“I had a God-fearing family, you see.” His mouth twisted in a half smile. “I found that I could walk on air—walk on air, Ben, it was a miracle. I thought it was a gift from God. I danced through the air to show my parents. My father beat me till the stick broke and then he flung me out of the house. Physically. He took me by the arm and leg and marched me down the path, and threw me outside the gate, in the dust, and spat at me, and said I was no son of his. Changeling, he said. Devil spawn. My mother stood in the doorway and watched.
“So I went away, and I…survived for a while, stole, slept in hedges, all that, and finally the justiciary caught up with me. They were very kind. They assured me none of it was my fault, and everything would be wonderful now, and gave me to a couple of practitioners out in Cambridgeshire for training. Well.” He laced his fingers together behind his head. “We very quickly established that I was too stupid to ever learn to read or write, and that I couldn’t teach them to windwalk. After that, I was of very specific use to them, cleaning windows and picking fruit, as well as all the other tasks they wouldn’t pay a servant for. There was no training, no education, nothing, and there was nobody for me to appeal to. I said, this isn’t what you were supposed to do, and they told me to write and complain to the justiciary. Offered to spell the address for me. They laughed about that.”
Ben swallowed. It was not easy with the anger closing his throat. He should have known this, somehow. Jonah shouldn’t have hidden it. He shouldn’t have carried it alone.
“Eventually, when I was sixteen, they gave me a paper to sign. I made my mark, and they told me I owed them for their generosity in food and board, and the accumulated interest, and I’d just agreed to work for them for life to pay for it. They said I’d signed the indentures of a slave.”
“There is no possibility that’s legal,” Ben said. “None.”
“Bollocks to legal. I got up that night and stole everything that wasn’t nailed down. Then I took all the papers I could find, piled them in the middle of the room and set it on fire.”
“You…”
“Where did I go after that, Birmingham? Northampton? I forget. I found a wonderful old lady in Manchester, Auntie Dot. She knew what she had in me, but she gave me fair exchange. She taught me how to pick locks and open windows, how to fence goods, and she never tried to cage me. She said she’d treat me well if I’d treat her well, and we both believed it. She was using me, but we liked each other and it was good. But she was old, and she drank, and she died. Her son took over and told me the agreement had changed. I’d do the jobs he chose from now on. He’d let me do as I wished to indulge his old ma, he said, but it was time to clip my wings. So I ran again. You have to keep running.”
An eddy of wind whipped through his piebald hair, ruffling it.
“I tried to find other people after that, but it never worked. They wanted too much. It wasn’t enough that I could get in through a high window: the plan would be that everyone else got out safe and I took the risks. You can fly, you can do it. It’s not fair,” he mimicked. “I had something that everyone else wanted, so nobody ever cared what I wanted. So I decided that I would not be of use to anyone but myself. I tried to keep to that.
“And then I met you. And I stopped running. And I fell.”
Ben shut his eyes.
“I should have told you,” Jonah said. “You’d have made me stop stealing, and I would have, for you. None of this would have happened. We’d be at home, and you’d have your job, and you’d love me.” His voice shook, just a little. “But I didn’t tell you, because everyone in my whole life has either hated and feared me for being what I am, or wanted to take it for themselves. I didn’t want to see you turn away, or watch you think about how you could use me—”
“Use you?” Ben said furiously. “You could have trusted me.”
“But I couldn’t. That’s the point. I was too afraid to trust you, and you paid for it. Nobody’s ever cared more about me than about what I can do, and I couldn’t bear to find out if you were different. I was afraid to look.” He pulled his legs to his chest, mimicking Ben’s position, hunched into himself. “Afraid to look, and afraid to have you see me. Contemptible, isn’t it? Lying all that time because I knew what you’d think of me.”
“You could have stopped stealing by yourself.”
“Yes. Except, it never occurred to me that I could. I wish it had. I wish I’d thought, but I never think.” There was a glistening trail down Jonah’s cheek. He swiped at it angrily. “I wish you still loved me.”
“Oh, Jesus, Jonah.”
“I’m tired of being the villain in the story. I never meant to be, and I don’t want to do it any more. I just—God, all I want to do is to be with you. I want to walk the wind with you and come home to our bed. I want you to read to me and play rugby. I want to make you proud of me. I don’t need anything else. I don’t see why that’s so much to ask, that I could just be with you. If you loved me. And I want you to love me again. I want that, Ben.”