---

The One I’m Waiting For

by KJ Kabza

 

For an eternity of days, I wait for her in the cabin. The light outside rises and fades, rises and fades, and the wide rectangles of sky near the ceiling show me sun and starlight, cloud and snow, lightning and rain. I no longer have skin to feel the air, or a nose to smell it with, but the birdsong outside tells me it’s spring, or the moon in the left window tells me it’s winter.

I can sense the damp in the few bones I have left, so when the cabin around me begins to rot, I am not surprised, but I am very afraid. I know that things must be old to rot. Is she never coming back?

One day, I hear a rhythmic crunch outside. I think I know that sound? Before I can recall, the cabin door pulls open.

An old woman, wearing a thick fur cloak and fur leg wraps that are bound to her lower limbs with sinew, stands at the threshold. Fine snow dusts the fur she wears, and beyond her, I see white ground.

She is not the one I’m waiting for.

I stay quiet. I do not move.

She enters and inspects the cabin’s contents. They are meager and battered by time: a few pots, a dish, a cup, a spoon. A blanket that the birds and mice have picked to tatters. Clay jars she opens, peers inside of, and makes a face at.

She reaches my shelf and stares at me.

We are eye to eye. Hers are the gray of the sky outside. Mine, I hope, are dark sockets, but by her rising grin, I know that my own light has arisen.

“Well well well,” she says, smiling now. “Hello in there.”

I’m too afraid to move.

“How did a thing like you come to a place like this, eh?” She reaches up and strokes the long bridge of my nose, and the warmth and gentle pressure of her hand is like a bitter, painful thaw. “Someone must have been very fond of you. Someone who wanted to keep you a secret, by the looks of this place.” She shakes her head. “I bet that’s an interesting story. But you’re not the kind who can talk, are you?”

She places a palm against my forehead and loosely rubs, as if tousling the front of my long-gone mane. She strokes my nose again. Her touch is so welcome, it hurts. Now I’m afraid that she’ll stop, that she’ll leave, and that I’ll be alone again until the cabin fully rots and falls around me, and I am buried in its mound of decaying wood, and I will hear and see and feel nothing until the last of me separates and I merge with that changeless darkness, too.

I nicker, pleadingly.

She perks up. “Oh! But you’re the kind with a voice.” She pats my nose. “I could use a thing like you, you know. Put you on that tree stump near my house. Intimidate the riff-raff. Some people only feel respect if it’s frightened into them, you know.” She considers. “But I’m no monster. I’ll only take you if you’re willing. What do you say?”

I want to say, Keep petting me, but whatever it was that happened to me that eternity ago gave me understanding without speech. All I can do is nicker.

But it’s enough. She nods and reaches up with both hands, and in moments, the world swings into something new.

---

She calls herself Nails. She lives in a low stone house on the edge of a winter-barren forest, and she explains, as she sets me down upon a tree stump that faces the path we’ve trod, that she is a witch.

If I still had ears, I’d flatten them. I don’t like witches. When this cataclysmic thing happened to me, there was a witch, and there were many others like myself, and we were compelled to trample an army. I had all my parts and senses, right after it happened, and I remember the stink of burning hair and flesh, and the itchy tackiness of blood on my hide, and a hot terror in my limbs as a force I didn’t understand pushed me from behind like a tremendous wind.

I think I have made a bad mistake. I think I should have stayed in the cabin.

But then Nails strokes my nose again. I feel that painful thaw. “Hmm,” she says. “You’d be more intimidating up high on a pole. I’m not about to waste my magic on that, though, so we’ll just have to wait until the earth softens in the spring. The stump will do for now.”

The petting stops. If I had a heart, it would cry out.

Nails crunches past me and enters her house. The warmth of her hand evaporates, and I’m alone again and overwhelmed at the start of a new eternity.

---

But it’s not an eternity. Here, outside Nails’ house, there is motion and change.

I see more than rectangles of sky. Denuded, gray-barked trees rock in the wind, their dead twigs pattering to the ground. Creatures move among their trunks — digging squirrels, bounding rabbits, cautious deer. I hear the knocking of a woodpecker. Wolves, which I stopped fearing long ago, lope past. Wet snow falls and covers me, and I listen to the trees drip as I feel the meltwater dribble down my skull.

And, once in awhile, there are people. They come in ones or twos, usually, their clothes threadbare and patched beneath ragged cloaks, the men with unkempt beards and the women with weary eyes. Sometimes, boys or young men come, their shoulders thrown back. Regardless of who arrives, I don’t seem to intimidate anybody. Most people barely look at me. When they do, they rarely stop; when they stop, I let my light rise, always hoping, and though the men frown and hurry themselves or their companions along, women who are alone will often smile and bend over, and beneath their gentle touch, I’ll feel that perfect warmth and pressure glide over me once more. “Hello, sweetheart,” they’ll whisper; or, “I bet you were a good girl, weren’t you?” I waited in that cabin for so long for her. But in the end, I left. Was I good, still?

Cold rain falls. The thin snow melts into a translucent sludge. Two very threadbare people of very different sizes, each one wearing a pack, trudge up the path. The small one grabs the other’s cloak and points at me with a pink and tiny finger. “Look, Muhmah! She’s smiling!”

“Skulls are always smiling.”

“Why?”

“Because for them, the troubles of life are over.”

There is something familiar here. Didn’t I myself once stand next to a tall one, whose big, solid body blocked the wind? Didn’t I myself once stand next to a little one, whose softness I was determined to protect?

“Troubles of life,” the little one echoes. She spreads her tiny fingers and presses her hand to my forehead. “Muhmah! Her eyes light up!”

Nails’ door opens behind me. She and the woman talk. The little one leans close to me. And even though her eyes are not flames like mine, but an ordinary brown, they somehow feel very warm.

“Your eyes are so pretty,” she whispers. “Like rainbow fireflies. Are you magic?”

“Don’t touch that, Gretta.”

“Oh, she’s fine. Horse skull’s harmless. Supposed to be a warning totem, but we see how well that’s worked out, don’t we? Go on and pet it, dearie, if you want to. Your muhmah will be inside with me.”

Gretta watches the door behind me. When I hear it close, she puts her hands on my face.

I nicker.

Gretta squeals. She flings herself over the entirety of me, jawbone and all, and though it has been an eon since I could nod my head in pleasure, I can still arch the pair of vertebrae I have left.

When she holds me, I do feel magic.

She stays like this for a long time, but still not long enough; when she pulls away, I groan in disappointment. “Don’t worry.” Gretta’s touch explores the little of me that’s left — the edges of where my nose once was, the sides of my teeth, the lines of my fissures. “I’m here.”

The door opens behind me. “Now remember,” says Nails. “The spell will send who it sends and that will be that. Well, look who’s made a friend.”

“Come, Gretta.” Gretta’s muhmah steps into my view. “It’s time to go.”

Gretta’s face falls. She drops her hand, and I cry out. “Do we have to?”

“Yes, Gretta. Priestess Nails is a very busy person.”

I cry out again. Nails sighs, then comes around to face me, her hands on her hips. “Parmelle. One more thing. You must take the skull with you.”

“The skull?” The woman, Parmelle, gathers her cloak about herself, as if I’m something deathly cold to be shielded against. “Will the spell not work if we don’t?”

Nails does not answer. She places a hand upon my forehead and says, “I told you, I’m no monster.” Then she clucks her tongue. “You were useless as a totem anyway.”

She leaves the three of us to the slushy path. Gretta scoops me up into her eager arms, and my world spins anew.

---

Unlike Nails or the one I waited for, Gretta and Parmelle do not have a house. Instead, they travel between houses, and at each one they ask if they can do any work in exchange for meals and a place to sleep. The first time I see this, the farmer who opens his front door looks at me and turns them away. Parmelle says, “We had better keep the horse skull out of sight, Gretta,” and I feel as sad as Gretta looks when I must leave her arms for Parmelle’s crowded pack.

It is lonely to sit in silence, in the dark, with the cold metal of a pot against my jaw. But in the evenings, cloth rustles; those warm, tiny hands pull me out into the world; and Gretta’s smile presses into mine as she kisses me. In whispers, she tells me of the day’s work (“Today we helped with mending”; “today we gathered wood”) and the three of us curl together on the loose straw or rag bed we’ve been given, with Parmelle and Gretta careful to keep me hidden. Then the silence and darkness is not lonely at all, when the warmth around you shifts with breath and you can listen to a heartbeat.

One night, we do not stop at a house. We stop at the edge of a market square, which is bright with a full moon and bustling with people. Lanterns are strung between stalls, and many people pass coins and food between them. “It’s the spring moon festival,” Gretta says, pulling me out of her muhmah’s pack and showing me the market. “See? You can buy springcakes. Muhmah, can I have a springcake?”

“In a little while,” says Parmelle. She shakes out her cloak and scans the crowd. She looks worried. “Do you remember the spell that Priestess Nails cast?”

“No.”

“It’s supposed to come true by tonight. Someone to love and protect us, at last.” Parmelle fidgets with her cloak. “We have to keep our eyes open.”

“Then can I have a springcake?”

“Wait here.” Parmelle points to a tipped-over crate near the wall at her back. “I saw a man with a green cloak looking at us when we passed the puppet show. It might be him.”

Gretta sighs. She sits on the crate and puts me on her lap, and I watch the moonlit market with her. Her touch calms me. “Let’s play the question game.”

I snort twice.

“Do you like springcakes?”

I don’t know what a springcake is. I snort once.

“Do you like apples?”

Once.

“Is that because you’re dead?”

Twice.

“Can you taste anything?”

Once.

“Do you remember what apples taste like?”

Once.

“They’re sweet and crunchy,” explains Gretta, “unless you get a tart one. My puhpah worked in an orchard and they had a lot of tart ones.”

The comment surprises me. Gretta has never mentioned a puhpah before.

She says nothing for a time. Then her next question is quiet. “How did you die?”

It’s not a yes-or-no question. And if it were, I still wouldn’t know how to answer. That far back is nothing but dim anxiety. Before there was a witch who pushed, but after there was a little one at my side, there were other things. Maybe apples. A time I had been afraid of wolves. Something between my teeth, something good. Others like me. When we were all together.

Gretta asks, “Did it hurt?”

I can’t answer that, either. I’m not sure that I know what pain is. There was a time when I had skin, and some sensations were to be feared; and then a time when I had skin, and I still felt cold and heat and wet and itch, but not scrape or bite or cut or pierce. There was a time when running was hard, and my body would feel bad if I did it for too long, but then a time when it was effortless.

A time when people saw me and screamed.

Arrows. Lances. Swords.

Burn it with fire. Ferocious itching all over. Rubbing myself against boulders, rough-barked trees, fence posts, anything, hard, harder, wet chunks of myself breaking off, my fading sense of smell telling me dead flesh as my hooves trampled a snowfall of maggots. Chase it off!

Standing in a valley. Wind pushing between my sun-bleached ribs. Everyone gone.

A face looking up at me and whispering, “Are you a good girl?”

“Hey!” Gretta’s small arms struggle to hold me as I cry out, unable to rear, unable to pin my ears or bolt or kick. I was wrong. I can feel pain: the kind that not even death can take, the kind that no wail can communicate.

The people in the market turn to stare. Parmelle pushes through them and runs to us. She wrenches me out of Gretta’s arms. “Muhmah, stop!”

Parmelle hurls. I strike the wall. Something pops, and just like that, I can no longer feel the back of my neck.

“Muhmah!” Gretta cries. “Muhmah, no!”

Parmelle sweeps Gretta close. “What did it do to you?” she cries. “Are you hurt?”

“She’s just afraid!”

Some other pair of arms wrapping around me, when I had all my bones but none of my flesh; some other pair of arms stroking me, putting a halter on my joke of a head, leading me into an unnecessary shelter, pulling me into a pantomime of a living horse. But she ran that brush down my bare spine and it felt good, and she hung a flower garland on my neck and it felt good. And when she saddled me and rode me into town, and all the people saw me and fled and she laughed with delight, I felt like the lead mare of the world.

All the people in the market see me now, but nobody flees. And I have no legs to carry anyone away. And the last of my spine has broken.

What arms can be for me anymore?

At the front of the crowd, a man in a green cloak frowns at me. Parmelle still holds Gretta, and she does not even notice when the green-cloaked man pushes back into the others and disappears.

Had the one who had once ridden me discarded me, too?

---

Gretta cries until the crowd drifts back into the festival. As she sniffles, Parmelle picks me up, and with the edge of her fraying cloak, she wipes the mud from my bones. But she doesn’t look at or speak to me, and my feeling of filthiness remains.

“She didn’t do anything,” says Gretta, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “She got scared.”

Her muhmah sets me on the crate and hands Gretta a handkerchief. “Would you still like a springcake?”

Gretta nods. I myself would like to be trampled to dust, for some witch to push all these people and have their boots erase my undesired self at last. But no such witch appears.

Instead, something else happens. A tall, masked figure who is dressed in motley steps from around a stall and beckons to us.

Gretta looks at her muhmah. “I’m sorry,” says Parmelle to the figure. “We have very little money, and none for entertainments.”

The figure shakes its head. It points to Parmelle, Gretta, and me and then beckons again.

My view becomes blocked by Parmelle’s cloak. “The horse skull is not for sale . . . Well, what do you want with us, then? . . . What does that mean? . . . I don’t see how, but you’re welcome to try.”

Parmelle steps aside. The figure kneels in front of me and removes her mask. Her gaze is unsettling. I feel seen in the same way that wolves used to look at me.

She places a hand upon the bridge of my nose. Her touch is hot and dry, like a stone warmed by the sun.

Without speaking or moving her lips, she tells me, I watched your conversation with the little girl. I know what you are.

The world rolls again.

---

Her name is Con Kell Karia (“or just Kell”), and she takes the three of us into a covered wagon parked nearby along the edge of the town common. As she lights a few lanterns, she says that she tells people that she is a travelling mystic. Parmelle asks, “And is that what you are?” and Kell just smiles.

I am afraid of Kell’s green-gold eyes and too-bright teeth. But I feel better when she gives Parmelle and Gretta food and drink, and better still when Gretta is finished and puts me in her lap. The wagon feels cozy, and even though the way Kell looks at me makes me nervous, I like the way she looks at Parmelle and Gretta. “I’m very grateful for your hospitality,” says Parmelle.

“And I’m grateful for your attention.” Kell gestures to me. “Things like this are very rare nowadays. It’s an honor just to see one.”

“She’s not a thing,” says Gretta. Her hands curl protectively over me. “She’s a she.”

Kell inclines her head. “You’re right. She’s a mare — or at least, she was — who was killed and reanimated by a sorceress.”

“How did —”

Kell holds up her hand. She looks at me. “Did you know that?” she asks gently. “That you were murdered?”

I did not know. The fact settles around me uneasily, like a flock of small birds that could flee at any moment. I don’t know how to feel about this. It was so long ago — should I feel anything?

Parmelle glances at me. “It’s an honor to see a . . . reanimated horse?”

“There are different methods of reanimation.” Kell inclines her head again, this time at me. “Your friend here has experienced one of the rarest. Sentience with partial senses and vocalizations. It takes a very powerful sorceress to arrange that.” Her eyes soften in sympathy. “And in my opinion, a cruel one, to give sentience without speech. That’s the kind of spell that’s used to create perfect slaves: capable of working forever, incapable of ever talking back.”

That flock of birds gets thicker. I feel frightened and confused. A slave? How could that be? Had I really been pushed by that witch for so long?

And besides, there was later. When the one who found me in that valley gave me garlands of flowers, and brushed me when I had no hide to brush, and —

— kept me shut up in a stall, alone, away from the world —

Dimness. Quiet. Waiting. How much?

What had finally caused the loss of my legs?

What happened then, when her skeletal steed could no longer bear her?

“What’s wrong with it now?” Parmelle shouts. “Gretta, be careful!”

I’m roaring. Moving my jaw is the only thing I have left to move, and Gretta is fighting to hold on, but I can’t stop. Murdered? And somehow separated. And then chased off and pierced. And left to rot and bleach and wander, and then, while abandoned and empty, lured. Seconds to hang a garland of flowers. Weeks to be left forgotten, with no need to water or feed or muck me, no need to remember me or have me move at all, only place me in lifeless darkness to wait (good girl) until I am commanded once more.

I hear you. Hot dry touch is upon me. I’m shaking. Kell’s voice says, “It’s all right,” while she says to me, I hear you. I see your pain. I see how you have waited.

I fall silent. My jaw still shakes. Gretta can hold me easily, now, and she wraps around me like an animal protecting its young.

To all of us, Kell says, “I have a proposition for you.”

---

The four of us live and travel together in Kell’s wagon. She travels slowly, spending perhaps a week in each village, because wherever she goes, many people come to see her. Some are men with unkempt beards and women with weary eyes, like the ones who came to Nails, but others are dressed in robes or rich furs, and still others are filthy and bare-footed. And unlike Nails, Kell sometimes shows me her work, and I am placed on a cushion inside the wagon to watch as she sets her hands on a person and chants in a language I do not know. Sometimes she mixes the contents of small bottles together and gives them out in exchange for coins. Sometimes she paints pigment on a person’s bare skin with different objects: a rod of iron, a greenwood stick, a small bone. She always asks me afterward, “Did you find that interesting?” and, because Gretta taught her how to play the question game (and because, when Kell places that hot dry touch upon me, she can sometimes see the images in my mind), if I want to, we can talk. I think that Kell is my friend. I do not know what to think about having a witch as a friend, and this fact sits upon me like a flock of birds, too.

But living with Kell is good. During the day, she works in the wagon while Parmelle and Gretta come and go, taking care of the chores and errands — buying or mending supplies, cooking food, encouraging people to see her — and at night, we all sleep in the wagon together. In the beginning, I am in Gretta’s arms; by summer, Parmelle is also in Kell’s arms; and by early autumn, Parmelle and Kell are in each other’s arms, and when Gretta’s heartbeat is slow and steady against me, the two women press together and gasp as quietly as they can.

On a bright day in mid-autumn, we come to a rare town in which business is slow, so Kell places me outside to watch the world and perhaps entice a customer. Mostly, I watch the pair of horses that pull the wagon. They have been released from their harnesses and are hitched nearby, eating the grain Parmelle has purchased and poured into a public feeding trough. The horses move stiffly. Kell tells me that they are old, and that this will be their last season. Come winter, we will travel to a farm owned by Kell’s cousin, who will take them in and let them retire.

I am glad that rest awaits them, but as I look at the pair now, I feel sad. Are these horses slaves? They are well-cared for and seem content. And I think — I think — they serve Kell willingly, for I have seen her press those hot dry hands to their foreheads, and they nicker softly and nuzzle her. I think they love her. Is love a kind of slavery? Maybe it is, if only one side serves and loves. But maybe it isn’t, if both sides love first and equally, and the service is something they give to each other.

My thoughts are interrupted by a man with no cloak and a cook’s apron. He trots toward the wagon, panting. His breath steams, but his forehead sparkles with sweat. “Hello?”

Kell emerges, wrapped in her cloak. “Hello, friend. Are you in need of a mystic?”

“Not myself.” He jerks a thumb backward. “Yonder witch wants to see you folk.” He glances at me. “You folk and your enchanted skull. She’s back in The Silver Oxen. And rich. She’ll pay you well for your time, I reckon, as she took care of me for running here and telling you so.”

“I see. Thank you for the message.”

The man trots off. Parmelle and Gretta emerge from the wagon, too. “Well,” says Parmelle. “If another witch is in town, I suppose that explains why business has been so poor.”

Kell looks at me. “I know how you feel about witches.” She smiles a little. “So it’s up to you.”

I do not need food or warmth or supplies or almost anything at all, but Kell, Parmelle, and Gretta do. And if they don’t get coins, which a wealthy witch would have in plenty, then they cannot have these things. And I want them to have these things.

I snort twice.

---

As the four of us approach The Silver Oxen, we have to push through a group of gawking people on the street outside, and the two strong men guarding the door won’t let us pass until Gretta lifts me up and shows me to them.

I have never been inside a place where people eat and drink together. It is like the cabin, but much bigger, and there are several tables and chairs. Along one side of the room is a place that looks like a pen, with a thick, low wall surrounding it and stools lined up against the wall. There is a fireplace, like in the cabin, but it is also much bigger, and the fire that roars there is hearty.

The man in the cook’s apron is waiting for us. “You made it!” He gestures toward the fire at the far end of the room. “Go ahead. I’ll be back here by the door. Give you folk the privacy that she paid for.”

Despite the size of the space and its many places for people to sit, the room is almost empty. Only a chair near the fire is occupied. An old, old woman, with skin like lichen- spotted bark, sits wrapped in a quilt. Her hair is like wisps of cloud, and her eyes are watery and red.

Gretta and Parmelle hang back, but Kell stands squarely before her. “Hello, Grandmother. I am the traveling mystic who travels with a skull. I am told that you have sent for us.”

“Oh yes. Yes.” Her voice is faint and wavering. Her hands, all knuckles and ancient skin, flutter out from the quilt. She can barely lift her arms. “Do you have it? Let me see.”

Is she really a witch? She is so old and weak. Gretta looks down at me, uncertainly, so I snort twice.

Carefully, Gretta places me in the ancient woman’s lap. The woman tilts me up, to look into my eyes, and her thin lips waver into a smile.

“Oh,” she sighs. “I knew someone like you, once. Very long ago.” One of her trembling hands lifts to caress me. Despite the double heat of the fire and the quilt, her touch is cool, as if her whole being were a fading sunset. “So loyal. So good. Such a good girl.”

I, too, feel a sudden chill.

“So very long ago,” she murmurs. “I can’t remember.”

Kell’s tone is polite. “Have you seen many summers, Grandmother?”

The old woman ignores her. She peers into my eyes again. “It was someone like you,” she repeats. “I met her when . . . I can’t remember. And we parted because . . . I can’t remember, either.” She coughs. It’s a dry, raspy sound. “Many,” she says suddenly to Kell. “So very many summers. The right magic can do almost anything, you know.”

I scan her ancient face. I recognize nothing. It’s all wrinkles and pain. She smiles again, and those barely-there hands settle upon me. “I have one last spell in me, I think. Here you go, dearie.”

Something happens.

I feel the light that rises in my eyes rise at the back of my skull, and then over my skull, and then all around me. I pull away from the old woman’s lap and push and stand — I stand? — and the faces of the humans are below me, looking up: Kell’s, shocked; Parmelle’s, amazed; Gretta’s, joyful; the old woman’s, satisfied. I snort and dance — I dance? — and the legs that move me are made of a blue-orange-yellow-white nimbus, like the flames of my eyes, like fireflies.

The old woman sinks within her quilt. Her eyes close. She whispers, “Good girl,” and her quaking, at last, ceases.

---

Perhaps the most perfect slavery requires a body that can never break or betray the slave master.

Perhaps I still don’t understand the difference between slavery and love.

But I know that, regardless of the intentions behind the change that came to me, I alone am the one that lets my light rise, and I alone choose to call forth my body to pull the wagon that holds my family, and I alone choose to retreat into my skull each night so I can be inside with the others as they rest. If I wanted to, I could run. No witch can push me, and no weapons can hack me apart, and no halter can restrain me anymore.

But in this wagon, there are arms to hold me. There are arms to hold everyone.

So instead, I am here.

---

Host Commentary

…aaaaand welcome back. That was “The One I’m Waiting For” by KJ Kabza, and if you enjoyed that then this is one of those happy times where you will still remember this URL by the time your commute/mental health walk/regular chore is done: kjkabza.com. Easy! Click on Works, find the books, and below that the short stories going back over twenty years. Oodles of stuff for you to read.

Is love a kind of slavery?

I can’t answer that for you. I suspect the answer is not only particular to every individual, but to every situation.

There are many limitations to the English language, but the one I feel most keenly is the reduction of all forms of affection to love. I love my wife. I love my kids. I love my dogs. I love my friends. I love doing these outros. I love creating something that didn’t exist in the world until I made it, and then I love that creation. I love the smell of the earth after rain, and the sound of a river tumbling over rocks, and the first hot taste of tea in the morning. All of these are valid and true. All of these are very different. All of these get the same word.

I don’t know the truth behind the idea that the Inuit have seventy words for snow, or whatever, and I don’t want to look it up and be disabused of the idea because I wish I had seventy words for love.

I wish I could better distinguish the unique, searing, singular love I have for my wife, Claire, beyond adding the preposition to be in love, which at least, I suppose, conveys that sense of utterly drowning in it, floating in its depths, breathing it deep because it’s as essential to my existence as oxygen is.

I wish I could give more texture to the love I have for my kids, unique to each of them, because they are each unique and therefore so is our relationship, though of course, as each of these loves are infinite in their depth, you cannot say that one is bigger than another.

I wish I could say that I love my friends without it feeling like an implication of romantic love, through that shared word, and without it feeling like it is therefore watering down that meaning. It is distinct and separate and yes, just as vital, but in a wholly different way. But to be stuck with the same word is to reduce them both. It’s like calling everything from chartreuse to verdigris “green”.

Is love a kind of slavery? It depends on the love, I suppose, and whom the love is for. Perhaps it also depends on the understanding of slavery. Is it being beholden to someone and their whims, at their mercy? It shouldn’t be. Is it being bound to someone? It is—but more properly, it is bound to each other, with neither the master, so then again perhaps not like that, either.

I think, maybe, love is slavery only insofar as we are slaves to it when it strikes, and don’t have a choice to partake. I could no more choose not to love Claire than I could choose to stop my heart beating. I have no control over it: it is natural, automatic, part of what it means for me to be alive.

If I wanted to, I could run. But when you love, you will only ever make that choice one way. And you will delight in it.