Chapter 38 The Most Brilliant Thing #2
She moved quickly, terrified someone would find her, and she grabbed hold of Caspian’s wrists, pulling him toward her.
He was heavy, though, and it took several attempts before his head and shoulders finally came up.
Once he was bent at the waist, Aurora paused a moment to catch her breath, wiping her forehead with her cloak.
Then she moved behind him and hooked her arms under his, grunting as she heaved his body up to the edge of the casket.
Then she pushed.
It wasn’t graceful or respectful. In fact, it was outright blasphemous, and as Caspian’s body rolled over the side of the casket and dropped into the snow with a heavy thud, Aurora hoped with everything in her that this would remain a secret between her and the Sun, one that no one else would ever hear of.
She tried not to imagine the look that would cross Caspian’s face if he could see her right now, and the thought made her want to laugh and cry in equal measure.
He would be absolutely horrified, and Aurora would probably laugh because she wouldn’t know what else to do, and it would only make things worse.
When Aurora had pulled him away from the casket and out into the open, she looked up at the sky, waiting. She could not imagine how she would ever explain this if the Sun changed her mind, and when she could no longer take the silence, she said, “It is done.”
Aurora’s entire body was full of hope, overflowing with it, so much that she thought she might lift off the ground and float away. For another beat of her heart, there was nothing but quiet, and Aurora started to worry that she had misunderstood, somehow made it all up to ease her pain.
Then the Sun spoke again.
I sit at the center of the universe, and the most brilliant thing I have ever been witness to is love, she said. Treasure it, protect it, and above all else, enjoy it.
With that, the sunlight vanished, and a vast darkness settled over Reverie.
Aurora began to shiver, and she heard the wolves howl in the distance.
Then, in a sudden rush, the mountain began to shake, violent and strong, and Aurora dropped to the ground to cover Caspian.
A radiant light reached between the peaks and illuminated the earth where they lay, Aurora squinting against the intensity of it.
Keep your hand tightly around his, the Sun said. Do not let go no matter what.
Aurora grabbed Caspian’s hand in hers, and before she could reply, the Sun began speaking. Aurora could not make out the words, though she could hear the power in them. The force of them.
The love.
And she knew the Sun wasn’t thinking about Aurora’s love for Caspian but rather her own love for the first Starmaker.
An excruciating pain began in Aurora’s right arm, rolling down the length of it and out through her hand that held Caspian’s.
At first she thought the Frost was coming for her, but it was an entirely different kind of pain, a hollowing out.
Aurora screamed in agony, and she had an unbearable urge to pull away and bury her skin in the snow, anything to stop the hurt.
She didn’t know how she managed it, how she kept her hand around Caspian’s, but even as her body shook and her insides felt as if they were being scraped out, she held on tightly.
All at once, Aurora understood what was happening.
Her life was being shortened, the thread of her very existence pulling apart as year after year was sucked out of her and given to Caspian.
Tears streamed down her face from the pain or the grief or the awe of what was happening, and in a rush she could see all the years she was giving up as if they were memories playing out in her mind.
Years of laughter and sunlight and warmth.
Years of longing and sleepless nights and incurable aches deep inside her.
All of them beautiful. All of them hers.
And perhaps the most stunning thing of all was that in each year she saw, Aurora was content.
She had found a way to build a life for herself around all the grief, because the loving had been worth it.
Loving her sister and her family and her nieces and nephews who hadn’t even been born yet.
Loving her animals and her roses and her mountain.
Loving.
Aurora mourned each year she lost, but as they were torn from her body in an excruciating stream, her grasp on Caspian’s hand was strong, never once faltering.
She saw what she was giving up, and still she held on, knowing she would treasure and carry those years as she embarked on a different path with Caspian by her side.
Aurora loved Caspian, not in a way that stitched her world together but in a way that broke it apart entirely, and she wanted to pick up every piece and every shard and create a new world that was big enough to hold them both.
Aurora looked up to the sky, her breath catching as the darkness came to life with the northern lights.
Streaks of purples and greens, pinks and yellows, reds and blues glided across the sky like a perfectly choreographed dance.
The Sun was crying along with her, and it was a moment so dreamlike, so mesmerizing, that Aurora was sure she would look back on it and question whether it had been real.
Then, almost as suddenly as the colors had arrived, they vanished. Aurora watched as a star fell through the darkness, falling and falling and falling until it landed directly on Caspian’s chest.
The mountain stopped shaking, and sunlight once again claimed the day.
An incredible silence followed, the wolves no longer howling, the voice of the Sun gone.
Aurora’s breathing was the only sound that remained, and she scrambled to her knees and propped Caspian’s head in her lap, searching his face for any sign of life.
But there was nothing. Aurora stared at him, not understanding why he wasn’t moving. Why he wasn’t breathing.
“Come back to me,” she whispered, pleading with him. “Please come back.”
The mountain was still, as if the trees and the rabbits and the flowers were all spectators, waiting to see what would happen. Aurora held her breath.
“Come back to me,” she said again, this time more forcefully. She brushed his hair out of his face and smoothed her hand down his neck, coming to rest over his heart. “Come back.”
She would stay there, holding him, until she had to let go of the light, and after she had fulfilled her duty to the mountain, she would return to him and stay through the long night, letting no one near him until the Sun herself told her it had all been a dream, a vivid, wild dream to cope with the sadness of his burial.
She would stay because even though he wasn’t moving, even though his heart did not beat and his lungs did not breathe, she could feel the years she’d given to him moving beneath his skin like a gently rolling river.
They were there, and she would stay until they woke.
Then Caspian’s chest rose. She couldn’t be sure, but it felt as if her hand had moved, rising with his rib cage. She watched him but saw nothing. She kept her palm firmly on his chest and her eyes fixed on his abdomen, but after several minutes of stillness, she realized she’d imagined it.
“Please,” she whispered.
Then Caspian gasped, his eyes flying open and his chest expanding with a huge intake of air.
He looked around, taking in the sanctuary and his open casket and the falling snow before he found her eyes.
He stared at her, bewildered, and he blinked several times, as if trying to prove that what he saw was real.
Then his breathing slowed, and Aurora watched as understanding settled on his face.
He thought Aurora had brought him back, just as she had said she would. And while it was the Sun who had done it, perhaps it was Aurora after all, telling the Sun a story she had desperately needed to hear.
His mouth opened slightly, and he shook his head in disbelief. He pushed himself up so he was sitting directly in front of Aurora. Slowly, he slid both hands up her arms, over her neck, settling on either side of her face. He rested his forehead against hers.
Then finally, he spoke. “My god, you’re a stubborn thing.”
Aurora laughed, big and loud, and with tears streaming down her cheeks, she flung her arms around Caspian’s neck and kissed him.