasted too much time dallying.

He found it impossible to tell.

  Tolys would have liked to say that he forgot all about the mysterious musician, but in reality, he found it difficult to stop thinking about the encounter. Not when he was doing his work, of course, getting his liege food and armor and running down to the stables to check on his horse because he was convinced the actual stable boys wouldn’t take good care of her, but the thought of the mesmerizing music crossed his mind often when he tried to sleep at night, or when he waited by the castle kitchens in the morning.

The melody was still stuck in his head.

No one else seemed to have noticed the musician, though, and Tolys wasn’t supposed to talk to the only child who’d been there who lived in the castle, because the girl was high nobility, and he was just a servant. So he was left to wonder, for days.

And then there he was.

“My lords,” the steward was saying, “it pleases me to present to you a most celebrated musician from across the mountains. He is honored to play for the court tonight.”

The court in question applauded politely, and Tolys couldn’t see what was going on from the servants’ table, but he could hear everything. He could hear the first few gentle plucks at strings, the clearing of a throat, and then the strains of a lively melody accompanied by a familiar voice.

The musician. Tolys sat up straight on his bench to look, but the nobles were getting up, clapping enthusiastically and generally obscuring his view.

Again, he didn’t understand the language, but the song sparked something in seemingly not only him, because his fellow servants starting talking animatedly, smiling and gesturing, but still the music was clear through everything.

It had to be him. They did speak a different language across the mountains north of the peninsula, but Tolys was quite certain it wasn’t this one. He’d lived close to the mountains until he’d come to court to work there and had never heard any of the traders in his village speak this flowing tongue with each other. He should ask Raivis, who worked in the kitchens and whose family actually came from the other side of the mountains.

Looking over at the boy now, Tolys decided against it, because he looked genuinely happy for once and he didn’t want to disturb that. Perhaps, there would be a chance to speak to the musician himself.

The man played and played, undoubtedly telling a fantastic story in his beautiful language, and everyone was in a good mood when he eventually did stop and quietly slunk off. Even Raivis was humming the song under his breath, and Tolys smiled before getting up from the table and following the musician. He needed to know more about him, even if he wasn’t sure why.

The halls of the castle were empty but for a dog wandering through them, but there was music somewhere.

Tolys let it lead him to a small courtyard, and then there he was again.

The musician didn’t look up from his lute until the song was finished, but then the sea-green eyes were on Tolys. Like the sea, they were hard to read but soothing at the same time.

“You play beautifully,” Tolys told him. The man smiled.

“Thank you.” He put his instrument down on the bench next to himself. “Your lord has seen fit to offer me to play at the court this whole week.”

“He probably intends to keep you,” Tolys replied, and was surprised by the scathing tone in his own voice. That was something never to be displayed openly. The musician merely titled his head, squinting in his direction as if he were unclear.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I? I’m Tolys, I serve—”

“Yes, yes. Where are you from?”

“The north of the peninsula, a village. I’ve been here for five years.”

The musician nodded, picked his lute back up, and plucked some strings.

“Tolys. My name is Eduard.”

Tolys opened his mouth to ask something, although he wasn’t sure what that would be, but he closed it again when the separate tones from the lute resolved into a song he hadn’t heard in years. He sought support against the wall as Eduard played the melody of his childhood, the memory of his parents and the village he grew up in.

How did he know that song? It was specific to that one village, recounting the life of its founder. Had he visited? Had he guessed the place from Tolys’s speech, from his eyes?

The song was finished before Tolys could even start to put his thoughts in order, and he wished Eduard would stay, but the musician stood up and smiled at him.

“We’ll see each other again soon, I presume,” he said, and Tolys nodded, stepping aside to let him through and watching as he vanished into the shadows of the hall.

Very intriguing. He looked forward to the next time he’d hear him play.

  As Eduard had said, he was back the next day. He played a soft song that moved people to tears and left Tolys breathless, but not enough to prevent him following the musician again, to that same courtyard.

This time, he sat quietly against a barrel to listen to a happier song, alternating closing his eyes and watching the sea green of Eduard’s. He seemed to be looking into a far distance Tolys couldn’t see, but that he could hear all the same. There were words, muttered under his breath. Tolys wasn’t sure if he understood them.

“This song,” he said when the last note had died away, “is it about home?”

Eduard smiled. “Yes.”

“Whose?”

He put his lute down and leaned forward with his hands on his knees, seemingly studying Tolys. He was still wearing blue, rather than the red of the court they’d have undoubtedly offered him during his stay.

“I don’t think it matters whose home,” he eventually said, and Tolys blinked, having almost forgotten he asked a question at all. “Music has power, you see. I can make people yearn for places they’ve never even heard of.”

Tolys nodded silently.

“Do you miss your home, Tolys?”

“Often,” he admitted. “Less when you play.”

Eduard smiled again. “Then you understand. There’s power in music, and in memories.”

“Like magic?”

“Yes,” he said. “Much like magic.”

Maybe, Tolys reflected, as Eduard played a short song and walked away, not so much like magic, but just magic. He felt as though that thought should scare him, but was certain Eduard did not have evil at heart or in mind.

Besides, he knew what the punishment for use of magic was, and had no desire to see the musician burn.

  Although he did his best not to show it, Tolys felt nearly too exhausted for dinner the next day. His liege had worked him hard, ruthlessly, and his entire body ached. More than usual. It was lucky his duties didn’t extend into the evening, because he absolutely needed to listen to Eduard again.

Somewhere, he wondered if perhaps he was being played as well, not only like but by the lute and its own particular magic, by Eduard’s long, talented fingers, his voice.

If he were, he decided, he’d take it, because it felt better than anything.

As Eduard entered the great hall of the castle, still standing out like a sore thumb in his shades of blue, the musician searched the room and caught Tolys’s gaze. His mouth turned down at one corner and his eyes sparked with something almost dark. Tolys swallowed heavily. He wasn’t afraid, but did feel a wary anticipation creeping up.

And then he played, and sang in yet a different language. This one sounded similar to the language of the court, so that Tolys understood most of the words.

The melody was happy, but Eduard told the story of a cruel lord who mistreated his servants and was cut into pieces by the end of the tale.

At the servants’ table, it was quiet until the nobles started cheering enthusiastically and moving along to the music, at which point the servants felt it was safe to do the same.

Eduard grinned a warm grin in Tolys’s direction, maybe even at him. Tolys smiled back, and of course followed the musician to the courtyard after dinner, not a doubt in his mind.

In the courtyard, he found that Eduard had strapped his lute to his back already, and he bit the inside of his cheek.

“Are you going somewhere?” he asked by way of a greeting.

“I am,” Eduard said, then tilted his head invitingly. “Come with me. You look very tired.”

“I am.” Tolys followed him, a little warily, through the cold, drafty halls of the castle, up the stairs to the guest wing. He didn’t come here often, not unless his liege wanted a message delivered to guests, and even then Tolys wasn’t the usual messenger.

“Where are we going?” he asked, checking around for gossipy servants or grumpy nobles.

“Here,” Eduard replied, and opened the door to one of the rooms. He gestured Tolys inside, and Tolys hesitated for a moment before stepping across the threshold. It wouldn’t do for anyone to catch him dawdling in the hall like this.

Once inside, Eduard gestured at the bed opposite the lit fireplace.

“You need to rest.”

“I—” Tolys looked at the bed, which had an actual mattress and a pillow, and a blanket that looked comfortable. “I can’t.”

“Why can’t you?” Eduard asked, putting his lute away and taking his hat off. The fireplace crackled pleasantly. It had been getting colder again; the first night frost would undoubtedly present itself shortly.

“I can’t because that is your bed, my lord.”

“Please, none of that. It’s a guest bed. If you are my guest, aren’t you the one more entitled to sleep in it?”

He shook his head, in amusement as well as denial.

“I’m just a servant.”

“I’m just a musician,” Eduard countered. Tolys bit his lip.

“Are you?”

Eduard didn’t answer, but he reached for Tolys’s shoulder and gently led him to the bed, pushing him down to sit on the edge of it. It was so soft.

“You’re a peculiar man, Tolys.”

He laughed nervously. “Me? I’m a very normal man, honest.”

“I think you’d be surprised,” Eduard replied. “Now sleep. I’ll wake you if need be.”

Tolys wanted to protest more, because if his liege found out, losing his position at the court was the best possible scenario. However, Eduard began to hum a melody, a wordless lullaby, and he couldn’t help but give in to his exhaustion.

  He woke to weak sunlight and an empty room.

There was some food and a piece of parchment on a table. On the parchment was drawn in charcoal a crude drawing of a figure eating. Tolys laughed. Eduard had assumed he couldn’t read. Of course.

To be fair, most servants couldn’t. Tolys was lucky, and he shook his head when he realized the other side of the parchment was an official contract about Eduard’s stay at the court. Only someone with riches would do something like this.

Eduard didn’t seem like one who did, at least not in a material sense. He obviously had a wealth of talent and some sort of charm that made Tolys trust him so implicitly.

The musician’s name was signed in letters that flowed like music. Tolys looked at it for a while, then sighed, ate some of the bread and an apple, and left to do his duties.

  Eduard and his music were back again in the evening, this time with a warning song to a haunting melody that left the nobility shifting in their seats, but Raivis sat back down at the servants’ table with a confused sort of smile on his face and told Tolys that his lord just thanked him for his work. He’d never done that before.

“What was that song?” Tolys asked Eduard, later in the courtyard. He clasped his hands behind his back and watched the musician shift on his bench, lute on his lap.

“It was just a song,” the man answered. He fingered the strings, and Tolys resisted the overwhelming urge to drop the issue.

“It wasn’t, I think. Yesterday, you said there is power in music, and I have always believed that to be true, but never in such a…” He bit his cheek. “In such a literal way.”

Eduard looked up at him, and then down at him when he stood up, unfolding his long limbs.

“You’re right,” he said. “Come, I’ll show you something.”

“What?” Tolys asked, and the musician smiled.

“I promise you will like it.”

Apparently, Tolys couldn’t resist listening to Eduard even when there was no music to persuade him.

They went out, this time, leaving the castle through an exit by the kitchens – still busy, but they went unnoticed – and walking through the dusky town surrounding the high walls. Before long, they reached the edge of the forest that spanned much of the peninsula. Far in the distance, Tolys imagined he could hear the crashing of waves against the cliffs on the shore.

“I think this will do,” Eduard said. His hair was nearly white in the light of the nearly full moon, his eyes translucent. He looked how Tolys always imagined the fair folk from the legends would, and that made him take the smallest step back, because that was what they did, wasn’t it? Lure people away?

Eduard sat down on a stone, not noticing.

“There’s always power in music, no matter who makes it,” he was saying. “But, I… You’re one of a few who have noticed me so immediately. Noticed what was going on. So I think that maybe, you should know.”

“Should know what?” Tolys asked breathlessly, stepping closer again despite himself, kneeling on the mossy ground at Eduard’s feet as if he were a child. It was quite cold.

“Can I show you?”

They held each other’s gaze until Tolys nodded.

“Thank you,” Eduard said, then took a deep breath and began playing a light melody. It tinkled and leaped like a mountain brook in summer. A faint smile appeared on his face after a while, and he looked up and around, urging Tolys to do the same with a glance of those sea-green eyes.

He did, and gasped.

Flowers had sprung up among the cold moss as if it were spring instead of late autumn, bathing the edge of the forest in color, hues of blues and pinks and yellows. It was mesmerizing. Tolys looked back up at Eduard, who squinted at him again, so he scooted a little closer.

“How?” he asked. “How is this possible?”

The musician opened his mouth, frowned, and closed it again, seemingly lost for words even as he played on.

“Is it you or is it the lute?” Tolys asked.

“It’s… Mostly me,” he replied. “The lute helps. My mother made it. She could do what I do, too.”

Do what he does. It was amazing, how even nature would bend to his will, if only because Tolys was certain he was on Eduard’s good side.

“Eduard,” he said, “do you know what punishment awaits those who use magic here?”

He smiled. “It’s just music, Tolys.”

“I don’t think so. If I sang a song like the one you played at dinner, they would have me hanged, magic or no.”

“As far as anyone knows, it’s just music,” Eduard amended. And then, tilting his head, “Do you sing?”

“I… Used to, often. Not so much since I came here.”

The musician shifted, and so did the music, again to the song about Tolys’s village.

“Sing for me?” Eduard asked. There was no magic of persuasion behind it, Tolys was certain. “This is your language. The song of your home.”

Tolys swallowed. It was, but it made him nervous. Eduard played on, his fingers quick and skilled on the strings and his gaze on Tolys, at once soft and deep. Was this a test?

If it was, Tolys wouldn’t know what he was being tested for.

He started to hum, letting the words come back to him after so many years, and then let them out, singing under his breath at first, but louder when Eduard smiled brilliantly, eyes lighting up in the pale light. In the distance, the castle shone like a beacon, but the world around him and the musician was still and silent except for the music. The flowers moved in wind not felt.

When the song ended, they were both quiet for a long while, Tolys lost in memories and Eduard looking into the forest.

“Thank you, Tolys. You sing beautifully,” he said, eventually. “Perhaps we should head back. I don’t doubt you have much work in the morning.”

Tolys nodded, and they both stood wordlessly, brushing off their tunics and starting to walk back, through the narrow streets of the town to the castle. The silence was comfortable, full of the memory of music.

“Tolys?” Eduard asked when they had reached the hallway where their paths split.

“Yes?”

“What duties do you have tomorrow?”

He summed up, “I bring my liege breakfast, help clean his rooms when he goes hunting in the morning and I need to visit the smithy in the afternoon, and there are smaller things that always present themselves besides.”

With a smile and the lightest of touches to his shoulder, Eduard told him he might see him in town tomorrow, and before Tolys could reply to that, the musician had slunk off in that way of his, without a sound.

He used his left hand dominantly, Tolys realized, blinking into the shadows. People would think something of that. He didn’t believe in any of that talk, because he could use both hands equally well, but perhaps he should warn Eduard of the court’s superstitions regarding that. Anything that would cause the slightest amount of suspicion towards him was a bad thing. Tolys liked him alive.

Tolys liked him a lot.

  And indeed, there he was on the market, luteless for once but smiling at Tolys from where he was leaning against a wall of the castle idly. Tolys shook his hair out of his face and smiled back, feeling his face heat for some reason and hoping it didn’t show. This wasn’t one of those illicit affairs the other servants sometimes had, with each other or townspeople or even nobility. This was just… A musician with a magical voice and a servant. Spending time together for no particular reason.

“Isn’t that that musician who’s been playing for the nobles?” Raivis asked. Tolys had met the boy on his way back from the smithy, and they had stuck together. He felt a little protective towards him.

“Yes,” he replied, trying to pull his face back into neutrality by biting his lip.

“He is very good,” Raivis said. “Maybe we should tell him, or do you think he wouldn’t appreciate that?”

“I’m sure he would,” Tolys said faintly, because Eduard was already walking over to them. Raivis visibly tightened his grip on his basket. Absently, Tolys patted the boy’s shoulder.

“Good afternoon,” Eduard greeted, nodding at Tolys and smiling at Raivis. “I don’t believe we have met.”

Raivis bowed his head and stuttered, “My name is Raivis, my lord. If I could just say, you play beautifully.”

Blinking, he replied, “Thank you, Raivis. Please call me Eduard.”

Tolys shook his head while Raivis stuttered some more. It would just confuse him. He worried about Raivis often, honestly. He was obviously a smart boy, but working in the castle didn’t do him any good. Tolys hated that he couldn’t do anything about it.

Then again… He watched Eduard’s light eyes flash with determination, and had the feeling the nobility was in for another warning tonight, or more yet. Who knew what that music could set into motion?

Eventually, Raivis trembled out of the way, and Eduard looked after him almost sadly.

“Is he always like that?” he asked Tolys.

“I fear so, yes.” He shook his head again. “He shouldn’t be here.”

Eduard nodded, but then turned his full attention to Tolys, smiling.

“It’s nice to see you in the daylight, Tolys.” He looked like he wanted to say something else, but closed his mouth again before he could, gaze skittering away.

“Likewise,” Tolys just replied. “Is there anything I can do for you? Have you seen the town?”

“Not with you,” Eduard replied, then opened and closed his mouth a few times again, and eventually bit his lip. It was endearing how out of his element he was without the lute, but Tolys decided he was happy to help him be more comfortable, so he smiled and told him he’d give him a tour.

They rounded the marketplace and walked down to the docks, where the air smelled like salt and fish and people were shouting in multiple languages at each other. The city was an important trading post, attracting not only people from all over the peninsula but also from farther away.

“Such as you, of course,” Tolys said to Eduard. “Have you been to many places before?”

“Yes, all across your peninsula,” he replied. “People’s love for music is more important than borders.”

Tolys raised his eyebrows at him, trying to convey skepticism, and the musician laughed.

“Yes, and I have effective methods of persuading them, I will admit that.” He sighed. “I’ve never talked about it with anyone, about what I do. Even in places where magic isn’t a crime, I don’t know how I would be looked upon if people were aware.”

Now walking back into the pungent alleys of the city, where Tolys had lived for a short while before joining the ranks of the servants and being assigned a room in the bowels of the castle alongside them, they encountered fewer and fewer people. They followed the slight slope up to the top of a small hill and looked out over the sea in the distance, the mouth of the river below even while the houses pressed in on them from both sides. The wind, at least, was fresh.

“I like you.” Tolys felt he needed to make it clear. “And I think that what you do, is…”

Eduard looked at him, stopping in his tracks, and he was lost for words. Magical? Of course it was. Mesmerizing? Amazing? That didn’t even cover half of it.

“I’m just a musician,” Eduard said under his breath. As if he were the one awed.

“You’re—”

“No, listen. You’ve worked, you’ve worked hard to get where you are. I just sing, and people do what I want them to, and it’s almost always been that way. I’m just a musician, but you, Tolys, you are…”

“I’m a servant,” he supplied, breathlessly caught in the man’s gaze.

“I think you’re a good man. Better than I am.”

Tolys grimaced. “Being good doesn’t get you much of anywhere.”

“Maybe it gets you where you need to be.” He put a hand on Tolys’s shoulder, sliding it to hold his neck, running a thumb across his jaw. Tolys lowered his gaze to the leather straps of the musician’s shoes, wound around his calves. Eduard was warm, but Tolys felt warmer yet, skin prickling.

He blinked when Eduard shuffled closer, looking back up at him and his beautiful eyes filling his vision. There was a twitch at the corner of the man’s mouth that Tolys’s gaze lingered on, fascinated.

“Listen,” Eduard said, “I’ll do what I can for Raivis.”

“Thank you. I worry about him, you know.”

He smiled. “You are a good man.”

He brought his other hand up to Tolys’s face as well, his right one, and, oh, that’s right, he needed to know – Tolys’s breath caught when he leaned into his space and touched their foreheads together, separated only by a thin layer of fair hair. The rim of Eduard’s hat pushed into Tolys’s hair, the feathers brushing the top of his head. His own hands flew up reflexively, fingers catching on the fastening of Eduard’s cloak when he rested them against his chest.

They stayed still for a short moment that seemed to last ages, there in the shadows of the rickety buildings.

“I think you aren’t so bad yourself,” Tolys eventually said into the scarce air between their faces. Eduard chuckled warmly, finally straightening. Tolys’s fingers slipped away from his chest.

“Thank you. Will I see you tonight?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Good. You… You better go, then, before your liege lord decides to keep you.”

He had a good point there, so Tolys nodded regretfully and sped to the castle, trying not to grin. They’d start thinking it was one of those illicit affairs.

Maybe it was.

  That evening’s song was again in a language Tolys didn’t understand, but he remembered how his liege had not been angry when he returned quite late this afternoon and how Raivis was trembling less than ever before, and thought it probably didn’t matter much what the words actually were. It was the thought behind the music.

How could it be that no one but him seemed to notice the connection?

He asked Eduard, who shook his head.

“I don’t know. Anyone can notice, but there is often someone like you in any group of people I play for.”

Tolys breathed in sharply, and the musician looked at him with one eye.

“They don’t seek me out most of the time, and they’re often children besides. It’s never been like this before.”

“Like…” He tried to pronounce it as a question.

“Like…” Eduard drummed his long fingers on his lute. With everything he did, it was easy to forget that he was merely human too. “Like we could be… Something. If you feel that too, at least.”

Swallowing heavily, Tolys nodded. He was more than just intrigued by Eduard. Had dreamed not only of his voice but also of his eyes last night.

“I do, Eduard.”

The musician’s face lit up with a smile, breath coming out in a rush. It was a risk he’d taken by making that confession; although there weren’t any laws against two men, it was not something people always looked kindly upon, certainly not as one’s main relationship.

Then again, perhaps Eduard could have commanded him to forget through a mere song, if he’d have been one of those people.

He listened to Eduard play in his rooms that night, talked about everything and nothing with him, and sang softly at his request until the musician kissed him silent, seeming as surprised by the move as Tolys felt but smiling at it.

They fell asleep when the fire in the hearth was no more than glowing embers.

  The room wasn’t empty this time when Tolys woke.

Eduard was flitting around in it, humming under his breath. He seemed to be in a good mood, smiling broadly at Tolys when he noticed he’d woken. Tolys smiled back.

They broke their fast together, and then Tolys hurried off to his work with a kiss goodbye. Raivis commented that he seemed happy.

“I am,” he said. “It’s been a good week.”

“It has, hasn’t it?” Raivis asked. “Where were you tonight? Is that why you’re so happy?”

He shrugged noncommittally. “I’ll tell you sometime.”

The boy actually smiled while nodding. Whatever Eduard had done to help him was working well. Tolys hoped he would stay around for a while after this week – after tomorrow, his seventh day playing for the court. Surely, the nobility wouldn’t mind. They seemed to be enjoying his music.

Of course they were.

That evening’s song was a happy tale about a knight and his deeds, which some of the servants as well as the nobles seemed to know, the ones more from the south of the peninsula. Tolys’s liege clapped along enthusiastically. It was almost endearing.

Afterwards, Tolys caught up with Eduard in the hallway to their courtyard – his route to it was faster, it seemed.

The musician smiled, and Tolys glanced around before kissing him, because it was hard to stop now.

“What was that song for?” he asked curiously.

“Sometimes, a song is just a song, even with me.”

“Really?”

He inclined his head. “It made people happy. That is the best part of what I do. Always has been.”

“I understand.” Tolys nodded. “Can I ask you something?”

“A favor?” Eduard asked, a crease appearing between his eyebrows.

“Not really. It’s a question. Something I wonder about.”

“Oh, yes. Of course, go ahead.” He sounded relieved.

“If the lute helps you… Do what you do, as you said, does that mean it might also help someone else?”

The musician drummed his fingers on the instrument in question, clasped under his right arm.

“I don’t know. Maybe. Why? Do you want to try?”

“No, I… I was thinking about Raivis. Of course, I wouldn’t ask you to give up your lute, but if you could teach him – something. Anything. Just music would be enough, I know he’s got talent. He’s young yet; he doesn’t have to live his life being unhappy here.”

“Neither do you, you know,” Eduard said softly. “You could come with me when I leave. Both of you, even.”

“I— We—” Tolys hadn’t even thought about the possibility. He didn’t have a bad life here at all, and everything was uncertain out there. Less so with the powers Eduard possessed, of course, but all the same…

“Think about it, if you want to. Talk to Raivis. You don’t have to tell him about the—” He made a vague gesture with his free hand, which made Tolys chuckle.

“I will, I will think about it,” he promised.

“Good,” Eduard said. He sighed, then smiled. “Good. Come.”

They went.

  “Tolys,” Raivis was nearly whispering, “I don’t understand. Why would he want us to leave with him?”

Tolys floundered a bit, unsure how to explain anything, until understanding dawned rapidly on the boy’s face.

“You were with him those nights!”

“I…” He sighed. “Yes, I was, and Eduard knows I care about you. He’d want to teach you about music.”

“Really? But I’d never be as good as he is, certainly.”

“I don’t think anyone could be. But I know you have talent.”

Raivis shuffled his feet into the straw on the floor of the hallway, his head flopping from side to side.

“Isn’t today the last day he’ll play for the court? Eduard?”

Tolys nodded, biting the inside of his cheek.

“And he’s leaving tomorrow?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. We haven’t talked about that.”

Raivis smiled innocently. “Have you talked much at all?”

“Raivis!”

His smile widened to a grin, the likes of which Tolys had never seen on his pale face. Even if he was joking at his expense, it was good to see. Tolys shook his head fondly and told him to think about it and to tell him during dinner.

When the dinner in fact came, it seemed as though Eduard had saved his best for last. He swept the entire hall up in a wave of emotion with barely any help from his lute, just his voice carrying clearly across the large space, echoing off the walls and bringing color to the tapestries.

“Tolys,” Raivis whispered.

“Hm?” He didn’t take his eyes off Eduard. Couldn’t.

“Yes,” he said. Tolys smiled. Yes.

He tugged Raivis with him to follow when Eduard left the hall and went to the courtyard, where the musician smiled at both of them, and laughed breathlessly when Tolys kissed him, hard. Raivis was studiously looking down at the lute when he glanced over at him, clearing his throat.

“Well,” he said, “Raivis would like to come. Isn’t it?”

The boy nodded.

“Good,” Eduard said. And, looking at Tolys as he furrowed his brow, he whispered, “Is he aware of… Me?”

Tolys shook his head.

“Do you think… How do you think he’d react?”

“I think favorably. Have I told you his family is from across the mountains?”

Eduard smiled. “You haven’t. But that’s great.”

He turned to Raivis, who had now awkwardly clenched his thin fingers in the edge of his tunic and was shuffling his foot.

“Sorry,” Eduard said. “There is something you should know. Something I need to show you.”

“Oh?” He blinked. “Of course.”

The musician looked around the courtyard, which was mostly empty, pursed his lips, and gestured them both into the hallway and through it into another room. It was the council room, Tolys thought; there was a tapestry on the wall depicting many knights led by a previous lord. Eduard looked up at it, muttered some words as if trying to find the right ones, put his lute down against the heavy table dominating the space, and began to sing.

Raivis shot Tolys a confused look, but Tolys just shook his head and motioned for him to watch Eduard. He did, too, until his eye was drawn by movement.

The tapestry had come to life. The knights were stampeding across the fabric, soundlessly but with shining armor and leaving behind clouds of dust.

“Oh,” Raivis said, staring openmouthed. He sank down to his knees as if his legs wouldn’t hold him, next to Eduard’s lute, as the song ended. “That is magic.”

Eduard nodded.

“Do it again?” Raivis asked, and the musician smiled, and did. The knights, who had returned to their original positions, began to fight an incoming enemy this time; the words to the song were different, but the heavy melody was the same. It was almost as if he could hear the horses running, the armor clanging.

The armor clanging.

The bang as the door to the chamber was slammed open unceremoniously, cutting off the song.

No.

Raivis scrambled underneath the table with Eduard’s lute as Tolys’s liege lord and some of the knights spilled into the room, backing Tolys and Eduard up against the still tapestry.

“What is this?” his liege boomed, his eyes harder than ever before – and they often were. He was known as a ruthless man, and had earned that reputation.

“My liege, the musician was singing—”

“I heard. I saw, however, that he was performing magic.” His voice was now dangerously low. “Don’t imagine I haven’t noticed you running off evening after evening, Tolys. Don’t imagine I do not know what is going on between the walls of my home. Do not imagine that I will tolerate this.”

Eduard was breathing rapidly next to Tolys, but then he started singing, wordlessly pouring emotion into the room. Tolys’s liege blinked, opened and closed his mouth a few times.

Then, he shook his head, snarled, and slammed the musician into the tapestry behind him with one hand, knocking the breath out of him.

“Don’t play tricks on me!” he spat. Eduard turned his face away.

“Leave him alone!” Tolys shouted, rushing forward, but he was yanked back by one of the knights and held in a painful armored grip. He met Eduard’s eyes, and saw his own desperation reflected in them. There was nothing either of them could do. All Tolys could do was hope they’d be mild, although he knew that was feeble, and that they’d leave Raivis alone. No one had spotted him yet, it seemed.

“I assume,” Tolys’s liege was saying, “you are aware of the punishment we bestow on those who commit such foul atrocities here?”

“I am,” Eduard said, squaring his jaw, eyes not leaving Tolys’s.

“Don’t,” Tolys pleaded in turn, and his liege whirled on him, still holding Eduard up against the tapestry.

“You, I know, are aware of the punishment for treason.”

He was. Gods, he was.

“Put them in the dungeons. They’ll burn tomorrow.”

  It was a long, cold night in the musty dungeons, and although Tolys and Eduard were put in the same cell, could hold each other, it provided little warmth.

“I’m so sorry,” Tolys told him, the words muffled against his shoulder.

“Don’t be. It has always been inevitable,” Eduard whispered into his hair. “It is what happened to my mother as well.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“So am I.”

Even Eduard’s soft singing could not open the door, and the morning dawned unfairly sunny and with cheers coming from the courtyard as they were led outside.

Each step felt like climbing a mountain; Tolys wasn’t honestly sure his legs would carry him any further when he saw the pyre. He didn’t hear anything as his liege read out the sentence, as if there had been any sort of trial, as he was roughly tugged up, his hands tied around a post. He could feel Eduard on the other side. Their fingers touched.

He didn’t hear anything when the torch came down to the wood and the flames started licking at it, but he felt Eduard, and he saw Raivis, among the crowd in travelling clothes and with the musician’s lute strapped to his back, before the smoke blinded him.

“Go,” he told the boy.

“Is it Raivis?” Eduard asked . It was the only thing he heard.

“Yes.”

The musician turned his hand over in its binds and entwined their fingers. Tolys closed his eyes.

Eduard started singing.

The flames danced ever higher, and Eduard sang on. Tolys listened, and did not feel – not the fire, not the smoke in his nose, not any pain. He just listened.

He’d listen forever, because he knew Eduard would keep singing.

Once outside, he sprints – as much he can sprint – to his car, lifting his feet above the water in the street. He must look like an idiot, but there’s no one around to see him. It doesn’t really stop him getting wet either, seeing as it’s still fucking pouring.

A helicopter passes over somewhere in the distance. The emergency services. They’ve been getting gradually closer to his town, which is good. He hopes they can get here before the situation gets any worse.

David takes the winding road into the mountains, where he and Angélique have been staying since the worst of the weather hit, about five days ago. And really, if anyone would have told him that was how he would be spending his time during the storm of the decade, he’d have laughed at them.

Once out of town, David presses play on the cassette still in his car radio. He only just got it before he was called out to Angélique’s place last Thursday.

It happened more often, people calling the station because Ms Verlaque was unnerving them again. She has a habit, and it’s a small town; people have to have something to talk about. If asked at that point in time, David would have said that Angélique was an intelligent and friendly woman who just sometimes fell victim to her own mind and would speak in doom scenarios, and he’d advise anyone not to pay attention to her when she got like that.

Now… He sighs. Well, turns out she had a point in the end, didn’t she?

Rain isn’t exactly unknown around here – clouds formed over the sea can’t cross the mountain range at the end of the peninsula and rain down on the valley completely – and sometimes the river floods, yes, but not… Like this. Not in a way that leaves the entire town covered in water, not over a week of unstoppable downpour. David has never seen anything like this before, and isn’t sure where he would be if not for the fact that he was safe with Angélique, up on the mountain.

She knew. And now she has been saying that there is something else coming, something bad. While he’s still skeptical, David has decided to listen to her from now on. At least about things like this.

He drums on his steering wheel, silently singing along to Fleetwood Mac while he drives up the mountain, leaving the ravaged town behind. The rain still beats on his windshield.

Angélique is standing on the porch of her bungalow when he arrives, safe from the rain under the awning, but she rushes out to help him with the supplies he got as soon as he kills the engine, and the music.

They get everything inside quickly enough, and David changes into some less damp clothes in the bathroom. He looks a little sick in the mirror, but a large part of that must be the green tiles. He doesn’t feel sick. Just tired, and cold. It’s damp even inside, even here, high up where there’s no flooding.

“Hey,” Angélique says softly. She’s leaning against the doorpost when David looks, arms crossed. Her flared sleeves are wrapped around her hands as if they will keep out the chill. “How was town?”

He shrugs in response. “Empty. Wet. I hope everyone’s safe.”

She smiles a sad smile before turning her back and walking to the living room. There’s a fire burning, crackling pleasantly like the world isn’t falling to pieces outside. David sprawls out on the rug in front of it, hoping to soak up some warmth. Angélique sits down to read a book, cross-legged with her back against the couch. Her hair has been getting curlier and curlier over the past days – whatever she did to it to make it straight before must be wearing off.

David likes it.

He, surprisingly, likes her. She’s been levelheaded throughout this whole mess – maybe that’s something that happens when you apparently know what’s going to happen, he thinks. Whatever that is. He feels bad about having dismissed her all this time.

It doesn’t hurt that she is, well, a very attractive woman.

“Hey, Angélique?” he asks, and she looks up, resting her index finger halfway down the page of her book. “Can I ask something about the whole…” He gestures at nothing. “The predicting the future thing?”

She smiles a little. “It’s not so much predicting, I think. I just… I look at people, or at things, every now and then, and I know stuff, and sometime that stuff hasn’t happened yet.” Her gaze skids away from David, and she chews on her full lower lip while her brow furrows.

“What do you know about me?”

“Hm?” She looks up again.

“When you look at me, what do you know about me?” he clarifies. Angélique closes her book and draws her legs up underneath herself, tugging her denim miniskirt down over her thighs when it rides up. Her legs look strong – David fancies she could wrap them around his waist and hold herself up without much trouble.

Wait, she can’t actually read minds, can she? Fucking hell. He thinks about the rain very intently.

“I know your name is David Oliver Clarke,” Angélique says. “You’re 30 years old, born January 26, 1939. You have… Two younger siblings, and honestly I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned them, considering how proud of them you are. You know your brother blames himself for that incident in ’54 that caused you to lose most hearing in your right ear, when you were teaching him how to swim. You write to him every year saying that he shouldn’t do that, and this year he’ll believe you. No one knows about the hearing loss, do they? You were afraid they wouldn’t let you join the police if they did.”

“How the fuck—” David starts, instinctively covering his ear. Only his family knows about that incident – though it’s good news Josh will finally stop getting worked up over it.

She shrugs. “Told you.” But her dark eyes flit away again, as if she’s afraid of a rejection. Hm, she doesn’t know everything.

“Angélique,” he says, “that was boss.”

“I— What? You really think—”

“Yeah!” He pushes himself over to her and leans against the couch as well, close enough that their legs nearly touch – his corduroys and her freckled knees only separated by a tiny sliver of brown carpet. “Wish we’d known before. Maybe you could have helped with something.”

“But you did,” she says, her voice slightly wry, but she smiles still.

“Yeah, alright.” David pushes his hair back from his face and then rests his arm on the couch behind her. Some dark curls tumble over his wrist when she turns her head to him.

“Is there nothing in the future for me?” he asks, and as he says it, he realizes they’re still pretty much in the middle of a very dangerous situation and maybe there really isn’t anything in the future for him, and then what?

However, Angélique smiles and ducks her head, biting her lower lip again. Her teeth have left indents when she looks back up at him. They’re oddly transfixing, although David would much rather he’d made them. Absently, he curls a strand of her hair around his finger while they look at each other. Is she reading him now? Is that how it works?

“There’s, uhm.” She wets her lips now, and David shifts until their legs do touch. “There’s quite a lot of me in your immediate future, actually.”

He grins. “Really? How much is a lot in this case?”

“Oh, you know.” She presses their legs together more firmly and leans over to him. He can see a sliver of green in her eyes, this close, could count the freckles dotting her warm brown skin, which glows in the firelight. He leans forward too, while he touches his fingertips to her knee and lets them trace patterns on her skin.

“Is this alright?” he asks, because even if those hippies with their free love have a good point – he thinks – he doesn’t want to anger the woman largely responsible for his continued survival. Especially not when she knows so much stuff about him.

“That’s great, but it could be better,” Angélique answers with a laugh. “I’d ask you the same thing, but…” She hooks her small fingers in the collar of his T-shirt. “I already know.”

David laughs. “Well, that’s convenient. What else do you know?” His hand slides slowly up her thigh, and she bites her lip again. Her already dark eyes are deeper now, and both of them seem more than happy to just forget about the terrible situation outside for now.

“I don’t know anything that’s very interesting in theory,” she admits.

“I guess we better get practical then,” he says, and while the wind howls outside the bungalow and the rain seems to be on the verge of breaking through the windows with its force, he kisses her. She kisses back without hesitation. Well, if she knew it was coming…

David is unsure why he’s surprised that Angélique knows exactly what he likes – hell, of course she does – and hopes she’ll forgive him that he doesn’t know her preferences in return. She laughs at him when he tells her this, not unkindly, and suggests practice.

“I know not everyone is like me,” she adds, beautifully sprawled on the couch, completely unashamed.

“Have you ever met anyone else?” David asks, curious. “Who can do… Whatever it is you do?”

She gasps gently when he trails his fingers up her leg again, this time unhindered by any fabric.

“I don’t think so. And I’m pretty sure I would have known.” Her breath hitches. “See, I do like that. You’re – you’re learning.”

“Good,” he says, and then nothing for a while.

Over the next three days, neither of them go out because it doesn’t stop raining and there is no need, and he also learns that Angélique does indeed have very strong legs – she surfs, she explains, but not at the same spot he does, and when he asks if they might go catch some waves together when this is all over, she gets a faraway look in her eyes and says she isn’t sure –, that it’s much easier to stay warm like this even if clothes are eschewed often, that Angélique likes horror movies – she can always tell what the actors have really been up to, she says, which is most amusing when it’s horror –, that she loves animals just as he does, and that it would be very possible for him to fall in love with her, given just a little time.

She can’t say if he will. It doesn’t always work in a straightforward way, apparently. Some people are more past than future, “and you,” she tells David, “are very much the present, in a lot of ways.”

He could almost forget about the world falling to pieces outside.

And then, in the morning of the fourteenth day after it began raining, it abruptly stops.

Everything around the bungalow is soggy, and there’s no way the road will be in any condition to drive on, so they aren’t going anywhere, but it’s dry. The sky is clear. And anyway, staying a little longer is just fine by David.

He writes a letter to his sibling that he can post when this is over – they have got to be worried if they saw the news from over here – but can’t finish it, because Angélique comes practically running into the living room with a coat half on and waving a shoe at him while yelling that they need to leave the house immediately. He opens his mouth to ask a question, like what the hell, but has thrown the shoe at him and dashed off already.

Alright. He’ll ask questions later. The lesson about listening to Angélique has been learned.

In more ways than one, he thinks, with a grin at the shoe now on his foot.

It starts the moment he sets foot outside. The slightest tremor, like a train passing close by, but there are no trains anywhere in the mountains, and they wouldn’t be running right now anyway, so it’s something else. David clenches his jaw.

“Lique?” A nickname, caught on quickly – it happens often, with him.

She’s ahead of him, hurrying further up the mountain, jumping from stone to wet stone, but stops and looks over her shoulder. Her beautiful face is set in a grim line, her hair – now all bunched up in tight curls – swept away from her face and into a ponytail.

“Hurry,” she says. “I… I’m not sure what’s coming, but we need to be somewhere else when it does.”

The ground shakes beneath their feet as they climb, making it more and more difficult to keep going, and David wonders if it was the right thing to do, to leave the bungalow. They don’t get earthquakes around here, really, and he’s not sure what you’re supposed to do. On the other hand, Angélique knows… A lot of things.

They reach a stream that’s probably a little mountain brook when the weather has been normal. Now, it roars by with deafening noise. Angélique stops on its banks and pushes her hands into her hair as if in desperation.

“What’s wrong?” David asks, then repeats himself slightly louder to be heard over the roar of the water.

“This!” Angélique gestures frantically at the water. “I know what’s on the other side, I just… I don’t know if…” She swallows hard, and David reaches for her, tugging her against his chest. He rests his chin on her hair, she pushes her nose against the skin of his chest exposed by his shirt.

“Do we need to get to the other side?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I can’t tell.”

“It’s alright. That’s how the other side lives, Lique.”

She laughs, wrapping her arms around his waist, hands clenching on his back. The stream sprays cold water on them, but they’ve been damp for the past two weeks; it doesn’t matter anymore.

Another rumble shakes the ground, and Angélique holds on tighter. David strokes his fingers up and down her spine and plants his feet firmly on the rock. What do they do now?

“Oh, fuck,” he hears Angélique murmur, and then she’s tugging him down insistently until they practically sprawl on the rock. A second later, a spray of debris sails overhead, scattering among the trees. The ground starts to shake again, and it doesn’t stop.

The forest creaks and groans around them, and the water gets even wilder. David and Angélique remain seated on the rock, even though he feels like they should be doing something. This is nature. You can’t stop fucking nature.

The shaking gets worse. A tree groans and falls over on the other side of the stream, and just like that, more go down, and more and more and David can only cling to Angélique when they hear an almighty crash from just below them, and he knows.

“The bungalow.”

He feels her nod against his shoulder where she’s hiding her face.

Then, another noise. An insistent, booming rumble that gets louder with the second. He tilts his left ear towards it.

“What’s that?” he asks anxiously.

“The dam broke,” Angélique says, and then water crashes around them, hitting like an icy wall and sweeping them both off the rock and away.

David tries to grab something, anything, blindly reaching out with one hand while the other refuses to let go of Angélique, who clings back just as hard in return.

A branch or something, sliding by his hand. He grabs it, and it holds, and he can pull them out of the water just far enough that they can breathe. The current still tries to drag him down, rips at his clothes and his shoe – just the one, he seems to have lost the other, but Angélique is still here, even if she’s apologizing into his chest for not knowing, for not having predicted.

“It’s okay,” he says, raising his voice over the water. “It’s not your fault, you can’t predict everything!”

“It’s not about that,” she replies. “It’s not about this, David.”

When he looks down at her, her eyes are rimmed with red in a way that isn’t just the icy mountain water’s doing. She’s crying.

“We’re fine.” He grips the thing he’s holding tighter, reassuring himself. “When this dies down, we’ll be alright. I’m sure!”

She closes her eyes. He wants to kiss her, but he can’t, not like this. Everything is heavy, but he needs to hold it up. Needs to hold her up.

“We’ll be fine,” he repeats weakly, speaking into the middle distance. His fingers are going numb. Angélique didn’t predict this. Did she?

Fuck.

“Lique?”

She looks up at him with a sad line to her mouth, as if she knows the question he’s going to ask. Come to think of it, she probably fucking does.

“You know how this ends, don’t you?”

Slowly, slowly, she nods. Her expressive eyes are deep and dark, her fingers cold when she splays them on his neck. Curls plaster to her forehead, her throat. She’s still beautiful. And she knows. She knows.

And really, David also knows.

She minded, though, when her inspiration waned in autumn, when she needed it most. She had to find a new coat for the winter, among other things, and the vegetables were almost all harvested by now, so there would be no selling those. She sat wrapped up by the lake often, with her quill pen and her inkwell and a completely blank piece of paper that stayed that way. Even telling stories to the still water didn’t help.

And then there was her.

She showed up at Olympe’s door the morning after the first frost, like the ice come alive. Everything about her was pale but her eyes, which were instead dark blue like the lake.

“Who are you?” Olympe asked, mind running a mile a minute. This woman was not only mysterious, she was also beautiful, and it seemed to be that she brought some inspiration with her.

“I am here to help,” said the woman. “You can call me Bela.”

“As in beautiful?”

She smiled slowly, wickedly, showing teeth. “As in white.”

And, even though Olympe was not a very trusting person by nature, and all evidence screamed to be wary of Bela, she let her in.

Not just that once, as she had feared. The mysterious woman disappeared in the evening, yes, when the first moonlight reflected on the still water of the White Lake, but she returned the next day, and the next, and many – almost all – days after that. Olympe was curious – how could she not be curious about this woman who had brought her creativity back with her simple presence? – but she also had the distinct feeling she shouldn’t ask questions.

Did Bela have a home? Was she human at all? God knew there were plenty of legends about the mountains, hailing from the medieval times when the town in the valley had just been a small village, some from even earlier dates. Olympe had thought about compiling them in a book at some point, but never had come around to it.

It was perhaps foolish to be keeping on like this, but she didn’t care.

  Even as winter set in, the mountains became bitterly cold and the lake froze over, Bela kept coming. She didn’t wear warmer clothes and didn’t want to borrow any off Olympe either, appearing unbothered. She read what Olympe wrote and, increasingly, offered her opinion. Bela was blunt and it made Olympe laugh sometimes just how different she was from her target audience in the cities, or indeed from herself, with her wealthy upbringing.

“This book doesn’t bear your name,” Bela said one dark afternoon, when she seemed the only light.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I am a woman. No one will want to read a book written by a woman.”

Bela was quiet. It really was as if she was from a different world altogether sometimes. But other times…

“Well, that’s stupid,” she said. Olympe laughed, and laughed more when Bela looked surprised, and pleased.

“The world is stupid,” Olympe said.

“You aren’t.”

She snapped her head up to look at Bela, who was actually looking less pale right now. Was she blushing? That was new. Olympe decided she liked it.

“You aren’t stupid either,” she replied.

Bela only shook her head, dark eyes downcast.

“I am very stupid,” she said cryptically. Before Olympe could push it, she had gone, just like that.

She didn’t think Bela was stupid. Quite the opposite, actually. It was true that the she didn’t know much about social interactions or the finer points of etiquette, and that she had no idea who the current ruler of the country was, but Bela could tell Olympe a great many things about the history of the mountains and their myths and legends, and knew nature in a way that seemed to be becoming increasingly rare.

And, yes, her white dresses were about 300 years out of fashion, all trailing sleeves and embroidered pearls and she never wore a hat, as if she were a woman of easy virtue, but that added to the mystery, and to the things that inspired Olympe to write yet more.

Bela knew much, but her knowledge seemed to stop past a certain point in history, much like her way of dressing did. Olympe had never met anyone like her, and didn’t think she ever would again.

Once, her cousin Francis came to visit her for a few days, and Bela didn’t show until he was gone.

“You could have greeted him,” Olympe said, not knowing how she would actually feel about sharing Bela.

“He didn’t ask,” Bela replied, which made little sense, but Olympe decided to let it slide. She wondered, though; had she asked somehow?

Later, she tried to ask Bela how she had known that Olympe needed help, needed a muse, but, unsurprisingly, the woman only smiled ever so slightly and gave no reply at all. Olympe was not sure she would want to know, when it came down to it.

That was something else she wondered about, if that was all her, because she was a curious woman by nature, whether society liked it or not. It was unlike her to let things slide so often.

  “Who are you?” she asked Bela again, one day in spring, as the tall woman was standing in the cold water of the White Lake, which pooled around her ankles and soaked the hem of her dress even though she had lifted it a little. She looked at Olympe with eyes as deep as the lake.

“Whoever you want me to be,” she eventually replied. Her voice seemed hoarser than it already tended to be usually.

“I want you to be yourself.”

Bela bowed her head so that her pale hair fell over her shoulders like rivulets of water and hid her face.

The water rippled around her bare feet but stayed otherwise still.

“Who do you want to be, Bela?”

Now, she looked up again.

“I want to be your inspiration,” she said matter-of-factly. Some unseen force rippled through the entire lake. Olympe thought she might understand.

“You are.”

Bela nodded sadly. “I know.”

  With all the writing she had done lately, Olympe hardly had to sell her fabrics anymore, but she liked to interact with the townsfolk every now and then, so she went to the market anyway. Bela never wanted to come along, insisting the mountains were her home. There would be so much to show her, Olympe thought wistfully. And perhaps they could find her a more modern dress, one with a higher waistline and tighter sleeves and maybe a hat to match.

Not that Olympe disliked her mysterious muse’s hair. It was the opposite, in fact. Lately, however, she had been struck more and more often with the desire to run her fingers through it in a way that had little to do with seeking inspiration and everything with how fascinated – one might say infatuated – Olympe was with her as a person, something that she saw more of every day.

Maybe, she thought, Bela never had been herself before and somehow Olympe was her inspiration too, in a much more profound way. She liked thinking that, because she couldn’t actually tell if she was worth as much to her at all.

And so summer rolled into the mountains with the scent of drying grass and wildflowers, and Bela’s eyes seemed to brighten with the sun even as her skin remained pale. They spent a lot of time by the lake, sometimes talking, sometimes silent but for the scratch of Olympe’s quill pen.

One day, Bela said, à propos of nothing, “I have done many bad things.”

Olympe carefully put her quill away and turned to look at her expectantly. Bela just looked out over the lake, her silhouette sharp in the sunlight.

“I have never felt remorse until now.”

“How so?”

Bela looked at her with one light eye.

“I never cared before.”

Warmth blossomed in Olympe’s chest. Much as she wished the circumstances were different, it was good to know that Bela cared in her own way. She didn’t ask what it was she felt remorse over, feeling she would not like the answer, provided she received one at all. Instead, she just put her hand, which looked tiny, softly over hers. Bela breathed steadily. Her skin was cool, but warmed under Olympe’s fingers.

They sat like that for a long time. Eventually, Bela turned her hand over and entwined their fingers.

  Long hair whipping in the October wind, Bela walked along the edge of the White Lake. Olympe thought it looked like she was searching for something, but had no idea what it would be, or she would help.

As it were, she could only watch the lone, distant figure in white through her lorgnette, and wait.

After a while, Bela strode up to her cottage, hair wild and eyes dark. Olympe didn’t expect to say anything about what she had been doing, and she didn’t, but what she did do was far more surprising than that. The tall woman dropped to her knees, dress pooling around her, and looked up at Olympe with an indefinable emotion on her face.

“Bela, what is…” She gestured vaguely. “Are you alright?”

“I wish…” Bela started, reaching her hand up as if she wanted to touch Olympe, then letting it fall.

Slowly, almost afraid of startling her, Olympe mirrored her, sinking to her knees. She reached out with caution and wrapped both hands around the one Bela was holding in her lap now. She didn’t speak. She waited.

“I wish I could be more,” Bela eventually said. Her voice was barely audible over the wind that howled around the house.

“You are enough,” Olympe replied. This was true in many ways. She gripped her hand tighter, hoping to impart this message without words. Bela’s eyes were deep and sad. Olympe could almost see herself reflected in them, a small woman in blue with a tight braid, so different from her muse.

“You are more.” It didn’t sound accusing, or jealous. It sounded almost admiring.

“I do not think I am so much,” Olympe said bashfully, lowering her gaze. Bela put her free hand on hers, her fingertips ever so gently stroking Olympe’s wrist. Her next words were barely more than breath.

“Olympe, you are everything.”

When she looked up, Bela was closer than before, and it was all Olympe could do not to gasp. Instead, she followed her instincts, pushed up, and pressed her forehead against Bela’s gently. Her skin was cold; it always seemed to be. Nevertheless, she breathed warm on Olympe’s neck, steady and reassuringly there.

“Please stay,” Olympe heard herself say. “Please.”

“As long as I can,” Bela promised.

  Finally, Olympe could indulge the need she felt to run her fingers through Bela’s long, loose hair, or let her know in other, small ways how she felt about her. Nobody could ever know about this, of course, but most people did not care much for what Olympe did either way. It was good.

And then it ended.

It was the night of the new moon. Olympe jerked awake for reasons unknown in the very early morning – it was silent outside, and still practically pitch dark. Yet, after a brief disoriented moment, she rose from her bed and padded to the window, grabbing her lorgnette on the way. She didn’t expect to see anything.

Maybe the more accurate word, she thought, would be hope. She hoped she would not see anything out of the ordinary.

But, no, there she was, truly looking like a supernatural being this time, a spot of light against the darkness of the lake. Bela, walking into the water every so calmly, barely disturbing its surface. It didn’t seem as though she was looking for something this time – more as though she knew exactly what she was doing. But that made no sense. Granted, many things about her didn’t make sense, but this was truly something else.

Olympe wanted to run outside, but was also afraid of losing sight of her muse for even a second, afraid that she would simply disappear. Indecision and fear paralyzed her.

So she watched, unmoving. Frozen as the edges of the lake, still like the mist over the water. Was that all her?

The very first ray of sunlight falling through the evergreens illuminated Bela in blinding white, and when Olympe blinked, she was gone. The water was still as if she had never been there.

Had she?

Was it a dream?

  Olympe called out for Bela in the morning when she didn’t show, walking around the lake with chattering teeth, pressing her lorgnette to her nose as if she could see more that way. It yielded no results. Not a single hint towards the mysterious woman’s presence. The lake was dark, and remained so when Olympe glared at it, yelled and pleaded at the water. It had given her so much… And it had taken everything.

So she wrote, and wrote, and wrote as if it were her final day every day for the lonely next month. She wrote a letter to Francis, asking him to come visit in the approaching spring and to take her manuscripts with him so they may be made into books. But mostly, she wrote about Bela, and about the hateful White Lake. She wrote until she ran out of ink and her fingers cramped and even her lorgnette could not help her see clearly.

It had to be done. Olympe couldn’t say why.

And then, that too ended.

All at once, the new moon was back. The day before had brought a storm that could still be heard in the distance, but the mountains were quiet around her cottage. The lake was still. The lake was foreboding, Olympe thought. She’d thought so many times.

  She came wearing black.

At first, Olympe thought she was a dream – a nightmare, perhaps. Everything about her was pale but her eyes and her dress, which were both dark as the night reflected in the water of the White Lake.

“Bela,” Olympe breathed, sitting up in her bed. The woman simply nodded. She dripped on Olympe’s floor, the water like an ink stain in the near-darkness.

She looked away when Olympe tried to catch her eye, and walked to the door when she got out of her bed, tried to reach for her. Olympe followed, somehow unsurprised yet still terrified of what was to come.

Bela stood at the edge of the lake on bare feet, her black dress floating around her calves. Her back was turned to Olympe, but she could still see that her hands were clenched in tight fists.

“Who are you?” Olympe asked. Bela looked at her over her shoulder, wet hair plastered to her forehead. A hint of a smile flitted over her sharp features, but it was a sad one.

“Bela, as in white,” she reminded Olympe. The water of the White Lake rippled out from her feet. Olympe swallowed. She wished she could say something that meant something, but her mind was blank.

“You helped me,” she just said.

“Yes.” Bela waded deeper into the water. Olympe followed her to where the shore became rocky and plunged straight into the deep. It was unwise, she knew that.

“Is there no way for you to stay with me?” she asked. Her own hair fell across her shoulders when she knelt on the rocks, touching her fingers to the freezing stone.

Bela shook her head. “You must understand. The lake demands payment.”

“The lake, or you?”

She raised a hand above the water and ran her fingers through Olympe’s hair, swept her cold thumb over her cheekbone. She didn’t answer the question, but, as with so many things Olympe had asked her, she wasn’t sure whether she really wanted to know the answer. She leaned farther forwards, cupping her own hands around Bela’s face.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said. She clutched the fabric of Olympe’s nightgown with her free hand, the grip nothing short of desperate.

“I know.”

“Your memories belong to the lake now.”

The regular crowd is already there in the dim, smoke-filled room, and some of them grunt vaguely in Luca’s direction as he walks to the bar, its greying wood a comforting sight.

“Evening, Rotaru,” the barmaid greets. “The usual?”

“The usual,” he confirms, smiling faintly at her. It’s refreshing to see her patched-up, low-cut dress after a whole day of looking at the upper class with their colorful ruches and shiny fabrics up to their chins, all the while feeling horribly out of place. He thanks her when a drink appears in front of him, and spends a while nursing it, looking at everything and nothing and thinking about much the same.

His glass sparkles in the low light of the gas lamp behind the bar, the candles elsewhere in the room, and it’s the only thing there that does. The drink is disgusting. It always is, but it’s cheap.

Somewhere behind him, the door to the bar opens and closes, and a curious hush settles over the crowd. Luca blinks his hair out of his eyes and turns to look, and then inadvertently catches the eye of the man by the door, the one who must have come in seconds before. It’s piercing across the room. With a shiver, Luca looks away. Then back at the man.

He’s dressed in dark colors, but the fabrics shimmer, silk and damask and a watch chain running to the pocket of his waistcoat. His hair is blond, maybe light brown, underneath a felt hat, and absolutely immaculate; so is his facial hair. Rich, undoubtedly rich. What in the world is he doing in this part of the city?

Luca quickly turns back to the – equally perplexed – barmaid when the mysterious man starts making his way through the bar, in his direction. Conversation starts up again when he’s passed, and Luca can’t help but look through his own messy hair when he gingerly sits down on a stool only one or two down from Luca’s own. He leans forward to order something from the barmaid, who thrusts her cleavage at him to no avail. She shares a bemused look with Luca, who shrugs helplessly.

Then widens his eyes when she puts a glass in front of him filled with – it looks like wine, but not wine Luca can afford.

“I—” he starts, but the barmaid interrupts him.

“Rich fellow insists. Says he’ll take your tab.”

Luca jerks up and looks at the rich man, who catches his gaze again and holds it while he puts his hat down. His eyes are light, but rimmed with dark circles that stand out in his pale face.

“Alright,” Luca says absently, unable to look away. He hears the barmaid snort in the background before she shuffles away.

Well, if there ever was a reason to run up a tab, it’s this, he decides. Vaguely, he wonders if the man wants anything from him – nothing comes without a cost, in his experience, and he can’t imagine this does – but he’ll get around to seeing about that. Eventually.

For now, he drinks the wine, which is rich and much better than anything he’s ever had before, and orders another one. He can feel the mysterious man’s gaze on him almost continuously, but it doesn’t feel so bad, all things considered.

After a while and a couple more drinks, he turns to the man. It’s late, and more people are at the bar now, so Luca moves over a stool, settling right next to his benefactor.

“So, what do you want from me?” he asks, leaning an elbow on the bar. His sleeve sticks to the wood.

The man looks at him intently. He even looks rich when one doesn’t take the clothes into account. Although he is pale and obviously tired, he is also undeniably well fed, and his narrow nose and high cheekbones all scream aristocracy.

“What makes you think I want anything from you?” he eventually asks, arching his brows. “Perhaps I’m just a bit eccentric.”

“In this city?” Luca asks cynically. To his surprise, the man actually quirks a smile at that, even if it is a rather wry one.

“Good point.”

“I’m very smart.”

“I see, I see.” He frowns slightly. “I’m Noah Krier, and if you’ll listen, I have an offer for you.”

Intrigued but wary, Luca motions for him to continue. Even his voice is aristocratic, all perfect pronunciation and careful vowels. It’s almost too perfect, almost as if it’s a learned thing, as though he taught himself how to fit into the elite like Luca can’t even be bothered to try.

“I am in need of a… Someone to keep me company.”

“And by company, you mean…”

“Nothing vulgar,” Noah Krier hurries to assure him, although his light eyes blaze a curious path down Luca’s body that might suggest otherwise, so quickly that he’d have missed it if the man weren’t so damn interesting. “Just friendly company around the house. Someone who will accompany me when I leave the city for a few days.”

“I can’t do that, I’ve got work to do,” Luca tells him.

“I will cover your expenses,” Mr Krier interrupts, carefully enunciating each word.

He’s weird, he’s so obviously weird, but Luca can’t help but be curious.

“For how long do you need a friend, then?”

Mr Krier huffs. “Four months, until the end of August. I have other plans after that.”

“How often have you tried this?”

“This is the first time, I assure you.”

Luca smirks. “I’ll bet you tell all of them that.”

A dismissive hand gesture; the glint of silver on his fingers, maybe even some precious stone.

“Unimportant. Are you willing to keep me company?”

Luca thinks about it. What has he got to lose? He has no family left, not for several years now, and his life is a boring monotony of working and drinking – and eating something other than potatoes if he’s lucky.

“Alright,” he says, “I’ll do it.”

“Excellent. What is your name, might I ask?”

“Rotaru, Mr Krier. Luca Rotaru.”

“Luca.” He smiles now, ever so slightly, then holds out his long-fingered, ringed hand to him. “Please, call me Noah. We’re friends now, after all.”

This should be interesting, Luca thinks as he shakes the cold hand. Good.

Noah’s house, as it turns out, is a massive mansion on the outskirts of the city, in the hills near the river, where the air is clear and the landscape sprawling.

Once he’s there, after a carriage ride that seemed to last hours and hours in the early morning bustle of the city, in the narrow and filthy medieval streets and alleys, Luca decides he’s made a good decision by accepting the weird offer. Even if Noah Krier turns out to be a murderer – at least he will die happy, knowing that he won’t rot away in the attic where he lives or out on the streets like a rat.

He decides not to tell his new ‘friend’ this. Few people appreciate his morbid humor. Luca is always surprised by that. Why make the city worse by always being so serious?

Noah opens the door himself, now dressed in more color. He still looks pale, though, and the veins in his face stand out starkly, blue and nearly black. Maybe he’s sick. He’ll tell Luca if he deems it important, he supposes.

“Good morning,” the man just says now.

“Good morning,” Luca returns. He shuffles his scruffy boots on the white stone steps leading to the door.

“Well, come in. I’ll show you around.” Noah steps back to him into the large hall, then ambles in turns ahead of and next to him while he shows him his house.

Luca has been in the halls and drawing rooms of many a rich person’s house in the city, but never has he actually had the opportunity – or inclination – to explore any further. Noah’s house is fascinating, though. He has a flushing toilet, and even a room with electric light, while the rest of the rooms are lit with gas lamps. Luca usually counts himself lucky if he has a candle.

As it’s almost summer, none of the fireplaces are lit, and it’s remarkably, pleasantly, cool inside. Flowery wallpaper greets him everywhere. The wallpaper on what Noah says can be his room is a slate grey. It matches his eyes.

“Wait, my room?”

“Whenever you wish to stay,” Noah explains, brow furrowing. “Unless you don’t like it. I think the Yellow Bedroom would also—”

“No, it’s – I adore this room, Noah, I just…” He looks into it again, past the four-poster bed and through the gap between the heavy blue curtains into the large garden. “I can’t possibly repay you if I stay here.”

“It would be enough if you did stay,” he says. He’s leaning against the doorpost when Luca looks at him, remarkably casual. “I understand that I’ve put you in a strange situation, Luca, but I honestly am lonely. I want company, that’s all, and I think the very fact that you are here means that you want the same.”

Luca chews on his lower lip, thinking. In a way, he knows Noah is right, but admitting that to him is another matter. Despite everything, he still has some sense of pride. So he walks to the window instead, trails his dirty fingers along the soft fabric of the curtains and looks at the sunbathed flowers and hedges below. The sky is a stark blue. No one is in the garden. Now that Luca thinks about it…

“Don’t you have any servants?” he asks, turning back to Noah, whose green eyes are intent on him, but his gaze flits away when he replies.

“Not anymore. It’s a long story.”

Luca lets go of the curtain and walks back over to him, stopping too close. Noah looks down at him, although surprisingly not that much. Somehow, he seems much taller from a distance than he is up close, and Luca never unfolds himself fully. He thinks of it as a form of protection, and is aware he looks younger than his years.

“You’re a peculiar man, aren’t you?” he asks Noah. It might be the end of this all if he takes it as an insult, or…

Noah laughs drily. “Thank you, Luca.”

Or it could be the start of something interesting.

“I’ll stay when I can,” Luca promises, and he has to look away when Noah’s pale face lights with something like relief.

It’s surprisingly easy, when Luca thinks about it, to spend time with Noah Krier in his empty mansion or its gardens, or even on day trips to the river where he wears straw hats and gets mud on his shiny shoes.

It turns out that they both don’t know anything about plants, and the lack of gardener means the beautifully trimmed hedges and rosebushes are getting wild. They dedicate some less hot afternoons to trying to remedy that. Luca doesn’t know if they quite succeed, but he does know it’s both strange and rather nice to see Noah looking less than perfectly composed as usual, even if he’s obviously not healthy. The veins on Noah’s arms stand out against his skin, paler there than on his face.

On a few occasions during May and June, Luca even manages to talk him out of his waistcoat. It’s immensely satisfying. He looks handsome no matter what he wears, but that is another topic entirely. Mostly.

On a particularly hot day, when they are both sweaty, Noah refuses to let Luca have dinner until he draws himself a bath and washes. It’s been ages since Luca has actually had a warm bath, let alone one with nice soaps, so he luxuriates in it, all the while mildly in wonder about the realization that Noah must draw his own baths as well. He doesn’t have anyone here to do it for him, after all, and Luca knows he cooks and cleans for himself.

After dinner, while Luca is still in the dining room – one of three dining rooms in the house – he asks about that. For a second, Noah gets a closed off expression on his face, as tends to happen when Luca asks something that is apparently painful to remember, which most notably includes the topic of his siblings. Luca still isn’t sure whether they’re still alive or not.

A moment later, though, the man seems to shake it off and smiles at him.

“I wasn’t always so…” He gestures around, at the flowery wallpaper and the unlit chandelier and the polished dark wood of the table.

“Rich?” Luca suggests.

A huff. “I was going to say fortunate, but I suppose the difference is not that great. We weren’t always poor as I grew up, but sometimes, yes… I’ve never forgotten how to take care of myself.”

“What happened?”

“To me?” He scratches at his small beard, brown streaked with blond. “I was lucky. The rest of my family less so.”

Luca is silent for a moment, watching the evening sunlight play with the contours of Noah’s face. At this angle, the shadows under his eyes are nearly invisible, but Luca knows they’re there. He could trace the veins with his fingers, could smooth the tired lines around his mouth but also the crinkles of laughter, rarer a month ago than now. Against all odds, Luca has grown rather fond of the madman who decided he needed a friend.

“Sometimes I doubt you take care of yourself,” he says softly, turning to him.

Noah raises thin eyebrows.

“I just mean…” Cautiously, Luca reaches a hand to his face, smiling when Noah goes nearly cross-eyed trying to follow its path and then sighs in something like resignation. He touches his fingertips to the man’s cheekbone. Slides them ever so lightly to his jaw, over the visible veins. Noah is still enough that Luca can see when his breath stutters, just a little.

“That’s different,” he says. “It’s…”

His brow furrows while Luca drags his fingers across his jaw, warm skin and short hairs and solid bone underneath. It isn’t an angry furrow, though. More like a saddened one.

Not even thinking about it, Luca reaches up and smoothes it out with his thumb. When Noah laughs a startled laugh, he realizes how wildly inappropriate he’s being and quickly draws back. He’s always been someone who touches others a lot. It isn’t usually appreciated; apparently, it isn’t seemly.

“Sorry,” he stutters. “I’m—”

“Don’t be,” Noah interrupts. “Luca, I promise I’ll tell you – everything you want to hear. But not yet.”

“Then when?”

“Let me worry about that,” he replies. And then, while he hesitantly reaches out to touch the angle where Luca’s jaw meets his neck, “Let’s have drinks.”

He goes, in a whirl of flower-patterned green waistcoat and pristine white silk, leaving Luca with more questions than answers.

Nevertheless, drinks are drinks. He follows.

During the next weeks, Luca manages to get in more mostly-innocuous touches. He makes it into a game of sorts, whereby he awards himself points every time Noah touches him back.

The balance shoots up rather quickly. Luca attributes it to the fact that Noah apparently wasn’t raised in the stiff environment of the elite of the city, cared for by governesses and private teachers. He must have joked around, played with his mysterious siblings as Luca had done with his brother in better days.

When, at the end of the second month of his friendship – now genuine – with Noah, the man starts initiating touches, Luca decides to abandon his point system altogether and start worrying instead that he has let himself get carried away. In more ways than one. He’s missed days of work already, isn’t sure if he will be able to pay the due rent for his draughty attic room.

He also wonders about Noah, and the terrifying fact that he knows exactly what he wants the man to be to him, and how completely unacceptable it is. Never mind that Noah seems… Susceptible to the feelings, that it sometimes seems as though…

It must be wishful thinking, Luca keeps telling himself.

“Luca,” Noah says, coming down the main staircase. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

He looks gorgeous, as always, even if he’s obviously just had a bath and his hair is still damp, falling across one eye in dark blond strands, and he’s grumbling at his sleeves, which remain unbuttoned. Luca smiles at him, then quickly looks away.

“It’s good that you’re here, though,” Noah continues, halting close to Luca at the foot of the stairs. “Might I ask a favor of you?”

“Of course.” Curiously, Luca lifts his gaze again, keeping it somewhere around Noah’s mouth – no – his forehead.

“Would you mind fastening my sleeves for me?” he asks, thrusting one arm forward. Silk slips down his wrist. Luca looks at that, then wordlessly nods and sets to work fastening the row of tiny buttons at the end of the sleeve. Noah is warm, and he smells nice, and his breathing is steadily ruffling Luca’s dark hair.

When he’s done with left and moves on to the right sleeve, Luca makes the mistake of looking directly at Noah. He’s been trying to avoid that for days. He knows his fellow errand boys are gossiping about what he gets up to already. There’s no need to – well, anything.

“Luca.”

His jaw clenches. “Yes?”

Softly, Noah asks, “Will you stay?”

He says it as if it’s important, as if it isn’t a question he’s asked many times before.

“I don’t know,” Luca replies. He hasn’t stayed in the Blue Bedroom for a week now.

“Luca,” Noah says again, and now he raises his free hand and runs his long fingers across the short hairs on Luca’s jaw, brushes his thumb over the corner of his mouth. Luca looks at his throat where it disappears into his collar as he continues, “Please stay.”

“I need to do my job,” he tells the pressed corners of Noah’s shirt. The fingers are still on his face, tracing absentminded patterns into his greasy skin. Noah smells like soap, and he’s too close.

There are more reasons why he can’t be that to Luca, why he couldn’t be even if he were a woman. Luca is an errand boy. Almost two and a half of the four months he was promised have already slipped by, and then what? Will he return to the city when Noah gets on with his mysterious other plans?

“Then stay longer,” Noah says in a near-whisper, and Luca can’t help but look up at him, let himself be caught in the green gaze. “Don’t go back. We’ve got a month and a half.”

“I can’t – I…” Luca squeezes his eyes shut. He’s still holding Noah’s sleeve, half the buttons done up.  Warm skin under his fingertips. “Why?”

“Do you really want to know the answer to that?” asks Noah. He looks mildly pained, but his fingers skim across Luca’s neck softly.

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”

Noah is still for a long moment, eyes searching on Luca’s. His left hand turns over, fingers on the inside of his wrist. Then, he moves, slowly, until all Luca can see is him and all he can think is yes so insistently that it drowns out the no at the back of his mind.

He pushes forward himself, and then he’s kissing Noah Krier, pressing them together even as they both pull back as if startled, noses bumping and breath irregular just from that short touch. Luca’s heart beats in his throat.

“Luca,” Noah says. Luca reaches up and wraps his shaking arms around the man’s neck.

“I’ll stay, then,” he says, because all things considered, it’s much better here than it is in the city center. Noah kisses him again, hard but with a smile on his dry lips.

They have drinks to celebrate, Luca wakes up to the green of Noah’s bedroom, and he thinks that even if none of this holds up outside the walls of the Krier mansion, it will have been worth it.

“Those four months,” he asks Noah from time to time, “what happens at the end of them?”

And every time, he receives the same answer.

“I can’t tell you yet.” Noah says now as well, even as he arches most gracefully under Luca’s touch and he wasn’t making many comprehensible noises seconds ago.

“Why not?” Luca leans forward and presses his lips to Noah’s chest.

“It’s something that – something – I promise I’ll tell you, but don’t stop doing that.”

He can live with that.

The days pass by, the end of the summer approaching fast. It’s beautiful out here, quiet and peaceful. Luca takes many walks on the estate, with Noah and without him. He cooks, because it is actually an enjoyable thing to do when one has the ingredients, and Noah attempts to teach him to play the violin, which is nothing short of a disaster but more of an opportunity than he’s ever had.

They don’t go out, building a small world of their own on the grounds Noah owns, only interrupted every once in a while by people delivering necessities to the house. Luca can’t help but laugh when he realizes that Noah pretends to be one of his nonexistent servants when he answers the door, tugging on an old coat over his immaculate clothing.

This, in turn, somehow leads to Luca being clothed by an amused Noah, who ‘accidentally’ stabs him with a pin more than once as he attempts to make his own clothes fit better on Luca’s body.

“You’re not that much taller than I am,” Luca protests, looking over his silk-clad shoulder. Noah just pats his lower back and shushes him. “You’re a strange man, Noah Krier.”

“You like that about me,” he says. “And you look amazing in blue.”

Luca has to admit he does both those things.

Still, as the end of August nears, he notices that Noah seems to become paler by the day. He seems anxious as well. It’s nearly the end of the four months. Luca has to know, although he feels as though he probably doesn’t want to.

After a search across the grounds after dinner, when they often go their separate ways for a while, Luca finds Noah in their bedroom, sitting on a chaise longue with his back to the unlit fireplace, looking out of the window at the setting sun. His mind seems miles and miles away, and he only looks up when Luca sits down next to him. A faint smile tugs at his lips when he presses a glass of wine into his hands.

“It’s time,” he says, then takes a large gulp.

“Time for what?”

“Do you know what the date is?”

“August 25,” Luca replies. It’s a date that’s etched into his heart forever, but he doesn’t think Noah knows that.

“It is.” Noah looks at him with tired eyes. “You always ask what happens at the end of the four months, and I owe you an explanation that’s long overdue. I didn’t think… I never thought it would be so difficult.”

Luca waits, sipping his own wine slowly. Perhaps he should have chosen something stronger.

“When I was seventeen, I lost… Everything,” Noah starts. “There was a fire, in the city. Many people died that day.”

Luca’s breath stutters, but he nods. Taking another large gulp of his wine, Noah continues as he stares out of the window again.

“My brother and sister, our parents, they were all lost.”

“But you survived,” Luca says, reaching for him. When Noah’s gaze meets his at last, it’s filled with sorrow.

“I didn’t. Or I shouldn’t have. I don’t know what happened, Luca, but I remember being in my childhood home. It seemed like a dream, and it was empty but for a man I didn’t know. He gave me a choice.”

Noah swallows, and Luca reaches for his free hand, terrified of what he is going to say but knowing he needs to hear it.

“I could go back and he would grant me anything I wanted. For a price.” He bites his lower lip, and his eyes shimmer with tears. “I was so stupid, Luca. I should never have…”

“What did you choose?” Luca asks. “You lived.”

“I lived, in a manner of speaking, but instead of bringing my family back with me, instead of saving everyone who lost their lives that day, I asked for fortune. I shouldn’t even be alive, and all of this…” He shakes his head and gestures with his glass, spilling droplets of wine on the floor and the chaise longue. “It’s worth nothing.”

Luca is shaking, clenching Noah’s fingers. “What was the price?”

“I, Luca, please know I’m not— I wouldn’t—”

“What was the price, Noah?” he snaps.

A deep breath. “I would get ten years on earth, and at the end, I was to compensate by paying with my life.” He pauses, and Luca thinks that perhaps that’s all, but then he finishes, “Or – or the life of someone else. Someone I care about. An equal exchange.”

He looks down at their intertwined hands, tears now streaking down his face, clinging to pale eyelashes.

“So that’s what I am?”

“No, Luca, that’s not what you are.” With visible difficulty, Noah wrenches his gaze back up, flinching at the coldness he must see in Luca’s eyes. “It’s been ten years since that fire, and I haven’t been truly happy during all that time, until I met you. I didn’t deserve to be, and you – you were meant to be nothing more than a barter chip, because that’s what I’d been planning, but, Luca, I… God, I love you.”

“Don’t tell me that,” Luca spits, standing up. His glass shatters on the floor, spilling shards and red liquid over their feet. “You don’t have the right, Noah Krier, when you traded money for your siblings’ lives. For so many lives.”

“Luca—”

“My brother died in that fire! You don’t have the right.”

Noah crumples at that, all light leaving his eyes. Luca bites the inside of his cheek, clenches his fist, but he can feel the tears welling in his own eyes.

“I’m still so selfish,” Noah says, falling off the chaise, dropping to his knees in the mess of glass on the floor. “I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you’d leave. And you should. Just go, Luca. The end of this day will be the end of me, and you should go.”

He wants to. A very large part of him wants to leave Noah to wallow in his selfish misery, but—

“Where would I go?” he asks. “I have nothing, Noah. You’re— All I’ve got now is you. I was twelve when my brother died. I haven’t had anyone since then, and when I think I do, when I finally think that maybe I’ve got something, you take it away.”

“I’m sorry,” Noah whispers. His hair falls into his face; he probably hasn’t had it cut in months. He just looks sad, sitting there with his white pants stained, wringing his hands.

“Was— Was this real?” Luca asks. “Are we—”

“Yes,” he says decisively, looking up. “More real than anything in the past ten years has been.”

Suddenly exhausted, Luca lets himself fall down on the chaise longue, putting his elbows on his knees and resting his face in his hands. He sighs, pushes his hair out of his face.

“I don’t like you right now,” he tells Noah, who nods in understanding. If he has a shred of decency, he probably doesn’t like himself much either. “But I – Noah, I do love you. God help me, I do. I just wish we had more—”

The door to the bedroom bursts open, slamming against the green flowers of the wallpaper, and they both jump.

There is a man there, in the shadowed hall, or at least something that carries the suggestion of a human form. He – it – shifts before Luca’s eyes, it seems. All the evening sunlight bends around it in ways it shouldn’t be able to do. Noah swears under his breath and scrambles to his feet. Luca stands up as well, staying by his side against his better judgment.

“Noah Leclercq,” the figure says, and Luca glances at the man in question with one eye. “Oh, no, it’s Krier now, isn’t it?”

There is a flicker where maybe his face is, like an ice-cold grin. Luca shivers. Involuntarily steps closer to Noah.

“I have come to collect my due reward,” the figure continues. Luca grabs Noah’s arm when it seems as though he wants to take a step towards it. Noah looks at him, gratitude in his eyes, although mixed with surprise.

“And who is this?” the voice, at once grating and impossibly deep, soothing and terrifying, booms.

Holding Noah’s gaze, Luca replies, “I am Luca Rotaru.”

“Luca,” Noah whispers, as if he knows something that Luca is only half-aware of. He reaches up and kisses him once, quick but deep and trying to ignore the looming presence by the door. Noah tastes like salt and wine, and Luca makes up his mind. He swallows and turns to the figure.

“I want to make a deal,” he says. Noah inhales sharply, steps yet closer to Luca, long fingers on his waist.

A sound that could be a chuckle emanates from the shadowy presence. Luca clenches his jaw.

“You want to make a deal?” the maybe-man asks.

“I do.”

“I assume you’ll want me to forfeit my right to Mr Krier’s soul.”

“Luca,” Noah says, “don’t, please.” Luca ignores him.

“I want you to give him time. Give us time.”

“Time, yes.” The figure glides further into the room. Somehow, it seems familiar, looking – feeling – like people Luca has known over the years. Like his boss, the barmaid, like his brother. He tries not to look directly at it. “You think I would do that? I came to burn Noah Krier’s soul as it should have ten years ago.”

Noah makes a small sound of distress.

“Like I burned – oh, like I burned your brother, Mr Rotaru. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have him back than this liar? Pride and gluttony are some of the worst sins, you know.”

“I’ve lived ten years without my brother. I’ve had longer with him.” Luca takes Noah’s hand. “I’ve had scarcely four months with Noah, and I need time. We have things to do.”

“How sweet. You understand the terms, don’t you, Luca Rotaru? Your soul, in exchange for the simple commodity of time.”

“Yes,” Luca says. He looks up at Noah, whose fine hair seems gold in the last remaining sunlight, his eyes made brighter by the green of the room. Despite everything, he looks nearly angelic; a light counterpart to the shifting, shadowy figure by the door.

Noah looks at him too. “I love you,” he whispers.

Luca smiles faintly. Kisses him. Then, he turns to the figure, who’s far closer now, having moved soundlessly. The air is unnaturally still around it.

“Then, it’s time,” it says, with the same lisp that Luca’s brother used to have, “that we shake on it.”

A shape with the suggestion of a hand extracts itself from the main shadows, long and dark and somehow cold. Gritting his teeth, Luca holds his own hand, cleaner than it has been in years, out. He tries to concentrate on Noah beside him, on his breathing and his warmth. They need time. He needs to tell this man he forgives him.

“More time,” says the man-figure, “for you, Luca Rotaru, and for Noah Krier, and then I will burn both of you.”

The ‘hand’ closes around Luca’s in an icy grip.

“Done,” he says, other hand warm in Noah’s.

“Very well. There is, however, one flaw in this plan, Mr Rotaru.” The fireplace lights with a whoosh behind them, and the figure shifts erratically until it seems to take up all the space in the room, soaking up the light and dragging them both in. Luca can’t move. Noah seems to be trying to crush his fingers.

He realizes his mistake at the same time the figure tells him in a thousand voices at once.