Bloody Valentine
Is this it, my final, wretched day?
Sickly colours and searing heat flash through me, abrade the insides of tightly closed eyes, bead my sticky skin. My stomach swirls and churns. Pushes bile up a singed and sore throat. I try to rise, and everything becomes so much worse.
If this is my final day, piled on the mouldering corpses of so many such days, I greet it with open arms.
Scents of shaving cream and coffee creep under the edges of my awareness.
My resolve.
Is my physical agony not enough?
I turn away from him, so he cannot see me, nor I, him. Yet even with my eyes pressed closed, I see the helplessness in his eyes. The bright, dewy shell that catches candlelight or daylight whenever he looks at me.
#
Was it in dream or that half-remembered state somewhere betwixt somnolence and lucidity that I could have sworn a large black bird pried open the loose window catch and hopped onto the inside sill?
As my eyes adjusted, the Corvus perched on the foot of my bed, folded its wings and regarded me down the length of its black beak. It pulled at something secured to its leg, dropped whatever was onto the counterpane and … left.
Attributing the vision to lack of sleep, I sought to remedy the shortfall and restlessly returned to Nótt’s embrace.
Hours later, my maid, Deidre, picks a small black linen pouch from the day-lit bed covers. I undo the knot and tip the contents onto the sheet. Three plump acorns in their neat chequered saucers dimple the crisp white cotton. One downy black feather settles on top.
The stiff mulberry ribbon is unmarked by the bird’s beak and matches a bonnet I bought last season past. The milliner knows my ancestral roots. Expects me to recognise the acorn’s significance. She appears to be making an offer. One I cannot believe. One I can ill-afford to ignore.
Later that morning, Edward’s fingers brush my clammy skin. Caress the black hair I thought would silver to match his as we grew old, together. The pain that wracks my body is nothing compared to the regret and anguish that gnaws at my mind.
I have no choice but to go see the milliner.
“Edward.” I smile, marshalling what little strength remains, ensure my voice is everything it can be. Strong. Unflinching.
It trickles over my ears like wind playing in a bed of reeds.
“What would my lady like to do today?” His smile breaks my heart. Warm, resolute. It speaks to me of promises made on our wedding day. Promises kept.
“I feel much improved today.” I pray to be forgiven the lie. “I would like to take the air. Maybe visit the milliners while you consult your tailor.”
He blinks. Embraces signs of life. “I will send Diedre to attend you.”
#
Without a word of greeting, the milliner points me towards the back room. And as though responding to the light touch of my puzzled glance, the heavy door opens-
Reveals the darkest of spaces filled with drying herbs, discoloured bottles and inedible animal parts. The transformation of brightly coloured birds to brightly coloured feathered hats is not a casual or accidental one. This is a place of death and dismemberment.
I pass through the doorway, and the door closes behind me.
“Freya, welcome. Come in,” the hag greets me as though she knows me. Turning and ducking with self-conscious practice, keeping her blind eye in the shadow of her creviced face. I see the long, heavy hair plaited down her back. It frays, curling at the edges like goose down. It should soften her face, but it does not. Her hard features rear from her skull like a grotesque in the mist.
“How do you know my name?”
“You passed through the Doorway.” She looks through me with her good eye, a striking ocean blue iris, ringed by deeper, darker waters. Her expression tells me that is all she will say.
I frown at my failure of etiquette. “Forgive me. How may I address you, mistress?”
“Lia will do, girl.” She meters her answer, gestures with stained fingers towards a high-backed chair, and I sit, scaffolded by pride. Sweat coats my pallid face. I am in no position to judge her appearance.
She hands me foul-smelling tea. Waits. Not wishing to offend, I sip. The steam scours my skin. The acrid taste challenges my manners, but I swallow without incident. Welcome the immediate easing of my pain.
“You understand the message.” Lia’s voice scrapes as though not oft used.
“Life. Longevity.”
She nods. Confounds me.
“Immortality,” I speak the word. What the acorn represents — in its literal sense. Myths are always so… other in their wording. Semantics are not my concern. Possibility where before there was none, is.
“Of a fashion.” There’s a cunning twist to her lips that offers somewhere appropriate to pin my reservation. My hope.
“It is possible, Lia?” I ask. In this room, this company, possibility stirs.
She nods again.
“Your price?”
“The price is not mine, but it is always the same; whatever you value most in this world.”
I look down at the simple gold band on my finger. My engagement ring. My wedding ring is too large to remain on my skeletal finger but-
Her rasping laugh hurts my ears. “No coin, girl,” she dismisses. “Gold is cold, hollow. What it represents, perhaps.” She leans towards me, conspiratorial, encouraging.
“I am doing this for Edward.” I dare not shout. Drama empties my lungs, leaves me weak, faint — the idea of exchanging his happiness, his life for mine appals me. “I cannot bear to think of him mourning a second wife. It will break him. He married a younger woman on the promise I would out-live him… Look at me! Forsworn. I need more time.”
“What would you pledge for that time?” Dust glitters in the faint afternoon light. Lia shies back into the shade.
“I am not a woman of independent means… and I am unsure what you consider appropriate currency.” I pace myself through the sentence. Drag in a lungful of air. Take another mouthful of the fortifying brew.
“I cannot suggest, infer… it is not permitted.” She twists terms in the shadows. “Just answer the question. It will come to you.”
“Ironically, it is time.” I sigh. “The waking, breathing time we have left together. However little of it remains.”
She tilts her head at so severe an angle it unnerves me, makes her neck appear broken.
“You have to be honest, girl,” she warns. “The pact keeps itself, seeks out that which you treasure most. Fine ladies have sat where you sit. Lied… pledged their souls when it was their beauty they most treasured. They serve their penance as wizened hags.”
“What else could there be?” My voice cracks. “That is all I have. All I have to trade.” My heart pounds like a caged wild animal within my chest, my vision blurs, the horizon shifts.
She catches me before I slide from the chair. Moves before I’ve begun to topple. I can barely dream of such reflexes. Lia is not of this world.
Dare I believe?
“I would give anything to match him, day for remaining day. To chase the ghost of loss from his eyes. To see him laugh again.” It takes me several attempts to complete the promise. Fuel it with life. Life I don’t have.
“Time,” she repeats.
“Hours. Days. That is all I have to live… to give.”
“I hope you are right, girl.” She produces a small dark glass phial, pulls the stopper from its mouth and tilts back my head. The black liquid pours between my lips.
#
I wake in the milliner’s shop. A wide ribbon beneath my chin secures a summer bonnet to my head. As I survey the effect in the mirror, Edward pushes open the door from the street. He approaches slowly, as though committing the sight to memory.
I remember little of the journey home. Dozing in and out of dark dreams. Once home, I expect I was stripped, plied with a hot toddy and installed in a pre-warmed bed.
I die. Alone. Cold and shivering, soaked with sickly almond-scented sweat.
#
Sitting up with a fluidity I had all but forgotten, I revel in the joy of movement and delight that no wracking cough pursues my elevation. I am pain-free. My stolen youth restored.
Flinging heavy covers off me, my legs swing over the edge of the bed, supple and energetic as a child’s. I imagine blood rushing through my body, flowing beneath my skin, raising a pink glow. Desire fills me. The need to hold Edward in my arms, smother his lips beneath mine, tell him how much I love him, how much I’ve missed him against my skin. Desire swells to lust.
Edward’s bedroom is across the hallway. I tut at the inadequacy of the nightgown, cross the floor and throw open the wardrobe doors. Sweet fragrance greets me. On a ribbon dangling from the rail above me, the delicate ceramic pomander hangs. Its lavender breath guards against moths like a perfumed dragon. My wedding gown enjoys its protection.
The nightgown pools around my feet, discarded along with all other odorous garments. I want to take the time to bathe, but I do not want to wait for a second longer than I have to.
The heavy silk and taffeta bridal gown sticks to me. The endless march of fiddly buttons parades out of reach-
I abandon the idea of dressing unaided. The virginal white of the gown is no longer a valid contract. My need is educated, knowledgeable. The shimmering silver the moonlight paints my naked skin is a more honest costume to wear.
Reaching towards the dressing table, I loosen my hair-
Wrench my smoking fingers from the etched silver brush. Staring at the blackened tips, I clutch the injury against my chest. For some unfathomable reason, the sight of my charred flesh stirs my stomach, makes me hungry. I drag fingers through my tangled tresses as best I can and head into the hallway. Edward awaits.
He lies awake. Fitful. I hear him breathe, roll one way across the mattress and then another. The bed frame creaks as he moves. The counterpane rustles. His heart beats slow and heavy.
I trace the moulding on the bedroom door with a distracted air. A sudden reluctance tip-toes through me; pulls a frown across my face.
Hunger nudges me onward.
Hunger for Edward, whose love I need more than anything in this world and the next. The door opens, and I cross the floor between the distance of two heartbeats. Run my hand through his luxuriant hair. Trace the curve of his ear with my thumb.
Startle him to blasphemy.
“What is it, my love?” I see him clearly, yet he looks slightly to one side of me as I press him against pillows. His usually gentle hazel eyes look hard and bright in the dark. They open as wide as his skin allows.
His heartbeat pounds in my ears.
I pluck the covers from his tight knuckles. His screams play up my spine as he clutches fast, and the candlewick tangles a finger. Dislocates it.
“Shush,” I console. Trace my blackened forefinger down his nightshirt. Fabric rents beneath my touch. Edward’s form writhes on the bed, and the smell of warm metal has me chasing my tongue across my lips, searching for it.
My fingers sink into his chest cavity, and Edward falls silent. I withdraw my hand. Shelter his still beating heart, bring it closer to my face so I may admire it.
He lies still. Eyes roll back into his skull, eyelids remain open.
As I bite into the dense muscle, thick warm heart’s blood anoints my throat and my chin. An absent thought chimes like a distant bell.
Edward… whose heart I died to preserve… whose heart I could not bear to be parted from…
Now, I never will be.
