Ivan Kosin

"I don't get it." he moaned, a pitiful voice dragging out of a parched throat. "What am I supposed to understand?"
As ever, there was no answer but that incessant striking of the drum and Tom Gaspar's voice droning from the shadows of the room.

He was part of a ceremony; this much had been explained to Malcolm in bits and pieces throughout the first night.
We are cleansing you, they said. So that you might be reborn.
You are a Manor man now, they told him. You are a man of higher ways.
You are one of us now, he heard. This is your home.
Perfect yourself, they told him. Make yourself worthy.

~:~

George had stayed with Ivan every night, and had promised he would until Malcolm came back. This had been Ivan's only indication that Malcolm would come back.

The men had all gone missing, one by one, since that night, and yet things continued in a perturbingly unperturbed way. All the carriers behaved exactly as if nothing were wrong - in fact, everyone appeared to be on the best behavior they could possibly muster. Meals were made, shared, and cleaned up; laundry was washed; gardens were tended; exercise was undertaken. No questions were asked, either of Ivan or George. No arguments arose, and no duties were shirked. Miller was nowhere to be seen.

This bizarre non-recognition both irritated and intimated Ivan; he felt pressured to behave in keeping with the rest, and therefore did not raise any of the million questions he had in his mind. He also behaved well - he did not ignore or avoid the others, although they lingered close to him in a way that made it apparent that he was being watched.

During the day, he did his chores and went to the greenhouse and then on long walks with George. He asked no questions, made no fuss over this or that, and did as he was told. At night, he slept in Malcolm's gray t-shirt and cried after George fell asleep. What was this place? Ivan didn't understand it. In his former life, his former position, he would have been privy to any and all information pertinent to the well-being of carriers in the Union - and yet he'd never heard of this place. The Manor? Even if it was some sort of group home, there had to be paperwork on that, hadn't there? Had these people really flown so low below the radar as to go undetected? They weren't hermits; they were prominent men who held jobs and had accounts…

Ivan was struck with another, sudden, strange fear. Malcolm's job - what about that? What would happen to it? Ivan thought it was a stupid job anyway, but Malcolm seemed attached to it, and Ivan supposed that he, then, by extension, should feel attached. To what else was he attached? Nothing. To whom? To Malcolm. And without him? No one. A jolt of fear raced through Ivan, then simmered. He had only Malcolm, and no one else.
Ivan shivered.
Who would he belong to if Malcolm never returned?

~:~

There were symbols on the floor, he realized, hazily. They had given him something; that was the haze. Or was it? Was it just fatigue? How long had he been here? There were symbols on the floor - a flower, a rose; and an animal - a wolf? There was a curving sheaf of some sort, and an arrow, broken, and another obscure drawn thing that his position made difficult to see or determine.

The men were all circled around him, wearing their dark paint and naked, all. They held out their hands to him; Malcolm wanted to reach for one and bring him down, break his skull on the floor and flee. Instead, he did nothing. He was in pain; agony - he was regretting.

~:~

That night, when they went to bed, George tried to kiss Ivan. Startled, Ivan jerked away, out of reach, and glared at him.
"What are you doing?" he asked, quickly and without really wanting to hear the answer.
George raised one eyebrow.
"Calming you down," he soothed, stroking his friend's shoulder. "Bringing you back." He drew closer. "This has been hard on you."
Ivan shrugged off the touch more harshly than he meant to.
"I'm fine. And I said I don't want that - leave me alone."
Ivan said this with an excess of demonstrative ferocity.
George released him, and watched from across the room as his friend went about the nightly business of dressing and going to bed. When they were in together, with George sleeping closest to the door so that Ivan felt secure, the blonde put an arm around the younger carrier and tucked in close for the night.
"Fine." he said, patiently, "Then just let me hold you."

~:~

There was a shrine before him, the only bright thing in the room. It reflected the candlelight. He squinted at it; it was the Pièta. An animal lay at her feet - another wolf.

The two Toms knelt beside him - all of the men knelt in this room - and were silent.
"Do you understand?" one asked him, eventually, and for a brief moment, Malcolm thought he did. Then it was gone, and the lie was too much to concoct.
"No." he told me, and his voice croaked. "I don't understand yet."
They took him from this room to the other, with the symbols on the floor.

~:~

Ivan woke up every day angry at everybody. Malcolm was still gone. Occasionally, Ivan would be in the midst of an activity - mopping, or weed pulling, or canning, and he would feel a strike of dread in his chest; he would seize, and gasp for air, and in that moment, he felt greater fear than he ever had in his life. In those moments, he feared Malcolm was dead and he was alone.

George had sensed something of this fear and had promised Ivan twice now that he would always be welcome at the Manor, no matter the circumstances - whether Malcolm came back or didn't. This was the first time they had spoken openly of that particular possibility, and Ivan's stomach had given up immediately and he had vomited all over the brick of the back stairs.

~:~

They gave him something to make him sleep and he had fevered dreams of escape, of agony, of a final swift death, and of Ivan.

On the last night, he dreamed of fishes - six, circling the body of his beloved who lay sprawled across the grass in a meadow, delicate flowers crushed under his weight. He was in pain - had he fallen? Malcolm couldn't be sure - he tried to venture closer, but the meadow was water and he needed a boat. Could he swim? He tried to swim, but there was nothing to buoy him - there was only the great bottomless depth of white-black water and Ivan laying there out in the middle of it. He called out to him, and his beloved turned; Malcolm's belly contracted in revulsion - Ivan had the face of the wolf.

He woke with a start.

~:~

Ivan kept losing his grip a little more, every time they spoke of Malcolm. His stomach felt ill all the time now; his head ached in a dull, tired way. His skin was dry and his hair kept missing the wash somehow. He stacked cups in the kitchen, then took them down again, crying because he couldn't remember their names. He lost himself for an hour in a corner of the sink, furious because scrubbing wouldn't make it clean so that the faucet wouldn't drip. George had to stop him from anxiously burying the vegetables - all of whom he suspected of being wrongly collected - back in the dirt.

~:~

They were growing impatient with him. Malcolm could sense this, but he had no answers for it. When he woke again, his sense of time was lost. How long had he been asleep? There were no windows, no clocks - nothing to mark the passage of time but the return of awareness of his bladder. They fed him irregularly. They had washed him twice, with buckets - he was sure he needed more.

They asked him questions about his beloved. Who was that? Malcolm frowned. They must mean Ivan. Ivan is his beloved. Ivan is his prayerful stone, his sacred law, his held divinity.

Malcolm thinks that last thought, then understands.

~:~

Miller returned early in the day, and although there had been some anxious glances thrown around, Ivan's thoughts had been so preoccupied that he had barely taken notice.

When he did realize, he wondered at the paranoia of them all. They were afraid he would fight Miller again, but fight him over what? Everything he'd been angry about was gone now. Nothing existed beyond the confines of his own confused mind. There was no dignity in this kind of pain - only the bleak, gray nothingness of long-suffered fear. So he neither avoided nor sought out Miller; it didn't even occur to him to do so. He only thought of the next step, then the next, then the one after it. There was nothing else.

Ivan was peeling vegetables for the dinner salad when Miller cornered him in the kitchen and kissed him. Ivan pulled away, startled, and anticipated the feeling of rage that simmered always inside of him; none came. There was only an emptiness, and a fear, and a sorrow that could not be grasped or understood. Miller looked deeply into his eyes, blue to blue.
"I'm sorry." he whispered, and pulled his face closer so that their noses pressed together. Somehow, Ivan became aware that he was crying. "I'm sorry, Ivan."

Across the room, George, who had crept in - being never too far from Ivan - stiffened and looked on in fright.

Miller stroked his slim fingers through Ivan's dirty hair.
"But I only had to make you one of us."
Without understanding, Ivan felt relief and knew that Malcolm was alive.

~:~