The front door slammed shut behind Harry, leaving Magnolia, Cid, Rose and Antonin in stunned silence. For the first time Magnolia wondered just what kind of a nut job Antonin had brought home with him. "What was that all about?" she said, looking between Antonin and Cid.
Antonin looked worried. "I have no idea."
"Me neither," said Cid. "I've never met him before, but -- holy chao." It was obvious from the look on her face that she was upset. It would weird anybody out, but Cid was so tenderhearted, not to mention that she was all strung out from traveling. Magnolia really wanted to get her upstairs and into bed, but...
"He's obviously unstable," said Rose.
"No, I think I know what might have happened--" began Antonin.
"I think he really thought I was his mother," said Cid. "That's... that's just..."
Magnolia wrapped her arms around Cid and held her tight. She looked at Antonin. "You said his father killed his mother."
Antonin glanced nervously at Rose. "That's right."
"What?" Cid and Rose spoke in unison, one horrified, the other outraged.
"How awful! That poor boy," said Cid.
"You didn't tell me that!" Rose turned on Antonin.
"I didn't want you to freak out," he said.
Rose narrowed her eyes. "But you told Magnolia."
Antonin darted a glance at Magnolia, begging her not to mention the requested hit. She wouldn't, not now, anyway. They had enough to deal with.
"I think I know why he thought Cid was his mom," Antonin said in a rush, making the most of his reprieve. "He told me once that his parents knew Rahul. Maybe Rahul had a... a... you know, a thing for Harry's mom. So he made some of his robots to look like her."
"That would be so Rahul," agreed Magnolia. "That old perv."
"So you see? You'd freak out too."
Cid nodded and pulled away, taking Magnolia's hand and gripping it hard as she looked from her to Antonin to Rose. "What am I going to do? This is awful. Should I stay away from him, or will that only make it worse? Maybe I shouldn't have said who I really was."
"That's right," said Rose, "You should have pretended to be his dead mother."
Cid bit her lip.
"Don't be ridiculous," said Rose. "For one thing, we don't even know for sure that you really look that much like his mother. It could just be a resemblance--"
"I don't know," said Cid.
"-- and for that matter, he could be making all of it up, the murder, the resemblance, everything, just to get attention. We don't know this kid."
"I know him," said Antonin, "He's not making it up."
"And you didn't see his face when I told him who I was, Rose. I may not know him, but I know he's not faking this."
Magnolia didn't like the glare Rose directed at Cid, and she didn’t like the edge to Cid's voice and the tremble in her hand as she gripped hers. "Whatever is going on, we'll work it out, after you've had some rest, Cid. It was a long trip."
"I'm telling you there's something fishy about that kid," said Rose. She turned to Antonin. "You should have told me about this murder story he's concocted. I never would have let him come here if I'd known about that. I shouldn't have allowed it anyway. I knew something was wrong with him when you got into that fight because he wouldn't defend himself." She turned to Cid and Magnolia. "Two boys were beating him up and he didn’t even try to fight back. Antonin had to rescue him."
"Mom!"
"Rose, please," said Cid, rubbing the bridge of her nose.
"What?" When no one said anything, she continued, "Well we'll just have to send him home when he gets back, that's all. This is our time to spend with Antonin. I'm not having everyone walking around on eggshells just because this kid has a loose noodle."
Antonin gritted his teeth. "Harry's staying."
This was exactly the kind of argument Magnolia had hoped they could avoid.
Rose ignored Antonin's protest. "He's not our responsibility. And he could be dangerous. It's best if he goes back to his own people."
"His own people?" Antonin exclaimed. "Let me tell you about his own people. His dad has his security guards beat Harry up and then they... they tie him... they tie him up in this little room and leave him there."
Magnolia winced.
Beside her Cid stiffened. "Oh goddess."
Rose sniffed. "That's not so bad. When I was owned by the brothel, they chained us to the--"
"Beds. I know," said Antonin. "I thought you didn't like playing Agony Sweepstakes."
Rose shrugged off Antonin's barb. She was very good at staying on topic -- her topic. "So he can go back to the school. What's so bad about that? He'll be safe and we can have our holiday the way it's supposed to be."
Antonin crossed his arms. "If you make Harry leave, I'm going with him."
Rose narrowed her eyes and pointed a finger at him. "You're not going anywhere, mister."
"Oh really?" said Antonin. Magnolia tensed at the angry gleam in his eye. "What are you going to do? Chain me to my bed?"
Crack! Seemingly out of nowhere, Rose's hand smacked Antonin across the face. A bright red star of anger bloomed to life on his left cheek. Both equally stunned, mother and son stared at one another.
Cid gave a low groan and took a long shuddery breath that bordered on a sob. Magnolia bit down on her own seething anger. Nobody here had ever hit Antonin before. That was one of the things that made this makeshift family so special. And now Rose had taken that away, with her paranoia and her stubborn, grasping possessiveness. Magnolia wanted to hit her back. But that would just inch them ever closer to the kind of life she thought she'd left behind forever.
Of course, Rose was the first to recover. Magnolia detected the barest quiver in her shoulders before she clamped down on every reaction but the flush of anger in her cheeks. She opened her mouth again and said, "You had that coming."
Antonin's dark eyes flashed with triumph but before he could respond, Magnolia got herself in between them. "If either of you says one more word I'll--" What? Kick the crap out of both of you was what she was going to say. Was that what she wanted to say? All she knew was she had to make this stop, now.
"Rose, is this how you want to spend your time with Antonin?" said Cid, stepping smoothly to Magnolia's side. There were tears in her eyes, but her voice was calm.
Rose didn't answer. She just glared at all three of them, her nostrils flaring, something like shame lurking in the back of her eyes. Without another word she turned and went down the hall to the greenhouse.
#
Tumcari dove beneath the surface of the pond and ran his hands over the dormant form of the nymphaea matera, his plant-mother. Years ago, when he was a young and angry monster, he had severed the taproot and it never grew back. The plant never fruited again, but it didn't die, either. Leaves still grew on the ends of the long stalks, but never a blossom. Checking on it, feeling carefully for any change near the severed taproot, was a daily ritual for him -- daily nowadays, anyway. It used to be he'd check it ten or more times in a single day, and he'd play all sorts of games with himself about when he could check it, when he had to wait, and so on. Now he only felt the need to do it once a day. That was progress, he thought, of a sort.
Again, there were no changes. There never were. There was no reason to think there ever would be. Sighing, he floated back to the surface of the pond and rolled onto his back.
The sound of the greenhouse doors opening brought him upright again. A visitor. Happy anticipation lifted his mood even higher. Cid was expected back today, it could be her, or maybe Antonin and his new friend, or Magnolia -- maybe even all of them. But the stride he heard on the gravel path was aggressively swift. Rose, and she was pissed off. Oh dear. He swam to the bank of the pond.
She emerged from the foliage to stand on the patio, her arms folded tightly about her, one foot thrust out and her hips cocked at an angle. She wore dark slacks and a red blouse. Her mouth was a grim, determined line and her dark eyes flashed. She was such a bright spark -- all that passion, rage and fear mercilessly tamped down into a seething molten core. He wondered what she would be like if she ever felt safe enough to unclench.
But that wasn't going to be today. "Since you've stolen my son's affections from me, I thought maybe you could tell me how to get them back," she said.
Tumcari sighed. Rose had always been jealous of his bond with Antonin. She operated on the scarcity model. Antonin's love for him meant less for her. She was wrong, but he could understand how her life had led her to believe that. "What's happened?" he asked.
Magnolia had offered to install video-intercom units in every room of the house, so he could be present for all the little interchanges that took place outside of the greenhouse, but he'd refused. The temptation to leave the video off and eavesdrop would be too great. So he relied on reports from others.
Rose lifted her chin defiantly, her nostrils flaring. "You may as well hear it from me. Antonin's going to give you his side of the story anyway. Which you'll probably believe, but at least you might remember that I told you about it first. I slapped him. Right across the face." In an eye blink her expression shifted from fiery rage to cold desolation.
It was his turn to clamp down on his anger. Antonin was all that was bright and good in the world. To strike him... "Is he all right? Physically?"
She dropped her eyes to the patio stones. "Yes. I don't even think there'll be a..." She took a deep breath. Her fingernails dug into her upper arms as she forced herself to say the words. "A bruise."
Tumcari swallowed. Rose was a difficult person to be around, particularly for him because she saw him as a threat. But the thing that had made her antagonism bearable was the unshakeable fact that she loved her son. And the fact that she was here telling Tumcari about this, despite how difficult it obviously was for her, told him that hadn't changed. Even if that love was leading her to do some very strange things at the moment. "I take it some sort of an argument preceded your assault." He supposed there were softer word choices but he didn't feel like making things any easier on her. "Sit down."
Mechanically, she pulled over a lounge chair and sat on the edge of it, leaning forward, studying her hands clasped between her knees. Her gaze flicked up to his, studying him carefully. "It was about that boy Antonin has brought home with him."
"Harry."
She nodded. "For some reason he thinks Cid is his mother, or he's pretending to. He's very strange. I don't think he's a good friend for Antonin to have, and I think we should send him home. Antonin, of course, disagrees with me. We argued about it, and he said something that-- It happened very fast. I won't say I didn't mean to do it, because at the time, I really think I did."
"But now you wish you hadn't."
Rose shot out of the chair and stood, her arms rigid at her sides. "Of course! What do you think I am?"
"What did he say to you?"
She sat back down again. "What difference does it make?"
"You've never hit Antonin before. We both know he sometimes opens his mouth before his brain is engaged. I want to know what he said that made you lose it."
"Why, so you can decide whether or not I was justified? I wasn't. It doesn't matter what he said. I'm the parent. I'm the one who's responsible."
"You're right. Tell me anyway."
Her cheeks flushed red. Maybe he shouldn't have pressed her. Maybe she'd leave. "He said that if I made Harry leave he'd go too, and I told him he wasn't going anywhere and he wanted to know if I was going to ch-chain him to his bed. There, now you know, are you happy?"
The inappropriate urge to laugh gripped him. If he gave in to it, he could kiss off this golden opportunity to cooperate with Rose concerning Antonin. But really! She had so set herself up for this, with her utter disdain for anyone's misfortune compared with what she had endured.
He took a deep breath, and changed the subject. "I think it’s a mistake for you to try to send Harry away."
She stared at him. Maybe she'd been expecting an 'I told you so.' She seemed to relax marginally. "Of course you do," she said bitterly. "It would make Antonin unhappy."
"Do you want to make Antonin unhappy?"
"Of course not, but this is for his own good."
"How do you know?"
"Tumcari, there is something wrong with that boy. I can tell. And besides, I think they might be... Has Antonin said anything to you, about this boy? Do you think they're, you know..." She made a circle with the thumb and forefinger of one hand and pushed her other index finger in and out of it. Eloquent.
"I don't know. I don't think so, at least, not yet."
"Good, then there's still time to separate them. Tumcari, please, help me convince Antonin that he can do better than this... this..."
"His name is Harry and I don't think it would make any difference to you if Antonin brought home the valedictorian of his class. I'm not entirely sure it would make a difference if it were a girl instead of a boy. Anyone Antonin becomes attached to is a threat to you. I know that first hand." Well there, he'd said it.
She stared at him. Her jaw was clenched so tight he could see the muscle jumping beneath the skin. "I don't have anything else," she said at last. "And I'm losing him. That is what is going to happen, isn't it? Sooner or later I will lose him and then I'll have nothing at all."
And now they were down to it at last. This was the heart of her fear, her terrible fear of losing Antonin because she thought he was all that she had. He felt a stab of sympathy for Antonin, being the lifeline for two other people -- three, if he counted Harry. Lot of pressure, poor kid.
Rose's nostrils expanded with her exhalation. "Don't tell me you're not afraid of the same thing."
Tumcari regarded her carefully, thinking over what to say to that. "Antonin is growing up. If you don't accept that, then we're bound to have more of the kind of misguided behavior you displayed today, and then, perhaps, it will be so unpleasant for Antonin to come home that he simply won't anymore. That's what I'm afraid of."
Rose nodded archly. "So once again, I'm the villain. I do all the work, and I take all the blame. Tell me this, if I do everything wrong, then how did I manage to take care of him before we came here?"
"I never said you do everything wrong. You may be a bit... out of focus on this particular issue but no one would ever call you a bad mother, Rose." He sighed. Her face was stiff. He wasn't getting through. "I owe you a great debt, and I don't know if I've ever properly thanked you." She narrowed her eyes suspiciously and looked confused. Maybe she'd listen now. He went on. "Before you and your son came to my pond I had nothing. I was nothing. Just a bitter, thwarted creature obsessed with hatred for the man who created me. But Antonin. . ." he trailed off. He could see that he didn't need to explain. There was something else, though. "And it's because of you. Because of the work you did to bring him up right in the face of terrible odds. You didn't just save him; you saved me, and yourself too. You needed a place to raise him and so you made this place a home. When we ran out of money, you were the one who started hacking Wall Street. You made this home, this business, and this family. It's all because of you. And one day Antonin will realize that too, when he's done rejecting everything about you as a way to assert his independence." That actually got a faint smile and breathy laugh. Tumcari smiled back at her. "And in the meantime, you should never feel as if you have nothing. You made this place. Everything here belongs to you."
#
"Can you believe she did that?" said Antonin the second the door had shut behind Rose. "She's totally out of control."
"That was a really shitty thing for you to say to her," said Cid.
Magnolia suppressed a smile as Antonin, who'd clearly expected a sympathetic audience, gaped at Cid. Her own heartbeat returned to normal as the tension in the room dissipated. Cid pulled her into a hug and murmured into her ear, "It's all right now."
And here Magnolia had thought she would protect Cid from the stress of family strife. She looked up into Cid's eyes and marveled. Because she was kind and gentle, and as prone to tears as to laughter, it was easy to think of Cid as being weak. But that was a mistake. It always amazed Magnolia how someone could be so soft and so strong at the same time.
"Hey, you guys?" It was Antonin. He was at the door, on his tiptoes, looking through the peephole. He turned around. "Harry's taking an awfully long time getting back."
Uh-oh.
"What did he forget on the jet?" asked Cid.
Antonin thought about it, his eyes growing wider as the seconds ticked by. "Nothing."
Shit. Magnolia grabbed her parka from the rack beside the door, her mind racing as she calculated how long they had stood here yapping, and how far a person could run in that time. It was dark out. Harry's parka was white. Even a short distance from the house, it could be really hard to find him. He didn't have a facemask or a hat, and the parka was cheap -- even if he put the hood up, it wouldn't insulate his head much. She turned to Cid and Antonin. "Take the jet. Use the searchlight. I'll take the snowmobile. We've got maybe twenty minutes before he's a block of ice."
#
By the time Harry stopped running, Wotroya House was nowhere in sight. He was alone in the arctic night and he was going to die. That's what he'd wanted, wasn't it? He stood on the top of a low hill and slowly turned in a circle, but there was nothing to see but darkness, and snow, and more snow coming down out of the darkness. The cold was the most intense thing he'd ever felt. It felt like iron teeth slicing into his skin. It felt like he had no skin left.
He remembered that time he'd swum away from his father's island. Just got in the water and started swimming away from shore. He hadn't really thought he would reach another shore, but even nowhere had seemed better than staying on the island any longer, at the time. Until he turned his head to take a breath and a wave hit him right in the mouth. Choking on seawater, he'd decided drowning would really suck. He came upright in the water, scanning for the shore, but there was nothing but water in all directions, and he couldn't even be certain in which direction was the island. He was alone in the big blue, and he'd never felt so small and powerless.
Until now. The dark and the cold and the night were every bit as vast as an ocean, and he couldn't see Wotroya house and the wind and the snow had already buried his tracks. He couldn't feel his arms or his legs or his face. That had to be bad.
There always seemed to be a world of difference between thinking of offing yourself, and actually being in danger of dying. His heart hammered and he started running back in the direction he thought he'd come. Panic made him breath faster and faster. He tried to slow it. Hyperventilating wasn't going to help him any. Why had he done this? Why did he always do this? It was stupid and he had to cut it the fuck out. If he made it this time, he would. This was the last time. No matter how bad things got, he would remember that he wanted to live anyway. If he made it.
He tried to gauge his progress, and whether or not he was going in the right direction. There was a drift of snow up ahead shaped like a crescent. He tried to keep his eyes on it but the air was so cold he couldn't keep them open. When he held his numb hands up to shield his eyes the crescent didn't seem to be any closer. Maybe it was larger and farther away than he thought, or maybe he was going that slow. He cast about for another landmark, a stick poking out of the snow, or a tree, or a rock, anything, but there was nothing.
Then he realized that he'd stopped. He was standing in the middle of the big black and white, wasting the only thing that could save him: time.
He started running again.
He remembered his limbs failing him, and going under, the claustrophobia of being unable to breathe, the struggle, the searing spasms of his lungs as he fought not to breath in seawater. And then came his first lungful of ocean. He was so weak by then that he barely struggled. He got another lungful and then the whole world fizzled down to one tiny spark of light in a forever of fuzzy grey.
But it turned out that the current dragged him to another island where there was a resort, and the people there found him and revived him.
Harry realized he'd slowed to a walk. He forced himself to run again. He was exhausted, but there was no current here. No island. Nothing to get him out of this but his legs and he forced them to keep moving.
They were really nice to him at the resort. Everyone seemed to be really happy and relieved that he was all right, and they gave him juice in a fancy glass. It had a tiny plastic sword with a cherry and an orange slice on it resting on the side. He'd meant to keep the little sword, but he'd lost it.
He didn't know how he wound up laying down in the snow. He hadn't noticed falling. It felt like he'd been asleep. He couldn't quite make it up to his feet again, so he crawled. Crawling was better. He was starting to feel warm again. That was good.
There was just a little juice left in the bottom of the glass and he swirled it, the orange rind twirling around and around and when got it going fast enough it looked like snowflakes.
#
Magnolia almost mistook the huddled shape in the lee slope of a low hill for a snow-covered boulder. A white parka! What was the use of a white parka? Swearing, she swerved to the side and came to a halt, her headlights illuminating the vague form. Be him, be him, be him, she prayed as she took the thermal blankets and the rebreather -- a blocky unit about eighteen inches on a side, equipped with a face mask and hose -- from the cargo compartment of the snowmobile and ran to investigate.
It was him. He was unconscious, but still breathing shallowly. He'd tried to make it back, she realized, seeing the churned up snow on the upper slope of the hill. He'd been crawling.
Working quickly, Magnolia spread one blanket on the ground and gently moved Harry onto it, careful not to jostle him. If she caused the cooled blood at his extremities to circulate back to his heart too quickly, he could go into cardiac arrest. She covered him with the second blanket, leaving only his mouth exposed. Then she turned on the re-breather, took the mouthpiece, stripped her facemask off for a searing moment and felt, yes, warm moist air coming from it. She put her facemask back on and then put the re-breather mouthpiece over Harry's still, deathlike lips.
She glanced overhead. The microjet was landing. She checked the readout on the re-breather. She took the dermal thermometer from her pocket and wormed it past his parka hood and stuck it to his neck. She watched the numbers of the readout slowly rise. Thank gods.
She heard the hiss and crunch of snow as the microjet landed, and a moment later, Cid and Antonin running. Without a word, Antonin got under the thermal blanket and wrapped himself around Harry. Despite her worry, Magnolia had to suppress a smile. That whole sharing body warmth thing wasn't really all that effective, but it wouldn't hurt, either, and if it kept Antonin calm, so much the better.
Cid stood over her, peering at the re-breather's readout. "How is he?" her voice was muffled by her facemask.
"He seems to be responding," said Magnolia, cautious not to be too optimistic. "His body temperature has risen three tenths of a degree so far. If that continues, we can move him in another ten minutes or so."
#
Harry dreamt that Antonin lay half on top of him, a comfortable weight all along the right side of his body. Warmth seeped into him through the layers of Antonin's clothing and Harry's long underwear. His arm was around Antonin's shoulders, and Antonin had flung his right arm and leg around Harry. He buried his face in Antonin's silky dark hair and breathed in the spicy smell of his shampoo. Antonin lifted his face to Harry's, and Harry felt his warm breath on his face.
Harry opened his eyes. He was in the room they gave him at Wotroya House and Antonin really was there, looking up at him like... Harry didn't know what it was like. Antonin's eyes were dark and warm, and deep enough for Harry to crawl inside and hide from everything that had driven him out into the snow.
"Are you okay?" asked Antonin.
Harry thought about that. He felt tired, and the skin on his face stung pretty bad. But he was alive. He was alive and Antonin was looking at him like... He nodded his head.
"You scared the crap out of everybody." Every time Antonin spoke, it sent little puffs of his breath over Harry's face. They soothed his sore skin like a humid jungle breeze.
"I'm sorry," Harry managed.
Antonin shook his head. "I'd freak out too. I'm just glad we found you. Do you have any idea how easy it is to die out there?"
For the first time Harry forgot that they were having this conversation while in each other's arms in bed. He could see from the look on his face that Antonin already knew the answer. "I thought it would be," he said. "But there was nothing easy about it."
Antonin propped himself up on one elbow and looked at him sternly. Antonin was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt -- a lot more than Harry's thin layer of long johns and long-sleeved T-shirt, but it was his question that made Harry blush. "Are you going to do it again?"
"No."
Antonin studied him, as if trying to decide whether or not to believe him. "Did you really want do die?"
"I thought I did, but, no," said Harry.
Antonin's mouth took on a stern line that reminded Harry of Rose. "Well you're lucky."
Lucky. Yes, he was lucky. Incredibly fucking lucky that he'd met Antonin, and that he was in from the cold, and that none of his asinine suicide attempts had been successful. The Old Man, his mother, Cid, none of that might ever be okay, but if he could be here right now with Antonin, like this, then he was lucky.
Antonin leaned forward as Harry's hand flexed against his warm, slender shoulder. Their kiss was long, and slow, and floated them out of all of their problems for a gently whirling moment that ended with Harry's moan of regret, as he remembered his promise not to steal anything more from Antonin than he had to. He broke it off, sitting up against the wall behind the bed, his head down, Antonin held out from him with both arms.
"Harry."
He looked up. Antonin's eyes held no anger, no judgment, just sadness. "Why can't you?"
The words beat themselves against the inside of his mouth. His lips parted as he fought for control of his jaw and lost. "I want--" he stopped himself, but Antonin just kept looking at him. "It would be wrong," he finished lamely.
Antonin's gaze became shuttered. "Because we're both guys."
There was that, though it wouldn't have stopped him. "I don't know, maybe, but... there's more."
Antonin took Harry's hands from his shoulders and folded them against his chest as he scooted forward and leaned against Harry, his head resting on his shoulder. His grip on Harry's hands was commanding, as was his voice. "Tell me."
There was no longer any way for Harry to refuse. He buried his face in Antonin's silky hair, his lips against that seashell ear, and he began to tell Antonin everything.
Copyright © 2009 by Anne Harris
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