"No," I answered, almost in a growl. "But if it's a spell I want to learn it."
"It will be my pleasure." She nibbled her way across my lower lip.
"That," I murmured into her kiss, "is my entire goal in learning it."
Our voices harmonized in the night, then eased to laughter. Kisses ended the day, kisses that were promises of another tomorrow.
I fell asleep to the aroma of her body, her love and the spice of mint and chamomile in the air. My last conscious thought was that one of her dresser drawers was seeping light. The book, I thought, then sleep claimed me.
I stirred in the night, pleased to feel her there. The light changed, from black to green to white and it was Kylie I heard calling out, "Get up, you lagabeds!"
Aurora giggled and pushed me softly. "Thy sister. I'll not get up."
I'd not don a gown just for my sister's modesty, no matter the hour, so I greeted her wrapped in a blanket. "Twas thee I caught abed last week, the sun at full noon, so I'll hear no insults on that account."
"I have come for the eggs and shall leave thee to thy doxy." She skipped lightly to the cellar door and disappeared into the depths. "Thee and she seem partial to Mondays."
"We are partial to all days," I boasted, for it was true. My beloved and I kindled our flame easily. "Thee could say the same any day the week long."
Her light step sounded on the stairs and in moments she was back, egg basket in hand. She never slowed, my sister. She was as fast as I was deliberate. "Thee are not the only one returning to bed. Once these are delivered, I am heading there myself. 'Tis a fine, fine day for love."
"Your doxy is as eager as mine. We are so lucky we ought to be kings."
She grinned at me then cocked her head to the sound of an approaching wagon. "I ran ahead to make this a quick stop. She is in a hurry to get home."
I watched her dance to the open door like a will-o'-the-wisp at midsummer. Leaning out she called, "Don't stop, I shall catch thee up."
"Close that door behind thee, dear sister," I said in parting. I gathered my blanket skirts and headed back to the bedroom. "Blessed be."
"Blessed be," she answered, then the door slammed with a resounding thud.
I startled in bed, my heart pounding. Aurora stirred, then moved close with a sigh. The dark was soft with the scent of her hair. I fell asleep again, and dreamed again and knew in all the time since those years with her I had never been so happy as I was tonight, with her in my arms.
The sheriff examined the restraining order in my hand, then turned wearily to my father. His encampment on my doorstep was not going to last more than ten minutes today. I'd tried letting him in. Kylie had agreed he could visit for thirty minutes a day, initially. But after his second visit had left her in tears and depressed, I felt enough was enough. He wasn't here to comfort her or spend some last few hours dwelling on good times they might have had. He was here to exert his control over her. Never once did he express interest in Kylie as she was. His interest was in her soul.
He couldn't have it. Still filled with wonder on the inside at what I'd glimpsed with Aurora, I could only resist him with steady intensity. He could not have Kylie's soul. It was my house and Kylie agreed, and two days ago a local judge had issued a restraining order.
The number of days left to Kylie was growing short. The two weeks she'd been home had passed in a blur. I'd finally admitted I could not keep up my classes, and substitutes had been found, much to the department head's annoyance. I had no time for her annoyance, and no time to spend making statements to judges. I closed the door on the vision of the sheriff insisting my father get off my porch, and added it to the list of items I would discuss with the hospital administration at some future date.
Not today. Not tomorrow, either. These days were Kylie's.
I heated water for tea and knew Aurora was at the kitchen door before she knocked. I seemed always to know when she was near these days.
"Good morning," she whispered against my lips. "I saw that it was safe to venture out."
I gathered her into my arms. "Good morning. Yes, battle has been done. Tea?"
"No time. How is she this morning?"
"Groggy, but awake. Go on in, if you want."
I finished making my tea and delighted in the faint, shaky sound of Kylie laughing. She liked Aurora, a lot.
"I've got to get to campus," I heard Aurora say, and she came back to the kitchen to give me one of her whole body hugs.
"I felt today, watching him, that all he wants is Kylie's soul. I believe . . . that she has one." It was a big admission for me. I was trying hard to see the world as Aurora did. "He can't have it."
She studied me seriously, no hint of humor in her eyes. "What would happen if he did somehow get her soul?"
"He can't have it," I repeated stubbornly.
"No, he never can. All that can happen is you think he did. And if you think he did, what happens that's so terrible?"
"Well—" I regarded her open mouthed, not sure I knew the answer.
"Does his hell exist because he believes in it?"
"No." I blinked. How did she make such weighty philosophical issues so simple?
"If he thinks or you think he's got Kylie's soul, what has happened to Kylie's soul?"
"Only what nature determines. I guess... I used the word soul but that's not what I meant." I sipped my tea and thought it over. "I don't want him to frighten her. I don't want Kylie to believe that he has her soul. I don't want her to die, to have the fear of her last breath filled with visions of fire and damnation. That's what I meant."
Aurora nodded. "And I understand, very much, your wanting to fight against that on her behalf. He cannot have her fear and inflict pain. It's how she dies that you are fighting for, not what happens after."
"He's such an extremist. I know perfectly nice, rational Christians who'd agree with me that he is a nutcase. He doesn't represent anything but a bunch of ideas strung together to give him power over others. He's a bully, plain and simple, just using religion for authority. Like so many have over recorded history."
"I think I'd like to sit in on your class next time you teach it." She hugged me again. "Off I go. Call my cell if you need anything."
I watched her hurry down the walk with grace and aplomb, stomping snow and skirting ice as if she'd live here all her life. She'd not even complained of the cold, and today was one I'd consider downright chilly. I loved watching her move.
I joined Kylie in her temporary bedroom, carefully checking the level of solution left in the hanging saline bag, and the level of the collection bag that was hung more discreetly from the lower bed. Her output was healthy—I knew what to look for now. Noting her color, whether she appeared to be in more pain than usual, and her response time to conversation were all things the visiting nurses had taught me to evaluate and take comfort in, when I could. Kylie was a little bit rosy in her cheeks, but she always was after Aurora visited.
"So," Kylie said, her voice thin and raspy. "I like her, you know. Lots."
"Me too."
"I'm glad. You shouldn't be lonely."
Tears filled my eyes, and I didn't try to hide them. Kylie said she understood that I was giving into poignancy and grief. It took too much effort to hold it back. "I don't think I will be."
"You're different." She turned her head to gaze directly at me. "She's made you softer and happier."
"You think? Softer?" I prodded my stomach.
"I mean in a good way. You've a suspicious mind. But lately you seem... calm."
"I feel it."
"Even the way you deal with Dad. You're not... anything to him. No attitude."
"He doesn't matter to my life, nor to yours. He was in the room when we were conceived but that contribution doesn't buy him anything. He hasn't earned anything."
"He's scared." Kylie licked her perpetually dry lips and I hurriedly gave her water to sip from a straw.
"What makes you say that?"
"Desperate to avoid his own predictions. Ever thought of that?"
"Tell me that a different way," I prompted. "I don't quite understand."
"Sinners die. Everybody dies. Therefore—"
"Everyone is a sinner."
She nodded. "What happens to sinners?"
"Fiery pits of hell, getting stuck with pitchforks, eternal torment, all those fun things."
"Yeah. He must be terrified of dying."
I hadn't thought of it that way, and I couldn't say that doing so increased my sympathy toward him. "And you? Are you afraid?"
"Yes. Pitchforks scare me."
She wasn't joking though she tried to grin as if she was. Her face flinched and I recognized a rise in her pain level. I moved the button within her reach. "Don't tough it out. There's no point."
"If I get a miracle cure," she said grumpily, "I'll make you eat those words." She pressed the morphine button once and the mechanism locked for the next three hours. It had been barely over three since the last one. The neurologist had said when she couldn't make it three hours they'd switch her to one of the heavy-duty designer compounds. "Look at the addiction I'd have to kick."
"You would kick it." We'd joked before about the "miracle cure" and all the trouble it would be in our lives, should it happen. "Driving you to all those support group meetings would really be a drag, though."
"Much better for me to die." Kylie closed her eyes and the lines of pain relaxed. "I get a miracle cure and I'm taking Aurora."
"Hah. Besides, there would be someone else for you."
"What makes you think that?" She frowned slightly, and swallowed and moments later was asleep.
Why indeed, I asked myself. What did I believe? Every time Aurora held me I felt that wonderful feeling of Home. I didn't want to lose who I was in her, but the rest of the world did seem to recede when I gazed into her eyes. She didn't ask me to change but in accepting the magic she had brought into my life, I found myself wanting to change. I wanted to believe in her. In the feelings I had when I was around her. I wanted to believe in forevers.
Mystics throughout the ages wrote of their conversions. Epiphanies and raptures, passions and ascents, they took belief outside their known worlds of thought, and merged body and soul into new beliefs. Whether hammered to church doors or found in the path of a rising star, they changed.
I changed.
Fitzgerald's dark night of the soul was about loss and being lost. In my dark night of the soul, I found light and what mattered.
I'd been restless all night. Kylie's meds had been changed a week earlier and she dozed most of the time. But tonight had seemed different. She was awake, and groggy with drugs and pain. She spoke in half-finished sentences and some distress.
I hadn't wanted to leave her to go to bed, and decided I'd ask
the morning nurse if she thought Kylie ought to be moved back to the hospital.
"Hayley... the pitchforks, you know?"
"I know."
"If they're the last thing I think of..."
"They're not real."
"Twilight Zone I'd make them real. Gotta stop."
I took her cool, dry hand and squeezed hard enough for her feel it through the layers of numbing meds. "Let's think about something else, then."
"Can't. I don't know what... happens."
"When?"
"When I die. I don't want to. I'm so scared, Hay. I don't want to. Pitchforks. Burning." Her breathing was rapidly increasing. "I can hear screaming."
Alarmed, I leaned over her. She'd tightly closed her eyes and the pain was obviously on the rise. The magic button wouldn't respond to her push for another fifteen minutes. "There's no screaming, Ky. None at all."
"What happens? I'm going to hell."
"No, you're not."
She waved a hand as if she wanted to push me away. "You don't believe in anything."
"I do, Ky. I do."
"At least Dad could give me... something."
I squeezed her hand again and she didn't respond. "Open your eyes, Kylie. Look at me, please."
"I can smell the fires."
"Look at me, please."
It was an effort for her to respond, but she did. I was looking into her eyes, but they were my own. I was reflected there and saw her, too. "I have never lied to you, have I?"
"Tried when we were kids."
"You always knew. I could never fool you. We're twins. We know." Her eyelids drooped and I shook her slightly. "Stay with me."
"Wanna sleep."
I knew, somehow, she would never regain consciousness. I'd waited too long and not thought about what I would say, but I couldn't let screams of the damned and smells of hellfire be what she carried with her. "You shall, Kylie. But first, listen."
I stroked her forehead and was rewarded by her eyes opening again. "What?"
"I believe in something. Took me a while, but I believe that there are no endings. No place where you will go forever. There is this world, and here is where we dwell. Every turn of our time, we have gifts of life. And we turn again, and live again." My voice broke.
"Why do you believe that? Sounds too easy."
"I'm in love with Aurora, and when I'm with her I feel the turning of my life. Loving her will go with me, always. I found her in this life and it is a new beginning."
She had tears in her eyes but they were also increasingly vacant.
Clutching her hand, my face close to hers, I said, "That is your miracle cure, Kylie. There is no ending. But there are new beginnings."
"Don't lie. Not now."
"I can't lie to you, you know that. Am I lying? Look at me, Kylie," I pleaded, tears trickling down my cheeks. "I believe this. I believe it, finally. Everything is magic. All you have to do now is let go. It's okay to be afraid."
She breathed out and didn't breathe in again as I expected. Just as I was about to panic, she gasped, a great heaving sigh. "I want to believe."
"This will sound crazy, but I knew Aurora before. A long, long life ago. That book, the one with the crazy lettering, it started everything."
Her eyelids fluttered rapidly. "I dreamed... about eggs. And a wagon and a woman driving... and she kissed me when I jumped in. And I ran in my dream. Like I used to."
"Yes, sweetie, that's it. Yes. It's all true." I was choked and blinded by tears as I pressed the back of her hand to my cheek. There was no time for a past that long ago. She had nothing left in her to recall such distant memories.
"Do you remember the World Cup game, where you ran like the wind? You weren't afraid to try. The sky was so blue that day and you were a blaze of speed across the grass. Think of that, Kylie."
She nodded, weakly, so weakly, and her lips curved in a near smile.
I rested my head on her shoulder, thinking that the last time I had done this she had lived my memory with me even though she'd been in her room and I in mine. I believed now.
Whispering the word I'd learned from Aurora's book, I let us both sink deep into that magical day. I remembered every victorious moment, showing Kylie what I'd always loved about her, including every line of the lithe, powerful body that now, tonight, was at its ending.
"Think of that, how wonderful it was. You stretched so far for that kick ... a blur going for that pass. How perfect those moments were." My tears splashed on her face and she didn't react.
"You will be that again, / promise you. No endings, but new beginnings, always. I believe this, I truly do."
She breathed out and her lips curved slightly. "Beginnings ..."
Epilogue
"Glad you wore boots?" I tried not to laugh as Aurora yanked her foot out of a puddle.
"Spring is more trying than winter. Everything is so muddy! Bast left paw prints on my pillow."
"You let her sleep at your house. Now it's her house."
"There is no let when it comes to cats. She'd find her way in, on
e way or another."
I took a long step to avoid another paving stone sunk below the water level. As nonchalantly as possible, I said, "She'd likely be less confused if she had only one house to live in."
"Are you asking me to move in with you, Hayley Carnegie?"
"Do you want to?"
She caught my hand. "No, no, you have to do better than that. I will not move in with you because it's easier on the cat."
I pulled her to me, heedless of the squishy ground we were navigating. "I want us to live together, Aurora Lowell, I want to because I am in love with you and I want another forty years with you."
"That's better." She kissed me.
As always, a simple kiss made time irrelevant. I'd learned the magic of dismissing time for these moments, to stand with her in the place where we were together. The world could wait.
"You still didn't answer," I said when her lips released mine.
"I think Bast would prefer it, so yes."
"Vixen!" I tickled her furiously, threatening to topple her to the ground.
"Hayley, don't, I'll get soaked through and there's no change of clothes in the car."
"That could make driving home really fun."
"I don't disagree." She laughed into my eyes and I wanted that wonderful green glow around me forever. "But in the meantime, this is not the time nor place, missy."
I let her go and turned my attention to the path again. "One more set, I think, then we go left."
I couldn't yet look at the rows of old and cracking gravestones without thinking of Kylie. Though these plots were hundreds of years old now, some were tended with flowers much like the bouquets that had overflowed at her memorial service. I'd spread her ashes in the cold winter chill from a hill overlooking a river. A beautiful place to join with the wind she had been in her life.
Glancing at the notes I'd made in the cemetery's office, I tugged Aurora's arm. "The Lowells are over here."
"Maybe we should have waited a few more weeks, like you suggested. My toes are soaked."
"C'mon, we're here. We'll go look at the House of the Seven Gables, next, and then, as long promised, we're going to have nice, warm apple cobbler at the Salem Hotel. You can put your boots in front of the fire like everyone else does."
Bell, Book and Dyke - New Exploits of Magical Lesbians Page 26