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Scene Thirty Three




Will, walking along the true path alone. He looks ready to drop — the color of tallow, bedraggled, with dark circles round his golden eyes.


How tired Will was. How far he’d come, with no food or drink.

Nothing but his longing for Hamnet could have got him to do it, his love for his son, his love for wife, his daughters — his need to restore his family to what it had been.

He walked along the winding path, while branches flogged him and leaves tugged at his coat like beggars attempting to detain him.

The stick in his hand pulled on while, tired and confused, Will kept holding on to it.

Thirst and hunger warred within him. It was all he could to walk on.

Suddenly, as though out of nowhere, he heard voices again, as he’d heard them before, in the night.

He slowed his step and, stowing the stick beneath his shirt where it beat and pulled like a living creature, he walked cautiously amid the trees, over tree roots, keeping himself hidden.

Ahead, in a clearing, men were talking — or perhaps not men, but those creatures that Will had met before, for these had the same accent, the same haughty tones, the same foreign intonation.

Cautious, Will stepped forward.

The dappled horse-body and the black one sat by a fire upon which a hunk of still-bleeding meat roasted.

Whence that meat?

Will felt uneasy over Caliban, Miranda’s troll, the one Miranda had said narrowly escaped being eaten.

But then he spied the monster sitting by the spit, turning it, while the meat roasted. Behind Caliban--

Hola. What was here?

A bundle lay on the ground behind Caliban, and for a moment it looked to Will like a bundle of green cloth — a large blanket or a roll of baize.

Then he saw the moonlight-bright hair and, looking harder, spied Quicksilver’s pale, severely beautiful face beneath the hair.

Was Quicksilver alive? Was he dead?

Forgetting himself, Will stepped farther forward till only a few branches, a few sparse leaves stood between him and the centaurs. Such was his anxiety over the king of fairyland that Will’s breath came short and shallow.

Many years ago, Will himself had unjustly imprisoned Quicksilver. He’d wrapped him in iron, almost killing him.

Quicksilver had looked like that then — drained and pale, his moss-green eyes dull, his lips bled of color.

The then-prince of fairyland had forgiven Will for imprisoning him, for almost killing him. He’d taken no revenge. He’d forgotten all.

Will thought suddenly, startled by the thought as though it were an alien intrusion into his mind, that Quicksilver had as much reason to resent him as he had to resent Quicksilver.

Had Will not, once upon a time, ambushed Quicksilver and wrapped him in cold iron, almost killing him?

Hadn’t Will’s father, while Will was still a youth, beguiled by Sylvanus's evil schemes, helped murder Quicksilver’s own parents?

Hadn’t Will, in London, spurned Quicksilver so that the hill and London, aye, and the world entire, had almost been lost to the dark Sylvanus?

And yet, did Quicksilver complain of mortals? Did he fear the mortal world and refuse to face it? Did he tell Will to go elsewhere, to apply for help from some other supernatural being? Did he tell Will to go beguile another elf with his facile mortal lies, his mortal problems?

No. No. Quicksilver’s devotion was still such that when Will’s son was kidnapped, he followed without thinking.

Will was here because Hamnet was his son.

But why was Quicksilver here, if not to rescue Hamnet and spare Will the grief of losing a son?

And yet — without this being Quicksilver’s strife -- how Quicksilver suffered for it, captive, on the ground, wrapped in something. Iron? He looked tired, almost dead.

He could be in his hill, with his retainers, but for Will’s sake he was here, in the dangers of the crux, captured by centaurs, brought low by his enemies.

It was only by staring intently that Will could discern the minute rise and fall of Quicksilver’s chest.

A great relief flooded Will at seeing that movement.

Alive. Oh. Quicksilver was still alive. But for how long?

Slowly, slowly, trying not to snap a twig beneath unwary feet, trying not to set his foot wrong, Will walked around the clearing.

The centaurs talked, and Will listened with half a mind, noting only that they talked as people do who do not know they’re watched.

“So, we’ll see him tonight?” the brown one said.

“Tonight as it ever was, if he manages to give the shrew the slip.”

“Is the meat not done yet, worthless creature?” the brown one said, and aimed a kick at Caliban.

Caliban stepped out of the way in time and turned the spit faster.

“And tomorrow will be the end of that haughty creature,” the black one said. “That tyrant king for whom so many have been killed.”

Will crept forward silently, holding onto the trunks of trees to avoid accidental falls that would lead to noise.

He had no very clear idea what to do.

Reach Quicksilver and free him, of course, from the net or the iron, or whatever it was that held him captive.

But how to do it and in what way, he couldn’t imagine, as he didn’t know the true nature of what constrained Quicksilver.

Whatever it was must dampen Quicksilver’s magic, for Will had seen, on the beach, that Quicksilver’s magic was more than a match for everyone else’s here.

The journey was weary, and every time one of the centaurs moved, Will was afraid he’d somehow see Will through the foliage around.

Will could use magic to free Quicksilver.

That thought was also alien and made Will stop. Magic!

It was true. He could use magic. He’d proven his gift in rescuing Miranda.

But if he used magic, then he would be, as Quicksilver had said it, neither elf nor human. A human who could do magic, unleashed upon the unmagical world. A mage who’d scare his neighbors. Perhaps scare them enough that they would kill him.

Even if magic weren’t evil in itself, what business had Will with magic? What would he do with it? He’d never been taught to use it, nor did he wish to learn, and if he performed magic, would he not make mistakes, and cause himself to suffer?

Or bring death on himself and his family?

Once, Will had imagined imprisoning Quicksilver in the mortal world and seen how awful a situation that would be.

Now, Will pictured himself in the mortal world as a magic user.

Marlowe would have liked that and the secret power that came with it. But Will was ever saner than Marlowe and perhaps, for all of Marlowe’s flaunted cynicism, it was Will who trusted less in the goodness mankind.

He knew that his being special or having a special power would only bring him the envy and resentment of his neighbors.

Besides, Will didn’t trust himself at all.

Yet if Will had a power no one else did, how long till Will felt that he must abuse it, and impinge on others with his force that they couldn’t counteract?

How long until whole mortals, men and women like him, hated him and killed him?

No. No. He’d stay without magic. No matter what it took.

He crept around the clearing, staying within the covering of the trees.

Near Quicksilver, he stopped.

Quicksilver’s chest still only moved the slightest bit, like a man in a sleep so deep that he might never wake up.

He was pale and cold, cold and pale.

Will crept up on him, keeping close to the ground.

The brown centaur and the black one had their backs turned, and only Caliban stared at him, his face betraying nothing, as trolls’ faces ever did.

“Quicksilver,” Will whispered.

Quicksilver’s gaze turned to Will, and then stared, frantically, over Will’s shoulder.

“Look out,” Quicksilver rasped.

Will turned his head.

He’d forgotten about the dappled centaur, or assumed he was out somewhere, hunting or answering a call of nature.

But there the centaur stood, hand raised and a thick branch grasped in it.

Will tried to run out of the way, but the centaur’s other hand grabbed him.

And then the branch descended upon Will’s skull.

A moment of pain, and then there was darkness.

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Framed