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sigh that rippled through the man's body at simple animal contact.
"I want to go home, brother," Green murmured, "But I want to take you with me,
okay?
And Funky Man lurched against Green's shoulder, sobbing in earnest now. "Oh
please, my brother, please& don't leave me in the cold anymore&
"No," Green said, being careful not to let his plaited hair brush against
Funky Man's lice-ridden head. "But how about a bath first, right?
"Right& right& all is right& " Funky Man chanted, and Green was grateful that it
was three-thirty in the morning with no prying eyes to see as he grabbed his
duffel with one hand and hauled Funky with the other, back into the hotel and
up the two floors to his room, which was, after all, paid up for another four
days.
It took two tubs of hot, hot water, and half of the generous amount of
home-made shampoo in Green's duffel. Midway through, he summoned a couple of
sprites they seemed to rotate to travel with him, for which he was ever
grateful and had them 'fetch' scissors, a clean brush, clean comb, and box of
Rid-X from a local pharmacy. He spent the second batch of water cutting Funky
Man's hair, then treating the scalp for the lice which had, on the sidhe's
rich blood, grown bloated, fat, and even slower than these vermin usually
moved. Funky Man wept quietly through the ministrations, looking at his long,
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clean, pitifully thin limbs mournfully, petting his severed dreadlocks with
doleful fingers, then dutifully allowing Green to wrap them in a plastic bag,
along with his rank clothes for disposal.
"I was beautiful," he wept. "I was sidhe, and I was so pretty. So, so pretty.
"You are still pretty, brother," Green said kindly, rubbing a now clean,
gold-violet back soothingly with a bath sponge. "You are still pretty but we
need to fatten you up and make you strong, and you will feel well again.
Funky Man nodded, happily it seemed, and rested his head on his arm as Green
finished with one last wash of all cracks, crevices, and hidden parts. There
were scars on the sidhe's body, when the sidhe never scarred scars from
scrapes, from cuts, scars around his anus, where, heaven knows, he had
probably been violated on the streets. Adrian had possessed those scars too,
Green thought, and in spite of a hundred and fifty years of healing, and
Cory's magnificent healing effort in the garden, one magic filled summer
night, they had never left his marble white skin.
"Good touch, Lord of Leaves, good touch, Lord of Shadows& " Funky sang, and
Green made an effort to pull himself back to the present, making sure to put
just a little bit of power in his touch, a little bit of healing, not enough
to startle. But that didn't stop him from remembering Adrian.
Adrian had been beautiful and broken too, Green mused, but in spite of the
similarities of the situation, and the actions, of bathing and healing a
filthy, damaged victim, the similarities ended there. Where Funky Man had been
despondent, Adrian had been full of rage. Green had let Adrian take out the
rage on his own, quick healing body, and then taught him what real love could
be. He wasn't sure if Funky Man were strong enough even for that kind of
healing, not now, not yet. But even more important, Green thought sadly as he
bundled Funky Man into a towel, rubbing the thin limbs still straight, still
with the possibility for strength until the violet-gold skin pinkened and
glowed with health and a remembered vitality even more important than the
weakness, or the skin color or even the species, was the most vital fact of
all.
Green had loved Adrian dearly, even from that first glower of those furious
sky-spangled eyes. Just as Adrian had loved Cory, with one touch on her palm,
and she had loved them both, in spite of all her efforts to the contrary,
Green had loved Adrian as his beloved from the very start.
Funky Man was a brother, and they may even share their flesh together, but
Green wasn't sure, here in this lonely, quiet hotel room in the middle of the
night, if he had room for one more heartbreak of a beloved in his sore and
battered soul.
After Funky Man was dry, Green sent the sprites for food they returned,
exhausted and only at half their usual glow, with what appeared to be Grace's
leftover vegetable lasagna, and Green almost wept with gratitude. He cupped
his hands and bade the seven sprites to gather there, and then he bent his
head, close enough to see the tiny details of their other-than-human faces.
Legend said that the sprites were made when the Goddess and the other took the
forms of birds and bats and flying bugs, and often their piquant faces took on
those very characteristics. Softly, with gratitude and love, Green breathed a
little power onto his tiny gathered brethren, and they glowed brightly again,
as they collapsed on each other in an instant, satisfyingly spelled sleep.
"Good job, my little ones," he whispered, and placed them carefully in the top
of his duffle bag.
When he and Funky had finished off the lasagna Funky ate voraciously, but had
room in his stomach for very little in order to be full Green wrapped Funky
Man tightly in a brown and green quilt that Grace had made him just for travel
to help him remember home. Together they lay, Funky Man's thin, shivering body
balled up into a tight wad of self-defense. Green gathered him into his arms,
soothing and singing, until Funky Man's shivering subsided, and he began his
own humming in his throat. As miserable as Green was to be alone and away from
home, he had to smile. Good brother could still sing.
The darkness of the hotel weighed on them both for a moment, and then the
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Funky Man spoke, his voice still moving up and down to the tune Green had
started.
"Green man has a beloved, beautiful is she? Tell me 'bout beloved, Green man,
wont you please tell me?
Green's throat caught. Ah, Goddess, to talk about Cory. He'd been locked in
business meetings with humans since he'd left the sylphs although he was
familiar with the people who dealt with franchise holders, he'd scrupulously
kept his distance from them. He'd never mentioned his personal life, he never
shared lunches with them as far as most of them thought, he still lived in
England and was as gay as an Easter Parade. And sometimes, he'd thought wryly,
according to their standards, so he was.
"She's not beautiful to humans," Green said roughly. "But she smiles, and the
world grows brighter. She has a mouth like a sewer rat unless she's using it
on you, and then it's like an angel, or unless she's speaking from her heart,
and then it's like the thunder of a thousand waterfalls. She's human, but in
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