“what is your name, child?”
his name is yves. you named him so because when a vendor demanded the same of you some years ago after catching you nicking an apple from her stall, you could not bring yourself to give your birth name. it is a name far too ostentatious for your station—the disciple that sothis herself plucked from the sky, one of the brightest to ever light up the night. what hopes had she for you, when your mother bestowed it upon you in turn? and what hope had you of fulfilling any of them for her?
the most you can do for her now is not sully it.
the man who asks the question this time, his name is clotaire. but you only see its true importance when you hear the whole of it, because nobility get three names to themselves and some measure of worth attached to all of them.
ansel clotaire rowe. that third name boils your blood. even children like you—or, perhaps, it would be more apt to say that especially children like you—ought to know it. you trade it in whispers on the streets, warnings that can only be delivered in hushed words: he will promise you everything. murmur sweet things into your ears. make you feel, for once in your goddess-forsaken life, that you are important. it’s tempting; it’s too good to be true. your friends warn, again and again: yves, don’t. you can’t. he will take your dreams, offer them up to you on a silver platter. and then, at the very last moment, shatter them all before your eyes.
the kids that take him up on it, they don’t come back.
yves blinks. clotaire offers him no dreams, no wishes, no fulfillment. nothing about him is sweet or too good to be true. no, what he sees in him is someone hungry enough not to need any of those temptations at all. someone he can offer that falsely bright future and the power of the name attached to it, knowing all the while that he will not struggle when the light of it all fades. he will not run when he sees what bloodied ruins the name was built upon.
and so, unlike all the others, what the count offers you is this: be his son. if you’re good enough, maybe even his heir. he will elevate you to heights you could have never dreamed of reaching on your own.
you know what it will cost you. yves doesn’t plan on coming back.
so he smiles and dutifully answers, “my name is—”
“—████? i’ll be back before dinner, okay?”
you stare long and hard as she leans down to press a kiss to your forehead, as though the truth might be written somewhere in her expression. before dinner in this house has always meant the early hours of the next morning, creeping in quietly through the front door that always creaks as though her absence at dinner wouldn’t have been answer enough to her whereabouts. but anything that lays beyond her smile is as inscrutable as always. where she’s off to today is a mystery even to you, as always. if you didn’t know any better, you might think she was only stepping out to run some errands, see some friends.
but you don’t have the gold to be running errands, and mama has no friends.
there is a game you and mama have begun to play in recent years, ever since the old man died and left you both with spaces in your hearts that neither of you should have ever carved out for him to begin with. it is a game of pretend.
you pretend: you do not have to put away an untouched of plate of food every evening. you do not have to go to sleep every night in a bed where the other side of it is empty and cold. you do not hear the creak of the door in the morning when you are still meant to be sleeping. you do not see the exhaustion in her eyes or the way her frame only continues to grow thinner and lighter.
she pretends: she is not wasting away trying to claw you both out of the pit you’ve been buried in. she has not given up both friends and family to take you far, far away from the capital where her sins would have haunted you both. she is not haunted by the grave she dug in your backyard to bury the man who plagues you both, left behind without even a name to etch upon its tombstone.
she pretends she knew what all this would cost her.
(but she would have paid it twice and then thrice over for you. don’t you know?)
the winters get crueler; the fires in your hearth smaller; the meals on your plate lighter. the world gave you joy then ripped it away twice as viciously, as though to say this is what you get. this is where your hope has led you; this is the price to pay for trusting your heart.
still, mama presses it into your palms, into the cracks that have begun to form in your heart like a mirror image to hers. what little hope you have to spare and what little she is able to lie about, as though it could possibly fill that aching void. she clasps her palms over it to keep from spilling, a mantra repeated to her tired pulse: everything in the world will be all right.
but it does not leave you with hope—only the lies. so you laugh. you grin and bear it. you learn to play pretend. this is what you learn first at her knee, the best lesson she will ever be able to teach you: everything in the world is not all right.
“okay,” you say with a smile to match hers. “i’ll make your favorite stew for dinner.”
you don’t have even half the ingredients for it. you don’t think she knows. these days, she hasn’t been home nearly long enough to notice and is too tired to think about it when she is. mama only smiles again and gives you a pat on the head before turning for the door.
you stare for a long while even after it has shut behind her, trying to burn the expression into your memory.
when she returns the next morning, there is a cold bowl of stew in the kitchen and a folded letter on the counter, that same lie penned as farewell:
don’t worry, mama. everything in the world will be all right.
a name alone is not enough to become someone else. it always takes you a second—too short to be noteworthy on its lonesome but long enough to be noticeable as a habit. the head gardener should know by now that something is amiss, but he’s good at turning his head—and a blind eye—so you learn in turn not to question his kindness. if you’d been smarter, you would have just picked something closer to ████.
if you’d been smarter, you wouldn’t have taken this job at all.
but now you and jules are stuck with one another, until whatever bitter end this job will take you both to. when he looks into a mirror, you stare back. when he’s cut, you bleed too. when he picks up a knife, resolved to finish this at last with her death or yours, you force it back down.
he just saw you both run off to play together.
no, you were the last one to leave dinner. they’ll trace the knife to you.
if you try it here, they’ll know for sure it’s you.
it’s not right; it’s never right. that’s all it is. why doesn’t he try again tomorrow? yes, tomorrow everything will be just right.
jules sets the watering can down and brushes the dirt from his hands. then he turns and cups his palm around his mouth as he trots off. “coming!”
(you do not know what it will cost him. you do not know what it will cost you.)
there are few things in this world that are yours. a journal you’ve bled all across, the truth of yourself splayed across every page. a scar beneath your right eye that mocks you in the mirror, both a curse and a reminder of the price you once paid for trusting your heart.
a name. your name. the boy who hides beneath it. ████, jules, yves—whichever one you take, there is always someone who sees beneath it to find you. you curl up to make yourself small, pull your knees up to your chest and bare your teeth at anyone who comes close. you tell yourself it does not matter, that you never planned on coming back either, not until you had done all you set out to do.
you know what it will cost you. you are prepared to pay the price. it doesn’t matter; there is no cost too high. he is just another name to be rid off, just another boy to bury. you have already buried ████. he has already buried jules. it is nothing for yves to join them in their graves—they will climb out of theirs to help you dig his, too.
you swallow down the bile that rises in your throat. (you wrestle yves down into that empty grave, freshly dug.)
you smile sweetly at the count, drawing closer. (he fights you the whole way, of course. in the end, he is still you. and you have spent your whole life trying to claw your way out of the mud you had been born in.)
“no?” you murmur. (you twist the knife. unlike ████, you do not linger on what you are leaving behind. unlike jules, you do not hesitate. unlike all of them, you know. this time, you know what it will cost you.) “what name suits me, then?”
count rowe smiles too, leaning forward to cup your face tenderly in his hand. “you like the opera, do you not? it is where i found you. of course, you sing more beautifully than any songstress.”
“oh? shall we pick out a new name from one of them, then? last night’s lead was rather dashing...”
(and you will cut a path to the future you seek. you tell yourself it does not matter whose blood you must spill to make it so.)
as you sit in the silence of the monastery’s dungeons, blood long since dried upon your skin, you remind yourself: you knew what it would cost you.
in the muddy reflection that stares back at you from the cell’s bars, the boy looks unamused.
he is tired of paying the price for it.
you watch yuri rowe bury himself—and then you start again.
yuri leclerc will choose for himself, the price he is willing to pay for the future.
(you know what it will cost you. this time, the only blood he is willing to spill is yours.)
████ has mastered TRICKSTER.
