Interlude
Three years ago, First Day of Winter. Maskios Leaves Forever.
I don’t see Calix again.
Not the next day. Not the next week.
I pretend not to notice. I mix salves. Avoid certain bridges. Tell myself that was it.
And just when I start to believe it—
I’m yanked from the side gate and dropped onto a saddle in front of Calix. He says nothing, flicks the reins, and the horse surges.
“Maskios! This is a crime.”
“I’m a criminal, after all,” he mutters.
He rides tight and silent until the cliffs, then turns toward the treacherous path. “White chryslaced fungi. Help me find it.”
“Who’s been poisoned?”
He grits out the facts. I wince. “Wrong time of year.”
The horse slams to a halt. “What?”
“You won’t find chryslaced here.”
“I must.”
“You won’t.”
“Don’t tell me I won’t!” His control snaps. “I must and I will. My brother is everything to me. Everything. I’d jump off a cliff for him; I’d give him my heart. I’d do anything. We will hunt every crevice of these mountains until we find our miracle.”
“We will find your miracle,” I say quietly, “but it won’t be chryslaced.” I take the reins and turn us away from the cliffs. He curses behind my ear but doesn’t take them back.
We ride into the swamplands.
I swing down. “You’d really do anything for this cure?”
“You aren’t planning to hold me hostage, I hope.”
“Aquamare can replace the fungi. I’ll find it, and in return you unmask.”
He rips free of my hands but stays in the saddle, watching. “How are you sure?”
“Grandfather was poisoned like your brother. Also in the wrong season for chryslaced fungi. He studied water-roots. They look different, but they break down the same. It’s the burst of poison both release that becomes the antidote.”
“Why don’t the vitalians know this?”
“They wouldn’t listen to him. A par-linea.” I let the word sit. “This cure survives only in his notebooks. And in me.”
He shifts, tight in the saddle.
I wade waist-deep into cold water. Reeds snare my legs; silt clouds my hands. I dive, come up coughing, dive again. After an hour my fingers close on a yellowed root.
I raise it high, laughing. “Your brother is saved. Take off your mask.”
Calix looks toward the hills, where the sun is dropping behind the ridge. “There’s no point.” His voice is flat. “I won’t be seeing you again.”
Mud sucks at my boots. My heart bangs, small and hard. I squeeze the aquamare.
“Since I won’t be seeing you again,” I manage, “there’s no threat in me knowing the you behind your mask.”
“You won’t like him,” he says. “Or perhaps you will, but for the wrong reasons.”
“I don’t care how handsome you are. I want to know who’s beyond the magic. Who I’ve . . . spent this time with.”
“We’ve only shared a few moments.”
The answer is too quick. It stings.
“Moments can be real too, if you let them,” I say. “But they only become real if you’re willing to be vulnerable. If you expose your true self. Without that, what we have will never be deeper than banter and rivalry.”
He stiffens. “What?”
“I thought you wanted to be friends.”
He turns his horse to face me and takes the aquamare from my hand. His gaze holds mine too long; his voice vibrates low. “I can never have friends.”
That’s it.
He turns his back and rides off, and I’m left wobbling in the marsh, watching him.
Until he is gone and there’s no elegant cloak, no sharp tongue. No trace of his shadow.
Just the stillness of something abruptly ended, and the ache of something I don’t . . . have the words to name. A something that lingers.