#why must this poor boy be plucked for a fate and destiny he did not choose?

[ghostyv]

There are tears in my eyes it’s too late to be crying

rest now, hero

till we meet again

[justfandomwritings]

By The Norns (Part One - Soulmate!Loki)

Pairing: Loki x Reader, Soulmates AU

Word count: 2.1k

Warnings: Nobody was harmed in any way in the making of this story... but there was some arson.

Summary: She wasn’t a goddess. She wasn’t even an elf or a dwarf. She was a mortal, a Midgardian, a human. To Odin, she was a curse. To Loki, she was a second chance.

Notes: Don’t worry. Despite what the chapter and the description may make you think anyone whose read my stories before will know I am not a fan of soulmate aus that take away the character’s choice. This chapter is set up. Stick with me on this. I promise. Posted in honor of @muna1412​ being very excited at the prospect of another soulmate au.

This is not related to Loyalty in any way... I just have an unhealthy obsession with Soulmate aus. 

Fate was a funny, fickle thing. Loki knew that much. After all, he’d met her. 

Them, to be more precise. The Norns.

Urdr, Skuld, and Verdandi were their names: Past, Present, and Future, as they should be known.

It was they who watered the tree, and they who grew its leaves. The task fell to the Norns to write, shape, create, and control the fate of every being under the branches of Yggdrasil. 

A poor, dwarven craftsman working on the surface of Nidavellir, a beautiful, golden elf living on a hill in Alfheim, a meager, puny human scurrying around the surface of Midgard. It was they who made the dwarf rich, who killed the elf in his sleep, who let the human sow the land. They did not exchange the gold; they did not wield the dagger; they did not draw the plow. But it was by their hand, by their grace and mercy, that the worlds turned, that life waxed and waned, that the Realms drew breath. 

Every birth was through their will. Every death was by their hand, and everything in between was because they decided it would be so.

All fell under the gaze of the Norns. The kitchen cook, Andhrimnir, who served the Aesir’s table at night, owed everything to the Norns. They allowed his birth into Asgard. They raised him above the station of a lowly tavern boy. They gifted him the family he cradled so dearly to his chest.

Odin, King of the Nine Realms, Protector of Asgard, owed everything to the Norns. He was born by their choice. He survived a thousand battles because they said he would do so. He married Frigga because they put her on his path. His sons… 

Well, one of his sons.

Loki knew the exact moment Odin stopped looking at him as a son, the exact moment Odin chose Thor over him, the exact moment Odin turned his back on him, the exact moment his father marked him disappointment.

It was, like all things, the doing of the Fates. The Norns.

Fates were theirs to command from the highest branches of Yggdrasil down to its very roots. From king to beggar, slave to master, aristocrat to pauper, farmer to merchant, sailor to soldier. From Loki to her. She was their doing.

Love was an inevitable part of life. Not even the Norns, with all of the power of the gods and then some, could stop that. Humans, Aesir, Elves, Vanir, the sentient beings of the Nine Realms felt an overwhelming urge towards emotion, and one of the strongest, one of the most inevitable, was love.

They couldn’t stop it, but they could direct it.

It fell under the purview of Fate to decide who one loved. People, god and mortal alike, fell in and out of love all the time. 

Sometimes, though, every now and then, the Norns would reach down and touch two beings. The Norns would take two souls in two bodies and braid them together, weave them together, mold them together, as if they were one.

Those who knew magic well, those like Loki, could see them, watch them, doing this. 

They could see Urdr floating, invisible amongst them, deciding the pair. They could see Skuld, plucking up their souls. They could see Verdandi tying them together.

Loki watched them when they took his soul.

“Mother, Mother,” Loki tugged on his other’s silk skirts and pointed up into the rafters of the Grand Hall. “What’s that?”

Frigga followed her son’s gaze and gasped. Magic was not her proficiency, though what little she had she wielded well. She had enough to see the Norns, floating ghostlike in the air over her younger son. She had enough to see his soul in their hands, and another at their side. 

In the old days, before that fateful night, it was considered an honor to be chosen by the Norns. It was a guarantee of a great, powerful destiny in the future. It was a promise of passion, understanding, and respect on the horizon. It was the mark of one who would know true love. 

The Midgardians called them soulmates. The Aesir called them the destined. 

“The Norns have touched Loki,” Frigga whispered to Odin at her side. “They are gifting him a match.”

“With who?” Odin asked because he could not see them for himself.

Frigga squinted in the direction of the apparitions tying together Loki’s future. “I cannot tell. She appears to be…” Frigga’s eyes whipped around to Odin, “Midgardian.”

Odin turned up his nose and sniffed.

Midgard. The word, the world, that had sentenced Loki to a lifetime of second best. 

His ‘destined’, his ‘soulmate’, his curse.

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It was centuries before the soul tied to Loki’s found the body it would spend its own life in.

(Y/n), her parents named her. 

They weren’t sure why they named her that. When asked, they said they saw the name once in a book. Or was it on the tv? Or in a dream? 

Neither could really remember. All they knew was that, as she grew, the name suited her perfectly. Almost as if fate itself had chosen it for her.

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For centuries, millennia even, her soul had been lingering on the edges of reality, existing but not quite feeling. She floated through time and space, following the ties that bound her to existence, waiting.

By the time her soul entered her body on Earth, she had existed longer  than any other Midgardian ever had or would in all of history. She had lingered for years just out of reach of one of the most powerful beings on Asgard, her soulmate. Lifetimes had passed her by in the blink of an eye, and though she didn’t remember any of them, they remembered her.

Her soul hovered above its mate, basking in the magic that dissipated into the air around him like smoke. She breathed it in, soaked it in, drew it in.

In many ways, even subconsciously, she showed her age, her mate.

Even as a baby, she never woke her mother up screaming, to the jealousy of her mom’s friends. She was the model toddler, even through her terrible twos. She almost never cried and rarely threw temper tantrums. They called her a prodigy when she started speaking in full sentences before time doctors even expected her to be learning her first words, and they called her a genius when she learned to read full children’s books while other kids were still struggling through their first alphabet flashcards. Even though she ran around playing in the mud or splashing in puddles, somehow her clothes were always pristine. She taught herself faster than the teachers could and skipped two grades in elementary school alone. She was suspiciously charismatic for such a little girl and made, literally, hundreds of dollars off her lemonade stand. She listened to a family speaking another language in the store once and ran up to them to answer a question they had; when her parents asked her how she’d learned to understand or say that in another language, she had no idea what they were talking about and seemingly hadn’t even realized she’d done it. 

And yet there were other things, darker things. 

When she was born, the nurses didn’t question the little shock of static that jolted through them as they held her. No one commented how, in the right light, the baby’s eyes could look terrifyingly aware. She lied as easily as she breathed and almost never got caught. A girl made fun of her friend's hair once at school, and that night ended up being rushed to the hospital by her parents with all the signs of a heart attack in a five year old child. She liked having things her way, and even when her parents refused her, they always found themselves oddly compelled to do whatever it was anyways. She had an affinity for snakes that often found her letting them in the house. The pranks she pulled on her little brother sometimes got out of hand and often resulted in loud crashes and screams, though by the time any adult arrived nothing ever seemed broken. Her father used to joke that she must be some kind of shape shifter because he swore that, from day to day, her eye would change their color. Sometimes, when he looked in them, he swore they weren’t his daughters, but when he blinked and looked back they always returned to normal. 

Most of it was written off as the simple oddities of a child or exaggerations of first time parents. 

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Superheroes did not exist when (Y/n) was a child. 

It would be another decade before Tony Stark would stand on a stage and proclaim before the world, “I am Iron Man.” It would be even longer still before Peter Parker would put on a red and blue jumpsuit and call himself, ‘Spiderman’. Bruce Banner hadn’t even begun his research into the serum that would be his ultimate undoing. Dr. Stephen Strange was finishing up med school. Thor hadn’t made his presence known. Wanda had just been born. Hawkeye and Black Widow were still assassins working in the shadows. No one outside Wakanda had ever heard of the Black Panther. Vision hadn’t been built yet, and Captain America had been dead for decades. 

Even if they did exist, it wouldn’t have helped (Y/n). Most of them weren’t born super. Most of them became so by lab experiments or radioactive insects or training or technology. 

In the world (Y/n) grew up in, there were no superheroes. And if there were no superheroes... then what was she? 

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She was 12. 

It was her big day. 

Not her birthday, she didn’t particularly care about birthdays. Something about them just felt off to her. When she turned 11, she asked her mom if she could have two of those candles that were shaped like the actual numbers, and she’d put them pressed against each other on top of the cake. She ran around all day telling everyone she was 1,111. Some people laughed, but mostly to humor her.

That was why she hadn’t had a birthday party when she turned 12. She didn’t like people fake laughing. It felt like lying. She didn’t particularly mind lying herself, but she hated thinking that people were lying to her. Especially because she could always tell when they were. 

No, instead, she had this. The Science Fair.

She’d won first prize the night before. She knew she had because one of the judges had told her she’d won.

That morning, they would be handing out the awards, and she was so excited for everyone else to know the secret, to know that she was the best, even better than the older kids in her class.

The judges were walking up on stage, and any moment, once they got past the category winners they were going to call her name.

“In third place we have Jesse Martin with his project in the biology category!” 

A cheer went up that, judging by the pitch, absolutely must have been from Jesse’s mom. The other parents in the room clapped while Jesse ran towards the stage, turning red in the cheeks from his family’s overzealous encouragement. 

“Congratulations, son,” the Dean smiled as he bent down to shake the boy’s hand. The mike picked up a small bit of Jesse’s anxious thanks before he ran to join the line of winners.

“And in second place we have, (Y/n)! With her wonderful….” 

Second place. 

But Mr. Sellers, the science teacher had told her she won. 

Was he lying? Did he honestly think second place was winning? Was he just saying that to shut her up? Or was he being mean? Did he want to laugh at her when his real favorite won? 

The parents were cheering her, including her own. Her father was nudging her towards the stage, but she didn’t at all appreciate the gesture.

No. They told her she was going to win. 

Her face screwed up in pain, and she balled her hands into fists.

At the back of the room something exploded. 

A scream went out. 

“Fire!” Someone shouted. “Fire!”

The poster boards up and down the hall were catching fire. It jumped easily from paper to paper. It didn’t help that there was no smoke, for some odd reason. That the sprinklers, that the fire alarm, didn’t turn on.

Someone grabbed (Y/n) by the waist. Her father no doubt. 

(Y/n) barely noticed. She was still upset staring at the trophy on the stage over his shoulder. 

Slowly, before her eyes, it began to melt.

She smiled. Good. If she couldn’t have it, no one could.

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“She caused the fire.” He whispered, staring down at the floor in front of him with glassy eyes. 

“Wayne, that’s crazy; you know it is.” 

“I saw it with my own eyes, Elle. She clenched her first and suddenly Christina Danvers poster exploded. She gets second, and the first place project explodes the moment she throws a fit?”

“Our daughter doesn’t throw fits.”

“Not normally, but she did today. She was about to, and then everything caught fire.”

“Wayne, you can’t be serious about this right now.”

“She was smiling.” He whispered. “When everything burned down, she was smiling.”

(Y/n) listened silently from the hallway as her parents talked.

She loved to eavesdrop on her parents late night. They never knew she was there. It was another one of those odd coincidences of her life that (Y/n) was the only person in the house who never made the steps creak when she walked up and down the stairs. 

She was old enough to know what they were saying, what they were implying. It should’ve bothered her more than it did.

(Y/n) walked back upstairs, silent as the grave, and opened her closet.

She needed the duffle bag her father kept tucked away in the top of her closet, but she was nowhere near tall enough to reach it. As the door slid open, the bag teetered on the edge of the wire shelf and fell to the floor. 

“How convenient,” (Y/n) mumbled to herself. 

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“Hey Kid,” The man shouted at her out the window of his semi-truck. “What’re you doin’ out here at night? It ain’t safe!” 

(Y/n) shrugged. “Not safe at home either.” 

The man gave her an understanding look. 

(Y/n) watched him carefully as he opened the door of his rig and offered her a hand. 

Her mother had always told her not to talk to strangers, but (Y/n) had found she could always tell what people wanted. Besides, she was pretty sure she was a greater danger to them than they were to her. 

“Where ya’ headed?” The man asked.

“West.”

“I can take ya’ as far as Texas.” He offered. 

(Y/n) hopped off the curb and grabbed the man’s offered hand, hauling herself up into the passenger seat. 

She didn’t know where she was going or why she was going there. But something inside of her told her she had somewhere to be.

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Next Time On.... Part Two

Thank you very much for reading! I hope you all enjoyed. I have just come back from a hiatus and a great deal of why I went on said hiatus was the stress of managing ‘added features’ for lack of a better expression. I like writing. I don’t like formatting or managing the blog side of things. 

As such, no taglists. Please don’t ask me to be on a taglist. Keeping track of it stresses me out too much. I don’t feel like doing it. I don’t appreciate being pressured into doing it. In the olden days of tumblr, people used to follow each other, and I promise you that feature still works. If you follow me you will see part two when it’s posted. 

[elderbloodlore]

Calanthe was not a racist homicidal tyrant: a useless and bitter rant of someone whose favourite character ever got mercilessly butchered.

WHY ARE YOU WRITING THIS? 

Well, let me give you a little bit of a backstory. I first read the Last Wish and the Sword of Destiny in 2012, when I was 14 years old. I instantly connected with the character of Calanthe, and after her death, it took me nearly a year to be able to pick up the saga itself. Ever since, she remained my favourite fictional character ever. As a little girl in misoginistic Poland, I was so lucky to have her as a role model. Because she fought for herself, she took no shit from anybody, she had love and respect of the people around her, and yet she had such tenderness and kindness about her that many strong woman-trope characters are missing these days, and that is exactly what happened to Calanthe when she was being translated to the screen. In 2015 The Wild Hunt was coming out and there were rumours of Ciri being included, so you can imagine my absolute glee and the hope I was filled with to have some more content with that one woman that meant so much to me growing up. And you can imagine my disappointment when all we got about her were a couple tiny mentions, even though the events of the Wild Hunt happen not even a decade after her death. Then the show by Netflix was announced and, once again, I had super high expectations. I wanted to see the wise, kind, beautiful Queen brought alive. December 2019 rolls in, and my hopes are being steamrolled. So here I am, 22 years old and crying over a fictional character, because one of the best written female characters ever (in my opinion) entered mainstream as a bullish, racist, homicidal tyrant. So let me address the biggest changes the show made to my beloved Calanthe Fiona Riannon, the Lioness of Cintra.

THE LOOKS 

That was obviously the first thing that threw me off. I was quite enthusiastic when the cast was announced, but then as the first promo pictures were released, my enthusiasm was slowly dying down. In the books, Calanthe’s looks are adressed very often: 

 “As before, the queen wore emeralds matching the green of her dress and her eyes. As before, a thin gold crown encircled her ash-gray hair.” Sword of Destiny. 

I tried to convince myself that Jodhi May won’t be a bad Calanthe so hard that I actually made this poor ass EDIT to feed my delusions and cheer myself up. In comparison, HERE is my personal favourite art of Calanthe that I find is the most accurate to the book portrayal. 

Even when the first trailer dropped I was still trying to convince myself that even though she has none of her Elder Blood features or her iconic emerald green, that she wore exclusively in the books, she couldn’t be that bad. Right? Wrong. 

THE DEMEANOR 

This is probably the biggest change. Calanthe was one of the wisest, most gracefully-written characters in the entire saga, and I really hoped to see that on screen. She was quick-witted, calculating, but at the same time caring enough to let her daughter choose her own destiny in the end (even if it was to be with a hedgehog-headed man twice her age). Her smiles were said to always be full of kindness, she was acting very proper and clearly cared about her image. I’m not going to be getting too much into it with my own words, let these examples speak for me:

'Ah, Geralt,' said Calanthe, with a gesture forbidding a servant from refilling her goblet. 'I speak and you remain silent. We're at a feast. We all want to enjoy ourselves. Amuse me. I'm starting to miss your pertinent remarks and perceptive comments. I'd also be pleased to hear a compliment or two, homage or assurance of your obedience. In whichever order you choose.' [...]  'Hochebuz,'  said Calante, looking at Geralt,  'my first battle. Although I fear rousing the indignation and contempt of such a proud witcher, I confess that we were fighting for money. Our enemy was burning villages which paid us levies and we, greedy for our tributes, challenged them on the field. A trivial reason, a trivial battle, a trivial three thousand corpses pecked to pieces by the crows. And look - instead of being ashamed I'm proud as a peacock that songs are sung about me. Even when sung to such awful music' Again she summoned her parody of a smile full of happiness and kindness, and answered the toast raised to her by lifting her own, empty, goblet. Geralt remained silent. The Last Wish.

'Aha,' said Calanthe quietly, clearly pleased. 'And what do you say, Geralt? The girl has taken after her mother. It's even a shame to waste her on that red-haired lout, Crach. The only hope is that the pup might grow into someone with Eist Tuirseach's class. It's the same blood, after all. Are you listening, Geralt? Cintra has to form an alliance with Skellige because the interest of the state demands it. My daughter has to marry the right person. Those are the results you must ensure me.' The Last Wish.

‘Very well then. As queen, I shall convene a council tomorrow. Cintra is not a tyranny. The council will decide whether a dead king's oath is to decide the fate of the successor to the throne. It will decide whether Pavetta and the throne of Cintra are to be given to a stranger, or to act according to the kingdom's interest.'  The Last Wish.

'Pavetta!' Calanthe repeated. 'Answer. Do you choose to leave with this creature?' Pavetta raised her head. 'Yes.' The Force filling the hall echoed her, rumbling hollowly in the arches of the vault. No one, absolutely no one, made the slightest sound. Calanthe very slowly, collapsed into her throne. Her face was completely expressionless. The Last Wish.

Guards, armed with guisarmes and lances, ran in from the entrance. Calanthe, upright and threatening, with an authoritative, abrupt gesture indicated Urcheon to them. Pavetta started to shout, Eist Tuirseach to curse. Everyone jumped up, not quite knowing what to do. ‘Kill him!' shouted the queen. The Last Wish.

CINTRA, RACISM AND MURDERING HER OWN PEOPLE 

In the books, Cintra was often mentioned to be obiding by the rules of the elves: 

‘Dear child,’ said Vesemir gravely, 'don’t let yourself get carried away by your emotions. You were brought up differently, you’ve seen children being brought up in another way. Ciri comes from the south where girls and boys are brought up in the same way, like the elves. She was put on a pony when she was five and when she was eight she was already riding out hunting. She was taught to use a bow, javelin and sword. A bruise is nothing new to Ciri—’ Blood of Elves.

There were many elves and dwarves living peacefully within its borders. Calanthe’s two names - Fiona and Riannon, come from her ancestors that are respectively a quarter and a half elf, and known to be that. Calanthe was the one who taught Ciri that non-humans are not dangerous:

‘I’m not afraid at all!’ Ciri suddenly cried, assuming her little devil face for a moment. ‘And I’m not parrotised! So you’d better watch your step! Nothing can happen to me here. Be sure! I’m not afraid. My grandmamma says that dryads aren’t evil, and my grandmamma is the wisest woman in the world! My grandmamma… My grandmamma says there should be more forests like this one…’ Sword of Destiny.

There was no actual reason nor basis for the showrunners to make her racist and make her murder elves. Having her walk into her own daughter’s birthday party, bathed in elven blood, while she knows that the same blood flows in her own veins, at least partially, was completely unnecessary. Even in the polish version of the show from 2001 Calanthe said: 

RELATIONSHIP WITH GERALT 

This probably hits me the most on personal level, because I feel like Calanthe had a huge impact on Geralt’s growth as a character, and with such a drastic change to their relationship, I’m unsure as to he will now proceed to develop. Calanthe was, in large, one of the first people in the books that treated Geralt as anything more than a mutant. Here are some of my favourite scenes between the two, in comparison with how their relationship was portrayed in the show:

"At times, no, for years at a time, I deluded myself that you might forget. Or that for other reasons you might be prevented from coming. No, I didn't want anything unfortunate to happen to you, but I had to take into consideration the dangerous nature of your profession. It is said that death follows in your footsteps, Geralt of Rivia, but that you never look behind you. Then... when Pavetta... You know already?" "I know," Geralt said, inclining his head. "My sincere condolences..." "No," she interrupted, "it was all long ago. I no longer wear mourning clothes, as you see. I wore them for long enough.” Sword of Destiny.

He slowly pushed the cup on the table so that the clink of silver on malachite would not betray the uncontrollable trembling of his arm. "You don't deny it?" "No." She bent to seize his hand with vigor. "You disappoint me," she said, giggling prettily. "This isn't voluntary," he responded, laughing as well. "How did you guess, Calanthe?" "I did not guess." She did not release his hand. "I said it at random, that's all." They broke out in laughter. Sword of Destiny.

"I will not take it. It is too great a responsibility, one that I refuse to assume. I would not want for this child to speak about you the way... the way I..." "You hate this woman, Geralt?" "My mother? No, Calanthe. I doubt that she was given a choice... or perhaps she had no say? No, she had, you know, enough formulas and elixirs... Choice. There is a sacred and incontestable choice of every woman that must be respected. Emotions are of no importance here. She had the indisputable right to make such a choice. That's what she did. But I think about meeting her, the expression on her face then... it gives me a sort of perverse pleasure, if you understand what I mean." Sword of Destiny.

A rosebush grew next to the gazebo. Geralt plucked a flower, breaking its stem and then knelt, his head bowed, presenting the flower in his hands. "I regret that I did not meet you sooner, white-haired one," she said, accepting the offered rose. "Rise." He rose. "If you change your mind," she went on, sniffing the flower, "if you decide... Return to Cintra. I will wait for you. Your destiny will be waiting for you, as well. Perhaps not advitam aeternam, but for some time, no doubt." "Farewell, Calanthe." "Farewell, witcher. Look after yourself. I... I sometimes feel... in a strange way... that I am seeing you for the last time." "Farewell, my queen." Sword of Destiny.

FALL OF CINTRA AND CALANTHE’S DEATH 

We were robbed of so many epic scenes that truly took away from Calanthe’s millitary accomplishments and showed none of the strength and determination she originally had: 

"The Nilfgaardians dealt the first blow," he began after a moment of silence. "There were thousands. They met with the armies of Cintra in the Marnadal valley. The battle lasted all day: from dawn to dusk. Cintra's troops valiantly resisted before being decimated. The king died, and that's when the queen..." "Calanthe." "Yes. Seeing that her army had succumbed to panic and scattered, she gathered around herself and her standard any who could still fight and formed a line of defense that reached the river, next to the city. All the soldiers who were still able followed." "And Calanthe?" "With a handful of knights, she covered the troops' crossing and defended the rear. They say she fought like a man, plunging into the thick of the battle. She was impaled by pikes when she charged against the Nilfgaardian infantry. She was then evacuated to the city. What's in that flask, Geralt?" "Vodka. Want some?" "Well then, gladly." "Speak. Continue, Dandelion. Tell me everything." "The city wasn't properly defended. There was no headquarters. The defensive walls were empty. The rest of the knights and their families, the princes and the queen, barricaded themselves in the castle. The Nilfgaardians then took the castle after their sorcerers reduced the gate to cinders and burned down the walls. Only the tower, apparently protected by magic, resisted the spells of the Nilfgaardian sorcerers. Even so, the attackers penetrated inside four days later without making camp. The women had killed the children, the boys and girls, and fell upon their own swords or... What's is it, Geralt?" "Continue, Dandelion." "Or... like Calanthe... head first, from the battlement, the very top... It's said that she asked to be... but no-one would agree. So she climbed up to the crenelations and... jumped head first. They say they did horrible things to the corpse afterward. I don't want... What is it?” Sword of Destiny.

I understand that this happened because of limited screen time, probably, but the whole Fall of Cintra had been squeezed into what seemed to be a single day, a crushing defeat for Calanthe’s forces, and probably in some way, punishment for her pride. 

AFTER CALANTHE’S DEATH 

While reading the rest of the saga, these little snipits of people talking about Calanthe, mentioning her, often with respect and reverence, mentioning how her people mourned her and swore revange for her, truly kept me going through. I wished that, at the end, Ciri would find it in herself to return home and liberate it, as back then I had no way to spoil myself the ending. In the books, you can really feel the outrage almost all of Continent feels after the murder of Calanthe: 

[...] Cintra is a symbol. Remember Sodden! If it were not for the massacre of that town and Calanthe's martyrdom, there would not have been such a victory then. The forces were equal — no one counted on our crushing them like that. But our armies threw themselves at their throats like wolves, like rabid dogs, to avenge the Lioness of Cintra. Blood of Elves.

[...] Bear in mind that these men left their homes and families, and fled to Sodden and Brugge, and to Temeria, because they wanted to fight for Cintra, for Calanthe’s blood. They wanted to liberate their country, to drive the invader from Cintra, so that Calanthe’s descendant would regain the throne. Baptism of Fire.

In the show, there is none of that. In fact, people seem to be full of disdain and hatred for her, saying things such as: 

which, in turn, fills me with dread for the upcoming seasons, because I can already feel all the further butchery coming my beloved Queen’s way.

IN CONCLUSION

In all honestly, there is very little the Calanthe from the show has in common with the one from the books, the one I originally fell in love with. Which is not to say that Netflix’s Calanthe is not a great character in her own right, because who doesn’t love a badass sword-wielding Queen, but as a portrayal of the greatest ruler within the Witcher universe, and one of, in my opinion, best written female rules in literature, she falls flat, and that’s what pushed me to write this useless and slightly bitter rant, in hopes to maybe interest more people in the original version of Calanthe and maybe, just maybe, prompt some of you to read the saga or, at the very least, the short stories. 

[fweeble]

Courtly Love

Title: Courtly Love Fandom: Ao no Exorcist Verse: I Wanna Be Your Knight Pairing(s): RinBon, ShimaBon Warnings: slight canon divergence post-Kyoto arc, navel-gazing, unbeta’d Summary: If people were shapes, Bon would be a line— simple, direct, untangled, limitless. Renzou is a Celtic knot— circular in nature, turning in on itself endlessly without a start or end. If people were shapes, Renzou would be made up of Bon. -- In which Bon is many things to Shima; Shima is a singular thing to Bon. A/N: I heard there was a mysterious chapter 90 for AoEx that has yet to be posted on Mangapark. And then I had ShimaSugu feelings that I didn’t know what to do with. So I didn’t sleep and wrote this.  Tumbles has been messing with my formatting, so an alternative is reading it on AO3. 

 --

 If people were shapes, Bon would be a line— simple, direct, untangled, limitless.  Renzou is a Celtic knot— circular in nature, turning in on itself endlessly without a start or end. 

  If people were shapes, Renzou would be made up of Bon.

  --

  In the end, everything comes back to Inari. 

 Before he had been ordered to capture Kamiki, he had been so sure. He could throw away his chains, break free of them and fly away like he had always dreamed. Mephisto had given him the map and the Illuminati had given him the key— he knew he was dancing along a precipice, but it hadn't mattered either way. He didn't want to die but he wasn't afraid of dying, and while he had no real allegiance to the Illuminati, they offered something that Myou Dha did not. Choice. Freedom. Nothing in Kyoto was worth going back to. He would play spy, double agent— triple, quadruple, quintuple— to his heart's content. Because this was the game, the grandest game, and there was no losing, only winning. Heads, he had fun, freedom, and lost nothing; tails, he had fun, freedom, and died.  

In the long run, he'd rather die than return to Myou Dha and its responsibilities.  He had nothing to lose.  When Bon shouts his name was the first time that he questions himself. Still, he climbed into the helicopter, towards his new duty, one he chose for himself, and away from Bon. 

He watched as his friends fought for their lives against monsters that could not die, no matter how much the poor souls yearned for death. He watched as Konekomaru was nearly eaten alive by an amalgamation of pain and suffering, as Shiemi was plucked from the floor by her leg, and he squashed down the fear, the anxiety. This would have all had happened whether or not he had been a part of the Illuminati, he knew— the organization was too large, too influential, too deep inside the True Cross Order for her kidnapping to have been prevented. He had no illusions— he knew what his job entailed, had known that walking down this path had meant forsaking friends, family, everyone he loved. But he had known it'd be worth it, had known he could throw it all away. That was why he was a perfect spy, after all.  None of them could have stood by and watched— not Bon, not Rin, not Konekomaru, not Shiemi, not even Izumo. But he could. He could watch them die. He could watch everyone die. Watching Bon give the writhing mass of limbs and mouths its funeral rites had made him realize—

He could watch everyone die, even Bon, but he would never forgive himself if they did. 

Bon's anguished cry, the desperation that seeped into the words, they were what made Renzou realize that there was something worth returning to, something that was worth more than anything else.  That day, when Bon asked him if it had been his fault, Renzou had been honest. Renzou chose his path and there's no going back now, even if it means leaving behind what mattered the most.  He doesn't think Bon will ever understand. He knows Bon will never forgive him. Bon isn't made of secrets and lies, he doesn't understand the yearnings of another life, of another world. Bon has only ever lived in the sun, has only ever been loved and adored.  Still, as Renzou lies in his bed, in the dorm he shares with Bon and Konekomaru, he finds that it doesn't matter. Bon can hate him, can distrust him, can revile him.  Renzou can live with anything as long as he lives on in Bon's heart, a mark that never fades. 

 --

 According to Christian scripture, there are seven sins. Bon would argue that Renzou's sin is sloth, Konekomaru would insist is lust, his father would correct them both and declare it pride. 

The truth is that Renzou's greatest flaw is his envy. He envies the freedom those born outside of Myou Dha; he envies how they can choose their own path, how their blood is not a chain that ties them to what they can never run away from. As a child he imagined growing wings, of flying far, far, far away from where he is told he must protect a boy with his life, that he must live up to the memory of a brother he does not know. He dreams that, instead of stern words at his sloppy form, the grip on his khakkhara, faceless parents praise him on mastering a weapon at such a young age. Instead of a destiny protecting a lineage out of duty, he dreams of a life where everything he achieves is a small victory.  He envies Konekomaru who does not live under the burden of his family's expectations, of the ghost of Shima Takezou, of the name Shima. He envies Konekomaru, who even without a family, is beloved, both by the Shima family and the Suguro family.  He envies Rin, who chose the life of an exorcist and was not raised into it. Rin, who can declare just as proudly and earnestly as Bon that he will defeat Satan. Rin, who has never lived in anyone's shadow, even as he chases after Shiro's. Rin, who after realizing his love for Bon, throws himself wholeheartedly into playing white knight and winning the princess's favor. Rin had done what Renzou could never bring himself to do and had been honest with Bon. He envies Bon, who embraced the role Myou Dha gave him, who strove to meet their expectations and exceed it, who built his dream around their plans for him. How they chafed, the weight of his responsibilities, how he resented them— how he resented Bon— only to watch as the other boy thrived under it while he suffocated.

Shima Renzou has lived with envy his entire life. He does not know how to live without it.

He does not know of a love without it. 

 --

 Konekomaru would be a right angle— plain and unremarkable, but reliable and sturdy. Renzou knows that, without him, the two of them would have fallen apart love before they reached the True Cross Academy. 

  --

 Bon can't look at him. Bon, who knows etiquette as well as anyone reared by an owner of a traditional ryokan has to, cannot look at Renzou when they have meals in their room now. Even when he speaks to Renzou, he cannot life his eyes from his bowl. Never in his life has he seen Bon scowl into his bowl and while asking Renzou to pass him the ponzu sauce.  And Bon knows it, he knows he's being immature and petty, and that only causes him to implode further, spiraling into himself with indignation and frustration.  Renzou can't help but be amused. Bon, always so serious.  He wants to lean over the table and press a finger against the deep ridges of the other boy's furrowed brow, to tease him for being ridiculous. He wants to needle and prod Bon until he explodes, because at least then Bon would look at him— when had he started craving the other boy's attention? Maybe he had always craved it and it wasn't until he lost it that the hunger wriggled its way into his consciousness.  "Rude, Bon, so rude~ You should talk to the person you are talking to~" He holds up the ponzu sauce tantalizingly, swinging it to and fro just so Bon would look up at outrage about condiments being treated inappropriately at a dinner table.  Instead, Bon just sets his bowl and chopsticks down and excuses himself from the table.  Renzou watches Bon on his bed, curled on his side, facing away from the Renzou and the dinner table, reading a book.  In this small, cramped dorm room with three people in it, Renzou has never felt more alone. 

  "Shima-san," Konekomaru says softly, "could you pass me the ponzu sauce?" "Of course Koneko~" Renzou sings happily, passing it with more cheer than he actually feels.  Konekomaru refills his own sauce plate before quietly doing so for Bon's abandoned one as well. 

Later, after Renzou exits the shower, he finds Bon's dishes empty and Konekomaru clearing up the table. 

  --

  Renzou doesn't know a life without Suguro Ryuuji. 

His entire life, he has been Bon's side because of blood, birth, and duty. He has been raised with Bon, educated with Bon, trained with Bon, taught to be devoted to Bon.  He has spent his life resenting Bon, for his existence which dictated his fate. Bon. Pure, selfish, hard-headed Bon. No one knows Bon better than Renzou. Bon pushes himself beyond his limits, sets impossible standards for himself, expects miracles from himself because he loves them— because he loves his family, Myou Dha, and he wants to give them everything. He wants them to be loved and well-respected like they once were; he wants to give them the world.  Bon, like the sun, tries to pull everyone into his orbit.  He tries to make everyone's problems his own. Bon is what Myou Dha made him. 

 -- Bon sits by his bedside, hunched over himself, his elbows braced against his knees as he looks at the floor. There are dark circles under his eyes, and he looks so distraught that even his panda joke rings hollow in Renzou's own ears.  "It wasn't a lie," Bon says to his feet. "That demon doesn't tell lies." Renzou leans back into the pillows at his back, looks forlornly at the mostly-empty tupperware that held Rin's apology cookies and wishes he could eat them, if only to have something to distract him from the guilt that was gnawing at his innards like one of Gedouin's creations.  "Nope," he says, popping the p. There's no point in softening the blow, not with Bon.  Bon doesn't say anything for awhile, and Renzou is forced to marinate in the silence and his own guilt until the other boy finally moves.  "So it was my fault," Bon says finally, running a hand through his hair, laughing. And that's the biggest punch to the gut— —not the confession he made while possessed, not the way he had sidled up to him and professed his love for Bon in the same breath he had used to declare his hatred for Bon, his family, Myou Dha—

—it's the way Bon laughs now, self-deprecating, filled with self-loathing. "Look, it's not as simple as the demon made it sound— it's.... it's all sort of," he sighs, tries to recollect his thoughts, tries to figure out a way to order words that would make sense to Bon, that wouldn't just make everything a bigger mess than it already was.  Bon just shakes his head as he gets up, his voice thick as he says, "It doesn't matter, Shima. It's my fault." He looks away from Renzou and out the hospital window, as if the horizon held answers that Renzou cannot give. "I've been pushing and pushing and— Konekomaru's right, I can't push you all into... into being friends or family. I can't push you out of being a spy or into returning to Myou Dha... or even leaving the Illuminati." Bon looks at him and Renzou realizes his eyes are just a bit wet and something warm and selfish unfurls in his chest, because Bon didn't cry when his father was wounded and dying while the Impure King ran rampant, but Renzou, he's struggling not to cry over him. It's unfair and cruel, the happiness he feels about the unshed tears in Bon's eyes, the way the other boy looks unmade and broken by the truths Renzou had cruelly thrown at him while possessed.  Renzou can't bring himself to say anything.  "Shima— Renzou, I..." Bon lingers at the doorway, struggling with words he can't seem to figure out how to say. "I'll change. I will. I'm sorry. "Renzou... I won't stop trying to rebuild Myou Dha, I can't. But it isn't for me, and it isn't for Myou Dha; it's so everyone has a place to come home to." Finally, Bon stops looking at his feet and meets Renzou's eyes. He squares his shoulders, straightens his spine as he takes a steadying breath, hand braced against the door frame. "So come home whenever you want. I'll always wait for you." With that, Bon swiftly spins on his heel and stalks out the door, carefully shutting the door behind him.  It's as if all the air in the room had left the room with Bon— for a few minutes, Renzou can't breathe.  The place Renzou has always longed for, a place for him, has always been with Bon.  Bon is home. Bon loves him. Renzou will always be in Bon's heart.

  Bon isn't a liar like Renzou.

  --

   Shiemi would be circle fractals— its beginnings are simple, but as it grows and expands, so does its beauty, until it encompasses everything, unearthly in its simplicity, in its entirety.

  Renzou often finds himself in awe of her, in the kindness that suffuses her and how it is her strength.

  --

  Shiemi has lunch with him while he is in the hospital.  Her smiles could stop wars, he thinks as she watches her talk about the classes he's missing, her hands doing as much talking as she is as they flutter like butterflies in flight. Shiemi is almost defined by her smiles, Renzou can count on his hands the number of times he has seen her without one.  "I'm so lucky to have such a beautiful girl visit me every day! And with lunch!" Renzou tries his best to swallow his mouthful of sprouts and bread without choking— it wouldn't do, after all, to pepper a specimen of loveliness with half-chewed pits of vegetation. "How've you been? How is the shop?" "I've been well!" Shiemi tilts her head in consideration. "Rin is well, too! He's been worried about Yuki-kun, though." She frowns, her mouth pursing together in the way it does when she chews on the inside of her mouth. "I have been too..." Renzou bites his tongue— these secrets aren't his to tell, even if he should. She tilts her head to one side, hands that fidgeting in her lap as she says slowly, "I saw Suguro-kun yesterday. He came in for more ammunition. He seemed... troubled." "Don't worry about him, Shiemi-san. Bon's a worry-wart, you know that. Just give him time and he'll get over what's bothering him." Renzou tries to fight down the surge of joy when he remembers Bon's words. "Besides, he's got me!" He grins, it's irrepressible, and he can't fight it even if he wanted to.  It's irresponsible, promising to be there for Bon, it's stupid. It's impossible.  Shiemi just smiles at him gently. "I know, Shima-kun. We've all got each other." She squeezes his hand gently as if she knows all his secrets and accepts him for what he is, twisted, envious, treacherous, lying creature that he is. 

  Whenever he's with Shiemi, Renzou feels like he can be better than he is. 

  --

  Rin would be a circle— incomplete until finished, filled with endless possibilities and potential. Renzou remembers Bon once telling him that everything in the world is contained in a circle; in pi. 

   --

  Between reporting to the Illuminati and Mephisto, missions for the Order, and trying to mend burnt bridges, Renzou discovers that he and Rin have become something different, something more than what they used to be. "Friends and rivals in love," he says into his can of soda, breathless with laughter. "What are we? Two lovelorn souls sitting on a rooftop, bonding over impossible love?" Rin looks at him, determination in the line of his body, in the tilt of his smile. "I'm not like you. I haven't given up." Giving up. Is that what he's doing?

"I'm the black knight," he reminds Rin. "You have rules to follow; I don't. That's the boon of being a spy, you see. I don't follow the rules— I bend them to suit me." The stars are bright tonight, the cloudless sky seemingly endless. He loves nights like this, where the world seems tiny, insignificant, and he— so close to the stars— feels like he can capture those faraway lights if he just reached out for them. "Giving up, not giving up— that's not what this is for me." "Then what is Bon to you? Now that you aren't mind-controlled by green-eyed demons," Rin says cheekily, fangs glinting as he grins. Rin is easy to talk to, comfortable, a kindred spirit. That's what makes him dangerous, Renzou knows, Rin makes it easy to share secrets and Renzou is nothing but secrets tied into delicate knots with one another until they take another form. Rin picks at them, guileless and genuine. He's not a creature of the shadows despite his parentage. Shiemi had said Rin's flames were warm, kind. That's the problem, Renzou thinks. Because Rin is like Bon.  Straight and true.

  And Renzou—

Renzou is anything but.

  "Bon," he says lightly, eyes tracing constellations as he stretches out against the roof, "is Bon."

  --

 Rin doesn't dream of a perfect life together with Bon, but he hopes for a day Bon will accept his love. He strives for a day when they can build a life together. Rin believes in a day where he will hold Bon's hand and he will smile at Rin, softly squeezing his hand back.  Renzou doesn't dare have these hopes and dreams.  His biggest wish has already been granted— Bon will always wait for him; he will forever exist within Bon's heart. That is the biggest difference between the two of them. Renzou plays every angle, he plays the probabilities, he hedges his bets, he doesn't take his chances on a miracle. 

Rin does. He believes in the impossible; he believes he can defeat Satan, he believes he can win the heart of the princess.

And maybe that's what makes a knight a white knight and not a black knight. 

   --

   Kamiki would be a star— its lines crossing over itself endlessly until it became whole, incomplete until the end met the beginning, giving birth to itself. 

Renzou finds her beautiful and familiar, enchanting in a way he is not.

   --

   Kamiki still looks at him like he is scum, but there is something familiar in her eyes now, something achingly intimate. Understanding.  They had been outsiders looking in, playing their part, a part of but removed from everyone else in the cram class— now they are both unmasked for everyone to see. He had liked her from the beginning, he had sensed her for what he was— both of them were dressed themselves in their secrets. She wore them like armor protecting her from a past she could not flee from; he wore his for a future he yearned for. Her armor was her own weakness, a flaw in its design, a flimsy protection in truth. He loves her for it; he has never felt closer to a person before her. She looks at him and sees him— a boy running towards or away from something, he can never be sure. He looks at her and sees her— a girl who cannot outrun her past no matter how hard she tries. Her past has caught up with her, and with it, she has lost her armor and he has lost some of his, but they are kindred spirits.  Kamiki will never forgive him, she will never hesitate to cut him down if he threatens this new family she has now. Still, he loves her more for it, for the strength she found in her own abyss. 

  "You and Rin both," she says derisively, rolling her eyes, because she is like him; she doesn't just look, she sees.  "Yeah, me and Rin," he says laughing, allowing his eyes to follow Bon and the way he tilts his head back just the slightest as he lets out a laugh, full and loud and unrestrained. They're alike, he and Kamiki, similar in the ways they differ.

  She is so beautiful his heart aches.

   --

  Bon falls in love easily, as quickly as the sakura fall after they bloom.  Renzou doesn't remember when Bon fell in love with Juuzou, just remembers the the sight of Bon, round-cheeked and bright-eyed, with a fistful of fresh cucumber looking up at his older brother with simple adoration. He remembers Bon's chubby legs straining to keep up with Juuzou, his childish, high-pitched laughter as he ran after the older boy. Bon idolized his father. Bon admired Juuzou.  Years before the fat melted from Renzou's own cheeks, he had known the line between admiration and love were blurry for Bon.  It had been funny, a secret he carefully guarded within himself— a joke only he knew. Now, as he watches Bon— older, wiser, taller, broader— chasing after Lightning, a flush high on his cheekbones, it isn't funny.

  "I've fallen for him." 

 Couldn't you have lied? Just to yourself? Renzou watches Bon's back as he gets farther and farther away, bile sour and bitter in the back of his throat. Of all people, why Lightning?

  --

 Lightning is Rorschach blots— changing, fluid, misleading, unknowable.  Renzou can't stand the idea of stains blurring the crisp, beautiful edge of Bon's line. 

  --

 Lightning smiles like he knows all the secrets and every secret is a joke he will never share. Lightning calls Bon "Ryuuji" as he cheerfully leads the boy astray, down paths so dark not even Renzou has access to.  Lightning will get Bon killed, or worse. Bon might change.  Bon had changed for Juuzou, had decided to become the kaname the older boy had told him he was.  Bon, simple, straightforward Bon who falls in love so easily and without question.  He falls in love like snow melts in the spring, as if it was inevitable. He molds himself for those he loves, because he has never truly grown up from that little boy who liked to show off how easily he memorized sutras, looking for praise, recognition. If Lightning tells him to become someone other than he is, Renzou is convinced that Bon will do that, just like Bon has for him, Konekomaru, and the rest of Myou Dha. 

Bon returns to the dorm one night after helping Lightning unusually withdrawn and distant. After glancing at Konekomaru and catching the other boy worriedly staring at Bon's hunched form, Renzou finally gives into the apprehension that had been plaguing him since he had seen Bon with Lightning outside the Order's secret library.  "Bon." Bon doesn't move from where he sits on his bed, curled forward, arms crossed, chin tucked in. "Bon," Renzou tries again, making his way to Bon's bed. "Bon." Finally, Bon responds. "Yeah, Shima?"  Bon is still pensive, eyes staring unseeing at the floor before him. Renzou stops before Bon, places both hands firmly on Bon's shoulders, and says, "Bon, if this thing with Lightning is messing with you, you oughtta stop. All the knowledge and power in the world isn't worth whatever this is doing to you." Beneath his hands, Bon's shoulders stiffen. When Bon finally speaks again, his words are stiff, "I'm fine, Shima." "You're not, Bon," Konekomaru says from behind Renzou. He takes a breath before continuing, "At first, it was okay, you know. You looked after him but you still came back..." You. 

Renzou's grip tightens, "Look, Bon— I know. I know..."  What would be the right way to word this? "We know you admire Lightning a lot. We know you think you can learn a lot from him, and that... You tend to..." Renzou looks to Konekomaru for support. The smaller boy just shakes his head after awhile and looks back at him, apparently unaware of any way to word the situation delicately as well. "Uh, go above and beyond what the situation calls for when...it...involves..." The look on Bon's face when he finally looks up at Renzou— uncomprehending, before something akin to surprise flickers across his face— causes him to relax. Unfortunately, the next heartbeat is when, enraged, Bon shoves him onto the floor, face a perfect picture of fury as he exclaims, "Really?  Do you still think I'm six and chasing after Juuzou, confusing admiration with love?" Bon stands up, scowling, looking from Renzou to Konekomaru. "Do you really think I am so stupid? So naive?" Renzou stares from his place on the floor, mouth flapping soundlessly. He turns to look at Konekomaru who looks properly chastised, smiling awkwardly as he says, "Sorry, Bon... You've just... We've been worried." Bon seems to deflate at Konekomaru's words.  "No, it's my fault too..." Bon frowns at the floor once again. It's the look he always gets when he's thinking hard, when there's something important on his mind and he's on the verge of making a rash decision. For once, Renzou hopes he'll make it, that Bon will snap and tell them everything.  But Bon just looks up from the floor and at Renzou for several long seconds before sighing, running a hand through his hair and settling back down on the bed. "I can't say it's nothing. It's not." He looks at them and gives them a small, strained smile. "I never thought there'd be a day when I couldn't tell you guys everything..." It hits Renzou hard, then, how much he despises Lightning for the changes he's causing in Bon.  The smile melts into something like a grimace as Bon continues, "And this isn't something that can stay a secret forever... But I can't right now. When the time comes, I'll tell you." "Bon..." Konekomaru looks as if he'll protest, but after a moment he seems to change his mind. "We're here for you, always," he says instead. He smiles, just as brittle as Bon had.  "I know," Bon says, smile finally something familiar, real and true. "I am, too." Renzou hates Lightning, he decides as he looks takes in all the subtle tells of wear and tear on Bon's features, the slightly hunted and haunted look that has slowly started to become common on his friend's face. He hates Lightning more than anything he ever has in his life, including Myou Dha. 

  --

 At night, if the moon is bright enough and the stars aren't hidden behind clouds, SRenzou can see Bon from his own bed. He can see the rise and fall of Bon's chest, can hear the soft breaths of both Bon and Konekomaru as they sleep. Tonight, he sees Bon flat on his back, eerily still late into the night. Whatever Lightning has been doing, whatever he has been dragging Bon into, it has gone too far, Renzou thinks as Bon spends another sleepless night staring at their ceiling.  Renzou turns over, tries to still the maelstrom of emotion cluttering his mind as he wills himself to sleep. He thinks he hears Bon murmur "Okumura" before he falls asleep. 

  --

"What would you do if saving someone meant making them hate you forever?"  Rin looks at him strangely, as if he can't understand why Renzou would be asking such a strange question. Maybe he can't— they both know Renzou would do it in a heartbeat, that Renzou is fine with being hated.  Still, Rin ruminates over Renzou's question for awhile before saying, "I'd do it." He meets Renzou's eyes and repeats himself slowly, confident and sure. "I'd do it. I'd rather they live and hate me than die still loving me." Rin falls flat onto his back, spread eagled, looking up at the night sky. "But I'd rather they didn't, you know? I'd try explaining everything to them, afterwards." He laughs, a sudden snort of exasperated fondness as he says, "Although, if it's Suguro, he'd probably deck me, no matter what." "Yeah," Renzou agrees, leaning forward, resting his chin on his hand. "He would, wouldn't he?" "He doesn't like being reminded he's a princess." "No, he doesn't." White knights and black knights are both the same in the end, he realizes as he stretches out beside Rin, gazing at the night sky.  He closes his eyes.  "And what will you do if you never win the princess's love?" Rin laughs.  "That's simple. I'll still love him." "Yeah," Renzou says softly, smiling. "That's what knights do."

   --

  Maybe Lightning's dark blots will mar the perfect, crisp edges of Bon's line; maybe his shape will change and evolve into something different, something less defined, less definite.  No matter what new form Bon will take, Renzou is convinced he will still be made up of Bon. After all,  Bon is home, friend, family, and love.  --

[qqueenofhades]

The Rose and Thorn: Chapter VI

summary:  Sequel to The Dark Horizon. The New World, 1740: Killian and Emma Jones have lived in peace with their family for many years, their pirate past long behind them. But with English wars, Spanish plots, rumors of a second Jacobite rising, and the secret of the lost treasure of Skeleton Island, they and their son and daughter are in for a dangerous new adventure. OUAT/Black Sails.  rating: M status: WIP available: FF.net and AO3 previous: chapter V

The city of Bristol and James Joseph Hawkins, Junior, did not get along. In fact it was some time since they had even been on terms of cordial acquaintance, and the relationship only appeared to be deteriorating. It was the general opinion that a young man of nearly five-and-twenty should have a proper and honest occupation by now, perhaps even a wife and child, but the problem with the proper and honest occupations was that they did not like Jim either. He had enlisted in the Royal Navy at the age of sixteen, thinking to follow in the footsteps of his father and of his distant ancestor Sir John Hawkins, the famous Elizabethan seafarer, adventurer, explorer, and defeater of the Spanish Armada (along with his cousin, Sir Francis Drake), but the Navy was a bloody cesspool of human misery, shit, blood, and weak grog, and Jim’s habit of disrespect to his superiors had not helped the problem. It was a mark of the impression he had made that even the Navy, which was normally so desperate for able-bodied men that the press-gangs would kidnap apprentice greengrocers if needed, decided it could not tolerate him. He had been drummed out in disgrace, sent home to the disappointment of his mother and the dismay of their neighbors, and spent a few aimless months accomplishing nothing in particular. He tried to help out at the old Benbow, the inn the widowed Sarah Hawkins ran on the waterfront, but “help” was rarely accomplished when Jim was involved. He earned a few shillings working as a longshoreman, loading and unloading the cargo of the arriving ships, fat with the spoils of the Bristol slave trade, but if he had to spend the rest of his life like this, he’d kill himself.

Jim really had not set out to be such a disappointment. He had thought several times about rejoining the Navy, as he wasn’t a bad sailor and his father, James Hawkins senior, had served with distinction as purser aboard HMS Imperator, a career which had claimed his life when Jim was very young. He did not in fact remember his father at all, as Hawkins had set out to the Caribbean when Jim was only a few months old, and never returned. The story was that he had been killed by pirates, which was rather a romantic fate, but not a particularly useful one for a lonely and misfit lad whose mother loved him, but could not spare the time and effort to deal with all his troubles. It had been good for a brief pittance of money from the Admiralty, which was gone in a few years anyway, and yet one more sense that Jim had let someone else down by his failures, of hating that life so much. But not even for the sake of pleasing his father’s shade could he stand to return. So he was here instead, vexing everyone else.

Most recently, Jim had tried to get a job with his uncle at the Seven Stars, the pub he ran in Thomas Lane, but as that was still close enough to the Benbow, which was located on the Narrow Quay on Prince Street, for tales of his exploits to travel, that had likewise backfired. So then it was back to the docks, from which he also managed to get himself sacked after an altercation with some miniature bastard of a cloth merchant who insisted Jim was purposefully damaging his trade goods (it was cloth, it couldn’t bloody break, what was the damned problem?) That left him emphatically and, to the looks of things, all but permanently unemployed. It would be the bottle and debtor’s prison for him, or something worse. At points, the gallows did not seem at all out of the question. The things he put his poor mother through, the neighbors whispered. Really, with a son like that, they did not know how Sarah stood it.

It had been the end of June when the old mariner arrived, and things changed.

Jim, put out of work and thus unhappily back at the Benbow, had been ordered to help haul and carry and otherwise make himself less than actively catastrophic. The man had not particularly caught his eye at first, as all sorts of sailors and sea dogs and old salts (and those who fancied themselves such) passed through here. Bristol was a bit of a fool place to have a port; it was seven miles inland from the Atlantic along the River Avon, so ships had to navigate the shallow estuary before reaching the sea, and you could always spot the amateurs who had come to grief in getting here. This one, however, was certainly not an amateur. He was uncommonly tall, with a grizzled grey-blonde beard, knotted muscles, and a wary, suspicious way of peering out at the world. He carried a small hardwood chest with him, banded in bronze and locked up tight, which he doted on as if it were his unmarried maiden daughter and never let out of his sight. He wore a tattered cloak and slouch hat, arrived in the Benbow’s common room at nine o’clock in the morning, and was drinking in the corner by ten. The only name he gave to the startled Sarah, who had dealt with colorful customers before but not quite this, was Bones.

Jim watched him out of the corner of his eye, wondering if the urge to punch him would arise, though he hoped not; he could hurt his hand, whacking a bloke of that size. Bones’ gold was good – more than good, it was some hefty old coin, etched in some old writing Jim couldn’t read – so there was no reason to turn him out, but the other patrons kept eyeing him nervously. In the past, and still at times in the present, the Benbow catered to the Navy men who had been Hawkins senior’s friends and colleagues, and Bones looked like the sort who, just by something in his fundamental nature, would have a problem with Navy men. Jim couldn’t blame him for that, but one more run-in with the Bristol magistrate would stretch the limits of his luck to the utmost, and he wanted to avoid any dust-ups if possible. Even if he protested, truthfully, that he had not started it, they would not be surprised in the least to find him in the middle of it.

Bones drank for most of the afternoon, duly paying for each tankard brought to him, until at last, as Jim was setting down the next one – having been made to serve this particular customer, as the maidservants were afraid of him – he cracked a bleary eye and regarded Jim with a blend of curiosity and hostility. “Don’t you have something better to be doing, lad?”

“No, actually.” Jim picked up the empty stein. “Don’t you?”

Bones looked as if he was thinking of saying something tart in response, but conceded the point with a grunt. “Ale’s good,” he said, evidently by way of explanation. “And I’ve a while to wait. You hire rooms?”

“We’re full up,” Jim said, which was a lie, but he doubted anyone wanted this hobo loitering around any longer than necessary. “You can try the Seven Stars, that’s my uncle’s pub.”

“Seven Stars?” At last, something flickered in Bones’ blurred eyes. “The one on Thomas Lane?”

“Aye. Why? Heard of it?”

“Was there a time or several as a lad. My parents were printers. In Plymouth. Fixed up pamphlets about tyranny and slavery and man’s right to determine his own destiny. They traveled there often to hold meetings, and I’d sell the pamphlets for two groats.” Bones smiled bitterly, half to himself. “That was what got me snatched by the press gangs, I always reckoned. In retaliation.”

Jim was surprised, not least that this weathered old tree stump actually had parents and had ever been young. “You’re from Plymouth, then? Turning up here to visit old haunts?”

“This is my first time back in England since I was kidnapped. I was thirteen.” Bones’ basilisk stare remained unswerving. “It still reeks of mold and shit.”

Jim could not deny that. He shot a glance back over his shoulder, but the evening wasn’t that busy (doubtless in part due to Bones himself scaring off the customers) and his mother appeared to have it under control. He hesitated, then took a seat. “So where’ve you been?”

“Around.” Bones’ mouth twisted.

“You planning to keep going?”

“What’s it to you if I am?”

“If you were in the market for an assistant before you left, well.” Jim shrugged. “I’m available.”

Bones stared at him, then barked a laugh. “Wanting to take up with me, boy? You really must be desperate.”

This was of course true, but Jim did not feel like admitting it. Affecting casualness, he plucked up one of the half-finished tankards and took a drink. “I’ve been stuck here ever since they th – I, ah, I left the Navy. Think it’d be better for everyone if I found somewhere else to go.”

“Former Navy?” Bones’ voice said that he had a number of opinions on this, equally divided between rampant hatred for the bastards and Jim’s decision to ever join in the first place, and grudgingly commending him for being smart enough (or rather, troublesome enough) to leave. “Better than current, I suppose.”

“My father was.” Jim didn’t know what possessed him to bring it up, but Bones had mentioned his own parents earlier, and this was the longest conversation he had had without being shouted at in too depressingly long a time to remember. “In the Navy, that is. I tried to make it work for his sake, but it. . . didn’t.”

“Father?”

“Aye. I had one too. Also James Hawkins, he was the purser on HMS Imperator. He was killed a long time ago, though. In Nassau, by the pirates.”

Something definitely flickered in Bones’ eyes at that. “HMS Imperator, you say? Was that before or after she turned pirate herself?”

“Wait, what?”

“You don’t know? The Imperator became one of the most notorious pirate ships in the Caribbean, the Jolie Rouge. Under the command of one Captain Hook.” Bones’ mouth twisted even further. “Taken over by Captain Rackham after the war, or so I heard later. Your father one of those scurvy brigands, then?”

“No. He was an honorable man, a loyal one. The Admiralty specially commended his devotion to duty in the letter they sent to my mother.” Jim looked down. “I was just a baby when it happened. He’d. . . probably be disappointed in me.”

Bones considered briefly, then hauled himself to his feet, scooping up the chest. “I’ll see your mother about a room, then.”

“Ah – ” Jim hesitated. “Well, er, I did say that we were full – ”

Bones gave him a look as if to say that this had been so transparently a lie that he had not wasted a moment’s thought on it, and that he had dealt in his day with such an advanced class of liars that Jim would have to do much better to even qualify. Wavering only slightly from the considerable quantity of ale he had consumed, he stumped off, got himself a room – the Benbow was a bit down at heel these days, they couldn’t be turning away admittedly well-paying customers – and went upstairs. That left Jim still none the wiser about his full name, why he had turned up in England now after what must be close to forty years overseas, who or what he was waiting for, how long he planned to stay, what was in the chest – and what he knew about Nassau. Jim could be mistaken, but he was quite sure that Bones had registered that on considerably more than an abstract historical-interest level. He knows something. Might have been there during its glory days, with Flint and Vane and Hornigold, Blackbeard and Bellamy and the rest. (Jim had read A General History of the Pyrates several times, and was felt to have more interest in this subject than was entirely healthy for anyone’s peace of mind.)

That was how it went for the next week. Bones sat in the common room, drinking steadily, or went out on hours-long errands, returning late after the doors had been locked (most taverns only had a license to operate until nine o’clock at night on working days, ten o’clock on Saturdays) and obliging Jim to go down grumbling to open them and let him in. “You do realize there’s a curfew, don’t you?” he demanded, after the third such incident. “You’ll be swept up by the constables if you keep doing this, and I’m guessing neither of us want any better of an acquaintance with them.”

Bones looked at him with a brief, guarded flash of amusement. “Local miscreant?”

Jim squirmed. “I’d just like to avoid it.”

Bones studied him for a long moment. Then he said abruptly, “Very well. I’ll cease these expeditions if you tell me – and only me – if there’s a letter or any other message from a Lady Murray. Also, if you spot anywhere, or even hear about, the presence of a one-legged man.”

“A one-legged man?” Jim blinked. “What’s this one called, Hopper?”

“No.” Bones did not look amused. “As a matter of fact, Silver.”

“Friend of yours?”

“Definitely not.” Bones’ tone had turned even cooler. “Just do it.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“Aside from avoiding run-ins with the constables? Here.”

With that, he unclicked the locks on the chest with a complicated set of spins (Jim tried to follow, but quickly lost track), reached in, and pulled out a ruby the size of his thumbnail, which he casually lobbed at the startled young Hawkins. Jim managed to catch it, and before Bones slammed the lid, he thought he caught a glimpse of something rolled up – maps, or charts, or something that looked navigational of some sort. “Bloody hell,” he said, turning the ruby so it caught the low light, winking scarlet in its facets. “Where’d you get this?”

Bones grunted, checking that the chest was locked again and hoisting it under his arm. He appeared set to stagger off to bed, then stopped. “You ever heard of Captain Flint?”

“Flint?” Jim blinked again. “The master of the Walrus? I’ve read the stories, aye. He’s dead, though, isn’t he? Been dead a while.”

Bones did that now-familiar facial expression where he was deciding not to say anything. “Plenty of men have claimed to be him before they hanged, yes. Good night.”

He headed off down the dim hall before Jim knew quite how to respond, more confused than ever. He wasn’t sure that half of this was not paranoid ranting and raving; Bones wasn’t exactly insensible with drink, but he was a long way from sounding sane and sensible – one-legged men, letters from a mysterious lady, that odd question about Flint as if he expected Jim to know a legendary pirate captain personally. Jim had paid a visit to the Seven Stars the other day, though, and his uncle dimly recalled hearing about a William and Anne Bones, printers from Plymouth, who had used the place for meetings many years ago. They had had a son, he was also fairly sure, but didn’t know if he had ever heard the boy’s name. This had all happened during his predecessor’s tenure as landlord anyway, so he couldn’t be sure. Why the sudden interest, anyway?

Jim had made some noncommittal noise – he thought it was for the best if word did not get around that an old firebrand and scion of subversive intellectual stock was staying at the Benbow – but it at least confirmed that Bones was, so far as that went, telling the truth. Jim could not deny that he was burning up with curiosity, and this did give him something to think about apart from the dismal prospects of his future. He could also not exactly stroll up to a merchant in the street and spend the ruby, so he would either have to get all the way to London, to the Bank of England on Threadneedle-street, and obtain an exchange into currency, or visit one of the counting houses along the docks. As he was clearly not going to London, that left the latter option, but those bastards cheated fit to outdo the Devil Himself, and they definitely also hated Jim. He’d just keep it for now. As a down payment.

The following week likewise did not stimulate any sudden desire on Bones’ part to be forthcoming, and Jim decided to take matters into his own hands. It had been over a fortnight of him loitering around and drinking their casks dry, there had been a near-altercation with a snippy fresh-promoted lieutenant off HMS Glory, and Sarah Hawkins was starting to fear what rumors might attach to them if this kept up. Jim knew that he had caused her a good deal of heartache and worry already, and this at least was in his power to do something about, so he bought a seat on the public stagecoach that made the weekly circuit between Bristol and Plymouth. It was a hot, jouncing, stuffy three-day ride for the hundred and twenty miles south, stopping at various rural hamlets to collect the post along the way, sitting across from a middle-aged gentlewoman and her two frilly daughters who eyed him disapprovingly from behind their fans, but he arrived more or less in one piece.

The Bones parents were long dead, but after combing through the gravestones in St. Andrew’s churchyard, Jim finally found them – put in an out-of-the-way corner and heavily grown over, with no other living relative to tend their upkeep. (Likely as well they had not made themselves popular in the community for their rabble-rousing.) But by taking the dates, recalling that Bones had said he was snatched by the pressers when he was thirteen, and reckoning him to be in his middle fifties, Jim went to the parish archives, concocted some tale about doing a favor for an elderly relative, and flipped through the dusty old baptismal registers, squinting at their bloody awful handwriting, until he finally hit on it. One William Fitzgilbert Bones IV, son of William Fitzgilbert Bones III and Anne Cranmer Bones, had received the sacrament of Anglican baptism on the thirty-first of May, 1683 A.D., eleven days after his birth on the twentieth.

Seeing as the dates, the names, and the location all matched, Jim could be quite confident in feeling that he had found his man. Searching a few years on for the confirmation noted it as being given to “Billy,” and he disappeared from the records altogether after the winter of 1696. If he had been back to England at any point in the subsequent forty-four years, it had not been here.

Billy Bones, then? Jim could swear that the name was faintly familiar, though for the life of him he could not think why. He headed out and gritted his teeth for the return journey to Bristol, this time eyed up by a weedy country solicitor and a young vicar who already looked set to die of consumption, and wondered if he should confront Billy with his findings. Not that it offered any clarity on his present or future, only confirmation of his past, and nothing very helpful at that. Whoever he was waiting for, this Lady Murray or otherwise, they should damn well hurry up and get here. Either Billy did something or he didn’t, but either way, Jim’s patience was running short. Make a move, or bloody leave.

He finally got back to Bristol on a particularly sticky late-summer night; the trip had taken an extra four days due to the coach breaking an axle in Exeter. As Jim was climbing out, stiff and sweaty and hungry and otherwise out of sorts, he caught sight of a man and a woman making their way up the docks from a recently anchored ship. The woman was stylishly dressed in black, high-cheekboned and beautiful, and the man was around Billy’s age, with brown-grey curls and a scruffy beard – not to mention a thoroughly distempered look. Something about them caught Jim’s attention, and as he trailed after them, as they reached the street and set off, he realized to his considerable surprise that they were also making for the Benbow. Bloody hell, is that her? Bones’ mysterious Lady Murray? Who’s the other bloke, then?

He followed them at an unsuspicious distance, and once they had gone inside, waited a few minutes and then did the same. The woman was having rather demanding words with poor Sarah Hawkins, while the man was standing stock still, looking like an ox that had been hit on the head. “Christ,” he muttered. “It’s exactly the bloody same.”

“Scuse,” Jim said. “Can I help you?”

The man started, looked around – and if he had been confronted by a ghost to walk into the Benbow, it was twice that to lay eyes on Jim. He blanched. “Hawkins?”

“Wait, what? My name is Hawkins, aye. Jim Hawkins. But I don’t recall we’ve met.”

“No, we. . . we haven’t.” The man belatedly composed himself, running a hand over his face. “I’m. . . I’m sorry. You look very much like your father, is all.”

That, to say the least, Jim had not expected. His heart skipped a beat. “You knew my father?”

“I knew him well, yes.” The newcomer swallowed and glanced down, before meeting Jim’s gaze as forthrightly as possible. “My name is Captain Liam Jones. Your father served as purser under me on HMS Imperator, from the moment my brother and I took over the ship. He was a good man. All but a father to us as well, in many ways.”

“You’re the captain of the Imp – ?” The surprises were coming thick and fast. It seemed uncouth to ask if Captain Jones was aware that his old vessel was, according to Billy, a pirate ship, but this was the first time that Jim had ever met anyone who had served with his father – much less his former commanding officer. “The devil are you doing in Bristol, then? Er, sir?”

“That,” Captain Jones said grimly, “I very much want to know myself. I was removed from my home by her – ” he tilted his head scathingly at the woman in black, still haggling with Mrs. Hawkins – “and have been allowed no opportunity to send word to my wife. Mrs. Regina Jones, of the Rue Malebranche in Paris. If there’s any way you can help me dispatch a letter – ”

“That won’t be necessary.” The woman in black had evidently overheard him, even though he had been speaking quietly, and turned to regard them with a pleasant smile. “Surely you recall Sarah Hawkins, Captain? Come, make your greetings.”

“I – Mrs. Hawkins.” Liam Jones politely doffed his hat. “It has been a. . . very long time.”

“Liam?” Sarah blinked, then stared. “Liam Jones?”

“Aye, the same.”

“This has been an age and then some, my heavens! Where’s Killian? We did hear some dread tales about what happened to him, but I never believed them. Your brother was always such a sweet lad. Still the politest lieutenant I’ve ever met.”

Liam’s mouth tightened. “Killian is. . . likewise enjoying a quiet retirement. He lives with his family in America.”

“Oh, really? America, fancy that. Whereabouts?”

Liam’s eyes flickered to the woman in black, who was listening avidly. “The Colonies, someplace. It’s been many years since I’ve seen him, they could have moved.”

“That will be strange, then,” Sarah said sympathetically. “The two of you were always together before.”

Liam nodded, seemingly at a loss for words, and the silence was poignant until the woman in black clapped her hands. “Captain, don’t you want to vouch for us to your old colleague’s wife? Seeing them again after so long, it would be a shame for the reunion to go sour all at once. Likewise, insisting on sending word to your wife – we don’t want young Jimmy in any more trouble, do we? Poor lad suffered enough, especially growing up without his father.”

Jim was insulted at being spoken of as if he was five, not twenty-five – for all his missteps and misadventures, he was an adult, if perhaps a completely shit one – and thus missed the sinister undertone in this. Indeed, he only realized that there had been one by the look of pale, barely restrained fury on Liam’s face. After a moment, sounding choked, he said, “Sarah, if you would see fit to provide lodgings to Lady Murray and myself for the time being, I think everyone would be grateful. We shouldn’t be long. For – for James’ memory.”

Jim supposed that this was in reference to his father, even as his mother’s eyes welled up, she came around to hug Liam, and promised that of course the Jones brothers were always welcome beneath her roof. Liam himself hugged her with such an anguished, guilty expression – which only Jim saw – that it finally clicked. Lady Murray was not-so-subtly threatening Jim, Sarah, and the entire Benbow if Liam withheld or complicated his compliance in any way, and given what he had said about being snatched from the streets in France, it seemed that he was not here of his own volition. But whatever the bloody hell the whole lot of them were cooking up, Jim had rather suddenly lost any taste to play along.

He kept trying to get a moment alone with his mother that evening, to warn her, but the supper hour was ludicrously busy, and they and the barmaids were all run off their feet. When the rush finally subsided, he tried to pull Sarah aside in the scullery, but Lady Murray – who seemed to have a dozen ears – popped up on the instant with some query about the rooms she had purchased, and Sarah was obliged to take her upstairs to sort it out. Jim stood swearing under his breath, then spun on his heel and marched into the emptying common room, where Liam and Billy – Jones and Bones, it sounded like the opening to a tuppence vaudeville – were sitting in a corner and glaring at each other suspiciously. It was difficult to imagine a meeting of two more stubborn individuals, or two set so intractably to either side of an affair and forced unwillingly into conjunction. The only question is who blows first.

“So,” Jim said flatly, coming to a halt in front of them and folding his arms. “Tugging my mother’s heartstrings to advance you and your lady friend’s slimy little intrigues, Captain? And to think my father respected you.”

It was contentious, purposefully so, as he good and damn well intended to provoke Liam into a response one way or another. In this it succeeded, as the older man’s face flushed brick red. “I have nothing to do with Lady Murray, or her intrigues. I am staying, in fact, because I fear what she’d do to you and your mother if I tried to leave. But – ”

“She said she’d recruit us a captain,” Billy interrupted. “I bloody well wasn’t expecting it to be you. And are you going to tell the landlady what really happened to your brother, or should I?”

Liam grimaced. His voice when he spoke, however, was chillingly cold. “If you put Killian, or the rest of his family, in danger for the sake of your old fucking grudge against Flint, I swear – ”

“Flint?” Jim broke in. “As in the same Flint you were asking me about, Billy?”

That caught Bones, finally, decidedly on the hop. “I – how did you – ”

“Went to Plymouth,” Jim informed him. “You’re from there, just as you said. Billy Bones – that’s you, isn’t it? I haven’t worked out what the hell you’re up to, or how the rest of you fit in, but you leave my mother and the Benbow out of it. This old place is all she has, it’s not making as much as it used to, and I, well, I’ve not made her job any easier. If you need headquarters for your evil plots, piss off somewhere else. I don’t care if you and my father used to sail together, Captain. I tried the Navy myself. Didn’t take.”

That, at least, sufficiently surprised Liam and Billy so that neither of them had an immediate response. Then the former said, “Jim, I – ”

“Shut it,” Jim said, more wearily than anything. “For what it’s worth, I did reckon that you weren’t here because you wanted to be. But I want some answers, and I want them now. What’s in that chest? What are you scheming? And what would a bloody one-legged man, or a supposedly dead pirate captain, have to do with any of this?”

Liam and Billy exchanged a look, briefly forced into alliance by their mutual unwillingness to explain – Liam to try to keep Jim out of danger, Billy because he was clearly a true believer with a very large axe to grind against person or person(s) unknown, and Jim was starting to have more than an inkling that it might just be Captain Flint. There was another hesitation. Then Liam said, “I scarcely know much more than you. All I have been told is that Lady Murray wanted my old connections here in Bristol, and now that evidently I am being recruited as a captain for a voyage. It is customary, in case it’s slipped your mind, to tell said captain where that bloody is.”

Billy ignored the sarcasm. “Leave if you want, Jones. I was confident in our ability to manage the plan without a third party, so I won’t be trying to stop you. Besides, I’m the one with the bearings, so unless I give them up – ”

“The bearings.” At that, a dawning look of realization, and further anger, crossed Liam’s face. “Oh, Christ. She told me in the carriage, but I didn’t think anyone would be that foolish. You really are trying to hunt down Skeleton Island, aren’t you? That’s what this is about. You have – or think you have – a way to find the damn place and retrieve the treasure, and you’ve offered to sell the information to Lady Murray in exchange for whatever favor she’s promised you. Whatever she wants the money for, God knows, but it can’t be good. What’s so bloody worth making bargains with her?”

“You tell me.” Billy remained unyielding. “Haven’t you climbed into bed with a few devils in your own day, all for your personal benefit?”

Liam opened his mouth, made an angry sputtering noise, and shut it. Jim, for his part, was still hung up on the earlier bit. “Skeleton Island? Isn’t that just a story?”

“No,” Billy said, still more darkly. “Trust me, it’s real. I was marooned there for three years.”

Just as Jim was about to remark that this seemed to explain a great deal about Billy’s character and general personality, it struck him that he had not seen his mother for a while – that he had indeed let her go upstairs alone with Lady Murray, even when warning her about the woman was precisely what he meant to do. He jumped to his feet, heart in his throat, even as he thought he smelled something from neither hearth nor lantern nor lamp. Smoke.

“Son of a bitch,” Jim said, pivoting around and starting to run. “Son of a bitch!”

He thought either Liam or Billy might have shouted after him, but he did not stop to hear. He crashed up the narrow stairs, heard doors opening and the Benbow’s other guests hurrying out with alarmed shouts, and could very definitely see a dark cloud billowing from under the door at the end. He sprinted down the corridor and yanked and rattled at the handle, but it was locked. “Mother? Mother!”

There was no answer from within, and Jim slammed his shoulder into the latch hard enough to bruise. The smoke was intensifying quickly, stinging his eyes and searing his throat, and if he ran downstairs long enough to find something to break it with, it could be too late to make it back. He wrenched and pounded again, able to hear the crackle of flames, and was just about to try taking a running start and diving into the door headfirst when someone shoved him aside. Liam, cravat soaked in water and tied over his nose and mouth, battered violently at the wood with the poker from the kitchen hearth, until it finally splintered. “I’ll get her!” he yelled at Jim. “Run!”

Jim remained exactly where he was, as he did not trust this man with his mother’s safety. Yet in a few moments, Liam emerged from the eerie orange glow with the unconscious Sarah Hawkins slung over his shoulder – at least Jim hoped it was unconscious, as the alternative did not bear thinking of – and Liam grabbed him by the arm, dragging him along the corridor as it blackened behind them. They made it to the stairs and clattered down, through the common room, and burst into the dark street, just in time to hear the roar as first the wall, and then the roof, crashed in fiery fountains. Bells had started to ring in alarm, and the neighbors were forming a bucket brigade from the riverfront. Jim ran to assist, as a fire in old, wooden, crowded buildings like this was everyone’s worst nightmare. The Great Fire of London in 1666, less than a hundred years ago, had started as a similar small, isolated blaze, and would have flattened the entire city if it had reached the gunpowder stocks in the Tower. There might not be a fully loaded armory here, but given his already delicate relationship with Bristol, Jim could not help but think that burning the lot of it down – even if it was not directly his responsibility – would be regarded very dimly indeed. Bloody hell. Bloody, bloody hell.

It took countless buckets, an assist from the stout brass fire engine with its pump crew, and the sacrifice of several nearby barrels, troughs, and anything else that could hold water, but they finally got the fire out before it could spread down Prince Street. This, however, came far too late to save the Benbow. It was a burnt-out, steaming husk, charred beams tilting and falling in thunders of ash and soot, embers still spitting sparks, as the neighbors gathered in anxious, muttering knots before turning their communal accusing stare on Jim. “Mr. Hawkins. Care to explain?”

“Look, for once, this is not my bloody fault.” Jim shoved through the crowd to where Liam was crouched by Sarah, helping her to sit up and weakly sip some water. His heart turned over with relief at seeing her alive, as he threw himself to his knees next to her. “Jesus, Mother, are you – that bloody witch started it, didn’t she? Lady Murray? Where’d she – ”

He glanced around, as if expecting to see the woman, but he could not spot either her or Billy among the crowd. It was probably far too much to hope that the bloody pair of them had just up and died, and Jim wasn’t normally the sort to wish that on folk – a nice crisp roasting around the edges as a sharp lesson, sure, but burning to death seemed a bit much. Still, he stood up. “Anyone seen her? Woman in black, looks like she’ll eat your ballocks for breakfast? Or the other one, the big blonde bastard? Bones?”

Blank looks greeted this enquiry, as it hit Jim that his efforts to keep Bones’ presence under wraps had evidently worked too well – either they did not know who he was talking about, or figured he was seizing on a harmless old drifter as a convenient culprit for his own crime. Why they thought he’d want to burn down the Benbow was a mystery, but he had to admit it was just the sort of thing they would expect from him, inadvertently or not. It didn’t help that he did feel bloody responsible – if he’d not let his mother go off alone with Lady Murray – but why would he expect her to set the damn place afire, when she’d already gone to such effort to get Liam to secure them rooms? God, what a mess. Given how Jim had just about nailed shut the coffin on his chances of getting work anywhere else in Bristol, there was no obvious way of paying for the repair, or much money to support them in the meantime. He did still have the ruby Billy had given him, as he kept it in his pocket, which he’d now have to fence somewhere, but –

A brief and mad idea crossed Jim’s mind, but was gone as quickly as it had come. Besides, Billy and Lady Murray were gone, literally up in smoke, so there was no way of finding Skeleton Island even if it was real. Instead, he looked back at his mother. “Hey. I’m sorry, I should never – if I’d known Lady Murray was going to do that – she did, didn’t she?”

“N-no.” Sarah Hawkins shook her head, eyes wide and staring in her soot-smeared face. “No. She didn’t.”

“What?” Jim was not remotely about to buy that this had been a coincidental accident. “What do you mean, she – ”

“He did,” Sarah insisted. “He did.”

“What? Bones? We were downstairs with him the whole time, I’m not sure I like him either, but this at least, he – ”

“No. No, he did.”

“Mother, you’re not making any sense.” Jim frowned at her. Glancing up at Liam, he demanded, “There wasn’t anyone else in the room, was there?”

“No.” Liam looked unnerved, as well as rather offended at the resulting implication that he would have left them to burn alive if so. “Only her, not any – ”

“He did!” Sarah raised a shaking hand – and pointed directly at Liam.

There was a brief, stunned silence, and then a murmur of anger. Jim was equally startled, as well as about to note that he had likewise been downstairs with Liam the whole time, not to mention that Liam had saved her life. But an instant of doubt caught at him – if Liam had set it somehow while Jim was distracted trying to talk to his mother, sat back and waited, and thus known to get upstairs so quickly and rush to the rescue – and that prevented him from saying anything long enough for the notion to immediately take root among the crowd, fractious and on edge and searching for someone to blame. They advanced on Liam and the Hawkinses, reaching out, as they grabbed hold of Liam and dragged him off down the street, shouting.

Jim did not think they were going to string him up from a yardarm, but it might not be out of the question. With a word to his mother telling her to wait, he managed to struggle to his feet and run after the mob. “Hey. HEY! At least take him to jail first! You can’t just – ”

Someone, not inclined to listen and doubtless still convinced that he was to blame somehow, backhanded him across the face, and Jim saw stars. Then someone else punched him, he had to punch back, and the whole thing devolved on the spot into a chaotic free-for-all. Jim’s face hit paving stones at least twice, clenched knuckles several more times than that, and he was twisted and hauled headfirst through some reeking puddle, the citizens of Bristol finally getting a chance to vent their accumulated frustrations with him, as something else banged his chin, he bit his tongue so hard that he half-expected to spit it out, and tasted blood. Then someone lifted and flung him bodily, he hit someone else, and he and Liam Jones landed arse-first in some dismal damp cell, just in time to hear an iron grate slam shut above them. “You’ll hang soon, you bastards!” someone yelled, and then they were gone.

Jim sat where he was, gasping for breath in raw, whooping gulps, a hank of chestnut hair loose and pasted to his face with mud and blood, both lips split and a fine shiner rising on his left eye. Frankly, killing someone did not sound like a bad idea after all. “I swear,” he said at last. “If you did set the fire, I’ll – ”

“I didn’t.” Liam grimaced, drawing a painful few breaths of his own. “Christ as my witness, I don’t know why your mother said that.”

Jim wasn’t sure if he should thank Liam or not, as they seemed to have gone from the frying pan, to the fire, to an even bigger fire. He worked his tongue around his mouth with a grimace, to see if any teeth were loose. “So what the fuck are we going to do now? My mother’s inn burned down, the city thinks we did it, and we’ll be lucky to talk our way off a lynching. Even if your bloody friends don’t turn up again, we’ll just – ”

“They’re not my friends.” Liam’s voice was grimmer than ever. “And in fact, I feel more than certain that we will soon be seeing them again.”

-----------------

It did not take Killian long – indeed, no more than a few seconds after opening his eyes – to realize that he was on a ship. He had spent too much time in the darkness below decks not to recognize it immediately, from the reek of tar, turpentine, brine, and the stale, shut-up feel of air that never saw the sun, damp and moldering. He was lying awkwardly on his side among tightly wedged casks, wrists tied behind him and false hand gone, head still ringing from the blow that must have sent him into his just-escaped state of oblivion. The roughness of barnacled boards rasped his cheek, he could hear the slop of water as more senses slowly returned, and while he had certainly had a too-cozy acquaintance with the floor at various points in his madcap youth, it was considerably distressing, for several reasons, to find himself forced back into intimate relations with it now. Not least due to the small fact that when he had last been compos mentis, he had been on dry land, at the Nolans’ estate in Charlestown, still angry but nonetheless about to go inside and hash things out with Emma. He was right about what she had done, running off alone, but she was likewise right – as usual – about him, and that instantaneous aspiration to revenge and bloodshed. No matter how long Captain Hook had been locked in his trunk, he could still pop up at inopportune and unwelcome moments, and that had been one of them.

As a result, and perhaps only fittingly, what Captain Hook was presently locked in instead was the devil of a lot more alarming than a trunk. His ankles did not seem to be tied, so either they had run out of time to properly effect his capture, or they figure that knocked stoutly over the head and hands bound was good enough to contain a gentleman of seasoned years, even a former pirate. Killian experienced a moment of intense rage at the presumption of these whippersnappers, before realizing that he had just used (or at least thought) the word “whippersnappers” in earnest, and would thus entirely deserve it if he had fallen and could not get up. This was just bloody embarrassing.

And yet, newfound sympathy with Flint’s disdain for masquerading as a geriatric or not, his wits would have to step up if the rest of him was slacking on the job. The fact that they had not killed Killian outright (and who the bloody hell were “they?”) and instead thrown him into the hold of a ship suggested that this had been some sort of carefully planned operation, and that he was worth more alive than dead. But the knock on his head (and doubtless, he thought blackly, general age-related forgetfulness) was making it difficult to recall any more of who might have ambushed him, or why. They had certainly made a very neat job of it. Managed to get into the Nolan estate without raising any alarm, caught Killian from behind in the dark as he never saw them or had any chance to defend himself, and incapacitated him long enough to transport him all the way aboard their getaway vessel and whatever unknown distance out to sea. Jesus, Emma must be worried sick. Unless their following move had been to storm the house and take her, Flint, and Miranda as well, along with David, Mary Margaret, and anyone else who –

At that thought, Killian began to struggle against his bonds in good earnest, twisting and grunting and swearing until he finally got his arms awkwardly wrenched over his head, found a jagged end of a beam, and rasped at the rope, back screaming, until it finally parted with a snap. He pulled off the coils and straightened up slowly, breathing hard. Being free was a promising first step, but there were probably a good deal more of them than there were of him. He would have to think this through.

Killian climbed cautiously through the barrels to the ladder, where he could just make out voices from overhead. They sounded English, not Spanish or otherwise, which increased his lurking suspicion that this had been an inside job, and when he distinctly heard the words “Lord Murray,” his heart skipped a beat. Bloody hell. That was what they all got for being so merciful and forbearing and insisting that the man could not possibly be as bad as his infamous uncle. The wee bastard – unless Killian was imagining things, which he did not believe in when it came to the Gold family and their vigorous exercise of boundless annoyance – had had Killian assaulted, kidnapped, and removed to his present quandary here on his way to who-knew-bloody-where, and nobody was likely to be any the wiser. Emma must be looking for him – there was no sign of other prisoners in the hold, so for better or worse, they must have taken him alone – but if she just thought he’d up and stormed off after their fight –

Deciding that the urgency of acquiring answers was worth risking his neck, Killian started up the ladder, as a sudden hush fell in the conversation. They were afforded further leisure to contemplate their inadequacy in life when he emerged into the middle of the crew’s hammocks, there was a general roll and scuffle as they dove for weapons, and Killian abruptly found himself on the business end of a dozen pistols. “Hey, lads,” he remarked, holding up his hand and stump – which might have been a mistake, as it immediately brought to their attention that he was untied. “Easy.”

“Get back, pirate.” The nearest one – they all in fact seemed offensively young, fifteen or sixteen, though many sailors were – jabbed at him with a musket. “Or we’ll – ”

“Pirate?” Killian arched both eyebrows. “Well then. I’ve not been called that in years. What’s got you all in a lather for it now?”

“We know that’s what you are. Aren’t you.” Richard the Lionheart here administered another jab with the musket. “Hook.”

“First, stop poking me with that, you fat-headed pup, unless you want a personal demonstration of why it’s stupid to use a musket on a ship. Second, was it Lord Murray you kidnapped me for? Be interested to hear just what he thinks I’ve done.”

“None of your concern, pirate. Go below and don’t make no trouble, and this doesn’t have to be unpleasant. Otherwise I promise, you won’t – ”

Killian had heard enough. These lot were utter idiots, and he wanted to get back to his wife. “Do you know why it’s stupid to use a musket on a ship?”

Caught momentarily off guard, the lad blinked. “Wh – ”

“Because.” Killian bared his teeth in an amiable snarl. “The pirate you did a really shit job of snatching will wake up, come to find you, and – ” Fast as a snake, he reached out, grabbed hold of the muzzle, and wrenched it out of the boy’s hand, cracking the butt-end viciously over the little bastard’s head hard enough to crack the stock. “Do that.”

There was a brief, complete, almost impressed silence as the others regarded their dropped compatriot in considerable surprise. Unfortunately, however, they recovered quickly from the shock. They lunged at Killian as he swung the musket like a quarterstaff, managing to catch another in the gut, and a third tripped over a coil of rope. Killian ducked as a shot went off just over his head, ran for the ladder to the main deck, and encountered substantial difficulty in climbing and holding onto the gun at the same time. He had to awkwardly tuck it under his arm, nearly lost his balance, kicked out at the hands trying to grab him, and tumbled onto deck. If they were still in the harbor or even just anywhere close, he could jump overboard and swim for it. They’d doubtless shoot at him, but it was dark and in the water, they were less likely to inflict lasting damage. He sprinted to the railing, prepared to dive, and –

No sign of land. Nothing to indicate where they were or where they were bound, or how long since they had left Charlestown. Nothing but black water, and enough wind against his face to know, even without seeing, that all the sails were up and they were well underway. He could still jump, but it was as likely to end him up sucked under the keel, eaten by a shark, or just plucked straightaway out again in dripping indignity. What the bloody, bloody hell was this –

As he hesitated a split second too long, a blow crashed into the back of his head so hard that he saw white sparks, and he staggered forward, almost going over the rail anyway. The crew had, most unfortunately, caught up with him, and dragged him by the legs across the boards as he still fought to break free, getting nowhere, until another shadow fell over him. This one was a young man in a stylish coat that had once been black velvet, but was slashed and patched with red silk so as to render the garment striped, and hair that had been coiffed with bacon grease into the distinctive style that gave the Mohawk Indians their name. It looked incredibly stupid, in Killian’s opinion, and he was about to express said opinion, but one of Mohawk’s associated miscreants rabbit-punched him in the kidney, and he was briefly rendered unable to do so. When his spinning vision cleared, he snarled, “Who the fuck are you?”

“Keep a civil tongue in your head, pirate.” Mohawk paced nearer, evidently threateningly. He looked a bit like a Chinaman, though in this dim light, Killian could not be certain. “You know what we do to pirates?”

“Blind them with your appalling fashion choices?”

That got him a kick. “Try again.”

“Ineptly assault them with your halfwit gang of juvenile delinquents?”

That got him several kicks, from all sides, as Mohawk grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head up. “My name’s Rufio. Captain Rufio. This is my ship, the Pan, and you’re my prisoner.”

“Lord Murray sold me to the local home for troubled youths?” Killian spat out a bit of blood and regarded his teenage captors balefully. “If you were old enough to shave, I might take you seriously, but as it is – ”

“You want a little moonlight swim, Hook?”

That, at least, he had decided he did not, and noxious as this bunch were, there were plenty enough of them to put him overboard. He didn’t think they would, at least yet, but still. Instead of answering, he glared at them.

“Tie him up. Make sure he doesn’t escape this time. Hands and feet.” Rufio jerked his head at his pubescent henchmen. “If he didn’t appreciate our hospitality before, I’d say he can appreciate it less. Take him below, boys. And don’t feed him until I say.”

And with that, and Killian utterly certain that this was the most humiliating thing that had ever happened to him in a life that had sadly not lacked them, they did.

------------------------

It was six or seven hours out of Bermuda, and thus far, just as Geneva had wagered, the only trouble they had encountered were a few spits of rain, a bit of churn on the waves, and a stray gust of wind or two that sent odds and ends cartwheeling across the deck. But the Rose was stout – she kept the old girl well chinked and careened – and once she had her crew reef the topgallants and keep a careful eye on the rest of the canvas, they were even still making progress, if somewhat more slowly. Geneva herself had been on the wheel for the last few hours, relieving her helmsman, and her greatest current inconvenience was the fact that her thick dark hair had blown loose from its stylish twist, pasting in her eyes and against her sun-freckled cheeks, while she did not have enough hands to tie it back again. She was more interested in finding how it felt, a storm in deep water, just her and the ocean testing each other that bit more with each round. It was hard work. Despite the chill when the wind blew, sweat was dripping into her stays, and her arms and shoulders ached something fierce, but she paid no attention. She could do this.

The clouds were getting darker, however, and not only because it was getting on to sundown. They were in for a bouncy night, but Geneva had forewarned everyone of that already, and they could probably tell by looking anyway. She kept at it, matching the weather’s considerable stubbornness with her own, until the hatch opened and her great-uncle climbed out, wearing an oilskin and obliged to use the storm lines strung up along the rails to keep his balance. “My dear, it’s getting a bit foul!” he shouted. “Mr. Arrow said he’ll take over, come below!”

“In a minute!” Geneva yelled back. Her first mate, Phineas Arrow, was a solid sailor and had served as her mentor as well as her parents and grandfather, but he was past fifty, and it was easier for her, at twenty-four, to take a beating. “Be careful, Uncle Thomas, the waves are nearly over the gunwales!”

Thomas, who had just been knocked hard by one, gave her a look. “I assure you, I have noticed. Not to second guess your decision, but this is a bit worse than you reckoned.”

“Only a bit.” It was true, however, that she should tie herself to the wheel if she was staying out here much longer. A man (or woman) who went overboard in these conditions was almost impossible to recover. Geneva started to say something else, was interrupted as a solid-white sheet of spray scalped off the next wave and soaked both of them, and finally decided that discretion might be the better part of valor. “Fine, fetch Mr. Arrow, but warn him it’s exciting up here, and – ”

At that moment, she was interrupted as the bottom of the world went out from under them. The Rose’s prow pointed down the side of a vast green mountain, and the twenty-gun sixth-rater went sledding like a child on a toboggan in winter. That sort of sledding, however, was supposed to be fun, and this – well, this was not fun at all, even for someone of Geneva’s adventuresome sensibilities. Furthermore, the crest of the wave was still rising behind them, and their sails snapped and went oddly slack as the wind was cut off. There was an instant in which the entire world was silent, and then it hit.

Pummeling, shrieking, rushing blackness engulfed Geneva to every side, ripping at her, tumbling and tossing her, until for a terrifying instant she felt herself lose contact with the Rose altogether and hang unsupported, untouched, in the utter heart of the abyss, completely dependent on the sea’s whims to either drop her back on the ship, or drag her down to its depths. She kicked and clawed, lungs straining, and then out of nowhere was thoroughly winded, gulping and retching, as mercifully but unfortunately solid deck boards punched her in the chest. She flailed out, got hold of a rope, felt it burn against her palms as it was ripped away, and struggled to swipe away enough stinging salt to see. Thomas, where’s Thomas, where’s Thomas? Oh God, if he –

The Rose rode up another wave, down the just as terrifying far side, through it managed to avoid being completely inundated this time, and Geneva staggered to her feet. “Thomas! Uncle Thomas! Uncle Thomas!”

She heard a faint answering yell, sprinted to the side, looked down, and felt her heart stop as she beheld Thomas, clinging to the starboard strakes like a barnacle and struggling to get a grip on the soaked tangle of the shrouds. It was not at all a secure position – one even middling-size wave could knock him off with a direct hit, and to say the least, more-than-middling-size waves were too bloody plentiful at the moment. Geneva grabbed a rope and threw it to him, which Thomas managed to get hold of, and had almost finished tying it around his waist when he vanished in a torrent of whitewater. Geneva briefly and horrifyingly felt the rope go slack, sobbed in utter terror, and then saw him reappear – tied in, but having lost his grip on the ship entirely, bouncing and dragging along like a runaway kite on the end of a string. He was in just as much danger of being sucked under the keel and torn to shreds as he was from the storm, and she was hauling, heaving with all her strength, palms bleeding and the wounds burning with salt, but it wasn’t enough, she couldn’t, it wasn’t going to –

At that moment, another set of arms seized Geneva from behind, awkwardly balanced on the sliding deck, but she was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. She and the second man pulled like Hercules, and with their combined effort, Thomas was able to somersault back onto deck, winded and wheezing, blood running down his face where he had banged headfirst into the timbers. Geneva wanted to fling herself to her knees and hug him, but they were not out of the woods yet. Instead she helped him frantically to his feet, satisfied herself that he was more or less intact, and turned. “Thank you, Mr. Arrow, that was a very timely – ”

“You’re welcome.” John Silver gave her a half-smile, holding tightly to the capstan as his false leg slipped and skated under him. “Maybe a bit more careful next time, then? And how about we get the fuck below before next time happens?”

“I – ” Geneva shut her mouth hard enough to hear her teeth click. “Mr. Silver, I didn’t – ”

“I’d prefer it if Flint’s granddaughter and his. . . Thomas did not die on my watch. As well the fact that you are the captain of this vessel, so – ”

Silver had been yelling over the tumult, but at that moment, everything flattened out and quieted down, nearly that quickly. The Rose landed with a jerk on unnaturally calm water, even as the sea raged and thundered not far behind them, and a hazy, distant halo of rain surrounded them to all sides, a break in the furious anvils of clouds revealing a veiled moon and massive, jagged forks of lighting plunging from sky to sea in the near distance. It was as if they had abruptly stumbled into the one part of the storm that had been switched off, and Geneva, even without the mercury, could feel the pressure drop fast enough to make her ears pop. “What are we – look, we’re clear of it, we can – ”

“We’re not clear,” Silver said. “We’re in the eye.”

“We’re in the wh – ?”

“The eye. The central point around which the body of the hurricane spins.” Silver whirled, pulled out his spyglass, and hastily tried to judge the distance of the far side. “It’s the worst right in the bands nearest to it, which means we’ll hit the screaming wife of what we just went through in about, oh, half a bell. It’s not bloody safe for anyone to be up here, I warned you we couldn’t – ”

“Later!” He was right, damn it, but Geneva could not spare any leisure for the realization. She ordered Thomas belowdecks at once, where he went after a worried look at her, and she, Silver, a few of her men, and Mr. Arrow desperately tried to ready the Rose for her rapidly approaching next round of punishment. There was not much that could be done, aside from double-knotting everything, making sure the cargo and guns were firmly stowed, and there were no major leaks – though even if there had been, there wasn’t much to fix them with apart from spit, sawdust, and prayer. They got all the sails tied – Silver could not climb rigging, so he confined himself to management of the deck – and Geneva could hear the unearthly scream of the storm rising again as they were shoved inexorably toward the far side of the eyewall. The Rose spun like a bottle from stem to stern, pointed almost backward into the maelstrom, and Geneva thought briefly of how her godfather had died, a story nobody in her family could bear to tell much. Wrecked in one of the worst storms Cape Cod had ever seen, the Whydah driven up on the cliffs of Eastham and broken apart with the loss of all her treasure, her captain, and her men. Of a hundred and fifty souls who served under Black Sam Bellamy’s flag, only two had survived.

No. No, this is not ending the same, I forbid it. At least, she could be sure of that since in this case there were no cliffs, but Geneva forced that particular morbid thought aside. She and Mr. Arrow splashed across the deck to the wheel and tied themselves in, hauling the Rose the right way again, pitching and yawing as the distance closed to only a few hundred yards. All the lanterns were out, having been doused in the last go-round, and the approaching wall of darkness felt like the gates of hell themselves, the Rose screaming and straining as her timbers were punished by the fury. Oh, Geneva thought. Oh, this is a storm at sea.

The next instant, the eyewall hit like the breaking of the world. They were pointed almost straight up, and then straight down, and then slewed around, taking the attack of the raging waves broadside, as the lifeline tied around her waist snapped like a carriage whip but held, if barely. Geneva’s face smashed into the helm-housing, she was suspended upside down, and then crashed down atop it. The impact was brutal enough that she momentarily thought she had broken her back – her entire body would be covered in bruises when this was over, if it was over. She had lost sight of Silver, hoped he had been wise enough to get below before this hit – and then, as the next wave negligently flicked them off it, she saw Mr. Arrow pulled bodily across the deck, catch against the railing, and then, with a horrible sound, be crumpled like a bit of wet paper. The rope snapped, and the next instant he was not there.

“No!” Geneva was not sure if she thought it or said it or both, just that it was the only word that existed anywhere. She crawled madly on all fours across the deck, torn hands screaming, cracked ribs aching, staring into the water, waiting for his head to break the surface, for him to come back up. It hurt like the son of a bitch to scream, but she did anyway. “Phineas! PHINEAS!”

Nothing.

Geneva spat out a mouthful of salt, and had a brief and suicidal impulse to dive in after him. But it was too late anyway, they were ten or twenty or thirty feet past the place where he had fallen, and she could see nothing living in the waves. Only the heaving, howling hinterland to every side, the sleeping giant awoken and screaming, capriciously crushing the insects that crawled over it, Brobdinag and Lilliput from that novel by Mr. Swift, the one she had gotten her grandparents as a present. “MR. ARROW!”

Nothing.

He was gone.

Geneva felt as if all the bones in her body had turned to butter, sinking against the helm, as she barely heard the storm continuing to vent its fury. It lessened only slowly, in miserly increments, until it finally passed over close to dawn, the Rose spun heavily battered but still afloat into calm water, and Geneva was too terrified to move, lest this was another eye and they were in for a third repeat of the ordeal. She was coughing, sore, sodden to the bone, freezing, bruised, and bleeding, and her hands were too slashed and raw to unpick the knots of rope still holding her to the wheel. So she just sat there, shaking without a sound.

A few minutes later, the hatch banged open again, and Thomas, Silver close on his heels, bolted out, racing across the deck to her. “Jenny! Bloody hell, Jenny, are you – are you – ”

“ ‘m fine.” Geneva gave him a weak smile, despite having never felt less fine in her life. Thomas threw himself down and tried to undo the knots, but likewise could not budge them until Silver pulled out his knife and sawed through the wet rope. Her teeth were chattering so hard her jaw cracked, but she still tried to push away Thomas’ arms. “Uncle Thomas, ‘m fine, I – ”

She took a step, just about collapsed, and he caught her, hoisting her awkwardly across his chest and making his way to the cabin, where Madi was trying to pick up the things that had been thrown everywhere. Upon sight of Geneva, however, she instantly abandoned her efforts, took her from Thomas, and helped her to the bed – which, if damp and disheveled, was at least horizontal. Then she arched a cool eyebrow at Silver, hovering by the door. “Did you also need something, then?”

“I just – thought I’d look in and see if you were – ”

“If you came to gloat, neither of us wish to hear it.” Madi shook out the quilt and draped it over the shivering Geneva. “You were right. You usually are, John, but that does not mean it is in a way in which you should take any pride.”

Silver flinched. “Christ, I didn’t come to gloat! I wanted to see if you were all right!”

“I am fine.” Madi’s long dreadlocks fell forward, hiding her face, but something about her voice made Geneva think that it was somehow as much a lie as when she had said it. “I will look after her now. You may go.”

Still Silver hesitated, looking at his ex-wife with desperate, unguarded yearning. Then Thomas stepped up, put a hand on his arm – gently – and showed him out, the door creaking shut behind them. After the madness of the storm, the stillness rang unbearably in Geneva’s head, buzzing like a nest of hornets.

Madi helped her out of her wet clothes, dried and warmed her, and brought her some broth, and Geneva dozed fitfully, on and off, hearing voices outside as the men tried to whip the Rose back into shape. Surely they must realize that Mr. Arrow was gone, that it was her decision that was to blame, that she had wanted to prove to all of them that she could handle an Atlantic storm and Silver alike, and failed decisively at both. She was cold, she was cold, she was cold, cold, cold. She wanted to be home in Savannah, drinking tea on the veranda, talking about books with Granny, about sailing with Grandpa and Daddy. She wanted to see Mother, she even wanted to see her git of a little brother. Adventure was all well and good, but at least presently, she had had more than enough of it. She had killed Mr. Arrow, she had nearly killed Thomas as well, and it was only luck that she had not. God. She would never have been able to face her family again.

At some point Madi stepped out, and when Geneva heard the door open again, she assumed it was her returning. She cracked an eye, about to say that she should get up and face the crew, even if it was the last thing she felt like doing – then stopped, going tense. “What do you want?”

Silver held out both hands, making no move to come any closer. “I’m sorry about your first mate.”

The air seemed to run out of Geneva’s lungs. She wanted to say something sharp, but she just stared at the white-painted boards of the rocking ceiling. At last she said, “I killed him.”

“The storm killed him.” Silver perched in the chair, keeping an eye on the door, as if knowing that Madi would not be pleased to come back and find him here. “You didn’t – ”

“I gave the order to sail into the storm. That’s my fault. I know it is. Is that why you came? To remind me?”

“No.” Silver’s voice was quiet. “I said that I’ve been through my share of storms. One of them, aboard the Walrus, I was belowdecks with one of the men, a friend of mine. We were trying to patch a leak. A cannon shifted, pinning him to the hull, and I could not move it. The water rose higher and higher, while all I could do was try desperately to keep his head above it. My efforts did not make any difference. He drowned before me as I watched, utterly powerless to stop it. I have not forgotten that. I know you likewise will not with Mr. Arrow. I’m sorry.”

Geneva was once more at a loss for words. She sensed, as she had before, that Silver was genuinely trying to connect with her, but she did not want his calculated empathy, not when this entire affair was of his purpose and devising. Yet she did not want to order him out either, if only because that would mean being left alone with her thoughts. At last she said only, “Why?”

“As I said. You are Flint’s granddaughter. And he was also often in the habit of spurning what I said, merely because I was the one who had said it.” Silver regarded her steadily. “As I also said, it would be much easier for us to be friends. To work together. When Flint and I finally did, we were all but unstoppable.”

“I’m not your second chance with him.”

Silver flinched again, ever so slightly, but his tone remained courteous. “Of course not. But there are similarities. If you did work with me – ”

“What did you do to him on Skeleton Island?”

“I – beg your pardon?”

“You heard me. You want us to be allies, because I think you want to make up for whatever you did to Grandpa on Skeleton Island, what passed between the two of you, why you and Mother left him behind and she thought for years that he was likely dead. If you want me to trust you – and remotely believe that I would not come to the same end if it suited – then tell me. Or go.”

Silver looked truly flummoxed. He opened his mouth, then shut it. “Geneva – ”

She wanted to remind him that it was Captain Jones, but that took too much effort. “Well?”

Silver opened his mouth a second time, then likewise shut it. “I think I see Madi returning,” he said at last. “I’ll spare you another of our squabbles. If there is anything else I can do for you, please do let me know.”

And with that, he went.

[madeeoutoflight-blog]

I took heart from his eyes on mine

Achilles knows his destiny, has always known it—it has been written since before he was born. There is one detail the prophecies have left out, however, and it turns out to be the most important of all. (AO3.)

words: 3329 tags: canon compliant, character study, Achilles POV note: I have posted this once before under a different url; I’m starting afresh, so here it is again

I am not used to being surprised. My mother is a goddess—why should our men not fear her, and honor my father, and expect great things of me? The boys in the dining hall tumble over each other, trying too hard to catch my eye. My spear and sword are feather-light in my hands and I keep up with my horse as we race down the beach, side by side. I play the lyre and my teacher has nothing to teach.

I am not surprised. Why should I be?

And then there he is.

He does not fit the mold and is painfully aware of it, fidgeting and forcing himself not to. He isn’t broad like the other boys, isn’t tall, isn’t brash. Large, dark eyes under a mop of unruly hair glance around, framed by lashes as full as a girl’s, always observing. I wonder what he sees—he does not smile the way the others do when they see me, he does not attempt to talk to me. He looks and then looks away, casts those large eyes down.

I remember his name. This is the first time he surprises me. The other boys have names, too, but I cannot summon them from my memory so easily. Not like his. Patroclus.

That is why I search for him after overhearing the master’s complaint to my father. He is small, wedged between amphorae, startled eyes like a doe’s—but he is not small when he speaks. There is a strength in those words, proof of his character. He calls me “prince” and I am surprised again. Not because he knows, everyone does, but because he does not seem to care. He only suggests to use it like a tool, something I have and not someone I am.

I am not used to being surprised. I find that I like it.

Therapon, I have named him, and now he is always on my heels, quiet when we are not alone, bright when we are. At first, I worry that as I grow to know him he will no longer surprise me, he will become normal, like everything else. Then, I discover that he does not. He sees so many things, with those large dark eyes, that I cannot and tells me of them—he has words for every color of the sky and sea, he knows the boys that we spend so little time with, he describes the music of wind and waves and rain on roof-tiles.

He says I have a better way with words than he does, but it is only true when we have company. He has been hated into silence by his father and will not speak if he does not feel safe. I am glad for my strength, glad for my skill, because I know I can protect him, and he knows it, too. Maybe I should tell him that I will also keep him safe in the presence of others, so that they might hear him—but I am selfish when it comes to him. I want his words to be for my ears alone.

If one day songs are written about my deeds, I would want him to do it. I know no-one else who can so carefully put to words the things they see, and I know no-one else who sees me the way he does, as someone I am and not something I have.

Still, when he leans in on the beach and kisses me, I am surprised again. It is my first, as it is his, and I have always known it would be him—I did not know it would feel this way. I have been warm, but not like this, and cold, but not like this, and full, but not like this. Then he pulls back and I register the smell of the sea, the angry lashing of the waves at the sand. I know what comes next. Not here, I think, not right in front of him. So I turn around and run.

My mother catches me on the garden path, growls, bares her teeth. I try to straighten my shoulders, but I am breathless in a way I’ve never been before. She tells me I must go and I have no words to object.

I do not ask Patroclus to come. This time, I am afraid that he will surprise me and say I can’t. I leave without saying goodbye, but I leave slowly, never spurring my horse to a gallop, dragging my feet through the dust after I dismount and continue on smaller paths. I am prepared to be late, I know Chiron will not turn me away. My mother is a goddess, after all. And if he will have me, then he will have us both.

There is no surprise when he does, only relief.

It is hard to know the most precious time of your life when you have not yet lived all of your life—but I cannot imagine a life better than the one we learn to live together, high up on Mount Pelion where my mother cannot see us. I feel a vague guilt when I think this, but it is true. She does not see the hours I spend watching him talk and listen and walk swiftly across the grass. She would say they are hours wasted. I know they are not, even if I do not know what comes a year from now, or two, or ten. I know I will not miss these hours; I will never wish that I spent them doing something else.

“You look older,” he tells me, and it surprises me, because I have only seen him.

“I do?”

“Yes. Do I?”

“Come over here,” I say, because I don’t know how to tell him, only show him. I have words for courts, and kings, and things, but not for him. The words I know are not enough.

I trail my fingers over his skin, softly, pointing at what I see, lingering in places, smiling at the sight of his large eyes growing larger, until he stops me. Things are changing, more than just our bodies, and there is enough time to let them change. We are not yet sixteen. One day my father will call us down, but we will have changed before then, and even my mother cannot stop it.

There are other things that can.

The messenger comes too soon, we are whisked away, and suddenly, the world moves fast around us. War beckons—not me, but him. My mother’s advice is fickle like the sea she carries inside her. First she wants me to go, not with him but for myself, to gain the honor that will make me a god. Then, she wants me to stay, not with him but for myself, or maybe for her. I do not understand. All I know is that she does not care for him, and she does not care that she rips me apart when she plucks me from the bed we share and drops me on an island.

Deidameia’s eyes and hair are dark, like his, but small and empty, and for a moment I am, too. I miss him more when I am with her; she is a poor reflection of him, and I am a poor reflection of myself. I curtsy, I cast my eyes down, I melt into the shadows of white dresses and veils. I do not know how I hold myself together. Maybe it is because my mother is a goddess. Maybe it is because I tell myself that he will come, he will come, he will see you again.

I have never felt powerless before, but I do now, and it is because he is not beside me. I am not surprised.

My strength comes back with a surge when he does, not a moment too late—I need it to explain, with words that refuse to leave my mouth, why I am here, and what I have done, and how I will be ripped apart all over again if he does not forgive me. There is a wildness in the way I look at him, I know. His large eyes see it, too. I drink them in, the darkness of his irises, the long lashes, the faintest spark of something that does not belong there, anger mixed with hurt. And then we both cry, and we are all right.

Of course, the war still beckons and the future calls for us. Odysseus arrives with Diomedes at his shoulder; my mother and he fight over prophecies, but the choice is mine. Except that it is not. I weigh the options on a scale that determines not just my life, but his as well. If I go to Troy, I die. If I do not, I wither. Chiron’s words are on my mind—that it is harder to be left on earth when the other is gone—and I know: whatever I do, I will be gone.

There is only one way out, and it is my mother’s. Troy will have to be the battlefield where I can claim my fame, earn enough for the gods to notice me. I will make them see, and maybe, maybe—maybe they will see him, too.

If they don’t, I do not want to be a god.

My resolve trembles when I see the sorrow in his face, as if he has already begun to mourn. The alternative to godhood is death, which has never been this apparent to me before, but I cannot think about it now. I must not be afraid, for both of us. As long as he stands beside me, I will prevail, and I will win eternity for us. Win, or die trying.

“Will you come with me?” I ask.

He does not hesitate to say yes, and I am not surprised.

I am surprised when he goes to the sea, scratching his hands raw on the rocks to seek out my mother. I am surprised that he coaxes the answers out of her, answers she will not give me. Hector. I repeat the foreign name in my head, as if the practice will make it easier to recognize him beneath the walls of Troy—to paint him as the one target I must always ignore. Patroclus looks at me eagerly, large eyes urging me to understand.

“And you think to steal time from the Fates?” I say.

“Yes.”

“Ah.” I smile, slowly. “Well, why should I kill him? He’s done nothing to me.”

His eyes widen and his mouth drops open, just a little. I have surprised him this time—and this is what makes me sure, so sure, that we will steal the time we need, we will twist the prophecy, we will have hope.

Of course, there are times when I forget. Iphigeneia. The evening after the first raid, the bitter curling of his lips, the way he turns his eyes away. His first day on the battlefield. The dreams I start having, of my spear in Hector’s throat. My first word-duel with Agamemnon, as the soldiers grow restless and their promised victory does not come. The new prophecy, foretelling another death in our camp. Briseis, and her wish to have a child with the man who is mine.

Every one of these times, it is Patroclus who convinces me this is another thing we can overcome. He holds my face in his hands and looks at me with his doe’s eyes—my father calls him owl, and he sees as much as one, but he is a doe to me, soft and slender and sweet—and just before he presses his lips to mine, he says my name. First, we kiss open-eyed, and the spell of his eyes strips away everything that I am not. Bloody, bloodthirsty. Cruel. Murderous. Nothing beyond an iron-tipped spear and the sharp edge of a sword.

Then, as our eyes slip closed, he brings my hands to his chest, to his hips, and he reminds me what they are really made for: to hold him and touch him, to let my fingers play across his ribs, carefully, like the plucking of strings. I know every response his body has to my caresses, have long since mastered the art of making him sing—and moan, pant, writhe, and breathe my name. This, I think, is the only song I want written about me. This will forever be the most beautiful song of Achilles.

In this bliss it is not my hope that I forget, but my destiny, and that is when it comes crashing into me, like a wave swept high by a storm and suddenly released upon the coast.

Agamemnon takes my honor. He has been greedy, vain, and bitter since the war began. He cannot stand me. I cannot stand him. I have always thought I am not alone in this, but the men do not take my side, and it chokes me. After everything I have done for them, these ten years of my life I have given them, these are my spoils of war—betrayal and humiliation?

A wild panic seizes me. Is this the death of my fame? Is this the death of my chance at godhood, my chance at eternity? Is this the death of my desperate attempt to keep us together, even after everything ends? I cannot let that happen. I will not let that happen. My, our, downfall will not come at the hands of the wretch Agamemnon, if it is decreed that it must come at all. My mother is a goddess, and I will win.

Patroclus surprises me again. If he had stabbed me in the chest it would have hurt less, I would have bled less. Why would he seek out Agamemnon? Does he not understand—he, who always sees everything? I want to scream it at him, I am doing this for you, for you, for us, do you not see, but then I look into his eyes and I know that he does not see. For once, he does not see. Not me.

I cannot speak of my plans to him anymore. I speak to my mother instead, and she tells me I am right, although she does not share my reasons. She promises her help. I know what Patroclus would say, I can conjure his face in my mind and the way he bites his lip in warning. She is a goddess, and ever-changing like the sea, and she has betrayed you before.

So have you, I think.

He thinks I do not care when the losses come. I turn away as they carry corpse after corpse into the camp and lay them to rest on their pyres, breathing in the salt of the sea until it mixes with the smell of burning blood and hair. I did not swing the sword or throw the spear, but these deaths are on me. Still, I force my limbs to stone, my face to a mask. I cannot turn back now. They will call for my help soon. I will save them, and in return the gods will grant me my wish. They will grant me him.

Hubris, his voice whispers in my ear, but I refuse to listen. Is this not what I was born for? To fight, to gain honor enough to lift me up among the stars? He will surpass his father. I will. I will be famous and happy, I will surpass even Heracles, I have promised myself and him so many years ago, and no-one will stand in my way.

They will call for my help and then it will end.

“Save them for me,” Patroclus says, and he kneels at my feet, which he has never done before. “I know what I am asking of you. But I ask it. For me.”

I look down at him, drawn to his doe’s eyes, and my head is no longer clear. For me, he says. He still does not see that I am already doing this for him. This is the only choice.

“Anything else,” I say. And he surprises me again.

My armor is too big on him, and despite his healer’s muscle he is too soft for the bronze—a doe, he is a doe—, but he is brave as he has always been and holds his head high when I slide the helmet down over his dark, unruly hair. The kiss we share is sweet, promising. I hold him close and tell him, breathlessly, that he must come back, because I have always come back to him. He nods. Then the lashes flash across the horses’ backs and they speed away. The sun ricochets off my helmet; for a moment, he is caught in its light. It is the image on my mind as I wait, a fragment of the future I dream of—him, and me, under a bright sun, as one.

The image crumbles to ashes when the makeshift pallet is set down before me. Menelaus tries to speak to me, but I do not hear. Odysseus stands behind him, but I do not see. Antilochus grabs my shoulders, but I do not feel. Patroclus’ eyes swallow me whole.

They are broken.

For a moment, I think nothing comes next. What can come next, after the sun has gone down for the last time? I am suspended in time, trapped in all-encompassing grief. Patroclus. I remember how it surprised me that I could remember his name, the first year his life touched mine. It is the only word I know now.

Anger releases me from my state of frozen shock. I scream. My throat is raw and bloody, but I do not stop until my voice gives out. I am vaguely aware of my body moving—in my pain, I am too fast for myself. A red veil falls before my eyes. When it clears, the tent is trashed. Shards of a bowl are on the floor, fruit spilled out and flattened, benches overturned, three of my spears stuck in the ground. The only place left untouched is the pallet with him on it, lying spread out on his back, and it does not look like he is sleeping.

I know what he looks like when he is asleep. I climb onto the pallet, gently rearranging his limbs until he is curled around me, our legs intertwined, one of his arms slung over my hip and his face buried against my chest. I pull a blanket over us both and shut out the world. I am selfish when it comes to him. He is mine. Death cannot have him.

Why, I whisper soundlessly against cold collarbones, must you always surprise me?

Do it again, I whisper soundlessly against cold ribs that used to house the warmest heart in all of Greece, surprise me again, come back to me. Surprise me.

He does not, and that is when I know it’s truly over.

I did not swing the sword and throw the spear, but this is on me. I have lost him. I have done this. And I was doing it for him, but not for this, not like this, it cannot be like this. I bury my head in the hollow between his collarbones; it fills with my tears, then overflows.

For the first time in my life, I truly understand the prophecies. I understand why heroes are never happy. Because they are not heroes until they face their destinies, and they do not face their destinies until they are prepared to lose—or have already lost. Together, he and I have stolen time from the Fates. Now they claim it. I touch my fingers to his eyelids and close them.

Hector falls, my spear in his throat. I am not surprised.

[norfloxacin1]

    Children, come back--come back, I say--     You whom my folly chased away     A moment since, from this my room,     With bristling wrath and words of doom!     What had you done, you bandits small,     With lips as red as roses all?     What crime?--what wild and hapless deed?       What porcelain vase by you was split     To thousand pieces? Did you need       For pastime, as you handled it,     Some Gothic missal to enrich       With your designs fantastical?       Or did your tearing fingers fall     On some old picture? Which, oh, which     Your dreadful fault? Not one of these;     Only when left yourselves to please     This morning but a moment here       'Mid papers tinted by my mind     You took some embryo verses near--       Half formed, but fully well designed     To open out. Your hearts desire     Was but to throw them on the fire,     Then watch the tinder, for the sight     Of shining sparks that twinkle bright     As little boats that sail at night,     Or like the window lights that spring     From out the dark at evening.

    'Twas all, and you were well content.     Fine loss was this for anger's vent--     A strophe ill made midst your play,     Sweet sound that chased the words away     In stormy flight. An ode quite new,     With rhymes inflated--stanzas, too,     That panted, moving lazily,       And heavy Alexandrine lines     That seemed to jostle bodily,       Like children full of play designs     That spring at once from schoolroom's form.     Instead of all this angry storm,     Another might have thanked you well     For saving prey from that grim cell,     That hollowed den 'neath journals great,       Where editors who poets flout       With their demoniac laughter shout.     And I have scolded you! What fate     For charming dwarfs who never meant       To anger Hercules! And I     Have frightened you!--My chair I sent       Back to the wall, and then let fly     A shower of words the envious use--     "Get out," I said, with hard abuse,     "Leave me alone--alone I say."     Poor man alone! Ah, well-a-day,     What fine result--what triumph rare!       As one turns from the coffin'd dead     So left you me:--I could but stare       Upon the door through which you fled--     I proud and grave--but punished quite.     And what care you for this my plight!--     You have recovered liberty,     Fresh air and lovely scenery,     The spacious park and wished-for grass;       The running stream, where you can throw     A blade to watch what comes to pass;       Blue sky, and all the spring can show;     Nature, serenely fair to see;     The book of birds and spirits free,     God's poem, worth much more than mine,     Where flowers for perfect stanzas shine--     Flowers that a child may pluck in play,     No harsh voice frightening it away.     And I'm alone--all pleasure o'er--       Alone with pedant called "Ennui,"     For since the morning at my door       Ennui has waited patiently.     That docto-r-London born, you mark,     One Sunday in December dark,     Poor little ones--he loved you not,     And waited till the chance he got     To enter as you passed away,       And in the very corner where     You played with frolic laughter gay,       He sighs and yawns with weary air.

    What can I do? Shall I read books,     Or write more verse--or turn fond looks     Upon enamels blue, sea-green,     And white--on insects rare as seen     Upon my Dresden china ware?     Or shall I touch the globe, and care     To make the heavens turn upon     Its axis? No, not one--not one     Of all these things care I to do;     All wearies me--I think of you.     In truth with you my sunshine fled,     And gayety with your light tread--     Glad noise that set me dreaming still.     'Twas my delight to watch your will,     And mark you point with finger-tips       To help your spelling out a word;     To see the pearls between your lips       When I your joyous laughter heard;     Your honest brows that looked so true,       And said "Oh, yes!" to each intent;     Your great bright eyes, that loved to view       With admiration innocent     My fine old Sèvres; the eager thought     That every kind of knowledge sought;     The elbow push with "Come and see!"

    Oh, certes! spirits, sylphs, there be,     And fays the wind blows often here;     The gnomes that squat the ceiling near,     In corners made by old books dim;     The long-backed dwarfs, those goblins grim     That seem at home 'mong vases rare,     And chat to them with friendly air--     Oh, how the joyous demon throng     Must all have laughed with laughter long     To see you on my rough drafts fall,     My bald hexameters, and all     The mournful, miserable band,     And drag them with relentless hand     From out their box, with true delight     To set them each and all a-light,     And then with clapping hands to lean     Above the stove and watch the scene,     How to the mass deformed there came     A soul that showed itself in flame!

    Bright tricksy children--oh, I pray     Come back and sing and dance away,     And chatter too--sometimes you may,     A giddy group, a big book seize--     Or sometimes, if it so you please,     With nimble step you'll run to me       And push the arm that holds the pen,     Till on my finished verse will be       A stroke that's like a steeple when     Seen suddenly upon a plain.     My soul longs for your breath again     To warm it. Oh, return--come here     With laugh and babble--and no fear       When with your shadow you obscure       The book I read, for I am sure,     Oh, madcaps terrible and dear,     That you were right and I was wrong.     But who has ne'er with scolding tongue     Blamed out of season. Pardon me!     You must forgive--for sad are we.

    The young should not be hard and cold     And unforgiving to the old.     Children each morn your souls ope out       Like windows to the shining day,     Oh, miracle that comes about,       The miracle that children gay     Have happiness and goodness too,     Caressed by destiny are you,       Charming you are, if you but play.     But we with living overwrought,     And full of grave and sombre thought,     Are snappish oft: dear little men,     We have ill-tempered days, and then,     Are quite unjust and full of care;     It rained this morning and the air     Was chill; but clouds that dimm'd the sky     Have passed. Things spited me, and why?     But now my heart repents. Behold     What 'twas that made me cross, and scold!     All by-and-by you'll understand,     When brows are mark'd by Time's stern hand;     Then you will comprehend, be sure,     When older--that's to say, less pure.

    The fault I freely own was mine.     But oh, for pardon now I pine!     Enough my punishment to meet,     You must forgive, I do entreat     With clasped hands praying--oh, come back,     Make peace, and you shall nothing lack.     See now my pencils--paper--here,     And pointless compasses, and dear     Old lacquer-work; and stoneware clear     Through glass protecting; all man's toys     So coveted by girls and boys.     Great China monsters--bodies much     Like cucumbers--you all shall touch.     I yield up all! my picture rare       Found beneath antique rubbish heap,     My great and tapestried oak chair       I will from you no longer keep.     You shall about my table climb,       And dance, or drag, without a cry     From me as if it were a crime.       Even I'll look on patiently     If you your jagged toys all throw     Upon my carved bench, till it show     The wood is torn; and freely too,     I'll leave in your own hands to view,     My pictured Bible--oft desired--     But which to touch your fear inspired--     With God in emperor's robes attired.

    Then if to see my verses burn,     Should seem to you a pleasant turn,     Take them to freely tear away     Or burn. But, oh! not so I'd say,     If this were Méry's room to-day.     That noble poet! Happy town,     Marseilles the Greek, that him doth own!     Daughter of Homer, fair to see,     Of Virgil's son the mother she.     To you I'd say, Hold, children all,     Let but your eyes on his work fall;     These papers are the sacred nest     In which his crooning fancies rest;     To-morrow winged to Heaven they'll soar,       For new-born verse imprisoned still     In manuscript may suffer sore       At your small hands and childish will,     Without a thought of bad intent,     Of cruelty quite innocent.     You wound their feet, and bruise their wings,     And make them suffer those ill things     That children's play to young birds brings.

    But mine! no matter what you do,     My poetry is all in you;     You are my inspiration bright     That gives my verse its purest light.     Children whose life is made of hope,     Whose joy, within its mystic scope,     Owes all to ignorance of ill,     You have not suffered, and you still     Know not what gloomy thoughts weigh down     The poet-writer weary grown.     What warmth is shed by your sweet smile!     How much he needs to gaze awhile     Upon your shining placid brow,     When his own brow its ache doth know;     With what delight he loves to hear     Your frolic play 'neath tree that's near,     Your joyous voices mixing well     With his own song's all-mournful swell!     Come back then, children! come to me,     If you wish not that I should be     As lonely now that you're afar     As fisherman of Etrétat,     Who listless on his elbow leans     Through all the weary winter scenes,     As tired of thought--as on Time flies--     And watching only rainy skies!