Chapter Text
Nicolò was daydreaming about his book again.
He had but a single book, and that only by accident. A traveling salesman had brought many beautiful illuminated manuscripts through town, but they were expensive, and the people of Nicolò’s little village in Genoa were poor and illiterate. Nicolò, having prepared for a life in the church, was among the few villagers who could read at all, though the fact seemed to shame his father. Of course, everything about Nicolò shamed his father, but this particular shame, at least, had a thread of justification: Nicolò was meant to be a priest, but instead he remained on his father’s farm, toiling among his olive trees.
The traveling salesman had seen the hunger on Nicolò’s face when he beheld the manuscripts, but Nicolò had to admit he had no coin and, if his father discovered he had spent a month’s wages on a book, the price would be taken out of his hide. No one else in the village was interested, and so the salesman bundled up his wares and led his horse and wagon out of town. As he turned a corner past some trees, Nicolò saw a parcel fall out of the back of his wagon. Nicolò ran to pick it up, but when he gave chase, waving it in the air, he heard the salesman whip his reins and the horse picked up enough speed to leave Nicolò in the distance, with no hope of catching up.
When he looked down, he saw that he held in his hands the very volume he had been admiring so: a book of stories collected from a faraway land he had never heard of, telling tales of people who were strange and dazzling to him. He hid it and read it by candlelight. He had read it so often that the pages had grown soft and thin, and he babied it when he handled it at all. He had every word memorized after so long in its company, but he loved to read it anyway, to see the script arc gracefully over the page, to see the dazzling illustrations of a land and people he would never know.
When he was inspecting the olive trees for weeds, he would imagine himself instead in an arid land where djinns poured out of bottles and men could change their fortunes on the fleetness of their wits alone.
“Nicolò!” came his father’s voice, sharp as the bark of a slavering dog. “What are you doing? I’ve been calling you for five minutes!”
Nicolò turned. His father was climbing the hill towards him, his face and neck red from sun or exertion or anger. Nicolò would find out which soon enough.
“Sorry, Papa,” he said.
“Antonio with the missing finger found blight on his trees,” his father said. “All his trees will be firewood by the end of the day and then where will he be? Four children and one on the way!”
“We are fortunate in our abundance,” Nicolò said. “Perhaps we could share with him.”
His father’s face twisted further.
“Have you seen anything on these trees, boy?”
“No, Papa.”
“Have you even looked? Or was your idiot head in the clouds again?”
“I would have noticed blight, Papa.”
“You wouldn’t have noticed a stampede of horses until your skull caved under the strike of their hooves! Bah!” He threw up his hands. “What did I do to deserve seven daughters and then a useless sognatore for a son, eh?” He slapped the back of Nicolò’s head and stomped back down the hill toward the ramshackle cottage they called home.
Nicolò stood stiller than prey until his father was out of sight. He turned back to the olive trees and started his inspection over again, this time searching for black spots.
When the moon rose full and luminous, Nicolò stole out of his father’s house with a coin purse full of olive pits. It was but the work of half an hour to walk to Antonio’s farm. Antonio’s eldest child, a boy of perhaps ten years, opened the door. Nicolò waited while he fetched his father, and then Antonio was there, closing the door behind him and ushering him away from the house.
“Nicolò,” he said in a low voice. “You can’t just show up at my house. I told you we have to stop.”
“It’s not that, Antonino. Here.”
Nicolò held up the coin purse. Antonio frowned.
“Coin? Nicolò, I can’t.”
“Open your hands, my friend.”
Antonio complied despite the look on his face, and Nicolò poured the pits out. By the light of the moon, Nicolò could see Antonio’s eyes grow big and round. His heart swelled.
“Nico…”
“I heard about your trees,” he said. “You will have to wait until the rot is gone from the soil, but this should be enough. And perhaps other neighbors, too, will come to your aid.”
Antonio’s mouth trembled. He licked his lips and blinked rapidly. Nicolò averted his eyes.
“What about your father?”
“What he does not know cannot hurt him,” Nicolò said.
Nicolò found himself seized by the front of his tunic and pressed against the wall of the barn, his mouth devoured. Nicolò clutched Antonio’s head and kissed back with abandon, only for Antonio to tear himself away and kneel to pick up the pits he’d dropped. When Nicolò tried to join him, Antonio waved him away.
“Go home, Nicolino. Thank you, and don’t come back without a wife on your arm.”
Nicolò wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He stared at Antonio, on his knees in the dirt. As he had been so many times, for Nicolò. But now, Antonio scowled up at him, tears running down his face.
“Go!” he hissed. “What’s wrong with you? Go, damn you!”
Antonio whipped one of the pits at him. It hit Nicolò on the cheek. Another grazed the delicate corner of his eye, and he felt another like a sting on his collarbone. He raised his hands to block still more.
Nicolò turned and left, but he refused to run.
Nicolò walked for a long time. He walked until the moon was high in the heavens and he found himself out of the hills and near the seashore. He kicked off his shoes and rolled his trousers up past his knees. He waded into the water. The sea was warm though the air was cool, and the comfort of it eased something tight about Nicolò’s chest. He tipped his face to the sky. The stars glittered, and the moon glowed softly. Somehow, it reminded him of lying on his mother’s chest, rising and falling in time with her breathing. She allowed him to do this even as she grew sicker and frailer, even as the sloshing of her lungs overcame the beat of her heart under his ear. Even as his father tried to tug him away.
She had been gone for more than twenty years, but he felt her now in the gentle moonlight. If he closed his eyes and concentrated, he might even be able to hear her voice. Telling him fantastical stories. Singing songs of love in his ear while he fell asleep.
Perhaps, then, he could be forgiven for the way he jumped when someone called, “Ho there!”
He whipped around only to find a man bobbing in the water several paces away. The man raised his hands as if in surrender. When he stood, the water came up to his midsection, and he tossed his glorious mane of black curls away from his face. He was swarthier than Nicolò and hairier too. He had a full beard and straight, strong shoulders. When he crossed his arms to warm himself, the muscles of his chest and arms bulged. The light of the moon was low, but Nicolò could see enough to know that this man had been carved from the finest marble by a divine hand. Nicolò was looking at the most beautiful man in the world.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” the stranger said in a curious accent. “I seem to be lost.”
Nicolò became aware of his mouth hanging open only when his teeth clacked shut. Words had left him. The man smiled, which made one of Nicolò’s knees buckle. He caught himself before he splashed face-first into the sea.
“I startled you!” the man said. “I really am so sorry! It’s just I seem to be in something of predicament! I, well, I have no clothes, you see.”
Perhaps Nicolò was dying. He was dying and God had somehow seen fit to reward him instead of consigning him to the depths of the inferno like the bishop said he deserved.
Nicolò was spurred to action by the stranger’s distress, but there was only one action he could think to take: he waded deeper into the water, tore off his belt and tunic, and handed them to the man before him. At the touch of his hands, Nicolò’s breath caught.
The man thanked him and rose further out of the water, Nicolò’s tunic dropping over his body, obscuring him from Nicolò’s sight. When the shadow of his manhood swung generously against his thigh, Nicolò turned abruptly away, his face flaming.
He heard splashing behind him, and then a wet hand landed on his shoulder.
“Thank you again, my friend,” the man said. “Please—tell me your name?”
Nicolò steadied himself with a deep breath before he turned and met the stranger’s eyes.
“I am Nicolò, son of Mascimo of the hill.”
“It is my honor to meet you, Nicolò, son of Mascimo. I am Yusuf, son of Ibrahim, of—oh, a glittering palace somewhere, long lost.”
“Well met, Yusuf, Ibrahim’s son. Come—you must eat, and I will help you find your way home.”
“My friend, you are too kind. I have no means of repaying you.”
“Any man who would expect payment from one who washed up on his shores, alive after some calamity, has no heart and sees no miracles. Come—the walk is long, I’m afraid.”
Nicolò had no coin, and it was too late for the kitchens to be open at the tavern anyway, even if he was fit to enter with his chest bare. He would have to take Yusuf to his father’s house and hide him in the barn. He would smuggle some food to him and keep him company in the cold. Perhaps, in the morning, he could convince his father to hire Yusuf as a farmhand. He would say their blessings were so great he needed help tending the many rows of trees, that Yusuf had come highly recommended, that there was plenty of room for one more body when once these four walls held ten rather than merely two. Perhaps Yusuf would—
“Where are we?” Yusuf asked.
“Liguria,” Nicolò said. “Where is your home?”
“I am a man of many homes,” Yusuf said, “and none.”
When Nicolò glanced at him, he could see a smile shone brightly from the split in his beard.
“I don’t know what that means,” Nicolò said.
Yusuf waved a hand as if to bat Nicolò’s confusion away.
“I am told I am far too fanciful and no one wants to hear it,” he said.
“Oh, but I love to hear fanciful stories,” Nicolò said.
Yusuf’s laugh rang out in the silence.
“Well, you’re in luck, my friend. If there’s one thing I’ve got, it’s the wind in my lungs.”
And so as they trudged back through the village and up the hill, Yusuf regaled him with tales both familiar to Nicolò and new—Yusuf must hail from the same part of the world Nicolò’s book came from, and Nicolò was fascinated by all of it: Yusuf’s expansive gestures, his dramatic flair, the smokiness around the edges of his voice, the ways Yusuf’s stories differed from the ones in his book, the way even the stories Nicolò didn’t know felt like they belonged alongside those he did. There were common threads that made Nicolò feel as though he could gather and follow them, and at the end he would see a completed tapestry. Best, perhaps, were the ways he could see the stories of his own youth echoing in the fantasia of the worlds Yusuf spun, despite how different they seemed at first.
When Yusuf was ensconced in the barn with a few blankets and a pile of irascible cats, Nicolò crept into the house to collect some bread and wine, figs and cheese, flavored oil and spiced olive spread. In the morning there would be plenty of fish and eggs.
Yusuf devoured what Nicolò brought him with the zeal of a starving man. Nicolò’s heart ached. How long had it been since Yusuf had had a bit of food? Of kindness?
“Thank you for this,” Yusuf said. “It is far too much.”
“Please,” Nicolò said. “After a night of such diverting entertainment? Food and wine is the least I could offer.”
“I see you are determined to deny any accusations of generosity,” Yusuf said, and even in the dark Nicolò could see the way his eyes sparkled. Had Nicolò ever known what beauty was before this night? Yusuf nudged Nicolò’s knee with his own. “Come. Tell me about my dashing savior.”
A thrill bubbled through him, but Nicolò smothered it viciously away. This man was not for him. No man was for him.
“I am boring,” he said, “and I have still not heard the story of the man who appeared naked on the shores of my village with nary a ship in sight.”
Yusuf’s smile grew rueful, though no less astonishing. Nicolò could not look directly at it. He watched one of the cats stalk the perimeter before joining the pile of its compatriots.
“A man with a heart so full of kindness could never be boring,” Yusuf said. “Are those olive trees yours?”
“My family’s,” Nicolò said, “for many generations. My father is old now and unwell, so I tend them alone. I’m hoping I can convince him to hire a hand or two—soon it will be time to harvest, and that is too much for one man.”
Yusuf hummed. He sat back and stretched out his long legs, uncaring of the way they budged up against Nicolò’s. He bit into a fig from the palm of his hand and juice ran down his wrist. Nicolò, who considered silence an easy acquaintance, felt compelled to keep talking.
“I would have you—that is, if you are seeking employment and are amenable to it, I would make a place for you here.”
Never mind that this was a job for Nicolò’s abundance of nephews, and his father would never let a stranger with a burnished complexion collect his coin, much less live on his property.
“Ah, my friend, once again you offer me the world and I have naught but empty hands.”
“I cannot harvest alone, Yusuf. There is no charity here.”
“Nicolò, I appreciate your generosity more than I can say, but I cannot impose on you more than I already have. I will be gone by morning, and I regret that all I will leave you with is my thanks.”
“Gone? Where will you go?”
“It’s not important.”
“Yusuf!”
“Come now,” Yusuf said, clapping Nicolò’s knee. “Let us enjoy this excellent food with the time we have.”
“Yusuf, I would not have you suffer further for your misfortune.”
“On the contrary, I think I have been very fortunate tonight,” Yusuf said. “I met you, and you reminded me that there is goodness in the world.”
Stricken, Nicolò could not tear his eyes from Yusuf’s face. He looked so fond, and so sad, and still shone brighter than the sun. Nicolò would go blind for his refusal to turn away.
“Please,” Yusuf said. “I would hear your stories now. Tell me of Nicolò, son of Mascimo up the hill, strong enough to till the land alone and gentle enough to pluck each olive without bruising.”
“You flatter me,” Nicolò said. He cleared his throat when his voice came out like gravel. “I tend the trees because my father cannot, though he refuses to admit it. I have no particular skill at it, only lifelong habit, and in truth it is my father I tend to the most.”
“Is it just you and him?”
“My mother is no longer with us, and my sisters are all married now, with their own crops, and their own families.”
Yusuf tilted his head.
“Then you must fill this house with children, surely.”
Nicolò dropped his gaze to the ground. He tried to laugh, but it was only air, only weariness.
“I will not marry,” he said. “When Papa passes into the next world, I will give this land to whichever of my nephews is starting his life as a man, and I will go somewhere else at last. Somewhere far away, beautiful and strange, and if I am strange, it will be because I am new, not because I—” Nicolò’s mouth shut and he could speak no more.
“Oh, Nicolò.”
Nicolò looked up and tried to smile.
“Do you have many children, Yusuf?”
Another smile, another shake of his head.
“I too will never marry,” he said. “I am—ah, what’s the phrase?—a rolling stone gathers no moss.”
“You are welcome here, should you ever roll this way again.”
“Thank you, Nicolò.”
“I have a book,” Nicolò blurted, entirely without his volition. His eyes went wide, and Yusuf raised his eyebrows.
“A book?”
“Some of your stories were in it. I was so happy to hear new ones. I fear my appetite for them will never lessen.”
“Ah, Nicolò, how dare you say you are boring and then reveal yourself a man of the world!”
Nicolò scoffed out a laugh.
“I am a small man with a small life, and it is by God’s grace alone that my book came to me, kept me company when I thought myself alone, and showed me the world was wider than my olive grove.”
Yusuf crossed his legs under himself and planted his elbows on his knees, chin in hand. His eyes were large and avid.
“Which story is your favorite?” he asked.
“Ha, what an impossible question,” Nicolò said. “I suppose I read the stories of the enchanted horse most often. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to soar so high, and to travel to places you never dreamed of before?”
Yusuf hummed and a faint smile touched his lips.
“Do you believe in magic, Nicolò?” he asked.
“I believe God bestows miracles,” Nicolò said.
“And witchcraft?”
“Some things simply cannot be explained. Good or bad, all is the will of God. It is not for us to understand.”
“Many Christians believe witchcraft is the work of the devil.”
Nicolò was silent for a moment. He picked at a seam in his trousers.
“When I was young,” he said, “a woman from my village was accused of witchcraft because all her babies were born too deformed to live, and when another woman with many healthy children had one that looked the same and died, it was said the first cursed the second out of jealousy. She was hanged. Later, it came out that the husband of the first was lying with the second woman for many years, and for adultery, she too was hanged. He was not.”
“Wallahi!”
“When I was a child, these things made sense to me. Witchcraft, hanging, fear and punishment. Now, when I think of that incident, I see only great sadness, an injustice done. It is not that Satan walks among us, it is that our hatreds and selfish deeds turn us away from the light of God. That is what the devil is.”
“Would that all men were as compassionate as you, and intelligent,” Yusuf said.
At that, Nicolò did laugh. It came out by surprise and was so loud he slapped his hand to his mouth.
“Oh, no, my friend,” he said. “I am only a simpleton, everyone says so.”
Yusuf’s face transformed—where once it was open and smiling, it pinched now into an angry frown.
“Who says this?” he demanded. “And why? Because you have a different opinion? This is not the way of civilized people!”
“It’s not just that,” Nicolò said. “I have always been told I am strange and off-putting and incorrect in all things, ever since I was small. The way I think. The way I speak. The way I look at people. I was to join the church, you know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Nicolò smiled the way he did sometimes when something was sad.
“I am too simple to understand the scripture properly, everyone knows this,” he said. “It is no bother—Papa needed me here anyway.”
“Perhaps it is your holy men who are too simple to see one who is truly touched by the hand of God,” Yusuf said severely. “Perhaps they cannot bear to stand beside you, where it will be clear whose souls have withered under the weights of selfishness and cruelty.”
Nicolò stared at him. He could not help it.
Yusuf seemed to realize he had become overwrought, and he slumped back, shoulders dropping.
“I’m sorry, my friend,” he said. “I am told I am too easily aggrieved, that the force of my feeling is overwhelming. I must try harder to shield you from the violence of my passions.”
“I do not find you violent, Yusuf.”
Yusuf leaned forward and seized both of Nicolo’s hands in his.
“I have known you for mere hours, and I know these things that have been said about you are untrue,” he said. “Please, Nicolò—promise me you will not believe these lies anymore.”
“Yusuf…”
“Promise me, Nicolò.”
Nicolò swallowed. He gave a single sharp nod. Yusuf seemed to deflate as if in great relief. He ducked his head and pressed his face against Nicolò’s hands. Nicolò’s breath caught. Yusuf stayed like that for a moment before he released him and met his eyes again.
“Good,” he said. “Thank you, my friend.”
Nicolò swallowed around the thickness that had grown in the base of his throat. His hand landed on Yusuf’s knee.
“I wish you would stay, Yusuf,” he whispered.
Yusuf’s mouth curved beautiful upward, but his eyes were huge and liquid, full of sorrow.
“Me too, Nicolò.”
They talked until the moon began to set again. They talked until their voices grew hoarse and their eyelids heavy. They talked even after they lay down side by side, curled toward one another in the dark. When Nicolò woke up to the sound of his neighbors’ cocks crowing, Yusuf was gone, and the tunic he had lent him was folded up neatly where he had lain.
Nicolò snatched it up and held it to his face. He inhaled deeply, but he could not tell where Yusuf’s scent ended and where his own began.
Every evening after the day’s exertions, Nicolò packed a loaf of bread and some fruit and cheese and walked down to the edge of the water. There he sat, scanning the shore, the cliffs, and the sea herself for the shape of a man—lithe and strong, golden as the sun, shaking out a beautiful cascade of inky curls—only to leave, heart hollow, when the sun set.
One warm Thursday night, Nicolò was halfway out the door when his father’s voice halted him.
“Boy! Where do you run to off to every night?”
“The shore, Papa,” Nicolò said.
“And what’s so interesting at the shore?”
“The waves are peaceful.”
His father peered at him suspiciously. After a moment, his expression slid into a leer.
“You got a girl down the hill, boy?”
Nicolò stared at him. His father shambled up to him, wine on his teeth, wine on his breath, and nudged him by the elbow.
“Come now, boy, you can tell your old man. Is she a great beauty?”
He held his a hands in front of his chest as though he were carrying two fat piglets.
“Papa, please.”
“I’ll let you in on a little secret, Nicolino—they’re all great beauties in the dark!”
He barked off a peal of laughter, turning a dull red as he cackled away. He clapped a heavy hand on Nicolò’s shoulder and shook him.
“Oh, my son, my ridiculous sognatore. I had almost given up hope for you. You’re very old not to have a wife and kids by now, you know.”
“I’m not the marrying type.”
“Of course not, of course not.” His father winked horrifically. “Come—we must go to the tavern.”
“I’m busy, Papa, I told you.”
“And we have plans with the neighbors, so shift your ass; you can meet your little puttana afterward.”
“Papa!”
“Is she marriageable, boy?”
“I’m not seeing anyone, Papa.”
His father smirked and favored him with a laborious wink.
“Then you’re not late for anything, and you can go to the tavern with your old dad.”
And so Nicolò was borne along to the tavern, where the men from several other families had gathered to drink and eat. Antonio was there looking glum despite the flush of wine on his cheeks. Nicolò sat on the same side of the table from him, several men down so he wouldn’t have to look at him. The mood was less jovial than Nicolò had been dreading, but a sense of heaviness lurked instead. Friends and neighbors kept Antonio’s plate and glass full, though Nicolò noted his father was not among those contributing.
Last month, Antonio had twenty rows of olive trees. Now, he had not even four rows of olive trees and a great deal of olive wood to sell at market. Peo and Lusciandro had already seen the first signs of the blight on a handful of their trees. Earlier that day, Peo sent two of his sons to visit cousins in a neighboring village further inland to see if they, too, were afflicted.
“Has no one sent for the medicus?” Bertomê, one of the older farmers, asked.
“What could he do?” Lusciandro flung out his hand in a sharp upward slash. “He treats men and cows, not plants.”
“Perhaps the medica, then,” Nicolò said, and the table went silent, all eyes turned on him. “She has a vast knowledge of plants, including their uses as remedies for unbalanced humors and miasma. If she knows their properties so well, perhaps she will also know how to heal them.”
Lusciandro scoffed and dismissed Nicolò’s words with a flick of his wrist.
“That old hag treats women’s problems and smells like cat piss,” he said.
Snickers rose around the table only to die when Antonio said, “I would try anything. I would go any distance and beg any stranger if it meant my children didn’t starve. I would offer my head on a platter to that crazy woodwitch if I thought anyone would take it in lieu of coin, but it’s utter shit just like the rest of my grove!”
He was shouting by the end, and his voice broke, and his fist came down on the tabletop like a lightning strike. He covered his face. Peo tried to put his arm around him, but Antonio shoved him away and stormed out of the tavern.
Nicolò crossed his arms and planted his elbows on the table. The men around him were silent. He heard his father issue forth a big gusty sigh.
“We will take up a collection for Antonio’s family,” Bertomê said. “Food, too.”
“The blight is coming for all of our crops, Bertomê,” Lusciandro said. “It’s only a matter of time.”
“And? Do you see anyone lining up to help us? We have only each other. First Antonio, and then you, Lusciandro. First Peo, and then you, Mascimo. First me and then you, Feipo, Marçello, Gaspao.”
“All right, Bertomê, calm down,” Nicolò’s father huffed, but it only incensed Bertomê further.
“Why have we come here tonight if not to share the burden of Antonio’s loss?” he demanded. “Either we all survive this or none of us do, and I mean that quite literally, Mascimo. Or do you not remember how this went when we were boys?”
Nicolo’s father flapped his hands out and crossed his arms, chin tucked into his chest.
“You’ve made your point, old man,” he said. “God in Heaven, Bertomê, no one’s going to let those children starve.”
Bertomê glanced at Nicolò only to shake his head at whatever he saw there and rise from the table.
“The medica, Nicolò,” he said. “Since no one else here has a soul.”
Bertomê passed the proprietor some coin before he left. Nicolò did not wait for the rest of the party to disperse; he left and walked the long path to the shore, where he waited for Yusuf by the light of the waxing moon. Yusuf did not come.
The journey to the medica’s house was a full day’s walk inland, where the land grew mountainous and lush with trees. When his father complained of Nicolò’s leaving him with all the work of the farm, Nicolò told him to stop being such a miser and hire someone.
Her cottage was in the forest, set away from the nearby villages. Nicolò lost his way more than once, and felt as though he could feel the weight of a watchful gaze upon him. When he finally reached the medica, she peered at him with too much knowing on her face and sat him down for a hearty meal. He had brought a few leaves and a slender branch to show her the nature of the blight, and she took them outside to inspect them in the sunlight. Nicolò ate her stew of goat and beans and had a staring contest with a cat the size of a small child. When the medica came back inside, she doddered about her home picking up this and that jar and setting them on her table. He watched her without speaking.
Finally, she looked up at him and scowled.
“You come see how it’s done now,” she said.
Nicolò stood and focused on each item she added to her mortar and in what proportion.
“Garlic,” she said, throwing in an entire bulb’s worth. “Oil of margosa. Turmeric root powder. Here, powder of boar hoof. Now, aqua vitae.”
“So you know the cause of the blight?” Nicolò asked.
“Demons, probably,” she said. “Fairies, perhaps.” She waved a gnarled hand about her head as if to swat them away. “Maybe even divine punishment for sin. Cause is not my concern—treatment is.”
Nicolò nodded, his skin suddenly flashing hot and cold.
He had caused this blight. He and Antonio, with the things they did. Perhaps it started on Antonio’s farm because he was the one who vowed fidelity to his wife before God, but the blight would creep further up the hill soon enough. God would have His retribution, and all in their village would suffer for it.
Nicolò needed to confess and seek absolution. He needed to do all he could to prevent the blight from sweeping through the entire complement of olive trees in his village, and then he would leave forever.
The medica made him several jars of the salve and instructed him on its use. He suspected it was not enough, but his pack was nearly too heavy to carry already, and she had run out of the rarer ingredients—the oil of margosa and the turmeric powder were from faraway lands Nicolò’s eyes would never behold.
She refused his coin—his, and Peo’s, and Marçello’s, and Gaspao’s, and Bertomê’s—and insisted he stay the night so he would not be walking in the dark. For payment, she extracted from him labor he was only too happy to do. He patched a leak in her roof and some mouse holes in her walls. He cleaned her dishes and her kitchen when she made him more food, including bread for the journey home. He listened to her speak about times past and people from long ago.
In the morning, he hefted all those jars onto his back, and by late afternoon, he had passed a crooked tree with a very particular-looking knot on it three times. Nicolò cursed and set his pack down as carefully as he could. With a groan he stretched his back and rubbed the muscles of his neck. He drank from a stream and sat contemplating the progress of the water as he ate some of the medica’s bread.
The forest seemed to be watchful. Whenever he heard the snapping of branches or the rustling of leaves, he looked around only to find himself alone as ever. Occasionally he would see a deer or a pheasant or a rabbit, but he knew whatever dogged his heels could not be prey. It was strange—Nicolò felt not hunted, but protected.
Soon enough, the sunlight faded, and he decided to set up his canvas tent so he could sleep for a few hours. When he woke, he would be able to orient himself by the stars and let them lead him home.
The moon had just risen, fat and full, when Nicolò roused himself from his slumber. He considered building a fire and catching a fish, but decided it was best to find his way out of the forest as quickly as possible. He found the brightest star in the sky and held up his hand to trace his path southwest.
He was packing up his things when he heard his name hissed from a copse of trees. He whirled around, fists raised, only to see Yusuf step into the clearing with his hands up and his eyes wide. He was clothed this time, but no less devastating in his beauty.
“Yusuf!” Nicolò cried. “What are you doing here? I waited for you. Every day, I waited for you.”
Nicolò wanted to rush up to Yusuf and throw his arms around him, but a ripple of nerves and hurt feelings stayed him.
“You’re far from home, my friend,” Yusuf said. “I didn’t expect to see you in the forest.”
“Did you expect to see me at all?”
Yusuf brushed his hair back from his face and stepped forward, only to stop short of getting within arm’s reach. He crossed his arms around himself as if he took a chill.
“No,” he said. “But I could not help hoping.”
“What do you want? I have to get these salves to my village.”
“In the dark?”
“I got lost without the stars to guide me,” Nicolò said. “Now I must make up for the time I spent going in circles.”
“May I join you?” Yusuf asked. “Keep you company on your journey?”
The jars in Nicolò’s pack clanked together when he hefted it onto his back.
“You may come if you use that golden tongue of yours to tell me where you’ve been,” he said.
That earned him a smile. Nicolò started walking and Yusuf fell into step beside him.
“Just here and there,” he said. “I keep to myself, much of the time.”
“Then why…” Nicolò’s words dried up. He stared down at the plodding of his own feet.
After a long silence, Yusuf asked if he could take the pack for a while.
“I’m fine,” Nicolò said. “All of this is mine to carry.”
“I would help you though, if you’d let me,” Yusuf said. “I’d like to.”
“Fine.”
They kept walking. The only sounds were the striking of their feet on the forest floor, the coo of night birds, the wind ruffling through leaves.
Finally, Yusuf asked, “Now?”
“No,” Nicolò said.
“Nicolò.”
“I am doing my duty, Yusuf. Do you have any of those? Do you know what that’s like?”
From the corner of his eye, Nicolò saw Yusuf duck his head. He carried nothing with him and so worried at the hem of his tunic with both hands in the absence of anything else to do.
“I do, actually,” Yusuf said. “I know it does not seem so, but I am intimately familiar with duty.”
“Is that where you were? Attending to your duties?”
Yusuf didn’t answer for a long while. Nicolò, ever comfortable with silence, walked without speaking.
“Many years ago now,” Yusuf said, “I was callow and self-involved, like many young men accustomed to luxury. Being thoughtless was natural and being cruel was a jape. I had no consideration for anyone who might be hurt by my careless words or actions, for I could not fathom that anyone else’s heart may be capable of the full breadth of human feeling, the same as mine.”
“Young men are forgiven their follies,” Nicolò said, though even as he said it he know his own never had been. Regular young men were forgiven their follies; Nicolò had ever been something else, something suspect.
Yusuf hummed, and a glance at him revealed a small smile, touched by sadness.
“Some things are not forgivable,” he said. Nicolò frowned, and Yusuf turned away with a sigh. “Mine was an important family, and I, little emperor that I was, believed the privileges of my position were God-given, simply the natural order of things, since I was so wonderful, of course.” Yusuf’s teeth flashed white in his beard when he smiled. “I…how can I put it? I wished to reap without sowing. I resented the obligations of my position. I refused to fulfill my duties to my family and to my people, and in my failure, I crossed a powerful figure, and so I was exiled.”
“Exiled!”
“Now my duty is to stay away from them, so as not to compound their shame. See? I, too, do what I must, Nicolò.”
Nicolò stopped and turned to him. The jars clanked when he set his pack down. Yusuf moved to pick it up, but Nicolò stayed his hand with a touch to his wrist.
“I cannot imagine what could be so bad as to earn exile, Yusuf,” he said. “You speak as though youthful mistakes deserve censure, but a lifetime in exile is reasonable. It is not, I assure you.”
Yusuf seemed to be studying him.
“And what could be so bad that you would carry this cross on your back for a full day and night, though there is one who stands beside you begging to help ease your burden?”
Nicolò scowled at him. Yusuf only grinned as if he had won something. He held out his hand. Nicolò rolled his eyes and handed him the pack’s strap.
“A blight is overcoming our crops,” he said, and started walking again. Yusuf grunted as he secured the pack and hurried to catch up. “I had to go to the medica in the woods for a cure, and it was there I realized I brought this blight upon us. I and Antonio, another man in my village.”
“Did you quarrel with him?”
Nicolò shook his head. His eyes flickered toward Yusuf for but a moment, but it was enough.
“Ah,” Yusuf said. “And you think this is what atonement looks like.”
“Is your endless wandering not the same?” Nicolò asked.
“It’s the only way for me,” Yusuf said.
“You could have a place, Yusuf. You could have a home.”
“With you?”
Nicolò’s neck flamed and he stared down at his feet. One in front of the other, steady, even progress.
“With whomever you want,” he said. “You are away from those you wronged. You have looked into the flaws of your character without flinching and sought to correct them. Why not lay your burdens down? Why not build a life where you choose?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It could be.”
Nicolò felt Yusuf’s eyes on him, but he looked resolutely ahead.
“This medica you went to,” Yusuf said after a long pause. “Did she weave spellwork over your blight cure?”
“Eh? What do you mean?”
“I mean, is she a healer or is she a witch?”
Nicolò shook his head.
“Some may call her names and sneer, but it is she they turn to when they are desperate and in need.”
“Ah.”
“So you do believe in witchcraft,” Nicolò said.
“Do you believe in the sun and moon?” Yusuf asked. “The bird in the tree, the fig in your hand?”
“You speak nonsense.”
“Magic is thus,” Yusuf said. “Whole. Palpable. Undeniable.”
Nicolò stopped abruptly and faced him. Yusuf bumped into him and bounced off with a surprised grunt.
“And if the medica had magic, this would solve your problems?”
“No,” Yusuf said. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“She’s just a woman in the woods, Yusuf. She’s just someone people hate for having a different kind of life. This is enough to call her a witch.”
Yusuf’s eyes were huge and tragic, even in the dark. He nodded.
“What did you do when you were young?” Nicolò asked. “They consigned you to exile, but you are the one who remains in it willfully. Why, Yusuf?”
They trudged along for some time before Yusuf answered.
“I gravely insulted the girl I was meant to marry,” he said. “It had all been arranged before we were even born. It was to be a great union of our families, countries, bloodlines. On the day of our wedding I called her ugly—a pig, a dog, a thing from the swamps. I said a beast like her was unworthy of being a queen and the mother of kings.”
“…kings?”
A rueful smile.
“Spoiled princelings are accustomed to getting their way,” said Yusuf. “I had sought to delay marriage, perhaps indefinitely.” He spread his hands and gestured about. “And look—it is so.”
“She could not possibly have been that ugly, Yusuf.”
Yusuf’s laugh rang through the trees and startled birds from their slumber.
“I would have said it about any girl, my friend.”
“Oh.”
“I should have been kinder about refusing marriage,” Yusuf said. “Not all of one’s mistakes can be blamed on youth. Even children are taught to be kind.”
“There is nothing kind about exile.”
“Soon I will have been as I am longer than I was ever a prince of the realm,” Yusuf said. “I have seen lands and people that silly boy never dreamed of. I have bathed in waters cold enough to leave icicles on my eyelashes and warm enough to steam my skin pink. I have eaten fruits even the grandest storytellers have never imagined. Life is greater and more full of wonder beyond the walls of any palace, Nicolò. I only wish I could have come to this knowledge a different way.”
Yusuf’s hand brushed Nicolò’s. Nicolò turned his wrist, and their fingers slotted together. His breath caught. There came a gentle tug and he turned. Yusuf kissed him and stars dazzled behind his eyelids. Nicolò clutched at him, deepening the kiss. Yusuf let the pack slide off his back, and the jars inside clattered like a sink full of dishes.
Yusuf’s hands slid over Nicolò’s hips and settled on his arse with an appreciative squeeze. Nicolò moaned into his mouth. Yusuf sucked kisses into Nicolò’s shoulder, his neck, the hollow behind his ear. Nicolò’s hips jerked forward, where the hard column of Yusuf’s pleasure strained against him in kind. Nicolò found himself pushing Yusuf up against a tree and dropping to his knees. Yusuf yanked his tunic up as Nicolò scrambled to pull down his breeches, and then he was taking Yusuf into his mouth as though he were a man starved.
Yusuf gave a shout that resounded between the trees. Nicolò groped up until he found Yusuf’s mouth and pushed three fingers inside. Yusuf let out a whining sound but sucked at them hungrily. The sensation went straight to Nicolò’s stones, and his own cock gave a mighty twitch. He ignored it and slid his free hand around to cup Yusuf’s arse and hitch him closer. When Yusuf’s hands landed in his hair, he took Yusuf deeper, pulsing the back of his tongue over the slit. He paused, savoring how Yusuf filled his mouth, how he smelled, the perfect silken hardness hot on his tongue, then he drew back with a slow slurp. Nicolò gave himself over to the rhythm of Yusuf’s pleasure until Yusuf was nearly sobbing around his fingers, his knees buckling, stomach quivering and leaping against Nicolò’s forehead, Nicolò the only thing holding him upright.
Yusuf gripped convulsively at Nicolò’s hair and made urgent sounds from behind Nicolò’s fingers. Nicolò opened his throat and buried his nose in the soft thatch of hair at the juncture of Yusuf’s thighs. He stroked his thumb over Yusuf’s stones and pressed gently behind them. Yusuf’s shout was muffled this time, but Nicolò felt his cock hardened further, his hands locked in Nicolò’s hair, and then he stilled for a long, breathless moment before his ecstasy flooded Nicolò’s throat in generous bursts. Nicolò swallowed it gladly, gratefully.
Yusuf slid down the tree, dazed, only to bat Nicolò’s hands away when he went to free his own aching cock. He crawled between Nicolò’s knees and nudged him back until he was bent over Nicolò’s lap and swallowed him down to the root. It was Nicolò’s turn to choke back his appreciation, to cradle the back of Yusuf’s head, to go cross-eyed with rapture.
“Yusuf, I—”
Yusuf’s eyes flicked up to meet his, eyebrows raised. They were heavy-lidded and guileless, innocent, while his lips stretched obscenely around Nicolò’s thickness. The contrast made Nicolò swell nearly to crisis, and his words evaporated into a groan. He wanted to keep looking, wanted to imprint this moment in his memory, but his eyes fluttered shut of their own volition. His hips stuttered forward, Yusuf moaned around him, and Nicolò was catapulted into the heavens.
Later, they half dozed with Yusuf’s head pillowed on Nicolò’s chest and Nicolò petting lazily through his curls. Nicolò found himself yearning for the man in his arms and it struck him how absurd that was, how unnecessary. A sudden bravery swept through him, inflaming the surety of his convictions.
“Stay with me,” he said. “Don’t leave again.”
Yusuf’s sigh tickled his chest.
“It’s not as easy as all that,” he said.
“It is! It could be! We’ve needed help on the farm for a long time, it would be the simplest of explanations.”
Yusuf stood up, and Nicolò followed. Yusuf dressed in a hurry, but Nicolò stood tall and unmoving.
“I wanted to stay last month,” Yusuf said. “I want to stay now. But it cannot be, Nicolò, do you understand?”
“I don’t understand a bit of this, Yusuf.”
“It’s better this way,” Yusuf said. “Perhaps I am more handsome by the light of the full moon, hm?”
Nicolò scoffed.
“I’m beginning to see that callow youth you spoke of,” he said.
Yusuf cupped his face and pressed close. Nicolò’s breath shuddered out of him. He held onto Yusuf’s wrists. They kissed. Nicolò kept his eyes closed when Yusuf’s hands fell away, when the heat of him seeped away, when his footsteps faded into nothingness. Nicolò kept his eyes closed so he wouldn’t have to watch Yusuf walk away.
Nicolò gave Reusa, Peo, and Lusciandro two jars each of the salve with the admonition to be sparing with it. There were only nine jars left and, though he felt like an overbearing uncle, Nicolò kept them hidden under the floorboards in his bedroom. If anyone else reported blight, he would dole salve out accordingly. He might even split the contents between several smaller jars. If they ran out before eradicating the blight, all the olive trees in his village would fall.
Peo’s boys returned with the news that the crops of two neighboring villages showed no sign of blight, but that some of their livestock was missing, and something lurked in the shadows ever watching, only to dissipate like mist when anyone tried to catch a glimpse. This sent a ripple of unease through the village and led to several families attempting to keep goats, pigs, and, chickens in their cottages at night. They regretted it, but the stories kept everyone laughing at the tavern and at church.
Nicolò meant to confess his responsibility for the blight, but once in the confession booth, the other villages’ livestock and the lurking creature stilled his tongue. There was something else happening here, something whose true face he could not see. Father Arturo, impatient on the other side of the confessional, prompted him.
Nicolò told him he had had indiscretions with a man. “Indiscretions” seemed an inadequate word, an insult, even. He felt connected to Yusuf, as though their hearts kept the same time. It had never been thus with Antonio, or the other men at seminary, or Orberto, the friend of his youth. With them, their failures of chastity and fidelity were about their bodies, the pump of their blood. With Yusuf, Nicolò felt desire so intense as to border violence, but more than that there was tenderness, yearning, a soft but ardent affection. He longed to be the one who made the world kinder for Yusuf to occupy.
Father Arturo sighed.
“Again, Nicolò?”
“It’s different this time,” Nicolò said.
“It always is,” Father Arturo said, long-suffering.
“No, this is—I feel him, Father. Like my heart beating outside my body, waiting to come back to me.”
“Nicolò, these feelings will go away when you find a wife. Don’t you want that? A pretty woman in your bed, biddable and pleasant, filling your home with children?”
“What would you know of wives?” Nicolò said.
“Nicolò!”
“Sorry, Father, but I do like to speak plain. And biddable? I don’t know which Ligurian women you’re meeting, but I think you spend too much time at church.”
“There are other villages, Nicolò.”
“And I would make a poor husband to the fine women in those, too. What shall I do for penance, Father?”
Father Arturo let out a gusty sigh.
“Fast for one day and one night and spend the evening in prayer. Ask the Lord to send you a suitable wife, and leave that man, whoever he is, alone, Nicolò.”
“I’m always alone,” Nicolò said, and took his leave.
Peo and Lusciandro lost a handful of trees each, but the majority of their groves were spared when the salve was used at the first signs of blight. Marçello and Gaspao both came to Nicolò for a small helping of salve, and after that, Nicolò visited all the olive-growing families’ farms to inspect each tree for himself. He applied salve where it was needed, and the blight slowed but did not stop completely. And, though it was he who had brought the salve to their afflicted trees, they treated him as though it were he who blighted them in the first place. Peo at least thanked him and treated him as he would a hired hand, but Bertomê was the only one who welcomed him with open arms and spoke to him as though they were friends, invited him to stay for dinner, shared his wine. Perhaps they were friends, after a fashion.
The guilt he felt over his sin with Antonio mixed with his questions about the other villages’ strife and an indignation and resentment he was not proud of. If this was to be his punishment, he should take it gracefully, but he tired of helping people who openly despised him; he wished he did not tire of helping. He wished he were a better sort of man.
“You should be charging them, Nicolino,” his father said every afternoon when he returned. “You do this charity at the expense of your own duties; payment is the least you are owed.”
“The medica did not charge me and so I will not charge them,” Nicolò said. “If we help enough, perhaps God will spare our own trees entirely.”
“Hmph. Still a soft-hearted sognatore. It’s a wonder you haven’t been eaten alive.”
Soon, whispers of a demon that stalked the shadows overtook the village, and Nicolò began to feel eyes on him again. He still walked the shore at night, though he no longer expected to find Yusuf. Even so, he felt as though he were waiting for something. He watched the moon swell, and he tended the little fire inside him that blazed with the hope that he’d see Yusuf again.
Before darkness fell on the night of the full moon, Nicolò told his father the other men would be missing him at the tavern. When he disappeared down the hill, Nicolò repaired to the barn with an oil lamp, some blankets and the excess of dinner he had prepared. After shooing the cats away from the food, he sat in the doorway reading his book even as the light seeped from the sky.
The moon rose, and Yusuf appeared. Nicolò smiled, closed his book, and rose to his feet. Yusuf’s eyes were bright and his smile dazzling. He did not hesitate to fold Nicolò up in his arms and hold him tightly to his body.
Something thumped against his back. Nicolò pulled away.
“You said you loved reading but had only one book,” Yusuf said. He was uncharacteristically bashful as he handed Nicolò an unfamiliar volume.
“Yusuf,” Nicolò murmured. He could not look away from Yusuf’s face, even to see what he’d gotten him.
“I know it’s not thrilling, but I thought, I don’t know. I thought of you when I saw it.”
Nicolò’s heart expanded. He rocked forward and landed a kiss on Yusuf’s lips. He felt Yusuf jolt, but pulled away to look at the book before Yusuf could deepen the kiss. It was heavy and the edges of the pages glinted gold. He shifted so the cast of the moonlight illuminated it enough to read.
“Alpi e Appennini Liguri: A Study of Local Flora and Its Uses.”
The book was heavy and contained beautiful, detailed illuminations of countless flowers, trees, plants, and fungi Nicolò had seen nearby and on his modest travels. Each illumination was accompanied by a name, a description, a list of uses and instructions for those uses. It was astonishing.
“Yusuf, this is…I’ve never seen anything like it. How did you…I cannot possibly take this.”
“Please do, Nicolò. I want nothing more than for you to have it.”
Nicolò flicked his eyes up to meet Yusuf’s.
“Nothing?”
Yusuf stepped in close enough that Nicolò could feel the living heat of him, smell his fragrant skin. He drew a hand down Nicolò’s arm and closed his fingers loosely around his wrist.
“There are many things I want,” he said, his voice rumbling low through Nicolò’s body. “Some I cannot have. Some I can have only fleetingly. And some which are more lasting. I would have you remember me, ya amar.”
“You cannot imagine I would forget you,” Nicolò said.
Yusuf pressed closer, tucking his face into Nicolò’s neck. He breathed of Nicolò deeply. Nicolò wrapped his arms around his neck and savored their closeness.
“It is I who cannot forget you,” Yusuf murmured. “I should have stayed away, but—”
“Do not speak so,” Nicolò said. “Come back to me always.”
Yusuf shook his head but slotted his mouth over Nicolò’s and seized a kiss. He pressed himself against Nicolò as if desperately trying to merge with him. Nicolò broke the kiss only to tear off his tunic. Yusuf followed suit and soon they were bare, as much skin touching as possible.
“I need—ya Allah, Nicolò, I need you,” Yusuf said, his voice cracking.
“You have me, tesoro,” Nicolò said.
“It’s been so long since I have been touched by kind hands, I can hardly think of anything else. Please, Nicolò, I am—I am—”
“Let me,” Nicolò said, and he bore Yusuf down into the bed of blankets he had prepared.
Nicolò started with the top of his head, nuzzling kisses along his hairline. Yusuf sighed and clutched at Nicolò’s sides. Nicolò kissed his eyebrows and his nose, his cheekbones, both eyes. He kissed along his jaw, his chin, his ears. When Yusuf let out a whine, he relented and kissed his lips again. Yusuf threaded his hands in his hair and held him close, slid his tongue into Nicolò’s mouth and swept away everything but the two of them, here, now. Nicolò was hard, rocking and grinding into Yusuf’s answering hardness as Yusuf arched against him. Though Yusuf’s urgency touched him, Nicolò wanted nothing more than to savor him. Spoil him.
Nicolò followed the strong lines of Yusuf’s body down, nipping, licking, and kissing at every bit of skin and hair he could find. He intoxicated himself on the smell of Yusuf where it was strongest—his beard, under his arms, the middle of his chest, the puff of hair between his legs, his stones, the hot crevice of his arse. He had Yusuf squirming and begging and even giggling. He told him how lovely he was, how moving his desire. He told him he wanted nothing more than to carry Yusuf with him, to be allowed a place with him, to keep him.
“Yes, yes, ya Allah, I want this,” Yusuf said, “I want this more than anything, Nicolò, please.”
Nicolò rose up to kiss him. Yusuf wrapped his legs around Nicolò’s hips and locked him in close.
“Please, please,” he said.
“Yes,” Nicolò said. “I’ll give you anything, tesoro, anything at all. Hush now.”
Yusuf’s cock was thick and boasted a gentle upward curve. It was curiously bare without the gathering of skin over the head, but Nicolò found himself inflamed by the sight of it, the novelty, how sensitive he seemed. He gathered a mouthful of saliva and sank his mouth over Yusuf’s cock. Yusuf choked back a shout, and Nicolò bobbed over his lap, dizzy on the scent of him, the taste, the way he made his jaw ache. He set his thumb against the tight furl of his hole, now slick with his own spit.
Yusuf moaned and thrust upward. His opened his legs wider, his feet landing on Nicolò’s back to encourage him. Nicolò rubbed at him gently until he felt the hole slacken, and then he ventured a fingertip inside. There was resistance, and then a great blossoming, and Nicolò’s finger was abruptly inside. Yusuf clenched around the intrusion, making the most beautiful sounds Nicolò longed to hear unmuffled. Yusuf was hot and smooth and tight inside, and Nicolò’s prick throbbed.
“Ya Allah, Nicolò, I need you now, please, please,” Yusuf moaned.
Nicolò left off Yusuf’s cock and removed his finger despite Yusuf’s protest. He reached for the lamp. The oil in it would have to do.
“Do you want to turn over?” Nicolò asked.
“No, I want to look at you.”
“You’re very tight.”
“Nicolò, please. I have been dreaming of this. Yearning for this. Let me watch your face while you take me. Make me feel it even when—make me feel it for days, Nicolò.”
With slick fingers and a hungry mouth, Nicolò sucked Yusuf while he opened him. He was greedy and impatient, but Nicolò paid him no heed. He would take as much time as he needed. Finally, with four fingers buried in Yusuf, and Yusuf writhing and mindless with need, he knelt up and pulled Yusuf’s arse into his lap. He pressed the head of his cock to Yusuf’s soft, open hole.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice rough.
Yusuf, pushed onto his elbows, his hair damp and face slick with sweat, his swollen lips parted to pass his heavy breath. He met Nicolò’s eyes and held him in the moment. Was that Nicolò’s heartbeat, or Yusuf’s?
“Nico,” he said, full of wonder.
He bore down and Nicolò’s cock slid inside. Nicolò bit back a groan even as his eyes fluttered shut of their own volition, but Yusuf had to slap a hand over his mouth to keep from crying out. Nicolò shifted until he was fully seated and gave a slow thrust. Yusuf’s eyes rolled back and his head lolled against the blankets. His body spasmed around Nicolò’s cock, stealing Nicolò’s breath. He ground in slow and deep, just letting Yusuf feel him. Eventually Yusuf rolled his hips and the begging started again.
Nicolò drew back, slung Yusuf’s knees into his elbows, and kept his eyes on Yusuf’s as he set a steady rhythm that built until he was fucking him with abandon, until Yusuf could no longer keep his eyes open or his moaning quiet. Nicolò pushed his fingers into Yusuf’s mouth just in time to stem another shout. A spurt of thin liquid burst between them and Yusuf’s scream came out strangled from between Nicolò’s fingers.
Nicolò braced himself and went harder, faster, eyes never leaving Yusuf’s face. Suddenly Yusuf’s eyes snapped open and he reached down to jerk himself at a frantic pace, and then he seized up, back arching, teeth and arse clamping down so tight it struck the sight from Nicolò’s eyes. He let out an agonized grunt and then he was spending in thick ropes up his stomach and chest. Some landed in his beard. He let out a broken, relieved little sound and collapsed into the blankets.
The sight of him in rapture tightened Nicolò’s own pleasure. He fucked in with sharp snaps of his hips until his rhythm stuttered and heat broke over his spine. He shoved himself as deep as he could go, only distantly aware of Yusuf’s hands on his face, his voice in his ear, and something tethered inside him snapped. He pumped all his want and longing into Yusuf’s body until he was spent and all his strength was sapped away.
He lay heavily on Yusuf’s body, his softening cock still inside, and let Yusuf trace lazy patterns onto his back.
“You’re so good to me,” Yusuf was saying, softly into Nicolò’s ear as he came back to himself. “I want you to have all good things. I want for you to have tenderness, and laughter, and joy.”
Nicolò shifted to stop crushing him and his cock came free of Yusuf’s arse. Yusuf made a sound of displeasure, but turned onto his side so they could face each other. Nicolò pulled Yusuf’s hand to his lips and pressed fervent kisses to his knuckles.
“I have these things when I’m with you,” Nicolò said.
Yusuf’s thumb brushed over Nicolò’s lips.
“Ya amar,” he said.
“I don’t know what that means,” Nicolò said.
Yusuf smiled, though it seemed sad.
“It means you light my way when I am lost,” he said.
“Yusuf, I wish you would—”
Yusuf kissed his words away.
“Where did you get such a beautiful book?” Nicolò asked later, leafing through the pages by lamplight. Even in the darkness, the illuminations were diverting. He was eager to get lost in the details come sunrise, but he dreaded Yusuf’s inevitable leaving.
Yusuf carded idly through Nicolò’s hair.
“I visited your medica,” he said. “I was nervous to speak with her, but.” He shrugged. “She may not have magic, but she sees beyond this waking world.”
Nicolò sat up and faced him. His penis lay quiescent and gleaming against his thigh, and his position produced a series of little rolls at his stomach. It was so sweet and dear that Nicolò wanted to chew on them.
“She gave it to you?”
“I spied it when we were discussing my problem. I was lucky her price was one I was able to pay.”
“And was she able to help you?” he asked.
Yusuf’s smile was sad.
“No,” he said. “I did not expect her to, but it seems I am a creature of hope, even when all hope is lost.”
“I could help you,” Nicolò blurted. “You could tell me and we would find a solution.”
“Ah, Nicolò.”
“You could have a home with me, Yusuf.”
“And is this a home you want, habibi?”
He asked so gently, Nicolò felt it like a hot blade to his gut rather than incendiary fire.
“It’s what I have,” Nicolò said. “When my father passes, I can make a different one.”
Yusuf reached for his hand.
“You have to trust me that it’s better this way.”
“I wish you’d tell me why.”
Yusuf looked away. He stood and started gathering his clothes.
“Yusuf…”
“Nicolò, please.”
“Whatever it is, we can untangle it together.”
Yusuf yanked his trousers up and his tunic down. His hair was a wild cloud. Nicolò got to his feet and tried to take his hand, but he jerked it out of his grasp.
“You cannot fathom the enormity of what you’re asking for, Nicolò,” he said. “Not just for me but for you.”
Yusuf stalked out of the barn. Nicolò scrambled to follow, uncaring of his nakedness.
“Yusuf, I love you!” Nicolò cried.
Yusuf whirled around, expression thunderous, eyes full of fire. Whatever he was about to unleash died when he looked upon Nicolò’s face. He held his breath for a moment and then took Nicolò’s face in his hands. All his words were whispered furiously and desperately against Nicolò’s lip,.
“Ya amar,” he said. “You are like the moon to me. Light in the darkness. My salvation. It is for me to admire you, and for you to traverse the sky as you will, do you understand?”
“I don’t, Yusuf, please. I don’t understand at all.”
“You do not love me,” Yusuf said. “You cannot.”
“Yusuf, don’t do this.”
“You will have a beautiful life if you let yourself, Nicolò. But you must let me go.”
Yusuf released him and stepped out of the barn. Grief troubled his expression for a moment before he turned away and walked down the hill. He never looked back.
