Chapter 4
KORMAC/TITUS
Titus.
A popular angelus everyone flocked to. The best friend of Olivia, an angelus who enjoyed games of chess and backgammon, watching the stars at the edge of the Fatumstellae, so happy here, never especially curious about the worlds beyond unless I had to be.
Yes, I was always professional, always took great care and interest in my tasks.
But other than that, give me the sunshine and moonlight and the days swimming in happiness with my friends.
Until now.
I also remembered where to find every key to every room in the Sky Palace, how to look into the other worlds, even how to communicate with them. All I had to do was play along now and be fixed, pass the tests and get back to Valance.
I could do it. I just had to hold firm in my convictions.
Titus was back but changed. And there was no going back to the old me because Kormac swam inside me, was me, with Valance holding his hand.
I want his hand in mine again…
I waited for a while before approaching Olivia. I had to be sure this wasn’t a surge of Kormac, his dying breath.
I am Kormac.
I am Titus.
I am new.
Angelus weren’t sexless when it came to male and female characteristics.
I was male but without sexuality. I possessed a glass cock, when not a ball of light, yet it was purely ornamental, as were vaginas and buttocks.
They came in use for when we went on jobs, like on Faerie, part of our assimilation into respective cultures.
We were also completely hairless as angelus.
Would my cock feel pleasure when Many Hands put me back together? Would my physical restoration wipe Kormac away or keep his appetites close?
My thoughts and speech were muddled between the human and the angelus. The knowledge confused Kormac, and the many human desires enticed Titus.
Olivia returned. I moved into action, offering her my best performance.
“Do you remember the day we built the diving board at Orchard Lake?” I asked.
A beautiful spot with crystals the shape of apples growing on the trees of the orchard on its north bank.
“Titus?” she said.
“It had such a spring to it.”
The ball of light that was Olivia glinted, hovering forward. “Did you really just say that to me?”
“I did. I remember everything.” I explained various details, other memories of the fun times. Like when we decided to pluck some crystals from the orchard and make ourselves fly with their special, fun magic. What a great day if you enjoyed that sort of thing.
My childhood in Riverleaf, though dark at times, was made of better memories. A collage of joy and sadness carried through into my adulthood and darker times. The endless war between seelie and unseelie, my friend Ren and I making that perilous quest to attack Summer on Lasair’s orders.
It still hurt knowing I’d never see Ren’s face again.
Everything here seemed so frivolous and empty of feeling other than endless laughter and happiness. It seemed so vacuous in the light and shadow of a whole other life lived.
Olivia didn’t need to know that.
“Oh, Titus! I really want to hug you!” she exclaimed.
“You will. We will.”
There’s only one I want to hug…
“Let me speak to someone.”
“Marcus?” I said.
“You remember him?” she cried.
Obviously. Why would I recall the lake and flying around and not our leader?
“I do,” I responded politely.
“I’ll be back. This is a wonderful development.”
She whistled her trademark tune, some lovely melody she linked to Christmas—a period at the end of a year some other worlds celebrated with presents and food and lights and the birth of a boy called Jesus.
Not a Faerie custom or practice, but there was a similar festival in the December months in my home country of Autumn.
One of food and singing and too much ale.
My home…
Here…
There…
Wherever he is…
Could Valance be my home? We weren’t… What were we? Before I’d left him, things were changing, and not only because of the soul bond. There were real feelings there. I still felt them, still held onto the change. We’d been through so much together, seen the hurt from many sides.
I had to see him again.
Olivia returned with a ball of light almost identical to us, though slightly bigger.
Marcus was the tallest angelus in existence.
It happened then, more truth sliding into place. The balls of light stretched, quickly sprouting limbs and a head, two naked bodies of green and blue glass standing side by side. Male and female, Marcus well over six-and-half feet tall.
“Titus,” Marcus’s deep tone greeted me. “Olivia has just shared the good news.”
“Thank goodness I’m back,” I answered cheerily.
Marcus probably trumped me in popularity. I suppose, given his position as leader, everyone would love him most. He kept us together, our strength in all things. And I loved him as I loved every angelus with all of my glass heart, a happy-go-lucky creature beyond the stars so full of joy.
Hellpiss! I wanted to be sick.
Marcus’s glass head bopped several times in a nod. “So, let’s get you to Many Hands. Are you ready to be complete?”
I’m ready to run… “Yes.”
“I can’t wait!” Olivia cried.
“Then follow me.”
Floating through endless green and blue corridors, passing games rooms and libraries, workshops, I listened to happy sounds, wishing they would shut up.
So many memories, so much of a life here I didn’t want to go back to.
Olivia skipped beside me the whole way to the exit. As we stepped into the brilliant sunshine, she burst into loud humming.
Marcus, a few feet ahead of us, chuckled and hummed along with her.
By the gods! Make it stop!
I joined in, though. I had to make them believe Titus was back for good.
They skipped across rolling meadows as white birds flew in the blue skies. Olivia took Marcus’s hand, and they ran to a single tree shedding pink, glass blossoms. They twirled around it, humming and full of joy.
“He’s back with us!” Marcus sang.
“Back for us to hug and love!” Olivia followed up with a new line.
Together: “Our brave soul. Never to be beaten, never to be lost. Our Titus! Our Titus!”
A terrible song drowning in hellpiss.
I laughed, thanking them for their kind tribute.
Marcus stood before me, his glass chest rising and falling. “Everything will be okay.”
Olivia draped herself over him. “It really will be. No matter what that terrible old woman did to you by taking your undying essence, things will be put right.”
The old woman. She’d seen us here, called to us for help. Abused the system somewhat.
“They really will be,” our leader added.
We carried on across the meadows, up and down the sloping greenery, until we reached the river.
Olivia bent to the clear blue water with sparkling crystals adorning the riverbed. She scooped up some water and threw it in the air. I didn’t know why, but it seemed incredibly funny to her.
The river flowed from north to south—from the cascading Crystal Falls to the edge of Fatumstellae where it fell into the stars, joining them to light up the many night times of the universes.
Marcus led us north, more dancing along the riverbanks. Singing and endless fucking happiness Titus would love so much.
Should I see Kormac as a curse rather than a goal? Remove him, remove this dark caress of my own? Be at one with my true nature again?
Marcus dove into the river, Olivia jumping up and down with glee.
Her clapping rang like a spoon striking a wine glass.
Just like Tara did at Riverleaf tavern whenever she wanted to make a drunken speech about anything that came to her mind after too much wine.
Usually close to the tavern’s closing time.
I liked Tara. Always dressed in her musty, yellow-dyed fur coat, sat on her favorite stool at the bar.
Wine and those greasy fried potatoes she loved.
She liked to tell stories of her youth, how she once saw a dragon, and how the best wine always came from Summer, even if the seelie court and the Sidhe fae were all bastards.
She would follow up any seelie talk with a spit and a curse, then offer me some of her food.
Dad liked her too.
Kormac’s dad.
My dad.
Marcus surfaced with a crystal, water sluicing down his glassy form. He held it aloft, the stone glittering in the sunlight. The refracted light cast a rainbow on the grass.
“Pretty!” Olivia cried. “What shall we do with it?”
“Save it for later.”
Olivia nodded, giggling with her hand over her mouth.
Ah, a secret shared between us.
Marcus looked at me, tapping the crystal with his right index finger. “Are you sure you’re ready for Many Hands?”
“More than ready.” I’d kill to have arms and legs again.
“I’m glad. I’ve really missed you. We all have.”
As he said that, a group of eight angelus came running toward us. Leaping in the air like gazelles, singing and laughing. They stopped to greet me, to praise my return. All friends of mine, all irritating.
More of Kormac lingered within me than Titus. This shouldn’t irk me. This laughter of mine shouldn’t be an act.
After an endless tirade of happiness, we moved on and reached our destination.
Many Hands lived beside Crystal Falls under the open skies. They had their bed and their five work benches, a tower of tools, and a row of other beds for newly made angelus.
A tall humanoid figure of no discerning male or female characteristics, their eight arms and hands worked tirelessly to create us, shaping us from the glass that fell with the crystals over the falls.
The Making Glass always sat in the drop pool, never moving downstream with the rest of the crystals. Many Hands would pluck the glass from the water, take the oblongs to their workbench and begin their mastery.
It was an impressive sight to watch those hands create life. I watched them once make an angelus, sprinkle her with crystal dust, infusing her body with the undying power I’d lost.
Many Hands was working on a new angelus
“Hello there, Titus,” they said. “It is good to see you back with us.”
“It’s good to be back,” I replied.
While Many Hands was angelus, they weren’t as joyous as the rest of us. They had a serious duty to perform, the only one who could do it, and, so their personality reflected that seriousness.
A balm against this relentless onslaught of elation.
Many Hands put down their tools, the figure on their workbench half complete. “Are you ready to be fixed, Titus?”
“I’m ready.”
“Then come over here.” They walked over to an empty wooden bench, the dark surface spotlessly clean.
I floated over to hover above the surface.
Many Hands took some Making Glass and a tool to grate across its surface. Fine dust fell through me, leaving a warm tingle as it passed.
Many Hands picked up a crystal, grating some of that next.
Particles landed within me, becoming solid kernels. Hard and warm, they moved, calling to my solid body.
Come back to us, they said. Be whole. Be Titus.
Many Hands continued their work, releasing more and more Making Glass and crystal dust onto me, muttering the words only they ever spoke or understood. Their special gift working through me, bringing me back.
Magic.
What magic did Valance have now? What kind of king had he become?
“Are you okay?” Many Hands asked as more kernels latched onto me.
“I’m fine, thank you.”
Piece by piece, inch by inch, I became Titus in body. First, my head formed above the ball of light, Olivia gasping as she saw me. Then my neck and shoulders, my chest, stomach. My arms followed, my two friends, dancing with glee.
After what I assumed to be an hour, I lay on the table, my glassy spine pressing into the wood.
Whole again.
“By the—” I cut off a Kormac saying. “I’m back.”
I flexed my fingers, wriggled my toes. Sat up, stretching my arms above my head.
“No more ball of light,” I said.
“You can’t have your undying power back yet,” Many Hands said.
I turned to face them.
“But give it time,” they added. “This is a long journey to a full recovery.”
“At least I’m solid again,” I responded.
“Exactly, Titus. And that is cause for great celebration.” Their delivery was flat, empty of feeling.
“Party!” Olivia cried, taking me by the left hand.
“Yes!” Marcus cried, taking my right hand.
They jumped up and down, planning an entire nighttime event within minutes. Even Many Hands was in full agreement.
Fine. Let them have a party. It would provide a decent distraction for me to sneak off and plan my escape.