Confidence

It's Greg Laden's birthday. As has become tradition, Greg, you're getting a story for your birthday. I hope you like it.

Confidence

Claude pasted a smile on his face before driving into the village square and kept it there while he unhitched and watered the horses. It was still there as he opened the back of his wagon and mounted the steps that folded out from the back. It was a calm and serene smile, despite his worries, never wavering as he waited under the awning for the villagers to become curious enough to gather round.

It didn't take long. Quick glances gave way to pulled-aside curtains and whispered conferences. Children tried to pretend they weren't looking at him while pushing their friends to approach him. Smothered giggles surrounded him.

Finally, a large man with his left arm bound up in splints and linen marched up to the wagon with a purposeful stride. Claude wondered, as he always did, whether he was finally about to be caught, but his smile stayed warm and easy. "Can I help you, friend?"

"I figured I'd better find out what you're selling before someone dies of curiosity." The tall man's grin was broad and open.

Claude relaxed slightly. He raised his voice to carry. "Goodness, friend, if they're dying, bring them here immediately! My partner and I trade in cures."

"Ah. You're magickers then?"

Claude bowed. "We are at your service." He preferred to tell only the lies he had to.

The big man winced as he tried to lift his arm. "Do you have something that'll take care of this?"

"We do indeed. Adele!" Claude turned to find her already standing next to him in the back of the wagon.

Adele frowned sympathetically at the big man's arm. "Was it a bad break?"

"Was it bad?!" He twitched his arm and winced again. He went on more quietly. "It's bad enough I haven't been able to work for two weeks."

"Oh, dear." She clucked and shook her head.

The man leaned forward. "I don't mind telling you, miss. I fainted dead away when they tugged it to straighten it out."

"You poor thing." She looked dismayed. "Stay right here. We have just the thing."

Adele retreated into the shadows of the wagon, and the man turned to Claude. "Good to meet you, by the way. I'm Thierry, the carpenter." He held out his good hand. "It's good you came along. Not being able to work sure gets to a man."

Claude shook it. "I'm Claude, and my partner is Miss Adele. It's a pleasure to be able to help, Master Thierry."

Adele returned quickly, holding out a clay bottle stoppered with a plug of wax. "This is what you want." She handed it to him. "Rub some over the break every evening, then wrap it again in a clean cloth. It may itch, but try not to scratch it."

Thierry turned the bottle in his hand. "How long will it take before I can work again?"

Adele sighed. "It'll be another five or six days, I'm afraid, and the arm will be weak for a bit even then."

"Another week beats another month or more, Miss Adele." Thierry set the bottle on the floor of the wagon and pulled out his purse. "How much?"

"It'll be three pence." Real magickers' potions would be worth about twice that price.

Thierry's eyebrows went up. "I don't mean to argue with a bargain, but are you sure?"

Claude's smile got wider. "We can't all be rich men, Master Thierry."

"You'll soon be a richer man than when you started." He handed Adele three pennies and picked up his bottle. "I'll go let the folks know you're okay." He marched off as purposefully as he'd arrived.

Claude winked at Adele. The soft sell had worked again.

The children gathered first, wide eyed at meeting magickers. Claude practiced a little slight of hand for their amusement.

Then came the adults, a couple at first and more as folks saw their neighbors gather. Claude moved down from the steps then, out from under the awning and out of earshot of the wagon. People were willing to tell Adele almost anything, even things they didn't want their neighbors to hear. Claude enjoyed himself, keeping the crowd happy as they waited, telling blatantly modest stories about things he'd never done. He sent Adele another customer whenever she was ready.

As Claude watched Adele work, he was reminded how lucky he was to have found her. She'd started out timid. Customers standing right next to her used to ask her to speak up. She still couldn't work a crowd the way he did, but she'd gotten much better. She had a knack of looking people in the eye and, to all appearances, really listening to what they said. She held hands and patted shoulders. He'd even seen tears in her eyes on occasion. No one could have played her part better.

"Well, that's everyone from the village. I sent some of the kids to run out to the farms, so I hope you're planning on staying for a bit."

Claude turned to see Thierry. He pumped the man's hand as though it had been a year since he'd seen his dear friend last. "We're hoping to stay through the night, if no one minds. We'll stay in the wagon."

"In the wagon? There's no need." Thierry pointed across the square toward a handsome, two-story stone building with a thatched roof. "We've got a perfectly good public house, and you don't need to be a rich man to stay there."

Claude's smile, which had never left his face, deepened. "I'm sure it's lovely, and we'll stop in for dinner, but there are some..." He dropped his voice. "...things that are better not left alone overnight."

"I see." Thierry shot a nervous glance at the wagon, as did several other villagers. Claude hadn't caught anyone snooping in the wagon since he'd started using that line.

Thierry rubbed the palm of his good hand on his thigh and looked around. "So, uh, where are you heading off to tomorrow?"

"We've been mostly heading east. What's the next village in that direction?"

"It's Elder's Ferry, but it's not a village. It's a good-sized town."

Someone else said, "Hope you have enough medicine. Probably be plenty of sick folk for you to cure."

Claude looked around him. "Well, you're a hearty, healthy lot. I don't think you'll clean us out."

Then he sent Adele another customer. He was as fully relaxed now as he ever got. Things couldn't have gone better. He let his eyes twinkle at the crowd as he mentally counted his take.

***

Claude woke himself two hours before dawn. He threw on his clothes in the dark and opened the half door that led from his bunk to the wagon's seat. Adele was sleeping on the floor, lying between the barrels of steeping "medicine" and the bags of dried berries and herbs they used for color and flavor. All they added was water and a little of the local hooch.

It wasn't easy hitching sleepy horses to a wagon in the dark, but Claude had years of practice. Soon he was on the seat and ready to move.

South. He'd had no intention of heading east, but the news that there was a town there had confirmed his plans. They didn't stop in large towns. Towns were big enough to hold garrisons. If and when his misdeeds caught up with him, he wanted a fighting chance to get away.

He shook the reins and clucked softly to the horses. There was barely enough starlight to show where the buildings were. They made a little noise crossing the square, but his experience said honest folk slept soundly this time of night.

Claude was just turning onto the southern road when he saw a tiny blur of motion cross in front of the wagon. The horses started. The rabbit or whatever it was had come from the right, and the wagon turned sharply back into the square. It picked up speed.

Claude braced his feet against the board and leaned back as hard as he could, pulling on the reins, but the horses were having none of it. They wanted to run.

He saw the fence in front of them just as the horses swerved to avoid it. The wagon didn't make the turn as sharply as the animals did. He threw his hands up to shield his face when he heard the fence splinter.

Then he wished he'd been holding onto something. The wagon tipped, one of the front wheels coming up off the ground. As it came back down, Claude heard an ominous crack.

He was riding lower than he should be, even considering he was now sitting on the floor between the footboard and the seat. He heard something dragging, and the horses slowed. They came to rest in the middle of the road leading east.

As soon as the wagon stopped, Claude climbed back on the seat and opened the door behind him. "Adele, are you okay?"

There was no response. Then he heard a tiny annoyed voice. "Wha time's it?"

"Never mind." Mornings weren't Adele's best time. "Go back to sleep."

He thought about climbing down, but it was too dark to see the damage. Instead, he waited for the villagers to arrive and tried to come up with a plausible explanation for leaving town so early. He looked at the road. At least they were pointed the right direction.

***

It was the axle, and that wasn't the worst of Claude's luck. Thierry, with his broken arm, was the only wainwright in the village, as well as its carpenter. The only good news was that the wagon had landed right outside Thierry's shop.

Some of the villagers thought it would be better to send to Elder's Ferry for help and hope that someone had an axle the right size or would be willing to travel to fix it. Others thought that was useless and the magickers ought to wait the few days it would take for Thierry's arm to heal.

Waiting was, of course, out of the question. Those few days would be long enough for everyone to realize the medicine they'd bought was worthless. Claude tried not to show the panic he felt. He held onto his friendly, unconcerned smile, but only just. He couldn't take any useful part in the discussion.

It was Adele who came up with the solution, once she'd had her morning tea. "Harvest hasn't started, right? Otherwise you wouldn't all be standing around like this."

Sheepish grins showed the truth of her statement. She turned to Thierry. "How long do you think it would take you to make us an axle using other people's hands?"

"You mean tell them what needs to be done?" Thierry's eyes brightened at the prospect of work. "Three, maybe four days--assuming you're not all complete oafs." He turned to his fellow villagers.

There were friendly protests, but four of the young men accepted his challenge. They and most of the rest of the village, who'd found the accident a perfect excuse for a holiday, followed Thierry to pick out a properly sized and seasoned log from his stores.

Claude turned to Adele. "Is there anyone who's expecting to be cured before the axle's done?"

She was looking under the wagon at the broken axle. "I don't think so."

He looked around nervously. "Unless you have a way to speed things up, you might want to be sure."

She stood up and faced him. "They like us here." She shrugged. "What's the worst that could happen?"

Claude stared at her, his mouth hanging open, as she casually reclaimed her tea mug from the wagon's seat and wandered across the square toward the public house. It wasn't bad enough he had to worry about them being hung, now Adele was going crazy on him. He hoped he wasn't going to have to find a new partner again.

His other partners in crime had been so...well, dishonest. Claire had been the first. She'd packed up and left with him when he'd passed through her town. She'd left him about a year later, but most of what she'd packed then wasn't hers. He was lucky he'd been in the wagon when she left.

He'd avoided romantic entanglements in choosing his next partner, deciding they affected his judgment. It hadn't helped much. Marc had turned him in to the mayor of a town they'd stopped in, probably hoping to take the wagon while Claude was occupied. Claude had just barely enough warning from the mayor's daughter to escape--leaving Marc to his fate.

He'd been leery of taking on another partner after that, but he couldn't really raise a crowd as effectively from inside the wagon. Adele had seemed so harmless, even if he got the odd impression from time to time that she looked down on him. She was perfect once she'd learned to speak up.

She'd made improvements to how they sold the medicine, too. Gone were the days when he just pulled the nearest bottle from the shelf, telling people it was a cure-all. Adele spent time in the wagon for each customer, and every one of them came away thinking she'd given them exactly what they needed.

She was the one who started telling people that the cures would take several days to work, an improvement Claude appreciated. It gave them a much better start before irate customers could come looking for them. Only now she was acting like she didn't care about angry crowds.

He wanted to chase after Adele to yell at her, but he couldn't do that here. He couldn't wring an answer out of her either. He clenched his fists in frustration and kicked one of the wagon's wheels.

Remembering Marc, Claude made himself a promise. No matter what trick she thought she was keeping in reserve, if Adele betrayed him, he'd make sure she went with him.

***

"Come on, boys, back to work!" Thierry frowned as he gestured with his left arm. He'd taken the splints off and had it resting in a sling, but he kept using it to talk.

Claude nodded at the arm. "Hurt much?"

Thierry looked down and grinned. "No, but it itches like you wouldn't believe. Your partner was right. Mostly I can stand it, but when it rubs against the sling..." He patted it gently with his other hand. "Well, it's all I can do to keep from taking off some skin."

"You don't want to do that, not when it's healing so nicely." Claude turned toward the young men back at work on the axle. He and Thierry were standing in the open doors to Thierry's airy and barnlike shop. "What are they working on now?"

Thierry started in on the details of how they were shaping the log to make Claude's axle, with lots of pauses to yell at the men as they worked. Claude smiled and nodded in the right places, but his attention was all for the arm.

He was awed and amused that Thierry had decided that the pain was itching, just because Adele had told him it would itch. Two days ago he couldn't even move it splinted. Some people were so desperate to believe they were getting better that they'd convince themselves of anything.

At the same time, he was terrified that Thierry would gesture his arm right into something solid. It should be splinted for weeks yet. If Thierry jostled it hard enough, he'd be likely to pass out from the "itch." Then where would Claude and Adele be? Not that he'd seen much of Adele in the last couple of days.

Claude noticed Thierry's voice trail off. He was staring somewhere over Claude's shoulder.

Claude turned around. Coming across the square were a woman and a girl of about seven. The girl, racing to keep up with the hurrying woman, was quite a sight in this tidy village.

Her curly straw-blond hair was pulling out of her braids and stuck out all over her head. The hem of her dress was torn and hanging down on one side. The dress had probably once been blue, but it was now the same light brown as her hands, feet and the big streak across one cheek. She was carrying a rag doll in worse shape than she was. Obviously a child who liked mud.

The woman, who Claude assumed was the girl's mother, was much neater. Her light brown hair was pulled back. Her dress and apron were clean and pressed, if obviously faded. Claude would have described her as pretty if she hadn't looked so worn and worried.

When the two of them reached the shop, the little girl flopped down on the ground. The woman was winded too.

"Oh, good." She sighed and relaxed very slightly. "You are still here. I...I need..." She blushed crimson and looked at the ground.

Thierry stepped forward. Claude thought he might be blushing too. It was going around. "Is there something I can help you with, Bernadette?"

Bernadette dropped a half curtsy to the blacksmith. "Thank you, but no. It's just..."

"Are you looking for medicine, Mistress Bernadette?"

She looked up at Claude and opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Claude hadn't thought it possible, but her blush deepened.

"My brother's sick." The little girl stood back up and patted her mother's arm. Words came out through her gasps. "Coughing real hard...Aunt Mae says his color's bad...says there'll be one less mouth soon."

Bernadette bit her lip and turned half away. "I can't pay." Her words were almost inaudible.

"The baby's sick? Bernadette, I can--"

She shook her head. "No, Thierry, I can't let you do that."

Claude hadn't heard her approach, but Adele was standing at his elbow. She held out a bottle. "You'll be wanting this."

Bernadette's hands were clenched in fists at her side. She was still turned away from them. "I can't pay."

Claude stared at the woman. What was she doing? "Mistress Bernadette, if your son's sick--"

"I can't pay."

"Here." The little girl held out her doll. "Mama says we don't take...anything we can't pay for."

"Sophie." Bernadette held one hand out toward her daughter.

"It's all right. You can have the medicine." Part of Claude wanted to confess the stuff was worthless, just to make them go away. The combination of need and rigid honesty was making him edgy.

The little girl shook her head, still holding out the doll.

"But I don't need your--"

"Claude, take the doll."

Claude looked at Adele. She looked serious.

"They won't take the medicine otherwise." When he didn't move, she turned to the girl and knelt down. "I've been looking for a good doll. What's her name?"

"Elise."

Adele shook the doll's hand. "Nice to meet you, Elise." She looked back at the girl. "Do you think we can trade?"

The girl nodded. She hugged Elise fiercely, rubbing her face against the doll's. It was hard to say who ended up the dirtier for it. Claude was pretty sure the doll was wetter than it had been.

Then the exchange was made and Adele stood up. "Mistress Bernadette, rub some of that on your son's chest when you get home, do it again morning and night. When he's breathing easier, give him small sips instead for a week."

Bernadette nodded, her eyes wet. "Thank you."

The three of them watched mother and daughter out of sight. Thierry cleared his throat. "Well, I should see how that axle's coming." He wandered away without waiting for a response.

Claude shook his head. "There's a story there."

"There are stories everywhere, if you stop to hear them." Adele was still looking after Bernadette and her daughter. She looked silly, hugging the ragged doll.

"What's yours?"

Adele tilted her head and looked at him through narrowed eyes. "What do you mean?"

Claude decided there were too many ears too close by. He jerked his head to indicate that she should follow him to the other side of the wagon. Once there, he put his head close to hers. "Do you think that was wise?"

"What?"

"Taking the doll. Don't you think they'll have enough to hate us for when the baby dies?"

"But they wouldn't have taken the medicine if I didn't take the doll." She looked confused.

"It's not medicine." Claude spit the words out. "It won't help them."

Adele looked at him for a long moment, opened her mouth and closed it again. Then she shrugged. "It won't hurt."

"Adele!" Claude was shocked at her callousness. She was so good it was easy to forget she was a fraud.

She snorted. "Don't try to convince me that you're growing a conscience. You were doing this long before I came around." She stalked away.

Claude considered going after her, but she was right. What call did he have to talk to her like that? He turned opposite the direction she'd gone and started to walk. He didn't really want to be alone with his thoughts, but he didn't want to share them with anyone else either.

***

That night they held a dance in the square. Visitors seemed rare here, for all they were near a good-sized town. Or maybe it was just that they wanted to do something nice for the people who had helped them. Claude gritted his teeth at the thought. The morning was still bothering him.

Thierry was there. Claude talked to him for a while between dances. He saw him dancing with Adele once, a clumsy proceeding with his arm in a sling. Thierry kept watching over Adele's shoulder as they moved. Bernadette wasn't there.

All the young men and boys wanted to dance with Adele. She laughed and tried to refuse, but they wouldn't let her. She seemed to be avoiding Claude.

When he danced, Claude confined himself to old women and girls under ten. No sense in making more trouble here than they were already in. Mostly he sat to one side and smiled. It was harder than usual. He was worried about how much time they had. The axle was coming along well, but any delay could still mean disaster.

It was odd. The longer Claude thought about it, the less disaster meant arrest or a public thrashing. Truth be told, he'd be sorry to disappoint these people. He didn't want to see their faces when they discovered he was a fake.

Maybe he shouldn't find it strange. After all, he'd gotten into this business because he wasn't any good at anything but talking to people. He enjoyed his job, meeting people and being friendly. He enjoyed telling stories and watching kids' eyes get big when he talked to them. He enjoyed having people look up to him, even if he wasn't who they thought he was.

This was the first time he'd really had to face the fact that there was another part of his job. He knew he was a fraud, but he didn't spend much time thinking about what that meant to anyone else. He'd never stuck around long enough to have to connect what he did with people being hurt. But now he knew these people, and he'd likely to have to watch what happened when they found out about him.

Claude wasn't wearing his habitual smile when Thierry thumped him on the back and sat down next to him. "Not much of a dancer either, eh, magicker?"

Claude waved a hand vaguely. "It's not that."

"Oh, I understand." Thierry smiled conspiratorially. "These small town entertainments, well, it's nice to be neighborly, but you must be used to something more grand."

"No, it's not...." Claude didn't want Thierry to keep guessing about what was bothering him. He changed the subject to the first thing he could think of. "How's Mistress Bernadette's baby?"

He wanted to take back the words the moment they left his mouth. The last thing he needed to do was to draw attention to his failings.

To his surprise, Thierry smiled. If he blushed too, well, Claude was getting used to that. "He's doing real well. Sophie--that's the little girl--she said he's almost stopped coughing. Even Aunt Mae, old pessimist that she is, thinks he'll make it. I can't thank you enough."

"Don't think anything of it." Claude was trying to absorb the good news. He'd been expecting tragedy. He almost missed Thierry's next remark. "What did you say?"

"I said it was right nice of Miss Adele to clean up the doll and 'sell' it to me. Sophie loves that thing, and I'll find some way to get it back to her without bruising anyone's pride."

Claude murmured something noncommittal, but he was too perplexed to make conversation. Was Adele having an attack of conscience? It didn't seem possible after her behavior that morning. Maybe she was trying to ingratiate herself with the villagers, plotting to shift the blame onto him. Or maybe....

Claude hardly noticed when Thierry left him to his own thoughts.

***

If Claude was confused the night of the dance, he was flummoxed by the afternoon they left.

The blow he'd been waiting for had never come. On the contrary, people had been coming up to him for the last day and a half to thank him for his help. A few more folks came to buy medicine. When the time finally came for them to leave, most of the village crowded around him and Adele, shaking hands and pounding backs. There were tears on some faces.

This time, they left in full daylight, and Adele sat beside him on the seat. It took all he had not to ask her immediately what was happening. Then, finally, they were out of earshot of the villagers. He tried to sound calm. "This is hardly the sendoff I was expecting."

Adele hung off the edge of her seat, turned around to keep waving at the villagers. She chuckled. "Thought it would be something less ceremonious?"

"Less comfortable at least." Claude realized Adele couldn't avoid him anymore. "So what happened back there?"

Adele didn't answer, just kept waving until they were around the first bend in the road. Then she turned around and settled in with a sigh.

"I asked you what happened back there."

Adele tried to look blank. "What do you mean?"

"We were there plenty long enough for someone to realize that what we were selling wasn't medicine. But everyone seems to think it worked." He frowned. "We're heroes. That was a grand goodbye. I haven't paid for anything for two days, but we've got enough extra food in the wagon to last us more than a week. What happened?"

"They liked us?" Adele sounded hopeful.

"Adele, stop it!"

"I, uh, I need to get something from the wagon." She reached for the door.

Claude leaned back against it. "You weren't worried, so you know something about what was going on in the village. If you go into the wagon without telling me what that is, it'll be to get your stuff. Then I'll stop and let you off."

Adele's mouth squirmed as though it were trying to flee her face. She turned forward.

"Adele?"

She held up her hand. "Please. A minute. I'm not used to talking about this."

He waited for almost a mile. Finally, she sighed. "It was magic."

"Magic?" Claude was stunned.

She nodded. "I used magic to turn the potion you mix up into medicine. Everybody thought the cures worked because they did."

"But I...but you...." Claude told himself to shut up. He took a deep breath. "How long?"

"Have I been doing this? Since the start."

"Why?"

She frowned at him. "Why what? Help people?"

"No." He thought about what he wanted most to know. "Why is a magicker like you staying with a fraud like me? Don't you have a council somewhere you should be sitting on?" He had a sudden suspicion. "What do the magickers want with me?"

"Nothing as far as I know." Adele grinned. "Why? What have you done to them?"

"Nothing as far as I know." Claude hoped it was true. "Then why stay?"

Adele turned away. "Because the magickers don't want anything to do with me either."

Claude had traveled with Adele for three years. He couldn't imagine her committing any crime bad enough that the council of magickers wouldn't want her. Not with their reputation. "Why not?"

"I'm not very good." There were tears in her voice.

Claude couldn’t believe what he was hearing. "For goodness sake, you just cured a whole village of what ailed them. How good do you have to be?"

Adele wiped her eyes before turning around. "I didn't do all of it. You helped."

"Me?" Claude stared at her. Then he closed his mouth and looked at his hands, holding the reins. They looked the same as they always had. He couldn't see any magic. "What did I do?"

Adele smiled the tiniest of smiles. "Magic requires two things. I have the skills. I know what needs to be done."

"Okay, I'll agree with that. What's the other part?"

"Belief." Adele sighed and looked like she was going to cry again. "That's the part I don't have."

"What do you mean?"

Adele looked at him. "People see you and hear you, and they believe in you. They want to. I...well, I'm not exactly inspiring." She gestured at herself. "I'm not much to look at. I can't carry on an interesting conversation. People just don't look at me and believe I can help them."

"But..." Claude stopped. He realized he was on the brink of saying something that could lose him the best partner he'd had. He wanted to think about what he was doing first.

Then he looked at Adele, twisting her skirt in her hands. She'd spent the last three years curing people. She'd stayed with a fraud so she could keep curing them. What had he done in that time?

There wasn't anything to think about. "People believe in you."

Adele stared at her hands. "You don't have to be nice. I'm used to it." Her expression said she lied.

He whooped with laughter. "Since when do you think I'm nice?"

She looked up with wide eyes. "You're serious."

"I'm serious." He sighed. "I've been admiring your tricks, your way with people, for years. You have a skill I've never had."

She frowned her question.

"Sincerity." He shook his head. "You look at people, listen to them, and they can tell you care. They know--and I should have known, if I was paying any attention--that you're there to help them. When you tell them what they need to take to get cured and how they need to take it, they believe in you. They believe in it."

Adele looked stunned. Claude gave her some time to think.

He thought about the last three years. Nothing he'd done in that time had been what he thought it was. There were places he could go back to, people he could talk to again. They wouldn't be looking to arrest him. They'd think he'd helped.

For that matter, he had helped them--with Adele's assistance. From what she'd said, he'd supplied half of what they'd needed to make them better. Even if he hadn't meant to at the time, it was nice to know the one thing he was good at had turned out to be good for something after all.

The sun had almost reached the horizon when Adele stirred next to him and spoke.

"There's one more thing I should tell you."

Claude braced himself. "What?"

He hoped Adele would stay. If she decided she didn't need him anymore--and he wouldn't blame her--he'd have to go back to being a fraud. Now that there was another option, he desperately wanted to be able to grab it.

"I wasn't completely honest with you." She rubbed her eyes and looked uncomfortable. "I was afraid that if I told you everything, you wouldn't need me anymore."

Claude didn't understand. "What do you mean?"

"The magickers thought I was a novelty. It's pretty rare for someone to have only half the talents needed to create magic. That's how I got so much training before they made me leave. They were sure I'd develop the rest."

When it sunk in, Claude stopped the horses and turned to face Adele. "You mean..." He couldn't say it.

She nodded, a little bit of humor peeking out from behind her nervousness. "If you can raise that much belief, you can probably learn to shape it."

"I, uh...oh." He blinked.

Adele grinned, definitely not the timid person he'd met three years before. "I could try to teach you, if you like."

Claude tried to think about it, but he couldn't give the idea the attention it deserved. On top of everything else, it was just too much. "Could you do me a favor?"

Adele scrunched her eyebrows together. "What?"

"I'm having enough trouble getting used to being legitimate." He shook the reins to start the horses going again. "Ask me again in about a month."

She looked at the wagon and horses then, finally, at him. "I will."

He believed her.

Continue reading...

Apologetics and Apoplexy

You see the arguments: Atheists can't have morals because they don't have a god to provide them. Atheists think this world is all there is, so what do they care about being good if it all goes away when they die? God is love, so atheists can't love anyone.

It's a clueless, backward argument. Atheists have morals. They love. Demonstrably. I've always found it a bit sad that these particular theists argue from principles and end up denying the facts rather than the other way around, but...well, you just can't make people think if they don't want to. I might step in now and again to point out that this is what they're doing. I include evidence to the contrary when I lecture a class on religious skepticism, but in arguments, usually I just walk away.

Today, however, it's personal.

Last week, my friend Jodi, who rarely blogs, wrote a post about penises. Well, it was about taking a realistic look at body image anxieties imposed on men, in particular about penises. She ended it with "I guess what I’m trying to say is that we should all just have sex the way we want with the types of people we want and *enjoy* it, because enjoying it makes it awesome."

Then, some idiot theist who likes to keep tabs of what "the atheists [a]re up to these days" decided that this one sentence was a great jumping-off point for another one of those ass-backward arguments about morality. His point? That atheists had no reason to not include pedophilia in that "types of people we want" because we didn't have religion.

I'm not linking to his post. Jodi preserved it for history in her own post. Go over there if you want to read it and laugh over some spectacular bits of cluelessness about who wrote the post and what it was about or engage in some discussion over where exactly the injunction against pedophilia comes in the bible and how well those who preach these morals live up to them. That's not what this post is about.

This post is about demonization. It's about basic empathy and humanity. And it is, sadly, about kids and rape and a suicide note. This may get too intense for some people. If you're one of them, you'll find the rest of what I have to say at the very end of this post, below the fold.

In some ways, it doesn't matter who he was. I mean, it matters intensely, but I didn't know him. After reading his letter this morning, which I found following a random Twitter link that I can't even find anymore, I couldn't remember his name (it's Bill Zeller). What matters is that he was building a life, growing academically and professionally, despite having been repeatedly raped as a child. I say, "was," because what follows is the letter he posted before successfully hanging himself, posted in its entirety as he requested.

I have the urge to declare my sanity and justify my actions, but I assume I'll never be able to convince anyone that this was the right decision. Maybe it's true that anyone who does this is insane by definition, but I can at least explain my reasoning. I considered not writing any of this because of how personal it is, but I like tying up loose ends and don't want people to wonder why I did this. Since I've never spoken to anyone about what happened to me, people would likely draw the wrong conclusions.

My first memories as a child are of being raped, repeatedly. This has affected every aspect of my life. This darkness, which is the only way I can describe it, has followed me like a fog, but at times intensified and overwhelmed me, usually triggered by a distinct situation. In kindergarten I couldn't use the bathroom and would stand petrified whenever I needed to, which started a trend of awkward and unexplained social behavior. The damage that was done to my body still prevents me from using the bathroom normally, but now it's less of a physical impediment than a daily reminder of what was done to me.

This darkness followed me as I grew up. I remember spending hours playing with legos, having my world consist of me and a box of cold, plastic blocks. Just waiting for everything to end. It's the same thing I do now, but instead of legos it's surfing the web or reading or listening to a baseball game. Most of my life has been spent feeling dead inside, waiting for my body to catch up.

At times growing up I would feel inconsolable rage, but I never connected this to what happened until puberty. I was able to keep the darkness at bay for a few hours at a time by doing things that required intense concentration, but it would always come back. Programming appealed to me for this reason. I was never particularly fond of computers or mathematically inclined, but the temporary peace it would provide was like a drug. But the darkness always returned and built up something like a tolerance, because programming has become less and less of a refuge.

The darkness is with me nearly every time I wake up. I feel like a grime is covering me. I feel like I'm trapped in a contimated body that no amount of washing will clean. Whenever I think about what happened I feel manic and itchy and can't concentrate on anything else. It manifests itself in hours of eating or staying up for days at a time or sleeping for sixteen hours straight or week long programming binges or constantly going to the gym. I'm exhausted from feeling like this every hour of every day.

Three to four nights a week I have nightmares about what happened. It makes me avoid sleep and constantly tired, because sleeping with what feels like hours of nightmares is not restful. I wake up sweaty and furious. I'm reminded every morning of what was done to me and the control it has over my life.

I've never been able to stop thinking about what happened to me and this hampered my social interactions. I would be angry and lost in thought and then be interrupted by someone saying "Hi" or making small talk, unable to understand why I seemed cold and distant. I walked around, viewing the outside world from a distant portal behind my eyes, unable to perform normal human niceties. I wondered what it would be like to take to other people without what happened constantly on my mind, and I wondered if other people had similar experiences that they were better able to mask.

Alcohol was also something that let me escape the darkness. It would always find me later, though, and it was always angry that I managed to escape and it made me pay. Many of the irresponsible things I did were the result of the darkness. Obviously I'm responsible for every decision and action, including this one, but there are reasons why things happen the way they do.

Alcohol and other drugs provided a way to ignore the realities of my situation. It was easy to spend the night drinking and forget that I had no future to look forward to. I never liked what alcohol did to me, but it was better than facing my existence honestly. I haven't touched alcohol or any other drug in over seven months (and no drugs or alcohol will be involved when I do this) and this has forced me to evaluate my life in an honest and clear way. There's no future here. The darkness will always be with me.

I used to think if I solved some problem or achieved some goal, maybe he would leave. It was comforting to identify tangible issues as the source of my problems instead of something that I'll never be able to change. I thought that if I got into to a good college, or a good grad school, or lost weight, or went to the gym nearly every day for a year, or created programs that millions of people used, or spent a summer or California or New York or published papers that I was proud of, then maybe I would feel some peace and not be constantly haunted and unhappy. But nothing I did made a dent in how depressed I was on a daily basis and nothing was in any way fulfilling. I'm not sure why I ever thought that would change anything.

I didn't realize how deep a hold he had on me and my life until my first relationship. I stupidly assumed that no matter how the darkness affected me personally, my romantic relationships would somehow be separated and protected. Growing up I viewed my future relationships as a possible escape from this thing that haunts me every day, but I began to realize how entangled it was with every aspect of my life and how it is never going to release me. Instead of being an escape, relationships and romantic contact with other people only intensified everything about him that I couldn't stand. I will never be able to have a relationship in which he is not the focus, affecting every aspect of my romantic interactions.

Relationships always started out fine and I'd be able to ignore him for a few weeks. But as we got closer emotionally the darkness would return and every night it'd be me, her and the darkness in a black and gruesome threesome. He would surround me and penetrate me and the more we did the more intense it became. It made me hate being touched, because as long as we were separated I could view her like an outsider viewing something good and kind and untainted. Once we touched, the darkness would envelope her too and take her over and the evil inside me would surround her. I always felt like I was infecting anyone I was with.

Relationships didn't work. No one I dated was the right match, and I thought that maybe if I found the right person it would overwhelm him. Part of me knew that finding the right person wouldn't help, so I became interested in girls who obviously had no interest in me. For a while I thought I was gay. I convinced myself that it wasn't the darkness at all, but rather my orientation, because this would give me control over why things didn't feel "right". The fact that the darkness affected sexual matters most intensely made this idea make some sense and I convinced myself of this for a number of years, starting in college after my first relationship ended. I told people I was gay (at Trinity, not at Princeton), even though I wasn't attracted to men and kept finding myself interested in girls. Because if being gay wasn't the answer, then what was? People thought I was avoiding my orientation, but I was actually avoiding the truth, which is that while I'm straight, I will never be content with anyone. I know now that the darkness will never leave.

Last spring I met someone who was unlike anyone else I'd ever met. Someone who showed me just how well two people could get along and how much I could care about another human being. Someone I know I could be with and love for the rest of my life, if I weren't so fucked up. Amazingly, she liked me. She liked the shell of the man the darkness had left behind. But it didn't matter because I couldn't be alone with her. It was never just the two of us, it was always the three of us: her, me and the darkness. The closer we got, the more intensely I'd feel the darkness, like some evil mirror of my emotions. All the closeness we had and I loved was complemented by agony that I couldn't stand, from him. I realized that I would never be able to give her, or anyone, all of me or only me. She could never have me without the darkness and evil inside me. I could never have just her, without the darkness being a part of all of our interactions. I will never be able to be at peace or content or in a healthy relationship. I realized the futility of the romantic part of my life. If I had never met her, I would have realized this as soon as I met someone else who I meshed similarly well with. It's likely that things wouldn't have worked out with her and we would have broken up (with our relationship ending, like the majority of relationships do) even if I didn't have this problem, since we only dated for a short time. But I will face exactly the same problems with the darkness with anyone else. Despite my hopes, love and compatability is not enough. Nothing is enough. There's no way I can fix this or even push the darkness down far enough to make a relationship or any type of intimacy feasible.

So I watched as things fell apart between us. I had put an explicit time limit on our relationship, since I knew it couldn't last because of the darkness and didn't want to hold her back, and this caused a variety of problems. She was put in an unnatural situation that she never should have been a part of. It must have been very hard for her, not knowing what was actually going on with me, but this is not something I've ever been able to talk about with anyone. Losing her was very hard for me as well. Not because of her (I got over our relationship relatively quickly), but because of the realization that I would never have another relationship and because it signified the last true, exclusive personal connection I could ever have. This wasn't apparent to other people, because I could never talk about the real reasons for my sadness. I was very sad in the summer and fall, but it was not because of her, it was because I will never escape the darkness with anyone. She was so loving and kind to me and gave me everything I could have asked for under the circumstances. I'll never forget how much happiness she brought me in those briefs moments when I could ignore the darkness. I had originally planned to kill myself last winter but never got around to it. (Parts of this letter were written over a year ago, other parts days before doing this.) It was wrong of me to involve myself in her life if this were a possibility and I should have just left her alone, even though we only dated for a few months and things ended a long time ago. She's just one more person in a long list of people I've hurt.

I could spend pages talking about the other relationships I've had that were ruined because of my problems and my confusion related to the darkness. I've hurt so many great people because of who I am and my inability to experience what needs to be experienced. All I can say is that I tried to be honest with people about what I thought was true.

I've spent my life hurting people. Today will be the last time.

I've told different people a lot of things, but I've never told anyone about what happened to me, ever, for obvious reasons. It took me a while to realize that no matter how close you are to someone or how much they claim to love you, people simply cannot keep secrets. I learned this a few years ago when I thought I was gay and told people. The more harmful the secret, the juicier the gossip and the more likely you are to be betrayed. People don't care about their word or what they've promised, they just do whatever the fuck they want and justify it later. It feels incredibly lonely to realize you can never share something with someone and have it be between just the two of you. I don't blame anyone in particular, I guess it's just how people are. Even if I felt like this is something I could have shared, I have no interest in being part of a friendship or relationship where the other person views me as the damaged and contaminated person that I am. So even if I were able to trust someone, I probably would not have told them about what happened to me. At this point I simply don't care who knows.

I feel an evil inside me. An evil that makes me want to end life. I need to stop this. I need to make sure I don't kill someone, which is not something that can be easily undone. I don't know if this is related to what happened to me or something different. I recognize the irony of killing myself to prevent myself from killing someone else, but this decision should indicate what I'm capable of.

So I've realized I will never escape the darkness or misery associated with it and I have a responsibility to stop myself from physically harming others.

I'm just a broken, miserable shell of a human being. Being molested has defined me as a person and shaped me as a human being and it has made me the monster I am and there's nothing I can do to escape it. I don't know any other existence. I don't know what life feels like where I'm apart from any of this. I actively despise the person I am. I just feel fundamentally broken, almost non-human. I feel like an animal that woke up one day in a human body, trying to make sense of a foreign world, living among creatures it doesn't understand and can't connect with.

I have accepted that the darkness will never allow me to be in a relationship. I will never go to sleep with someone in my arms, feeling the comfort of their hands around me. I will never know what uncontimated intimacy is like. I will never have an exclusive bond with someone, someone who can be the recipient of all the love I have to give. I will never have children, and I wanted to be a father so badly. I think I would have made a good dad. And even if I had fought through the darkness and married and had children all while being unable to feel intimacy, I could have never done that if suicide were a possibility. I did try to minimize pain, although I know that this decision will hurt many of you. If this hurts you, I hope that you can at least forget about me quickly.

There's no point in identifying who molested me, so I'm just going to leave it at that. I doubt the word of a dead guy with no evidence about something that happened over twenty years ago would have much sway.

You may wonder why I didn't just talk to a professional about this. I've seen a number of doctors since I was a teenager to talk about other issues and I'm positive that another doctor would not have helped. I was never given one piece of actionable advice, ever. More than a few spent a large part of the session reading their notes to remember who I was. And I have no interest in talking about being raped as a child, both because I know it wouldn't help and because I have no confidence it would remain secret. I know the legal and practical limits of doctor/patient confidentiality, growing up in a house where we'd hear stories about the various mental illnesses of famous people, stories that were passed down through generations. All it takes is one doctor who thinks my story is interesting enough to share or a doctor who thinks it's her right or responsibility to contact the authorities and have me identify the molestor (justifying her decision by telling herself that someone else might be in danger). All it takes is a single doctor who violates my trust, just like the "friends" who I told I was gay did, and everything would be made public and I'd be forced to live in a world where people would know how fucked up I am. And yes, I realize this indicates that I have severe trust issues, but they're based on a large number of experiences with people who have shown a profound disrepect for their word and the privacy of others.

People say suicide is selfish. I think it's selfish to ask people to continue living painful and miserable lives, just so you possibly won't feel sad for a week or two. Suicide may be a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but it's also a permanent solution to a ~23 year-old problem that grows more intense and overwhelming every day.

Some people are just dealt bad hands in this life. I know many people have it worse than I do, and maybe I'm just not a strong person, but I really did try to deal with this. I've tried to deal with this every day for the last 23 years and I just can't fucking take it anymore.

I often wonder what life must be like for other people. People who can feel the love from others and give it back unadulterated, people who can experience sex as an intimate and joyous experience, people who can experience the colors and happenings of this world without constant misery. I wonder who I'd be if things had been different or if I were a stronger person. It sounds pretty great.

I'm prepared for death. I'm prepared for the pain and I am ready to no longer exist. Thanks to the strictness of New Jersey gun laws this will probably be much more painful than it needs to be, but what can you do. My only fear at this point is messing something up and surviving.

---

I'd also like to address my family, if you can call them that. I despise everything they stand for and I truly hate them, in a non-emotional, dispassionate and what I believe is a healthy way. The world will be a better place when they're dead--one with less hatred and intolerance.

If you're unfamiliar with the situation, my parents are fundamentalist Christians who kicked me out of their house and cut me off financially when I was 19 because I refused to attend seven hours of church a week.

They live in a black and white reality they've constructed for themselves. They partition the world into good and evil and survive by hating everything they fear or misunderstand and calling it love. They don't understand that good and decent people exist all around us, "saved" or not, and that evil and cruel people occupy a large percentage of their church. They take advantage of people looking for hope by teaching them to practice the same hatred they practice.

A random example:

"I am personally convinced that if a Muslim truly believes and obeys the Koran, he will be a terrorist." - George Zeller, August 24, 2010.

If you choose to follow a religion where, for example, devout Catholics who are trying to be good people are all going to Hell but child molestors go to Heaven (as long as they were "saved" at some point), that's your choice, but it's fucked up. Maybe a God who operates by those rules does exist. If so, fuck Him.

Their church was always more important than the members of their family and they happily sacrificed whatever necessary in order to satisfy their contrived beliefs about who they should be.

I grew up in a house where love was proxied through a God I could never believe in. A house where the love of music with any sort of a beat was literally beaten out of me. A house full of hatred and intolerance, run by two people who were experts at appearing kind and warm when others were around. Parents who tell an eight year old that his grandmother is going to Hell because she's Catholic. Parents who claim not to be racist but then talk about the horrors of miscegenation. I could list hundreds of other examples, but it's tiring.

Since being kicked out, I've interacted with them in relatively normal ways. I talk to them on the phone like nothing happened. I'm not sure why. Maybe because I like pretending I have a family. Maybe I like having people I can talk to about what's been going on in my life. Whatever the reason, it's not real and it feels like a sham. I should have never allowed this reconnection to happen.

I wrote the above a while ago, and I do feel like that much of the time. At other times, though, I feel less hateful. I know my parents honestly believe the crap they believe in. I know that my mom, at least, loved me very much and tried her best. One reason I put this off for so long is because I know how much pain it will cause her. She has been sad since she found out I wasn't "saved", since she believes I'm going to Hell, which is not a sadness for which I am responsible. That was never going to change, and presumably she believes the state of my physical body is much less important than the state of my soul. Still, I cannot intellectually justify this decision, knowing how much it will hurt her. Maybe my ability to take my own life, knowing how much pain it will cause, shows that I am a monster who doesn't deserve to live. All I know is that I can't deal with this pain any longer and I'm am truly sorry I couldn't wait until my family and everyone I knew died so this could be done without hurting anyone. For years I've wished that I'd be hit by a bus or die while saving a baby from drowning so my death might be more acceptable, but I was never so lucky.

---

To those of you who have shown me love, thank you for putting up with all my shittiness and moodiness and arbitrariness. I was never the person I wanted to be. Maybe without the darkness I would have been a better person, maybe not. I did try to be a good person, but I realize I never got very far.

I'm sorry for the pain this causes. I really do wish I had another option. I hope this letter explains why I needed to do this. If you can't understand this decision, I hope you can at least forgive me.

Bill Zeller

---

Please save this letter and repost it if gets deleted. I don't want people to wonder why I did this. I disseminated it more widely than I might have otherwise because I'm worried that my family might try to restrict access to it. I don't mind if this letter is made public. In fact, I'd prefer it be made public to people being unable to read it and drawing their own conclusions.

Feel free to republish this letter, but only if it is reproduced in its entirety.

If you couldn't read the whole thing, don't feel bad. I've had to skip around in it a bit as well. There's just...too much. Too much damage, too much pain, too much tragedy. It's overwhelming. It should be. It haunted me all day. (And if it resonated with your own experience too much, please read what Joel Johnson at Gizmodo has to say about the letter. It is every bit as true as it is probably hard for you to believe.)

Now, to strip gears just a touch, that's what state I was in when I read the post by that idiot theist who wants you to believe that I, as an atheist, have no reason for not accepting what happened to that young man as just and moral. He wants you to think I find that just as fine and dandy as sex between consenting adults because I was raised without religion and have never claimed a god or religion as my own. He wants you to think it's all the same to me.

In short, he wants you think I'm not human. Because I'm an atheist and he wants that to be wrong.

I don't know whether he believes this or is just trying to score cheap points for his "side." I don't care. Either one makes him despicable. In order for him to believe it, he can't feel overwhelmed by the wrongness of what happened to that young man, so that he thinks religion is required to keep everyone from doing it. Or he has to be so prejudiced against atheists as to believe that my lack of religion would keep that letter from reaching me emotionally.

If he's trying to score in some argument ongoing in order to promote his religion, he's both dishonest and adding to the social stigma borne by atheists. But maybe that's okay if it provides additional pressure for atheists to convert, even if it requires that the rape of children be turned into a rhetorical football.

It's not okay with me, though. It's an insult at every level. It denies the tears I've been fighting ever since reading that letter. It denies me my humanity. It denies the work I've done to point out the dangers of arbitrary authority. It denies the fact that every child I interact with comes away from the encounter with a little bit more permission to be defiant, to subvert the rules, to say, "no," to any authority, even Mom and Dad. (Yeah, I'm a hit with the parents.)

But it doesn't work that way. I can't be made to go away by a simple denial. I am a fact. My tears are facts, although you wouldn't have heard anything about them if the idiot hadn't tried to call them imaginary. My record on consensual sex is a fact, and so is my atheism.

So as long as this idiot goes around claiming that god and religion are required for morality, he is hurting himself and calling his other arguments into question. It won't matter to some people, of course, since as I noted at the start of this post, you can't make people think. But to anyone else, it will be obvious what kind of tired, transparent, and insulting apologetics he's dabbling in.

I just wish that meant more to me right now.

Continue reading...

Not So Very Little

The worst version of "The Little Drummer Boy" I've heard was playing in a pizza parlor on Christian radio. It was a duet, male and female, with mismatched vibrato in their voices. The arrangement was basically New Age, country, soft jazz, and I think they'd reworked the lyrics to make them more Christian.

Yes, it really was that bad. I also heard it this year, which makes me extra happy that this version came along now. This is highly nontraditional and definitely not safe for many workplaces, so it's tucked below the fold.

Enjoy.

Little Taiko Boy

Continue reading...

Fighting the Frost

For those who found my last story a bit difficult to take, well, this one is at least somewhat less hard on the reader. Or at least it's intended to be.

Fighting the Frost

Raelorn stood on the edge of the city and shivered. He didn't know which city it was, nor did he care. They were all the same. Cold, indifferent steel and concrete, air thick with dirt and noise.

He was ready to stop. He'd been searching too long, and he was weary. Too, cities were not known for being gentle to his kind.

He closed his eyes. There. His caged cousins' spirits burned like beacons directly ahead of him. However inimical the city, however weak he felt, that was where his path led.

Raelorn sighed and stepped across the line, invisible to normal sight, that divided not-city from the city.

#

Jen waited with one eye just past the edge of the wall. She clutched a string in her hand and held her breath, hoping, needing.

The small creature moved slowly toward the bait. It stopped frequently, sniffing the air and looking around. Jen was lucky it hadn't seen her, even though she'd learned to hold very still.

Finally, the creature made a dash for the cake. As it tore hunks off in its hands and stuffed them into its mouth, Jen pulled hard on the string. A cheap plastic tumbler came flying across the kitchen at her, but she ignored it. She ran past it to the counter and threw all her weight onto the large plastic mixing bowl the tumbler had propped up seconds before.

She was almost too late. The bowl skidded to one side and she had to lunge for it. Pinned under her, it continued to jerk and shake. A whistling noise, high enough to hurt her ears, squealed angrily from under the bowl, but she ignored the pain.

After about twenty tense minutes, the whistling and shaking stopped. The bowl sat for a moment, then tried a march toward the edge of the counter. Jen braced her feet against the floor and pushed back. The pushing stopped, but Jen hung on. Two minutes later, the bowl again attempted escape, with similar results.

Jen waited until everything had been still for ten minutes before carefully and quietly letting go. She immediately put a cutting board on top of the bowl, then the several cans of soup waiting on the counter.

Then she turned to the kitchen table, where the cage that would hold her new captive lay in pieces. She poked cheap takeout chopsticks through holes she'd sliced in coffee can lids, one lid for the bottom of the cage and one for the top. Then she threaded string through the chopsticks to hold them all together. It felt flimsy, but it should do.

It wasn't difficult work, but Jen was tired when she finished. She looked up at the clock on the stove. Four a.m. No wonder she was beat; she'd been up since two and she wasn't a night person.

Everything had been quiet for almost half an hour. Jen returned to the counter and pulled the cutting board away. She bent down until her eyes were level with the counter and slowly lifted the near edge of the bowl.

It was safe. Jen pulled the bowl away. The cake was gone, except for some crumbs. In its place lay a tiny figure, to all appearances asleep. Jen would have said it looked human, except for the size and the wings. It was naked and obviously female, and its belly bulged with its recent meal.

Jen marveled that this creature, taking up maybe a third of the plate the cake had sat on, had devoured a piece of cake that had filled the whole thing. But the was hardly the only wondrous thing about it. The most wondrous thing was that it was now hers. Jen picked it up gently, set it in her makeshift cage, and pushed the lid back down over the chopsticks. She put the cage with the others on the shelves on the wall between the kitchen and the rest of her studio apartment. This one made eight.

She set up the tumbler and bowl with a new piece of cake and headed for bed. There'd be time later for the contemplation of wonders.

Jen woke up about noon. It was Saturday, for which she was grateful. She'd spent enough nights recently fairy hunting to be really sleep deprived. No matter how little attention anyone paid to her at work, they'd have to notice eventually. Besides, Saturday meant she could spend time with her pets.

A chorus of headache-inducing whistles greeted her the moment she sat up in bed. The shelves buzzed with the noise, and she was afraid it would bother her neighbors.

"Shh. Hush," she pleaded. "Wait just a minute and I'll get your food. Shh."

Jen ran for the kitchen and grabbed the pan that held the rest of the cake she'd used for bait last night. This had been the last box. She'd have to get more today. She didn't bother to cut it, just ran back with the whole pan. The new slice she'd set out had nibble marks in it, so she left it.

She broke off pieces and started stuffing them through the holes in the cages. It was easier with the new ones, where she could slide chunks through the large holes between chopsticks. The colander and perforated steel trashcan were harder. She had to rub the cake into the holes. The toughest was the plastic bin that used to hold her sugar before she'd poked holes in it to turn it into a fairy cage.

As they ate, she wondered again whether she should call them fairies. She was only guessing. She'd have sworn up until a couple months ago that there were no such things. If she hadn't been desperate, she might not have believed it then.

The first day she saw one was just like any other weekday, except that it was her twenty-sixth birthday. She hadn't gotten any calls from well-wishers, but she hadn't really expected any. Her mom wasn't good at that sort of thing--always too distracted by her latest passionate interest to deal with dates, she might remember to apologize later. Dad had his own problems. Her sister had always been too much older to really get close to, and the space between them had widened after Chris had married and had kids.

As for friends, well, Jen had to admit she didn't make friends easily. She never had. Some days the knowledge tasted bitter, but she wasn't going to let it get to her today. She'd do something special for herself, instead.

She took the earlier bus to work and tried to make eye contact and smile at her coworkers as they gathered in the break room, waiting to start the shift. It was hard, but she kept it up.

She got only a couple of weak smiles from Tom and Elena for her efforts, but it was early, and that was still more interaction than she usually had with them. It wasn't that she didn't want to get along. But being part of the crowd seemed to mean being loud and very casual. Jen just didn't know how.

Still, her modest success felt like a birthday present. She resolved to try again at lunch. When the whistle blew and the lines shut down, she grabbed her lunch bag and headed for the break room. In good weather, she usually took her lunch outside, so she wouldn't have to sit alone in the middle of a roomful of noisy camaraderie. Not today.

She marched, without pausing to let herself think about it, up to the table where Elena was sitting with a bunch of female friends. There was one empty chair, and Jen put her hand on the back of it. "Excuse m--"

"Did you guys see what she said to him last night?"

"I know. And he believed her!"

"I'm so ready to give up on him. Anyone in his right mind would know that when she scrunches up her eyes like that and tries to look adorable, she's lying through her teeth."

"I don't know..."

Jen could tell they were talking about a TV show, but she didn't have any idea which one. She waited with her hand on the chair for a pause so she could ask to join them. The conversation rattled on. When it switched to another show a minute or two later, she walked out and ate her lunch in her normal spot on the dock steps. The book she'd brought was almost enough distraction.

When lunch was over, it was a different matter. Counting the screws, washers, and other assorted hardware in each bag coming down the line didn't use enough of her brain.

Normally she used the time to daydream. Today, she wondered, once again, why everyone but her seemed to understand how to deal with other people. Other people knew what to say to start and end conversations. They knew how to chat to pass the time. She couldn't remember a time when those things hadn't been awkward and painful for her.

Was it something about her that made these things so hard? Sometimes it felt like she'd missed a class in school that everyone else had taken. Or that everyone else had been handed a key to life, while she was still searching for the gate in the fence. Silly, she knew, but more pleasant than thinking it was something wrong with her that kept her sitting in life's shadows.

Her memory was all too ready to argue that it was her. There were all the jokes she hadn't gotten, the ones where she'd laughed in the wrong places. There were the conversations that she'd killed as soon as she'd opened her mouth. There were all the times she'd said something she'd heard someone else say the day before, only to have everyone stop and stare at her as though she were speaking another language.

The scenes were still fresh and painful, although some of them were years old. She welcomed the break whistle. Then came Terrie, the plant manager's assistant, over the PA. "Will all employees please join us in the break room for cake and ice cream."

That meant going back outside to read was out of the question. They were celebrating the June birthdays. She had to be there when they announced hers.

She stood in the back of the room, so she wouldn't have to fumble with a chair when it was her turn. She hadn't been enthused enough to hurry, and she got there just in time to hear Terrie, a petite, slightly overweight brunette whose self-important attitude did nothing to endear her to the production staff, start reading off the birthdays.

"June second--Jim Curran. Come on, Jim, stand up."

Jim grumbled but stood up.

"June ninth--Blanca Padilla." Terrie pronounced it blank-uh pad-ill-uh, and Jen winced. "There you are Blanca. June eighteenth--Alfonse Williams."

She'd skipped today, the twelfth. Jen hoped they weren't saving her to make a big deal out of the fact that her birthday was today. She hated having everyone looking at her. She didn't remember them doing it to anyone else, but she usually skipped these things.

When Terrie read the last two names and started leading the singing, Jen changed her mind. People staring at her would have been infinitely better than knowing she'd been forgotten, left off the list. She'd been on it for the last four years, so they knew when her birthday was.

No, they'd just forgotten she existed, and no one in the room, many of them people she'd worked with for years, knew her well enough to remind them. Jen felt a cold knot crystallizing like ice under her diaphragm, making it hard for her to breathe.

Suddenly, she'd had enough. She didn't want to spend any more time with these people, and she certainly didn't want to eat cake and celebrate with them. Clutching the icy mass in her belly, she walked over to Sanchez, her shift supervisor.

"Mr. Sanchez, I'm not feeling well. I'd like to go home." She quailed under the weight of his attention. "I think, maybe, something...my lunch."

"You don't look so good, Jenny. Go ahead and take off. Do you need help getting home?"

Jen exhaled hard, feeling like she'd been hit. She shook her head and fled into the women's room. It was, Jen was thankful, empty. She stepped into one of the stalls, slammed the door shut, and leaned against it, holding her stomach and breathing carefully through her mouth.

Ow. Ow. Ow.

Jenny. He'd called her Jenny. He'd been her supervisor for two years. Two years of some of the best quality numbers in the company, and it wasn't even worth it to him to get her name right. No more than it was worthwhile to anyone else to know when her birthday was. And she'd tried to do something nice for herself by making friends out there.

Jen laughed bitterly, stopping when it threatened to turn into sobs. She pressed her back hard against the stall door, covering that little aching vulnerable spot between her shoulder blades, the one that felt like a bull's eye painted on her back.

She should know better. She had no excuse. If experience had taught her nothing else, it should have at least taught her not to try. If constant failure hadn't driven the lesson home, the talk she'd had with her mother after she turned eighteen, "old enough to know," should have.

Mom had meant to be kind, maybe, in her absentminded way, to explain why Jen's father had never taken the interest in her he obviously had in Chris. But for Jen, learning that she'd been conceived in an attempt to save a marriage--ended by court papers signed three weeks before she was born--had just confirmed something she'd always suspected.

"Useless." As the hissed word bounced back to her off the tiled walls, cold and relentless, Jen felt something crack. Fat, unstoppable tears rolled off her cheeks onto the floor.

The litany that had formed the background of her life poured through her head. She'd outlived her purpose before birth. She wasn't good at anything. She couldn't get close to people, couldn't talk to them, couldn't even act normal. She was a lousy human being. Useless.

She covered her ears and rocked, willing it to stop, but on it went. The ice in her stomach snaked slivers of frost into the rest of her with every repetition. It came with pain but left a welcome numbness, with only a tiny ache of cold, behind it.

Jen knew she ought to fight the frost. Something had warned her, a long time ago, that letting it take all of her could mean her death. Worse, it could mean living as the kind of monster who didn't care about anything or anyone. But the only alternative to ice right now was pain, and Jen thought that might just kill her on its own.

The door to the bathroom opened, and Jen put a hand over her mouth. She tried to take deep, quiet breaths through her fingers, hoping she wouldn't start hiccupping. She really didn't want anyone to find her crying in the bathroom.

That fear and the breathing took up so much of her concentration, it took her a minute to notice the conversation going on in the stalls around her.

"So now I have to go work Q.A." She recognized Elena's voice. "Is there anything more boring?"

"So sorry," replied a voice Jen couldn't place, "but at least it's not me."

"Thanks." Elena was sarcastic. "Oh, well. That's Jen for you: too stuck up to talk to us, and then she leaves us with all the work."

Jen coughed, choking on the unfairness of the accusation. She was maxed out for accruing both sick time and vacation. It wasn't like she had somewhere else more appealing to spend her time.

At the sound, conversation stopped. Flushes were quickly followed by perfunctory hand washing. The last noise Jen heard from them was giggling as the bathroom door closed.

Hearing that hurt, but it helped too. Anger burned away a little of the frost and let her stand up straight again. That was what she'd let spoil her birthday? No more. She'd...well, she wasn't sure what she'd do, but it didn't involve staying here.

Jen grabbed some tissue and blew her nose savagely before opening the door behind her. She splashed some cold water on her face and patted it dry with a paper towel without looking in the mirror. She settled her face into a scowl that she hoped dared the world to talk to her.

She marched out of the bathroom and down the short hall to the door. No one was there to see her. She was half-sorry, half-relieved. Her anger still felt all too fragile.

It was easier by the time the bus stopped for her. Jen sat on the sunny side of the bus, closing her eyes and trying to absorb a little of the sun's warmth. Once the bus reached her corner, she'd settled on a plan. If no one was going to help her celebrate her own birthday, she'd just have to do it alone.

She marched into Harold's, the convenience store on her corner, and picked up a box of yellow cake mix and a tub of chocolate frosting. She grabbed eggs, just to be sure she had some, and headed for the counter.

Abdullah, his white hair in its usual untidy mop, gave her his standard wink and toothy grin. "Looks like someone's having a party."

Jen gave him what she hoped was a mysterious smile and paid for her purchases. She wasn't quite ready to try to talk.

In fact, mixing the cake in her beige, boring apartment took most of her remaining energy. As it baked, Jen reconsidered her decision not to have a television. All the songs on the radio were about broken hearts or parties, like the one she should be having--if she had anyone to invite. She was too tired to read even the books she reread when she wasn't up to tackling something new. She just sat on her couch and waited for the oven timer, trying unsuccessfully not to think.

It was almost too much work to get up when the timer went off, but it would be more to deal with beeping and smoke. Putting the cake on the counter, she wondered why she'd bothered. She didn't want it any more.

Since it was made, one slice, plain because frosting was too much trouble, went on a plate that she carried into the living room. She got a bite into her mouth before the tears overwhelmed her again.

Lying on the couch, she couldn't stop crying. Was it wrong, she wondered, to need more from life than a slice of solitary birthday cake? Anything more was always out of her reach, and it hurt so much to keep trying. Wouldn't she be better off to reach out for the frost and let it take her? Still, she couldn't quite. She cried over her cowardice too.

She knew that she was loud enough to be heard in the hall. She tried to keep quiet, but then another surge of pain would come. On it went, and on, until she couldn't think clearly enough to remember what she was crying about. Still she couldn't stop.

When Jen woke, her apartment was dark except for the streetlights shining in the window. Her neck was sore from sleeping with the couch still folded up. Her head throbbed, her throat was raw, and her mouth tasted foul.

She groped her way into the bathroom for some aspirin, then into the kitchen for water. She tried to accomplish the whole trip without waking all the way up. That possibility evaporated when she turned back from the sink.

There was something on the cake, something big enough to see in bad light. Jen wanted to run away, but she couldn't leave whatever it was with her in the dark. She edged around it to flip on the kitchen light--and saw her first fairy.

Not that she knew right away. It took minutes for her eyes to convince her brain that the head of dark gray hair resting in a hollow in the cake wasn't a mouse. But mice didn't have wings. Whatever was in her cake definitely did, translucent gray-green sheeny wings cupped around its sleeping body. Their edges fluttered as the fairy breathed in and out in its sleep.

She prodded the fairy gently, testing the reality of it. It chirruped, poked an arm out from under one wing to wave vaguely in the direction of her finger, and turned over on its back, all without opening its eyes. Opening his eyes, she corrected herself.

He wasn't quite as tall as her hand was long, and aside from the wings, he looked like a tiny man who worked out a lot. Well, wings and one other thing. Jen didn't have any practical experience, but she had taken health class, and she'd seen enough guys in tight jeans to be pretty sure those were not human proportions.

She realized she was staring and blushed. Then she laughed at herself for blushing over a sleeping fairy, or whatever it was. That brought home the fact that she was standing over a fairy in her kitchen at--what time was it? One a.m. Oof.

Jen decided she was probably dreaming, or sleepwalking, or whatever it would take to make the whole thing make sense. It was time to go back to bed.

First, just in case it was all real, Jen pulled everything off her coffee table. She grabbed the colander from the cabinet. She cut into the cake around the fairy and gently scooped fairy and cake together onto a paper towel. She set that on the table and put the colander over the top, with a stack of books to weight it down.

Then it was time to try to sleep. Her brain buzzed with questions, making sleep difficult, but they were far more pleasant thoughts than she'd had earlier.

She must have dozed off eventually, because her alarm woke her up at its usual time. Jen shut it off and glanced at the coffee table. The colander, at least, was still there. Jen didn't touch it. She decided she could wait to prove to herself that she'd been sleepwalking. Before having to face another day of reality, she wanted to relive the magic of discovering a fairy in her kitchen.

The colander trilled and Jen jumped. She looked over to see tiny fingers gripping the colander through the holes. Jen sat up and leaned over the coffee table. Through one of the holes, she could just barely make out an eye staring back at her.

Slowly, trying not to startle him, she reached out one pinky toward the colander. Instantly, he disappeared. Still, she rested her pinky nail just below the hole where his fingers had been. She waited, breathing shallowly.

Eventually, his fingers crept back out the hole. She held her breath. Gently, weightlessly, they crept over the surface of her nail. They came to rest still touching her. He blurbled a question that she didn't understand.

She called in sick to work, not caring for once that someone would have to cover for her. She even hoped it was Elena.

It was Friday, which gave her three days. Except to get more cake mix, Jen didn't leave the apartment all weekend. That wasn't so unusual, but it was the first weekend she could remember that she hadn't been lonely even once.

The fairy didn't do anything special, just chirped occasionally and ate all the cake she could stuff through the holes of the colander. But her apartment wasn't empty.

Monday morning, she saw signs that another fairy had been in her cake pan. She set up her first fairy trap. It hadn't worked, but the second one had. Since then, the fairies had continued to show up on a semi-regular basis. She didn't know why they found her box cake so appealing, but she wasn't about to argue.

Jen was glad she didn't have to try to tell anyone about them. Completely aside from the issue of being believed, there was the question of how to refer to them. She'd decided against giving them names, since presumably they already had their own. They might even have told her what they were, for all she could understand them.

Finding space for them was a more pressing issue. Cages were cobbled together or pressed into service from anything she had lying around that might hold them without suffocating them. She blessed whomever had decided that these apartments could skimp on space but needed almost a full wall of deep built-in bookshelves.

Her books came down to make room and were stacked against the wall underneath the shelves, covered with cake crumbs. They were mostly children's books and fluffy romances. Every one had happy endings and soft covers, making it a little safer to throw them on those occasions when she could no longer stand things working out for everyone but her.

She hadn't picked one up since the first fairy had arrived. They weren't friendly, exactly, but they offered more companionship than books did. They looked at her through the cages, watched her. Occasionally they even trilled at her. She talked back to them, not caring whether they could understand. It was just nice to have someone to tell things to.

Although she wasn't sure what exactly happened to the food she gave them, since she never had to clean the cages, they appeared to need it. She couldn't remember ever being needed.

It was slowly freeing her from the tyranny of other people's opinions. She was able to joke a little with Abdullah and say hi to the bus driver instead of just smiling. Small things, but every time, she felt the frost recede just a little.

Two weeks after her birthday, she'd run into Elena. If there had been a crowd, Jen would have kept quiet. But seeing Elena by herself, Jen hadn't been able to resist the impulse to get a little of her own back.

"Hey, Elena. I hear you had to work Q.A. while I was gone." Jen looked her in the eye. "It must have been terribly boring. So sorry. I just couldn't stop coughing."

Elena had flushed silently and dropped her eyes.

Jen still wanted to jump up and down like a kid remembering it now. She knew it was a small thing, petty even, but it had been so nice to see someone else be speechless for a change. Even a tiny flame could warm you if it was all you had.

The only flaw in her new happiness was the cages. She wished she dared trust that the fairies would stay if she let them out. Still, sitting in her living room on that Saturday morning, surrounded by cages and a burbling chorus, she was as happy as she could ever remember being.

When someone knocked at the door, it took Jen a moment to realize what the noise was. No one ever came to see her. She opened the door, thinking it was someone knocking at the wrong apartment.

When she opened the door, she was sure of it. The stranger in front of her was tall and pale, with black hair that absorbed light and eyes that suggested every color without settling on one. Handsome, even beautiful, felt like inadequate words to describe him. Finally, Jen settled on magnificent. He was definitely not someone who would come to see her.

"I have come for them." His voice matched the rest of him and carried a weight of authority that Jen envied.

He could only be looking for the fairies. Still, she tried to lie. "I--I don't know what you mean." If he'd peered past her into the apartment, looking for the cages, she might have been able to do it. Instead, he stared down at her silently, and she, utterly unnerved by that kind of attention, stepped out of the doorway.

As he walked past her, Jen had the vague impression of something following behind him. It might have been a pair of wings, but when she looked directly at his back, she couldn't see anything unusual.

"Are you a fairy, too?"

It was the only time in her life that Jen could remember speaking without thinking first, and she regretted it immediately. He turned to stare at her again.

"I'm s-sorry." Jen looked at the floor. "I--that's just what I've been calling them to myself."

He sighed, and Jen dared to look up again. "Don't worry, child. Fairy is not what I call myself, but I have been called so before. It will do."

"I could call you by your name?" Jen tried to meet the cool eyes that stared down at her. She couldn't. "Never mind." She didn't know what to say next, and the silence stretched uncomfortably until he broke it.

"It's time to let them go."

Jen panicked. Every little bright moment she could remember in her life had happened in the past two months. Life had stopped being endless work and had started giving her moments to look forward to. Now he was telling her to give that up.

She wanted to say, "No," and make him leave. She wanted to be strong enough to defy this stranger who was coming into her home and giving casual orders. Instead, she could barely hear her own voice, high and thin. "I...I can't."

"You can't?" He paused and considered her. "Oh, I see."

Jen knew that he did, that the truth was plainly there on her face, in her posture. She cringed to have to acknowledge that hers was such a small, easily read story. As the silence stretched, she felt the ache again in that small vulnerable spot between her shoulder blades. She waited for him to mock her.

Instead, his words were as gentle as they were inexorable. "Don't you think they have the same right to their lives that you have to yours?"

More. She knew their lives were worth far more than hers was even with them in it. Her life the way it had been before they arrived--well, if she hadn't known how little it was worth before, she certainly did now.

Knowing it, she couldn't go back. She needed them. She grasped desperately at an idea. "But they came to me."

"You did nothing to tempt them here?"

Jen thought about it and risked a look up. "Just baked a cake."

A sad smile on that majestic face softened his words. "And do you think cake alone would be enough to keep them here?"

Jen shook her head and looked back at the floor. The cages. She should have known he'd see the weakness in her argument as quickly as he saw the weakness in her. The tears fell for the first time since the fairies had started coming to her.

It hurt more than she thought it could to face the truth implied by the cages. It was such a fragile lie she'd built her happiness on. His words shattered it. They had no more chosen to be with her than anyone else in her life had. She'd have to give them up, set them free.

But she didn't know how. How could she go back to her old life, being certain that there was more, knowing that it had once been hers? She'd only been able to bear it because she'd never known anything else. The frost had almost won then. How quickly would it take her now?

She wished desperately that he would just take them all and disappear. She could admit to herself what she had done, but saying it out loud was beyond her. Putting a hand to a cage to free the first one would be impossible. Waiting for the courage to do either, courage she knew wouldn't come, was agony.

He interrupted her misery. "What if I stayed in their place?"

Jen gaped. "What?" She didn't believe what she heard, but her brain couldn't make the words mean anything else.

"If I promised to stay with you, would you be able to let them go?"

Jen couldn't hear anything but sincerity in his voice. Still, she looked hard at him, trying to detect mockery or deceit. He was...he was just too much to be willing to do that.

"You would stay?"

He nodded. "I would, if you would let the little ones go."

"Why?" The question slipped out, more forcefully than she usually spoke, before Jen could stop it. She blushed, but her attention was all for his answer.

He shrugged, implying that the question hadn't occurred to him. "It is necessary."

Necessary. Right. She took a deep breath. Well, she wouldn't have believed him if he'd said he'd stay because he liked her.

In fact, she still had trouble believing he'd be willing to stay at all. She wanted to ask again, to make him confirm it, but it felt a little too much like suggesting he was lying. Some instinct told her it wasn't a suggestion he'd take well.

So, he wasn't lying. But all her experience told her that people just didn't do things like this. Admittedly, he wasn't human, but no one had ever been this generous to her. As much as she hated herself for doubting a creature like him, her brain kept searching for the catch.

"You..." Jen took a deep breath and hoped he wasn't easily offended. "You won't hurt me, will you?"

He sighed, a big, gusty breath that ruffled her hair. Jen cringed for having had to ask.

"No. I will not hurt you."

That should have settled it, but Jen still couldn't reconcile his offer with the rest of her life. There had to be some hidden snag. She couldn't think of anything momentous that could prevent what was happening, so she groped after the mundane.

"Would I have to feed you? I can't afford that much cake."

He laughed, surprising her. "My cousins are greedy, are they? No, you didn't need to feed them, and you would not need to feed me."

His eyes twinkled. "You would also not need to cage me, clothe me, or find me a place to sleep. My needs are very few."

A place to sleep. Jen felt herself going pale. She hadn't thought about that. She hadn't thought beyond having someone to come home to, to talk to, someone who would listen to her. Really sharing her apartment hadn't been a consideration. Still, it would be worth changing in the bathroom for the rest of her life if that was what it got her.

That brought up one more important question. "How long would you stay?"

He stepped up to her and smiled brilliantly. "You ask excellent questions." He picked up her hands in his. "I will stay until you no longer need me."

Jen didn't know where to look or what to say, but there wasn't any question of not accepting his offer, not now. As much as her past told her to disbelieve in him, he was undeniably present and wonderfully real. She'd just have to adapt to the idea that he was willing to stay.

Jen realized the cages had been quiet throughout their conversation. It was odd. Letting the fairies go had been unthinkable just a few minutes ago, life without them impossible. But with one simple promise, she didn't need to hold onto them anymore. She could give them back their own lives, and that knowledge lifted a burden she didn't know she'd been carrying.

She started toward the shelves.

"Wait."

Jen turned back to the fairy slowly, feeling a heavy fear. The relief she'd felt evaporated. She waited for this one sliver of life to be snatched from her hands too.

The fairy smiled. "You haven't told me your name. If I'm to stay, I'll need something to call you."

Jen could breathe again. She thought about his question. Somehow she didn't want him to call her by the same name her parents had, the name the rest of the world had used indifferently. Something new and untainted would be so much better. She returned his smile. "Call me Jennifer."

Then she reached for the first cage.

#

Raelorn allowed himself to sag a little. That had taken almost more than he'd had left. It had been more difficult than he had expected and would be, it appeared, less productive than he had hoped. Still, he had accomplished what he needed to.

He looked to where Jennifer was dismantling her "fairy" cages, apologizing to each little one as she released it. She was a slight, pale thing who might have been pretty with a little animation. Instead, she huddled and cringed and apologized for existing. Her only distinguishing feature was the need that blazed though her like fire, big enough that she couldn't contain it and hide it away.

He marveled anew at what humans could do to their own. He didn't know the specifics of her story, but he'd heard enough of them to know the general outlines. There were only so many things that could be done to stunt a human life this badly.

Still, he admired her. She was more resilient than she knew. She had to be, to have contained her need this long without burning herself out. Even now, she was releasing the little ones cheerfully, apologizing for keeping them captive, when an hour ago they were what kept her life livable.

As they were released, his kin flew to him and chirped their welcome.

"Little cousins," Raelorn said in the liquid language native to them all, "you are looking fit and well fed."

An angry buzz of insults fluttered around his right ear.

Raelorn turned to face the little female who had arrived in Jennifer's apartment just before he did. The faint flush of pink that was just visible on his other cousins was missing on her. Her skin was a pale, pale cold blue, though not as blue as his.

He made her a bow of apology. "Ah, dear one. I apologize, but I couldn't wait. The frost would have taken me shortly."

She warbled at him some more, and he listened politely. She was tired and disappointed. He understood, having been in her position more times than he liked to think upon. Still, her situation was not as desperate as his had been, and there was nothing he could do to reverse what had been done. She had been released. She'd have to go.

Eventually her anger spent itself, and she followed the others, flitting through the solid outside wall to continue her travels. Raelorn wondered whether Jennifer noticed and if she understood what it implied about the cages. He wished the little one a quick end to her search.

He allowed himself a moment of sorrow that his kind had been reduced to this, to stealing scraps of human warmth from one another for survival. It hadn't always been so. They had once been gods and the emissaries of gods. But that had been in the infancy of humanity, when mankind had needed them.

They had never considered that they also needed humanity.

His people's beginnings were shrouded in legend, so it was a matter of great debate among them which had come first, his kind or humanity. Some thought that as mankind had slowly freed itself from instinct, learning to doubt everything, they had created a burning need for comfort in themselves. They thought his people had arisen to answer that need, learning to live off it in the process.

Others thought that his kind had shaped the development of humanity to provide more potent sources of the delicacy that slowly became their only food. Raelorn suspected that the truth was more complicated, that the development of his people and Jennifer's were intertwined and interdependent. He doubted that either could have reached maturity alone.

But the humans had moved on. Perhaps it was his people's fault. They were known to be capricious, to devise torments that kept humans in that constant state of uncertainty that breeds the most potent need.

Whatever the reason, humans had reached out for more certain answers to their needs. Slowly, they had built societies and civilizations, learning to depend on one another instead of their gods. They developed rules and customs that took the place of instinct and kept fear at bay. They had worked hard to discover certainties, constants and laws that made their lives more predictable and muted their strongest needs.

Raelorn's people started to go hungry. Their fires burned low, and lower, until many of them simply stopped.

There was still need left in the world, but not like it had been. All too often it was vague and fleeting. Humans who are regularly fed don't cease to feel hunger, but they forget the sharpness of near starvation. They forget to worry. Distractions, amusements, intoxicants--all of these dulled need, making it thin and unpalatable.

The small, half-articulated needs of children never faded, but they were just barely enough to feed one of the little ones. Times of great trouble created a feast of need, but it didn't last. It took something unusual to make a Jennifer, an adult who found no comfort in the world, who needed as much, as persistently, as she did.

Even Jennifer's need wouldn't last long, although it radiated now so strongly that he could feel its warmth against his skin. His willing presence would slowly heal the wounds that made her need so great. The protections with which she had ringed herself so well would see to it that he couldn't stretch that need by prolonging her pain.

Still, he was glad that she had been cautious. Watching her covertly look at him, trying to figure out what would come next, he had no heart for adding to her burdens. The promises she had extracted from him would ensure he could never be tempted. Hurting her would be a poor price to pay her for saving his life.

Raelorn walked over to Jennifer's couch and sat. He looked her squarely in the eye and patted the seat next to him.

"Jennifer, if I am to stay, we should know each other better. Will you tell me about yourself?"

He saw tears return to Jennifer's eyes, but this time, they looked like the right kind, the kind that could melt the frost in both of them.

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