Coda Will
Will wakes up with a heinous hangover.
Tongue tangy with the traces of old ale, eyelids sealed together with the wax of sleep, hands strangely empty. Was he holding something? Someone? A woman?
He turns on to his back, eyes opening to the soggy ceiling of his London lodgings, grey morning light spreading shyly from the window.
This feeling of loss lingers, weighing on his chest. As if a faerie kingdom has forever closed its doors on him; as if he had been on the verge of something spellbinding, only to come up empty-handed. It manifests as a dull pain.
Indigestion, perhaps. How much did he have to drink last night?
Deciding he can no longer avoid the day’s duties, he staggers out of bed, knocking an empty tankard of ale with his foot. Yawning, he combs his hair out of his eyes and reaches his desk, to reread yesterday’s meagre writings – whereupon he stops in his tracks.
For, front and centre, is a page addressed to him, in strange handwriting. And next to it, the oddest red silk ribbon, like an orphaned bookmark longing for a book to belong to. He blinks. His hangover may be worse than he thought, because did that ribbon just move?
Will shakes his head, decides to focus on the page instead. Pages have always made more sense to him than anything else. The words in this one are barely legible, as if written in a hurry with crude charcoal instead of quill and ink. Yet, as he reads, their meaning sinks under his skin.
Will,
‘Spirits turning to harpies,’ you said, laughing. Laugh away, my friend!
Some of us do turn into birds.
I believe that is a thing to be admired; birds fly in flocks, never alone, always returning. We embrace the chaos of the wind, see where it takes us next. We traverse domains that exist between one pen stroke and the next, never static, always shifting, like sand after a tempest.
Will, it is despite you, not because of you, that I have wings to fly. Yet for my flights I thank you all the same. And if we never grace again the same skies, remember:
Name your heroines.
Make their deaths count.
Drink less. (She made you promise in your sleep, just now. You mustn’t anger her.)
Finally, let’s acknowledge: we may have caused you some upset.
Like fickle spirits, we led you on a chase through frozen forests, haunted castles, dangerous dungeons.
Because of us, you might not see your muse for a long time, if ever.
So, a gift: you said you wanted to remember the name Cleopatra.
I believe you were planning to write something about her.
So write, Will, and remember all of it – the absurd, the foul, the fair, and us.
Yours in friendship,
VLV