by Laury Falter
Anger like I’d never felt before swallowed me whole as I went for Dmitrei. I fought the restraints of my translucent presence, using the energy exploding from me to send my fist into his face.
Dmitrei stood over Eran’s body, victorious, and wiped the blood from his cheeks. When my hit came, it made him pause before resuming his efforts. I kept pummeling him though, even after he gave no further reaction. Eventually, his face was clean and I came to my senses, standing back to assess what more I could do.
“Regrettably,” Dmitrei said staring down at Eran, “it seems that we have both won this fight.”
Then, he stepped away and climbed the ladder, leaving Eran to breathe his last breath alone.
The heartbreak I felt in watching the blood pour from Eran’s head held more pain than in all the times I’d ever felt sorrow combined. Of all that I had witnessed, nothing was more terrifying, more despairing than to watch Eran die.
Breaking down, unable to bear the pain of it, I sobbed, “I’m here for you. I’m here for you. You are not alone.”
I dropped my head into my hands, weeping like I had never done before.
“Magdalene…”
There were three things that stunned me next. First, I realized that his voice was free of pain. Second, it was much closer than it had been seconds earlier. Third, when I opened my eyes, Eran was standing before me.
He stood uninjured, his hair clean, his eyes alert.
“I’ve passed,” he said, amused by the notion.
He exhaled and took me into his arms, where I clung to him. Where we touched a vibration began there.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I mumbled into his shoulder. “You shouldn’t have hurt yourself.”
“I didn’t. Dmitrei did.” He sounded almost entertained by the fact his deception had worked.
“You know what I mean.”
“Magdalene, with you waiting for me on the other side, how can you quarrel with me on that?” He paused and something occurred to him. “Why are you here?” Eran was back to his firm, controlled manner.
I lifted my head.
“You should be in the afterlife.”
“No, I-I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t what?”
I stared up into his blue-green eyes, wondering how it could be so difficult to take a breath without a body.
“Couldn’t what, Magdalene?”
My voice was small as I said the words. “I couldn’t exist without you.” Clearing my throat, I repeated it. “I will not exist without you.”
His lips stretched into that arrogant smirk, and this time I didn’t mind it.
A few seconds passed and I began to feel awkward under Eran’s scrutiny. “If you expect me to delve into that-”
“Oh no,” he reassured, “I wouldn’t ask it of you. I know that was hard enough for a recluse.”
“Good,” I replied, owning that label. “I’ve already said more than I wanted.”
“The fact is, I know how you feel about me. You can avoid meeting my eyes, Magdalene. You can hold back your urge to touch me. But you couldn’t hide it in your kiss.”
I had never felt humility before like I did in that moment.
Having never been one to cower from the truth, I realized then, the only person I had hidden myself from was Eran, and he was the one who most deserved my honesty.
“I care for you,” I confessed. “More than I should.”
Why did that feel so liberating? I wondered.
“Then we have the same problem,” he said earnestly.
I tried to hold back a smile and couldn’t.
“That too must have been a challenge to admit,” he said, meeting my grin.
“It was.”
His shoulders rolled up as laughter overtook him. “Being away from you for the last hours was like spending a lifetime apart…far too long and intensely excruciating.” His hand rose to cup my cheek and again I felt a vibrating sensation where he touched. I leaned into it. “I can’t believe you returned for me.”
“I couldn’t leave you,” I said pleading. “I couldn’t…”
His face contorted in distress, looking like he wanted to take away my ache. With his hand still on my face, he leaned in and placed his lips on mine. Every place he made contact left that irrational, exquisite sensation. He had meant for it to be a temporary distraction, but it became more. Quickly, his free hand rose to my opposite cheek and he stepped forward. At the same time, I slipped my arms around his shoulders and pulled him to me.
He moaned.
Our lips crushed together, setting free the need to express what had been constrained for so long.
My arms slipped from his shoulders to curl around his neck and I pressed my chest up to him. He responded by pulling my hips into his body and arching my back until I was fully pressed against him. My entire being hummed now.
I could feel the muscles in his chest, the firmness of his abdomen, the solidity of his hips, and the pressure of his thighs. We had melded and become one, and yet I still couldn’t feel enough of him. Even when we parted, and our foreheads remained together, I wanted him closer. Then a realization came to me.
“Eran?”
“Hmm?”
“Why don’t we see the tunnel of light?”
Slowly, he lifted his head.
“Shouldn’t we see it by now?”
“It’ll come eventually.”
I trusted him and yet my uneasiness didn’t dissolve.
As we waited, we spent the time the best way we knew how…gazing at each other. I took in every definition of his face, every curve, every dip, every slope. And he did the same with me.
We were entirely alone, engulfed in silence, without any possibility of an interruption and yet when he spoke, it was in a whisper. “I heard you when you screamed at me to stop upstairs.”
I nodded.
“And again when I told Dmitrei he’d find no contest from me.”
I winced at the memory of it.
He seemed perplexed. “Our bond is stronger than we know, Magdalene.”
«Our bond?»
“Don’t you feel it? It’s what tells me when you need protection, what helps me to hear you when you are in a place that doesn’t exist.”
I placed my hand against his face. In turn, he tenderly kissed my palm. When his gaze returned to me, however, he seemed baffled.
“What?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Something…”
His eyes shifted around the room as if he were searching for an answer.
“That bond, that feeling is…it’s ebbing.”
“Ebbing?” I demanded, alarmed.
It wasn’t so much his choice of words but his face. He was still trying to understand what was happening to him.
“Eran?”
“I think I’m…I’m being pulled.”
“Toward a light?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I see no light.”
“Where then? Where are you being pulled?”
Evaluating it, he muttered, “From behind.”
I peered around him and what I saw made me stiffen.
His body, the lifeless body lying against the wall, was behind him.
“No,” I whimpered. “No…”
Eran was staring over my head, but he focused on nothing in his path. He was using all his senses to determine what was happening. “It’s getting stronger,” he warned.
“No,” I said one final time before realizing that pleading, regardless of the amount of desperation that accompanied it, would not stop Eran’s departure.
I seized his shoulders. “Listen to me. You will not be alone. I am here. Do you understand? I will be here.”
“No, you won’t,” he demanded. “You will leave this place and return to the afterlife.”
I shook my head.
“Don’t defy me on this, Magdalene.”
“You like my defiance, Eran,” I countered.
He seemed stunned. “You hea
rd that?”
I nodded, unashamed.
He rolled his eyes to the side. “You’re going to use that to suit your purposes for the rest of eternity, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
He smiled warmly, content in the moment. “I would expect nothing less from you, my lo-”
And then he was gone and my hands were empty.
“Eran?” I called out, my eyes searching toward the ceiling and back down along the walls. “ERAN?”
“I’m here,” he said, although his voice was burdened again and gurgled.
His body against the wall stirred. He brought his hand to his head, assessing the damage…or reassuring himself that he wasn’t imagining what had occurred.
“I’m back,” he sighed.
That was when I understood that Dmitrei had been correct. Those above had rejected Eran’s plan of suicide. He had died, but he had then been revived.
“Are you all right?”
He stood up and steadied himself. “I’m going to leave Dmitrei’s now.” He looked pointedly at me, where he knew I was when he had been brought back to life.
“Are you all right?” I asked. He was once again in a body that felt pain and it unnerved me.
“And in case you’re wondering…I’m fine.”
Despondency drew the life from me then as I realized I was no longer audible to him. The great divide separated us, keeping him from hearing my voice. For the remainder of his time, we would be essentially locked away from each other, and those above would have their separation between us.
Eran stopped at the ladder, one hand on the rung. “Are you here, Magdalene?”
“I’m here!” I shouted.
His head dipped and he sighed, confirming that this time my voice failed to reach him. It didn’t matter. He knew the answer because he knew me.
“I urge you to leave,” he said, his voice breaking, “unless you wish to see your burial.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: FUNERAL
THE GROUND WAS HARD WHEN HE drove the shovel into the compact earth. Overhead, thick clouds cast a gloomy grey across everything in sight and the cold air made Eran’s breath visible as he worked.
He had carried my body over farmlands and cities and across countless territories to a place I had never been. When he finally stopped, we were surrounded by a dense forest of narrow trees. It was isolated but serene.
As his feet touched the forest floor, settling onto a bed of loose dead leaves, he carried my body to a fallen log. Tenderly, he laid it across and settled my head delicately onto the wood. Patches of emerald green moss covered the trunk, contrasting starkly with the white dress I had been wearing. The hem slipped down my legs and hung in the air, drifting with the breeze, as Eran had commenced his work.
“Why here?” asked Hoffstedler, who had trailed Eran along with the rest of the messengers and guardians. Jeremiah and Hermina were the only two missing.
“She’ll be safe,” Eran said, not bothering to address him with a look. “Our enemies won’t find her.”
He bent down and took the shovel he had brought only to be intercepted by Claudius.
“No,” Eran said, “this is my duty.”
And Claudius released the shovel to stand aside with the rest of the group.
Many of them I would see soon, but they weren’t here for me. They wished to comfort Eran, who in the midst of his trial needed the support of good friends.
Eran tucked his appendages back inside, leaving his torso bare and surging with each movement. He began with a dedication to see it done, but by the end he struck the dirt with violent ferocity as his face twisted in fury and his lungs sucked in air. Two things had been stolen from him today…me and the ability to return to me. And his resentment over it showed.
When the grave had been dug, he let the shovel fall and returned to my body. Carefully, he drew it into his arms and carried it to the hole, my limp arms and legs swaying with his steps.
At the grave, he knelt down but did not drop my body in. Instead, he brought my forehead to his lips and kissed me delicately at my hairline. It was a kiss that lingered as if he knew he would need to release me when it was finished. Then, with great caution, he laid me down.
He sat beside me then for an indescribable amount of time, moving only when the raindrops stirred him from his thoughts. Pushing himself to a standing position, he moved in a trance-like manner back to the shovel, picked it up, and began scooping piles of dirt onto me, starting at the feet and moving up my body. His process told me that he was struggling with covering my face.
I could not speak to him, so I sent him silent wishes to help him through it.
“I wish for you, Eran, to cover me. I wish for you to let me go. I wish for you to begin your journey on earth, where you will find happiness and beauty, friends, and, I so desperately hope, love. Let me go, Eran. Let me go.”
Yet he paused when he reached my face, holding a scoop of dirt in the shovel over my grave. The rain continued, quietly tapping the trees and ground, and bringing a shiny sleekness to my pale face. Several long seconds passed where he showed no signs of movement, not to breath or blink or utter a word. The others glanced uncomfortably at each other. He existed there in his torment and in those few seconds he was the ghost. Then his nostrils flared and he tipped the shovel downward.
He worked for another hour on my grave, filling the hole and assembling a cross in which he carved my name. Once he had planted it at the head of the fresh, dark mound, he fell to his knees at the foot of my grave.
Thunder cracked overhead, pursued by a flash of lightning that hit not far from Eran. Then the raindrops quickened and the noise around us grew louder. The earth, my mound in particular, turned black.
The storm saturated Eran’s pants and streamed down his bare back, but he appeared not to notice. The others didn’t cower from it either.
Eran’s head fell forward and his tears mixed with the rain.
Thunder boomed through the forest, but he showed no sign of hearing it.
They remained there, with the rain pummeling them, until the storm had passed. When it diminished to a trickle, Jeremiah and Hermina appeared in the distance, weaving their way through the trees. And they weren’t alone.
The three of them stopped next to the group to observe Eran.
“We’ve brought someone for last rites,” Jeremiah called out.
Apparently, they had followed Eran until he stopped here only to continue on for a preacher.
Eran growled. “No stranger will speak about her.”
The man stepped forward, crossing the saturated leaves.
“Colonel,” he said, calmly, respectfully.
Eran lifted his eyes in recognition of the voice. “Vasko?”
Vasko lowered his arm to Eran who swung his hand up to grip the man’s massive forearm in greeting. I’d never seen that handshake, yet it seemed appropriate between them.
Eran released him and rose to his feet on his own. “I would like to hear what you have to say.”
Vasko nodded and stepped to the head of the grave as the others moved to encircle the mound under which I laid.
“I did not know Magdalene personally. Our paths never crossed. I am no longer one of the colonel’s guards and thus my travels have led me elsewhere. But a spirit as strong, as willful as hers does not depart this earth without leaving behind an indelible imprint. I ask that we suspend our tears, our sorrow, and perhaps our anger to remember the beauty that Magdalene brought to this earth. Even from afar, through the whispers of my friends and the Alterums who joined my congregation at church, we knew Magdalene. Stories of what she had done for us, what she survived to teach us, came to me many and often. Because of Magdalene we faced our greatest fears…and we learned. Because of Magdalene we faced our most treacherous enemies…and we survived. Now it is her time to rest. It is her time to be at peace. It is her time to do as she wishes. So farewell, Magdalene. The rest of us will see you on the other side.”
A
nd that was when I knew that Vasko wasn’t speaking to Eran. He was speaking to me. Hermina had told him that I would be present. She made one sweeping study of the grove in which I was buried, the slightest smile of affection just barely visible across her lips. Then she turned to leave and the others followed.
Vasko paused at Eran’s side to comfort him with a hand to his shoulder. “She will stay with you in spirit now. You may not see her, but she is here.”
Again, I was amazed at the double meaning this man could utter on a whim. I wished that Eran could see beyond his grief to the other side of Vasko’s truth.
Vasko then followed the path the others had taken, leaving Eran to find comfort in the solace of the hushed forest.
No rain pattered the trees, no birds sang, and no breeze stirred the leaves. It was so silent that I could hear Eran’s staggered breathing. Then came the subtle shifting of leaves across the ground and I looked to my right to find a man and young girl.
The man’s hand was crossed over the girl, preventing her from stepping farther, as he evaluated the path where the others had gone. They were now nowhere in sight.
He dropped his arm at the same time Eran fell to his knees at my grave. Eran’s sobs concealed the man’s footsteps as he crossed the forest floor.
I should have been distraught with sympathy for Eran, but in that moment all I felt was anxious fear.
Eran was still naked from the waist up, so when his appendages sprouted from between his shoulder blades they were clearly visible.
The man came to a halt, shocked but showing no indication of fear. On the contrary, he seemed intrigued. This enflamed my concern.
Eran’s appendages unfolded, carrying with them the whisper of feathers unfurling, to lay against his back. They were blindingly white, in deep contrast to the grey, overcast forest, and their sheer size was awe-inspiring.
“Wings,” the little girl demanded, her words nearly inaudible in their wistful, delicate tenor.
Yet Eran did hear her. He lifted his head to peer over his shoulder.
Before Eran could react, the man’s hand swept below his jacket. It remained there, poised in defense, as Vasko appeared on the path carrying a coat that was clearly meant for Eran.
Vasko never saw what hit him.