Perhaps it was the fault of his disastrous first impression, but Bastien found himself thoroughly snubbed in the caverns of the demonic court. And he reveled in it.
His husband vanished for days at a time, warring with mysterious creatures from the lower depths. The skeleton force left to guard the royal complex acted as if Bastien didn't exist. It was almost as if he'd become a living ghost, able to drift in and out of any scene without being seen or heard.
As far as he was concerned, this meant he was free. And the very first thing he did with this freedom was lose himself in the caves. It wasn't to escape--he knew his duty--all he'd been trying to do was find his way to the mushroom forests. But the twists and turns of the Neathniche were more complicated than he'd supposed.
He didn't know how long he wandered, but from the pangs that came and went in his stomach, he must have passed several mealtimes. Eventually, he became so weak that he could no longer walk, so cold he tried to curl up to a stalagmite for warmth, and so thirsty he tried to lick the glistening stone, imagining that its gleam came from water.
When he heard the bell-like chiming of chains, he dismissed it as yet another hallucination. Then came the strangely weighty pad of small, white feet, but he put that down to wishful thinking. But then he found himself lifted up and heaved onto a warm, bony back. Despite the narrowness of those shoulders, the delicacy of those bones, they bore him up steadily all the way back to his yellow room.
The last thing he saw before he fell into a soft, comforting sleep was Thistle's face.
This unexpected rescue filled him with such bliss, that after a few hearty meals and several days' rest, he instantly repeated his adventure. He never found a mushroom forest, but he did discover a host of wonderful things: passages of obsidian so smooth they shone like mirrors, lattices of crystal-thread that hummed in different tones when touched, and a collection of green, bubbling pools where some of the demons came to make twining love with giant eels.
He got lost often enough that Thistle vowed to leave him to his doom the next time he fell into a spiderpit or disturbed an orgy of irate, many-fanged lovers.
But he never did.
In fact, Thistle began to follow Bastien about: first, with vague threats about what might happen to a spy who tried to escape the Neathniche; and then with exasperated pronouncements about the idiocy of someone who can't even remember that rivers always flowed down. "Whenever you find water, you silly puppy, you have to go up! Below us live the Unnamable Nones--" and his face always grew fierce at the mention of these ancient enemies "--and I won't let them eat you before we can!"
Finally, after his third month as the dark god's wayward bride, Bastien had the honor of having his husband's lover escort him to the nearest mushroom forest.
"But after this," said Thistle, "you must promise to stop wandering off!"
Eager to display his skills, Bastien decided to attempt the only spectacular spell in his repertoire, the song of growing. He chose the plumpest, brightest mushroom he could find, and coaxed his beloved into sitting underneath it. Thistle grumbled and sneered all the way, but there was a gleam of curiosity in his eyes too. It was a pretty picture he made: a wisp of white sitting against the pale-yellow stalk, canopied by a drooping parasol that glowed a glossy turquoise-blue. Despite his pleasure at this sight, Bastien tried to maintain a grave expression. Nothing irritated Thistle more than to have Bastien staring at him with a silly smile on his face.
"I will sing a charm taught to me by my mother," he explained, "and this mushroom will grow to a fantastic size."
Thistle looked up, his eyebrows curving into doubtful arcs.
"Whatever happens, don't be alarmed," Bastien added airily. "I can never do anything to harm you."
Irony glinted in Thistle's eye. "I'd like to see the mortal that can."
He had a point. In their adventures throughout the caves, Bastien had seen Thistle split a granite wall with a tap of his finger and tear apart a goat-sized spider with his bare hands. Even so, he didn't want to do anything that might cause him the least pain.
But as Thistle had warned him that first night, magic worked differently in the Neathniche. The song of growing inspired no such thing. Instead of expanding into a fantastic size, the mushroom's parasol began to shiver and shake, battered about by an inner storm. This agitation became so violent that Bastien disregard his own advice and tried to pull Thistle away. But the unaccountable boy, amused by Bastien's embarrassment, stayed where he was, even dragging Bastien in with him. They fell together against the stalk, just in time for the mushroom to give a final shudder and dump a cloud of yellow dust over them both.
Thistle burst into laughter. Bastien, blushing and coughing, stared at him for a moment before joining him. They laughed at the ridiculous picture they made, laughed at the incongruity of them being together like this, laughed, until the yellow dust began to sprout all around them, shooting up myriad small stalks which opened into tiny, blue umbrellas right before their eyes.
Bastien had never thought about it before, but it seemed that the sound of a thousand, tiny mushrooms opening all at the same time was a great, squelching Fwoop! Thistle was so overcome by this fact that he toppled over, clutching at his sides. Without thinking, Bastien dove down after him. He struck the ground with enough force to be knocked breathless, but he was pleased to find Thistle's head protected by the crook of his arm.
It took him a moment--he needed to relearn how to breathe--but he slowly realized that they were lying together, on a bed as blue as the sky. He only needed to turn in order to take his beloved into a full embrace.
Bastien felt as if he'd become suspended in syrup. There were rocks gouging into him in three different places, but he felt no pain. He was trapped, unable and unwilling to do anything that might shatter the moment. He would have moved, of course, if Thistle had said the word--but how he wished Thistle wouldn't. He waited, resentful of his own loud heartbeat, hardly daring to move his lungs.
Thistle lay still, pillowed on his arm. There was a softness to his face that Bastien had only seen once before. "Do you know, puppy," he said, "that we have no magic in the Neathniche to makes things grow? It's easy enough for us to bear things, or break them, or make them dead--that's the way of fallen gods. But light and life persist here in spite of us, not because of us. The mushrooms and glowworms, the blind, bright fish and the luciferous insects, they lived here before us and they will continue long after we are gone. We don't belong here. I've told you that your magic would be twisted out of shape here; but here's another truth: so is ours."
Bastien made the softest of hums, urging Thistle to go on.
"Sometimes I dream of an endless, warm light, and I imagine it's heaven calling me home. But I know it's all in my head. Because I'm mad, you know. Dangerously insane." Thistle lifted one foot so his shackle glinted blue in the mushroom light. "Gris Neath keeps me chained for my own protection. If I didn't have them I'd try to escape, to run home. And then the emperor of heaven will have me beaten and broken and cast down all over again." There was an odd hint to his voice then, almost like a plea. As if he wanted Bastien to tell him it wasn't true, even though he wouldn't believe this reassurance anyway.
His voice faded, and Bastien couldn't bear the loss of it. "Please," he said hesitantly, braced for rejection. "Please tell me more. What do you dream about when you dream of heaven?"
And perhaps there was magic in the mushroom forest, because Thistle did. He told Bastien of an endless, velvet ballroom where flaming giants circled around each other in the eternal dance of night. He recalled floating in the core of a towering castle, where particles of light and air and water buzzed together like thoughts in a great, inscrutable mind. And, most strikingly, he spoke of that moment that Bastien knew all too well, when the sky touched the earth with a slender, white sword to create a singular instant that froze the world into peace. He started to speak of the thunder too, but his voice broke.
"I'll take you there," Bastien said, forgetting himself in a passion he'd never felt before. The ivory pendant against his chest seemed to be pulsing along with the beat of his heart. "I know what you mean. I've seen that place! This is my Fate, it has to be; I've come to bring you home." He took Thistle's hand and brought it against his heart. "Come with me."
But at the touch of their hands, the pendant flashed and Thistle screamed like a wounded animal.
Horrified, Bastien let him go. Burned into Thistle's palm was an incandescent, red mark, like a brand. "I'm sorry--" Bastien stuttered, nearly sobbing with distress. "I didn't know--I didn't mean to--"
But Thistle turned a look of such fear and hatred towards him that Bastien lost all ability to speak or think or move. All he could do was watch, tears blurring his eyes, as Thistle backed away and vanished into the darkness.
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