"Just as you haven't recovered from your own … what is your phrase for it? Heartbreak?"
"That's it," Alea said through gritted teeth.
"A most nonsensical phrase," Evanescent said. "Hearts don't break, after all, though they may stop working—and it's not your heart that does the feeling anyway, it's your brain!"
"Would you have us say 'brainbreak,' then?" Alea couldn't help smiling.
"I suppose 'heartbreak' is a good enough metaphor," Evanescent conceded. "Of course, mating is scarcely a guarantee it won't happen. I do find it amusing that a strapping young woman like yourself who can face sword-swinging warriors in battle is afraid of a man who has proved his loyalty."
"If I were foolish enough to tell him I loved him, he might still hurt me by saying he didn't love me," Alea said, her voice hard.
"Quite so—he'll face ten armed men in battle but is still afraid to look into his own heart," Evanescent admitted.
Alea frowned at her closely. "So. You've been eavesdropping again."
"Why not?" Evanescent asked. "Your kind are so amusing!"
Alea was afraid to ask but forced herself. "So you know he doesn't love me, then."
"He's afraid to let himself feel it," Evanescent explained. "Every time he has before, he's been hurt. Why should he think you'd be any different?"
"He's braver than that!"
"Something in him isn't." Evanescent nodded toward the side of the clearing.
Alea followed her gaze, frowning, and saw nothing but dry leaves and, behind them, dark trunks and live leaves— and dust motes dancing in a ray of sunlight. As she watched, though, the motes thickened, doubling in number, tripling, becoming a sort of sunlit fog, a mist that billowed up seven feet, then drew in on itself, taking human form.
Alea found herself staring at a stout little man in a bottle-green coat and battered top hat, with ruddy cheeks and a rum-blossom nose, who cried, "A rag, a bone!" then turned a very angry glare on Evanescent. "And just who do you think you are to call me awake out here in the middle of a forest?"
"Who do you think you are," the alien responded, "to go hiding in the depths of a man's mind?"
"That's where I was born, catface," the tubby little man answered. "That's where I live!"
"Magnus's brain?" Alea asked, staring.
"In his most secret depths." The man turned his glare on her. "Where you'd like to be yourself, wouldn't you, and evict me or make me cease to exist!"
"I… I bear you no ill will," Alea said, taken aback.
"No ill will, she says! When my home's becoming so crowded I can scarcely move, there's so much of you there already!"
"Is … is there really?" Alea asked, wide-eyed.
"Oh, there'd be more, if he could open his heart," the rag-and-bone man told her, "but he locked it away years ago, he did, in a box of golden, and can't open it!"
"Did he, now!" Alea's eyes narrowed. "With no help from you?"
The rag-and-bone man shrugged impatiently. "I'm just a figment of his imagination, a personification of his fears and desires. To say I did it to him is as much as to say he did it to himself."
"Are you sure that she-wolf Finister didn't call you into being?" Alea demanded.
"Oh, she did the most," the rag-and-bone man said, "but she wasn't the first and wasn't the last. He had a knack for falling in love with women who wanted to use him, he did."
"And … that's why he hasn't fallen in love with me!" Alea felt anger growing. "Because I don't want to use him!"
"No, it's because his heart is locked up, and he doesn't know how to unlock it," the rag-and-bone man said cheerfully. "Don't put on airs, young woman. Don't think you're rnore than you are."
"Meaning he isn't in love with me!" Alea said, seething.
The rag-and-bone man rolled his eyes over to Evanescent. "Bound and determined to believe the worst of herself, isn't she?"
"She's growing out of it," the alien said. "These humans seem to cling to their illusions, even when they're destructive."
"All right, then, if you know so much," Alea said, "how can I free his heart?"
"Ask the one who did the most to imprison it," the rag-and-bone man said. "Ask the she-wolf!"
"Never!"
" 'Never' can be a long time," Evanescent warned.
"I couldn't stand to ask anything of her! I'd rather die!"
"Well, then, you will," the rag-and-bone man said, "alone."
Alea rounded on him in a fury. "Who asked you?"
"You did," he answered. "Go ahead, don't listen to the answer. It's better for me if he lives alone all his life, anyway."
Alea stood with fists clenched, fuming but silent, searching for some scathing retort but finding nothing. It made her feel helpless, powerless, and her fury built in silence.
"I'd love to help you, if I could," Evanescent said, "but I haven't the faintest notion how to generate this emotion you call 'love.'"
Alea stared at her in disbelief. "Don't your kind fall in love?"
"No—we come into season and smell the other's interest," Evanescent said. "Once we know, we do something about it. It's enjoyable while it lasts, but it never distracts us for long."
"And of course, distractions are what you most need," Alea said with disgust.
"Of course." Evanescent gave her a toothy smile. "Most of us die of boredom, quite literally. You promise to give me a good long life, you and your male."
"He's not mine!"
"And you can't change that," the rag-and-bone man said.
Alea rounded on him. "You be still! You can disappear!"
"Can I really?" he asked, and turned away, turned soft around the edges, soft all the way through, his form blurring, then thinning as it turned back into dust motes that blew away. A last whisper of beery voice cried, "I can!"
"That didn't accomplish much, did it, dearie?" Evanescent asked. "But I suppose you'd learned all you needed from him, anyway."
"Not a thing!" Alea said.
"Of course you had," Evanescent said. "You learned that it's no lack in you that keeps that silly male from—'falling in love,' do you call it? The fault's in him, not in you."
"That's no help!"
"Oh, it's help you want, is it?" the alien asked. "Well, I'll be delighted to do what I can. Your species' courtship ritual is quite amusing—you make it so much more complicated than it needs to be, especially you and Magnus."
Something in the statement rang false. Alea eyed the alien narrowly. "Have I really fallen in love? Or have you just been manipulating my emotions for your own diversion?"
"How could you think such a thing!" But the alien's toothy smile was less than convincing. "Your emotions are real—though I must confess I find them a great source of diversion. No, if I were going to manipulate anyone's emotions, it would be his—but you just saw what I'm up against."
"A funny little man and a golden box?" Alea frowned. "Scarcely daunting adversaries."
"They wouldn't be, if they were real," Evanescent said, "but when they're buried in the mind, it's another matter entirely."
Alea heaved a sigh and sat down on a stump. "Does it really happen? I don't just mean people falling in love—I mean staying in love, even after they're married!"
"Well, I know of one couple that will probably manage to be in love until death does them part," Evanescent said, "though I suspect they're cheating by making death come sooner. She's only twenty-six and he's twenty-eight, but he's about to hang for the capital crime of feeding his people. She's more in love with him than ever, so I think they'll make it through life—his life, anyway."