Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
As he slept, Stefano dreamed of swimming through endless ponds where tiny fish darted among waving plant fronds like birds playing in the treetops.
He dreamed of climbing onto a floating lily pad, the sun warm on his back and insects buzzing all around him.
He was content in this dream. He had a full belly, a comfortable spot to doze, and minimal risk of predators.
Really, a frog wants little else. A frog rarely thinks of the future and never of the past, and a frog carries no responsibilities except for his own well-being.
It was, all things considered, not a terrible existence.
But a frog also has little curiosity about the world.
A frog’s days flow by, each one very much like the one before.
It learns little beyond what is needed for survival and feels no pressure to contribute something notable to the world.
A frog might seek to mate during a particular season, but beyond that it cares little about companionship and nothing about love.
In the dream, there was movement on the bank of the pond. Stefano dove off the lily pad and swam over to investigate. When he arrived near the grassy edge, he found a human standing there, gazing at him. A male human, naked, face tight with sadness.
“Even in my dreams you’ve transformed,” said the man.
Stefano recognized him then and hopped out of the water. He landed on the grass on two feet rather than four, stood tall, and felt his human heart warm inside his human chest. He brushed wet hair away from his face. “But this is my dream,” Stefano said.
They stared at each other until Stefano, fearing that he would wake soon, grabbed Henry’s hands. “I am so sorry for causing this catastrophe. Please forgive me.”
Henry shook his head. “I will be happiest if I never again hear you apologize to me. There is nothing to forgive. Except, perhaps, my failure to protect you.”
“You can’t protect me from my family. Nobody can.”
“But I can ensure that you remain safe now. And I will.”
There was nothing dreamlike about this Henry: he looked and moved exactly as he did in real life, and his voice had the same tone and timbre. His body, as familiar to Stefano as his own, had the same landmarks, the same scars. No dream had ever been this detailed.
The only thing new about Henry was something in his eyes.
It was as if curtains had come down, obscuring Henry’s usual cavalcade of emotions.
But then, those curtains had likely been there since Louis enacted the curse, although Stefano had noticed them only after he’d regained some of the equilibrium that the curse had stolen from him.
“What did my brother do to you?” he asked, reaching for Henry’s cheek.
Henry jerked back, just out of reach. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does. You matter.”
“I won’t waste my dreamtime arguing about things that cannot be changed. Gods, I miss you already, Stef.”
That last statement came with a brief lifting of the curtains, a hint of the usual spark in Henry’s gaze, so Stefano moved forward and wrapped his arms around him. Henry made a soft sound—somewhere between a sigh and a sob—and held him tight.
Stefano had spent nearly his entire life surrounded by people.
That was a consequence of being a prince and living in a palace.
Despite the fact that he was rarely alone, Stefano had always felt alone until Henry came into his life.
In Henry he had found first a friend, then a lover: someone with whom he felt a true emotional connection.
That connection had grown stronger over the years, until sometimes Stefano felt as if he could never be complete without Henry.
He felt that way now, in a dream. “I don’t want to wake up,” he growled against Henry’s neck.
Henry pushed him away slightly so he could look into Stefano’s eyes. “Are you real? Or simply desperation invading my sleep? Gods, I barely feel the bands now.” He rubbed at his chest.
Although Stefano didn’t understand this last part, he didn’t ask for clarification. “I’m real. And you are as well. This must be a side effect of Louis’s enchantment. I don’t know if it was intentional. I can’t think why he’d allow us this mercy.”
“He cares for you, you know. In his own way.”
That made Stefano scoff. “He cursed me.”
With a sigh, Henry drew him close again. “Let’s not waste time trying to puzzle this out. We might not have very long.”
That was sensible advice, and Stefano ached for his touch.
Stefano nuzzled his jawline and inhaled deeply, letting his lover’s familiar scents fill his body.
He grew hard instantly and, ravenous, kissed and caressed with wild abandon while Henry responded in kind.
Stefano could feel every scar on Henry’s back.
“You’re so brave,” he murmured into Henry’s ear.
“Not really. It’s only that I love you.”
Stefano sank to his knees and rested his head against Henry’s torso—against hard muscles and soft skin—and it felt as if that strong yet gentle body could somehow sustain him. It felt like home.
“A part of my soul lives in you,” Stefano said, punctuating the statement with a kiss. “That’s why we’re in this dream together.”
Henry stroked Stefano’s hair. “And my soul in you, which is why the bands can’t stop my feelings for you.”
“What bands?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Henry gracefully dropped to his knees, and then somehow Stefano was on his back, blanketed by Henry’s comforting weight.
Their movements, slow and languid at first, soon became more purposeful and then almost desperate.
Henry was so hot, as if a piece of the sun had broken off and taken the form of a man.
Everywhere he touched Stefano—with his hands, with his mouth, with his cock—felt invigorated.
Henry’s touch helped Stefano remember that he was, despite everything, a human being.
Henry wrapped one large hand around both their cocks and, while Stefano arched upward, Henry provided the friction they both needed.
But despite the heady pleasure of their contact, Stefano almost lost himself in Henry’s eyes.
If Henry contained the sun, his eyes contained the entire galaxy.
Amongst such multitudes, wasn’t it possible they could somehow find peace together?
“Still mine,” said Henry, and that was enough. Stefano cried out and came. And then he fell away from Henry, out of the dream, and into darkness.
* * *
When Stefano opened his eyes, he found that the water in the silk cloth had evaporated overnight and his skin felt dry.
He remained silent and unmoving on his pillow perch, watching Henry sleep.
The sun hadn’t yet risen enough to illuminate the room, but Stefano could see well anyway.
Despite the stubble on Henry’s cheeks and chin, he looked almost childlike as he slept and seemed temporarily cradled in the innocence that had been stolen from him when he was so young.
He also had bits of grass and leaves stuck in his hair, although he’d carefully brushed it before going to bed.
When Henry opened his eyes he looked directly at Stefano, and for a brief moment he looked startled and confused. But that passed quickly, replaced by something like acceptance, and the curtains in his eyes drew closed.
He sat up, passed a hand across his head, and peered at the small pieces of greenery in his palm. “I don’t like magic. Didn’t like it even before… this.” He waved at Stefano. “But I’m grateful for last night’s dream, even if we don’t know how it happened.”
Human speech took a tremendous amount of effort, so Stefano gave a soft croak of agreement.
“All right,” said Henry, getting out of bed. “The coach leaves early.”
Preparations for departure didn’t take long.
Henry performed brief morning ablutions before getting dressed and packing up the few belongings he’d used the evening before.
He wetted the silk cloth thoroughly in the washbasin, lined the little cage with it, and invited Stefano to hop in.
“Do you need to eat, or can it wait for tonight?”
“Wait.” Stefano had consumed a lot of raw meat the previous evening and wasn’t hungry. He knew from his studies that frogs ate more rarely than humans. A slower digestive system, most likely. On the few occasions when he’d kept one captive for a full week, he’d fed it only two or three times.
Henry wrapped the cage in a thin cloth. Plenty of air and sufficient light would reach the interior, but nosy people wouldn’t be able to see inside. Stefano allowed himself to doze as Henry ate a quick breakfast in the inn’s common room and then carried him a few blocks to the station.
Under other circumstances, Stefano would have been excited to ride in a public conveyance.
He had left the city only rarely, and always in one of the royal carriages, accompanied by a phalanx of guards and with windows closed until they were well away from the stares of curious citizens.
Now, though, Stefano was mostly bored. Real frogs might be content to spend their days sitting on lily pads, but he longed for a book to read and the ability to chat with Henry.
And he didn’t like being confined, even though he knew it was for his own protection.
The day was a hundred years long.
When Henry finally released him from the cage, they were in a room at another inn.
This room was smaller and smellier, and when Henry returned from having dinner, he complained that the meal hadn’t been very good.
“And my bones were rattled all day in that coach. They ache.” He stretched hugely.
“I’m tired of sitting all day. I’m tired of listening to the other passengers drone on in their stupid conversations.
I’m… I’m tired.” He sat heavily on the bed’s thin mattress and stared sourly at his hands.
“I miss the joy your brother stole from me.”
Stefano remained silent, not wanting to point out that they had many more days in their journey.
Or that, while he hadn’t been jostled so much in the cage, he had been cooped up in a tiny space.
And his meal tonight had been a few morsels of undercooked meat that Henry had saved from his plate—hardly much of a feast.
Instead of trying to speak, which was simply too hard, Stefano hopped onto the windowsill.
The view provided nothing but a dusty little yard, a few chickens settling in to sleep, and a yellow dog nosing around a heap of firewood.
Stefano could hear voices from the public space downstairs, although he couldn’t make out the words.
And if he strained, he heard frogs singing somewhere nearby.
Not his species, but the sound still filled him with melancholy.
They went to bed not long after the sun set, Henry lying on his side facing the pale yellow wall and Stefano wrapped in damp silk beside him.
Neither of them fell asleep right away, and Stefano struggled with his yearnings: to wrap his body around Henry’s and bury his nose in Henry’s hair, to feel his own soft cock nestled against Henry’s round ass, to sense that—at least for a few hours—the world was a safe place.
When he finally slept and dreamed, he was back in the dream pond, but it was even bigger this time, the distant banks so far away that he couldn’t see them. It was deeper as well. More fish darted around in the depths.
Stefano kicked, reveling in the strength of his legs and the smooth glide of water around him. As a human he’d always been a little clumsy and not skilled at much of anything aside from his studies. As a frog, however, he was fast and graceful.
Some time passed before it occurred to him to look for Henry. There he was on the bank again, naked, arms crossed as if he were annoyed.
“I have an idea,” said Stefano as soon as he was out of the water.
Or tried to say; unlike the previous night, it took him several moments to transform into a man.
Even once the transformation was complete, his limbs felt awkward and his mouth didn’t work quite as it should.
He repeated, carefully: “I have an idea.”
Henry was expressionless. “Yes?”
“This isn’t so bad, is it? A frog by day and man at night? We can find a place to live… in the forest somewhere. By the water. No kings or princes or princesses. We’d still have one another, and at night we could—”
“Where would we get money? You might be able to catch flies to fill your belly, but I can’t. I don’t know how to hunt or garden.”
Disappointed, Stefano frowned. “You could learn. I know it sounds more ideal for me than for you, but—”
“Look at yourself.”
The sharp order briefly confused Stefano. When he parsed the meaning and glanced down, he saw that although he was in the shape of a man, the skin on his belly was the color of lemon peel and the rest of his skin was grass-green and covered in small bumps.
“I’m not…. It’s only a dream,” he said with more than a hint of desperation. “Maybe if we wait a little longer I’ll return to normal.”
In a gesture that Stefano didn’t understand, Henry cupped one hand over the left side of his own chest. “But I won’t.”
Stefano glanced over one shoulder, where the water called to him almost as strongly as Henry’s body did. “Did Louis say that the curse would become permanent eventually?”
“He didn’t specify.”
He wouldn’t, the bastard. Among his many faults was his unwillingness to give straight answers about anything. Philip was by far the nastier of the two, but at least there was never any question what he was thinking.
“So we might not have much time,” said Stefano.
Henry, downcast, simply shrugged.