The Green's Hill Novellas (2 page)

He started out his wander in a fit of melancholy. The little clearing was on top of a rise, on the other side of a graffiti wall that separated the railroad tracks from the small, low-rent suburb on the other side. Suburb, graffiti wall, even the glaring spaceship of lights below the rise, all of them were new. The area had changed—humans had become more prevalent, and this great, cold-iron track cut less and less through areas of field and forest and more and more through the backs of suburbs and horse pastures—and Whim missed the emptiness. He’d seen the great rabbit warrens of large homes on small plots of land that the humans had been building, and he hated them. Soon, he thought unhappily, Green’s hill and the surrounding protected forests would be the only place his kind could walk the earth.

Then he saw a youth in tight jeans and a tank top under a flapping great trench coat, balancing on the cold-iron beam in the starlight, and he forgot his private vendetta against progress and remembered why he was out in the Litha dark.

Litha was the cusp of light and dark, the crux of life and death, the longest day and shortest night of the year. The earth was in full burgeoning strength, and the Goddess’s shining ones literally—and with no help from their own magic—tended to glow like beacons of sex and touch. Litha was the night Oberon could seduce Titania with a commoner who had been partially turned into an ass.

As the youth on the railroad tracks looked up and caught sight of Whim walking toward him wearing nothing but jeans and a cloak of color-shifting hair, the boy’s mouth curved into a plump little O and his eyes, so dark a chocolate brown as to be opaque in the moonlight, opened as wide as the sky.

Whim looked at him and felt his lips curve into a smile. The boy was like Litha itself: on the cusp of things. He was not tall, certainly not as tall as Whim, who was in the middle of six and seven feet, but not even as tall as Adrian. His chest and jaw would be broad when he filled out, but now, in his late teens, he was all shoulders and elbows, collarbones and angled jaw and bold, assertive nose. His jeans were torn and bleached on purpose, and his tank top was tight to show off the rebellious rings in his nipples and his navel, but that look….

In spite of the sneering of the teenager and the skepticism of the nascent man, the look on his face had been all joyful child, and Whim was charmed.

He drew nearer.

“Be careful you don’t get stuck,” Whim said gently as the boy played with his feet in the railroad ties. The boy rolled his eyes, and Whim rolled his back. “I am only saying that the train is due very soon, and I cannot touch the rails or the spikes to help you.”

That brought the boy up short. “Why can’t you touch the rails?” he asked, and Whim looked down at his bare feet and wiggled his toes. The boy’s eyes followed.

“The cold iron burns my skin,” Whim told him honestly. It was true. Here, on Litha, Whim was caught in all three of a sidhe’s vulnerabilities: They drew power from the earth and hence detested coverings for their feet. They were allergic to the cold iron of the humans (the reason all of Green’s cars were treated with a salt and herb wash before the sidhe were allowed to drive them). And they could not lie. They could if they really wanted to, but they ended up afflicted with nausea, cramps, and a blinding headache until they burst out with the truth, and Whim had never been tempted to test that particular weakness.

“And don’t believe what you hear about foot size and penis size,” Whim added for good measure.

“I’m sorry?” There was a curious blink, and Whim felt he should explain.

“Humans believe that foot size is proportional to penis size. You were looking at my feet. They are very large. In fact,” Whim said as he held up a forearm, “they are the exact length from the crease of my arm to the edge of my wrist, and so are yours. I know, because I have a friend who makes socks.”

“Burns?” asked the boy curiously, and it was Whim’s turn to blink. “You said the cold iron burns,” the kid enunciated patiently. “That’s why I was staring at your feet.”

Whim nodded and shrugged and made a very rash decision, which would have surprised no one who knew him. It was Litha. If he breathed in deeply, he could set a shield between himself and this man-child that would deflect bullets and keep even the subtle, warm breeze at bay. With such a shield, he could stand on the railroad tracks and let the train batter him like a wave batters a beach ball and walk away without a scratch or even a blister from the iron itself.

On such a night, with such power brushing his skin, what could this boy do to him, even with the truth?

“My people are allergic to the iron,” Whim told him, and his glamour, which hadn’t been very firm in the first place because he’d been caught unaware, dropped completely, on a whim. The youth looked up into his triangular features, his wide-set eyes, and saw what he was ready to see.

He must have been ready to see the truth, because his arm rose and his fingertip moved immediately to Whim’s curved ears, and he stroked gently, like a child stroking a rabbit’s nose. Whim shuddered sensually and purred. The ears of most sidhe were sexually sensitive, and his were no exception.

“You’re real,” the boy whispered, his voice barely audible in the night quiet. In the rushing darkness, the shushing of the freeway could be heard. It was nearly three miles away.

“You’re taking liberties I haven’t given you,” Whim told him, but he cocked his head and moved his body sinuously anyway. It was his
ear
. It just felt so damned good. “Of course I’m real.”

The boy dropped his hand reluctantly, and Whim sighed and straightened his body. “It is dangerous out here for unwary boys. I’m an elf, and even I know that not all strangers mean well.”

The boy shrugged, pulled his foot from the space between the two railroad ties, and hopped off the track altogether. “Folks don’t care much where I am,” he said.

“Don’t
you
care where you are?” Whim was there under the moonlight because this was his holiday, a treat to himself. He wanted to feel the warmth of the lingering sun and the faint, cooling breeze. He wanted to smell the new-mown hay, brown grasses, and burgeoning green orchard smells that permeated the Sierra foothills in June. He wanted the absolute aloneness to seep into his bones, because it was so very different than the masses of family that beat in his blood from life on the hill. He cared very much where he was.

“I care that I’m not at home,” the boy said on a bleak sigh.

“Well, then,” Whim said, feeling a little disappointed that he would not be sharing flesh with someone this night—the boy was too young, after all, “for tonight and tonight only, I will care where you are, and this roof of darkness can be ours.”

The boy looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Do you want me for sex?” he asked suspiciously, and Whim gasped a little. He had forgotten that with the changing of the years, human children had become more like sidhe children about these matters.

“I don’t even know your name,” Whim replied, affronted. “And you are too young, even if I did.” The two of them began to walk together through the darkness, using the tracks as a guide but staying well away from them.

“My name is Charlie,” the boy supplied with a gratifying readiness, “and I’m eighteen.”

“My name is Whim, and I’m…. Well, shit… how old am I?”

“You don’t know?” the boy asked, and Whim wrinkled his nose at him.

“Our days pass so ordinarily,” Whim replied, wondering. “We sit and we do whatever we want…. There are the solstice celebrations, of course, but no real way of marking our days…. What year is it?”

Charlie told him, and Whim nodded, pretty sure. “Yes, I was born near the beginning of the last century. I am nearing one hundred, but not quite.”

Charlie shook his head and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Man, that’s messed up. If you live a hundred years, you’d think you’d have something to show for it. Pain, laughter, you know. Something.”

Whim looked at the young human with wondering eyes, seeing every feature perfectly with his better-than-human vision. Charlie had fading acne scars and the awkwardness of the young, but… but in that moment, Whim saw something special about him, something indefinable. It was a quality that never left.

“That’s exactly what Adrian said,” Whim told him, amazed. He’d thought Adrian was the only human—he’d been human once—capable of wisdom. Well, that should show Whim that arrogance was truly an unattractive personality trait. He would find himself struggling against making assumptions of his own superiority for the rest of his life.

“Is Adrian the reason you don’t want sex?” Charlie asked suspiciously, and Whim laughed outright.

“Adrian is sex on legs,” Whim told him frankly. “One night with you—one hundred nights with you—and Adrian would still play if I asked him. But no. You… you are barely the age of consent. I am not here to give you a yearning for things you can never have. I come out at Litha to give someone a gift, an offering. If they have regrets or loneliness or sadness in their lives, I can give them something magical—a memory that not even time can erase. A moment when their bodies become light and sound, and they’re one with the Goddess’s shining child. You—you have so much potential in you. You have no regrets yet. Look at you. Your hands are quivering with the urge to paint this night, surreal though it may be. Your eyes are looking at a dark sky and seeing heathered purples and blended greens, a charcoal-tinted rainbow with blood-edged stars. You hear music in the faraway freeway—I can watch it pulse in your throat. Your mind teems with a thousand stories of what is possible this night. I can hear your characters speaking, as though on stage. Myriad talents compete for space inside you, Charlie. You have no regrets—only possibilities.” He was very proud when he finished speaking. It was one of the longest speeches he’d ever made on a single topic.

Charlie looked at him very carefully. “You talk really weird,” he said at last. “Is that an elf thing?”

Whim looked at him steadily. In the darkness he could see the blush, the sideways slant to Charlie’s eyes, the way the pulse throbbed in his throat with a passion waiting to break free. “My words touched you,” he said softly. “You’re pulling into yourself because you are afraid of what I’ve said.”

And now Charlie looked over his shoulder, squinting into the darkness as though he could make something out. “Man, everybody wants to hear somebody beautiful tell them they’re special. Did you think you could tell me something like that and not make me want to cry like a weenie?”

Whim’s mouth quirked upward, and he stared at Charlie with more of that renewed appreciation. “My people do not think less of you if you shed tears,” he said earnestly, and Charlie turned a shining smile in his direction.

“I’ll have to remember that if I ever feel like crying again,” he said with mock seriousness. Whim felt a sudden shaft, a sudden flaw in the shape of his heart. He wouldn’t be here for Charlie to shed more tears. Not if he held true to the pattern of his butterfly mind.

“We only have Litha,” he said with soft regret. “But if it’s any comfort for you, I will be sorry to see the dawn.”

Charlie didn’t have anything to say to that, and he didn’t question why Whim would only be there for one night. Whim was grateful. Suddenly, his policy of only mingling with the humans one night a year sounded… artificial, artificial and cowardly, a shield between him and the censure of someone who might not understand the nature of Whim. Especially by the end of the night, when Whim had learned so much about Charlie, and everything about him was real and brave.

Charlie had just finished his senior year in high school. He had earned scholarships to a performing arts school—a full ride, in fact—but his father wanted him to join the military. Charlie didn’t want to go. He planned to tell his father the next morning that he couldn’t join the military. For one thing, the military did not appear to
approve
of specific ways of sharing flesh, and Charlie was gay.

“I never understood that word,” Whim said, frowning.

“You’re not gay?” Charlie asked, clearly disappointed.

“I’m sidhe,” Whim told him. “Most of us are pansexual. We don’t discriminate among genders or species.” Whim especially had no trouble with that. He tended to bed whomever he wanted, depending on… well, his whim.

Charlie raised his eyebrows and mouthed the word “species” with some appreciation, but then Whim asked him what he intended to do with his art scholarships and his family life, and he moved on to the answer.

“I guess now I’m going to have to really live up to all that bullshit I was just spouting and tell them,” he answered obliquely.

Whim blinked. “You didn’t mean it when you said it?” He was puzzled and let it show. Charlie flashed a crooked grin.

“What—you mean everything you say?” he asked snidely.

Whim nodded, his eyes open very wide. “I have to. I forget that humans and vampires and were-folk can lie, but we cannot. I did not realize you were lying.” Whim pulled his head back, a little disappointed.

“I’m not lying now,” Charlie said, his voice firm. Surprising Whim, he caught Whim’s chin with his fingers and made the taller man look down, into his eyes. “I mean every word I said, I swear. And I’ll never bullshit you again.”

Whim nodded, touched yet again. Maybe it was the boy’s youth that touched him, he thought optimistically. Youth would pass. But he did not think that was the reason this boy seemed to yank at his heart.

“You are a very good person, Charlie,” he said gravely. “This night is much more exciting than I had anticipated.”

“Even though you’re not getting laid?” Charlie asked, incredulous. “Because having not been laid yet, I can only tell you, I was really hoping you were up for it!”

Whim took a deep, deep breath and exhaled through his nose. The problem, he thought crossly, was that human young were so beautiful at this age. There was an aching softness to even the strongest jaw, and a terrible vulnerability to simple things, like clavicles and biceps and limpid eyes that spoke of an awful, stomach-churning need to be cared for.