Chapter Thirty-One #3
For a moment—just a moment—I imagine us falling. Imagine giving in to the call of the void. L'appel du vide. Surely, whatever the ocean may hold for me must be better than what waits for us here. Here in these gardens. Here in this house. Here with him.
"Kolfina, stop! This is madness!"
"No!" The woman, Kolfina, spins around so quickly that she nearly topples us off the cliff's edge.
The world lurches beneath us, my vision reeling and my mind foggy—like we are still under the water, sinking and swimming with no sense of which way is up or down.
Kolfina holds out our trembling hands to keep him away, her feet shuffling back toward the edge. "You stay away from me!"
The man—Walden, our husband, the man we loved once, trusted once—holds his own hands up in surrender, a lion tamer facing down a wild beast.
"Alright, duck, alright. I'll stay right here, okay? Just come away from the edge before you fall. Can you do that?"
I shake my head, sucking in desperate breaths to fill Kolfina's lungs.
"No. No, you've done something to me. You—my medicine, you’ve done something to it, tampered with it—I don’t know!
" she cries, tearing my hands through her hair, tugging until the pain shocks away some of the fog in our head.
It is so hard to think, and my mind is a pitching, raging thing. Clawing for something to hold onto.
Walden clucks his tongue in the way he always does before he scolds her, the way she hates, the way that sends a spike of shame and regret through our chest. "Kolfina, dear, you had a nightmare, that's all.
You had a bit too much to drink at dinner, and you know how the terrors come to you when your mind is weak. Please, come back inside."
He's right, in a way. My dreams turn hazy and dark when I drink, and the shadows like to visit when I am less likely to fight back. Kolfina’s mother used to say it was a burden people like us had to bear sometimes, to wake in the middle of the night with our body locked down in fear and the demons looming over us at the end of our bed.
A way for our mortal minds to balance the divinity of Death our kind are faced with every day.
But not this time. This time, she is sure. This time the shadows had a face, and it stands at the edge of my garden, a wolf dressed in shepherd's clothing.
"You took me to the cellar. You had a knife," Kolfina says, her voice shaking in my mouth. "You—you were holding it like you—like you intended to—"
"To what, duck? Kill you?" He scoffs, lowering his arms in a careless manner, but he doesn't fool me.
I can see his nerves piling up. I can see the crazed worry in him as his hands ball into fists at his sides.
His eyes dart toward the stars, the moon, the house.
He shifts restlessly on his feet as if he is running out of time.
I swallow my fear, and the woman says, "Yes. Like you intended to kill me."
Because I remember now. I remember the shape of his mouth as he muttered in a language I did not recognize.
I remember the shadow across his face from the strange, hooded cloak he wore.
I remember the candles and the scent of spiced wine and the glint of his knife.
I remember the pain as I slapped the blade away and ran.
Blood still drips from the cut on Kolfina's palm, and the pain stings as I squeeze our fingers into a fist and watch that dark red liquid splatter across the moonlit grass.
"You tried to kill me," she says again.
Is this what love is? The slow eating away at something until there is nothing left to care for? Until you've devoured the other person whole, regardless of whether they fed themselves to you or not?
"You have always been a difficult one," Walden finally responds.
The venom in his voice has me whipping our head up to see him take a menacing step forward.
His breaths fall heavy from his mouth, his mask cracking faster and faster until there is nothing in his eyes but a furious panic.
"I knew there was something wrong about you from the beginning, but I chose you anyway.
Call me a fool, but I had hopes you would be the last."
The last? The last what?
He takes another step forward. The moonlight glints off something in his hand—a knife. The same one from the cellar that he'd been prepared to plunge into my heart.
"Walden, please," she begs, though she knows it's no use. There is no use now, no changing his mind. Whatever is happening had been planned long ago, and we were nothing but chess pieces for him to move around as he pleased. "Did you—did you ever even love me in the first place?"
His laugh is lost on the waves, but I can see it darken his face.
It hurts more than I thought it would, the ease with which he dismisses the question.
"You truly are as stupid as they say, aren't you, little duck?
Why don't you be smart for once and come here.
You've already taken five years of my time, it is enough. You won’t take this from me too. "
A storm brews along the horizon. I can see it rising behind Kolfina like a cloak of darkness. I can hear the thunder in the distance and feel the wind beginning to swirl around us. This is it. This is the moment it happened, the moment everything changed. The moment she changed.
I recognize the resolve in her eyes, can see the choice before she's even made it. The light in my attic shines in the distance, casting a soft golden glow across her face, and I can hear the tinkling of my piano in between booms of thunder.
"I will not let you take me," she says, taking another step back until her heels hang off the edge of the cliff and the spray of the ocean grasps at the hem of her gown.
I stand in front of her, desperate and pleading for her not to do this, but she looks right through me.
"Let the waters consume me, for I am not yours to have, Walden de Klein. I never have been."
She spreads her arms out to her sides. The music grows louder and louder. A voice calls out for her.
And then she falls.
I reach out for her, but I am too far away. The wind buffers me back, shoving me through the maze, twisting and turning me until I find myself at the beginning again.
The woman is there, running through the garden in nothing but her torn gown and her bare, bleeding feet. His voice rings through the air behind us. The sea screams below.
"I will not let you take me," she says. "Let the waters consume me, for I am not yours to have, Walden de Klein. I never have been."
She falls.
I reach.
I am back at the beginning again.
The storm grows closer and closer with every repetition. The light from the attic grows dimmer and the music begins to slow. I am stuck in da capo al segno, constantly reaching the end only to be shot back to the beginning over and over and over again.
The same scene. The same ending. I do not understand. I cannot think past the rising crescendo in my head.
"Go to your garden," the woman on the seabed told me. "Follow your path and you will find your answers."
But I have. I have followed the path so many times now, I fear my own feet are bleeding from the stones. I know every twist and turn of the maze. I can count the seconds until his voice reaches me. I know the shape of each strike of lightning beyond the cliff.
It is as if I'm trapped inside the walls again. Trapped in the twisting wallpaper, clawing desperately for some kind of freedom. Like I am wandering my hallways and digging my toes in the rugs to prove that I am real..
That I am not sinking.
"Remember not to sink. Listen for your hearts, for your freedom."
My freedom. For a moment I think she is speaking of the cliffs. Is death not a freedom from the suffering of life? Was my sacrifice not freedom from his cage?
But the ocean is my grave, not my heart. Perhaps once, it was my freedom, but something else calls to me now, something stronger. Louder.
Kolfina falls from the cliff, but this time I do not watch it happen.
I turn away before her curls disappear over the edge, and I walk back into the rotting maze.
I pass the man screaming and scrambling for a love he squandered.
I maneuver the hedges as if they were nothing more than a few measly weeds.
When I reach the beginning of the path, the light in the attic grows brighter, and music wafts through the crack in the back door. Beckoning me closer.
Remember not to sink.
I wrap my fingers around the handle, unfurl my wings, and I fly.