WALES 2022
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, THE doorbell rang.
Ceri stood on the porch in a red crew-neck sweatshirt and those loose-hanging black jeans. His short hair had wax slicked through it, and I realized he must have bought it especially for tonight. It hadn’t been in his bathroom when I’d rooted around.
After all these years, decades, centuries, Arden still wanted to make an effort for me. His beautiful, aching poetry echoed in the chambers of my heart.
He ’ s going to kill you , I reminded myself, and, in turn, your sister.
He cleared his throat and gestured around the porch. ‘This is nice.’
Our family farmhouse was a rugged, handsome thing. Old grey stone and sage-green window frames, pretty planters full of magnolias and carnations that Dylan kept neat and watered. Dotted around the main house was a hotchpotch collection of barns and outbuildings, and there was always the smell of manure and tractor fuel lingering on the forecourt.
I liked living on a farm, the way it made me feel connected to something greater than myself. The circle of life, the cycles of sowing and reaping, every birth and death so purposeful.
‘Thanks,’ I replied with a forced smile. Arden, Arden, this is Arden. I could barely think over the roar of blood in my ears. ‘Do you want a tour?’
‘Sure.’ He smiled at me, pressing the lock button on his car key with a slight tremble of the hand. The old Corsa’s headlights flashed.
As we headed to the barn where the machinery was kept, my chest convulsed with fear. There were so many ways in which this could go wrong. But it was too late to back out now, and I was running out of options.
‘Do you like living out here in the country?’ he asked, eyeing my outfit with a trace of amusement. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, you look amazing.’ A slight flush to his cheeks. ‘But most farmers’ daughters wear Hunter wellies and Barbour jackets.’
‘Mmmm,’ I said vaguely, too distracted to think of anything even close to charming.
‘Living in the sticks drove me mad, personally. I need noise. People.’
Was he trying to throw me off the scent?
The Arden I knew could live in solitude for years without craving conversation.
I studied him for any sudden motions, any subtle movements that looked like he might be reaching for a weapon, but despite the light sheen of sweat on his face and the flickered glances he kept throwing my way, he didn’t seem to be contemplating my demise just yet.
Doubt darted across my mind, but it was soon cut short.
We came to an ancient magnolia tree, its boughs dense with white-pink flowers. Ceri stood beneath it and looked up through the snarled branches.
And then he said, ‘As I gazed upon the first blossom, I thought of how the world reinvents itself year after year, century after century.’
My heart stopped.
The poem.
From Ten Hundred Years of You .
Cited perfectly.
It was him.
It was .
I was talking to Arden. Walking beside him, peering across at him.
‘A beautiful poem,’ my throat scratched out.
He just smiled wistfully and kept walking.
There was so much more I wanted to ask, to say. I wanted to explain how it felt reading those words after so long wondering what he was writing about me. I wanted to sit down with him over a pot of tea and discuss every detail, every syllable, tracing the Easter eggs all the way back to our origins.
But I couldn’t. Not yet. He couldn’t know that I knew until the last possible second.
‘If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?’ I asked, heart skittering unevenly like a stone skimmed over a lake. I didn’t know why the question had come to me, but it seemed a fitting gateway into the inevitable, terrible conversation.
‘Hmmm,’ he replied, without a trace of suspicion. ‘I think … Tokyo, maybe? It seems so alive.’
Another bright, sharp image: a red pagoda surrounded by candy-pink cherry blossoms, the peak of Mount Fuji arcing behind it. The sky a wan pastel lilac, streaked with indigo whorls.
As we approached the outbuildings, my whole body felt alight with foreboding. I’d once witnessed a minor tsunami in the Philippines – watched with slow horror as the sea suddenly fell away from the shore – and right now my whole existence felt suspended in that terrifying moment before the crushing impact of the wave.
‘How about you?’ he asked. ‘If you could live anywhere.’
‘Right here,’ I said at once, defiant. ‘I never want to leave this life.’
And it was true. I had lived in a lot of amazing places, experienced a lot of Golden Ages, but something about this life had stuck . It was the people, of course – my sensitive, playful mum, my sharply hilarious sister, cheerful Dylan and quietly intelligent Nia and the enduring memory of my adoring father – but also the place itself. The bright smiles and tight-knit community, the pale-pastel buildings and the kitschy tearooms, the way Beacon Books smelled first thing in the morning – of old pages and fresh ink and nutty coffee grounds.
It felt so soft, so easy. And after a lifetime of sharp edges and terrible ends, I needed all the softness I could get.
Truthfully, I could see a future for Arden and me here, if the situation were different. This … it was the kind of life I had dreamed about, back in the trenches.
He would be so alive on the crags and moors, the wild grassland and rugged mountains. He would return home each night flushed and happy from a day tilling the earth, dirt beneath his fingernails, a flower tucked behind his ear. And I could have my vintage boutique in town, keeping whatever erratic hours I wanted. I would travel all over the world sourcing the most unique thrifted pieces, and I would tailor and tinker with them until they were perfect. I would meet up with Nia on our lunch breaks to moan about difficult customers, and when Arden and I came back together over a glass of wine by our roaring cottage fire, we would just … enjoy each other. In every meaning of the word.
Such a simple thing, it would be, to bicker over what to eat for dinner. Such an ordinary pleasure so many took for granted.
All I wanted was a life with him.
All I wanted was a life .
And yet here I was, viciously plotting against him.
The smell of fuel was stronger in the barn, and there was the subtle bite of something metallic. Pigeons cooed in the high rafters. Though Dylan tried to keep everything tidy, the concrete floor was scattered with mice droppings, tiny white feathers and straggles of hay.
The shovel was exactly where I’d left it, propped against the corrugated wall.
Ceri was looking around at the various tractors and combine harvesters as my hands closed around the smooth wooden handle.
While he was still facing the other way, I swung at his head. Not so hard that the blunt force trauma would kill him, but enough that the flat side of the shovel would knock him clean out before he realized what was happening.
Thunk.
He fell straight to the ground.
I thought of fallen soldiers and blood-soaked trenches, discarded helmets and blank stares, and, for a moment, I felt like I might throw up.
Guilt throbbing at my temples, I dropped the shovel and grabbed him by the ankles. I had to work quickly and quietly. Dylan was still somewhere on the farm and could be back at any minute.
Putting all my worldly strength into it, I dragged Ceri’s limp body back out through the open side of the barn and across a narrow walkway, nudging open the door of another outbuilding with my hip.
As I worked, something hitched in my mind. Something from the recent conversation that jutted out like a frayed piece of driftwood. But I couldn’t put my finger on what, exactly, had given me pause, so I tried to shake away the disquiet.
The former stables hadn’t held horses for a long time, so Dylan never went into them. Which made them the perfect place to hold Ceri until I could turn eighteen and save Gracie.
It was a chaotic and slightly ill-conceived plan, but it was the best one I had. Ceri lived alone in a serial killer’s flat, and he was estranged from his family, so hopefully nobody would report him missing any time soon.
Dragging Ceri into a stall right in the middle of the building – I didn’t want him to be able to pound on the corrugated metal wall and raise attention – I bound his ankles together using some rope I’d gathered earlier. Sweat slicked down my spine, and I regretted the fur coat.
I propped him against a post that held up the rafters, wrapping his arms behind it and tightly securing his wrists with another rope.
Then, for a few brief moments, I sat back on my heels and stared in horror at what I’d done. His head slumped forward, chin pressed to chest, and only the light rise and fall of his shoulders let me know he was still breathing. Blood bloomed like a rose in his light-blonde hair.
Despair wracked me, like an old witch shaking me by the bones.
Had a hundred lifetimes of love really led us here?
Would we ever break free? Or were we just doomed to repeat this terrible cycle for the rest of time?
I wanted more. I wanted so much more.
Pain-stricken, I thought of the poem he’d quoted at me, of the final lines: our love blossoming afresh, year after year, century after century, new flowers from old roots, an eternal seed from which life will always bloom .
How had he made such an awful thing sound so beautiful?
Then it finally hit me, the imprecise detail I had snagged on.
Ceri had said: ‘As I gazed upon the first blossom.’
But that wasn’t how the poem began.
It was bramble .
Not blossom .
The doubt rose in me afresh, but I tried to quash it as best I could. It had been decades since he’d written that line. Perhaps he’d simply misremembered.
Just as I was climbing to my feet, there was a shuffling sound behind me.
Then a throat-clearing that made every hair on my body stand on end.
I turned around.
Dylan.
Leaning against the stable door in his mucky overalls, watching my every move.
‘This is a bit much, Evelyn. Even for you.’