To die, is to be banished from myself,

And Silvia is myself; banished from her,

Is self from self- a deadly banishment!

What light is light, if Silvia be not seen?

What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by-

Unless it be to think that she is by,

And feed upon the shadow of perfection?

Except I be by Silvia in the night,

There is no music in the nightingale.

Unless I look on Silvia in the day,

There is no day to look upon.

She is my essence, and I leave to be,

If I be not by her fair influence

Fostered, illumined, cherished, kept alive.

-William Shakespeare (1593)

On the night that I enlisted, Banastre gave me a title that I would never forget: "disposable income". His lectures, for lack of a better word, rang true and I had come to accept that I was only a single note in a massive symphony. If I were to fall, every other working part of this masterpiece known far and wide as "the greatest army in the world" would continue to thrive without me, without even noticing that I was gone. The cause that I was fighting for was of greater importance than my comfort and ultimately, my own life. This, too, was the case for everyone in my company. But I made a silent vow to myself and every man in my platoon that I would be a commander who was more reliable and compassionate than Banastre ever was. Therefore, the importance that I staked on my own survival fell shy of the importance that I staked on theirs. With no Sylvia to fear for me and no Sylvia to feel the single, inconsequential tremor of my sacrifice, I had nothing to lose and was prepared to lay my life down at any time during the battle.

We were in the second wave. Most of the men in the frontline had trained with me in New York and it sent a shiver down my spine to know that my talents were on reserve for after theirs had failed. Our battlefield was a sloping oceanside hill full of loose soil and hidden rocks that could only be seen jutting out of the earth the moment before they snagged our boots and robbed us of our balance. At high noon, the sun had dispersed an even blanketing of light over the bay, but by the three o' clock hour when the first shot was fired, disorienting glares bounced of the rolling waters and into our eyes. Watching how the other commanders used the alarmingly hostile terrain to their advantage was a lesson in and of itself. Captain Greer told me where to go and I merely redirected his orders once we were in motion. When he told me to break off and lead my platoon to fire behind a natural buffer, I could only obey, but it was clear to him that I was terrified.

"I'll keep an eye on ye as best I can," he assured me, the cruel sting of indifference in his voice. And we parted.

I ordered my men to duck and position their rifles against the rocks. The formation that I had placed them in was dreadful, scattered and unorganized. While they remained out of sight, I scanned the field for other lieutenants so that I might follow their examples. They kept low, lower than I, but I was so enamored with the notion of being "heroic" that I was steadfast on my commitment to put my life on the line. My first mistake was willingly stepping out into the clearing for a better look. The miscalculation that would prove detrimental was ordering my men to fire out of panic when I believed I had been spotted. We took out several unsuspecting rebels, but attracted a swarm of forty or more militiamen once our location was compromised. Captain Greer saw our peril from several hundred yards away and ordered a retreat. He could not come to our assistance, having been dealt an even larger hand of combatants. I blocked my men as best I could, but could not prevent three souls from being gunned down as they fled. One took a shot to the femoral artery and bled out in the white sand, the second never saw his end coming and was gone before he hit the ground, dead from a musket ball that tore through the back of his skull.

Guilt strangled me from the inside. Those two young men, whose souls were just as intricately formed by the hand of God and whose minds were just as complex as my own, had died because of me. The third victim of my negligence was curled up on the ground, clutching with quivering limbs to a gaping abdominal wound. I stood above my fallen comrade, ready to defend him until all my strength was spent. In the distance, I could see Greer. He waved his arms and shook his head, but I remained even though he clearly did not condone my valiant, but stupid, decision.

The rebels opened fire at the others who were rushing in to defend my lost platoon. It was in this moment that their shots grew sparse. They had run out of ammunition and we had just enough to bring them down. One broke free from his line to come after me, he must have seen the faint limp that my latest injury had left me with because it was my injured knee that he struck first. I fell over top of the man who I was defending, shielding him with my back. I managed to whisper several words of comfort before noticing that his eyes had gone sightless and his face had gone cold. There would be no saving him. With a yell, I drew my pistol and fired three shots of vengeance for each man I had lost into the young rebel's chest. I remember watching him fall. His dark eyes, light complexion and limp strands of mousy brown hair almost seemed familiar to me. For all I knew, we had grown up in the same town, perused the rows at the same market and crossed one another on the streets a hundred times before this tragic encounter.

The longer I looked upon the two crumpled bodies at my feet, the more overwhelmed I became by the terrors of combat. My vulnerability did not go unnoticed and a parade of footsteps drew in to end me. I loaded and fired, again and again, keeping my eyes from focusing on those who I shot down. A slice into my shoulder disarmed me, a second kick to my faulty knee brought me to the ground and a violent, noisy rip of a bayonet passing from my chest to gut debilitated me entirely. Stunned and cold, I dropped to form a triangle on the beach with the corpse of the rebel that I had killed and the recruit that I had failed to save. It was impossible to tell the origin of my deepest wound; my blood was spilling in every direction. My hands numbed, my muscles weakened and still, I clutched my broken breast with all my might, thus preventing myself from hemorrhaging. Breathing became a struggle, panic took over and my heartrate inclined into a buzz. I had no way to count the passage of time, no way of knowing if the feet that passed over the top of me belonged to a friend or a foe. It would have been welcome for anyone on either side to put me out of my misery like a useless, injured beast. No such mercy ever came.

A dizzying contrast between the warmth of the sun and the cool breeze of the ocean surrounded me. The bits of my flesh that were exposed burned and chilled simultaneously. All that I could do was tremble and breathe quick, broken breaths. By the time that Captain Greer located me, my shaking had nearly subsided and my breathing had turned shallow.

"Ye crazy little bastard," he lifted me up in his arms without so much as a grunt and carried me towards a wagon wherein several other wounded men awaited medical attention, "I was expecting to find a dead man!" As he strode away to find any others, I gripped the edge of his sleeve. I wanted to apologize for the lives that had been lost at my expense, but my tongue was flimsy and drier than sandpaper. "New Jersey, aye?" I must have nodded or given some indication that he was correct. "The ship is heading south. I know it may feel like ye let me down, but ye exceeded all of my expectations today," he gave my hand a quick squeeze before leaving, "Godspeed, Captain Bordon."

The harder I fought against the dark invasion of death, the more my body seemed to succumb to it. My senses had failed me in New York like the flame on a wick that has been denied oxygen. This time, however, I was present for every moment. The surgeon gave me a small, narrow panel of wood to sink my teeth into. He then proceeded to sew my chest shut before the sails could meet a favorable tide. My body started to convulse, and he called another man to hold me down. Stillness was not an option and the life that remained within me found new ways to escape. My vision distorted into a skyward smear as my eyes rolled back into my head.

"This one is done for," the surgeon droned, hardly caring whether I had heard, "bring me a man I can save."

I fought to regain my vision, but no avail. The surgeon's shadow passed from behind the backlit screen of my loosely shut eyes. He was in the process of moving on to a more promising case. But the other man remained. "I can pray with you, Sir," said he, "Or bring you anything within reason to aid your passing."

A tear slinked from each of eye. They slid down my temples and into my hair. "Sylvia," I whispered to the sails as they unfurled and covered the sky with white. "Oh, what I would give to see my Sylvia one last time." I then fell into a strange paralysis. My body must have died, but my mind was still alive. My companion placed his hand on my cooling forehead, it was burned so hotly, it could have been a brand. He paused for a quick prayer. My arms were slack and weighted, but he pulled them from my sides and across my core, laying both of my hands over the wound that had been given up on.

"Fear not, my friend, you will be going home to Sylvia soon." His fingers fell as softly as snowflakes on my eyelids, but he soon suspended all motion. He must have seen the consciousness in my eyes for just then, a newborn tear caused me to blink. He placed my hands back on the table and continued the surgeon's stitch.

"What did I tell you earlier, Boy?" A nameless shadow growled from across the way, "Don't bother making them pretty. Give them a quick prayer if they want it and toss them overboard. We need to make room before we sail."

The stubborn young man continued his work, "This man is still alive! And as long as he breathes, I will do my best to keep him with us." His eyes, so brown they were almost black warmed with a smile. "Tell me about Sylvia."

My tears must have grown. Involuntarily, I blinked to clear the lenses of my eyes. I had to remind myself how to breathe. The boy had nearly given up on hearing my answer, when I finally made an effort to speak again, "She would have been my wife. I would have built a shelter around her with my bare hands and showered her with all the love in my heart until my dying day. She had this gift, you see…"

"A gift?"

"Yes. She could turn silence into music just as easily as you and I can form breath into words. And her music captured every emotion the human heart has ever held. Every secret, every fear, from the thresholds of agony to the very pinnacle of rapture. She would map them out with such artistry in her compositions. She was not of this world," my chest heaved, fighting against the sob that was building against its walls, "I love her. She destroyed me. But I love her." I could feel the pressure of my aching heart against my stitches. The pain was blinding, but all that I could do was wait until the hurricane within me passed and I found rest.

The voyage to New York masqueraded as an elongated dance with death. Even when the waters grew smooth and the ship sailed into the harbor, I continued to fight and tremble beneath my blanket. My wound was bound more skillfully after I was carried ashore. But this second surgery would be a greater trial than the first. In the early hours of the morning, they stripped me of my uniform, my blood and sweat-stained underclothes and any ounce of decency that I had left. Normally, I would have felt shy and craved coverage, but my mortal form was no longer my own. It now belonged to the men who were trying to save it. A lantern's golden glow illuminated this gruesome battle. The hotness of my blood seemed to sear each inch of frigid flesh that it touched. My convulsions, the only response to the pain that I could make, grew beyond what they had been the first time that I succumbed. Several pairs of strong arms tried to restrain me. Somehow, at the peak of my misery, I felt the divine presence of peace.

"Get her out of here!" A hollow voice echoed from all around me. "She should not be seeing this!"

The voices and shadows quarreled and blurred into one another. I wouldn't have been able to understand what was being said even if my senses were intact. But the soft touch of callused fingers against my hand eased my seizing, exposed body into stillness.

"Breathe with me, Sweetheart," Sylvia lilted, "slowly. Deeply. Like a waltz."

Every other sound in the room vanished. I could hear only us, breathing in perfect unison. Surely, this was only a dream. The flesh and tissue beginning at my breastbone and ending just beneath the center of my abdomen were joined. All other aspects of my recovery were dependent on what happened in the deep realm of slumber that Sylvia had delivered me to. I could feel her hand in mine for all the hours that followed. Sometimes, our breathing would fall out of sync and she would speak to me and bring me back to life. Other times, my heart would stampede over the comforting sound of our singular breath. I finally broke out of my empty dream at the end of one of those episodes.

The room was dark, illuminated only by the onlooking moon. The chair that she must have been seated in during the days of uncertainty following my arrival was pushed away. She knelt on the floor at my bedside. Her hair hung freely over her shoulders and onto the sheets in careless whirlpools of gold. The ruffles and lace that she usually wore had been traded for a plain, brown dress. Likewise, I had been given a pair of unrecognizable bedclothes that fit far too snugly across my throbbing chest. A distinctly mournful sound passed through her lips but was stifled by my hand, which she had pressed between both of hers as if in prayer. Sylvia was crying- for me. I called her name and her round face, reddened and damp with tears appeared from over the horizon that our hands made.

"Don't cry," I longed to give her a smile, but everything, even the small task of drawing in air pained me, "let us make this a cheerful dream." She froze like a tearful statue, both of us seemed unsure of what to say or do to one another, even in this fantasy. "Oh, but how could I possibly be cheerful? So many dead. Everyone I knew- every man I trained with in New York is gone and I-"

"-I know," Sylvia's free hand shot into the air. Hearing of my brush with death was torture for her, even now as she beheld me in such a pitiful state. "I never thought that I would see you again. And after you arrived the other night from Boston, I," the usual musicality of her voice frayed and broke like a golden rope under too much pressure, "I don't know what I would have done."

I'll admit it was comforting to hear that she still cared for me. But I found that I could not look at Sylvia without recalling her betrayal. "Why be so gentle with me as I lay here in June and so harsh with in April when I was only beginning to break? The response that you gave to my letter broke my heart." My breath cut out, my grip on her hand loosened, but she tried with all her might to pull me back down to earth, so that I might hear the truth before blacking out again.

"I was a symbol of virtue to my father," she stroked my forehead, searching my eyes for the tenacious man that I used to be, "when he learned that I had let him down, he grew vengeful and cruel. I wrote that letter with him standing over my shoulder. He whispered the words in my ear and I obliged. I ran away and tried so hard to find you. The siege built an impenetrable wall around Boston that my letters could not break through. But that is no excuse for how deeply I must have hurt you." Her eyes plummeted like two brilliant emeralds to my hand as it continued to quiver weakly in her grasp, "You needn't cling to me anymore, my love. Say the word and I will be gone. But please, please hang tightly to this world."

I tilted my head back as far as it could go without snapping. The magnitude of this conversation multiplied beneath the physical hell that I was going through. My body felt as though it was being shredded to pieces and reassembled with every breath, every sob that it produced against my will. Sylvia did not leave me once. She simply muttered a soft apology for every moment of despair that passed me by.

"Why?" I asked desperately before the approaching darkness had the opportunity to take me far away from her again, "Why did you run away from home? Your perfect life, your father, your sisters… Banastre?" She looked so uncertain, as though she believed that by giving me the truth, she would also destroy me. "Tell me!"

"This is my home now," she smiled through her tears, "As long as I help to heal the wounded and pray for forgiveness every day, I have a roof over my head and a place to play my music. Pastor Benson is a kind man. He shows mercy towards pregnant girls when others do not." Carefully, as though my hand were made of thin, dampened paper, she guided it around the circumference of her slightly rounded abdomen. "I ran away to make a better life for our child, Sweetheart. One of my own devices and funded by my compositions."

"Our child?" Although I may have inhaled joy upon this reveal, I exhaled nothing but grief. "You wish to raise our child alone?"

"If not with you, then yes. Alone. Any other man would be a false father. Please believe me when I say that I was never unfaithful to you. I accepted no proposal, it was decided without my consent. I can only imagine the cruel words that my father must have forged for you. As for Banastre, I fled before he and I could even discuss his supposedly 'selfless sacrifice' to wed me."

"But why?" I asked, thinking only of the future that Sylvia would be condemned to after the infection that was surely building in my bloodstream took me. "He is a gentleman of great ambition and you, you are a grand lady!" Her expression grew sour to hear her father's term. So, I forged one that she would not only understand, but appreciate. "You are a swan."

I earned a small laugh from Sylvia, but she quickly grew pensive. "I suppose that is what makes swans such curious animals. You can remove them from their partner's side long before they pass away, but neither swan will ever take another mate. They only love once."

"What a cruel arrangement." I found the strength to raise her hand to my lips and kiss the ridges of her knuckles, but darkness soon followed, and my picture of Sylvia grew dim. "Take my house in New Jersey. I was born there and grew up climbing that silly tree that you fell out of, remember? It is a fine home to raise a child and will be a warm and comfortable place for you to pen your compositions. You will no longer have to live in this grim church, surrounded by death. I wish that I could leave you with so much more, but that is all that I can give to you, my love."

Defiance was what I expected to receive as I started to give in. But Sylvia did not defy me at all. She drew near, avoiding my injuries as best she could and was simply present. She fought away the urge to cry with as much fortitude as it had taken me to remain alive from the moment my life began to spill out on the beach to now, this final reckoning.

"Let go," Sylvia whispered with all of her gentle strength, "Let go of this frightening, confusing world and find the peace that you have earned for yourself. You needn't fight anymore."

She continued to speak to me, permitting my surrender and promising that she would love me despite my absence. The same all-encompassing paralysis that I experienced the first time that I was severed from my mortal form set in. The moon, the church and the sweet presence of selfless Sylvia all vanished. I marveled at the emptiness, the deafening silence that semmed too lofty and distant to be experienced until the end of one's life. But what I did not know was that this was merely a place that my soul had escaped to while the rest of me warded off death. By letting go, I was closer to recovering and returning to Sylvia than I realized.