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The Winter Twins

Jocelyn’s father is put to bed with a soothing draught but the longer the lord lies still the more restless he becomes. Jocelyn is gone and only the guest ‘Tiberius’ is left to watch the sleeping man clench and unclench the bedsheets in his fists.

This is his doing somehow, his and Jocelyn’s, but he does not fully understand what it is about them, together, that frightened her father. Yet he is guilty, and so he repents his guilt by keeping vigil at the man’s bedside, holding a large but trembling hand in his own, not unlike a young woman who had once comforted him when he was fevered, new to the world, and very much afraid.

The lord’s chambers are nearly as large as the main room of the cottage. He wonders how the fireplace, farthest from the bed, is able to win over the natural chill of the house. As he watches tiny flames smoldering amongst the kindle, a house servant enters the room to stoke the dying fire and also to stare at him with open curiosity. Yet no one asks him to leave, just as no one speaks to him. All occupants of this manored house are walking shadows; he too makes himself into a shadow as he waits for the answer to an unspoken question. The servant leaves the room as soundlessly as he arrived.

Soon the light of day fades to a red-gold and tendrils of it slither down the walls of the chamber; then the daylight vanishes altogether and darkness settles in its place. There comes a soft tread of boots in the hallway and, in company of the monotonous sound, a hint of a familiar scent. Back turned to the door, his ears strain to listen and subsequently he catches the hesitant pause of those boots upon the room’s threshold.

Leonard walks slowly into the lord’s chambers and, silent, circles to the opposite side of the occupied bed to stare at his father-in-law’s drawn face. The silence is unable to last, not while unsaid words create a strain between them.

“Jocelyn said he collapsed.”

He answers with the sole hope of relieving the invisible guilt bearing down upon his shoulders. “Yes.”

Leonard’s troubled gaze seeks him then. “Why won’t you leave this family alone, kid?”

He lifts his eyes to Leonard’s, sees the blanketed anger there. “I am Tiberius.”

He shouldn’t have said that. By the look in Leonard’s eyes, he shouldn’t have said anything.

“I know what you are—you’re a thief,” the man accuses. “You’re here to steal what isn’t yours—whether it’s a name or a little girl or a wife.”

The accusation burns like a brand. “I would never take them from you,” he says, struggling for words. “You… love them.” Dropping his eyes, he waits for Leonard to name him further. Stranger. Beast.

“Leonard.”

Leonard’s attention wavers and at last breaks, drawn by the dry, faint croak of his father-in-law. “Sir? Do you still feel… ill? What do you need?”

“My child,” whispers the old man. “Where is my child?”

Leonard’s eyes darken. “Jocelyn isn’t here. I’m sorry.”

The lord shakes his head listlessly. “Not—Jocelyn. My other child. Tiberius.”

His heart leaps into his throat and lodges there.

Leonard leans over and lays a hand against the man’s chest, muttering, “He is too cold. Sir?”

“Tiberius!”

Such a cry cannot go unanswered. He leans forward, caught. “You named me Tiberius,” he offers.

The hand he is holding grips his fingers hard, almost painfully.

“I should have known,” the man says wearily. “I did know, when I first saw you. You have her summer eyes.”

Leonard interjects, “Sir, you cannot—this man is not your Tiberius!”

“No,” agrees the lord, suddenly relaxed on his nest of his pillows and blankets. “My wife named him before he ever left the womb. Not Tiberius—James. My son James.”

Leonard pales. “Jocelyn is your wife’s child.”

The lord denies it. “Do you not see the truth? She is her daughter, Leonard. I have raised her child, not my wife’s!”

Leonard’s face pales further and he sways in the firelight. “You’re talking about Jocelyn. Jocelyn is human.”

“Leonard,” the lord beckons to his son-in-law, voice heavy, as Leonard backs away, one step at a time. “It was something none of us could see.” Jocelyn’s father—his father?—turns his eyes to his son. “Not until you came.”

“No!” cries Leonard. “What is the matter with you? He’s the beast!” Nothing the lord says stops Leonard from running away.

Leonard is alone in the parlor with the cracked mirror, braced against the mantel like a man barely strong enough to stand. A golden-haired man’s entrance goes unacknowledged.

After the telling a somewhat stilted story of a man with two lovers and two children, one born of each woman, the lord sleeps, exhausted but strangely peaceful. The need to find Leonard drove him to this room, but now that he is here he finds himself drawn to the mirror rather than the man. The face staring back at him in a broken sliver of cold-clear glass is wide-eyed, new—the face of a James.

“How does a… James feel?” he questions, looking at his somewhat dirty, tan-less hands with the same wonder he felt at the age of eight. Is he truly James? He looks hopefully to Leonard.

Fire shadows flicker across the dark-haired man’s face but beneath their playful dancing is an indifferent mask.

He tentatively tries another name he has not spoken before. “Leonard?”

That stirs the man, who seems defeated. Except Leonard’s words are anything but defeat. “You can’t tell anyone who you are.”

The room loses its warmth, and his lungs turn to ice. “But…”

Leonard lifts his head to implore him, “Please, don’t!” Desperation twists in the man’s eyes, and fear. “If my wife knew—” Leonard inhales a shaky breath. “She can never know.”

He… understands.

He hates, quite suddenly and fiercely, that he understands. Searching Leonard’s face for a small hope, a sign of jesting, proves futile. His hands fall loosely to his sides. “I am the child of the lord and his wife. She is the child of the lord and…” His voice sticks as he pictures a feminine, fey face with too-dark eyes.

Leonard covers his eyes briefly with a trembling hand. “I’m beggin’ you, please. If not for me, then for Joanna, who needs her mother.” The man is colorless.

He wants to agree, simply to remove the anguish in Leonard’s heart, but knowledge of his own need tricks him into making a half-promise. “I will tell no man, woman, or child of my true name.”

“Thank you” comes the faint reply. “I know this is an… unkind thing to ask of you, but I love my family,” Leonard finishes. “I hope you can understand.”

He nods mutely.

Leonard visibly sags. “All right.” He runs a hand through his wild hair. “All right, we should… should go home. Try to get some sleep.” His tone speaks of how easily he imagines sleep will come to either of them.

“Home?” Something clenches his chest in a fist-like grip.

Leonard admits, “Jo won’t speak to me. She just keeps crying. If I let you come back—well, I don’t have a choice, do I?” Leonard looks at him, weary. “You have power over me now, kid.”

“I am not kid. I have a name…” But he has agreed not to share his name with anyone; for all intents and purposes, he remains as he was before the vision in the mirror. Even now, that mirror reflects sad summer eyes in an unremarkable, lost face.

A hand gently ghosts his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’ve joked about what to call you but I know you only put up with the stupid nicknames to make Joanna happy. A real name means something. If it’s all right with you…”

Leonard waits until their gazes meet.

“Jim,” Leonard names him softly. “It’s another version of James.”

The invisible fist lets go. “Jim.” An almost-true name—more than he ever thought he might have. He could be a Jim. “Yes,” he says, salvaging what he can of himself, “call me Jim.”

Joanna doesn’t greet him with words when he enters the cottage. Instead, choking on a sob, she flings her arms around his middle and presses her face just under his ribcage. He strokes her hair until her shoulders stop shaking.

“I didn’t mean it,” she whispers. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble, Sockless.”

He looks at Leonard, saying, “It’s okay.”

She lets go of him and steps back, sniffling, but trying for dignified tears.

He tells her, “My name is Jim.”

Her eyes widen, skating over to her father then back to him. “How did you find your name?”

“Your Papa found my name,” he murmurs, feeling Leonard’s eyes on him.

Her face clears of heartbreak. “Your name is Jim!” She crows and bounces on the balls of her feet. “Oh, Papa,” she cries and hugs her father enthusiastically, apparently forgiving of all his sins, “thank you! Now Sockless can stay with us!”

It’s all right, he thinks, if Joanna still calls him Sockless. As long as Leonard does not.

Leonard pats her back. “Staying with us is up to Jim, Joanna. He can if he wants to.” But Leonard’s eyes are pleading, quite clearly, don’t stay.

He drops his eyes to his feet but makes no promises. Instead, his first order of business is to remove the horrible boots strangling his feet.

The routine of living together is easy to return to, as though the disaster of the fair never happened.

Except Jocelyn follows him now as she never did before; she is a constant presence at his side and when she is away from him she inevitably comes back like a tide. He asks her one day why she won’t leave him alone.

Her answer is “You are changing again. I want to see what you become.”

The reflection in a bucket of melted snow shows him as no different than the night he returned from the lord’s house, other than the fading bruise on his jaw from Leonard’s unforgiving blow. “What are you becoming?” he wonders quietly to it.

Leonard catches him in the middle of this contemplation and, shocking him, overturns the bucket into the earth. “Don’t do that.”

Jim asks, surprised, “Why not?”

But the man does not give the reason, only the command. It isn’t until Jim catches sight of Jocelyn in the bedroom she shares with Leonard staring at herself in an oval hand-mirror and whispering, though she is alone, that he understands Leonard’s reaction.

When Joanna is bored, she attempts to teach him how to bake. He is of the opinion the girl isn’t quite certain how to bake herself.

During one of their culinary adventures in the cottage’s compact kitchen, her father conducts frequent assessments of their progress. Currently, the man peers from the haphazard bread soup to the pair of wide-eyed bakers and drawls, “There’s more flour on the floor than in the bowl.” The corner of his mouth lifts wryly. “Two kids—that’s what I’ve got.”

One of the bakers glares at the tailor’s retreating back. “I am Jim, not kid.”

Joanna pats her companion sympathetically with a wet spoon instead of her hand. Not that it matters; his shirt is already sticky. “Papa likes calling you a kid,” she explains with a knowing nod. “You shouldn’t tell him not to.”

“But my name is Jim,” he argues and sticks his tongue out at her.

She responds in kind then giggles.

“Hmmm,” comes the echo from across the room, “wonder which one of them I could trade in? Maybe get a milking cow instead.”

Joanna hops up and down in proper horrified fashion. “Not me, Papa, not me!”

He fully expects Leonard to appease his daughter and say Jim is the more easily disposable of the pair but the man snorts amusedly at them as he situates himself behind a table covered in strips of cloth, dark colors of thread, and a set of tiny cutting knives. “Well… Jim’s the one who does his chores without complaint.”

The girl’s mouth drops open. “But he does them badly! He caught your cloak on fire ‘n drowned your shoes!”

Now Leonard laughs and winks playfully in his direction. “He’s learnin’.”

He blinks, not certain if he should respond to that, or how he should respond if he is supposed to.

Joanna folds her arms in a perfect imitation of her father. “You just like him better ’cause he’s got boy parts,” she says, aggrieved as only the young can be. “Well I’m glad I don’t have boy parts!” The spoon in her hand is discarded in the bowl of bread soup—which was supposedly to be dough—and Joanna goes outside, unmindful of her straggly hair or oversized clothes.

“Stop grinning,” Leonard says pointedly to Jim.

His grin grows.

“I said stop that,” the man grumbles but his mouth is fighting between a scowl and a grin of its own. After a while, expression under control again, Leonard lifts one eyebrow. “Looks like she left you to clean up the mess. Try not to put salt in the sugar jar again.”

He looks at the open jar next to the bowl contemplatively before sticking his finger in it.

“For the love of—don’t do that either, Jim! We have to cook with that stuff!”

“But how else will I know if it’s salt or sugar?” His finger definitely tastes sweet like sugar. Leonard does not seem to appreciate the ignorant batting of his eyes.

Without another word—or argument—the tailor unfolds a strip of blue cloth and proceeds to mark it with charcoal, ignoring Jim’s noisy but determined efforts to beat flour out of a shirt. Whereas the flour comes out in big, white puffs (making him cough), unfortunately the yolk stains do not.

Not that he cares overly much. The borrowed shirt is Leonard’s. Joanna had said it was the correct attire to wear when making kitchen messes. However, after interpreting Leonard’s look as disgruntled when he returns the shirt, he decides next time he should give more thought to Joanna’s suggestions before agreeing to them.

“Sorry,” he apologizes.

Leonard takes the ruined fabric from him and tosses it somewhere far away. “Don’t worry about it,” Leonard says, clearly not as upset as he previously appeared to be. “Jo is happy. That’s worth a lot of shirts.”

He wants to ask are you happy too? but cannot seem to speak the words. Not then.

No, it isn’t until he has had a sip of too-strong cider in the evening and is waiting for Leonard to return from the bed-time reading with Joanna that words stumble over themselves to get out of his mouth.

He asks Leonard, as the man settles beside him on the long bench sighing contentedly, “Do you like me?”

The man grows too still. “Like you?” echoes. “I guess I do.”

“Do you love me?”

Leonard cuts his eyes sharply to him, brows drawn. “Jim… Sometimes I think you say words just to hear how they sound.”

“I ask so I can learn,” he disagrees without heat. He looks down at his open palm, remembering. “A woman once loved me as a son.” His hand curls into a fist and he lets the fist rest on his leg.

Leonard draws in a soundless breath, then another.

He adds, “Joanna loves me as a friend. Do you love me, Leonard?”

“I don’t,” the man admits quietly. “I can’t. Why are you asking me this?”

His gaze drifts toward the nearest window. “The moon is only missing a small portion of itself. I had to know.”

Leonard leans forward, hunching his shoulders, and stares straight ahead. “You should never ask me that again.”

“Because of Jocelyn,” he guesses.

“Not because of Jocelyn,” the man says, but no explanation is forthcoming.

Two days later he wanders the woods by the cottage and stops to pick a small white flower blended in with the snow. He lingers there, hearing the occasional snap of fallen branches.

“Why is Tiberius unhappy?” The question floats ahead of the woman who emerges from the surrounding trees.

“Jim,” he corrects, turning to Jocelyn. “Your grandfather is Tiberius.” Our grandfather. Pinned by a shrewd look, he is afraid she might discover that knowledge so he hedges, “Leonard is looking for you. You should come home.”

The woman’s dark eyes move past him, forgetting him as they drink in the quiet calm of the woods. “What is a home?” she muses. “Is a home where you feel warm? Safe? Loved?” Her eyes return to his again. “I feel none of those things when I am in that house. Only out here am I safest, warmest.”

Something hot flares under his breast bone. “But this place doesn’t love you like Leonard and Joanna do, or it would accept you for what you are.”

Unflinching, she demands, “What am I? Tell me!”

By the feral look of her eyes, it is clear to him exactly what she is. He doesn’t need the scent of the bitter magic clinging to her as identification anymore. Yet he promised Leonard his silence.

He gives her what truth he can: “You are bitter because you are not loved by what you love most, and you are blind to the price of your bitterness.”

For a long moment, Jocelyn says nothing. Only when he turns away to escape the oppressive silence does she speak: “You also are bitter, beast, because you are not loved by what you love most.”

“But I am not blind,” he counters too softly, and leaves.

The exchange with Jocelyn lingers with him past dusk to the slow rise of the white moon, which he struggles not to see in the window of the cottage. Since he has Joanna’s undivided attention as they play a game with coins and sticks upon the cottage floor, he asks her, “Do you miss her?” Neither of them need mention who he refers to.

“Sometimes,” the girl replies absently, spinning a copper coin until knocks down three of his sticks.

“I cannot help,” he says quietly, thinking of the secret he cannot share with Jocelyn—or Joanna.

Joanna props her chin in her hand and tilts her head back to look at him. “You already said that. Why are you still sad about it?”

“Aren’t you?”

She shrugs one small shoulder. “When I was very little I didn’t understand. Then I grew up.”

He frowns. “But you are not grown.”

Her mouth curves with a secretive smile. “Who is to say what is old or young to Us? We who live under the hill, not the sea!” she sings mischievously.

“There’s a land under the sea?”

Joanna groans. “Sockless!” She scampers from their place on the floor to her room and returns with a hard leather book, its edges worn by handling. “Here, look at this.” She turns to an illustrated page and puts the book under his nose. “A land beneath the sea!”

“Where are their legs?”

Again, the child groans. “They’re like fish. You really don’t know the story of the Undersea?” Suddenly she looks anxious. “I won’t tell it as good as Papa does.”

He holds out the book. “Please?”

And that, it seems, is all the encouragement the child needs. Settling against his side, she pulls up her knees and balances the book between them. She begins to weave a tale of mermaids and moonlit oceans, of ageless kingdoms built of oyster shells and horrid sea-witches.

Near the end of the story he lifts his drowsy eyes from the book, spying motion in another otherwise pleasantly still room.

Joanna’s sweet voice flows like a carefully woven spell: “…looking upon her prince and his lover, the mermaid knew she could not let her love destroy his happiness, and with the dagger clutched to her breast and tears upon her fair cheeks she returned to herself to the sea.”

He shivers, caught under Leonard’s unreadable stare. Joanna sighs, unaware of her father, and presses her arm to his as she turns the page to reveal the picture of the dark-haired mermaid fading into the depths of an ocean. “She dies,” the girl says. “Isn’t that sad?”

He cannot bear that gaze upon him any longer, so he rises to his feet, ignoring the stiff pull of his tightened leg muscles. After retrieving a blanket to drape over Joanna’s shoulders, he puts on the spare cloak kept by the door. It is easier to breathe once he is away from the cottage and under starlight.

Touching the skin of his throat, he wonders if this is how Jocelyn feels. Like she is suffocating. Drowning?

The thought of the mermaid stays in the back of his mind but he shies away from it. Resolved to be empty of sad thoughts, he crosses the lane and turns into the woodland, no destination in mind and only the need to move. As a beast he would run until his legs grew numb. For the first time in a long while, he longs to have that kind of freedom again.

Through the thick patch of trees the cottage glows dimly, a beacon to guide him home.

Too soon, the wind begins to carry a hint of laughter, and he is forced to retreat back to the border of trees. Someone whistles in the distance and then, closer, that same someone croons a name like Beast; the sudden breath on his ear is not from any wind. He flees to the cottage, heart glad to see a single lit candle in one of its window. He slips inside, shivering because of the phantom in the woods, and sheds his cloak.

“You were gone a while,” a voice murmurs out of the dark.

Jim trails to the owner of the voice and sits opposite him at the oak table. The smell of warmed apple cider greets him, along with the tired eyes of Joanna’s father. Leonard sets an extra mug in front of him and pours cider into from a pitcher. Fine tremors run through the man’s hands. He wraps his own hands around the mug out of comfort rather than thirst.

Leonard takes a healthy swallow of cider before pushing his mug aside. The man then grunts softly to himself, using a hand to rub slow circles at his left temple.

Jim is content to watch him.

“You went out barefoot again.” Leonard shifts under his bold stare. “Didn’t I tell you that’s a dangerous thing to do?”

“My feet don’t get cold.”

“Then you can’t be human.”

He agrees simply, “I’m not.”

The man freezes, swallows, and places both of his hands flat upon the tabletop. “No?” Leonard reiterates more quietly.

He shakes his head.

“Then what are you?”

“Beast, but not; human, but not. I don’t know. I keep changing.” Jocelyn’s words echo within his own.

Leonard observes him silently for some time before speaking again. “I don’t need more uncertainty in my life, Jim. You have to become one or the other, and stay that way.”

“Which do you want me to be?”

“Why do I have to choose?”

“Because what you want matters to me.” Finally, he is learning the right words.

“Then become a beast!” the man snaps, suddenly angry, and shoves away from the table. “Be a beast and leave me alone!”

Leonard stumbles to his bedroom in anger, or perhaps because of the too-strong cider; many days ago he would have misunderstood Leonard’s response and body language, but now he sees beneath the anger to the hurt. Leonard is not angry at him, only angry at himself.

Somehow this revelation comforts him. He pours the cider back into the pitcher and sets it high on a shelf from Joanna’s reach and retreats to the loft. Sleep comes swiftly but he dreams of a disembodied voice, reflected in a silver, glass-like mist, calling his name.

Loud voices break through the cloud of early morning. He awakens, recognizing one of the voices instantly; the other voice, after a moment’s careful listening, reveals the identity of its owner. But surely it is out-of-place in this small cottage, he thinks.

“You’re insane!” Leonard’s bellow aspires to reach the cottage roofbeams.

“No,” insists Jocelyn’s father—his father. “She must be returned, and he must stay. I know how it sounds but I say only what needs to be said.”

“She’s your daughter! You can’t simply give her back.”

“They are both my children, and because I am their father they are caught in half-worlds. Jocelyn has always been restless here, Leonard, and I understand now it isn’t any fault of ours. And James—”

He slinks to the edge of the loft, hardly daring to breathe, and grips its edge.

“—is so eager to come home to a human world. Can’t you see what we must do?”

On the main floor, Leonard is pacing back and forth like a caged animal. “I won’t entertain your madness, sir,” the man snarls. “You may be ready to hand your daughter over to some… thing but I am not capable of it. She is my heart! Why would I give that up to another?”

His eyes burn upon hearing the finality of those words.

The lord persists, relentless. “Then you have gifted your heart foolishly, as I did years ago to someone who never returned it. Instead she gave me a child to take what little love I had to spare and that child, too, never returned my love. I want back what I gave, Leonard, which is why I want James.”

“Leave,” Leonard tells his father-in-law.

“Do not make a choice you will come to regret some day,” the lord warns him, drawing a fur-lined cloak about his shoulders.

“The only thing I regret is letting you in my house this morn,” Jocelyn’s husband states flatly. “Now get out.”

“Ask her” the lord’s says, too certain in his beliefs to grant mercy. “Ask your wife what she wants.”

Leonard corners him by the woodpile where he is splitting logs for the fire place. The activity is much easier for him now, though it leaves a deep ache in his arms afterwards.

“You said you aren’t human,” the man begins, skipping all pretense.

He lets the ax in his hands slide to the ground. “I said I was not fully human.” Half-world—the word drifts past him like a sigh of a thought. He is of a half-world, as his father said. His mind has been fully occupied of this morning’s confrontation, turning it over, learning its nuances.

“And can you become fully human?” Leonard wants to know.

He nods hesitantly.

Blazing green eyes demand his attention. “How? How does someone part-human, part… fey become only human?”

“A trade,” he says without thinking, surprising himself.

The man moves close to him, reaches out and takes his arm in a hard grip. “I need to know what to trade for her. Promise me you will find a way. Promise me, Jim!”

He nods, unable to deny hope to the man he loves. Behind Leonard, the moon is a faint round circle in the daylight of the sky.

When the moon rises to its full crest, Jim abandons his watch at the cottage window and leaves. Joanna comes running after him so he stops at the border between settlement and wilderness; thinking back, if he had been sure of himself, he would have stopped her that day of their meeting, would have handed her over to Leonard and slunk into the forest, never to meet Jocelyn or set himself on this path he now walks.

The child says fearfully, “Where are you going? Don’t you want dinner?”

Not knowing what else to do, he leans down and kisses her cheek, un-fisting her hands from his clothes.

“Will you come back?” she whispers insistently, voice on the verge of trembling.

He nods.

But she cries, “Liar! He said you won’t come back! Oh, it’s not fair!” She sobs then, kicks dirt at his bare feet and shoves at him before hurtling back into the cottage, slamming its door shut in her wake.

Puzzling over her behavior, he walks a path worn their happy, playful trampling over weeks past until it becomes to an untouched stretch of wet snow. Soon, a gentle taste of magic in the air tugs him forward and he relaxes, giving himself over to its guidance. The Winter Queen is waiting. She will not lead him astray now.

The trees part to a clearing, one which he had not known existed in this area of the woods. He goes to the center of it and kneels.

The Winter Queen regards his silent supplication with midnight eyes. “You are changed.”

He lifts his shoulders in a helpless gesture. “You changed me.” And she might change him again, this they both know.

But the Winter Queen presses, “You did not bring all of yourself. Where is your heart, beast?”

He lifts his head to observe her. “It is—” He closes his eyes briefly and sees a dark-haired man with a heartbroken face. “I couldn’t keep it.”

She reaches down to touch the golden curl of hair over one of his ears. It is a wondering gesture, almost mournful, but she withdraws her curious touch as quickly as she gives it.

“You have a question,” she says softly. “Ask.”

“To become fully human, what must a half-human trade?”

The Winter Queen’s eyes are sharp like nettles. “She must trade her twin.”

Without warning, the air is gone. His chest feels tight and hollow.

…trade her twin.

Promise me you will find a way!

“What is your name?” The question is calm but careful, an Old Way, a ritual never to be denied.

Again he hears, Promise me you will find a way! The echo of Leonard’s desperation will not leave him alone.

He has his true name. It speaks of his stolen past, of a future he could have; the identity is rightfully his to take but in the learning of it, he gained something deeper and more meaningful. It is this new, sweetly painful thing, tucked away with the gift of his heart, which shapes his answer:

“I have no name.”

Her eyes understand though she reminds him, “Only a beast has no name.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “That is what I am; forever a beast.”

He closes his eyes again, thinking of the timbre of Leonard’s voice, even when it was cold with fury, and the scent of Leonard on his clothes; of how little things like that make him feel like he is home.

Will that voice change with time? Can a scent be forgotten?

This is what envelops him—the bitter-sweetness of parting—as he waits for imprisonment.

But time stretches and nothing happens. He opens his eyes, surprised. Magic is oppressive between he and his captor, at its most bitter, yet he remains untouched, still kneeling in the snow. The Winter Queen is unconcerned with him, he gathers too slowly. Turning, he tracks her gaze to find what he does not expect—and draws in a quick, very human breath.

No.

Two shadow people emerge reluctantly from the backdrop of the dark woodland, separating into Leonard and Jocelyn. The plainly dressed tailor, cloak missing and hair askew, visibly tightens his hold on his wife’s hand and stops short as wild magic sparks and spirals.

The Winter Queen’s hand jerks, the first ungraceful movement he has ever seen from her. Then the moonlight fire in her hair recedes and her presence seems to darken; but her power is not fading, it is leaving her to go elsewhere.

To Jocelyn.

Leonard shrinks away without moving, eyes large with fear. The man’s voice, however, is oddly steady. “His name,” speaks the tailor, “is James Tiberius—” Leonard’s voice catches.

Something bends painfully under the power of the beast’s true name. The woman at Leonard’s side releases a small breath, like a whimper.

“—and her name is Jocelyn,” he finishes in a whisper. “My Jocelyn,” Leonard repeats, turning to his wife in sudden, evident desolation.

She is already gone, though her fingers are still tangled in her husband’s. Her eyes are midnight; her hair aflame. Moonlight polishes her face into an ethereal mask.

Jocelyn is more beautiful than ever—and the merest whisper of a human.

Jim’s heart pounds. He puts a hand to his chest to feel the power of it, thinking that it has returned to him.

A soft wind sighs as the Winter Queen utters the name of her child. “Jocelyn.”

Jocelyn steps toward her, answering the Queen’s call as helplessly as her half-brother always has; but unlike her half-brother, her eyes are full of naked longing. She is only halted from leaving behind her half-world by the tether of Leonard’s hand. Jocelyn turns to her husband, face framed in the light of her mother’s power.

For a seemingly endless moment, they look at one another; then at last Leonard says in a tremble of words, “Okay, darlin’.” He lifts her hand, presses his mouth to the back of it, and lets her go.

She passes by Jim like she is floating, eyes fixed forward and a dreamy part to her lips, shedding the last of her humanity like a trail of tiny stars into the snow.

Another winter star is born; the Queen and her daughter are almost indistinguishable, expect for the color of their hair: one black coal while the other burns golden. Behind Jim, Leonard makes a sound, a shuddering of sorrow.

“You have been named,” the Winter Queen says to her beast in his beast-language. “You can no longer be bound.”

He asks, “Is Jocelyn bound to you in my place?”

“No,” the Winter Queen tells him. “It is the Red One who laid claim to my child upon her birth, for I had begged of him to let me have my mortal lover and all desires have a price. I gave her to her father so she might live freely. The Red One could not take her, for a changeling is meant to be what it is not, not what it is. Yet the deception will never be easily forgiven.” Her eyes speak of a danger. “Beware, James.”

Jocelyn holds him, too, in her gaze and repeats her mother’s warning: “Beware the redbird. To protect my child, beware, Tiberius.”

She shares a look with the Winter Queen, something unspoken passing between them, and they turn away, already stepping upon a path no mortal eye can see. As Jocelyn and her mother fade into moonlight, a keen rises.

He hurries to Leonard, catching him as the man’s legs buckle under grief. Leonard hides his face against Jim’s chest, and a sob rattles them both. “Jocelyn” comes the keen again.

Jim presses his cheek against Leonard’s dark head. “I am not Jocelyn,” he murmurs, rocking the man. “I am Jim. Leonard’s Jim.” The man in his arms is crying too hard to listen, but it matters not. “I will not leave you,” he continues. “I will not leave, Leonard.”

Leonard!

He jerks his head up to listen.

Leonard, leonard, leonard! Leonard and the beast!

Small chirp-like sounds.

A red, pointy face peeks out from beneath a thistle patch and cocks its head at the pair of humans. It opens its beak and chortles.

Can’t get something for nothing! What does a snow girl give for a friendly beast?

He tightens his hold on Leonard, a pounding in his ears. “What does a snow girl give?”

She gives away her Papa’s heart!

It dives back into the thistle and bramble patch, laughing uproariously.

Some time later, it matters not how long, Leonard stirs in his arms and finally pulls back to wipe his face though his eyes are still leaking tears. They say nothing as they stand up; Leonard sways in place, eyes glassy and wet, face hollow. He draws the dark-haired man’s arm over his shoulders, asking quietly, “Home?”

Leonard nods.

Joanna is waiting for them when they stumble through the cottage door; he sags under almost the entirety of Leonard’s weight but dares not let the man go. She looks from her father’s grief-stricken face to his sad one and drops her eyes. Her reaction confirms his suspicion that she is the one who sent Leonard—and her mother—chasing after him. How had she known about the Winter Queen’s spell?

He shudders, thinking of the redbird.

Leonard seems to force himself to regain some of his strength. He draws his daughter to his side, saying, “Come to bed, Jo.”

“With you?”

He nods.

She adds tentatively, “And Jim can come too?”

Her father nods again, obviously too exhaused to think about what she is asking.

Joanna holds out her hand to Jim. “Let’s go to bed, Sockless.”

He links their fingers, unable to protest, not really wanting to, and the three of them walk together to that one room of the cottage he knows, from now on, will be his privilege to see. He vows then and there to protect what is most precious to him.

Beware the redbird.

Joanna climbs into her father’s bed, tucking the blankets around Leonard before snuggling up to her friend’s side.

Beware, indeed.

I had finished typing some minutes ago and the silence in the bedroom was deafening. When I proceeded to save my work and, after another moment’s hesitation, close out the word processor, a voice asked sharply, “What are you doing?”

I turned to Spock. “It’s complete.”

He stared. “It cannot be! What kind of ending is that?“

I shrugged. “An ominous ending.”

Now Spock glared. “No,” he insisted, unexpectedly passionate.

His eyes were brighter, I noticed, than they had ever been. Strange.

“This is not acceptable to me—I mean, to Faerie’s standards. I demand a wedding!”

And he thinks human expectations are ridiculous. I asked too innocently, “Whose?”

He gestured wildly at the computer desk. “Theirs!”

“Nope,” I said and hit the off-button of the laptop with satisfaction. “Sorry, Spock. My story, my rules, my ending.”

He did not like this answer. I didn’t realize what a menacing shadow the Sidhe could cast until he was looming over me with glittering eyes and an intriguingly vibrant aura.

“You will comply,” he said darkly, “or I will inform the High Council of the Court you have failed to produce a fairy tale of quality.”

Poor Spock. I smiled disarmingly. “I’ll make you a deal, m’dear.”

His menacing shadow shrank. “A deal?” Now he sounded cautious—but hopeful. It amused me that he seemed to need his happy Jim-and-Bones ending like any regular old shipper.

“You must tell your High Council this: while I am a perfectly legitimate and capable writer, I am not available to create stories for them. I have an aversion, you understand, to writing under coercion or at my peril. I expect you to prevent such a future scheme if necessary.”

He said nothing. I didn’t expect him to.

I concluded cheerfully, “In return, on my posting date, I will present a wonderfully fascinating, thrilling tale in which you can practically create its happy ending yourself!”

He eyed me. He eyed my desk (for reasons I could not fathom—there was nothing special about the desk; it certainly didn’t bite or lie). At great length, the Sidhe agreed. We did not shake hands or pinky-swear but it was a near thing.

When he left to spread the good news of my success (I imagined he would phrase it as his success of wrangling a decent piece of fiction out of a human), I laughed to myself. I made a late dinner, ate, cleaned up, and laughed to myself some more.

Then I rebooted the laptop knowing exactly how I wanted to flesh out my story.

There you have it.

As promised, Spock, I have told a tale of Faerie; to be more precise, I have told a tale of you. I will end it here and thereby leave this happily-ever-after (of my well-being) to your discretion. Since you are so insistent upon happy endings, I anticipate you will do your utmost to ensure our little tale concludes pleasantly enough for me.

My thanks in advance,

klmeri

THE END

Related Posts:

• [Masterpost] Of House Guests and Winter Twins – from December 4, 2011
• [Pseudo-Masterpost] Of House Guests and Winters Twins – from November 29, 2011
• Of House Guests and Winter Twins, Part II – from December 4, 2011
• Of House Guests and Winter Twins, Part I – from December 4, 2011

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