Christmas Raven
***This short takes place the Christmas BEFORE the beginning of Perfect Ten***
RAVEN
It’s cold. Like balls creeping up inside your body, fingers getting numb, ‘I should have put on a damn coat’ cold. It’s December twenty-fifth so that might seem like a given, but one of the benefits of life on a tropical island is that cold like this is a blessedly rare event.
I tug the sleeves of my black zip-up hoodie a little lower so my hands are protected from the chill.
The wrapping paper covering the gift that’s tucked under my arm crinkles at the shift in my grip.
My breath crystallizes in the air with every labored exhale and my feet ache as I wind my way up the overgrown mountain path.
If I were a proper psychic, I might have foreseen the blisters I would be subjecting myself to by wearing my extremely fashionable, not-at-all-meant-for-hiking black leather platform boots. C’est La Vie. Blisters heal, looking fly as fuck is forever.
A branch snags my tights just above my knee, tearing open a hole that exposes my thigh to the chill in the air.
“Mother fucker,” I mutter, tugging my high waisted shorts down a few inches in the vain hope that they’ll keep me warm somehow.
I told them that having this little gathering by the carousel was a bad idea this time of year.
Of course, they didn’t listen. You would really think they would listen more to the freakin’ psychic.
In all fairness, I didn’t have a cinematic vision of torn tights, unreasonable cold fronts, or blisters but I was right all the same, you would think that would count for something.
I tug my hood up over my head and pull the strings to tighten it into place.
On the bright side, at least I’m not sweating all of my makeup off.
Although, the benefit of my goth-chic look is that even smeared, my eyeliner still looks fabulous.
I stumble through more dead branches, out into the open field.
The old carousel sits quietly a dozen or so yards away, in desperate need of a coat of paint with weeds growing up all around it.
In the spring, this meadow will be full of wildflowers as far as the eye can see, but right now there’s nothing but dead grass and fallen leaves that are well on their way to decaying into a nice layer of compost to feed the soil. And so the circle of life goes on.
I close my eyes and breathe in deeply, letting go of all of the things that weighed me down during my hike up and replacing them with the energy that vibrates and swirls in every molecule of soil and sky and air of this island.
It’s chaotic and beautiful, pulsing with life and lust, the weight of all the love that’s been lost and found here a physical presence as it fills me up.
I knew the second I stepped off the ferry five years ago that this was home. I didn’t know why or what brought me here, but I knew the island wanted me, and I could tell right away that she was used to getting whatever she wanted. Cheeky bitch.
I cross the barren meadow… no, not barren…
slumbering. It’s just resting so it can be stunning and vibrant again in a few months.
We all need a little beauty rest, don’t we?
Leaves and dried grass crunches under my boots all the way to the Rainbow Carousel.
I stop just a few feet in front of it and tilt my head to get a good look at the old broad.
“Hello, Sweetie.” I greet her by blowing a kiss. Someone decked the old carousel out in Christmas lights, red and green ones twinkling in the dimness of the cloudy afternoon.
I don’t bother to mess with any of the buttons on the control panel.
I already know that she won’t start unless she damn well wants to, and the only thing that seems to rev her engine is good old fashioned true love.
I do have a healthy self-esteem, but I’m not ready to hang it up and pronounce myself my own soulmate just yet.
I set my Secret Santa present down on the edge of the platform and reach for the tarnished gold bar that connects the nearest horse to the floor and ceiling so I can heave myself up.
I swing my leg over the plastic beast and then reach into my back pocket for the tattered leather notebook that I stuffed there before ascending the mountain.
The cold nips at my fingertips again immediately, but I ignore it the best I can, flipping the notebook open to a page near the end.
I’ve read this particular entry so many times that the spine is bent to fall right open to it.
I can recite every word in this book from start to finish, but that doesn’t stop me from reading it over and over, every messily scrawled word and rogue dash of ink like a security blanket for my soul.
I drag my index finger over the page, feeling the familiar shape of every word.
I close my eyes again and my breath catches, a feeling too big to be contained filling up my chest and fluttering in the pit of my stomach.
It’s a giddy feeling, an intoxicating feeling.
It’s the kind of feeling that people write poems about and go to war for, that brings men to their knees and inspires them to new heights.
Harold Tellinson poured so much love into every word he wrote about his lover, George that I can feel it even now, like a living thing that isn’t satisfied to be contained by simple ink and paper. It needs to be felt so the two of them can live on for just a flickering moment every now and then.
I curl my fingers back and let out a trembling breath, releasing the ghost of their love with it.
Now if only I could find some of that action for myself instead of living vicariously through a couple of dead guys, things would be fucking peachy.
But self-pity isn’t the look I’m going for, so I shake it off and finally bring my eyes to the page open in front of me.
I lean forward, resting my cheek against the ice cold metal pole.
As I start to read, the world feels like it dissolves around me, placing me right in the moment Harold described in so much detail.
December 24th
I worked my hands to the bone through the entire spring and summer.
On at least a dozen occasions, I tossed my hammer down and gave up on this endeavor entirely.
But I always came back. Day after day, for months on end, I toiled in the hot sun.
The only thing that kept me going was imagining the way my love might smile when he finally saw what I’d been working so hard on.
I would move the mountain itself if it would please George, he need only say the word.
I count myself lucky that he’s perfectly pleased with the location of the mountains, and that it’s only a carousel that needed to be built.
Still, I know I left a piece of myself in it as I crafted it, a piece of George too, I imagine.
I thought of nothing but our love and our life as I built it plank by plank and nail by nail.
I imagined what might become of our little island paradise one day.
I never set out to create a sanctuary when I spent so much of my family money to buy this island.
All I wanted was a place where I could love George without apology and without judgment.
And I suppose that’s all the other residents wanted too, to love and be loved.
We’re not so different from anyone else.
People waste so much time searching for the meaning of life while it’s right in front of us all along. Love, connection, passion…
I dreamed of a world where I could make George my husband while I built that carousel.
I dreamed of a world where no one would have to flee to an island to live the way their heart tells them.
Maybe one day, that world will exist. I like the thought of that, the hope of it, that someone might sit on George’s carousel one day and be free of the fear and sadness that chased us all the way here to Palm Island.
Ah, but I’m getting off topic…
I woke my love at daybreak, feeling like a child on Christmas morning as I kissed him to consciousness, his eyelids fluttering open as his warm lips sought mine even before the fog of sleep cleared.
He was less amused when he realized the hour.
Ha! But I simply couldn’t wait another minute to show him his present.
He had laughed and teased me as I dragged him out of the house. It took us ages to make our way through town, as always. Everyone loves George, and his heart is too big to resist wishing each and every person a Merry Christmas.
He never tires of the warmth of the island, turning his face to the sun and drinking in the ocean air every chance he gets.
He sang Christmas songs and pestered me to build sandmen on the beach with him later the whole way up the mountain path that I had grown so familiar with over the past nine months.
I sang along and kissed him, promising him anything his heart desired, as always.
When we neared the clearing, I covered his eyes and led him through the last of the trees. My only wish is that the meadow had been in bloom when he first laid eyes on it, but I suppose that will be something for me to look forward to showing him in the spring.