by Mandi Lynn
I seat myself farther away and let the sun shine at my back. My clothing flutters in the wind, beating against my legs, reminding me that I am here. I watch Garren and am jealous of his rest. He looks different in his sleep. His dark curls are matted to his head in short tendrils, and even in the dull morning light his skin seems to glow with a freshness. I watch as his chest continues in its steady rise and fall and wonder why it is we still breathe in the oxygen of the world when we no longer need it.
“Habit,” I answer, inhaling deep as if I could taste the air.
Garren stirs, perhaps awoken by my voice, but doesn’t open his eyes. His body shifts and he turns to face me.
“Garren?” I say quietly.
For a moment I get no response, but then a moment later he opens his eyes to me.
“Luna,” he says, sleep still deep in his voice. He comes to the present and lifts himself off the ground and into a sitting position that mirrors my own.
“We sleep,” I say.
He looks at me and sees the questions in my eyes.
Why do we sleep? Why do we sleep when we do not need it? Why do we breathe when we do not need to?
“Yes,” he says. “It is all part of our human memory working for us, I suppose.”
“After all these years?”
He shrugs. “After all these years.”
I watch him. I’m not sure if I understand why exactly, but I do. I stare as his eyes fully awaken and his face opens into a smile as the sunrise’s array of colors shine over his skin. He’s in front of me, and I watch when he opens his mouth as if he might speak, but no sounds come at first.
“Luna.”
I give him my undivided attention, and when I do he freezes as if my gaze pierces him. For the first time in a long time I remember the power my gaze holds. I remember how my silver-white irises had marked me as some sort of evil, which I never asked to be, and I realize that I’m still a monster. I look down, shame taking over me, and concentrate on the contour of my fingers. How my palms are printed and drawn with thin lines, sketches within my hands, small and nimble.
“I want you to be happy.”
I lift my face and I see Garren’s fingers wrapping lightly against my chin once more, cradling me.
“I’m sorry I brought this upon you, but I’m willing to do anything to make this eternity something good for you.”
“Am I a monster?”
He seems shocked by my question. His fingers almost drop from my chin, and even though I can’t feel his skin against mine, the thought of losing contact with him frightens me.
“Why are you a monster?”
“All my life my eyes have been a sign to everyone that I was something to be feared, to be extinguished. I was less than human.” And I can’t help but remember how Dondre couldn’t even bring himself to forgive me. How Mama might have died with Papa telling her how I was somehow to blame for the pestilence. How I loved so many without ever being loved back, because I was perceived as a witch.
“You are no monster,” Garren tells me.
“I don’t want them to see me,” I say, but the words are nothing more than a whisper. Yet he hears me and nods to accept my thoughts as they are; he doesn’t try to change them. “I don’t want them to look at me anymore.”
“I know,” he says. “I don’t think they’ll see you now.”
“What do you mean?”
He smiles, drops his hand from my chin to brush his fingers against my cheek. Instead of feeling the tingle of his touch, I watch the gesture from the corners of my eyes, skimming my gaze back to his face to see the look of nurture and care etched into his features.
“Remember the moon? And how it can give you gifts?” he says, and I smile.
~~~
There’s a beautiful thing in having the ability to walk through a crowd and not be interrupted. At first I don’t even believe it’s really happening, but the farther I walk the surer I am of the simple fact that even if I step in front of someone, they are oblivious to my existence.
The streets of Marseille open and flood in front of me, but for once I’m disconnected. Faces pass and conversations make waste in the air, all while I stand, watching.
“Garren, they can’t see me,” I say, a thrill forming inside me. I turn to find Garren, but he stands off to the side like he is hiding. His face reveals surprise, like maybe he himself didn’t believe the change would actually occur, that the moon would gift me something when it had taken so much.
“I see,” he says, a smile reaching his lips, but his voice holds another emotion entirely. A man walks by, just inches from Garren, and I watch as Garren steps back so the man doesn’t stumble into him.
“Garren?”
He looks up at me and I see he is hiding something, but he smiles anyway. In a single breath of air I swear my eyes trick me. A young girl comes running down the street, but when she reaches Garren, she doesn’t see him. Instead she runs straight through him as if he didn’t exist. I stare at Garren, waiting to see if he will blow away like dust, but his image never wavers.
And it’s like a mask has just left his face. The smile he once held disappears as he realizes what has happened—every fiber of his face reads certain and utter shock.
“Garren?” I say again, this time with a small shrill hinting at the edges of my voice. And I realize that the moon has given Garren the same gift given to me and I’m not sure if this is a good thing.
XXXVI.
Garren brings me to his home. It’s nothing like the cruck houses I had known growing up, made only of simple things like clay and straw. What stands before me is something I’d imagine nobles possessing—a miniature castle. Four stone walls with a thatched roof that looks like it could stand for years to come. This is where he has lived while waiting for me to awaken.
We walk in silence over the threshold and inside I’m greeted with a small touch of home. Wooden furniture is scattered across the room but the most surprising thing is the stone walls within the building that divide the space. In my human memory this is nothing we ever had. Cooking and sleeping had always been within the one room; privacy was a dream, not a reality.
“So it worked,” Garren says, sitting down on a chair that is upholstered with a thick and worn fabric.
His words remind me. How a girl walked through Garren’s body like he was nothing. How I was the one who took away his physical being because I was both selfish and fearful.
“I …” I start, but I don’t know what to say. Instead I just stand within this room, so unsure of everything around me.
“Sit,” Garren says, holding out his hand to the chair across from him.
It is like his, covered in cloth, but wider, like it could seat two.
“Please, sit.”
And I don’t understand why his voice is so kind to me when all I’ve done is take away his presence in the world.
I gather myself and find peace in the seat. “How long have you lived here?” I ask.
“Only a few years,” he says. “I move once people notice the lack of years on my face, but I never travel too far.”
I look around the room and see that, although the house is furnished, nothing says he has really lived in the home: no trinkets possessing memories, no stains on the floor, no marks on the wall when he moved things because he grew bored of the view. This is a place to wake up, to sleep, to reside, and nothing more.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
His brow furrows. “Why is that?”
“I took you from this. From your life.” I point to the inside of his home, but he doesn’t follow my gaze. Instead I hear him move, and when I look he has come to sit beside me. Our knees touch and his body is angled toward mine—I let the moment last.
“Luna, I would have had to leave soon anyway,” he says, his voice gentle. I’m afraid to see his kind eyes.
“I didn’t want people to see me, Garren. I didn’t know, by offering myself to the moon again that I would take your physical body
from you also. You had friends, people you knew. Now you will be gone to them.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long time and I wonder if he’s finally hearing me; if he’s listening to my words and realizing that I’m right and how he should leave. And I’m happy for him because I feel as if I’ll never deserve him. But the thought—the simple thought of him leaving—it bites at me and begs to disappear so it can’t haunt my mind any further.
“Luna,” he says, but he isn’t angry.
I dare a look and his face is so close. My gaze drifts and I see he is holding my hand in a gentle cradle.
“I’m the one who took you away. And for that I’m sorry.”
He looks at me, and I don’t understand what he sees because I’ve never had someone look at me like this before. His eyes don’t flicker away or waver. He just stares into me and I can’t find myself looking away.
His hand comes to my face and I’m aware of his touch as his lips meet mine. I close my eyes and I swear that I feel his skin against mine even though neither of us are human. Warmth builds between us, and for a second I believe we are something again, something alive and bursting, just waiting to be awakened.
The sensation leaves and when I open my eyes, I see Garren’s face still just a breath away. His forehead rests against my own and I hear his small breaths, so close to me. His eyes remain closed. We are spirits floating away into something beautiful. We are creating our own world of sense and allure because we are no longer human.
“I know what we are,” I say in a breath.
Garren opens his eyes, his expression tentative as to what I have to say. His eyes are so full of life that I wonder how I had ever thought we were anything less than alive.
“We are spirits. Not ghosts, but something else,” I say, but my words are fumbling.
He smiles in the smallest, most innocent way, and it’s like our minds are connected.
“Something that exists spiritually but not physically? Wouldn’t that be a ghost?” he says, a hint of laughter in his voice.
“No,” I say, dismissing the ghosts, dismissing a subject that everyone only believes has the power to haunt. “An Essence.”
This time when he smiles, it isn’t something timid. It is full and lively, and I want to remember this moment forever because I know it will never last an eternity like our lives might.
“A beautiful essence of everything that is beautiful in my life?” he asks, mimicking the words he had said to me once before.
“An Essence,” I say. “Yes, that’s what I’d call it.”
XXXVII.
I stand in the middle of the market and wait. Voices sing, and gossip travels, but I’m always here. A little girl clings to a young woman’s skirt, and when I look closer I see small tears dripping down her cheek—oh, how such a simple act is taken for granted by humans.
People rush by without any awareness of my presence. I stand in front of a merchant, and it doesn’t matter if I glare at him; he will never see me. My silver eyes will never threaten another person again—including me. I’m no longer a monster to the world. I am something different. An Essence, we call it.
The world is dancing around me and all I’m left to do is observe. A husky man plows through my body and I’m amazed by the simple fact that I don’t feel a thing. I don’t lose my footing or even feel a tickle of pressure. For a split moment this man and I were one. It’s an amazing feat—it’s quite frightening to think about really.
Far off in the corner somewhere I see Garren come into view. I find my way over to him, and when I do his face is detached and oddly neutral. He smiles at me when I come closer, but it looks like a mask, out of place.
“Okay,” he says. He comes to grip my hand and walk me from the marketplace. He swerves and dodges crowds of people even though their bodies don’t affect us.
“What did you write?”
Though Garren had to move and restart his life every few years to keep up the act of being human, he had made friends each time—people who cared just enough to wonder what had happened to Garren when he disappeared physically from their lives. His plan had been to write a note to explain his absence.
“I said that I was leaving,” he says simply.
We continue to walk at a brisk pace, never slowing, but never seeming to come closer to the beach that will bring us to the open waters.
“What about your home?” I had only been in Garren’s house once, but it had been so much more than I had known growing up in my family’s cruck house. Garren’s was large enough for a family, maybe even two. It seemed like a waste to leave such lavishness behind, but I knew that if Garren left his human life behind, his home would have to be left behind also.
“I mailed a note to a good friend. I told him that he could have my home, as long as he made good use of it.”
“Do you think he will?”
“Yes,” Garren says.
Our pace finally slows as the sandy beach finds the bottoms of our feet. I watch the grains push away under my soles, and for a moment I’m tempted to take off my leather shoes to feel the sand between my toes, until I remember what it means to be an Essence and push away the thoughts with a new eagerness that I hadn’t known before.
He drops my hand to fetch the boat. It seems every time I look at it, the old wood is more worn. The bottom is rotting, becoming soft and pliable. Garren pushes the boat into the water and I watch as it floats calmly on the surface, swaying in small motions against the waves. I stand by it, the wind blowing hair into my face, detangling it from the braid that rests over my chest.
“My friend,” Garren says, “he was homeless most of the time. Just begging on the streets or at the market. I used to give him jobs so I could pay him somehow. Recently he took residence as a worker for some nobleman, but the work was unkind. I’m hoping now he won’t have to live there.”
“That’s very kind of you,” I say.
He turns to me. One of his feet sinks into the salty water while the other rests on the dry sand of the beach. He offers his hand to me while holding the boat steady.
With a sure grip he takes my hand and pulls me toward him. Once I’m closer he lets go of my hand, only to wrap his arm around my torso and lift me off the ground. For a moment my feet don’t touch the sand, and I’m being held close to Garren. Then the next second his grip is gone and I’m standing in the boat.
All this happens, every touch with him happens, and even though I can’t feel him or know he’s really there, it’s like I don’t need anything physical anymore—because he holds my hand and I know he’s here. I look at his skin and I can’t feel the heat of it, but at the same time I feel his Essence here with me.
Garren joins me in the rowboat and grips the oars to take us from the beach. We float away slowly, every now and then the waves urging us to the shore again, but then Garren steers us from the land.
“Are we coming back?” I ask. We hadn’t made a plan. We have the rest of eternity and we don’t know what to do with ourselves. The only thing we know is that Garren has to disappear from the human life he had created. We are just spirits in this world, and we cannot bother the physical life that inhibits this place. Marseille is grand in its appeal even as we float away. Life radiates off the shore and leaves memories that are a permanent part of life.
Garren doesn’t pause in his attempts to carry us away. His arms continue in their circling motions, dragging the oars through the ocean waters. “We’ll be back,” he tells me. But that’s all he says. Neither of us speaks of what eternity will be like.
The waves push and pull us into motion and Garren turns as if he hears something. He stops suddenly, holding up the oars in the air mid-row.
“Luna.”
“What?” I ask, but he doesn’t look at me.
His eyes are watching something behind him and I try to see what he’s looking at. Tiboulain rests easy like it always has, but now a large ship has made port on one of its rocky shores. The vessel has sails that reach
high into the sky, and when I look close enough there are dozens of crates stacked atop each other on the deck. There is movement on the ship as Garren and I watch figures unload a ramp, extending from the ship to the island.
“Luna.” Garren says my name again, this time more urgently. Something has snapped into place and suddenly he comes to life, rowing us to Tiboulain as fast as he can.
“What will we do?” I ask.
“We have to cover the pool in the center of Tiboulain.”
“But why?” I ask.
“Because it is the reason you and I are alive today, and will be alive every day after.”
“But …” I say, his words confusing me. I thought Garren and I were the only ones, could be the only ones. “Others can become an Essence?”
Garren continues to row and I see frustration grow within him. He doesn’t ignore me; he looks and pleads with me with his eyes, but he never slows his pace to reach Tiboulain.
“Yes,” he says. His eyes dart around, exchanging glances between the ship docked on Tiboulain and me. “Anyone who touches the water can be trapped in eternity.”
XXXVIII.
We steer our way around the island, doing our best to keep our vessel out of sight. Although Garren and I are invisible, our small vessel is not. As we near I realize that the large ship belongs to some merchants, the bow full of goods. The only people on it are its crew to guide the vessel from one location to the next. It ships goods, nothing more, so why is it here on this uninhabited island?
Garren jumps from our small rowboat that docks on the opposite side of the island from the merchant’s ship. Ocean water splashes around me, and I watch as Garren makes frantic motions to pull the wooden rowboat to the rocky beach. The water comes to his waist, and, even though I know he can’t feel the cold, part of me has to bite my tongue as I watch him drag us through the bitter ocean water. Finally the bottom of the boat glides against land and I jump out, the water making my thick skirts cling to my legs, only working to slow me down.