: a transformable melody that recurs in every movement of a multi-movement work
“So then she said, ‘Listen, my tad knows where I am, and he’ll be looking for me soon.’ Like she was afraid I was going to kidnap her or something!”
“She—” Ellis was laughing so hard he was nearly bent in half. “Over crowberries?”
“Well, to be fair, it was the last pint anywhere in the markets, and I make an epic tart. I might’ve been a touch… strident.” Milo grinned. “I really wanted those crowberries.”
Ellis had to lean against the railing, weak-kneed, roaring out an open, shameless laugh. Milo chortled along with him for the length of time it took him to wonder if that story was necessarily one he should have told to someone like Ellis. Ellis probably never got into arguments over produce in the markets. And if he did, his challenger would likely hand the item of contention over with a wink and a coy smile, rather than worry he might do untoward things to them without their permission.
So, basically, in one short tale, it had just been pointed out to Ellis that Milo was sort of a git when it came to social interaction, and that his neighbors thought he might be the sort to assault and/or kidnap someone over crowberries. That was sure to impress any suitor.
Milo tugged his gaze away from the addicting display of Ellis laughing and back toward the beach below. He pulled his scarf tighter. It was bloody freezing out here.
Brookings in late autumn was much like Whitpool in late autumn, or really any coastal village in northern Kymbrygh—cold and windy and wet. As though to make up for it, or perhaps in stubborn defiance, Brookings took great glee in, and any excuse for, festivals, and so seemed to have one for almost anything once or twice a month. Milo didn’t know if the timing was purposeful on Ellis’s part, but Milo was beyond pleased to find this trip coincided with the tail end of Seal Whelping and the considerably livelier opening of the Oyster Fest. Livelier because it—not accidentally, Milo was certain—corresponded with the Sparkling Wines Exhibition.
Milo could really use a glass of that right now. Or six.
Ellis, calmer now, leaned over the railing, elbow settling snug against Milo’s, and peered down the cliffs at the fat gray seals lounging on Ynys Sêl’s rocky beach and the wee pudgy milk-white pups flopping and bouncing and cracking out their sharp little barks. Shags watched, vigilant, from the cliffs just below the observation deck, while gannets and gulls swooped through a sky hung low and gray.
“You don’t see the pups in Whitpool, then?” Ellis’s eyes were on the beach below, but his arm was a solid strip of warmth alongside Milo’s.
Milo dared to lean into it just a bit. “We do. It’s only that some of the thermal springs dump into the sea right at the coastline, and it makes the water there too warm for them. Plus the dragons will hunt anything that close to the preserve. The seals out our way whelp at Gard Dafina’s, all the way out past Doorway Falls, and....” Milo trailed off, unwilling say that he just really didn’t go anywhere, didn’t do much at all, honestly, besides tool about his mam’s house, fixing what needed fixing, taking care of the preserve, and, occasionally, embarrassing himself at the markets.
It was a new feeling, this, a novel realization that, when faced with Ellis and his apparent worldliness, Milo was sort of a rube, even despite his years at school in “the big city.” He had no friends in Whitpool. Those he’d made in Llundaintref had since scattered to their various home quarters at all points of the Preidynīg Isles, and only two thus far had bothered to write Milo back. Whitpool itself hadn’t got much better since Milo’d been home, the villagers pleasant enough when he saw them but unmistakably wary of him, determined to stay acquaintances and nothing more.
Apparently, the most remarkable thing about Milo was that he’d gone away to school. Now that he was back, he was only some vaguely recognizable nobody who was as much of an outsider as Cennydd, but for different reasons.
Ellis, on the other hand, seemed to have no end of tales of adventures with his boyos, or places he’d been to on Warden business, or people he’d met through getting the Croft back to respectability and who’d become allies or even friends in the process. He’d always been charming, but now he was interesting too, and damnably good-looking. Every time Milo found himself laughing at something Ellis said, or listening, rapt, to one of Ellis’s stories, or staring, equally rapt, into Ellis’s gray eyes as they sparked or simmered or flared depending on what he was talking about, well.
“I imagine it’s difficult to get away from Old Forge.” Ellis shifted, still looking down the cliff at the seals on the beach, grinning when a pup splashed tip-over-tail into the water with a surprised little squawk. But his arm wound through Milo’s with casual ease, like he did it all the time. “Especially since it’s all more or less down to you now.”
Milo shrugged. “It was always going to be.” He tugged his coat tighter and let himself lean in closer. It was freezing up here with a faceful of cold ocean wind. “It was hard to get used to, with Nain gone, but I think I’m managing all right.”
“Of course you are.” Ellis turned to give Milo a smile. “Somehow, I’m thinking, the only one who ever doubted that was you.” His smile turned to a wicked little grin when Milo’s mouth flapped. “I was only asking because I’m wondering how difficult it’s going to be to do this again.”
Milo’s brow crinkled, mouth turning down in bemusement as he peered down the cliffs. “This?”
“Meeting up,” Ellis said, looking down at the seals again, but cutting sideways glances at Milo like he couldn’t look directly at him. Like he was nervous. “I was thinking maybe once a month, you know? Here in Brookings.”
“You… what, now?”
“Well, it’s rather in the middle for us, yeah? Sort of. And they’ve always got something going. So I thought maybe—”
“You want to do this again?”
Ellis rolled his eyes. “Well, not this.” He waved at the seals. “It’s only once a year, innit?”
“But. I mean.” Milo was tempted to pull back so he could get a good look at Ellis’s face. But it was cold and Ellis was warm and pressed against Milo like he belonged there. “We only just got here.”
“Yeeeees?” Ellis was grinning again, his tone teasing. “I’m aware we only just got here. But, unfortunately, keeping you here forever or stealing you away to Wellech would be against the law. So I thought we might arrange to meet here on the regular.” It only took a moment for the grin to lose its devilish edge and begin to slide into something uncertain when Milo only blinked stupidly. Ellis straightened and cleared his throat. “I mean. That is. We can just… agree to not—”
“No.” Milo honestly didn’t want to hear how that ended. And he really didn’t want that look on Ellis’s face one second longer. “I mean yes.”
Ellis lifted his eyebrows, cautious. “Care to unpack that a bit?”
Milo’s internal flailing was reaching alarming proportions.
Not ten minutes ago, he’d come to the novel conclusion that he was, in fact, incredibly dull. And rather a dolt. Ellis, in no uncertain terms, was absolutely not either of those things. That Ellis could do a lot better than Milo wasn’t a new thought, but it had rather hit harder at every look Ellis received—at the station, hiring a buggy out to the peninsula to see the seals; here on the soggy decking where people were supposed to be watching the seal pups they’d paid to see and not staring at Ellis. Except they were, and Milo couldn’t stop noticing and wondering if they were all thinking the same thing he was—What the deuce is he doing with someone like that?—as he sank down into a depressing little pool of self-pitying angst that would make Cennydd look like the amateur he was.
And yet here Ellis was, asking, like he’d done when he’d sent the contract offer, taking that first step that had been so paralyzingly terrifying for Milo that he hadn’t even considered it a real possibility. With anyone, let alone Ellis. And not only had Ellis done it for him—he was taking the next as well.
<
br /> Milo sighed like a character in a penny romance. “I want to be you when I grow up.”
Luckily, he’d only mush-mouthed it, and the wind had kicked up, so when Ellis frowned, leaned in and asked, “What?” Milo merely shook himself and gave Ellis an embarrassed little smile.
“I’d like that. To see you, I mean. Here.” Milo rolled his hand and tried to make his mouth behave. “On the regular. Like you said.”
Ellis’s face lit up, pleased, and he leaned back with a grin. “There’s lovely, then. Now that’s settled.” He dug out his pocket watch and gave it a quick glance. “It’s getting on. We’d best go if we want to make the picture show.”
IT WAS… sort of breathtaking, actually.
Honestly, Milo hadn’t been expecting much when Ellis had led him to what looked like any other storefront along the Brookings High Street except for the posters and playbills pasted to the windows. And the interior wasn’t any more impressive. A screen only as big as a splayed broadsheet was positioned at the front of the narrow room. Rows of hard wooden chairs were set so close together Milo wondered if he was going to have to sit with his knees tucked up to his chin. He was just deciding that being forced to squash up next to Ellis might not be a bad thing when the lights were put out, the music started, and....
Nothing like the Dynamoscopes Milo had seen in Llundaintref. Those only cranked a series of consecutive still pictures like flipping illustrated pages fast enough to make a one-minute slapstick comedy in exchange for a 5p. This was so much better. For one, it wasn’t a stack of individual pictures stuck on a roll—Milo had watched the reel moving through the projector almost as much as he’d watched the picture itself, fascinated. And the story unfolding on the little screen at the front of the crowded room was… well, on its own, it would likely have been predictable and a little melodramatic; except watching a story that had been played out hundreds of miles away, told to him through a machine that worked very much like magic, made it all into something rather sublime.
He’d been to the opera once, when his mam came to visit him at school and decided they both could stand to acquire a bit of culture. (They hadn’t acquired anything, in the end, except the firm opinion that opera was for other people.) He’d seen a revue show with a group of classmates when there wasn’t enough money to pay for the roundtrip ferry to go home for his birthday, but just enough to indulge in a risqué bit of theater. (It wasn’t terribly risqué, really; Milo had seen more skin in the team dressing rooms at his rounders games. The music had been wonderfully catchy, though.) The theaters had been plush and sumptuous and lit bright with gigantic electroliers, tea served between acts, and people strutting about in expensive silks and wools.
This—uncomfortable wooden chairs; cramped spaces; cheap beer; eye-popping new technology; Ellis snugged right up close—this was definitely more to Milo’s tastes.
“That was....” Ellis was starry-eyed as they tumbled back out into the street, cold, wet wind smacking them in the face and pulling them close without thought.
“It was!” Milo flailed, too overwhelmed and excited to even keep his ungloved hands in his pockets. “The dragons were clearly fake and kind of awful, but the train crash! And the explosions! They had to have had real magic for that. Maybe the heroine is a real mage and wasn’t only playing one. There’s no way anyone could live through it otherwise. Did you see it? It was huge! And the heroine just walked through it!”
“Could a powerful mage do that?” Ellis peered at Milo with a squint and steered them toward a side street. “Could you?”
“Ha! Well.” Milo thought about it. “I mean, the strength of the shield one can conjure depends on how good they are, of course, as well as how strong. Plus, there are different shields for different threats. Shielding fire was one of the first things Nain taught me, and your mam endlessly drilled me on technique, since you never know when you might need one with dragons. They’re sort of shirty, rubbish arseholes sometimes, and especially when they know you can defend against them. It’s like they test you only for the fun of scaring you witless once in a while.”
Ellis blinked. “Wait. Are you saying they’ve shot fire at you before? To test you?” He shook his head, clearly disapproving. “These creatures that you take care of occasionally try to kill you. For… fun.”
“Oh, sure. Well, not try to kill. At least I don’t think so. But who knows why they do anything, really? Nain always said spewing at you is their way of showing love, making sure you can defend yourself against one that doesn’t have good intentions. Mam maintains it’s one of their many ways of being gits.”
“And what do you think?”
“I guess....” Milo thought about it some more. “It depends. They spew at each other all the time. It’s a way of… keeping in shape, I guess? Staying on their game.” Milo paused, trying to find the proper words. “I think they see us almost as part of their clan, only different from them and without the scales that would protect us from their fire, or the fire of a dragon that’s not clan. So it’s as though they’re trying to teach us to be on our guard, you know? And, as far as I know, they’ve never actually incinerated anyone just for fun.”
“There’ve been serious run-ins over the years, though.”
“Well, of course. They’re still wild animals. But those were people who’d tried to hurt them or steal an egg or something. And I’ve never heard of a case where they shot fire at someone who wasn’t capable of shielding themselves, or someone who wasn’t trying to hurt them in some way. And it’s not like you can’t tell it’s coming. Well, as long as you’re not completely uneducated. All you have to do is watch for the signs. Fuel drooling out the sides of their mouths and fire moving up their throats are pretty obvious warnings. The growls and ear-splitting roars are sort of giveaways, too, yeah?”
“Sure, but.” Ellis looked somewhat dubious, tugging Milo across a small open square where people were setting up temporary stalls, complete with stoves and steamers, for the Oyster Fest. “Not everyone sees them every day, you know? We get a few of them flying over Wellech during migration, but they almost never land, so not many get to see them up close. I suppose not many want to. Or should.”
“But you know the warning signs.”
“I do.”
“There you go, then. Good. I was beginning to wonder what Kymbrygh schools were teaching children these days. Someone at your mam’s party actually asked me if ‘dragonkin’ means I’ve somehow got dragon blood in me.”
Ellis barked a laugh. “You’re making that up!”
“I’m not! And he was serious, too. Like he honestly thought it was possible!”
“I’m trying to picture....” Ellis couldn’t finish, cackles getting in the way, but he shook his head and took a steadying breath. “I mean. You’d have to have… hatched, and… stone the crows, I don’t want this in my brain, but… Ceri—roosting!”
“Oi!” Milo punched Ellis in the shoulder, though considering the size of it and Milo’s frozen fingers, it didn’t do much damage. Ellis’s laughter was, Milo was finding, highly contagious, and it was deucedly difficult to keep the injured scowl Milo was going for. “It’s in my brain now, you stonking great git. Ta for that.”
“If I have to see it, so do you.”
“I’m going to tell her you said that.”
It didn’t stop Ellis from laughing harder. They’d stopped walking somewhere in there, standing now off to the side, out of the way of people coming and going, arms still locked at the elbow. Ellis was laughing so hard he dropped his forehead down to Milo’s shoulder, gently whacking a few times, hot breath puffing through the gaps in Milo’s scarf and down his collar. It should’ve made Milo even colder, but instead it heated him right through.
And that was it. Milo was gone. Though, to be fair—who wouldn’t be? So when Ellis made a serious effort to catch his breath, and managed to say, “Save me, I can’t stop seeing it,” Milo opened his mouth, unthinking, and answered, “I’ll take you to see real
dragons up close. That’ll turn the trick.”
“Yeah? Something needs to.” Ellis was down to breathless snickers now, but he didn’t seem to twig to what Milo was actually saying. Asking.
Which, fair play—Milo hadn’t either until it had come out his mouth all by itself. Still, though. It wasn’t as though Milo hadn’t wanted to say it.
And yet, Milo hesitated, abruptly anxious, before plowing on, “Would you…? I mean, it’s only that… well, it seems that maybe…augh.” He set his jaw. “That is. Would you like to see dragons up close?”
“Well, who wouldn’t?” Ellis grinned. “But it’s not as though there’s much chance of… oh.” Apparently having caught the import—or maybe just what Milo suspected was a deeply pathetic look on his part—Ellis lifted his eyebrows and broadened his smile, clearly pleased. “I’d really like that. Yeah.”
Milo had to look away, though he was smiling too. Something no doubt besotted and highly embarrassing, so it was just as well.
He hadn’t realized they’d stopped almost right on top of what must be Brookings’s version of Preachers’ Row, not until he registered the distinctive wailing cadences of sermonizing coming from the men and women who’d set up podiums and pulpits from which to lecture, each trying to out-shout the other. A deliberate gauntlet, no doubt, one each festival-goer was going to have to endure if they wanted to reach the prize of the actual festival on the other side. Milo caught snippets of “The masses assaulting our borders must be turned back!” and “The Triple Goddess needs no handmaids!” He gave Ellis a look that was probably a bit desperate, because Ellis snorted and unlaced their arms, snagged up Milo’s hand and hauled him right down the middle.
It was strange how the next moments skidded by so fast they were almost blurred and yet in retrospect crawled so slowly Milo could almost count his heartbeats slip-thudding in uneven bursts. The thick aroma of steaming oysters blundered into the sweeter haze of sugary cakes fried in oil. Music came from just over the low ridge, something sprightly and made for dancing. Men and women in their fashionable high-hats scuttled past the obstacle course of proselytizers, or paused to listen.
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