ALL THE THINGS WE SAVED YOU FROM
To the casual observer, the light was spectacular, a golden evening glow that bathed the glassy skyscraper in the middle of nowhere and set its windows aglimmer as the sun sank toward the horizon and the world held its breath.
Ravens circled somewhere about the building’s knees, full and luscious oaks a gilded fringe at the building’s toes, autumn-gold leaves fairly dripping with the evening light.
Exactly the right sort of clouds filled the sky, tiny cumulonimbuses that might have been painted in with a fairy’s brush, all cotton candy-pink and dewdrop-gold as the last of the daylight flared magnificently.
Still air bore the pleasant scent of leaf mould and lake water, for the skyscraper stood alone in the middle of the woods, held up by magic and willpower only in a place that usually bore no love for mechanised things.
No trace of concrete dust in the back of the throat here, no hum of traffic or lingering scent of fuel winding about one’s neck like a scarf, or a boa constrictor. Instead, birds chirped and cawed and warbled, leaves rustled secretively, and the occasional trout broke the mirrored lake with a tiny splash, breeching the sacred surface of its world to snag an unwary mosquito.
It was all very beautiful—and for Tristan, it was all very pointless. Here was a man who, once, had been lured to the wood by the promise of beautiful things and, once, had been ensnared by the serpent that lay beneath them.
Once, unfortunately, was enough.
Because instead of golden light glimmering off the gently rippling surface of the lake, instead of the enlivening sting of a bug sucking blood through one’s skin and the tingling, soul-ringing slap that followed, instead of the smell of oak leaves winding down one’s sinuses like an intoxicating perfume, Tristan lived in the penthouse of the high-rise, where the cooling system stripped all flavour from the air, where the golden, gleaming light of sunset filtered in through heavily tinted windows except at certain hours, and where the only noise not of his own making was the energy powering his prison’s various appliances.
Tristan was miserable.
Nobody cared.
Sometimes, like now, as he sat on a padded window bench that he suspected had been intended as a cozy nook but instead merely illuminated the fact of his solitude and the utter lack of other people he needed to nook away from, Tristan suspected that he was miserable because he deserved to be.
Perhaps he’d imagined this, a prison of his own mind made real by the magical forces that wreathed and writhed through the forest. Perhaps this was only the tangible form of that which had always been: an impenetrable fortress in his mind, self-selected isolation birthed by the suspicion that, really, what value did he have to anyone anyway?
He’d run away from his father at twelve.
His mother, he’d never known.
He’d wanted her, and she hadn’t wanted him, and there began a path that led, without very many twists and turns at all, to the window seat on which he now sat, surveying the kingdom that in his more whimsical moments he thought of fondly as his.
A flock of ravens exploded from a nearby oak, their wings catching the last of the sunlight like a bear dipping its paw in honey.
Tristan shifted restlessly. The thing was—the thing was—that in actual fact the prison was entirely of his own conception, because at any moment—any moment at all—he could pick himself up off the padded bench, pad his way barefooted across the thick vermillion rug, and descend the interminably long staircase to the world below.
At least, he could, if he could bring himself not to care about two highly important things:
One, the life of his daughter Nicole, and two…
He leaned against the window, the glass cold against his shirt sleeve, against his cheek. Any moment… Any moment now…
The tinting on the windows lifted, and Tristan was bathed in the full strength of the golden sunlight. Warmth suffused him, buoying him up until he bowed backward, full to bursting with the life and light of it all. Pressure built in his chest, mounting, mounting…
Warmth became heat…
Breath became light…
…and as Tristan exhaled, a deep-chested sigh of contented pleasure, the air in front of him condensed, and flakes of gold crystallised therein.
He raised his hands, cupped, and the flakes drifted down as the motion of his exhalation released them.
Half full.
Not the best day, but not the worst.
The sun dipped below the horizon. The tint rose up again on the windows. And Tristan crossed the vermillion rug diagonally to the white marble plinth that most people would have called the kitchen bench, and let the gold flakes fall into the transparent crystal bowl that sat there for that purpose, joining the rest of the week’s harvest and sending the numbers on the scales that coastered the bowl flickering.
The numbers settled.
Adrenaline gave Tristan’s heart a tweak.
Two kilos. It was enough.
The doorbell rang, and even though the door was never locked—what would be the point, when the only being Tristan cared to keep out could walk on through regardless, and the rest of the tower slept uninhabited—Tristan crossed the rug on the opposite diagonal toward the door, nervous hands wiping against his thighs, leaving sparkling tears down the front of his slacks.
The bell chimed again, and although it was the only noise apart from the background hum of electricity, still there was an element of discordance to it, as though it were clashing painfully with a sound that sat just barely out of hearing.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Tristan muttered quietly—very quietly. A deep, steeling breath and he yanked the door open—though not too forcefully.
The man-who-was-not-a-man gleamed back at Tristan, not emanating a single photon of light and yet still somehow causing the dim, maroon hallway to brighten to something slightly less… intestinal. Dark hair gleamed as though lit by the sun that had died, tousled as though the wind itself was in love and couldn’t help but caress; dark eyes glittered with an eternity of amusement, and ears tapered to slender points that Tristan could never keep his eyes completely away from, though he did, with monumental effort, constrain his fingers from them.
“May I enter?”
He would enter with permission or without, but it went better for everyone with.
Idly, Tristan ran a thumb over the long scar that tracked down the side of his wrist. “Please,” he said in a tone that formed the Venn diagram intersection between loathing, and longing, and desperate, desperate need.
The man-who-was-not-a-man strode over the vermillion rug to the crystal bowl of gold. He lifted it in both hands, the crystal chiming a long, gleaming note of recognition, and inhaled deeply as one might a bowl full of eucalyptus steam to clear the throat. “Yes,” he sighed happily. “You have done good work this week.”
The gold vanished, and despite his intentions every single week to spot how it was done, Tristan still couldn’t decide if the gold had been inhaled, or merely vanished.
Sometimes he hoped for vanished.
Most times he hoped for vanished.
To think of the gold as something he’d exhaled and the other had then inhaled…
A shiver slid down his spine, silver and cold.
“You’ll make sure Nicole gets her half?” Tristan said, imagining the curved point of that ear beneath his thumb, for him to caress—or crush.
The man-who-was-not nodded, shrugged, lazily tilted his head and narrowed an eye at Tristan. “You still care? Even after all this time?”
Tristan hadn’t known a snake still coiled in his gut, but if he had he’d have named the snake Regret. Or maybe Guilt. Sorrow, even; Sorrow was a great name for a snake. “Yes,” he said quietly—very quietly. “I still care.”
A more decisive nod this time from the man-who-was-not. “Then I shall return again next week.”
No one had wanted him in his early life, and too many had wanted him in his middle life, but at least now in this, his imprisoned life, there was a balance: Tristan made something worthwhile, and in exchange, he would not be torn apart—and neither would his daughter.