Page 8 of Until the Last Leaf Falls

Orren looked up and Niles forgot to breathe. Orren's eyes—were gold. The same stunning colour as the leaves on the gingko tree.

Then he blinked, and his eyes were the familiar dark brown.

“You’re back,” Orren said and started towards him.

Niles stayed rooted to the spot, trying to rationalise what he’d just seen. Orren with golden eyes. A trick of the light? It had to be. Only… what light was there in a damp, drizzly morning? “I left the library open for you,” he said as if this mattered. “I put a note on the door.”

“I saw. I just wanted to spend a little time with the trees before I settled down to work.”

Niles managed a nod, then followed Orren into the library, where the trinity of books, coffee, and work settled him.

His brief glimpse of a golden-eyed Orren stayed with him all day.

“I used to go days without speaking,” Niles admitted one afternoon, when it was dry enough to share coffee in the glade. “Weeks, almost. Just ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘have a nice day.’ I didn't realise how quiet my life was until...”

“Until?” Orren prompted.

Niles shrugged. “Until you turned up and answered me.”

Orren hesitated. Then he laid his hand over Niles’s where it rested on the bench between them. “I know what that’s like,” he said. “The quiet. The wondering if anyone would notice if you… just… stopped.”

He kept his gaze on the trees, but Niles saw his throat work and wondered if Orren, too, had trouble to voice what bothered him. “Does someone notice now?” he asked, the words coming out soft, and hesitant.

Orren turned to him, an expression in the deep brown eyes that made Niles's chest ache.

“I’m starting to think so,” Orren said.

“I’m glad.”

They sat like that until the light faded, fingers tangled together on the bench. Niles brushed his thumb over the back of Orren’s hand, heard his breath catch, and didn’t ask what Orren meant. He was afraid he knew. And equally afraid he might be wrong.

Between work, conversations, and time spent in the glade, the days passed. Niles received no further mysterious books or messages, but Orren’s scarf took up residence on the back of a chair. And every so often, Niles would look up in the middle of his work, find Orren’s gaze turned his way, and smile.

The undemanding companionship was soothing, but Niles didn’t miss when Orren grew quieter. He still came to the library, drank his hot chocolate, and sat in the glade, but there was a new stillness to him, a watchfulness that hadn't been there before.

“Are you all right?” Niles asked one afternoon.

Orren didn't turn around. “Just watching the leaves fall.”

Niles looked past him. “It's autumn. That’s what leaves do."

“Yes.” Orren sounded faraway, almost sad. “That’s what leaves do.” He turned then, and his smile was back in place, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I have some reading to finish,” he said. “I’ll be in the corner if you need me.”

Niles watched him go, uneasiness curling in his chest. He told himself he was imagining things. Orren was a storyteller who loved old books. He was probably just absorbed in his research, like Niles when he wrestled with a tricky problem.

Niles had hoped to invite Orren to join him on his book round, to walk through the park together and admire the trees in their autumn finery—but something in Orren’s demeanour held him back. He’d barely said a word all morning and while they’d eaten lunch in the glade, he’d stared pensively at the leaves on the ground.

Niles thought he understood. Orren had come here to work. Now his time in their town was coming to an end, and he was trying to find a way to say so. Niles would have to soak up as much of Orren’s company as he could before he was alone again.

He took his books around town the following morning, not minding the scant greetings. But he did cross the road to walk through the park on his way home. And stopped ten feet in, jaw dropping.

The trees, gorgeous in their autumn hues the week before, had shed almost all their foliage. The rustle he now heard was the shirring of bare branches as they shivered in the wind.

He thought of his glade where the trees had barely changed and only a few leaves mantled the ground. And for the strangest reason the first word that came to his mind was magic.

“Nonsense,” he muttered. “Trees shed their leaves because insufficient sunlight halts photosynthesis. Keeping the canopy would use too much energy, so shedding the leaves before the onset of winter is a survival strategy.” His glade was a sun trap and sheltered from the worst of the wind. A perfectly good reason autumn took its time. Though he would have sworn that—in previous years—autumn in his glade had kept pace with autumn in the park.

Until Orren had arrived.