Archive of Our Own ^beta

The bullet pierced Harry’s shoulder before he could even react and he toppled to the dirt. His eyes caught the vast blue sky above, the birds soaring from the sudden catastrophe that broke out. Men rushed past him in a raging stampede. Nobody stopped to get him out of the way or ask if he was alright.

He didn’t mean to get caught in the crossfire of a rebellion, but he has, and now he’s dying because of it. When he tried to get up, the pain seared itself all over his body. It felt like the first time he was shot all those years ago, when he was still in Peru and got caught stealing quinine bark. Except this time, there was nobody to save him from under the frozen water. 

The ground was soft and damp against his back as the humid air blew over him. In a brush of a moment, Harry was back in the open hilly fields of Bedlam, his elbows digging into Raphael’s ribs as he tried to catch some new crawly thing. Gunshots faded into a deep laugh. 

It was one of those memories Harry held delicately between his fingers like fine thread, weaving it along the course of his body whenever he felt the loss of the pieces he left of himself in Peru. He carried so many bright snippets of the past in his chest, too afraid to give them up for something closer here in the present and future.

He always went back when he could, with some half-hearted hope that Raphael would be waiting for him in that small church. The wish got smaller and smaller every time he opened the church doors to find it empty, until it was nothing but a pollen speck — so easy to wave away but luminous all the same. 

He had brought his family. Little Jack’s first words were in Quechua — “Inti!” he had exclaimed when he pulled on his father’s hair as he was picked up. A love had swelled in Harry then,  so great that it appeared unexplainable to his wife and daughter, both who seemed to only want to stick to English and their Englishwoman values the entire time they lived there.

Harry could never bring himself to go into the pollen forest. He had found Raphael’s body in his earlier trips, tied by the tree itself to the trunk like he was being held captive. When he first saw him, a sort of stubborn acceptance, or something like it, washed over him. He knew that Raphael wasn’t human, he was aware of the sleeping spells, and yet he tried to tell himself he couldn’t be grieving, because grieving meant that he was never going to see him again. And that was a lie, because he was here, right in front of him, was he not? He wasn’t dead, just… transforming.   

“And all this stop-start exponential catalepsy is in fact a kind of stop-start metamorphosis, and each time you’re a little different and a little stronger and one day different altogether,” Harry had told him on a quiet night in the kitchen. “You much resemble Theseus’s Ship in that way. It’s not mentioned in any of Shakespere’s stories or the other books we read so don’t bother looking for it, and I take it you’re not wholly familiar with myths and legends of the Greek kind.”

Raphael had watched him from across the table, waiting for him to go on. “The great Greek hero, Theseus, after slaying a ghastly Minotaur and saving Athens, had escaped on a ship. It was a long trek back home, and along the journey the ship would need constant repair. Parts of the ship would be replaced until by the time our hero got home, no parts of the original ship remained.

“It’s a matter of identity and it begs the question, are you still the same thing despite your metamorphosis?” Harry met Raphael’s gaze when he looked up from his notes. Before Raphael could respond, he continued, “I should think so. I don’t know much about this markayuq business, it’s fascinating really, I might write a book on it, but it’s a constant on what a lovely creature you are.”

It was the last night Harry had spoken to him. He didn’t want to face his not-dead-but-not-alive-either friend after finding him so still in that tree, but then Jack had ran into the forest and Harry was forced to go after him. It wasn’t long until his son found the man in the tree. 

“Dad, who’s that?” he asked in a childlike wonder. It was straight out of a fairy tale to him, where you found a sleeping prince in a dark forest and if you woke him up you would earn a great reward.

Harry stared at the trunk, expecting the man within it to change after all these years. “His name is Raphael,” he replied as he picked up Jack to give him a better look. “And he was my best friend.”

Harry wanted to cut away the wood and vines and spiderwebs that trapped him within the trunk. He wanted to settle him down somewhere softer, somewhere where there was lots of sun shining down on him, and he'd be protected from the rain and snow and all signs of ruin. He wanted the townsfolk to see Raphael and know that he was loved from half a world beyond.

It was the least he could do for him.

But he couldn’t disturb him. What he knew of markayuq was that they were holy stone people. Even if he got him down, he had no way of carrying him back to the village when he was one of the only able-bodied people that lived there. Harry had a terrible urge to go missing, to just stay here in front of this tree and wait for Raphael to wake up and be the very first thing he saw. He didn’t know what he would do with himself if Raphael woke up and thought he was abandoned when the reality was that Harry had kept coming back again and again. 

In his final years in Peru, after hopes had fizzled out quietly like a dying matchstick, Harry had written a note. 

Raphael

I find that I cannot come myself as I promised, and so I send you my son, who looks very like me, in the hope that he might stand in.

All my love,

Harry

It was a last attempt at a final message to Raphael, to let him know that he was still waiting. Jack was like him in so many ways. The blond hair and the sharp nose, but also the intense curiosity for anything new and strange, as well as his gentle kindness. Jack wasn’t him though, he knew that, but loneliness was a fearful thing and Raphael deserved to have a friend waiting for him at the end of it all. 

Harry didn’t know what happened to the note, whether it arrived in Peru or was still trapped away somewhere in his belongings back at Heligan. 

His breathing came in bits and pieces. Blood seeped into his clothes and gunshots clamored in his ears. Harry’s mind quieted and his hands went limp in the soil. 

He thought of his wife and children. They’re grown enough, and they might even miss him, but they’ll be fine without him. He had heard that Jack was about to become a father himself. It was a joy to realize that he was nearly old enough to become a grandfather. Shame he was going to miss that.

Harry thought of Raphael. 

He missed him.