Equinox
"Isabella."
The voice raises her from sleep. Raises a cry of fear from her throat.
"Shhh, shhhh, it's me. It's only me."
They lie together, her heart pounding, he holding her to contain her shaking. Slowly she stills. And no sound comes from her father's room. Her arms stay snaked around the boy's waist, her head against his chest.
Finally she asks, "Where have you been?"
"Afraid to come back."
Her whole body jolts, as if by galvanic shock. "Why?"
"Because coming back means … " The voice vibrating her cheek through his sternum breaks. "Means I have to say goodbye."
"What? No you don't!"
"Oh, Bella. My Bella." Now it is he who is shaking, as he pulls her to lie level with him and frames her face with his hands, threads his fingers through her hair, kisses her crown.
"No! No, no, no, no, no … " is the threnody she whispers, fingers dug into the fabric of his jacket, until both of them are spent.
"I have to. I have to go. I can't … tarry … any longer."
His hands return to her face, ever so gently thumbing away the wet on her cheeks. Then holding her close, kissing her eyelids, pulling the heat from them with his cool, cool lips. They lie embraced, until she can breathe normally again.
"We can't stay where we are, Bella. We have to move on. My family. Me. You. All of us."
"WHY?"
"This … this time we've had. It can't be forever. It could never be forever." His whisper is as bitter as gall, "Never."
He shifts away from her slightly. To give room for breath. "I came … I had to come. To find you. To make sure you were okay." And again, the grieving whisper barely at the edge of her hearing, "I couldn't stay away."
"I'm not okay."
His fingers rove her face again, lift her hair, stroke down her arm to capture and curl her hand in his, bring it to his throat. Minutes pass before he releases his breath in a chill sigh across her face, then takes another to speak.
"I can't stay with you. That was never … my future. I can only do my best to help you. Help you move … into your life. Just as you've been helping me … to move into my death."
Her insides recoil. "Is that what you want? For us to just … just … " She stops. Then, plaintively, "You don't want me? You want yourself to just … disappear?"
In the unlit shadows, she sees in his face the face of the boy who had stood behind the dark wing of the piano with a knife through his chest. "You belong to life, Bella," he says. And whispers, "As I belong to death."
"If there were magic. If you could live again …" I will go down with this ship.
"If I had lived … even … even if I'd somehow lived to know you as a tiny child … you would have DIED. Last year."
I won't put my hands up and surrender.
"No. If … going forward. If you could live again, and I could change … "
There'll be no white flag above my door.
"Are you trying to trade your life for mine? What are you talking about?"
Her breath catches in panic. They've suddenly trodden so close — too close! — to her secret. To breaking the magic.
"I just … I … don't you want me?"
It is he who surrenders then, telling her how he'd hung, impaled on the impossible, night upon night, helplessly haunting her rocking chair, stealing communion with her while she slept. Before the meadow, and flight, and fire.
How he'd imagined her, waking, to curl sleepy and unafraid with him on the chair. Or his mortal soul laid to rest at last, in the journal placed in her coffin, to be carried with her into the earth.
The cottage in the woods. Meat for her, blood for him. Or the two of them, meeting and living their lives together, in the unwritten pages of a lost past that never was.
All the ghosts in his wishing well.
Each confession falls into her heart like an echo of her own pulse. The two of them, throughout all those days, had been a silent duet in the realm of the spirit. Even the frightening arrow of stone.
They lie together when he is done. She holding him, now. Wishing she could just surround him with softness and comfort and peace.
"You have to stay. Just a little longer."
"We can't stop time, Bella. We can't just … stop the universe."
"Do you remember when you carried me through the woods?"
"Of course I do."
"The meadow?"
"Of course."
"Do you remember what day that was?"
"Always."
"It's next Thursday." She takes a deep breath. "You have to give me that. Give me the full year. You can't leave before then. Please."
"Alright. Until next Thursday."
"Until the very end of the day! The very very end."
For the first time this night, he smiles. "As you wish."
They drift together, in that promise. And then he surprises her by climbing gingerly on top of her. The weight of him, settling onto her, is a heaven she has never known. She holds him to her, a blanket heavy as earth and cool as cloud, and wishes that this can be her forever.