Young Writers Society

He watched her letter burn in the darkness. Smoke wafted into the air, signaling to the world his crime. So he closed his eyes. The black canvas of his eyelids was strewn with images of her, and when he opened them again she peered back at him from the flames. It went so far beyond imagination.

He could picture her hair, damp from the autumn rain, streaming down her shoulders to her waist in a river of crimson, a deep exotic red like a rare wine he longed to drink. Her face, angular and pale, was marred by the quater-sized scar high on her cheekbone, a disfigurement that made her more real than anything without blemish. A storm raged in her gray eyes, but her face was sad. Her lips parted to utter some curse or spell, bestow some punishment which he knew he deserved, but instead of words issuing from her mouth a single tear leaked from her eye and tumbled down her cheek.

He had never seen her cry, and that was when he knew it was not real. She’d left him hours before, and he did not blame her.

You asked me my name, she said with the voice that was capable to travel through him as swift as any bullet, and it was nearly as painful. Beautiful and painful. It started the night you asked me my name. Do you remember?

She knew he never forgot. He never misplaced a memory or let a moment fade over time. His first sight of her, that remarkable hair a stream of deep vivid red and eyes that seemed to both blaze with anger and cry out for deliverance, was branded in his brain. He would never forget, never lose the feeling that that from that first night her hand had crept into his chest and seized his heart, unwilling to let go.

No, he replied flatly. No, I can’t recall. But you always remembered better than I.

He took a long, smoldering drag on his cigarette and exhaled and watched the smoke drift lazily up toward the stars.

Jacob.

He couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t look at her. If he did he would surely die - scream or beg or weep. If he looked at her he would break again. And this time he might end up telling her the truth.

That he loved her; with as much passion as he hated himself he loved her, and the thought of uttering it aloud to her, the one he cared for most and the one he had hurt so abominably, was so painful he wished he'd never known her. That was the truth; it was why he lied.

Jacob, she said, forcefully this time, and he pinched his cigarette to keep from shuddering. Then she had closed the gap between them, though he tried to move away. Not to be denied, she seized his shoulders and tried to shake him, but it was as if he was made of stone. What is wrong with you? I’ve waited so long for this. I’ve come all this way just to see you. Do not abandon me now. Her voice morphed from anger to pleading. Jerusha.

It was the sound of her uncannily hoarse, musical, human voice breaking over his name that shattered his icy veneer. His cigarette was hurled at the ground, and the night was shattered by his tortured cry.

ENOUGH!

Enough, he gasped, his back to her because he would not face her again. No more, Anna. No more.

There was a silence nearly as painful as hearing the beauty in her voice.

But:

Then I am too late.

He said, Yes, and he felt her cringe at the ice in his voice. The resolution. The resistance.

Too long. Years had bled into decades, fraying into centuries as the world grew and babies were born and people died; the rivers turned black and the sun sank in a red haze. And the world of long ago, of endless forests and oceans of tundra, palaces and blood that ran deeper in veins than the cracks in the earth, was lost, and the people that belonged there were lost with it.

Forgive me. Her breath was harsher than the arctic winds, but he felt the heat of her lapping against his back. He felt her intense gaze on the back of his head as he stared into the night, blacker than pitch, in this place were darkness was kept away by strange ever-burning lights, when all he wanted was the protective cover of shadows.

Take this, she said, commanding, demanding. Take it, for it’s all I can offer you, all that I have, and it is the last thing I will ever give you. You already own my heart. What more is there to give?

Her hand was outstretched, but he dared not move for fear of catching a glimpse of her pale hand, afraid that he would again see it snaked with chains and smeared with blood as he had once before, that he would remember how she had gotten that scar on her cheek. He shut his mind to the memory; she would never be anyone’s possession again.

Not even his.

Please, Jerusha.

His hand found hers, and before he could relish the warmth of fragile skin on fragile skin he pulled away and closed his fist around her last and final gift. He wanted, suddenly, to tell her how he would treasure it, how it would stand the test of time and travel with him through the centuries. How what she loved, he would love also.

He would love, always, but from a vast distance. How he wished he could weep as he said, I'm not Jerusha anymore.

Goodbye, then, Jacob. He flinched but stood his ground. How laconic, how flat her words were. He was used to her voice being lilting, full of emotion she never tried to hide, and he hated being the one to take that from her. Perhaps one day . . .

Do not come looking for me again, was all he could think to say, and it came out as black and empty as his soul.

No, I will not. I know now that you do not wish to see me again, and you do not care that we will live through the ages of this world apart. I only hope that one day I might have that same luxury.

*

Jacob knew she was gone. He sank to his knees, shaking, his eyes unbearably dry and his stomach rolling.

"What have I done?"

Her gift was a ball in his fist. He peeled back his fingers, one by one, blood rushing back bringing feeling along with it. A letter in a yellowing envelope, sealed with a circle of wax as it had been done years ago. His fingers traced her handwriting, his own name, and they itched to open it.

Hours later found him there, bent over his love’s last token, and as the night grew colder than he ever thought possible for Earth to be, he knew what he had to do.

His lighter. A violent spark and the budding of flame that licked the paper and soon began to devour it and its secrets. The unbroken seal melted in the heat and trickled away, like streams of lifeblood.

He would never forget her face, for it was in his mind always.

Jacob waited until the fire died, then he crushed the ashes with his boot and walked away into the night, toward the river where there were no lights, where he could hide in the shadows and imagine away the pain.