I walked into his room and said
"How are you," and he said, "I love you
too." From then on,
I had that word to lose.

--"Beyond Harm", Sharon Olds

___


He is walking away, just under his cloak, when the pain starts.

First, it is slow. It tugs at him gently the way that morning does after a particularly restful sleep. But then it grows deeper, and the tug becomes a pull, then a shredding, and it wrenches him from what he has come to know as reality and into something darker. Beside him, his son immediately senses something is wrong.

The cloak falls away to reveal the black stallion that so few remember or see. It is Knox, now, all disguises withheld as the ground rushes up to meet him. It is Knox, beginning the part of his journey that he must take on his own. He has fallen in the greenery, he feels his heart beating but its echo and shadow is gone.

He can't remember the last time his heart beat with no response. He can't... he can't...

Life has never really existed for him, not like this. Before that answering heartbeat there was nothing, always nothing. Now, nothing returns like an old enemy.

Milo is weak but strong enough to turn and run from his father, run back to the dying fires, and find help. A hollow thought comes to Knox with a stark clarity: he will return with nothing. From this point on, there will always be nothing.

He can't see Milo because he can't see anything. His second gaze is shut, nothing but fluttering shadows of black and flame in his tortured mind. The heart with no answer pounds loudly as if to make up for the emptiness in his breast. He feels adrenaline and confronts it with first laziness, then dejected sorrow, and then at last the energy it is meant to provide.

He has stumbled and now he must rise again. He drags himself, broken blade of the mind in tow, and seeks the fading echo.

He has to find her.

It can't all end, not before he finds her.

He can feel, faintly, the weight of a body upon her and the pressure of thorns in her throat. He tries to call her name but the beckoning is uttered as nothing but a hoarse whisper, something so insignificant it is not even worth writing, here. His every act is futile, his every past memory nothing but a haunting reminder of days he spent with her. And as if in solemn recognition, not a single voice of the many in his mind has risen to contest his sorrow.

He picks his way across the battlefield without care. He crushes embers beneath his hooves, coats his feathers with blood and tar, and breathes with intense effort. He kicks aside the vial of goddess' blood that falls at his hooves without realizing, sending it towards the son that follows anxiously in his wake. Everything, just existing, is a labor. His presence is taxed, his being is compromised, and he has to find her.

But it is not until the Earth God pulls the curtain of the tigress from the bloody scene that she is revealed: Manhattan, the love of his life.

Kn...Knox?

The message is a mere murmur, the soft echo in his chest struggling even to exist. There she lies, dark holes gaping in her neck from where a goddess dragged her down to mortality. She speaks in his mind as if the blood is filling her senses, garbling her words, but he knows what she is saying to him.

When he finally finds her, she is exactly as he expected her to be. She is dying, and there is nothing he can do.

He thinks he must be to blame, for not turning back to protect her when she was so clearly struggling on her own. He left his packmate alone, he abandoned her, and surely he must be to blame.

N...N..N-o... Kn-ox.

Confident whispers.

I... I... said...

Go, he recalls to her. She blinks, as if in steady affirmation, and her tongue drips out from between her parted and poisonous jaws. He doesn't know if it's an order or a memory, but she is leaving and he knows it. Slowly, the echo in his chest falls into almost nothing. He thinks he feels his bridle--grown now into his face after so many years of aging into it--tighten. Its pale glow is faint, casting a pallor upon her that is almost deathly. He has to take it off, he can't watch her--he chokes--can't watch her die like this, not in this light.

He doesn't remember asking his son to wrench the white chains from his face and reveal the scars beneath, but when he looks next at Milo he will see the colt with useless white straps hanging from his parted infant lips and know that everything has changed.

As if aware of her master's new freedom from the shackles impressed upon him since his birth and the magic that lingers in their fibers, her eyes spark open. They are blue, pure, and perfectly at peace. Care for... ca-are.... for... them. l-l-l-- she is too weak to finish the words, the thought. He knows, though, what she has asked him.

Love them, he says through their bond. He knows Milo is nearby and soon he will love that boy like he should have before. He knows Aylin is home, waiting for her family, and he will tell her all the things he should have in the heart caves. He will love them, but first he must love her.

Love them like I love you.

She sighs quietly, her burned and shaking side settling into stillness. Do.... reme...remember... A broken image flashes in his mind of the day her magic to terrorize first manifested and, in a confused state, she fought with her sister--and he, as a colt, with his brother.

Yes, he says to her quietly. Without realizing, he has let his figure drop to her side. His knees are covered in the red of her blood, his eyes are brimming with tears. Tears from joyful memories--tears for every day they'd spent as a pair.

Can... like... l-like... th-th-then...

He puts his face to her wound and lets his hindquarters land so he is wrapped gently around her. As her eyes flutter shut for the last time, he casts silver smoke to cover them.

She is too good for this world, too good to see it at the end. And he, not good enough for her, must do all that he can. He has to love, because that is what she wants. That is all she has ever wanted him to do. So now, her request is clearer than anything Knox has ever known, and quietly he hums to her in the way that he taught her when they had both known so much less. He hums her name, the same short tune she was taught when she had to follow her master but could not see--could not see, lest she be haunted by her own terrors. He hums his own, like he taught her so she would always know who to return to.

And he hums the song of their bond--a long, quivering note--as his body slowly starts to shake with broken sobs. She breathes her last and the last echo dies with brilliance. His own unaccompanied breath catches and the hum, her gentle final lullaby, falters.

Manhattan? he asks, his heart falling to pieces.

Silence.

Manhattan?

Nothing.

"MANHATTAN!"

The whole world falls apart.

—