The Secrets Amongst the Cypress

by Cradit, Sarah M.

  “The goddess says I need a daughter.” Amelia’s eyes drifted to the window. “I would have liked to be a mother, but I could never bring a child into this world, not with all the pain my family has endured. Look at your own pain, Ophélie… it didn’t start with my generation.”

  “There is no Deschanel Curse,” Ophélie said. “You know this.”

  Amelia said nothing.

  “Yes, I’ve seen glimpses of the fears of our family’s future. Maman has power, but cursing every one of her ancestors to unhappiness and death is not one of them,” Ophélie said. “Though many will believe that, the knowledge will destroy them. The goddess showed me so much sadness. She allowed me to see everything. My niece, Ophelia, will trust in it so fully, she will sacrifice everything to that belief and eventually create a child anyway, with her Sullivan lover, a child she will only have time to kiss and send away to be raised by another. I have seen many more Deschanels turn away from happiness for fear of what might be, including you. Please, Amelia, our family needs a voice of reason. It should be you.”

  Amelia focused on her hands, palms cupped. “I was pregnant. I lost the child that night in the cabin, the same night I learned I was going to be a mom. If that doesn’t feel like a curse…”

  Ophélie nodded. “It wasn’t meant to be. As my son was not. But that is not a result of a curse.”

  Amelia snapped her head up. “The crying child was real, then? Ophélie, please tell me…”

  “It is done.” Ophélie drew her mouth in a thin, tight line to steady herself. To keep from crying. “The child is no longer in pain.”

  Amelia was aghast. “In pain? What was wrong with him?”

  “We will never know because Maman refused to allow a doctor to attend him. She did not want to expose the horrors of what she’d put upon her children.” Ophélie laughed. “And yet, her modesty only stretched to appearances, not to our own well-being.”

  “I could’ve helped,” Amelia said, shaking her head. “Jacob could have helped. We are doctors… not the same kind, but we still know a hell of a lot more than your mother, and we could have done something.”

  Ophélie reached forward and pulled Amelia’s hands into hers. “Do you not see? It was not in fate’s vision for me. As your first child was not in yours. We are not meant to question, only accept. The goddess did not bring you here to try and save me, or to alter what has happened to either of us. But you can learn from it. You must.”

  Amelia turned Ophélie’s hands over in hers, studying them. Perhaps seeing if she recognized them from her own distant memory. “And what lesson should I take from all this misery, Ophélie?”

  “Because I have been chosen to suffer,” Ophélie began, choosing each word carefully. “I will not ever have my Cianán. He’s looked after me all these years, and I never knew… not until now… why, or why it should matter to me. Victor cannot change my fate, and he knows, as I know, it must be. He watches us both in sadness, knowing he cannot be with the one he was fated with, and he cannot have the one he was not.

  “And yet the argument could be made that my suffering is a result of Cianán not being at my side. A circular argument, he calls it. Either he cannot have me because I am destined to die, or I am destined to die because he cannot have me. It matters naught when the outcome cannot change. The lesson, then, is clear to me: There is no Cianán without Cerridwen. No Cerridwen without Cianán. The two are not only bound by the prophecy, but by the stars. Think, Amelia, of the time before you knew Jacob. Of the emptiness.”

  Ophélie realized when it reflected in Amelia’s sad eyes.

  “The reverse is equally true. He was not himself until he was yours. And now, as you recover from your unspeakable suffering, you are again separated, and your souls are in a similar torment. You are lost, fumbling through the steps of your life. And I am here to show you what happens when Cerridwen does not or cannot have her Cianán.”

  “I thought if I could find the answers, I could find my way back to him,” Amelia whispered. “I’ve tried so hard to be wise, like my mother, but I’ve only proven to be a well-intentioned fool.”

  “He is the answer, Amelia,” Ophélie said gently. “He has always been the answer for you, as you have been his answer. And you are no fool, well-intentioned or otherwise. But it’s time to return. To Jacob. To your home. We are on the verge of a war you surely know more about than I, and once it comes, I cannot protect you. No one can. Not even the goddess. And my maman… she knows something is amiss and won’t stop until she learns the truth, or drives you away.”

  The silence between them was all-consuming, but rather than a void, it served as a well of mutual understanding. Ophélie did not require confirmation of Amelia’s understanding. She had passed her test.

  “Victor,” Amelia said finally. “What about him? What do we do about him?”

  “You? Nothing,” Ophélie said, and for the first time in the long night of revelations, a dark foreboding washed over her. “And I caution you, Amelia. You may have been sent here, but it was not without danger. I know it comes as a shock, to say Cianán is a danger to you, but the presence of two in your life cannot do anything for you except add confusion. He cannot help but love you, and if you let down your guard, you will love him in return.”

  “No, that just isn’t going to happen,” Amelia said with a short laugh. “I’m drawn to him, yeah, but only because I have no choice… I mean, he’s Cianán. I’m built to be drawn to him, right?”

  “Perhaps,” Ophélie agreed. “But that does not mean your nature is serving you well here. Say your goodbyes, and make yourself clear, for he cannot separate his love with the same clarity: He must leave you and Jacob to your fate, and live out his own, separately. When you leave, he becomes an element of your memory, of this lesson, but nothing more.”

  “Will he accept that?”

  “Give him no choice. He belongs here, in our time. He is not of your world, and you are not of his. When you return, you look only forward.”

  “And there’s nothing…” Amelia shook her head, struggling with her internal thoughts. “No, I know there isn’t. I wish, more than anything, that I could help you. But I won’t be the foolish girl in the book who refuses to see reason. We are who we are, and while neither of us chose the path we are on, we’re on it, and there’s, as you said, only forward, not back.” Amelia pulled Ophélie’s hands into hers again and lifted them to her face, kissing them. “If only we could have known one another longer, sweet, brave girl. What a gift this has been, even with everything surrounding us.”

  “Ahh, but you have,” Ophélie smiled, lifting Amelia’s hands to her own lips in return. “We have known each other forever.”

  XXXI

  When Jacob awoke to find Amelia missing, again, he resolved this would be the last time.

  They were going home.

  The thin blanket flew off in a heap. After their brief but heavy talk tonight—the most intimacy they’d shared since that night in the cabin—he trusted whatever he found would not wound him too deeply, but gone were the days and nights where he left her to solve this for herself.

  He disregarded the noise he made as he sprinted into the hall. Seeing no sign of her there, Jacob made his way down the stairs. The pitched creaking from his heavy footfalls would likely wake the house, but he no longer cared. Nothing else mattered beyond the two of them and getting home.

  A quick, harried scan revealed Amelia wasn’t in the foyer either. But someone else was.

  Victor.

  “Where is she?” Jacob demanded.

  “Jacob,” Victor replied, turning from where he rested against the parlor doorframe. “You have been here all this time and overlooked what lay right in front of you.”

  “Does that work with the ladies? Throwing a bunch of words together and slapping on a mysterious look?” Jacob shook his head with obvious impatience. “I don’t have time for this. I know you know where my wife is. You’ve tracked her every moment since we got
here.”

  “Longer, even,” the man replied with a slow, maddening grin. “For once, it isn’t her I am waiting for, but you.”

  “You know what? I don’t even know why I bothered,” Jacob snapped, and barged past Victor, in the direction of the kitchen. A hand fished out and clamped down on his upper arm, jolting him back.

  “Victor, I do not recommend that,” Jacob hissed, attempting to wrench his arm free. He made no gains because the effort was like pulling a hand out of concrete. The man was superhuman.

  “I see you,” Victor replied, dropping his voice. “I see you, Cianán. I know you, as you know yourself.”

  Jacob stopped struggling and met the man’s eyes. “What did you say?”

  “You have wandered these halls, pining for your beloved, awaiting her to find her realizations that will take you home,” Victor answered. He dropped Jacob’s arm. “When all along, your answers lay before you, as well.”

  “What did you call me?”

  “Jacob… Cianán… these names are only that, names. You and I, we are one and the same. I may yet be punished for not permitting you to discover this truth on your own, but Cerridwen has learned her truth, and she cannot weather this storm alone. And you cannot help her survive it if you come to her a white canvas, absent of knowledge.”

  “Is that…” He had his answer, and with it, came many others. There was no way Victor, a stranger, could know the legends of Cianán and Cerridwen with such confidence unless he brought firsthand experience.

  Jacob matched this new knowledge with their experiences the past number of days… Victor’s bold pursuit of Amelia, the conspiratorial smiles he often afforded Jacob. How he was everywhere, always, a part of them.

  “She needs you. Over time, the nature of that requirement has shifted, and the burden with it, but now it is yours to carry. Only you can heal her wounds, Cianán. They run too deep for her to find her way back alone.”

  Jacob’s heart rate plummeted. For a moment, he thought he might be in cardiac arrest, the shock was so acute.

  If Victor was Cianán—or an iteration of Cianán—then he was Jacob, and his love for Amelia was not verboten but a natural evolution of their meeting.

  No wonder she’s been so confused. Oh, Blanca. We need to talk.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jacob said. He backed away, eyes darting around the perimeter for any sign of Amelia. No, only she mattered. “Or maybe it does, but it is of no consequence right now. I need to find her. If you are who you say you are, and you mean what you just said to me, then you’ll tell me.”

  Victor pointed toward the heavy oaken doors leading outside. “She’s been waiting for you. And now, you are ready to go to her.”

  Jacob threw open the doors and rushed into the electric night. The storms plaguing them the past few days showed no signs of leaving. Heavy rain hit the earth in sheets, passing over a large swath of moonlight like a moving wall.

  “Amelia!” he cried with a power to wake the earth.

  He squinted through the blanket of rain at the sight of movement. It was faint, but he was certain he’d identified someone climbing the short levee toward the river.

  Jacob didn’t think. He ran.

  When he reached the levee, he stopped to assess. From his original vantage point, he couldn’t see which direction she’d been headed, and once Amelia had disappeared, she never came back into his field of vision. But he didn’t need eyes to see.

  I’m here, and I know, and I love you, and nothing else matters.

  He closed his eyes to block the competing chorus of his other senses. Listen. Nothing else.

  Jacob turned to the west. Opening his eyes, he spotted a cluster of cypress trees along the bank, near the levee break. A flash of white clothing reflected back.

  He sloshed barefoot through the mud and the storm, losing his footing. But the momentum carried him true and forward. At the edge of the trees, he saw his wife, huddled underneath, trembling from the weight of the sobs that had taken over.

  Only you can heal her wounds. They run too deep for her to find her way back alone.

  “Never again,” Jacob vowed as he struggled through the muck and sheeting rain to his wife. Toward the only person who had ever made him the man he wanted to be. “I’ll not ever leave you again, even if it kills me.”

  XXXII

  “I’ve been so unfair to you.”

  Amelia, hunched over the cypress knees, wrapped in an afghan she’d taken from the house, heard his words before seeing him approaching.

  Jacob had come. Either in fear of realizing her missing again or from new comprehension of his own. Regardless, he had come. He was here, and when she lifted her tired head to read him, Amelia witnessed only one thing: love.

  “There’s no rulebook for surviving,” she answered. Her voice cracked. She sounded so unlike herself. “No one taught us how to get through this.”

  Jacob climbed carefully over the roots, navigating a maze of them to get to her. She scooted over to make room, and he slid under the afghan. Her head fell on his shoulder as his arm draped around her back, a gesture she hadn’t allowed since that night but did not know, until now, how badly she’d needed it.

  “I didn’t realize how guarded I’ve been,” Jacob went on. He ran his hands up and down her arm, warming her. She rocked back and forth in an attempt to control the rising pain within her. “I was so caught up in thinking you were too fixated on finding signs, or answers, that I didn’t think at all about my own actions. I pushed you to figure everything out while all I did was hide in my own head. I’ve failed you again, and I can’t say sorry enough, Blanca.”

  “There’s no such thing with us,” she whispered, hoarse and exhausted. “You’re my constant, Jacob. Over the span of space and stars, you’re the only one, and you couldn’t ever fail me, not if you made an honest effort of it.”

  “I’m not fishing for reassurance,” he said, his lips against her matted hair. “I’m not a man worthy of you if I can’t admit when I’ve been wrong. And I have… I thought… well, we need to move forward. We have to just try and move on… but then you were so damned determined the answers were in the past, not the future, and I let myself fixate on that, and I tunneled on the idea because it distracted me from thinking about anything else. Specifically, one thing.”

  Amelia released a jagged breath against his chest. “I know. And I thought I could put off my grief. Then, I thought I could solve it. I didn’t know how to deal with my hatred.” Her voice caught as a new sob rose. “It wasn’t my hatred of Baldur that was eating me alive, but hatred of myself.”

  A fresh rain hit the tops of the cypress, their only canopy from the storm. Jacob pulled the blanket tighter around his wife. “How could you ever hate yourself for what he did?”

  “Don’t you?” she asked, looking up briefly. “Isn’t that what you’ve done, blame yourself?”

  A few drops escaped the cover and landed on them. Ahead, the river’s current increased with the arrival of a steamboat making its way upriver.

  Jacob’s jaw tightened. Her words had a transporting effect, and as he trained his gaze on the ship, in an attempt to re-ground himself, he saw Amelia running from him that night in Ireland after he’d told her to leave. The next time he’d seen her, she was at the mercy of that monster.

  Amelia saw this in his mind, laid bare to her in his vulnerability.

  “No… Donnelly, no. You can’t. If we want to play that game, we could start blaming the Quinlans for pushing us so hard, or my aunt for sending the letter that brought us to Killianshire. Our fight that night… it was inevitable. We had so much pressure, and we were only just beginning our lives together after everything with Oz, and Adrienne…”

  “I wanted to hurt you that night.” Each word strained to reveal the next, as the comprehension hit him. “I blamed you for getting us into the business with the Quinlans, then disregarding everything they said.” Jacob’s arm around her went slack, and his foot began an escalatin
g staccato of tapping. A small moan was trapped in the back of his throat, and when it escaped, the sound turned to primal grief. “Amelia, my God, I led you right into that nightmare.”

  Jacob’s scream rose into the quiet night, a symphony of rage and immeasurable regret. Amelia experienced his agony like ice to the marrow.

  He released her and fell forward, grinding his fists into his kneecaps, rocking faster and faster as if trying to burrow himself into the earth. His chin fell to his chest, and tears rained down on his bare feet, sliding into the mossy trunk.

  Amelia rested her hand against the middle of his back and traced soft, calming circles. She had used this gesture years ago when he’d returned from a fight, full of adrenaline and aching regret. It always brought him back to the now. To her.

  “You are so wrong. Jacob, you brought me out of it,” she said softly, letting her hand speak the rest of her thoughts against his trembling back. In Amelia’s own all-consuming attempts to transcend her own grief, she had never stopped to consider his.

  “I’ve pushed you away because it hurt when you couldn’t turn to me,” Jacob cried. “And I turned around and made you feel terrible for doing exactly what I had pushed you to do.”

  Amelia leaned over her knees, pressing her face to the side so she could see his. “Without you, I wouldn’t be here.” This time, she couldn’t stem the tide of the impending meltdown. Her own tears burst forth in a flood. “Jacob, I would have died, body and soul. You brought me back. You saved me. You’ve been protecting me since the day I caught you in the middle of that silly drum solo on the campus pub.”

  Tears blinded her now. They ran down her face and into her mouth. “I don’t know how to get through this,” she continued between sobs, afraid of losing herself before she could say the words. “But I know now the only way forward is together.”

  Jacob drew back. His fists clenched and unclenched, tears rolling over his hands. He blew out, once, twice. Brought fresh air back into his lungs.