The Knife
Now twelve letters were left from the original inscription And ye then deign to know me, o wisteria hares turning. The last slots had opened in the floor, grouped in four words.
“How many clues to solve after this is done?” Liko asked.
“Just one.” Dane opened his book. “Good luck.”
Liko pulled together letters to make the last two words is and three. He shuffled the W, D, G and Y around but with no more vowels, he couldn’t make any words. Also he had five slots to fill, but only those four letters left.
“I’m stuck,” he said.
Dane lowered the book to see. He looked so delicious, Liko leaned to snog for a while, before Dane broke free and lightly bopped him on the head with the book. “Work with the D and G a bit.”
“I need a vowel though.”
“What could you make if you had one?”
“Dig,” Liko said. “Dug. Dag? Dog.”
Dane touched his nose. “Dog spelled backward is…?”
“God.” Liko moved the G and D into the beginning and end of the three-letter group. “But I still need a vowel.”
“Would you like to buy an I?”
Once upon a time this hint would have sailed over Liko Greenman’s head. But not today.
“Ah,” he said, “in this game, an I is never just an I.” He clicked over to the Green Man and circled the cursor around his one remaining eye. The brown one.
“May I, sir?”
The eye came away and Liko dropped it between the G and D.
Which left just the W and Y. Liko moved them into the last slots, thinking it was an abbreviation of the word why. Another cutesy concession that would’ve annoyed Ethan to pieces.
“Why God is three,” he said.
Dane smiled, rubbing circles on Liko’s back. “Remember Nomi and I had a rule in Scrabble. A way to cheat against Ethan.”
“So the score wouldn’t be two thousand to six. I remember...”
It took Liko a few tricky clicks to turn the W upside-down and make it an M. It locked into place and all the letters of the anagrams lit up bright. Liko paused the game. Just to take it all in.
“My God is three,” Liko said.
“Well, yes,” Dane said slowly. “But the eye is still an I.”
“My guide is three?”
Dane smiled. “Ethan could be a little ham-handed in his romantic gestures.”
“All in, how long did it take you and Nomi to solve this?”
“Weeks. And truth be told… God, we sound like such dicks when I tell this part of the story.”
“What?”
“We loved Ethan but we didn’t think like him.
Nobody thought like him. And neither me nor Nomi was a gamer.
We wouldn’t obsessively play something until all hours, never resting until we could solve every puzzle.
So Ethan does this great unveiling of the chamber and says it’s a mystery just for us.
When I say we stumbled through it, I’m being kind.
We weren’t indifferent or unappreciative, we just weren’t good at this kind of stuff.
Ethan had to prompt and hint us through what he thought were obvious clues, and he’d get all huffy. ”
Dane put fingertips to the bridge of his nose, shaking his head.
“It was a beautiful thing. He worked so hard on it and he loved that only we would know what it all meant. We appreciated it. We just weren’t good at it.
Oh. The wisteria. Got it. Cute. No no, not cute, sorry, I mean brilliant. Oh God…”
Dane’s face came up and his eyes were liquid. He sniffed. “Whoa, that hit me.” He ran the back of his hand across his face and sniffed again. “Okay, watch what happens next, and then we stop for the day. Because I need to ask you something.”
Liko tapped the space bar and the animation continued.
The view pulled wide to take in the chamber as a whole.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then Saskia’s knife, hanging on the wall behind the Green Man’s altar, disengaged from the stones and clattered to the floor.
At the same time, the ceiling motif stopped spinning and the hares came to rest. Liko clicked over to collect the beautiful weapon and put it in his cache.
Then he shut the laptop, turned sideways on the couch and looked at Dane.
“So, Green Man,” Dane said. “You have one thing left to do. One more romantic gesture to behold. And then the game is done. And then. And then. Until finally.”
“And then?”
Dane took his feet off the coffee table and tossed his ballcap aside.
He crawled on top of Liko, kneeling across his thighs.
“Then it’s October, when Schoenfeld’s is a scream.
The CSA is finished but the pumpkins start rolling in.
Apples and cider start rolling in. Week days are nuts, weekends are indescribable.
I’ll be running around like a headless chicken and falling into bed at night, calling shotgun. Will you still be here?”
“Yes.”
“November is when I collapse and do nothing but eat, sleep, read, get drunk and screw. I’ll start to think about Thanksgiving—making plans with Huff and Maisie, who to invite, what to make. Will you still be here?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
“December is booked. We’re going to Paderborn.”
“Then to France,” Liko said. “Then to London, for Christmas with Basil and Bootsy.”
“For the first time in twentyish years, I won’t be decking the halls of this house.
I’ll miss the tree lighting at the pond, and the hootenanny at the Pub.
We’ve even given up New Year’s Eve at Huff and Maisie’s house, and the chance to finally kiss on the roof, because we’ll be in Devon, looking for Tinner’s Hares. ”
“I’ll live,” Liko said, running his hands up and down Dane’s legs. “It was the resolution, after all.”
“Then we come home. What does that look like?”
“You tell me,” Liko said, feeling slightly outside himself.
“I want you to stay. End of story. End of game. I want you here all year. All the time. I want you to stay.”
Liko stared, unable to speak.
“I’m in love with you and I want you to stay,” Dane said. “Stay here, Henry Greenman. Henry Hugh Liko Greenman, the anagram of which, by the fucking way, is please stay with me.”
“I thought it was tempt me with fiber,” Liko said softly. He grabbed Dane around the waist and toppled them sideways onto the couch. “Fine, then.”
“Fine?”
“I’ll stay,” Liko said, hugging and wrestling and gnawing on Dane’s earlobe.
“You will?”
“I’ll be your Valentine. Your St. Patrick’s Day hangover mate. Your April Fool. And next May Day you can dance around my flagpole and decide if—”
“Okay, shut up now.”
Liko laughed and wrapped both arms tight around his magnificent Great Dane, rolling them off the couch onto the rug. The coffee table lurched and a plate fell onto the floor.
“What is with you and the fucking plates,” Dane said, muffled in Liko’s grip. “I can’t have one romantic moment without you breaking something.”
“It’s part of my brooding charm.”
“Jesus Hernando Christ, you’re lucky you’re cute…”