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really , not any more than Fionnbarr is the moon. But…” He paused, squinted then shrugged. “You are death. Endings… You really are, and I just don’t understand.”
    “Do you want to?”
    “Do I…” Myrddin paused, looked up and met Kas’ gaze. There was an intensity there far different from that which had held him still during their lovemaking. Intensity that promised something he was quite certain he should fear.
    Say no.
    The thought sprang into being fully formed, and he swallowed a thickness in his throat that came just as much from nowhere.
    Say no.
    “I don’t…” He licked his lips, shook his head and tried to smile, but it wouldn’t come. “No. No, I— That’s…not a good idea.” He turned away, tried to find something else—anything else—to talk about, to focus on. He regretted a thousand times even thinking that question, never mind actually asking it.
    Maybe I should go . But he was tired, and hungry. A smile did come to him then, and he reached out a hand and dug his fingers into the earth. There was a pulse of life there that was familiar, throbbing, sleeping under the promise of winter, as he should be. It was as green as the feeling of his own magic, and Myrddin tapped it easily, pulled at the threads of power until they began to unwind from the soil.
    Grasses, bushes, trees—the shadows of things became the things themselves, slowly, carefully, every fractal pattern of life exposed to its basest seed. What he wanted, he grew. Grapevines, tangled, heavy with black grapes, ripe apples on boughs as bright with leaves as with fruit. Pears, plums, golden quince and greengage weighted the branches of new trees that looked as if they’d been there fifty years.
    Low bushes showed gleaming boysenberries, raspberries taut with cerise juices, and blackberries gorged on sun peeked up through flat, soft leaves. Wild strawberries lay in profusion on curled vines, their tiny seeds glittering like a fall of silver dust.
    Well satisfied, Myrddin grinned at his work and chose a raspberry, then a grape, savored the juices as they burst together across his tongue. He plucked a quince from a low-hanging branch, bit it, then frowned and tossed it aside, took an apple instead. “Mmm…be’er. You wan’ some? Take wha’ you like.” He spoke over his shoulder at Kas, mouth full of apple, but Kas only stared at him and stayed very still.
    “You do not want me to touch. I will kill it.”
    “No—” But even as Myrddin began his denial, Kas reached out a hand, touched the bramble of blackberries. The fruit fell instantly, almost overripe, and settled into the green, though the green didn’t last.
    The plants were dying under Kas’ touch, the vines shrinking and the leaves crisp and shriveled on branches that went brown and curled in on themselves. Only the tree trunks seem not to care, sturdy, steadfast, perhaps not immune, but they didn’t show the passage of time as the green did. “Kas, you don’t have to kill everything you touch. You didn’t kill me .”
    “Yes, I did.”
    “ Kas—” He huffed, but it was obvious Kas wasn’t joking. “You are other things too, you know, you have to be. You don’t have to use that power all the time. You could just…be.”
    “I am .”
    “But—” And just like that, a fragment of what Myrddin didn’t know was there inside him, sharp-edged, sibilant, hissing its truth at the back of his mind. “ Oh .” He reached out and touched the blackberries, gave them back their spark, their life, but Kas didn’t move, and when he turned to look at him again, there was something almost wistful on his face. Almost .
    “You know, you could do something about that, if you wanted. Keep it back—that power. Bind it to something, somewhere…”
    “No. In this world, death is everywhere .”
    “You haven’t met my father.” One corner of his mouth quirked upward, but Kas stared at him quietly. In his motionless attention Myrddin sensed a shrug and