The Heartbeat Thief

by Ash Krafton

  He chopped at his leg with his right hand, forceful enough to leave a bruise, his fingers curling into a fist.

  “I know,” Senza said quietly. “I feel like I’ve been here forever and don’t have anything to show for it. I’ve never had a job. I’ve never done anything of any value, for anything, or anyone.”

  “You’re just a kid.”

  “Am I?” She held up her hands the same way he had. “You feel like you’re here at the beginning when everything else says you’re at the end. What about me?”

  He eyed her suspiciously. “What about you?”

  She banged her right hand, over and over. “I should be here. I should be here! But I am always going to be back here, at the beginning. You’re mad because you lived, and life caught up with you, and it’s time to end. Life passed me by and it won’t even take me with it.”

  “Huh, what are you complaining about?” He grumbled, digging around in his breast pocket for his lighter. “You got your whole life ahead of you.”

  Senza gripped the arms of her rocking chair tightly enough to make her knuckles pale. Finally she managed a response.

  “What a dreadful thing to say to a person.” Her voice was low, and tight, and shook with an anger that could put Piotr’s own to shame. “Don’t you ever speak those words to me again.”

  Piotr looked like she’d punched him in the stomach, his mouth hanging open in a silent O. She stood and abandoned him to himself and the incoming weather, which already carried the taste of rain on the wind.

  A few minutes later, she heard the door open and close. He cleared his throat from the doorway. “Look, kid. I’m sorry, okay? I don’t know your story so I don’t know how the hell I offended you but…I’m truly sorry.”

  She busied herself at the counter, pushing spice jars around in an effort to appear busy. “Don’t be. I behaved badly. Sometimes, my temper gets the best of me.”

  “Mine, too. Look. I’m not the enemy, and neither are you. We know what the real problem is. And I’m glad you let me stay so I don’t have to face it alone.”

  “Oh, Piotr.” She turned and knuckled the sting from her eyes. “No one should ever be alone.”

  “Thanks to you, I’m not.” He drew a shaky breath and rubbed his mouth. “So, how long until we see that pie?”

  “Patience, Piotr.”

  “I can’t be patient, kiddo. I can’t afford to be.”

  They sat down to cut the apple pastry just as the first rains smattered against the cottage. The storm promised to be a long one, and it would be days before the air would warm enough for them to venture outside.

  By then, he said the porch was still too drafty and he didn’t feel like staring at the ugly old ocean for a while. Senza knew he would not walk through the front door ever again.

  His illness had taken over. Now, it was just a matter of time.

  Wicked, vengeful time.

  One morning, Senza sat in her wooden rocking chair, reading. Piotr had turned the couch into a make-shift bed that first night he stayed, and he rarely left it these days. She spent most hours watching him, listening to him sleep, wondering when he’d awaken.

  If he’d awaken. She did not want to admit how much she’d grown accustomed to his company, and how she dreaded his inevitable departure.

  Piotr woke with a start and a fit of coughing. She had a glass of wine at the ready. The wine was the closest thing to an analgesic she had, and she could not hold it back from him now.

  When she went to his side, he shrank from her, fear and strangeness in his eyes. He cried out when she reached to comfort him. But then, the spell seemed to pass, and relief spread across his visage.

  “Oh, Senza. It’s you.” His apologetic chuckle was raspy and rough. “It was just a dream. A dream. Did you ever have a dream so real you didn’t want to wake up? I mean, a dream so much better than this—”

  He sliced his fingers at the room around him, condemning it all. “That you’d rather just never wake up again?”

  “An escape,” she murmured.

  “Yeah. An escape. But then I just wake up. And I’m still alive. God help me, I’m still alive.”

  His voice was so heavy with blunt anger, a watered-down version of conviction. Piotr grew weaker every day, in body, in spirit, in vitriol. The fight was going out of him and he died more and more each passing day.

  Senza regarded him quietly for several long minutes. The silence was most accommodating and said everything she could not come to say. At length, she nodded. “I used to.”

  “Used to what?”

  “Dream. I used to dream every night. I didn’t even have to try. I’d just close my eyes, and the darkness would fade, and I’d be swept off in a swirl of abandon. All the pressure would just disappear. All the worry, the demand, the expectations—I’d outrun them all and I’d be free. I used to dream every night and it was the only time I wasn’t afraid.”

  He grimaced, biting down hard enough to make the tendons in his jaw stand out. “And now?”

  “I don’t dream. Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss dreaming the most. I’m too damned busy living that I’ve forgotten how to dream.”

  “I can’t imagine what that must be like.” His voice was tight and thin, as if he was in great pain again. “Dreaming is the only thing I have left.”

  “And I have everything but.” She blinked back the sting of tears. “There’s the respect that makes calamity of long life.”

  He exhaled through his nose. “What’s that, Shakespeare?”

  She nodded. “He had an uncanny knack for a devastating truth. How could he have known?”

  She toyed with the locket, staring down at blurry nothingness. “Maybe he was a thief, too.”

  “Kid, you’re making even less sense than I do.”

  “Maybe. Maybe nothing makes sense anymore. But I worry that it does. I don’t want it to, but sometimes I think…I’m not the only one.” She lifted her chin and looked at Piotr, his face gaunt and hollow in the harsh afternoon light. “I’m tired of being the only one.”

  He reached over and gripped her hand. His fingers were weak but the fire that burned in his eyes was fierce. “Me, too.”

  He sank back against his pillow. “Thank God it’ll be over, soon.”

  Senza did not sleep during her vigil. She had no need for rest, and she had no wish to miss a single remaining moment with Piotr.

  He woke with a start, a half-cry of confusion. It took him several moments to settle himself and his eyes roamed the room until he saw her.

  In the rocking chair, where she always was.

  “Senza.” His voice was little more than a rasp. “I thought you’d gone.”

  “No, Piotr. I’m here. And look, there’s warm broth. Will you eat something?”

  He shook his head. His breath creaked, tiny puffs that hardly stirred his chest. Pain creased his face, and she was heart-broken for his suffering. “I should have jumped. I should have just let go.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “You’ll be fine without me.”

  “No.” It was so hard to say it. Easy to think it—it had been a single unbroken thought for dozens of years—but so hard to say it out loud. “I’d…be lonely.”

  “You? Never.”

  She pulled her chair closer to the couch. “I’m always lonely.”

  “But you’re so beautiful. You must have men following you like dogs.”

  She shook her head. “Piotr, I must tell you something. I—told you I was older than I looked.”

  He scoffed, a harsh scrape of laughter.

  “I found the secret of eternal youth.” Glancing around, she whispered, afraid the walls would overhear. “And I can share it with you.”

  His watery gaze seemed to focus on her for a moment, as if he could truly see her. “I don’t want it.”

  “But you’re dying.”

  “Yes, because Death has ordained it. I don’t want to live forever, kid. But, right now I’d give anything to l
ive one more breath past my time, just to thumb my nose at him.”

  Senza fondled the amulet, and flicked it open. Inside, the stored beats had dwindled to their last numbers. They fluttered, bright and red, no longer the throbbing surge she’d once known. She pressed her finger into the glow, bidding a beat to come away on her fingertip. Gently she laid her hand upon Piotr’s chest and pressed the heartbeat into him.

  He gasped and blinked rapidly, clutching at her hand. There was more animation in that small reaction than he’d exhibited in weeks.

  “Oh. Oh, my.” He rolled his head to look up at her. “Just now, I felt—I felt fresh.”

  He licked his dry lips. “Could I bother you for tea? I could go for a cup, like you made that first day.”

  Tears blurred her vision and she patted his hand. “No bother at all.”

  He ate for the first time in days. Granted, it was a biscuit she’d softened with tea, and she fed it to him upon a spoon. But he ate it. And he smiled. And her heart shattered into smaller pieces because she knew the respite would not last.

  And the fragments of her heart shattered further still when that temporary light waned in his eyes, and he sank back into the pillows, his face drawn and grey.

  She had no choice. She pressed open the locket and drew off another beat, pressing it to his chest, noting the ease that melted into his expression as he slept.

  Death be damned. She had a locket full of heartbeats that she’d stolen. Senza narrowed her eyes, clenching her teeth to stop the trembling in her chin. Gripping the locket hard enough for the metal filigree to bite into her flesh, she smiled, a desperate stretch of lips that held no humor.

  The dark seducer had turned her into a thief. This time, she’d steal an entire life.

  Not like Gehring, she thought with a pang. That wound was still so fresh, made bigger with all the years of shame that engorged it. She would not steal anything from Piotr. She had every intention of giving him all the extra time she could, to help him lift his hand to thumb his nose.

  She’d pilfer his life from the clutches of Death himself, and steal His hollow victory.

  The sun rose and bloomed and fell, giving up to a purple twilight that draped itself over the cottage. She kept watch over Piotr, holding his hand, smoothing his brow, slipping him a heartbeat when he rattled for death. It would ease his pain and calm his struggle a little longer.

  And so Death was kept at bay, beat by stolen beat, through the long, dark night.

  “Senza.” She roused from a waking trance to a gentle tapping on her hand. Daylight had arrived while she slept, a thin hope that seeped through the window.

  Piotr was lucid. “Senza.”

  “You’re awake. How do you feel?”

  “I had the most incredible dream,” he said. “An undertaker came for me and you told him he couldn’t come in.” He chuckled. “I did it. I should have died yesterday. It was my time. But we kept him away, didn’t we? Senza and her magic tea.”

  “Shh.” She stood and smoothed her skirts, needing to do something with her hands. “It’s not magic tea.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Already the heat in his hand was fading, even as the sun brightened the sky outside the window. The sunrise was a haze of pink fuzz, too low in the sky to give warmth. “Death came for me yesterday. I saw him. He stood by the door, and held his hand out to me. It would have been so easy. So easy. Part of me was already there with him, ready to walk out that door. But I said no. Because you wanted me to stay. I told him I’ll go when I want to go. I can die now. I can do it on my own terms.”

  “No, Piotr. Tea. No need for a big breakfast. We’ll take some small tea together.”

  He shook his head. “I just want to sleep. Okay?”

  She stood over him, eyes ablaze with a fierce sting, knowing if he closed his eyes, he would never waken. And all these weeks he’d spent here in her cottage, trying to outsmart Death, all this time he had encouraged her to open up to him as he had done with her. In the span of a month, she knew him better than she’d known all the people she’d met since her Unbirthing day, since the moment her dark lover Knell had placed her last heartbeat into the amulet.

  She opened the locket and peered in, wanting to bolster Piotr’s strength.

  There was only one beat left.

  Her heartbeat, the very first one Knell had stowed inside the locket when he’d cast his spell of eternal youth upon her.

  One beat. It was barely enough to sustain her until she could get to town and steal more. She had to get outside, find someone. It was so early in the morning, she’d have to go to the coffee shop, she’d have to find a person with a few beats to spare.

  Senza stole a look at Piotr’s face, the deep lines, the dark circles under his eyes, the jaundiced glow of his skin. No. This was the right thing to do. It was destiny.

  She dipped her finger into the final beat, which had been the last she’d experienced as a mortal. She felt the affinity her flesh had for the great beat. It was her. It was the last remnant of what had truly been her. She’d been alive and eager and passionate and full of heat and emotion. All those things had gone away when that beat was lifted from her.

  She could have that beat again. She could experience it all once more.

  But this moment with him would be lost. Piotr would die, either way. Death could be held off no longer. But at least, she could give Piotr a glimpse of all she’d failed to share with him, even as he shared his entire essence with her.

  She pressed the beat into his heart, and with it all the compassion she’d ever felt. He had to know. He couldn’t die a grey, shallow death. Let him go to the other side knowing that he’d meant something to her.

  The pulse sped to his heart. She felt the crash within his chest when his heart responded. His eyes opened, eyes crinkling in a smile.

  “Senza,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

  The sun broke free of the hazy dawn, emerging as a separate entity of its own glory. Piotr breathed his last, his life slipping out of him.

  On his own terms. Death had taken nothing Piotr didn’t want to give.

  Her vision blurred. One hundred fifty years. It took that long for her to learn regret. That final heartbeat had been her everything, and the expression that had illuminated his face was proof that in that moment, he knew. But it wasn’t enough. He’d deserved so much more.

  She’d given him all she had to give, and she knew she could not have given him more. He’d been smitten with her, and in the end he’d loved her more than anyone he’d ever known. But she never could have returned that love.

  Her empty heart had always belonged to another.

  Suddenly, a terrible force gripped her chest, squeezing. The pain was galactic, lancing through her like needles and molten silver. Breath was lost. Coherency was lost. She clutched her chest, her empty heart in an endless constriction of agony.

  Dying. After a century and a half of running away from death, she was finally dying.

  Somewhere, unseen, the great grandfather clock began to toll, heavy sonorous peals that traveled right through her, ringing in her very bones.

  Her midnight hour had arrived.

  Senza pitched forward, landing hard on her knees. The pain tunneled her vision, draining her strength. Face to face with Piotr, she bit her lip. So glad he hadn’t lived to see this.

  She hung her head over her clasped hands as she knelt next to his body. Closing her eyes, Senza sipped at the air, trying to breathe around the pain. This is what she’d wanted, wasn’t it? She wanted to die, wanted to break this spell—

  Another toll of the massive ebony clock, another wave of pain sliced at her and she cried out. No one would hear her. She’d die alone.

  Just like Knell had told her she would.

  The twelfth peal sounded, the pain curling her into a constricted mass of agony.

  And then, there was silence.

  Alone.

  No. Not alone. You were never alone. His voice was a whisper, a waterco
lor of intonation. It raised the hairs on her neck and dripped chills down her back.

  She sobbed, recognizing his voice. It had been so long but she knew that voice, a melody to a song she’d never stopped singing. “All I wanted—”

  “Was to escape Death. And you did an admirable job. Although he was an unexpected twist.” His footsteps sounded behind her, his strong hands scooping under her arms to lift her up to her feet.

  She wanted to wilt back against him.

  Knell stroked his hand across her collarbones and the gnawing burn of pain subsided. Wrapping his arms around her, he rested his chin on her shoulder, mouth close to her ear. “You surprised me, Senza Fyne. I never thought you’d give your last beat to another, especially not to one as hopeless as he.”

  “You don’t know me.” She wrapped her fingers around his arms. Would he disappear again? All she’d wanted was to be with him, all this time; she’s spent decades coping with a life that would not end, a solitude that left her haunted, and only after she broke the spell that bound her to life did he return. “You don’t know my heart.”

  “Do I not?” He tugged her away from the body and gently twirled her to face him. He stroked his chilled fingers along her jaw, gaze caressing her face. “Don’t you see? I have always loved you, since the moment I first laid eyes on you. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, granting your wish.”

  She gritted her teeth and glared at him, wanting to scream, to cry. She would not. “It was a game to you. You enjoyed seeing my torment and you knew how to make it go on forever.”

  “Torment you? You think I did this to torment you? I did this because you wanted it. I was the one in torment.”

  “And yet, you stayed away! I was always alone. Always without.”

  “Never alone. I was there. You just didn’t know to look for me.”

  “I looked everywhere. No matter how fast I ran, you kept slipping away from me.”

  “But I was there. At every funeral you ran from. At the salons and the opium parlors. In the stables of an inn. And I was here now, for him. Always with you.”