The Silenced Tale, стр. 103
“No!” Pip cries. “No, just . . . try harder!”
“Bao bei,” I say softly. “Th-the ma-mah-magic isn’t-t st-stron-ng enou-gh h-here. And th-the Wo-Wo-Words can-n only do-do-do s-so mu-ah-ch.”
“No! Don’t stop Speaking them! Keep going!” my wife orders, snot on her upper lip and her cheeks now splotchy, her eyes swollen with her tears. “If we can . . . Elgar, just hold on.” She turns her head back toward the ballroom door. “Isn’t one of you guys a fucking healer? Come on!”
Someone inside the room yelps, and the sound of feet pounding toward us rings out, but they are going to be too late. Too late. Kintyre drops down beside Pip, grips the ball of our tangled fingers, and recites the Words of Healing in tandem with me.
“The bleeding is slowing, but not enough,” Bevel grinds out. “Kin.”
“Where’s Ahbni?” Pip asks, and we both start when we see that Kintyre has bound her to a piece of protruding rebar with her own pink scarf. She is straining, working to get away, but the knot is too efficient, the material too thick.
The Words seem to bring Elgar back to himself enough that he is able to focus on our faces. He squints at me thoughtfully, then slides his gaze to Pip. He doesn’t linger long on her, turning his head slightly to take in Bevel instead. He squints at him, too, and then finally, his eyes settle on Kintyre.
I shouldn’t feel overlooked, or offended. I know I shouldn’t. But it feels, suddenly, very much like being the ignored and forgotten younger son once again, skipped over in favor of Kintyre. Bright, shining Kintyre, who does everything the wrong way and yet still holds the greater affection of the world.
Elgar has had a year with me, I tell myself, squashing down my jealousy for his attention, and regretting all the times I had pushed him away, and the time in each other’s company we had subsequently lost. He has had mere hours with Kintyre and Bevel. Do not begrudge him this.
Elgar lifts a hand, half-curled, toward Kintyre’s face. Without ceasing his drone of Words, my brother takes it and presses the old man’s palm to his cheek. He doesn’t wince at the usual jump of electricity between creator and creation, and I wonder if it’s because Kintyre is hiding his reaction or because the strength of the unnatural feeling is fading as Elgar drowns slowly in his own blood.
“Weren’t . . . s’posed to . . . love ’im,” Elgar grunts, and each word brings red foam to his lips.
The pronouncement is startling, shocking, and though I can’t speak for Bevel or Kintyre, I feel as if Elgar has just slapped me in the face. How could he choose to use his last breaths on this? To decry the happiness that my brother and his trothed have fought so hard and so long to make their own? How controlling, how spiteful must Elgar be?
“Stop talking,” Pip insists. “Just breathe. Just keep breathing.”
Kintyre’s eyes narrow, becoming even icier, his lips curling inward as he bites them to keep from wasting these last few moments in shouting.
Elgar’s mouth melts into a beatific smile, and he blinks so slowly that I fear for a moment that his eyes may not open again. When they do, he focuses hard on Kintyre.
“Glad you . . . do, though,” he says.
The reversal hits Kintyre so hard he grunts like he’s been punched in the gut, the breath whooshing out of him. His expression breaks into a sunrise, and half a moment later, crumples into sorrow.
“Don’t go,” he implores. He lets go of Pip’s hand to grasp Bevel’s wrist, desperate for a connection with his trothed at this moment.
“Glad you’re . . . all loved,” Elgar hisses. “L’cy . . . do me . . . f’vor?”
“Anything,” Pip vows.
“Love the books ag’in. Write ’em if they ask.”
“What? No!” Pip gasps in horror. “I can’t! I’m an academic! I don’t write fiction! You do it! Stay, and write more!”
Elgar makes a slight motion with his head that might be a shake. “You care. P’tect Hain with tha . . . tha TV . . . bring F’syth.”
“I . . . I will. I vow,” Pip says, and then gasps as something invisible seems to clutch hard at her chest. She coughs, eyes screwing shut, and when she opens them again, they glow violet. For just a moment, just one very brief second, violet.
What does it mean? I do not have time to wonder, to ask, even. I have no time; there is no time.
“F’syth,” Elgar moans.
“I’m so-sorry,” I say, and I can’t seem to make my voice get any louder. It’s a harsh, low whisper, choked by sorrow and the onset of grief, and all things that I never said to my creator, and now, never will. “Elga-gar, ple-please, for-for-forgive me.”
He smiles dopily, eyelids drooping, and the corner of his mouth peels back in a grimace that, even now, he is clearly attempting to disguise as a smile. His teeth are red with frothing blood, and a tiny ruby stream of the stuff escapes from the quirked corner of his lips.
“For?” Elgar whispers.
“I’m a f-fu-fuck up, aren’t I? A c-c-co-omplete and utt-er t-t-tit. I m-made eve-ry single wr-wr-wr-wrong choice there wa-was to make. I was over-overconfident and b-buh-blind.” I sob, grasping Elgar’s other hand tight, where it is pinned against the floor. “Oh, f-f-for-forgive me. Elgar, p-p-p-pluh-please!”
A man dressed in white healer’s robes shoves, suddenly, in between Bevel and I, uncapping a phial and dumping its glowing blue contents over Bevel’s fingers, against the wound. Most of it runs down his arms, ineffectual.
“Try again!” Pip implores him.
“No, m’boy,” Elgar mutters. “No, no, no . . .”
“Stop it!” Pip sobs. “Just . . . stop it. Come on, Elgar. It’s your magic. You made it up. It should