The next week there are bear prints in the snow, circling the hot spring. I wrap up in a beach towel and pick a rock and sit near the waters edge, aware of the ice freezing on my body, that my flip flops are hardly appropriate wear, but the cold lodged in my magic is deeper than this mortal winter, and I wait. My mother keeps me company, the weight of our pentacle, the memory of it between her breasts, that chill then and the one now against my skin.
He comes out of the woods, his steps slow, lumbering with a muscly grace, sits when he sees me.
I wave; he blurs, form going liquid, comes back into Listens-to-Wind, grey hair and dark eyes and his expression wry. “You greet all wildlife like that, son?”
I shrug. “Only when I’m pretty sure they’re not coming to teach me about forest fire prevention.”
“What gave me away?”
I eyebrow at him and he shakes his head, laughs, the echoes rolling off the mountains around us. There are lines of white down the darker rock, through the scraggly green of stubborn trees, their roots wrapped around stone. Avalanches. He knows where I’m looking, and thumps my shoulder, sitting down beside me. “The season for it,” he agrees. “And it was a cold winter; the pack’s not stable. I’ll tell you if anything feels like it’s coming our way.”
“...This place?” I say, sounding more surprised than I am. “You?”
He grunts, and we sit, still and quiet. I wonder if he’s been able to hear my mother through me, feel her, know the little pieces of herself she wove into the fabric of her map for me, her secrets that I’ve made my own. The wind is gentle, cool where it finds us, rustles my hair, smells like snow and mud and spring high above sea level. I wonder if I’ve disturbed him, the invasion of another messy human body in his sanctum.
“It was too safe here,” I tell him. “I could feel your wards-- not the wards. I could feel them working. That’s how I knew.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder again, leaves it there for a minute. “You’re frozen to the ground,” he says, and stands, arches his back.
I look. It’s true, the water that’s dripped down my legs has sealed tight around my flip flops. I flex, pull, watch the ice break apart.
“You here for lessons?” Listens-to-Wind says, unzipping his jacket, pulling his shirt over his head. He’s strong underneath his clothes, lean definition, long runner’s muscles I wasn’t expecting. His shoes and pants follow, folded and tucked into his jacket, his ass and thighs and calves flexing as he slips into the spring. “Offer still stands. There’s anger in you buried ten feet deep, son. Kept me up all night the first time, listening to it fighting to get out.”
“Not much of a student,” I say, watch the muscles in his back as he pushes himself to the centre of the spring where there’s no submerged rock ledge, nothing but deep water, treading easily.
“Not much of a teacher,” he returns. “In fact, I make the old farmer look as patient as a saint.”
I kick my flip flops off, leave them by my dufflebag, leave my towel on the rock. I slide my legs into the water, sitting on the ledge-- he turns to face me. “That’s all the invitation you’re going to get, son. Don’t pretend like I haven’t seen you splashing around in here.”
“Did you know my mother?” The pentacle rests against my breast bone. I could probably find out, search her memories until I stumbled across one, Listens-to-Wind in my grandfather’s home, maybe, or a face in a crowd that would remind her of him, a voice, a scent, a tangle of blackberry vines, a shadow.
“Not well,” he says. “When she was growing up. But after she took off, she didn’t want much to do with her father’s friends.”
Something begins to untangle in my chest. It hurts. “She was pretty angry,” I say. “For a long time.”
Listens-to-Wind nods, steam gleaming on his shoulders, the lines of his face. “Lots of people are,” he says. “Doesn’t make it any easier.”
I slide into the spring, going under, push off the ledge until I’m down deep, looking up at his legs, gently treading above me.
The first thing is water. The second thing is heat.
“Youth,” he says, snorts, when I come up next to him, wiping water from my eyes, my nose, my mouth.
I know how he can feel me, my heart beating, my legs kicking, each breath I take. Probably Mab’s power, waiting in me for her call. Knows the way I keep watching his chest, the water dripping down his neck, how I was staring up at him from below.
My cheeks heat up, not from the spring, and he snorts again. “That’s hardly my usual approach to apprentices, son.”
“Sorry,” I say, cheeks going hotter, stomach twisting as I try to find those thoughts, isolate them, and only urge them on a little stronger for my efforts. “Oh Hell’s bells, I’m so sorry.”
I’ve felt people die on Demonreach. I’ve fought monsters there, felt a creature older, stronger than I can imagine bleed. I’ve never kissed anyone there. I don’t know what it’s like to feel a strong hand come down gentle on my face, a mouth press against mine, taste him, open my lips carefully, catch myself by surprise with a moan that starts in my belly, and feel it again from his perspective, feel both at the same time, know it as one tiny part of a world full of little lives and deaths and centuries.
I shiver, try not to imagine it, push harder at Listens-to-Wind’s mouth, slide my hands around his back, drift them down his spine, trace his muscles. He breaks away, stays close, chuckles, shakes his head. “Your grandfather will kill me,” he says, his hand sliding down to hold the back of my neck.
I kiss him this time. There’s nothing but the steam in the air, the heat of the spring, his skin slippery under my hands, his dick hot against my belly. I kiss around his lips, press my body up against him, wrap my legs around his hips when he pushes us over to the rock ledge where the water splashes shallow around us, hot and wet.
He knows where to touch me better than I do, strips my wet shirt and bathing shorts off, finds every place that makes me spark up, makes me gasp and shout and tremble. He rubs against me, hard, burning, in the crease of my thigh joining my pelvis, hikes my legs higher and rubs between my ass cheeks, the head of his cock hitting me just right on the thin skin behind my balls. I chew at his shoulders, latch on to one coin-flat nipple until it’s peaked and swollen in my mouth, swear and twist when he grips me around the middle and digs his thumbs into matching spots on my hip bones that must be connected to a rocket launcher in my nervous system, and I go off with a wail, messy and hot and slick between us.
He pants into my neck, hits my ear and makes me shudder, my cock twitching in its own mess. The steam rises up around us, off of me, the mess on my stomach and chest, my still gasping breath. I tighten my knees and he pushes them apart, leveraging himself into short, hard thrusts, hits my asshole a few times and I twist, push back, arch up and feel myself flex open and close, not sure what to do with the jolts of nervous and pleasure making my sides twitch, my thighs shake.
“Whoa, boy,” he grunts, laughs. “Don’t take off yet, pony.” He pulls back and presses the heel of one hand against my mouth to give me something to hold with my teeth, grips himself with the other. I bite down, and he jerks and finishes, streaking down on my belly, adding to the mess, hotter even than the water beneath me.
He folds down beside me, rolls until he’s mostly covered by the shallow water. I have a flash of guilt-- he doesn’t have Winter inside him, after all, and he wraps an arm around my chest, strokes gently, hooks a leg over my hips. “Settle down, son,” he says. “Let it run its course.” And I do.
It’s not until my heart’s slowed back down and his hand has stilled and I eventually wriggle and sit up, reach for my towel and wipe the mess off my chest, my stomach-- can’t help but laugh that’s it’s iced over, frozen into a tacky slush-- that I realize I’m alone in my head. I go still, breathe in-- out, wait to see if my mother’s body is with me, somewhere, her skin under mine. I clutch at my pentacle, feel the ruby, I don’t know what I want to do--
Listen-to-Wind sighs, slips all the way into the spring again, holds onto the slopping, uneven rock ledge. “Don’t do trouble in halves,” he says, like he has before, shakes his head. “Let her rest, Harry. She’s there when you need her. That’s one hell of a map she’s left for you.”
I look at him, feel my face twisting down, my lungs tighten-- he pulls at my knee, tugs me into the water. “Settle, pony,” he says, brushes at my hair, his old eyes tired. “You’ll go wild. Anger’s going to tear you down.” He presses his hand to where my chest aches, a ball of Winter cold and my own rage, bundled so tight I’d forgotten it was there, hard and shiny. “We’ll work through it.”
I force words through the way I’m panting, teeth grit together, chest heaving like I’ve run down from the top of one of the mountains around us. “Not my usual approach to teachers, either,” I tell him.
“I’m flattered,” he says, dry, and I snort and rub at my face. He lets go and I sink down under the water to where it’s quiet and warm.
He waits until I’ve surfaced again, and rubs my shoulder, squeezing gently. “Meet me next week,” he says. “I’ll know when you’re here.”
“This wasn’t our first lesson?” I say, eyes wide, and he snorts, pulling himself out of the water.
“Keep yourself out of trouble, Harry.” He bundles his clothes up, and I watch the bear leave through the steam, lumbering away. I stay in the spring until the stars come out, until my fingers and toes are one big wrinkle, and sink down to where it’s morning on the other side of the world, dripping water and hot through to my bones.
Fill 1b/1: Maps
He comes out of the woods, his steps slow, lumbering with a muscly grace, sits when he sees me.
I wave; he blurs, form going liquid, comes back into Listens-to-Wind, grey hair and dark eyes and his expression wry. “You greet all wildlife like that, son?”
I shrug. “Only when I’m pretty sure they’re not coming to teach me about forest fire prevention.”
“What gave me away?”
I eyebrow at him and he shakes his head, laughs, the echoes rolling off the mountains around us. There are lines of white down the darker rock, through the scraggly green of stubborn trees, their roots wrapped around stone. Avalanches. He knows where I’m looking, and thumps my shoulder, sitting down beside me. “The season for it,” he agrees. “And it was a cold winter; the pack’s not stable. I’ll tell you if anything feels like it’s coming our way.”
“...This place?” I say, sounding more surprised than I am. “You?”
He grunts, and we sit, still and quiet. I wonder if he’s been able to hear my mother through me, feel her, know the little pieces of herself she wove into the fabric of her map for me, her secrets that I’ve made my own. The wind is gentle, cool where it finds us, rustles my hair, smells like snow and mud and spring high above sea level. I wonder if I’ve disturbed him, the invasion of another messy human body in his sanctum.
“It was too safe here,” I tell him. “I could feel your wards-- not the wards. I could feel them working. That’s how I knew.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder again, leaves it there for a minute. “You’re frozen to the ground,” he says, and stands, arches his back.
I look. It’s true, the water that’s dripped down my legs has sealed tight around my flip flops. I flex, pull, watch the ice break apart.
“You here for lessons?” Listens-to-Wind says, unzipping his jacket, pulling his shirt over his head. He’s strong underneath his clothes, lean definition, long runner’s muscles I wasn’t expecting. His shoes and pants follow, folded and tucked into his jacket, his ass and thighs and calves flexing as he slips into the spring. “Offer still stands. There’s anger in you buried ten feet deep, son. Kept me up all night the first time, listening to it fighting to get out.”
“Not much of a student,” I say, watch the muscles in his back as he pushes himself to the centre of the spring where there’s no submerged rock ledge, nothing but deep water, treading easily.
“Not much of a teacher,” he returns. “In fact, I make the old farmer look as patient as a saint.”
I kick my flip flops off, leave them by my dufflebag, leave my towel on the rock. I slide my legs into the water, sitting on the ledge-- he turns to face me. “That’s all the invitation you’re going to get, son. Don’t pretend like I haven’t seen you splashing around in here.”
“Did you know my mother?” The pentacle rests against my breast bone. I could probably find out, search her memories until I stumbled across one, Listens-to-Wind in my grandfather’s home, maybe, or a face in a crowd that would remind her of him, a voice, a scent, a tangle of blackberry vines, a shadow.
“Not well,” he says. “When she was growing up. But after she took off, she didn’t want much to do with her father’s friends.”
Something begins to untangle in my chest. It hurts. “She was pretty angry,” I say. “For a long time.”
Listens-to-Wind nods, steam gleaming on his shoulders, the lines of his face. “Lots of people are,” he says. “Doesn’t make it any easier.”
I slide into the spring, going under, push off the ledge until I’m down deep, looking up at his legs, gently treading above me.
The first thing is water. The second thing is heat.
“Youth,” he says, snorts, when I come up next to him, wiping water from my eyes, my nose, my mouth.
I know how he can feel me, my heart beating, my legs kicking, each breath I take. Probably Mab’s power, waiting in me for her call. Knows the way I keep watching his chest, the water dripping down his neck, how I was staring up at him from below.
My cheeks heat up, not from the spring, and he snorts again. “That’s hardly my usual approach to apprentices, son.”
“Sorry,” I say, cheeks going hotter, stomach twisting as I try to find those thoughts, isolate them, and only urge them on a little stronger for my efforts. “Oh Hell’s bells, I’m so sorry.”
I’ve felt people die on Demonreach. I’ve fought monsters there, felt a creature older, stronger than I can imagine bleed. I’ve never kissed anyone there. I don’t know what it’s like to feel a strong hand come down gentle on my face, a mouth press against mine, taste him, open my lips carefully, catch myself by surprise with a moan that starts in my belly, and feel it again from his perspective, feel both at the same time, know it as one tiny part of a world full of little lives and deaths and centuries.
I shiver, try not to imagine it, push harder at Listens-to-Wind’s mouth, slide my hands around his back, drift them down his spine, trace his muscles. He breaks away, stays close, chuckles, shakes his head. “Your grandfather will kill me,” he says, his hand sliding down to hold the back of my neck.
I kiss him this time. There’s nothing but the steam in the air, the heat of the spring, his skin slippery under my hands, his dick hot against my belly. I kiss around his lips, press my body up against him, wrap my legs around his hips when he pushes us over to the rock ledge where the water splashes shallow around us, hot and wet.
He knows where to touch me better than I do, strips my wet shirt and bathing shorts off, finds every place that makes me spark up, makes me gasp and shout and tremble. He rubs against me, hard, burning, in the crease of my thigh joining my pelvis, hikes my legs higher and rubs between my ass cheeks, the head of his cock hitting me just right on the thin skin behind my balls. I chew at his shoulders, latch on to one coin-flat nipple until it’s peaked and swollen in my mouth, swear and twist when he grips me around the middle and digs his thumbs into matching spots on my hip bones that must be connected to a rocket launcher in my nervous system, and I go off with a wail, messy and hot and slick between us.
He pants into my neck, hits my ear and makes me shudder, my cock twitching in its own mess. The steam rises up around us, off of me, the mess on my stomach and chest, my still gasping breath. I tighten my knees and he pushes them apart, leveraging himself into short, hard thrusts, hits my asshole a few times and I twist, push back, arch up and feel myself flex open and close, not sure what to do with the jolts of nervous and pleasure making my sides twitch, my thighs shake.
“Whoa, boy,” he grunts, laughs. “Don’t take off yet, pony.” He pulls back and presses the heel of one hand against my mouth to give me something to hold with my teeth, grips himself with the other. I bite down, and he jerks and finishes, streaking down on my belly, adding to the mess, hotter even than the water beneath me.
He folds down beside me, rolls until he’s mostly covered by the shallow water. I have a flash of guilt-- he doesn’t have Winter inside him, after all, and he wraps an arm around my chest, strokes gently, hooks a leg over my hips. “Settle down, son,” he says. “Let it run its course.” And I do.
It’s not until my heart’s slowed back down and his hand has stilled and I eventually wriggle and sit up, reach for my towel and wipe the mess off my chest, my stomach-- can’t help but laugh that’s it’s iced over, frozen into a tacky slush-- that I realize I’m alone in my head. I go still, breathe in-- out, wait to see if my mother’s body is with me, somewhere, her skin under mine. I clutch at my pentacle, feel the ruby, I don’t know what I want to do--
Listen-to-Wind sighs, slips all the way into the spring again, holds onto the slopping, uneven rock ledge. “Don’t do trouble in halves,” he says, like he has before, shakes his head. “Let her rest, Harry. She’s there when you need her. That’s one hell of a map she’s left for you.”
I look at him, feel my face twisting down, my lungs tighten-- he pulls at my knee, tugs me into the water. “Settle, pony,” he says, brushes at my hair, his old eyes tired. “You’ll go wild. Anger’s going to tear you down.” He presses his hand to where my chest aches, a ball of Winter cold and my own rage, bundled so tight I’d forgotten it was there, hard and shiny. “We’ll work through it.”
I force words through the way I’m panting, teeth grit together, chest heaving like I’ve run down from the top of one of the mountains around us. “Not my usual approach to teachers, either,” I tell him.
“I’m flattered,” he says, dry, and I snort and rub at my face. He lets go and I sink down under the water to where it’s quiet and warm.
He waits until I’ve surfaced again, and rubs my shoulder, squeezing gently. “Meet me next week,” he says. “I’ll know when you’re here.”
“This wasn’t our first lesson?” I say, eyes wide, and he snorts, pulling himself out of the water.
“Keep yourself out of trouble, Harry.” He bundles his clothes up, and I watch the bear leave through the steam, lumbering away. I stay in the spring until the stars come out, until my fingers and toes are one big wrinkle, and sink down to where it’s morning on the other side of the world, dripping water and hot through to my bones.