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He's not sure where he heard the news. "Blackberries are finally back in season. Finally, it'll taste like Summer again! Have you tried any?" Something tickled the back of his brain, but he'd paid it no mind. He'd passed some in Doolin, but they'd been dried husks of rot clinging to old thorns, and he'd been a man on a mission with no time for life outside of mysteries.
But it's the heat of summer, and a trip to the (thankfully shaded) heart of Life's Cradle to track down an elusive beast while it slept by the lake led to him hiding in the undergrowth, sketching the full grace of outstretched limbs and wings, when something falls and splats! on the page. He looks up. Blackberries hang over his hiding spot, and a bird had caused one to come loose. The berry stains red, too bright for blood, but it adds a sharp contrast to the page of this peacefully slumbering beast.
Across the lake, the beast briefly raises its head to yawn. Dappled sunlight glints along ivory fangs; a reminder that nature is still red in tooth and claw even when it needs take rest.
Curious, he scrapes the rest of the berry off the page, juice staining his thumb. Look at the way this seemingly solid thing is actually multitudes barely held together, the way Keats looks like a single man and not a vessel for so many Folks. His tongue laps out past teeth sharp as the creature he's observing.
He tastes a Summer not his own.
"You haven't gone picking berries before?" Cecelia already has little purple-red stains on her summer dress, and she holds out hands still small and soft with youth. "Here, have some! You have to be careful not to get poked, but I'm really good at it."
It's rude to refuse a little girl. Herve cautiously takes a few, stains already deeper than the bruises so commonly left on his fragile white skin by medical equipment. Flavor explodes, heady and deep sweetness. Early-picked berries sting tart, sharp contrast to overripe kin that threaten to overwhelm, so full of life about to give way to rot.
(Herve is both underripe and overripe, barely grown yet one foot in the grave. But this little village has given him at least one more summer, and a rare friend to share it with.)
"Tasty, right? Mummy says we shouldn't eat too many on our own, but if we pick some, she'll make a pie! You want to help me?"
Herve nods and steps into the brambles.
...
Keats is not Herve. He should not remember this. It might not even be a memory at all.
Yet his mind insists yes, this was real, remember it? You were there, Keats. You were a young little boy picking berries with your best friend, and the thorns never bothered you because you'd long grown numb to needles. You two filled a bucket and brought it to her mother, back when everyone in the village was friendly. And maybe you remembered wrong, and they never stopped being friendly, and the two of you went picking berries every summer, finding life in that Village of the Dead.
Keats reaches up. Berries tumble down long fingers into the palm of his hand. Tasting them is like falling down a Netherworld portal, strange and fantastical to a skeptic's eye, except the realm is a past he never lived. Like the morbid curiosity that strung him along through those initial steps into the Henge, he holds the blackberries on his tongue and tumbles down, down , into a past that never got to be.
Next Summer, we brought Suzette with us. Remember how her face looked, covered in juices? The way she cried when she got a thorn in her thumb because she was healthier than you, Herve? Next was the Summer where you and Cecelia crawled through the brambles into a perfect little clearing, munching on berries and reading books. That's when you first got into poetry, fell in love with the name that's now yours.
No. He's always been Keats. He doesn't know where the name came from.
Remember the Summer when you two were older and you'd gotten a bike, so you and Cecelia rode out to the big city? That's when the two of you were first Ellen and Keats, fake names so no one called your always-overprotective parents. And one night was bad, you broke a man's nose on your knuckles while Ellen clutched the knife her mum had given her? She cried all the way back because she almost used it, and so you did the only thing you could think of. You pulled over on the side of the road at sunset and you offered a handful of berries. The two of you didn't care that they were likely sickened things from road smog, you just sat there in the grass and thorns, two dumb kids talking until the crying turned into laughing and your knuckles no longer stung.
You've always been Ellen's Guardian, you know.
Berry juice bleeds down his fingers. He watches as they reach his knuckles, painting real traces of a false past. If he shifts his memory just enough, the memory of swiping through Folks with Barghest's claws becomes decking a man in a pub. Human blood smells different from Folks, muted and more metallic. Imagine the grass under boots, like right now. Imagine if he could give advice to his best friend, if he'd learned at a younger age how humans looked after each other instead of only ever chasing them with endless questions. Imagine knobby young knees bumping together, holding hands up to the sky, "hard to believe you were ever sick, remember how close to dead when first we met?"
Remember? Don't you want to remember that you were a person too? Isn't it so much nicer to close your eyes and pretend, once again, that you fit in? That you have a real heart that beats with blood as red as these berries?
The beast by the lake stirs and stands, ivory teeth stained red. The other on the opposite shore opens a lazy eye and bares fangs in kind, but not out of malice. They share a look of kinship. They may look approachable, at peace, when they rest under a God's watchful eye. Look, but do not touch. Even if the surface looks familiar, there is something deeper that cannot be understood, cannot be sorted into the cookie-cutter life of mortal ken. Some things were made, not born, not raised by tender hands and brought into the world with loving ease. Some are born of violence and a need to protect something.
Some can delude themselves that they taste the same things when Summer rests on the tongue, and that thorns sting just the same. But they don't, dear heart, and they will not forget this. You must not forget this, no matter what you want.
The beasts bow their heads to each other and know they will not meet again under this season's sun. Keats grabs a handful of berries for the road, walking home and counting the false Summers that pass along his tongue.