Which Shape

The shape moves.

It is on him before he can breathe. A weight drops onto him, a grip closes on his arm, and the blade is gone, taken back, and then it is at his ribs. Close. Hot. Real. A body where there has only ever been a shape at the treeline. No face. It presses him, and it does not kill him.

He has wanted this. It is not a thing he would say out loud, and it is true all the same. He has wanted the same thing the shape wanted. The shape wanted him to take the blade. He took it. The shape wanted him to stand in the light and be the one it looked at. He stood.

The door is close behind him. He does not take it.

He brings the axe up and they go at it. The blade comes in high and he turns it on the haft, both hands, and the sound is steel on wood. He gives ground and the shape takes it, the two of them moving back through the room and out the door, into the yard. He swings across and his swing finds nothing. The shape is behind him. The blade is at his back. He brings the axe around and the shape is in front of him again.

They match each other, stroke for stroke. The blade comes and the axe is already there. The body is close and hot and it breathes, and he breathes with it. The smell is the night and the iron. He meets the weight, and the weight is real, and the craft is in his hands, and the axe goes where he is going. He blocks the next one on the haft, and the shape takes the block and turns it, and he turns with it.

It holds him. The blade cuts across his ribs and the blood runs down. He does not flinch. The cut is in the rhythm now, the two of them pressed together in the dark.

Under the blood it turns. The blade is close. The breath is in his ear. A body pressing on him at the edge of the lamplight, and he feels the thrill of it, the pleasure of being this close to it and matching it. He wants more of it. There is no fear in it. He does not want it to stop.

The killer presses in, drawing him. It is the push on the weak place. The need to be exceptional. It does not break. It rises. He wants to be the one being watched doing this, and he is good at it, and he has never been this good at anything. Dana told him once, flat: he could not stand being the one nobody looked at. He is being watched now. He stays in it.

The shape presses in one more time. He turns the axe and drives it home.

The edge catches and goes through. The shape comes apart. The thing he hits is the shape he has been becoming, and there is no face in it, no name, only the weight going loose and gone from the frame. His axe is in his hands. The blood runs down his ribs. It is almost joy.

The blade is through it and the fight is over, and he is still standing, and the shape in the treeline is gone — and what he wants is to do it again.