Mr Lofthouse,
Thank you for the use of your garret. My compliments to your literary tastes. Scott has proved a particular comfort for me.
Sincerely,
M. Fairfield.
Wren would not have expected such handwriting from a young lady. Particularly one of Miss Flora’s background and education. Then again, he supposed he knew very little of young ladies and didn’t give the matter any more thought than to smile and tuck the note away in the front cover ofIvanhoe.
Though he’d parted from Shrike on Friday morning and would reunite on the afternoon of that very Saturday, for Wren, the single night that lay between them felt as if it lasted a year and a day. The daylight hours he could bear, distracting himself with surreptitious sketches and, at times, even with actual work. But at night, after Mr Grigsby had returned from dinner and gone upstairs to bed, Wren had nothing to prevent his thoughts from running on in feverish imaginings of the fabled Blackthorn. He knew not when he dropped off at last. Only that when he awoke at daybreak tangled in his bedclothes like a firefly in a spider’s web, he felt equal parts as exhausted as if he’d never slept and as fired up as when he’d spent whole nights drinking coffee in the company of the Restive Quills. He’d thought those nights wild, then. He’d never known what wildness was until he met Shrike.
Saturday morning, Wren accomplished little beyond increasingly intricate drawings of the Blackthorn of his dreams. A half-crumbled stone tower like a chessboard’s rook with thorned vines rising up to reclaim its most ruined side; a ring of standing stones knotted together with walls of briars; a hill-fort wearing a coat of thorns like armour, the illustration cut away to reveal an interior as labyrinthine as any rabbit’s warren. The stroke of twelve interrupted his attempt at rendering a castle with a moat full of brambles. He abandoned it with glee, hardly stopping to tuck it under a ledger before he dashed upstairs to retrieve his hat, coat, scarf, and satchel.
“Going out, Lofthouse?” Mr Grigsby asked, blinking in wonder as Wren thundered back downstairs and leapt for the door.
“Yes, sir,” said Wren, catching the door-frame to halt his mad sprint. Though he feared the answer, he forced himself to ask, “Did you require me further, sir?”
“No, no, not at all,” Mr Grigsby assured him. “Only idle curiosity. Good-day, Lofthouse!”
Wren wished him the same and vaulted down the stairs into the courtyard of Staple Inn.
His dash down Oxford Street saw him almost run down by an omnibus, much to the astonishment of a passing unfortunate. It mattered little to Wren. Only that it brought him nearer to Cumberland Gate, then through it, then down the paths to Achilles looming out of the fog.
Wren staggered to a halt, bracing both palms against the plinth and hanging his head down between them whilst he caught his breath.
“Hail and well met, fellow traveller.”
Wren bolted upright and whirled to find Shrike standing before him, a handsome half-smile on his noble features.
“Hail,” Wren heard himself reply, breathless for reasons beyond his mad sprint. His hand had fallen to the stitch in his side. He quickly shoved it into his trouser pocket instead. Foolish of him, perhaps, to attempt to hide his poor physical condition from a man to whom he’d bared his whole body not two days past, but his pride demanded the effort regardless. In stronger tones, he replied, “Shall we be off?”
Shrike nodded and turned to lead the way. Wren fell into step beside him. As they walked, they remained at arm’s length. Wren found his gaze drawn again and again to the negative space between them. It felt as though an invisible barrier prevented their meeting. The barrier of polite society, perhaps, or the barrier of public opinion. Or the simple yet most effective barrier of English law, Wren concluded with no small bitterness. He wished he had the courage to surmount it. He’d had the man’s cock in his hand the night before last, for Christ’s sake, and yet now his heart pounded at the thought of merely brushing his fingertips against Shrike’s knuckles. For over a decade Wren had deprived himself of another man’s touch. Like a starved man, he’d grown inured to hunger pangs, but they did not die out, only slept. A taste of the barest morsel would have sufficed to reawaken every repressed ravenous impulse and render him insatiable. Even a feast such as he’d had on Samhain would not suffice to quell his desire now. He trembled at the temptation of Shrike so near to him.
But the tension between them found relief only when they stumbled on the mushroom ring, and Shrike reached out and grasped Wren’s hand to guide him through it.
The warmth of his palm flowed through Wren’s blood to overflow his heart. The intimacy of his rough fingers interlaced with Wren’s own sent him shivering. Wren’s eyes fluttered shut as they fell together hand-in-hand.
And when he opened them again, he found himself in another world altogether.
A forest more ancient than Sherwood loomed over him. Trees as broad as castle turrets towered above. Birches entwined with rowan, maple, elm, and oak, and breeds Wren couldn’t begin to name, with sprays of emerald hemlock and the frosted wintergreen of spruce. Lichen and moss glowed green on their limbs and trunks, and amidst their roots, ferns unfurled from the carpet of fallen leaves.
Ruins stood among the trees. Latticed windows, their few remaining panes twinkling in the sunlight, hung in fragments of ancient walls. Crumbling staircases twisted upward, halting before they reached even the lowest of the overhanging branches, moss spilling down their steps in a waterfall of green. Arched doorways, Romanesque and Gothic alike, led to nowhere in all directions.
Or perhaps, Wren thought, considering how he’d arrived where he now stood, they led to everywhere.
Wren glanced down at where he and Shrike had entered the fae realm and beheld not the mushroom ring of Hyde Park but a stone wall. Centuries of fallen debris had packed firm to fill its once-fathomless plunge, leaving just a few inches of depth beneath its rim filled with ferns that seemed to bubble up like sea-foam.
Then Shrike, whose fingers still entwined with Wren’s, pressed his hand, and Wren looked up at him to find a shy smile gracing his handsome features.
“Is this Blackthorn?” Wren asked.
“Not quite,” Shrike replied. “We’ve some journeying yet to do.”
A rare spark of courage ignited in Wren’s heart. He withdrew his hand from Shrike’s grasp.
And offered him his arm instead.
Shrike’s smile broadened as he accepted the charge.
