For fifty chapters they have sung their lonely arias. This is their duet.
The Meadow
He's gone. Gone.
He had been standing so close. Holding my hand. Leaning in.
I'd thought … I'd thought he was going to kiss me.
Then whoosh, all the air sucked out of the space where he had been standing. My fingers wrenched.
I stand where I am, listening. It's unnaturally quiet. In the stillness, I realize that this is how it is around him. No animal or bird makes a sound anywhere close by. Only far away.
My hand is hurt. Not broken or anything like that, but it hurts where he wrenched away, too fast to be seen. I hold it in my other hand and bring it to my chest.
Without Edward, I look around me, at the shaded spaces between the trees, and the bright circle of flat, dead grass beyond.
"Edward!"
My small voice cries in the wilderness.
"Edward!"
Come back.
Come back.
How many times has he done this, now? Come close and then disappear.
A bag of medicine on my Dad's porch. But no hide nor hair of him.
In his arms on the ground, held safe from screaming metal and flying glass. And then he skips out, before anyone else can see.
His scent in my bed, and the journal. Was it his? Or someone he killed? Oh, God, was that boy, that beautiful Edward, the first person he ever killed? I can't, I can't. He left it there – his scent and the book – with no explanation.
Holding me in the ocean, carrying me back up to dry land, and then bolting away like a startled animal.
Then coming down the curving stairs, to play the piano, in his Sunday best.
Close and away, close and away. Keeping me dry with his umbrella. Leaving to get me food. Returning to feed me. Sitting way over in the corner. Coming to settle at the foot of the bench.
Bringing me here. And now gone. Again.
It's a dance.
Like the waltz from Sleeping Beauty.
I know you
I walked with you once upon a dream.
I know this song by heart. Watched it so many times on the VCR when my Mom was at work, and I had to be good at home.
I know you
The gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam.
Aurora and her Prince, separating and coming together.
Yes, I know it's true
that visions are seldom all they seem –
Around and around. Pink and then blue.
But if I know you, I know what you'll do
You'll love me at once
the way you did once, upon a dream …
The stories – on the news and at school – drizzle and yellow tape, my father's grey face, Brendan talking about thigh bones cracked open and the red marrow sucked out, as if he'd been there, which he hadn't. Out here in the middle of nowhere with a vampire – real and solid and faster than thought, and lurking somewhere I can't see – I should be scared out of my mind. I should be running with all my life, like the deer, or frozen motionless, like the rabbit in the shadow of the hawk. But I can't. Because all of the bloodless, torn apart bodies are what is told by others. But what I've seen and heard and felt, with my own eyes and my own ears and my own self, is a completely different world. Doctor Cullen with his careful hands. Mimosa soap and chicken soup. Alice softly braiding my hair, and Edward, always Edward: sheltering me with his body, holding me up in the water, "Are you okay? Are you okay?"
And so, I am not running.
I am taking off my shoes and my socks, and walking out into the meadow.
Even in the sunlight, the grass is cold, like him. It's stiff and dead and just slightly damp. The cool travels up through my legs, even though I'm wearing jeans.
I walk gently, carefully. I know all about places. And I just know, that this is where he comes when he needs to be alone. Where he comes to find himself. My own are left all over. White Swan. Salt Lake. Santa Cruz. Phoenix.
"Edward," I call, as I walk to the center of his heart.
Here I am.
And I stretch out my arms, and I look up to the sky, and I turn and I turn.
Movement, a flash, catches my eye, and he scares me out of my skin. The sound I make is like a startled animal – hands clapped over my mouth, heart nearly escaping from my chest.
He lied to me! He's burning, right here in front of my eyes!
But that's not what it is.
I step closer, to see.
"Look at you." Words on breath, and nothing else. My hand goes out, pulled by his light. "Look at you."
He does look at himself, and his face is ashamed, afraid, as the sun stands bright in the blue, shattering all over his skin.
I reach for him. "You have rainbows."
I want to touch.
"Halos."
He lets me.
"Everywhere."
I hold his hand in one of mine; run my other hand's fingers over his forearm.
The way the light scintillates off of him, I expect his skin to feel all faceted, like diamonds. But of course he's not. He's all smooth and coolness, but too hard, too solid, too dense to be any kind of human flesh. More like some living stone. The stone child in his rainbow cloth. I have found him.
I can't believe this girl. She touches me fearlessly. Even though she knows what I am, can see how unnatural I am. Only her heart betrays her, racing beneath her breast.
She turns my hand over and lets out a soft cry. "Even your palm!" Her warm fingertips trace and tickle. "Even your palm."
He's staring at me so hard. Shivering in my hands. "Is this all right?" I ask.
"Not really," he whispers, tremoring throughout his body. But when my hands loosen he grips me instead. "Don't," he says. "Don't let go."
"I won't." I would never.
We stand quietly, and slowly he settles. Until he is completely, utterly still. The inside of his wrist is under my fingers, and I feel the silence there. A wisp of cloud is passing in front of the sun, and his skin quiets, too, back to its milky white.
He's still staring at me as I raise my hand to his chest, slip it in past his open jacket, to where there's nothing but his thin shirt between me and his skin. I can't find it. I must be putting my hand in the wrong place. I search for my own with my other hand. I can feel, beneath my ribs, but maybe that's only because it's beating so hard.
Will he let me? I take the half step in; it is my face that slips in where his jacket hangs open. He's holding his breath again, because I smell bad, or perhaps to let me hear. Holding onto his waist, my ear against his chest, I listen. A minute. Two. At last he sighs.
"There's nothing there, Bella – nothing that moves, anyway. I'm a walking corpse." He snorts softly. "Perfectly preserved in the moment of death."
I see the last words on the page, the horribly large brown stain. It's him. It's him. He didn't kill. He died.
"You're Edward!"
He laughs, actually laughs. "Yes, that's my name."
"No. The journal. It's you. It's you."
Now it's me that's shaking, talking into his cold, still chest. "I thought you were dead. Forever. Bones in a box. But no box, because they ran out, didn't they? Just wrapped in a cloth and buried, all disintegrated by now, gone back to the earth. And I would never see your face, never hear your voice, never anything!"
She's clinging to me, burning me with thirst – for the heat of her, for her tears that scald through my shirt to my skin, for the blood that I hear and smell, rushing through every vessel in her body. What more proof does anyone need that that boy is no more?
I'm shaking again, and she lets me go. She's getting away! It takes everything I have not to clutch her back to me and bite. She's not getting away at all, not even trying. She's wiping her face on her sleeve and looking up at me.
"Doctor … Doctor Collin …"
I nod. "It was Carlisle. They didn't have name tags in those days. I just wrote what I thought I heard."
"He saved you."
"In a manner of speaking."
His face is bitter when he says it. What has it been like for him? This boy who wrote about his last snow man, who cranked the heavy laundry through the wringer for his mother, who made a pact with his friend to find each other in the trenches in France; instead he's doomed to live forever, drinking blood like some kind of monster.
"Do you wish that he hadn't?"
He's staring at me again, and his face goes soft. The sun is out again, too, and his hand and his face and every part of his skin that I can see all dazzle with rainbow fire as he brushes my cheek with his thumb.
"Not any more."
Not any more.
I had been made of lead, but now I'm made of air. I don't know how to dance but I am spinning away, arms out, turning and turning, looking up at the sky. I used to play this all by myself when we had a little bit of lawn, in the first house, in White Swan.
"Isabella, what are you doing?" His voice is alarmed.
"I'm spinning." I flop down in the grass, arms out, face up. "It makes heaven and earth turn around and around. Didn't you ever do this when you were a kid?"
"I don't remember."
That whispered answer breaks my heart.
"Try."
She gets up and pulls at my hand, and starts spinning around – unsteadily, now, because she is already slightly dizzy. I turn, too, keeping a watchful eye on her. She is clumsy, after all. I worry about hidden stones or sharp tree-roots under the grass, under her bare feet. She topples suddenly and I twist to guard her landing, then lie down, too. Our heads are close to each other, but our bodies and feet stretch out in opposite directions. Bella stretches her arms out to the side and I do the same. We lie on our backs like twin crosses, anti-parallel, heads together, gazing up at the same sky.
"Did they move for you, too?" she asks.
"Yes." But not for the same reason that they did for her. It is she, not a trivial bit of spinning, that has moved heaven and earth for me, made my world new.
We gaze upwards together, silently. I have never felt so close to another being before. In the silence of her mind, the soft susurration of her breath, the beat of her heart, the clouds that pass above – or is it below? – our eyes. We are together.
From the corner of my eye I see and feel her turn her face toward me again, and I do the same.
"You're upside down, Edward."
"Well, so are you, Miss Swan."
I have never been so happy as I am right now. This is the summer that was denied me. Lying in a sun-warmed field with a young lady, bantering gently like this. Even if it is only the lamb's tail of March.
Isabella turns on her side and I mirror her, and now, if some bird were to look down on us, what would it see? Our two bodies making something like the S-curve that divides yin from yang in the circle of the Tao ...
"Being upside down will turn your frown into a smile," she says.
I smile, and hope that doesn't mean that in fact I am frowning.
Bella closes her eyes and sighs. "I'm so happy."
"You are?" Yes, I am greedy. I want to hear her say this to me.
"Yes. Today is the beautiful day of my whole life."
What did I say? His smile has turned on a dime.
"Today could be the last day of your whole life, Bella. It will always be that way. Ever since I first smelled your blood."
I want him to laugh again, like he did before, this Edward, this beautiful Edward, who didn't die, but lived. "I don't stink?"
"No." He smiles sadly. "That was a lie. You smell good to me, Bella. Too good. Much, much too good. That's why – " He stops. I see him swallow, hard, close his eyes, and hold very, very still. "It's better not to talk about it, actually."
"I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault. It's never been your fault."
"It's not your fault either, Edward."
He can't look at me, only at the sky. "Every moment that you are with me may be your last."
He swallows again, and squeezes his eyes shut. "I'm so sorry."
I look at him. All this time, I've been making his mouth water. I feel a chill, but I'm going to say what's in my heart.
"It's supposed to be that way, Edward. We're supposed to live each moment as if it might be our last." I take a breath. "You make that real for me."
He looks at me dumbfounded.
I feel sad. "But I can't make that real for you, can I?"
"No, Bella, you do."
"I do?"
"Yes, you do."
My heart dips and soars, like the dark bird, like the music he wrote. Edward turns on his back again, and looks up at the sky. As if he is searching for an answer there. I wonder what the question is.
"My family and I," he begins. I wait. A breeze flows over us, reminding me that it isn't April yet, and we are up in the mountains, even if we are under the sun. He shakes his head. "I shouldn't tell you this. You'll think you're safe with me and you're not. You'll never be."
"Edward. I believe you. Lying down with you … is like lying down with a tiger."
I wonder if he can hear my heart speeding up again. I wonder if he can smell what emotion I'm feeling. Maybe someday he'll tell me what it is – since I'm not even sure myself. If it's fear … or surrender.
"I know that you kill. But so do I, remember? Everything that lives has to eat another living thing."
"Except the trees?" he asks, teasing ever so gently.
And I know. It's surrender. Unconditional.
"Grass too; don't forget the grass." I'm fishing for his smile – the happy one – that I've only seen in tiny glimpses.
"Oh, Bella."
The thought of dying in his arms fills me with a strange trembling. But thinking of someone else, someone who wants to live, not die, someone struggling, scared, having their life taken by horrible force –
He takes a deep breath, and it looks like it hurts going down.
"My family and I, we drink from animals."
"Animals?" He's thrown me completely for a loop. Again.
"Carlisle taught us. He's the best of us. No, Rosalie is. She's the only one among us who's never tasted human blood." He smiles a little. "She's too stubborn and proud." He rushes to make sure I didn't miss the main point. "It doesn't mean that we're safe for you, Bella. There have been slips." He puts both hands over his face. "Some of us more than others."
I'm still trying to catch up. "So, wait, those people who were eaten … it really was a bear?"
He looks at me. "We took care of that."
"Your family."
"Yes."
Wow. "Did you … you all drank the bear?"
"Not … not this time. But yes, we do. And Emmett – " He cracks a small smile. "Emmett's rather partial to bear."
I try to wrap my mind around it. I guess it explains the camping trips. And I guess it's easier, and less traceable, than trying to tap into blood banks or something. If one felt bad about killing.
"But you all really prefer human blood."
"Yes." His eyes bore into me. "Always."
The sun is throwing halos over him again, and I understand where the myth of burning comes from.
"Living the way we do, mingling, it's like being an alcoholic at a winery on tasting day – all the casks open and breathing." He puts his hands over his face again. "It's worse, actually. It's like heroin addiction. Like crack. Like meth. Like ecstasy." I hear him swallow quietly. "It never ends, either."
My heart is breaking all over again. "Why, then? Why do you live among us?"
"Because, not to, forever, is too lonely. Too purposeless." His hands are at his sides and he's staring up into the blue again. "It's too lonely. Even with seven of us."
"I'll be your friend, Edward. I'll always be your friend."
Who made this girl? Where did she come from? And how did she ever come to Forks?
I look at him and wonder what he's thinking. I'm so glad that he and his family don't drink people, though I know they'll always want to. I like to think that I could love him anyway; I'm pretty sure that I could, that I do. But right now I'm thanking God and all the angels, that I can love him without having to harden my heart against all those people he and his family would be killing, if they didn't drink animals instead. The snow-boarder girl, the man at the power plant, the groundskeeper, Uncle Waylon – I can just feel sad for them now, instead of guilty.
The wind passes, and I see us as if from above. We are the mandala of the grass. Everything is one. Edward and me and the ground underneath us and the sky above, the trees and the clouds and the blue and the sun. I still hardly know him, and he hardly knows me. But there is time. We have said what needs to be said, and all the months stretch out in front of us to learn each other's stories and ask questions and find out every little thing about each other. If vampires can exist, what can be impossible? We are intended. How else could he have lived to today? How else could I have come back to Forks? And here we are. His hand is clasping mine. Pinky swear, and ring finger, and every other one, too.
I imagine her beautiful dove feet, dancing over the grass. I know that I will bring her here again. And again and again and again.
My eyes start to leak and I try to wipe them on my sleeve again. "I shouldn't do this, should I?" I ask him. "It makes it hard for you." The scent – that he doesn't hate, but loves; so much that he can barely hold himself back from drinking me alive. "I'm sorry!"
"Don't," he says. "Here."
"You have a handkerchief?"
"My mother told me to always carry one."
I imagine his mother, the vision I have of her from what he wrote in his journal. She lives in him, too. "Thank you."
The snow-white cotton smells like starch and him. I could keep it over my face forever. But then he wouldn't have it to give to me when I need it. I wipe the last bit of tear from my eyes, and fold the handkerchief into a square, and give it back to him.
Away down the mountain, a flock of crows starts cawing. Perhaps they have found an owl.
To all whose gifts are in this story, and to all who may receive it.