The Netherlands
Victor woke to Willem unwrapping him. His first instinct was to kick himself free and flee.
But he hadn’t noticed how tall and large Willem was until now.
Like many men from this country, he towered over Victor.
Victor just hadn’t seen this because the previous night, Willem had been either seated or behind him.
Also, Willem had another bowl nearby of steaming grain with berries and a generous dollop of honey. Victor ached, remembering Willem’s hands in his hair, and stayed still. Stayed obedient.
Willem unwrapped Victor’s arms and placed the bowl in his lap.
“So,” he started. “Your horse is fed and has had enough to drink.”
“Thank you.” Victor’s voice was rough; he cleared his throat.
Willem hummed and reached down beyond where Victor could see and produced a wet cloth.
He daubed Victor’s neck and around his collar, swiping up around his face.
He was nearly finished before Victor realized: Willem was cleaning the tracks left from his tears.
He looked up at Willem’s face, humiliated.
But he found nothing there that looked like judgment.
Just the sort of mild determination his mother had on her face when she wiped jam from his cheeks as a boy.
What a strange man.
When he finished, Willem and Victor ate their breakfast, and Willem brought Victor a brown shift not unlike what he was wearing.
“You’ll need this. You can have your city clothes back, but they cannot be worn where we are going. Or for what we are doing.”
Willem moved to unwrap Victor’s legs, but paused.
“I do not think you will. But you are a dangerous man and I am a good one.” He patted Victor’s knee. “If you move against me, I will tear the hole in your heart open so wide and send your bones back to Elizabeth.”
Victor jerked as if he’d been slapped. Her name sounded so strange in Willem’s mouth, a childhood love thrown into the grotesquerie of this space. What a cruel way that Willem had chosen to remind Victor he had been through his things.
“Do we understand each other, Dark Alchemist?” Willem said, sitting back. He looked exhausted and a bit insulted for even having to give this warning.
“We understand each other,” Victor said. “Thank you for . . . everything.”
Willem shrugged. “Dress and come with me.”
Victor stretched, cracking his joints, and pulled the shift over his head. The garment was far too big for him, swamping his form like a monk’s habit.
He found Willem outside, feeding his geese.
“If you live, changing your relationship with animals would be a good start?” Willem remarked.
Victor was forced to remember with a wave of shame the cats and rats he’d killed. Everything this man said felt like violence.
He followed Willem for nearly a mile into the windswept country. Until there were no more trees except in the distance and the scent of water shifted from fog to swamp.
Their walk had been silent, and Victor could tell that Willem was taking short steps, walking slower to accommodate for him.
All things Willem did made Victor hate himself more and more.
He could feel that hatred twisting into hatred for Willem, but whenever his thoughts ran that way, somehow Willem knew and would look down at him over his shoulder with a gaze of such incredible pity that it quieted the voices in him and made Victor feel so very small.
By the time they reached where they were going, the clouds were dark gray. Willem looked up at the sky and made a contemplative sound.
“Here, perhaps,” he said to himself, and stopped walking.
Victor looked around, but there was nothing. Just grass and clouds and mountains in the distance.
Willem turned to him, bearing down on him, tall and imposing.
“Would you be afraid of yourself if you met yourself?” he asked again. The question Victor had failed to reply to.
“Yes,” Victor admitted, and hoped it was the right answer.
Willem shrugged. “The man you are becoming now would want to become more dangerous to protect himself from that. But strong men meet even stronger men. Always.”
Victor hung his head.
He startled when Willem’s hand landed on his curls, firm but resolute. Like a priest giving a blessing.
“This man you stole from God. He will be strong,” Willem said like it was just a meaningless observation.
“How do I defeat him?” Victor begged, swaying toward Willem helplessly, lost in the depth of his eyes and the warmth of his palm.
“Why would you want to?” Willem replied mercilessly.
Tears sprung to Victor’s eyes. “I don’t want to die!”
Willem’s hand slipped from the top of Victor’s head to his cheek, wiping away Victor’s weakness, tender as a lover.
“In some ways, my friend, you are already dead.”
Victor sobbed, open and harsh, his cry swallowed by the whipping wind.
Willem smiled. “Come. Lie down in the spring.”
Victor hadn’t noticed; his feet were so wet and cold already. But running beside them—too shallow to reach the top of their toes—was a spring.
A current for the alchemist of currents.
Victor allowed the frigid water to soak into these borrowed clothes. Allowed it to run down his spine, leak into his hair. Allowed the small rocks to cut into his back and arms and legs.
Willem crouched the way men in this region do, with their feet flat on the ground, then pulled Victor’s arm up, checking that the tips of his fingers were higher than the top of Willem’s head.
“Crying for yourself.” He giggled, immune to Victor’s pain. “Perhaps when you meet Brogan you will have learned how to cry for Elias, too.”
Victor covered his face with the hand that Willem wasn’t holding. He didn’t want to be seen. He wanted to sink into the ground.
Willem hummed and let go of Victor’s arm. Then he turned his face up to the sky and stopped moving entirely.
It was eerie enough to stop Victor’s crying. He hadn’t noticed how much Willem moved until he was stock-still, like a statue.
Victor watched as Willem’s hair began to rise in strands around his head. He looked ridiculous.
“What—?” Victor started, then realized his hair was doing the same.
Understanding what was happening in a rush of terror, Victor began to put his arm down, but it was too late.
Lightning tore from the sky, illuminating the field. A current for the alchemist of currents, Victor’s mind supplied again as his body received it and arched in agony.
Willem looked powerful as he reached over Victor’s chest, hand clad in a black glove, yanked his shirt open, and sealed his palm over Victor’s heart the instant the light of the bolt faded.
Willem gritted his teeth and, with a wild cry of effort, pulled his hand up until his palm was lifted. All five of his fingers pursed, still touching Victor’s flesh. Then, like it was taking all his strength, Willem spread his fingertips.
Victor screamed. It hurt like nothing he’d ever experienced before, including getting hit by that lightning. His entire skeleton was still vibrating from the electricity, but his chest felt like Willem had stabbed a morning star into his center and spun the handle around.
Willem grasped his own wrist and, using the strength of his other arm, tore his hand away from Victor, then dug his fingers deep into the ground. A deep thump rattled the ground, pulsing outward from where they lay like an explosion.
Victor couldn’t breathe for gasping and sobbing. His skin felt sunburned; he could smell the singed fabric of his robe and the acrid smoke from his hair.
Willem was panting beside him. Taking a moment to come back to himself. He rubbed his hands together, opening and closing the one that had hurt Victor so much to stretch it out.
Then he lay back onto the grass with a sigh.
“It is done,” he said over Victor’s whimpers. “Did you think this would be painless?”
He looked over and let out an exhausted chuckle. “It seems you kept your hair! Most of it. Be thankful.”
Victor couldn’t care about his hair. He could barely move, much less reach up to check how much of it was left.
Willem climbed to his feet and stretched again. Then he reached down and did something unthinkable. He scooped Victor up.
He placed Victor on his own back, secured Victor’s arms around his neck and looped his own arms beneath Victor’s thighs.
Victor sobbed into Willem’s neck. He cried for himself.
He cried because his entire body hurt and he was too weak to walk.
He cried because he’d had to do this in the first place.
He cried because he knew it was his fault, and there was no easy way to fix his mistakes.
He cried because he was embarrassed. Embarrassed to be fed, fussed over, carried, embarrassed to be himself in front of this kind man.
Cried because he wished that he could have met Willem in some other way, before he did this terrible thing that made someone kind enough to carry him have to threaten his life.
He cried because he had never felt more like a child or more lost and helpless, and he cried because he still had more places to go.
Willem walked him all the way back to his home. He didn’t say anything about Victor’s tears, even when he stopped crying and just hid his face in silence. Willem whistled to himself, as though Victor wasn’t even there, and even that was a kindness that made Victor’s eyes hot and wet.
He gave Victor the privacy to put himself to rights when they got inside. Let him dress himself and pack away his things and smooth his hair down until it looked proper again.
He fed Victor’s horse an apple and helped him onto her back.
“Here. It should keep your clothes dry.” Willem draped a waxed cape over Victor’s shoulders, tying it beneath his chin like his mother had when he was a boy. Another gift that Victor didn’t deserve, given freely without effort or expectation.
“If I live, can I come back here?” Victor asked. Begged. His heart felt raw and new, like Willem had scrubbed it with sand and rinsed it in the river.
Willem looked at him hard, then shook his head.
“You may come back for dinner, perhaps,” Willem said softly. “But you can never be allowed to learn the things that I know.”
Victor looked back at Willem’s house as it got smaller and smaller. He couldn’t look away. Kept his gaze on the place until the road turned and he couldn’t see it anymore.