Snow (11 page)

"You should go back to the square tomorrow," Alec said abruptly. "You liked that, right?"

"I'm going to have tea with Gladys tomorrow."

"You're free of whatever held you before," Alec said, his voice almost desperate. "You can do whatever you want."

"I know," David said. "Do you want the last piece of gingerbread?"

"I don't understand you," Alec said.

"Yes, you do," David said. "You just don't want to."

Alec stared at him, open-mouthed. After a long silence he said quietly, "I'll get you a chair tomorrow. And some blankets. And a pillow."

Alec didn't own much to cook with. A couple of plates. A handful of utensils. Three cups. A pot.

A tin. A saucer. Everything except the saucer was chipped or dented.

The saucer was painted all over with roses and if you held it up to the light it was made so finely, so delicately, that you could see right through it and the roses looked almost real, shed red light.

It was beautiful. David found it in the very back of the cabinet one afternoon and set it out that night, put it on the table with a piece of gingerbread resting on it and wondered what Alec would say.

Alec didn't say anything, not at first. He stared at it when he sat down, no expression on his face, but David saw a muscle jump in his jaw. Then he picked it up and dumped the gingerbread onto the table, holding the saucer gingerly, like he feared it might break or didn't want to touch it or both.

"Where did you find this?" he said, and his voice was so quiet it was barely a whisper.

"It was in the cabinet," David said. "Way in the back. I thought maybe the people who lived here before left it but--it's yours, isn't it?"

"No," Alec said and pushed away from the table. "Get rid of it. Don't--I don't want to see it again."

David looked at his still face for a moment. "Okay," he said, and took the saucer. He went out into the hallway and knocked on Gladys's door. She didn't answer but he heard her inside, coughing as her bed squeaked over and over. He left it on the floor.

Alec was sitting by the fire eating the gingerbread when he got back. David looked at him, his carefully blank face, his still shaking fingers, and didn't say anything. He knew what it was like to have a memory you didn't want to own.

***

The day David bought the chicken started well enough.

The night before Alec had said, "Potatoes again?" and then, "David, do you know how to make anything else?"

"Well, I can make--"

"Besides gingerbread."

"Then no." He waited for a second, wondering if he should say something else, but Alec was shaking his head and smiling.

"Tomorrow," he said, "when you go to the square, get a chicken. Just put it in the pot with some potatoes--make sure you pluck the chicken first, okay?--and let it cook for a few hours. Maybe throw an onion in or a carrot. Easy enough. Right?"

David nodded. It sounded easy.

He bought the chicken from a girl in the square. She was tall and thin with ale-brown hair and painted patterned hands like women in the castle used to have, decorations to show their fingers, highlight the curve of their wrists. But when she said, "Want me to do the butchering for you?"

He realized what the dark spatters on her hands were. He looked at the chicken. It stared placidly back at him from the crook of her arm.

"No," he said faintly.

She gave him a look. "Just a quick chop to the neck if you can't wring it yourself. Sharper the knife the better, and mind you, make sure you've got space, because they do like to run around a bit after." She clucked her tongue at something she saw in his face and said, "You sure you don't want me to do it? Won't take but a moment."

David shook his head and took the chicken home. When he got there he put it on the floor and got out the pot. The chicken looked at him, looked at the pot, and went back to wandering around the floor, scratching at it occasionally.

By mid-afternoon David had learned that chickens didn't like being put in pots, that they scratched, and that when they had to go to the bathroom they went, even if the spot they'd picked was in the middle of the floor right where you'd left a plate of cooling gingerbread.

He picked up the chicken as the sun started to set and looked at it. He put his hands around its neck. It flapped its wings uselessly, trying to move away from his suddenly very cold hands. Its eyes were placid, small and stupid. He took it outside, holding it gingerly, and let it go.

One of the miners found it. David heard a cry of "Look here!" as they began to trickle in, returning home. "Found myself a chicken just wandering around out in the street. Luck is shining on me today!"

"Wandering around in the street?" Alec's voice.

"I swear by all the saints. Must have gotten away from a nodding housegirl, eh?"

Alec laughed. He was still laughing when he came in.

"So I guess we'll be going out to dinner," he said.

"I didn't know I'd have to kill it," David said. "I can't--I don't want to do that."

Alec started to say something, the smile still on his face, but as he looked at David his smile faded. "You can get fish tomorrow," he said quietly. "Already cleaned and ready to cook. I'll show you where after we eat."

David nodded. "Thank you," he said softly.

"Sure," Alec said. "So where's the gingerbread?"

***

David tried to do laundry a few days later. He was able to handle the washing part well enough--

he purchased soap at the square, a creamy white bar that smelled nice and lathered up thick suds when he rubbed it over Alec's clothes -- and rinsing them was easy. But he wasn't sure about drying them and after an hour draped over a chair they were still dripping on the floor. David pulled the chair a little closer to the fire and then a little closer still. And then Gladys came and knocked on the door and had biscuits shaped like stars and by the time David got back it was dark and Alec's clothes were decidedly dry, his pants speckled with tiny holes, round blistered burns.

"Oh no," he said, staring miserably at them, thinking of how few things Alec owned and how he'd ruined one of them, and the fire sputtered and hissed and then froze over, shattering on the floor. Out in the hall he could hear the returning miners muttering about how it had suddenly gotten cold, like it might snow. Alec came in and looked at the shattered pieces of the fire on the floor, at the pile of his clothes next to it, and then at him.

"Hey," he said softly. "What happened?"

David handed him his pants.

Alec looked at them for a moment. When he looked back up at David the gentle expression on his face made David's heart skip a beat.

"You know what?" he said. "I never liked these pants anyway." He climbed up into the loft, opened the window and tossed the pants out. He turned back and the smile on his face made David laugh delightedly. Alec's grin grew wider and he said, "Let's go out. I'll buy you an ale and dinner."

"Really?"

"Sure," Alec said. "All you have to do is promise you won't ever do my laundry again."

David laughed again and the ice on the floor began to melt.

Alec disappeared when they were at the tavern. One moment he was sitting across from him, laughing as David told him why he'd forgotten to check on the clothes, shaking his head and saying, "Biscuits shaped like stars?" and the next he'd pushed away from the table, a stricken and almost panicked looked on his face, and said, "I'll pay the bill. You go on back," before he disappeared into the crowd.

David didn't leave. He saw Alec talking to a fat man wrapped in a heavy cloak in the corner, watched as the man rose and pushed his way to the door, Alec following close behind. He took a deep breath and followed.

Outside Alec was standing in the alley, the fat man next to him.

"This? Won't buy but two lungfuls. You'll be back here before you know it," the fat man said. "It really all you got?"

"No, I have six invisible bits here too. What do you think?"

"I think," the fat man said slowly, pausing to spit on the ground, "that instead of two lungfuls, you just talked yourself into one."

"Fine," Alec said sharply. "Just give over already. All it has to do is last long enough for me to go back in and drink enough to forget about going home."

"Grief waiting there?" the fat man said.

"Something like that," Alec muttered, mouth set into a thin tight twist. David heard a shifting crackle under his feet and looked down to see ice blooming across the street stones. He thought about walking back, about sitting and waiting and how, when Alec finally returned, he'd think of things to say and not say them, be afraid to. He was good at waiting, at not asking questions, at not asking for anything. He'd done it all his life.

He wanted to know what had made Alec leave. He wanted to know enough to ask. He went back inside.

When Alec came back his eyes looked different, gone glazed over and lost. He stood looking at him for a moment and then smiled like he never had before, open and sunny and warm. "Always strange to see you looking like you actually want to see me," he said, and sat back down. He tilted his head to one side. "Talking about biscuits and for a moment I forgot you'll go." He closed his eyes and then opened them again. "I should be somewhere else now."

"Why did you leave like that?" David said, and his voice only shook a little.

Alec ignored him and leaned across the table. Up close his eyes were odd looking, filmed with what looked like thousands of tiny wiggling creatures, and he smelled like strange pungent smoke, spicy and bitter.

"Wormwood," David said slowly, thinking of the night he'd spent in the square, of the old woman with her shaking hands and rusty knife and desperate voice. The things in Alec's eyes twitched and swam sideways, then flipped over.

"If you aren't here I can do this," Alec said in a whisper, and rubbed a thumb across David's wrist. It was the first time Alec had touched him, really touched him, since the night he'd said David could come live with him, and it felt good. It felt better than good. He wanted to ask Alec why again but all he managed was a soft sound, a plea.

"I knew you'd sound like that," Alec said and something in his voice, his smile, made David shiver. Alec saw it and smiled more, linked their fingers together and tugged him up. "Come on,"

he said, and tossed a handful of coins down on the table.

Outside he put one hand on David's back, fingers brushing along the line of his spine. David froze, breath catching, and turned toward him, stopping in the middle of the street. Alec was a dark shadow next to him, his face impossible to see, but his hand curved lower, a caress that turned David closer.

"You're going to disappear," Alec said. "Any minute now."

"I am?" David said, confused, and Alec's fingers were still moving, sliding softly across his back, his other hand coming to rest on David's arm. David let himself touch in return, one hand sliding up Alec's shoulder and around the back of his neck, coming to rest on the warm skin that lay just above his collar.

"I see you in the rocks," Alec said, and his voice had gone lilting, dreamy. "There you are, in the clump of purple over there. But I don't want to be in the mines. I'm leaving." He closed his eyes and then opened them again. "I'm in the cart. I'm far away. But you're sitting next to me. How did you do that? Why won't you leave? I know you will."

"I don't want to," David said, and Alec's mouth brushed against his lightly, a teasing slide.

"Why?" He could feel the word, Alec's lips shaping it against him, a hint of the taste of his mouth, ale-sweetness cut with a bitter ash tang.

"You," David breathed and Alec's mouth opened against his and his hands pulled him close. He was still talking, murmuring words into David's mouth, and David was shaking all over, straining toward Alec.

"Please," he said, and Alec pushed him back against a wall, breathed hotly into his ear. "Want you," he said, voice slurred, and kissed him again when David shuddered. Then he froze, one hand sliding up under David's shirt and stroking along his stomach.

"David?" he said quietly and David shifted a little, moving to rub against Alec, and Alec let out a strangled, shocked sound.

"David," he said again, and his voice was urgent, strained. David opened his eyes. Alec was staring at him. The film of wriggling things covering his eyes was gone and they were clear, startled. He moved the hand that was resting on David's stomach a little, fingers flying away when David arched into the touch.

"I thought--" he said, and moved his other hand away, took two, then three careful steps back.

"You're here."

David nodded.

"Shit," Alec said and the word was loud and edged with something wild, sharp. "You didn't leave. I told you to leave."

"I didn't want to."

Alec closed his eyes. When he finally opened them his face was carefully blank. "I'm sorry," he said carefully. "Did I--did I hurt you?"

David shook his head. Alec walked back with him in silence but didn't come in and when David turned around to ask him why Alec was gone, faded into the night.

He didn't come home until morning and when he did he didn't say anything, just splashed water on his face and then changed his shirt in the faint light of the fading moon and the slowly waking sun. When he was done he looked over at David.

"I'm not sorry about last night," David said carefully, heart pounding in his chest. He'd never said something like that to anyone. Before Alec all he'd had in his life were things to be sorry for.

Alec's expression didn’t change but David saw something flare, briefly, in his eyes. It was too dark for him to tell what it was.

"I am," he said quietly, and then he was gone again.

That night David expected awkwardness. He pictured a silent Alec, a strained meal. He bathed and washed glittering dust from his stomach. It had left a faint red scratch behind. He touched it, tracing where Alec's hands had been. He pictured--deep down and in a place he didn't know existed, not the dark place that called him before with his brother and sister but something deeper, sweeter--Alec turning to him like he had last night. He waited for night to fall.