Carmen nearly wails in frustration. “Then you must run from here! My family and I will delay him—”
“I could never leave you,” Swift insists.
“You must. You can send word and I’ll catch up. But I’ll not let you stay here to be hurt again—or worse. I’ll not have your death upon my head!”
Swift blinks at her. “But, Carmen, don’t you know? I’m already dead.”
V. Swift’s Story
Sickness came to my town. Not so unusual in winter, when the ground’s frozen solid so it can’t absorb mal vapors. If anything was strange, it was that the catarrh came on so mild. Small sniffles and a snag in the throat weren’t enough to keep anyone from daily tasks, so the illness spread like rumors after church. One day I was delivering groceries and stocking shelves with holiday fare, the next I was bed-bound, fevered, hacking, feeling foolish to be bested by such a trifling malady.
Some days later, I wondered—astounded, really—if this catarrh might actually kill me. Later yet, I begged my brothers to carry me outside, despite the cold, so I could see the sun one last time. They bundled me against the chill and set me in a chair in the garden, though by then they were coughing into their collars, as well.
The next thing I knew: a dapple of drops on my head.
Through doubled vision, I saw I was no longer outdoors. The rough-hewn walls of our shop’s storage shed surrounded me. To my bafflement, I lay on the shelf usually reserved for the overflow of jarred preserves from an orchard the next town over. Two shadows hunched on old crates, drinking from fancy flasks. One figure had his back to me, and every time he guffawed, he flung out an arm for balance and his flask doused my head with fresh drops. I couldn’t complain for I couldn’t speak, nor move at all, as if I were tied at elbows and wrists, knees and ankles.
I struggled to lift my head, hoping to dispel the only explanation I could think of for why I lay on a shelf in the vermin-proofed shed, in the middle of winter. Meanwhile, the fellow nearest me bragged, “I’ll collect more souls this season than any in business. Just you wait and see.”
His cohort nodded indulgently. “Certainly your take is impressive already. Not merely old and weak but young, sturdy stock, the like of which we hardly see. Tell me your secret?”
The rowdier shadow chuckled. “It almost feels like cheating, I concede, but I’ve cobbled together a spell so powerful—”
He caught himself.
“But really,” he hedged, “the best part is the binding. Souls stay attached to bodies until I, and only I, choose to collect. Thus I can venture into other villages to sow the sickness without worry that some wretch will sneak in to reap my rewards.”
By now I’d nearly wrenched my head from my neck, straining to assess my situation. Despite the cold, a mere bedsheet—a shroud, my panic insisted—was wrapped ‘round me, shoulders to toes. More disturbing, I saw myself times two, as if through water or warped glass. The paler of my selves was nearly see-through and floating. I was one of those the shadow spoke of, my soul strapped to my body and my body gray as death.
How long I lay in horror I don’t know. Long enough that the braggart emptied his flask, then badgered his friend for more, soon slipping off the crate and into a snoring stupor.
But they weren’t friends, after all. Maybe colleagues, definitely competitors, as I learned when the second shade crept to my side and, brandishing scissors filigreed with fire, snipped the air between the drunk and me. I think now he must have severed the invisible tether that held me, for suddenly my soul dropped into my body and I could move again. Truth to tell, I trembled so hard, I nearly shook myself off the shelf.
Then the faceless figure leaned over, and a gleaming crescent emerged where I imagined his mouth to be, and with that heresy of a smile he whispered, “Run.”
And barefoot I did, right into winter’s icy grip. I ripped through my shroud and ran past my childhood home, past my parents suffering inside, past my brothers’ doors, where worried wives paced the floors, and I never stopped running. Even after Preacher, I was running, chasing him from town to town. ‘Til you, Carmen. I don’t want to run anymore. ‘Cause your love’s caught me tighter than the reaper did before.
Carmen’s legs, tucked beneath her through Swift’s story, have gone numb. Bloody half-moons mark the meat of her palms. She blinks, on the cusp of panic, like when the preacher’s powerful gaze almost caught her. Swift saved her then; who will now?
“Impossible,” she says, struggling to stand. “You walk and talk.”
Swift nods but adds, “I don’t eat or drink.”
“Not in front of me.”
“Not ever.”
“We’ve kissed. We’re lovers.”
“Have you ever heard my heart beat? Or felt the rise and fall of breath in my chest?”
Despite her tingling legs, Carmen stumbles toward the door. “I have to go, discuss this with mi familia. Tío y Tía will know what to do.”
Swift follows, begging, “Carmen, wait! Don’t be afraid, not of me.”
“I’m not afraid!” she snaps, but she wraps Mami’s rebozo tighter ‘round her.
Swift staggers outside after her. “The reaper never found me while I trailed the preacher. I might be safe on holy ground.”
“Well, good luck finding that in this town,” she yells over her shoulder.
“What about your uncle’s well?”
Vágalme! And she’d thought him civilized! “It’s a well,” she says, whirling on him. “Water, simply water. Because we like being clean! Because we respect our guests!”
Running footsteps behind Carmen chill her blood, but when she dares a glance, she sees her primos. Concerned by Swift’s earlier absence, Casimiro y Pánfilo have hurried in the direction of Carmen’s shouts. She turns back to warn Swift not to follow her, and that’s when a dark shimmer, like heat rising from a well-seasoned comal, turns the corner of the casita and seizes Swift.
VI. Heroica
Carmen lurches forward in spite of herself, in spite of the pain that spears behind her eyes when she looks at the malicious shadow. She reaches for Swift, but part of the shadow swirls outward, as if it is cloak and villain in one. It cuts across her fingertips, and Carmen cannot tell if it freezes or burns, but she jerks away with a hiss.
“What’s happening?” asks Pánfilo.
“Can’t you see?” she says, cradling her blistered fingers in her rebozo. “It’s got him!”
“What’s got him?” asks Casimiro, but his question is lost in Swift’s scream.
The shadow has yanked one of Swift’s wrists behind his back. Now Carmen understands the permanent welts marking his skin.
“Don’t let him take me!” Swift cries, reaching for Carmen.
The shadow expands. Arcs of darkness slash the space between lovers. The cold fire has raced from her fingers to her shoulder, spreading a leaden ache. Carmen dares not risk her bare skin again; a second jolt might sap her strength, perhaps even incapacitate. But neither will she permit Swift to be dragged away, so she tears off her rebozo and wraps it around her arm. She then orders her cousins to hold her by the waist, anchor her to ground.
They do not understand but, forever awed by their nose-breaking hero, they obey. Each locks his arms around her and ducks when she swings her rebozo like a lasso through the air.
The wool-and-cotton panel splits the shadow, clean as sunlight through a parted curtain. The scent of jasmine spikes the air.
With the shadow throttling him, Swift misses his lifeline the first time but snatches it the second.
Carmen focuses on the fabric connecting them—it’s easier than looking at Swift’s terrified face—but her vision blackens at the edges. Her chest aches as the shadow sucks air for a roar that doesn’t come. Instead, Swift staggers several steps back and Carmen and her cousins stumble to keep their grip. Carmen twists the rebozo around her forearm and tugs with both hands. She’s wrestled a sack of panicked snakes at every sugarcane harvest since she was eight.
Sometimes possums, too. She can do this. She can reel him in.
Swift is almost within reach when the shadow does howl. Carmen’s hair flies in stinging whips about her face. The cousins start babbling about the nearly visible “something” flapping before them, but Carmen barks “Concentrate! I need you to pull me back when I tell you.”
She loops the rebozo’s slack around her arm and yanks again, straining with all her might, calling her cousins to do the same. Swift’s toes cut ruts in the dirt, as do Carmen’s heels, but the lovers hold fast. Carmen’s eyes blur at the shadow’s ever-blooming blackness. She’s never fainted before, but it’s like what Tía has described.
Her cousins falter a moment, too, breath expended on profanities for the hardly-seen enemy. Then they pivot, turning to push rather than pull Carmen away from the ruction. Despite aching arms and benighted vision, she tows her lover in turn.
The shadow loses its grip, leaving a scarlet mark on Swift’s neck. The cloak of darkness swirling between Carmen and Swift begins to peel away in scraps.
“Keep on,” Swift begs. “You’re hurting him. He doesn’t want be hauled into the light!”
Carmen would laugh if her cousins weren’t driving the last breath out of her. Swift thought this thing some kind of demon?! As if she, a mere human and nonbeliever, could overpower a supernatural being, even with her primos’ help. She knows not what this shadow is, only that she’ll never let it have Swift.
With a final surge of defiance, Carmen wrenches her rebozo so hard, Swift flies toward her. The veil of darkness crackles, raising goosebumps on her skin, but it lacks the blistering fire or frost of before. Rather than be crushed between the lovers, the shadow flees so fast Carmen actually hears suction, a popping, as the dark dissipates in defeat.
Then Swift crashes into her, and, all resistance vanquished, the four humans fall in the dirt, sweaty and bewildered.
VII. Healing, the Second
Back at the main house, Carmen insists on extensive ablutions.
Afterwards, at the kitchen table, Tía applies aloe vera to Swift’s wounds. Then she bandages his wrists and neck.
“Ahora, pareces un juez,” Tía tells him, smiling as she gestures at the bandage cuffs and collar.
Carmen scoffs but says nothing lest Tía treat her blistered fingers with less than loving care. Casimiro y Pánfilo, regressing from excitement, reenact the battle for their mother, crashing into cupboards and upsetting crockery until Tía chases them outside.
Carmen declines to have her fingers bandaged. Too much fuss for her dominant hand, and anyway the blisters are already shrinking.
Tía, though skeptical of her sons’ story, goes in search of her husband, that he may know of the commotion before rumors reach him. Left alone with Swift, Carmen removes her rebozo and spreads it out on the table, searching for snags or scorch marks. There’s no sign of their struggle, but the scent of jasmine is stronger than it’s been in seven years.
“You saved me,” Swift says, voice husky from his strangling. “I can’t begin to repay you, dear Carmen.”
“I’m only glad I was there. If I hadn’t been, if my cousins hadn’t come...” Carmen can’t suppress a shudder.
“You believe me now?”
“You were chased by something,” she concedes. “It hurt you. It would’ve taken you against your will.”
“Something?” Swift straightens in amazement. “Can you still not accept it was a reaper? A demon of some kind?”
Carmen cards through the rebozo’s fringe, untangling strands. “I don’t know what it was. I don’t need to. It meant you harm, and I could not allow that.”
“Your cousins will tell the tale. What will they call that thing they battled? And what will your neighbors think?”
Carmen sighs. “I’m sure mis primos will choose the most dramatic name possible. The neighbors will think what we always have, that nature is immense. That, although knowable, it cannot be known in its fullness by anyone now alive.”
She stands and shakes frustration from her shoulders. Does he expect conversion from one encounter?
“I’ll fetch you a cobija and you can rest in the parlor until dinner. From now on, you will join the family for meals.” Before he can object, she adds, “You’ll not be forced to eat, I’ll make sure of that, but your hosts must begin to see your true nature, whatever that may be. You may stay in the casita tonight and for however long you like, but I will remain here.”
She starts for the hallway, but his cry holds her back.
“Carmen, I’m afraid! What if it comes back and you’re not there to save me?”
Carmen turns. Swift’s blue-gray eyes are terror-wide and blinking as if to hold back tears that do not—cannot?—form. Can she be so cruel? To the man who sensed her fear and sheltered her at the revival? The man whose curiosity warmed her, whose eyes saw her as she was, inside and out? Who now fears for his life, such as it is?
Carmen changes direction and walks to the kitchen drawer where Tía keeps her shears.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” she says, grabbing the scissors with her good hand. “Or how we prevailed. I don’t believe it was I alone that saved you. My cousins, mi rebozo, all played a part.”
She returns to the table where her rebozo is spread and hands Swift the scissors.
“Perhaps one of mis primos will stay with you at the casita. But if not, this should make you feel safer.”
Swift frowns at the shears. “You would have me stab the shadow?”
Carmen sighs again, points at the rebozo. “No! I want you to cut a tassel from the fringe. I can’t because my fingers hurt.”
“Are you certain?” Swift’s gray brow crinkles with doubt. “Wasn’t it your mother’s?”
But at Carmen’s insistence, he obeys and, with his help, she knots the tassel around his wrist. “There, now you’ll always wear a bit of my armor.”
Swift’s smile is forced and small. “I’m still who I was days ago. I haven’t changed at all.”
Carmen nods, tears rippling her vision. “Please understand. My head must catch up with my heart. Or maybe it’s the other way ‘round.” She wishes she had Mami’s clarity, her gift of felicitous phrasing. “Whichever way it is... can you give me time?”
Swift winks, and she thinks she really must show him how winks work among her people, and her presumption that flirting is still in their future eases the ache in her throat.
“Dear Swift,” she says, “if there are, in fact, miracles, I believe you’re mine.”
He strokes her spotted cheek and replies, “I know there are. Because you’re mine.”
© Copyright 2019 Lisa M. Bradley
Lisa M Bradley - [BCS279 S01] - Revival (html) Page 2
