by Megan Derr
He stared at the hundreds of pages stacked neatly to one side of his desk, held down by a paperweight of marble carved to display a well-endowed mermaid. Shaking his head, he added the final pages to the bundle and neatly bound the whole with ribbon.
Then he simply stared some more, until the sound of the front door opening drew his attention. Thomas called a greeting, but did not open the study door, having well-learned that when it was closed, it was best to keep it that way.
If it was snowing, Thomas must be chilled to the bone. He should go and fix something, but what to do with the tale now that he had actually written it? Was it fit for other eyes, or would he simply set himself up for another humiliation.
Did it really matter? After all he had gone through, did it really matter to be mocked for one more thing? Anyway, if he showed it to Roger… he was in the village, too far away to travel further up the mountain simply to mock and deride him. Roger would simply send him a tactful note if it was an abomination.
And, he admitted, hadn't reading been the point of all this? What did it matter to tell a tale of Meir if no one ever read the tale?
Decision made, even if he was still anxious, he picked his pen up again and pulled out fresh paper to pen a letter to Roger, asking him to read the story and tell him truly if it was at all horrendous. Then, before he could talk himself out of it, he wrapped the whole so that it would be safe from the inclement weather.
Then he went to find Thomas, who proved to be making himself quite at home in the kitchen. "Hello, my lord," he said in surprise.
Alcor shook his head at the honorific and said, "Shall I make you porridge, Thomas? I think that's all I've got about the place."
"Yes, my lord—I mean, that's all you've got." He smiled sheepishly, scrubbing a hand through his dark, curly hair. "You don't have to make me anything."
Waving the words aside, Alcor set his package upon the table and went to make porridge. He motioned to the package while he did it. "I'd like you to take that to your father. There is no rush to reply, tell him that for me. I also understand completely if the reply is not a positive one, hmm?"
"Yes, my lord," Thomas said, making tea as the water came to a boil and setting one cup out for Alcor. "Um—if you don't mind my saying, my lord… you look much better."
Alcor paused in what he was doing, startled. "Do I?" he finally managed.
"Not as, umm… dark?"
"Bleak, I should think," Alcor said. "I suppose I'm not. Thank you. Was it hard getting up the mountain?"
"Oh, no, I'm an old hand at it now," Thomas said with a grin, and with that any nervousness abated, and he began to talk and talk about everything, as though he had been saving it up to share for the past year.
Alcor smiled faintly and set the porridge out as it finished, adding what he could from usable herbs and spices to flavor it. He sipped at his tea, listening until the chatter finally eased and Thomas' hunger was sated. "As divine as your company is, young sir, you had best get home. The look of the clouds is not promising, and you do not want to be caught in the middle of it."
Thomas nodded and took his dishes to the wash pail and immediately started to bundle up, picking up the well-wrapped manuscript before departing with a wave and a smile half hidden by his scarf.
He watched until Thomas was out of sight then glanced up at the sky. From the kitchen window, it had looked unpleasant. Here, out in the open, it looked positively ominous.
Yet his roses thrived. Alcor reached out to touch one near the house, stroking the petals that were soft and warm, completely immune to the bitter, cutting cold. He bent to smell it, enjoying the sweet, delicate scent of a dark red rose. Even through all his writing, he had enjoyed the roses. They had, somewhere in the course of the past, blurry year, become precious.
The wind rose up, making him shake with the cold, and he finally retreated indoors to enjoy a proper night's rest, or perhaps some reading.
Only a couple of hours later, the wind became a howl, and when he glanced out the window he saw only a world of white. Shaking his head, Alcor threw another log on the fire and settled back into his warm chair with his book and tea.
Sometime later, he was startled from his reading by a sound he did not expect to hear: a great and terrible sneeze. Another came, and he set his book down, moving to the window to peer out. The wind had mostly died, at least for the moment, and he could see patches of thin light through the whirls of white.
He could also see movement. Abandoning the study, he strode to the front door and pulled it open and stared in angry disbelief as the man in his front lawn cut a rose from one of the bushes and added it to the growing number of them lying on a piece of cloth on the ground.
"How dare you!" he called out, making the man jump and turn around, dropping a cut rose to the ground. Alcor stormed down the steps and strode over to loom over the man. "How dare you, sir, invade my private property and proceed to steal my roses!"
The man sneezed, and Alcor noticed abruptly he was rather advanced in his years and nearly blue with cold, and he was sneezing, even if he was obviously well enough to steal roses. Muttering to himself, Alcor reached out and snagged the man by his shirtfront and dragged him toward the house.
"L-l-let go of me, y-y-you—"
Alcor shoved him into the house and slammed the door shut. "Beast," he said quietly. "Go ahead and say it—or monster, if you prefer that." When the man just stood staring at him in horror, he rolled his eye and resumed with dragging the man until they were in the kitchen and more tea and porridge were on.
When the man looked reasonably recovered and mostly thawed, Alcor finally asked, "Why were you stealing my roses?"
"I wasn't trying—that is to say—" The man stopped, sighed, and tried again. "I did not have it in mind to steal them, my lord. I am afraid I did not think upon it to that point. It's only—well—" He sighed again and took a swallow of tea, seeming to prepare himself for something. "I am sorry, my lord. I have not been myself these past days." He glanced up briefly then dropped his gaze quickly back to the table. "I was called to the city a few weeks ago, because I had learned my ships had finally arrived. I'm a merchant, you see, and they were late returning. I was beginning to worry, but then they arrived, only they did not."
He seemed suddenly to wilt in his seat. "All three of them were lost at sea, and I am officially bankrupt. I had promised my children gifts and have not so much as a pence to my name. I got lost in the storm and saw your roses. My eldest, you see, adores roses. Yours thrive even in the snow! I thought, if nothing else, I could bring him a few and that would at least put a smile on one face upon my return—"
Silence fell, and Alcor felt bad for giving the man such a fright, especially if his story were true—and he was inclined to think it was, for he knew the look and feel of a lie. "Well," he said at last, "it is not as though I have only a few. Take them, then, if you like." He tried to think of something amusing to say to ease the man's obvious distress. "If he likes them, then he can come and thank me for them."
To his surprise, the man actually laughed at what Alcor considered a failed attempt at levity. "He very likely will. My son is a kind soul, and courteous to a fault. He also loves roses, as I said. I will tell him of your generosity." He finished his tea and stood as though to leave.
"Stay," Alcor said. "There are beds aplenty here, and by morning the way will be much easier to travel. We would not want you getting lost and stealing violets next, would we?"
The man laughed. "Indeed. I thank you for being so generous to a thief."
Alcor shrugged and stood. "Follow me. I will show you to a suitable bed."
Come morning, the snow had, indeed, eased enough to make travel a good deal less dangerous. "Are you certain you will not fall in a drift?" Alcor asked doubtfully.
The man laughed. "Hardly. I know these woods like the back of my hand." He laughed again, more sheepishly. "When I can see, anyway. Thank you again, my lord, for your generosity."
&n
bsp; Alcor almost laughed in weary amusement at the irony of such words being addressed to him. "Indeed.
"My son will come and thank you for the roses," the old man said before he rode off.
He waited until the old man was out of sight and only then realized he had never gotten any names. Ah, well. It hardly mattered. The man had sworn his son would come, for no good reason, but still had found it hard to look at him, and what reason was there to make his son keep that word? There was not.
That the roses were gone still bothered him, but he knew he was being ridiculous. Perhaps he was simply sick of his own company and being too long alone was affecting him. Sighing, he strode back into the house and decided that a nice, hot bath would be just the thing. By the time he got the water heated, had the bath, and dumped the water again, he would sleep for a week and wake up the much better for it.
The snow started up again a few hours later as he was dumping the last of the bath water, but it was a much lighter fall, and when he finally crawled into bed it had almost stopped completely.
He passed the next two days prowling the house restlessly, wanting to go out, but not trusting himself to know the lay of the land as the old man could claim to know it. Reading proved a futile endeavor, as he could not even sit still long enough to get the book open. He paced his study restlessly, at one point striding to the desk and pulling open the topmost drawer, but he closed it in disgust again when he realized he was trying to reach for the damned mirror.
If only the weather were clear enough for a good house cleaning. He passed a considering eye over his bookshelves, and wondered if perhaps they could stand to be reorganized. Perhaps just cleaned—
Decisio made, he headed to the kitchen to fetch what he would need from the storage closet there. Then he went to change into much older clothes and promptly set to work. He started with the books, but moved quickly to the whole of the study until it was not only cleaned, but rearranged. He looked at the new arrangement and wondered that he had never thought before to—
The knock upon the door made him jump. He stood in complete bafflement for a moment then realized someone was still knocking. Shaking his head at himself, he left the study and headed to the front door, but he froze again, realizing that he was likely to send some poor, lost idiot screaming into the woods.
But the knocking persisted, and simply to stop it, he opened the door. And felt the same punched-in-the-gut feeling he had last experienced one year ago. He stepped back slightly, hoping to hide the worst of his disfigurement. Thank the gods that it was dark out, at least. Rohese. What—what was Rohese doing here?
"Can—" he coughed, nervousness getting the better of him. "Can I help you?"
Rohese smiled, and only then did Alcor notice he held a rose in one gloved hand. "I came to thank you for the roses, my lord."
"I—I see," Alcor said and froze for a moment, then finally stepped back and held the door open a little more. "Please, come in." He drew back further still as Rohese slowly stepped into the house and pushed back the hood of his cloak, brushing snow off.
Alcor closed the door and made certain to keep carefully to the shadows as much as possible. Gods, but he was beautiful. "You should not have gone to so much trouble; the weather is hardly ideal for travel, especially for something so trivial."
Rohese only smiled again, and if there was nervousness in it, the way he did not let it get the better of him only made him more impressive to Alcor. Yet, he remembered that from before. Rohese had been miserable at his birthday party, but had approached him anyway. "Hardly trivial, my lord, when a promise was made, and you were so kind as to give up roses such as these." He lifted the one he held then brought it to his nose. "I've never seen a rose which could bloom in full snow. Is there some magic in it?"
"Yes," Alcor said slowly, "but I could not tell you the nature of it. I came by them quite accidentally. Would you care for some tea or brandy? You must be cold."
"Either or both would be splendid, I confess," Rohese said with a laugh.
"This way, then," Alcor said, utterly bemused as he led Rohese to the study, surreptitiously dousing what lights he could. If Rohese had noticed his ghastly appearance, he had given no sign of it. So, he must not have really noticed. "Make yourself comfortable, I shall go and fetch the tea." He poured Rohese a brandy and then left.
In the kitchen, he had a moment to steady himself. What were the chances that the old man's son would be Rohese? Honestly! The fates did enjoy toying with him, that much was painfully obvious. Alcor sighed and went about the familiar, comforting process of preparing tea, grateful that Thomas had never let his supply of it run out.
Though that reminded him that if Rohese were to linger, he would have to come up with food for him. Meir's teasing words of needing to know how to cook came back, and Alcor smiled faintly even as a familiar ache throbbed in his chest. He wondered how amusing Meir would find all of this—probably vastly.
All too soon the tea was ready, and Alcor returned to the study with it, setting it on the table close to the fire. He then quickly abandoned the light to retreat to the relative dark closer to the window.
"Thank you," Rohese said and gave no sign of being displeased he had to pour his own tea. "I do appreciate your generosity, especially as I have arrived quite late."
Shrugging the words off, Alcor struggled for something to say. "You're the healer, are you not?"
Rohese looked surprised, then smiled, but Alcor thought he saw something in it that did not fit. Regret, or maybe resignation. "I am, indeed. Is that why you bid me come and thank you?"
"No," Alcor replied. "I am quite beyond healing. I saw you once, in the village. That is all.
"Then I apologize," Rohese said and poured more tea, adding a bit of his earlier brandy to it.
Alcor tilted his head to the side, puzzled. "You… do not like being a healer?" Now that he could do a bit more than gawk like a mooncalf, he saw the gleam of a familiar ring on the middle finger of Rohese's right hand. He had his mother's ring and mastery of it, just as he had always wanted—unless that had changed. Alcor knew better than anyone that people did change, but Rohese had always seemed so earnest about being a healer, it seemed a strange thing for him to have come to dislike.
"I love being a healer," Rohese said. "I am sorry for my accusation, truly. My father would be aghast to know I had behaved so rudely."
"Not at all," Alcor said. "Does something trouble you about it, for all you love it?"
Rohese shook his head. "My petty insecurities are not something to be thrust upon a stranger, as kind as you are. Please, I should never have spoken as I did. Do please forget it."
"As you wish," Alcor murmured, letting the matter rest for the moment.
Smiling in gratitude, Rohese sipped his tea and turned around to face the books, expression absorbed. "You have quite the collection—so diverse. My own house is filled with little more than business journals and medical texts."
Alcor fought an urge to cross the room and stand beside him. He just couldn't. Likely the only reason Rohese had not so far been reviled was the fact he had yet to see Alcor clearly. Even a healer was only inured to so much.
He looked over the books himself and smiled faintly. "They're good companions," he said quietly. "You can help yourself, if there is something you would like."
Rohese looked at him in surprise then gave a smile that was brighter than any he had previously displayed. Gods, he really was beautiful. The hair, at some point, had been tied back, but had come mostly loose in his travels. Long strands of it spilled over his shoulders, gleaming in the firelight. He wore simple clothes, worn and frayed, but of good quality, in shades of brown and cream. "You are far too generous, my lord."
Alcor shrugged, barely stifling a laugh at such ridiculous words. He did not understand how Rohese could ever have offered gifts to what he had been. "Such formality is not necessary."
"Then what shall I call you, my lord?" Rohese asked, laughing briefly in friendly
amusement. "But I guess I have not given my name either, though if you know I am the healer, perhaps you know that as well. Nevertheless, I am Rohese Boncoer."
A name, damn it, he should have thought of that. Rohese would not, of course, remember him, but still— "Beast," he said, "is the only epithet I use anymore, really."
Rohese frowned. "Beast? That's horrible. You're hardly that."
Alcor did laugh then. "What else would you call me, healer? I admit you are the first not to recoil at the sight of me."
"I know what a real beast looks like," Rohese said, face suddenly flooding with sadness, and he turned away to look at the books again. "Though I've only met you, I know you are no beast."
The urge to move closer was so strong, he ached resisting it. He'd never known a desire or a need to comfort, but he hated the sadness in that voice. If only he had the knowledge—and the right—to soothe it. "And how, pray tell, does a true beast look?"
"Beautiful," Rohese said softly. "So beautiful he takes your breath away, even as he laughs in your face."
Alcor flinched and drew further into the shadows. "I am truly sorry you were treated so."
Rohese shook his head and, with obvious effort, turned around again. "No, it is I who must again apologize." He smiled ruefully. "I am normally better at keeping myself to myself. I came only to thank you for your generosity, my lord. Perhaps I should go before I say something I will truly regret." He set his tea down and strode to the door and out into the hallway.
Dismayed, anxious to keep him at least a little while longer, Alcor went after him, but Rohese had stopped abruptly with the front door open, staring out into a world made of pure white. The snow had returned, and with a vengeance.
"I do not think you are able to escape quite yet," Alcor said with a laugh. "You may as well come back inside for a spell."
Rohese nodded, but pulled his cloak close anyway. "I should at least run to the stable, for I left my sack there, and it has foodstuffs in it—father said you seemed to have an empty kitchen and worried you'd have no stores coming in this weather." The words made Alcor blink, but before he could speak, Rohese had vanished into the relentless snow.
