~3~
Now
"What do you remember?" Elsa asked, somewhat hesitant. Her fingers fumbled a little on the buttons to her blouse, for her left hand was sore.
They were standing in the sunlit privacy of their bedroom. The bed was still unmade; Anna would get to it later. Anna paused in the act of pulling on her shirt, her mouth a thin line. Elsa asked the question because she had to; gently grilling Anna on her dead night was a standard part of their day.
Silence grew taut and thin, like pulled taffy though not nearly so sweet.
Elsa finished dressing and moved to her vanity. There were two markers on it: red and blue. She picked up both, even though she knew already what sort of night Anna had just come from.
She turned to face Anna, whose eyes were open but focused on their off-white ceiling. Just as she was about to ask another question, Anna replied, "It was a child, a boy. He had a scrape on his forehead, and fresh rips in his clothing. He was holding a very old and battered soccer ball."
"How old was he?"
"Sevenish."
"Did he say anything to you?"
"'Tell momma I promise not to run in the road agin, okay, lady?'" Anna recalled, her face tight.
At least it was in English, though Anna had become quite adept at mimicking the sounds of other languages when necessary. Couple that with Elsa's dedication to research and the absolute magic of Google, and they were sometimes able to identify those who came to Anna in the night.
In the Marketplace of Souls.
"He was hit by a car?" Elsa asked. It wasn't likely a hit and run - that would have constituted a red night, not a blue one.
Anna nodded.
"Did he leave a message?" Elsa asked.
"No more than he already said," Anna replied, her voice weary. Elsa held out the markers; Anna took the blue one and turned her attention to the piebald walls. She stood in quiet contemplation for a moment, trying to bring reason to an unreasonable night. Finally she found an empty space and wrote in her clear and smooth hand,
October 4, 2010. A seven year old Caucasian male, likely American. Scrape on his forehead, tears in his clothing. He held a soccer ball in his hands. Cause of death: hit by a car. "Tell momma I promise not to run in the road agin, okay, lady?"
Elsa could have been happy this was only a blue night, and not a red night. But even the blue nights were restless nights.
Dead nights, and no stars.
Two years ago Elsa had taken Anna up north in the middle of the winter, flying first to Edmonton, Alberta, and then on to Yellowknife, and finally to Tuktoyaktuk. This small town was north of the Arctic Circle, and on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. They had saved for the trip for five years.
And there, in the season Elsa hated most, in the land of blasting winter and endless night, Anna got to enjoy the moon and the stars, even while dying at nine every evening and reborn at six in the morning and glorying in every moment of it. They saw the northern lights at noontime, and heard the howling of the sled dogs. Deep and bitter cold, too cold for trees, Anna was sublimely happy, and Elsa was happy for Anna's happiness.
Some legends claimed that the northern lights sang.
And there they made love at midday, to the crooning of the northern lights and the everlasting stars, as if it were truly night.
Anna turned away from her wall-writing and relinquished the pen. They bought them in bulk from the local arts store and the girl at the till was no longer surprised at how many they bought or how fast they went through them. Elsa turned to put them away and Anna caught her hand.
Surprised, Elsa looked at her partner, so devilishly young, so fair and beautiful. In a few more years they would have to move again. Anna didn't get about much in the town, but agelessness only went so far before it was noticed. When they met ten years ago, Elsa was younger than Anna by two years.
Now Elsa's 32nd birthday marched closer, peeking with vengeance around the corners of the calendar pages, and Anna had not aged a day. She was arrested in time at 25 years old. As each year passed it became harder for Elsa to keep her greatest fear a secret; she did not want to add to any of Anna's burdens.
Uncanny knowledge was granted through the unseen world; Anna could not read minds, but that didn't stop her from being so damned intuitive.
For Anna pulled Elsa back to her, lightly squeezing the hand with the markers in it, lifting her free hand to touch Elsa's face. Those questing fingers touched her temples and then ran down the sides of her face. A thumb brushed against the lattice of scars at Elsa's throat before wrapping in the platinum majesty of Elsa's loose hair.
"You are so beautiful," Anna said, pulling her softly forward, her fingers irresistible. Soft lips, too soft, too fresh, too damned young, brushed against hers before pressing harder. When Anna pulled away from the kiss, her teal eyes were vivacious and sparkling.
"Am I presentable?" Anna asked, slowly turning around with a wink and a shimmy of her hips.
The sun was rising, and their small bevy of guests would be wanting the breakfast that came with their bed. Yet all Elsa wanted was to lay with Anna within those sheets of Egyptian cotton, for Anna's body wasn't cold nor dead just now, and she could kiss her and love her and every moment would banish her fears. Surely one day Anna would find her repulsive and aged, with wrinkles and varicose veins and the other dread marks of time that would never appear on Anna's body.
But Elsa didn't often get what she wanted, at least not the way she wanted it. She wanted to be the same age as Anna again.
She wanted to love her at midnight.
So the markers were put away, and Anna stood behind Elsa's chair to brush and braid her glorious mane of hair. Her own messy mop would be put into a single ponytail, at least until after breakfast. Then the women looked each other over, smoothing a pant leg here, adjusting a collar there, details a mirror would have shown them, once upon a time. "Do you know if Haley is home?" Anna asked as they left their room, hand in hand down the hallway to the kitchen, the smell of fresh coffee borne through the air on the wings of the soft radio.
"Kristoff said her flight leaves this morning," Elsa replied as they entered the kitchen. The huge bay windows faced the ocean-side groves and gardens, and the rising sun filtered unevenly through dawdling autumn leaves. Renee must have woken early this morning and been to the gardens; there was a bouquet of freshly cut flowers, resplendent autumn blooms. The entire room was cast in an aging organic warmth; copper pots and pans and bunches of drying herbs hung from the ceiling over the interior island. The graces of the thriving world outdoors were giving a final grand performance before heading into the wings as winter took center stage. In time the snows would come, the ocean would scream, the guests would stay away, and nights would be even more unbearable.
Elsa hated winter, just as she hated the sound of a crow, the whistle of a calliope.
Renee smiled at them as they entered the kitchen, her long brown fingers wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee. Her black hair was also pulled into a ponytail, and her almond-shaped green eyes were as exotic and alluring as always. Kristoff was likely still asleep in their bed; now that they no longer worked a farm, he was not the morning person as he had once been forced to be.
And as much as Elsa also liked to sleep in, she was certainly a morning person now, not entirely by her choice.
"Good morning," Renee said quietly.
The kitchen hadn't fully woken up yet. For some reason they always spoke softly in the kitchen just after dawn, as if nature were whispering secrets they had to strain to hear. Soon enough the room would arise for the day, along with their guests, but until then they each adopted the quiet.
"Good morning," the women echoed, and their hands finally parted; Anna to the drawer to pull on an apron, and Elsa to the coffee machine. By ancient tradition Anna abstained from coffee in the morning, not for any mystical sort of reason. Caffeine did remarkable things to the steadiness of her hands, and a trembling, jabbering woman wielding a kitchen knife was not advisable.
One morning after a red night, when Anna had finally calmed herself into a state of near exhaustion, she allowed herself a small cup of coffee to help perk her up. The pancakes had salt in them that morning instead of sugar, and the mystery of the guest pouring on reams of syrup was solved when Elsa tasted them.
Yet even surfing the waves of coffee-induced madness Anna was a far better chef than Elsa would ever be.
Anna's movements were swift and quick, darting like small birds. The swift wrap around and tie-back of the apron, the double down of the edge over her slim waist, her sleeves rolled and clear; Elsa watched, a little needle of familiar envy rising within her.
Anna was glowing.
The morning light filtering through the trees seemed to imbue her with vitality and strength, as if the universe itself commiserated with her on those lost hours in the unseen world, and sought to repay her with gifts of youth and beauty. Such high cheekbones, carefully shaped eyebrows, blue-green eyes brilliant and clear. There was a hard and near painful surge of desire in her gut as Elsa looked at her lover, knowing that while others could feast upon Anna with their eyes, only she could feast on her with her mouth.
Only during the day. Never at night.
Anna caught Elsa's eye and leered at her.
Only then did Elsa notice that she had paused in the act of pouring her cup of coffee, and the hot liquid was nearly overflowing the mug. "What are you thinking about?" Anna asked innocently, and Elsa jerked her hand, slopping some of the coffee on her aching hand and on the floor.
Renee chuckled as Elsa pulled a wad of paper towel from the dispenser to mop up the floor, her cheeks crimson with equal parts embarrassment and despair. Anna's intuition was near legendary, and her ability to correctly interpret thoughts and feelings was a strange gift, given of her time in the unseen world.
If they found the fortune teller, and broke the curse, would Anna be willing to give up all these gifts for the taste of starlight on her skin, for the sight of the moon at midnight?
If she stayed alive at all?
Please God, let her live.
When Elsa rose from the floor, Anna touched her arm, drawing her gaze. "Even this won't last forever, Elsa," she said quietly. "We'll find a way."
"It's been nine years, Anna," Elsa replied. "How can you still have faith?"
"Because I have you." Anna softly kissed her, and squeezed her arm before returning her attention to the creation of breakfast for their guests. Elsa sat down on a stool, nursing her burned hand, watching the vastly intricate kitchen dance between Anna and Renee, as eggs found their way into skillets with bunches of herbs and onions, fresh hash browns with cheese, steamed asparagus with hollandaise, and always the rising and beloved smell of new bread from the oven.
Kristoff eventually joined her, and the siblings sat in uncomfortable silence, looking at the women they loved and the beautiful autumn day but never at each other. The calendar hung on the wall, a testament to the inexorable flood of time and Haley was coming home empty-handed.
Then
There was an unopened library book in Anna's lap, for she was watching television with Hans. He had taped a number of Star Trek Deep Space Nine episodes and they were watching them together. Anna hadn't overly cared for Star Trek, nor Star Wars, nor Starsky and Hutch or any television programming. Spending time with each other had been one of the goals of their marriage-saving; advice dispensed not quite freely by a marriage counsellor.
It was September of 1999.
Dishes congealed in the sink, and the beer in Hans's hand was beaded with condensation. Anna watched the TV screen without seeing it at all, remembering only the soft touch of Sergeant Carter upon her hand earlier that day and the maligned agony that swept her soul as a result. She was only peripherally aware of a tide rising within her, a great earthquake that would cause her world to rearrange, coastlines evolving, whole continents spreading and drifting and anchoring anew.
A new universe had spun in Sergeant Carter's eyes.
A scene unfolded on the screen with soft intensity. It was so unusual it drew her attention completely.
There were two female officers, and they were kissing each other. The kiss was fraught with history and hardship and love, and the sight of it flensed all of Anna's muscles. For a moment she could scarcely breathe. A hard knot of loss and joy cramped Anna's stomach as she pretended not to stare at the screen, trying with all her soul to remain nonchalant while sitting next to her spouse. She could not evince any interest, but the scene was scorched into her mind with an incredible burning.
It was the final catalyst.
Her eyes were wide in the spaces of that night, her husband sleeping next to her, for she was haunted by this rising tide, this wellspring of emotion and hunger. The world, once so callous and cruel, now wondrous and strange, called to her, whispering of love, calliopes and seawater.
Whispered of beauty.
After Hans left for work in the morning, Anna pulled on a light jacket and walked through the woods, down that now familiar path that led to the slightly pebbled mound of dirt over the dead dog, overrun with weeds, grass, and flax.
"My choice," she whispered to the mound, as if the dead dog within it could hear her or even care.
Her heart burned for the months she had lost, the courage that always seemed to elude her. Seeking to define herself by the attentions and perceptions of others, there in the drained lassitude of the weary world and in the company of a rotting dog, Anna realized that in twenty three years of life she had failed to accomplish a single notable thing.
The dirty dishes were still in the sink, despite Hans's promises to help in the kitchen.
Hans's characters had long since conquered their fantasy world; he had found another game to occupy the stretches of time between work and sex and sleep.
He occasionally brought home roses, but they were no substitute for devotion or attention. Meals were eaten in the mind-numbing glow of the television screen, and he wolfed down ahi tuna on jasmine rice with sesame ginger sauce the same as he did microwaveable meals. They drank beer, never wine.
Her hands grew grimier and more learned under the hoods of cars at work. Dave and Gary doted on her while pretending not to. The radio spewed country songs and melancholy.
The millennium was approaching, and the frantic gyrations of her paranoid society would call it the end of the world. Did Nostradamus dream of this when he composed his ramblings, knowing that his own prophecies would be skewed, twisted and sold to these desperate fools? Tabloids shrieked of his prophecies, of bat-faced demon children, of the digital viruses that would crash the computers of the world, sending the stock markets into a deathly spiral and every economy in the world flushed down the same drain. Panicked shoppers stocked up on beef jerky, distilled water, and shotgun shells.
Anna didn't believe in God or the apocalypse or even herself.
She only knew that she needed a kiss.
When she returned from her walk that day, Anna turned on the television. Frequently looking around her, as if to prove that Hans had indeed left for work and she was as alone as she was going to be, she found the exact spot on the VHS tape that held the key to her future.
After six or seven revolutions, Anna turned off the television, the torture of the scene suddenly far too much to bear. It was exquisite in its beauty, haunting her, tormenting her with her choice.
Restless, aching, Anna turned instead to the new library book, chosen for the pretty fake picture on the cover and the promising blurb on the back. Titled "The Ledger", the book opened with a line that branded itself into her consciousness forever.
The brave may not live forever, but the timid do not live at all.
She was living a caricature of life. Skewed, hollow, pointless.
Anna read the line six or seven times, until the words branded her soul and settled deep into her psyche. Only then did she close the book and look at the name on the front cover. A.E. Cannon. She flipped to the back, but there was no picture. She wouldn't send a prayer to God in thanks for the words of this unknown person who had unwittingly shaken her world. She refused to pray, for both God and heaven were dead, and felt guilty for it.
The timid do not live at all.
There was a nick on her ear, a scar to remind her how closely death stalked the living, as if envious of light and substance. There was crabgrass over the mound of the dead dog. Dying was her single greatest fear, for there was no heaven, and she had never been kissed. Her dreams were locked in a drawer of her own devising. Once upon a time she had been capable of much more than this.
Anna needed beauty, and it was perilously absent here.
And she finally realized that Hans could never give her what she needed. No one could.
It would be a gift solely from within.
Anna spent the rest of the day packing, evaluating her meagre possessions and stowing them away. She made a pot of macaroni and cheese for supper; it was cooling slightly when Hans arrived home.
His eyes went wide when he saw the boxes. He smelled of dirt and cigarette smoke, and his face was ruddy and wind burned. "Anna?" he asked, setting down his lunch cooler.
It nearly broke her heart to see him so vulnerable. Bemused and stricken, he stared at the boxes and she remembered how he looked when he had taken her dancing on their second date. The music had been too loud, their conversation was stilted, and he worried incessantly about not making a good impression. The depths of his attempts had warmed her heart, and she was twenty years old, and all her friends were getting married and producing children, and she was tired, so very tired of being the one hanging near the wall.
His attentions were heart-warming, and his future promising.
When they finally kissed, some time later, Anna could remember her father's sermons. Fear had risen like bile within her as they kissed, but she had shielded it.
"Why are you doing this, Anna?" he asked, near collapsing on the chair.
Anna sat across from him, her stomach knotted and fierce, her eyes barely able to meet his gaze. "Why can't you believe that I just don't love you?" she asked. "Don't you hate this, too? We're practically strangers. You deserve better than this, Hans. You deserve better than me."
"What I deserve is a wife who doesn't pack her boxes every six months," he shot back. "Why am I so terrible to you? Where the hell do you think you can go? And how on earth are you going to survive without my money?"
It was as if her own father had delivered the insult.
Anna's hands were gifted. They could debone a chicken as easily as replace a carburetor. Yet all she could make with them was $5.75 an hour. Her nails were cracked and thick, her fingers rough and stained with oil. With two years of general studies under her belt and three years of gas jockeying, she wasn't exactly educated or erudite. How was she supposed to survive without his money, his support?
Happiness was more than the cherry on top.
It was necessary.
Anna quietly packed deep into the night, systematically scouring the house for those things that had been hers before their marriage. Her possessions filled twelve large boxes and no more.
Dave and Gary were not surprised when she handed in her resignation the following day. "You've been unhappy for a long time, Anna," Gary said as they tinkered under the hood of a battered Corolla. "You certainly deserve better than him." Anna handed him a crescent wrench, her heart thick and her throat tight with fear. She still didn't consider herself overly brave.
They gave her all the shifts they could in her last two weeks, but it still wouldn't be enough money to jump start her new life. Anna pawned some of the items in those twelve boxes and spent every available hour in between on the Internet, looking for a new place to live. Somewhere that had no bad blood memory for her, a new place, exciting, intimidating.
Time and again her eyes flitted down the coast of Maine, to a town called Bath. It was only vaguely familiar as a bathroom stop on the way to New Hampshire for the summer holiday when she was a child. The want ads were not particularly promising, but at least there were some cheap apartments. She kept looking, but felt no driving need to return to Bangor, nor any desire to move away from Maine.
Bath it would be. Small, safe.
The seawater called to her.
Moving day arrived and Hans left for work in stony silence. Her hopes and dreams were packed away with all her belongings; she could hardly wait for the moment to open them and bring them to the air. With a careful and illustrious hand she could wipe the neglect away and see her bright and hopeful face reflected in the gleam.
Her future would be bright.
She had to believe it, or else she would go mad.
Once her parents realized the depth of her resolve, they begged her to come and live with them for a while. Displaying fortitude far greater than she thought possible, she said no. In the end they did not help her move; it was Gary who drove up in a company truck on moving day. He slipped her an envelope, later opened to reveal five crisp one hundred dollar bills; a parting gift from everyone at the garage.
When Anna looked at the back of the truck, she could have cried. Their attentions scorched her soul.
In the back of the pickup was a bed and mattress, a small dresser, an overstuffed paisley chair from the wicked seventies along with several boxes of assorted necessities; new towels, reading lamps, pots and pans. Anna stammered and fought back mutinous tears as the burly mechanic adroitly manoeuvred her meagre possessions into the back, lashing them secure with tarp and rope.
Then four hours of open highway, lined by avenues of trees that applauded for her with showers of leaves, every mile cementing her new future, unknown, terrifying.
Essential.
That night, Anna stood in the middle of a decrepit open space. The ad had been misleading; the "cozy loft" was nothing more than a ramshackle bachelor's suite, walls exhaling second hand smoke, painted with a thin veneer of ancient hamburger grease. Water marks slowly conquered the ceiling and the heating register drooled and moaned.
It was perfect.
The following morning she locked the door behind her, more out of habit than any desire of material preservation. She walked out into the growing gentility of a Maine September day, hoping that the sting of fresh air would relieve the hamburger grease and stale tobacco scent of her freshly laundered clothing. It was not a short walk to the Patten Free Library, yet she enjoyed every minute of it, watching the men and women sauntering to their jobs, relaxed and happy.
The library rose from the ground with the aristocratic airs of seeded nobility; half of it built at the turn of the last century, and the rest still smelling of construction and paint. The landscape was abraded, waiting for the touch of spring for renewal, fresh sod and new flower beds to cover the tracks of construction equipment.
Inside, she delighted in the smell of the books, scents as precious to her as mandarin peels or fresh bread or pine needles in spring. She wandered through the library, her smile small and grateful. When she consulted the want ads of the local paper, she discovered that there was plenty of work for grunts such as she. There was always work for girls who were separated from their husbands for no good reason.
Anna was about to return to her grease-laden junk hole when she noticed that the library itself had an opening: Library Assistant, Circulation.
Did the future swallow her, promise her the taste of seawater and an abiding hatred of calliopes?
Anna didn't realize that destiny, like a mighty river, could be diverted with the careful placement of a single pebble.
She was Elsa's pebble, and didn't know it.