by Raven Taylor
"Dear friends," Gwen began as the flute player lowered her instrument, "We come here to Calton Hill this evening to witness the union between these two people. Lilly and Winter have known each other only a short time but their love is as strong and as pure as can be. Time does not dictate love. When the right person comes along time looses all meaning. Today will be a union of two souls that where destined to be together, today we join them so that wherever they might go, no matter how lost they may become they will always find their way back to each other."
I took Lilly's hand and squeezed it tightly as a young girl in a red 1940's style dress approached Gwen and handed her a small wooden box.
"Lilly and Winter have chosen not to exchange rings today," she opened the box and a silverly light seemed to pulse from it, "Instead they have chosen to to bound together by these chords."
She approached us and bid us each hold out a hand.
"These two chords represent the coming together of two spirits, one for Lilly, one for Winter," she laid the two chords across our wrists, they where strangely warm against my skin and they looked somehow alive.
"Lilly, in this chord I give to you a piece of myself," I said and I struggled to stop my voice from being strangled by grief and happiness, "So that wherever you me be, I will find you, so that in lives beyond this I will always come back to you and though my mind may not recall, my soul will remember and love you still."
Lilly repeated the vow and as she spoke a single tear like a shining crystal slid down her white skin.
"And so I bind you," Gwen knotted the chords about or wrists, "so that the love you share will endure anything that comes your way and never be broken."
Once the chords where bounds she slid them away off over our hands without breaking the knot.
"So long as these chords remain joined then you shall never be alone," the girl in the red dress approached again holding the open box and Gwen placed the tied chords into it before handing it to me.
"Take good care of this," she said in a low voice with a smile that suggested she knew these where not just ordinary chords.
And so the short ceremony concluded and the guests all followed us, accompanied by merry flute music, to the marquee, where a vast banquette was laid out. After the meal the band from Lilly's club struck up a tune and the tent was filled with that fusion of modern rock and jazz that had so enchanted me at the Black Cat.
We had not made any speeches as I understand is the tradition at weddings but as the evening drew on Lilly told me that she would like to address her friends. I knew what was coming, with a sick kind of reluctance I accompanied her onto the small stage as she gripped my hand and took to the mic.
"I want to thank you all for coming tonight," she said once she had everyones attention, "it's been a perfect day, everything I have always dreamed of. I don't just want to thank you for today though, I want to thank you for everything. You were all invited today because everyone of you is dear to me and I want to thank you all for your wonderful friendship and support and for everything you have ever done for me. Now, I know a lot of you are wondering why the sudden rush to get married? You are too polite to ask I suppose, but I have something to tell you. Today is not just a wedding, no, it's something more, today is goodbye."
She paused. Now I was crying. The faces of he crowd looked at her with puzzled expressions.
"I'm dying," she announced, "And tonight will be this last time I see any of you. So I'd like to say farewell. Remember, live your lives to the full, don't waste a second, because nobody, nothing is forever."
She wiped at her eyes and tugged at my hand, pulling me across the stage and towards the exit, ignoring the people who called her name and grabbed at her arm as she passed, quickening her pace as she jogged across the wooden boards that had been laid as a floor.
"Come on Winter," she urged as I tried to keep up.
"Where are we going?" I asked as we fell out into the cold night.
She didn't answer, just kept running, running, until we had left the hill behind us and where on the street below.
"Lilly," I moaned miserably, "What's going on?"
She glanced over her shoulder to make sure we weren't being followed.
"Trust me Winter," she said, slowing her pace, "I'll tell you when we get there, this is important."
She did not speak as she led me back through the town. It was a long walk as we passed the parliament and left behind the shops and houses. Ahead of us King Arthurs seat loomed up into the night sky; a vast rising giant that dwarfed Calton Hill from where we had come.
"Up there?" I questioned.
"Yes," she nodded.
"But why?"
"You'll see."
It was a struggle to climb the hill and I was amazed she managed to keep pace despite the cold and her flimsy shoes and dress. Yet she smiled the whole way and held my hand.
From the top the view was magnificent; you could almost see the end of the world.
"What's going on Lilly?" I appealed.
"I have never been one to let anything in my life be out with my control," she began, moving in close to me, I wrapped my arms around her, thinking how cold she most be out here in the snow without a jacket, "It makes me angry that I can't be in control of my own death. I won't sit and wait for death to come."
"Lilly..."
"I saw a scene in a movie once, where a couple where lost in the snow and they just gave up, accepted that they where going to die, and they stopped walking. They sat down together, held each other, and died of exposure."
My tears where flowing freely as I held her.
"I always thought if I was going to die I'd like to die of the cold. It's painless, just a gradual, slow shut down of the body. You're too numb to really feel anything. To sit here with you and slowly drift away is what I want. I don't want to wait weeks, months. I don't want to grow weak, to loose my hair, ti become a shadow of myself and die in some hospital bed with tubes up my nose. No. Mine will be a truly beautiful death."
'A beautiful death' wasn't that how he had described it? It was so like her with her strong and independent spirit, not to want to loose control of anything, even of her own death. But was she ever really in control? Not really. For this, after all, was what I had chosen for her. It came back to me suddenly. I never had intended for the tumour to kill her directly. All of this had been laid out be my that evening when our souls had become one.
"If it's what you want," I said,"Then I'm here all the way."
She smiled and pulled me towards the bench. We sat and she pulled up her feet, curling up and pressing herself as close to me as she could. It was minus 12 out and it felt like even less up there on the exposed hill. It would be all too easy for an under clothed body like hers to perish out here. Of course as far as suicides go such a thing was never guaranteed to work, but this one would, we had our guaranteed stamped on her flesh.
"I want to hear you talk Winter," she said as she rested her head on my shoulder, "Remember that time when we were in The Witchery and I asked you to make up a story, a past for yourself. You told such a beautiful tale. Tell me something else like that."
I nodded. I knew exactly what I was going to tell her.
"You're quite right, that was quite a lovely story, but it was, after all, just that, a story, nothing more. I'm going to tell you now who I really, who it is you really married."
"Then you weren't a rider in the circus?"
"No. The person who you fell in love with is not even a man," I told her, "He comes from another world from which he was banished, simply for loving you. And he did love you, always, from afar he watched over you though you could never know he was there. But his desire to be with you became so strong that he asked to be cast from his world and into yours, the trouble is, once he got there, he could not remember who he was or anything of his love for you."
"How sad," she said gazing off at the distant lights of the town.
"Yes, but he found you again, and when
he did his soul remembered you and loved you still, and that's how it will always be. He will always find you and he will always remember."
"So what are you?" she turned her face to me and I stroked her cheek, it was like touching ice.
"An Angel."
"Such an imagination you have," her voice was beginning to sound distant and vague like someone on the verge of falling asleep, "You should write you know. Write a story about this Angel who falls in love with a girl. Make the girl me, I'd like to be a character in a book, it's a way of living forever isn't it?"
"I guess it is." I agreed.
"Then write it for me, when I'm gone."
"I will."
Against me her breath came in long, slow, peaceful drags. She forced her drooping eyes to stay open and when she looked up at me her expression was eerily serene and calm. I had worried she might panic at the last minute as her life ebbed away but she had accepted it unconditionally.
"Promise me one thing Winter."
"Anything."
"My parents are buried in London, in Highgate Cemetery. It's where I originally come from. I'd like to go back to them."
"Lilly, I don't want you to go." I buried my face in her hair.
"It's ok, really it is." she assured me but her voice was slowing, she was falling slowly towards oblivion as her body began to shut down.
"This isn't right," I whispered, "Can't you do something Cane. Please don't take her away from me."
She leant against me, exhausted, her head lolling as though the vertebrae in her spine had turned to jelly. Using my right hand I pushed her cheek against my chest and it held it there. She felt fragile. Her breathes came in long gasping draws. I stroked her face and rocked her, telling her over and over that I loved her, repeating it in her ear like it was some sort of mantra, a magic spell that might bring her round.
The moments passed. She didn’t move, just lay against me breathing in that slow, heavy way. Then she flexed her spine and reached out her arms, breaking them from my embrace, and stretched like someone who has just gotten out of a car after a long journey.
“Oh, Winter.” she said softly, looking up at me, smiling, "I love you."
Then her arms fell limp and her head dropped backwards. She became a lifeless rag doll in my arms, I watched as the light left her eyes. Funny, all the time I had spent bringing death to people I had never actually seen someone die. There are so many metaphors on the subject and I had heard people say ‘it was as though the light just went out of her eyes’. Never did I imagine I would actually see this happen. That was the worst part of it, Caroline; her eyes. One moment they had a shine to them, you could see the spark, could see a soul, and the next they were glazed and I was horrified to find the person I had known was no longer looking back at me from them. She was gone. Lilly was dead.
CHAPTER THIRYY
We buried her on a Sunday, in Highgate Cemetery, as she had asked, and that afternoon by her grave was the last time I saw you, Caroline. I remained there long after we had thrown the first handfuls of dirt on top of the coffin and the grave diggers had buried it deep in the ground, sealing her off from the sunlight forever. Every other mourner, including yourself, had left. Once the hole had been filled in with earth and the officials had departed I remained, numb with sadness. I took a walk around the deserted cemetery and lost in this wilderness of the dead I felt at peace. I knew then that death was as important as life itself on this mortal plane. Looking at these monuments told me that better than anything. There was so much love here. Each stone was a symbol of how much that person was cared for in life. If life was eternal then perhaps there would never really be such a thing as love, not as they know it. For ultimately it is the knowledge that nothing is forever, that loved ones can be taken away from you at anytime, that makes them care so much.
I paused against a weeping willow tree to draw breath and the sharp, cold air hurt my lungs. Ahead of me a mourning stone angel bowed his head in silent prayer, a sombre reflection of my own self. There was a sound from somewhere in the undergrowth, a slight shifting of foliage and a snapping of twigs. A fox emerged from the left and stopped in front of me. It was thin, its stark ribs poked in unsightly peaks through its shabby hide. It looked about ready to drop, to leave the earth. It was not worried by my presence as a wild animal should be, I thought it appeared too far gone to care. It looked at me for a moment with tired eyes that spoke of weariness and anguish. An old creature with a greying muzzle, the once gleaming red fur was lack lustre and sad, an old creature tired of the trials of this life calmly waiting for death to sweep it off to a fresh start.
It hit me again as I watched the rise and fall of the foxes breath under the starved body, just how important death is. Too go on and on forever. Too live in eternity with the mistakes you’ve made without ever being granted the chance to start again. Your kind are blessed, truly blessed, and we were cursed. For Angels there is no escape.
But was I one of you now?
This was a question that had only just surfaced. What was I? Surely now I was among the mortals there would be no way back.
The fox had left silently to find a place to die. Perhaps it was time I did the same.
I'm sorry that it had to be this way Caroline, that I left you without explanation nor goodbye. I am sorry for the anguish I have caused you and only hope that you can forgive me. Caroline. Dear Caroline. Surely you know why I have chosen to tell you all of this? Why I have vowed I will come back to you. It is because you too will die too soon and I have seen how it will come. It is an ugly, hateful death that you will suffer Caroline. Yet it does not need to be this way. I will come for you Caroline and though I cannot save you I can let you go in peace if you choose. So much has changed in our world since my return. I know now that death can be a beautiful and painless transition. This will be my gift to you, my way of saying I am sorry and thank you for everything you did for me. Until we meet again, Caroline, I bid you farewell.
And so here I am sat against her grave, writing this for you, in the hope that one day I will be able to reach you again and help you.
I close the book. The story is told and now the dark is pressing in around me, black shadows slinking cunningly from the cover of the trees. From my jacket pocket I take a razor blade. It gleams in the moonlight and its fine edge call to my mortal flesh. Without further hesitation I sever the veins in both of my wrists and lay back to die as the pure snow is stained with a spreading pool of crimson.
They will find no body when morning comes. Winter the man will disappear as mysteriously as he came, leaving little evidence that he was ever there at all.
…Exhaling that last breath with gentle relief, I open my eyes on a new vision. The blackness clears and opens up all around me. I am lying awkwardly on stone. I am vaguely aware of candlelight, of shadows dancing on rough looking walls. A black shape comes into view. The flashbacks, the memories have all flown. Am I not dead then? I feel hands on my shoulders. Careful hands. Gentle hands. Loving hands. A feeling of familiarity steels over me as I try to rouse my weary body to move. My limbs are heavy. I feel as though I am in a dream like state from which I cannot quite wake. I am being lifted. Pulled into a sitting position. Held close. Cradled like something precious. This is where I belong. I am home. My vision begins to clear and a face comes into focus. Red hair. A slanted smile. A black eye. And there is a tear in that black eye. I watch with fascination as it grows heavy and then spills over the lid. Down the gaunt white cheek the tear traces a path across his skin before pausing at his chin. For a few seconds the tiny clear drop hangs, reflecting the light from around it. Then it looses its grip and tumbles through midair. I feel it land on my upturned face.
“Cane?” I croak through dry lips.
“Oh my beautiful Winter, you have come back to me…”
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