Work Text:
Eddie’s first book does well. Enough to live comfortably for a time while he continues to write. It’s a series of poems about home, about finding himself in the choices he’s made, and the sorrow of losing his old self along the way. It’s not good, in the sense that it’s a testament to all the mistakes he’s made in his twenty years, and therefore it’s popular. The publisher contracts him out for another book and a year later Eddie’s second book does just as well.
The second does well enough to support him and his uncle back home. City life provides another landscape for his work. Its burrowed brick buildings and carriage-filled cobblestone streets introduces Eddie to love, to heartbreak, and to loss of a different kind. That’s what he writes about and it pulls something out of him in the process. There’s a hollow emptiness in his chest at the end that follows him out after the book is published. Eddie doesn’t recognize himself when he looks in the mirror. He feels skewed to the side, his eyes deep set and unfamiliar.
When his publisher asks for a third book, Eddie declines, asks to postpone. He asks if instead there’s anything else he can provide.
She hums. Her name is Christina and Eddie’s considered her a friend since she’d first taken him on as an author. She shuffles papers on the desk mindlessly, sighs quietly, and rubs an eye. Eddie can tell she’s disappointed but is trying to make light for his sake. Her topknot is slowly starting to droop backwards on her crown, green ribbon spooling at the nape of her neck. The curls framing her eyes are listless and undefined.
“We’d received a letter after the first book,” she starts. Her mouth twists into an awkward frown. Eddie raises his eyebrows at her. “A request–” Christina tilts her head to the side, the topknot sliding along with it, “more of a proposition.” She doesn’t say anything more for a moment, instead folds her hands neatly in front of her on the desk.
“Miss Cunningham?”
“A Mr. Harrington wrote in inquiring about a live-in author for his estate.”
“Oh?” Eddie blinks.
“He requested you, specifically,” and here she meets his eyes. Hers are full and very blue, wide with concern and hesitancy.
“Oh.”
–
The cottage that is offered to him is small but spacious. There’s a loft for his bed, the stairs steep and creaking. A sitting room branching from the entrance with wooden framed couches and a fireplace. The carpet beneath it is red and is soft beneath Eddie’s shoes. The kitchen is modest and there’s no staff to be seen outside of the lawnkeepers shoveling. The back of the cottage butts up in the woods, a walking path out to an outhouse hidden amongst the spindly trees.
It’s the dead of winter when Eddie arrives, but there’s no chill in the house. There’s a fire roaring when he arrives and a basket near the root cellar with jars of jams and a few loaves of bread. A letter is tucked within the bundle, noting that the cellar is stocked, but should he want anything more, he need simply place a letter in the box at the end of his pathway. It’s signed by Ms. Byers.
Eddie settles in easily. There’s a wardrobe for his overcoats and a place for his hat by the front door. Another smaller wardrobe is in the loft, with room for his trousers and collared shirts, drawers for his cravats, small clothes, and other bits and bobs.
There’s a desk in the sitting room, simple in design with a straight backed chair to match. It has room enough for his papers, notebooks, and pencils. His inkwell sits crooked in the divet for it, but Eddie rarely uses ink for his work.
The night silences around him. The air is filled with warmth from the hearth, the crackling of the burning wood, and the muffle of the snow outside. He feels on the edge of a new beginning.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
—
The first request comes a week later. Eddie hasn’t left the cottage in that time. The air outside is sharp and leaves his lungs empty from walking to the outhouse or to the letterbox. Most days there’s nothing there, Eddie having bundled up in his boots, overcoat, and hat for no reason.
MR. MUNSON
–it reads, when Eddie has settled back into the chaise, a patchwork blanket pulled from his bed tugged across his lap.
DO YOU HAVE ANY WORKS ON THE WOODS PLEASE?
It’s signed “SH” in the same uniform but delicate print. The words are well-spaced and meaningful, in black dried ink. Unlike Eddie, Mr. Harrington does not trail ghosts of his words across the page with the back of his hand. It feels soft somehow, this request. The words leave Eddie bereft, heart somewhere steady behind his ribs but floating in his throat. He trudges back up to his desk. The patchwork blanket is around his shoulders and dragging across the carpet below.
The poem is dropped in the letterbox a few days later after six iterations are burned in the fireplace. Eddie goes through a pencil in that time. There’s a nest of shavings around the straight backed chair, dragged around the cottage from the blanket.
Whirl up, sea—
whirl your pointed pines,
splash your great pines
on our rocks,
hurl your green over us,
cover us with your pools of fir.
A response comes three days later. Eddie tries not to be eager to hear back, is cautious of his own tendencies, but still catches the boy who delivers the letter anyway. Watches as he disappears around the bend towards the main house.
MR. MUNSON
–it starts, like the first letter. Eddie stands at the end of his pathway, hands bare in the breeze and overcoat only partially buttoned. He’d forgotten his cravat; his collar flutters against his chin in the wind. His emotions feel like a similar whirlwind.
TO GET LOST IN SUCH A FOREST; TO GET LOST IN SUCH WORDS. THANK YOU.
Again signed “SH” and Eddie cannot help but marvel at the simplicity of the response. He stands looking at it for so long that when he returns inside, his body is numb to heat. His fingers feel separate from himself as he stands in front of the fire warming them.
–
Time passes mostly with reading and writing. Winter rages on in its quiet fashion, and Eddie moves through it just as silently. Firewood is stacked daily by his front door by the same boy as who delivers and collects the letters. Ms. Byers drops by more jams, a knit scarf she bungled but didn’t want to waste, and two left mittens that work just as well.
“Ms. Byers–”
“Joyce, dear, please,” the woman corrects immediately. She’s currently puttering through Eddie’s kitchen. His prep table is filled with a layer of flour and a steadily kneaded lump of dough. Ms. Byers looks up at him with white dust across her cheeks. Her smile is warm.
“Joyce, then, may I make a request?” Eddie’s hand goes to straighten his cravat awkwardly. When it proves to be situated correctly, his hands roam up to his curls, unruly and unprepared for company. Ms. Byers hadn’t seemed to mind the state of him. Certainly didn’t seem to mind the length of his hair, despite how much it’d gotten away from him.
“Of course,” and her tone reflects the statement. She wipes her hands across her apron and stands fully to give Eddie her attention. The simple knot atop her head slips slightly to the side. When a piece of hair floats in Ms. Byers eyes, she squints and blows it back.
“Pencils?”
“Anything else?”
Eddie wracks his brain for anything else, comes up blank, but still says, “Honey?”
“Honey?” Ms. Byers laughs, nearly aghast. Eddie’s hands pick at his nails, at the ring circling his middle finger, ready to be embarrassed by the request. “Of course! Yes, I’ll have Mr. Henderson drop a pot off in the morning with your wood.”
She stays for another hour, into lunch, putting together sandwiches with the bread she makes Eddie. They discuss the weather, her sons, but Mr. Harrington never comes up. Not until Ms. Byers is bundled by the door. Her scarf is an atrocious blend of colors from leftover projects and her mittens match only in that sense. One mitten is shorter than the other. The thumb on the other is longer than it has any right to be.
“Before I forget–” she starts, digging a mittened hand within her overcoat pocket. Her skirts shift along the floor boards. Eddie suddenly remembers the pencil shavings and a blush steals across his face. A piece of paper emerges before he can say anything. It’s slightly crumpled, but Eddie recognizes the quality immediately as that of Mr. Harrington’s stationary. “Ste– Mr. Harrington passed this along. Have a good evening, Mr. Munson.”
“Eddie,” he corrects in kind, without thinking, reaching for the letter.
There’s a smile in her voice when she says, “Eddie,” before slipping out the door.
MR. MUNSON
–it reads, like the others. Eddie cannot help but smile down at the wide print. A thumb trails over the letters carefully. He feels a fondness that he shouldn’t over Mr. Harrington’s handwriting. When he continues, the smile dwindles.
DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING ON NIGHTMARES? PLEASE.
Signed, as always, “SH.” Eddie settles into his straight backed chair heavily. One of his hands claws to the back of his neck, unbuckling the cravat with ease, eyes still only on the letter. It drops to the floor beside the chair. The tie in his hair is also pulled loose. It drops to the desk. The buttons to his waistcoat dig into his stomach uncomfortably. Eddie pulls the pad of his thumb into his mouth, leaning an elbow onto the desk.
Mr. Harrington gets nightmares.
Eddie writes into the evening, into the night. Copy after copy is cramped onto pages before they are thrown to the fire with frustration. He stops only to sup quickly and to trudge to the outhouse. There’s a burning in his chest that will not cease until the words are out.
Mr. Harrington gets nightmares.
In the end, it’s not about nightmares, and only briefly about dreams.
Somewhere in the branches
Overhead a blackbird
Whistles the sun down.
I can make out
A single light, a single window,
And I think of witches,
Now that I am alone
With the night falling,
And wet leaves on my face,
And I cannot quite
Remember how the story
Is supposed to end,
But you have ended it
For me, leaving a trail of crumbs
To your bed.
At the bottom, in his stilted cursive, Eddie writes an extra note for Mr. Harrington.
Sleep well.
It’s simple and Eddie regrets it almost immediately. He doesn’t like the warmth brewing in his gut, recognizes it for what it is in the early stages. He knows it can only lead in one direction. Instead of changing it, the letter is folded carefully into an envelope and pressed with his plain seal.
Eddie hands it off to Mr. Henderson in the morning, who’s a wide smiled boy of ten and four. There’s an air of awkward youth about him that Eddie recognizes himself in at that age. Eager to please and happy to chat with anyone who will listen. Eddie likes him immediately for his blunt nature–
“So you’re the hostage?”
–and humor. When he departs, Eddie stands on the pathway for long enough to see him throw his hands in the air on his cart before sprinting back to the cottage. Eddie waits for him, watching the white clouds of his breath disappear in the morning light.
“Honey,” Mr. Henderson wheezes, “and pencils.” The pot and parcel are handed off almost blindly before the boy is racing back to his horse.
–
Mr. Harrington’s reply takes nearly a fortnight to arrive. Eddie’s honey is nearly gone. Toast and tea and porridge all go down so much easier with honey. The wind has begun to change. While not warmer, there’s a sense of otherness in the air. A purposeful movement in the breeze and the scent of rain on the horizon. With each passing day, the trails of small critters appear on the path in the woods. Songbirds have begun to return, picking apart browned leaves and twigs frozen to the banks.
MR. MUNSON
–it begins in the expected fashion. Eddie’s heart races in his chest, palms clammy, and sitting sideways in his straight backed chair towards the fireplace. The patchwork blanket is pooled at his bare feet. Underneath it lies his cravat from weeks earlier along with more shavings. The entire house is littered with them.
I SLEEP BETTER KNOWING I HAVE YOUR WORDS FOR COMFORT. THANK YOU.
Eddie’s breath is pulled from his lungs. His hand lowers to his lap and the flames lick against the firewood like they always do. Like they are destined to do. Eddie’s eyes lose focus into them, Mr. Harrington’s words humming in the crook behind his ear. They feel as though they are whispering there. Eddie can nearly picture how they would sound. Eddie feels–
Eddie feels perhaps too much. There’s a thickness to his throat that catches on his next swallow. He presses the back of his wrist carefully to his mouth, squeezing his eyes shut tightly. He calls for his thoughts to cease, but they will not.
Mr. Harrington’s words continue to echo throughout the night. Eddie remains hunched at the desk for far too long, more shavings joining their brethren on the floorboards. Eddie is drowning and he strives to find the words to explain it, even if for his own peace of mind.
–
Eddie hears nothing from Mr. Harrington for another fortnight, the crest of a third week on the horizon. The snow has begun melting, leaving the grounds muddy and uneven. There’s newness and loneliness brewing in Eddie’s chest. With every inch of snow that disappears, a heaviness weighs on his shoulders. Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever felt as isolated as he has in these moments.
Ms. Byers has visited but once in the last month, long enough to bake another batch of her bread, to deliver another pot of honey unprompted, and to tut at him for the mess he’s made of the cottage. It quells him enough to finally pick up his cravat, the waistcoat he’s left hanging on the chair, to do his washing. The washing soap is harsh on his fingers. They’re left cracked in the chilled air. He hangs a series of lines across the kitchen. Shirts and trousers and small clothes hung for anyone to see should they enter the cottage.
Eddie cannot bring himself to sweep up the shavings however. Finds himself holding the broom from the kitchen doorway. Looking into the sitting room, with its red carpet and ever glowing fire, and seeing them spread about. Seeing them trail to the steep stairs and settle in the corners of each step. It shows a passage of time. For some inexplicable reason, Eddie feels it shows that he’s been here. That Eddie Munson has made a home of this cottage for nearly three months now.
It makes him long for his uncle. Long for the home he hasn’t seen since his first book was published. He wonders if his uncle would look the same as he had last. If the lines of his face are still as familiar as they once were.
An hour later, broom hung back up in the kitchen, Eddie finds himself hunkered down at the desk. More shavings join the old beneath his feet.
In the morning, Eddie meets Mr. Henderson with his delivery. The letter had only one iteration and, once written, Eddie could not find it in himself to read it again.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all,—
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
Eddie doesn’t anticipate hearing from Mr. Harrington for another fortnight. He accepts that with as much grace as he can: silently and in the comfort of the chaise, too aware of the heaviness of his heart. The patchwork blanket has become an old friend, though less needed as the season continues to move.
He’s at the dining table–a slice of toasted bread with honey and currant jelly halfway gone–when there’s a knock on the door. He’s unkempt, in only his small clothes and a sleep shirt down to his knees. For a moment, Eddie only sits there. An old habit of waiting the visitor out takes over him. If he simply remains quiet and unmoving they won’t know that he is home.
They knock once more.
Eddie scrambles and ducks beneath all of the windows until he reaches the staircase. Pencil shavings stick to the bottoms of his feet as he thunders up them. Cravat, waistcoat, trousers that don’t have a stain in the knee. The sleeves of his clean shirt crumple terribly as he shoves his arms into his short coat.
The knocking is incessant now, as Eddie attempts to thunder back down the staircase. His hands fly to his hair self-consciously. He’s overly aware that it’s too long. He looks eccentric, more so than he prefers.
“So you’re the hostage?” are the first words spoken after Eddie opens the door.
They leave him blinking dumbly at the visitor. Hearing Mr. Henderson’s words once more erases any greeting he’d had.
The visitor is dressed neatly in cream trousers, a tan overcoat with embroidered golden leaves along the collar, a white cravat starched to perfection. Looking further, they sport a mild-wide grin, as if the two of them are in on a joke together. Glittering blue eyes and an array of curls framing their face and tophat.
“So it seems,” Eddie finally manages. It comes out almost questioning, as Eddie grasps for this stranger's name.
“Miss Buckley, if you would,” she smiles, mischief in her eyes.
“Miss Buckley, a pleasure,” Eddie remarks, brows pulled low.
Miss Buckley pushes past him, hands pulling at the buttons of her overcoat blindly as she looks around the cottage. Eddie can’t help but flush at his bare feet and the littering of pencil shavings. She drops her hat next to his, stomps her boots into the entrance rug heedless of the slush she leaves behind.
“The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Munson, I’ve heard a great deal about you.” Miss Buckley’s overcoat gets hung in his wardrobe and she meanders into the sitting room. Eddie stands dumbstruck in the entrance, door still open letting out the warm air.
His mouth clicks when he swallows, “Have you?”
Miss Buckley is sitting in his chaise, the rest of his toast in her hand. It disappears with her next words, mouth open and head draped along the edge so she can see him from the doorway. Thoughts of the washing still hanging on lines in the kitchen flash horrifyingly in Eddie’s mind. A stray hand makes its way up to rub self-consciously at his lips.
“You’re Steve’s favorite topic of late,” Miss Buckley continues. Her grin is conspiratorial, still chewing, eyes alight with the glow of the morning. Eddie feels as if he’s misstepped somewhere this morning. He can’t help but spin the ring on his middle finger around and around.
“Mr. Harrington?” he asks, even though he knows. He has not let himself think of the man’s first name. Miss Buckley shrugs, whirling her head around to face the fireplace once more.
“I had to come see you for myself. See the fuss, you understand.”
Eddie forces himself to sit on the couch parallel to the chair. Miss Buckley is sucking jelly from her fingertips, wipes them off on her trousers afterwards. Her waistcoat has the same golden leaves winding up from her waist to her breast on vines.
Before he can reply, “He admired your first book. Spoke of it at all hours. Had your verses imprinted on his eyes, I swear.”
Eddie doesn’t know what to say. He searches for the right words; instead finds himself sitting mute in the face of this stranger who knows Mr. Harrington intimately.
“ Sadness is that feeling / when the falling doesn’t stop ,” she pauses and holds the air between them. Melancholy roams her features slowly, seeping into her lips, into the corners of her eyes. Remembrance for something she will not share with Eddie. “He quoted that one a lot.”
Her eyes are too blue when she looks at him now. A searching look, seeking an explanation in Eddie’s features. Who is this woman who knows Mr. Harrington as a friend would? As a sister would? He tries not to let the feelings of jealousy tighten his throat. He almost succeeds.
“Is he well?” Eddie finds himself asking. A question that has been haunting him since the letter on nightmares.
Miss Buckley hums. She’s turned serious now, so quickly from her easy-going nature. “He seems more like himself with every passing day. Truthfully,” and here she hesitates and looks away from Eddie. The curls of her hair cups her jaw, softening her features. Another pause while she collects her thoughts. “Truthfully,” she continues, “he is more like himself since you have arrived.”
–
And so Eddie doesn’t hear from Mr. Harrington for a week after Miss Buckley visits. Her words have been with him since, have stuck in his ears with every waking moment. What does he know of Mr. Harrington? Not enough to warrant the feelings he has been denying. They grow with each passing day and Eddie sees no end in sight for them. He puts them on a shelf, as he must, and lets them gather dust. It leaves him bereft for an afternoon. No words have been added to the page.
When he checks the letterbox that evening, after supper and after staring endlessly at a blank page, there’s a letter. His boots track mud to the straight backed chair carelessly.
MR. MUNSON
–it begins and Eddie sighs quietly to himself. It’s a comfort to see his name once more in Mr. Harrington’s square handwriting.
HAVE YOU ANYTHING ON LOVE? ON LONGING? PLEASE.
Something wells in his chest at the words. At the signing of “SH” that is ever present at the bottom of the letter. To speak it would not shed Eddie in good lighting. It’s bitter and feels pointed to what Eddie has been trying to keep out of mind. It’s as if Mr. Harrington can see his struggle and is mocking him for it. Asking too much, maybe, of who Eddie is.
But what does he know of Mr. Harrington? That he is not cruel, of that Eddie is certain. So he writes.
What is the greatest gift?
Could it be the world itself–the oceans, the
meadowlark,
the patience of the trees in the wind?
Could it be love, with its sweet clamor of passion?
Something else–something else entirely
holds me in thrall.
That you have a life that I wonder about
more than I wonder about my own.
That you have a life–courteous, intelligent–
That I wonder about more than I wonder about my
own.
That you have a soul–your own, no one else’s–
That I wonder about more than I wonder about my
own.
So that I find my soul clapping its hands for yours
more than my own.
It leaves Eddie confined to his bed for a few mornings afterwards. The low ceilings feel as if to cocoon him from himself. The small round window sheds enough light to cast the room in a series of moving shadows across the day. Eddie’s eyes remain closed and he remains hidden from the world for a few mornings, picking up parts of himself.
A reply is in his letterbox when he finally makes it out of the front door.
MR. MUNSON
–it reads as it always does. Eddie does not allow himself to feel any disappointment at this. Sits in his chaise and smooths a thumb over the letters as ghosts of them. He continues to read–
FOR YOU I WONDER; FOR YOU I PONDER. I THINK OF YOU ALWAYS. THANK YOU.
–and there, at the very bottom–
YOURS, STEVE
–
The cottage is on the outskirts of the property, he’s found. With the warmth of summer blooming, he wanders now, notebook and pencil bag in hand. The pathway in the woods behind the cottage leads out of the woods, onto the property proper. The woods themself are cool in the afternoon and hover somewhere between real life and a daydream. Eddie isn’t superstitious, though if he was, these woods would be otherworldly and full of sprites.
He strays in his thoughts. Allows himself time to prod his own feelings where there are none to see how his face changes with them. Allows himself to think of Mr. Harrington– he almost dares not–of Steve.
The pathway leads him deeper still, and his thoughts follow. Deeper until the treeline breaks and opens unto the back of the gardens. The wrought iron gate is open, a curved entrance into a well manicured haven.
The evening is already at a close, the sun low in the sky and casting a warm golden hue over the gardens. Eddie spins carefully around, taking in green and decorative grasses and the multitude of colors.
There’s trimmed hedges leading him further in, shaped perfectly as cones and natural fencing alike. They blend with tall pink and yellow black-eyed susans. With short late-season dewdrops covered by daylilies that have yet to bloom. Fruit trees are spotted with climbing creeper vines, a burning of maroon leaves amongst the greens.
A fountain gurgles in the distance somewhere ahead and Eddie walks quietly to it. The grass underfoot is cropped short, with spots of clover and mosses where the shade hits more readily. There are butterflies and bees alike, bopping from one flower to the next for their day's work. The fountain is a tall, skinny cylinder with a blooming top where water flows steadily into a low pond below. It’s partially in-ground, lily pads and reeds growing from the green water below. Eddie rounds it, kneels for a moment to press his fingertips into the water, rests an elbow on the ledge and watches koi fish lurk below.
When he rounds the next bend, he stops in his tracks.
There’s a man sitting in a copse of rose bushes climbing up an arch, short red and white flowers growing beneath his feet. He’s in black trousers, white collared shirt undone on the first few buttons, with no cravat. His waistcoat is a deep emerald velvet, open enough to see lightly embroidered braces. Eddie feels the burn of a blush steal across his face and chest immediately.
This is Mr. Harrington.
This is Steve .
He's beautiful in the dimming sunlight, Eddie thinks, almost second-handedly. He's radiant and golden and sun-kissed and words that Eddie doesn't know. For all Eddie has spoken of beauty, he had yet to see Mr. Harrington in the evening light. Head bowed into a book, brunet hair falling across his cheeks, his neck pale with the knotting of scarring across the throat. The flowers are in full bloom for him and there's dew shining in the grass still and the sun is glowing from behind him. It’s as if nature has been bound to his will, as if it seeks to show Eddie, this is him, that whom you write of.
It takes too long for Eddie to realize that Mr. Harrington is reading aloud to himself. The words had flowed so easily across Eddie before. But he is whispering quietly so that Eddie almost can't hear him. The piece is unrecognizable, but there’s enough to know it’s prose of some kind. The words are surely tightly packed and small on the page.
Mr. Harrington’s voice is as soft as his letters, but stilted as he reads. The words form awkwardly in his mouth, like the words are too rounded, too heavy, too wide for him to say. There's a crinkle in his brow that smooths when he finishes sounding out a word, creases once more when he stumbles across another.
Suddenly, things make sense for Eddie. Mr. Harrington’s wide and well-spaced print–odd but charming to Eddie, who’s grown so fond of it. Eddie, who has grown fond of how his name looks in such print. The time in between some letters, time enough to read Eddie’s scrawled cursive, of which he gave so little mind to.
He leaves the garden single-minded, taking with him the image of Mr. Harrington, delicate in the low sunlight. It’s an image he is not likely to ever forget. He can already feel words forming along his fingertips, whispers of phrases as they form along his lips. He knows the night will be long, easing into tomorrow and the tomorrow after that. The words have been within him for months now, have only begun to take shape. The fireplace will eat any that do not deserve to be spoken.
And when Eddie places the poem in the letterbox seven days later, it is written in a clumsy but well-spaced print.
I want you and you are not here. I pause
in this garden, breathing the colour thought is
before language into still air. Even your name
is a pale ghost and, though I exhale it again
and again, it will not stay with me. Tonight
I make you up, imagine you, your movements clearer
than the words I have you say you said before.
Wherever you are now, inside my head you fix me
with a look, standing here whilst cool late light
dissolves into the earth. I have got your mouth wrong,
but still it smiles. I hold you closer, miles away,
inventing love, until the calls of nightjars
interrupt and turn what was to come, was certain,
into memory. The stars are filming us for no one.
It closes, for the first time, with “Yours, Eddie.”
–
Mr. Harrington has not responded within the following week. It leaves a hollowness in the center of Eddie’s chest that does not recede. He feels as if his breath echoes with every exhale. Eddie wanders the grounds more, not letting himself confine himself to the bed anymore. He does not allow himself to feel heartbroken over this. Mr. Harrington has taken longer to respond in the past, he reminds himself. It does nothing to quell the ache.
He never goes to the gardens, however. The idea of seeing them in the fresh daylight, the threat of seeing Mr. Harrington again. It frightens him. So he finds himself deep in the woods again. He appreciates the cool air now, like he never did in the winter. He wears his short coat out now. His overcoat is too warm for the gentle sunlight of early summer. Creatures cross paths unseen and Eddie is among them. He collects leaves and flowers, presses them in what books he has when he returns to the cottage.
When the woods prove too idle, too lonely, he finds himself on the back lawns of the property under trees older than anyone he’s ever known or will know. They shelter him from the blossoming sun and do not mind if he hums, recites, or cries softly to himself. Mr. Harrington’s estate looms behind him, ever present. It’s several stories high, the windows even and plenty along the face of the building. Eddie resolutely faces into the grassy plains and away from the house all together.
He soon finds himself near fishing ponds on the opposite side of the property. There’s gray fish, quick and slithering, beneath the water when he sits along the banks. There’s a constant noise of rippling water and dragonflies. Every morning a lawnkeeper comes to feed them and the water erupts with hungry mouths.
Here Eddie writes to his uncle for the first time, asking for advice. He’s unsure how to word it, feels guilty that he’s not thought to write before now. For the first time in years, Eddie cannot find the words for it. Everything comes out too flowery, too obvious on a second reading. His uncle would see right through him in an instant. He was always capable of reading Eddie better than anyone else. Always knew Eddie’s emotions as easily as he knew his own. In the end, Eddie sends a letter, words stilted but no less sincere. For every line there is about Mr. Harrington, there’s another of how much Eddie has missed his uncle.
After a week, and after exhausting all hidden spots on the Harrington grounds, Eddie feels desperate for company. His uncle’s letter won’t arrive for too long, and Eddie’s desperate for some form of company. He hasn’t seen hide or hair of Miss Buckley and Ms. Byers has her own responsibilities rather than indulging Eddie in a visit.
Mr. Henderson is a constant. Eddie knows the boy will arrive early each morning, will laugh much too loudly and grin his mile-wide smile at every word Eddie says.
The following morning finds Eddie in his front garden. The lawnkeepers had brought out a wrought iron bench some weeks ago, settled amongst a flurry of pink and white low-blossoming flowers and long decorative grasses. Eddie pulls on his short coat and settles there for the early hours. It’s peaceful and warm and Eddie allows himself to lull into his mind.
The sun is breaking along the horizon in a glow of gold and yellow, illuminating the gravel pathway to the Harrington residence. Eddie’s finding words like resplendent and transcendent and breath-taking gazing up at the curves of clouds and winds of sparrows. Mr. Henderson is late and Eddie is tracing the iron bench mindlessly with a fingertip while humming under his breath, finding the correct cadence for his words.
Someone begins cresting the pathway, first a set of shoulders and a head, bobbing as a silhouette against the sunrise. Eddie sits up, almost ready to call down the road at Mr. Henderson, something to do with sleeping in and slacking on his deliveries. Except–and this leaves Eddie breathless–except it is not Mr. Henderson.
It’s Steve.
Wind-swept and gait purposeful as he strides down the pathway to Eddie’s cottage. It freezes Eddie where he sits. Steve’s as beautiful as the evening in the garden and words clammer against Eddie’s ears and fingertips at the sight of him.
Steve’s wearing cream trousers and an unbuttoned forest green overcoat. The tails of it are fluttering behind him. Beneath it is a white cravat, cradling Steve’s jaw, and an embroidered waistcoat. It’s a depiction of leafless tree branches against brown fabric, lined with golden thread and silver shadows. Eddie feels overwhelmingly underdressed in a flash of hot panic. He has no time to do anything before Steve stands at the end of his pathway.
“Mr. Munson–” Steve says, brisk and sudden. His face twists, lips drawn to the side and brows pulling down. It’s like he’s disappointed himself. The ring on Eddie’s middle finger spins around and around.
“Eddie–” Steve tries again, voice soft. His eyes are honey brown in the sunlight and he looks blindsided and lost at the sight of Eddie. His voice is reverent when he says again, “ Eddie .”
Eddie doesn’t know what to say, has lost all words. Carefully he stands from the bench, glides across his front garden, cautious of the purple and yellow flowers that grow along his pathway. It’s the most graceful Eddie has been in his entire life.
The gravel crunches under his shoes as he walks to the gate. It’s still closed and Steve hasn’t crossed that barrier yet. Steve’s eyes are searching across Eddie’s face. Eddie watches Steve pull his hat from his head carefully. Watches as Steve’s gaze drops to it, his fingers lining the edging before those too brown eyes look back to Eddie. Underneath the hat was a tussle of brunet locks that are a disaster of waves. Eddie’s hands twitch at his sides to rearrange them.
“I–” Steve starts again awkwardly, unsure of Eddie’s silence. He clears his throat, sets his hat along the stone fencing of Eddie’s cottage. He resettles his stance, steps one foot closer to the gate and to Eddie. “If I only had the words,” and here he swallows thickly, “Eddie, if I had the words, I would never silence. You would always know. You would know every day–every moment–that I love you.”
There’s a humming in Eddie’s ears, like the ocean breaking against the surf. It’s so earnest, so truthful, that Eddie cannot doubt them–will not doubt them for the sake of his own heart beating strongly against his ribs.
Eddie opens the gate. It squeals on its hinges. When he looks at Steve, truly looks at him, he takes in the way his shoulders hunch into himself. Takes in the ruddy pink hue of his cheeks and the bitten nature of his lips. His eyelashes are heavy with tears. Eddie feels both smaller and bigger than he truly is.
“Steve,” Eddie whispers, voice raspy from disuse this past week. Steve’s hand is cool to the touch when Eddie grasps it in his. Eddie feels as if he will shake out of his skin if Steve's hand isn’t in his. “Love me with your hands,” he continues softly. Steve’s cheek is soft against his palm. “Love me with your eyes.” Steve’s lip twitches against Eddie’s thumb. It drops open enough for Eddie to trail his thumb across it. Steve’s breath is warm against his hand. “Love me with your lips.” Eddie brings both hands to the one he holds, brings it carefully up to his mouth. His eyes never leave Steve’s “And I will always love you with my words.”
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep