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Tir had liked snow and rain and storms, but had never liked grey flat days if they came over and over and endlessly, monotonous, dull. Oliver had known this for years, and so had consistently bought in advance one or two melodramatic volumes of ghost stories or unlikely romances or tales about long-ago monks chatting with men visiting in airships from other worlds. He always hid them away to bring out on precisely those days. And Tir always—
The latest volume sat squashed between mattresses in his bed. He forgot it was there until he tasted parchment and touched hardness through those mattresses and eiderdowns one night, courtesy of his shiny new magical senses.
When he ran fingertips over the cover, a firebird etched in scarlet and saffron seemed to sing; this one was a book of impressively erotic interpretations of fairy legends, and he was pretty sure someone had sex with the firebird at one point, and he’d thought it’d make his fairy laugh out loud.
He left the book on his bedside table. He fell asleep with it in sight.
He never learned to sleep more easily. The dreams came and came, night after night.
In the dreams he was a hero. In the dreams he saved Tir, or he died with Tir, or he rode back to the Seeing Pool and wept with joy because Tir was standing there whole and hale and laughing, telling him it was all a nightmare, making a cheerful face as wind tugged dark hair into pale eyes—
Oliver smiled as he held court audiences and heard his people’s petitions, in daylight. He began assuming more responsibility, at first as some way to fill the days, and then because to his own surprise he wasn’t bad at finding solutions and administering justice. Meetings with the farmers, with the silk weavers. Discussions with the guilds, about taxes, in the Small Council chamber or in his study. He found that that wasn’t so bad; he could listen, and he was patient, and he wanted to help, and he thought maybe his people knew that.
He was trying to listen more. Better. The way he hadn’t, with Tir.
One day a woman he didn’t know—one of the weavers, but not someone Ollie’d met yet—brought him a gift, a knitted blanket in soft tawny wool; she came in during audience hours, simply to deliver it. She said that the story had spread, that his people told it and spoke of him and cared for him. The Prince who knew grief. The Prince who’d been rescued by, and lost, a fairy-love.
Ollie couldn’t talk. He clung to the blanket, hands desperate, buried in golden folds. She understood, and touched his arm, gently, and left.
More petitioners came through his office, asking him to please look up official land-boundary markers to settle a dispute, to relieve one village of tax debt after a bad harvest, to find a position in the stables for a young orphan whose aunt couldn’t afford to take him in. Oliver listened.
More and more of them brought gifts, gradually at first and then in a spreading tender wave. They weren’t bribes or requests; most people who brought something did not even have a real request.
They brought the kind of homespun heartfelt offerings they’d give to a village friend: canned peaches and fresh-baked bread, a quilt that resembled starry skies, a carved pouncing kitten made of wood, a small iron charm against heartsickness made by one blacksmith who’d always previously denied having a fairy great-grandmother. Oliver loved them all, with the patched-up anguish his heart’d become, with all he’d got left; and he found an apprentice groom’s position for the boy, and granted the tax exemption, and sent castle pages to retrieve the relevant dusty old town charters.
He went on. He was a good Heir, or he tried to be. He existed.
He dreamed about Tir. He did not believe they were real dreams—he knew better—but he loved those dreams, and hated those dreams, and wanted to stay with Tir, and wanted to shout at Tir for never letting him know, for not giving Oliver a chance to say goodbye, or I hope you’d be proud of me, or I love you.
The dreams got sharper, brighter, more urgent. Oliver wondered why. He would’ve thought the opposite, if he’d tried to guess. But they felt more vivid. Clearer, and intense. Starkly outlined. Himself seeing Tir, rescuing Tir—coming back to find Tir, there in that black-hued ravine—
Oliver, Tir said, turning to look at him, the two of them standing close. Tir’s hair was loose, tugged by wind; he was wearing blue, the outfit he’d worn on that horrible morning. He looked like himself, like everything Oliver’d ever taken for granted, loved, lost. Oliver, look at me.
You’re not real.
I’m real.
You mean you’re real for me. Because I love you.
No—if you look—
I can’t, Oliver whispered. I can’t. You’re not here. I failed you and you’re dead.
He woke sobbing. Tir’s face, Tir’s wide shocked eyes, Tir holding out one bandaged hand—
But that wasn’t Tir alive. That was a dream.
But it came back the next night. And the next.
Four weeks to the day, in the night, he stood in the ravine yet again. No dragon. No Seeing Pool. Stars above, though, framed by stone: the distant diamond gleam of possibilities, cool and clear.
Yes, Tir said, appearing beside him. Tir looked the same: long shimmer-dark hair, long dark eyelashes, worried face. Clarity. Thank you.
I know why you’re here, Oliver told him. I know why you’re haunting me. In my dreams. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.
Oliver, Tir said, you don’t need to apologize, you turnip! Also, when did you grow a beard?
Ollie froze, in dream-space. Stared at him.
