A/N: One of my favs. Enjoy.
Chapter 56 - Smelling Like Lavender
At times, many times, dreams come. Scrambled, jumbled, and frustrating. He's running, he's driving a speeding van, he's pulling the trigger of that gun himself. But once in a while, he dreams of a child's soft cheek, ice blue eyes staring right at him. In those dreams, he wakes with the whisper in his ear to live, to push, to keep moving. His heart beats steadily. Just as the child is new, born, so is he when he wakes. Tissues and cells rejuvenate. He grows stronger.
Edward fills out his shirts now. New shirts he bought with money, from his own pay. That first night, the old man pointed him toward the inn. The middle-aged woman at reception just looked up through the window, but Edward never went in. At least not that night. He walked to the woods out back and slept against a tree. The next morning, he sat on the stoop again, hoping whatever tasks the old man would give him, meant a meal for the day.
He shook off his coat and got to work. He's been working ever since.
It's been over a year.
His eyes look up from under the brim of a hat. He sees the horizon, quiet. No sounds but for the breeze sweeping the fields and animals calling from their bins. His hands working a rag to put around his neck. The heat is picking up. The lavender bushes have already been harvested. He did all that work with other men who came on the ferry. A few just nodded at him, no introduction. Others were just as quiet as him. He trembled at first with the anxiety of company. He was working alone for a month. The old man barely present, only giving him orders. He'd pick up quickly and was up before anyone else. No one in sight but for pigs, cows, and chickens. Those goats sniff at his thighs. He's their master now.
He turns the machinery back on after a break. It sails between bushes of lavender to prep them for the next snipping. There's another machine for that. He tinkers. He opens their lids and looks at the motors. He's interested. He's calm.
He's found some peace.
It's hard labor, but he can get lost in his mind.
When men came, new help, he wanted to leave. He wanted to move on. He tried to find malice in their eyes, horrible intentions. This wasn't going to work. But keeping mute has its advantages. No one talks to him. He told himself not everyone in this world is out to do harm.
So, he let go of the tension around his shoulders some. Even though it still looms at times.
Every morning he wakes and wonders if today will be the day he leaves. But then a filling breakfast comes, lunch, then dinner, and he's too tired to think about anything but sleep.
He slowly walks to the library after he's done with the field. He needs a new book for the night. He isn't stealing anymore; he borrows them. He's proud of that. Even though it takes all his nerve and courage to be around people. It's nearly numbing to visit the town at the old man's insistence to pick up things; cashiers with wide smiles and questions he never answers. He'd rush out at first. Where he bought a shirt, pants, some socks, new boots, there was also a library. His feet practically marched that way without thought.
It's not a bad life. If he knew there was ease like this when he was twenty and out of college, he would've come here first.
And where is here? He figured it out himself one day while wandering.
The storefronts in that very deserted, ghost-like town he found, displayed large, typographic letters: Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.
He hummed to himself, almost framing his jaw with forefinger and thumb with the gesture. A bubble popping up over his head like in comic books. How in Christ did he get here?
But moments like these, when he looks over the field's horizon and the sun setting, his hands and clothes smelling like lavender—over his pillow and even his sheets putting him fast to sleep—he feels like it was meant to be.
These days, he barely lets anything occupy his clear mind. Not until he feels it. Just now. A creeping feeling.
On his way to the library, he spots a woman far away. It makes him stop. She looks hauntingly and unnervingly familiar. The Lady of the Woods is a glimpse, a ghost. He crosses the road to get a better look with no such luck. Just like that, she's gone.
Every muscle in his body loses strength.
...