Once we were home, I knew Da would reluctantly leave me alone with my grief. He would light the fire, I knew, and fill the kettle, and start something roasting in the stove, because we were never short of good cuts of meat.
I wasn’t ready for that. I wasn’t ready for the next part of my life to begin.
“Go home, Da,” I said. “I’ll catch up. Take the carriage, and Millie. She can have my bed.”
“Foss ...”
“Cornelius, you go too. I’m all right. I promise. I just want a few minutes alone ... with him. Before you take the body.”
“All right,” said Da. “I’ll come back with the cart in a bit. We’ll make sure he gets a proper burial.” He looked over at the carriages and the carts full of jars. “We’ll have to bury all those somewhere too. Somewhere respectful-like.”
I watched Da toddle off toward home, Cornelius in his arms, and then I stared down at Sylvester’s body.
He was quite unchanged. I stared for a long time. I do not know how long. The rain was so light now that the droplets seemed almost to hover in the air. A light mist of water draped around my shoulders like a shawl. It was comforting.
We had been bound together for weeks now, the sorcerer and I, closer than two sweethearts ever before. Who else could say that their beloved had their heart and really, truly mean it? A piece of my heart had lived in him, somehow, and had changed him. And he had changed me.
Cornelius wandered back after a while—an hour perhaps, although it was difficult to judge how much time had passed—picking his way through the wet grass and shaking off each paw with fastidious care. He settled himself by my feet and washed himself—a pointless exercise, as the misty rain kept on falling.
“Are you going to come home?” he said at last.
“Eventually,” I said. “I’m thinking.”
“I didn’t think he would do something like that.”
“He was very brave.”
“So were you,” said the little cat.
“I know,” I sighed. “For what good it did.”
We stared at the sorcerer’s body for a while. I thought for a moment that I saw his chest rise and fall, but it was an illusion of the still-falling rain that shimmered in the air.
“I’m going back again,” said Cornelius. “Will you be all right?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I won’t be long.”
He licked my wrist, a tiny, rough burst of affection, and trotted off, back toward the house. I kept staring at the sorcerer. Part of me was dead right along with him, I thought. Part of my heart lay there, waiting to be buried, and another part of it had dissolved to dust. What was left?
A bubble of a thought rose in my head, so delicate that I was afraid to look at it directly for fear of bursting it. I let it float there, gently, and then I let it come to rest. It whispered a question:
If my heart had melded with his, if our bond had changed him as much as it had changed me, if we were muddled and mixed-up together, as he had said...Was there enough humanity in him now to survive?
The magic-workers had been destroyed, yes, and whatever part of Sylvester had been created by the king was destroyed also. But that didn’t meanallof him had been destroyed.
I placed my hand against Sylvester’s breast. I felt the full brokenness of my poor, depleted, bisected heart, piecemeal in my chest, too deep and dark for tears. My heart was broken, all right, and I would have to drag it around with me for all of my days. Unless . . .
My hand tingled and grew hot. Beneath my palm, Sylvester’s skin began to warm, but he lay still, and there was no answering heartbeat to my touch.
I remembered what I had said to him, all those weeks ago, about how, in the old stories, a kiss would break the spell, and I leaned forward to press my rain-wet lips to his. His were heartbreakingly warm and soft, but there was still no movement. No breath.
“Live, damn you! Live!” I shouted into his face. I dug my hands into the earth and uprooted great handfuls of grass, then threw the clods as far and as hard as I could. Then I sank back, my feet in a puddle and my muddy hands over my eyes, sobbing so hard that the snot ran as freely as the tears. I’m sure it was a lovely sight.
And he stirred.
And he opened his eyes.
“Foss,” he said.
