18
“Do you ever wonder how you might die?” Francesca had asked one overcast afternoon.
The words lingered between us like smog, an acrid thing that polluted the forest air. Poisonous in their expulsion, my lungs stilling so I dare not breathe them in.
“You shouldn’t speak of such things!” I insisted, my heart fluttering as I studied the sincerity of her expression.
“Why not? We all die, Rabbit. It’s not such a scandalous thing to wonder about.” Francesca said with dismissal, her heel tracing lines in the dusty earth.
“Of course, I know that. But it’s such a sorrowful thing to mention. I don’t like to discuss it.”
“Well, I should like to die young,” she had said, the ease of it like electricity through me.
“You shouldn’t wish to die young, Frannie. You should wish to grow old, to live life, to fall in love and experience wonders aplenty,” I urged, a sickening worry settling in my stomach.
The sun was blazing across the stones in the small clearing, steam rising through the winter air as we drew shapes across the dirt.
“Perhaps,” she mused, mind wandering elsewhere, eyes glazed in thought, cheeks flushed as though they heated her.
“Why would you wish such a thing, anyway?”
“If I were to die young, it would prevent me turning into our mother’s, at least. The only memories I would carry would be of joy and hope and my mind would still be filled with daydreams. I look at my mother sometimes and wonder how she ended up so sad. I don’t want that.
I want to die before the world tarnishes my thoughts.”
“I suppose that’s an understandable perspective. But I would miss you if you did, and would very much like to grow old with you instead.”
“Well, Rabbit, perhaps we could die young together,” she says it as though she’s foreseen it as though it were a promise upon her tongue. My stomach clenched at the ease of it, the passive way she spoke of our deaths.
“What are you saying?”
“Nothing, I’m just being foolish.”
She resumed drawing shapes through the earth with her heel, mind already beginning to move onto the next collection of thoughts. A sharp worry tickled through my spine as I watched her.
“Frannie,” I said slowly. “I hope you know that if you were to die, I simply couldn’t go on without you. You’re the sole purpose for my existence.”
And it felt true, in that moment. That without her, I would cease to exist.
“It’s okay, Rabbit. I’m not going anywhere. Everything is as it should be.”
I hadn’t known it then, the irony in her words.
The foreboding she had expressed into the universe.
I hadn’t known how beneath the dripping gum leaves, winter breeze kissing our skin, she’d doomed our fate.
That within months, the world would be turned inside out, and everything we understood would prove a lie.
She emerges from the woodland with quiet footfall, face flushed crimson as she straightens her skirts with assessing eyes.
I watch silently from the kitchen window, the house in silence around me, as she closes the old wire gate with a gentle touch, seemingly ensuring its silence.
The child I knew still lingers beneath her glowing skin, the memories of childhood at the seam of my memories. They press against every thought as I watch her, pushing through the haze that lingers like smoke through my conscious.
That young girl who used to whisper secrets to her rag dolls and make wishes on falling stars. The child who, through tears and apologies, would always right her wrongs, for the fear of causing hurt was too great to bear. Whose pride was second to her compassion.
I watch her now, shadows dancing across her woman, and realise how much she’s changed. No longer the baby-faced child I knew. She’s grown – all curved edges and filled fabrics.
The sun is yet to rise beyond the mountains, the summer air still chilled from a midnight embrace, light barely brushing the tips of the trees. Birdsong echoes through the yard, weaving its way beneath the windowpanes as the earth welcomes a new day.
Creaking floorboards sound behind me, mother’s presence imminent as Isabel slowly tiptoes through the yard, making my breath hitch in worry.
She smiles to herself, twirling through the overgrown grass, twisting a length of hair between her fingers.
There’s an unrelenting innocence to her, even through the new flush of womanhood – a joy I’ve not felt within myself in an age.
I can’t help but smile as I witness it, pleased for whatever brings her such lightness.
Happy for her, until my gaze draws to something lazily clutched in her hand.
Hellebores, red as freshly drawn blood.