Another fic! 'Le Bel Endormi dans la Tour', or.....
'The Sleeping Beauty in the Tower'.
Wheeeee!
This is the story i wrote ages ago, the one that made me want to do the j2_everafter challenge. It's not 'officially' part of that, but since i'd mostly finished it by the time we actually got our prompts...here it is!
I loved writing this. I love this fic. It was so *fun*, in style and structure, to bring to life. I hope you enjoy!
darkhavens, of course, guided me to grammatical and structural perfection, and sweptawaybayou infused me with glee by her enthusiastic reactions. And moimoietmoi was most kind in helping me to get the correct title. So thank you, all of you!
And now....
The house and tower stood upon a hill overlooking the sea, ringed round and about with a hedge of dense briar. They had stood so for longer than anyone could recall, and only the pale-slate roof could be seen from the village at the foot of the hill, shining like river water in the blued air of twilight.
To this tower, at intervals, came champions and heroes, and knights upon caparisoned horses. Most slunk away in the grey light of dawn, battered and bloody, tattered by thorns. Some few did not come away at all, and their bones stayed behind, twined about by the canes of the briars, polished by the wind and the beaks of ravens.
At the heart of the tower - or so the story said - was a prince. It was told that he had been blessed with wit and grace, a fair singing voice and sloe, jade eyes. Compassion, joy, and beauty, all dandled down to his waving, baby hands while his doting parents looked on.
But, as the sun has the moon and fire has ice, so all blessings must be leavened with a curse. And so was his. Out of spite, and wounded pride, his second-to-last birth-gift was this: when he reached his majority, he would tear himself on a distaff, heart-wound that would kill him in an instant.
Distraught, the party sought to undo this terrible curse, but no way could be found. Until his grandmother, using a final bit of magic from the hoarded remains of her dowry, changed it. Spun gold from dross, or as close as she could. Instead of death, it would be sleep. And only true love's kiss could wake him.
His parents then decreed that all distaffs must be outlawed, and burned upon a fire before midsummer. And though kings and queens are powerful, and rules whose breaking could bring the head-man's axe made even the strongest shudder, all rules, as eggs, must break from time to time. And so the prince's blood was spilt upon the bone-fine, polished spindle of a spinning distaff, and he fell to sleep (perchance to dream).
And slept on, though others died to wake him.
And this is where our story begins.
On the fading edge of a bonfire autumn, a man came to the tower by the sea. He rode a fine chestnut stallion, and he wore rich clothing, but no armor. He carried a sword at his side, and also a pouch made of some thick and heavy stuff that shimmered oddly in the antique-gold light. He rode through the village without a look to this side or that, and up the twisting track that was all that was left of the fine, wide road that had once led to the tower. There were five rings on his hands, and a linked chain of copper, gold and silver 'round his throat. His hair was the same rich red-gold as his horse's coat, and his cloak flowed behind him like water, too thin for the chilly day.
As he rode, he lifted his chin to study the hill, and the tower, and the ring of briars that hid it. In summer, gulls and terns and skimmers made their home in the cliffs below the tower, raucous and lively as the spray they danced through. Only ravens flocked there now, circling and wheeling, the black lines of their wings sketching across the curling gold-grey clouds.
The man rode steadily - easily. Bending occasionally to avoid low-slung branches, letting his horse pick his path around bushes and rotting logs, wash outs and rocks. Eventually he came to the crest of the track, and there it widened and smoothed out, abruptly remembering what it had been. Earth gave way to stone that rang softly under the horse's iron shoes, and the air seemed to shiver. The man straightened in the saddle and carefully worked open the complicated knot that held the pouch shut at his hip. Once the silky-strange stuff had fallen open, he dipped carefully inside and then drew out his fist, something clutched in it. He closed his eyes for a moment and then lifted his fist to his lips. His lips moved, forming words that were mere breaths on the air, and then he spread his hand flat and blew.
A dust spiraled out from his palm, as weightless and gleaming as a cobweb, spinning out and out. The dust struck the hedge of briars and the canes sprang back. An avenue was now open, wide as two carriages and about as long. The man's heels touched his horse's sides and the horse stepped forward, ears pricked and eyes wide.
Again, he took out a fistful of dust and again, the briars parted. As he rode further down the avenue, the light began to change. It went from the brassy chill of near-winter to the thick, honeyed light of summer. The briars themselves changed, from black and iron-hard to a curling, springing green.
About halfway through, the man was forced to rein his horse aside to avoid the jack-straw tumble of bones and armor that clattered to the stones when the briars moved away. He made a small motion with his hand, heart to lips to brow. A warding, and a blessing.
Eventually, the last of the canes had rustled away, and the horse stepped beyond the hedge, and into summer. The light lay like a fuzz over everything, golden and soft. It pooled in puddles around the water pump, and hung in calcified fingers from the eaves. A bird was caught and held, mid-flight, and the man reached up and touched with one finger the downy white of its belly. A good-sized house, four stories and rambling, enclosed three sides of a fountained courtyard. Beyond and above, part of some older, long-gone structure, rose the tower. The man studied it, his fingers working to close the pouch, and then he rode forward again.
Bees hovered over tubs and beds of flowers, and a procession of women and men, decked in flowers and sprays of wheat, made a colorful frieze across the courtyard floor. The man rode around them - rode his horse to the foot of the wide, stone steps that led inside. There, he dismounted and went in.
Again, there was light, everywhere. Spangled candles that gleamed in shadow like tiny stars, and great chunks of sunlight like ice over the rushes that strewed the floor. Fresh bundles of lavender and meadowsweet had been added, as well, but no scent rose from them as the man trod over them on his way through.
It was obvious that a wedding party had been in progress. There were tables laid with starched linen and gold plate, and arches of ivy and flowers tied up over the first table, framing seats of honor. The man walked through all this without a second glance, going in - going up.
He trod stairs made of stone and of wood - he trod halls and floors covered in rushes and in rugs and in cut wood planks, scrubbed near-white. He trod, at last, upon the crumbling mortar of the old tower and as his foot touched the bottom-most stair, he seemed to falter for the first time. But then he went up - and up - and up again, one hundred stairs pierced by wedges of flaming light until at last he reached the top.
Here there was a round room, its roof arched and carved, its floor laid with hand-knotted rugs that had come from some far land. In the center of the room was a catafalque, richly draped with costly velvets edged in gilt. The light here was not golden, but filtered - transformed. It came through many high, round windows and it was apple-green and tidal blue, ink, rose and flame. Several people - servants, holy men - knelt in the bars of it, like icons from a church wall. Two, their hair touched with grey and their faces lined with an infinite, unending grief, knelt closest, gazes and hands fastened upon the figure that lay before them.
It - he - was also draped, in a shroud of fine linen, and the man stepped carefully between the kneeling father and mother - for that is what they were - and flung the shroud off, one wide, sweeping gesture that was swallowed by the static weight of the air, the room. The figure beneath the shroud lay still, drowned in the smoldering colors of the windows, lips and brow, chin and nails edged in various colors. The man leaned over him, so close. One finger coming up, again, to touch. Ever so gently, he brushed across the pale jut of a cheekbone, and the fine strands of dark hair that lay smoothly away from the unlined forehead.
His other hand lifted and he worked at one of the five rings he wore, until the cabochon there sprang up, revealing a hollow beneath. He tipped his hand, and a fine glitter of dust poured out and down - poured past the barely-parted lips of the man on the catafalque. He closed the ring and then he bent closer still, and put his mouth to the figure's mouth. He breathed in deeply through his nose, and then breathed out through his lips. Breathed into the mouth, the throat, the lungs of the man beneath him, and the man - opened his eyes.
They were of an uncertain color in the spangled gloom, dark and wide, and the man stood back. The figure stared upward - blinked once. Then he breathed out, an exhalation of dust and light and perfume, something almost alive as it swirled up and away. Like a soundless, deafening crash of thunder, time - which had stopped when the figure had stopped - began again. The man - a sorcerer, as is plain to see - held out his hand.
"We must go, your highness. Now."
The man's hand lifted, shaking - uncertain. The sorcerer took it with care, and tugged him upward. As he did, the man's clothing cascaded from him in a river of dust and threads, until he stood naked, his skin furred with the dust of years. It was caught in his lashes, gold-green-blue, and in his hair like the nap on velvet. He looked down, and saw his parents' kneeling forms - reached for them with the instinctive, thoughtless need of the child.
At his touch, they lifted their heads - saw him - and crumbled to dust. The sound that came from the man's lips was raw and terrible, and the sorcerer slipped his cloak from his shoulders and draped it around the man - fastened it snugly.
"I'm sorry - the spell held you all as you had been, but only you were to wake. For the rest, they are to go into time's maw, and we cannot stop it." The man's face - flawless, untouched, agonized - was streaked now with two quicksilver traces, and the sorcerer did not touch them. "Come - we must go."
As they reached the foot of the stairs - the man leaning on the sorcerer's shoulder, shaking - the tower quaked above them, and the ravens screamed. In the courtyard, men and women fell to dust, and birds, flowers, trees. The roof of the house gaped, the doors hung askew and the dry fountain was cracked, now, and drifted with dry leaves. The horse stood patiently, and the sorcerer helped the man climb into the saddle - swung up behind him and gathered the reins. By the gate, the apple tree that was hung with the first small, hard, green fruits of the season withered before their eyes - dropped leaves and grew taller, hunched against the wind. The booming sound of the sea was suddenly audible as it rushed and crashed on the beach below, and the autumn sun, tawny lion, dipped below the dusky horizon, sending shadow like a curtain across them.
The man shuddered, his face in his hands, his body wracked by soundless sobs, and the sorcerer shook up the reins, pressed his heels into the horse's side, and rode.
Jared was called the woodcutter, but he did much more than that. He lived alone in a cottage in the woods, with three slot-eyed goats, a little covey of chickens and a mangle-eared tom. Some whispered he had a touch of Giant in his bloodline, because the woodcutter was passing tall. But all agreed he was a truly gentle and happy man, ever willing to lend a hand to clearing a field, raising a roof, or catching a runaway cow.
Indeed, on this night, Jared was returning from a long day of just such work. The heavy snow had brought down a tree onto the Widow Ferris' roof, and he and four other men had spent the day cutting it apart and repairing her thatch. In return, she had fed them all heartily with pottage and goat milk, and given them each a crock of good honey from her hive. Now the woodcutter was returning home, pushing himself through the knee-high snow of the woods, bundled in cloak and mittens and hood.
It was mid-winter, and the woods were still and diamond-bright under the gibbous moon. The snow creaked and groaned beneath the woodcutter's feet, and he hugged his cloak tighter to him and tucked his head down. No wind tonight, and the air seemed as sharp and clear as a pane of ice - as cuttingly cold. The woodcutter longed to be home, his back aching and hands sore, but his belly was warm from the Widow's mess, and he carried in his heart her smiling thanks - the press of her callused hands in his.
'The Widow isn't so old she couldn't marry again,' John Weaver had said, sly little wink and a grin behind his thick beard. 'She'd keep you warmer than that mangy cat of yours.'
And, indeed, the Widow Ferris was a pleasing woman, accomplished and clever. She owned a very wide and sumptuous bed for which Jared had carved a tall headboard. She owned a fine chest lined with cedar, many pewter dishes, a crumple-horned cow, and a bullock to pull her cart. But Jared's heart didn't warm when he looked on her, no more than it would at a loved Aunt, so he had only smiled and shaken his head - taken the next bundle of thatch and begun to tie it down.
Now he put all that aside and listened, because something was in the woods with him. He had stopped beside a narrow-trunked tree, one hand on the bark to steady himself, breathing softly through his nose and pushing his hood back a little, so he could hear better. So he could hear the strange little sound that had stopped him in his tracks. It was an animal noise, low, desperate and unending, and the woodcutter wondered if it was a wounded fox, or wolf. He put his hand on the hilt of his long knife and walked carefully forward.
Ahead, at a bend in the buried track, was a fallen evergreen, the dead branches thick with snow. Some had been shaken bare, and there was a dark scrape along one side, where snow had been churned by paws or a body, exposing the wet needles and earth. Jared sniffed once, then twice, but there was no rank smell of wolf or bear - no musk of animal at all, only snow and earth and cold that crinkled in his nose. He went forward slowly - carefully. Crouched down and listened, and now the sound was clearer. It was someone crying. Sobbing, really - the exhausted, breathless grizzle of a child who has been left alone too long, and Jared felt his heart turn over in sympathy and anguish.
He went to his knees, pushing - lifting the crackling branches, ignoring the snow that spattered down on his shoulders, sliding off his cloak. He looked into the strange little den under the fallen tree, the moonlight coming through like silver mist, lighting the shape that lay there, curled and tucked in on itself. A man, dressed in clothing too light for mid-winter, and too fine for the forest. Thin slippers that were tattered, fine woolen breeches that had not withstood the curving hooks of brambles, a linen shirt that hung, too large, off a thin and shivering frame.
"Man, I'll help you if you come out to me. I live near by," Jared said, and the man lifted his head, turning to look almost blindly toward the woodcutter's voice. There was dirt smudged on his face - twigs and needles and leaves caught in his hair. A gaunt face with silver tracks of tears that shone in the misty light, and Jared held out his hand. "Please come out."
"I'm lost," the man said, ragged and tear-husky voice trembling in his throat. "Please, I can't find home...."
"I know. I'll help you," Jared said, and the man finally reached out his own hand, dirty and too thin and as cold as the snow, and put it in Jared's own. "I'll help you get home."
For three days, the woodcutter nursed the stranger. A sickness was on him, and Jared bundled him in blankets and sheepskins, close to the fire. Burned twists of aromatic herbs to ease his rasping breaths and poured endless spoonfuls of thin broth through his pale, chapped lips. The stranger's skin was hot and tight with fever, and the woodcutter bathed his limbs and face with a wet cloth in the hopes of making it break. The man whimpered and twisted away, his dull eyes coming half open, his thin fingers pushing without strength, and Jared shushed him as he would a restive horse, hissing softly between his teeth, until the man drifted to sleep again.
The scrapes and tears from his adventures held a little heat, and Jared worked into them the salve that Madam Lora made, knowing it would sting, but knowing it must be done. Jared also bathed his poor, torn feet and covered them with the salve, wrapping them in rags. Jared's tom - he called him Bear - came and went, uneasy with this new person in his home, sneezing at the sharp scent of the salve.
In the times when the man would restlessly sleep, Jared was busy. He was by nature a man who did not like to be idle, and so his restless fingers had been tempted to woodcarving as a child, when his father had given him a knife and a stick of wood, and told him to make it pretty. Five days later he had, and the wood had got into his soul, then - into his veins and his bones - so that he never was without a little knife, a bit of wood, again.
This time, however, he wasn't carving but sewing. From his stores, he had chosen heavy boar's hide, and from this he had cut a pattern for the lower legs. From softer buck hide, he had made feet. In the long hours of the man's fretful, fevered sleep, Jared sewed him boots. He lined the inside with the softest rabbit skins and tufts of felted wool, so that the man would be able to walk on his bruised feet. In three days time he had them nearly done, and was sure they would fit perfectly.
Late on the third night, when Jared was lying curled against the man's back, wound in his own blankets and sleeping not at all, the man gave a sudden shiver and then a long sigh, turning. Jared sat up, anxiously looking, but the man's face was bathed in sweat, and his breathing was easy. The fever had finally broken, and Jared sank back down, letting out his own sigh of relief. At last, the man was getting better.
In the morning, Jared woke first, and went out the half-mile walk to the spring, where he broke the ice and dipped up two bucketfuls of water. He also knelt and briskly washed his face, grinning at the fierce tingle and how alive it made him feel. He ran a handful of the aching-cold water back through his hair, and then hoisted the buckets up, the wooden yoke fitting his shoulders smoothly.
His cottage was half-buried in snow, smoke curling blue-white from the stick-and-daub chimney. Jared gave the goats' water and hay, and turned their bedding and milked the nanny. He searched for and found that day's ration of eggs - five - and scattered grain for the rooster and his small harem. Then he went inside with the second bucket of water, blinking in the change from bright sun to shadowed house. The man was sitting up in his nest of bedding, pale and drawn and haggard, but a shaft of sunlight touched his forehead, making his skin seem to glow and his eyes to gleam like polished stones in the river, and Jared had never seen anyone so beautiful before in his life.
"Hello," the man said, and his voice was rough and tired-sounding; thin, as the man was. Jared put the buckets down and went to the hearth, holding his hands out to the fire.
"Hello. I'm Jared, the woodcarver. I found you in the snow, and nursed you."
"I...thank you. I'm sorry, I'm lost." He looked so sad - so very much like a small child, though his shoulders had the breadth of adulthood, and there were fine lines beside his eyes.
"I know - you told me the night I found you. I'll help you get home, if I can." Jared crouched down, closer to the man - trying not to tower over him so, and frighten him. "What's your name?"
The man looked down at his hands - at nails that were ragged and torn, at wrists that were too thin. He seemed ashamed of them, and curled them into the sheepskin. "My name's Jensen."
"Hello," Jared said again, smiling, and Jensen looked up. Looked at the hand held out to him and slowly reached out. Jared clasped his forearm, and Jensen did the same, and they held on for one moment, Jensen's hand warm through the wool of Jared's sleeve, Jared's hand nearly circling the thin arm. Jensen smiled shyly back, and Jared let him go. "Where are you from?"
"I can't...I don't...." Jensen shook his head slightly, biting his lip. "I remember the sea," Jensen said, and his voice faltered a little. His dark eyes seemed to swim for a moment with tears, but then he blinked and they were dry, dry and wide open. "I think it must be far from here."
"Someone in the village may know."
Jensen only nodded, looking so exhausted and so sad that Jared wanted to do something - anything - to make him smile. To make him happy. "Are you hungry? Do you want to eat?"
"Yes, please."
"All right," Jared said. He stood up and swung the cooking pot a little closer to the fire, to warm the porridge he had made the night before. He took down the crock of the Widow Ferris' honey, and his two bowls, and the one fine pewter and one wooden spoon. Then he strained the goat's milk and set it in the cool spot up under the eaves, and took down the crock from the day before, which was half-empty. He unwrapped the loaf of bread and laid it on the table, as well, and smiled to see everything so tidy and good. He turned to his guest, and held out his hand.
"Come sit at the table, and have some milk, and bread and honey. The porridge will warm in a few minutes, and I'll cook the eggs."
"Thank you," Jensen said. He put his hand in Jared's and stood, and the bedding all fell away, and again, Jared could only stare, losing his manners and all his good sense as the sunlight warmed the man's skin to a pale, mellow gold, and lit the fine hairs on his thighs to russet-brown. Jensen only stood there, unknowing or uncaring, and Jared swung his own cloak off, warm from his exertions, and put it around Jensen's shoulders.
"You'll be sick again, Jensen," Jared said, chiding in his mother's voice.
Jensen blushed, faint and all over, and tugged the cloak closer around him. He moved in slow and shaky steps to the table and sat down, and Jared cut him a slice of bread - smeared honey across it and watched him until he took a bite. The smile of pure, hungry bliss was enough for Jared, and he cut more bread, and poured the milk, and stirred the porridge, feeling quite happy. Jensen seemed happy, too, watching Jared as he moved about, smiling just a little, his lips and fingers sticky with honey, his brown hair like a hedgehog's quills.
"In two days I have to go into the village, to see the smith. You should come, and we'll speak to Madam Lora. She knows...things. I'm sure she can discover where your home is," Jared said, scouring the breakfast bowls with water and sand, crouched down by the hearth.
"Oh," Jensen said. He was sitting in the sunlight again, on the end of the bench nearest the fire. Blinking sleepily and Jared only gazed at him, wondering why he felt as small and sad as that word had sounded.
"But she may not," Jared said, hastily, and then bit his lip. Jensen gazed back, his shoulders drooping, and Jared frowned and stood up. "You've been sick. You should rest. Come and lay down again and sleep."
"All right," Jensen said, his rough voice so faint, moving slowly to do as Jared said. He curled himself up in Jared's cloak and the sheepskins, and turned his face to the fire and slept almost immediately. Jared went away to his workbench and found something small and quiet to do, humming under his breath. Wishing, with a fierce intensity that rather startled him.
But wishes, as his mother always said, were birds. Easy to see, hard to catch.
That night, Jared finished the boots and laid them, all ready, on the hearth where Jensen would see them when he woke. Then Jared lay down, back to back with Jensen and closed his eyes, but sleep was long in coming. After some time had passed, Jensen stirred, making a small noise like a wounded animal, and Jared turned over and touched his shoulder.
In the dim smolder of the banked embers, Jensen's eyes were wide but unseeing, panicked. "Never wake up," he said, his voice hoarse with sleep, and Jared put his hand on Jensen's chest, and the curious arrow of a scar that lay just above his heart.
"It's nighttime, Jensen. You're supposed to sleep."
Jensen's blind gaze seemed to touch on Jared and he sighed and hitched closer. Closed his eyes and was asleep again, and Jared laid his head on his arm and finally slept himself, Jensen's heartbeat there under his fingertips.
In the morning, Jensen found the boots right away, and tried them on with a little, crooked smile. He stood up and walked slowly once around the table, and allowed as they felt quite good on his sore feet. Then, laughing at himself, he had to take them off again when Jared pulled clothes from trunk and basket - older things Jared had outgrown, too good to throw away and kept against future need. Wool breeches and hose, a linen shirt that Jared himself had embroidered with oak leaves, and a wool tunic that the moths had only got at a little bit, on one shoulder. The shirt and tunic hung on Jensen's thin frame, the sleeves nearly covering his fingers. He stood patiently while Jared rolled them back a bit, the bones of his wrists pushing up against the skin. There was a little color in his face now, and he'd combed his hair into soft waves and cleaned his teeth. But his eyes were still clouded - distant - as if the fever lingered just below his skin.
Jensen went with Jared to the spring, washing his face and gasping from the cold. He tried to help carry the buckets but he was too weak, still, and Jared took them away again, shaking his head. The goats in their pen watched him with suspicious eyes until he gave them each a withered crab apple from the stores, and then they were friends.
After breakfast, Jared settled at his workbench, to smooth and sand the final, tiny imperfections away on the trunk he had been commissioned to make. It was large enough for traveling, made for the miller's daughter who was to marry in the spring. It was carved all over with Heart's Ease and ivy, and the smith was making iron bands to hold it shut, and iron corners to protect it.
Jensen rolled the sheepskins away and folded the blankets, swept the hearth clumsily, as if he'd never done such a thing, and put the bowls and spoons tidily away on their shelf. Then he came over to where Jared was, and settled on the woodpile. And for the rest of that day, he watched.
Jared worked for long hours over the trunk, knowing it must be finished. He fetched the pot of oil and, using scraps of felt, burnished the wood until it glowed. Jensen watched with flattering concentration as Jared rubbed the oil into the wood - explained how it would help keep the wet out, and worms. The oil and wood, warmed under Jared's hands, smelled softly sweet and earthy. The fire purred and sizzled in the hearth and Bear finally condescended to meet this stranger. He sniffed Jensen's fingers all over and allowed a moment's scrubbing behind his tattered ears and then he strode haughtily away to the inglenook, to groom and doze as was his habit.
That night, because it felt like a special night, Jared cut down a string of venison sausages he had made that fall and cooked it up with the last of his apples and a winter-stored onion. With chunks of soft goat's cheese and the bread toasted just so, it was a feast fit for kings and they all went to bed comfortably full and warm.
The next day there were chores Jared had to do - chop more wood for the woodpile, and mend the fence of the goat's pen, and muck out their stalls. Jared decided that Jensen was to stay indoors, because he was too soon mended from his illness, and he went out to work feeling a little lonely, wishing he had nothing to do. But the day passed, as days do, with time running and lagging and running again. From time to time, Jared peeped in through a crack or a window to see what his guest was doing. Jensen simply sat, staring into the fire or turning some small thing - a knife, a cup - over and over in his hands. Jared wondered if it was from the fever, this strange half-dreaming state, and grew more anxious for Madam Lora to meet Jensen. Finally, the sun was sliding down under the horizon, a molten gold coin in the plum-blue sky. His chores finished, Jared shook the snow off his boots and cloak and went inside.
The house was warm and the fire sang, and the trunk gleamed like amber in its place on the workbench. Jared felt a ridiculous sort of welling happiness at seeing Jensen turn from the hearth and smile at him, his dreaming eyes soft and dark. Jared washed the dirt and sweat of the day off in a tub of steaming water and then dressed and made dinner. He remembered a way to make cakes, with oats and ground nuts, honey and milk and eggs, and so he made them, turning them carefully in the pan until there was a gold-brown stack of them. There was butter from the goats, and more honey, and they sat down and ate every last cake.
The following morning started early, before the sun had even risen. They ate bread and honey for breakfast, and Jared packed cheese and cold sausages and bread for their trip into a satchel for Jensen to carry. He wrapped the trunk in rags and rope, and found his old hood and spare mittens for Jensen, and his very best cloak, because he only had two, and Jensen must wear something.
Then he hoisted the trunk onto his back and they began the long journey to the village. They walked in silence through the forest, the air going from chill blue-grey to rose and then to gold, the rising sun sending their shadows stretching out far, far ahead of them. They passed the Widow Ferris' house, and then the ramshackle cottage where the trapper lived, hung about with old hides and bones. Then the track dipped away into the forest again and they walked between the upright trunks of oak and fir, larch and yew. The willows by the frozen stream seemed huddled and cold, and the ice curled around the uprights of the foot-bridge, the water underneath dark and quick. Jensen stared around and around him, stumbling in the snow because the sky, the trees, the air, all seemed to hypnotize him.
The walk to the village took Jared an hour, but this day it took a little longer, as Jensen's feet were still sore, and his body was not quite healed. Jensen was stubborn, stomping through the tracks Jared made, panting hard, his face flushed under the edge of his hood, his fingers locked tight around the strap of the satchel. Not wanting to admit that he should rest, so Jared rested for him, easing the trunk down with a little groan and stretching his back - taking his ease on a hewn stump until Jensen joined him.
They shared the water skin back and forth, and a bite of cheese, shoulders just brushing. Jared even made Jensen smile, pointing out the flicker-flash of blue that was a jay, lighting in a bush. When Jensen's chest didn't work quite so hard for breath, Jared shouldered the trunk again, and they plodded on.
The track flowed seamlessly into a wider road, and the forest gave way to wide, open plains planted all over with wheat and millet, oats and rye. A broad river came down from the mountains and cut through it, and along the banks of the river was where the village was. There was a well at the center of it all, dug so that people needn't wade through the sedge and silt to draw clean water, or risk the ice in winter. There was an inn, as well, for the many travelers that passed. Most were going to the city that lay downriver, or upriver to the mines. Flat barges and white-sailed boats passed up and down all through the day, some docking and some not. There was a mill and smithy, a wainwright and a cooper, and seven houses of stone and brick, instead of timber and thatch. It was a busy place, with many sounds and smells and sights, and Jared liked it, if only for a day at a time. Jensen seemed unprepared for it, and Jared felt Jensen's hand curl into his belt and stay there as they walked along the muddy streets.
The smith had a crowd, as always - boys and girls and some few adults who couldn't resist the magic of the singing iron, the roaring forge and hissing bellows. Two big boys worked for the smith, smirched with soot and singed by the fire as the smith was, black nails and bright eyes and wide, white grins in their sweaty faces.
The smith himself, Jeffery Morgan, was a tall, broad man with a thick black beard and a merry smile. He often sang while he hammered and shaped, his smoke-rough voice roaring out over the hammer blows and you could not hear it and not smile.
As Jensen was smiling, his uneasiness seeming to drop away, his mouth curling into a grin as the smith shouted for more heat and the boys sprang to the bellows and pumped. The coals inside the forge glowed high and hot and bright and the smith drew out a length of iron, brilliant ruddy-gold on the end, and laid it on his anvil.
The hammer in his fist smote down, double-thump like a heartbeat, and Jared could feel it down to his bones, the song of the iron. It made you want to shout - it made you want to jump and run and roar. It wasn't as sweet or tender as the wood-song that flowed up through his fingers every day, every hour; that lulled him to sleep at night. But it was exciting. Jared shifted the trunk on his back and went into the smithy, and Jensen silently followed.
The iron pieces for the trunk were ready and waiting, and Jared eased the trunk down onto a cleared space on smith Morgan's workbench. He unwrapped the rags and Morgan made a low, pleased sound, his gaze running over and over the burnished curves of the wood.
"Oh, now, that's lovely, boy. Done yourself proud again, Woodsmith."
"Thank you, Ironsmith," Jared said, and they both laughed, old joke between them. Morgan looked sideways at Jensen, who was basking in the heat of the forge, staring with sleepy-eyed wonder at the carmine and scarlet and amber scintillations of the coals. Jared looked, too - bit his lip and made up his mind between one breath and the next. "Jensen is...is lost. We're going to speak to Madam Lora when my business is done."
"Are you, now?" Morgan looked at Jensen again, his dark gaze frankly assessing. Then he grinned, wide white smile in a smirched face. "You can't go wrong, speaking to her. She'll soon sort your boy out. Now then!" Morgan clapped his hands together, a ringing slap, and Jensen jumped. The apprentices came scurrying, one with half an apple in his teeth, and Morgan laughed. "We've work to do, boys! Bring me the pieces for the woodsmith's trunk! You, Woodsmith - sit you down and have a sup of ale, you and your boy. You've walked far."
Jared grinned and nodded, because they had, and smith Morgan's ale was very fine, indeed. They found a space to sit and Jared filled the pottery mug that stood atop the barrel and he and Jensen passed it back and forth until it was dry. Morgan and his boys were huddled around the trunk, soft clang of iron and low voices, and Jared put the cup back and led Jensen out. Jensen was smiling softly, his cheeks flushed and his steps ever so slightly unsteady, and Jared wondered if it had been too soon after his illness for something like Morgan's ale. He said nothing, though - only took Jensen's hand in his and tugged him away down the street toward the river, and Madam Lora's home.
She had come up the river seven years earlier, a large, dark woman with a larger husband and whipcord son, wearing her differences like a banner. She draped her bulk in cloth patterned with strange, square designs, bright colors and many folds, with a regal turban wound around her head. While her son and husband worked up in the loft, making sails and leather goods, she presided over a small room filled with strongly-scented herbs, mortars, pestles, and all the other clutter of an apothecary. People said they were not afraid of her, but she could look you in the eye and tell you your troubles and your deepest fears. Jared had never come to any harm by her hand, and had come to value her knowledge of simples and cures.
Somehow, though, that didn't help the uneasy feeling in his gut as he and Jensen stood at the top of her step. Jared reached out and rung the little brass bell, and a moment later the door came open, letting out a little waft of exotic scent.
"Why, it's the woodcarver! Hello, Jared, hello!" Madam Lora's round face creased into a fond smile, and Jared felt his tension ease, chiding himself for being so silly.
"Hello, Madam Lora. Are you well?"
"I am, I am, though I do hate the cold, boy. Come in!"
Inside, there were rushes strewn with fresh, crackling hay and dried rosemary, sending up a sweet scent at every step. More fabric in rich colors hung from the walls and across the doors, and Jared and Jensen both had to stoop over to go through the doorway into her apothecary's chamber. Several wooden stools - simple things that Jared had made - stood in a huddle about a low table, and Madam Lora plumped herself down on the one closest to the hearth, pulling her shawl close about her shoulders.
"Now, who is this changeling you've brought me, boy?" Madam said, and Jared felt a chill go over him.
He glanced at Jensen, who was staring with fierce concentration at the satchel-strap that he wrung in both hands. "He's not - Madam, he's not a...changeling, he's not. He's a man, as I am."
"Don't be fussed, woodcarver. I don't mean he's one of the Bright Folk. But he's not like you or I at all, is he? Sit down, you boys, sit down now, and let me look."
They moved forward, Jared feeling that unease again, almost wishing they hadn't come at all. Jensen seemed.... "Don't be afraid," Jared whispered, leaning his shoulder into Jensen's and touching his tight-clenched hands. Jensen's knuckles were sharp - cold.
"I don't think I am," Jensen whispered back, his voice shaking a little and they settled onto the stools, Jared's satchel laid aside, their cloaks pushed back.
"Now then, now then," Madam Lora said, and held out her hands to Jensen. After a long moment he slowly held his own out to her, and she gently took his pale, thin hand into her creased and callused ones. "Ooh, oh, child. Oh, I see. I'm so sorry, Jensen. So sorry."
"Why...what are you sorry for?" Jensen asked, and Jared hated how his mouth was thin and wobbling - how his eyes were so very wide and startled. Afraid.
"For your folks, boy. I'm sorry you had to see them go - I'm sorry you're all alone."
"He's not -" Jared said, and Madam Lora quelled him with a look.
"You're family is gone, Jensen, and that's a sad thing. And where you came from - it's gone, too, isn't it? Swept under and gone, like the ocean rose up and just...rubbed it away."
"There were ships," Jensen said, his leg trembling against Jared's. "There were ships, and the sea, and a hill, and...and birds. I remember...birds."
"Dunowen," Madam said, and Jensen jerked violently, his hand contracting sharply into a fist in hers.
"That's...that.... We called it the Tower of Birds. I thought I only dreamed it ending, I thought...." Jensen's voice broke, and then he bowed his head down over his knees and wept, and Jared could do nothing but pull him close, and hold on.
They walked back to Jared's house in silence, hoarse wuffs of breath and the creak of the snow the only sound. Jared had paid Morgan in coin, hoarded against just such a need. His own work was bought in flour, a year's worth, to be doled out in visits, and he carried fourty pounds on his back right now, shoulders aching from the rope, fingers cold.
They went by the Widow Ferris' house as the sun was dipping down, walking through the long, golden slant of the sun, everything blurred and the shadows blue as ink. They pushed into the plum-blue dusk of Jared's cottage, and Jensen simply stood, panting, fingers shaking on the strap of the satchel and his eyes wide with tears - nose red from cold. He was still more beautiful than any of the girls or boys Jared had ever seen, and his heart clenched, a sharp ache, at the misery in Jensen's gaze.
Jared let the flour down onto the table with a thump and a sigh - stirred the fire and added wood, and then bent and picked up the yoke and buckets. "I must...I must fetch water and tend the goats, Jensen. I'll not be long." He waited but Jensen said nothing, and finally Jared turned and went out. He thought of what Madam Lora had told him, her lilting voice soft as Jensen had washed his face - drunk a bit from a pitcher of ginger-water. He thought and thought on it, but could not think how to fix it, because her words made no sense.
"That boy is still dreaming, woodcarver. Someone dragged him into the day, but he's still fast asleep. And he won't remember himself - or truly live - until he's been woken up for good and all."
Jensen wasn't asleep - he walked and talked, he ate and drank - surely he was awake! But, Jared thought, his gaze was often distant - his mind seeming to lose itself in the dance of the fire or the up-and-down thresh of wind-tossed branches. Jared hurried through his chores, feeling that somehow, while he was gone, Jensen would simply vanish. Melt into the shadows and the night, as lost and forgotten as his home - his life. But when he stepped back inside, Jensen was still there, swaying on his feet like a child who's been allowed up far, far past his time. Jared poured water into a bowl and scrubbed the dirt of goats and chickens off his fingers - pushed the pot closer to the growing fire. Up in the rafters he had a little cask of brandy, gifted to him years ago by an old friend of his family's. He'd only breached it twice before, but tonight, he thought, he should do so again. He slung his cloak onto a peg, and peeled away his snow-damp boots.
Then he went to Jensen and gently took the satchel from his shoulder. Took cloak and boots and guided him to the hearth, making him sit close to the fire. Jensen was shivering, and Jared was afraid his illness had come back - that the long walk and upsetting news had been too much.
"Jensen, I'm so very sorry. I shouldn't have....it was too soon, all this. I should have let you rest here and gone alone, I should have -"
"I can't...why can't I...remember?" Jensen whispered, and Jared shook his head silently. "She said...they're gone. She said it was all gone and I...it seems it is. It seems...." Jensen ran a shaking hand over his face - wrapped cold fingers around Jared's wrist, squeezing. "It's as if everything is...underwater. As if I'm looking through a veil. Nothing seems real, Jared. It's...as if I dream." Jared's breath caught at those words, and he leaned forward to speak, but then did not. Jensen turned his face to the fire and the light caught in his eyes, a clear green like water that seemed to slant sideways - forever. Deeper than Jared's spring - deeper than the sea. Made huge by the tears that stood in them but did not fall.
"Even...you." Jensen turned back to Jared and his hand slipped away from Jared's wrist. Lifted and touched his face, a feather-light trace of fingertips from brow to cheek to lips that made Jared shiver, his eyes fluttering half shut. "Are you real, Jared? Everything is so...strange...." Jensen's voice dropped to a whisper, and Jared leaned closer to hear. "If I dream, I don't want to wake. I don't want to wake, Jared...."
"You do not dream. Jensen, I promise you -" Jared caught Jensen's face in his hands - tipped it toward him, stroking the soft skin of his temples, the waves of dark, silken hair. "I promise, this is not a dream." Jared felt as if his heart were too large for his chest - too large for his cottage. He had never felt it race so, tripping and falling and bumping under his ribs, like a fox kit, like a birth-wobbly colt. It made him feel breathless and dizzy - made him feel as if he were falling, ever falling, and no end in sight. And Jensen - only Jensen could catch him. Stop his fall. "Jensen," he breathed, and Jensen leaned closer and then Jared did, and then they were kissing.
Mouth on mouth, breath passing between them. The faint sweet of the apple they had shared on the way home still clinging to Jensen's lips. Jensen's hands were on Jared's wrists - slid up to his shoulders and then one curled around the back of Jared's neck and the other slid down again, to rest on Jared's heart. And it was like nothing - nothing - Jared had ever felt before. It was as if the world held her breath, and Jared thought that at any moment he might shatter.
And something - something in Jensen, as well, Jared was sure, something that moved through the other man like a shiver - a sigh. And then Jensen pulled away, a bare hand's breadth. His eyes were bright - dancing - and he was smiling a soft, wide smile. A different sort of smile, that made Jared grin back, joy tugging at his heart.
"What is it?"
"I remember now, Jared. I remember what was said. The curse...the spell. She said - '...not in death but just in sleep, the fateful prophecy you'll keep. And from this slumber you shall wake, when true love's kiss, the spell shall break'."
"Who said that, Jensen?" Jared said, his fingers tangled in Jensen's hair - his heart still pounding, rabbit-fast.
"My grandmother." Jensen took in a long and shaking breath - let it out, leaning forward until his forehead touched Jared's. His hand was still on the back of Jared's neck, just holding there, warm and heavy. "I slept. I remember...the distaff piercing me, over my heart. And then I was so weak - so tired. And they took me away to the tower and they laid me down, and they prayed. And I...slept. And I dreamed. Jared..." Jensen shuddered all over, and Jared wrapped his arms around the man's shaking shoulders and held him close.
"Jared, for one hundred years. One hundred years I slept, and I dreamed, and when he came...when he worked his spell...it all crumbled away. I saw them go to dust, Jared."
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Jensen, so sorry." Jared helplessly stroked Jensen's back, and after a moment Jensen straightened, and wiped his eyes.
"He thought he woke me, but he didn't. He used magic, and only to prove he could. But when he realized...realized that I wasn't...right -"
"You were, you are -" Jared insisted, fiercely, and Jensen laughed.
"No, I wasn't. It's all right. He turned me out. Told me to...go home. But I couldn't find home. I didn't...there is no home, not now. Not anymore. Not until...."
"Until what?" Jared asked, when it seemed Jensen wouldn't go on.
Jensen looked up at Jared, and his smile was so wide and so happy - so beautiful. And his eyes - they shone like stars, full of some tender emotion that Jared could only hope - wish - was the one for which he longed. "Until you, woodcarver. Until you took me in and healed me - warmed me and fed me and gave to me everything that was yours. Until you loved me, Jared. And kissed me."
Jensen was almost laughing now - was crying a little, too, his lips trembling and his hands locked tight with Jared's and Jared felt his own heart soaring up and up, like a lark in spring.
"You woke me, Jared. You woke me."
The 'spell' quoted is lifted directly from the Disney movie 'Sleeping Beauty'.
Wheeeee!
This is the story i wrote ages ago, the one that made me want to do the j2_everafter challenge. It's not 'officially' part of that, but since i'd mostly finished it by the time we actually got our prompts...here it is!
I loved writing this. I love this fic. It was so *fun*, in style and structure, to bring to life. I hope you enjoy!
darkhavens, of course, guided me to grammatical and structural perfection, and sweptawaybayou infused me with glee by her enthusiastic reactions. And moimoietmoi was most kind in helping me to get the correct title. So thank you, all of you!
And now....
The house and tower stood upon a hill overlooking the sea, ringed round and about with a hedge of dense briar. They had stood so for longer than anyone could recall, and only the pale-slate roof could be seen from the village at the foot of the hill, shining like river water in the blued air of twilight.
To this tower, at intervals, came champions and heroes, and knights upon caparisoned horses. Most slunk away in the grey light of dawn, battered and bloody, tattered by thorns. Some few did not come away at all, and their bones stayed behind, twined about by the canes of the briars, polished by the wind and the beaks of ravens.
At the heart of the tower - or so the story said - was a prince. It was told that he had been blessed with wit and grace, a fair singing voice and sloe, jade eyes. Compassion, joy, and beauty, all dandled down to his waving, baby hands while his doting parents looked on.
But, as the sun has the moon and fire has ice, so all blessings must be leavened with a curse. And so was his. Out of spite, and wounded pride, his second-to-last birth-gift was this: when he reached his majority, he would tear himself on a distaff, heart-wound that would kill him in an instant.
Distraught, the party sought to undo this terrible curse, but no way could be found. Until his grandmother, using a final bit of magic from the hoarded remains of her dowry, changed it. Spun gold from dross, or as close as she could. Instead of death, it would be sleep. And only true love's kiss could wake him.
His parents then decreed that all distaffs must be outlawed, and burned upon a fire before midsummer. And though kings and queens are powerful, and rules whose breaking could bring the head-man's axe made even the strongest shudder, all rules, as eggs, must break from time to time. And so the prince's blood was spilt upon the bone-fine, polished spindle of a spinning distaff, and he fell to sleep (perchance to dream).
And slept on, though others died to wake him.
And this is where our story begins.
On the fading edge of a bonfire autumn, a man came to the tower by the sea. He rode a fine chestnut stallion, and he wore rich clothing, but no armor. He carried a sword at his side, and also a pouch made of some thick and heavy stuff that shimmered oddly in the antique-gold light. He rode through the village without a look to this side or that, and up the twisting track that was all that was left of the fine, wide road that had once led to the tower. There were five rings on his hands, and a linked chain of copper, gold and silver 'round his throat. His hair was the same rich red-gold as his horse's coat, and his cloak flowed behind him like water, too thin for the chilly day.
As he rode, he lifted his chin to study the hill, and the tower, and the ring of briars that hid it. In summer, gulls and terns and skimmers made their home in the cliffs below the tower, raucous and lively as the spray they danced through. Only ravens flocked there now, circling and wheeling, the black lines of their wings sketching across the curling gold-grey clouds.
The man rode steadily - easily. Bending occasionally to avoid low-slung branches, letting his horse pick his path around bushes and rotting logs, wash outs and rocks. Eventually he came to the crest of the track, and there it widened and smoothed out, abruptly remembering what it had been. Earth gave way to stone that rang softly under the horse's iron shoes, and the air seemed to shiver. The man straightened in the saddle and carefully worked open the complicated knot that held the pouch shut at his hip. Once the silky-strange stuff had fallen open, he dipped carefully inside and then drew out his fist, something clutched in it. He closed his eyes for a moment and then lifted his fist to his lips. His lips moved, forming words that were mere breaths on the air, and then he spread his hand flat and blew.
A dust spiraled out from his palm, as weightless and gleaming as a cobweb, spinning out and out. The dust struck the hedge of briars and the canes sprang back. An avenue was now open, wide as two carriages and about as long. The man's heels touched his horse's sides and the horse stepped forward, ears pricked and eyes wide.
Again, he took out a fistful of dust and again, the briars parted. As he rode further down the avenue, the light began to change. It went from the brassy chill of near-winter to the thick, honeyed light of summer. The briars themselves changed, from black and iron-hard to a curling, springing green.
About halfway through, the man was forced to rein his horse aside to avoid the jack-straw tumble of bones and armor that clattered to the stones when the briars moved away. He made a small motion with his hand, heart to lips to brow. A warding, and a blessing.
Eventually, the last of the canes had rustled away, and the horse stepped beyond the hedge, and into summer. The light lay like a fuzz over everything, golden and soft. It pooled in puddles around the water pump, and hung in calcified fingers from the eaves. A bird was caught and held, mid-flight, and the man reached up and touched with one finger the downy white of its belly. A good-sized house, four stories and rambling, enclosed three sides of a fountained courtyard. Beyond and above, part of some older, long-gone structure, rose the tower. The man studied it, his fingers working to close the pouch, and then he rode forward again.
Bees hovered over tubs and beds of flowers, and a procession of women and men, decked in flowers and sprays of wheat, made a colorful frieze across the courtyard floor. The man rode around them - rode his horse to the foot of the wide, stone steps that led inside. There, he dismounted and went in.
Again, there was light, everywhere. Spangled candles that gleamed in shadow like tiny stars, and great chunks of sunlight like ice over the rushes that strewed the floor. Fresh bundles of lavender and meadowsweet had been added, as well, but no scent rose from them as the man trod over them on his way through.
It was obvious that a wedding party had been in progress. There were tables laid with starched linen and gold plate, and arches of ivy and flowers tied up over the first table, framing seats of honor. The man walked through all this without a second glance, going in - going up.
He trod stairs made of stone and of wood - he trod halls and floors covered in rushes and in rugs and in cut wood planks, scrubbed near-white. He trod, at last, upon the crumbling mortar of the old tower and as his foot touched the bottom-most stair, he seemed to falter for the first time. But then he went up - and up - and up again, one hundred stairs pierced by wedges of flaming light until at last he reached the top.
Here there was a round room, its roof arched and carved, its floor laid with hand-knotted rugs that had come from some far land. In the center of the room was a catafalque, richly draped with costly velvets edged in gilt. The light here was not golden, but filtered - transformed. It came through many high, round windows and it was apple-green and tidal blue, ink, rose and flame. Several people - servants, holy men - knelt in the bars of it, like icons from a church wall. Two, their hair touched with grey and their faces lined with an infinite, unending grief, knelt closest, gazes and hands fastened upon the figure that lay before them.
It - he - was also draped, in a shroud of fine linen, and the man stepped carefully between the kneeling father and mother - for that is what they were - and flung the shroud off, one wide, sweeping gesture that was swallowed by the static weight of the air, the room. The figure beneath the shroud lay still, drowned in the smoldering colors of the windows, lips and brow, chin and nails edged in various colors. The man leaned over him, so close. One finger coming up, again, to touch. Ever so gently, he brushed across the pale jut of a cheekbone, and the fine strands of dark hair that lay smoothly away from the unlined forehead.
His other hand lifted and he worked at one of the five rings he wore, until the cabochon there sprang up, revealing a hollow beneath. He tipped his hand, and a fine glitter of dust poured out and down - poured past the barely-parted lips of the man on the catafalque. He closed the ring and then he bent closer still, and put his mouth to the figure's mouth. He breathed in deeply through his nose, and then breathed out through his lips. Breathed into the mouth, the throat, the lungs of the man beneath him, and the man - opened his eyes.
They were of an uncertain color in the spangled gloom, dark and wide, and the man stood back. The figure stared upward - blinked once. Then he breathed out, an exhalation of dust and light and perfume, something almost alive as it swirled up and away. Like a soundless, deafening crash of thunder, time - which had stopped when the figure had stopped - began again. The man - a sorcerer, as is plain to see - held out his hand.
"We must go, your highness. Now."
The man's hand lifted, shaking - uncertain. The sorcerer took it with care, and tugged him upward. As he did, the man's clothing cascaded from him in a river of dust and threads, until he stood naked, his skin furred with the dust of years. It was caught in his lashes, gold-green-blue, and in his hair like the nap on velvet. He looked down, and saw his parents' kneeling forms - reached for them with the instinctive, thoughtless need of the child.
At his touch, they lifted their heads - saw him - and crumbled to dust. The sound that came from the man's lips was raw and terrible, and the sorcerer slipped his cloak from his shoulders and draped it around the man - fastened it snugly.
"I'm sorry - the spell held you all as you had been, but only you were to wake. For the rest, they are to go into time's maw, and we cannot stop it." The man's face - flawless, untouched, agonized - was streaked now with two quicksilver traces, and the sorcerer did not touch them. "Come - we must go."
As they reached the foot of the stairs - the man leaning on the sorcerer's shoulder, shaking - the tower quaked above them, and the ravens screamed. In the courtyard, men and women fell to dust, and birds, flowers, trees. The roof of the house gaped, the doors hung askew and the dry fountain was cracked, now, and drifted with dry leaves. The horse stood patiently, and the sorcerer helped the man climb into the saddle - swung up behind him and gathered the reins. By the gate, the apple tree that was hung with the first small, hard, green fruits of the season withered before their eyes - dropped leaves and grew taller, hunched against the wind. The booming sound of the sea was suddenly audible as it rushed and crashed on the beach below, and the autumn sun, tawny lion, dipped below the dusky horizon, sending shadow like a curtain across them.
The man shuddered, his face in his hands, his body wracked by soundless sobs, and the sorcerer shook up the reins, pressed his heels into the horse's side, and rode.
Jared was called the woodcutter, but he did much more than that. He lived alone in a cottage in the woods, with three slot-eyed goats, a little covey of chickens and a mangle-eared tom. Some whispered he had a touch of Giant in his bloodline, because the woodcutter was passing tall. But all agreed he was a truly gentle and happy man, ever willing to lend a hand to clearing a field, raising a roof, or catching a runaway cow.
Indeed, on this night, Jared was returning from a long day of just such work. The heavy snow had brought down a tree onto the Widow Ferris' roof, and he and four other men had spent the day cutting it apart and repairing her thatch. In return, she had fed them all heartily with pottage and goat milk, and given them each a crock of good honey from her hive. Now the woodcutter was returning home, pushing himself through the knee-high snow of the woods, bundled in cloak and mittens and hood.
It was mid-winter, and the woods were still and diamond-bright under the gibbous moon. The snow creaked and groaned beneath the woodcutter's feet, and he hugged his cloak tighter to him and tucked his head down. No wind tonight, and the air seemed as sharp and clear as a pane of ice - as cuttingly cold. The woodcutter longed to be home, his back aching and hands sore, but his belly was warm from the Widow's mess, and he carried in his heart her smiling thanks - the press of her callused hands in his.
'The Widow isn't so old she couldn't marry again,' John Weaver had said, sly little wink and a grin behind his thick beard. 'She'd keep you warmer than that mangy cat of yours.'
And, indeed, the Widow Ferris was a pleasing woman, accomplished and clever. She owned a very wide and sumptuous bed for which Jared had carved a tall headboard. She owned a fine chest lined with cedar, many pewter dishes, a crumple-horned cow, and a bullock to pull her cart. But Jared's heart didn't warm when he looked on her, no more than it would at a loved Aunt, so he had only smiled and shaken his head - taken the next bundle of thatch and begun to tie it down.
Now he put all that aside and listened, because something was in the woods with him. He had stopped beside a narrow-trunked tree, one hand on the bark to steady himself, breathing softly through his nose and pushing his hood back a little, so he could hear better. So he could hear the strange little sound that had stopped him in his tracks. It was an animal noise, low, desperate and unending, and the woodcutter wondered if it was a wounded fox, or wolf. He put his hand on the hilt of his long knife and walked carefully forward.
Ahead, at a bend in the buried track, was a fallen evergreen, the dead branches thick with snow. Some had been shaken bare, and there was a dark scrape along one side, where snow had been churned by paws or a body, exposing the wet needles and earth. Jared sniffed once, then twice, but there was no rank smell of wolf or bear - no musk of animal at all, only snow and earth and cold that crinkled in his nose. He went forward slowly - carefully. Crouched down and listened, and now the sound was clearer. It was someone crying. Sobbing, really - the exhausted, breathless grizzle of a child who has been left alone too long, and Jared felt his heart turn over in sympathy and anguish.
He went to his knees, pushing - lifting the crackling branches, ignoring the snow that spattered down on his shoulders, sliding off his cloak. He looked into the strange little den under the fallen tree, the moonlight coming through like silver mist, lighting the shape that lay there, curled and tucked in on itself. A man, dressed in clothing too light for mid-winter, and too fine for the forest. Thin slippers that were tattered, fine woolen breeches that had not withstood the curving hooks of brambles, a linen shirt that hung, too large, off a thin and shivering frame.
"Man, I'll help you if you come out to me. I live near by," Jared said, and the man lifted his head, turning to look almost blindly toward the woodcutter's voice. There was dirt smudged on his face - twigs and needles and leaves caught in his hair. A gaunt face with silver tracks of tears that shone in the misty light, and Jared held out his hand. "Please come out."
"I'm lost," the man said, ragged and tear-husky voice trembling in his throat. "Please, I can't find home...."
"I know. I'll help you," Jared said, and the man finally reached out his own hand, dirty and too thin and as cold as the snow, and put it in Jared's own. "I'll help you get home."
For three days, the woodcutter nursed the stranger. A sickness was on him, and Jared bundled him in blankets and sheepskins, close to the fire. Burned twists of aromatic herbs to ease his rasping breaths and poured endless spoonfuls of thin broth through his pale, chapped lips. The stranger's skin was hot and tight with fever, and the woodcutter bathed his limbs and face with a wet cloth in the hopes of making it break. The man whimpered and twisted away, his dull eyes coming half open, his thin fingers pushing without strength, and Jared shushed him as he would a restive horse, hissing softly between his teeth, until the man drifted to sleep again.
The scrapes and tears from his adventures held a little heat, and Jared worked into them the salve that Madam Lora made, knowing it would sting, but knowing it must be done. Jared also bathed his poor, torn feet and covered them with the salve, wrapping them in rags. Jared's tom - he called him Bear - came and went, uneasy with this new person in his home, sneezing at the sharp scent of the salve.
In the times when the man would restlessly sleep, Jared was busy. He was by nature a man who did not like to be idle, and so his restless fingers had been tempted to woodcarving as a child, when his father had given him a knife and a stick of wood, and told him to make it pretty. Five days later he had, and the wood had got into his soul, then - into his veins and his bones - so that he never was without a little knife, a bit of wood, again.
This time, however, he wasn't carving but sewing. From his stores, he had chosen heavy boar's hide, and from this he had cut a pattern for the lower legs. From softer buck hide, he had made feet. In the long hours of the man's fretful, fevered sleep, Jared sewed him boots. He lined the inside with the softest rabbit skins and tufts of felted wool, so that the man would be able to walk on his bruised feet. In three days time he had them nearly done, and was sure they would fit perfectly.
Late on the third night, when Jared was lying curled against the man's back, wound in his own blankets and sleeping not at all, the man gave a sudden shiver and then a long sigh, turning. Jared sat up, anxiously looking, but the man's face was bathed in sweat, and his breathing was easy. The fever had finally broken, and Jared sank back down, letting out his own sigh of relief. At last, the man was getting better.
In the morning, Jared woke first, and went out the half-mile walk to the spring, where he broke the ice and dipped up two bucketfuls of water. He also knelt and briskly washed his face, grinning at the fierce tingle and how alive it made him feel. He ran a handful of the aching-cold water back through his hair, and then hoisted the buckets up, the wooden yoke fitting his shoulders smoothly.
His cottage was half-buried in snow, smoke curling blue-white from the stick-and-daub chimney. Jared gave the goats' water and hay, and turned their bedding and milked the nanny. He searched for and found that day's ration of eggs - five - and scattered grain for the rooster and his small harem. Then he went inside with the second bucket of water, blinking in the change from bright sun to shadowed house. The man was sitting up in his nest of bedding, pale and drawn and haggard, but a shaft of sunlight touched his forehead, making his skin seem to glow and his eyes to gleam like polished stones in the river, and Jared had never seen anyone so beautiful before in his life.
"Hello," the man said, and his voice was rough and tired-sounding; thin, as the man was. Jared put the buckets down and went to the hearth, holding his hands out to the fire.
"Hello. I'm Jared, the woodcarver. I found you in the snow, and nursed you."
"I...thank you. I'm sorry, I'm lost." He looked so sad - so very much like a small child, though his shoulders had the breadth of adulthood, and there were fine lines beside his eyes.
"I know - you told me the night I found you. I'll help you get home, if I can." Jared crouched down, closer to the man - trying not to tower over him so, and frighten him. "What's your name?"
The man looked down at his hands - at nails that were ragged and torn, at wrists that were too thin. He seemed ashamed of them, and curled them into the sheepskin. "My name's Jensen."
"Hello," Jared said again, smiling, and Jensen looked up. Looked at the hand held out to him and slowly reached out. Jared clasped his forearm, and Jensen did the same, and they held on for one moment, Jensen's hand warm through the wool of Jared's sleeve, Jared's hand nearly circling the thin arm. Jensen smiled shyly back, and Jared let him go. "Where are you from?"
"I can't...I don't...." Jensen shook his head slightly, biting his lip. "I remember the sea," Jensen said, and his voice faltered a little. His dark eyes seemed to swim for a moment with tears, but then he blinked and they were dry, dry and wide open. "I think it must be far from here."
"Someone in the village may know."
Jensen only nodded, looking so exhausted and so sad that Jared wanted to do something - anything - to make him smile. To make him happy. "Are you hungry? Do you want to eat?"
"Yes, please."
"All right," Jared said. He stood up and swung the cooking pot a little closer to the fire, to warm the porridge he had made the night before. He took down the crock of the Widow Ferris' honey, and his two bowls, and the one fine pewter and one wooden spoon. Then he strained the goat's milk and set it in the cool spot up under the eaves, and took down the crock from the day before, which was half-empty. He unwrapped the loaf of bread and laid it on the table, as well, and smiled to see everything so tidy and good. He turned to his guest, and held out his hand.
"Come sit at the table, and have some milk, and bread and honey. The porridge will warm in a few minutes, and I'll cook the eggs."
"Thank you," Jensen said. He put his hand in Jared's and stood, and the bedding all fell away, and again, Jared could only stare, losing his manners and all his good sense as the sunlight warmed the man's skin to a pale, mellow gold, and lit the fine hairs on his thighs to russet-brown. Jensen only stood there, unknowing or uncaring, and Jared swung his own cloak off, warm from his exertions, and put it around Jensen's shoulders.
"You'll be sick again, Jensen," Jared said, chiding in his mother's voice.
Jensen blushed, faint and all over, and tugged the cloak closer around him. He moved in slow and shaky steps to the table and sat down, and Jared cut him a slice of bread - smeared honey across it and watched him until he took a bite. The smile of pure, hungry bliss was enough for Jared, and he cut more bread, and poured the milk, and stirred the porridge, feeling quite happy. Jensen seemed happy, too, watching Jared as he moved about, smiling just a little, his lips and fingers sticky with honey, his brown hair like a hedgehog's quills.
"In two days I have to go into the village, to see the smith. You should come, and we'll speak to Madam Lora. She knows...things. I'm sure she can discover where your home is," Jared said, scouring the breakfast bowls with water and sand, crouched down by the hearth.
"Oh," Jensen said. He was sitting in the sunlight again, on the end of the bench nearest the fire. Blinking sleepily and Jared only gazed at him, wondering why he felt as small and sad as that word had sounded.
"But she may not," Jared said, hastily, and then bit his lip. Jensen gazed back, his shoulders drooping, and Jared frowned and stood up. "You've been sick. You should rest. Come and lay down again and sleep."
"All right," Jensen said, his rough voice so faint, moving slowly to do as Jared said. He curled himself up in Jared's cloak and the sheepskins, and turned his face to the fire and slept almost immediately. Jared went away to his workbench and found something small and quiet to do, humming under his breath. Wishing, with a fierce intensity that rather startled him.
But wishes, as his mother always said, were birds. Easy to see, hard to catch.
That night, Jared finished the boots and laid them, all ready, on the hearth where Jensen would see them when he woke. Then Jared lay down, back to back with Jensen and closed his eyes, but sleep was long in coming. After some time had passed, Jensen stirred, making a small noise like a wounded animal, and Jared turned over and touched his shoulder.
In the dim smolder of the banked embers, Jensen's eyes were wide but unseeing, panicked. "Never wake up," he said, his voice hoarse with sleep, and Jared put his hand on Jensen's chest, and the curious arrow of a scar that lay just above his heart.
"It's nighttime, Jensen. You're supposed to sleep."
Jensen's blind gaze seemed to touch on Jared and he sighed and hitched closer. Closed his eyes and was asleep again, and Jared laid his head on his arm and finally slept himself, Jensen's heartbeat there under his fingertips.
In the morning, Jensen found the boots right away, and tried them on with a little, crooked smile. He stood up and walked slowly once around the table, and allowed as they felt quite good on his sore feet. Then, laughing at himself, he had to take them off again when Jared pulled clothes from trunk and basket - older things Jared had outgrown, too good to throw away and kept against future need. Wool breeches and hose, a linen shirt that Jared himself had embroidered with oak leaves, and a wool tunic that the moths had only got at a little bit, on one shoulder. The shirt and tunic hung on Jensen's thin frame, the sleeves nearly covering his fingers. He stood patiently while Jared rolled them back a bit, the bones of his wrists pushing up against the skin. There was a little color in his face now, and he'd combed his hair into soft waves and cleaned his teeth. But his eyes were still clouded - distant - as if the fever lingered just below his skin.
Jensen went with Jared to the spring, washing his face and gasping from the cold. He tried to help carry the buckets but he was too weak, still, and Jared took them away again, shaking his head. The goats in their pen watched him with suspicious eyes until he gave them each a withered crab apple from the stores, and then they were friends.
After breakfast, Jared settled at his workbench, to smooth and sand the final, tiny imperfections away on the trunk he had been commissioned to make. It was large enough for traveling, made for the miller's daughter who was to marry in the spring. It was carved all over with Heart's Ease and ivy, and the smith was making iron bands to hold it shut, and iron corners to protect it.
Jensen rolled the sheepskins away and folded the blankets, swept the hearth clumsily, as if he'd never done such a thing, and put the bowls and spoons tidily away on their shelf. Then he came over to where Jared was, and settled on the woodpile. And for the rest of that day, he watched.
Jared worked for long hours over the trunk, knowing it must be finished. He fetched the pot of oil and, using scraps of felt, burnished the wood until it glowed. Jensen watched with flattering concentration as Jared rubbed the oil into the wood - explained how it would help keep the wet out, and worms. The oil and wood, warmed under Jared's hands, smelled softly sweet and earthy. The fire purred and sizzled in the hearth and Bear finally condescended to meet this stranger. He sniffed Jensen's fingers all over and allowed a moment's scrubbing behind his tattered ears and then he strode haughtily away to the inglenook, to groom and doze as was his habit.
That night, because it felt like a special night, Jared cut down a string of venison sausages he had made that fall and cooked it up with the last of his apples and a winter-stored onion. With chunks of soft goat's cheese and the bread toasted just so, it was a feast fit for kings and they all went to bed comfortably full and warm.
The next day there were chores Jared had to do - chop more wood for the woodpile, and mend the fence of the goat's pen, and muck out their stalls. Jared decided that Jensen was to stay indoors, because he was too soon mended from his illness, and he went out to work feeling a little lonely, wishing he had nothing to do. But the day passed, as days do, with time running and lagging and running again. From time to time, Jared peeped in through a crack or a window to see what his guest was doing. Jensen simply sat, staring into the fire or turning some small thing - a knife, a cup - over and over in his hands. Jared wondered if it was from the fever, this strange half-dreaming state, and grew more anxious for Madam Lora to meet Jensen. Finally, the sun was sliding down under the horizon, a molten gold coin in the plum-blue sky. His chores finished, Jared shook the snow off his boots and cloak and went inside.
The house was warm and the fire sang, and the trunk gleamed like amber in its place on the workbench. Jared felt a ridiculous sort of welling happiness at seeing Jensen turn from the hearth and smile at him, his dreaming eyes soft and dark. Jared washed the dirt and sweat of the day off in a tub of steaming water and then dressed and made dinner. He remembered a way to make cakes, with oats and ground nuts, honey and milk and eggs, and so he made them, turning them carefully in the pan until there was a gold-brown stack of them. There was butter from the goats, and more honey, and they sat down and ate every last cake.
The following morning started early, before the sun had even risen. They ate bread and honey for breakfast, and Jared packed cheese and cold sausages and bread for their trip into a satchel for Jensen to carry. He wrapped the trunk in rags and rope, and found his old hood and spare mittens for Jensen, and his very best cloak, because he only had two, and Jensen must wear something.
Then he hoisted the trunk onto his back and they began the long journey to the village. They walked in silence through the forest, the air going from chill blue-grey to rose and then to gold, the rising sun sending their shadows stretching out far, far ahead of them. They passed the Widow Ferris' house, and then the ramshackle cottage where the trapper lived, hung about with old hides and bones. Then the track dipped away into the forest again and they walked between the upright trunks of oak and fir, larch and yew. The willows by the frozen stream seemed huddled and cold, and the ice curled around the uprights of the foot-bridge, the water underneath dark and quick. Jensen stared around and around him, stumbling in the snow because the sky, the trees, the air, all seemed to hypnotize him.
The walk to the village took Jared an hour, but this day it took a little longer, as Jensen's feet were still sore, and his body was not quite healed. Jensen was stubborn, stomping through the tracks Jared made, panting hard, his face flushed under the edge of his hood, his fingers locked tight around the strap of the satchel. Not wanting to admit that he should rest, so Jared rested for him, easing the trunk down with a little groan and stretching his back - taking his ease on a hewn stump until Jensen joined him.
They shared the water skin back and forth, and a bite of cheese, shoulders just brushing. Jared even made Jensen smile, pointing out the flicker-flash of blue that was a jay, lighting in a bush. When Jensen's chest didn't work quite so hard for breath, Jared shouldered the trunk again, and they plodded on.
The track flowed seamlessly into a wider road, and the forest gave way to wide, open plains planted all over with wheat and millet, oats and rye. A broad river came down from the mountains and cut through it, and along the banks of the river was where the village was. There was a well at the center of it all, dug so that people needn't wade through the sedge and silt to draw clean water, or risk the ice in winter. There was an inn, as well, for the many travelers that passed. Most were going to the city that lay downriver, or upriver to the mines. Flat barges and white-sailed boats passed up and down all through the day, some docking and some not. There was a mill and smithy, a wainwright and a cooper, and seven houses of stone and brick, instead of timber and thatch. It was a busy place, with many sounds and smells and sights, and Jared liked it, if only for a day at a time. Jensen seemed unprepared for it, and Jared felt Jensen's hand curl into his belt and stay there as they walked along the muddy streets.
The smith had a crowd, as always - boys and girls and some few adults who couldn't resist the magic of the singing iron, the roaring forge and hissing bellows. Two big boys worked for the smith, smirched with soot and singed by the fire as the smith was, black nails and bright eyes and wide, white grins in their sweaty faces.
The smith himself, Jeffery Morgan, was a tall, broad man with a thick black beard and a merry smile. He often sang while he hammered and shaped, his smoke-rough voice roaring out over the hammer blows and you could not hear it and not smile.
As Jensen was smiling, his uneasiness seeming to drop away, his mouth curling into a grin as the smith shouted for more heat and the boys sprang to the bellows and pumped. The coals inside the forge glowed high and hot and bright and the smith drew out a length of iron, brilliant ruddy-gold on the end, and laid it on his anvil.
The hammer in his fist smote down, double-thump like a heartbeat, and Jared could feel it down to his bones, the song of the iron. It made you want to shout - it made you want to jump and run and roar. It wasn't as sweet or tender as the wood-song that flowed up through his fingers every day, every hour; that lulled him to sleep at night. But it was exciting. Jared shifted the trunk on his back and went into the smithy, and Jensen silently followed.
The iron pieces for the trunk were ready and waiting, and Jared eased the trunk down onto a cleared space on smith Morgan's workbench. He unwrapped the rags and Morgan made a low, pleased sound, his gaze running over and over the burnished curves of the wood.
"Oh, now, that's lovely, boy. Done yourself proud again, Woodsmith."
"Thank you, Ironsmith," Jared said, and they both laughed, old joke between them. Morgan looked sideways at Jensen, who was basking in the heat of the forge, staring with sleepy-eyed wonder at the carmine and scarlet and amber scintillations of the coals. Jared looked, too - bit his lip and made up his mind between one breath and the next. "Jensen is...is lost. We're going to speak to Madam Lora when my business is done."
"Are you, now?" Morgan looked at Jensen again, his dark gaze frankly assessing. Then he grinned, wide white smile in a smirched face. "You can't go wrong, speaking to her. She'll soon sort your boy out. Now then!" Morgan clapped his hands together, a ringing slap, and Jensen jumped. The apprentices came scurrying, one with half an apple in his teeth, and Morgan laughed. "We've work to do, boys! Bring me the pieces for the woodsmith's trunk! You, Woodsmith - sit you down and have a sup of ale, you and your boy. You've walked far."
Jared grinned and nodded, because they had, and smith Morgan's ale was very fine, indeed. They found a space to sit and Jared filled the pottery mug that stood atop the barrel and he and Jensen passed it back and forth until it was dry. Morgan and his boys were huddled around the trunk, soft clang of iron and low voices, and Jared put the cup back and led Jensen out. Jensen was smiling softly, his cheeks flushed and his steps ever so slightly unsteady, and Jared wondered if it had been too soon after his illness for something like Morgan's ale. He said nothing, though - only took Jensen's hand in his and tugged him away down the street toward the river, and Madam Lora's home.
She had come up the river seven years earlier, a large, dark woman with a larger husband and whipcord son, wearing her differences like a banner. She draped her bulk in cloth patterned with strange, square designs, bright colors and many folds, with a regal turban wound around her head. While her son and husband worked up in the loft, making sails and leather goods, she presided over a small room filled with strongly-scented herbs, mortars, pestles, and all the other clutter of an apothecary. People said they were not afraid of her, but she could look you in the eye and tell you your troubles and your deepest fears. Jared had never come to any harm by her hand, and had come to value her knowledge of simples and cures.
Somehow, though, that didn't help the uneasy feeling in his gut as he and Jensen stood at the top of her step. Jared reached out and rung the little brass bell, and a moment later the door came open, letting out a little waft of exotic scent.
"Why, it's the woodcarver! Hello, Jared, hello!" Madam Lora's round face creased into a fond smile, and Jared felt his tension ease, chiding himself for being so silly.
"Hello, Madam Lora. Are you well?"
"I am, I am, though I do hate the cold, boy. Come in!"
Inside, there were rushes strewn with fresh, crackling hay and dried rosemary, sending up a sweet scent at every step. More fabric in rich colors hung from the walls and across the doors, and Jared and Jensen both had to stoop over to go through the doorway into her apothecary's chamber. Several wooden stools - simple things that Jared had made - stood in a huddle about a low table, and Madam Lora plumped herself down on the one closest to the hearth, pulling her shawl close about her shoulders.
"Now, who is this changeling you've brought me, boy?" Madam said, and Jared felt a chill go over him.
He glanced at Jensen, who was staring with fierce concentration at the satchel-strap that he wrung in both hands. "He's not - Madam, he's not a...changeling, he's not. He's a man, as I am."
"Don't be fussed, woodcarver. I don't mean he's one of the Bright Folk. But he's not like you or I at all, is he? Sit down, you boys, sit down now, and let me look."
They moved forward, Jared feeling that unease again, almost wishing they hadn't come at all. Jensen seemed.... "Don't be afraid," Jared whispered, leaning his shoulder into Jensen's and touching his tight-clenched hands. Jensen's knuckles were sharp - cold.
"I don't think I am," Jensen whispered back, his voice shaking a little and they settled onto the stools, Jared's satchel laid aside, their cloaks pushed back.
"Now then, now then," Madam Lora said, and held out her hands to Jensen. After a long moment he slowly held his own out to her, and she gently took his pale, thin hand into her creased and callused ones. "Ooh, oh, child. Oh, I see. I'm so sorry, Jensen. So sorry."
"Why...what are you sorry for?" Jensen asked, and Jared hated how his mouth was thin and wobbling - how his eyes were so very wide and startled. Afraid.
"For your folks, boy. I'm sorry you had to see them go - I'm sorry you're all alone."
"He's not -" Jared said, and Madam Lora quelled him with a look.
"You're family is gone, Jensen, and that's a sad thing. And where you came from - it's gone, too, isn't it? Swept under and gone, like the ocean rose up and just...rubbed it away."
"There were ships," Jensen said, his leg trembling against Jared's. "There were ships, and the sea, and a hill, and...and birds. I remember...birds."
"Dunowen," Madam said, and Jensen jerked violently, his hand contracting sharply into a fist in hers.
"That's...that.... We called it the Tower of Birds. I thought I only dreamed it ending, I thought...." Jensen's voice broke, and then he bowed his head down over his knees and wept, and Jared could do nothing but pull him close, and hold on.
They walked back to Jared's house in silence, hoarse wuffs of breath and the creak of the snow the only sound. Jared had paid Morgan in coin, hoarded against just such a need. His own work was bought in flour, a year's worth, to be doled out in visits, and he carried fourty pounds on his back right now, shoulders aching from the rope, fingers cold.
They went by the Widow Ferris' house as the sun was dipping down, walking through the long, golden slant of the sun, everything blurred and the shadows blue as ink. They pushed into the plum-blue dusk of Jared's cottage, and Jensen simply stood, panting, fingers shaking on the strap of the satchel and his eyes wide with tears - nose red from cold. He was still more beautiful than any of the girls or boys Jared had ever seen, and his heart clenched, a sharp ache, at the misery in Jensen's gaze.
Jared let the flour down onto the table with a thump and a sigh - stirred the fire and added wood, and then bent and picked up the yoke and buckets. "I must...I must fetch water and tend the goats, Jensen. I'll not be long." He waited but Jensen said nothing, and finally Jared turned and went out. He thought of what Madam Lora had told him, her lilting voice soft as Jensen had washed his face - drunk a bit from a pitcher of ginger-water. He thought and thought on it, but could not think how to fix it, because her words made no sense.
"That boy is still dreaming, woodcarver. Someone dragged him into the day, but he's still fast asleep. And he won't remember himself - or truly live - until he's been woken up for good and all."
Jensen wasn't asleep - he walked and talked, he ate and drank - surely he was awake! But, Jared thought, his gaze was often distant - his mind seeming to lose itself in the dance of the fire or the up-and-down thresh of wind-tossed branches. Jared hurried through his chores, feeling that somehow, while he was gone, Jensen would simply vanish. Melt into the shadows and the night, as lost and forgotten as his home - his life. But when he stepped back inside, Jensen was still there, swaying on his feet like a child who's been allowed up far, far past his time. Jared poured water into a bowl and scrubbed the dirt of goats and chickens off his fingers - pushed the pot closer to the growing fire. Up in the rafters he had a little cask of brandy, gifted to him years ago by an old friend of his family's. He'd only breached it twice before, but tonight, he thought, he should do so again. He slung his cloak onto a peg, and peeled away his snow-damp boots.
Then he went to Jensen and gently took the satchel from his shoulder. Took cloak and boots and guided him to the hearth, making him sit close to the fire. Jensen was shivering, and Jared was afraid his illness had come back - that the long walk and upsetting news had been too much.
"Jensen, I'm so very sorry. I shouldn't have....it was too soon, all this. I should have let you rest here and gone alone, I should have -"
"I can't...why can't I...remember?" Jensen whispered, and Jared shook his head silently. "She said...they're gone. She said it was all gone and I...it seems it is. It seems...." Jensen ran a shaking hand over his face - wrapped cold fingers around Jared's wrist, squeezing. "It's as if everything is...underwater. As if I'm looking through a veil. Nothing seems real, Jared. It's...as if I dream." Jared's breath caught at those words, and he leaned forward to speak, but then did not. Jensen turned his face to the fire and the light caught in his eyes, a clear green like water that seemed to slant sideways - forever. Deeper than Jared's spring - deeper than the sea. Made huge by the tears that stood in them but did not fall.
"Even...you." Jensen turned back to Jared and his hand slipped away from Jared's wrist. Lifted and touched his face, a feather-light trace of fingertips from brow to cheek to lips that made Jared shiver, his eyes fluttering half shut. "Are you real, Jared? Everything is so...strange...." Jensen's voice dropped to a whisper, and Jared leaned closer to hear. "If I dream, I don't want to wake. I don't want to wake, Jared...."
"You do not dream. Jensen, I promise you -" Jared caught Jensen's face in his hands - tipped it toward him, stroking the soft skin of his temples, the waves of dark, silken hair. "I promise, this is not a dream." Jared felt as if his heart were too large for his chest - too large for his cottage. He had never felt it race so, tripping and falling and bumping under his ribs, like a fox kit, like a birth-wobbly colt. It made him feel breathless and dizzy - made him feel as if he were falling, ever falling, and no end in sight. And Jensen - only Jensen could catch him. Stop his fall. "Jensen," he breathed, and Jensen leaned closer and then Jared did, and then they were kissing.
Mouth on mouth, breath passing between them. The faint sweet of the apple they had shared on the way home still clinging to Jensen's lips. Jensen's hands were on Jared's wrists - slid up to his shoulders and then one curled around the back of Jared's neck and the other slid down again, to rest on Jared's heart. And it was like nothing - nothing - Jared had ever felt before. It was as if the world held her breath, and Jared thought that at any moment he might shatter.
And something - something in Jensen, as well, Jared was sure, something that moved through the other man like a shiver - a sigh. And then Jensen pulled away, a bare hand's breadth. His eyes were bright - dancing - and he was smiling a soft, wide smile. A different sort of smile, that made Jared grin back, joy tugging at his heart.
"What is it?"
"I remember now, Jared. I remember what was said. The curse...the spell. She said - '...not in death but just in sleep, the fateful prophecy you'll keep. And from this slumber you shall wake, when true love's kiss, the spell shall break'."
"Who said that, Jensen?" Jared said, his fingers tangled in Jensen's hair - his heart still pounding, rabbit-fast.
"My grandmother." Jensen took in a long and shaking breath - let it out, leaning forward until his forehead touched Jared's. His hand was still on the back of Jared's neck, just holding there, warm and heavy. "I slept. I remember...the distaff piercing me, over my heart. And then I was so weak - so tired. And they took me away to the tower and they laid me down, and they prayed. And I...slept. And I dreamed. Jared..." Jensen shuddered all over, and Jared wrapped his arms around the man's shaking shoulders and held him close.
"Jared, for one hundred years. One hundred years I slept, and I dreamed, and when he came...when he worked his spell...it all crumbled away. I saw them go to dust, Jared."
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Jensen, so sorry." Jared helplessly stroked Jensen's back, and after a moment Jensen straightened, and wiped his eyes.
"He thought he woke me, but he didn't. He used magic, and only to prove he could. But when he realized...realized that I wasn't...right -"
"You were, you are -" Jared insisted, fiercely, and Jensen laughed.
"No, I wasn't. It's all right. He turned me out. Told me to...go home. But I couldn't find home. I didn't...there is no home, not now. Not anymore. Not until...."
"Until what?" Jared asked, when it seemed Jensen wouldn't go on.
Jensen looked up at Jared, and his smile was so wide and so happy - so beautiful. And his eyes - they shone like stars, full of some tender emotion that Jared could only hope - wish - was the one for which he longed. "Until you, woodcarver. Until you took me in and healed me - warmed me and fed me and gave to me everything that was yours. Until you loved me, Jared. And kissed me."
Jensen was almost laughing now - was crying a little, too, his lips trembling and his hands locked tight with Jared's and Jared felt his own heart soaring up and up, like a lark in spring.
"You woke me, Jared. You woke me."
The 'spell' quoted is lifted directly from the Disney movie 'Sleeping Beauty'.