Long Shadows

Sonny

“You want to tell each other secrets?” Claude asked, pretending as though he’d been looking up at the sky the entire time and not watching me.

I wanted to say make out. Let’s make out until we start tripping. And then continue making out right the way through the trip and into the night, and not even stop until the sun comes up and we feel the morning dew through our clothes.

I chickened out.

“Whatever we say, we could blame on the drugs,” I said.

“But we’re fae, we can’t lie. On or off drugs.”

I shrugged. It had a muted effect since we were both lying down.

“You go first,” Claude said.

A smile blossomed across my face.

“I really miss my pee-bale. It was so handy when I was working in the walled gardens. Now I have to walk inside, and Jenny likes to hide the toilets. Or put them in ridiculous places. I don’t know how many times I need to tell the house a urinal on the top of a pommel horse is about as far from practical as it gets.”

Claude snorted.

“Jenny even placed a rank of judges at the sideline, and when I finished, they held up signs with grades on them. I got a seven-point-five average.”

Claude smirked at me. “Sounds like a record-scoring piss.”

A soft, distant thump echoed through the field. Both Claude and I popped up onto our elbows and craned our necks like meerkats in the desert.

“My pee-bale!” I was almost giddy with excitement. A pee-bale waited for me where the old one used to frequent. “Is that the one from before? Or a new one?”

Claude paused, tilted his head to the side like a puppy as he waited for Jenny to confirm. “It’s the one from your Remy apartment. Jenny said it stinks something rotten, so it’s probably ready to... do whatever you need it to do. It said it’ll get you another fresh one.” He paused again. “No, I’m not telling him that.”

I decided I didn’t want to know, and didn’t ask. “Thank you, Jenny.”

“Jenny says you’re welcome, weirdo.”

It was my turn to snort. “Do you feel anything yet?”

“No, do you?”

“Not yet. Now you tell me a secret.”

Claude thought for a moment. “My favourite vegetable is sprouts.”

“That’s not a secret,” I said. “We had this conversation about four weeks ago. I ate so many sprouts that for about a week, I couldn’t take a single step without a little extra jet propulsion squeaking out.”

“Gods,” Claude said, but he was still laughing. “Okay, but before sprouts seven ways my favourite vegetables were radishes.”

That admission made my tummy do weird flippy things. He’d changed his favourite vegetable because of a shared moment with me. I tried not to read too much into it. It didn’t mean anything. It was a funny experience, and I expected lots of people changed their favourite things because of random, flippant reasons like that.

“It’s not really a proper secret though, is it? Not something embarrassing or rude,” I said.

“Fine.” He puffed out a breath, thinking. It was a full minute before he answered. “I’m pretty sure I don’t want to go back to Remy. Once this is all fixed, I’m gonna... stay here at Stinkhorn Manor.”

I leaned up on my elbows again. “Oh?”

Claude was a fully grown adult. He could make these kinds of decisions. Not as though he was doing it to purposefully tear my heart open. But I wouldn’t get to see him every day in the mornings and again in the afternoon on my way to and from the uni. We wouldn’t get to date. Damn. I was really looking forward to that.

“I just... feel like I’m needed here. Nobody will miss me in Remy.”

I will, I thought. I didn’t say it aloud, though. If his heart belonged here, I shouldn’t try to convince him to come back to Remy.

“Here, people... sort of need me. Jenny would miss me. Also, seems unfair to leave Oggy and Willow alone with the residents.”

They have each other, they won’t be alone.

“And it would save a lot of travel to and from Borderlands.”

Twice a year.

Everything he said was the truth.

“I understand.” And I did. I just didn’t like it.

Because I wanted more. From life, from my research, from him—from us. I wanted there to be an us, which wouldn’t happen if I was in Remy and he was in Agaricus. Long distance never worked. Besides, we didn’t even have anything yet. Our romance was a vegetable allotment and all we’d done was plant the seeds. Seeds stood very little chance of growing by themselves without any help.

If we were a thousand miles apart, how could we possibly water those seeds?

“I have a secret,” I said, since we were already tiptoeing around bad news.

Claude said nothing. He stared at me and swallowed, like he was preparing himself for devastation.

“I have a proposal meeting with the editor-in-chief of EHK’s Society journal to talk about my most recent paper. Hopefully they’ll consider publishing me in their next edition.”

“Sonny, that’s amazing news!” Claude sat bolt upright, looming over me and blocking the early evening sun from my face.

“It is,” I agreed. “But the meeting’s on the twenty-first of June.”

“Oh,” he said.

“And she won’t do FaeTime, only an in-person meeting. I don’t know why. Some of these editors can be old school. Militant even.”

He nodded, then lifted his eyes up to the sunset.

“I haven’t decided what I’m going to do,” I said.

“No. You have to go. This is your career. This is... I mean, this transcends your career. It’s about everyone and everything. You have a shot at making a difference to the entire planet. Why would you still be undecided?”

You. Because of you. I didn’t say those words out loud.

Regardless, Claude must have heard them in my silence. “I’ll be fine. I’m sure we’ll figure out what it is I’m supposed to do before then. I expect you’ll be back in Remy long before the twenty-first, anyway. What time is the meeting?”

“Two, I think, but I ought to double check.”

“Oh,” he said again, and I realised he was doing the mental calculations. Remy was a seventeen hour drive away. Even if I hired a Sleipnir taxi driver and demanded they decimate every single speed limit along the way, I wouldn’t be present for the sunrise at four a.m. in Agaricus and make it to my meeting in Remy at two p.m.

Claude lay down again. He didn’t speak for a while, but when he did, it wasn’t to me. “No, absolutely not, Jenny. We’ll talk about it later.” A pause. “Well, does he need to be here for the ritual... No? You’ll let him go then... No, you fucking won’t. I will quit right now if you do... What’s ‘into the ether?’ You still haven’t told me... Later, Jenny... Later!”

He turned to me. “It wants to stop you from going.”

Ah, like when I first arrived and I felt a physical force holding me back, stopping me from leaving.

“I won’t let it, though. This is bigger than the house. It’s bigger than me, or you, or us.”

I nodded. My gut churned. “This isn’t really the vibe we want going into the trip.” Not that I could feel much yet, but the edges of reality were beginning to both blur and sharpen at the same time.

“Okay, tell me something that will make me smile,” Claude said, with obvious forced calm in his voice.

I dug around in my memories. “When I was a boy, I had a worm farm. It took up three-quarters of my bedroom. There was my bed, and about a foot of space on the floor, and the rest was my hand-built tank... pool, I don’t know what you’d call it. My mum hated it. Said it made the house—and me—smell disgusting, and no one would want to hang out with a worm-stink boy.” I laughed, she never meant any malice, but retrospectively I could see how annoying it must have been for her and Dad.

“Worms smell like soil though,” Claude said.

“It was a long-standing joke in my family, Sonny the worm-stink boy, but I didn’t rehome all the worms until I moved out for uni. I had thousands of them at one point. Tried to keep track of them all in a little ledger. Gave most of them names, but in the end I started calling them all Jeff. Big Jeff, Medium Jeff, Teeny Jeff. I sold them too, and used the money to buy books about the Great Naga Forests of the Kingdom and, of course, mushrooms.”

I chanced a peek at Claude. He smiled, dreamlike. “That’s so stinking cute. I can picture it vividly. Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“Six sisters, no brothers. I’m the baby, so I was the last one to move out. Do you? What were you like as a kid?”

Claude sighed. “No, no siblings, just me and Mum. I guess it was kind of lonely. My childhood... I desperately wanted a brother or sister, but my parents did not split amicably, and there was no chance they’d ever get back together. Never really saw my dad. I knew about him, knew he was a famous explorer and that he owned a big house near Agaricus. That was it. I kept hoping one day he’d show up, like a knight in shiny armour, and take me to his castle and there’d be siblings. Friends. But obviously that never happened, and after a while that longing turned to resentment, and well, here we are.”

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Claude had abandonment issues, and there I was planning on leaving him at probably the most significant moment of his life.

But this was my career. This was the future of the planet. I repeated that over and over in my head.

“Do you feel anything yet?” Claude asked, when I didn’t respond to his memories. Maybe he’d assumed I’d spaced out.

“A little. You?”

“I feel like the sky has never been more beautiful. That this time of day, with the long evening shadows, has always been my favourite, but bloody hell, it’s stunning.”

I laughed. “Are you seeing colours you never knew existed?”

“Yes!”

“That’ll be the shrooms. We should try weather glamour before they take a hold.” There was a distinct window between that intense hyper-focus the mushrooms brought—the moment when you felt like the drugs had opened a direct channel between you and infinite possibilities—and tripping so hard you’d forget your own name. Not that we’d really taken enough for the latter to happen, but it was Claude’s first trip, and who knew what he’d experience. Shrooms were organic, and therefore it was impossible to know exactly how much you’d exposed yourself to. Impossible to quantify or regulate in any real way. At least without drying, powdering, and measuring beforehand.

Claude sat up again, turned towards the stone tablet, and crossed his legs. He closed his eyes, held his hands out, and was silent for the longest time.

“Can you feel the energy?” I asked.

“Yes. It feels bubbly. Like cola in my veins.”

“Amazing. That’s the glamour. We need to concentrate on pooling it all together into your palms.”

“You keep saying we.”

I faltered. I did, didn’t I? Perhaps he didn’t want me to say “we.” After all, it wasn’t down to me to save the house. It was Claude’s responsibility.

“Can you stand up?” I said, choosing to archive the discussion on “we” until later.

“I think so.” Claude got to his feet and beamed at me as though it was his first time doing so.

“Okay, tell me if this is too close. If I’m making you uncomfortable, let me know.” I moved behind him and then slowly, so slowly it was nearly painful, I closed the gap between our bodies.

Claude’s back slotted against my front. My hands slid under his to support them. His breaths stuttered, and I had to close my eyes against the sudden onslaught to every one of my senses. His body heat pressing through his thin cotton shirt, his wide shoulders against my chest and arms, the musty, earthy scent of him invading my nostrils.

“Is this okay?” I asked, my voice too breathy, my eyes still closed.

“Yes,” he whispered back.

The plan was to start him off. Get the ball rolling quicker so we weren’t standing around waiting for the glamour to build and the drugs to wear off.

“I’m hoping I can transfer some of my energy to you.” I felt the magic drawing from my core and funnelling into my hands, and then almost evaporating into Claude’s. The surrounding air crackled. Claude gasped. He could feel it, too.

“Okay, I’m going to step back. Keep that energy there.” I eased a gap under his hands and between our bodies, so we no longer touched. I took another step away and came to stand by his side. “Now, push! Throw all the energy—the glamour—into the clouds.”

Claude closed his eyes, but the very next second a bolt cleaved into the sky and smashed down onto the stone tablet at Claude’s feet. And just as quickly, it was over. White lines striped the centre of my vision. I blinked them away.

Claude laughed, and spun around, pulling me into an embrace. “We did it! We did it!”

He did it, too. Said “we.”

He pulled away and looked upwards. “Was that it, Jenny? Was that the ritual?”

“Well?” I said, after apparent silence.

“It says, ‘yeah, whatever. Warmer.’”

“So, that’s it or not?”

Claude paused. “It says it can’t tell us when we’re right, it can only say when we’re definitely wrong. It says the shrooms are not part of the ritual but maaaybe I should practise the lightning more.”

“Oh.”

His smile morphed into a laugh. “So, that’s it then, no? If Jenny can’t tell us when we’re right, but it tells me to keep practicing, it has to be the lightning!”

I forced my expression to mirror Claude’s. Pulled my lips into a smile. Something didn’t sit quite right, but I couldn’t pinpoint what. “We should still explore other avenues. Just in case.”

“Of course,” he said. “Yeah. For sure.” He nodded, his smile dropping only slightly. He sat down again and placed his hand on the tablet. “Still warm.”

I sat next to him to feel it, but at that moment, he moved, and his fingers brushed mine. He whipped them away, and a physical ache ripped through my chest.

“Should I try singing to it like you suggested earlier?” he said.

“That’s a great idea.”

He cleared his throat. “Okay...” he said, but didn’t begin singing. “Maybe if I get real close to it.” He leaned down, his face next to the tablet, and took a deep breath. And still didn’t start singing. “I just...”

“I don’t think it matters what you sing,” I added, because my guess was Claude felt shy. “Sing a nursery rhyme.”

Colour flushed his cheeks. “I don’t actually know any nursery rhymes. I only know the lyrics for one song. But it’s...”

“Cheesy?”

“It’s cheesy as fuck. Try not to listen, yeah?”

“I’ll try.” I made a show of putting my fingers in my ears.

“Okay.” Claude screwed up his face, paused again, and began humming the opening beats of a vaguely familiar tune. It conjured images of an acoustic guitar and a piano. Soft, melodic, somewhere between a lullaby and a country song. He opened his mouth.

“Because when you’re not here, you can still be with me. When you’re with her, that’s not what I will see.”

I knew this song, but I couldn’t think of the name. It was old. Twenty, thirty years. Claude looked to the heavens again, perhaps waiting for Jenny to say something, but continued singing quietly regardless.

“I let you drive to her house. Let you leave me again and again and again. Because when I’m alone, that’s when we’ll be together. In my dreams, that’s when we are one.”

He hid his eyes behind his palm.

“In my dreeaaams. In my dreeaaams. You and I are one in my dreams.”

Cosmos Roison, that was the singer. A human. He had died a few years ago from old age. The song was called “When You Are Mine”.

Claude finished his singing, but kept his hands over his face. “Did that work?”

I figured he must be talking to Jenny.

He removed his hand and rolled his eyes. “It’s laughing. It says, ‘don’t be so fucking ridiculous.’” He flipped onto his back and slid down on the blanket, his head next to the tablet. “Worth a try, I guess. I apologise you had to listen to my gods-awful singing.”

I lay next to him. “I think you have a beautiful singing voice.” Sure, the pitch was off and it was out of tune. Sure, there was bass where I didn’t remember there being bass. Didn’t stop his version from being beautiful, though.

Claude lifted his head to frown at me. I shrugged, and he lay down again.

“Okay, this feels kind of nice,” he said after a few minutes’ pause. He held his hands up above his face and turned them over, inspecting his palms and wiggling his fingers. The sun was on its ultimate moments of the day. Darkness spread over the grass like a rising tide. “Feels otherworldly. Like... soft, and wonderful, and harmonious.”

“It’s pretty cool, huh?”

Claude was quiet for a few more minutes, the buzz stealing our focus intermittently.

“I’m glad you’re here with me,” he said. He said it so quietly I wasn’t sure if I heard him correctly. “She’s wrong, though.”

“Yeah, she is. Wait, who’s wrong?”

“I love hanging out with the worm-stink boy.”

Oh.

When I opened my eyes next, the sun had shifted from the west to the east. Its soft pink luminance marbled the sky. The scent of Claude filled my nostrils, and I realised he’d placed his jacket over my bare arms like a blanket. I was suddenly aware of the chill and the damp.

“Claude,” I whispered, nudging him gently. “Claude, we fell asleep. Let’s go inside.”

He peeled his eyes open, and swung them lazily to me. “Sonny. You’re still here.” My heart flipped over in my chest, but then he seemed to gain more of his senses back. He pushed himself into a seated position. “Did we sleep? Outside?” He glanced around. “It’s morning?”

“Maybe five, five thirty. Come on.”

We stopped by my pee-bale on our way to the house and stood side by side.

“This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever done,” Claude said, laughing as he peed.

Jenny was right, the bale smelled ripe. I should ask the house for a new one so I could spread this one out on the soil in the walled gardens.

We decided that even though technically it was morning, we were both still tired and wanted to get some proper sleep in an actual bed. So we stripped down to our underwear and crawled into Claude’s four-poster bed sans PJs.

Claude was the first to drift off. His earlier rendition of “When You Are Mine” floated through my thoughts.

In my dreams. In my dreams.

How painfully apt those lyrics felt. I flipped onto my side. The sheets were cool against my bare flesh. My fingers made contact with something soft and warm. Claude’s hand. In the middle of the bed. Almost as though he was waiting for me to take it in mine.

I wrapped my pinky and ring fingers around his, and after a few moments, reality and everything surrounding me slid away like oil straining through a cloth.