Esar, Age 19

19 Years Ago

“I’ve never dreamed about you. Ever.”

Kelsam didn’t answer for a moment, but it didn’t matter. Esar already knew the painful truth that, in a strange way, made what he needed to do bearable.

Kelsam didn’t need him.

Esar had always known that. Kelsam’s letters were the letters of a man who was at peace and happy with his life—that was the best thing about them, that bit of peace that Esar could borrow by reading them. Who was Esar to take that peace from him? Kelsam had other lovers in the past, and he would find someone new, someone who wouldn’t drag him down, someone who deserved his love. The last thing Kelsam needed was a pathetic wretch begging him to stay, holding him back, shackling him and calling it the chains of destiny.

“Then how did you know I needed help?” Kelsam finally asked.

“I walked in the gardens every morning that week. I saw you, I watched you—I spied on you, really. I saw the crisis on your face. And then, when I didn’t see you the day we met, I got worried. I went looking for you. Not because of a dream. Because I was stalking you.” Esar shuddered as the world fell apart around him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lied to you.”

He tried to stand, but Kelsam actually held on to him. That kindness cut Esar deeper than anger or reproach ever could. Why couldn’t Kelsam see that Esar was a disgusting creature, unworthy of his sympathy? He deserved to be despised, not coddled.

Esar wrenched himself away.

“I lied to you,” Esar repeated. He found his discarded trousers on the floor and pulled them on, keeping his back turned to Kelsam. “I made you think that there was something between us, but now you know there’s nothing. Nothing is tying you to me.”

He started towards the wardrobe to get a fresh undershirt, the world blurred through a screen of tears, when Kelsam’s arms encircled him from behind.

Esar froze. He wanted this comfort so badly, but he was so deeply unworthy of it that the touch hurt. When Kelsam pressed his cheek against Esar’s back, his hairs cut like a thousand strands of sharp wire. He put his hands on Kelsam’s arms, meaning to push him away, but found he didn’t have the strength to do so.

“Go home, Kelsam.” Esar closed his eyes. “Go home and live your peaceful life.”

A drop of moisture was a stab of ice into his back. Kelsam shook slightly with silent tears.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Kelsam said.

“I’ll be fine.” Esar tried to push him away. Kelsam held on tighter.

“That’s a lie,” he said.

“I’m a liar. What do you expect?” Esar took a shirt from the shelf and looked down at the arms holding him. “You don’t need to feel sorry for me. Please, let me go.”

Kelsam released him, and Esar pulled his shirt down over his head.

“Look at me,” Kelsam said, as Esar pointedly avoided doing so.

“Get dressed, first,” Esar said. He waited, listening to cloth rustling behind him, and tried to collect himself so he could face Kelsam with something resembling composure. It would have been easier if Kelsam was angry; was Esar truly so pathetic that he deserved only pity?

“I don’t feel sorry for you, I’m just worried. I knew the experiments were hard on you, that you’ve been going through a lot, but I didn’t know how bad things were. I should have come to see you a long time ago.”

“No, Kels,” Esar said, turning to look into Kelsam’s glistening eyes. Esar actually managed to smile. “We’re not doing this.”

“You could come back to Norana with me, just for a while—”

“No,” Esar repeated. “I don’t want you to think you’re obligated to help me because you’re worried about me, or because you pity me, or because you think there’s some current of fate that’s binding you to me whether you like it or not. You don’t owe me anything. You have a home, and a life, and you’re happy there—and I’m not part of that.”

“I was happy,” Kelsam said. “Seeing you now, though, it’s—”

“Stop. Please.”

“But what if what I want is to help you?” Kelsam asked. From that look in his eyes, Esar knew he actually meant it. He was so good, so selfless. How could Esar have thought himself worthy of that, for even one moment?

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Esar reached down deep to find a well of determination that he could use to steel himself for what he had to say. “It’s not your job to fix me. Don’t worry about me. I’m doing something worthwhile here. I can finally see things and actually help people. It’s . . . what I want, Kelsam. They’ll make more improvements to the symbic apparatus, and I’ll be able to dream where the next seal will break—”

“What about you?” Kelsam insisted. “It looks to me like you’re about to break.”

“I’m always like this. I’m used to it!” Esar snapped. Kelsam drew back from him, and in another room of the house, baby Raen began to cry. Esar cursed himself silently for losing his temper, covering his face with his hand. What kind of human garbage shouted at a man because he had been too kind?

“If you really want me to go, I’ll go,” Kelsam said. “But Esar . . . all you have to do is write to me and I’ll come to you. My door is always open to you. Just promise me you’ll stay alive until we meet again.”

Stay alive? Did he think— “I’m not going to kill myself,” Esar said.

“Promise me,” Kelsam repeated, “and I’ll go.”

Esar met his eyes one last time. “I promise you I’ll stay alive.”

Kelsam hesitated a moment. Esar wondered if he would try to kiss him good-bye, or touch him, or . . . anything.

“Good-bye, Esar,” Kelsam said, then left the room without waiting for a reply.

Esar just stood there for a while after he left, pinned beneath a crushing blankness that obscured all thought and feeling. But the desire to be in motion, to get out and get away, crept up on him until he couldn’t ignore it any longer.

Esar left his house by the back door, climbed the garden wall and hopped down to the alley below. He had scarcely landed before his legs were carrying him uphill. He didn’t know where he was going, he just knew that he had to go.

It was still early enough that few people were out and about, but the sunlight already felt bright and brutal. As his capacity for thought returned, he replayed the events of the last night in the harsh light of day. How selfish he’d been! From the moment he walked in the door and saw Kelsam, all he’d thought about was what he wanted. He’d wanted Kelsam, and he’d gotten his way. Kelsam had seemed just as interested—but Kelsam had thought he didn’t have a choice. If they were bound together by fate, there was no point in resisting.

Esar nearly ran right into a baby carriage, stopping just in time to allow it and the person pushing it to pass unscathed. His long, swift strides were carrying him toward the rising sun, but he couldn’t bear to look up at the light. Instead, he watched the paving stones beneath his feet, the dust and rubbish of the city that piled up in the places where people chose not to look.

He always knew the day would come when Kelsam saw him for what he really was: a wretch who turned everything good in his life into dust out of selfishness and greed. Disgusting. Worthless. He’d stolen years from Kelsam’s life—

He wasn’t just sitting around waiting for you, whispered a more reasonable part of Esar’s brain, but he wasn’t in the mood to heed it.

At least Kelsam was free of him now, free to go back and live his quiet, beautiful life in the Sanctuary. There could be no more letters. Esar had no claim to any more glimpses of that blissful existence. He’d won them under false pretenses, and that tainted every moment he’d spent reading and rereading those pages. He ought to burn them when he got home. Burn every sweet memory and taste nothing but ashes every day for the rest of his life.

A bell clanged, warning Esar of the approaching streetcar. For one wild moment he considered throwing himself in front of it, but he discarded the notion. Oh, his life had value—so much value that he couldn’t dream of throwing it away. The only problem was that he still had to live with himself. Damn it, even if he had somehow managed to hold on to Kelsam, he would still have to live with himself.

Kelsam couldn’t fix him. Love couldn’t fix him. Nothing could fix him. And he had to face it. Had to face that dismal, lonely future.

Eventually, the abuse he hurled on himself lost its power to plunge him into despair. A sort of numbness crept over him, muffling the raw edges of his emotions as he neared the university campus. He hadn’t even realized that was where he was going. Not to the laboratory where he spent most nights under the watchful eyes of Yanset and her students, but to go in search of the storage room he remembered from his dream.

The dream had been so close, so clear. The man with the red eyes and his companion with the glasses might already be there. But where was that storeroom? There were probably a hundred such rooms in a dozen different buildings in the university. Esar closed his eyes, trying to picture the dream again. What had that man been pulling out of the boxes? Ceram appliances. Prototypes. Engineering?

He took a sharp left to follow the path to the engineering building. He hadn’t seen another person yet on campus, but even on school holidays, the university wasn’t completely abandoned. The doors were unlocked and there would be a few students in the workshops even now.

Esar took the stairs down to the basement. The first door was to a room stacked so full of crates that it would have been difficult to enter—but it was obviously not the room he wanted, so he didn’t bother to try. The next room was almost completely empty. Well, that seemed inefficient. The third door was locked, but it had a window that Esar could peek through, but it was so dark inside that he couldn’t be sure if it was the room he’d dreamed about or not.

“Can I help you?”

Esar jumped. But the speaker was not the man with the red eyes, or the bespectacled man; it was Professor Etherret Maisk. The legendary scientist looked at Esar with some befuddlement. Was he still trying to puzzle out why Esar was the one piece that wouldn’t fit into his grand theories?

“I—um—I was looking for—”

“Are you all right, Esar? You look a bit unwell.”

“No. I mean, yes, I’m all right.” Esar heaved a sigh.

“Actually, I’m glad to see you,” Ethernet said. “Do you have a moment? I’d like to ask you something.”

Esar nodded and followed the theoretician down the hallway to the last door on the right. Etherret opened the door and activated the light, and Esar found himself in the room from his dream. A large rectangle swathed in fabric could only be the door—Etherret confirmed that when he pulled off the cover to reveal it.

“Here’s an interesting enigma. We think this is from the original university—the old university in Vas. The channel patterns have some similarity to known patterns, but they’re different, and they’re carved into stone, not ceram. So I was curious, Esar. Have you ever seen anything like this? In your dreams, I mean?”

There were several sets of footprints in the dust on the floor, and someone had left the lid of one of the boxes slightly askew. A chill traveled down Esar’s spine, and he felt a sudden urge to run forward and knock the monolith over. He resisted the impulse, but every instinct screamed at him not to tell Etherret about his dream of the red-eyed man.

“No,” he heard himself say. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”