vigils for an unshriven soul, lit by yearning
–I remember his confessions –
secrets are less bitter shared,
until the sharing shows its teeth.
I remember the shape of me as a knight
created by his words
a memory I hardly have remade by him
I remember myself because he remembers me
I remember how to
—gasp with human lungs, and for a moment everything is still. His body, calm – too calm, heart paused between beats, a momentary suspension into immortality, but no immediate collapse into his animal skin. He allows himself to exist in a moment of nothingness, and then his heart thunders into life and the breath comes rushing out of him and he’s alive.
And human.
His hands – God above, he has hands, the shape of them so alien and welcome – shake as he struggles with the braies, and then untwists the undertunic, easier now he has the shape of it and a little more sense of himself. Better that the clothes areold, simple, no laces to baffle his unsteady fingers. The woollen tunic next, red like blood. With every layer his skin fits a little better.
Human.
Human and clothed and real, bound into himself by the garments around his body, reminded of all that he is by the warp and weft of the cloth. He thought he’d never be human again. He thought he’d never have hands again, and he can’t stop staring at them. He thinks his mind will burst with the saturation of the world, the colours vivid and many-hued.
He’s exhausted, the bone-deep exhaustion of remaking oneself. He should stand, cross the room, open the door and tell them that he’s a man again, but he cannot move. Instead he curls up on the bed he’s known only as a wolf. He is unsettled in his new-old body, unsure how to fit in this space he thought he knew. This room has been his home for a year and now it is made strange.
Except that the bed is the same as ever, and he’s the one who has changed.
He crawls under the heavy blankets, too weary to concern himself with manners. The king will understand, he thinks. He’ll understand that being reborn is tiring. That it takes more energy than any duel to build yourself a new body – new blood and bones and skin, new lips, new teeth, new hands.
Hands. He has missed having hands. He’s still running the fingertips of his left hand over the marvels that are the knuckles of his right when his eyes begin to drift closed, the weight of his fatigue dragging him down.
And there, in the king’s bed, Bisclavret sleeps.
44
You
How long should you wait? Longer, probably. You sit pressed against the door. The wood’s hard against your back, the only thing holding you upright. You want to be inside that room, and at the same time you never want them to open the door, because once they open it, you’ll have to live with the truth you find on the other side. Maybe Bisclavret is there – maybe you don’t have to be alone anymore.
And maybe not.
Or maybe he’s there, and human, but all the strange intimacy of the past year will dissipate along with his curse, and he’ll be nothing more to you than what he always was – a pledged knight only, the closeness of his wolf months lost along with his claws. It would almost be worse that way, though you loathe the part of you that dares to think a Bisclavret who is alive and happy without you might be something to be mourned.
You wait until you can bear it no longer, and then you stand. But you can’t go alone. You take two knights with you – your knight in green with his clear judgment and clearer eyes and your flame-haired knight with the wicked tongue – and you open the door more timidly than any king should open the door of his own bedchamber.
It takes an age to swing open wide enough to enter, and yourheart is in your throat, choking you with hope that sobs and soars with every ragged breath.
You cannot look – you cannot know – you cannot bear . . .
‘Sire,’ says your knight in green, his tone hushed and reverent, and you open your eyes.
There’s a moment before you see him when all you notice is the absence of the wolf, and then your gaze catches on the figure burrowed deep beneath the coverlet. His hair is long and tangled, an unruly dark mane around his thin face with its knife-sharp cheekbones. His eyebrows are a severe slice across his exhausted, sleeping face.
Bisclavret.
