Meditations
1 ~ Alice
I wish this was a vision. But it's not. If this were a vision, we might be able to CHANGE what happened. But it's a memory. Memory doesn't lie. Only visions do.
And this memory is playing out in my mind once more — as unstoppable and unchangeable as it was when it was happening to all of us … such a short span ago.
...
My eyes roll back in my head and a wail of pain pours out of my throat.
Edward sees everything in my mind and is gone in a shot. Racing sound. Leaving thunder.
Jasper has already wrapped himself and his gift around me, and all of the rest of us are asking what's wrong.
"Bella," I gasp. "It's Bella. We all have to go. RIGHT NOW. Edward … I can't see for sure. He might kill her."
Carlisle has his black bag in hand. "Too late for that!" I cry. Cried. "No time for cars. We have to RUN."
"Now you see her? Now?" My sister, who unfailingly cuts to the heart.
"The wolves. They put a … a mark on her. It must have been some kind of ward. It's broken now. Her blood. Oh God, she's bleeding out."
"How?"
...
I recited what I saw, sound and syllable swirling backward in the wake of our streaking flight. Our broken coven barely more than a clot of pale blurs through the trees, tearing as straight a line from Alberta to Forks as geography and the intervention of human settlement would allow. Rockies. Then Cascades.
Esme, gripping Carlisle's hand as we sprinted, as he calculated times under his breath. How long for Edward to reach her. How long for a young, healthy patient to exsanguinate from a radial artery cut. Age. Gender. Weight. Transverse incision vs longitudinal. Completely severed vs partial. Collateral vessels involved vs only the one.
Parameters of survival.
We heard every word.
The ward broken, like a dam burst, left me blind with visions. "No! Bella! No no no! Why?" Jasper, his arm around my waist, had to practically carry me as we raced, while he and Emmett exchanged their "difficult women" glances.
And all of us pitted our speed against time and distance and the unknown depth of a cut.
... ...
Now it is dusk, and Jasper and I hide in the woods behind Forks' high school. That fateful place. After the breakneck dash, and what we found, and had to DO, I need to rest. Past and future have run roughshod over me.
We were going to be friends. She was going to like me.
We WERE friends. She DID like me. Not in the future, but in the PRESENT that we shared. So, so very briefly. All the tangled WASes and WILL BEs that drown my mind are overlaid with the single sight of the HUSK of that girl whom I knew and loved in the space between — stilled now forever beside a blood-soaked strip of cloth.
She is lost. To all of us. The cruelty of how short her time was overruns me. And for the first time I understand why Edward raged and hated at me for so doggedly tempting him to change her.
Jasper cannot stop my exhaustion from soaking into him, trembling him like an overused muscle. We crouch together in it. Silently. Waiting. We have work to do. Aftermath to attend to. We are the rear guard, in case anyone tries to make sense of the scene we covered so hastily. But he does not chide me. Only runs his fingers through my hair, blowing small puffs of his gentle breath across my eyelids.
"It'll pass, darlin'. It'll pass. It always does."
2 ~ Rosalie and Emmett
Rosalie 'n me are out here in the woods. Not hunting. She ran. I followed. Out of earshot. When you're a vampire, that's a pretty far piece. I'm holding her now, so she won't keep running.
"None of this had to happen. None of it!"
She's madder'n ten wet hens.
Easier on her than the sorrows.
I'll probably put my foot in it, but I got to try. "You don't know that, Rose. None of us do."
"We killed her."
I sigh. Old habit. "Seems like she had a hand in that herself."
"She never would have done it if someone had told her the truth! God damn Edward! Visiting her like that. Letting her think stupid things." She's got her teeth clenched. Fists, too. "He should have stayed in Alaska!"
My girl ain't thinking straight. She don't, when she's on a tear like this.
"If he'd a done that, she'd be dead a year gone. And then some."
"And it wouldn't have been our concern!" Softer now. "It was fate. Her fate. Why did Edward have to put our hands in it?"
She's still sore about that. Being left the one to protect us by doing something hateful. I guess her and Jasper share that. And both of them bein' stopped before they did. By Carlisle. By Alice. But Bella's fate wasn't stopped. Only throwed off the scent. For a little while. It still came for her in the end. Hell and high water.
"Rose," I say. Rockin' her now. Wrapped around her. Like she needs, times like this. "They were kids. Stupid in love. Both of 'em. Didn't need Jasper to see it. Nor Alice. Can't fight a thing like that." Any more'n you can fight fate.
"She wouldn't have killed herself if she'd known the truth. If she'd known she didn't have to."
Going back to the main point. So I follow. "You don't know that. None of us do."
We're deep in the woods, so it's only by the sounds of the critters and the cool of the breeze that you know it's getting toward the end of the afternoon. We been out here a good while.
"If he'd a told her what happened with the nomads and the fire, do you think it would've made a difference in the end? Would any of us be any place different than we are right now?"
Because if that girl had known, then she'd of come found us. And pester us until somebody gave in and changed her. And by Rose's lights, there ain't no damn difference between that and dying outright. I sometimes wonder if day will come that she takes that last step. But … not today. Today is about Bella. And the step that she took. Blind. And no one knowing or getting to her in time to stop fate from havin' its way with her.
Done is done, and I just rock my Rose. She's a stubborn woman. The kind that lays the blame where she sees it, and won't ever answer you, even times she knows you're right. It's ok. I know what she's seein' right now … Seein' herself in Bella. Promised over to that Royce character because that's what high society folks did. Eighteen-year-old her. Settin' her heart on white dresses and rings and flowers and churches and babies. What did she know about what was really waitin' at the end of that street? It's all tangled up for her. Most of all 'cause she can't remember proper. None of us can. It's a big divide we step over when we become what we are. So she's got the hearsay she got from Carlisle. And smoothin' over from Esme. And that one bear of a memory that she'll carry with her 'till Kingdom come. Guess it ain't no wonder why Bella's fate don't set right with her. What's a 17-year-old kid know about love or life or what was on the other end of that knife? My Rosie wants to fix the street she went down, once upon a time, by Bella makin' a different turn at the crossroad. But that ain't the way it happened. And anyway —
"She ain't you, Rose."
I say it real soft, but she hears me. "She ain't you."
3 ~ Carlisle
Disposing of the cloth soaked with Bella's blood has fallen to me. Alice was in fear that the scent of Bella's blood in the cloth, even clotted and congealing, would derange Edward … or Jasper … with dire consequence. But truly, who but me, or perhaps Rosalie, can touch this thing with (relative) impunity?
Certainly no one desires it in our house, or anywhere within scent range. It was hard enough for the troop of us, carrying it away from the scene of Bella's …how shall I name it? Sacrifice? Sacrament?
Nor is it only I, with all the Scripture in which my brief mortal years were steeped, and do carry to whatever distant end may await me, who understands her act as such. We all understand.
Not suicide. For if that, then what need the cloth, and all the months of labor and care it took to fashion it — labor and care that she managed, throughout those months, to conceal from Edward, though he lay beside her, night upon night, in that same room.
And not some childish ploy to force him to change her. For, again, why the cloth?
No. She took as truth the false witness we made of the burnt house. Took it as truth, and, with the faith of a child, laid down her life to restore … how can I not call it redeem? … what had been lost.
Little lamb, who made thee!
So I am carrying it away. Leaving Edward alone in this hour of his greatest grief. So much about what has come to pass can not be helped. Although I fear that Rosalie has many a bone to pick with me, and with Alice, about all of it. And with Edward most of all.
I pray that he will accept from Esme the succor that I am not there to give him.
I pray that forgiveness may come to us all. That we may grant it, and receive it, of each other. For Rosalie is right. Did we not, all of us, allow the perpetuation of the deception through all the months from the fire to this day?
And how did we truly believe that mere time might extinguish that girl's anguish? Have we, despite ourselves, come to see the mortal race of our origins as somehow less than what we have become? And if that, then how different are we from those of our kind who yield to nature and drink from humans as we do from the beasts of the field?
I have wended my way northward and westward. I know not for certain what I seek. Only that my path does lead me upward as well, over the tumbled terrain of the wilderness cloaking this great continent's spine.
I think of sky burials — a custom of peoples in Tibet, and in this land as well, once upon a time. The last mortal remains placed upon a scaffold, for the birds of the air to pick the flesh, and the spirit ascend into sky. Is this what calls me ever uphill?
Bella's blood in the cloth is drying hard now, the scent changing as I run, becoming thick with the final death of all its corpuscles, even the cloth is stiffening. Such a tragic thing do I carry in my hands.
A sound catches my ear. Running water. It calls to me. I go to seek it.
A stream gleams at me between the trees. A small freshet. A headwater. It is here that I stop.
When I set out, I had thought to bury this thing, but Providence has stayed my hand. I think upon that other thing that Bella made, that Edward treasures most deeply. The companion to his own journal from his human life. When these terrible days are past, will he not long for this thing also, final work of Bella's hands, most intimate memorial and token of her love?
And so, I do not hang this thing upon a tree, nor bury it in a hole sealed with stone. I wash it. At the wellspring of an unnamed water. Where, moored to grass stems and pebbles, streamers of tiny eggs wave gently in the downward flow. This place is on the wrong side of the Divide for these to be salmon. I guess them to be trout instead.
Slowly, the cloth of many colors releases the blood in which it was dipped. It stains the trickling freshet, makes bright the glance of sunlight, sets forth the strings of tiny globes, each with their one, dark dot of life at the center.
I wonder at the tattoo the Quileutes had graved into Bella's back. Did they know the future they were signifying with this mark?
At last the cloth is supple and clean. The last pale trace of crimson gone downstream beyond my sight. Only the children of the trout remain. And I wonder at the Hand whose Work is greater than our own.
Author's Note ~
To everyone still on this wild ride - so much love and so much appreciation. Thank you all for all of your support. Through the chapters and through the years. So much love and so much appreciation also to my Betas. Through the years - geo3, averysubtlegift, Woodlily, quothme, Sarita Dreaming, malianani, Alby Mangroves, punz, MeilleureCafe, Delirium01; and in this long present - Cindy Windy.
None of this would exist without you all. ️
Only three more chapters to go.
God willing ... and the creek don't rise ...