by O. Rose
Impossible.
He was the husband who killed her.
Chapter Two
Only those with heightened abilities were allowed to become public servants and they were subject to random testing often, to be sure their purposes were pure, especially if they worked with children. Emma had no doubt Lori could see through most enchantments with little effort, but she didn’t see this man.
Young and handsome. That was how she’d thought of him until their wedding night when he choked her to death. Like everyone else he was standoffish all day, the kiss shared to seal vows was forced, yet somehow she held a spark of hope that maybe he could love her.
Of course he didn’t; he was her first murderer.
And she never forgot it.
Was it anger she felt? Not really. Sadness? A little. She didn’t want to die then. She was scared in those moments and it hurt.
It always hurt.
If anyone thought to ask her what would happen after death she couldn’t tell them. She was unique.
Emma woke up alive. An infant, not crying, who saw the blurred faces of a family who wouldn’t keep her.
If he hadn’t killed her, what would their life have been?
He was exactly the same as he was back then. He’d not aged a day. Dark hair and dark eyes, entrancing. Magnetic. She remembered how badly she’d hoped he would stay.
Why did he kill her? Why did she keep coming back? Would she have died, if he hadn’t killed her?
That was a strange thought.
Would she have died?
When she flew forward, hands reaching for his neck as she knocked him to the ground, he did nothing. When she squeezed as hard as she could, trying to kill him the way he killed her, he still did nothing and that her made stop.
All at once she realized she couldn’t kill this man, not because of some misguided empathy, but because it wouldn’t work. He didn’t even care that she’d tried.
She sat back, legs on either side of his chest, knowing she’d not harmed him at all. When he’d put his hands to her throat it was crushing, she couldn’t breathe, and as she thought back she recalled how serene he was. He didn’t look afraid or angry. Not once. He’d murdered her and she’d never realized she didn’t know the reason.
Now he put his hands behind his head, like this was a spot he’d chosen to have a lie down. Like she wasn’t there.
Jeans that were a size too big. Ratty sneakers she’d worn daily for at least three years. A plain, gray t-shirt. It was nothing like what she wore the first time she saw him. She remembered that, too. The dress, so flowing and full of lace, royal purple dye. Her hair done up in twists with tiny flowers.
She was beautiful then.
Emma thought she looked the same, but circumstances played a big role in how a person turned out. In that life she was rich, dressed in the finest silks and bathed in the scented waters of a natural hot spring. In recent years she ate microwavable foods and took five minute showers.
Who was she?
For all the times she’d lived she never grew up, never had the chance. But she might have, if he hadn’t killed her.
This man who looked grown up and young at the same time, who had enough power to make Lori see things that weren’t there.
His face, the shape of it and his nose. His chin and eyes.
When she saw him for the first time she thought she could fall in love with him, even if it was for the perfection of his body.
She didn’t know what happened after that. Did he escape into the night? Was he there only to murder her? Did he somehow become king?
She’d never cared and still didn’t. What did it matter?
She couldn’t kill him, but he could still kill her.
∞
Emma sat there for a long while and he didn’t try to move; he never said a word and she didn’t either.
When a clock struck an hour, she didn’t notice which, she got up. The door was still open behind them, her trash bag remained on the step. She turned to retrieve it and when she looked back he was gone.
It was evening by then.
Clearly, there was no hope for her and she refused to let herself have any. This would be the end of another life sooner than later. Seventeen years this time. Who knew how long it would be before she lived that long again? If ever.
She didn’t have any attachments here, she wasn’t leaving anyone or anything behind. There was no one to miss her or any regrets weighing her mind.
It was inevitable.
A curse she would never escape because her life was only possible through death.
But, for this very moment, she was still living. He’d not killed her yet. It might come in the night again; the last time she was worrying over sex. Now she didn’t think she could have stopped him anyway, but at the time she was too nervous to notice odd behavior. She would have at least tried to save herself.
Then again, he probably didn’t give anything away.
She was definitely destined to die, again and again, a virgin.
She supposed some crazy blessing in this curse was never making it to adolescent hormones more than twice. Her first life didn’t count and this time it still wasn’t much of a hurdle.
She didn’t feel attracted to people with gooey-black things covered in misty eyes hovering around them. Some had more than others. Some were a little bit different. All made her keep her distance and no one wanted to be near her anyway.
Looking around, as she stood in the entry way, she realized there was nothing in the house. None of the typical little monsters. Nothing scurrying into a wall, nothing materializing for a moment only to leave again. She glanced outside once more; the landscape was clear. No hovering oddities within the gate or wall.
The place was strange for multiple reasons.
She actually gasped when he was there again, not a step in front of her. Silent and free of lingering anomalies.
“Who whispered in the ear of the queen and drove her mad?”
His voice was smooth and she was struck by his closeness, but the question was unanswerable and stupid. How could she know?
Emma didn’t answer, didn’t want to talk to him. He was her first murderer and he would be the next!
“He is one who lives to this day.”
She didn’t care. She didn’t care what he was implying. She didn’t care who he was or wasn’t.
She didn’t care that he’d leaned down or that his nose wasn’t a hair’s breadth from hers.
“He is the one you belong to.”
But that was too much.
“If I belonged to him then why did he kill me?” Her tone was acerbic. “Why does he let me die over and over and over again? There’s no point in owning someone who doesn’t live.”
He straightened, stood tall again. Taller than before? He towered over her. It might have been a trick of perception.
“So you would understand your place.”
“My place?” a short laugh. “I have no place!” The shout was uncontrollable. “I hardly have a name!”
“But today you do, Emma.” He was in her face again, much too close. The scent of him was overwhelming spice. “You have a place at the side of a man who cannot die.”
And he was gone.
There was no fading away, no hazy swirling of dust, he simply disappeared.
She could have stood there, dumbfounded, but didn’t see the point of it. In all her many short lives she’d seen things she no longer thought fantastic and that man’s abilities were just one more addition to the list.
She didn’t know who he was or what he could do, didn’t know why he’d killed her or if he was telling the truth.
The only thing she could do was ask and she didn’t want to.
She took her black garbage bag and wandered further into the house, realized it was much bigger than it should have been. And dark. Everything was dark. The floors, the walls. Candles lit the way, mounted near the ceiling, yet they to seemed dim. No light filtere
d in through the windows; she supposed that was down to the ivy.
Emma felt there should have trilled some ominous, aphotic music, that there should have been fog at her feet, but she was alone and the only sounds were her own breathing and quiet footsteps.
She came to a door that looked like wall, after many random turns down halls that never ended only forked, and upon opening found a steep, narrow stairway. With nowhere else to go, when she turned she found the hall gone and another wall in it’s place, she moved up.
At the top was another doorway and upon pushing it open she released a breath of disbelief.
Impossible as it should have been, there before her was the room she died in for the first time. The massive bed draped in white linen. The glass doors that opened to a starry garden. The wooden dressers and wardrobes, light wood unlike the rest of his curious house, at least what she’d seen and she suspected there were miles of it to travel, that once held more clothes than she could ever need.
She was almost afraid to step inside.
Emma looked down to the trash bag of shabby garments and back to the room. Nothing changed, shifted, in the moment she looked away. Inconceivable, yet real.
Like him.
Who was he? Why were they reunited? What did it mean?
This house was full of something. She’d first noticed it outside and it was already becoming part of her, working to settle into the back of her mind. What it’s purpose was she couldn’t say and that made her wary.
It was like he was still here, somewhere, just out of sight. Hidden in the corner of peripheral vision.
“Magic?” she asked aloud. Not the kind her first mother used, to force the world to bend to her berserk will, something stronger. Something that flowed like water and slid like silk. Nothing like the assignments they had at school. What passed for magic there was nothing like this.
She could feel it on her skin, slipping up her arms. A low, cool wind. It played with the ends of her hair.
The linen curtain’s edge lifted gently, swaying in a breeze that shouldn’t be.
It was alive. The house was alive, yet muted.
“Lonely,” she said. She’d thought so before. The building was dejected, bereft of companionship despite the unaging one who lived within.
Through the years she’d learned a few things, things people didn’t take seriously anymore. There were stories about highly powerful ones who called themselves witches and wizards, and spurned lovers thought burning the right candles would let them send curses after those who hurt them, but that wasn’t what worked. There were things listening, the inky ones, waiting for someone to speak in anger so they could perpetrate the horrors that brought them some kind of satisfaction? Or not.
The little Emma knew wasn’t much. ‘Supernatural’ forces were real and not so super in her estimation. People simply ignored them until it was too blatant to disregard. Stories of hauntings, of possession.
All because they played pretend for too long.
Whatever was in this house was different. This was natural as breathing, a thing that Was. Not made; inherent and old. Older than she could imagine. So much older than herself, older than the history textbook she’d turned in last week even dared to mention.
People didn’t like history. They didn’t like to think back, to consider the past in any meaningful way. They made up their own reasons for things and then put them in museums with printed signs describing what they thought it might mean. Their own histories were forgotten if possible, rewritten in their minds. Personal faults were transformed into something less earthshattering, mistakes shoved into corners.
She wondered what mistakes were made in this house that wasn’t a home.
But, she couldn’t stand on the edge forever. Emma gathered her courage and stepped into the room. There was no trembling of the floorboards, no rush of power. Yet neither was it just another room in the house. She could feel that.
This was more than a simple replica. It too bore an aged atmosphere, less so than the areas she’d wandered so far, but still significant.
Fingertips trailed over bed sheets, eyes traced pillows. She snatched the one on the left and threw it underneath. That was the one she’d laid on. The one she’d died on. His smell lingered on the other, but Emma found herself unable to touch it. It was his, not hers. Still there and unchanged.
Her bedroom furniture, from her first life, hauled into the future perfectly preserved.
At some point food appeared, a covered plate on the table where she once imagined dawdling with her husband, and she was tempted to leave it untouched, but the truth was she was hungry. If she was to be poisoned, well, that was that. At least it wasn’t starvation.
When she didn’t vomit blood upon ingesting the salad greens or grilled chicken, she was left to carefully lay on the bed and fall asleep in her clothes, wondering if she’d wake to his choking hands.
Chapter Three
Emma’s first challenge was opening her eyes to daylight. She’d half resigned herself to another awakening in the arms of a stranger, tiny and helpless. But she was greeted instead by the iridescence that was morning sunlight glinting off dew.
She couldn’t tell the time, there was no clock and she found her belongings disappeared. All she had access to were unknown items, still hidden within dressers and wardrobes. Things that once belonged to her and now did again.
It wasn’t exactly fear that held her back, but it still took several minutes for Emma to pull open a drawer. For all the memories she retained from that first life, the truth was she didn’t remember much over all. Most of it was a blur of days.
Two events stood out to her, being born and dying.
Apparently he, if his words could be believed, had a hand in both situations.
Despite all the things she saw in the world, things no one else could begin to imagine, she still felt blindsided.
Who was he?
Thinking back as she fingered a dress of blue-green, long and flowing as a mountain stream, she tried to recall what she’d been told of him. There wasn’t much. He was supposedly from a nearby country, yet it was one she’d never heard of. She recalled that she wasn’t well educated.
Nothing about life was explained to her, she was expected to follow the direction of the king like everyone else and she did. The king was not a cruel person or a bad ruler, but he was generally narcissistic and didn’t pay his only child any attention.
She was left to herself more often than not and kept away from people whenever possible. They were glad to see her leave the domicile for the gardens, happy when she stayed away, and Emma was sure they prayed she wouldn’t return; their disappointment when she did was palpable.
So she didn’t know anything about him. Not even his name. She didn’t remember it.
All she knew, whether he was telling the truth or not, was that he was magic. Wholly. She could feel it and nothing else in this world was like it. Indescribable.
She’d forgotten magic, what it felt like. It was all around her once, when everything was dark and she was beginning to be. The feeling of magic was inexpressible and rarely encountered, nothing like the rubbish they taught in school. Special words and visualization, all contrived.
Now that it surrounded her again, in the air and the walls and the floor, she couldn’t imagine being away from it.
Wearing the first dress she’d seen, because she didn’t feel up to searching through the rest of the clothing, she opened the door that once led to a staircase. Not anymore. Now it brought her to a smallish room and he was there, seated at a table, newspaper in hand.
The walls were bookcases and the fireplace was lit. There were no windows.
She looked to the ceiling, it was far higher than it should have been and domed without glass.
She wished it was glass. Wished to see the light streaming down, lightning the darkness that crept along the edges of the room. It lived. Lonely as the rest of the house.
He looked up briefly whe
n the structure changed, flickered for a moment and then sunlight filled the space from above. She could see the daze of fog.
The fire went out.
∞
Emma didn’t know how long she stood, thunderstruck, staring at the heights that shifted so easily from wood to glass. She’d never seen anything like it.
Despite the beings floating through the world, things other people couldn’t see, magic wasn’t what ruled them. They were things living in the same world, hidden from sight. How? She didn’t know.
When she finally tore her eyes from the ceiling and back to the man, she realized he’d hardly moved an inch. The paper was folded and set on the table now, but he was still seated toward the dark hearth.
Set out before him were silverware and covered dishes. The second chair, across from his, was clearly to be hers, but she didn’t want to sit with him. She still didn’t trust him, not at all. Would he stab her as she passed? Whip a knife into her throat the moment she sat?
But, suddenly, she was seated, the chair was behind and sweeping her off her feet. She didn’t have a chance to react and the set table was before her.
And so was he.
It didn’t seem her presence disturbed him as he put foods on the plate in front of her, some of them without using his hands. Magic. Everywhere and in everything. Yet it wasn’t just in this place, it was him.
She didn’t like it.
The idea that he held this together, that without him none of it would exist anymore, made him important. She had the distinct idea that if he left, ever really left, this house would be little more than ruins of a shack in the woods, hidden in a snow blanketed land.
The vision was so clear she had no doubt that would be the case.
It was so strange! She’d never been in a place like this, never had thoughts like this, and she didn’t want to attribute anything to him, but it couldn’t be denied.
Whoever he was, he had power unlike anything she’d known existed.
Sitting across from him, she watched him eat and did the same because she was too hungry to be sullen and sulky about it. If she could have, she would have pushed the plate away.
