"Farewell, Peter. You were my best friend, and I miss you still."
The forest whispered and swayed, and she imagined a weight sloughing off her body, shedding to the earth like an old skin.
.
.
Isabella returned to her bed and sank into the deepest sleep she'd had in years, the kind that children succumb to after a day's running and laughing, gulping fresh air.
In stark contrast, her father lay awake most of the night in the adjacent room, with the weight of guilt and regret tucked around him like a shroud.
His daughter, his only child, had rejected what he saw as her last chance at a respectable familial future within their tiny community. She'd turned the Pastor down, and there would be no more suitors now. Newton had been the only one in years, and he'd been forgiving enough to overlook what the staid folk of this town saw as Isabella's shortcomings. As a man of God, perhaps he'd had to.
Isabella was headstrong and stubborn- that was true; she would never make a meek and gentle wife. She was not pious or godly, and she'd have great difficulty attempting to be those things. In a small epiphany, Charles grudgingly admitted to himself that she would have been unhappy as the wife of a churchman. She'd suffocate under that yoke.
And while she'd deny it to her last breath, Charles would be an albatross around her neck. He knew she'd refused the Pastor partly on his account. No new husband would relish having his bride's decrepit father come along with the dower, and she'd never leave him behind to fend for himself.
Charles was under no illusions; he himself had sentenced Isabella to spinsterhood.
Over the course of recent months, as his own health deteriorated, Charles had begun reminiscing. He'd been watching his daughter wistfully, seeing tiny, precious reminders, like flecks of her mother glowing within her.
While the distance of time which separated them grew each day, their reconciliation drew closer. He could feel Renee along the path of his life, like an invisible string he'd been following all along. It made him smile to think of her that way, waiting for him beyond the twilight.
He missed his wife so much, seeing an echo of her smile, her bearing, her stubborn streak, reflected in their progeny.
There was the way that Isabella tucked her feet up under her while reading, her skirts a calico waterfall spilling loosely over the edge of her armchair. A serious crease would sometimes appear between her dark brows when deeply in thought, and if the crease was there at the same time as a certain tilt of her defiant chin, he would blink and look away before his eyes clouded with years of longing for his long-dead Renee.
The closer he watched her, the more Charles began to realise that there was so much more depth beneath her serious exterior than the practical, impervious creature he had thought her to be. Isabella was bold and brave, and she was no man's fool, but she was indeed, in some measure at least, a sensual creature like Renee had been.
Isabella was not the mirror image of her mother, but Charles had begun to see that neither was she an echo of himself. Perhaps age had made him sentimental, but his eyes would soften and his heart drip with fondness at the way she was both of them, and neither.
He had seen her eyes widen in wonder as she observed flashes of lightning split stormy skies with their thunderous bolts. When she walked, her hand would reach out and lithe fingers would unfold to touch a wildflower by the roadside. He loved her quiet beauty, then.
When tending to their little horse, she would caress the velvet nose and scratch lightly under his mane, a smile brightening her pretty face as the animal snorted his pleasure.
Oh yes, Renee lived within her at those times.
But, there were other moments, too, when Charles would see himself.
He began to see that it was her loneliness that had made her more like him. She had loved once, and, Charles thought, once was enough for her. In this, she was more like him than he'd cared to admit. When it came to how they loved, they were two peas in a pod. His chest tightened to think that he may have taught his only daughter all about stagnating in grief.
He felt so old, and so very tired.
.
.
Weeks passed, and Charles Swan and his daughter lived on as before but for that niggling splinter under his skin.
They still attended church on Sundays, but now, instead of misguidedly attempting to make Isabella a match, the trip had become a pleasant routine for them both. Sometimes, she went on her own, reluctant to leave her ailing father until he lost his patience with her and shooed her out regardless.
Isabella no longer dreaded Pastor Newton, not since she noticed the Stanleys—including Miss Jessica—were lately seated in the front pews, directly opposite the pulpit, where they observed the pastor with adoring eyes. Isabella held no grudge against him, and breathed a sigh of relief that he had moved on so free of bitterness.
Of course, her attention was elsewhere, too, certainly not on the boring sermons. No, she had not changed her mind about the value of those.
It seemed to Isabella that she suddenly felt the horseman everywhere. She would turn her head to speak to someone, and there in the crowd—was it? No. Could not be. Sometimes all she saw was a flap of a coat tail as a man disappeared into a store, and her heart would beat so fast, her head spun with it. She'd walk the muddy road home and imagine she felt eyes on her, except for two times when she didn't have to imagine it at all, but knew it for certain.
Both times, she'd seen him in town. A deceptive calm cloaked him like a blanket, but underneath he was watchful and dangerous- a coiled spring. Stay away, he exuded, drawing her ever closer.
Anthony, she would chant under her breath, throwing her silent voice at him. I know you. I see you.
Isabella wondered what caused his hands to clench so tightly, fingers white and digging into calloused palms. His bearded face, clad in shadow, gave nothing away.
She wondered if he rode into town along the forest path not far from her home. She would imagine he did, and that she could venture along that path, almost walking in his footsteps. Strolling among the low fronds and young saplings at the edge of the road, Isabella would hold out her hand and collect droplets of morning dew into her palm, wondering if the miniscule beads sat on his beard the same way as they did on the ferns, like tiny, precious rainbow globes.
She imagined him sometimes with her eyes half squinted, unfocused, as though he was a shimmering figment of her imagination.
His appearances seemed random at first, a lovely and thrilling surprise. Until they didn't seem random at all.
On one clear night, Isabella lay beneath her coverlets, watching the moon's eerie light play upon the curtain lace. She watched smoky clouds ride across the night sky like ethereal chariots, the rider's specter haunting her heart's every beat.
She raised her hand to catch the moonlight, and as she watched the unearthly sheen wash her skin, an incredible realization dawned upon her.
Just as she had put her hand in the path of the light, she could put herself in his path.
In fact, it was possible she already had.
Through a gap in her lace curtain, she could see the fingernail moon shining its ghostlight over the forest canopy and thought that maybe, just maybe, his visits were not as random as they appeared. He always came riding into town at the precise time that the sermons ended, though not every Sunday. She always looked for him as she stepped into the light of the morning, casting furtive eyes from the safety of the dimly lit church.
Suddenly wide awake, Isabella could not easily dismiss the notion that he came to see her.
An abrupt turning-away, a coincidental presence, convenient time and the same place... they were not random.
The moment she grasped it, the notion became solid and real. Away went any hope of sleep while the spinster flushed like a girl, dreaming of things long put aside.
Could this man, who had haunted her waking thoughts, be likewise haunted? Were they two of a kind, spurned and longing?
Isabella gasped and sat bolt upright in bed. She whispered an incantation to the moon, to make it so, to make it real.
Let him see me, the way I see him.
Laying back down amongst her pillows, she sent him a wanting thought, a moonlit caress, a beckoning sigh, hoping that the magic she felt in that moment would reach him in the mountains.
.
.
For his part, the man of whom Isabella dreamed lay on his narrow cot with its crude, straw-filled mattress, tethered to the world by will alone. Desperation as powerful as a knife in the guts twisted his face into a grimace, and he felt as near to crying as he ever had in his life.
It was not often, but there were times like this night, when the loneliness crushed him from the inside out, and he wanted to wail like a wolf at the moon to lessen the pressure inside his chest.
He would hold onto the edges of his humanity, his civility, and clutch his arms about himself to stop from unravelling, from bursting open like an overstuffed grain sack.
He still had friends in this world, and Shĩ-Pa's russet-skinned tribe had always made him welcome. The Quileute women were proud and brave, and he'd caught the eye of one in the past, many years since, but the old anguish in his soul was too loud, too crippling for affection to stick.
There had been nothing wrong with their couplings, even if only a momentary connection, a fleeting pleasure. He grieved for his family and she for her mate, and they shouted the anguish of their bereavement into each other, until she grew hoarse of that song, and quieted her voice forever in the violent ocean beneath the high Quileute cliffs.
When he'd heard of her choice, he felt painted by the color of death, the Pariah, the leper. He'd have clawed out of his own skin that day, if it were that easy to set the soul free.
And now, years later, here was a woman whose appeal seemed endless, and though she was a complete mystery to him, he wanted her like no other. He craved her scent and could only imagine what a taste of her red lips would do to a starving man.
Under the fingernail moon, deep in the rainforest, resounded ragged sighs and discarded propriety and suddenly that knife in his guts became a hook. He'd been grappled, good and tight.
He resolved not to hide from her any longer.
Let Isabella see me, the way I see her.
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A/N: Thank you for reading.