“Vale,” she said, her voice going strange and echoey once more as the void joined in, making her voice echo into the sky. “Time to wake up now, my love.”
The faintest flicker of green awakened in the depths of Vale’s eye sockets.
Ivy sagged with relief and threw her arms around him. After a moment, Vale returned the hug. Weakly at first, then so fiercely the breath was crushed from her.
Vale surged from the silver pool and pulled Ivy away long enough to stare at the void as it repaired itself.
“Ivy,” he said. “You did it.”
“Wedid it,” Ivy corrected him.
Vale’s green eyes flared. He gripped her chin and kissed her, licking blood from her lips. They stood there for a long while, trees cracking back into place and distant animals baying with delight as the wilderness void came alive once more.
Finally, Vale pulled back, leaning his cool, bone forehead against her warm skin. “I will find more assistants. You will have a good life here.”
Ivy looked up. The dark sky twinkled expectantly, forming small circles of light that Ivy had seen back in the throne-room painting. What had Ivy felt the void say, back at the castle?The caretaker must be fulfilled…
“Actually,” Ivy started as the first light-mote glided down. “About those assistants…”
Twenty Years Later
Vale’s work was done for the day.
He retreated to their nest, his gait slow and relaxed as he approached the gauzy shelter that Ivy had constructed over it so long ago. Ivy claimed it was called a “tent,” formed for the purpose of privacy. They could not have the assistants seeing them in the throes of pleasure, after all.
A strand of ivy pulled the thin tent door aside for him. At first, Ivy worried about her namesake plant populating his void. But it did not act as it did in the mortal realm. This ivy did not strangle or constrain. It simply existed, lining the void with beauty.
“Thank you,” Vale told the plant that pulled the tent door open. He gave its leaves a brief stroke. The plant sent him a throb of joy, and Vale smiled and sent one straight back.
His queen’s voice echoed from the depths of the tent, “Vale! I need your hands!”
“I am coming,” he replied. He gave the vine another fond stroke, then headed inside the tent.
Ivy sat on the far end, perched in front of a mirror and humming while gathering her dark red hair with both hands.
“There you are,” she said. “Do you mind?”
She held up her hair, which had grown more with each year she spent in the void. Nowadays it fell to her ankles. Braiding it was no longer something she could do by herself and required more than one single braid wrapped around her head to get her hair out of the way.
Vale took her hair and sorted it into sections, retracting his claws as he went through the familiar motions. Despite its length, her hair never tangled. Never caught or teared, no matter how many bone thickets she trudged into or teeth lilies she weeded. The wilderness void cared for its queen almost as thoroughly as its king.
Vale twisted her hair together in slow, practiced motions. When he started braiding her hair, he had done it quickly, as he had done all things. It had taken him years to halt the habit. Some things were meant to be savored.
“Harrier left this morning,” Ivy told him.
Vale frowned. “That was this morning? Why did he not say goodbye?”
“He did! You were concentrating on drying the nightbeast hide. We decided it was best to leave you to it.” Ivy smiled at him in the mirror, her rosy cheeks radiant as ever. “He will be back in the spring. But we should find a new assistant while he’s gone. He mentioned he had someone in town who might be interested, but it depended on how that woman’s mother was faring.”
Vale growled absentmindedly as he wound her hair together. “I could always demand an offering,” he joked.
“One offering was enough,” Ivy said, her eyes glinting merrily.
Something chirped behind them. Vale looked in the mirror and saw a light-mote drifting toward them, glowing brighter than usual.
The light-motes had returned by the dozen as soon as the void had been healed. According to Ivy, who heard the wilderness void clearer than Vale ever did, they were fed by his joy. Once that vanished, so did they.
It was a confounding realization. Vale had always thought that he had grown tired of the work after the light-motes died. That was when his workload increased, after all. But the truth was, he had tired of the work long before he was left on his own.
