The Green's Hill Novellas Read Free Page A

staying well away from them.
    “My name is Charlie,” the boy supplied with a gratifying readiness, “and I’m eighteen.”
    “My name is Whim, and I’m…. Well, shit… how old am I?”
    “You don’t know?” the boy asked, and Whim wrinkled his nose at him.
    “Our days pass so ordinarily,” Whim replied, wondering. “We sit and we do whatever we want…. There are the solstice celebrations, of course, but no real way of marking our days…. What year is it?”
    Charlie told him, and Whim nodded, pretty sure. “Yes, I was born near the beginning of the last century. I am nearing one hundred, but not quite.”
    Charlie shook his head and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Man, that’s messed up. If you live a hundred years, you’d think you’d have something to show for it. Pain, laughter, you know. Something.”
    Whim looked at the young human with wondering eyes, seeing every feature perfectly with his better-than-human vision. Charlie had fading acne scars and the awkwardness of the young, but… but in that moment, Whim saw something special about him, something indefinable. It was a quality that never left.
    “That’s exactly what Adrian said,” Whim told him, amazed. He’d thought Adrian was the only human—he’d been human once—capable of wisdom. Well, that should show Whim that arrogance was truly an unattractive personality trait. He would find himself struggling against making assumptions of his own superiority for the rest of his life.
    “Is Adrian the reason you don’t want sex?” Charlie asked suspiciously, and Whim laughed outright.
    “Adrian is sex on legs,” Whim told him frankly. “One night with you—one hundred nights with you—and Adrian would still play if I asked him. But no. You… you are barely the age of consent. I am not here to give you a yearning for things you can never have. I come out at Litha to give someone a gift, an offering. If they have regrets or loneliness or sadness in their lives, I can give them something magical—a memory that not even time can erase. A moment when their bodies become light and sound, and they’re one with the Goddess’s shining child. You—you have so much potential in you. You have no regrets yet. Look at you. Your hands are quivering with the urge to paint this night, surreal though it may be. Your eyes are looking at a dark sky and seeing heathered purples and blended greens, a charcoal-tinted rainbow with blood-edged stars. You hear music in the faraway freeway—I can watch it pulse in your throat. Your mind teems with a thousand stories of what is possible this night. I can hear your characters speaking, as though on stage. Myriad talents compete for space inside you, Charlie. You have no regrets—only possibilities.” He was very proud when he finished speaking. It was one of the longest speeches he’d ever made on a single topic.
    Charlie looked at him very carefully. “You talk really weird,” he said at last. “Is that an elf thing?”
    Whim looked at him steadily. In the darkness he could see the blush, the sideways slant to Charlie’s eyes, the way the pulse throbbed in his throat with a passion waiting to break free. “My words touched you,” he said softly. “You’re pulling into yourself because you are afraid of what I’ve said.”
    And now Charlie looked over his shoulder, squinting into the darkness as though he could make something out. “Man, everybody wants to hear somebody beautiful tell them they’re special. Did you think you could tell me something like that and not make me want to cry like a weenie?”
    Whim’s mouth quirked upward, and he stared at Charlie with more of that renewed appreciation. “My people do not think less of you if you shed tears,” he said earnestly, and Charlie turned a shining smile in his direction.
    “I’ll have to remember that if I ever feel like crying again,” he said with mock seriousness. Whim felt a sudden shaft, a sudden flaw in the shape of his heart.