Ah, pretty Joshua. What a fool’s choice it has made, who might have been petted and dandled, immortal and bright and ever-ravenous for all that feeds us. Our dream is a starveling one, always empty and unsatisfied, but how it waxes glimmer-hot on such sustenance as you are! Your every little weeping, your every fit of passion, hastens the steps of our dancing, raises thick and green our trees. And if you became one of us? Ah, then the boil of your exploding heart would fuel us through a hundred of your years, and the children you brought us for perhaps a hundred more. For one of them in turn might grow to be a knight of ours, and transform himself into the substance of our world.
But no. You, our Prince’s favorite plaything, failed where you might have burst.
You failed us saying Kezzer, Kezzer, who was the first gift you gave to us, though you still thought, silly poppling, she was yours. Had you become one of us, oh how in the heat of changing your poor love would combust and go cold, ash flung upward from the fire!
And then, our Ksenia’s sobbings, her gnashings, once she understood? More sustenance, more lightness and grace for our waltzes, more radiance for our speaking stars! We would gather around the house, and admire her grieving through the walls. We would applaud and send a rain of delicate birds to die against the windowpanes wherever she watched for you. And you, dearling Joshua, you would applaud with us. You would suckle down her bitterness like so much milk, then take her in your arms, and care nothing how she broke.
But no. Prince perhaps spoiled you, overfond and overkind lord that he is. You grew stubborn, wicked, a horror of ingratitude champing at your lips. A little curl of your fingers, a drizzle of blood to seep out, at my request? Such a small thing, dearling. Such a trinket, no more than a necklace of ruby to wind upon the ground. And you would not oblige me!
Kezzer would hate me. Why, yes. Such a pleasure it would be to taste that hate that I can hardly bear the loss of it. When she has been so obdurate in her love, how that love would blaze in its destruction!
Well, then. It is slower, it is less savory, in this way that you have chosen, Joshua. It offers less delight. But still you will be consumed, with your Alexandra beside you, though you will never see her. We will bury you both in light that will not touch your eyes. And soon enough, your Ksenia too, once she accepts my gift and uses it to go pursuing you. Now I stroke the black felt with my fingers, I whisper incantations down into its darkness, just as I did before I sent it to Alexandra. Ksenia must take it from my hand, tame and eager, and she will do so. As foolish as her friend, who accepted the same gift from us. Ksenia is already on her way to me, thinking she tricks us, thinking she escapes us.
Even Ksenia’s thinking of it is naughty, naughty, no matter how untrue. We will tend her suffering with exquisite care, to punish her for such rebel thinkings as she has now, while chirping to her stairs.
Her scrap, her bit, her broken-offling, no wiser than its parent. It was there, watching you and Alexandra and the hat she popped onto you. It will mean to help Ksenia, oh, it will intend the sweetest it can! And so we will make it her undoing.
This way is slower. Your tears will flow as glaciers do. Our trees will sway in a breeze lethargic with your tedious grief, but sway they will. My mink will hang his tongue, ever so sleepy, yet now and then he will lick his lips. Slow and dull, but still enduring, for did we not promise you forever with your Ksenia? To you, dearling Joshua, your life will seem longer than death’s own rule.
And then, we still have the children for our playing. But they grow numb, and only rarely weep.