by Jeremy Marr
"The kiss is over silly,” a little girl's voice echoed through the young boy’s world.
Brendon-Jago opened his eyes. He felt his entire brain spinning out of control within his head. It was as though a veil of fog had swirled around his entire world. The fog made it hard to concentrate on anything about the past. However, who wanted to think about the past, when right here in the present stood Jodeen-Coleena. He was standing inches in front of her; stiff backed, arms to his sides, hands balled into fists, and lips puckered up.
“Great,” he said to himself as he tried to relax, “she’s probably laughing at you, knowing now that you have never kissed a girl before.” He felt his face turn crimson and tried to look down at his feet, hoping she would not see his embarrassment. He heard her giggle softly and then felt the smooth, warm skin of her hand as she touched his chin. He let her lift his head, and as he looked at her, he noticed her exposed cheek was as red as his felt.
“That was my first kiss as well, Jago,” she told him. “We are not even ten yet, you know,” she snickered.
The way she seemed to read his mind, and put to rest his own feelings of inadequacies, made him feel as though he was the luckiest boy within the entire land. He noticed her eye, on the visible side, was slightly larger than normal. That, along with her more-than-usual blinking, her lone, deep red cheek, and being this close to her, where her fragrance filled his nostrils, gave him the power to overcome his shyness. Casting it off made him feel free.
Alive for the first time, he embraced the moment. He felt his hands rise towards her dainty face. He watched his left hand as it went straight towards her right cheek, as his right hand headed for her left. Just before making contact with her face, the right hand, almost on its own, did a funny downward dip before coming back up, under her protective, half face-mask of hair. He felt, with both sets of fingertips, the smoothest, flawless, warm surface he had ever felt in his whole life. It was as though warm wind had materialized enough to have been touched. If he was not so intently paying attention to what he was doing, savoring every moment and committing to memory every second his hands ran up the sides of her face, he may have been able to close his eyes for a moment and envision cupping a large, soft rose with both hands. He could not imagine living his life without her by his side.
He saw her lips moving, but he was so into each second his hands held her face, he did not care to put any brain resources into a simple task such as listening. “Blaa, blah. Hmmmmm, bla-bla,” was all that made it through to his conscience. His hands resumed their climb and when his fingers reached her scalp, they did not stop. The left hand felt no resistance as it slid up onto the hair held back by her center braid. The right, although a lot less then he would have thought, felt some tension. But as he watched in amazement, it kept its forward momentum, folding back and pulling up the hair that had covered her face since he could remember. When his hands had glided up and over to just above her ears, he instantaneously felt cheated during all the years prior to this point in his life.
He finally saw her whole face, for the first time. It was a moment, he was sure, he would remember for the rest of his life. He gently pulled her face towards him. Her lips were still silently mouthing words, but he was not about to let something like that stop him from making this life long dream come true. He stopped the movement of his arms and hands when her face was mere inches from his own. He gazed deep into her eyes, and saw things he knew most people would never have the pleasure of seeing in their life time. There was kindness, compassion and understanding floating just under the surface. Further in, he recognized acceptance of him, her wanting and needing him in her life. He saw her fears and worries, her dreams and desires; her entire soul lay bare in those eyes, and he could see himself, there in the center, being protected from everything and everyone. He could see she truly loved him as nobody else would or could.
"To show you I truly care and will be a good husband to you, Jodeen-Coleena, I, Brendan-Jago," the nine-year old heard coming out of his mouth.
"No, it is not," Coleena’s lips mouthed out. The voice was that of an older woman, not his wife-to-be at nine. It sang all throughout his head, but it did not come from the mouth of his hearts captor, though it did look that way. It was more like she was up in the air above him, yelling down in a booming voice that echoed from the sky itself. "Your real name is Goldspawn. You are Jago Goldspawn. That is the truth, as you shall see later.
“You may continue," the voice finished.
Jago was not upset at the interruption. She was kind enough to accept him, and if she wants to order him about, so what. She loved him, he was sure of it like nothing else in his life.
"To show you I truly care, and will be a good husband to you, Jodeen-Coleena, I, Jago GoldSpawn,” he started again. He found himself actually agreeing with what he heard come out of his mouth. If she, his wife-to-be, says his name is now to be Jago GoldSpawn, who is he to say “nay”? He continued, "Do, right here and now, promise for the life of me, when that some day comes, and you become my wife, I will love you truly and will always do so.
“To prove to you that I would be worth having as a husband, I promise to honor all your requests without question.
“You will neither go hungry, nor have shelter unobtainable.
“Because you love me, and I can see that in your eyes, the promise just given will become an automatic vow upon you becoming my wife.
“You have made me the happiest person that has ever lived in your shadow." He finished his speech and could not resist the urge to try his luck at sealing his words with yet another kiss. As he moved his head in towards her, she beat him to it by quickly closing the gap between his puckered lips and hers. His mind started swimming around in his head lazily. His entire body felt light as a feather, and a tingly sensation envelope his skin. It was as if that kiss had brought him someplace new, but at the same time, he was still where he was. He laughed gleefully as she playfully pushed him back, smiling that smile that said, “Trust me, you are safe,” while not truly saying anything at all.
“Tag,” she said, while she lightly patted his arm, “you're it.”
He reached out as fast as he could, to tag her back, but she simply was not there anymore. He stared at the spot where she was standing and a blanket of loneliness and depression draped itself over him from out of nowhere.
“It was all a dream,” he said aloud to himself. His brain clung on to the events he was now sure were fragments of his imagination. “She was right here!” his mind screamed through the haze that it was swimming within. He then heard soft giggling coming from behind him. He spun around as fast as he could and found, not ten paces away, standing over by the corner of his house, his beautiful wildflower; she was not simply a prank of his over active thoughts. She was covering her mouth, trying to do her best at not allowing her laughter to break through her hand and betray where she had disappeared.
“Catch me if you can,” she called as she spun and started to run around the side of Jago’s house.
Jago screamed in excitement. He ran up and around his house and just caught the rippling fabric of her dress as she ran behind a large boulder, set off to the left side of the path that led up towards the mountain. He stopped running, confused at how she traveled such a large distance in that short of time. Without spending too much mental matter on contemplating the whole time and space subject, his thoughts wafted back to Coleena. That thought was quickly replaced by another, as his mind started to hatch a plan.
“I'll show her,” he said to himself with a twinkle in his eye. Instead of running straight for the path and the boulder beyond, he dashed off to the right, where waist high meadow grass that grew there would conceal him. He paused when he was five or so paces into the dense grass to catch his breath. This task was made more difficult because he was bent over, trying to disappear as she had done. When his breath was under control again, he started walking slowly, s
till hunched over. His vision was next to nothing, something he had not thought of in his plan making, neither that, nor the terrible ache that was starting to form in his lower back from being almost doubled up in order to remain unseen within the grass. It seemed as though he had walked probably three times the distance he should have when, finally, he came to the edge of the grass. He was several paces from the path and then another couple from there to the boulder. He squatted on one foot in preparation of the mad “dash-to-the-bolder” plan he had just then formulated. A rustling of grass from his left brought his head around, and he realized that she truly had been out of his sight for far too long.
Her bright, half-showing smile was mirrored in her eyes. “Took you long enough,” she sighed. Then she started laughing as she said, “You looked funny, you know, with your head all the way down and your backside all the way up.” She giggled again, “I think that was the first time I have ever seen the fabled ‘butt-shark’ before,” she shivered and then continued. “It was such a wild and scary thing. I hope to never have to see such a monster again in my life.”
Before Jago could begin to start laughing with her, she reached out with speed he certainly did not expect and with a careful shove, pushed him off balance as he crouched there on one knee. As soon as he made contact with the ground, he heard her yell from up the path, towards the two lone houses, “You are still it! Hee-Hee!”
He got up as quick as possible. Just before he started running as fast as he could, he looked back and saw the way the long meadow grass had bent, giving a tell-tale of the large circles he had gone in before somehow coming out at the path right in front of the boulder like he had wanted to. “Certainly not the ‘Plan Maker’ anymore,” he said to himself as he turned to chase Coleena in their game of tag; so far she had two points and he had nothing but the worst schemes ever.
He saw her halfway between him and the houses. He hastened his running, looked down, and then commanded his legs to never tire in their efforts. He looked back up and found himself already coming up on Coleena’s house. He saw her take her last step to goal before reaching out with her hand for the knob as she came to a halt. She looked back over her shoulder with a grin. She opened the door. He was right on top of her, but fell away abruptly as the door closed just before he got to it.
He stopped at the entrance, dumbfounded. “Now what?” he thought. He had never found himself in that kind of predicament before. “Do I barge in there, or not?” he questioned himself. He settled on doing the next best thing to that and knocked on the door. She told him to enter. He did. The room was completely empty of anything except for Coleena, who was standing off to the right, back to him, doing something to her hair.
She spun around and he was, once again, thoughtless for a moment. She had somehow managed to obtain another braid in the matter of seconds that it took to knock and open the door. She wrapped it around the other half of her hair that had always covered her face. She looked much older than nine years old, he noted, and glanced down at himself. He, too, had seemed to grow years in seconds. His mind started to cry in agony, and begged him to stop thinking. Instead of the swimming feeling it felt like it was doing earlier, it was now trying to do the backstroke in nothing but mental mud. He was confused, to say the least.
“Oh no, my love,” she said to him.
Then and there, he did not care to know how they aged; it no longer mattered at all. She had called him ‘my love’.
“Have you gone blank again, on our wedding day?” she asked him, with worry splashed across her face and fear in her eyes.
“Wedding?” he asked himself, “Our wedding day?”
“Ohhhhhhhhh,” she coed, and smiled.
He found all he could do was stare at her. Her skin was tanned, smooth, and glowing. He followed the course of her hairline down her face while marveling at her natural beauty. He skimmed over her birthmark, and was puzzled by it. He always remembered seeing it as a kid, but he remembered the dark interior within the top part of the zigzag, having a distinct line, as though someone had used a writing stick and inked it there. Now that line was less defined as it somehow expanded, the black lightened to dark gray, and then to a lighter shade of gray, leaving just the bottom tip of the bolt natural skin color. Even this patch of natural skin was surrounded by a thick, black outline. “It is almost as if the birthmark is filling in with age,” he thought. That was how he closed the book on that oddity, which allowed him the opportunity to continue looking at Coleena. He was content to do just that as she started to speak.
“You just want me to think that you forgot it all, so you can see if I remember, hmmm?” he heard her say.
The way those lips of hers moved and parted with each other, he did not care to stop looking for as long as she continued speaking.
“The entire military was there, Jago, with all the armor and weapons they have. They kneeled to us and everything!” she exclaimed.
As she was taking, he started remembering the things she spoke of.
“I was very surprised by it all, as you well know. I have actually dreamed of wedding gatherings such as only the High Military Commanders get, but neither one of us are military commanders, so I never would have dreamed that you had the power of granting a childish notion such as that,” she said. As she spoke, she took a couple of steps towards Jago. “It would seem that the entire land showed up to witness our union. The OneWhoPlaces stood up on the mountain with us and listened as we exchanged our vows and promises.” She took a few more paces and stood toe to toe with Jago. She then slowly reached out with both hands and carefully took Jago's left hand in hers. Her two thumbs started massaging the flat spot on his hand between his wrist and his first set of knuckles. “Oh, Jago,” she murmured, “how I would love to hear those words you spoke again.” Her voice spread goose bumps all over his body.
He truly wanted to say those words again, but lacked the memories need to recall and recite them. He would have no choice but to tell her the truth about how he could not remember anything from when they were children to now. He swallowed hard and raised his eyes to her. He saw her mouth moving, though no words were being spoken. He inhaled and closed his eyes to find the inner courage he needed to continue along the path towards her disappointment. He could lie to his love no longer. He opened his eyes and released a now startled breath. Gone from sight was the house they were just in, gone was the almost familiar landscape of two houses nestled on a mountain side, and a worn out path between the two, and forgotten was the urge to tell his love that he could not remember large chunks within his life.
He found himself on a small plateau, high up on a mountain. He looked up to the peak, which stood higher than any other along the range which swept away from the sea to his left, as far right as his eyes would allow him to clearly make out. The spot looked and felt oddly familiar, but he did not know why. He heard a female clearing her throat behind him and spun around. He saw the OneWhoPlaces standing before him, dressed in the finest clothes he remembered ever seeing. Movement behind her caught his attention, and with just a quick gaze, he corrected himself.
There, standing just beyond the OneWhoPlaces, was Jodeen-Coleena. The fact that she was older still, than just moments ago in the house, did not register itself within his mind, neither did the question of how he got to where he was. Time and distance no longer seemed to play a part in his life. Past, present, and future were nothing to him; only the thought of having her still with him was what mattered. She was dressed in a very low-cut, black, short-sleeved dress. There were countless little, yellow wildflowers hand-stitched on the snug fitting cloth that hugged her features as though it was skin. His eyes traveled the entire length of the fabric from her neck down to her black slippers; one single yellow flower stitched on the toe of each. An odd feeling settled over him as he looked back up at her face. He shifted his knees on the dirt and almost recognized the fact that he did not recall kneel
ing. He was too far into paying particular attention not to squeeze or tug her hand that he was holding as he did so. Her lips were once again mouthing words he could not hear, but even that oddity about her was comfortably familiar. He raised his sight from her lips to her eyes. The love for him that he saw in them took away any urge on his part to try to break the connection. He felt himself inhale.
“My dearest Jodeen-Coleena,” he heard himself say. The way the words just floated off his tongue without any forethought, being heard by him for the first time as he said them, must be, he thought, what speaking from the heart really was. He continued, “Today is the day you are to be my wife or my life is forfeit. You are the wildflowers growing in my meadow grass soul, and without those flowers, and all their colors and scents, my spirit would not allow life to interrupt it from taking a long, long nap in the Eternal Darkness.
“All I have to offer you in this documented marriage is myself, as a whole.
“Give me a wedding vow and I'll be yours forever.”
He paused and waited to see if she accepted his pledge for marriage.
She did not.
He spoke again, “I, Jago GoldSpawn, have learned as a child that I am not a thinker, but a doer. I will do anything your words speak to me.
“Give me a wedding vow, and I will be yours forever.”
Again, no acceptance from her was offered.
“I, Jago Goldspawn, could not anymore physically hurt you then I could beat my own head into the ground. If harm does come to you from me, then may my vow here today take my life.
“Give me a wedding vow and I'm yours forever.”
He held his breath, but heard nothing. He was not sure how he knew about a wedding ceremony, having never done this before, but he knew it was up to him to make a vow that Coleena would accept by making a vow of her own. The words he spoke sounded right to him, but her refusal of his vows meant that she must be still waiting for more.
“Jodeen-Coleena, I pledge my undying love to this documented marriage. You will own my heart and soul as a gift from me, for all time.
“All you must do is give me a vow of your own and it is sealed,” Jago said.
Again, he stopped talking. This time, just like the last, brought forth no pledge or vow from Coleena. She was still standing there, mouth moving without sound, apparently waiting for more. He was getting to the point of hopelessness in saying a vow that Coleena would accept. He closed his eyes and inhaled a fresh lung full of air. He was not going to insult his love by another failed vow. He was going to put it all on the line, and if she still chose not to accept, then he would simply end it all here and now by jumping off this very mountain.
“Jodeen Coleena, I, Jago GoldSpawn, so named now thrice, could not anymore physically hurt you then I could hurt myself. If harm does come to you, from me, then may this vow take my own life. I do here and now promise to break that cycle once and for all. Furthermore, if hurt comes to you from any source other than me, I will not rest until it is avenged.
“I will love you until the day I die, and promise to honor your commands as though they give me the command to breath.
“You will have no need or want unfulfilled. If I cannot fulfill them myself, I will seek the means to see that they are carried out.
“You have chosen to allow me into your soul. I can see your love for me in there, as it should be. I cannot bare the thought of being without your love, just as I cannot bare the thought of living without the air that I breathe.
“All this I vow, here and now, if you will only give me a vow of your own as acceptance, and seal the marriage.”
She lifted her hand out of his grasp and dangled it before his face. It was close enough to his nose that the sweet smell of buttermilk made his mouth water. He uncontrollably stretched his lips out of the protective overhang of his nose and kissed it.
“You may rise, Jago GoldSpawn,” Coleena’s words rang out like a farmer’s dinner bell, calling to home all hands for the evening meal.
He did as commanded.
She lowered her hand to her side, mirroring the other. Standing straight-backed and proper, she looked every bit the most important woman in the land, and to him, she truly was.
“I have heard your offerings and have found them agreeable enough to accept. I give you my own to seal this marriage.
“I vow from this day forth, to the end of time, or your death, I will take you as my husband. Your name shall be mine of rights due to this union, and I will cherish that name always.
“I also vow to allow your vows to remain as spoken until the sweet embrace of the Eternal Darkness takes your soul.
“We are now husband and wife,” she said while smiling that beautiful smile of hers, the one that said she was pleased with him.
A deafening roar of cheers erupted from behind Jago and he turned to see the greatest spectacle ever witnessed. People from all trades cascaded down the mountain side as far as he could see. The mass, made up of hundreds of thousands, was headed up by the Supreme Military Commander and his platoon of the elite High Honor Guard of Darkness. The Commander was standing stiff as an arrow, saluting Jago proudly. What seemed like the entire Swords of Darkness army was next. They flowed to almost the point where his eyes failed him, but he was able to make out the contrast from black armor to regular clothes beyond. It would seem that, for sure, the entire Land of the Faithless did indeed come to see the two of them.
“Jago,” Coleena’s voice, though soft, cut through the still cheering and applauding crowd’s noise, as though they were standing alone on the mountain.
He looked back at her and found her standing next to a trap door built within the hard ground of the mountain. It seemed strange, but he noticed the nonchalant way in which she bent down and lifted the large wooden door up, so he did not give the concept of it another thought. After the door reached the vertex of its travel, it started to allow Christina DeBold to pull it down in the opposite direction. Jogo started to jump to his wife's aid, fearing the impact when it hit the ground on the other side would in some way injure her. He had closed the gap by a pace or two when the heavy looking trapdoor made a “thud” noise and halted its movement on its own accord. Jago tried to locate the straps, ropes, or tendons holding the door halfway between its vertex and the ground, but all that was visible besides the door, was a ladder being suspended by darkness, leading into more of the same. He heard a soft and airy snicker from the left of the opening. As he turned towards the source, the whole world staggered nauseatingly. He almost lost not only his balance, but whatever his last meal was as well. As quick as the feeling came, it went away and left his eyes deep in his safe place within Coleena’s gaze.
The back of her nine-year old right hand was pressed up against her mouth, with her index finger sandwiched between her lips. Her left hand was palm flat over the birth mark on her cheek.
“I can feel it getting warmer,” she squealed happily from behind her right hand. She was so full of childlike energy; she hardly looked able to stand in one place as she was doing. She put her hands down and then motioned to the ladder leading into darkness. He was moving before he got a chance to think about whether he wanted to, and did not stop when he got to the ladder. He started stretching his little boy legs to safely reach the rung below the one his feet were currently occupying. Jago counted ten such rungs before his feet made solid contact with the floor. He backed up two paces and waited in darkness so complete he could have sworn he had gone blind. He heard Coleena start down the steps, then silence, followed by the sound of a heavy door closing. Her movements down the ladder then continued.
When she had reached the bottom, she turned around and spoke one word, “light”. The room was then bathed in beautiful, white light. He felt his hands fall from his eyes to his side. When he looked down at them, they were where they felt before she spoke, so all was well.
He glanced around and realized the trap door led
down to enormous sleeping quarters. Halfway down the West wall, to his right from the ladder, stood an elaborate, redwood clothes cabinet. A head-boarded, fancy bed was placed along the Northern wall, and completing the room decor, in the Southeastern corner, was the largest bathing tub he'd ever seen in all his nine years alive.
Coleena walked over to the bed and pulled out a set of wooden steps from underneath it. She then walked up them and turned to sit on the bed. “Since we are now husband-and-wife, we will need to sleep in the same bed,” she said as she gestured to the high standing mattresses underneath her. Her tiny little body took up no more space upon it than a fly would, landing on a piece of flatbread. “It certainly is large enough for the two of us.
“I am so tired from our busy day I'm going to take a nap. Come join me, Jago GoldSpawn, my husband.”
His feet started moving and he was up on the bed and lying down before she even had the chance to move herself up to the pillowed end. He was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling and minding his own business, when she rolled over right on top of him.
“Lights out,” she said and then she nestled her head on his chest. Her breathing slowed. Jago wrapped his arms around her, to protect her should anything happen, and he was quickly asleep himself.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BREAKING THE CYCLE
