by Mandi Lynn
The opening of the cave stares at me in the evening sky. Dusk approaches, leaving only a muted color to the world, but it is enough to see the cave. Within its walls are crystals which I know will shine if light touches them, but farther within Clara lies forever. Somehow her body has found its resting place, but I find myself cowering away.
I take all the branches I can gather and lean them against the opening. I tell myself that if I can’t see it, then it does not exist. If the cave isn’t here to remind me of Clara’s death, I can pretend it never happened.
The leaves and branches pile up. They turn the opening in the rock wall into something else. The healthy greens vibrate with life against the gray stone, and I find myself looking forward to the passing days as the leaves wilt and die, just a fixture against the backdrop.
I stumble away. It’s a mess. All of it. But I don’t care. Instead I find myself on that familiar rock by the lagoon, curling into myself. My knees come to my chest, and my arms lock around my legs. The sun runs away like it’s being chased by an unnamed god, and before I know it the night is black. The only things left are the stars and moon. And I remember the moon, because it’s the same no matter where I am. Garren and I share the same moon—that much I am sure of.
~~~
It comes that night. Sleep finds me and I wish I could say it was a relief, but it wasn’t. Because an Essence only sleeps out of boredom. The act isn’t from exhaustion or for rejuvenation; sleep comes because it is night and there is nothing else left to do. In a way I am just resorting back to human habits. The sun sets; my mind quiets and I drift off. No dreams or images speak to my soul; there is just nothing. It’s a way to pass time; that is all.
In the morning birds chirp. The air breathes the fresh breeze of another day, but even with the new start I find myself haunted by the pile of leaves in the corner of my sight. I turn away, leaving my back to the cave, begging myself to forget.
Instead I focus on the sounds around me. The morning is quiet, leaving only the birdsong and the brush of leaves, as a small wind curves and twists through tree branches. In the distance is a stomping sound, an animal running through the forest. It grows closer, and as it does, I’m able to better focus on the rhythm. It’s not a trot like I’ve known to accompany a four-legged animal. There are two sure footfalls as the steps grow louder and louder, thumping against the soil of the forest, kicking fallen leaves out of the way in intervals.
I turn to look behind me, the sounds growing frighteningly close. That’s when I hear the rushed and unsteady breaths. Behind the heavy exertion is effort and pain—so entirely human. Whoever is running is losing energy. I can hear them as they slow, yet their breath is labored and strained.
A girl emerges from the trees. She stumbles through, pushing her way forward. Her hair is tied back and a dress of silk is wrapped around her bodice, yet the thick skirts don’t seem to slow her down. Her clothing is from a different time entirely. It seems similar to what Sabine had been wearing on the ship, but it’s simpler, less artistic.
I can see the rise and fall of her chest as she struggles to find the air needed to run. Her pace slows and I can see her better. The girl is young, no older than sixteen, but her dress is an attempt to make her appear much more mature, with its plunging neckline and intricate stitching. Her face is delicate, and small tears stumble down her cheeks as she tries to navigate through the forest.
She doesn’t see me—of course she doesn’t see me—but it still comes as a surprise when she rushes toward me. As she draws close, she slows, and I can see a calm melt into her exterior. Her muscles relax and she attempts to breathe steady once again as she comes to a stop.
Her eyes seem glossed over as she walks blindly to the lagoon. The girl is watching her surroundings, but all she can concentrate on is the lagoon. Her eyes gaze into the water and the beauty of the lagoon casts a spell over her. Her feet shuffle forward until she’s only an arm’s reach from me. Her face is void of all expression as her feet touch the water.
Panic shocks me. I watch as she moves forward, letting the water soak her gown. It folds out around her. It’s an emerald color—beautiful in every way—but she doesn’t notice anything except the water. She stops, looking down. The air is so still in this moment, so quiet that I swear I can hear her hushed breath.
With slow movements she bends into the water, plunging her arm to the bottom. She straightens a second later, holding something. She cups it in both hands, uncovering a silver stone. It shines in her palm, and there is a moment of relief as she stands with the stone like this is exactly what she ran all this way for.
I feel my body relax. Air releases from my lungs that I hadn’t realized I had been holding as I give a sigh of relief. But then the girl’s face goes blank, and I watch as her body drops into the water like a limp rag doll, like the one Margo had when she was small.
This girl doesn’t move. Her body floats on the surface, legs hanging underwater. Her mouth is closed, her face cupped by the surrounding liquid. Hair streams out around her as the intricately brushed and combed style falls apart in the water.
Everything is still for a moment. No sound comes from the forest. The birds seem to have been scared away by the splash of water she had created. Ripples cascade through the lagoon, creating circles around the girl’s body. The only sound is the soft whistle of wind that rustles the leaves against their branches.
There’s no rise and fall to her chest. I slide off the rock I have been sitting on, taking careful steps like my movement may stir her awake. When I reach the water’s edge, her body settles and sinks. Without thinking, I step into the lagoon and grasp her shoulders. I pull her out, wrapping my arms around her chest. Once I’m on shore again, it becomes harder to pick up her weight, and I find all I can do is drag her torso against the soil, leaving her bottom half in the lagoon.
Her face is serene despite the fact that she may have been running for her life. At her side her hand is clenched into a fist. I make my way to kneel beside her and grip my fingers around hers, working open her palm.
My hands drop away the instant I realize what I’m doing. Despite the fact she’s human I touched her and was able to drag her from the water. I look at the girl and wonder if somehow she is an Essence like me, but then I remember the tears so willingly shed down her cheeks. I watch my hand stretch out next to her. My fingers wrap around hers but don’t slip through her skin. Instead I’m able to grip her delicate hand and open up her fist. A small rock drops from her palm and onto the pebbles of the shore. It’s the stone she had picked up from the lagoon, but it’s no longer the silver it had been seconds ago. Its smooth surface shines with a slight green cast.
I remember how this girl had fallen at the touch of the stone, unable to control her body. I stand up and leave the girl at the shore, her lower body still emerged in the water. The girl looks like she’s asleep, but she doesn’t breathe—the lagoon has taken her life. I back away, wondering how long it will be until her body decays, like those I had seen when I was human, watching the world rot away before my eyes. Even as I retreat from the green-cast stone it grows brighter, and I can’t help but see it as poison.
XLVI.
I didn’t want to leave her. But I did. I left the lagoon and all that it is, because I couldn’t face seeing another dead body. Every time I see a human so still, so silent, all I can remember is that it is something I will never have. And it seems so selfish, so cynical, to want death, but it’s what I want. I waited for it when the pestilence haunted me, and I still desire it when eternity breathes down my neck.
I’m jealous of the girl in the sick way that I want her death. I want the peace she and every other human being find one day. But then I also mourn her passing into oblivion. I don’t know her or what kind of life she lived, but I know in the pit of my stomach that she has lost something great, something magical, which she will never get back. I want her to know that if we could have traded places, I would have taken her death so she could h
ave lived—but that’s not how death proceeds.
Instead I wander away, plagued and haunted by this curse of eternity. I picture myself in this world, always lost, looking for Garren, hoping that he may miss me the way I miss him.
The forest grows dark again—another day ending—so I settle in the grass. The trees are dense, making it difficult to see the moon in the sky, but I know it’s there.
I find myself mystified by human habits and how they stick. I sit on the ground, completely aware of the fact I’m not tired or in need of rest, yet I still want that slumber. The night’s solace tells me to be quiet and lulls me to sleep.
I lie on my back, looking up at the sky. In between tree branches I can make out small stars. I close my eyes, aware of the animals that rustle in the bushes and the crickets that chirp their lullaby. But I also notice the silence—the dead silence of it all because I’m alone.
~~~
I’m a wanderer in the morning. There was no rest in my sleep and I find myself pacing and hovering, looking around like maybe an answer to all my questions resides within the trees. But the truth is I can’t find reasons for my restlessness—I just am. My feet scuttle about, my mind muddled with thoughts.
I want to go back to the lagoon. I don’t know why, but it keeps calling to me. I see the water and the stone wall and see a solace that I can’t find anywhere else. But I can’t return. The girl is there, still motionless without life. She’ll have begun to decay by now, like Clara had as I held her in my arms. I can see the young girl in my mind, how her flesh may discolor and contort against her bones, and I know I won’t be able to look at her.
And Clara—she’s still in the cave with the crystals that will never shimmer in the sun again, because I had closed it off from the world to be soon forgotten and never to be discovered—the way Garren had covered the pool of water on Tiboulain.
I wander, walking in circles, occupying myself in hopes of freeing my mind of this torment of the lagoon which I had begun to call home without consciousness. The trees all look the same as I walk. There’s no sure path where I step, but I make my way through the branches and bark.
I’m leaning against a tree for support when I see her. The girl steps around the trees in a haze. She stumbles as if she’s just woken from a deep sleep. My gaze cruises down her body, watching the hand she clutches at her side—her fingers form a fist.
Why isn’t she dead?
“Miss?” the girl speaks up. There’s relief in her breathy words as she speaks as if she can’t believe someone is here in the forest with her. “Can you help me?”
She looks at me with scared eyes, observing my old ratted clothing. Her gaze pierces me like she will hypnotize me into doing whatever she wishes, yet her stare makes me look to the trees for cover. I take a small step away, feeling a growing sense of danger rising in me.
“You can see me?” I ask.
“Yes.” But her eyes squint with the words, like she isn’t sure of herself. “Miss, I don’t know what has happened, but …” She bites on her own words. “I woke up in the water.”
“You were supposed to be dead,” I say.
She rebukes my words, but at the same time there’s an understanding as she hears my words. “Did I drown?”
I walk toward her, seeing the emerald color of her gown—just like it had been the day before—except now the color is muted and dirty. Her hair is a matted mess at her scalp, falling over her shoulders in dark knots. She looks like she had drowned, yet here she stands.
“No,” I tell her. “There was a stone. It poisoned you.”
Her face drops, and I see fear overcome her again. It’s like I may have killed a hope inside her as she brings her hand to her chest. Her fingers are still wrapped in a fist and it looks like she may cry. With an unsteady arm she opens her hand to me, revealing a bright green stone in her palm.
“I can’t let it go,” she says.
I look into her eyes and see the utter fear. With wide eyes she looks to me as some sort of savior, offering the stone she can’t let go. It shines bright against her light skin. The surface of the stone is grainy, distorting the green pigment.
“Why can’t I let it go?” she asks me.
I look up at her and see a bright young face. There are no signs of lost sleep or fatigue, but I see her hand quiver. I push down her hand gently, allowing her to wrap the stone in her fingers once again. She succumbs to my actions, defeated, and lets her arms hang at her side.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
She smiles at my words. “Hadley,” she says.
Her voice perks up at the familiar inquiry, and I know this one ordinary question is what she needed.
“Why were you running?”
Hadley’s smile wipes away quickly. She doesn’t speak at first, only loses her gaze as she opens her hand to look at the stone once more. It isn’t until she closes her fist again that she speaks.
“Valen … he was supposed to meet me in the forest for a picnic,” she tells me. Her lips form a smile when she speaks his name, but she also seems to mourn at the memory. “Mama didn’t like him very much, so we had to sneak out together. I went into the woods like we always had, and he would bring the basket of food. He didn’t come so I was alone. There was a rustling in the leaves and I thought it was him, but it was some animal. I don’t know what—maybe a bear, because I’ve never seen a bear before—and it saw me, so I ran.”
“You ran all this way, from a bear?”
Hadley purses her lips and I can practically see her working through the memory, trying to decode something she doesn’t understand. “I don’t know. I thought that’s what I was running from, but after some time, I knew the bear wasn’t chasing me, but I couldn’t stop running. It was like I had to be somewhere—I’m just not sure where.”
And she looks around as if for the first time in that moment. With the stone still clutched in her hand she scans the forest, trying to look at it in a way that makes sense of where she is and how she got to be here.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” I ask.
She smiles and it makes no sense to me because I saw her last moment—or what I thought was her last moment. She stepped into the lagoon like I had, except she was sacrificing her own life, so unlike the sacrifice I had made of Clara’s body.
“Peace,” she says. “The peace of mind and body that I had never known before. It was as if I were dying. And I remember not being afraid.” As soon as her words end, Hadley’s face drops. “What happened?” Horror fills her voice that I don’t wish to remember.
I offer my arm to her, resting my fingers over her shoulder, like my touch may somehow relieve the tension I see radiate off her body. My ability to touch her makes me realize—she is no longer human.
My hand drops back to my side again. Hadley lifts her eyes to me, pleading. She is just a child, a child who ran when she shouldn’t have. I see it in the light of her eyes, in the fresh glow of her skin, but also in the ignorance of her words. She has yet to see the world and it’s already been taken from her.
I guide her back to the lagoon silently, knowing we both have questions that neither of us wishes to answer. She doesn’t speak as we walk toward where she had come from. Instead she curls her fingers around the stone in her hand, making circular rotations over the rough surface.
Clara’s body comes to mind as we walk. I know it’s hidden behind the leaves and brush at the cave’s opening, but as I walk with Hadley, I know that barrier must come down.
XLVII.
It’s painful to watch. Hadley stands above her own body, a sick and disjointed mirror that doesn’t make sense. A limp girl lies on the floor of a cave. Her dark hair is still a beautiful masterpiece of locks. Her face, her eyes, her lips, all are so relaxed and serene that I’d guess she was only taking a nap. But Hadley hovers over the girl—this body that is no longer hers to possess—and weeps. She shakes and slowly lowers herself to the ground, crying without tears running down her fa
ce, but she doesn’t notice the lack of tears. She only has eyes for her body, and it has betrayed her.
Hadley does not look like this girl. Hadley’s hair is knotted to her scalp, and her dress is no longer emerald green. Instead the skirt is a dusty brown at the hem, weighed and wilted by dirt and debris. She curls her arms around her torso, looking at herself, and I watch as she cowers from the form, like she’s afraid to touch her own body.
At first she couldn’t stop looking at her body, but now I watch as she struggles to even be near it. She looks at the stone walls of the cave, the crystals that line the corners and light up when the sun hits it—but she doesn’t look at herself, and I see her expression crumble as she attempts to wrap her mind around the idea of seeing her dead body before her.
“Hadley?” I stand apart from her. She doesn’t lift her head or heed my voice. Instead she cries. I try to bring her back to reality, away from the nightmare that unfolds in her mind where she can’t explain the phenomenon in front of her eyes.
“I want to go home,” she says. “I want Valen to take me home.”
I walk toward her with slow steps. She lifts her head when I approach, but she is careful to be sure that her body is outside her range of vision. Her face is dry.
“I know,” I tell her. “I want to go home too.”
I offer my hand to her. She looks at it, almost as if it’s another piece of poison, but then she grips my palm. I pull her away, and she sways for a moment before regaining herself.
“Where’s your body?” she asks.
It’s a simple question, but it’s also one that never occurred to me. If I were like her, there would be a body. But I’m not like Hadley. She is like me, this spirit that has been caught between deaths, but I’m not like Hadley. I don’t know where my body is, whether it be back at Tiboulain or if it never left me in the first place. But Hadley isn’t like Clara, who died, yet her body sits in the same cave as Hadley’s. The only reason I can find as to why both of their bodies are found here is the shared element of water: because Hadley’s soul left her body in the water of the lagoon and Clara was scarified in the water.