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It’s no easy feat to reach Laurel Grove from the capital. The road is rough and pitted, hateful to wagon wheels. It twists through the mountains and descends into the treacherous fog of the Mistwalk Valley. Bandits, emboldened by newly thawed trade negotiations and a glut of incautious, overencumbered merchants, stalk the spaces between the trees. From caravan to campsite, a flock of apprentices have zealously guarded your crates of precious cargo. You’re tired, all of you, eager for beds, blankets and a proper meal, but also restless with anticipation. At the Sheralothian Festival of the Arts, you’ll make more money for your workshop in a few days than you will for the rest of the year, attracting new patrons and securing new contracts.
The first of your apprentices to spot the sparkle of magic hollers in unabashed delight. The tapestry is a seamless weave of physical and metaphysical components, a shimmery material that blooms with sweet-smelling flowers in the daylight and sparkles luminescent beneath the moon. These adornments wrap around the trunks of trees and dangle from the canopy in thin ribbons, forming a path that guides you across bridges formed of mossy, gargantuan tree trunks and through leaf-canopy shaded streets. Laurel Grove, the Evergreen City, gradually unfolds all around you, not carved into the forest but melding with it.
One of your apprentices rushes off to secure a room at Fiora Falls, an inn tucked behind a waterfall. Another finds boarding for the horses. The rest follow you to the meadow fairgrounds where a ring of tents, stalls and tables has sprung up in a wide circle. You are late arrivals, having traveled further than most. Your fellow artists and craftsmen are happy to see you, exchanging embraces and well-wishes. A space has been saved for you not far from the meadow’s entrance. The apprentices get the crates open, setting up shelves, tables and a canopy. The display on your left belongs to Veta, a woodcarver from the south. She has amber eyes and thickly muscled arms littered with old scars. She waves when she sees you. On your right—
“There, there, darling. Don’t be nervous.”
You freeze. All of your joy and excitement withers and dies because on your right is Medraut.
You consider leaving. You shouldn’t. Can’t, really. But the thought occurs to you. Packing up, turning around, and making the long journey home without a single sale. You take a deep breath and let it out slowly. No. He won’t ruin this for you. You focus on helping the apprentices, unpacking fresh flowers, minerals and round jars packed full of colorful dust. Your pigments are the finest in Sheralothia. They’re on temple ceilings and canvases hung in palace halls, staining the palettes of the world’s most renowned painters.
Greta, one of the newer apprentices, glances around in awe at the works of leatherworkers, glassblowers and luthiers from distant lands. Inevitably, her gaze is drawn to Medraut and his eclectic display: heavy tomes. Bows and ribbons. Syringes. Small bowls of cosmetic pigments. Cloudy vials of condensed magic in both smooth liquid and thick ichor. Sewing kits. Everything is arranged around a life-size doll at the front and center, sitting stiffly upright with stocking-clad legs dangling off the edge of the table. It’s undeniably beautiful. Dressed in an asymmetric frilly ensemble, its dainty hands are folded one over the other in its lap, nails neatly trimmed and painted. It has a listless expression, lips pursed and painted orchid purple, neither smiling nor frowning. Glassy lavender eyes are accentuated by long lashes and dabs of glittering blush on the cheeks, half-lidded gaze staring at nothing in particular.
“Hush now,” Medraut murmurs. He tucks a stray lock of hair back into place, looping it behind the shell of the doll’s ear. He caresses its face with the back of his hand in slow, soft strokes, the way one touches a lover. “Yes, I know. You dislike the spotlight. But you’re perfect.”
“Greta,” you say sternly. She flinches, scurrying back to your side with a sheepish expression. “Guests will be arriving at any moment and we’re not finished setting up. Let’s not get distracted just yet.”
“Of course!” she stammers. You offer a smile to reassure her when she rejoins the other apprentices, sifting through pigments and materials to find the most eye-catching objects worthy of display. She’s soon drawn into a gossip huddle with the others, voices lowered, nervous glances thrown around. You don’t stop them. Better she hears it now, however twisted by hearsay and urban legend, than later. You try to focus on preparing for the start of the festival but you keep stealing glimpses at the neighboring tables.
Medraut is deceptively delicate-looking, willowy with bony fingers and slender wrists. He’s cut his hair since the last time you saw him. Shoulder-length now, no longer spilling halfway down his back. He still favors the lavish fashions of the nobility; white silk, billowing sleeves, an obsidian brooch affixed to a lace jabot. Everything he does is graceful and deliberate, from the simple act of movement to the precise way he handles the goods arranged in front of him. He keeps returning to the doll, fussing over it, smoothing out creases in its clothing and refluffing drooping bows. Each time, his hand lingers. A squeeze of the shoulder. A stroke of the hair. A slow slide of the palm against the hollow of the throat, unabashed lust in his eyes.
Not unlike the doll, there is an uncanny, ageless quality to his features, a lack of anything that could easily identify him as young or old. That’s just how it is with mages. He could be thirty or three hundred. There’s no way to tell just by looking. You hear the apprentices discussing it. Trading rumors and throwing out guesses. His portrait hangs in the Hall of Gratitude in Twillisp Castle, his smile forever enshrined along with the other advisors King Kirgar maintained during his reign several centuries ago.
“You’re pulling my leg!” Greta hisses. “He can’t be that old!”
The others insist, “He might be even older.”
“He’s from Ithyr, you know. Some of the oldest mages in the world live there.”
“Lived, anyway.”
“Oh,” Greta says, her eyes wide. “Ithyr? To the west? Isn’t that where…”
“Yes. I think that’s why he’s…like that.”
You share a table. Tall, long and draped with black cloth, this flimsy barrier is all that stands between the two of you. Medraut has already placed a few odds and ends on the side closest to him. Combs and hairbrushes. Perfume bottles. An assortment of scalpels in different sizes, spread out on a velvet cloth. You gather a few of the larger, more inelegant minerals you haven’t had the chance to cut and grind into fine powder, lining them up down the center of the table. You try to do this quietly but Medraut turns the moment you place the first stone. He approaches the table, his smile widening.
“Medraut,” you greet him curtly.
“My dear friend,” he says, the same sensual murmur he spoke into the doll’s ear rolling off his tongue. The slow, undisguised wandering of his gaze up and down your body makes you uneasy. His eyes are stark silver in pools of black sclera like twin moons, the pupils somewhat misshapen; common in survivors of arcanapox. “It seems I have the pleasure of your company again this year.”
You hum in acknowledgement. “I wonder how that keeps happening.”
He tilts his head, glancing at something behind you. You step to the side to block his line of sight and he chuckles softly. “Hm. Bloodshot eyes. Unsteady gait. Shaky hands. You work your poor apprentices hard but you work yourself hardest of all. Would you like to sit down? I brought a chair.”
You place the last stone more heavily than you need to, slamming it down at the end of the table. “You don’t cross this line,” you tell him. “You stay on your side and I stay on mine.”
“Now, now. There’s no need for all that. But if it will put your mind at ease…” He shrugs, leaning against his half of the table with his arms crossed in front of his chest. “Really, do you think so poorly of me? Your apprentices are precious, but I’d never steal one away. No matter how lovely they’d look in something other than those dreary robes and aprons you’re all so fond of.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” you say, utterly unconvinced.
The slow trickle of the festival’s first guests thankfully diverts his attention. Medraut’s display draws in many curious onlookers and he’s all too happy to explain the history of Ithyrian dollmaking. He comes out from behind the table to stand beside the doll, demonstrating its posable limbs with gentle, coaxing touches. You shouldn’t watch. You have plenty to do. But you keep looking. Keep glancing over and finding him increasingly shameless. Running his hands through the doll’s hair. Stroking its arm. Kneeling once to tighten the laces of its boots and sliding his palm up and down the curve of one long, ball-jointed leg. Up and down. Up and down. Slipping beneath the fluttering edge of its skirt…
You get a few potential customers, too, excitedly chattering patrons of the arts looking for fresh new pigments to supply their preferred painters. A few recognize you from previous years. One particularly discerning man asks if a particular jar of dark dust is used in the creation of “mourning blue,” a rich color becoming increasingly popular in the frescoes of the capital. You’re still not accustomed to being recognized like this, approached with awe and praise. Your whole world is the workshop, turning rocks and plants into colors worthy of royal portraits.
One of your apprentices demonstrates a technique with mortar and pestle, dropping a fistful of flower petals into the bowl. The others stand towards the back and whisper amongst themselves, furtive glances aimed at Medraut.
“How bad was it?”
“Oh, it was dreadful. Haven’t you seen The Death of the Deathless?”
“Gods, that awful thing? I couldn’t bear to look at it!”
“Shhh!”
Silence. You can feel them staring at your back for a moment before the whispers start again, even quieter now.
“It’s true. Our teacher was there when it happened. They apprenticed in Ithyr.”
“They were there? How did they survive?”
“Arcanapox only kills mages. Still, it makes us pretty sick, too. That’s why they have that tremor in their hands.”
“Of all things, they painted that?”
“When you see something so awful, you make sense of it however you can.”
“Eyes like hot wax. Eugh.”
“But that was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”
“Mages don’t handle death well. It’s too strange to them.”
“So that’s why…?”
“Yes, to help them grieve.”
“No, that’s just how it started. What they do now, it’s…well, it’s certainly not the same.”
A finely dressed man in a striped, high-collared doublet approaches Medraut’s table with a broad smile. They know each other. Medraut’s face lights up and they greet each other with half-bows, left hands flicking to the side as though to cast a minor spell; a mage greeting. They speak in hushed but excited tones and you should not be eavesdropping, should not care what they have to say to each other. You rearrange the pigments, sorting them alphabetically. You can’t help yourself. You glance over at them again.
The doll is staring at you.
You nearly drop the jar you’re holding, fumbling with the lid. It hasn’t moved at all except for its head, turned towards you. You swallow nervously, bending to pick up the lid of the jar. The doll’s eyes lower, then follow you back up when you stand. You look away, heart pounding.
“How long did it take?” you hear the man ask, sounding awed.
Medraut laughs softly. “Quite some time, but I enjoy the process. This one especially.”
You look at the dirt beneath your feet. The dangling tablecloth. The line of stones. Medraut’s beautiful hand sliding beneath the doll’s arm. Cupping its elbow. Stroking its wrist with his thumb. Sliding their palms together, lacing his fingers with its stiff ones. His face is flushed and his smile is the sort born of fevered delirium, a man dreaming of something impossibly sweet.
“He’s stunning. Simply breathtaking. And the eyes…”
“A fresh set,” Medraut assures him. “I used the portrait you left with me for reference. A perfect match, isn’t it?”
“Yes. This is everything we wanted and more, Medraut. I can’t thank you enough.” The other man grasps the doll’s hand and brings it to his lips, kissing each finger reverently. “Everything is as it always should have been.”
“As it will forever be,” Medraut says, quiet and solemn. For a moment, neither of them speak. They bow their heads, eyes shut tightly as though willing away an unpleasant memory. Medraut snaps out of it first. He clears his throat, his smile returning. “Let me bring you the case.”
‘The case’ is a large, wheeled box with a handle at the top. The exterior is polished leather, while the inside is ruched white velvet. Like a display case, you think. Like a bed. Like a coffin. Medraut picks up the doll like it weighs nothing and carefully sets it inside, arranging it on its side in a fetal curl. Stray ribbons and folds of fabric are tucked in. One last kiss is pressed to its forehead. The case closes, zipped and latched and locked shut with a key Medraut passes to the man. You can’t look away as he leaves, watching the case rattle through the dirt and grass and far away, vanishing beyond the meadow. You think about it all day. You’ll probably have nightmares about it.
Sunset signals the end of the festival’s first day. You’re exhausted, eager to get off your feet. When did you eat last? You dismissed the apprentices for lunch in turns and they offered to bring you something. Offered, but you said no. Too frazzled by all the people to eat, all the talking you had to do. A sudden wave of dizziness sends you stumbling, careening right into your own display.
Strong, beautiful hands catch you. You are held against silk ruffles. A warm chest. A quickening heartbeat. Medraut lowers you gently to the ground, cradling your head in his lap. The world is blurry but you can tell he isn’t smiling anymore. He wipes the sweat from your brow.
“Teacher!” You hear Greta and the others, your apprentices frantic and wailing. Medraut keeps them at a distance, barks at them not to crowd around you. You rarely hear him so sharp-tongued and terse. He tells them where to find a healer, sends them off for food and water. You breathe shakily, feeling worse than you realized. Medraut shushes you, his thumb catching a tear at the corner of your eye.
“My dear friend,” he whispers.
“Put me down.” You try to squirm away from him but you don’t get far. Medraut turns you over, burying your face against his shirt. “Medraut, I’m serious.”
“You need me,” he says. His voice quivers slightly. “You need me, and you long to be cared for. Treated like a precious, delicate thing. Here I am, my dearest one. Let me take care of you for just a moment.” He rubs your back, pressing his fingertips into muscles you didn’t realize were sore. You don’t mean to relax against him. You want to fight, to push him away, but he hums an old song you haven’t heard in decades and you remember damp summer evenings in Ithyr. The hiss of the ocean and the caw of seabirds. The chalky scent of magic pigment, the way it fizzled on your fingers. Stargazing on your back in a field, your hand joined with another. How you looked at the sky but he only looked at you, spellbound.
“Do they still hurt?” you ask him.
“My eyes?” he says. You nod weakly. “No, dear. Not for a long time.” He strokes your head, gentle, sliding pets that make you feel like young and impulsive again. “I wish you would come to Ithyr again. Stay this time. Do you remember that seat in the bay window? You would sit there for hours with your canvas, watching the tide come and go. You would sit there, so very still.” You shake your head and it’s a lie. Denial and avoidance. Of course you remember. “I want to see you there again,” Medraut whispers, stroking along your spine. “In the sunrise. In the moonlight. As you always should have been, forever.”
That’s how they find you when the apprentices return, still in Medraut’s embrace. Curled up like a sick child crying for relief, wrinkling his shirt with your grasping hands. Only when the healer comes do you manage to pull yourself away. Medraut lets go of you slowly, one finger at a time. You assure him repeatedly you’ll be fine, you’ll be fine, you’ll be fine. You see him helping your apprentices pack up the pigments, their looks of wary acceptance, leaving his own section abandoned. There is a large box underneath one of his tables. A leather case, shut tight but unlatched. Empty, then. No doll inside. His personal mage seal is stamped on the side.
It’s the same one he brings every time, year after year. Empty, save for desperate dreams and wishes that this time will be different than all the others. That you will finally say yes.