Lyle's Story

by Kay Berrisford

  “Ben,” he whispered, “this isn’t your fight.”

  “Stop arguing with me, love,” said Ben, and Lyle wondered if he detected the merest hint of a wry laugh. The Wise Ma, meanwhile, regarded both of them with placid interest.

  “Shall I send the troublesome human away?” said Emmet. “I did not ask the birds to bring him. His presence was a mistake.”

  “There are many mistakes in this universe,” said the Wise Ma. “This man’s being here is not one of them.” Sil fixed on Lyle alone again. “I would like to hear your answer now. Do you plead guilty or not guilty to the charge of murder levied by your cousin?”

  “I honestly don’t remember what happened,” said Lyle, finding himself rewarded with a squeeze from Ben. “But it’s my word against Emmet’s, and he saw what he saw.”

  “Did he indeed?” The Wise Ma swivelled sils skewering gaze onto Emmet; Lyle sagged into Ben, as if sils scrutiny had been somehow sustaining as well as impaling him. Maybe conjuring the pizza had drained him after all. Ben caught him and patted his midriff. “There’s only one way to find out,” sil continued. “I need to break into one of your heads to discover what was actually witnessed.”

  “What?” squeaked Lyle and Emmet as one.

  The Wise Ma explained the process, which turned out to be a magical one, as opposed to the physical operation Lyle, and no doubt Emmet, had momentarily feared. Through the power of hypnotism and enchantment, the Wise Ma could transfer the essence of sils consciousness into either Emmet’s or Lyle’s memories. There, sil could uncover everything, including experiences that the individual under examination had forgotten or repressed.

  “The process is not without risk,” sil admitted. “It can cause great distress to the subject being interrogated. In worse cases, it can cause madness… or death.”

  “You better get into Lyle’s silly little head, then,” said Emmet. “It probably won’t make much difference. The child’s mind is already addled as a pickled eel’s.”

  “If you call me a child one more time,” growled Lyle, “I’m going to ram your bloody tentacles up your ruddy—”

  “Sssh, it’s not worth it.” Ben, still tight at Lyle’s side, restrained him and glared collectedly up at the Wise Ma. “Is that really the only method you can think of?”

  “There is a way to ease the passage and lessen the risk,” sil said. “That is, to blend my consciousness with one who loves the subject and let them probe with me.” Sil turned back to Emmet. “Have you one who would do this for you?”

  “He’s had at least six wives,” mumbled Lyle. “There ought to be a queue.”

  “There is not though, is there,” said the Wise Ma, answering for Emmet as he scowled and flinched away. “The Lord Emmet has little love in his heart, and so his heart is unloved in return. But you?” For a brief instant, the swirling mists in sils eyes calmed as sil smiled down at Ben. “You love Lyle dearly, and he you. Love sparkles from your every move.”

  Ben matched sils smile with his own tremulous one and shrugged. “It’s all a bit of a no-brainer, isn’t it?”

  “It’s your brain I’m worried about,” said Lyle. He’d passed beyond anguish. He felt drained and so, so tired of having his heart and soul battered from all angles. Every time he tried to let go, to plummet into the abyss, Ben refused to let him fall. “Really, I can’t let you do this. There must be a terrible risk for everyone involved, right?”

  The Wise Ma nodded. Ben pecked the tip of Lyle’s nose. “I’m not asking you to let me, love. I want to do this. I’m not scared of what I’ll see.”

  “I am,” muttered Lyle, then he gnashed his teeth as Emmet leaned forward to ruffle his hair.

  “You should be,” drawled Emmet. “Oh, Lyle, my little cousin—just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse? Your own darling lover boy is going to prove that you’re a murderer.”

  Lyle gratefully latched onto his fury with Emmet—anything to not have to dwell on the true purport of Emmet’s words. “You do realize that ‘little cousin’ qualifies for the same punishment as ‘child’?”

  “It’s still not worth it.” Ben’s palliative touch, once again, pulled Lyle back from the brink. He allowed Ben to brace his shoulders, easing him around so they were face-to-face. Ben offered another slight smile, which Lyle read as encouragement. Then Ben peeped up at the Wise Ma. “What do we need to do?” asked Ben.

  Under the Wise Ma’s instructions, sil, Ben, and Lyle crouched on the damp ground, holding hands to form a triangle. Emmet leaned, sneering and languorous, against the highest side of the cave. Lyle loathed the idea of embarking on this dangerous experiment in Emmet’s presence. The notion of leaving Ben’s fragile human body unguarded sent shudders down his spine. On the other hand, even Emmet wouldn’t be so outrageous as to attack with the Wise Ma present. So, reluctantly, he placed both his and Ben’s welfare in sils care.

  The Wise Ma fixed deeply in Ben’s eyes and hummed gently. “Will you welcome me, dear one?” sil asked.

  Ben nodded, still forcing a brittle smile. Lyle perceived the truth from the harsh clamp of Ben’s hand and the clench of his jaw—Ben was scared rigid.

  The Wise Ma uncoiled two tentacle-like fins and massaged Ben’s scalp and hair. Lyle watched on, his dread ratcheting up a whole new notch as Ben’s eyes grew so wide Lyle detected the whites. Next, Ben’s gaze turned vacant and blank, as if his life-force had withdrawn. His grip on Lyle stayed tight as ever, though.

  When he wakes up, he’ll know the truth. He might not love me anymore.

  The Wise Ma ceased messing up Ben’s already bedraggled hair and pinned her scrutiny on Lyle.

  “No.” Lyle shook his head abruptly. “I don’t want this. Don’t let him in… I don’t know why I agreed to this… I can’t!”

  “That’s as good as a confession,” said Emmet. “He’s guilty as hell.”

  “Ssssssssssssh.” The Wise Ma’s soothing hush quelled Lyle’s panic. Sils fins slid through his hair, lulling and comforting him. “Let us in.” The mists in sils eyes cleared, revealing irises painted Ben’s soulful brown hue. “We are as one now, Ben and I. Let us in, Lyle.”

  Deep inside, Lyle sagged and surrendered. He accepted sils contemplation, grew sleepy and tired. Then the ground disintegrated beneath him, and he tumbled through it.

  ~~*

  Lyle landed nowhere, in a realm of blank, lost, loneliness, which stretched in every direction forever and ever and ever. He’d not even got his body anymore. He’d miss that, and the fun it’d given him.

  So sil had found the truth already and condemned him.

  He should’ve despaired for good. Instead, he reached deep inside the floating essence of himself that remained and discovered a speck of grit. He’d been somewhere nearly this bad before and he’d survived. He’d do it again… but then the revelation struck. This time, enduring the endless swathes of time would be much worse. He’d loved now. He’d miss Ben. Loving Ben made surrendering to his fate much harder.

  With a crack, his body returned to him. A flat sheen of water formed a surface beneath his feet, reflecting a lambent light through the darkness. The pool was placid, with scarce a ripple. Lyle stared down at it and discerned a moving shape beneath the surface.

  A drowning man, legs kicking and arms thrashing wildly.

  Without thinking, Lyle threw himself flat on the water, which held him as if it were solid as a table-top. He reached downward, grasped an arm, and with little effort, dragged a surprisingly dry-looking Ben upward. They stood on the surface, toe-to-toe. Ben was naked save some straggling threads of greenish pond weed. These streaked his body and formed a modest cloth about his loins, while leaving his upper thighs and arse utterly bare.

  Yup, Ben wore the water-sprite look well.

  Lyle checked his first instinct to grab and hug Ben, to sob his thanks to Ben for coming with him. One glance into the strange swirling mists of those eyes, and he understood the Wise Ma was with them too, maybe in the driving seat of Ben
’s body. Ah. So sil didn’t know the truth yet. Lyle’s trial wasn’t over.

  “We need to look into your memories,” said Ben.

  “I don’t want to.” Lyle’s tongue flapped quicker than his mind could keep up. He sort of did want to know. He just didn’t want Ben to see.

  “We don’t have much choice, Lyle.”

  With a roar, a great waterfall appeared just yards behind Ben. Pouring down from an unknown height, it crashed into the surface to form roiling white horses which splashed and soaked them both.

  Lyle might’ve been captivated, but Ben had turned around to face the falls, giving Lyle a great view of the cute dimples on his butt cheeks. Lyle adored those dimples and bit his lip. Not a good time to get turned on.

  Ben stepped under the waterfall. As if drawn by an invisible thread between them, Lyle followed.

  Chapter Nine

  The waterfall lasted for many paces, a relentless deluge that bruised flesh against bone. Ben was no more than a nebulous shape a step ahead of Lyle, urging Lyle on. If Ben hadn’t been there, Lyle might’ve given in to his impulse to crumple beneath the torrent and be washed to oblivion by the flow.

  He forged onward, stumbling and scared and then befuddled. Faces began to form in the white wall of water that surrounded him. It took him a while to identify the first two, their images ghostlike, although finally he placed them. That frothy beard had belonged to his father, the stern features to his mother. His father had died, but he wondered if his mother was still alive somewhere? For reasons he didn’t recall right now, she’d deserted the family long ago. They faded fast, like a dream forgotten on awakening. Then more shadows of his past emerged, waxing then waning—Lyle’s siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and other kin, and next, several dozen men and women, many of them scarcely recognizable.

  The lovers he’d taken when he’d been landlocked alone in Shanty Wood. The recollection of each coasted through him, leaving scant emotional residue in its wake.

  Finally, the waters shaped into Adam, the only man that’d really meant anything to Lyle before Ben. Heavens, Adam had been young, no more than a teenager, though as Adam’s image spotted Lyle, his boyish features twisted into a liquid effigy of loathing. For the first time, a hand formed in the waters, and then an arm. Adam raised a revolver. He jammed the barrel to his temple and pulled the trigger, shattering himself into a thousand teardrops.

  Lyle stopped moving forward, stopped following Ben. He’d been responsible for destroying Adam’s life—he’d understood that since Ben had explained to him what’d happened to Adam. After spending weeks in the woods with Lyle, Adam had returned to society only to be certified mad for telling the world he’d been with a fairy prince. At least, that was what they’d said about him in the newspapers. He’d been locked away like a criminal.

  No, Lyle couldn’t be held responsible for Adam’s later death in World War Two, but he’d little doubt Adam had blamed him for the rest; this memory was clearly shaped to remind him so. Yet Lyle, blindly incomprehensive of the world beyond Shanty Wood prior to Ben’s arrival, had spent seventy years loathing Adam for deserting him.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered, knowing words were desperately inadequate. Finally giving way to the pressure of the rain, he slumped to his knees. The downpour blinded him. What was the point of going on? Even if he didn’t lose Ben, he’d destroy him. His long life consisted of nothing more than a trail of meaningless unions. The few hearts he got close to, he’d broken.

  A hand—it had to be Ben’s—reached back and yanked him up. The torrent faded to a drizzle and then a thin miasmic mist. Lyle found himself beside Ben and next to a familiar pool. They were back in the cave where he’d recently spent three months with Welwyn, and Welwyn was there. Welwyn stood between the stalagmites and Emmet faced him, in a motionless tableau. The stage was set, just as it’d been before Welwyn’s death, apart from…

  Lyle scanned the scene and frowned. No, the cave wasn’t exactly as it had been the night Welwyn died. At one end of the pool, where there’d been a flush rock façade, gaped the mouth of another cavern. The opening was shaped like a lopsided pear.

  “Show me what happened,” said Ben, drawing Lyle back to the matter in hand. Ben let Lyle’s arm drop and edged into the shadows.

  Lyle stepped into his former place at Welwyn’s side. For a fleeting instant, he wondered if he could do things differently this time and somehow save Welwyn. But of course he couldn’t—he trod through a memory. Yet even as he acknowledged the fact that he was no more than an onlooker, Emmet nailed him with a lascivious gaze and his anger flared as hotly as the first time.

  “My, my!” said Emmet. “You’re even more ravishing than you used to be, Lilly.”

  “My name is not Lilly. It’s Lyle.”

  “A moot point, dear,” said Emmet. “Either way, you would make me a decorous consort.”

  Lyle stretched to take Welwyn’s hand, and Welwyn shoved him backward. He tumbled between two stalagmites, landing in the pool with a splash, even as Welwyn argued with Emmet over whose consort Lyle should become. Emmet raised his staff, and Welwyn raised his fists and poised his fins to strike.

  Lyle’s anger pushed him to a realm of all-encompassing hatred. He sucked power from the nearby sea and moon, blended it with his loathing, and rose to his feet. He screamed, loud and deep and hoarse. A blinding flash filled the cave, followed by an ear-splitting roll of thunder. The whole cavern quaked.

  It felt akin to when he’d started the storm in Shanty Wood, then lost control of it. Except this time, the rage was both more personal, yet somehow separate to him. The magic consumed him, stamping away his conscious mind, save the scarlet rush of his fury.

  From within his own body, Lyle now managed to watch himself. He didn’t lash out. He stood planted, fists raised, and summoned up the elements, lightning streaking and dancing all around. He’d show those two fools who’d the greatest power this day.

  Welwyn appeared suitably scared as lightning streaked past his nose, rebounded off the cave wall, and zinged back to scorch the fringe of one fin. He shouted something, although Lyle couldn’t discern what, and then Welwyn ducked behind a stalagmite. The lightning ceased, and a rumbling filled the air, like the stampede of a thousand horses—or an approaching tidal wave, conjured from the ocean by a wayward enchantment.

  Emmet, who’d been cowering in a corner, raised his staff and twisted to face Lyle. Arms still held high, Lyle’s chest was unprotected, and he’d not the faculties to move to save himself. The magic consumed every iota of his strength. He was helpless… and, for split second, dead scared.

  Emmet speared his staff forward. Welwyn jumped up from behind the stalagmite and dived to push Lyle from the pointed weapon’s path. Then one side of the cave imploded and the tidal wave conjured by Lyle’s anger lashed into the cave. The wave swept everything in the cave with it as it smashed into the now-exposed cliff face of the far wall, then receded just as fast. Lyle grabbed onto a stalactite to stop himself being dragged out to sea. At the same moment, the water tossed Welwyn’s flailing form onto one of the sharpest stalagmites, impaling him through his heart.

  The light in Welwyn’s eyes died instantly. Lyle felt a pang, then chills, as energy and heat seeped from him, then nothing. He unwrapped himself from the stalactite and blinked at his brother’s skewered body, dripping wet and with blood streaming. Welwyn’s fins trailed lifelessly, and Lyle felt sick. Emmet retrieved his staff and waved it, screaming accusations. Lyle’s mind danced far too wildly to care about Emmet.

  From behind, somebody touched his shoulder. Lyle spun around to see Ben. Ben’s eyes appeared cloudier, even more like the Wise Ma’s than earlier, his expression pained.

  Surely I’ve lost his love now.

  Ben spoke, but all Lyle made out was a garbled mess, as if two people spoke at once.

  “Beg your pardon?” said Lyle, still shaken, and pricking his ears to hear above Emmet’s ravings. Behind Ben, the shadows shifted. A dark silh
ouette slipped away towards the opening shaped like a lopsided pear, which had survived the ravages of the tidal wave. Lyle wrung out his sopping hair, all but drowning in a melting pot of dread and confusion. When Ben threaded his fingers through Lyle’s, Lyle nearly collapsed with gratitude.

  “We’ve seen enough,” said Ben, in the voice of the Wise Ma. “We need to go now. Elhendrou!”

  ~~*

  A bony hand sent a series of frenetic squeezes to his, and Lyle woke up. Back in the real world, he found himself crouching in the triangle, gaping at the placid face of the Wise Ma, and then at…

  Ben, apparently still senseless, crumpled forward, his hand slipping from Lyle’s loose grip. Lyle lunged to catch him, even as Emmet’s foul chuckle echoed around the cave.

  “I’m suspecting lover boy didn’t much care for watching you kill in cold blood,” said Emmet, still leaning and leering. Lyle didn’t deign to reply. He carefully laid Ben down flat, looking pleadingly at the Wise Ma at his side.

  “He didn’t come out of your mind with me,” sil said. “We were separated, but I was expecting him to catch up when we left. Something pulled him back. You pulled him back, Lyle.”

  “What? Me?” Lyle stripped off his shirt and laid it under Ben’s head. “A lot of strangeness happened in there, but I didn’t feel like I had much control over it.”

  “What a surprise,” said Emmet. “He’s a danger to all. It’s blatantly obv—”

  “No more!” The Wise Ma sliced sils fins up through the air. “I have seen the truth now, and no party involved in that sorry affair was innocent. Lyle didn’t murder Welwyn, and certainly did not intend to harm so grievously. However, his anger was at least partially to blame for Welwyn’s death, and the scope of his untutored magic is a worry. But you, Emmet, your culpability is greater. You are the only one who lashed out with the intent to kill.”

  “Me!” Emmet jabbed a fin to his chest in feigned innocence. “I acted in self-defence. Lyle could’ve destroyed the whole cliff face and slaughtered us all. The ch… that monster was out of control.”