Forseti woke with the rise of the sun and moved slowly from his bed. He coughed quietly and felt the burn in his throat and chest from smoking the cigarette even while he’d slept, but there was a beautifully sweet taste in his mouth, strange although it was. He was dizzy as he stood to his feet, and as he supported himself on the edge of the bed his other hand went to his forehead, feeling the dampness of it beneath the back of his hand.
So much for being made of stone.
“Lights,” hr ordered the room. It heeded him not: Forseti remained in darkness.
Clenching his fist tightly before him, he slowly opened it, imagining the flicker of flame in his palm, and the four oil lamps about the room stuttered before they came to life in fire. Something hummed in his veins, coming to the surface and singing upon the air, and Forseti’s dizziness faded like the morning mist.
Smiling to himself, he stood upright, taking in a breath, and he looked to the handsome clock on his mantel.
Made of carefully carved dark wood and shined to a polish, upon its face were painted icy spirits that coiled about its two hands, and two shifting gears at its centre showed the dates as each passed as well as the time.
It was some minutes past seven in the morning, and the date was the 29th.
Forseti rang for the footman and began to brush out his hair.
* * *
“Finally going to propose to her?” Forseti asked quietly. He leaned against the doorjamb, and Thor looked up from the pocket watch he’d been holding loosely in his palm, the golden clasp shutting with a quiet click, but not before Forseti had espied the small image of Hilde against one side.
“Perhaps,” Tor answered, and then confessed, “I have yet to ask Mr Wright for her hand.”
“I should ask Hilde’s permission before you ask for her father’s, if you wish to keep the tongue you mean to propose with,” Forseti advised as he stepped into the room, settling his thumbs into the pockets of his silk vest. Tor chuckled, his lips drawing back, and he gently set his watch into the pocket over his heart.
“Would you be my best man, if I married her?” Tor asked, leaning back in his seat, and Forseti couldn’t help his beam as he sat across from his brother.
“Of course,” he answered immediately. “How could I refuse you?”
“I would be best man at yours,” Tor said urgently.
A silence ensued, long and cloying and heavy upon each of their shoulders – Forseti could see that Tor regretted having said it, his cheeks darkening and his eyes casting down to the tabletop. Forseti looked away from him, instead examining the neatly cut and polished shine of his fingernails.
“Very kind of you to offer,” he said finally: it rang with insincerity.
He and Tor both knew Forseti would be laid to rest before he married a woman – perhaps this was why he felt so eager to leave the North of England behind him, why he was so willing to go off on travels to places far and wide. A travelling man could hardly take a wife, after all, when he was ever moving from one country to the next, but he was hardly some sailor. It would be impropriety of the highest order to leave one’s wife home alone for weeks on end.
Funny, Forseti thought, that Tor should be so easily aware of Forseti’s own indecencies, and yet be so ignorant of Murmel’s – or so forgiving of them, perhaps.
“Concern yourself not with my marriage prospects,” Forseti said. “Think on Hilde instead.”
“I have no idea how I’d begin to ask her,” Tor said, and Forseti laughed.
“You only while away the days from dawn ‘til dusk discussing everything else,” he said. “Would that be so difficult a conversation to broach? Begin by asking her to dance – or challenge her to a duel. Either would appeal to her liking, I should think.”
Tor’s lips twitched.
“She does have such strength beneath her dress sleeves,” he murmured quietly. “I’ve no doubt, sometimes, she could lift me on one of her shoulders.”
“Your children will be strong,” Forseti said, and he felt his expression falter at Tor’s mournful sigh. He had laid his hands in his lap, turning away from Forseti and instead looking about the fancy, shining paper decorating the room’s walls – it wasn’t shame this time but something else. “What makes you so melancholy? Wedding bells are a cause for cheer, brother. Surely you don’t think she’ll tell you no.”
“I merely wish things could be as they were sometimes,” Tor said. “There were long periods where you lay abed, true, but things seemed so much simpler when we were children, all four of us playing in the grass, running amok in the woods. I miss the rosy haze that seemed to encompass the lives we lived.”
“Gone are those days.”
Forseti did not empathise, particularly, with Tor’s fond remembrances – much as he had enjoyed his childhood when he was fit enough to roam the meadows and country lanes with his brother and his friends, Forseti was happier now he no longer had a schoolmaster to constrain him, and that he had the freedom to move where he wished, where he pleased, even with his sickness as his shackle. Tor had never been so tightly leashed as Forseti had been, followed and watched over by their father or mother or whatever tutor or governess or whomever else was chaperoning them.
He would always be called in hours before the others, and while he had gotten good at sneaking out and evading their gazes, the weight of the surveillance, of being tracked, had weighed heavy on his heart.
“Tor, do you remember the games we used to play in the wood? My play at being Merlin where you were King Arthur?”
Tor smiled now, and it came easy to his face. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Some days, Hilde would be fair Guinevere, and others, Morgana – others still, she would be a knight of the court, and Murmel ever the dashing Sir Lancelot.”
“Not always,” Forseti said, but almost under his breath, that Tor not hear him. He stared down at his own palms, which were marked with a few callouses and scars – neither her nor Tor had the idle hands of gentlemen, even as they wore their tailcoats and top hats. Indolence was not in either of their natures.
“What brings those games of ours to your mind? Murmel still calls you Forseti – I would have thought that game, you as our Æsir justiciar, would be closer to the forefront of your mind.”
“With either Forseti or Merlin, my fascinations were similar,” Forseti said, shrugging his shoulders. “I was always interested in magic, that’s all – I’ve been musing on why that was, of late.”
“You were full of magic as a child,” Tor murmured, his tone sweet and fond. His gaze was far away as he spoke, drowning in its reminiscence, as he said, “Many a time you held us spellbound with some wondrous tale from your imagination – Murmel might have a way with words, was always a natural skald, but he had not your, your heart. Was that not real magic, Forseti? Your tongue could enchant anybody.”
“Do you really think so?” Forseti asked softly. “That amounts to real magic in your eyes?”
“Of course,” said Tor.
Forseti fluttered his fingers against his knee under the table, and mingling with the fond warmth of his brother’s affection, he felt a real heated tingle beneath his skin, new and as yet unfamiliar.
It was the sensation of power.
* * *
Forseti was up late that night.
He attempted to put himself to bed several times but ended up rising again, and at some point where late night had given way to early morning, he found himself standing before the full-length mirror in his bedroom, holding his suits up against his night-clothes and examining the way they set against his eyes, or the way they contrasted the paleness of his skin. Which of these suits was best for a fae revel?
He knew not.
Rifling through the jackets hanging in his wardrobe, his hand found a costume from some years previous, the crushed velvet fabric soft and warm beneath his palm. He drew it out and held it against his breast, admiring the shine of the buttons in the light, the colour brightly green. He remembered the party well indeed – he and Murmel had agreed to match their costumes to one another, that they might make a game of swapping masks throughout the night, confusing those that sought ot tell them apart.
Even side-by-side, their costumes nearly identical, their masks and the colour of their hair the only thing setting them apart from one another, Murmel had been a most admirable Robin Hood in comparison to Forseti himself.
Shedding his dressing gown and his nightclothes, Forseti began to dress himself, pulling the trousers on, feeling how it clung tight to his thighs and his calves and the not immodest curve of his backside. He had grown a good deal since that costume party, and the trousers were so tight against his legs it was positively immoral.
At the time, Murmel had made jokes about them wearing codpieces – now, staring at himself in the mirror, Forseti could see how his crotch bulged through the fabric.
Swallowing, Forseti took up a white costume blouse from the back of a drawer and pulled it on, his fingers making quick work of the buttons. He had long since been used to dressing himself, much as Father always insisted upon someone being there to help him dress, and he drew a silk cravat of stark black around his neck, pinning it in place with a silver brooch: a snake.
Drawing on the leather jerkin that served the costume in place of a waistcoat, he then pulled on the green jacket as well and dragged his palm down the fabric, seeing the way it caught the light. With how tightly it clung to his body, he could never wear this particular costume to a party now – apart from being escorted from the room to change into something with modesty involved in its wearing, he might well be arrested.
But for his purposes…
Nausea made itself known in the core of his gut, twisting around his innards. Why is it, he wondered, that he was so confident in his dreams but in his waking hours found himself assailed by nerves and anxiety both? Shakes and uncomfortable twists of the organs within his belly? What changed?
Turning his head, Forseti looked to his desk. Staring at the drawer, he slowly raised his hand, imagining the turn of the drawer’s knob, imagining the sensation of its crystal surface in his palm and the hard angles of the slightly cool surface against his skin, imagining the resistance of the joint inside as he turned it and pulled.
The drawer slid open despite the six feet between Forseti’s hand and the knob he was gripping at, and he let it go, watching the slight tension in the drawer release, dropping by a fraction of an inch. He felt the magic prickling on his skin and moved over, reaching inside to pull out the mask from the back by the ribbon. Sliding it onto his nose, he tied it with a tight ribbon around the back of his head, looking at himself in the mirror. The black leather of the mask matched that of his riding boots – he usually never went riding with Tor and the Wrights, just stayed in the stables and brushed the friendlier of Hilde’s horses, and they’d been sitting in the back of his wardrobe, untouched for over a year.
A figure in a suit of green velvet, a snake at his throat, with a mask of black leather hiding the full shape of his face from view, he almost didn’t recognise himself.
“You have magic,” Forseti assured his reflection in quiet but resonant tones, approaching the mirror and looking himself up and down, searching for imperfections to iron out and finding none. True, the ensemble was immodest to say the least, a bulge to rival Henry VIII’s visible at his crotch, the light muscles in his thighs displayed in stark relief beneath the green velvet, his eyes seeming pale and shining as crystal beneath the shadow of the mask’s eyeholes. “You have magic,” he repeated, “and power, and the Faeries can do naught to you that you do not allow.”
It felt strangely imperious, saying it, declaring it, and yet there was a strange sort of power in that as well – he’d performed no spell nor feat of telekinesis this time, yet it felt as though the magic were bursting this time upon his tongue.
Standing up straight, his reflection mirrored the action, but then shifted behind the glass, and Forseti felt himself blink, nearly recoiling from the unexpected movement.
“Adjust your bearing,” instructed his reflection in the same commanding tone, demonstratively raising its chin with its knuckles pressing up against its own jaw, at the same time straightening its back, and Forseti followed suit. “You shall not walk – you shall surely glide. You are not merely the gentleman Ansgar now – at this revel, you are Forseti, a foreign prince, worthy of love and admiration.”
“You don’t think that a little theatrical?”
“What people should appreciate theatre better than these?” his reflection asked, tilting its head, and Forseti sighed, shaking his head and breathing in, filling his lungs.
He looked good, he realised. Not just good, not just handsome, but intimidating, affecting – in these clothes, with this bearing, he did look princely. It had been a long while since he’d been so pleased with the figure he cut, when Murmel’s flirtatious compliments didn’t ring somewhat false in his ears when he leaned in to deliver them.
He wished Murmel was here, all of a sudden, wished Murmel was standing at his shoulder – better still, he wished Murmel was standing just in front of him, that Forseti might use his superior height to lean in and nibble on the lobe of ear, perhaps bite lightly and feel Murmel’s body go loose and easy and eager, feel the weight of Murmel’s form fall back against his, that Forseti was the only thing holding him up.
“Goodness,” remarked his reflection, a haze of dusky pink visible on its cheeks as it raised its eyebrows, and Forseti broke their shared gaze, huffing out a breath and covering his mouth. “Don’t look so ashamed – he’s shameless, after all.”
“Yes, but we don’t normally indulge it,” Forseti whispered, although he ached to – perhaps it was a dangerous thing, to borrow the courage and confidence from his dream self. “Touching him might lead to his touching us back.”
“Would that be so terrible a thing?” his reflection asked, but seemed a little green even as the question tumbled out from between his lips, Forseti’s skin feeling somewhat tight under his clothes, but here came a stroke of mercy – a sudden chime rang out, and Forseti whipped around, shocked out of his ill-fitting skin.
His hands were thrown out in front of him as though to defend himself – and from what weapon, exactly? – as his gaze shifted fast to the source of the sound – the clock on his mantel, chiming midnight.
As if time itself had slowed, Forseti watched the number upon the clock change before his eyes, the 29 rolling over to the 30.
He’d thought only to try on the appropriate clothes, to test what he might wear and plan his escape, but why wait? The date had changed, and he didn’t think he would be able to sleep another wink tonight.
Forseti pushed up the window.
The night air was warm against his skin, humid and slightly thick, and Forseti found himself glad it wasn’t colder – he wasn’t exactly dressed for winter in a suit like this. Very carefully, he slid one leg over the sill, turning in his place and setting one booted foot against the trellis’ surface, treating it as the first rung of a ladder.
The thin wood, a good deal older than last he tried this maneuver – and himself a good deal heavier – creaked under his weight, and Forseti moved with grace and alacrity both. As he climbed down he felt the thorns in the roses tear at the fabric of his trousers then rip at his palms as he hurriedly felt for his way down – the trellis was all but screaming beneath his weight now and he could feel it close to snapping.
He hadn’t been keeping track of his journey down, but he takes the risk and lets himself fall onto the grassy bank of the garden before the rung of the trellis beneath his soles can snap and drop him – it jarred his ankles, but he managed to stick the landing, and although a dull throb sang up through his legs, the drop wasn’t even six feet, and the pain passed with the work of a moment.
He scarcely even had to think of it as he dragged his palms over the ripped fabric of his breeches and mended it with magic, the fabric obediently knitting itself together again before his eyes – the very use of this little spell seemed to heal him, the new wounds on his palms sealing shut without his evening having to think about it.
How quickly this was becoming second nature to him, how quickly this madness became reflexive.
Wiping the blood from his palms on a handkerchief, he hastily stuffed it into his pocket, and cast about himself to ensure no one had noticed him, but everyone at this time of night was sensibly abed.
It was pitch black.
The street lamps had been doused for the evening, and there was but a sliver of moon in the sky, but it mattered little. Forseti knew the roads – knew the whole of the village – no matter how dark it was, and no matter how ill his vision was.
Yet the walk felt longer than it ever had before.
* * *
When Forseti reached the edge of the wood, finally, he hesitated. There were the usual sounds of the forest about him, albeit different for the night – he heard the wind whistling through the trees, heard the grass and leaves rustle beneath his feet, distantly heard the babble of the brook.
Anxiety had gathered in him on the walk, corded twine rolling tighter and tighter in his breast, a seething ball of twisting threads, but now those nerves dissipated into the evening’s cool air, calm washing over him.
His breathing was slow and even, and he rested his hand on his breast, feeling the steady beat of his heart. There was magic on the air, and he felt it flicker at the edge of the wood’s border, a path of flame over which he would cross over to make it into the fae realm, make it to the revel ahead of him.
Very distantly, as though few several curtains of glass, he heard the music and the sound of those enjoying themselves – heard laughter, clinking glass and plates, quick steps on a varnished floor as people danced.
“Pray,” he commanded the forest, feeling his eyebrows raise slightly at the resonance to his own voice, how powerful his lungs felt despite the growing chill of the evening, “announce me. Forseti, of…” His lips twitched. “Forseti, of the Right House.”
As he stepped from the path and onto the grassy carpet of the wood, the breeze picked up and swirled about him in a whirlwind, leaves dancing on the air as they encircled him. The blackness of the wood gave way to a thousand glittering bright lines, shining golden and warm as they lit up his skin, and the walls of glass between him and the music melted away, that it loudened to meet his ears.
The ground beneath him was greener than ever, but the trees were now painted in silvers and golds, and from their leaves, turning brighter colours than the less magical autumn he’d left behind him, hung ribbons and banners of blue and green, contrasting with the reds and yellows in this deepest autumn. As he walked forward, the crowd parted about him, and he heard soft gasps and noises of surprise, but he did not turn to look at any of them, examining the strangers instead through his periphery.
He could feel the beat of his heart in his very throat, feel the pound of his blood in his ears, and most of all he could feel the strange power that thrummed in his veins as the forest about him sang out his name, letting it play upon the air amongst the music: “The wood presents Forseti, the Right Presider!”
Coming to a stop in the centre of a clearing, he raised his chin and stood up straight, and felt the gazes of every party-goer on his face, on his body, and he faintly smiled and took in the energy of the evening.
The calm had not abandoned him, and yet he was absurdly pleased and entertained as he drew in the shared mood of those around him – upon a stage of a heavy wood trunk was a band playing strange instruments, the likes of which he had never seen – odd string instruments and strange horns, made of foreign flowers and plants, crafted from unusual horns and claws and bones no doubt harvested from animals he could never imagine. On every dress and robe and suit about him he saw strange and beautiful clasps and buttons and buckles, saw layered skirts and shimmering ribbons of pure magic, saw beautiful and quite unusual jewellery, and saw the bodies of these fae themselves – saw living suits or even skins made up of leaves or blooming flowers, saw shining scales and feathers, saw wings made of the same crystalline and glassy structure as made those of dragon or cadis flies, saw hair of shining metal, of flames, of ice, even.
And yet when he looked to the faces of these peculiar strangers, he found that every one of them seemed to blend before his eyes. No one’s features made themselves available for his recollection or recognition – he could not make out the colour of any eyes, the shape of any lips or jaws or cheeks or foreheads, nor even the expressions on them.
“Well, well,” purred the Silver King, taking a sip from a fruity-looking drink of shining red before setting the glass aside to hover on the air beside him. “If it isn’t the little prince – the Right Presider, indeed!”
“I’m hardly little,” Forseti said mildly – despite his calm, he found himself mildly embarrassed by the slight shake in his tone, so he decided to distract from it: putting out his hand, he willed the King’s glass toward his palm. It drew closer, and he felt a thousand eyes on him as he took it by the stem and brought it to his face, inhaling the scent of it. It was fruity, yes – some sort of fruit wine, perhaps, made of rosehips and blackberries.
“By all means, have some,” the King invited him softly.
(“Do not Eat or Drink of anything offered to you in the Faerie realm. As soon as you imbibe or consume something there, you fill find yourself within their Debt, and therefore trapped.”)
“Alas, no,” Forseti declined, “but thank you for the kind offer.” He returned the glass to the air, and watched the King’s tongue flicking out of his mouth to wet his lips, undisguised hunger shining in his eyes. The pupils of his eyes were silver, but the irises around them were black. “I was merely curious as to its sense.
“I’m curious as to yours,” said the King, his silver tongue glinting and reflecting the golden lights that floated over their heads, and Forseti chuckled.
“Come closer, then,” he replied, and then smiled. “You can’t possibly be afeared of me.”
His was the confidence of his dreams, here, though it was tempered somewhat – and he was glad of that temperance, felt it bring him to a more even keel, a sense of better balance.
“Me, afeared? Of you?” The Silver King laughed, but Forseti saw the tiniest catch in the shape of his lips and in the infinitely dark expanse of his eyes, saw his silver-freckled nose wrinkle for the barest fraction of a second. He did indeed fear something, that much was clear. “My sweet young prince, you really are flattering yourself.”
“It’s not every young man who gets invited to so exclusive a party,” Forseti said, lidding his eyes and lowering his gaze to the forest floor: his tone was almost simpering, soft and displaying the greatest of flattery as he curled a lock of his loose-worn hair about his fingers. “You can see how it might go to one’s head.”
The Silver King was abruptly right before him, his fingers pressing against Forseti’s chin to raise his head, and they were nearly mouth to mouth. Forseti’s heart began to speed somewhat in its beats – he could act the haughty prince, play at being Merlin the Wild once more, but with the King’s mouth hot against his own, he found it near impossible to retain dignity and distance.
“You are quite something, do you know that?” the King asked, his black eyes glittering with danger. “There aren’t many here who might – there are some American humans who have a good phrase. Shoot their mouth off to me like that.”
“You seem terribly concerned with my mouth,” murmured Forseti. “I expect the Americans intend the focus to be on one’s gun.”
“See, this is what I’m referring to, dear boy,” the King said, faux-scandalised, but he was smiling still. “May I touch you?”
“No.”
He saw the Silver King’s tawny fingers, his nails shining with yet more silver, the back of his hands scattered with more silver freckles, clench at his sides, but he did not ignore Forseti’s refusal of him, kept his hands to himself. “Why did you invite me tonight?”
“You are… interesting,” said the Silver King. “Have you worked it out yet?”
“Worked out what, precisely?” Forseti asked, feeling his brows furrow, and the Grandmaster chuckled.
“I’ll tell you, if you allow me a kiss,” he said. “Quid pro quo.”
Forseti considered the offer, subtly biting the inside of his lip. He had liked it when the King had kissed him before, much as he might deny it, and yet here, amongst these Faeries on every side…
This was sin, he supposed, although he’d never much cared about all that. It wasn’t sin that held him back, wasn’t concern with God or religion or the whims of the church – it was… It was the rest of it. The sense of calm and confidence that the magic realm about him allotted cloaked him, somewhat, but if he stood here and thought about it, considered it more deeply, he could feel the prickling anxiety under his flesh, the sense of his flesh not fitting him, his body not suiting him, somehow.
These were not thoughts he could ever voice, not words he could express, though he had thought of trying, from time to time, when Murmel had asked him, earnest and eager, desperate to offer what comfort he could. Sometimes, it would be after Forseti had refused him – more often, it was when Forseti had reached for him and then stiffened at Murmel’s reciprocation, or when Murmel had softly recommended one man or another, nudged him to one companion or the next.
“I don’t mean to hurt you,” he’d said once, freezing, his hands up in a gesture of peace, when Forseti had tipsily leaned in to his touch and then flinched when Murmel had leaned back. “I’m so sorry. What can I do, to soothe you? Would you have me touch you, Forseti, or, or remain still as you touch me?”
“No,” Forseti had whispered, lurching away. “No, no.”
“Is it shame? Are you… Are you ashamed, of wanting me?”
“No,” Forseti had said, after a moment’s thought and consideration. “Would a man feel shame for wanting the sun on his skin, Murmel?”
Murmel’s lips had parted, and he’d looked so unmanned in the moment, so utterly disarmed. “Forseti,” he’d whispered, but Tor had come back to summon them out to the cab, and they’d made their way home.
“Tell me what you’re talking about, and you may kiss me,” Forseti said, and the Silver King’s mouth was on his within the second.
His lips were soft against Forseti’s own, his tongue flicking over the lower of his lips, and Forseti couldn’t help but softly moan, leaning into the touch and allowing the Silver King to kiss him more deeply. His magic surged in his veins, and he felt the ozone crackle as his own magic met the King’s, thrumming beneath his skin and leaving him gasping.
The Silver King pulled away and Forseti headily sighed. “Tell me then,” he said.
“There’s a secret about you,” the King whispered against his lips, his voice sing-song. “A big, big secret – so big it’s burning in your perfect body, so big everybody here can see it. That’s why you can’t see anyone’s face.”
Forseti frowned, glancing about the party once more, and he saw smiles and heard laughs, but still, he saw no face.
“A secret,” he softly repeated. “Won’t you tell me what it is? I’ll let you kiss me again.”
“Oh, no, no,” the Silver King said, shaking his head and making his great mane shift and wave, and his gaze roved over the green velvet of Forseti’s suit, admiring the way it clung to his body, admiring the way it barely contained… any of him. “I’d need something more substantial than a kiss, I think.”
“Something I’m not prepared to offer, I would wager.”
“Shall we dance?” the King asked, proffering his hand, and Forseti laughed.
“You just want an excuse to touch me.”
“You’re damned right.”
He laughed again despite himself, the sound soft. “You really must stop learning English from those Americans, your majesty,” he said softly, and took the Silver King’s invitation.
