Jenks wouldn't let go of the vial, and I gave up. With a huff, he tilted it up, and a slow avalanche of honey fell into him. "I'd have to be drunk to imagine you're in my s-stump," he stammered after swallowing. "Wearing Jih's dress. And a little furry man with you." Squinting, he looked closer. "Pierce! Son of Tink. What are you doing in my nightmare?"
Wings humming, Jenks started to collapse.
"Look out, Rachel!" Pierce exclaimed, lunging forward to catch him about an instant too late. With a whoosh of air, he landed on me, pinning me to the floor.
"Holy crap, Jenks," I said as I wiggled out from between the two men and tripped on Jih's dress as I found my feet. "You're heavy."
"Watch the wings!" Jenks slurred. "Fairy farts, I don't feel so good."
Shaken, I watched Pierce help him to a bench and drape a rough-silk blanket over his shoulders. Crouching, the witch forced the pixy to look at him. "How long have you been like this, old man?" he asked.
Jenks's bloodshot green eyes focused from under his curly, smoke-stained bangs. "Forever." He raised his glass in salute and drank some more. I didn't like seeing him like this, but being drunk was probably why he was still alive. With a surge of recognition, I realized his pointy-bottomed glass as a solstice lightbulb with the wires removed.
Concern and empathy were heavy on Pierce as he stood and looked down at Jenks. "Time to sober up, pixy buck. Rachel wants to talk to you."
"I'm not a buck, I'm a schmuck," Jenks slurred. "Mattie. Oh, my Mat-tie." His head bowed, and a faint dust slipped from his eyes. "She's dead, Rache," he said, and my heart broke again. "She's dead, and I'm not," he lamented as I knelt and gave him a hug, my own tears starting. "That's not right," he slurred. "I should be dead, too. I'm dead inside."
"You're not," I said, holding him tight. It was worth it. All the smut was worth it. "She wanted you to live. Jenks, please. I know you love her, but she wanted you to live."
"I've got nothing." Red-rimmed eyes met mine when he leaned back. "You don't understand. Everything I did, I did for her. Everything." His head drooped, and he was silent. His fingers opened, and the vial of honey hit the floor. Pierce plucked it up before the honey could spill, and set it aside. Just that fast, Jenks was asleep.
"Do you want to take him out now?" Pierce said. "Ceri twisted a curse to turn him big so you could keep an eye on him."
Jenks took a slow breath, his honey-stupor sleep giving him a respite. Slowly I stood and looked down at him. "No. He'd never forgive me. Let's let him sleep it off."
"Mattie," Jenks mumbled. "Don't leave me. Please..."
I eased Jenks down onto the moss-covered bench, chest heavy as I went to the table before the fire and sat where Matalina must have sat a thousand times before. I put an elbow on the table and dropped my head into my hand. Saying nothing, Pierce crouched at the fire.
I felt awful. Jenks would be awake again in five minutes, tops. This time he'd be sober. "Am I making a mistake?" I whispered.
Pierce looked up, his gaze on the fire poker as he tried to figure out what it was. I couldn't place the thin piece of hard plastic either, but I was sure I'd seen it before. "I don't know," he said simply. "It's a sin to end one's life, but judging Jenks by human or witch morality isn't fair."
"He loved her so much," I said. "But he's got his entire life. He might learn to love again. Maybe pixies marry for life because their lives are too short for second chances."
Pierce rocked to the toes of his feet, still crouched before the fire. "Ask him what he wants." His blue eyes flicked to Jenks, now snoring. "When he's sober," he added.
I looked at the slant of the sun, wondering how this day would end. "Am I being selfish?"
Not answering, Pierce went to the miniature carved statues of insects on the mantel. "These are beautiful," he murmured. Even wearing a pixy buck's trousers, long-sleeved shirt, gardening jacket, and hat, he didn't look anything like a pixy. Not only was his hair not right, but he was too muscular. Feeling my eyes on him, he turned, his expression making my heart jump.
"Where do you suppose Matalina is?" I asked softly.
From behind us came Jenks's dead-sounding voice. "She's in our bedroom, pretending to be asleep."
Warmth flooded my face, and I spun to see Jenks's eyes open, watching us. "I'm sorry," I said, realizing he was sober already. "I didn't know you were awake. Jenks, are you okay?" Yes, it was dumb, but I didn't know what else to say.
Jenks sat up, elbows on his knees and his head bowed as he held it. "My head hurts," he said softly. "You shouldn't have taken smut to help me. I'm already dead. My heart knows it, but my body won't listen."
Feeling awkward in my borrowed dress, I went to sit beside him. The sun was warm on my back as it came in through a circle of thick glass, but I felt cold inside. "What's another layer of smut?" I said, believing it. "Jenks, I'm sorry if it sounds trite, but it's going to be okay. It just takes time. Hundreds of people in Cincinnati lose the person they love every day. I survived losing Kisten. I - "
"Shut the hell up!" he shouted, and I drew my hand back. "It's not going to be okay. You don't understand. Everything I was ended with her, I loved her."
My face warmed, and I couldn't stop myself. "I don't understand?" I said, my fear that he was going to die coming out as anger. "I don't understand?" I stood, heart pounding. "How dare you tell me I don't understand!"
Pierce's eyes were wide. He clearly thought yelling at Jenks wasn't the best way to convince him to live, but I wasn't going to let Jenks fall into the poor-me syndrome and die.
"You saw me suffer after Kisten died," I said, and his dust-wet, red-rimmed eyes went wide. "You yourself told me I was going to be okay and that I'd love someone again. I lost my dad when I was ten. I watched him die like you watched Matalina. I held his hand and promised him I'd be okay. My mother told me it was going to be all right, and one day it was. Don't sit there and tell me that because you've got wings and cry sparkles your pain is more than mine. It hurts. It hurts like hell. And it's going to be okay! Don't you dare give up because it's hard," I said, vision swimming. "Don't you dare, Jenks."
Tears falling, I turned away. "I need you too much," I added, shaking Pierce's hand off my shoulder. Damn it, I hadn't wanted to cry in front of him - in front of either of them.
"I'm sorry," I said miserably. "I can't tell you how sorry I am about Matalina. You were beautiful together." I was still staring at the wall, seeing it swim. Taking a deep breath, I wiped my eyes. "Matalina is gone, but you're not. She wanted you to live, and I need you. It's selfish, but I do. You've done too much to give up and not see how it ends. You said last year that you were angry because you were going to die and Ivy and I were going to continue on." I turned, and the grief in his eyes made a flash of guilt rise in me. "Life's a bitch, Jenks. But if you don't live out what's given to you, what's the point?"
"I didn't know it was going to hurt this much," Jenks said, eyes going almost panicked. "She told me to live, but there's no reason to. She was why I did everything!"
He was only eighteen. How could I help him find a way to understand?
Pierce's voice eased into the moss-smelling air as if it belonged, shocking me. "Living on is not betraying her," he said, standing alone by the empty fireplace at the far end of the room.
"It is!" Jenks stood, catching his balance with a hum of wings. "How can I feel anything when she is not here with me? She said to live, but why? It doesn't mean anything!"
With the patience of hard-won wisdom, Pierce raised his eyes. "It will."
"How do you know?" Jenks said bitterly. "You've never done anything, dead in the ground for a hundred years."
Face placid, Pierce said, "I have loved. I have lost everything because death came early. I've seen it from your view. I've lived it from Matalina's. She wants you to live. To love. To be happy. That's what she wants. I can promise you that."
"You... ," Jenks started vehemently, then hesitated. "You have," he whispered.
Pierce set the figure of a mantis back on the mantel. "I loved a woman with all my soul. And I left her though I strove not to. She lived on, found love, married, had children who are old today, but I saw her face in their pictures, and I smiled."
I sniffed, thinking my coming here was a travesty. I was trying to help Jenks live when Pierce had lived more than both of us put together. Not in years, but in experience.
Seeming to start to understand, Jenks collapsed back onto the hummock of moss. "When does it stop hurting?" he asked, hand around his middle.
I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. All of us were damaged, but it made us stronger, maybe. Maybe it just made us more fragile.
"The mind numbs," Pierce said. "The memories blur. Others take their place. A long time. Maybe never."
"I will never forget Matalina," Jenks vowed. "No matter how long I live."
"But you will live." Pierce faced us squarely. "Others need you. You know it. Otherwise, why tell Jax to take the land? That's not pixy tradition. It's against everything you know. Why do that if you don't feel a responsibility for something else?"
Jenks blinked fast as he thought about that, and Pierce stood beside me. "You've reached past your limits, pixy," he said. "Now you have to live up to your ideas. You have to live up to them."
A light silver dust was sifting from Jenks as he silently cried. "I'll never hear her again," he said softly. "I'll never know her thoughts on a sunset or her opinion of a seed. How will I know if it will grow? She was always right. Always." Misery in his face, he looked up. Relief spilled into me. He wanted to live. He just didn't know how.
Pierce handed him his glass of honey. "YouTl know. Come with me on the first full moon of spring. We will tour the cemeteries. I need to find my sweetheart. I need to put flowers on her grave and thank her for going on without me."
My chest seemed heavy, and my throat was tight. I couldn't help but wonder, though, if Pierce had been measuring me against his eighteenth-century love. That was something I could never be. I didn't know if I even wanted to be with a man who wanted a woman like that.
"I will," Jenks said seriously, not drinking the honey. "And you will sing with me about Matalina."
Hope mixed with melancholy, and I crossed the room to give him a hug. "Are you ready to go?" I asked him. Matalina wanted him to burn their home.
Jenks's eyes flicked down to the glass in his hand. "Not yet."
I took the solstice light out of his hand. "I missed you, Jenks," I said, giving him a hug and shocking myself when I found wings back there. "Just for that breath of time I thought you were gone. Don't do that to me again."
He took a breath, then another. It came ragged, full of his emotion. "I miss her so much," he said, and suddenly he was holding me tight as he cried angry sobs into my hair. "I miss her so damn much."
So I held him, my own tears falling anew as we gave comfort to each other. It had been worth it. All the blackness on my soul was worth this. And no one would convince me that this was damning. It couldn't be.