Death is as necessary for man's growth as life itself. – Mohandas Gandhi
xxx
"Didn't I tell you we'd both fit on these here Is, mattresses?"
"Eleanor."
"What? I did, didn't I? Of course, like usual, you didn't believe me and just scoffed – and, like usual, I was right."
"Eleanor . . ."
"Well, you know that I'm right. I mean, it is a bit cramped, but it's doable, eh? I s'pose we could buy a bigger bed, actually, if we wanted to. It'd take up more space and probably make it harder to get around these little bedrooms, but I've seen bigger beds available in some spirits' shops – "
"Eleanor."
"Don't you 'Eleanor' me," she grumbled, but fell silent nonetheless.
He smirked and allowed his eyes to close, fingers drifting across her lower back, content to be inanimate not just in body, but in mind. It was a rare feeling, one he had lost since his death, since those few moments on Earth when he had been able to almost forget. It was a feeling he did not want to lose again.
"Mr. Todd?"
He sighed. Could she never be content with inanimation too?
"I was just wondering if you'd seen Turpin lately." Her face was pressed into his shoulder, muffling her voice; her lips moved against his skin as she spoke. "If he's still hanging about and bothering you."
"He still shows up to my art classes."
"Well, just try not to pay him any mind, I guess. Eventually he'll give up and leave us alone."
He rapped his fingertips upon her spine, impatient to have this conversation end, wary because he could tell from her tone that she was merely warming up to another topic. "That's always my strategy, pet."
"Mmm." She paused to shift her position, turning herself sideways to press her cheek against his chest, her muscles forcefully relaxed against his. "What about Lucy?"
His body tautened. "What about her?"
"Still looking for her?" she asked, her voice determinedly calm, indifferent to his answer.
"Yes," said Sweeney.
"Well," she said, tone still serene, but she couldn't disguise her swallow as her throat muscles rippled against his torso, "well. I won't judge any longer. You'll do as you must, I guess."
He refused to open his eyes and look at her. He already knew what he would see – slightly parted lips, unlined brow, wide and dry eyes, expression completely open and untearful, undefeated, still fighting for a cause that he was no longer sure of – and yet to see the expression manifest . . . he could not.
"You can't have thought this would change who I am," he muttered.
"No," she whispered, "I didn't." He felt her knuckles graze across his cheek before pulling away. The weight on the cot shifted then decreased as she lifted herself to her feet. He opened her eyes as she began gathering her wrinkled clothes in her arms. "But I did dare to think it'd change who we are."
He watched as she redonned her clothes: lacing up undergarments, squinting at buttons, jerking at strings. Nothing ever changed. People always remained who they were; people were always cruel to each other, selfish to their own needs and causes; people were always themselves. Death was just a continuation of life. Surely she knew that by now.
He watched her callused hands struggle to pull her corset too tight against her ribcage, her breathing straining, her jaws clenching in pain, but her hands still pulling, still trying, still determined to make a fit out of something that simply did not fit.
No, he realized. She would never know it. She would always believe that a fit was still possible.
xxx
"Isn't it frustrating how we don't get any of the more useful supernatural powers? I mean, honestly. Being dead's got to have a few perks 'sides from walking through walls. It'd be so handy if we could just repair broken things with a snap of our wrist, or summon objects out of thin air, or some suchlike. No more pointless manual labor."
"Without manual labor, there would be no time for inward reflection," Sweeney drawled sardonically.
"People'd get to stop moving and relax, though," persisted Eleanor as she swept up the shards of her mirror from her floor. "As they're s'posed to when they're dead, mind you."
Sweeney, lying supine atop her mattress, turned his head in her direction. "Pet, you're always moving because you don't know how to relax."
"No, it's 'cause there's always work to be done," she retorted, putting the broom and dustpan to the side and kneeling down on the floor. "You going to help me wipe up your blood or not?"
Rolling his eyes, he got down on his knees across from her. Eleanor dipped two rags into a bucket of water, wrung them both out, then handed one to him. They both began to scrub at the blood flecked across her stone floor.
He considered asking why she had not sponged up this blood earlier, for blood was far easier to clean up while wet; she knew that as well as he did. He considered asking too how her mirror had shattered – for though he recalled punching it, that had not caused it to splinter into thousands of shards – and why its remains had not been cleared away either.
But he did not ask. He did not ask because he was not sure that he wanted to hear the answer spoken aloud, an answer that shone in her eyes, scared and grateful, each time she glanced at him: that despite her desire to move on, she couldn't. That at the time, she couldn't let go of the last bit of him she still possessed, lest he depart and leave her with nothing again.
"Couldn't we clean this up after the festival?" he asked instead, chafing his linen across the ground.
She raised her head as a grin spread over her lips. "I thought you didn't want to go to the festival," she teased.
He frowned down at the spot of blood that he was scrubbing at: damn thing wouldn't come out. "I don't want to go."
"But you want me to go," she said, waggling her eyebrows. "You want me to be happy."
"No," he grumbled, scowling at the unflinching crimson stain: how many circles had it been since he'd smashed his fist against the mirror and received only bloody knuckles in return? How long had this blood been allowed to dry? "I'm just being practical. The fair's already started."
She snickered, the grin still stamped across her mouth. "As you say, love. Well, I s'pose you're right – might just make more sense to clean this up later. One more circle's not going to make a difference at this point."
Tossing her rag across the bucket, she got to her feet and traipsed towards her tulipwood wardrobe (her business really was doing quite well; he did not remember her owning this dresser), stripping lazily down to her unmentionables as she went. Opening the bureau, she pulled out her red satin dress, the dress she had not worn since the wedding – since everything had spiraled out of control – a tangible reminder of what they could never escape . . .
He frowned at the gown. "Is a harvest celebration really cause for such formal wear?"
This wasn't really what he wanted to ask, and Eleanor Lovett seemed to know that from the way she glared at him. "Well," she said, stepping into the mountainous pooled skirts of her dress, "when else do I ever get to wear this? It's a perfectly lovely dress and there just aren't many occasions for a lady to put it on. Besides – no time like the present, eh?"
"We've nothing but time in the afterlife," he muttered.
"Oh, stop your grumbling and help me lace this up."
Rolling his eyes, Sweeney stood and meandered over to her to tie the back of her dress, neither of them mentioning that she was perfectly capable of lacing the dress herself.
"Aren't you going to change too?" she asked, assessing him with critical eyes as she looped a red ribbon around her sloppy bun. "And you can't honestly tell me that you're not even going to comb your hair or wash your hands – for God's sake, Mr. T, y'can't celebrate a holiday with clay underneath your fingernails – and let's not even talk about how your suit's gone all rumpled from you just stuffing it 'neath your bed rather than buying a proper wardrobe . . ."
Another fifteen points went by before she finally deemed him acceptable to be seen by the public. Twining their arms together, they meandered down the corridors, following the other dressed up spirits for countless points until they finally arrived at the farming district.
"Ohhhh," Eleanor gushed in his ear when they stepped inside. "I come here lots to buy supplies for my pies and experiment with new fruits – but I've never seen it all dolled up like this! Oh, gosh, it's so impressive, isn't it?"
The farming district of Is was impressive on any circle – even Sweeney Todd, the permanently unimpressionable man, had to admit that. Like farms upon Earth, thousands of crops stretched out in perfect lines, growing and plentiful; like everything upon Is, the space was endless, reaching out further than the human eye could ever hope to discern. Foods from all over the world flourished, side by side, as naturally as if they always shared the same soil. There were rows of sprouts, stalks, trees, vines; there were pigments of green, yellow, red, purple, blue, orange; there were fruits, vegetables, grains. And yet it was unmistakably not part of the nethers, unmistakably belonged to the main parts of Is, for the colors were normal and no sky fanned above the room, simply the same monotony of cobbled stones. With so much color and life blooming everywhere, though, the gray ceiling and walls were forever tainted rainbow.
Typically – as Sweeney knew only from that murky period of his first circles upon Is, when he had sat in his room, unknowing and uncaring – the farming area was a fairly mellow place. Cultivators milled about, leisured but purposeful, tilling the soil, planting seeds, harvesting foodstuffs.
Today, the scene was anything but mellow. Holidays, like weddings, were apparently incredibly popular occasions where the grand majority of the Is population showed up. Spirits were everywhere, clumped in pockets of twos and tens and twenty dozens: dancing, talking, eating, performing strange rituals that he'd never seen before and could not make heads or tails of.
Eleanor dragged him away from the wall and towards the nearest thicket of souls. A cherub-faced woman, dressed lavishly in purple velvets and diamond jewels, stood atop a cart laden with wheat stalks. "Trowel the black bowl to me," she was singing, "hey derry derry, with a poupe and a lerry . . ."
"Hooky, hooky," the onlookers chimed in, "we have shown . . ."
"Let's get closer and join in," said Eleanor, grinning, pulling at him.
Sweeney raised his eyebrow without comment. Just because the view was impressive didn't mean that he wanted to become a part of it. She had hauled him here without his permission, he took no enjoyment out of these sorts of silly peasant affairs, and he was certainly not going to aid her in pretending any differently.
She scowled at him. "Well, nevermind, then. We'll just find something else to do – 's'not like they're lacking in things to do here."
"Two bits talent only!" cried an Oriental man in broken English as they approached the next cluster of souls. He held out a tray of pastries, enticing customers with the smell; a dozen baskets filled with more of the goods sat by his feet. "Mooncakes, two talents only!"
"Oh," said Eleanor, tapping at his arm, "that looks delicious too – so many different foods here, I'll never get over – "
"Ponggalo Ponggal!" two dozen spirits cheered from several feet away.
Like an overexcited child on their birthday – too eager to open each and every gift to properly enjoy a single one – she immediately began to caper towards the noise, turned around and rushed back towards the Oriental man to purchase a mooncake, then danced again towards the next group just as a copper-skinned fellow blew into a conch and the people around him cheered. They were all gathered around a vessel bubbling fresh milk, not seeming to care that much of it was slopping over the edges as they tossed in freshly harvested rice.
Eleanor tugged at his arm, pulling him from ritual to ritual: a group of younger spirits holding turnips and begging sweets off their elders; grinning men beating out a rhythm upon drums at their waists, the straps slung over their shoulders; a heavily draped woman peeling apples, tossing the skins over her shoulder, then exclaiming in a foreign tongue of her findings; a score of souls dressed all in white with their faces blackened beyond recognition; a knot of people erecting a temporary, tiny frame of a house and draping it with branches and fruits.
The pair observed each scene without participating in any. This was fine by Sweeney. This was what bound them together, after all – their desire to observe, to sneer, to ridicule the pointless cruelty of the disguised savages around them – their desire for isolation, despite her pretense of loving her fellow humans – their desire to stand apart from it all. Their refusal to admit they were no less pointless or cruel. It was how they existed, the two of them, a whole world of holidays and celebrations and plays and concerts and other stupidities right outside the door of their blissful solitude.
Yet tonight, Eleanor seemed to want to participate. Her glare narrowed even further with each rite that he cocked an eyebrow at. He couldn't fathom her behavior. Yes, she had spoken of her desire to move on some circles ago, but hadn't they both realized moving on was not truly possible? That it was only possible to revert back to what things had once been, but never progress further?
What he could fathom even less was how she didn't protest whatsoever to his refusals. She had certainly never paid his scowls or eye rolls any mind while they still dwelt on Earth, barging on ahead with whatever she had planned regardless of his obstinacy. Was she no longer able to fight him? Or did she just no longer want to?
"Why, Mr. Todd! How lovely to see you here."
Sweeney's jaws clamped together.
Eleanor spun towards the owner of the voice; knotted as their arms were together, he was forced to turn as well.
"Oh!" exclaimed Griselda Mooney, her eyebrows meeting her hairline. "Why – good evening, Mrs. Lovett. I did not know you were here. My condolences – regarding your death, I mean."
"Mine as well for yours," said Eleanor stiffly.
"Though this certainly explains why my customers have decreased so much over the past year or so on Is," said Griselda with a tentative grin. "You always were a worthy rival, dear."
Eleanor also pulled her mouth into a smile, her lips twitching.
"So this is your wife, then, Mr. Todd?" said Griselda; Eleanor's hands crushed so hard against the flesh of his arm that they nearly embraced bone. "Well, I suppose you're not aware, but Mrs. Lovett and I knew each other on Earth – always a temperamental thing" – she grinned at Eleanor, a bit more genuinely – "but always a kind soul, too. Helped me out of several tight spots, like coming down with consumption, or when I was living off nothing but ale for four days. . . ." Her eyes glittered upon his – no longer flirting, as they usually were when they gleamed, but approving, pleased. "She's certainly worthy of your affections."
Sweeney couldn't reply.
"Well, thanks very kindly, love," said Eleanor, beaming, as she extended her hand for a shake. "Lovely to see you again."
The two women said their good-byes, then Griselda disappeared back into the crowds. Eleanor's grin morphed to a glower as she tilted her chin up towards his face, the lines of her face tight. Sweeney braced himself.
"Why the hell does Mrs. Mooney think we're married?" she demanded.
Sweeney shrugged. "Who can say?" He certainly couldn't say that he'd told Griselda he was married after she'd tried to dally with him one too many times; he didn't want Eleanor upset, not now that things were finally easy and simple between them, the way they once had been.
The scowl remained upon her face as she tightened her arm around his and pulled him off towards the next gaggle of souls. "Mrs. Mooney's a stupid thing, but she doesn't decide people are married for absolutely no reason, Mr. Todd."
"We have it! We have it! We have it!"
Sweeney became paralyzed.
"Did you know she was here?" Eleanor wanted to know, her arm still snaked around his and jostling his now inanimate body forward: she was surprisingly strong sometimes. And surprisingly oblivious to the owner of the booming voice several yards away from them, drawer closer with her every harried footfall. "On Is, I mean? 'S'obviously not the first time you two've spoken – "
"What have yee?" chorused the crowd in return. "What have yee?"
" – but she doesn't seem to've made the connection that you used to live just a few roads down from her, so I'm guessing you didn't meet on Earth – "
"A neck! A neck! A neck!" thundered the reply.
" – though why you would've told her we were married is entirely beyond me seeing as – " she paused and shook his slack arm " – you even listening to me, you fool?!"
"Hurrah!" shouted the mob. "Hurrah for the neck! Hurrah for Mr. Turpin!"
Eleanor's mouth fell open and her feet came grinding to a halt, her ire forgotten. She jerked her head towards the gathering she had blindly towed the both of them towards: several dozen souls stood circled together in the midst of the corn field. In their center, holding a scythe in one hand and a stalk of corn in his other, his mouth smiling, his body donned in worn trousers and a dirt-smudged shirt, stood Judge Turpin.
"Of course," Eleanor muttered, "always comes back to the bloody ol' judge, doesn't it? Nevermind, dear." She tugged at Sweeney's arms, urging him forward. His feet remained stagnant, but she managed to resume dragging him along anyway. "Just nevermind him. If we leave him be, then he'll eventually just leave us be."
She was, however, forced to eat her words: they had gone not even three steps when Turpin appeared in their path, his corn and scythe having been passed onto another farmer, his smile still playing at his lips.
"Now what d'you want?" Eleanor demanded.
"Good evening, Mrs. Lovett, Mr. Todd. It is a pleasure to see you again as well."
Turpin reached his arm out, took Eleanor's hand in his own, and brought it to his lips.
Electricity bolted through Sweeney and returned his body to his own control in an instant: he jerked Eleanor towards himself – her fingers slipped from Turpin's – and Sweeney took a step forward.
Turpin's smile stretched languidly across his face. "I meant no harm, Mr. Todd."
"C'mon, love, take it easy – this here's a celebration, remember?" Eleanor soothed Sweeney, kneading his taut arm, but the fact that her eyes were pulled into distrusting slits and intent upon Turpin's was not lost on Sweeney – nor was it lost on him when she slipped her other arm around Sweeney's back and wiped her kissed hand on the fabric of his suit.
Sweeney forced himself to inhale, trying to recapture domain of his mind. He should be used to this by now. He should be used to dealing with Turpin. He should be able to see and speak to the former judge without every tendon in his body seizing, without his pulse thundering against his temples and stitching a haze of red in front of his eyes, without his fingers trembling with need.
"My apologies," said Turpin, bowing his head. "I did not mean to agitate either of you. I merely wanted to say hello."
"You want to say hello an awful lot," Sweeney growled, the words falling between his lips in another convulsion of his muscles; Eleanor dug her fingers into his arm.
"I enjoy your company," said Turpin, then added, as a smirking afterthought, "and your good manners."
Eleanor raked her eyes over him, eyebrow arcing as she observed his countenance: the beginnings of a hole on his left boot, the faded patches on the knees of his pants, the muddy color of his once-white shirt, the missing button at his collar, the smear of dirt across his right cheekbone. "So this is what you look like on the job," she drawled. "Never expected I'd see your honor in the thicket of any sort of daily grind."
Turpin spread his hands. Sweeney despised those hands – he could not look at those hands without being stampeded by images of those wrists flexing reverently towards unjust gavels, of those fingers dancing across Lucy's bare thighs – he could not look without remembering everything he could never forget, even without having seen it. Yet he noted, as he stared, that those hands that had once been smooth and unblemished by manual labor were now adorned by blisters and calluses.
"If there is anything I have learned about the afterlife, my dear," said Turpin, "it is to expect the unexpected."
Eleanor's right eyebrow lifted upward to meet her raised left. "You don't sound unhappy."
"Of course not. Why would I be? I enjoy being a farmer."
She giggled at that, and Sweeney felt his upper lip curl: the idea of Judge Alexander Turpin, the high and mighty dictator of the law, enjoying being deigned to a mere homesteader? It was purely laughable.
It was Turpin's turn to arc an eyebrow, his mouth no longer smiling but firm with conviction. "I'm quite serious. Being made to work as a horticulturalist for my 'community service' . . . well, it is certainly not a profession I would have chosen for myself – but seeing how provisions are harvested, partaking in its growth . . . it has made me appreciate both food and labor in a light I never had before."
Sweeney clamped his teeth together and swallowed, refusing to allow the bile rising up his throat to escape from his mouth. For God's sake, did he practice these sorts of speeches every circle? He darted his eyes to Eleanor who, to his pleasure, had her mouth pressed in such a thin line that her lips had nearly disappeared altogether.
Turpin clasped his blistered hands in front of him, folded palms resting against his stomach. "The vocation is all the more interesting in the hereafter too, I think. I still cannot figure out if we receive the plants that failed to grow among the living, or if our seeds truly do generate their own vegetation, just as they do upon Earth, but either way, it is a fascinating subject – don't you agree?"
"You're pulling my leg," said Eleanor flatly.
"No," said Turpin, quietly, his voice lost in the din of the festival around them, his words only decipherable from the shape of his lips, "I'm not."
"Oh, indeed? So you're a perfectly good and honest man now, eh?"
"I never said that, Mrs. Lovett. I have made just as many mistakes as the next man" – Sweeney couldn't suppress his snort; Turpin's eyes dived to him – "perhaps more. I am only human – but I attempt to honor goodness and honesty with my every action."
"Tilgul ghya, god god bola," said a man with high cheekbones and mused hair, appearing seemingly out of nowhere at Eleanor's shoulder; she jumped and gripped Sweeney's arm harder (any harder, he thought with a wince, and he'd have to amputate it from lack of circulation). The man pressed something into her palm, then took Sweeney's hand and placed one in his, before cantering over to Turpin. Sweeney unfurled his fingers: it was a little brown ball made of sesame seeds.
"Erm – sorry?" said Eleanor, smoothing over her face and flashing the man an apologetic smile. "I'm afraid I don't know what that means . . ."
"Ahh," said the man, smiling in return. "Eat tilgul and talk sweet." At her befuddled expression, he elaborated, "Release bad feelings and hostilities of times gone by. Resolve to kind speak from here forth and stay friends."
Without another word, the man walked away, leaving Sweeney to only ponder how it seemed simply to be within an Is soul's nature to continuously meddle in his fellow spirits' existences.
"Well, I don't believe that I can expound any further upon that," said Turpin, presenting them both with a bow and popping the tilgul into his mouth. "Enjoy the festivities, Mr. Todd, Mrs. Lovett."
"Bastard," Eleanor mumbled as he left, though with not quite as much venom as usual.
Sweeney looked down at her. "Don't tell me you bought any of that."
"What?" she snapped. "Of what that dunce said? Jesus, Mr. T, y'think I'm daft? Not all the fancy words or benign smiles in the world could allow him to pretend he's anything other than what he is: a deceiving, dishonest, sadistic, perverted . . ."
Satisfied, Sweeney popped the tilgul into his mouth (it was pretty good, even if he would never follow the advice dashed alongside it) and listened to the beautiful string of adjectives falling from Eleanor's lips.
". . . inhuman, repulsive – oooh, Mr. T!" she squealed, pattering her fingers against his arm. "Look, they're crowning that woman over there Harvest Queen – she's got a crown fashioned from corn and everything – oh, isn't it delightful how they've got customs from every culture imaginable here, all thrown together like this? Let's go get a closer look – "
She lifted her chin up, her face shinning with enthusiasm that died the minute her sparkling eyes met his flat stare. "Well. Nevermind, then, you big grump."
Sweeney was again puzzled: why was she not putting up more of a fight and simply plowing forward with what she desired? Not that he minded, of course – it was nice to not be continually forced to do as he didn't please . . . it was strange, that was all.
"Well, I guess we should be off, then," she chirped, flashing him a grin, as though all were right in the world. "Been here quite a few chords already – the time just flew by, didn't it? How about we head back to my shop for a nightcap, eh?"
He murmured his assent and allowed her to weave the pair of them between the souls and the crops, at last finding a wall and stepping through it.
"Home sweet home," Eleanor muttered, unknotting their arms and trudging towards her alcohol cabinets. "What would you say to some strong port, eh, love? Or a spot of wine? No reason to always drink gin – the poor man's drink – now that we've got so much, after all."
He intended to reply, 'Port.' What he instead replied was, "I'll be back," and stepped backwards, right into the wall he'd just come from, thinking Sweeney Todd's Art Gallery as he went.
He couldn't process why he was doing it, as his feet carried him across his shop and towards the far end of the room where he stashed the art pieces that were not ready to be sold, whether because a bit of clay had been chipped off or their veneer had not yet dried.
One bit of artwork stored over here, however, was finished. Had been for some time, in fact. Yet he had not been able to bring himself to sell it. He despised the piece more than anything he'd ever crafted, even more than his early, unsteady compositions – and yet he loved it more than anything he'd ever crafted, too.
The mind and the heart never worked as one.
Or perhaps they do. Perhaps that's why.
He lifted it into his hands as gingerly as a babe, as intimately as his old silver friends. He wrapped it in the brown paper that he kept for those customers that feared accidentally breaking their purchases. Then – his mind beginning to beat against his body's actions but his hands steady around the swaddled sculpture – he stepped through the wall.
Eleanor sat at one of her shop tables, eyes closed, hunched over against her elbows with her head upon her hands. Two tumblers with generous portions were already upon the table. He glanced at the bottle upon its center: she'd chosen gin.
Her eyes opened as his feet clomped against the ground. "You came back," she said, without astonishment or expectation.
Sweeney felt stung. "I said I would, didn't I?" And she'd always believed that he would – even when he'd been deported to Australia, even when Lucy hadn't believed his promise to return – Eleanor Lovett believed he would. Believed in him.
Or had believed.
Her lips pulled into a wan smile. She shut her eyes again. "I've given up trusting anything that comes out of a human mouth. Don't take it personally, love – I'm including myself in that statement, too." She sighed, her face sinking deeper into her hands, her cheeks squishing up around her eye sockets. "People can't change – people can't move on from who they once were, because they'll always be that person . . ."
Sweeney frowned and sat down across from her. How much had she drunk while he was gone? He hadn't been in his shop more than five points. One glance at the bottle, however, told him that she was drunk on nothing but crushed dreams.
"Oh, we can delude ourselves for a while, sure," she went on, "but then you only start deluding yourself 'bout the fact that you're not deluding yourself. But, of course, what else can we do? We've got to exist somehow, don't we? Can't accept the alternative. And even if it's not living, at least it's surviving . . . at least we're getting by . . ."
He couldn't listen to this; he cut her off, placing his wrapped sculpture on the table. "This is for you."
One eye opened and looked at him before flicking downward. Her other eye opened and she stared at the loose bundle of brown paper, transfixed. "You – you got me a gift?"
"Are you going to open it or just gape like a fish?" he grumbled.
She reached out her arms and took hold of the object, though her lips remained gently parted and her eyes glossy as though in a dream. She peeled back the paper at a painfully slow rate, scoch by scoch, like this too would be saved and cherished along with what actually sat inside. He rapped his fingers against the edge of the fettling knife in his pocket, impatient, as her finger meticulously stripped the paper away –
Until, finally, the sculpture was revealed.
It was his first – and probably last – sculpture to take on a human form. Its shape was no more than a suggestion of a woman. The curves of the body were wide and imprecise; there were no clothes, yet also no details of privates, and neither were there any features upon the face. Yet the wide, imprecise curves seemed deliberate, as though to capture a being that moved with loping ease and grace The figure was dancing: one leg swept behind the other in a waltz step, yet the arms ballooned outward in a gesture of vibrant defiance rather than docile deference, curved at the elbows as though to embrace life itself; the hair spilled over the shoulders in a waterfall, as inaccurately precise as the suggestion of the waist and breasts; the chin tilted upwards, making one see smiling lips and twinkling eyes upon the featureless face almost as vividly as though they were there.
It was a statue of her.
"Lammas Day," said Sweeney, thinking perhaps an explanation was needed, for Eleanor's hands had dropped into her lap and she was now immobile. His fingers drummed faster upon his blade: why was she sitting so still? Did she not like it? "An archaic harvest festival in some European countries – ours among them."
She remained silent, unmoving.
His foot joined in his hand, keeping a rapid counter rhythm beneath the table. "It used to be custom, on this day, for tenants to bring fresh wheat to their landlords."
Still no response.
His foot and fingers beat ever faster.
"Of course, I'm no longer your tenant – and never worked as a sharecropper – but you – but I . . . I wanted to participate in at least one tradition tonight – even if a sculpture's not – what it's meant to be, for this rote – "
Her fingers traced over the sculpture slowly, reverently, barely touching its surface, as though afraid to break it – as though it hadn't been cast in her image, as though it weren't solid and strong . . .
"It's perfect," she whispered, raising her eyes to his, and his hand and foot forgot how to move. "Love – my love – thank you."
A/N: I would like to give a special shout-out to one of my betas, the beautiful & talented beta Robynne (aka roberre, or, as she used to be known, Saime Joxxers). She is always an all-around fantastic beta, but her help with this chapter ended up being particularly invaluable. This chapter, in a nutshell, wouldn't exist without her; she really pushed me to think about how (after)life on Is functions outside of Nellie and Sweeney's little personal bubbles. Robynne, you're the best personal anthropologist a starving artist could ask for.
Okay. Enough with the sap. xD
Reviews are, and shall always be, love.
Anonymous review replies:
Thelovelyflorencelovett: I'm so happy to see that you've returned to read the new chapter! Thanks for R-&-R-ing!
Lady Musket: Haha, yes, I do write their every thought. But I am glad that it isn't boring. Sweeney and Nellie, bless them both, do a great deal of living inside their heads rather than outside; I felt it'd be dishonest to write them any differently.
Is all of Is made of corridors? LOL. You know, one of my lovely betas, Robynne, asked the very same thing after reading this fic. At the time, the answer was a very boring yes. xD Now, however, the answer is no . . . an answer that will be shown more in the next chapter (well, in the chapter that you just read. Whatever xD)!
Anyway, thank you so much for R-&-R-ing!
Noodlemantra: I'm glad you enjoyed the hair-braiding. For some reason, I've always had a particular fetish for scenes where Sweeney braids Nellie's hair. –shrug- xD Anyway, thank you for reviewing!