The Art of Speaking Softly

It is summer.
The sky is a surreal blue, freckled with birds and thin afterthoughts of cloud. Valentine sits on his bed, shoulder pressed to the wall beside the window, and skips his fingers across his knees as though playing the piano. When the door to the room swings open he blinks but does not turn, goes on watching gulls circle overhead. His eyes are deep, dark, blue, like opals underwater, and almost seem to ripple in reflection of the shivering, wind-dusted sky.
"Valentine," the nurse in the doorway says. "Sweetie, you've got a new roommate. Say hello."
Valentine is silent and his face still, and his hands fall to rest draped across his thighs.
"This is Winter. He's going to stay here for a while, okay? Now I'm going to leave you two alone for a bit to get to know each other. Don't get into trouble." The nurse laughs. She leaves Winter holding his suitcase and blinking his warm brown doe's eyes, watching Valentine.
"My name is Winter," he says after a long silence.
"Yes," Valentine says, and his voice is soft as cotton. "I'm Valentine."
"Do you mind me coming here? I thought you'd known, but I guess not."
Another silence settles in like snowdrifts and Valentine continues watching birds. A starling flutters to rest in the gnarled branches of the tree outside the window; he whistles to it and it whistles back in tune.
Winter sets his suitcase on the empty bed and opens it, but doesn't unpack and instead sits cross-legged on the floor.
"You like birds," he says.
"Yes."
"I know that one. It's a starling. They're very pretty."
"Yes."
"What's your favourite? Bird, I mean."
Valentine thinks for a long moment, touching his fingers to his lips as he always does when pondering something of importance. Finally, he speaks.
"Magpie," he says.
"I like cardinals." Winter pauses, purses his lips, then finds his words. "I'm frightened of it here," he whispers. "I never liked places like this."
"Hospitals?"
"Mental Hospitals. Everyone's strange here, and sad, and they look like broken dolls…" he remembers whom he's speaking to and looks down at his shoes. The laces are neatly double-knotted. "Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."
"Mm."
***
Valentine stretches and his limbs unfold like paper, long and thin and pale. For the first time he looks at Winter, takes in his dark hair sweeping his cheeks and the creamy-white curves of his arms as they slope down to his sides, and the bruise like a dragonfly's wing under his left eye, smeared along the cheekbone.
"What hurt you?" he asks, and reaches out a hand as if to touch the bruise but pulls it back when he remembers the distance.
"I got in a fight at school."
Valentine nods. He glances back out at the swath of sky out the window and longing touches the edges of his face for just a moment before it returns to emptiness.
"Look how blue the sky is," he says. "Like morning glories." It is the longest phrase he's spoken since Winter came, since that morning when he talked to the mockingbird on his windowsill about the feel of the wind in his hair.
"It's pretty."
***
The nurse returns with a tray of Dixie cups, a sweet smile on her face. "Time for pills! How are you settling in, Winter? Do you like your new roommate? Oh, I hope you two will be just the best of friends." She passes each boy two cups, one of multicolored pills and one of water. Valentine takes them without a word and passes them back neatly stacked within each other, both empty. Winter follows his example.
"I'm doing well, thank you," he tells the nurse. She nods and smiles broadly. Her face looks plastic to him, every wrinkle molded and painted with blush.
"Oh, well that's great, that's just great. Now why don't you head down for dinner, mmkay? Ta-ta!" She nudges the door shut behind her with one round hip.
Valentine stands, unfolding himself further and cracking his back. He would look like an oversized child were it not for the subtle sensuality of his face, the full lips and strong cheekbones. He is tall for eighteen but slender, reminiscent of an aspen bending in the wind as he walks. Winter follows him, envious of the gentleness with which he moves.
***
The dining hall is wide and sunlit, edged with polished cherry wood and large French doors. The main building of the hospital was once a nunnery, and the stained glass windows from that distant era make glowing patterns like lightning bugs on the floor around where the patients sit. Winter and Valentine take a tray of food each from a long table at the head of the room and then seat themselves at the end of one by the doors where a patch of sky is visible through the glass.
"Do you have friends here?" Winter asks as he picks at his mashed potatoes. No one waves to Valentine or greets him in passing, and the table they sit at is unoccupied but for the stained-glass fireflies of light across its surface.
"No one does," Valentine says quietly. He doesn't touch his food. "We're all broken dolls."
Winter finds himself regretting his comment earlier even more. "I'm sorry."
Silence greets him. Valentine's moon-eyes are focused again on the sky, where a bird dips and circles just above the trees. Winter follows his gaze and traces its path for a little while.
"What sort of bird is that? Can you tell from here?"
"Swallow."
"Oh."
"You can tell by the shape of the wings," Valentine says, "and the way it flies. I could teach you." He looks up from under his thin blonde lashes and a smile seems to flicker at his lips for a moment, then he looks back down at his hands and returns to silence.
***
A little while later a nurse comes up to the table, all smiles and glossy chocolate hair and skin. Her nails are perfectly manicured and her palms are like the insides of seashells, smooth and light.
"Valentine, honey, you eating your dinner? Oh, now, look, you haven't even taken a bite," she says. When he doesn't speak she is unfazed and sits down next to him, resting her hand ever so lightly on his shoulder. "Sweetie, you have to eat something. Come on, now, how about you just have a little of that salad?"
Valentine watches his fingers lace in and out of each other and is quiet. The nurse, whose nametag says Luanne, picks up the milk carton off the tray and opens it, then holds it out. "How about some milk? You like milk."
Valentine takes the carton and drinks a little, then sets it down again and stares out of the window.
"Honey, eat something for me, okay?" Luanne asks. Valentine closes his eyes for a long moment, then opens them again and slowly stands and walks away.
Luanne makes no move to follow him as he leaves the room and instead folds her hands on the table and sighs.
"What's wrong with him?" Winter asks. Luanne shakes her head and her hair shimmers in the colored light.
"Oh, honey, there are quite a lot of things that are wrong with that boy," she says.
"Like what?"
Luanne begins to stack up Winter and Valentine's trays and stands, smoothes her white uniform with one hand. "You'll see."
"Where's he gone?" Winter asks after her as she walks briskly away with the trays held neatly before her.
"Try the roof," she calls back, and then her shimmering hair is gone behind a corner.
***
Valentine is leaning against the high, curved fence around the roof, head pressed back into the wide mesh and eyes drinking in the crystalline sky.
"Luanne said you'd be up here," Winter tells him, and he nods. "Watching birds?"
"No."
"What, then?"
"Summer. Watching summer," he says. "Look."
Winter looks up with him at the sky, and can almost see the time passing between the clouds and gentle blue atmosphere. After a while he says, "Why are you here? In the hospital, I mean." When there is no reply, he goes on. "I get happy, sometimes- too happy. Then after a while I get so sad I can't even move. Then I'm angry and I feel like I'm going to break in half." He sighs. "My parents sent me here because they were frightened of me."
"I get sad, too," Valentine says carefully. "Not angry, though. Or happy. Just sad."
"Oh."
Valentine slides down to the ground and sits with his legs outstretched before him, fingers tapping away again at his knees. Winter sits down next to him and watches him play out invisible minuets, trying to find words.
"I'll make you happy," he says. Valentine nods.
"I'll make you happy, too."
***
A week passes and June drawls on, sultry and shimmering with heat waves. Valentine receives no visitors but birds at his window pecking at the glass and scrabbling for breadcrumbs in his palm. Winter's sister comes once, on a Sunday afternoon, bringing with her a rosary strung on a row of pearls and a quick kiss for her brother's forehead.
"I hope that God will save you from your sins," she says, and presses the rosary into his palms. Later he flings it against the wall and the pearls scatter like the stardust trailed behind comets. Valentine picks them up one by one and wraps them in a handkerchief in his dresser drawer.
That night, after dinner, Valentine and Winter sit side by side on the roof, peering through the mesh of the fence at the slow glitter of city lights far off in the distance. Moonlight is beginning to dance at the edge of the horizon but the sun still bleeds gold into the sky.
"Why's the fence here?" Winter asks, threading his fingers through the gaps in the wires.
"So we don't jump off," Valentine says in his slow, gentle way, as simply as he would say that poppies are red or the moon rises every night.
"If it wasn't there, then, would you jump?" Winter asks.
"Yes."
"I would, too."
Valentine stands, and his shirt ripples up in the smooth breeze. There is a tattoo of a vertebral column down his back, as though someone had inked the pattern of his bones into his skin. Winter reaches up to touch it, and Valentine flinches as the cold fingers brush his back.
"Did it hurt to get it?"
"Yes."
"I could never stand that. I hate pain."
"So do I."
"Mm."
The blonde boy spreads out his arms and tilts his head up to the sky.
"Would you like to see something pretty?" he asks. Winter nods.
Valentine calls out quietly, a mix of trills and clucks and birdcalls, arms still held from his sides like thin white wings, and after a few moments the birds come.
***
There are crows and gulls, pigeons, magpies, starlings, warblers, nuthatches, swallows; all manner of beautiful birds flock in from the vast expanses of sky to settle in on Valentine's outstretched arms. They perch in his hair, on his shoulders and the crooks of his elbows and the tips of his long fingers. Winter, too, is covered in birds: robins, doves, owls, swifts, woodpeckers, cardinals, sparrows. They chitter and whistle in his arms as he laughs and strokes their feathers.
"How did you do that?" he asks. "This is amazing!" Valentine closes his eyes and coos to a dove nestled in the curve of his neck.
"Shh," he whispers. "Just close your eyes."
Winter obeys and lets the sound of birdcalls rush over him, smiling a real smile, caramel-sweet, the realest smile that's touched his lips for years.
"See," Valentine says after a few minutes. "I made you happy. Like I promised."
"Thank you."
Valentine carefully leans down so their faces are just inches apart, the birds in his hair shifting their weight, then kisses Winter as gently as a ghost. When he pulls back, they are both smiling.
A nurse comes up the stairs looking for them and the birds scatter, leaving only feathers in the boy's hair and the taste of something beautiful lingering on their lips.
***
The head psychiatrist of the mental hospital is a stout, red-faced man with a bristly moustache the colour of cigar smoke. He smells of smoke, too, and there is a polished silver cigar case tucked into the inside breast pocket of his suit at all times.
"So, Mr. Bright, I see that you're making some progress," he says in a robust voice as he thumbs through Valentine's file. "Luanne tells me you've started eating a little more."
Silence and a blue stare are all that meet him.
"Well, let's talk about something else, eh? How do you feel today?" He waits patiently for a while, and then continues as though there has been an answer in that slow, sweet voice. "Are you feeling lonely?"
"No."
"Well great, that's just great. Have you made some friends?"
"Yes."
"Wonderful. I was worried in the beginning about your connecting with the other patients, but you're overcoming that hurdle, eh?"
A nod, and Valentine's white-blonde hair sweeps down his forehead. He brushes it away with thin fingers.
"Well, who's your friend?" the head psychiatrist asks.
"Winter."
"Your roommate? How nice." The head psychiatrist snaps open his silver cigar case and takes one out, lights it with a Zippo sitting on the desk. "Mind if I smoke? No? Okay." He takes a puff on the cigar and continues thumbing through the file. "Well, now, is there anything you'd like to tell me? Something you're worried about, anything like that?" Valentine shakes his head. "All right, then, son, go on back to your room. Just come on up if there's anything you'd like to talk about."
Valentine stands and pads across the plush carpet to the doors of the head psychiatrist's musty study, but the old man calls out to him before he can leave. "Ah, one more thing, Mr. Bright. Your brother phoned me the other day. He say's he'll be visiting before the end of the week." He takes another puff on the cigar, then clamps it between his teeth. "Good thing I remembered, eh? Heh." His laugh is low and gruff, like a dog's bark. "Go on, now, back to your room."
***
Valentine's legs are shaking when he returns to the room, and his fingers tangling in and out of each other frantically. Winter lies sprawled on the bed, reading a dog-eared novel from the hospital library.
"Hey," he says, but Valentine says nothing and simply goes to his bed, curls up against the window and presses his cheek to the pane. "Valentine, what's wrong?" No answer. Winter stands, setting his novel on the comforter, and sits down beside Valentine with their arms pressed against each other. "What happened?"
"My brother." Valentine coughs and leans his head into Winter's shoulder. "He's coming here."  
"Oh." Winter has never heard of a brother; Valentine never speaks of his family.
Valentine begins to cry, very silently, his shoulders barely shaking. Winter kisses his cheek and strokes his arms, trying to calm him, but the moons of his eyes continue spilling over tears.
"Shh, love, shh. Don't cry." He looks out the window, where a handful of sandy brown birds are clustered on the windowsill, watching them. "Shall we go to the roof? You can see the birds."
"Yes." They stand, fingers entwined, and head towards the stairs.
***
When the boys return from the rooftop, Luanne is waiting for them with a clipboard folded in her dark, mocha-rich arms. "I wish you two wouldn't spend so much time up there. It's dangerous," she says, then turns to Valentine. "Honey, your brother's here. Better come on down to the visit room."
"I don't think he wants to go," Winter says.
"Well, sugar, that's not up to you. Come on now, Valentine, let's go before visiting hours are over." She takes Valentine by the hand and steers him away and down the corridor, leaving Winter standing empty-eyed at the base of the stairs.
***
Luke Bright is the only guest in the visiting room, but he fills the space like loud music. He slouches back in his chair with his legs apart and his arms behind his head, and though he's staring into the distance there is a degree of sharpness around him not present in his younger brother; unlike Valentine, he has edges, and they hurt to be touched.
"Hey, bro, how you been? I missed you," he says when Valentine enters.
"Yes," Valentine says slowly. He stands still in the doorway, frozen.
"Come here." He beckons and Valentine walks slowly to him as though pulled by some invisible chain. "Sit." Valentine sits. "Now, I came all the way from London to give you a visit and you aren't even going to say hello?"
"Hello," Valentine says, and his voice breaks.
"Good. You know, I really did miss you." Luke leans in close, lips almost brushing Valentine's ear as he whispers: "You can't hide here forever." His fingernails are painted black and the polish is chipped along the edges, worn down by guitar strings. Valentine shivers, and he laughs. "Ha. You're like a scared bird."
"I'm not scared of you."
"Aren't you, though? You really should be." Luke's laugh is like that of a hyena who's smoked one cigarette too many, rough and cackling, and it echoes around the small room.
A shout from outside flickers against the window, and both brothers turn to the sound. Then another, and a smash, and the sound of scuffling feet just outside the door.  
"Just let me in! Let me in, you bastards!" Valentine stands at the sound of Winter's voice and tries to go to him, but Luke grabs his wrist and pulls him back.
"Who is that?" he asks.
"Valentine! Valentine, are you in there?" Winter calls, then there is the sound of someone being kicked in the gut and the door clatters open. "Valentine," Winter says, and runs in from the doorway, flanked by two angry nurses and a doctor clutching his stomach. "I told them you didn't want to go, but they wouldn't listen to me."
"Who the hell are you?" Luke snaps. Valentine does not attempt to free himself but stays perfectly still, a beautiful and frightened deer in the headlights. As a child, he covered up the hand-shaped bruises on his wrists with oversized sweaters or bandages snuck from the hall cupboard. Now he knows that there will be more and he closes his eyes, praying to something that his brother will let him go before his arm is fractured.
Suddenly there is the sound of a fist whistling through the air and Luke's hand vanishes from Valentine's skin. The boy opens his eyes and pushes back the cloud-thin wisps of his hair in time to see Winter pull back his punch and stare unseeingly at Luke sprawled on the floor with his nose gushing blood.
"Oh my goodness," one of the nurses says.
"A sedative, Emily," the doctor snaps, gesturing to Winter, and the other nurse quickly exits in a flurry of white uniform and blonde hair. "Now, Winter, have you calmed down a little?" The boy whirls around with his fists clenched and the doctor knows he has not. "Okay, okay, how about we all take a deep breath…"
"Fuck you!" Winter shouts. "You know nothing about me! Nothing! Why am I even here?" he takes a ragged breath. "You bastards are the reason I'm like this. All of you. I hate you! Why did you have to fuck up my life like this? I hate you!"
"Winter," Valentine whispers, and Winter goes still. He doesn't look at Valentine but straight ahead, eyes slightly glazed. "Do you hate me?"
"No," Winter says after a long silence. "No, I don't hate you."
"Do you love me?" Valentine's voice is fragile as moth's wings.
"I love you."
"I love you, too." He thinks for a moment and brushes his fingers against his lips. "Thank you. I was hurting, and you helped me." A pause. "You made me happy."
***
It is Autumn.
The windowpanes are kissed with fog and lacy frost, and the trees are shivering as their leaves crinkle into yellow and red and bursts of sunset. Winter and Valentine stand on the roof of the mental hospital, hand in hand, watching the sinking sun light the world aflame and the edges of the sky curl like burning paper, revealing underneath a velvet streak of night.
Valentine calls the birds, and they come in a flurry of brown and black and white and the occasional splash of opalescent blue on a duck's or a magpie's wing.
"How do you call them?" Winter asks, as he always does. "It looks like magic."
"Speak softly," Valentine says. "They'll listen if you just speak softly." His voice is soft, now, like down feathers, and he coos and warbles to the birds around them.
"I love you," Winter says, and kisses him, and they stand there in each other's arms for a small eternity of birds and setting sun.

The End