memories

[dauntless_son]

A Solstice Memory

"What do you want for Christmas this year?" Aurora asked.

No more secrets, Declan thought.

The first bad night that year was the nineteenth of December. Behind the advent calendar door had been a tiny wooden wren ornament with a golden ribbon. Declan had hung it on the tree too high for Ronan to reach and Ronan had thrown an absolute shit fest over it.

"Boys," Aurora said. "There will be another ornament tomorrow, and Ronan can hang that one. Go play together."

They did not go play together. Ronan wanted to, but Declan was sick of his face. He’d been watching his brother all night long for three days already, scrutinizing his sleeping face for evidence of oncoming disaster.

That night, when Ronan began to whimper in his sleep, Declan looked up from his post by Ronan’s bedroom door and threw a koosh ball at him. Ronan groaned and rolled over.

Declan had to wake him twice more that night, but there were no secrets.

The day after that was unseasonably warm, and the boys went outside to kick a ball around the cow fields. There was the unexpected gift of one thousand starlings, who had settled in the dun-colored grass on their way elsewhere. The birds shouted and squawked busily, moving in concert when startled. The game of kick ball quickly became a game of seeing how close the two Lynch brothers could creep to the flock.

"I’d like a bird army," Ronan said.

Declan thought of how plausible such a request was for a person like his younger brother, and, thinking of what Ronan’s room would look like in the morning after such a manifestation, said, "I don’t think that would be very interesting."

"You’re never into anything. You’re the most boring person I know." Ronan leapt to his feet. He ran into the flock of birds with such speed that their shock took a few seconds to catch up. Then he was in the midst of them, surrounded completely by birds scouring the air with their wings, birds and brother indistinguishable.

That night, when Ronan began to shift in his sleep, Declan woke him a little more roughly than was needed. The fourth time, he jerked the duvet off his brother, making no attempt to hide himself.

"MOM!"

Niall returned on the Solstice. It was a properly chilly day; no snow, but the ruddy grass was all turned white with frost and the trees were muted gray and the distant mountains beyond the trees were icy blue. Niall had them unload the trunk of his car, which was full of tantalizingly odd-shaped gifts. Secrets, some of them, Declan was sure, which were fine, but what he really wanted was a microscope set. None of the boxes were the correct size for that, which put him in a cross mood. Ronan’s euphoric mood — Ronan was always ecstatic when Niall returned — made him even crosser. He watched his brother on Niall’s shoulders as they played Giants around the barns, and he watched his mother and Ronan roll out sugar cookies, and he watched Niall set Ronan on the roof of his car for a better view as he flew one of his secrets high up into the sky for Ronan to watch.

"Declan, come in and play with us," Aurora said that evening after they’d returned from Mass. She’d set up Chinese checkers by the fire. Ronan was already installed by the fire, laying on his stomach and looking through a peculiar book his father had brought home; it made Declan’s stomach twist to look at it, and after a moment, he realized that it had no pages — it had merely the impression of pages. The story hummed out of the book without words. Ronan was reading it without any apparent discomfort, and why would he have any? He was the same kind of impossible as Niall.

Aurora reached a hand toward Declan. "Look, you can have one of your presents early."

It was a bag of new pieces for the game, ten intensely black-purple marbles. They shimmered like a raven’s eyes. They were so entirely to Declan’s liking that he went to his room and cried instead.

"Let him go," Niall said, "sure and he looks like he’s been up for a month."

A Boy Abroad

Declan stares out a hotel window at a city spread below. For a moment, he forgets where they are. In the past week, he's been in Munich, Stockholm, and now... Antwerpen? He needs to keep better track because God knows Niall won't.

He can hear his father on the phone, animated as he advertises the things he'll be bringing to the Market. The Fairy Market always makes Declan nervous because there's so much that can go wrong and so much to keep track of. Mostly, Niall. Meetings with private buyers aren't necessarily better, but at least they're smaller. Less to account for. Fewer possible things that could go wrong.

"Declan, boy, are you going to sit there all night?"

He looks away from the city and toward his father, who's finished on the phone and looking bright with triumph. He missed the last part of the conversation. Jesus, what has he promised now?

"What else would I do?" he asks.

"You're fifteen, we'll find a pub."

No one will ask his age if he's with a permissive parent, he's learned that. Even if they did, Declan has a small collection of IDs that make him sixteen, eighteen, and twenty one.

"Come along, Market's not til tomorrow night as it is. Come out, son."

Son. Niall makes it sound like a family business, though it's less wholesome and more like a mafia family. Full of secrets and shady dealings, with half the family either left in the dark or content not to ask about business. But Declan hasn't felt like Niall's son for a long time. He's a business manager. He's the straight man to his father's colorful confidence man. He's the reason all of this works.

And he knows if he says no, Niall will be disappointed.

"Yeah, alright."

They end up in an Irish-style pub somewhere near the Cathedral of Our Lady. Molly's. Niall's spinning stories and Declan has been working on the same pint of dark beer for the better part of an hour. He stays out of the way, invisible in between the moments that Niall feels the need to point him out. He wants to go home. He's missing final exams, though Niall is keen to have them home in time for the solstice.

"Come and sing, son!" Niall calls. Declan's lost track of how much his father's had to drink, but he has to be well into his cups if he wants a family duet.

Sometimes, it's easier to just go along with him. Declan brings his glass with him. He isn't doing this without a drink.

ORBMASTER

Ronan was on the roof of one of the small equipment sheds. It was as high as he could get on short notice without wings. He didn't lower his arms. Fireflies and baubles and his dream flower were glowing and swirling all around him.

After a moment, the roof groaned, and Declan groaned, and he pulled himself up beside Ronan. He stood looking not at the sky but at the things floating around his younger brother.

He sighed. "You sure have done a lot with this place." He reached out to catch one of the fireflies. "Jesus Mary, Ronan, there's not even any bug here."

Ronan lowered his arms and looked at the light Declan had snagged. He shrugged.

Declan released the light back into the air. It floated right in front of him, illuminating the sharp Lynch features, the knot of worry between his eyebrows, the press of disappointment to his mouth.

"It wants to go with you," Ronan said.

"I can't take a glowing ball with me."

"Here," Ronan said. "wait."

He shifted his weight to remove something from his pocket and proffered it to Declan in the palm of his hand. It looked like a crude heavy-duty metal washer, about an inch and a half across, a steampunk paperweight from a strange machine.

"You're right, that's much less likely to stick out," Declan said wryly.

Ronan delivered a sharp tap to the object, and a small cloud of fiery orbs sprayed up with a sparkling hiss.

"Jesus, Ronan!" Declan jerked his chin away."

"Please. Did you think I'd blow your face off?"

He demonstrated it again, that quick tap, that burst of brilliant orbs. He tipped it into Declan's hand, and before Declan could say anything, jabbed it to activate it once more.

Orbs gasped up into the air. For a moment Declan was caught inside them, watching them soar furiously around his face, each gold sun firing gold and white. There was a spacious longing in Declan's face. He'd missed so much being neither dreamer nor dreamt. This had never been his home. The Lynches had never tried to make it Declan's home.

"Declan?"

Delcan's face cleared. "This is the most useful thing you've ever dreamt. You should name it."

"I have. ORBMASTER. All caps."

"Technically you're the orbmaster, though, right? And that's not just an orb."

"Anyone who holds it becomes an ORBMASTER. You're an ORBMASTER right now. There, keep it, put it in your pocket. D.C. ORBMASTER."

Declan reached out and scruffed Ronan's shaved head. "You're such a little asshole."

The last time they'd stood on this roof together, their parents had both been alive, and the cattle in these fields had been slowly grazing, and the world had been a smaller place. That time was gone, but for once, it was all right.

The brothers both looked back over the place that had made them, and then they climbed down from the roof together.

Portrait of a Young Man

As she began to unpack her bag, Declan wandered from easel to easel, looking at the paintings on them. Landscapes, mostly, some fiddly cityscapes of DC-area landmarks. The walls behind them had photos of places all over the world in black and white. He looked for evidence of the older lovers who couldn't stand to live with or without each other but saw only one older woman smiling at the camera. She seemed in love with her surroundings, not with the picture-taker.

"I'm going to paint in the dark," Jordan said. "Even I don't want to see what I create left to my own devices."

He turned to find her standing at one of the easels, a blank prepared board propped up, her little paint palette open with eight colors squeezed on it within brush's reach on a spindly table beside her. The jar of Tyrian purple was there, too, unopened. He just looked at her there, standing with her things and her canvas waiting for his face, and he thought of the town house back in Alexandria with his brothers in it.

"You don't really mean that this is your first original," Declan said. "It can't possibly be." He remembered how quickly she had copied the Sargent at the Fairy Market. How thoroughly he'd been fooled by The Dark Lady. One didn't get that good at being other people without a lot of practice.

Jordan loaded her brush with paint. "I learned by copying. And then I copied for a living. I think some forgers would say their paintings 'in the style of' are originals, but they're telling themselves bedtime stories. So you're my first. Park your buns," she said, and gestured to the armchair opposite her.

"How?"

"With your arse and glutes."

He laughed, explosively, turning his face to do it, and she laughed, too.

He sat.

"How still do I have to be?"

"You can talk." She looked at the blank canvas. She let out a breath and shook her hands.

"Whoo."

She began. He couldn't see what she was doing, but it was no hardship to sit quietly and watch her work. Her attention flickered from her canvas to him, checking reality against her creation and vice versa. It was a strange feeling to be studied after years of attempting to avoid it. He wasn't sure if it was good for him. It was like dabbling in his father's criminal machinations; he could tell that there was a large part of him that secretly liked it.

"There are letters from Sargent's sitters," Declan said eventually.

The corners of her mouth rose, although her eyes stayed on the painting. "Tell me about them."

He did.

"Is it really spontaneous, though, if you've done ten spontaneous marks and erased them before it?" Jordan asked. "I think that's just not showing people the work in the margins, isn't it? You've practiced spontaneity. You want the viewer to respond to the unfretful line, even though it took fretting to get there. You're making it about them instead of about you. True performance. What a master."

She was telling him something about herself.

"No one knew him," Declan said. He was telling her something about himself. "All those letters and all the records we have about him. He was such a public figure, he lived not long ago, but they still don't know for sure if he had any lovers."

Jordan put her brush into the turpentine and pressed the bristles against the side of the jar until the paint billowed dark.

"He had at least one," she said. "Because I love him. Here now. Come see yourself."

He got up, but before he got to the canvas, Jordan stood to interrupt him with a hand flat on his belly. He was very still. The room smelled of turpentine and the warm, productive scent of the paints; probably they should've cracked a window. The concrete greyhound kept sniffing the air and the friendly city night light kept sneaking in around the drapes and Jordan's palm stayed flat against his skin, not through his shirt.

He felt a bright humming energy all through him, something he hadn't felt in a very long time. His stomach was a ruin. His life in black and white; this moment in color.

Declan's phone buzzed.

He sighed.

Jordan stepped back, bowing a little, giving him permission, the moment instantly deflated by how little work the phone had to do to capture his attention. He took the phone from his pocket and looked at it.

Matthew had sent a text: please come home :(