Chapter 1 #2
It appeared at first like an extra joint between ankle and knuckle.
Ephraim realised his error almost as quickly as he made it.
The flesh surrounding the break had swollen.
Still it could not entirely disguise the acute angle at which Hull’s hoof now dangled off the break.
The bone had not broken the skin, thank Jove, though this felt but small comfort to Ephraim.
Particularly when the snapped end of it pushed out far enough to discolour the surrounding flesh as the pressure forced blood to withdraw from the skin.
“Forgive me,” Hull gasped. “I don’t think I could have kept it up much longer.”
He meant the glamour, Ephraim realised belatedly.
Ephraim had no idea how Hull had held out so long as he had.
The slate-blue of his complexion had drained to an ashen grey, and his doubled canines grit tight beneath his beard.
Even so, when any man would have every right to grow a touch snappish at stupid questions or slow service, there remained a kindness in his dark eyes, white-rimmed as they were with pain.
“I don’t mean anything against Dr Hitchingham,” Hull went on. “It’s only—I don’t know if he ought to see me as I am. And I doubt he’s had much experience with fae anatomy. Certainly not so much as you,” he added, the ghost of his good humour twitching at the corner of his mouth.
“Oh, of course,” Ephraim quite agreed. He genuinely had no idea what Dr Hitchingham would make of horns, hooves, and tail. To say nothing of a hollow back. “But you must have some sort of doctor. Or a surgeon?”
Hull’s breath came and left him in hisses. “A bone-setter.”
Rather archaic, Ephraim thought uneasily, but he supposed the problem at hand was after all a bone which needed to be set. “What is his name? And where does he practise?”
A huff of laughter burst from Hull’s lips even amidst his pained gasps. “She’s called Grytha. You won’t find her in London. Here—a pen, please—”
Ephraim snatched one up and gave it over to Hull’s grasping fingertips. He brought forth the ink-bottle and paper besides.
Hull gave him a wan smile of thanks. He scrawled out something in an unrecognisable alphabet; Ephraim had the unaccountable idea it might be runes. Then he folded it thrice-over and dashed off more runes on its reverse. Ephraim couldn’t imagine the Penny Post would know what to make of it.
Something thumped at the window.
Ephraim jerked his head toward the sound—which made his shoulder twinge—but could perceive nothing through the pea-soup fog swirling past the panes.
“Open the window,” Hull said. His pained voice made it sound as though he begged. In response to Ephraim’s continued bewilderment, he added, “Just for a moment.”
Ephraim hastened to do as he bid. The window swung outward. Fog began seeping in.
And amidst the fog appeared a creature unlike anything Ephraim had seen in all his days.
His mind interpreted it first as a pheasant.
Then he recalled he was in London and there were no pheasants to be had for miles.
Then he realised that while the creature had the wings and feathers of a pheasant, its head and body belonged to a rabbit.
And yet it certainly wasn’t a rabbit, not only because of the feathered wings but also because of the antlers emerging from between its long furry ears.
Not a creature of London by any means. Nor of England, for that matter.
It must therefore, Ephraim concluded, have come from the fae realms.
Whatever-it-was perched on the open windowsill and blinked up at him rather like a cat.
Ephraim looked to Hull for an explanation. Hull appeared utterly unsurprised by the sight of the thing. Ephraim allowed his stiff shoulders relax just a hair.
Hull held out his thrice-folded letter with trembling fingers. “Could you…?”
Ephraim took the letter from him and followed the vague gesture of his hand in its absence to the box of wax wafers beside his bronze stamp.
To seal the letter was the work of a few moments.
It was, however, a finicky little job, with the delicate balance of candle-flame and pouring molten wax and the timing of the stamp.
Under normal circumstances it fell under a clerk’s duties, but Ephraim certainly didn’t mind it, and particularly not now when Hull shivered with barely-repressed agonies.
The creature in the windowsill watched him all the while.
It had settled down with its wings folded neatly across its furred back and its paws tucked under its round bulk.
When the wax’s molten gleam had faded to a solid matte, Hull jerked his chin at the creature.
“Give it to them,” he said in response to Ephraim’s continued bewilderment.
Warily, Ephraim held the sealed letter out to the creature.
And almost as delicately, the creature stretched out its little furry neck and plucked up the letter between its buck teeth.
Ephraim hardly had time for an astonished blink before the pheasant wings spread wide, beat twice, and sent the creature careening off to vanish in the perpetual fog.
“You may shut the window now,” Hull said as Ephraim stared at where the creature had been.
Ephraim turned to find a wan smile gracing Hull’s pale lips—the ghost of the delight he wore whenever Ephraim discovered by happenstance some fae novelty.
“Is that how the post typically travels betwixt London and the fae realms?” Ephraim asked. It’d never occurred to him to ask before. He simply trusted Hull to handle the matter of his correspondence with Lofthouse, wherever Lofthouse now dwelled.
“Aye.”
Ephraim supposed the queer creature must be the fae realm’s answer to the mortal pigeon.
Hull’s smile flickered into a grimace. He withheld his wince, but still Ephraim saw how the effort wearied him, and dropping his gaze however unwillingly to the broken bone, watched a spasm starting up in the strained calf.
While curing Hull might prove beyond his power, Ephraim could at least make him more comfortable.
The kettle went on the fire as a matter of course.
Then he piled pillows atop the seat of his own chair and gently assisted Hull in manoeuvring his afflicted limb to what he hoped might prove a more comfortable perch.
Hull thanked him and—to Ephraim’s surprise—caught him ever-so-gently by the arm and drew him down for a kiss.
Far be it from Ephraim to refuse spontaneous affection from his beloved clerk.
But he returned the kiss more gingerly than he might otherwise have done.
And Hull broke it off far sooner than he would’ve under ordinary circumstances, Ephraim felt certain.
Every hitch in Hull’s breath made Ephraim’s heart ache.
Watching Hull work so hard to smile through it only made him worry more.
From listening to Dr Hitchingham talk about his patients for some decades now, Ephraim had a dim notion of what ought to be done for swelling.
He didn’t dare bleed Hull on his own. However, a cold compress might do the trick, alongside elevating the affected limb.
The latter already done, he set about procuring the former.
Hull courageously submitted to Ephraim’s inexpert care; though Ephraim endeavoured to wrap the wound as gently as possible, a shiver ghosted over Hull’s skin. Nonetheless he thanked Ephraim warmly. And indeed it did seem to help a little as Hull released a sigh of relief rather than agony.
The only other thing Ephraim knew to do for an emergency was tea.
While Hull would’ve brewed it for him on any other day—and Lofthouse would’ve done so in the decade before Hull—Ephraim was well-practised in the art, and this at least he could do without his hands trembling in anxiety.
It felt good to know what he was doing, if only for a scant few minutes.
He added a dollop of honey from Hull’s old hives to counter-act the bitter taste of the laudanum drops.
Hull took the cup from him with a hand that trembled only slightly.
“Perhaps,” Ephraim suggested as Hull sipped, “I might read to you a while to take your mind off the matter at hand?”
Hull’s smile was wan on his lips but warm in his eyes as he acquiesced to this.
Most of their evenings together were spent with Ephraim reading aloud to Hull or Hull to Ephraim.
They were in the midst of The Pickwick Papers at present; Hull’s first encounter with the work, and as for Ephraim, he’d well lost count by now.
Ephraim picked up the book again and endeavoured to read as he always did whilst remaining aware of any change in his beloved’s comfort.
To his own great relief, Hull seemed to relax a fraction as he narrated the comical misadventure.
The minutes stretched on. A chapter went by, then another. No bell rang down-stairs. No hoof-beats clattered up the stair. No knock resounded upon the office door. The sole interruption—well after the tea-kettle had ceased to steam—was a bitten-off groan from Hull.
Ephraim ceased his narration at once. His eyes shot up from the prose to regard his beloved.
Hull’s eyes had fallen shut. From his slouching posture, a stranger stumbling across him might assume he’d fallen into the repose of Endymion. But his breaths came ragged through his tight-clenched jaw.
Ephraim tried to take heart in how his chest rose and fell. He set the book aside and leant forward to lay his fingertips against the pulse leaping in Hull’s wrist. It came hard and fast. Ephraim wished he knew whether that meant good or ill.
“Ephraim?” Hull murmured.
Ephraim took his hand. “I’m here.”
The faint smile twitched again at the corners of his mouth. Then he furrowed his brow and licked his lips, seeming about to speak again, but ultimately relenting with a sigh.