This will be the third year in the row they’ve done this, but the first they don’t have to sneak away to do it. Not that there’s anything wrong with where they’re going, exactly, except that they probably aren’t technically old enough to do this on their own, but the bigger issue is Gerard doesn’t usually ask his mother for the money ahead of time. She hasn’t noticed yet—or said anything if she has—but it’s still a risk. Honestly, that adds to the thrill of it.
But he doesn’t have to this year. He’s developed a knack for spotting rare books that aren’t…the sort his mother trades in…and discovered, to his mild surprise, that he’s also quite good at selling them at a profit, and he’s saved up enough that he doesn’t have to rob the till to make up the difference. So this year, rather than stay out all night the night before and meet Melanie and Martin once they’ve found a suitable excuse to slip out and join him, Gerard boldly knocks on the door of the house they’ve all been living in for the last year, and when Uncle Roger answers with a benevolent smile, he asks if Martin and Melanie can come with him for the day.
“Yes, I think you’re old enough to be responsible,” Uncle Roger says, which Gerard tries very hard not to resent, and lets him in to go get the other two.
An hour later they’re ensconced in a compartment on a train, breathless with laughter and also a little bit of exertion, considering they cut it pretty close and only just made it onto the 8:58 before it pulled out of the station, but that’s part of the fun of it. Gerard leans back in his seat and takes a moment to study Martin and Melanie—he and his mother have been out of the country for the last three months, so he hasn’t seen them. Melanie’s hair has grown out long enough that it brushes her shoulders, but she’s cut her bangs into a rather flattering asymmetrical sweep across her brow, and she’s had her ears pierced. Martin has new glasses, the lenses thicker than last year’s, and he’s switched from plastic to steel rims, but the eyes behind them sparkle with delight. They’ve obviously been spending a lot of time outside in the sun—Melanie’s neck and shoulders are reddish-pink and Martin’s face is so freckled you almost can’t see the skin underneath—and they look…good.
At the same time, there’s something a little off about both of them, and Gerard can’t figure out exactly what it is.
“Are you going to tell us where we’re going this year?” Martin asks. “Or is it a surprise?”
“Liverpool,” Gerard says. Martin’s face lights up. “So we’ve got a bit under three hours to catch up. I want to hear what you two have been up to while I’ve been gone.”
Melanie immediately launches into a description of exams and end-of-term parties, of imaginary games played in Regent’s Park and hidden corners of London explored. Martin nods along and occasionally puts in a word here or there, but doesn’t contribute until Melanie prompts him and he shyly admits he’s started learning to row.
“I thought it might…you know. Help,” he says, gesturing at his body. “But it’s not.”
“You’re not built like that.” Gerard’s education has been more skewed towards the esoteric and the paranormal than the practical, so it’s not like he has scientific knowledge to back him up, but the fact of the matter is that Martin has always been, not to put too fine a point on it, fat. He doesn’t overeat—he doesn’t starve himself, either, Melanie and Gerard won’t let him—and he’s walked more of the city than the other two put together. He’s also strong for his age, frequently hauling boxes of books around the shop for Gerard’s mother and lifting both Melanie and Gerard up to high places with hardly a thought, and now the rowing. But he’s still fat, so as far as Gerard is concerned, that’s how he’s made and that’s how he’s going to stay. Either that or he’s going to be twelve feet tall by the time he’s sixteen. He also knows it doesn’t usually bother Martin unduly that he is fat. “Has your mum been giving you crap about it again?”
“Maybe a little,” Martin admits. “I do enjoy rowing, though. I’m good at it. And it’s…nice to be good at something that isn’t…that.”
The temperature in their compartment drops a couple of degrees. Gerard’s stomach lurches as he realizes that Martin and Melanie have talked about everything but the shop. It’s not open quite the same number of hours when Gerard and his mother are out of town, but Aunt Lily is still there twice a week, and it being summer Martin at least has almost surely been helping, but Melanie didn’t mention it and neither has Martin.
“Have you…found any more of…his books?” Gerard can’t bring himself to say Jurgen Leitner’s name. His hatred and resentment of the man, and his books, have been growing steadily over the past few years. “Or books of power?”
“N-no,” Martin says, but there’s something uncertain in his voice. Gerard looks at him until he caves and admits, “Not books.”
Gerard’s stomach does another somersault. “What happened?”
Martin takes a deep breath. “I—it was a person. At the end of term concert, someone bumped into me and my glasses fell off, and I—when I looked up, I-I swear I didn’t mean to, but I saw—h-he was, he’d been touched. And then he came to the shop a couple weeks later, a-and he recognized me.” He rubs his cheek in a seemingly unconscious gesture. “He had a book to sell and, and he asked if getting rid of it would make everything stop, and he got so mad when I said I didn’t know…”
“It—it probably won’t, but—that’s not your fault,” Gerard stammers, staring at Martin. “Wait, what do you mean you could see he’d been touched?”
Martin blinks at Gerard. “I mean he had the same…like the books. It’s, the books aren’t magic, Gerry, they’re just…full of the Fourteen. That’s what I see when I look at them. I thought you knew that.”
“I guess it just never occurred to me.” Gerard looks at Melanie. “Did you know that?”
Melanie frowns at him. “Yes? I’ve known that since we had our eye exams at school last year and he told me to mind my manners because the bloke doing them had something to do with the Flesh.”
Gerard turns back to Martin. “How could you tell that?”
“They’re all different colors,” Martin says. What of his skin isn’t freckled turns pink. “S-sorry, I—I forget sometimes you two can’t see them too. The, the touches or—I don’t know what to call them.”
Melanie folds her arms over her chest. “I’ve tried. I can’t make myself see them. You think there’s like a carrot or something that makes it easier to see that the Fears have been somewhere?”
“That’s a myth. The whole thing about carrots making your eyesight better, I mean.”
Gerard nods, but doesn’t tell Melanie the truth—that she doesn’t want Martin’s ability. It’s been bestowed upon him by the Ceaseless Watcher, and gifts from the Fourteen always come with strings attached, really nasty ones usually. At this point, the best he can do is just protect his brother and sister as much as he can and hope nothing ever pulls on those strings.
“Are they at least nice colors?” Melanie asks, slumping down in her seat so she can prop her feet on the cushions opposite. “I mean, as much as anything about the Fears can be nice.”
“They’re not…awful,” Martin says slowly. “Well, the Corruption is kind of a nasty shade, but…”
All right, Gerard has to admit he’s curious. He checks to make sure the compartment door is shut. “How’d you figure out what colors were what?”
“Aunt Mary always tells Mum what Fear the books belong to, so I figured it out that way.”
“Which one’s your favorite?” Melanie asks. Gerard shoots her a filthy look and she sticks her tongue out at him. “Look, if he has to see bright glowing colors of things that hate us, at least there must be one that doesn’t suck to look at.”
“The Lonely isn’t too bad,” Martin says softly. “It’s grey, and it’s…softer, I guess? It doesn’t glow as bright.”
“There’s a shocker,” Gerard mutters. He pats down the pockets of his oversized leather trench coat—he’ll grow into it eventually, he hopes—and comes up with a stub of a pencil and a crumpled bit of paper. It’s better than nothing, so he smooths it out on his knee. “Right, let’s get these written down.”
He prints the names of all fourteen Fears in a neat list, then writes GREY next to LONELY before winking at Martin. “I know you know them all already, but just in case one of us starts seeing them too. And I kind of want to start integrating them into my art, if that’s okay.”
Martin brightens a bit. “That’d be cool.”
“What was the first one you figured out?”
“The Web, only ‘cause Aunt Mary said that book I found at Bergen’s that first time was the Web, and I remembered it. It’s purple…a royal purple, like the ribbons Mum had tied around her bouquet at the wedding.” Martin waits for Gerard to write that down. “Then the End—that one’s easy because of the Book. It’s white.”
“Is the Dark black?” Melanie asks. “Or is that too obvious?”
“Um, it’s kind of a very dark blue. It’s almost black, but not quite. Not like the Vast, that’s a brighter blue like the sky.” Martin screws up his face like he’s trying to remember. “The Slaughter’s red, really bright red, like blood. The Desolation is orange like fire, and the Hunt is, it’s somewhere in between? It’s hard to explain. I get it mixed up with the Slaughter sometimes, but I can usually tell after a while.”
“Slow down, slow down, I can’t write that fast.” Gerard presses the paper to the door in hopes of getting better leverage with the paper. After a moment he says, “Okay, got it so far. What have we got left?”
“The Stranger, the Buried, the Flesh, the Corruption, the Spiral, and the Eye,” Melanie says promptly. “You said the Corruption was nasty?”
Martin makes a face. “Yeah. It’s this…it’s like snot, o-or pus. Kind of a yellowish-green. It, it looks sick. The Flesh is pink, but it’s pink like salmon mousse is pink. Not like, like roses or whatever.”
“Makes sense,” Gerard mutters. He pauses as the train rattles over a point, then finishes the word PINK. “The Buried?”
“Brown—well, kind of a brownish-tan really. The Spiral is yellow. A really bright yellow, most times. It hurts my eyes.” Martin looks down at his hands. “The Stranger, um, I’m not sure about that one, actually. I-I don’t think Aunt Mary has any books from the Stranger? I’ve kind of been looking, but…”
Gerard scowls, but not at Martin. “Don’t invite that sort of thing into your life, Martin. If you ever see something that’s the Stranger, you’ll know because it’s not the same color as the others.” He draws a question mark next to STRANGER. “That just leaves…the Ceaseless Watcher.”
“Green,” Martin says promptly. “The same color as the stones in those earrings of your mum’s, and my mum’s wedding ring.”
Gerard finishes writing and smooths out the list against his knee. “Okay. I think I’ve got them all.” He contemplates the list. “Honestly, except for the Corruption, this doesn’t look too bad. If you didn’t know what they were, it’d be almost…pretty.”
“Like those recordings they show people in Soylent Green just before they recycle them into food bars,” Melanie mutters. “Too bad I can’t just stop wearing all those colors as a fuck-you to the Fourteen.”
Martin laughs. It sounds a little forced to Gerard. “They wouldn’t be so bad, maybe, if they didn’t glow. But I’m not kidding, they hurt my eyes sometimes. Especially when…I dunno if some books are stronger than others, but sometimes it’s bright.” He touches his glasses lightly. “I wonder if that’s why I keep needing thicker glasses. Because looking at the light from the Fears hurts my regular eyes.”
“I don’t think it works that way.” Gerard isn’t actually sure about that, but he speaks with authority anyway. “Like you said, you’re not looking with, well, your regular eyes. They’re probably going…dormant or something when you’re Looking. If you need thicker glasses, it’s just because your eyes are changing, but that happens with loads of people.”
Melanie cocks her head at Gerard. “So you’re saying he’s fine? That he’s not eventually going to, I dunno, get to the point where his mortal eyes don’t work anymore and the only way he can see is to navigate by the glow of the Fourteen and hope there’s nothing around that hasn’t been touched by them in some way for him to run into?”
She’s too smart for her own damn good, Gerard thinks, and the picture she paints is a bleak one that is, unfortunately, all too possible. He’s hoping it won’t get that far, though, since they know what’s going on and can take steps to mitigate the damage, so he fixes her with what he hopes is a withering glare. “Who ever heard of something like that?”
“Isn’t that the entire plot of Daredevil?” Melanie shoots back.
The conversation derails from there into a spirited debate on whether the Fears exist in the comic book universe and whether Matt Murdock belongs to the Beholding or the Corruption, and by the time the conductor announces they’re pulling into Lime Street Station, Martin and Melanie have gone back to being excited about their day trip. Gerard hasn’t forgotten about the talk about Martin’s eyes, though, and he vows to himself that he’s going to look into it, that he’s going to find out how much danger Martin is actually in from his ability and what it might mean for him, and for the rest of them.
Not today, though. Today he’s going to enjoy the day out and hope like hell they don’t run into anything more dangerous than a persistent seagull.
“Come on, birthday boy,” he says, looping his arm through Martin’s and nodding for Melanie to do the same on the other side. “Where do you want to start off?”