by Megan Tayte
The Ceruleans: Book II
Forget Me Not
By Megan Tayte
Copyright 2015 Megan Tayte
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means (other than for purposes of review), without the express permission of the author given in writing. The right of Megan Tayte to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
To contact the author, visit www.megantayte.com.
For Kathleen, never forgotten.
FORGET ME NOT
‘While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.’ – Leonardo da Vinci
PART 1: AURORA
1: WISH
Beneath the very bluest of heavens, a sea of black, broken only by velvety green grass and the greying granite of grave markers. On the sweet September air, beyond the distant rhythm of waves meeting beach, the rustle of a tissue, the swish of a suit jacket and the minister’s gentle but arresting oratory:
‘In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother Bert, and we commit his body to the ground: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’
Somewhere behind, I heard a stifled sob. Next to me, a girl swayed slightly under the weight of her grief and shifted a little closer. To my other side, a boy stood tall and tortured, rigid but for his long fingers entwined with mine, stroking mine.
It was a funeral, and we who stood at the graveside, we who were left behind, were meant to be sad. I was sad. But not for the old man whose remains lay in the simple elm coffin being lowered into the ground. Nor for myself, who’d watched him die and been unable to save him.
I was sad for my companions. For the girl, who was beautiful and courageous and already so damaged. For the boy, who would do anything to save me – had already saved me – and whose heart belonged to me. I was sad that they would be back here all too soon.
For me.
*
‘Hey, Scarlett. Miniature Battenberg? Fondant fancy? Chelsea bun? Lemon drizzle muffin? Slice of fruit cake?’
The spread laid out before me on delicate china plates was any sweet toother’s fantasy. But the mouth-watering wake buffet wasn’t what drew my attention. That was focused firmly on the boy towering behind the dining room table in this seaside bungalow – dark, messy hair, glowing cheeks and eyes blue enough to drown in.
I smiled at Luke – my Luke, my gentle giant of a boyfriend. ‘Which did you make?’
‘All of them,’ he smiled. Then he added loudly for the benefit of two elderly ladies flanking him, ‘Mrs Hobbs and Mrs Bennet did the savouries. Which, of course, are delicious.’
I quickly added a limp egg sandwich and a handful of cocktail sausages to my plate, but hovered indecisively over the dessert selection. Luke was an amazing cook – had dreamed of having his own restaurant, in fact, once – and to choose only one cake…
He saw the furrow in my brow and leaned over to whisper, ‘I kept two of each kind for us, for later.’
I beamed at him. ‘I knew there was a reason I loved you.’
His eyes lit up. The L word was new for us, and still we got a thrill from saying it and hearing it.
Behind me an elderly gent was elbowing me eagerly in his haste to get hold of the deepest-filled vol-au-vent, and after grabbing a muffin I yielded, giving Luke a ‘see you later’ smile and stepping away from the table. I threaded my way through the crowded room to where my best friend, Cara – Luke’s sister – was waiting for me on the sofa.
‘There’s more margarine than ham in this sandwich,’ she hissed at me as I sat down. ‘And I think Mrs Bennet got muddled between Piccalilli and lemon curd.’
‘Easy mistake. Both yellow,’ I conceded. I bit into a sausage and promptly regretted it. The middle was ice-cold. ‘Well, at least there are cakes,’ I muttered as I tried to work out how to discreetly spit out the sausage. I finally settled for a cough-the-frozen-centre-into-a-napkin manoeuvre.
‘Bert lived for cake,’ said Cara. ‘He’d have loved this.’
I nodded. ‘But he’d have turned off this weird pan-pipe music and put Murder She Wrote on in the background.’
In unison, we began humming the theme tune, until giggles took over. A prim old lady in the corner gave us a scandalised look, but we ignored her. It was good to laugh. Bert had certainly thought so.
Oh, Bert. I missed him – the cheeky, cheery old guy I’d met just two months before when I’d come to this sleepy coastal village of Twycombe. It had been apparent on that very first day, when he’d given me a summer job walking his dog, Chester, that he was seriously ill; but though he’d little choice but to sit in his bungalow and wait for God, he’d done so with such dignity and humour. I’d done what I could to keep him company in his last weeks. Along the way we’d watched a lot of TV whodunits, ingested a lot of cake and laughed so often that my lasting memory of Bert was the craggy smile lines around his eyes.
But then I’d walked into this very room and witnessed the very last smile of Bert in this world. And that moment marked not just the end of the life of a dear and loving man. It marked the end of my life as I’d known it.
Beside me, Cara sniffed. ‘I’d known him since I was a little girl,’ she said. ‘It won’t be the same without him.’
‘I know.’ The glaze on my muffin stickied my fingers as I toyed with it, appetite gone.
‘Scarlett?’
I looked up, into bluebell eyes awash with tears.
‘Do you think Bert’s looking down on us now?’
‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘I think so.’
‘So you believe… you believe in heaven?’
I nodded.
Cara relaxed a little beside me then. She took a bite of her bun and chewed it slowly.
I got it: why my opinion mattered that much. Cara and Luke were alone in the world, orphaned by a horrific car crash. I was the only person in their lives who understood the pain of their loss. Because five months ago, I’d lost someone close to me too: my sister, Sienna.
‘They’re probably all up there now.’ Cara gestured heavenward with her bun. ‘Mum, Dad, your sister and Bert. Dressed in their Sunday best and having a big party. Smiling down at us being all gloomy, saying, “Chin up. We’ve not gone far.”’
Not my sister, I wanted to say. She’s not up there. She was taken. And I have to find her. But of course I couldn’t say that, so I smiled and said, ‘I’m sure you’re right.’
*
Later, when the mourners had purged their memory banks of Bert tales, and the brandy was depleted and all that remained of the buffet was a forlorn Scotch egg, I sat on the bench in the front garden with Luke. At our feet lay Bert’s Old English Sheepdog, usually uncontainable in his joie de vivre, but today listless and pining.
‘Poor Chester,’ said Luke.
‘What’ll happen to him now?’ I asked, combing my fingers through his shaggy fur.
‘I asked Bert’s son. He doesn’t want him – not practical with his life in London, and with a baby coming. He was talking about taking him to a shelter for re-homing.’
‘No! I’ll take him.’
‘I said the same thing, and he agreed. I thought, perhaps – joint custody?’
‘So we’re getting a dog together?’
‘We’re getting a dog together.’
He smiled.
I smiled.
But they were sad smiles.
The breeze picked up and blew strands of long blond hair across my fac
e, and Luke reached up to smooth them back. He let his hand linger on my cheek for a moment, stroking lightly downwards.
‘How are you holding up?’ he asked soberly. ‘Are you okay?’
I stared past him, at the slice of ocean just visible over the rooftops, loath to lie but unable to find any other choice.
An unequivocal ‘no’ was the truthful answer. I was very far from okay.
Because this was the bench on which I’d sat after Luke found me slumped before a lifeless old man and a grief-stricken dog.
Because my shock that day had not been, as Luke thought, due to seeing a man die and being powerless to stop it. In fact, I had discovered, I was not powerless – miraculously, terrifyingly, I had some kind of power to heal.
Because I hadn’t seen Bert die, I’d seen his soul pass peacefully into a light, watched over by a boy – at least until then I’d thought he was a boy. Just a boy who’d been my sister’s friend and had spent a summer trying to be mine.
Because soon after, I’d almost lost Luke too, when he’d nearly drowned trying to save me from death-by-rocks in the ocean. I’d healed Luke then, but would have died myself if the boy with the healing hands hadn’t at last appeared and pulled me back from the brink.
Because on the day I turned eighteen, the-boy-who-wasn’t-just-a-boy had come to me and told me five things:
That he was something like an angel, but not an angel; he called it Cerulean.
That I, too, was this thing called Cerulean.
That he was here for me, to take me away, to another life beyond this one.
That my sister, my sister whose suicide I’d spent months trying to come to terms with, had been ‘taken by someone bad’.
That the time was coming when I would go with this Cerulean, Jude, because it was the only way to save my sister. I would choose him. I would choose death.
What was Jude? What was I? Where was Sienna? Who was this someone bad? Go where? Save Sienna from what? There were enough questions in my head to fuel a lifetime of insomnia.
Laid out like that, I reflected, really it was a wonder I’d even managed to get out of bed this morning, let alone put on a black dress and attend a funeral service and then make polite conversation with old Mrs Hobbs over a whiffy egg sandwich.
‘Earth to Scarlett.’
I blinked. ‘Yes?’
‘Are you okay?’
‘Sure, I’m okay. It’s just…’
‘Sad.’
I nodded.
He put his hand over mine. It was warm and reassuringly rough.
‘You heading home now?’
‘Yes,’ I said. A lie, one of many I’d told him recently: I’m fine… I’m not too tired… I don’t have a headache… We have a long, fun year ahead of us.
‘I’ll come by later then, with Chester. Say seven?’
‘Great.’
He moved forward to brush his lips on mine, but I leaned away.
‘Luke?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t forget the cakes.’
He laughed, and I kissed him then, a lingering kiss that made the blood sing in my veins. Then I left him to load a sister, a dog and a crateful of cake stands into his van. I left him, because that was the right, the normal, thing to do. But every step I took away from him hurt, and not only because of the pinching heels I wore.
Ask yourself this: if you knew, if you categorically, without-a-shadow-of-a-doubt knew that there was life after death, how would it change you? If you knew there was no final farewell, merely au revoir. If you knew those you’d loved and lost existed someplace. If you knew that when the time came, it wasn’t eternal black nothingness you faced, but another place, beyond the blue. If you knew you, the essence of you, wasn’t mortal after all, but immortal...
Would you let go of the fear at the very core of your being, the fear of losing and of being lost? Would you laugh more, love more, live more? Would you stand at the graveside of a loved one and say forever instead of never?
Yes, yes, yes.
But what of death itself? Still, you’d hear the ticking clock echoing in your every heartbeat. Still, you’d want more – another moment, another hour, another day, another year. You may no longer fear death, but still you’d wish it away, to defer the moment of separation from those you loved.
Had you a wish, it would be this: Please, let me stay just a little longer.
I know this. I know this because it was my wish.
2: DEATH KNELL
Twycombe village was deathly quiet. Earlier this afternoon, when I’d met Cara and Luke at the village square before the funeral service, there had been clusters of people all around – black-suited residents talking in groups, waiting for the chime on the clock tower of St Mary’s church that would signal one o’clock: time to bury their dead. Now, though, the mourners were at home, casting off black attire and sorrow, leaving the square empty. The hush was a little eerie, but a relief after the clamour and claustrophobia of the afternoon.
I’d been astonished by the turnout for Bert’s funeral. I grew up in a cavernous and cold mansion whose nearest neighbours were a mile away and should you attempt to ‘pop round’ to borrow a cup of sugar would most likely panic that someone had got through the security gates and send the butler for the shotgun. But clearly in Twycombe when a resident died, all came out to pay their respects. In this small, isolated village, people mattered. Myself included, it would seem. Though I had lived here just a couple of months and some distance from the village itself – in my grandparents’ windswept cottage on the west cliff of the bay – so many people had spoken kindly to me at Bert’s wake, as though I was one of them. It was overwhelming, and it was painful. Because now that I’d found a home and people who cared, there was so much more to lose.
Beyond the lawn of the village green, the rolling waves called to me. Often at this time each evening I would be out on them, riding them, revelling in the rush of the surging surf and the salty air. I spotted a couple of surfers, guys I’d grown close to over the summer. I itched to kick off my shoes and strip off my scratchy dress and leave behind all vestiges of the sombre mood of the day to join them out there, where the very epitome of being alive was to be found somewhere between ocean and sky. But that would have to wait until tomorrow.
St Mary’s waited patiently for me across the green, a quiet, cool sanctuary. As I unlatched the gate, the stained glass window of the clock tower cried out for attention. I knew the depiction well: an angel holding a baby within a starburst of light. I’d seen it a hundred times or more – my grandparents had brought me to this church for Sunday service every summer of my childhood. But I’d never before noticed the angel’s expression. He didn’t look serene, I thought. He looked pained. But what had angels to cry about?
The graveyard was deserted, and as I walked around the edge of the building I trailed my hand along the cold, coarse stone of the wall, finding solace in its solidity. For almost two hundred years this church had stood firm against the elements, faithful and unwavering, its spire pointing ever heavenwards. Even the trees around, tall and broad, were as resolute as sentries, sheltering the many generations in eternal slumber beneath.
Bert’s grave was around the back of the church, at the opposite end of the graveyard to my grandparents’, in an area by the rear wall newly designated for burials. Already the grave was filled and concealed beneath rectangles of turf. A corner was standing up, giving a glimpse of the rich brown earth beneath, and I crouched down and pushed it back. The grass was damp beneath my hand. I kept my hand there and closed my eyes.
In the past weeks, I had become a master of concealing my feelings. Today, standing with the other mourners at Bert’s graveside, among people who’d known the man for a lifetime against my two months, there had been no space for the words I wished to say for him – to him, because I was sure his soul was close by. So I said them now, alone, reciting Anne Brontë’s timeless verse:
‘Farewell to thee! But not farewell
To all my fondest thoughts of thee;
Within my heart they still shall dwell
And they shall cheer and comfort me.’
Lighter now, calmer, I stood and stepped back to make my way along the path to home, to Luke.
Afterwards, it would always seem that the first I knew of the stone brick falling on me was the thunderous crash it made as it hit the ground at my feet, cracking the concrete path. Given the jagged graze down my arm, it must have hit me first, but the pain didn’t register then, not until later. After I’d jumped back. After I’d flung my head up to look at the clock tower, vacant and silent. After I’d collapsed shakily onto a nearby bench and calculated that just an inch or so to the side and I’d have been brained.
Then, once pain permeated the fog in my mind and I saw my arm streaked with red, then I couldn’t get my breath.
Death. Death was coming for me.
*
‘Goodness me – whatever…? Scarlett? Are you all right, dear?’
I looked up to see a portly, pink-cheeked elderly fellow puffing up the path towards me. It was Reverend Helmsley. He surveyed the chunks of brick at my feet in alarm.
‘I heard a crash. Whatever happened?’
Gathering my scattered wits, I managed: ‘Stone. From the tower, I guess. It fell down.’
The reverend sank onto the bench beside me, his palm flat against his labouring chest. ‘Oh dear Lord. You might have been killed!’
I winced at the words, but managed a smile. ‘Really, I’m fine. Just a graze.’
His eye flew to the arm I was examining, and a fresh wave of horror gripped him. ‘Your arm! You’re hurt! Quick, come inside with me. I’ve a large bottle of antiseptic in the vestry that’ll help…’
Frankly, a large bottle of antiseptic sounded like something that would hurt, not help. But with the reverend placing surprisingly strong hands on my elbows and lifting me up, there was little to do but move obediently. As he ushered me along the path and through a side door, he kept up a constant stream of exclamations:
