~23~

Now

Time was a snake that had swallowed Elsa whole. She writhed in it every minute of the lost day. When she could bear company, she went to the kitchen and helped Kristoff and Renee make their plans. She averted her eyes from the obscenely clean portion of the floor, and the house no longer smelled of dusty herbs. It smelled of paint and bleach, and it was nauseating.

"We still don't know who hurt Anna," Kristoff finally said. "Will this person come back? I will not leave you all alone here if there is the slightest possibility that this psycho would come back."

"We'll lock the inn," Renee said. "We'll stay closed, until this is all over."

Elsa was holding a mug of hot water. She had forgotten to put a tea bag in it, but at least it was warm and soothing on her aching hand. When she brought up the mug to nearly sip it, she could smell the faintest remnant of sandalwood and rose on her fingers.

"The inn was locked before," Kristoff argued. "That won't stop him, if it's indeed a him."

"Maybe I should be the one to go to Alliance, then," Renee argued back. "You can stay here and be the protector."

The unnatural and unusual snippish remark seemed to cut through the gauze surrounding Elsa's thoughts. It took a great deal of effort to get up from the chair, as if gravity itself was conscious and needy. She opened one of the kitchen cupboards and stood on tiptoe long enough to push aside old boxes of photos and dusty relics. From the shadowy interior she withdrew a cloth-wrapped item and placed it on the table.

Kristoff narrowed his eyes at her as Renee withdrew the cloth. It was a Smith & Wesson .38 Special. Before Renee's astonished eyes, Elsa expertly checked the chamber and put it back down on the scarred kitchen table. It was loaded.

Renee licked her lips before asking, "How long has that been there?"

"Three years," Elsa replied.

Now Kristoff was staring at her. "How many others are there, Elsa?"

"Eight, I believe. A couple of shotguns, a few more revolvers."

Renee was looking at her as if she had spontaneously grown horns out of her head. "Do you know how to use them all?" Renee asked.

She could demonstrate, but it probably wasn't a good idea, so Elsa just nodded.

More incredulity on their faces, and Elsa's heart softened. "Don't any of you realize what I do at night?" she asked softly.

"Anna doesn't know about them either, does she?" Kristoff accused.

Elsa shook her head.

"Damn you, Asanna Elsa Kelly. One of these days your secrets are going to get us all killed."

Renee's mouth dropped open at Kristoff's words; she looked back and forth between them in mounting alarm. Apparently Renee didn't understand that Elsa was a hollow mountain. Words were futile and empty. There was no sound in them.

Elsa stood up, and walked away from the kitchen. Back to her bedroom, where Anna was dead and waiting. The smell of paint in the room was alluring; Elsa decided she would never write on walls ever again.

Hours passed, and she was stuck in the intestines of that snake monster. Hunger pulled at her; she was so famished she could feel her stomach scraping the back of her spine. Kristoff and Renee might still have been in the kitchen, so Elsa waited. It was what she was good at. She certainly had a lot of practice.

When 9 pm came, Anna did not shine.

Wallowing in the darkness of night, Elsa chastised herself for being so silly. She was pushing martyrdom into a whole new realm. She was honest enough in her mind to realize that her pity party was getting stale. When she looked out her window, there was just enough ambient light to illuminate the freshly dug pit of earth in the garden where they had buried Cub. The dog was in the final embrace of the earth, now.

The earth kept rotating on its axis and every soul upon it cried out to God for one reason or another. Was her lot in life really so bad? Could she compare her ledger with that of the world and be vindicated?

She wanted to pray, but she felt blocked. The way was shut.

The time monster did not release her, and ten minutes before 6 am she hauled Anna into the shower. She imposed an iron will upon herself, and did not allow any peeking at the clock. Holding the damp and cold and naked Anna tightly to her, Elsa bowed her head, nestled it in the crook of Anna's shoulder, and kept her eyes closed. She would feel it when 6:04 am came. She would know.

Such agonies in the belly of that time beast! Such raw apprehension, such primal fear! She waited and waited and when she could not bear the suspense any longer, she opened her eyes.

6:02 am.

An eternity still to endure.

She closed her eyes again, and kept the beating water on Anna's own back. Her limbs were trembling from holding her so tight. She started counting the seconds as they passed, and there should have been only a hundred of twenty of them, give or take an eon or two.

When she hit five hundred with no change except a slight flagging in the shower's heat, she opened her water-laden eyes and looked at the clock.

6:07 am.

Was there really this place that existed beyond all pain and all tears? A place of pure and unadulterated novocaine, blissful and numb? Of all the paths Elsa had ever traversed in life, every moment of darkness that scrabbled at her, none could compare to this. It was 6:07 in the morning, they had been in the shower for nearly twenty minutes, and Anna was still dead.

It was as if a hand other than her own reached to turn off the taps. They were someone else's legs that shambled out of the shower stall, with not enough strength to lift the dead woman's feet. The tops of Anna's naked toes dragged along the floor, leaving a trail of glistening wetness as they went back to their bedroom. An automaton, Elsa heaved Anna's sopping body back into bed and covered her with the sheets.

Routine saved her. She dressed, and combed her hair. She tied a light scarf over her abraded throat. She pulled a chair over to the bed and sat in it, holding Anna's cold hand.

Sometime in the middle of the morning, Kristoff came to her room, bearing a tray of food. "I think all the plans are in place," he said. "Haley will talk to Rick as soon as we give the word. Tomorrow night or the one following will be the big night."

Weren't people in mourning supposed to scoff at the sight of food? Elsa's stomach gave an unholy growl, so she placed Anna's hand back on the sheets and began to eat. Her silence gave him enough space to add, "We managed to get a message to Casey as well. She'll be ready when you are."

Elsa kept eating. How to choose between lover and child?

"I don't want to leave Anna," she said.

"Renee will be here," Kristoff replied.

Haley's words had stung her. "I'm not leaving without saying goodbye," she said. "I'll wait forever if I have to."

"And if she doesn't wake up?" Kristoff asked. "What about Casey's chance?"

"One way or another, Casey's going to die," Elsa replied, her voice dull. "She's been living on borrowed time for years."

"You are allowed to cry, you know," Kristoff said. "Keeping everything inside you, damming it up, all that emotion just ferments. Goes stagnant. Crying is good for you. It opens up the stream, gets everything all clean again."

Elsa shook her head. "I have to be strong," she said. "I have to be quiet."

"So much light, Elsa," Kristoff said, leaning now against the fresh wall behind him, his eyes snapping and intent. "So much inspiration. You could never know how I used to envy you, your creativity, your fire. The heavens used to pour their messages out to you, spilling into your hands and into your stories. When did you decide to become a lantern instead? Restraining your inspiration, holding your tongue instead of speaking the truth. Damming your water instead of letting it flow to bless and cleanse others."

If Elsa was water, what did that make Kristoff?

The answer was lightning swift.

He is the earth. The fertile ground upon which love grows and blossoms. A solid foundation, a boulder, blessed to be still, and patient.

He took the empty tray and retreated from her room, closing the door behind him.

Deep inside, the tempest raged, beating at her barriers. Time was marked only by advancing shadows across the clean walls. They did not bring food again, but neither did Elsa desire any. After midnight, she knelt on the cool floor and placed her hands together, palm to palm, as she had been taught as a child. She would blister God with her thoughts, even as she would not utter a word. Words meant action, and she was frozen.

Cold, and dead as surely as her partner in the sheets.

Her ancient knees ached against the hard floor. She could smell her hand cream, the paint, and the sheets. Her eyes were closed, so when the darkness began to recede to light, she believed it was morning, and that she had somehow turned the clock on the midnight hours.

She opened her eyes, and her father was standing in her bedroom, surrounded by a cropped nimbus of light.

"Hi, alanna," he said.

She stared at him as a witless child might stare, but surely any child would have believed, and she could not. Still, her knees creaked as she pushed herself from the floor.

"I guess this is what insanity looks like, isn't it?" Elsa asked the joyous air. She sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed her eyes.

Her father was still there when she opened them. "That's quite a suit of armour you've got on, kid," he said. "You've been working on your walls, haven't you? Built some fortifications? Makes me wonder if you've got bones at all, or if you rely on your armour to prop you up."

She and Paddy and Kristoff had once build a tree fort. It had no walls, and no fortifications, and was defenceless against the lightning bolt that eventually destroyed it. Yet it had been theirs, and she had loved it.

"Are you really there?" she asked, looking at him. He had an ageless quality to his face, and the stillness he never had in life was evident there. Did he look like Kristoff now, or did Kristoff look like him?

"Does any of that really matter?" he asked, either answering her question or her unspoken thought. "Reality is such an unimportant thing, anyway. Only the soul matters." He looked down at the dead girl in the bed, and when he touched her, he had substance. "So this is your Anna," he mused. "She's a good match for you, alanna. You needed a strong soul. Deep inside, you can't abide weakness, can you?"

Elsa shook her head at the truth, but it still struck her with a ray of beauty.

"That's why you were so mad, wasn't it?" he continued. "When I made the choice I did? You could only see it as weakness, and somewhere deep down, a part of you wondered if you would end up being weak like me. A part of you wondered if you would ever make the same decision I did."

"Why did you do it, dad?" Elsa asked, truth choking her like leaves clotting a fountain. "Surely there was another way."

"Doors all around me," her father replied, his voice pensive and sad, and he looked at Anna in the bed. "So many doors, and I only saw them as shut. The way was shut, and I needed out, so I carved the door I needed." He advanced slightly, and he placed his hand on Anna's big toe, gripping it as Elsa so often did. "No one to redeem me," he continued, still looking at her partner. "No one to buy back my life once it was put on the shelf. Not like Anna."

He finally looked at her again, his eyes beaming with the light of the universe behind them. "How many chances do you need, Asanna Elsa Kelly? How long will you perceive every way as being shut? How long will you rely on your armour to protect you, while your very bones atrophy inside?"

His hands were extended to her, and she took them, and they were flesh and bone. They were the hands that comforted her as a child, the hands that taught her to ride horses and fix fences and build forts, the hands that flicked popcorn at her when they watched movies together on Sunday nights, gentle hands, a father's hands, full of substance, truth, and beauty.

He lifted her from her bowed perch on the bed. "On your feet, alanna. There are yet many miles before sleep. Never despair, God is with you."

"I just wish I could see Him," she whispered.

"The day you can is the day you understand you always could."

He was starting to fade, because night was being melted by morning. "Can you see Anna there? Where you are?" Elsa asked.

"Who is Anna?" he asked, but before she could respond, he continued, "Is she your partner, or is she your armour?"

It was yet too early for sun, but still he eroded away. In the center of her bedroom she stood, and finally she bowed her head, and there were no words, no armies, no glorious song of angels nor the thunderous voice of omnipotent God.

Only breath.

Only truth.

Only the last fulcrum to move her entire world, and it stood upon a mere pebble. A two percent shift.

Anna was not the pebble. It was Elsa, redefined.

And it was time.

Then

Elsa had always honoured the power of words, which separated man from animals. The rat, the crow, the dog, the horse; they can only utter guttural scrapings of sound to express their will. Humans, with their flesh clothed over their spirit; the path begun by emotion is then transcribed into thought, which travels with intention down the nerves, generating the vibration that rides upon the breath, breaks across the teeth like a wave and finally erupts into the world, birthed as words. Words, just sound clothed over thought.

Physical words. Once uttered, they could never be retracted. They would live forever, as a slim and powerful vibration.

Free will is the last best gift of God.

They had seemed almost throw-away words, the sort to end a conversation with in order to sound cunning or wise. But then they had been tattooed with the depth of the fortune teller's eyes, and instead of volleying into darkness, those words struck and embedded themselves into Elsa's skin and memory.

The last best gift.

Had her father felt the same way? Impossible to tell; he was dead and she saw no angels.

She held Anna's hand as they flowed through the concourses of the fair, and though all noise was a din around them there was a void of space between them, filled with the words of the fortune teller and nothing else. The last two words she uttered made little sense; from her research the words evoked Europe, but little else.

She felt as if she had no air, as if an unseen world was pressing on her, this unseen world spoken of by the fortune teller. She had had her differences with God, but was she willing to completely rule out the opportunity of the divine? Haley had often told her that there was something that always flickered, just beyond sight, the same feeling which raised the fine hairs on the back of the neck, that raised the skin in gooseflesh. No mortal mirror could reflect it, so mortals had made other mirrors; using the tarot, palmistry, and tea leaves to interpret the divine.

But free will? The last best gift?

Since that day, she had rather considered it the last best irony. Wasn't it ironic that her father, a peace-loving man, a soft man, had gone out that day, and pulled the trigger at that precise moment? Or was it fate? Was it God that told the young man not to wear an orange vest to protect against such atrocities, or was it fate?

There was a nick on Anna's ear, one of the more beloved parts of Anna's body. Free will was her gift. Perhaps that's why Elsa could never doubt God; not when he brought Anna to her, just when she needed her most. A strong soul, to bear part of Elsa's heavy burdens; for the weak Elsa had only veiled contempt.

Anna was mightily distracted, and Elsa wondered what was pouring through her mind. Was it the words of the fortune teller? Was it the taste of Elsa's lips on the peak of the Ferris wheel?

Or was it that last stronghold of doubt, some last great secret she had never uttered aloud? Anna knew well the power of words; it must be mighty indeed for her to keep it so cloaked.

Elsa led them to the parking lot. Though it was just after 9 pm, the fair had turned nauseating. Anna followed her, holding her hand, her eyes still distant and shielded. Soon enough they had arrived at Elsa's car; Anna was about to sell the Malibu Classic and didn't want anything to happen to it. Elsa's own car was only a beater itself; running better now under Anna's talented hands, just as Elsa herself did.

What else Anna did with her hands, under the silky caress of night, made Elsa pulse with desire, until she believed she could never feel for another soul what she felt for Anna, could never believe that her personal ledger could pour out such blessings upon her.

The love they made was incredible, and it healed her.

More than that. It saved her. In many ways, Anna saved her life. And it hurt her to see Anna so tormented and unable to speak, not that Elsa was a better example. She knew the power of words, too well.

"Are you all right?" Elsa asked, standing there, holding her hand. She lifted her free hand to touch Anna's face, to draw a dark strand of hair back behind Anna's ear. She hovered for a moment by that nick, and squeezed it lightly, wishing she could touch it with her tongue.

"I'm all right," Anna said. "Just... she was a little uncanny. And a little too young to purport herself as a Madame."

"She was purporting now, was she?" Elsa asked, a little levity to raise her spirits. "And here I thought she was just masquerading."

Anna's eyes smouldered, and she pulled Elsa to her and covered her warm mouth with her lips. Even there, their bodies separated only by fabric, their breaths melding into one, Elsa could feel an ache rising within her, an ache to not only be Anna's partner, but to be Anna's breath, to be Anna's journey, to be Anna's soul. She ached for the fairy tale she still believed in, just as she ached for divinity that God would show her.

And bless her, Anna responded with all the heated desire Elsa needed, not caring about the world around them, the parents that tried to silence their children and shoo them faster along their way, the wolf whistle from the teenage boys and their girlfriends. No recrimination. No remorse.

When the kiss broke, Elsa embraced her, and Anna found solace in the raised scars on Elsa's throat, and she softly kissed her there before nuzzling into Elsa's shoulder. An undetermined amount of time passed in this crisp October air, snuggled against her love, and as the desire and ache began to blossom and grow, Elsa knew she wanted to be home where she could do something about it.

She blushed as she lifted her head, thinking her Anna-thoughts, and her girl flashed her dimples at her. "Minx," she said.

"Let's go home, shall we?" Elsa asked, gesturing for Anna to get in the car.

It was a delicious expectation that hovered between them, the words of the fortune teller lost and deafened by the noise of their glances, their touch. The car was an automatic; Elsa could drive with one hand, even the mangled one, and hold Anna's hand with the other. She found she could also draw her fingers along the outside seam of Anna's jeans. When she did so, Anna's breath got a little acute, a little bright.

The moon was high and drunk, and Anna was warm, and the frozen marsh that was Elsa and the salted earth that was Anna was showered with love, lit by expanses of sunlight and care, and under such influence even the salted and frozen earth could blossom anew. Love called to her, traversed every corridor of her heart, until it lived under the exhalation of every breath, waiting to be yet another vibration that would anchor her world.

There was no light to illuminate her love, her Anna, other than the dashboard, other than the sliver of moon and stardust upon the ocean that raced along with the road. Yet Anna shone, and Elsa's love clambered higher even as it deepened.

Elsa then put her hand on Anna's thigh, high up, near her hip. She had delirious hands; she dipped closer to Anna's hip and core than any other mortal would dare.

"You love me, don't you?" Anna asked, and an anvil strike of sorrow struck Elsa that Anna even had to ask such a question. Sometimes words weren't enough, and only action counted.

She would go home with Anna and prove it beyond any doubt. With fingers and tongue she would prove it, and mark Anna even deeper on her own soul.

"More than I've ever loved anything," Elsa replied, and she squeezed Anna's thigh. Anna lifted her hand to take Elsa's hand, entwining all her fingers.

"I want to tell you about what happened to me when I was young," Anna said. Her voice was as small as a mouse.

Elsa's heart expanding, pride filling every iota of space that was not already suffused with the deepest adoration and devotion. She waited for the words that would dissolve the last walls in Anna's life, just as she had finally dissolved the last of her own.

A small light suddenly erupted on the dashboard, and there was the tiniest puff of smoke in the car.

Elsa looked forward, and hit a moose.

There was no time to scream, to brake, to wail in useless prayers. There were only four spindly legs and a boulder of muscle and meat; the moose pulverized the front end of her car, leaving a bloody streak on the hood as the front half of its body slammed into the windshield with two distinct sounds.

The back half was somewhere on the roadway behind them.

One sound was the antlers that pierced the windshield. The other sound was Anna's head striking the side window with a resounding clap.

There was a guardrail, intensely white and brilliant in the headlights. There was only a gaping maw of darkness beyond that waited to swallow the car and its inhabitants whole. The trees stood sorrowing and silent, the only witness to the atrocity.

The car passed through this rail as if it were tissue paper.

And plunged into a river.

Late October, and cold. This near to the ocean the river water was a bastard of freshness and brine. It was a greedy and heartless water that conquered the meagre defences of the broken car, invading and subduing the air.

For Elsa the recitation of pain and shocking cold was horrific. It seemed as if the months had folded in on themselves, and that she was no longer here at all, but alone in the marsh by the steaming body of her dead mare, and Anna and all her bliss had never occurred.

Water entered the car with the easy grace of a professional thief, almost apologetic in its insistence. It was shocking cold, and may have been the only thing to keep her conscious, now that her car had slammed into the bottom of the river, the dashboard becoming a brash lover against her breasts and her right leg shattered by the impact. If not for the cold flaying of water, all might have been lost.

She cared no longer for herself. Her heart didn't really belong to her anymore; she had given most of it to Anna long ago. In the milliseconds that lasted eons, Elsa wished she would have made more of her second chance, but she would not lament. She had a taste now, and it would last longer than the sting of seawater.

It was a soft sweeping downriver, to the gullet of the ocean. The Atlantic would swallow them with all the decadent grace of a connoisseur enjoying an evening repast.

With a sigh and a bubbling of precious air, the car sank beneath the inky surface of the seawater, bobbing once or twice as it struck various underwater obstacles. A great swirl of perturbation followed, until it sank, the only grace of God being that they were grounded right side up against a sand bar, nearly completely covered with water, canted deeper on the driver's side.

How did Elsa have no more fear?

Water was rushing in all around her, surging around her broken leg, creeping up to her lap, and Anna was unconscious, a spider web of cracked glass where her head had struck the window. Her dark brown hair was clotted with her life, and she was still.

Seat belts too tight, and windows that wouldn't crank open, and dashboards melded with abraded flesh. Only a sandbar halted the forward momentum of the now amphibious vehicle.

Panic tasted like seawater and blood, bile black on the tongue. Car doors jammed with the detonation of moose wouldn't open against the insistent fist of water pressure.

At heart, Elsa was still a farm girl. She reached under her dash, where only last week she had followed some unbidden urge to replace her buck knife. Anna was just beginning to stir; Elsa's hands were too wet and cold to undo Anna's seat belt.

So she opened the knife, and sawed through the weary canvas of the seat belt. It was only as Anna was freed, and beginning to bob on the rising tide of water that she seemed to come to her senses. She blinked several times as she looked at Elsa, and Elsa decided it would have to be enough.

The voracious water was up to her neck. With her last effort, Elsa surrendered her will to the will of her God, her thought a silent prayer.

It seemed that nought but empty water heard her.

Did not the sages say to beware what you ask for, in case it shall be granted?

Doors were open; the way was not shut.

The moon was still thin and drunk, and couldn't tell anyone what had happened. The road was not empty; back down the road, just before the first skid marks, another car was wreathed in darkness. The man inside it had already cleaned and put away his equipment; between the detonator he installed at the fair under the hood of Elsa's car and the unfortunate gutting of the moose, the accident had been quick and seamless.

He hadn't much regret for the two girls in the car, nor the moose. His employer had been adamant on the exact delivery of this contract. He had expressed a brief doubt that either of the girls would survive the crash, but again his employer had been adamant, as if she held a crystal ball to the future.

It appeared as if she knew something, for a vehicle was coming down the road. He knew he would not be seen, not with the anorexic moon and inconstant starlight. Whoever was coming was coming slow, as if they knew the twists and turns of this road as intimately as their left hand.

True to his employer's word, a truck screeched to a halt by the back end of the moose. Two men leaped out, cursing in Spanish, shining their extra headlamps on the riven guardrail and the river. When they saw the freshness of moose blood, they acted swiftly and decisively.

Such stalwart bravery. Towing cables and shouting, and one of the courageous men leaping carefully into the river to investigate the wreckage. The other kept half an eye on his buddy as he investigated the fallen body of the moose. Curious, he hunkered down and looked closer at the recently deceased animal.

The edge of skin disturbed him. It was a clean line, not a ragged one. It was unexpected and malicious, certainly not indicative of a moose/car altercation, however dire.

He stood up, inadvertently stepping in the pool of gore, and backed away, lifting the crucifix at his neck and kissing it. This had been no accident. This had been murder. This poor aged moose had been gutted and, still alive, sent across the road at just the right moment of time. Murder disguised as an accident, as a wolf in sheep's clothing.

A shout from the river. Ay, Dios mio!