EPILOGUE #2
With his help, she brought in all her bags.
David had brought her everything he and his valet could carry from Sy’s apartment, including his clothes and all of his art, carefully stored in the long paper tube.
She’d bought him a new set of paints and canvas (she could handily build him an easel), at least three months’ worth of cigarettes, and some dry goods from the grocer, who, when told it was for a dinner in Sy’s memory, packed Anya all his favorites – not the stuff he bought for his blood, but his real favorites: pickled red cabbage, madeleines, paprika and coriander and cinnamon.
She kept one last provision in its velvet box in her pocket, saving it for the perfect moment.
A new earring, a regal sunburst on a delicate golden chain, the center set with a glowing orange gemstone called hyacinth.
For herself, new boots and a brand-new shotgun – double barreled.
She had let David and Sabina do most of the speaking for her.
Edgard, wearing a curled claw around his neck and a crown adorned with iridescent gold and orange feathers, had agreed to pay her a third of the value of her estate upon its sale, in respect of her loss.
He then confiscated those funds as recompense for her years of poaching.
But, he felt he owed her something for catching him the phoenix, though less than what was originally promised, since she could not grant his wish, and had in fact proven it was impossible.
A king’s broken dream was worth, evidently, fifteen thousand gold sovereigns.
She accepted his reward graciously, and swore, hand to her heart, to never poach from the king’s forest again.
“I won’t turn my nose up at the coin,” Perrine had said after, “but I can’t believe you swore off hunting.”
“I swore off hunting in the king’s forest,” Anya corrected.
Perrine only stared at her.
“The Lichtenwald is not the king’s forest,” Anya grinned, counting the last of Perrine’s coin. “Is it?”
She split the sum between Perrine, Sabina, David, Bertrand, and herself. With her share, she was hiring a thatcher and was going to see a man about a proper door.
All the while, Sy listened to her, listlessly sorting through his old things. Remembering her own desire to shed all reminders of her past life, she started to regret bringing them to him. When he picked up his license to practice, she stopped her endless prattle. “I’ve upset you.”
He looked up; a peculiar smile curled his lips. “No, Anya, you really haven’t.”
But it didn’t reach his eyes. “Then…if there’s something else I can bring you–” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I could get curtains.”
“Can you bring me back from the dead?”
She froze. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.” He lifted the license. “I do know. That life is gone, my death put to paper. I can’t ever return to ?bender. I was prepared for this, had been prepared for this. But now that it’s come to pass, I – well, it’s silly, but somehow it feels more final than anything that’s happened.”
“If you want to go, I can help you,” she said quickly. “Wherever you want. To Preule, or across the Starling Sea–”
“Anya,” he said, and her name was a song on his tongue. “My love. I want to be where you are.”
“I want to be where you are, too,” she whispered.
When he spoke again, his voice was far away. “I saw very strange things.”
“I know,” she said softly. Both of them had, each in their own way.
He looked at her. Some of the distance had been closed. Not all of it; some would always remain. Things neither of them could ever say.
“Paint them,” she said suddenly. “Paint them, for me. Even if I don’t understand. Even if they exist only in your imagination. I want to see them.”
After a moment, he set down the license. It drifted to the floor. “There’s something I must do first.”
“I…” Birds were chirping outside. Summer was a busy time. There was still so much to do. “I can help, whatever it is.”
He stepped around the table. “It’s very dire.” He brushed a loose hair from her cheek. “Absolutely necessary.”
“It…” Seven skies, her words actually caught in her throat. “Do you need me, then?”
“Desperately.” He leaned closer; his words were hot in her ear. “You see, I simply must touch every square inch of you.”
“...Oh,” she returned, breathless as he planted a kiss on her throat.
“For only one night, of course,” he murmured, lips lingering on the softest part of her neck.
“And the next night.” Another kiss, on the space between her eyes, which fluttered closed.
“And the next.” On her cheek, lightly, teasingly slow, to the left of her tingling lips.
His hands found her waist; his thumbs the skin of her hipbones, just under the waistline of her trousers.
“Mornings sometimes, too. The rare afternoon.”
When he leaned in again, she lifted her chin and caught his lips with hers. Eyes closed, she felt his turn upwards into a smile.
Then her own smile fell, and she kissed him like his breath belonged in her lungs.
There was work to be done.
They spent the afternoon in each other’s arms.
They stayed there all night. Awake, and avid. Asleep. Awake again, and gentle, and slow, not as if they had all the time in the world, but as if their touching could stop time from passing.
Every night would be the same. What they did would change; sex, sickness, sleep. Maybe the bed would, if they could afford it, or the sheets. Their bodies would, as age, the miser, took its dues. Their hearts, too, to a degree. But not that they shared it – the night, the bed, the work.
As the afternoon passed, she paid no mind to the warm wind blowing through the hole in the roof.
Nor, as the moon rose, to the stars singing their night song.
Nor, as dawn approached, to the blackbird’s farewell to the dark.
She shared in the body beneath hers, on top of hers, beside hers.
In the spirit that sang to her like nothing else in this world, or any other.
In the way the dawn painted his face, in his face made soft with sleep, in her own body, her own heart, made precious.
Every night would be the same, until one night, it wouldn’t.
What luck, she thought, to the rising of the sun. What beauty.