Page 15 of Bridget & Gabe Are Not Okay

“And I’m not?”

Gwen pulled away so that she could narrow her eyes at him. Gabriel often wished she weren’t quite so shrewd.

“Maybe. But I think when it comes to certain things you’re turning the crank yourself, Gabe, so it’s different.” They were approaching the mews, with no particular destination in mind. “I’m just saying! You can stop cranking at anytime!”

A boy who looked no older than ten rounded the corner, dwarfed by the old king’s snowy gyrfalcon, Viviane, who was perched on his gloved arm. Frankly, it looked like the bird should have been carrying him. Someone must have beenexercising her. Only the king was allowed to hunt with the largest of the falcons, but Gabriel was very attached to his own, Edith, and besides… it hadn’t felt right to fly his father’s bird. It was too much like admitting that he wasn’t coming back to claim her.

They’d both stopped to watch in silence. He didn’t realize he was rubbing at the twisty knot of scar tissue that closed over at his elbow until Gwen said, “Hurting today?”

It wasn’t, particularly, or at least not more than usual. The pain was random and changeable—sometimes a lancing agony that extended beyond the remaining flesh of his limb, sometimes scattered bursts like nettle stings under the skin, often just a general ache. The strangest moments were the ones in which he could still feel his fingers. The loss was so closely intertwined with the loss of his father that he couldn’t think of one without a twinge from the other.

They had both been such an enormous shock, and sometimes it felt like his ears were still ringing from the impact.

“I’m just very tired,” he said, as they began to walk again. “Even when I actually sleep. I don’t think it’s the sort of tired that sleep can… fix.”

“Mmm,” Gwen hummed. “Yesterday I found one of his beard hairs on a cloak I hadn’t worn in forever, and I picked it up and cried over it. A beard hair. I was going to toss it away, and then suddenly it felt like if I did I was letting go of him somehow, so I had to keep it. Sort of disgusting, when you think about it.”

Gabriel took a deep breath through the pain in his ribs. “I had this note written down that I needed to talk to him about ports. I have no idea what itwasabout ports, he’s the one who said we should discuss it… but we just never got around to it. The note sat on my desk for months. And sometimes I think,Oh, I must talk to him about ports. Even if the second before, I was thinking about the fact that he’s gone, it’s as if this… this outstanding task overrides that fact. He’s deadandwe must discuss the ports.”

They walked in silence for a while, and Gabriel’s chest hurt, and his arm hurt, and he wondered if he might be dying before remembering that this was just how it felt to be alive most days.

Gwen took his arm again, with a hint of clumsy desperation. “Do you think it’s just going to be awful forever?”

She’d been asking him some variation of this for the past year.

“Still yes. Ask me again next year.”

She let out a little hiss of horror. “I don’t want to have to do this for another year.”

“No. But you know what’s funny? I also don’t really want to feel better. If I feel better, I’ve forgotten, and it’s unfathomable that I could forget. I want to feel terrible every day for the rest of my life, because it means I’m thinking about him just as much as he deserves.”

“That’s deranged. I know exactly what you mean.”

“I suppose you could say, ‘That’s not what he would have wanted,’” Gabriel said, giving her a nudge.

Gwen snorted tearfully, gripping on to Gabriel like he was the only thing keeping her afloat. “Well if he wanted to weigh in on these things, he shouldn’t have died, should he? Silly old bastard.”

Eight

And so the knights came to Camelot, those who had committed marvelous feats of chivalry and were passing brave, those who were keen and sharp of mind, and some who were not sure why they were there at all, and all were well met by the King in his hall with great joy and love.

—FROM AN EARLY DRAFT OFTHE QUESTS OF KING GABRIEL AND HIS ROUND TABLEBY SIR FLORIAN ARDEN

Gabriel was hovering at the edge of his father’s old council room, watching ten men roll an enormous slab of oak into its center as rain pattered at the windows and wind gusted heartily down the large, stone chimney.

“Lovely,” said Lady Oakley. “Oh, I think it’s perfect. What do you think, Your Majesty?”

Nobody ever just let you skulk silently in the shadows once you were king. Apparently it was bad for court morale and made it look like you were “up to something.”

“It’s very round,” Gabriel said, stepping forward to observe. “And… big.”

“I like it,” said Master Buchanan. “Puts one in mind of totality of self… timelessness… life as an infinite circle.”

“Oh, yes,” said Gabriel. “And… er… holes.”

“Mmm,” said Master Buchanan amiably. “So very true.”

“I suppose we could have justsaidwe had a round table”—Gabriel cringed slightly as he watched one of the workmen struggle under his load—“without actually needing one? Most people wouldn’t have known. We could have had it… etched.”