Hammer & Air Read online

  “Well now, you don’t need your experiments and tables to figure that out. Go with him, Eirn. I’ll mind the fish.”

  That vague tremor I’d felt in my stomach congealed then, became slick and bilious and icy, and I almost said no. Then Hammer caught my hand and looked me square in the eye.

  “Whatever you decide, you need to tell him,” he said softly, and I nodded.

  “We’ll be back,” I told him, without a doubt in my mind.

  I stood up and the bear went down on one shoulder, then looked behind him with a patient sort of eye. I looked at Hammer, and he grinned and shrugged, but I could see the tightness in his grin. I couldn’t think of a thing to say to him that I hadn’t tried, and failed, to say before, and for the infinite time since that day at the oak tree, I wished for words.

  Carefully, for all that I’d seen the bear prince’s human body used hard, I stepped up on that shoulder and allowed the bear to carry me through the forest surrounding the enchanted little cottage. He headed straight for the cave.

  I rode him, and a part of me enjoyed the ride very much. The wild flowers, the smells of the spring forest—even the trees, for those that weren’t pine were clothing their branches in soft new leaves—it were as lovely as the world got. There were birds singing and rabbits rutting and deer munching grass and looking up in surprise as the bear passed their way, me sitting easily on his shaggy shoulders. But still, as we approached the rift in the granite rock face, and I felt the now-familiar tingle of the magic boundary start, I couldn’t help looking to the pansy-colored sky and wondering where the big black cloud were hiding to block out the sun.

  The mouth of the cave were bigger as we ventured in than it looked when standing out. The walls glittered with the fool’s gold embedded in the granite, and the floor were packed hard from long travel, so that it seemed almost civilized.

  I didn’t feel so civilized as we neared the middle of the cave and I felt the magic pull at my stomach.

  In a scramble, I were off the bear’s back and panting, several strides back from where that invisible line were, the one that separated the cottage from the rest of the world.

  “No!” I snapped, thinking hard. There were air flowing through the cave—there must have been a way out on the other side. Well, I weren’t going to risk taking one step on the other side and coming back to find Hammer had grown old and died without me.

  The bear took a few more steps, then shivered all over and shook out his fur, standing upright in his human body. He looked at me with hard, exasperated eyes, his gold-tipped sable hair hanging magnificently around his face, and said:

  “Why?”

  I were so surprised, I sat down.

  “You can talk?”

  “Outside the enchanted lands, yes. But I don’t have long, you already know time travels in odd paths inside the circle. In a few breaths, I won’t be able to come back to your time, and you’re leaving with… with him. I want you to leave now with me instead.”

  I shook my head at the absurdity of the request. “No,” I said shortly, and I turned to leave.

  “But… but why?” His voice were low and measured; Hammer were right. If he weren’t a prince, he were the next best thing. His assumption that I would go with him, in spite of all the things Hammer and I were to each other, were the blind sort of vision someone might have if they’d only been shown what he wanted to see in all his whole damned life.

  “Are you mad? Daft? Have you not been paying attention? He’s Hammer. There aren’t a kingdom or a planet fashioned that would make me desert my Hammer.” I had turned my back on him, but I felt bad for a moment. He had tried, for all his assumptions. He had tried to make me care for him. He must care for me. It weren’t a good way to treat a suitor. How would I have felt if Hammer hadn’t wanted me, and he’d just turned his back?

  I turned back, while he were still trying to pull words from the air.

  “You can come with us,” I offered, feeling generous. “We could get to know you, since you can speak and all outside of the enchanted lands.”

  This of all things seemed to offend him. “I am a prince! When I return to my home I shall sleep in clean linens every day, have people prepare my food! You could be my consort. You could spend your time doing research with the most learned men in the kingdom and never have to touch a printing press or cook fish in butter again!”

  Hammer liked fish in butter. Now, after cooking it for him all winter, so did I.

  “Hammer wouldn’t be happy in a palace with that much fanciness—” I began.

  “He isn’t invited!”

  “—and I would be very sorry never to touch a printing press again.” I sighed then, and threw him a scrap. “It’s too bad, then. We should have liked getting to know you.”

  I turned to walk away, then, and I heard a roar of frustration behind me. It were the prince’s roar, and not the bear’s, and I turned to look at him.

  “Why?” The prince were begging, just to ask the question. His word started to warble, and his body became… blurred in the darkness of the other side of the cave. “Why him? He’s coarse and he’s bloody arrogant, and I refuse to believe a man such as him would care for you the way I do.”

  I turned to him directly, and told him the one true thing I knew in the world.

  “If you cannot see the fineness in my Hammer, you’d best look at him with better eyes.”

  I turned back to the mouth of the cave and started walking, then, thinking that the bear had made pretty good time, and I’d have to walk quickly to get back to Hammer before he worried. Behind me, I heard the patter of running footsteps, and then the rumbling grunt of the bear. I stepped to the side—the cave weren’t that wide—and in a few steps the bear passed me up. He cast a baleful look behind him, but still, lowered himself to one shoulder so that I could climb up his back.

  I were of a mind to refuse, and for a moment, we regarded each other with the gaze of a level at true plumb. The bear’s look turned hard and crafty then, and I had a moment to think of Hammer, alone, his feet bare and his fishing poles in the water, and that made up my mind for me. I mounted him before he could change his mind, and he lumbered off at a surprising speed.

  But it weren’t a comfortable journey. He were frustrated, and I were worried at the things he might think to do to Hammer or because of him. I were angry, and half-ashamed for no good reason I could think of, when we entered the clearing. Hammer were standing in the stream, putting fish on a line. When we appeared at the edge of the forest, the most tremendous smile broke on his face, a wreathe of crinkles dimpling his cheeks.

  He stood proud—as he were always proud when he provided for us—and held out his fish with such joy. I pulled my head up out of my own thoughtfulness and smiled back, feeling my eyes burn at everything he were to me, and my chest grow so tight my teeth clenched.

  “It’s a fine catch, Hammer!” I called to him, dismounting from the bear with nary a thought. On an impulse, I waded out to the middle of the stream and kissed him, big, proud smile and all.

  He floundered for a moment—he were carrying fish, and they’re not graceful—but after a moment he managed to hold the line with one hand and put the other hand on the back of my head and crush me to him. His mouth opened under mine and I drank him in.

  The bear watched us from the bank, and before I lost myself in the kiss, I had a moment to wonder what he thought he had that were worth this.

  He knew the answer, all right. He knew the answer, and he knew our weaknesses. How could I forget that a bear could rule the forest with his ruthlessness and nothing else?

  That night, Hammer took me; our bodies were hard and happy and pounding and joyful. I’d chosen him, and nothing could take that away. Later, after midnight, when the bear assumed the prince’s body, he did an odd thing.

  I were sleeping, and I felt my legs spread, and my body flipped so that I rested my weight on my chest and my shoulders, and my arse were high in the air.

  The
n he framed my arse with his hands and began to lick. I groaned a little, because it were arousing—but slow, and squirmy-like, not sharp or hard or huge. So I lay there and moaned, and wished, but I never begged until the prince were done. It didn’t escape me that in bringing me pleasure, he’d tried to erase every trace of Hammer from my flesh.

  He left, and I were stuck, looking at Hammer’s curious eyes, my body pleasantly needing, and my skin tingling subtly, but no release in sight. Hammer grinned a little, and I rolled to my back and looked to the floor where the prince sat, his arms wrapped around his knees, staring up at the two of us. Hammer stared back and began to rub my chest and tease my nipples, and then I turned my head, and he took my mouth.

  Kissing were the one thing the bear hadn’t brought himself to do with either of us. This kiss were hot and sweet, intimate, and it took the pleasantly needing feeling to that sharp edge that would make me come.

  Hammer pulled back then and whispered, “Bring yourself off, Eirn. Let him see you don’t need either of us. Choice is choice.”

  I did. First I took my hand and went to lick it, make it slick, but Hammer took care of that for me by licking my palm himself—slowly, and with enough teeth to make that edge of needing sing a little. Then I lowered it to my cock and began to stroke.

  I remembered those furtive strokings under our covers, back in the child’s bed we’d shared.

  This had none of those in it. This were me, my legs spread, my hips arched, my cock weeping, and I squeezed shamelessly, and pulled up my other hand and pinched my nipples the same way. I went as slow as I could, as long as I could, and for a few strokes I met the bear’s eyes with a hard stare. His eyes were half-lidded, and his mouth were half-open, and his cock were stiff in front of him as he palmed it, just as I palmed mine. I licked my lips then, and for a minute, he saw hope.

  Then I turned my head to Hammer, and he kissed me, just as the pain of climax built in my balls, and I burst come all over my hand.

  That should have been the end of it. It should have. The prince knew how I felt, and where my loyalties lay. He should not have tried again. He just shouldn’t have.

  But it were not all his fault.

  I should have spoken then. The words, the fairy stories, the way we’d grown together in this little enchanted cottage—all of them, needed words. Men may think that actions say everything, but sometimes, sometimes, while the body may know what it knows, the mind and even the most stalwart heart may need language to define it. I were a printer, and I longed to learn the sciences, and I’d spent my youth learning the power of words.

  Knowing I should have spoken because Hammer had no words—this were a thing that should have been true, and it were not.

  It were my fault too.

  And Hammer? Hammer’s only fault were thinking he needed to be more than he were to be worthy of me. It were not true—it were never true, will never be true, but the reason we need words to define our hearts is that our hearts are lonely, vulnerable, bare and beating things, and sometimes, they do not always know truth unless they hear it.

  We prepared to leave that week. It were hard—although most of our packing could be done in an hour. The cottage, though, the cottage kept giving us things, and it near to broke our hearts. One night, I took the stuffed bear off the bed and, where we’d let it sit playfully, evidence that Hammer and Eirn lived there, even for s short time, and put it in our knapsacks. The next morning, it found its way to the head of the bed, where we figured we’d leave it until we left. Every night I put the books the cupboard gave us back into the cupboard. Every morning, they were all there in our knapsacks, weighing a thousand pounds. I tried to pack our old clothes, two nights before we left. The next morning, they had disappeared, leaving fine and sturdy clothes in their place, and new small clothes, several fine-threaded sets of them, folded neatly at the bottom.

  Hammer and I met eyes over the packs the morning the clothes appeared, and I said, “We can take one book, right Hammer?” And he smiled, that child’s smile, the one full of wonder, the one I’d never seen until we’d started waking up, tangled in each other’s arms, in a place that were ours and ours alone.

  “Aye,” he said shortly, and as I went to have a few, gentle words with the cupboard (I figured it had listened to me intently since we arrived, it would probably listen some more as we left) I caught him, rubbing his rough, smith’s finger over the fine, soft edge of the blue leather binding of his favorite book.

  That night, I woke up briefly to Hammer’s light touch on my cheek. I smiled a little in the bright moon from the window and then fell back asleep, and we must have worked harder than I’d thought (we were making sure the cottage were spruce for the next lost children it gave haven to in the woods) because when I woke up again, the moon had moved from our window to below the horizon, and Hammer’s side of the bed were stone cold.

  The bear were gone also.

  There were noises coming from the living room—sounds, from the bear prince’s throat that I knew very well. And not a sound, not even a grunt, from the other person who should have been there.

  My heart fluttered in my throat with iron wings, and I parted the door to the sitting room.

  Hammer were there, and for a moment, my relief were such I had to fight to stay standing. Prince or no, the other one wore the form of the bear until midnight, and for a moment… oh gods… for a moment, I’d feared to find Hammer, bloody and… gods. I didn’t even want to dwell on that moment, not ever again.

  So Hammer’s form were there, but his heart? His mind?

  His body were bent over the chesterfield, his face toward me in the firelight. His eyes were as vacant and as featureless as the sky in a snowstorm.

  I endured it, he said once of his time with the smith. Endured indeed. Whatever the bear prince had said (and I knew… ah, gods, I knew the one thing he could have said to bring this about) whatever transaction had gone between them to cause this, Hammer were not doing this by choice. He endured this violation in the hope of a better choice to come.

  The prince’s hand raised then, as he neared his climax, and came down with a resounding smack to Hammer’s bare arse. I flinched, but I didn’t have to look to know that Hammer did not. Flinching would have meant he were doing other than “enduring.”

  It weren’t long. The prince heaved his hips forward, again, and again, and then he moaned and spent and sighed inside my Hammer. Hammer waited for a moment, his cock shriveled and thriftless between his legs, and then stood stiffly and turned with heavy movements toward me—and toward, I were sure, the washroom.

  He didn’t seem particularly surprised to see me there, but then he didn’t look me in the eyes, either. Hammer—who had never quailed to meet my gaze, no matter how much he thought he were wanting in my eyes.

  My blood pulsed in my ears with a terrible tumult, and my hands shook as I caught his chin in my hand.

  “You never need to hide from me!” I hissed. “And there will always be a Hammer and an Eirn!”

  And then I were in the front room, my fist clenched, and I barely felt the thrum through my shoulder as it connected with the bear prince’s jaw.

  Part IX

  Traps and Hunters

  The prince didn’t look surprised to find himself on his arse, rubbing the bruise on his jaw, but he did look smug.

  He didn’t look so smug when I followed it up with a kick about the ribs—a kick that didn’t land, but only because he could move pretty damned fast. He scrambled to his feet, looking a bit alarmed now, but it weren’t enough.

  “He’s MINE!” I howled. “Mine! And I’m his! You knew this when you slunk into our bed. I told you at the beginning, and I thought you understood, well, you understand now, don’t you?”

  He had the nerve to extend a placating hand to me, and I wished so violently for a weapon, I were not surprised to hear the clatter of a knife falling out of the cupboard.

  I turned my head to the side and spat instead. “I told you ‘no’
, dammit. I told you I’d follow him to the ends of the fucking earth, and I will, and you thought that if you took him, you’d take the way I felt. Well, you can’t! Hammer and me—we’re twined together, like rose bushes or wrought iron, and you can’t untangle us, and if you did, you’d have to break us! Don’t you see what you’ve done? You tried to break Hammer! He’s mine! My whole life, the only thing I’ve ever wanted were him, and you tried to break him! And why? So you could have me? You don’t care for me! I were kind to you, and you think that’s… that’s….”

  It were so obvious. We’d been reading fairy stories this whole winter, and they used this word, and used it, until our ears were deaf to it. It were what made the prince find the maiden, and the reason the maiden held out for her prince. It were why the girl brought pastries to her grandam, and why the children held hands in the woods. It were the thing that brought down kingdoms and restored families, and caused the girl making shirts for her brothers to persevere, even though her life almost came to an end for it. It were the one thing, the one moment, the one heartbeat that ran through every story, but that we had never heard, not since we had been put in the same bed together and stood back to back in the playground, ready to defend the other to the death.

  It were the one word that made our hearts beat, and the one thing that would make me rather draw blood from a prince than turn my back on a blacksmith.

  “That’s love!” I finished, my face hot and my eyes burning, and my throat so tight I could barely speak. “That’s love, and not once have you felt it for me. Gratitude, and wanting, of that I have no doubt. But me and Hammer, we’re bigger than that. We may never be more than tradesmen to you, but even if we never get our cabin, even if we never get our dreams, even if we have to settle for a cot in the back of a master’s shop, we’ll still be more than you are, because that is what we have!”

  I tried to take a deep breath, but I couldn’t. My chest were too wracked with the power of my heart, and my hands were shaking as they came up to press the salt from my eyes.