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From Pandyssia she brought him home, or rather he brought her home, because he’d been in Gristol all along, she just hadn’t known where to look. She hadn’t spotted the cracks in the air at that point, the curdling of Wrenhaven waves where the Outsider seethed and towed scrimshaw under. So he said. He liked to say things like that. Like he liked to make shadows spring up underfoot. Liked to drip salt all over her furniture. Liked to keep his godly ways, lest anybody forget he was so. As though Vera could.
So he came home to her home, and she stayed up in the parlour entertaining her guest whilst her husband above called down the stairs every now and again that oh, it’s getting late Vera! Did the clock strike two? Vera, there’s that party tomorrow. There are those people!
“There are always people,” the Outsider said, and she made an echo of his words words, slippered feet scuffing Serkonan carpet as she followed him into the hallway. She held his hand, clammy little fish. Bony bones.
Preston looked exhausted; holding the stub of a candle that only served to highlight every chasm of age. Wrinkle wrinkle, old and dying. He’d gained so many lines since the Pandyssian voyage, same as he’d gotten those big bags under his pale eyes. A different shadow to hers. His voice became a plea, but there was a touch of fright there now. “Please, love.” She wondered what he saw in the dark. He didn’t want to sleep with her really.
The Outsider let her hand go, wandering off into another room. Preston’s fingers shook as he clutched his only source of light, and the flame licked up the dim walls of the place. Trembling, losing. “Come.”
A clunking of notes came from somewhere else; the Outsider had found the music room. Preston flinched, and moved back a little. The whole upper floor was lit, and he was retreating into that. There were still servants moving around somewhere; a clock ticked in a way which could not be stopped. There were no Pandyssian trophies on the third floor.
“I’ll join you later, dear,” Vera waved a hand gently to the man’s retreat.
“Don’t,” the Outsider said, appearing in the doorway. Hand held out, expectant. Vera took, of course, and he towed her to where he wanted her. A gentle pull, and she wondered if he ever did things by more than part. There was always something held back; his smile was only half as he placed her on the pew in front of the instrument he’d settled on as the one.
He ran his fingers along the keys, white with the bones of eight horned beasts, each of them shouting out in protest at the pressure. “Where did you get this?”
“Oh,” she’d rather hoped it’d been the little golden piano he’d been banging away on before, rather than this lummock of an instrument. “It was a gift.”
“From?”
“One of my gentleman callers,” she replied, and he cradled his chin in one hand, resting his elbow against the pale top. Eyes curious;
“Now I wonder why you’re being so evasive.”
“I wonder why you’re prying,” she rebuked, long fingers scittering over the keys to play a high, fluting little tune. Nothing much, but it seemed to draw his attention. His mouth parted; as though tasting the hum. She played a little more, lower down on the bones of unicorns now: deeper dirge-like clunking. Dust clung to her fingertips as she did so. The instrument had lain untouched for years since the Tyvian explorer had had it inscribed with his love, and now she was remembering it she found herself unsure as to why. Perhaps because it was something of a chore, stretching longer than her reach all along the pale-hued keys, so Vera always had to shift and move about on the little stool; straining the limits of her body where the music demanded. The periphery keys were almost always neglected completely; made of seal-tusk and Tyvian manticore, the latter high and delicate, and the seal the dourest note to be heard. Experimentally, she pressed it down, and the Outsider pressed his lips together, biting back a smile.
“Have you any requests?” Vera rolled up her lace-flocked sleeves, young eyes so serious as she met the black of god.
“Oh, know them all do you?”
“From Pottershead to Karnaca,” the lie sat comfortably, for anything he requested she could always improve on and accuse him of poor memory if he complained. He’d mentioned before he forgot more than he knew. She pressed down on the keys with a balled-up fist to hurry him up; the hum mounting until his hand shot out to hold it. Fingers crawled over the blue pattern of veins, her pulse probably blipping at a terrible speed. Childish, girlish. Foolish. The Outsider only smiled now because he had her.
“One Night in Whitecliff,” he said, and she played it without surprise.
“I know you like to think yourself an enigma, dear, but your heresy is a little predictable,” Vera said as she reached the middle keys, dancing over whales.
The Outsider’s lips twitched; “This song was not written for the Abbey, it was written for me, a thousand years ago.”
“Yet it’s associated with the Abbey rather more,” and is a somewhat dull besides. She broke away from the tune to tinker with something of her own, something that clinked and clunked and made use of the seal-keys, rolling like thunder to a delicate crescendo.
“What was that?”
“Did you like it? I made it up.”
“For me?”
“For me.”
“Since you took against One Night in Whitecliff so meanly, I demand a tune anew. Consider it your offering for this evening.” The Outsider said, and then began ascribing exactly what he wanted this new theme song to be like. It had to be light, but not irritatingly so, it had to make use of every key (especially the seal), it had to last at least eight minutes, it had to have three crescendos, it had to be something one could dance to, but only a slow dance. Slow-ish, anyway. So Vera did that, her nightgown whispering like Wrenhaven reeds as it brushed over the music. The river god pulled away for a while, but that was fine, as he would be back. He always came back to her, and the music filled the whole house, rolling and towing and lowing. It sounded like the sea, when it broke against the caves in the red cliff, and made a doleful bouncing echo. The last bit was an undertow off Morley; scraping like a kelpie’s draw, and in the middle, skipping stones, high notes that clacked and yipped.
She wrote for days without stop, and then days more she taught him how to play, and then days after the music swam in the air of the Void on a loop. Sometimes he paints the Void for her, makes it red as the clay wherein she first saw his face, but when they dance, they dance in blue. His lips didn’t taste of salt, but the snap of ice over teeth. The music and taste follow her everywhere, ringing in her head as she boiled up her husband’s body, as she daubed her spells on the floor and wall and world, as she hacked out her manuscripts and wrote love-letters on human bones. She loves him like a crow loves carrion, like a starving rat loves the body of a fallen comrade. Smeary happy, crunchy bone blood love.
“We should be married by now,” she said one day, years down the line, and he didn’t laugh as she’d expected.
“Interesting suggestion. You’d have to give an excellent wedding gift.”
“What haven’t I given you?” she asked, and meant it.
“What have I refused?” he replied, and took her hands in his. They were bathed in the ancient purple warmth of the shrine, in her apartment, not the old one but the new one that was still old. There were boys smashing bottles on the streets outside, and they knew nothing of her, or him. All they knew was to daub ‘THE OUTSIDER WALKS AMONG US’ on the walls, and curse his eyes at the slip of a hand. They knew nothing of his wildflower smell, that to think his eyes black was to think the sun yellow, that he didn’t walk but wandered. They knew nothing, and to look at him now, neither did she.
“Have I begun to know you?” she asked, and his lips quirked.
“Yes.” He rolled her hand in his, then blew on the fingers, for all the good his cold fog breath did. He told her she should get some gloves. The boys outside shouted, and there was a knock at her door, before a burst of laughter shook and they departed with fearful glee. He pressed a kiss to her fingertips, then said they could marry after all. If she would only do one last task.
“What have I refused?” Vera Moray quoted, and to that he agreed.