Ink and Steel

“So they assure me.” Kit opened his palm at face level as they climbed. His right eye showed a spiral of possibilities hovering over it. He focused on them, and called forth light. A thin blue flicker of Saint Elmo’s Fire curled about his fingers. “Call me Faustus and I’ll hit you. Although there’s a degree of dramatic irony in this.”

“Well,” Will answered, toiling upward. We’re both somewhat prone to irony. I suppose it’s appropriate. Ironic, but appropriate. Although I can’t answer for mine actions should you summon up the shade of Helen.”

“The furthest thing from my mind,” Kit assured him, permitting the light to fail.

   Act III, scene xxii

In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn,

But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing;

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 152

Will was never sure how they came to return to the Mebd’s palace. One moment climbing tiredly, Kit’s hand awkward and quickly withdrawn on the small of his back; the next the dry crunch of beech twigs under his feet, the scuff of grass. Will staggered as they came out of the trees. He turned to speak to Kit; Kit had fallen behind. Will stopped and retraced his steps.

Will found Kit leaning against a beech trunk, bent over as if he’d been punched. Head bowed, Kit stared at the backs of his hands, which were spaced widely on his half-flexed knees. He looked up as Will approached, the sunlight falling across his unblemished face. Wordlessly, Will studied Kit, realizing that he had almost forgotten what Kit had looked like before he was scarred.

Will held out a hand; Kit nodded it away, sliding his back up the smooth bole of the tree. A red bird such as Will had never seen sang in the branches overhead, a high chirruping whistle. Delicate bell-shaped flowers that almost seemed cast in wax poked through the leaf mold around Kit’s unshod feet.

“Thou’rt not well,” Will said.

“Overcome for a moment, is all.” Kit’s right eye caught the green sunlight through the trees and blazed for a moment, yellow as citrine before it faded to match the other.

“Kit.” Will took Kit by the forearms and held him tight. Kit would not meet his eyes. Will couldn’t find the words for the question he needed to ask and so he asked instead, “What hath become of thy shoes?”

“I sold them to a ferryman” Kit tugged ineffectually. “And my cloak to an ifrit, and my sword to a demon. I think they were all Lucifer.”

Will released Kit’s right hand; Kit braced it against Will’s chest and pushed, but Will held him fast and caught his chin. They stood just within the embrace of the woods; the trees were half bare. Within the castle, observers could see them wrangle so. Kit, what have I done to earn thine anger? Kit laughed, but there was no humor in it. Will held him fast when he leaned back, still tugging his wrist away like a restless horse fretting at its tie: absently, almost without intent. My touch hurts him,Will realized, and the thought might as well have been a dagger letting his bowels out a slit in his belly. He held fast nonetheless.

“Thou hast done nothing.” Sweat beading on Kit’s face. “And I everything to earn thine. I don’t deserve thy forgiveness.”

“I forgive thee anyway.”

“I went to Morgan because…”

“Because thou didst wish me hurt for leaving thee, and thyself hurt for not being what I wanted most.” Will delivered the words coldly, a judgment pronounced. “And she took thee because it would influence me, and me because it should influence thee. Christofer. Christofer, look at me Christofer, long I’ve had to consider this, and if thou needst forgiveness I forgive thee, although if anything tis I should beg thy dispensation. I cry thee mercy, my love.”

He expected Kit to quit his fighting; indeed, he looked Will square in the eye now, but his wrist still twitched in Will’s grip. “I knew what would have driven me to it,” Will said, softly, and made as if to kiss. Kit stiffened in his hands, flexed like an eel, and shoved himself backward, out of Will’s embrace. Kit fell gracelessly, sprawled in leaf litter, a rustling and crunching of twigs, a startled shout.

“Will,” Kit said, clambering to his feet. “Will, tis not thee.”

“What happened down there?”

Kit checked. He lowered his hands and scrubbed them on his thighs. “I asked thee practice reticence.”

“Aye,” Will said. “And I did not vow it. Kit, thy feet are bleeding.” Spots of red showed on raveled silk stockings. Will knelt down among the twigs. “Thou hast walked thyself bloody. Come, let me help thee to the palace.”

Kit shied a step back, and Will desisted. “Tis not far, he said. Methinks I can stagger a quarter mile downhill.”