He stood in a patch of sunlight, wearing a plain, lightweight suit of silver cloth. He was also standing outside the circle.
The circle and the flute were gone.
Harry stopped, looked at Miles, and his eyes changed, glowing with a silver heat.
“Gástlufu,” he whispered and started lumbering toward Miles. His hands were outstretched, his claws clicking against one another. His eyes darkened further. “Gástlufu!”
Miles cried out, turned around, and ran.
Chapter Nine
Come faerie! Come angel! Come lover, tonight!
Come take me away, come set me alight!
Let me burn glorious in the fires of your eyes.
In the fires of your glory, let me be your prize.
THE PERFECT FAERIE forest made a strange background as Miles fled from Harry. Instead of stepping on sticks and rotted stumps, he vaulted over artfully arranged round stones and stomped on mushrooms that could have housed the caterpillar in Wonderland. He would have done better in a normal forest, because there he could have leapt over the sorts of things a cloven-hoof man would have to take the time to climb. As it was, the path was practically a road, and Harry and his goat-hooves were quickly gaining.
“Gástlufu,” Harry cried over and over. “Gástlufu! Gástlufu!”
Miles whimpered and tried to lose Harry by weaving between trees. Harry was so close now that he was starting to swipe at Miles, and twice Miles felt the brush of his claws. Maybe that was another lie, that Harry would rape me. Maybe Terris lied. Maybe he lied to Harry too. Maybe—
“Gástlufu!” A claw caught the fabric of Miles’s shirt. It fell away, but the motion made Miles stumble, and the next thing he knew, he was pitching face-first into the grass, Harry’s weight pressing on top of him.
Harry roared, pinned Miles’s shoulders to the ground, and began to grunt and thrust against his backside.
Miles gagged as the rotten-animal stink of Harry smothered him, then coughed and gasped as the force of Harry’s exertions pushed his mouth and nose into the grass. “No, Harry,” he rasped, trying to turn his head and failing. “Harry!” His fingers curled into the dirt and stones until they bled, his mind and body going into shock as Harry tore roughly at his clothes, trying to bare him.
He was going to do it. Terris hadn’t lied, and Harry had been right. There was no man in there, just a beast, and it was going to rape him, naive, hopeful fool that he was. He felt the fabric of his clothes tear, then felt the brush of Harry’s furry arm against his bare ass. Choking back a sob, Miles gritted his teeth and locked his body, trying to brace as Harry grabbed his legs and wrenched them apart.
And then Harry was gone, howling and crying out. “Seolfor! Náhtfremmend!”
Miles reeled for a second, stunned by the realization that he was not, in fact, being rent apart, then climbed to his feet with a sob of relief. He clutched his clothes around him as best he could, daring to glance over his shoulder as he began to run again. Then what he had seen registered, and he stopped.
Harry was still howling, standing in the middle of the path and looking down at his hands, which were full of blood. Miles reached around to his back in panic, but his flesh was whole. This was Harry’s own blood.
What was even stranger was that Harry’s claws were gone. The beast was howling in pain, staring down at his very bloody, very human hands.
Empathy ripped through Miles, and before he knew what he was doing, he had started forward.
Harry howled and staggered back toward a thicket of daisies.
The light shifted, and for a moment the forest looked ominous and black. A sharp summer wind drifted past Miles’s nose, full of fragrance and sun and heavy stupor. It made Miles want to giggle and laugh, to strip off his clothes and lie down in the road, waiting for a pleasure he knew would come.
Miles’s nostrils flared, and he covered his face with his ragged sleeve. “Terris.” He loped back into the cover of some bushes, holding up his pants with his other hand as he went. As he pulled the leaves around his head, he saw a figure form in the middle of the path in the place where Harry had been standing. But it was not Terris. It was a man, yes, but he was taller, and darker, and even from behind, Miles could tell that he was ten times more handsome than Terris could ever hope to be.
Miles was in the presence of the Lord of Dreams.
The Lord turned, and on a sliver of instinct, Miles shut his eyes tight. He could feel the Lord of Dreams staring at him, trying to find him, trying to draw him out. It was like being burned, and he knew that if he opened his eyes or so much as let down his mental guard he would be lost. He shut his eyes tighter and tried to think of the flute. Come back. Come back, and take me out of here.
The flute didn’t come. But the Lord didn’t see Miles, either, and after a few minutes, he turned away again.
Miles let out a silent, ragged sigh of relief. Then his world rocked again when he heard the faerie speak.
“What is this racket, Beast?”
The words seemed to wrap around Miles, sliding inside his head as well as filtering through his ears. He clutched at the branches of the brush in which he hid, forcing his eyes to stay closed. It was difficult even to breathe in the presence of the Lord of Dreams. Miles’s body felt hot and tight, and he realized it was because despite the fact that he was cold with terror, he was also acutely aroused. He was aware of his own scent, and that of Harry, and more than anything he was aware of the Lord. Miles knew if he could but gaze upon the Lord of Dreams, he would never want for anything but him again. He would be frozen by his own desire, and he would sit here and die from it, like an addict, so enraptured by pleasure that he forgot that he was even alive. That was how you died in the pleasure of the Lord of Dreams. Empty, senseless pleasure.
And in a vision, he could see all the victims of the Lord, human and otherwise, hollow husks of men dotted over the landscape of beauty, withering and dying in their own lust.
All but Terris. All but Harry.
Why?
Harry was still crying. “My hands, my hands! The evildoer is within my beloved, and he has ruined my hands!”
Miles gasped and gritted his teeth against a wave of nausea. He heard Harry’s reply in grunts and howls, but he also heard the words inside his head. My enchantment. But why hadn’t it worked before?
The image of Harry’s bloody hands flashed into Miles’s mind.
Blood? Had the blood done it? Had the blood turned his claws to hands and translated his words?
The Lord of Dreams clucked his tongue. “Poor mad beast. You’re even worse than usual today. And look, you have indeed done something to your hands. Extraordinary!” There was another howl, and then a whimper. “No,” the Lord of Dreams scolded. “No fussing. You will allow me to inspect them, or it will go badly for you.”
Harry howled again, then roared. The cry tore through Miles, and he had to bite his lip to keep from calling back.
The Lord of Dreams sighed. “You could make this easier on both of us and surrender your will to me.”
“Beloved!” Harry cried. And as the word came out alone, Miles recognized it as the one he’d been calling out so much before. Gástlufu.
Beloved.
“Yes, yes, I know,” the Lord of Dreams said dryly. “You will only surrender to your beloved. I don’t—” He stopped, then hissed and swore.
Harry cried out again. “Silver!”
“Yes,” the Lord said icily. “So you said, and so I should have believed. I take it our mutual friend has been up to mischief again? Perhaps I should check in on him and tell him what I think of hiding bits of silver cloth beneath your fingernails? Odd, though, I must say. I’d expect him to put a ring around your cock, because that’s his kind of cruelty.” There was a pause, and when the faerie spoke again, his voice was thoughtful. “But no. Dear Terris sleeps on. This is not his doing. How very interesting, Beast. Someone else is here. Someone, despite the illogic of the statement, whom I cannot see.”
“Beloved,” Harry wailed.
“Perhaps I should look a bit more closely,” the Lord of Dreams said.
The world around Miles began to tighten and shrink, and his erection, already great, grew so painful he had to bite his hand to keep from crying out. The pressure of the Lord of Dreams pushed so hard around him that he knew if it kept up he would either give in, or he would die. He choked, he shuddered, and as he felt the vessels inside his brain begin to swell, he sent out a fleeting, whispered prayer.
“Help!”
And like a balloon expanding, he felt a force field rise around him. When it passed his head, he dared to open his eyes at last and saw that he was sitting hunched inside a transparent silver sphere. The silver flute was in his hand.
Push, it said.
Miles did.
He pushed with his mind and with his heart, and between that and the force of the flute, they kept the faerie’s spell at bay. Miles’s heart pounded, and he thought he would be sick, but he was not enslaved by pleasure, and he was not dead. Shaking, he lifted his head and dared a look at the clearing. He could see the back of the Lord of Dreams, and he could see Harry. The Lord looked like a silver shadow-shape to Miles, obscured, he assumed, by the flute’s spell. Harry looked like a beacon of light.
At last, the pressure stopped. The silver orb faded, and Miles quickly averted his eyes.
“How very odd,” the Lord of Dreams said. He sounded torn between concern and amusement. Miles heard him take several steps, his silken clothes whispering against each other as he walked. “Beast, something is quite wrong here. No more running around, do you understand? Back to your little cave. I want you to stay there until I call you again. I don’t want you out in any of the worlds until I sort out what’s going on.”
“Beloved!” Harry cried.
“No more whining,” the faerie said sharply. “I’ll make more than your hands bleed if you push me, Beast. I’m not in the mood. I must go and deal with whoever this is causing me trouble in my own world. I only hope it’s a wizard of some sort, and not another fey. I’d rather be amused than annoyed.” He clapped his hands. “Go on with you!”
Harry howled again and lumbered off into the woods.
The Lord of Dreams sighed. “And now for you, whoever you are. I can feel you, so don’t think you’re cleverer than you are. I can’t find you yet, but I will. And you will be sorry, sorrier than you could ever hope to be.”
Even without looking, Miles could feel the faerie’s departure.
Despite this, he remained huddled in the bushes until he had the strength to stand again. Then with a trembling hand, he raised the flute to his lips.
Take me to Terris, he whispered.
He played a few notes, and he was gone.
THE CRYSTAL DOORS were closed when Miles appeared before them. He knocked, but nothing happened. He tried to open them, but they would not yield.
Miles hitched up his waistband and set out to walk the perimeter. The flute had vanished again, but that didn’t worry him any longer. Clearly it would come when he called it—well, if it wanted to come. Anyway, he was in Terris’s world now. Neither Harry nor the Lord of Dreams could come here.
It was an echo of the Lord of Dream’s house, yes, but Terris had laced it with silver, Miles realized as he searched the exterior of the castle for a way to enter. The Lord of Dreams could not touch silver. Neither could Harry. Except maybe Harry could—it was the beast that could not handle it. And it had transformed him. But it had hurt him.
Miles pushed at a window, swore, then stormed on to find another one.
Terris was under the control of the faerie, but he was separate too. Harry was under the control of the faerie, but the Lord of Dreams did not have his will. That belonged to his beloved, which was what he kept calling Miles. Though the Lord thought that was Terris. But Miles didn’t have any power over Harry, not that he understood. If Harry caught Miles, he would indeed rape him. But if Miles were wearing silver, the pain of the silver would make Harry stop.
This was all so confusing.
The next three windows were sealed tight, and the door that led to the silver lakeshore was locked too.
“Terris!” Miles shouted. “Terris, damn you, let me in! I need to talk to you!” But Terris didn’t answer.
Miles made his way all around the castle, trying every entrance that he could. Nothing worked. He pounded on the front door again, shouted, and then, hands hurting and heart heavy, he sank against it.
He wondered if maybe he should go back. He wondered if Katie wasn’t right, if he shouldn’t just give this up. He’d seen the Lord of Dreams, and he’d felt firsthand how unfair the fight was. She was right. He could never stand up to these forces. No one could. Yes, he ached for Harry, even after nearly being raped by him. Terris, he couldn’t make up his mind about, but Harry had stolen his heart. And yet, all he was doing was failing him.
Maybe he should just quit.
The flute appeared in his hand, and without directly giving it a command or making a wish, he blew a soft, mournful note.
The castle faded away, and he was back in his room at Patty and Julie’s trailer. Miles sighed, heavyhearted, and started for the bed so he could collapse on it.
Then he got a better look at the room and went very still.
It was his room, yes, but it was very strange. It was all dull gray, and it was frozen, like a picture. He wasn’t sure how he could tell at first, because nothing in the room was really mobile, but then he tried to pull a tissue out of the box on the edge of the desk. It wouldn’t come out, and he got the whole box, frozen as if it were a cardboard cutout. It weighed nothing, and when he dropped it, it fell sideways onto the desk, unmoved. As he watched, it turned to dust.
He wasn’t, he realized, actually here. Nothing in the room was real.
But some things were. Some things glittered, and it only took a moment for him to realize that it was anything which contained silver. The necklace Terris had given him, lying on the dresser. The frame of a picture. A mirror on the wall and a small one inside a compact inside of a drawer. He could see through to it, because the drawer wasn’t real, but the silver was. The keyboard of the computer glowed, and when Miles touched it, the keys melted away, revealing tiny silver circuits.
The great silver phallus glowed too, hidden deep within the nest of his clean underwear.
“Silver,” Miles whispered. “Everything silver, I can see. But why? What am I to do with it?”
As if they had been waiting for this question, the pieces of silver lifted up from their places and began to drift toward the center of the room. The picture frame shattered, forming a silver needle and a long line of silver string; it threaded itself and began to sew Miles’s torn clothing back together. The circuits of the keyboard hovered like glinting fireflies in the air. The mirrors glided beneath them like plates. The necklace wound itself around Miles’s neck.
The phallus drifted eerily toward him, then without pausing made a turn at Miles’s hip, heading for the not-yet sewn gap in his silver trousers.
Miles backed away from it, waving his hands. “No.” He bumped into the mirror, then tangled some of the circuits in his hair; when he stopped to bat them away, he felt the cold tip of the phallus nudge him, and he yelped and jumped back, covering himself.
“No!” he shouted. “No, I don’t want—”
Harry.
Miles stopped but kept his hands over his backside.
The beast. Your Harry. You must go back to him. You must wear it for your own protection, and for his.
The voice was musical and soft. Miles glanced around the room. “Are you Terris?”
The musical sound flared briefly dissonant. No.
Miles frowned. “Then who are you?”
There was a shimmer before him, and he watched the flute appear. Then, to his astonishment, he saw it transform: it shimmered and grew as Miles watched, becoming a tall, thin, very beautiful man.
The
ghost-man. Except this time he was not ghostly at all, but very real. He was here, actually here in this dream place with Miles.
Miles caught the exquisite, perfect beauty of him and backed away. Faerie. This man was a faerie.
“Only half,” the man said. “My mother is fey; my father is human. I have the appearance and the abilities of the faerie, but my soul is human. My name is Murali.”
His voice was very like a flute, lilting and quiet. Every phrase seemed to contain a song. Miles realized that he could very easily be hypnotized by it and very likely already was.
“Why are you a flute? Harry said you are the enemy of the Lord of Dreams. Are you in hiding?”
Murali laughed, the sound like an arpeggio. “No, I am not the enemy of the Lord of Dreams. I am his lover.”
“Lover?”
Murali nodded. “I suppose I should say that I was his lover. We quarreled a long time ago, and I left him, though I had intended initially to come back. I went to Terris, asking him to help me hide. I meant him to transform me into something Almos could not find, and since my name means ‘flute’, a silver flute seemed appropriate. But Terris was just learning magic, and he made an unfortunate mistake. There is a condition to my release, one which, I am afraid, Almos cannot meet. Until someone does, enchanted I remain.”
Miles frowned. This wasn’t the story Terris had shown him at all. He had lied, even in that vision.
Murali laughed. “But how could you expect differently? He is fey. He does not think of you, only of himself. He cannot. None of them can.”
“Then how could you love the Lord of Dreams?”
Murali shrugged. “My half-human heart is as much a mystery as yours. Why do you crave acceptance? Why do you long for power? Why are you so angry about the loss of a life which was so poisonous to you? Why can you not see that you are living in a paradise, that you have gifts whole worlds ache to know? Why not—because your heart has fixed itself on dreams, just as all human hearts do. I loved Almos because my heart chose him. Nothing the human heart does is rational. It is all a mad, mad dream. But the difference between the desires of you and I, Miles, and that of Almos or even Terris are that our dreams can become reality. At best a faerie heart can be a shade of love.”
Miles and the Magic Flute Page 14
