by Mandi Lynn
I live a beautiful lie—pretending the moment is real.
~~~
Garren pushes the rowboat through the grains of sand. I stand at the edge of the beach, where the sand meets the rocky gravel and becomes nothing more than the usual piece of land.
“Why are we leaving?” I ask, the wind blowing between my breaths.
The small wooden boat touches water; it floats and sways with the rhythm of the ocean waves. I watch as it radiates with the life of the ocean.
He lets it drift an arm’s length away before tugging the rope attached to the bow.
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
I don’t speak as I feel the weight of Marseille gain on me. Even with the city to my back I feel it overwhelming me, seeking attention I refuse to give.
“We can stay,” he says, pulling the rope taut. The small vessel floats toward the beach again until it meets with the sandy bottom of the shore, unable to come any farther until Garren tugs with more strength.
“No,” I say quickly.
His hands stop, loosening his hold on the rope. Waves break and the boat floats on the ocean again where it sways with a cadence only nature possesses.
“Then we’ll be leaving now?” he asks.
I nod and join him. He doesn’t say anything else or question why I must leave; he just lets me be. A thankfulness lies within our silence, and neither of us dares to disrupt it. He tugs the rope and brings it to a steady hold where the water breaks, gesturing for me to step in. I pull up the hem of my skirts, stepping over the water and into the rounded bottom of the boat. I settle on one of the two benches and wait for the shift and sway that happens when another person steps in, but it never comes.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
Garren opens the lapel of his coat and fishes something out—the bread wrapped in cloth that Camila gave him.
“I almost forgot that we don’t need this,” he says, unwrapping the bread from its fine cloth. The bread is still fresh looking, and I imagine the days I walked to the market alone, savoring how magnificent fresh bread like that would smell, yet too poor to afford leavened bread. And that’s when it hits me—there is no scent.
“May I?” I ask, turning up my palms toward him. His gaze locks on mine for a long moment, questioning, but finally he places the bread in my care.
The cloth is nothing to me. There is no soft contact, but I have begun to grow used to the lack of feeling. What disturbs me now is yet another of my senses is disconnected. I hold the bread in my hands and bring it close to my face, begging my nose to pick up some indication of smell.
“Nothing,” I say. Hope leaves me as I drop my hand and lower the bread.
Garren reaches to take it from my hands, wrapping it in the cloth once again.
“I’ll be right back,” he says quietly before taking brisk strides along the beach.
It seems like a long time before he returns, but when he does, he steps silently into the boat. The motion wakes me from my own private world of thought. Garren makes soft muffled sounds in the bench across from me, working the oars as we glide through the water.
“We can’t feel or smell anything, can we?” My question must feel like a blunt jab to Garren. When I look at him, his face is laden and worn. His eyes close as he takes a deep breath, and when he exhales I watch as tension radiates off his skin.
“No,” he says.
“Touch, smell, it’s all lost to us,” I say, running the information in my mind. “But we’re here. We’re like ghosts—immortal in the most common sense—but people can touch us. They can hear us and see us, but we can’t feel them. We are part of their world, but they aren’t a part of ours.”
Garren doesn’t speak. His arms run in circles, bringing the oars down over the surface of the water as we skim across the ocean waves.
“Why tease with a world we cannot be a part of?” I ask. My voice is lost over the roar of waves and ocean wind, but I know Garren has heard me. I know it because as soon as the words release, I see a sadness form that most people would crumble under.
“I don’t know, Luna. That’s just the way it is,” he says.
I watch his movements—the firm push and pull he makes as he forces the oars to break the water’s surface. We stream over the ocean in slow motion, the island of Tiboulain seeming frighteningly far away.
“What did you do with the bread?”
Garren raises his head when he looks at me, a befuddled look coming over his eyes.
“What?”
“The bread. You said we wouldn’t need it.”
A small recognition occurs and he returns his focus to the task of dragging the boat over the ocean. “We don’t need to eat, so I gave it to the first beggar I could find.”
The information isn’t news. It makes sense in a cruel way. Why bother eating something if you don’t need its nourishment? We are eternal beings. Food and sustenance are nothing but a memory.
“Okay,” is the only word I can mutter.
XXXIV.
I stand at the edge of Tiboulain’s pool, the water reflecting my image, a perfect mirror. Everything seems so still, so pure, but when I lift my head to look elsewhere, I’m reminded how the world has changed without me.
“Luna?”
Garren’s voice breaks the silence. Around us the sun sets—another end to another day. Colors light the sky, the horizon on fire with brilliancy. Every cloud and stream of air declares its unique beauty, but despite this I can’t find it in myself to look at Garren.
“What happened?”
His voice invades me. I wrap frail arms around my body, wanting to shrink away so he may forget I’m here. But I feel his gaze on my back as he stands watching.
“How can you be a part of a world that so readily rejects you?” I ask. I want to be angry. I want my voice to carry the cadence that comes with sharp emotions, but when I speak I’m nothing but a small element in the backdrop.
“Because I have no other choice. It’s just how it is.”
“But what if it doesn’t have to be that way!” I shout, my words more certain than ever. I turn to face him, spinning until I see his face. His body is only an arm’s length away, but I still find myself shouting, as if the roar of waves might overpower my voice. “Wouldn’t you change it, if you could?” I feel as if I’m begging, like my knees might give out due to weariness, and I wonder if that’s possible for someone like me.
Whatever we are—the eternal beings who don’t have all five senses—can we be exhausted? We don’t need to sleep, eat, or breathe. Everything we operate from comes from habits of our old and familiar human life. There is no requirement for sleep now, but as I stand in front of Garren I feel as if my head will spin until my mind finds rest in the night.
“We don’t have a choice, Luna,” Garren says simply.
His face is placid when he talks. It makes me want to stride the small distance between us and shake him until he understands my words.
“How can you know that?” I ask, but my voice becomes desperate. Any energy of hope dies off in a quick fury. I look at him with pitiful eyes and wonder why he doesn’t understand.
“I’m sorry, Luna,” he says.
“My name is Aida,” I tell him.
Garren steps forward, arms reaching out to console me, but I step away, my feet slipping against the rocky surface of the island.
I stagger backward and lose my balance the instant my right foot doesn’t find flat ground. A yelp escapes my airways, and Garren jumps forward to catch me. His arm is coiled around me, both hovering over the edge of the pool of water. When I look down my heel is soaked in the water. I push Garren away, stepping out of the water and away from the edge.
“Luna—”
“Don’t call me that,” I say, cutting him off before he can say anything else. “I’m not the moon.” I hold my hand between us and lower myself to the ground. Everything inside me screams for rest. My head spins with more thoughts to put into action, and when
I do lift my head, images blur together until it’s all just one large abstract painting.
“Are you okay?”
I bring my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around myself. Tiboulain sways around me and I want to lie down until it all just falls away. Terror and panic rise in me, but I force myself to breathe, to stop thinking, but to still breathe.
“Leave,” I say, my voice a thin sound.
“But—”
I hear his footsteps as he walks toward me, but I shake my head in protest. He stops and an exhale comes from within me. He doesn’t leave, but he also doesn’t come closer. Around me the world hovers on the border of calm until I’m able to make out the lines and images again. I close my eyes and rest my head against my knees, feeling a small comfort grow from the containment I’ve been able to create.
“Please,” I whisper.
There’s no reply. I wait for the sound of footsteps, for some remark, but neither ever comes. I lift my head slowly, but when I look up Garren isn’t here and a frown forms on my lips. I’m left wondering just how long ago he had abandoned me.
~~~
The moon reflects its beauty on the water in the night. The sky is bright in the full moon’s glow, making everything a magical hue. The world seems so still and silent. A hush of water slaps against the shore, the wind off the ocean has disappeared to nothing more than a whisper of hair against my cheek.
I dip my finger in the smooth pool of water and watch as the ripples cascade across the surface, echoing to the other side. I sink my hand lower, watching as it disappears beneath the surface, my skin taking on a white tone under the moon’s shadow.
With one fluid movement I bring my hand to my face, cupping water within my palm. I sip at the liquid, shocked by the sheer nothingness that accompanies it. There’s no sensation as the water slides across my lips and down my throat; the lack of touch makes me mourn something I thought impossible to lose.
“Why tease us?” I look up to the moon that floats in the sky and wonder what it is it wants from me.
“The world isn’t trying to torment us.”
My head whips around to the familiar voice and I see Garren just behind me. He doesn’t move to come closer as he stares at me, and even though I feel as if I’ve been invaded, I don’t want him to leave me again.
“I thought you had gone,” I tell him. I pick myself off the ground and brush away dirt from my skirt, patting away at my sleeves, suddenly aware of the fact that the new clothing I had been gifted with has already become worn.
“No,” he says in a low voice. “I would return to Marseille, where I’ve found a residence for the time being, but I didn’t want to leave you on your own and—and it appeared you didn’t want to stay within the city.”
“Because I’m a ghost, Garren. They may see me, touch me, but to me, I’m nothing more than a ghost.”
He nods, accepting my words as they are. I watch him and I think he may agree. Surely he must agree. We live the same life, such as it is. All that time I had been trapped by the moon within the pool, Garren had been forced to live his eternal life alone—I find myself lucky to have him.
“How would you prefer to live an eternal life?” he asks, still standing so far away.
His brows furrow in some thought he isn’t inviting me to experience, leaving me only to wonder what he may be considering.
“You know I wouldn’t want this,” I say quickly, and he laughs—just a small chuckle of amusement.
“But, if you had to live it, if you could choose, how would you live it?”
And this time when he speaks, there is a smile in his eyes. Some of the seriousness has melted away into the lines of his face.
I let the words sink in, imagining how I might fashion it, were I able to choose. “If I had to live forever, I would want to experience it all. The touches, the smells, the tastes of what could be an eternal bliss. I would want to hold a baby and feel the softest skin that only comes with an infant, and I’d want to feel them kick when they’re upset. I’d want to live fully to know that something matters.”
Garren looks at me with wonder, his gaze never leaving me as he walks close to my side. The space between us seems so precious and intimate, but I don’t mind as he closes the gap.
“What are we?” I ask. His blue eyes seem to glow in the night and I feel so vulnerable in the darkness, but when Garren takes my hand in his my fears melt away. I want to fight, to run away, and to never let this man touch me again, but I also know he’s all I have left in this world, and, as much I don’t want to be around him, I feel as if I can’t be without him.
“Luna, what we are does not matter.”
“But I’m not human—not anymore at least.”
“And neither am I,” he says, his face so serious in the night. “But you, Luna—you’re just a beautiful essence of everything that is good in my life.”
He says the words so boldly, as if nothing in the world scares him, and I’m jealous. It only makes me wish that I may someday possess the bravery he holds in his heart.
“I’m not,” I say, shaking my head, turning from him.
“You are.”
His fingers grip my chin, forcing me to look at him. His gaze is gentle, as he coaxes me toward him and I give in. I allow myself this one moment of rest, to stop fighting and to let matters be, if only for a moment.
“Before you woke up, I was alone, Luna. I talked to strangers every day, and I suppose I even made friends, but they die. A few years is all I’m given until they realize I don’t age and I have to move to another place to live until they too see my eternal grace. But you, Luna, I’ve been waiting for you to wake up every day. I’ve been waiting for you to come to me, and when I saw you, I wasn’t sure it was you. You seemed so different, so sure of yourself, yet so lost within the world. You were Aida de Luna, the one who gifts eternity when death was a normality.”
His fingers drop from my chin and I can’t help but look down. When he speaks of me, it is as if he worships my being and I don’t understand why.
“Luna,” he says firmly.
I look at him again and realize his hands are wrapped around the tops of my arms. His gaze is so eager, but I can’t find it within myself to look at him. Instead my eyes drift to his hands. I watch his touch, but I can’t feel it, and it eats away at me like maggots in rotting flesh.
“I can’t feel you,” I say, my voice lingering within a cry that will never produce tears.
Something changes in Garren and he drops his arms to his sides, and although I can’t feel his touch, there is a sting in his rejection.
“You can change it.” And when he says the words, they are so different—so unemotional—that I want to run away.
“How?” I ask.
“You’ll never regain the lost senses, but you can fully become the ghost you speak of, if you so desire. No human will see you, hear you, touch you, but it may make living this life easier—you would be separate from the world.”
I imagine a life in the shadows, no one ever seeing my face again. No one will ever remember me, but I also won’t be able to influence the lives of those around me.
So I’ll be a ghost, the beautiful essence Garren sees. I’m not meant to be seen.
“Embrace the moon,” he says, gesturing to the pool of water at my back.
I turn and watch the white glow from the reflection of the moon.
“Will you still see me?” I ask.
“I’m not human.”
I face him again and try to read what his voice doesn’t convey, but his expression is so neutral, so plain. Part of me feels that if I do this I am somehow hurting him, but I don’t understand how.
“Do what will make you happy,” Garren says.
With strong legs I walk away and find the edge of the pool. At my feet the rocks along the edge drop into the water that lingers so deep in this island. I turn to face Garren to see if he approves, and when I do I see a small smile cross his lips, but it seems forced.
A final deep breath builds within me, and I take off the leather shoes Garren had given me, exposing my bare feet. I feel foolish when I look up to the moon as if it were a god, and even more foolish as I dive into the water.
I drift through seamlessly and when I open my eyes the world around me is magnified by the dark liquid. The stone-lined pool cocoons me in a final embrace, a wall around me. The moon looks down and I ask for it to take away the pain. I ask the moon to hide me from the world. To give me a gift within a curse, a gift that will allow me to only exist spiritually.
I want to become an essence. A beautiful, exquisite essence.
XXXV.
I feel as if I’m falling out of the water. Gravity no longer obeys; the world spins and I’m being thrown against the ground like an old rag. My body slumps into the strange contours of the sand and stone on this island, my arms held over my head like in worship, legs twisted around each other, feet still kissing the edge of the water. As a human I’d be suffering, but here I am—everything that’s nothing.
My wet clothing clings to my body, capturing me in a way that restricts my movement. Exhaustion engulfs me, haunts me, eats away at me from the inside out until I surrender and let the lids of my eyes seek darkness.
“Luna.”
Garren.
I don’t look for him; I don’t even lift my head or move my body in response as my soaked clothing creates a personal vise. But he comes to me still. My body moves; legs turn, arms wrap around themselves and I know he’s holding me. I’ve been cocooned within myself like an infant and I imagine Garren holding me close, like I am something more precious than what I believe.
~~~
Light comes with the morning. It ignites, sets fire, and reminds the world that today is another day. A new start. Another beginning.
I find it odd that we don’t need sleep, yet we can still do so, if we choose. When my eyes finally open, I crawl away. I’m shocked by the simple idea that even ghosts can achieve such human habits. Beside me Garren lies with arms folded inward, asleep on the ground. He rests so innocently, trapped inside a perfect dream, only because it is not the reality that we have to face.
