Before Ever After (17 page)

“Death consumes everything I care about, Uri,” the Basilisk said, “and all I can do is stand by and watch its slow feast.”

“What are you talking about, Captain?”

“My family. I am here while everyone I have loved is gone. All these years I have wanted nothing more than to join them. But …”

“But what?”

“I grew tired of waiting.”

“For what, Captain?”

“Death,” the Basilisk said. “So I decided to seek it out.” He let out a heavy sigh. “I have led more men to battle—to their deaths—than I can even remember. But war was comforting, at least for a while. Feeling my pike tear through my enemy’s flesh and hearing it scrape against their bones made me feel … 
alive.
”

Uri nodded. He remembered how he had never wanted to live more than when he stood in front of an enemy’s pike. “I understand.”

“But the desire to live would always pass,” the Basilisk said. “Each
time I won the right to live, I stared with envy into the eyes of the man I had killed and wished …”

“That it was you who was going home instead.”

“Yes.”

Home
. Uri closed his eyes. The word fell like a pebble into a well. It plunged through the stillness in his mind. Splash. His thoughts stirred, catching reflections of a reality he had chosen to forget. They grew stronger, swelling into a clarity that lapped at the edges of his painted peace. Paint dripped on his cheek. “My boys … they didn’t welcome me when I came home …”

The Basilisk took a deep breath. “No, they didn’t.”

“Why, Captain?” Tears streamed down his cheeks, washing away his world. “Why were they taken from me? After all the sacrifices, all the blood I spilled for them … my sweet boys …”

The Basilisk nodded.

“And Esther …”

“Is alive,” the Basilisk said. “She has been waiting for you to come home to her. Go home while you still can, Uri.”

“Home. Yes, you are right, Captain. I must hurry home.” Uri looked at the painted picture of his farmhouse. Madness and reality lapped over it, swirling into visions of muddy graves, empty supper bowls, and blood. He tried to open the door in the haze. It would not move. He needed to break it down. His children were calling for him from beyond his painted world. He needed his pike. Where was it? He looked at his wooden brush. He pressed the sharpened edge to his chest and called to his boys, “Wait for me! Papa’s coming home!” He pushed himself off the scaffolding and fell on the brush’s point. The hay turned red beneath him.

“Uri!” The Basilisk rushed to his side, but once again he was too late. Uri had left him.

The Basilisk cradled Uri in his arms and wept as Uri had for his sons. He stared up at the painted ceiling and through his salty grief he saw the barn for what it really was. It was a tomb long before Uri had died in it. He looked into Uri’s glassy eyes and saw his own amber eyes staring back
at him. He watched his tears fall for the things long gone, a home as empty and imagined as Uri’s painted world. The Basilisk died at the sight of its reflection.

At dawn, a rooster crowed and the captain walked out of the barn. But before he left, he took the bloodied brush from Uri’s hands. What he could not give Uri in life, he would give him in death. He climbed up on the scaffolding and painted a myth over Uri’s madness. When he was done, he wrapped Uri’s fingers around a black rooster’s feather, leaving him the only dignity he could.

D
ex’s snoring punctured the quiet in the barn, but that was not what kept Shelley awake. The Basilisk did. She could not stop thinking about him. Uri had found peace. She wondered if his captain had ever found the same. She hoped so. She searched the ceiling for him. She made out the outline of wings in the darkness. She could not see his eyes, but she felt their loneliness. She rolled to her side. Another set of amber eyes met hers.

“Jesus, Max. I thought you were sleeping. How long have you been awake?”

“A while.”

“I can’t sleep, either. I have a hard time falling asleep when I’m away from home.”

“Me, too.”

“But you’re a tour guide! How do you ever get enough sleep, then?”

“I don’t. It’s better that way.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like dreaming.”

“Nightmares?”

“No. I … dream about home.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“It’s not,” Max said. “It just makes it difficult to … wake up.”

“Oh, well, um, go easy on the Swiss soup before bedtime, then. I heard that it can give you a bad case of homesickness.”

Max chuckled. “I’m glad you’re awake, luv. It’s nice to hear another voice in the dark. Especially a voice that makes me laugh. I don’t think I’ve ever even smiled inside this barn until tonight.” He leaned closer and tucked a lock of Shelley’s hair behind her ear.

Shelley inhaled sharply and caught the scent of a rare evening, the kind of warm night when the most important thing you had to do was lie on freshly cut grass and count stars. And maybe eat jellybeans. She closed her eyes and filled her lungs with the scent of Max. She sighed, reluctant to release him.

“May I ask you something, luv?”

“Sure. Anything.”

“Do you regret the kiss?”

“Why? Do you?” Shelley held her breath.

“Yes.”

She was grateful for the darkness. It hid the pain burning in her eyes.

“I … I regret that I didn’t kiss you back.”

Her heart stopped. “You know, Max, it’s not good to have regrets.”

“I agree.”

Shelley closed her eyes and brought her lips closer to his.

“I can’t.” Max pulled away. “Not here. Not in this … place.”

She turned from him, embarrassed by her eagerness.

He sat up and ran his hand over her leg.

Shelley felt the sparks through her pajamas.

He whispered in her ear, “But there is something else I’d like to do …”

She told herself to breathe. The technique looked easy enough in her cousin’s Lamaze video.
Hee hee hoooooo
.

Max’s fingers glided down her thigh. His palm was warm around her naked ankle.

Hee hee hoooooo
. Shelley grabbed the blanket to stifle her imminent moans. “What … what would you like to do, Max?”

“Well, if you aren’t ticklish …” He grinned. “I’d be happy to give you a foot rub.” He kissed her big toe and pressed his thumbs into her sole.

P
aolo remained silent, and Shelley had a feeling that it wasn’t because he had a hard time picturing his nonno massaging her toes. She wasn’t in the mood to talk, either. Thinking of her husband as the bloodthirsty basilisk made her stomach turn. She was sure that if she opened her mouth, she was going to throw up. She heard Paolo taking a deep breath.

“Shelley, this will sound strange, but of all the things I’ve discovered about Nonno so far, accepting him as the Basilisk has been the most difficult … and the easiest,” Paolo said.

“What?” She choked. “You’re kidding, right? Unless he chased you around with a pike when you were a kid, I cannot, for the life of me, understand why you would feel that way.”

“No, I didn’t spend my childhood running away from pikes.” He almost smiled. Instead, his lips quivered, and he seemed to have difficulty regaining control of them. “But I did have other adventures. A boy can go many places and see many things sitting on his grandfather’s lap. Nonno told me stories, Shelley. Many, many stories.”

“Your point?” she said.

“He told me they were fairy tales, fables. But even as a boy I sensed there was something different in Nonno’s stories from the ones I read in books. Now I realize what it was.”

Shelley watched Paolo wrestle with the muscles in his face. They twitched beneath his skin as he struggled to keep them set in the calm and smooth lines she had grown used to.

“They were real, Shelley. Nonno yearned for those places and the
people in them. I could hear his longing in every word.” Tears crept into his voice. “He missed them, the way I missed him when he died.”

She sat helplessly as Paolo let his tears fall.

“That’s why I didn’t go back to Italy after Nonno died,” he said. “I couldn’t. Like him, like the Basilisk, I had nothing to go home to.”

Shelley watched him sob, unsure whether to hold him or run away. Since she met Paolo, she had fought hard to ignore how much he reminded her of Max. His eyes. His laugh. Even the way he smelled. But now that battle was lost. In this moment of vulnerability, he and Max could not have been more alike. She looked at Paolo through her own tears. His face blurred, swirling and changing into different men who shared the same pain. The Basilisk. The captain. Nonno. Max. She reached for Paolo’s hands. They were warm, just as Max’s had been. She held them tight, no longer able to deny that the hands that had once wielded a pike were the same hands that had kneaded the balls of her feet into oblivion every night.

Y
ou certainly work magic with eggs, Max.” Jonathan helped himself to the remnants of scrambled eggs.

Shelley was disappointed that Jonathan had beaten her to the morsels. They were almost as fluffy as the cloud she floated on when she woke up in Max’s arms. She consoled herself with another slice of
zopf
. She slathered the golden plaited bread with butter and marmalade.

“That’s the real reason why we look forward to his visits,” Josef said.

“And I thought it was my charming personality that kept me welcome all these years,” Max said.

“So where are we headed to next, Max?” Dex asked.

“I trust that you are all familiar with the Fountain of Youth?” Max asked.

“The one Ponce de León was searching for in Florida?” Simon asked.

“I’m no whiz in geography, but I think Florida would be quite a detour for a European road trip,” Brad said.

“Indeed.” Max grinned. “But while Ponce de León went looking for the secret of eternal youth, we are going in search of the opposite. And for that, campers, we shall have to make our way to Austria.”