by Harper Fox
“Yes, of course. I’d best, hadn’t I? She’ll only howl.”
***
The bedroom was painted in moonlight. The twin chests of drawers from Drift farmhouse, lovely in their carvings and their battered coat of white paint, the huge funereal wardrobe which had been Gid’s doubtful contribution from the parish house, reconsecrated by Tamsyn, who used it as a play-house, a castle or cave, depending on the needs of the game—all these had been silvered along their southeastern corners and panels. Through Lee’s eyelashes the solid old pieces became spectral, only their shining parts real. The transmuting light altered everything. Mrs C’s VW Beetle, the modern kind that resembled a vegetable anyway, had looked like a pumpkin rolling away down the lane.
He leaned his back against the wardrobe. The Rover’s growl became a reality, a normal disturbance of the air: headlamps strafed the ceiling, and everything began for him, the ordinary, holy routine of his husband’s return from work. Lee had to maintain that normality, as far as possible within his moon-racked home. Christ, he was scared! And so turned on that he could barely breathe, his cock heavy and stiff in his jeans.
The inner door clicked. Lee hadn’t bothered to close the outer one. What was the point, on this fairytale night of grimoires, pumpkin coaches and a wolf who could blow the house down, a wolf whose bigness and badness were surely only a matter of perspective, surely still in Lee’s hands to control? He listened to the soft-footed approach up the stairs, so different to Gid’s normal homecomings, the cheerful yell from the door. Oh God, this potency in the air, this weight and heat...
Gideon stepped into the room. His back was to the moon, his detail drenched in darkness. Lee couldn’t see his face. All he could hear were the sounds he was making—the faintest whispering purr on each outbreath, the shadow of a growl. Over a year ago, Lee had taken him into a dream, and there in the place beyond the Men-an-Tol portal Gideon had understood, fearlessly at last, what he was. He’d almost known the real name of their home.
But he couldn’t bear the knowledge back into waking life. Lee couldn’t help him, not yet. On some level Lee knew that his failure to do so was building up a price for both of them, a terrible forfeit. “Gideon,” he whispered. “Can you listen to me? Can you still do that?”
The great head tilted slightly. Now Lee could see his eyes, amber fire like solar flares around the iris, moonlight through rich Cornish brown. Lee saw his small nod of assent. “All right. My fine... my fine man. Do you remember, you wanted us to dance at Zeke’s wedding—properly, not just shimmying around? So you bought that DVD, and we... we were hopeless, weren’t we, taking turns to have our back to the TV and falling over the furniture. But then you just got it. God, you took me in your arms, and you moved, and suddenly I could do it too, because you were holding me so close.” Lee swallowed a fiery dryness in his throat. “You were so passionate, but so... perfectly, perfectly controlled. Can you still do that?”
Another nod, faint this time, just the slightest movement of the sleek dark head. Lee felt the weight of his attention, the honour of it. That Gid would hang on for him. “All right,” Lee whispered. “Come and dance with me, then. Dance.”
He held out one hand. Gideon strode forward and took it. He’d left his jacket and vest behind somewhere and was vibrantly warm in his T-shirt. When he laced his fingers between Lee’s, his touch was only human. His arm around Lee’s waist was only loving and strong. He’d been the natural lead, when their dance DVD had detailed the waltz steps, the lead and the follow, and Lee had rolled his eyes but stepped back to accommodate that powerful first movement. Gid’s left foot to his right, the guiding push of his thigh, the place where their hips met, their first successful practice melting into a frantic roll-around on the couch. How stately they’d been at the wedding, not even daring to look at each other for fear of re-igniting the fires! A safe two inches between them, from nose-tip to corsage to cock.
Not tonight. Tonight Gid moved like the ocean, like a wave on the beach below Drift, the waters of Earth pulled high by the sun and the moon. He held Lee close and swept him once around the limited space between the bed and cabinets. He didn’t look to left or right, avoiding the furniture with a blind precision that made Lee close his eyes in a shallow-lunged ecstasy of trust that did not end when the dance did, when the bedroom wall impacted softly against his spine. Shuddering, he looked up into the shadowed, still-human face. “Yes,” he said. “You controlled it. Now show me who you are, my beauty. Take your clothes off, all of them. Let go.”
And after all, Tamsyn could have stayed in her bed at the end of the hall. The bats flitting back and forth beyond the inched-open window were not disturbed in their patterns, and the second brood of fledgling swallows continued their peaceful occupation of the nests in the eaves. Not a leaf, not a star, not a breath of air was altered because Guardian Frayne had come home. He was Lee’s own man, and the deep-laid tracks of his nature—his lifetime’s habits of gentleness—had channelled his transformation, wolf to Lee’s lamb.
Nonetheless, Lee let his eyes close again, and this time kept them shut. He pushed down his jeans and briefs, stepped blindly out of them and kicked them aside. Up against the wall had always been a favourite fuck for them both, with roots right down into their sacred beginnings, the parish house and the beast outside the door. Always this way round, because Lee, tough as he was, could never hoist Gideon high enough and pin him there. Familiar ground, a sense of homecoming, everything sweet and the same, except that now the beast was in Lee’s arms.
He gasped when Gid lifted him. He was an armful, he knew, and Gideon would grunt and chuckle at the effort. Now there was only that whispering silence, and the knowledge that he weighed nothing to his lover. “You don’t have to hold off,” he said, surprised at the everyday sound of his own voice. “I saw to myself earlier—with the lube, I mean. I didn’t think you’d want to stop.”
I wasn’t sure you could. Lee was ashamed of that now, and scared at himself: whatever the hell had he been thinking, ready to plunge into those black waters, even with this man? On some level he must have known, a fathomless, untapped resource of trust: no would mean no between them always, wait and stop and don’t. With that much settled in his mind, Lee could let it all go. He burned up into yes, from his scalp to his clenching toes. Now and yes and do it. He would have closed his eyes anyway now, wanting nothing but the sense of Gid’s penetration. He tipped his head back. The slow push inside him, riding easy on the lube, went on and on, until his breath shattered with a threat of fearful laughter. Why should I be surprised that you’re fucking huge? Did I really think it would just mean broader shoulders, bigger hands cradling my butt, the tips of what feel like—oh Christ—knife blades, delicately catching and scratching my skin? Lee hitched his thighs up in a passion of acceptance. His eyes were closed, and so if the face next to his should be set in new lines, that meant nothing. His arms were locked so tight around Gid’s neck that he was clutching at his own shirt sleeves, and so if those great shoulders should be coated with silken fur, that meant nothing. He was riding and rising to the point where he wanted to cross his ankles behind Gid’s back, to hold him close and maximise the strain and squeeze inside, the divine bloody friction, and so if hot fur was rubbing at the insides of his thighs and the backs of his calves, that meant...
Lee had no idea how to get himself out of that one. The heat and the rasp were real. They meant everything. He stopped his frantic efforts at denial and inner escape. He was starting to come, in a flare like sweet death, and although Gid was ramming so hard and fast into him, a mouse building its nest in the wall behind them need not have felt alarmed. Those hands on him, their perfect, absolute restraint... Guardian, Guardian, what big hands you have, what a huge human jewel of a heart—all the better to love me with, to keep us both safe and sane. Gideon jolted and snarled, rhythm breaking, and Lee, eyes still closed, held him fast. “It’s all right, my love,” Lee choked out. “Everything will be all right.”
And everything was. The moon sailed serenely over Bodmin Moor. She visited the houses of Dark with her light, an incomprehensible mother making last rounds of the grown-up children of earth. She smiled through Mrs Waite’s chintz curtains, pleased to see that lady sprawled in passionate relief and solitude after the death of her husband, right in the middle of the marital bed, where she’d never been made to suffer but equally had never known a moment’s true pleasure or love. The moon looked into the Prowse house, where Marple’s few sticks of furniture stood on the bare boards left by the council’s cleaning brigade, and she filled up with her light the vacancy left by Bill’s chair and the little bunk beds where his children had taken such shelter as they might.
An impartial mother, she lit up the activities of one Pol Teague of Pendethy, who had finally managed to steal his ex-girlfriend’s spare set of car keys and was letting himself into her back seat, where he intended to lie beneath a blanket and wait, rope and a knife at the ready.
She followed the stifled giggles of Sarah Kemp and Wilfred and shone her blessing on the patchwork quilt, beneath which new life—despite all sensible daytime vows to the contrary—was being conjured. In Pellar Street she peered through the fancy lace-pattern nets Granny Ragwen had used to favour, and into a bedroom where Tamsyn Elizabeth Tyack-Frayne, cross-legged on a rug, expression rapt, was turning and turning a vast crystal sphere in mid-air, beneath the watchful gaze of the old woman in her wickerwork chair in the corner.
As if saving the best for last, the moon paused by Chy Lowen. There, the window which had been inched open to admit the summer air was now thrown wide. The doors remained closed, the sacred sealed gates of the kingdom, but there in the wide double bed—unlike Flora Waite keeping to his own side, the space beside him sacred too—Lee slept alone.
***
At exactly half eight in the morning, the pumpkin car crunched back up the lane.
Lee jerked bolt upright. Between swinging his feet to the floor and pausing by the window, he registered messages from his body. No pain—of course not; he’d been in the hands of a loving moorland god—but extraordinary sensations from head to toe of having been torn apart and reassembled...
He looked outside. There were Mrs C and Tamsyn already on the drive, the dog dancing around them. He ran for the bedroom door. Stopped short: whipped round and grabbed the nearest covering to hand, a crumpled blanket from the floor. He didn’t have time to look, but the room was full of sunlight, and he pelted downstairs with the image burned onto his retina of Gideon sprawled on his front and smiling.
He flung the blanket around him, hoping the effect was more Highlander than escaped lunatic, and opened the door. “There you are, dear,” said Mrs C, smiling. “It’s all right. I wasn’t about to knock. Run along now, Tamsyn—you know what to do.”
Dazed, Lee bent down to receive his little girl’s hug. He kissed her brow, noting distractedly that she was glowing with her usual weekend-morning contentment, then watched her run silently off across the hall and up the stairs. “I’m sorry, Mrs Coulter. She should have stayed to thank you for having her.”
“No, no. We had everything arranged. If she pops upstairs now, she’ll be there before he wakes up. That’s why I kept her in her pyjamas.”
Lee shivered in the cool morning air, and tugged the blanket across his chest. He had no idea why he felt compelled to justify himself to this old lady. Still, she’d been a social worker: perhaps it was one of her gifts, and he hoped she’d seen families more chaotic than his own without declaring them broken. “I never set out to deceive him.”
“Of course not. It was all my idea, if you recall.” She took a step closer to him, put her head a little on one side as if listening. Her cheerful face softened into a new compassion. “But you have to be careful. There’s something terribly wrong.”
“You don’t understand. I don’t know how you come to know the things you do, but there was no need for either of us to worry. He’s incredible. He’s in control.”
He shut himself up with an effort. What on earth was he doing, unfolding the secrets of the night in this sunny morning hour? But Mrs C was nodding, as if his words were nothing more than she’d expected. “We believe as we must, I suppose,” she said gently. “You’re in the hands of time, child—most of the time, anyway—and time will always unfold. As it happens I don’t mean him, though. Gideon’s becoming what he should be. I mean wrong with you.”
“Me? No. I’ve been working a bit too hard, but I’m going to take some time off now. The whole summer.”
“That’s good. But when you come to think about it—as I did, in the cold light of dawn—would you ever have let your girl go off with a stranger, no matter how spellbound you were?”
“Spellbound?”
“Under a glamour, then. Hypnotised, if you want to take a modern view.”
“But you’re not a stranger. You’re...”
“A random old bird who flew into your village a few years ago.”
“But Gid had you background-checked.”
“So he believes and would swear in a court of law, with that big paw of his upraised, and blind Justice herself laying her head on his shoulder for comfort. But it’s not like you to miss a point, or evade one, either. Is it?”
Lee rubbed his eyes. No, it wasn’t. “No,” he said, a chasm opening up beneath him. “No, I never would have let her go. Oh Christ, what did I do?”
“Let’s make the best of it. No harm done, so now let’s complete the charade. You’ll forget this conversation. Glamour!”
“Bless you,” Lee said politely, convinced that she’d sneezed. “I’m sorry. Forget what?”
“All of it other than this—take care, little prophet. Have your summer. You can call it your... What did we call them, those few mad months in the sixties when we all thought that peace had a chance? Oh, that’s right. The summer of love. Go on with you now. Glamour. Glamour!”
Lee turned around. He couldn’t just forget things on command. That was ridiculous. But when he looked into the hallway, he could see only the dancing light of Bodmin summer, leaping from window to mirror to the crystals in the dusty old chandelier. From upstairs came the joyous racket of his daughter and his husband beginning their day, a weekend morning when Gideon had time to chase and tussle and toss the little girl about to her squealing, delighted heart’s content. Already Isolde was joining in the chorus. Shaking his head, as often inwardly thanking God they didn’t have neighbours, Lee let the door shut behind him and set off to join in the fun. Why should he look back?
Chapter Seven
Lee Tyack-Frayne’s Summer of Love
What a time he’d chosen for it, with the rest of the world melting down in hate! Families and friendships blew apart over Brexit, an anguished civil war of the heart. In the States, the hellish political carnival raged on. Lee wondered if he wasn’t supposed to notice when Gideon stepped in front of the TV, or claimed a sudden interest in Jazz FM during a radio news broadcast in the kitchen. Probably he thought he was being subtle. And Lee couldn’t bring himself to call him on his manoeuvres. Being shielded was too pleasant.
The moon got small again, and Lee collaborated, closing down his social-media accounts, which he’d only used for work anyway. They’d tortured him sometimes, the rush of the world’s badness on top of everything he already felt. He rose to whatever bait of distraction Gideon chose to dangle: sunset walks across the moor, days out with Tamsyn and Ma Frayne on the riverboats around Kelyndar. Night after night of the kind of loving most men only dreamed about, because once the moon had waned, Gideon was only Gideon once more—his normal self, if that self had been set some kind of exam on the art of pleasing his other half in bed, and was anxious to get in all the practice he could. Lee went about his days with his bones half-melted with delight, his skin tingling.
He could barely stay awake, and blamed his disrupted nights for the honeyed languor that would steal over him around noon. Once Tamsyn’s
holidays began and he was on full-time dad duty, these episodes became easier to conceal. Gideon was usually out, and Lee could time his naps to coincide with Tamsyn’s, Isolde keeping her own drowsy watch in the orchard, living room or bedroom or wherever they’d crashed out together.
A hot July opened up, and he began his boat-repair job for Jory Stark in St Wylloe. After a few days, passersby got used to the fact that Lee Tyack-Frayne, famous TV psychic, was sanding planks in Jory’s garden behind the church, and stopped asking him for lottery numbers and tips for the Saturday races. He became just another working man amongst them, with his dog and his wide-eyed little girl. Tamsyn, having learned her lesson about lifejackets on the Kelyndar excursions, insisted on wearing one on deck: a boat was a boat, after all. She wanted Lee to wear one too, and when he laughingly declined, went solemnly to sit in the prow as if on watch. Lee could scan most of the sunny, overgrown churchyard from the deck. He kept an eye on her while she and Isolde scrambled about amongst the gravestones and the flowers. From time to time she brought him crowns of feverfew and willow, to cure the headaches he kept reassuring her he didn’t have, but otherwise she seemed happy, her little air of watching and waiting no more than an ordinary child’s expectant view of life.
Rings of contentment spread out from her. That was how it struck Lee, as he chaperoned her about her business in Dark and beyond. Everyone within her sphere of influence flourished. Elowen and Michel had moved to England for the time being, renting a house in Bodmin town. This news would once have made Gid’s hackles rise, but Elowen was becoming famous for her archaeological discoveries around the Hurlers. Success suited her, seeming at last to settle her old sense of injustice at being—helplessly, beyond poor Cadan’s control—her father’s second-favourite child. She had dug her way through Sarah Kemp’s garden and into her kitchen, recompensing her handsomely afterwards with a landscaping job and a state-of-the-art refit. Now she was eyeing up Chy Lowen, which also lay on the alignment of circles, but it would take her a while to get there, a stay of execution, though Gid had declared he’d gladly let her plough on through if he too got a brand-new aga and all the trimmings.
