I'm at the airport in Bucuresti, Romania, and I still have almost an hour before boarding my plane back to Prague. So here's an update for you. Enjoy! (You might want to read this one privately, if you get what I mean...)
~10~
Now
Elsa kept her eyes open. She was frowning.
She was lying slightly tucked on her side in their bed, and Anna was snuggled deeply into her, her head pillowed on Elsa's bare breast. There were still random latent trembles throughout Anna's body as she whispered her story into Elsa's skin. The words would shrivel and crawl there, like tiny midges of insects set to gnawing.
Elsa kept her eyes open, because she had to.
The recorder would catch all of Anna's words, but it could not record the way Anna's hands tightened, how she clenched her jaw, how damp her cheek was. Words spilled from Anna's mouth, haunting and evil words to represent the end of someone's life, and Elsa had to keep her eyes open. With her eyes open it was harder to visualize what had happened, not to see the death through Anna's words.
She didn't want to see it. The curse of a vivid writer's imagination was seeing everything through words.
So as she heard Anna speak, Elsa filtered the words as much as she was able to, distancing herself from the scene, knowing the recorder would catch the rest.
Blood was blood, whether it came from Anna's nicked ear or the gunshot wound in her father's head or even the riven body of this unknown person. If she closed her eyes, all these images would merge, and she would be destroyed by them.
She loathed winter, the hunting season, and the colour orange, even as she loathed the fortune teller and the sound of a calliope. She had once hated the cry of a crow with equal fervour.
The taste of seawater.
Anna continued to speak. Soon the words would be splashed across the walls in that same cranberry scrawling, bloodened islands in a sea of blue.
The victim had been a girl. Young, maybe sixteen. Beautiful, in the vastly genetically inherited sort of way, such confidence yet humility in her beauty that she didn't have to wield it like a bludgeon. No wonder she had plenty of friends, plenty of admirers, and still a sweet and genuine heart. She couldn't even be hated for her beauty, vilified by the envious ones.
She missed her mother so much, gone these four years into the blue, propelled into the afterlife by snow, black ice, and a sundered car. Her father was already a widower; upon hearing of her untimely and horrific death, he would be ruined.
The murder had happened somewhere in middle America, for there was the kiss of manure in the air, a hint of flat and fertile earth and straight rows of sweet corn. Whoever the girl was, she had liked to ride horses, and wished she lived on a farm. Elsa shivered when Anna spoke of it, and thought of hoarfrost on the barbed wire fence of her home. Her left hand was throbbing.
The girl had wanted to go to Africa, to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. She had such dreams and hopes, this brave, beautiful girl, not quite sixteen.
Sixteen must surely be the worst time to die.
A life just beginning to bud with promise. The first flexings of independence. The first stirrings of real love, not the heady crushes of girlhood on the star-of-the-week, but the actual fluttering butterfly in your gut kind of love that makes you wonder how you could have lived for so long without it. And every moment of this blessed and exciting life a foundation for that personal castle in the sky, young, alive, invincible! Who would dare to snuff out a life such as this?
A hooded man with an obsidian knife. Anna couldn't see his face. He was surrounded by an emanation of vileness, shrouded in the wings of Death's Head Moths. He was anti-light, a black hole to suck life. He would eventually dance with the fortune teller in hell, to the fiendish tapping heel of the devil and the screamings of remorse. God would see to it.
He had ripped her kidneys with this obsidian blade, sideways and out. Blood a sheet, cascading on the stamped earth. This ground was unknown to her; it had not been hallowed by her touch. She had not played on it as a child, nor carved snow angels upon it in winter. This place was a strange place, and she had been alone and waiting for her dead mother.
Strange sentinels surrounded her, indistinct in the shrouded moonlight. She had been in a clearing surrounded by these strangely familiar obelisks. It was past midnight; she should have been sleeping, safe in her own bower.
The knife edge was thirsty. Her screams should have been heard, but she had been alone. Instead, only Anna would hear them, through the seawater and the shadow of the world she would hear them, and she would echo them with her screams; a mirror reflection of pain and fear too intense to be borne alone.
The tears trickling from Anna's eyes carved tracks of wet horror down Elsa's bare skin, itching like those burrowing insect words, and she longed to wipe them away. But she would make no movement, for fear of breaking the flow of these words. She and Anna were witnesses to this murder where no other witness existed.
The girl had still been marginally alive when he got into his car, and ran her over with painstaking slowness, hovering on her torso. Her ribcage burst like a balloon under the tires. Flies were already congregating at the oasis of blood on the earth. It would be happy hour for them, time to get drunken on her spilled life.
And where once she had been a beautiful girl, who liked to ride horses, who wanted to visit Africa, now she was a marionette without strings.
Crumpled. Useless. Dead.
A tormented and newly rivened spirit to come to the imprisoned Anna in the night, Anna of the unseen world, Anna of the mirror captive soul. Stopping near Anna and the Marketplace of Souls, her voice would be too compelling, her face hot with anger and sadness. With ghostly hands she would pull Anna to the scene of the crime, to the most horrific replay imaginable, and Anna would be a party to the scene of bloodened tires and dripping obsidian knives, rib bones cracked and protruding.
Together they would weep for the girl's life.
Anna wouldn't know the girl's name, or the name of the town where she had died. The girl didn't speak of it. She was nervous for the joint she had stashed in her music box; her dad or the police would find it. Would that change what they thought of her?
Anna had tried to tell her that didn't really matter anymore. The veil of the living was shut to her, and eventually the living moved on. Now she was just dead, and soon to be reunited with her mother.
It had been a red night.
No wonder God was dead to Anna, as dead as this girl and all the victims of the red.
Anna trembled in the telling. Elsa kept her eyes open, and they burned.
Finally it was over. Anna was limp against her; spent in every way. Her hair smelled of shampoo, her breath was a warm blanket on Elsa's skin.
Anna's lips now connected with Elsa's skin, just there at the crest of her breast. Her arm had been tight around Elsa's waist, and she clutched at her even stronger. A spark of sad-sodden electricity burst in Elsa's nerves, a lightning bolt, transformative. Already her loins were moistened; love for Anna thundered inside her, made her weak. This love was a pressing, insistent beast, now escaping the confines of her heart to clatter against her stomach, to crawl up her throat.
"I wish so much I could take this from you," Elsa whispered into Anna's hair. "I wish there were some better way of sharing this burden. I wish, oh God, I wish we had never gone to the fair!"
Anna lifted her head, and her eyes were downy with the tranquilizer and pain. She was irresistibly alluring, magnetic and transparent with heartache. Elsa lifted her aching hand and drew her fingers down Anna's cheek, feeling Anna melt into the cup of her palm. Anna's eyes stayed open, and Elsa needed no assistance in translating the stricken look on Anna's face; it was remorseful hunger.
It was the half shameful realization that they were still alive, that it had been someone else dead this time and not them. They would see another sunset, they would eat another meal.
They would make love, and cry out in ecstasy, not in mockery of the newly sundered life, but with timid chagrin to be so happy that they were still alive.
After a fashion. Anna was captive and revenant.
"It was my choice," Anna replied. "Despite all this, I do not regret anything I have done. I have you, don't I?"
That love was now climbing right out of Elsa's throat, just as it coursed through her veins and pooled in her core. Fierce, instinctive love. Electrifying.
Anna presented her lips, and Elsa took them, with her sundered hand behind Anna's neck she took them, and they were soft, and sweet, and oh so very weary. A slow and steadily conquering barrage of kisses followed, not only on Anna's lips, but also on the framing of her face, her cheekbones, her jaw, her forehead.
Anna's hand dipped, slid over Elsa's backside, cupping her buttock as she writhed closer, this full body contact not enough now to express everything that had to be said in every language but verbal. Anna's skin was immaculate and glowing, and Elsa wanted to taste every part of it, and use it to banish her fears.
Longer, deeper. Forget death.
Their mouths locked tightly around each other as their tongues dipped and caressed warm confines. A honeyed kiss, deep and passionate. Anna began to pull harder at Elsa, tucking her pelvis as close as possible. With their legs tangled beneath the sheets a slow rocking began, to the steady increasing tempo of breath and heartbeat, moistness transferred to each other in the luscious grind.
Breaking the kiss, Elsa dove deeper, her hand trailing the outline of Anna's body as her mouth found the tight nub of her breast. A velvet gasp escaped Anna's lips at Elsa's journeying, but Elsa was bereft and could not smile. Her injured hand kept roving down, caressing the skin over Anna's hip bone, tucking under Anna's thigh.
Hesitant beauty surrounded the pair of them, stealing through the windows of the autumn day, the day that should have been about Casey, just another girl hovering on the brink of the unseen world. Even there in their bedroom, with them in between the sheets, death hovered, stalking them both, stealing their breath. Wasn't every day just one day closer to the inevitable finish? Would the young girl suffering from cancer get any more chance at life than this nameless riven girl of the red night?
No more time for ponderings.
Alive.
Elsa had been kneading Anna's breast as she licked and tugged at the other, alternating between each of them. Anna fell to her back, pulling Elsa on top of her. Her hands had lifted from the warm and smooth expanse of Elsa's back, and were now tangled in Elsa's still damp hair, pressing her face to her breasts. Anna was quivering underneath her, loosing more of those velvet desperate gasps.
Aching with desire, desperate with longing, wishing, oh wishing they were making love at midnight, under the satin touch of darkness, Elsa continued her journey down Anna's body, arching her back as she kissed her way down her abdomen. Here Anna was firm and muscled; the body of a girl in her prime.
"Please, Elsa," Anna panted. "Oh, please."
Elsa glanced up; Anna's eyes were closed and she was arching her upper body, her breasts high and proud. The sleek line of her throat, lifted, blood throbbing in her arteries. Beautiful expanses of skin. How she loved her, now more than ever. Every single cell in her body thrilled to Anna's touch; passion was an unbridled horse, forceful and rearing.
More. Now.
The trek resumed, and then the core of her, the moist and slick folds; Elsa buried her face into the very centre of Anna's sexual being and remained there, licking, sucking, tasting. She plunged her mouth deep into Anna's mound, the tender plane of her tongue sliding along the length of the fold before burrowing into the hood. At the electrifying connection, Anna arched her back even more, and Elsa gently squeezed her breasts in response before sliding her hands underneath the swell of her lower back.
And lifted.
Elsa lashed her tongue over the silky folds, the heat of the opening bathing her in waves of golden summertime, and Anna trembled underneath the onslaught. The little nub was now hard, erect, and Elsa let her tongue flutter there, knowing exactly what this felt like, this sliding surrender into oblivion, until the only sensation that existed was this single point of contact, connecting more than mere bodies of flesh and bone. It was a connection of pure spirit, and the gasps erupting from Anna's lips were no longer velvet. They were sandpaper, rasping with the event that was coming, bright and present with anticipation.
And.
Bucking release, her thighs clenching and unclenching as Anna shuddered into Elsa's mouth, nearly raising a choking cry. Elsa remained close, laving long and luxurious paths down the folds, barely aware that both she and her partner were still crying.
Still alive. For now.
Then
A gust of cold wind propelled Elsa through the door of the Blue Moose jewellery store in Richmond, Maine. She had been sitting in her battered car for at least five minutes, evaluating the merits of entering the jewellery store, a little scared of the set of circumstances that this innocuous event could precipitate. There was no getting around it; she was going to enter the store and buy Anna a Christmas gift.
She couldn't quite fathom what would happen next, and that scared her. Elsa liked knowing what would happen next. But she had discovered over the last few years that life wasn't ever like plotting a book. She had only to look at the past few months to realize it.
Anna had come out of nowhere, and with her every word, her every gesture, and every meal she shared, she was rewriting Elsa's destiny.
It was terrifying.
So she now stood in the store, blowing on her cold hands to warm them, wondering if she could get away without being noticed, but then the girl behind the counter looked up and noticed her. "Heya, Elsa," Carmen called out from behind the counter. "You working tonight?"
"Yes," Elsa replied, remembering to laugh and look happy. "I assume I'll see you there?"
"Best Guinness in this town at that Old Goat Pub," Carmen laughed. "And my boy toy isn't exactly rolling in the dough right now, or we'd head to Augusta for the night."
"Your boy toy?" Elsa asked, grinning for Carmen's benefit. Inside, she was still twisting in apprehension and indecision. "I hope you don't call him that to his face."
"He knows his place in life," Carmen replied sagely, dimples alighting on her brown cheeks.
"Two steps behind and buying the drinks?" Elsa filled in.
"You got it, girl. Are you looking for anything in particular?"
Elsa had been hovering by the jewellery counter, looking at the display of earrings and necklaces. Along the other walls were innumerable pieces of jewellery and art, nearly all of them handcrafted by Carmen and her mother. They went to art shows in Augusta and Bangor and had clients overseas. They had taken their native heritage and turned it into quite a valuable enterprise.
Carmen was also the most sought after girl in town. She probably hadn't bought a drink for herself for at least five years. She was a common face at the pub where Elsa worked three evenings a week.
The pay wasn't enough, which was why Elsa was still wearing the uniform of the fast food restaurant. She chose double shifts in a day so she could have her Tuesdays and Thursdays free. Kristoff had wondered why she chose the library in Bath as her place to work on her secretive writing; it was a lot farther than the local library.
Kristoff had always been her favourite brother, but it still took time for her to explain her motivations correctly.
"Not sure exactly what I'm looking for," Elsa replied, remembering to answer Carmen's question. "Hopefully I'll recognize it when I see it."
Liar. Elsa knew exactly what she was looking for, but she was afraid of asking for it.
Tomorrow was Thursday, the last day she'd be going to the library in Bath until the New Year. With her brother Patrick coming home, she wouldn't be able to get away twice a week as she used to. She certainly wasn't about to explain herself to him, or give him any opportunity to question her about her apparently unfulfilling and stodgy life; the life and future he had escaped.
"Is Paddy coming home soon?" Carmen asked, unknowingly echoing Elsa's thought.
"He flies in on Saturday," Elsa replied, unable to resist smiling. The first thing Patrick would do upon coming home would be to kiss the cheeks of mother and sister and then drive to Richmond for a night at the pub. Drinking, dancing, a girl on each arm and they would count themselves blessed to merely be in his presence.
The uniform. It apparently had something to do with the uniform.
Plus the fact that her younger brother was too dashedly handsome for his own good. Add that to the Air Force uniform and he could be a god.
Elsa found herself hovering over a display case that held a number of recognizable rings. Some were of Navajo design, and fashioned with jade. Others were Oriental, with pieces of onyx.
And one, just like half of her heritage, was Irish.
"How much for this one?" Elsa asked, pointing at it.
"Thirty dollars," Carmen said, but as Elsa's face fell, she added, "Put in a good word for me with your brother and I knock off twenty percent."
"Done."
Carmen didn't ask any more questions, even though she was obviously burning with curiosity over why Elsa was buying the ring and for whom. Elsa softly ignored her, checking her watch. It was almost time for her shift at the Old Goat.
The bar, with its dark wood paneling and hardwood floor, was damningly familiar. She had just turned 26 years old earlier in December, and it seemed that there was no way to propel herself out of this life, no way to sever the bonds of responsibility that anchored she and Kristoff to the dying farm. Paddy had more than broken those bonds a long time ago. His homecomings were always bittersweet.
Their mom always fussed so much over Paddy. It made Kristoff's blood boil.
But as she entered the bar tonight and changed her clothes, donning the short apron she wore and pulling her platinum blonde hair away from her face, she had an invisible smile. She had a secret, something only she and Kristoff knew and no one else, and it was a secret that would take her away from all of this.
This booze, with creamy heads of foam. This canned laughter, almost boorish and insensitive. This music, grating and loud. This place where people knew her name yet knew nothing about her, for she was a castle, and her walls were tall and strong, and she was able to keep out the world that had hurt her so terribly.
She could smile at them, and she did. Her smile was warm. Easy pleasantries flowed from her mouth. Did no one see that wall behind her eyes, did no one care that she was only an actress, and the best actress they had ever seen?
Carmen had gift-wrapped the package for her, for which Elsa was grateful. Her hands were not talented when it came to such decorative or careful work. They were farmer's hands, rough and callused hands, in love with the touch of a pencil, spinning out stories that no one here would ever hear.
And that's the way she liked it.
Two in the morning came fast enough, for the pub was busy. Carmen did show up with her boy toy; Elsa comped her a Guinness, even though it would come out of her pay check. Finally her boss was shooing the last of the drunks out the door, calling cabs if necessary due to the sullen winter sky, and Elsa was able to take off her apron, fold it neatly away and drive home across the Kennebec River, along thin highways to the farm where Kristoff always left a porch light on, even though times were tough and money was slim.
Sleep always claimed her quickly on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
Not so much on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when her mind would revolve around other softer and more delicious things. With each successive meal that Anna produced for her, Elsa grew more and more amazed.
She had noticed the girl the first day she had come in to the library. How could she not? She was a stranger, even more so than Elsa herself, and she had slunk into the library with the already defeated gaze of some form of prey, as if life itself were some great predatory beast to feast on her hopes and dreams, leaving them to rot like a carcass in the sun.
But then.
Elsa had watched her drop off a piece of paper, and knew exactly what Anna had been trying. That defeated slump of her shoulders was still evident as she turned away from the front desk. But then Anna had gone to the card catalogue, and it was then that she came alive, a beautiful smile emerging on her face like a glorious butterfly from its stodgy cocoon.
It was one of the most precious things Elsa had ever seen. She had never known anyone who held quite the same love for books as Elsa herself did.
And then the day Anna spoke to her for the first time, deep in the stacks.
Are you allergic to anything?
Elsa had been dumbfounded at the question. First, that Anna noticed her enough to speak to her, and second, that Anna had been aware of what Elsa ate for her lunch every day. Times were tough; there had been no insurance payout with her father's death, and it was hard to make ends meet. Peanut butter. Bananas. Water. The food stuck in her mouth with distaste, and it was a reflection of her own life; sticky and near meaningless, no nourishment at all.
Anna brought her miraculous food.
More miraculous was the attention.
And as the months passed, Elsa became aware of a slow shift, a tiny change. She had always looked forward to Tuesdays and Thursdays; they were her days, and they belonged to no one else. Now she anticipated them for entirely different reasons.
In her imaginary conversations, she would be witty and clever. Anna's eyes would glow, and she would touch Elsa on the arm, or on the wrist. Then she could slowly reveal herself to Anna, and tell her about her love of horses, and playing the guitar, and the future that erupted from her pencil, the fantasy worlds that would be her salvation, taking her away from this existence that was so predictable, so bland.
So peanut butter and jelly.
She could never say those things in reality; the bright and brave Elsa of her conversations did not actually exist. There was only this Elsa, who could never say the right thing, who could never be in the right place at the right time, who could never really amount to anything because there just wasn't anything to amount to.
Elsa was tingling and breathless with fear in the morning. She could barely eat her breakfast of cold cereal, could barely prepare her sandwich. Kristoff had already been out to the barns; he ate a huge breakfast in silence, staring at her as if to ask what was churning in her head. Even to him she couldn't say it, because she didn't even know what it was.
Liar. She knew exactly what it was.
It was desire, and it was terrifying.
Elsa dressed carefully that morning, in the most stylish clothing she owned, which wasn't much. A silk scarf, second hand suede boots, jeans that hugged her in all the right places. Even a light application of makeup, just enough to accent her blue eyes, her lips. Thank goodness Kristoff didn't notice, and she was able to escape into the yard without comment. Her mother would not be up yet; not with the assistance of whatever pills she took at night to help her forget the emptiness of her bed.
For an appalling moment it looked as if her car wouldn't start, but then it finally clanked into life. It took half an hour to drive to Bath, and the tiny wrapped package that was in her backpack was like Kryptonite.
Brave. Right.
She allowed a moment to rally herself before she walked through the doors of Patten Free Library. She was delighted and dismayed that Anna was not at the front desk; she was able to retreat to her habitual carrel without having to speak to anyone. The Goth girl, Haley, just watched her with a warm smile on her face.
Elsa waited when lunch time came, just in case, but as one o'clock got closer, Elsa realized that Anna didn't make her lunch that day. She had long ago learned not to get too frantic over the omission; Anna took a strange and nearly perverse delight in surprising her.
The little wrapped box sat on the corner of her desk, where she had placed it as a visual goal. The afternoon wore on, and her heart hammered in her chest like a woodpecker gone wild.
Paddy was coming home. She wouldn't be back here until after he left again, after the New Year.
Don't do it for yourself, Elsa. Do it because Anna deserves it.
She propelled herself from her seat, almost dizzy with her sudden intention. It did not take long to track Anna down; after all, the library wasn't that big. Anna was in the non-fiction section, where a painting of the generous Galen Moses hung as an eternal symbol of his philanthropy to the library board.
For a moment Elsa stood there, dumb and paralyzed, wondering what to say. She formed a dozen sentences, then just picked the easiest one. "Anna?" she asked.
Anna looked at her, and her eyes were a velvet teal, warm like the endearing eyes of her mare, Snowbelle. She stood with a book in her hand, her red-blonde hair swept behind her ears, a smile on her face that warmed Elsa's heart like a fired coal.
Elsa thrust the little wrapped box into Anna's hand, and then Anna's face fell. There was a genuine tinge of anguish on her face, and from some wellspring of deep intuition, Elsa knew exactly what was bothering her. Daring to touch her on the hand, daring to let that touch linger a moment too long, Elsa said, "Thank you, Anna, so much for all those delicious lunches. You've been spoiling me horribly for months and now I have to go home to dismal cooking."
Emotions galloped across Anna's face, and the girl said, "It was my pleasure, Elsa." Anna stopped for a moment, swallowed quite loudly, and then said, "So you're going home?"
Elation bubbled through Elsa's heart at the slightly stricken tone in Anna's voice. "Back to the farm," Elsa replied. As another dash of hurt flickered across Anna's face, she hurriedly added, "I'll be back in the New Year."
"Good," Anna said emphatically. "I like cooking for two." Another lightning bolt of pure emotion, this time disgust, flashed across her face and she continued, "Well, I like cooking for you."
Elsa had heard that Anna was in the middle of a divorce. In their imaginary conversations, they had spoken of it together. Not sure what to say, Elsa said, "Well, aren't you going to open it?"
"Can I?" Anna gushed. "I don't have to wait until Christmas?"
"I'd admire your fortitude if you could," Elsa laughed. "But if you want to open it now, you can."
As soon as she said the words, she wished she could take them back. She wasn't sure if she wanted to see the expression on Anna's face. What if Elsa had misinterpreted everything? What if Anna was just taking pity on her, her peanut butter and her jelly? What if Anna was only a friend and nothing more?
Anna opened the gift quickly, her eyes flickering in emotion as she lifted the lid and beheld the ring. It was silver, with two hands holding a heart that had a crown on top of it. Would she know what it meant?
Just as Elsa was about to explain, Anna breathed, "It's a Claddagh ring."
Her breath hitched in her throat. Trying to regain her senses, Elsa said, "I should have realized that someone as smart and well read as you would recognize this ring."
But how would she wear it?
Anna slid it on her right hand, on the ring finger, and the heart was pointing to Elsa, the crown turned inwards to Anna's body. Elsa's heart bottomed out even more.
Oh. My.
"It's beautiful, Elsa," Anna softly said. "Thank you."
Elsa could barely tear her eyes away. With that one motion, Anna had just answered her question. With placing it on her right hand, the heart pointing outwards, Anna was stating that her heart was open and ready for love.
But would she want a nobody like Elsa to provide it?
...
Hit me up in that review box if you enjoyed this! I'll post feedback to reviews before the next update, probably this Saturday.