40. A month
A month went by.
Peter Lake found no means to wink back at the sunlight. Cecil's luck was just as fickle.
The whispering temptation to steal was inevitable, though he knew, in the state he was now in, that nothing in the city existed to him unless it was given to him willingly by someone with eyes that could see, and a heart that could trust.
Patience, Peter.
Life, or death, whatever this new reality needed to be named. A mist. A theater show.
He was an actor to the stars and a spectator to the city. Their equal, their inferior, both, all at once. Cecil and Beverly and him, three foggy figures of memory and hunger.
Peter Lake had never been to the theater, save in dreams.
He knew he needed to enter one at some point, to tread a portion of his path, to find the girl who would make Beverly's theft worthwhile. The one who may give some truth to little Willa's theory.
When winter ends…
The princess bed. The frozen corpse of spring. The place where he'd cradled the body of the woman he loved and wept for hours.
When winter ends…
Winter would end when Beverly did.
And Beverly wasn't finished.
January, February.
Winter only deepened and the show went on, tediously, repetitively.
Cecil and Peter, cloaked in shadows, deviating from the oceans of cloudy sunshine bathing the icy peaks of New York City. Dripping frost. Dancing storms. Demons, in black, a black Peter still wore. Magpies pecking at the street.
The people protested. Alive, enraged, confused. Magpies had no difficulty being seen or heard. In fact, they relished on this presence they had. They were loud. They had no shame.
I'm not weak. I don't run. Pearly had told him this.
Peter Lake decided that the price to be present to everyone and everything must be pretty steep, for the dead. Beverly's mother had torn down her star, turned off a light that would have guided countless souls, including those of her family, just to become warmth and sound and color.
Her forsaken harness was now a piece of Pearly's tray.
Demons were demons. They trusted no universe, no tide, no one to play their songs better than they could.
But Peter Lake was lucky. Every day he was surer of this fact.
He closed his eyes and heard the music.
O Come, O Come…
The people complaining, and the many breaths being spent, were all part of Beverly. She drifted from one mouth to the other. She filled them up and released them. She gave rhythm to their arguing.
Was Peter that much wiser than the rest of them, now, that he found amusement in their reactions? He once considered himself to be beneath the whole lot of them.
Neither perspective appealed to him, to believe himself either inferior or superior… but Peter did find amusement in the reaction, for many reasons.
For one, because he knew the cause of the storm. He knew that Beverly was aflight, her temper thickening.
A rumble in his chest. A heat upon his ears.
Oh, she was angry. A white-hot rage. Frosty flames. He could feel her.
Her temper only caused the weather to turn wilder, for the crowd to become more upset, for Pearly's magpies to croak louder.
Shouts. They were shouting over the keys.
Peter couldn't hear her piano in all this chaos. Cecil's eyes steadied the show in undivided attention.
"We've had damn well enough of this weather, now!"
"Ah, and I suppose I'm to blame for this, eh? You've got quite a nerve, mister-"
"Oh, I know all about your little squad, little magpie!"
"How in Hell does my squad have anything to do with this blizzard!?"
"You've turned this city into a jungle! You're monsters!"
"Listen, do you want trouble, cause I-!"
"New York is quite flexible, y'see. Beasts like you mold it into Hell!"
"You shouldn't mess around with monsters like me, buddy-"
"Thieves! Animals!"
A spit. A gaping mouth. A white face.
Of course Beverly was angry. She was a musician. Sounds like these assaulted her senses.
Once again, Peter Lake remembered her face, pressed to his back, her arms looped around him. Athansor neighing frantically underneath them. Pearly and the klaxons.
Three words. All it had taken, once.
Go fuck yourself!
But no. Not here, not now.
He had no voice to scream with, no presence in this crowd. The only people who were sure to hear him were Pearly's men, and Peter wouldn't risk it. He would never.
So all he could do was scurry away into a nook of cold dark blues, breathe softly into the collar of his coat, averting his eyes from the blood and the cries and the flashing teeth, inhale and exhale and sway a tiny piece of her heart in his fingertips.
Beat, little heart…
"Beverly, love," he whispered, "there's nothing else you can do… Please, don't."
Don't get lost to the light.
Cecil sighed nervously beside him. A puff of white poofing out between his lips. He blinked repeatedly, bringing his bunnet down just a touch so the shadows formed a mask that spanned the upper half of his face.
The blood. The sounds. The fence.
The clattering.
Petes. Pete.
Peter breathed slowly, deeply. His hands trembled. He could still feel his own hands…
"All this light and all this promise of miracles given to us, and yet we cannot interfere in the end of a life," Cecil murmured, as if he had seen into his mind. "Lives are very rarely returned."
"Yes. I know."
An awkward little glance between them. They understood one another. They smiled a bit, sadly, amicably.
"Oftentimes, life is given a new language, Peter. A new form. But in my case, I've seen…"
"Seen what?"
"That nothing is returned, once it's taken. Think of our harnesses. The earring you lost. My coins. No coin I receive later down the line is ever going to match the ones that have saved me before. If we are ever given back what was stolen from us… in the most likely case, it'll be a different thing from what we last saw. Reshaped, remade entirely, sometimes. But never returned as it was, unscathed, untouched. It happens to relationships. It happens to objects. It happens to lives. Yes, we are awake now, only because we clung so tightly to the life that was being ripped away from our grasp that we managed to keep a piece of it…"
Peter suddenly came to the obvious realization that Cecil's diversion, his way to maintain his peace, was his rambling. Poetry. Explanations and narratives. He was a wonderful talker and he appreciated conversation dearly.
And his own… well, the same as always. To think, and think, and let questions question one another, and melt tragedy into patterns for him to decipher. Lists. Grease on old cogs. The metallic heart of a safe.
Beat, little heart.
"Beverly was like this, too, during my final days," Peter whispered. "Now I can understand why the weather was so horrible during her funeral."
He'd blamed a sleeping knight. A failed protector.
He'd been as blind as the folks he now found amusement in studying. These frowns, these dark eyes, these superfluous insults.
"She's trying," Cecil remarked, nodding to himself. "She hasn't forgotten my advice. But it's hard for her."
"I know."
"How do you feel, Peter?"
"I feel tired. A bit dizzy." A breath, lingering. Peter's eyes fluttered shut. "I have her in my lungs and she is ice-cold, heavy."
"Keep her there for a moment. Here, sit down. Turn your face to the wall, just in case someone shows up."
The streets cluttered with crowds who'd become so accustomed to the bestial cold that they thought themselves stronger than the rest of the world.
It was amusing, this ignorance. A mechanism so simple. Almost… enviable.
What machine had he been transformed into?
Was it worth it, to be so intricate in design yet still miss a few pieces? Or, rather, did Peter prefer to return to the being he'd been in life, before the fall? That wingless magpie with coins in his pockets and a heart full of water.
To be dragged by nothing more than the need for peace and the need for food.
Dragged.
Not now, he wasn't being dragged now. He was allowing the tide to carry him. Because need had become choice. Not only to him, but to Beverly. And, of course, to Cecil, long before it'd happened to either of them.
Need had become choice. Hunger, a choice. Rest, a choice. Trust, a choice. Separation. Loneliness. Hope. To wait and not run. To walk and not falter.
To wait now was a decision. To let Beverly go, to allow her to become his breath and his cold and his sunlight, had been a choice. Yes, their circumstances had been dire. But she could have remained at his side, whole, visible, audible.
Stop. Stay afloat. You cannot weigh her down any further, she needs your optimism today.
He was back in the attic of Grand Central Station and deciding who people were and what they were saying. Hello, goodbye. I love you, I hate you. Stay. Go.
Well… he had been to the theater, then. In his own way.
He'd been an invisible spectator to tragedies and miracles. He'd witnessed Pearly's atrocities for a very long time, without question. He'd attended Beverly's funeral and received no returning glances, with the exception of little Willa's.
Now, that girl… That little girl…
Those were eyes that saw. Those were eyes that looked.
Peter harbored the hope that he'd one day reflect within them again.
"Beverly," he whispered.
Where was she now? In his lungs, in his mouth, before his lips, caressing him in little wisps of winter air? Was her slender hand upon his forehead, when the daylight caressed it?
Was there any place where she couldn't possibly be?
"I wish you were here," he breathed. "And only here, you know?"
When he looked up at the sky, her star was still buried under a mound of blue dust. Their hiding spot, a warren in a field of stars. It was a sign. A pull of the river. A white horse stubbornly guiding him to an eventual destination.
All will be well in the end.
"Of course, I'm not asking you to. Not now, at least. There'll be a day when you and I can be as we are without fear of magpies or men… I know, I do… But not just yet… And I won't risk your safety for my sake. I did make a promise when I said you'd always exist to me… I am talking to you, now, after all, heh…"
I don't believe in God, but I do believe in you.
But he didn't have a picture of her.
This want, of her image, of her touch, of the sound of her voice, was becoming increasingly harder to ignore. How long was this song? How long would it take for his steadfast memories to crumble and become colorless?
When love is lost, one discovers greed.
And only a month had gone by.
And his situation was far less complex than hers.
Don't be greedy. Beverly once told you you weren't… Prove her right.
"But I can't lie to you," he concluded gently. "I do wish you were here. In a manner that made it possible for my arms to wrap fully around you. For your hands to have something to clutch. Your anger have witnesses, your pressure have a means of release. I wish… Mm…"
He could always… draw her.
His thieving fingers were too awkward, too filthy, to meddle with pencils or crayons.
But… mm.
Perhaps he'd learn to draw, in the time he now had. He needed to make a picture of her. He needed something to do, to prevent himself from sinking under all this mounting solitude. To keep the pianist afloat in this vessel they coursed within. His reality, her dream. Sunlight and darkness.
Beverly had no such luck in her shapeless state. The ability to learn a manual skill.
He wondered how she relieved herself of the stress of all this madness, in her strange and infinite form…
As soon as he could, he'd ask her.
And as soon as she could, she'd answer.
Not through winks of light or gusts of wind. But with that wonderful, hoarse voice, that had belonged to her in life and in death. That sound, hers alone, fever-roughened, gentle, that stirred chills within him in a New Year's Eve party, and tuned down the clattering of fences and the buzzing of crowds.
Feel me as I feel you…
No piano box, in life or in death, could ever rival that single woman's ability to whisper away all other music in the universe.
"Think of the taste of chocolate… Think of the snow under your feet… The staircase… The walks, here, there… Places we've been… Places we'll go…"
Peter Lake brought his hand down to his own chest. He flattened it, there, under the rough, frostbit fabric of his coat. Where Beverly's earring once was. A heartbeat, lost to the water.
Beverly was there, in pieces. A part of her in his breathing. What entered, cold, thin, slightly pungent. What left, softer, warmer, lighter. Another, in the wind that ravaged this city of monsters and stars. Some others, in the white winter sun, watered down to pale blues in the little places where he and Cecil hid.
She was the quivering of his fingers. She was the slow change in hue of his knuckles. Bone-grey. Bright pink. She rose and fell within and around him. A melody dimming down, piping up.
Her very existence was miraculous, as was his.
Her transformations, though… Those were something greater entirely. Greater than miracles, perhaps.
I'm the luckiest man in the universe.
"Breathe, love…"
Author's Note: To anyone who is here today, thank you for reading.
As I said, I'm going for a more episodic feel with these chapters that will follow Peter and Beverly as they wander about the city in their own respective ways and forms. And all the many observations they can each have.
I always feel like Peter's perspective on things is so easy to write down. I've been with him for so long, for actual years, and he's become something mine in my own story. He's so in-tune with my day-to-day pov on things, too, many times. His random observations, his jumps from one question to the next... The chapters like these, of him just lingering, thinking, just write themselves seemlessly between my fingers and the keyboard. It's easy. So easy. In the same way that Beverly finds easiness in sharing time with this man, in knowing exactly what to do and how to do it, and vice versa.
Yes, I'm hinting at yet another plot point from the film that I want to interlock with my narrative, in my own way of course, and for different reasons: Peter's desire to draw arises from a lack of Beverly's picture in his possession. Given that Cecil and him are meandering a city with nothing to offer (for the moment), observing tragedies they cannot prevent and waiting for someone to look their way and involve themselves in their story, like how Athansor involved himself in Peter's journey, and Beverly is keeping herself hidden in the various elements of New York, from its light to its wind to its weather... yeah, Peter would not fail in his promise to remember that she exists, and that she's all around him - in fact, in here he takes note of her anger and dissuades it as best as he can, a section that I'm deeply touched by and already very fond of, I'm glad I returned the lists motif with Peter whispering to Beverly even though she's not completely there with him - Peter's dive into artistry could bloom from this. From his desire to never forget Beverly's face.
In the film, Peter only ever draws Abby - the child with her hand to the moon. He draws her from the beginning, in the same way that Pearly draws her, and both of them are convinced for the majority of the movie that Beverly is the one with her hand to the moon, and that Peter is the one destined to save her - which, turns out, is untrue. The girl that Peter draws is Abby from the beginning.
In my re-interpretations, for the moment, I've limited Peter's knowledge of Abby to be a dream, not a drawing he makes. But he will draw her eventually. Because he'll also be busy drawing Beverly.
In the film, Peter initially draws very sloppily, even refraining from drawing in the daylight due to how self-conscious he is of his artistic abilities (I will definitely have him say this in my fanfic if the moment comes, by the way - that line is so tender and wholesome and I adore it, ah XD), but later on, through the decades, as he wades in a pool of lost memories and miraculously stays alive despite Pearly's gang being in the same city as him the whole time (I make sure to have Peter and Cecil keep cautious in my own version, as you can see, cause in the movie this never made sense to me - Peter and Cecil can't even interfere in the loss of life in my version, which btw, I'm so happy about Cecil's dialogue in this chapter, as I often am - I deeply relate to the feeling of loss and "returns," I've been returned a home that would never be the same, in essense, in presentation, as the one I once gave away... so yeah), Peter gets progressively better at drawing, as he maniacally chalks down the image of the redhaired girl facing the moon on the streets of New York. His skill grows considerably, his attention to detail, and also his confidence. He's in broad daylight, chalking down full pictures on the street...
Yeah I'm definitely adding Peter's artist arc in my stories. Just, again, for a different reason. And with a different execution. As always :3
Let's see how much more time spans before Beverly speaks again. I'm making no promises. I love having Peter and Beverly together, yes, but their separation is necessary if I want to make the spirit of my re-interpretation, different as it is at this point from the film that inspired it, on par with the spirit of "Winter's Tale."
See you very soon, again :3 Here's your hug *hug* , thank you for being here.
I'm busy with college and commissions and life but my need to be constantly crafting stories, both visually and verbally, always overpowers me. I'm not even tired right now, and it's almost midnight. I feel very alive.