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What if someday Tirian had—had done whatever he’d been sent to do, and then turned and walked back into magic and left him, Oliver, behind?
He couldn’t imagine his life without Tir in it. Marriage to an unknown Prince or Princess, a promised happily ever after? Himself guiding and steering and caring for his kingdom? Without those wry silver-thorn eyes? Without those elegant—and damned self-sacrificial—hands?
“Thank you,” Tir offered, yanking Ollie back into the present and out of the melancholy future. “We should bear west a bit more. Not a lot, but a bit.”
“How do you—oh, never mind, of course you know.” He released Tir’s left hand reluctantly. Belatedly. Well-bandaged. Tir said nothing, but curled his fingers very slightly inward, as if checking the fit and flexibility of wrappings. “Are you…is that…too tight, or…”
“It’s fine, Oliver. Thank you.”
“Yeah? Um. Good.”
“We’re good, yes,” Tir concurred. Getting up from the grass, which meant Oliver did too. Steady as a compass-point, even when injured. Right there at Ollie’s side. “We should find the next campsite—or at least the spot I was thinking, for that—soon. It’s not too far.”
“Um. Okay. And you can rest. I’ll take care of camp.”
“Oliver, I really—”
“Please.”
Tir sighed, but his smile emerged, tucked into a corner of his expression like a long-known story. “If you must.”
“I must,” Ollie said. “I really must.”
And he walked through the cruel and beautiful wild territories next to his best friend, spare boots on, sand glittering, thinning, having played its part. The Quest was perilous, but fair: a challenge dealt with would pass away.
And he wished—not for the first time, but the most ferociously—that he did not have to go and seek a One True Love in a Seeing Pool. That he could turn around and never rescue a prince or princess he’s never met. That he could…
What? Not fulfill his obligations? Defy thousands of years of tradition?
Tir was here for him. Tir was here because this was Oliver’s Quest. His family legend, obligation, ongoing tale. And Tir was family. Or something like family. Something like…
He wanted to touch Tir again. He wanted to check those bandages. Just in case. Healing, yes, he’d seen it for himself. But maybe not fast enough. Maybe the healing hurt. He wanted to know. He wanted to take the hurt all for himself and guard Tir from harm.
Tir’s face was turned away, remote: maybe some kind of fairy pain-management, maybe resolutely ignoring another headache, maybe only contemplating their path ahead.
Oliver sighed inwardly, tried to stop thinking anything at all, and plodded along over rock and sand beside him.
Chapter 6: Heartbreak
They camped that night in a pool of emerald grass surrounded by silver-barked trees; the green was a bit too green and the trunks too silver, to Oliver’s artist’s eye. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted to paint the North or back slowly away from it. Either way he wasn’t certain he could ever do a description justice.
He handled wood-gathering and fire-building and roasting potatoes. Tir offered to help; Ollie scowled at him until he sat down meekly and got out a book. Bandages remained around slim fingers, catching light under distant stars.
They both knew enough not to go hunting or trapping in the Northern Territories; for one thing, it was impolite, given that some fairies could shapeshift, and for another, nobody really knew what eating too much fairy game or fruit would do to a human. Tir said that the local berries and fruit that almost-but-not-entirely resembled apricots were safe, and anyway they were still on the human side of the border; the fruit would’ve adapted itself to less-magic conditions. Oliver considered the almost-apricot and its potential for sentience and deliberate adaptation, and did not eat it.
Tirian rolled his eyes, got up and picked two, and threw one at him. “You export these, you know.”
“Well…yeah, but—wait, go sit down!”
“And you make wine out of them. Expensive wine.”
“Not me personally,” Ollie said. “I have no clue how to make wine. Yes, I know, you’ve made your point, thank you.” The not-apricot was delicious. And Tir was teasing him. And moving easily, not flinching. “Potatoes in a minute. Read your book.”
The fire crackled. The stars twinkled. Night-birds made crystalline swooping noises in the forest. And Tirian had a book, and Ollie drew small loose sketches of leaping flames and many-petaled flowers and tall opalescent trees, and the night settled in, contented. As much as possible, in any case.
He wanted to check under Tir’s bandages, but did not want to interrupt his fairy, when Tir was comfortable. He put aside confrontation with that conundrum for a moment.
He wanted to sit here beside the firelight and their packs, and not move forward to the North and a Seeing Pool and a destiny. Why couldn’t this be his destiny, he thought, an unshaped glimpse of desire without words. Why couldn’t everything be this, here and now?
