To Bring Him Home and Other Tales

Chapter 1: The Boys-4

When Sam went upstairs to the bedroom of Fletcher’s mother and stepfather, he didn’t go in. The emotions he sensed inside were the same as those in the kitchen, sadness and despair, but darker and heavier. He found the steps to the attic, and he turned away, in sudden pain.

Fletcher’s room was next. Sam went down the stairs and opened the door slowly and, with relief, stepped inside. Here, and not in the rest of the house, except perhaps the front and back porches, Fletcher lived. Bookshelves, old, battered, and filled with books. He recognized some of the authors that Fletcher had told him about, as he picked up one book, then another. Lloyd Alexander, The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron. Taran Wanderer. Atwood, Bradbury. Further on, yes, Le Guin, Lewis, McKinley. And Tolkien…The bed, as rumpled as his. A small collection of stuffed animals, some bears, a dragon, a moose, a lion.

On Fletcher’s desk, he found a picture of two people who had to be Fletcher’s mother and father. Fletcher looked like his father. Both were red-haired. The woman’s hair was a deeper, richer red, with what looked like gold highlights. Sam sat on the bed and picked up the picture and studied it. Then he lay back on the bed, holding it over his heart. He felt a sort of shivering in his bones, but it wasn’t a bad feeling. It was as if Fletcher’s spirit was snuggling down in his heart. He closed his eyes and breathed in Fletcher’s smell. It was like seeing through the window of a really fast car, or a fast train. He could see images blurring together, images from the dreams Fletcher had told him about.

* * * *

They had dinner on Sam’s back porch, take-out from Hong Kong House, vegetable spring rolls, vegetable fried rice, Sichuan-style cucumber salad. Then homework, including drafting and sharing their portrait interview personal essays, with each other, readings from utopia and feminist science fiction, and finally, Sam got up, closed his books, stacked them with notebooks and binders and then reached over to do the same for Fletcher.

“Hey, I’m not quite done.”

Sam pulled Fletcher close and kissed him. “Tonight, you are.”

He took Fletcher by the hand and up the stairs, down the hall, to Sam’s bedroom, kissing him as they went.

“Hey, I gotta go to the bathroom first,” Fletcher said. “Give me a minute, okay?”

“Sure,” Sam said, wishing Fletcher was more comfortable with himself, his body, with his desires. He will be, Sam thought, as he peeled off his shirt, and then pushed down his jeans. He turned off all the lights. Naked and glowing, he lay back on the bed, slowly touching himself, drawing circles and spirals on his chest, his stomach, stroking his erection.

Fletcher opened the bathroom door and stood there a moment, silhouetted in the bathroom light. “You’re so beautiful.

“So are you. I think red hair is sexy. Now, come here and show me what you read in that gay s*x book you were telling me about.”

Fletcher left his clothes on the floor, and climbed on the bed. He paused, clearly uncertain what to do next. Sam sat up and pulled Fletcher down, their naked bodies touching, Sam rosy and golden and glowing.

* * * *

Thursday, October 22

It was all Fletcher could do not to tell Dr. Crawford everything. Sam couldn’t leave the house. He was still glowing from last night—and showering together—and if anything, he was brighter. They didn’t need any lights in Sam’s bedroom. More the opposite: Fletcher had to be sure Sam was covered so the glowing wouldn’t keep him awake. Sam insisted Fletcher stay with him, so Fletcher went back for clothes and he brought with them a goodly number of his fantasy novels from 935 Carr Street. Fletcher had started going through them, hoping for answers. No luck. The closest he came was in The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 12, “Flight to the Ford.”

“It’s right here, Sam, listen to this part, when Glorfindel comes to help Frodo get away from the Black Riders, across the river to Rivendell—”

“Fletch, I told you I haven’t read it, remember? Who is Glorfindel?” They were sitting on the MacTorains’ back porch again. It was early evening and dinner this time was two subs from the Subway on Spring Garden Street. Fletcher was thinking they should learn how to cook something more than fried eggs and scrambled eggs and assembly-line sandwiches.

“That’s so unbelievable,” Fletcher said and set down the remains of his veggie sub. “But never mind that, listen: ‘To Frodo it appeared that a white light was shining through the form and raiment of the rider as if through a thin veil.’ Later, Gandalf tells Frodo that he had seen Glorfindel as ‘he is upon the other side: one of the mighty of the First-born.’ Glorfindel is an Elf. Sam, you have to be an Elf, or a fairy, something like that.”

Sam shook his head, and for a moment, he splashed light around him, rose, gold, white. “I was born here; I remember only here. These ears, this glowing under my skin—never before now, not even in dreams like yours. Those books of yours, Fletch, they’re fiction, remember? I don’t know anything about Elves, but I am sure we are both fairies.”

So, they waited. Sam stuck at home, Fletcher turning in Sam’s assignments and collecting the next. With a little careful experimentation, they found Sam could use a computer for an hour before it started to get wonky—which wasn’t as long as he used to be able to. Fletcher was sure from the look on her face that Dr. Crawford was more than a little suspicious. If nothing else, he was sure she had guessed they were now lovers and that she had been matchmaking when she paired the two of them in the first place. That worried and scared Fletcher on two levels. If Dr. Crawford had just looked at Fletcher and Sam and knew they were both gay and attracted to each other, wouldn’t everyone else be able to do the same? Fletcher wasn’t sure he was okay with everyone knowing. Even so, Fletcher desperately wanted to just walk down Tate Street holding Sam’s hand. He wanted everyone to look, to see, to know that this good-looking boy was his boyfriend, and he wanted to run as fast as he could the other way. He was still afraid that no matter what Sam said, a week just wasn’t enough time. Sam said he had no doubts—but that made Fletcher all the more uncertain this was real, if it was—forever? He could only think of forever as a whisper.

* * * *

Sam usually liked having the house on McGee Street all to himself. Once Fletcher left for class in the morning, straightening up the house, then getting his schoolwork done, being sure papers and assignments were done on time, books read, got Sam through to noon. He had an alarm clock beside the computer that he had to keep setting for an hour ahead, so he wouldn’t stay on for too long. As for the internet, forget it. Sam could not get that to work. After lunch, he started reading from the stack of books Fletcher had brought over from his house, and thank God, not all were fantasy, but most were. He read those first as they told him things he wanted to know about Fletcher, what he believed, what was in his heart. It was in the afternoons, Sam found to, his surprise, that he missed Fletcher.

“How can I miss someone I am seeing every day and sleeping with every night? We talk all the time,” Sam told himself. But the house was quiet with Fletcher gone. He missed Fletcher touching him—casually, in passing, just because he liked touching Sam—and Sam liked touching Fletcher in return.

But he did miss Fletcher and when Sam thought about him, there was a flush of rose-gold beneath his skin.

* * * *

Sunday evening, October 25

Sam and Fletcher were in the front porch swing, and Sam was laughing as Fletcher tried to convince Sam that Dr. Crawford had to know they were lovers—if he had seen the way she had looked at him when he turned in their essays, she had to know. “You didn’t see her, how she looked at me—ahh, here’s a taxi,” Fletcher said. “Must be your folks.”

Fletcher could see the family resemblance when Mr. and Mrs. MacTorain got out of the taxi. Sam clearly favored his dark-golden-haired, bronze-skinned mother. Mr. MacTorain was fair and tall, and his blond hair was so pale, it was almost white. His eyes were grey-blue, almost silver. Sam had his mother’s hair and her dark eyes, her color, and his father’s body.

Sam took Fletcher’s hand and they stood up together. “Mom, Dad, this is Fletcher, my boyfriend,” Sam said, sounding a little shy and uncertain.

“Red hair, and those eyes, of course, that explains it. You don’t know it, but you have the Sight,” Mr. MacTorain said after hugging his son and shaking Fletcher’s hand. He looked at his wife and she nodded and he turned back, clearing his throat. “We felt his glamour shatter when we were in the sanctuary. Getting out and to a major airport took longer than we thought. Without the glamour, Sam is in immediate danger, so this has to be done and done now.”

“Liban, we got away with this experiment when Sam was a little boy, but now he’s eighteen. What did you expect to happen? He needs to know,” Mrs. MacTorain snapped, clearly furious with her husband. Her eyes glowed. “I knew we should have sent him to the sanctuary. It was your brilliant idea to put off changing his glamour to adult strength. So much for this experiment.”

“We can argue that another time, Lavy, and you know fairy children tend to mature more slowly than humans. The experiment was—and is—worth trying, you know that. We live in this universe. Sam, I am so sorry, but not him. It’s just too dangerous for both of you. Fletcher, you have to go and you must never see my son again.”

“Dad, Mom, no, what are you doing? Leave Fletcher alone…”

A force, something like a great invisible hand, seized Fletcher, wrapping itself around him, muting his voice, even as he struggled to cry out that this was wrong, wrong, no, please, don’t, I—think—I love him. He could just hear, muffled, Sam’s continuing cries of protest, but he couldn’t turn, not even his head. The hand pushed Fletcher down the flagstones, onto McGee, out into Edgar Alley, dragging him over gravel. Fletcher wasn’t released until he was by the bamboo, a living green fence hiding 935 Carr Street. Paul had insisted they leave it there when they bought the house. The hand released Fletcher and he fell to the ground.

He didn’t know how he made it inside, into his room, closed the door behind him and sank into the room’s shadows on his bed. Fletcher had been so close, so very close, to what his heart and his body were telling him he wanted—the fairy tale, happily ever after. He stared at the ceiling, trying to tell himself it couldn’t be real, the time was too short, that he didn’t really know Sam, let alone this whole crazy magic glowing stuff and pointed ears. Reciting passages from Tolkien and Lewis and God knew how many other fantasy novels didn’t help. Tolkien and Lewis’s words weren’t spells. But this was real. Fletcher knew he was awake. A promise was being made, a future glimmered.

Sam’s parents had changed the story Fletcher thought he and Sam were making together.

* * * *