Archive of Our Own ^beta

I’m all alone here as I try my tiny song

Claim my place beneath the sky, but I won’t be here for long

I sang all night

The moon shone on me through the trees

No brothers left

And there’ll be no more after me

-Deuteronomy 2:10 (The Mountain Goats)

It was spring when Merrick went.

It seemed like the entire world was prepared for his passing, because the earth blossomed fire-red poppies all along the pathways; the long-belled cantuas uncurled from the branches in a chorus of gold, and the lilies sprung in mourning. A breeze drifted shining motes all through the air, making the days seem that much brighter, and somewhere, just distant enough to be barely imagined, laughter sweet and true.  

Beside the buried man, there waited a saint.

*

Raphael thought he forgot what it was like to be a child, but the memories of his youth passed through his mind like an idle cloud. It was not with any sudden clarity like a revelation, but he remembered a closeness—that comfort and warmth that came with being held as a small boy. Maybe it was his mother. Somebody used to cut his hair, and maybe she would have knelt behind and made him sit on the ground as she threaded her fingers through his dark strands. A song would sail through their home as she hummed by his ear, something Raphael wouldn’t be able to place no matter how many times he tried to recapture the scene.

He didn’t know why he thought of it just now. It was a sunny day in the village, and currently Merrick was talking about everything and nothing at all. He tugged on the ropes hanging off Raphael’s hands and knotted them into a message. Jokes didn’t usually translate well, but somehow, this one did. It was probably Quechua in origin. English and Spanish were too new for the punchline to hit well. Merrick laughed, and Raphael found himself slowly smiling as well.

“How are you?” Merrick asked as he let his hands graze the ends of the rope lazily.

I was thinking about when I was younger.

“Oh?”

I don’t know why, but I think I thought of my mother just now. I’m surprised I still remember her.

“Did I do something particularly motherly that reminded you of her?” Merrick’s elbow sat on his banded knee, his chin resting on his hand and tilting to the shadow of Raphael’s standing form. “I don’t often think about Caroline, but that’s only because I don’t have enough memories of her to be fond of.”

Raphael’s childhood was nearly a century and a half away. I can’t remember what she looked like, but she said a joke like that too, I think. It was longer though, and it had something to do with a rat.

“What was her name? Do you remember?”

It had been so long since he had last heard it, and he didn’t even know if the grave she had been buried in still existed, much less the town he was born in. The town could have changed its name. Maybe the missionary was still there, and perhaps the barely familiar structures of his home, but anything resembling a tie to his own personal history must have crumbled away in the past hundred years. He was so young when he arrived in Bedlam, with nothing more than some clothes, his Bible, and his rosary. Every day after that was a blur.

“Well,” Merrick let out thoughtfully. “How about a family name? You never told me if you had one or not.”

Raphael had replied to him when he asked, so long ago, that he didn’t really have one. It’s lost to whatever world he lived in with a mother and maybe a father and brothers and sisters. He could barely scrape together the shape of it at the edge of his mouth. It was a stranger.

He shifted closer to where Merrick was sitting, and bent down near his ear, the leathers creaking and his new stone skin grinding against itself. He was careful to keep blocking the sun from Merrick’s eyes. It was too bright out today.

There was no harm in sharing it. It didn’t mean anything to him, not anymore. However, Merrick smiled graciously, like he had been given something precious.

 *

Raphael went back to that idle memory and suddenly the tender hands of his mother seemed mistier than they had been. If prodded more about her, he wouldn’t be able to name a single thing—neither about his own mother or about other family members. Did he even have parents? Siblings?

He had an uncle. He didn’t know how he forgot that. An uncle, just like him, who held his wrist as they walked through the floating city when he was so, so young. When Raphael’s heart was still soft enough to cry, his uncle’s hand would comb through his hair and try to console him as best as he could. The imagined humming in Raphael’s head went from a sweet motherly tone to a deeper paternal note.

His uncle would have held him tightly, because at that point the petrification would have already set in for him and he wouldn’t have been able to feel Raphael’s warmth. He had given him his rosary too, passed down through several generations of their family.

Raphael’s hand drifted to his wrist out of habit before it came away empty. Right.

He needn’t worry about it all that much.

*

If Raphael didn’t have to confront the truth of it, then he wouldn’t, but sometimes, when he was purposely turned away, it still found a way to rear itself in his face. Here’s what he learned over the years: Happiness only lasted as long as you never thought about it leaving you. Mortality worked in the same regard. Look too closely, and you’d start to notice the age in one’s body, the youth running away as fast as it had come, and the years settling in like an anchor.

He did a good job of believing that everybody around him was immortal, even for a little bit. It was easier when he was a boy though, because he was still little and at that age the world and all its possible futures loomed grand and far, and all the things he had to lose clouded itself with a childish unawareness. Now that he was grown, he wished he didn’t think about it so often—the thought of losing the one person who decided he was worth waiting for. Raphael didn’t want to wait for the end of this treasured thing to come, but it crawled along the edges of his spine so slow and gentle, like a spider building its web.

Merrick Tremayne was fearless, but not reckless, and a clever mind in a strong body was a recipe for prosperous longevity. Raphael wanted to believe so desperately that Merrick would stay by his side through the oncoming years, that he prayed to a god he half-heartedly trusted in to somehow grant immortality to his best friend. Better yet, take his stone away and transform him back into something softer and temporary—like the flesh and bone he once inhabited. That was a better deal, he thought. At least they’d be buried together.

When Merrick slowed too often to catch his breath, or had to sit down to rub his leg, or he coughed a little too harshly, familiar fears found itself dripping over Raphael like tree sap. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Merrick was a constant, walking reminder of all the good things in his life, as well as all the cursed things. He still caught Harry in him, when he rambled on about some flora, or he brushed his elbow against his ribs, or he walked into a sunbeam and suddenly there was the man he once had admired so long ago.

That wasn’t the cursed thing. Seeing Harry’s ghost still had some joy in it. It meant his mind didn’t choose to forget him just yet, and that somewhere inside, he did miss him instead of resenting him. It was even better to realize that Merrick was not his father, or his grandfather, and that he was going to stay for as long as he could. No, the unfortunate thought was that he was still going to leave.

Once, Merrick hugged him. He went back to England for the last time to sort out his affairs, and the moment he saw Raphael again, he gave him the tightest hug imaginable. Raphael couldn’t remember the last time he felt a hug like that. It was a dull sensation against his skin, but he willed himself to imprint that feeling against his body, to engrave this specific memory of Merrick’s arms around him into the forefront of his mind. Raphael wished he had gone against markayuq and human principles and returned the hug then. If he wasn’t rock, Merrick would have lifted him off the ground and spun him around, and just the possibility of that happening alone had made him dizzy.

(Merrick had given it a good go, but he ended up tiring himself out. He also didn't want to break a hip.) 

A hug like that held a promise. Merrick had grabbed his side and looked into his hazy eyes, and for a moment Raphael believed that even he could live forever too, like stone withstanding the test of time.

*

It was midnight, August 30, and Merrick’s 65th birthday. According to him, his birthdays in the Tremayne household were never celebrated with much festivity. It wasn’t that they couldn’t have afforded it before, it was just that Merrick didn’t really want all the celebration that came with aging, even as a little boy. His parents found it eccentric, but they didn’t fight it. His brother was the one who had the parties, with their mother being the ever-excited planner. They’d invite extended family, peers from school, and other kids from rich families they were trying to foster a connection with.

“It was always so stuffy and pompous. Charles was the type to care about that kind of stuff. He’d tell me to piss off as he and the other older kids did whatever they fucked off to. Didn’t bother me so much, don’t worry, I didn’t want to get involved in it all that,” Merrick said. “I just wished he didn’t care so much. I blame our mother; Caroline always told us that appearances were everything.”

His father always tried to give him the best, however, creating makeshift adventures for him around the grounds and helping him sow unusual new plants in the greenhouse. Whatever birthdays he had celebrated in Bedlam as a toddler were as clear as fog, he said.

“There wasn’t much to them when I got older. If I was lucky, I could manage a nice dinner, a drink, and maybe even some friends. Keita would always make sure to send something. And sometimes Minna and Clem came over. Didn’t really have anybody else though.” He didn’t sound regretful, more so saying this as a matter of fact. He took a quick swig from a bottle by his side and looked up at the starry sky. Some of the farmers down the way would give him rum from time to time for all the help he would give. Merrick would keep it in storage in the cellar—he wasn’t much of a drinker—but now was a better time than never to crack one open.

“It feels different now,” he said, and smiled at Raphael. “Even if 65 isn’t any different than 64 or 50 or 21.”

Is it because I’m here?

Raphael meant for it to come out as a tease, but Merrick suddenly gazed right at him. They were outside the church in the dark, with a pollen lamp settled in front of them. The way Merrick sat down against one of the ivy-wrapped pillars with Raphael standing next to him made it easy for him to lean in and rest his head against the stone’s solid form. Raphael shifted his knees so that Merrick wasn’t entirely uncomfortable against him.

“Of course, it’s because you’re here,” he said, as if he couldn’t fathom the answer being anything else. Raphael didn’t say anything. He wished he could join him in drinking. Even if he was a priest in his past life and he was expected to follow certain rules—he missed the easiness that came with alcohol, the world blurring away into something simpler for just a moment. In a different future, it would have been just the two of them, two men celebrating something as small as a 65th birthday.

“What do markayuq dream about?” Merrick asked quietly, still not quite drunk, but nearly bordering on. A man his size, of course it took a while, but the rum was strong on this side of the world. “I mean you must, right?” Even in the evening, the warm air stirred up a sweat against his skin. A stray firefly landed on his knuckle. He let it crawl around with its blinking fuzzy light before it flew away. “Do you even need to sleep anymore?”

Not in the way you do.

By pollen light, he looked softer, warmer; he looked human. Yellow made him look golden, and age polished him up, like a finishing veneer. The light revealed deep set wrinkles in his forehead and around his eyes. They crinkled as he turned to stare up at Raphael, who stood solemnly.

“How do you mean?”

It’s sort of like the catalepsy, except we can be awakened whenever we want. It’s harder to do that as we get older. Our dreams are more memories than whatever our minds created out of thin air. A few days ago, while you were resting, I dreamt of the first time I met you.

“Oh really?” Merrick sounded genuinely awed at the thought. “I dreamt of flying guinea pigs just the other night. You might have been there.”

Raphael hunched over a bit, reminiscent of what he would have done if he was sharing a real laugh.

“Do you dream of me often then?”

Yes.

It came out plain as the truth because it was.

“What of?”

Nosy, aren’t you?

“Oh, fuck off, it’s my birthday.” He ducked his head away, and from the angle Raphael stood at, he noted that Merrick’s ears were red. Merrick sipped his bottle sluggishly. Quieter, he said, “I dream of you too, if that’s any consolation.”

Past the salt barrier, the vast forest ahead chirped with nighttime wildlife. Fireflies weaved their way through the barks of the tree line, flowing along with the dim yellow pollen. Beyond that, it was dark as the sky holding the stars together. Merrick’s eyebrows furrowed, too deep in thought for a drunk man. He looked like he was holding himself back from saying anything else.

Sometimes, I dream about those days where we were together, before—this.

Raphael weakly waved a hand in front of him, as if to capture his entire existence in that singular motion.

Those days where we were running for our lives, or just hanging the laundry, or the one time I had you in my arms.

What they had together now, he didn’t know how to describe it, even after all these years. Friends, certainly. Lovers? Raphael always had this idea that lovers acted more… intimately than they did. He knew that physical affection wasn’t everything, but he wasn’t even allowed to touch Merrick without the fear of trapping him. Even so, they understood each other better than anybody else. It was only natural. You didn’t wait decades of your life just to have coffee again with a person you regarded as a stranger.

“Well, I do miss the running away from danger bit.” It was half sarcastic, half something softer—like longing.

Sometimes the dreams conjured out of nothing do come up. It’s difficult to discern whether it’s a memory of not, because they always just seem so real as to be already lived.

How could Raphael begin to find the words to say that he dreamt of a different life? Of being able to touch Merrick whenever he wanted with no fear of God or stone? He missed his own sensations of tongue and teeth, and skin and blood. This body he occupied didn’t belong to him but to something ancient and lonely. For all that, this body was all he had and though it felt no pain, he ached, and ached, and ached—every single day Merrick was with him.

His mind was cruel. He dreamt of the long-gone impressions of the frigid sense of snow against his body; the rain and water catching inside his boots and drenching his hair; the sun, too, with its humid kiss creating sweat across his face. All those things rendered foreign. He dreamt of hot, careful hands against his hips, his chest, his knuckles, his face. His fingers itched for the ghost of a solid body, something tangible, something he could sink his nails into. His lips dreamt of a weight against them, and something heavier than language sitting in his throat.

Even crueler, he dreamt of that peace that came with growing old.

So instead, Raphael settled on saying, Mostly, it’s dreams of you. Dreams of us. Moments like this.

It was pointless to desire to be human. This was all he will ever be—ribs carved into the rock, limestone memorizing the valves of his heart. He belonged to the forest, to the sky above, and to the greater earth beyond.

For an impossible dream, he would have wished that all away in an instant. He yearned for less time than he deserved. For the briefest second, he could imagine himself belonging to the same skin and warmth as Merrick again.

“Hmm…” Merrick didn’t say much after that. Raphael watched as he got up slowly and patted the dirt away from his trousers. The large amount of rum he consumed caught up with his body mass and he stumbled forward. If Raphael wasn’t looking for it, he wouldn’t have been prepared to quickly throw an arm forward. It met solidly with Merrick’s chest in a thump.

Careful, old man.

“I got it, I got it,” he said, and righted himself up. “Thanks.”

Raphael didn’t want to focus too long on that pressure of Merrick’s body against his arm and went to pick up the lamp. Merrick put the empty bottle in his right hand to free up his left. He brought it up against Raphael’s face slowly, his thumb rubbing along the cheek, as if he were handling something as delicate as bone.

“You know I love you, right?” In the dark, the question felt like the start to a prayer, and Raphael yielded. He watched Merrick lean in, lightly kiss the cold corner of his lips, and turn his back to go inside the chapel. 

Like dreams, this was never meant to last.

*

There were endless, unchanging truths Raphael knew of this world: The pollen will glow gold, the earth will turn a thousand times over, and Merrick will always know how much he was loved in return.

So, whether Raphael said aloud he loved him or he didn’t, it didn’t matter. Nothing changed, because they didn’t have the type of love that could change the universe, that could make him just a man again, that could sail him down the river of time like any other human being. The world wasn’t a fairytale, and though their lives included floating cities and stone-turning men and women, it was devoid of the peaceful eternity that lovers of the past would welcome at the end of their days.

There was nothing godly about him, nothing holy or sacred. Nor was this fragile thing they made together. What was the point of sainthood if all he ever wanted were the flaws that came with men?

Raphael, for no reason at all, thought back to the front pedestal at the monastery. The markayuq holding his wife’s bones in his arms was displayed at the busiest point in the city for a reason. Everybody saw it so that they could learn. One, if your body was trapped like that, nobody would dare put you above a saint. You will never be laid to rest. And two, what man—flesh or stone—wanted to wake in that sort of position? Your lover’s remains hanging by threads in a weak imitation of an embrace? It was awful.

“It is awful,” Merrick had said when they passed it together in the halls of the monastery. He stared at it, sympathy and sadness clouding his voice—and something else too. “I know why they put them up like this, but it still seems… disrespectful. To expose them like that for everybody to see? They both probably had no idea.”

Raphael followed Merrick’s gaze to the woman’s bones—her cradled head, her dusty ribs, the twisted femur. He glanced at Merrick's whitewood band. Merrick wasn’t appalled at the morbid lesson this markayuq and his wife were supposed to teach, but rather the fact that nobody had bothered to honor the idea that even the dead deserved the right to love in private.

How quick fairytale changed into parable into truth; Merrick didn’t see a myth or a warning. He simply saw two people memorialized in the wrong way.

“I’d be embarrassed if it were my bones up there,” he had remarked, and Raphael noticed his ears go red.

Raphael had no doubt in his mind that if he woke up like that, he would be furious. He would steal away Merrick’s bones to a place that could harbor them. An open sky or a leafy canopy, nothing extending past a vast earth where they could simply be .

If they wrote their own fairytale, maybe it would go something like: There once was a man who turned into a saint. He met a traveler and they fell in love. They lived their lives together in bliss until the end.

The tale could end there. Perhaps it could go on. They lived their lives together in bliss until, one day, the traveler had to go, and the saint found that he could not follow him. But it was the nature of a saint to remember, and so the saint waited for the man to come home, cherishing memories of a love well lived.

And the saint waited.

And…

Raphael never did well with endings.

*

He wandered.

Raphael’s mind barely comprehended that it was the afternoon and the peak of the sunlight had just finished. He didn’t know how long he wandered deep into the forest. The leaves and branches crunched underneath each steady step. His hands brushed along the moss-covered bark as he maneuvered gracefully around the bursting roots. It was difficult to focus on one thing, so Raphael chose to focus on everything.

His ears couldn’t catch anything past the macaws squawking and the monkeys howling high above. Maybe somebody was calling him. Maybe not. The canopy made the light stream in like a splattering of beams, but the deeper he went, the less sun there was.

Something called to him. He didn’t know what, but it felt like ghosts from everywhere were clamoring in his head. He should tell Merrick about this so that he stopped worrying about him. He shouldn’t tell Merrick, that would worry him. He shouldn’t make Merrick so concerned, after all he’s done. That man worried enough, sometimes Raphael feared he’d die worrying. He missed that smile of his, his sun-haired man. Where was he? Where was that man?

Raphael. Your name is Raphael, and you’d be damned if you lost your goddamn mind. You must go home. Just go home. Home-

“Raphael!”

A man stepped in front of him, grabbing his shoulders. Why did he look at him with such a face knitted in anguish? He should tell this man that he was simply going home, that he was going back to his friend. There was nothing more he wanted than that, and there was no need to worry.

“Raphael, look where you are!”

Suddenly, Raphael found himself focusing on the rushing sound of water, the light shining right into his eyes, and Merrick holding him like he was going to lose him. He came back to himself all at once.

How long did I lose?

“A week,” Merrick said. He stood up straighter knowing that Raphael wasn’t ignoring him. “I had thought you went back to the city alone, but you didn’t tell me. I went looking for you and here I found you nearly walked yourself into the Tambopata. I only managed to find you by following the broken roots and torn out trunks.”

Raphael gazed at his reflection in the muddy waters. If he fell in, he would have sunk, and nobody would have been able to find him unless all the water suddenly evaporated. He had heard stories of markayuq sinking themselves (either by accident or on purpose) and being left at the bottom of rivers because nobody had the power to bring them back up. The only way others could be completely sure you had sunk was either if they themselves saw you walk in, or the water eroded you into pieces that managed to drift to the surface, with no hope of ever being whole again.

It was what happened when you lost your mind.

Raphael admitted the truth. I didn’t recognize you for a minute. You were a stranger to me, just now.

“What? What do you mean-”

Merrick.

I am afraid.

He never thought he would have ever admitted it. Merrick sighed. He looked like he had a million things to say, but then he decided on shifting his features into something easy and presentable, and all those thoughts dispersed in a single second.

“Come on.” Merrick gazed kindly at him. “Let’s go home.”

They walked back, Merrick setting the pace and Raphael following beside him. He stared at the bark of the trees along the way. Indents of gripped hands decorated the wood like a desperate claw. Something shameful welled up inside him, knotted with apprehension and that same fear he had been carrying all his life.

Merrick grabbed his hand suddenly. Raphael tried to pull away, reminding him what could happen, but the other man didn’t let go.

“How long have you been holding onto that?”

What?

“How long have you been afraid? Of losing this?”

If Raphael didn’t have to confront the truth of it, he didn’t have to, but it reared its head into the man in front of him. And now, he couldn’t help but tremble at the enormity of such a truth.

Ever since we realized we were allowed to have this.

Raphael gave in and took hold of Merrick’s hand. He held it tightly, but not crushingly.

What am I to do when you’re not here anymore? And don’t lie to me, you’ll be gone, and I’ll be all alone again. That's how this sort of thing always goes.

Merrick didn’t speak. Then, “You’re being cruel to yourself. Stop acting like I’m already gone. Who do you take me for? I still have years in me, and I’d be damned if I don’t spend every single waking moment by your side before I’m buried.” Anger showed itself quietly in him. It wasn’t the explosive kind you’d typically see in other men. Merrick was holding his voice back from a scolding, from grabbing Raphael and shaking his nightmares out of him. But behind that anger, Raphael could hear the sadness tucked within it.

It wasn’t just sadness towards him, it was also towards whatever shared fate they were heading for. Merrick did a better job of hiding it.

But after? What then?

“Focus on me right now Raphael.”

Raphael focused on the pressure in his held palm and stared at his best friend before him. The Merrick he had cultivated in his head stood sharp and brilliant against a backdrop of generations of Tremaynes. He knew this man better than himself, all his intricate facets and angles, all his habits and hates, his loves and desires. As far as he knew, this Merrick will never leave him, even after death. He had to promise himself this, or else he was promised with nothing.

Raphael could not conceive of a moment where he will be surrounded with the absence of his friend. The sound of his voice, the strong embrace of his arms, the faint scent of grass lining his clothes, the way he looked kneeling in the dirt to nurture a dying flower, or running to Raphael with no other thought in his clever head than getting right to him. If his mind deteriorated in the worst possible way, he wanted to at least be left with the Merrick that he fell in love with: sitting on an open balcony, holding two cups of coffee in his hands, waiting for him.

Merrick placed Raphael’s hand on top of his chest.

“Here, I feel solid right? Real. Let go of that weight, it’s too early to be carrying it around with you. When the time comes, you will have to pick it back up again, but for now, put it down and just be here.”

Merrick leaned in and pressed his forehead against Raphael’s.

He will miss this, naturally. He realized it was better to live a life with the consequences of loving Merrick Tremayne than with nothing at all.

*

When Merrick went, it was with a stillness. Somehow, nothing changed and yet everything had.

*

It had been too long since anybody had lived in Bedlam. The vines have taken back the land that they had loaned for a short while, and they climbed over the dilapidated homes like an unrelenting force. They’ve tried to take the saint back too, but he never stood still long enough for them to take over.

He could leave if he wanted to. Home was waiting deep in the forest and high above the clouds, where everybody like him was waiting. He would be taken care of, why wasn’t he there already? There was nobody to offer him the salt vials or other trinkets, nobody to wash his clothes and check up on him. No more worshippers. Nothing kept him here.

He tried to remember the reasons for staying. When was the last time the saint had one?

His body was eroded at places it was impossible to protect against the weather. Along the years, others had wrapped around him ropes and knots and whispered dreams onto him. He was supposed to be a guardian, but what was the point when he had nothing to guard anymore?

The saint glimpsed the worn headstone he stood by. It was just as eroded as he, hugged by dirt and moss. Whatever was written on it was barely perceptible; long forgotten.

Yet, some part of his memory shifted, and he felt a joy familiar, like a barely-there itch beneath his skin he could almost scratch if he knew how to reach for it. The more he tried to place it, the more it seemed like an anchor striking the surface of a vast ocean—there was more to the feeling, a whole trove underneath the waters, just waiting to be found again. It was always tragic to lose one’s mind, but at least the saint had this happiness he could carry with him now.

It was a sunny day in what he knew once to be the village, and the saint may not remember who lived here once—in the crumbling church home to flocks of birds and other creatures—but there was a grave here. At the very least, he could guard this with his stone heart.

There the saint waited on the outskirts of a forgotten village, carved in bedrock. He drifted alongside time, not knowing how long it had been since he was last conscious of the world.

The catalepsy called to him. It never arrived when it was expected to, but this one did. He was searching for that lull for the past few weeks, and now it tugged him lightly like a boat on gentle waters. This one was going to be longer than the rest, and there was no guarantee he would be able to completely keep his mind after it. It could be centuries before he awoke.

He supposed it did not matter all that much, if he could still keep that joy about him.

His gaze clouded over, not quite dark, but just enough for him to know that the sunlight was still filtering through. A lightness filled his chest, like a long-missed warmth. Then suddenly, it came overwhelming and boundless, and the saint remembered love.