Bedknobs and beanstalks, p.15
Bedknobs and Beanstalks, page 15
"I know you took it."
Joseph rolled onto his back, trapped between the couch and coffee table.
"I want it back."
He watched the stranger calmly crouch on the sofa, with arms resting on his knees and hands clasped in front of him. The moonlight didn't reach the cozy living room, and in the blue light of the DVD player his skin was ghostly pale and his eyes nicotine yellow.
"Want what?” Joseph asked. His voice was steady but his hands shook. He couldn't imagine what the naked stranger could want from him, unless it was clothes.
The man's lips rode up in a parody of a smile. “I know you've hidden it, and you know I'll do what it takes to get my skin back."
Joseph bit back the urge to echo the stranger's words, as though doing so would make more sense of them. The stranger met his eyes and Joseph wondered if his confusion was evident or whether he should say something.
He saw the stranger's calves twitch. His legs extended and the man dove over the couch like a fishing bird. He plunged head first to meet Joseph's unsuspecting lips. His hands followed, grabbing Joseph's shoulders and pushed him down. Joseph hit the floor with a bone-jarring thud, head falling back. The stranger dropped his hips to meet Joseph's, and Joseph thrust against him. The stranger folded long legs under him, straddling Joseph, pinning him.
The whole movement was swift and brutal, but it ran before Joseph's eyes like slow-motion photography. The stranger tilted his head to one side, and Joseph's cock hardened. The man was stunning, sharp cheekbones and wild eyes, almost animal. Dominantly feral. He lowered his face to Joseph's, butting his head against Joseph's cheek, and catching Joseph's mouth with his own. Joseph lost track of the world, taken solely with the insistent softness of his lips, the hardness of the teeth behind them. Lust curdled inside him, holding his muscles taut and shooting static through his thoughts. His confusion dissolved, though it was not replaced by any kind of certainty.
A groan escaped from Joseph's throat, thrumming through his mouth and into the other man's. The stranger's wordless answer was high and fluting. He pushed Joseph's sleep-crumpled shirt up and over his head, and ran his hands back down Joseph's body to rid him of his trousers. The heat of his bare skin against Joseph's sent a spike of fire to his groin. Joseph's breath came in short gasps, air held high in his chest, and his hips snapped against the other man's with no pretense at control. He felt like a teenager again, so close so soon, and he was glad the stranger had stripped him. Relinquishing control—he'd never had had the nerve back then—it made him so...just... He couldn't hold on to the thought. His mind began to tighten, to focus on one white-hot point until conscious thought burnt up and his whole body burned with the intensity of his release.
He returned to himself slowly to find the other man slumped against him, apparently sated as well. Joseph wasn't sure how much he'd contributed to the stranger's pleasure, but at least he didn't have to worry about sexual etiquette. Half-formed thoughts of burglars and cleaning and other people's clothes lapped at the edge of Joseph's mind; they became the soothing waves that helped him drift to sleep.
* * * *
He almost ruined everything when he scrambled eggs for breakfast.
Luckily, equilibrium was regained in the form of fresh watercress. The stranger offered no help in fixing the window he'd broken, but seemed in no hurry to leave. He watched Joseph nailed a piece of plywood to the broken pane and tape around the edges. Joseph sanded absently at a splintered edge and glanced over his shoulder.
"Do you have a name?” Joseph asked.
"No."
In the daylight the stranger looked almost albino, with skin and hair silver white. His eyes were yellow, ruining the illusion, but Joseph thought there might be a name for that condition, too. He was heavily scarred, especially on the legs and neck, but he'd refused clothes when Joseph offered.
Joseph put his tools away. His only warning that the stranger was behind him was the distorted reflection in the steel range. The stranger pinned him to the kitchen counter with his hips, forcing them forward as Joseph's head fell back against him. The stranger's teeth in the crook of his neck held him still and submissive, though he would not have taken much persuasion and Joseph hadn't even considered resisting..
They left stains under the overhang of the counter top.
Through the slowly rotating days they left stains on the kitchen table, on the couch, in the bed, and the bathtub. The stranger enjoyed the water, though he preferred it much cooler than Joseph's taste.
Joseph learned little things about the stranger, like his refusal to eat anything but bitter greens and peppery salad. He didn't mind much what Joseph ate for the most part, but he would not speak to him for days when had chicken curry for dinner.
Joseph coaxed him into bed eventually, apologizing more profusely with his body than his mouth, but after they made love the stranger drew away. Joseph ran a finger down the knobbles of his spine; his lover had abandoned his grudge, but even though this was normal it still left Joseph a little bereft. His lover rolled back towards him, consenting to Joseph's arm across his waist. But Joseph woke later when his arm was carefully placed on his chest. He prized gritty eyes open to see his lover settle into a kneeling position, face buried in the pillow. Joseph grinned, and fell asleep again.
He knew he ought to find it odd the stranger couldn't read or write, but he wasn't. What did surprise him was finding his lover putting up the shelves Joseph had forgotten he'd even bought. He wasn't sure DIY was best performed in the nude, but it was entertaining to watch. He could see the muscles of the stranger's shoulders sliding up and down his spine, rippling beneath his silk-smooth skin. When Joseph checked the shelves out of curiosity later, he found them perfectly level. The stranger's fitful bursts of household chores never lasted long, but he was always thorough.
Joseph wasn't sure why he accepted the stranger's presence so easily. It had been a long time since a lover had consented to live with him, and experience taught Joseph he was hard to live with. He'd resigned himself to his cottage and his cats, deemed too old and too solid-looking by those skinny boys he used to know. The stranger did not care that Joseph had wiry graying hair or the scars of long-forgotten laughter and better-remembered frowns on his face. The stranger did not care that they seemed to have little in common. He didn't talk about himself—he rarely spoke at all—but his moods were dramatic and easy to read. Experimentation found a path of least resistance, and they settled around each other like a brooding bird on its eggs.
When Joseph had to leave the house, normalcy intervened in their eccentric routine— food had to be bought or bills to be paid—and he would come home to hissing cats and an awkwardly arranged house. Things would be out of place or out of order, books on the wrong shelves and pans in the wrong cupboards. The couch would be two feet forward of where it usually lived. The wardrobe doors would be wide open. The stranger would stand near the door, waiting for him, unaware of the dust smeared across his chest or the scratches on his back.
Joseph forgave him, bemused, with kisses and the sweat-slick slide of bodies against each other.
* * * *
The news was good and bad. Good because actually having a job again was both a salve to Joseph's ego and a relief to the financial pressures he'd faced as he tried to support two on state benefits for one. Bad because he would only rarely be at home. He worried whatever his lover searched for while he was away for brief periods might not survive a more prolonged investigation. Was their domestic security worth sacrificing for a job he wasn't particularly enthusiastic about?
It was with trepidation Joseph returned to the house, the ink on his new employment contract still wet. He thought he might break it to his lover after the usual pantomime of innocence and forgiveness, after sex in the late afternoon sun. The interview process had kept him away from home far longer than usual. But he would be gone longer hours each day once he began the job. He would beg forgiveness tonight, he promised himself, and would fall before his lover and let the thrusting of their hips override the tension in his gut. Afterward, nerves calm, it would sound like good news.
But today his lover was not waiting for him at the door. He was not in the living room, or the kitchen, or the bedroom.
Joseph descended from the dusty upper floor, footsteps hollow on the bare stairs. Three steps sounded different today; they were above the under-stair cupboard. Leaning over the railing, Joseph noticed its door was open.
The feeling was intense and immediate—horror without knowing what was horrifying. He swallowed down the urge to hope the handrail. Instead he took the steps two at a time and pivoted around the final banister, socked feet on slippery wood. He skidded to a halt in front of the cupboard.
The gloom was unenlightening. The coats hung in their usual order; the shoes were scattered on the floor beneath them. The toolbox was open, but he could see the orange handles and disorganized nails from where he stood. Umbrellas, winter clothes, cat box, long-empty fish tank—
Of course.
He hadn't believed it, not really. He hadn't lived four decades to think things like that happened to people like him.
But, past tense, it had.
* * * *
The first time, it was just a walk.
The second time it was a longer walk, but still just a walk.
The third time he took bread and stopped walking to feed the ducks, but only they were interested. Not a goose approached him, let alone a swan. Joseph scowled at the emerald heads and speckled wings.
When the weekend came—after he'd fought every day to keep at the job he'd only just started, when each hour at the desk felt like a painful waste of time—he took another loaf of bread, a pair of stout boots, and a bag of the most expensive pondweed the garden center would sell him.
He started out as the sun came up.
A thin white haze covered the dawn lake, dissipating before it could touch visceral earth. Dark ghosts moved through it, waterfowl taking their exercise before the fishermen and dog walkers arrived. It was noisier, now, a mess of birdcalls from the reeds and banks. Trills and whoops didn't help Joseph, though—what he sought was famous for only singing once.
He hadn't sung, Joseph remembered, but his silences had usually been stubborn, and he certainly wasn't going to betray himself to Joseph now.
The mud around the edge of the lake was grey-green with scum. It ran rings around the bottom of his trousers, a layered stain with tiger stripes from knee-high grass, and the footprints he left oozed themselves flat again. Joseph had hoped to find prints—human or bird—but they left no more trace than he did.
There was a suggestion of rain in the purple sky and a metallic tang to the air. The mist over the lake dispersed slowly as the day warmed, but resolved itself as low clouds instead. Joseph circled the lake in ever-increasing rings, forcing his way through thorny bushes, tangling himself in long briars, and dropping to a crouch to make sure he missed nothing in the summer-brown bracken. It was slimy with dew and creeping black mould. The briars were black too, heavy with overripe fruit that left furry white smears on his bare skin. He missed the walks of spring, as much as he loved this season. Mists and moldy fruitfulness.
Maybe it was the wrong time of year. The wrong time of month, or day. Should he have come at full moon?
He didn't know how far out to go, but his path began to overlap with fields and houses so he spiraled his way back in again. There was no trace of his earlier path, nor anyone else's.
He ate a little of the bread he had brought. It was stale at the ends and damp in the middle, but it made substitute enough for missed meals. A faint pain started at the back of his head—a reaction to the sugar-low light-headedness—and wound its way between his eyes. He dragged his hair across his eyes to cut out the glare of the sun on the lake. It hadn't rained but it still threatened to, the sun three times its size behind the bruised coat of clouds, and the lake was a blinding mirror.
He reached his starting point at noon without seeing so much as a single white feather. The hooper swans had flown. Migrated. Some swans did, Joseph knew that. They'd watched it together on the television, the only time his lover had paid any attention to the flickering colors on the screen. They were not graceful in the air, but they could hold themselves aloft and reach places Joseph never could.
He held his hand to his eyes and peered across the lake. Its glowing surface was interrupted by dark flecks, but it was too bright to know what they were.
The lake darkened, the glare subsiding. Joseph felt the urgency of knowing it could not last. He squinted as if tightening the muscles around his eyes could make him see sooner, or tightening those of his legs made him run faster. The shadows resolved themselves into ducks and floating branches. The geese had gone, he realized, and would not be back ‘til spring. It ought to have made his life easier, but it left him bereft of even false hope.
The air changed color. Grey, then the rain, itself grey. Thunder rolled around the lake like a traveling orchestra's lost timpani.
One shadow was larger than the others. Indistinct in the rain, but long and low. A long shape rose and fell.
The rain thickened. The swimmer, or the swan, was lost.
* * * *
It was still raining at midnight. Joseph stood in his kitchen, abandoning the morning's supplies on his table before leaving for another search. It would be cold out now, and he'd rather keep his hands buried in his pockets than carry anything. Though it was too dark to see well, he did not bring his flashlight. It was in the cupboard under the stairs.
There was no color in the world now, just wet smells and static sounds. Joseph stumbled through the reeds, staggering ankle deep into the lake and out again. His feet were dry inside his stout boots, but the chill of the water still worked its way inside instead. Numbness stretched its tendrils up his legs, strangely easy to ignore. He did not know what he was looking for, what vantage point he sought. The rain worked through his coat and though he did not feel wet, it left him open to the biting wind and gave him a pin-sharp pain across his forehead.
He stopped when he reached a patch of dried grass, shored up so it could jut into the lake. There was half a track behind it, less than a path but more than self-delusion. It was visible only because it had been recently used, the wet grass bent back around a furrow in the mud. It gleamed even in the dim light.
Joseph walked away from the lake, though he knew the short track had been made by someone heading towards it. He had only gone a few paces before his heavy shoes scuffed and dragged like a teenager's, everything in him a mix of unwilling and desperate.
The log where he'd found it that day had rotted further, mushrooms silver in the rain, and the stone behind it was covered with moss.
The track led no further, and Joseph hadn't expected it to. He hadn't expected to see the cloak, not really, but a lump came to his throat when there was nothing, not even a feather.
He felt he was owed a feather.
He stood until the rain slackened. It didn't stop altogether, but as it stopped pounding, so did his head. He took a deep breath, trying to ease the damp air past the lump in his throat.
His shoes squeaked in the mud as he turned. He cast his eyes down, watching the fallen leaves turn to mulch as he scuffed through them. There was something up ahead, something white.
His gaze moved up from toes, past ankles and knees and hips, stopping on the cloak, casually slung over a broad white shoulder.
"You're meant to ask people,” the swan man said. “They give you advice. You're not meant to just...look."
"I would have told you where the cloak was,” Joseph said. “I'd have given it back if you asked. I...thought it was a dead swan."
The swan snorted. “You're an unusually good man, you know that?” he said. “I've not met a man like you in centuries."
He placed a hand on Joseph's shoulder and pulled him close, stepping forward so they met hips first. His body was hot despite the night air—Joseph could feel it through his damp clothes. He barely felt the wetness on the swan's skin, but he could see it like a silver aura. He'd been tense with cold, but the swan's touch relaxed him so his shoulders dropped. He held his head high for the first time since his lover left. The swan cocked his head to one side, pressing his lips to Joseph's at a sharp angle. It was uncomfortable, a crush of teeth, but it made Joseph swallow and his lips parted eagerly. The swan smiled against them before he pulled away again.
"Everyone else has flown."
"Mute swans don't migrate,” Joseph objected.
The swan rolled his eyes. “Do I sound mute to you?"
Joseph raised a hand and ran a finger along the swan's sharp cheekbone. The swan rubbed into the touch and Joseph thought of swans with their necks twined together.
"It's going to get cold. Colder. And the weather's already bad."
The swan chuckled. “I liked your straightforwardness. This isn't it."
"Fine. Come back with me. Stay."
"For the winter?"
"For as long as you like."
The swan considered this. He shrugged the cloak from his shoulder and draped it over Joseph. Even in the dark, Joseph could see the line of his erect cock, its tip glistening slightly.
Joseph reached, his stiff fingers curling around it. The swan let his hips fall forward and his head back, leaning into Joseph's other arm. He tugged Joseph gently towards him and buried his face in Joseph's neck, thrusting lazily into the circle of his hand. It was so familiar, Joseph felt the ache of homesickness and his eyes grew hot.
The swan tipped Joseph's head back and kissed him gently. Joseph closed his eyes, the night growing distant, and let the swan's tongue press against his bottom lip. It brushed his teeth until Joseph opened his mouth, his own tongue coming to meet it. He grew hard against the line of the swan's thigh, the rhythm of his own hips to the pumping of his fist.
His wet jeans chafed horribly; the swan pushed him away just enough to undo his trousers. The speckle of cold rain tickled like the shower when he climbed in too early, or when the stranger had control of the dial. It wasn't entirely unpleasant, but he was relieved when the swan pressed close enough to shelter Joseph from the air. He thrust into the wet curve of the swan's hip, hand still trapped between them as the swan's pace increased, rocking against Joseph's palm.
