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Lukases don’t talk, but stories get around. Moralistic fables, cautionary tales for the young and old alike, real life stripped to their essentials and retold until they’re unrecognisable. Like the servant girl who found her soulmate in a Lukas boy. The boy scorned her for her poverty, and she was so overcome with despair that she dragged them both into the fog. She emerged later with a new name, unmarked, alone. Or the couple who, after a whirlwind romance and wedding, found their soulmarks shrinking every time they touched, until there wasn’t a spot of love on them. And the pregnant woman who ate nothing but sacrificed strangers for nine months, whose baby was born with skin unblemished and pure. The stories vary by region, retelling and family, but they all agree on one thing: Soulmarks are a blight on this world.
Peter is riddled with them.
It became clear, as the midwife wiped him down, that the stringy red clumps spidering across his body weren’t drying blood and mucus - that they were, in fact, his soulmarks. The midwife delayed his reveal, rightfully fearing the family’s reactions. The doctor, who was new, held him up and remarked what a fine, happy life he’d lead. The Lukases in the room looked him over, tutted, and gave up on this branch of the family. His mother laid back and made plans to work with what she had.
Later, the doctor drove into a cloud of fog and never made it out.
(Peter doesn’t remember any of this, obviously, but that’s how Nathaniel tells it.)
___
The others’ marks were normal enough. One or two blobs of abstract shape that meaning could be projected onto. They, unlike Peter, had vast plains of clear skin they could fill in themselves. Aaron spent most of his time chasing the scraps of sunlight available in Moorland, so had faint freckles over his face, arms and legs. Judith scraped her hands and knees climbing trees and, later, picking fights. Sarah had her own ways of marking herself that everyone agreed not to see.
The eldest - Peter doesn’t remember her name, just her place in the order - didn’t go in for all that, but she showed off the scribbled paragraph on her left arm enough to make her allegiances clear. She took a fit once and chopped the sleeves off all her shirts. They were replaced immediately, but still. Quite the show.
When she was fifteen, and Peter was ten, and the others were somewhere in between, she got lost in the woods around the house. He thought she got lost, anyway, out there in the mid-winter cold and her old vest top. Her room was silent. No one had whisper-shouting matches behind cracked doors. There was another empty seat at the dinner table for three days. The family didn’t mention it. The help worked. The other children whispered amongst themselves and stayed inside.
She stumbled through the back door on the third night, dragging the wind in with her, hugging her chest tight. Once the nurse ruled out pneumonia, hypothermia, malnourishment - the things you’d expect - she ran up to her room and didn’t come out.
Peter glanced in at her on the way to bed. Don’t ask him why. (Please don’t ask him why.) She stood at her mirror, examining her arm. Peter poked his head through the door to see around her, to the reflection.
The ink of her written mark was bleeding. The words smudged into each other and dripped down her arm, puddling at her wrist. She rubbed her thumb over the body of the mark, like it needed a polishing, and her hand came away stained, a thumbprint left behind.
She might have still been standing there later, when Peter was in bed. Thinking about that smudged paragraph, and his own sprawling marks. It’s not that people make fun of him for it - Lukases don’t talk - but he’s known since before he can remember that they’re stupid, disgusting worm-like squiggles, like he’s so pale his veins are on show. The shape twists and bends around him. Fluid.
Peter dared himself to check. Just in case. Whatever happened to his sister, he deserved it more than her. She doesn't even want to be a Lukas. She doesn’t need it like him. Peter squeezed his eyes shut, licked his thumb and rubbed at a dense red cluster over his knee.
If he opened his eyes and they weren’t gone, he’d give up. Peter would leave all this behind and find somewhere new for himself, somewhere dark and cold where he wouldn’t see himself and where no one would see him. He’d never make it in this family with his own skin betraying him.
Peter opened his eyes. Under his thumb - under his everything, marks go down to the bone - were his brands, stuck fast. Peter sat there without moving or blinking for too long. Then, he burrowed under his blankets and pillows until the world around him was a hot black mass crushing in from all sides, until he fell asleep sweaty and tangled and not crying - Peter didn’t cry as a child.
(He doesn’t remember, at least.)
___
The first time Peter met Simon Fairchild, when he was nine, he told him about a fishing trip he went on in Japan. Peter, in a rare moment of outspokenness, talked for ten minutes about how cool that was, how much he loved the sea, how he kept asking someone to bring him out but the nannies have to ask his parents and his parents are never available and he’s not allowed to talk to the maids and it’s so stupid, Mr Fairchild, because my uncle’s whole job is managing boats but he won’t even talk to me about it and I’ve wanted to go my whole life-
When Peter’s twelve, Simon takes him on a boat trip. It’s not exactly a birthday present, but close enough that it makes him feel disobedient. Still, Simon didn’t ask before grabbing him and dropping them both through the Vast, so if anyone asks - which they won’t - he could say Simon kidnapped him away to the Kent coast.
Simon says it’s Kent, at least. Peter can’t believe this scorching bright day is just a few miles from his overcast old home. Simon probably Vast-ed them to Portugal or Morocco or something like that, as a joke. Simon makes a lot of jokes with no discernable punchline, so it’s possible.
“My, it’s sweltering, isn’t it?” Simon leans over the ship’s side railing, into the breeze. The wind is mild, but it still whips up his thin white hair. Peter might feel strange about being on this dinky little boat with Simon, except that he can’t focus on anything but the way his whole body rocks with the waves under them.
Peter’s not sure what that word means, but it sounds right. “Sweltering,” he says, copying Simon’s tone.
Simon chuckles, maybe for his own reasons, maybe because Peter got the voice wrong. He points down to the rolling sea below. “I think I’ll take a dip, actually, I’m boiling in this sun. Do you want to join?”
It’s a good second before Peter understands what he means. When he does, he jumps back from the rail, shaking his head. Any time he’s imagined himself swimming, he’s fully clothed, alone.
“Suit yourself.” Simon pulls his shirt off.
Peter is twelve and seeing a shirtless man for the first time. He’s not sure why this is important, but it is very, very important. More important, maybe, are the thick black marks that run across Simon’s back and shoulders. Peter breathes, and the image loses focus, taking on meaning. He closes his eyes. The shaky, shuttery feeling zapping through him is unfamiliar. Not unpleasant, but anything that makes his heart pound this hard can’t be good. Peter buries it down where the rest of the stuff he doesn’t think about lives. When he opens his eyes, the world is simple shapes and colours again. He can see what Simon looks like, and not just the fact that he’s there.
His back is marked, yes, but unlike Peter’s mad scrawl there’s a proper picture to Simon’s. The more he looks, the more it settles into place. Along his shoulders and down his torso is the night sky, with spots of olive skin left blank for stars. Lower down are swirling clouds, light and wispy. If Peter took a step forward and brushed against it, he’d fall in. To the left of centre is a tiny dot, so small he almost can’t see, but Peter is somehow certain the speck is a person. Peter doesn’t look past his waist. Peter very carefully does not look past his waist.
The boat creaks. Simon glances back, eyebrow quirked, and Peter realises the noise came from him.
“Uh.” Peter grasps at the closest words to what he means. “I’ve never seen someone with so many.”
“You wouldn’t, outside a mirror, I suppose. Do you like them? They’re my own design.”
Peter blinks away from Simon’s sky to look at the real one. The blinding brightness of it is a welcome distraction. “Design?”
“Yes. I had to have others draw them on, of course, but they’re all Fairchild originals.”
Peter blinks. The words don’t resolve in his head the way they usually would if he gave them time. Simon turns to look at him properly, showing his similarly adorned chest - don’t look down don’t look down put it away - and cocks his head. “They’re tattoos, dear. We can’t all be born works of art.”
“Oh.”
The feeling in his chest, the uneven squeeze, sharp but not hurting - glittery, when he looked at the marks. Tattoos – is gone now.
But there must be some. Somewhere. “Which are the soulmarks?”
Simon twists to look over himself. He says, bright and cheerful, “I can’t remember!”
___
There’s a portrait in Moorland House. There’s a lot of portraits, but Peter only cares about this one. It’s hung in a well-lit hallway on the east side of the house, near the dining room. He doesn’t remember when he first saw it, only that he was so small he had to strain his neck back to see the picture. Peter wasn’t in the habit of looking at the walls, he had to focus on not stepping on the noisy floorboards or, worse, toes, but he did, at some point. To see him.
Everyone in Moorland looked the same. Dead eyes, bored movement, flat colours and dull edges. Not him. The man in the portrait was sharp. Harsh grey eyes, auburn hair that curled around his shoulders, angular eyebrows raised just so. Peter would come to peg him as late thirties, but he felt older. Something about the clothes, from a period Peter couldn’t name but felt domineering. Something about the hard line of his smile, lively and warm but mocking. Peter didn’t think people could look like that.
Peter looked at that portrait every chance he got. He’d stare at it every time he walked past, and made up reasons to go that way. Sometimes he snuck around at night to see it by candlelight. Eventually he realised that no one was watching him, and started going to the hall without worry. He’d spend hours looking up at the man. Studying.
He asked someone once, the nanny taking him to dinner that day, who the man was. She checked the nameplate - Peter was almost offended. If he could read, he would have memorised that name ten times over by now. The idea that other people didn’t spend days obsessing over this portrait had never occurred to him, and left a pit in his stomach.
“Jonah Magnus,” She said. “1825.”
___
At age fourteen, Peter takes a growth spurt. He stretches up but not out, uncomfortably long bones with no weight on them. It wrecks his sense of space, his unfamiliar limbs bang into door frames and furniture if he’s not careful. Eyes don’t pass over him as easily as they used to.
His marks change too. The shapeless blobs expand over this new room, and define themselves into thin outlines printed all over his neck, arms, legs, along his back and chest. Two pressed parallel into his shoulders, and one sneaking onto his face, brushing his lips and spread over his cheek. Peter doesn’t remember the day or the time, but he remember the rolling sick feeling in his gut when he realised they'd moulded themselves into hands.
___
After the basement-
the basement the basement the basement the basement THE BASEMENT-
After, Peter doesn’t think about the marks. They’re just colours and shapes. Forsaken - and it’s so nice that word, and all it represents - divorced them from meaning. They may as well be tattoos. Thanks to his new god, they’ll remain empty. Unfixable but harmless.
___
Peter wakes up sweaty, panting, the phantom taste of skin still on his tongue. He doesn’t dream like that often, not since-
But it’s enough to make him feel disgusting. A reminder that he still has a body, full of fog as it is. A weak, human body. Maybe in a few years he’ll be clean enough for Forsaken to put an end to it all. For now, he moves his clumsy hand under the sheets and thinks of the old reliables. It’s embarrassing, that he can’t get off on his touch alone, especially after everything, but needs must.
Grey eyes watching him, rougher hands than he’s ever felt holding him down, one bruising his throat. Ashamed, rocking, Peter lifts his own hand to his neck, resting over his least favourite mark. Not thinking - don’t think, put it away - just pressure. He chokes down the sound working up his throat.
Red hair, grey eyes. Hands.
___
Peter doesn’t think about what kind of person his soulmate would be. Not consciously. Not sober. But over the years, behind layers of carefully placed fog in the back of his mind, a set of expectations grows up.
A man, obviously. The barebones sex ed he got as a youth solidified his disgust for procreation, and sex with women in general. He’s not against getting his back blown out by the odd lonely dyke and a dildo, but that’s probably not the kind of relationship the family wants out of him.
If Peter were unlucky enough to meet his soulmate, he doubts he’d be able to escape them. The universe is sticky like that. So he’d have to be patient enough to let Peter have his life on the sea without hunting him down. The type to be near-satisfied with the scraps of time they share. Enough of a life to keep him busy while Peter’s away, but isolated enough that Peter could still feed on him in a pinch.
Not an avatar. Preferably, someone who doesn’t know about the Powers at all. Peter could drop hints now and then, tidbits to keep them on their toes, to feed the unease that’s so important in Forsaken unions. Peter can only imagine the loneliness a life built on unknowns and lies can give a person.
(Well. It’s not all imagination.)
They couldn’t be too nice. It would be nauseating to be bound to someone who wanted what’s best for Peter, who went out of their way for him. Who tried to take care of him. The universe likely knows this, and should act accordingly. (It also knows, the way Peter does, buried deeper than even the rest of these thoughts, that it’s less a distaste for niceness than an attraction to meanness.)
Peter doesn’t hold it against himself when he’s horny or drunk or dreaming enough to think about all this. None of it will ever amount to anything.
___
The Tundra’s crew don’t look at Peter long enough to stare pityingly at his marks. Peter couldn’t pick any one out of a crowd, but it’s clear who the outsiders are based on whose eyes trail him the odd time he’s out of his cabin. Peter doesn’t hold it against them, but it’s extra satisfying when they fall to the fog.
___
The first time Peter meets Mikaele Salesa, he thought he might die. Not just because he was waving a Leitner around with practised ease, or because laughed at every other word Nathaniel said, or even because of how bright and colourful he was in the gloom of Moorland. No, that’s all well and good, but what made Peter’s heart stop in his chest was – Well.
He was talking to Nathaniel, when Peter walked in. Waving his hands around to emphasise his points, forcing eye contact with him. He didn’t turn when the door opened.
Nathaniel grabbed the chance to get some attention off him. “Peter, my nephew.”
“Oh, wonderful, there’s more of you!”
Peter was about to introduce himself properly and set up an excuse for leaving soon (minor cold). He didn’t get the chance, because Mikaele, without looking away from Nathaniel, took Peter’s right hand and shook.
Peter didn’t do handshakes. Hands are filthy, it’s an unnecessary formality – (there is a thick red outline across his right hand, the shape of someone gripping it). He guarded that mark harder than the others, because it’s easy to make people find you off-putting and rude if you just don’t shake hands on meeting them.
And now…
Both Lukases froze. Mikaele looked over a second too late, smile too warm for both the place and situation before sticking when he saw Peter properly. He looked down at their still joined hands, back up to Peter’s face, and grimaced good-naturedly. “Ah,” he said, sheepish.
Peter yanked back. He expected- something, his hand is raw and exposed in a way he’s never felt before, and there should be a reason for it. Fulfillment, or his soul ripping apart. A change in the marks.
It’s the same as it was this morning. Just an outline. Just skin.
“Apologies. I sometimes forget how you… people are about these things.”
Peter fists his hand. Hiding the evidence that should be there.
Nathaniel, without the relief starting to creep into Peter’s chest, says, “There’s no harm done. Just don’t do it again.”
___
He apologises again, later on, when they’re smoking in a secluded corner behind the house.
“I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Peter finishes his cig off and steals Mikaele’s from his hand. “Like he said, no harm done. Doesn’t matter.”
“If it doesn’t matter, why are you still shaking?” It’s not accusatory, not confrontational. An observation. Simon-like.
Peter takes a long pull. Mikaele lets him have it, then plucks the cigarette out of his mouth and returns it to his own. Peter does not watch the way his cheeks move as he breathes in smoke, or his neck muscles expanding and contracting around it, or how it curls out from between his lips as they pull into a smirk. He doesn’t look at the smile grow from the corner of his eye as he cranes his neck back to watch the smoke fly up and disappear, he doesn’t turn to face Mikaele fully. He doesn’t match the grin.
He does not stay out there for hours, doesn’t keep Mikaele long after he should be gone, doesn’t laugh too hard at all the jokes he doesn’t understand just to see the self-satisfaction on Mikaele’s face. He doesn’t invite him back inside for a private game of cards.
(Well…)
___
At a young age, Peter committed to never letting anyone touch his marks. Even without Forsaken, the idea of his own body becoming a beacon to someone else’s love and that he could be forced to feel the same for someone else sickened him. After the- after he came into his powers, he had all the more reason.
But if he truly followed Forsaken, if it made him as whole as he believed it did, wouldn’t he trust it not to let that happen? That, no matter what, he’s safe with it?
___
Mikaele’s a big man. Taller than Peter, and wider. Probably stronger too. Peter’s never bothered testing it when they have sex.
“You’re such a pillow princess,” he says one night, in the middle of fucking Peter stupid.
“Is that a- ah! Is that a bad thing?”
“Eh. Pros and- mh- cons.” He drags Peter by the hair into a kiss. Peter’s not much use in it, too busy moaning through the hammering Mikaele’s giving him - “ah, aH- please!” - but he doesn’t seem to mind.
Mikaele continues kissing down Peter’s neck, sucking scalding bites into his skin, while Peter grabs whatever he can and tries not to scream as what feels like the last of his brain leaks out of his cock. Behind the noise and arousal, or maybe inextricable from it, Peter’s thinking about how well he’s done for himself, how Mikaele means nothing to him and he’s nothing to Mikaele and how perfect that is, how he doesn’t need some omnipotent universe’s blessing to feel good, how Mikaele’s hands don’t need any magic spark to feel incredible on his skin.
Mikaele rests one at Peter’s throat, more afterthought than deliberate, but the alignment of it, the way no part of Peter’s body is sacred, just skin on skin on skin, has Peter arching off the bed.
___
The Lightless Flame and the Lukases would make great allies, in theory. Their patrons can work well together, with the right circumstances, and although Peter’s not a fan of their unique approach, he admires the commitment. The reality of the situation, however, is two groups scrapping for the limited resource of fear. He tries to be amicable – they’re not worth the trouble – but he still has instincts.
“I heard about Agnes,” he says, walking into existence next to Jude Perry where she’s smoking against the back wall of a seaside pub. “Nasty business.”
To her credit, she doesn’t flinch. Just continues blowing smoke rings and tapping her fire-painted fingertips on the redbrick wall behind her. Peter thought it was cold for July, although he’s obviously biased, but she’s wearing her signature tank top with her arm’s flame marks showing. “She’ll be back.”
“Do you really believe that?”
Jude flicks her ash at him. “Don’t accuse me of doubt.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. Just… I’m glad there’s something holding you all together. I’d expect your little band to fall apart without your figurehead, but you’re still going strong.”
“She’ll be expecting us, when she returns.”
“You don’t ever worry about it, though? About your comrades jumping ship?”
Jude huffs smoke into his face. “Don’t pull your Lukas shit with me. I’ve seen things that would make you wet your little suit trousers.”
“I’m only commiserating, Perry. That’s the problem with a tangible god, I suppose. When she abandons you, there’s nothing else to believe in. So all you can do is wait.”
Jude take him by the lapels and shoves him into the wall. Peter yelps, involuntary, and she slams him into it harder. His wool coat singes under her hands.
“You’re an annoying, desperate little prick, you know that?”
The heat off her radiates through his clothes, scalding but not warm. The coat’s more to avoid attention than cold, and he’s only wearing a vest under it. It’s unbuttoned, the collar hanging open. If she moved an inch or two, she’d be melting his neck.
“You don’t know when to quit.” Just a bit of movement, just a sliver. Barely a thought.
Peter takes a deep breath, and feels the scorching hot air cool in his lungs. Plasters on a smile. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Jude grabs him by the throat.
For a second, Peter’s terrified-regretful-ecstatic-numb-terrified – the second passes. Peter is not on fire.
He squints one eye open. Jude looks at her hand, and his skin under it. She adjusts her grip and squeezes. It shuts his windpipe, the pressure is uncomfortable, but there’s no agony.
Jude drops him, shaking her head. “You’re a fucking enigma.”
Peter slumps against the wall, palming his neck. His smooth, cold, marked neck. “What was that?”
Jude picks her cigarette off the ground and takes a pull. “Desolation. The fear of losing what you love, and the pain of living without it. I thought, maybe…” She laughs, a cruel, choking sound. Broken glass in her throat. “Peter, no one’s scared of losing you.”
Forsaken fills him without needing a call. Half-delirious, drunk on the freezing uneasiness, he stays in the fog until hunger forces him out. It’s October by the time he's real again.
___
Jobs skewed hereditary in the family, so although Peter is the worst possible candidate for a business liaison, he’s also the only candidate, now that his father’s dead. Which means Peter has to take time off the Tundra to meet with the director of the Magnus Institute. Every six months. For the forseeable future.
James Wright is… nice. Smug, a bit plain, a bit pushy with no bite to back it up. His eyes slide over Peter without lingering on the usual spots. He indulges Peter’s need for empty small talk for the first five minutes before they move onto business. It’s not bad for an afternoon, but the thought of breaking up his self-crafted life for this doddering bureaucrat makes him… oh well. It’s this or disownment.
At the end of the meeting, Wright apologies for keeping Peter - something he hadn’t noticed, since he mentally left the building when Wright pulled the quarterly accounting forms out – says it was lovely to meet him, and he hopes this relationship will be mutually beneficial. He stands for a handshake.
Peter has overcome his irrational aversion to human contact through constant immersion in Forsaken – they can’t touch you if you’re always half-fog! - and casual sex. Still, it’s disconcerting to reach across the desk and take his hand, after all the nightmares he’s had about this. Surely the universe wouldn’t set him up with an accountant, though.
(Peter will think about this moment a lot, after it all. He’ll think about how he should never have gotten comfortable, how complacent he was, how it’s a miracle Forsaken didn’t spit him out then and there. Berating himself for being stupid will be more comfortable than the truth.)
In the moment, all Peter thinks is, ‘Ow!’
The electric sting zaps up from his hand, through and into him, and pings off each one of his marks, doubles back on itself and sets his whole body buzzing. The cacophony deafens him. It burns, not like fire, but like when you stare at the sun too long and it stains your eyes. There’s a rush in his ears as he is dragged by the arm fully out of Forsaken.
Peter flinches back. The feeling – not just touch, all his senses. He can taste his soulmarks fulfilling and it’s gag-worthy – recedes to a pulse, low but consuming. It keeps Peter rooted in the office, still and thrumming.
“Um.” They’re still shaking hands. “Uh.”
“Hm.” James is closer than he has any right to be – but doesn't he have a right? - peering down at Peter’s hand. He holds it up to his face. The mark is full, across the palm. No further than that, the finger alignment was wrong, but enough.
Peter’s not in love. Peter’s never been in love. Peter never will be in love. This, whatever it is, is a random act by an uncaring universe that knows nothing about him. He’s not in love.
“Peter.”
He’s not. He’s going to leave now, forever, he’ll salvage what’s left of him for the fog and disappear.
“Peter.”
Maybe he’ll bring Wright with him. That’d be a good end for them both, the kind Peter’s always dreamed of. It’s not like he doesn’t deserve it, after putting Peter in this position.
“Peter!”
He snaps back. James is still too close, staring up at Peter in a way he can only describe as ‘hungry.’ He’s angled towards Peter, sharp-edged. Wound up tight. “Peter,” he says, and his voice is stronger, somehow, despite being quiet. “Pay attention.”
“Fuck off.” Laugh through the hyperventilating, you’ll be out in a minute. If he’d just let go of your hand.
He does. He drops Peter’s hand and hold both of his own up, like he’s surrendering. Peter breaks away from his face to look at his hands. His smooth, unmarked hands.
“Oh.” Peter looks at the blank slates for too long. Soulmarks are a physical embodiment of someone’s love. Or, the love they’ll have, eventually. They’re not necessarily the first place your soulmate touches you, and they don’t have to match, but they are usually both. Peter’s covered in them, but James...
“Oh.” James smiles. He takes Peter’s hand back and slots their fingers together. Peter’s breath catches as another wave of warmth surges through him, but James doesn’t react. Just watches Peter pant and compose himself.
Now that is lonely.
Of all the ways Peter could have imagined meeting his soulmate, it never occurred to him that they would be mismatched. Proof that Peter still didn’t put his full trust in Forsaken, still thought himself capable of love.
“I have more,” says Peter, both because he’s working out ways to use this to Forsaken’s advantage and because the electric pressure building up is messing with his head.
James’ voice is as business casual as it was when they discussed backtaxes when he smirks and says, “Do you?”
___
It is, unfortunately, the best sex of Peter’s life.
___
Peter comes out of the bathroom and flops onto James’ bed, spent. Emptied out. The sheets are soft, fresh, and a brilliant distraction from the bile taste in his mouth. He squirms into them and groans.
James pokes his side – Peter twists away from it, he doesn’t get to know how ticklish Peter is this early – and holds out a glass of water. He looks tired, but amused. “Do you always purge after sex?”
It’s an old habit he thought he grew out of, for when things got overwhelming. Meeting his soulmate, and proceeding to get the living daylights fucked out of him by said soulmate, is overwhelming enough to justify a bit of induced vomiting. “Only the special ones.”
James laughs, which is good of him, since it’s a shit joke. He makes Peter take the glass and settles against the headboard. They’re both naked, but it feels inappropriate to look at James like this. He doesn’t look right without cufflinks. Peter focuses on a spot on his chest. A faded grey-purple swirl, starting in the middle and extending left. Like an old, untouched tattoo.
Peter stops himself from asking about it, at the same time as James says, “I met him years ago. You wouldn’t know him.”
There’s no sign of another person in James’ flat. In James’ life, from what Peter’s seen. Again, without being asked, James smiles nostalgically and says, “I got rid of him.”
Peter heard stories, growing up. About ill-fated soulmates, ripped apart by families or morals or their own actions. His favourite was the one from generations back, about the two lovers who were so committed to disobeying their marks that they killed each other to escape them. He always considered them personal heroes.
Of all the ways Peter imagined meeting his soulmate, this is maybe the best outcome he could get.
___
The only reaction from the family to Peter’s change is a raised eyebrow from Nathaniel, before they move on to more important business. There is no great shift. There is no bag packed for him. He doesn’t need to go into the details of how this will fuel Forsaken, actually. The fog soothes his wounds, as it always has, and he returns to the sea soon after.
The crew don’t look at him enough to notice.
Simon bursts out laughing and pats him on the back the next time they see each other, before tossing him into oblivion for a few infinite hours, as a kind of post-nuptial stag night.
___
James clicks the handcuffs into place. He leans back, surveying Peter’s body stretched to the four corners of his bed, satisfied. Peter’s been in this position enough times this week that it’s having a pavlovian effect on his headspace – struggling against it seems a bit useless, all of a sudden, when he could be letting James have his way with him. “Now that you’re settled, I think it’s time we had a chat.”
“What about?" The composed look on James' face is, he assumes, a mask to contrast whatever depraved bullshit he's about to put Peter's body through.
“Nothing serious.” He runs his hand over Peter’s thigh, too light. Too far away. “I’m just wondering why you’ve been so sad lately.”
Peter cranes his neck so James can his unimpressed confusion. “What?”
“You’ve been in a bad mood since you got here. Why?”
“Um.” He shifts his hips, hoping to distract James with the Very Obvious, Almost Painful sign of how good a mood he’s in. “I’m not?”
Instead of taking the bait, James leans over Peter, planting his hands either side of Peter’s head, legs bracketing his waist. Pinning him without touching. “Peter.”
“James.”
He lays a hand on Peter’s cheek, thumb brushing his lips – it’s like he’s pressing on an old bruise. Peter thought the electricity of the feeling would wear off, eventually, but it’s been a year of semi-frequent sex and his soulmarks feel as raw for James’ touch as the first time. Peter lets his eyes slip shut.
“What’s going on?”
“I-” Peter snatches the words back. “Oi!”
“Sweetheart?”
“You can’t use your beholding magic every time I do something you don’t like.”
“That is,” James moves his hand to Peter’s neck, “laughably hypocritical.”
He moved his hand to his neck, but not properly. He’s on the wrong side, the wrong placement, he’s barely touching where he needs to go. Peter doesn’t have the leverage to sort it out. “Tell me.”
“Eat my arse.”
“Later.” He shifts his hand to the left, closer to where it should be. Not close enough. “Peter, what’s wrong?”
Peter bites his lip to keep them shut. It is illegal, how hot his voice is like that. Composed, demanding, static around the edges. He tries to squeeze his legs shut- right. Cuffs.
He’s stuck.
“Peter.”
“I- mmmnn, fuck off-”
James grips his throat straight on.
“Ah- I!- I miss the sea-” Peter bucks. "Fuck off!”
James lets go. He straightens up, back to not touching. “You are always on your boat.”
After-effects of Beholding still in place, Peter says, “Not like I used to.”
Peter left Moorland when he was sixteen, and he’s hitting thirty now. He’s spent almost half his life on the sea, coming and going with the tide. And yet he’s here, every six months, in James’ office and flat and bed, life divided into neat chunks that will remain the same until he dies from lack of enrichment.
“Right.” James climbs off the bed and pats Peter’s knee. He walks too far away for Peter to see anything but his face. “Well, that shouldn’t be difficult to work out. I’ll look at the schedule tomorrow.”
“You’ll what?”
“It’s not like we can’t do most of what we do over the phone. It might make this more interesting, actually.”
“What?”
“Can you tie yourself up?”
“What?”
James sighs. “What are you not understanding?”
“You’re going to… change your schedule.” Peter squirms.
The Magnus Institute has run on the same timetable for decades. Maybe since its inception. Peter’s father went every six months, as did his mother. As did hers. James talks about it like a beloved pet, or a houseplants he’s kept alive long past it was due to shrivel up.
“Yes.”
“For me.”
James looks at him. Not in any particular way, not expressing concern or amusement or anything at all. Just looks.
(Peter doesn’t remember what happened after that. Something good, he assumes.)
___
Flekkefjord is lovely in November. Frozen wind, pavements crunchy with frost, and salt-thick ocean breeze that Peter sucks in gratefully. He sits on the edge of the dock, legs hanging over the crashing sea, arms crossed on the bottom rung of the railing. Peter leans his chin on his arms and lets the sound of the waves take him somewhere else, as he drinks the water from the air.
He stays in that half-Forsaken place until someone, from too near, shouts, “Lukas!”
Peter doesn’t have to look to know it’s Mikaele. The familiarity irks him, but he’s building a tolerance. “Salesa.”
“I haven’t seen you in months, how’s things?” He’s bubbly as ever, leaning his back against the railing next to Peter. Still too warm, still too comfortable around him. Sometimes Peter wonders if he’s this nonchalant around other avatars, or if he just finds Peter particularly non-threatening.
“Oh, I’m brilliant!” Peter turns so he can see the full handprint stain on his face.
Mikaele looks a beat too long, his smile not changing. “Fuck.”
“Yes.”
“Well then.”
“Hm.”
“Who is it?”
James mentions Mikaele sometimes, exasperated over how much he drains their funds and how much of a distraction he is to the Archivist. "You don’t know him.”
Mikaele grins like he knows Peter’s lying, like he thinks it’s fun. “That’s a shame. I’d like to see who managed to melt your frozen heart.”
On autopilot, scoffing, Peter says, “I’ll give you a first-hand demonstration on how cold my insides still are, if you want.”
The drawback of speaking in polite drivel most of the time is that you get used to not thinking before you speak. He wants to bite it back out of the air immediately, before it reaches Mikaele’s ears. He’s going to go still, to quirk his lips and say thank you, no, I don’t work with damaged goods. Peter is already tasting the sweet-bitter thrill of losing a friend, when Mikaele shrugs and says, "Sure, why not? My hotel’s near here."
___
If he avoids nosy people, and mirrors, and showers in the dark- If he wears gloves all the time and long pyjamas and keeps his eyes closed when he changes clothes- If he ignores himself, it’s like nothing has changed.
___
Something’s growing in Forsaken. Or, Forsaken is growing too big for itself. It’s restless, overzealous, taking more than it should. Peter has to double his sacrifices to keep himself opaque.
Lukases don’t talk, but an understanding grows between them on what’s happening, what they can do. Solutions and ideas get thrown out and knocked down, over and over for months, as they all grow thinner and paler and desperate.
Peter (can’t stop fucking proving yourself, can you, can’t let someone better handle it you stupid prick) puts a half-formed concept on the table, not thinking much of it. It won’t save anyone, but it would be useful. It doesn’t get struck off. It gets looked over, it gets discussed. Peter has to answer questions. He is not laughed out of the room. He is regarded carefully. He is made to sign waiver after contract after budget statement. He get approval, and three years.
He goes a bit mad.
___
Peter is in a haze of architecture, zoning permits and isolation. He’s never talked to so many people in a row, and yet he’s still buzzing with energy at the end of the day, still rearing to go. The conversations are buried in seven layers of deniability, his partners know nothing. He’s never delegated so much work and still been in complete control.
It’s his building. Peter’s ritual. His name on the forms, his hand being shaken, his idea being built into reality with brick and concrete and dread. His magnum opus, his raison d’etre. He doesn’t think about what would happen if he failed, because he won’t fail.
Peter doesn’t think about James. There’s no time for it, and he doesn’t drink anyway. Too many early mornings, and he wouldn’t want to forget any of this. He doesn’t sleep much either. The closest he gets to thinking of his soulmate is a half-lucid daydream in the back of his mind while he runs his hands over new blueprints, unreading and trance-like. He imagines the future, a place he’s been living for the past few months, and sees himself shrouded in fog, basking in his own accomplishment. He’s wearing his normal reserved clothes, but knows the way he knows where his arms are without looking, or whether he’ll fit through a door that’s too small, that under his coat and shirt and trousers is smooth, pure skin.
___
Peter is a man accustomed to moving through life without thinking, because he believes himself safe. He is the type that will never know easily he can be hurt.
Until he is.
___
After the Silence-
the light the break the Guardian-
Peter is barely conscious, drunk on defeat and self-pity, and thinking about everything that brought him here. Gertrude Robinson, of course. His own stupidity. Negligence, lack of foresight, lack of creativity. The fact that it wasn’t a very good idea to begin with. Mixed in with these, too often, is James. The space he took up in Peter’s head, in all the places he doesn’t look. The squeezing, burning feeling of him, raw nerves and dizziness, and how much Peter gave in to that feeling against his better judgement. His eyes.
(Peter didn’t think about James – unless he was drunk, which was often, or unconscious, which was more often. If he did, he’d have noticed all the ways he quietly infiltrated Peter’s life. He’d notice the quiet buzzing under his skin whenever the man looked at him, the way he played Peter without him ever knowing there was a game. He’d see the face Elias wore whenever he lost a bet, and see how it mirrored his put-on annoyance when Peter played the brat in bed, before he turned the tables.)
He didn’t warn Peter. All these marks, and he still didn’t care enough for that. That lessens and greatens the sting at the same time, not cancelling out. It’s the kind of thing he used to dream about. Peter did his job right. Half-right. He still botched the landing.
___
Peter doesn’t have to tell the family that he won’t continue being their Magnus Institute errand boy. He doesn’t pay attention to who they send in his place, just goes back to the Tundra, where he hopes to stay for life.
___
Peter, much later, has discovered that dangling off the Tundra’s railing is the best way to guzzle vodka by the bottle. He gathers Forsaken around him like a blanket and doesn’t let his thoughts stray from its empty, cold unease.
So he’s in the perfect position to see the latest pick up. They’re in Australia somewhere – Peter told Tadeas to get them as far away from England as possible, and didn’t ask questions – but the woman’s wearing a Cuban flag pin on her coat, and her exitement to leave the country seems to outweigh the Tundra’s creepiness. Both sides of her head shaved, her hair in thick cornrows, a notch in her left eyebrow. She’s pretty, the kind that doesn’t get compliments, and she reeks of something. Not loneliness, not exactly, but something that could be converted. It’ll have to be.
Peter notes her because she’s new, because she’ll be gone soon, and goes back to focusing on nothing.
There’s a shriek, a string of startled gasps, then – and Peter has to turn to make sure he’s not hallucinating, because it’s a sound he hasn’t heard in years, and never on the Tundra – laughter.
The woman is holding a crewmember by the arm, horribly familiar with her. The other - a senior member, likely, judging by the white hair and overlined face - holds her right back, all traces of Forsaken banished for a moment from her space. Bright and unfiltered and blasphemous, here on the deck of his home. Peter wonders how they could possibly know each other, until they shift and he sees their profiles. Across their cheekbones and between their eyebrows run thin white strands. Both of them. They’re a perfect match.
Peter could sink this whole ship. He could call Forsaken to sink her down to the bottom of the ocean, and he should, because she’s tainted now. Standing on her deck is a beacon to everything she is not, everything she was built to avoid. Someone fucked up – and it has to be Peter, because that’s his thing these days – and now his own sanctuary is ruined.
The other crewmen have joined in, half-hearted at first but turning into earnest cheers and congratulations. They’ve seen this woman turn a blind eye to murder, and she’s seen them do the same, the Tundra’s atmosphere is curated to breed resentment – and yet here they are, patting her on the shoulder, joking with the new one.
Tadeas is at his side before he thinks to call. “You’ll have to sort this quickly.”
“I will.” Peter’s voice stays cold and amused, the way it always is, even while his heart clenches at the two women leaning their foreheads together and whispering. Making a private moment in the middle of a crowd. It’s something out of a movie. “I will.”
___
It’s a touch choice.
Peter should, by all rights, sacrifice the newer one – pseudonym: ‘Yamilet de la Cruz’. She came onto their ship, disrupted the order, and spent most of her workday bunking off with her new soulmate. She kept inside jokes with the other crew. Peter once saw her showing them photos of her cat.
But the other one – pseudonym: ‘Sandra O’Hara’ – follows her around. She laughs too hard at her cheesy jokes, she shares her dinners with her, she nods her head and agrees that the cat is beautiful. She’s been here for years, she’s seen what they do, and she’s sat uncaring and cold on their lifeboats as much as Peter has, letting someone die.
It’s a touch choice, but it gets made.
___
A month into the Pacific, Yamilet is woken from her bed and brought to the lifeboats, asking frantic questions that go unanswered. She looks for Sandra’s boat so they can huddle for warmth out there, but she’s escorted onto the nearest instead. None of the people she’s grown close with look at her.
She keeps scanning for Sandra, but the fog thickens as they float out, and soon she can’t see past her own boat’s edge. If she didn’t have the rocking of the waves under them, she could believe they were sailing on the fog itself.
There are no lights, no sounds. No one but her miniature boat and its crew, who range from numb to quiet weeping, no one paying attention to anyone else. No one but her.
She leans over the boat’s rim, looking for the others. She can’t help leaning too far, past her waist, until a blurred shape becomes clear, coming closer. It resolves into another lifeboat, as quiet as her own. At the front is the captain. She hasn’t seen him much, but based on the others’ stories and whatever’s happening now, she doesn’t like him. He’s looking into the fog, moving his head side to side, not focusing on anything.
He catches on her. Maybe because she’s about to fall into the water, maybe because she’s glaring at him with as much heat as she can muster. She doesn’t look away. His face doesn’t change. The buzzing in her ears that she’s felt since she joined the ship builds to a proper layer of static fuzzing through her head.
Yamilet’s always been good with vibes. She can read people, sometimes places, in a way she doesn’t understand but that’s saved her a few times. Not from the Tundra, but the allure of getting home made up for the intense need to turn and run. It did at the time, at least. As she stares at the captain, and he stares back at her, she gets a sick, sharp feeling in her mind. Like a worm is eating its way out from the core of her brain and clawing into her frontal lobe. Some kind of thought, some information she forgot but needs to make itself known.
Sandra is gone.
She doesn’t know how she knows, or why she knows, but that one thought pushed through the wall of static and made itself so clear she can almost see it.
Sandra is gone.
‘Where?’ she wants to ask. Then, ‘What?’
But it’s already receding. The captain looks away, and the static fades. She’s left with the knowledge and nothing else.
___
Sandra should have known better.
___
James Wright is dead.
___
Peter fucking hates the Magnus Institute. The labyrinthine hallways, the jumpy employees, the art deco wall decorations above the uncomfortably modern furniture. The clawing, biting Knowing of the place, at once familiar and alien. He has to drench himself in fog to get through the door.
Wright’s replacement didn’t care for the old schedule – the one designed for Peter, to placate him, the one that made him blush if he thought too hard about it – and dragged him back to land mid-voyage. So Peter can do a job someone else could easily take over, that he’s not even good at. Because this prick can’t stick to old agreements.
Elias Bouchard is overly familiar in a way that scrapes his skin. He’s unbothered by Peter being a half hour late, and doesn’t comment on his obvious hangover. Just looks at him with an amused little smile. He laughs when Peter avoids his eyes.
The meeting is fine. Probably. Peter has no real reference for this stuff. Most of his past ones ended with a cock in his mouth. (Most started that way too.) They discuss numbers. Sign papers. Bouchard asks stock questions about the family and Peter gives him stock answers. He drifts in and out of Forsaken, Elias’ voice is as good a conductor as any. It’s nice to know that Peter is still essentially superfluous to this whole thing.
At the end, Bouchard offers a handshake.
Peter swallows a mix of deja vu and nausea. He’s not going to be one of those lovesick widows who guards their marks like they’re holy. It’s just skin. Defiled, useless skin. If Bouchard wants to touch it, whatever.
Peter takes Bouchard’ hand.
___
Jonah Magnus. Jonah fucking Magnus.
___
It’s unnerving, how easy it is to fall back into the old rhythm. Peter goes back to not thinking about James- about Elias, Elias goes back to whatever he does when Peter’s not there. It’s nice, not needing his family’s money for a place to stay on land. Nice to have guaranteed sex. Nice to share an eyeroll now and then when Nathaniel’s droning on.
Don’t worry about it. (Don’t ever worry about it.) You know better this time.
___
Peter never liked Italy. Too hot, too friendly, too flavourful. Everything and everyone is so oversaturated they hurt to look at. But Simon never asks permission before he whisks him away for ice cream, so today Peter is sat at a dinky glass table by a seaside gelato stand, trying to make Simon’s voice blend into the waves behind them. He is unsuccessful.
“I don’t see what your issue is, really.”
“Nothing, nothing.” Peter licks as small a dollop as he can off his spoon. Food turns his stomach, these days. “I just think it’s hypocritical of him to call us incestuous while he’s soulmates with his sister.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“Does the Vast make you stupid as well as apathetic?” Simon flicks a rolled up receipt at him. “The man can’t judge my family when he’s the one destined to shag his sister, that’s all!”
Simon’s eyebrows raise into two perfect crescents on his forehead. His smile curls. “Peter,” he says, an upbeat kind of concern, “What on earth are you talking about?”
“What? It’s the truth.”
“Do you… Peter… do you know what soulmates are?”
It’s a stupid enough question to make Peter laugh.
“I’m serious, Peter. Explain your understanding of them for me.”
“Come on, what is this?”
“Humour me.”
“It’s, you know.” Peter picks at the rim of his ice cream tub. He’s never actually had a conversation about this. Insinuations, yes, implicit understanding, but never any… talk. It’s an odd thing to realise. “It’s when your fate makes you fall in love with someone. And the marks show how much they love you.”
For the first time in their friendship, Simon is perfectly still.
Then he’s on the floor. Simon’s laughter rings out like a hundred bells, sweet and mocking, interspersed with gasps, chokes and ‘Mother of God!’-s.
“What?”
“Peter-” Simon breaks into another fit of giggles. “Peter, you don’t know anything, do you?”
Peter pushes his ice cream away. “I’m going.”
“Hold on, hold on. Good lord.” Simon climbs back onto his chair, crouching like a gargoyle. “Where to begin?”
“Begin what?”
“Well, someone has to teach you. If your mother won't, I suppose it falls to me.”
___
Soulmarks are not about love. I need to drill that into your head here, at the start. This is the crux of it: Soulmarks are not about love.
They could be described as connection, if we want to be poetic. Most people do with this sort of thing. You’re not the type, so I’ll have to go deeper than that explanation. It’s not that it’s wrong. Just unimaginative.
I think of them more like impact. A soulmate is a person who will have a huge effect on your life – someone who will help define it. They will be so very important that the universe itself will let you know in advance. Not necessarily good impact, you understand. It doesn’t even have to be emotional. Just impact. Enough to change you, fundamentally. Enough to leave a mark.
You might be the type to think of soulmarks as warnings, then.
___
The night of Peter’s Becoming would become one of his fondest memories. He’ll look back with pride, with satisfaction, with every positive adjective in the book. It will be one of his most treasured possessions.
In the moment, though, in the panicked euphoria, Peter’s running on fumes. The pounding of his feet and pulse in his ears distract him from the events of the night, the incoherent, amorphous events that are too sharp to hold or look at. He runs home because it’s the only place he knows. No one asks what happened, when he gets there, no one asks if he’s okay.
They silently lead him down.
Down to the-
___
Forsaken gave him an extra mercy, on top of everything else. The memories of his first sacrifice are glossy still images, almost third person. Cleaned up, beautiful, when Peter looks back at them. Irrelevant details removed.
The rain, the man, the umbrella. All true facts. (Not all the true facts.)
Until a conversation on an Italian beach sets him thinking in a way he can’t shove down. About his own marks, about James’, Elias’. Jonah’s. The rain, the man, the umbrella. The shake of Peter’s breathing, the full-body quakes, his eyes swimming and blurred. Choking his guts up on the side of the road as his body rejected the cold transformation taking him over the only way it knew how.
The man himself. The concerned tilt of his head, or his face lit up in recognition. The red-pink lines spidering across his face, neck, hands, outlines that in the watery orange streetlights could have been hands.
___
As much as Peter loves boats – and he does, he does, he does – they weren’t the main draw for his career. That was the sea. From a time before he can remember, he dreamed of giving himself to her. After-
The basement.
After the basement, where he gave himself to Forsaken, the sea got what was left of him. One day, when his god has taken all it can from him, the sea will hold the scraps.
He’s on the deck, drinking, thinking about Elias. The Tundra is anchored, the ocean is calm. Every few seconds, the boat floats level, and there’s a part of Peter convinced he’s on land again. Then the waves pull, and she returns to her swaying. The full moon sways with it, in the clear sky up there. Or, it does from where Peter’s looking. The bite of the cold air keeps him awake, enough to keep drinking.
Peter loves the sea, but on a night like this, he understands the sky. That trip with Simon, his first experience with open water, was also his first time seeing it unobscured by clouds and fog. It’s been printed on his eyelids ever since. The whole black canvas of it, stretched infinite above him, covered in stars. Deep, dazzling, bigger than anything Peter could ever imagine. Peter loves the sea, but he could fall in love with the sky.
There’s enough spray in the air to make him damp. The wind is half salt.
Without thinking, Peter drops the bottle and stumbles to his feet. He’s entranced enough with the swell of the waves that he can stand without getting knocked down, despite how plastered he is. The bottle rolls away, and there’s a sharp clink somewhere behind him that’s quickly swallowed by the crash of waves. Peter takes his clothes off, hands clumsy, legs weak, and piles them on the deck. She’s glittery from the moonlight, the sea is. Crushed diamonds.
The ladder is treacherous in the dark. Slick. The whiskey – and vodka, and rum, and something red and bitter that Peter found sandwiched between two containers – none of it’s helping. Peter almost cracks his head twice. He doesn’t think about why he’s getting naked in the middle of the night, why he’s climbing down into the rolling darkness. He’s occupied by the chill and taste in the air, the stinging cold of the metal rungs, his shaky breathing.
The freezing cold seawater splashing against Peter’s bare foot is the sweetest thing he’s ever felt. He doesn’t swim as much as he’d like – why do it now when he’ll be here forever, one day, and there’s so much to do in the meantime – so this is delicious. He hangs off the ladder, feeling just the water’s surface lap against his sole. Peter skips the last rung and jumps.
The ocean consumes him. Liquid ice, dark as a void, he tastes danger through his nose. She’s a living, breathing thing, and she’ll drag him to ruin if he lets her. Not because she’s malicious, or even conscious. That’s just how she is. He can’t hold it against her, no more than he can hold it against the wind for blowing. Peter’s the one that jumped. She just – what’s the phrase? – goes with the flow.
Peter could go with the flow. He could let her pull him down and away, somewhere no one will ever find him. She’s awfully convincing, caressing him as he floats back to the surface, tugging at his legs. One day.
Tonight, Peter treads water and holds his head up. Everything is eery and peaceful, except Peter, disrupting the scene with his breathing and swimming and borrowed warmth. He’s not guilty, just upset in a way he can’t quantify.
Jesus. ‘Quantify.’ He needs to stop drinking.
Peter floats onto his back. Without the marks, he’d be pale enough to blend into the moonlight reflections on the water.
Simon did convince him to get in for a swim, that first trip. Under a cliff edge, while Simon went off somewhere he couldn’t see Peter. It shocked his system in a way he still hasn’t recovered from. Cold that was physical, rough, not just the absence of warmth. He stayed in hours too long, with no sun cream, and came out stinging and red all over. Simon fussed over him with a tub of aloe vera, but Peter didn’t bother with it. Just sat in his shaded cabin, looking at the sensitive red streaks.
Peter loves the Tundra. But if he could stay here forever, in the sway of the waves, he would. He doesn’t think about staying near the ship, about the danger, how easy it would really be. Peter makes the only noise in his head the rush of the waves, the only image the full moon above him. It dwarfs even the stars, staring down at him. Unflinching and uncaring.
There’s no sun, but maybe if he stayed in long enough the salt would scrape away his skin again, might paint him that red-pink all over. Make him salty and stinging and pure, in its own way, a nice even coat. It wouldn’t matter, even if he could change his skin. Marks go down to the bone.
___
Peter always wanted to be forgotten. His life’s dream was to be washed away like footprints on a beach. And he will be, he knows that now. And it is a comfort. He just thought he’d be the one making the footprints, or even the tide coming in. He didn’t think he’d be the sand.
___
Lukases don’t talk, but they have stories. Ruined and forbidden romances, betrayals, griefs you can’t name. They shift with the times.
A girl who spent her whole life waiting for her soulmate to save her, who had to learn that the only person she could rely on was herself. A couple so desperate to love each other the way they were taught that they drove each other away. The woman who only wanted her baby to be ready for the life she destined it for, who gave her body and soul so it wouldn’t need her protection.
A man who could have been a perfect conduit of Forsaken, living proof that their god and their family works, if he hadn’t been cursed from birth. That’s a contentious one. He might have been forced into it by unstoppable forces despite his piety. His marks might have been signs of a secret weakness in him. Maybe he was just a man being played with. Each household learns a different version, every child has a different image in their mind. One lesson they all agree on is that heavily marked children are better off outside the family, where they can’t taint the more fortunate.