Dedicated to my wonderful friend Elli, on the occasion of her birthday.
Eden
"This was your favourite place."
"It still is."
It is spring, gentle, gentler than summer and love. Summer and love are hot, violent in their displays, bright colours and sharp, slanting light. The boughs of the orchard hang heavy with blossom, petals soft but fresh and bejewelled with dew. Real diamonds shiver and sparkle in the pale yellow blooms with a thousand tongues: Lucrezia's hair, fanned out across the grass, exuding a scent sweeter than the flowers. It is tangled with her brother's, plague black stalks in with the healthy golden wheat.
The colour is deceptive, for they both ooze poison, and their bodies are both ailment and remedy.
"You were too young to remember, my love."
"I remember." She props herself up on her elbow to look down at him, careless of her rose pink silk sleeve or the pearls stitched onto it, careless of words like 'husband' and 'brother'. "You always came here when your temper got the better of you. You used to knock the fruit out of the trees."
"And you always came to find me." How he longs to kiss her. Her mouth is uncoloured, lightly bruised, bare and newborn; it might be too soon to kiss her again, and it might be too late. "But there will be another husband when this one is done, and other children. You will forget you ever had a brother, and my temper will never be soothed. Not if I cut down these trees, nor if I burn all the trees in the Romagna."
"Never," she insists, so passionately that he turns over in surprise. They mirror one another, up on their elbows, nose to nose. She curls her fingers beneath his chin and shakes his head for him. "We are condemned to Hell in the eyes of God and men, and so we are condemned together. I will always be with you," she promises. "I will always be yours." His hand is guided to her bare, silky shoulder, and she kisses it where it rests. "This will always be yours. And this…and this…"
The thread holding the pearls frays, and drip, drip, drip, they fall to the ground like rain as the gown falls to join them.
It is neither too soon nor too early to lie in the green grass and red dust, for the flora of the field to gild their flesh as they push together. For Cesare, an orchard is the perfect place. He digs with his hands in the dirt, fingers flexing, straining to go harder, go through, put roots into the ground and be gone inside her. Here is where seeds are planted and secrets grow. Here is where the irreverence of a younger sister is worshipped as she laughs with her eyes and cries with her mouth.
She clings to him, small feet beating the rhythm of her heartbeat into his back.
She carves him up with her fingernails, watering the earth with his blood to make it new and fruitful.
They are before sin: Adam and Eve falling, but not yet Fallen. They are nothing more than two branches of the same family tree, wrapped more tightly together than ever before, entwined in a way which is too glorious for others to understand.
Their love is the ailment.
Their love is the remedy.
Fin.