Lor sniffs, turning his face aside. “But I was special for you . . .”
Tears burn Iohmar’s cheeks, but he’s afraid to let go of Lor long enough to wipe them. This is not the reaction he expected, not fear of Iohmar’s appearance or his human origins. A weight leaves his chest, for the boy hasn’t taken the ridiculous idea that the sickness is his fault, but he hates the pain in his voice.
“Do you truly believe I would break my magic for anyone who is not the most precious child in all these lands or the next?”
Lor hiccups, fists pressed against his eyes. Rocking back, he drapes himself against Iohmar’s chest, threading his arms about his neck. Iohmar cradles him, eyes closed. His head throbs, and he rests it against Lor’s fluffy hair, trying to ease the weight.
“Oh, Lor,” he murmurs. “I love you so very much.”
Lor doesn’t return the words but asks, “Are you going to be all right?”
“Yes . . . I am simply very tired,” he says. He’s drifting, Lor the single solid weight tethering him to the world. “You are very wet. Too much rain.”
It isn’t enough. His story isn’t enough, especially not when Lor burrows into his shoulder and doesn’t speak. What can I say? Right now, with his body too heavy to speak or move, it’s the only explanation he can offer. He slumps against the foot of the bed, unable to support himself.
I love you, he thinks, then drifts.
25
Centuries upon Centuries, Deeper and Deeper
Time passes, and Iohmar doesn’t truly sleep or wake. When Lor maneuvers from his arms, he tries to raise his head and doesn’t quite succeed. The boy tugs on his arm.
I can’t get up, Wisp, he wishes to say, but he finds his head as iron and his mouth full of feathers.
But he stands. He doesn’t intend to and is surprised his legs hold his weight. He wishes to go in the direction Lor needs. Lor needs him, so he must move. He finds himself being tugged by the fingers in one direction until tiny hands press up against his hip.
What is he doing? Slumping atop the bed, he realizes what his son is trying to accomplish. Lor pushes and maneuvers with all his infant strength until Iohmar finds himself tucked under the covers, head on a pillow. Silence. Did Lor leave? Iohmar tries to call for him. There’s a weight against his leg. The covers lift, and Lor loosens the ties on the front of Iohmar’s shirt.
Sweet boy, he thinks as Lor wriggles under his arm as he does in the early-morning twilight.
This is all he is aware of for some time.
As before, Iohmar dreams.
These are much the same, but different. The words are clearer. Sitting in his parents’ chambers, he hears their voices. They are not easily discerned, but the quiet ring of them remains in his ears. He is young. His hands are folded within his lap, small child’s fingers. Sadness weighs on him. His hair smells of earth and the deep places under the mountain. He went exploring the caves. He does this with Ascia often. His clothes are clean, but he still smells of earth. Why didn’t I wash my hair?
His mother sits beside him. Pomegranate—the scent she carries on her skin—envelopes him. She’s speaking, but not to him, and he doesn’t understand. Her fingers brush the top of his head—no, his horn, the aching place where one of them should be. It was broken off.
Yes, it was broken off when the mountain collapsed.
Why am I having such a dream? He hates to think on it. He was so little—too little to have done anything. His friend was buried while he was found. He hates this dream, even as he watches the soft shape of his father moving about the small warm chambers. They will be Iohmar’s chambers eventually. No, he sealed these rooms away to their ghosts, taking his own bedroom as the chambers of a king. One day, when even he is old enough to pass from these twilight lands, his will be Lor’s.
“Daidí?” he hears himself say. How strange. By such an age—barely younger than Lor, he must’ve been—Iohmar no longer called his father by the informal title. Athair, it always was. Why am I switching back?
His father’s hand touches his cheek. It’s warm and smells of candle wax. Either his hand is damp or Iohmar’s cheeks are. Daidí is saying something now too. Exhaustion lines his fair features. Still, the words are a haze, an echoing, weightless dream.
Iohmar remembers it as an apology.
Another dream. It must be, for Lor is not with him, and the orchard is silent. He searches for the boy, testing the strings binding their magic and finding none. He sits in the roots of his mother’s tree. It is a large thing, recently filled with her magic. The trees grow all their lives before taking on their inhabitants. Iohmar’s is somewhere within these rows of bluish limbs, growing wide, reaching for the sky. He searched for it as a child, as many children do. Never to be found. It is not meant to be, not until his final days.
His body aches. It’s not the strange illness, but a familiar physical pain: wounds. He puts his hand within his shirt and finds the raw, unhealing things war gifted him. Bandaged. He should tell someone. Galen, certainly. The old fae will fuss and tend to him as if he’s a child. He wishes to feel as such.
Centuries upon centuries of life. But his parents are dead, alongside many of his folk. He is the oldest in their Halls now. No, there is Galen. Galen is still with him, the presence of his magic a bright spark beneath the mountain, dimmed by grief.
A little boy. Iohmar’s legs don’t carry him far. He weaves among the crystals and mushrooms dwelling beneath his parents’ mountain.
Ascia follows.
A crossroads in the tunnel presents itself. Ascia creeps beside him, twirling the hem of the green-brown dress matching her skin and hair, and heads to the left.
Deeper. Deeper.
Iohmar “plays” prince so Ascia can play princess. Brother and sister. Grand adventurers protecting the great mountain and its Fair Halls. She’s the only child he’s ever met, the only one so young as he, and he loves this game.
Deeper.
She is a child of the heart of the woods, not the daughter of anyone. Iohmar learned recently how this works and is even happier to play brother and sister. After all, she came from the woods his parents serve. No one knows who begged the trees to gift her, but it matters little. They are Iohmar’s trees as they are his parents’. He feels their life force at all times. Feels the wind. The animals. Insects. His folk and their kin.
Which makes her his best friend to protect. A little sister of some sort, even when they aren’t playing adventurers.
Deeper.
