Chapter 9: To love is to burn, to be on fire.

He can’t feel it now. As long as Aidan keeps dancing, he can’t feel a thing.

His body, an instrument to peruse and play at his leisure, does not want or need for anything except for the practised motions of the dance, pain limited only to the very fringes of his current awareness.

When they’d all had to pick courses to study, he hadn’t been able to decide between science or dance, and Aures had gotten in his head about abandoning science for a discipline he had no history in aside from what he’d taught himself. Naturally, his parents had agreed with her. They always agree with Aeron and Aures.

Aidan, they placate.

“Stop f*cking up.”

So, he showed them. He danced his way straight into the first track ballet course. He bought books upon books about technique and posture, and stacks of LPs to play on his gramophone to substitute accompaniment.

“Stop f*cking up.”

He’d even done as Aeron said! He hadn’t been cocky. He never disobeyed or disagreed. He’d been perfectly polite. Respectful to those in authority. He’d even, on more than one occasion, helped his lecturers or a fellow student or two.

Fat lot of good that did him! None of them ever saw him as a friend or even an equal. Four months in and he’d been labelled a freak of nature for being as good as he is without formal training.

"Stop bloody f*cking up!"

“Aidan!”

He hadn’t seen them, but in no time at all Aures and Edmund are kneeling on either side of him, looking at him like he’s some special antique that might crack if handled too harshly.

“I’m fine!” he bites out, shoving Edmund’s hands away.

He’s not f*cking this up. Not again.

“Brother, you’re still in recovery. Perhaps this is not the best urge to indul––”

“Oh, piss off, Aures! I said I’m fine.” Aidan pushes to his feet from where he’d taken his tumble.

For a moment, he’d felt the pain start to seep in, to get a foothold in his careful defences – but he can’t have that. He can’t f*ck up.

“Aidan, I think Aures only means––”

But he is not about to have Aures’ intentions laid bare for him by a man who thinks himself intelligent for knowing how to apply gauze while being shot at.

“Dr Bolton, please do not insult me by presuming to have any insights into the nebulous, borderline sociopathic workings of my sister’s mind. I am perfectly capable of – and perhaps better qualified – to discern those for myself, thank you. Your services are, effectively, not required.”

Before either of them can get out another word of pointless concern, he has the gramophone cranked up loud enough to wake the dead.

Bellowing over the noise, he finishes, “Perhaps Aures has some use for you in her plentiful attempts at passing off sadism as science. Now, if you’ll both excuse me, I do not recall sending out invitations to this rehearsal.”

So, he gets back into position, feeling the tremor starting to overtake his body, but he’s had enough. He’s danced himself off this godforsaken island once before. He can do it again.

His final glimpse of either of them is Edmund’s wounded expression disappearing behind the closing studio door, leaving Aidan to wonder, distantly dismayed, if he’s just gone and f*cked up something else.

* * *

The heavy, old, oak door does well to muffle the frankly deafening music coming from Aidan’s studio. The only traces of the absurd volume is a slight tremor in the air, turning everything just the slightest bit blurry.

“Dr Bolton.”

Aures’s voice is quiet, but firm. Probably wouldn’t know comforting and supportive if it walked right up and took a good bite out of her nose.

Edmund wants to tell her to piss off.

“Edmund,” she tries again.

“He’s healing too slowly. Being an active dancer probably means his sitting idle for so long is taking its toll on him mentally. The return to ballet just doesn’t seem to be going as smoothly as he hoped it would. I’m not actually an idiot, Aures. So, whatever advice, comment or patronising quip you’re about to offer, spare me,” Edmund sneers, leaving Aures behind in that shadowy passage.

That night, when Aidan screams himself awake, Edmund does not go to him. Not when he’s having nightmares of his own, of a wily fae of old hunting him down to eat him alive.

* * *

When Edmund had been younger, he’d befriended a girl named Christine Dawkins, daughter of a housemaid they’d had. A wild thing, she’d always gotten up to mischief, and instigated chaos wherever she went.

Edmund had always thought she was beautiful, too: with her masses of braids that flew behind her when she ran, and her wide, blinding smile in her dark, heart-shaped face. She reminded him of an illustration he’d once seen of Puck on a playbill for a performance of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Excitement rolled off her in waves, infectious and warm, and nothing seemed to get her down.

She’d taught Edmund that life was not something to take seriously, since no one ever survived, regardless. When Edmund had decided to go into the field of medicine, however, he’d had to start taking life seriously, as childish flights of fancy weren’t earning him university placement.

Naturally, to someone like Christine, this had sounded a lot like conforming. She’d confronted him one day and demanded to know when he’d decided to become ‘one of the sheep’.

He’d told her that he wants to help people, make them better; that he cared about the world around him.

Her response had been to say that she’d never seen the world be particularly caring, so he was wasting his time.

For someone in Christine’s position, her inclinations are, of course, understandable. She hadn’t many prospects, as people of her demeanour are rarely seen as more than house staff in England.

Aidan, rather, had unequivocally said that he no longer needs Edmund, and Edmund refuses to hang about where he isn’t needed or, it seems, wanted.

These are the thoughts swirling, sluggish and miserable, through his head as he comes up on village limits. It isn’t a far trek from the Wynne property.

The town itself is quaint and picturesque, though most of it is due to its proximity to the seaside. If not for the sound of far off waves and the occasional cry of a gull, the place would have been better described as ‘drab’.

All in all, it’s no London, but it’ll do.

He scans the building fronts for lodgings, keeping a comforting grip on his rucksack. The damned thing had smelled of lavender and brine when he’d packed it, which is the exact scent he now associates with Wynne House. Interesting how a place can seep into your bones after only a few weeks.

“Dr Bolton, I presume.”

Edmund freezes in his tracks. Schooling his features into an expression of mild surprise, he turns to face the man now ambling down the street towards him.

“Charlie Dibney.” The man, appearing mildly moth-eaten and about right to have grown up in a place such as this, holds out a hand. “Don’t expect you’ve heard of me.”

“Can’t say I have,” Edmund smiles, gripping his hand firmly, but not harshly.

They shake.

“Not even referred to as ‘the boy’?” Charlie presses.

This jolts something loose.

“Aures sent you for my clothes.”

“That she did. You’re welcome, by the way. They seem to fit you quite smartly.” Charlie stuffs the hand he’d used to shake Edmund’s into his pocket and gives Edmund a calculating once-over.

“Sorry. Uh, h-how did you know who I am?” Edmund asks, then, subconsciously tightening his grip on his rucksack.

“Aures had explained you were a military man and a doctor. By your measurements, it was clear you were tall, robust. I also had your garments tailored, since most places only sell functional wear around here. All those things, coupled with you being a stranger, ‘twasn’t a huge leap to deduce,” Charlie says all this with a slight smirk playing around his mouth.

“So, it’s contagious, then?” is all Edmund manages in response.

Charlie’s smirk turns into a smile. “Being clever?”

“I meant being a cocky pr*ck,” Edmund jabs, not unkindly.

This gets a chuckle out of Charlie.

“How’s about you come for a drink, then? My shout,” Charlie ushers him on to a pub across the street.

They sit at the bar, side by side, as the barmaid pours them each a generous splash of whisky. Charlie takes his with ice, as though it wasn’t freezing enough out on the street.

“So,” Charlie turns to him after knocking back his first glass in one fell swallow, “sick of that lot already, are ya?”

The barmaid, a pretty woman with sun-weathered skin and an abundance of black ringlets, refills it immediately.

“Quite,” Edmund intones, sipping only briefly on his own drink. “Have you worked for them long?”

Charlie stares into his pitcher.

“Met Aidan when we was both at school together. We got on like a house on fire. Spent hours together, practising his ballet and profiling the locals, running bets on who could get it the most spot on. He’d wanted me to meet his family. Said they’d like me.

“Now, I ain’t got much in the way of parents, Dr Bolton. Grew up and aged out of the church orphanage. So, I was definitely wary of meeting anyone’s family. And I’d been right to be. Chewed me up and spat me out, that lot. Only halfway decent one between ‘em had been Aidan, up until he’d got sick of me.

“So, to answer your question, no,” Charlie finishes, downing his drink in one go again. “I have not been working for them long. And if it weren’t for them ruining me before I even had a chance to live, I wouldn’t be working for ‘em at all.”

Edmund throws his own drink back, too. “Christ. Aures?”

“Aeron.” Charlie raises his empty glass in a faux salute. He gives a single chuckle, turning to look at Edmund again. “The Ice Man himself. Feeling more confident about getting out, then?”

“Much. Actually, you wouldn’t know of an empty flat in the village I could rent by the month, would you?”

Edmund shakes his head at the barmaid’s gesture of another whisky.

“I could always use a roommate,” Charlie offers. “Maybe you could teach me a thing or two about doctoring.”

“‘M not much of a teacher,” Edmund says.

Charlie winks. “Can’t be worse than the snobs of Wynne House.”