“We have moonlight.”
She smiled a little. “No we don’t. The moon will still be hiding tonight!”
“We can hold hands.”
“I do like holding your hand.”
“When we kissed last night, that was pretty romantic, right?”
Remy blushed. I mean, I was holding her hand as we sat talking and I felt her get warm. I swear I thought her spirit turned slightly pink, but that might have been my imagination.
“That was my first kiss, Jonas.”
“Mine too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Jonas, what happened to you?”
I shrugged, though I didn’t know if she could see that gesture so I answered in words. “I always felt like I didn’t belong in my life. Like I was an outsider. I was empty. And then a day came where I just felt like there was nothing left to live for. I don’t know why. I did not live a troubled life. My parents were good people, my sister was many years younger so we were not very close, but neither was there animosity. I didn’t feel like she stole my spotlight, or anything like that. In fact, I was rather glad when she was born because I always felt like my parents deserved a child who would love them, you know, show love to them.
She tilted her head and looked at me. “Did you end your life?”
“No! No, I didn’t!” I said, but then I wondered. “I was hit by a car while crossing the street. It was an accident. At least, I thought it was an accident. I remember feeling so low, so done with my life, but I don’t remember stepping out into the crosswalk. I don’t remember looking at the traffic. Perhaps it was not just circumstance. Perhaps subconsciously, I did end my life and that is why the gate will not open for me.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Say what?”
“That you think you are not worthy of Heaven. I need to believe there is reason the gates don’t open. I want to think that I still have a purpose to fulfill here.”
“I’m sorry! I did not mean to imply that you were not worthy of paradise! You couldn’t help being sick, but I was just careless with a life that felt like a burden.”
We sat in silence holding each other for a long time.
“Jonas?”
“Yes?”
“If the gate opened for me, right now, I wouldn’t leave. I wouldn’t leave you.”
“I wouldn’t leave you either.”
Tenth:
We spent every day and every night together for weeks.
We told each other every secret, every wish and every fear.
She told me how it felt to know death was coming for you and I told her how it felt to wake up startled, alone, upon the freshly turned soil before my stone. I told her how I ran from it, and that I was still running from it.
But she held me in her arms and my soul changed from a thing that was cold and lonely to something that felt love in the simplest, purest form. Every moment we were together, I just simply wanted to be near her. I wanted to hear her voice, her laughter.
And each day that the moon grew bigger, brighter in the sky, I could see her more clearly.
She was so beautiful.
Is it strange that I could enjoy being a shade so much more than I was ever able to enjoy my mortal life?
I guess not. My mortal life had not included Remy.
And that made me wonder. We were both in this place; she must have been nearby in life as I was. Why didn’t my life ever cross paths with hers? Or did it? Did I just miss my opportunity to have something wonderful because I was too caught up in how miserable I was?
Or maybe it was supposed to be just like this.
“Remy,” I started quietly, as we sat looking at the full moon. “Have you thought that perhaps we are both here because we were missing each other?
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we are spirits, right? Perhaps we have lived other lives. Perhaps we were Daniel and Mary Margaret and you were my most beloved wife. Perhaps we have met and loved in many lives but this one just slipped away too quickly. Or perhaps you told me once that you would not be with me unless I was the last person on earth, and now I am.
“I would not have said that!” she laughed.
“No, perhaps you wouldn’t have said that, but you said you regretted that you didn’t have a chance to fall in love. I could never make a bond, I never felt comfortable with anyone. Something was missing in me, until the moment I saw you reading the stones. Now every time you leave me, even if you just step away for a moment, it feels like I am being torn apart. When you touch me, when I hear your laughter, I feel Heaven in my spirit. I love you.”
“Oh Jonas, those are the most wonderful words I have ever heard! Is this love the definition of True Love? Is what we have found fate? Can we be the lovers who are always reunited through all of time?”
“Yes, I think that is exactly what we are. Somehow this life went awry, but our spirits still found each other.”
“Jonas, I know you don’t like to see it, but will you show me your stone?”
She was right, I did not wish to see it, but I nodded and took her hand. I walked the rows; each step closer was exponentially harder to take. I always stayed as far from this area as I could. But Remy held my hand ever tighter until I stopped beside the black flame shaped stone. I simply could not stand before it and see my name with words of sympathy from people who cared for me. I could not look at it.
“This is yours?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve avoided it all this time and you don’t even know that we lie head to head.”
“This is you?” I asked as surprise and regret colored the simple words.
“It is, Jonas,” she replied as she walked to the front of my stone.
Then she gasped.
“What is it? What do you see?”
“You came here just two days after I did. I mean, I read your stone when it was new, but it has meaning now. You said there was a day...”
“...when I had nothing left to live for. It was the day you left the world, Remy.”
“It’s strange, that you should have searched the mortal world for something that was missing from your life, and here it was lying with you all this time.”
“Forgive me. If I could have faced my stone, we might have met long ago.”
She laughed. “Maybe we did meet long ago, when you were Daniel and I was Mary Margaret and you swept me off my feet at the summer house!”
“Or perhaps we met at church when I was James and you were Barbara and I walked you home.”
“And once again we lie here together. Together, Jonas. I will stay with you for all of time, my beautiful spirit. My soul will be the other half of yours and if we can’t enter paradise through the gates, we will make our own paradise here, in true love,” she said as he wrapped her arms around me and we kissed like we were the happily ever after in every fairy tale ever written.
And just as the first fingers of the orange light of day should have burst over the horizon, there was another light.
It shown down in a blaze of glory.
The gates to paradise were opened.
* * *
“You’re crying again. I thought you wanted eternity.”
“I did.”
“So, you don’t really want eternity. You want the fairy tale, the ‘Once Upon A Time’ up to ‘and they lived Happily Ever After.’
“Yes, tell me about a magical first kiss or an epic romance.”
“Will you fall in love with me?”
“Maybe,” she laughed.
* * *
The Phoenix and The Serpent
1. Zal:
Once upon a time, in the days when Sages read the paths of the moon and the stars for wisdom, a child was born to a king in Siestan.
A son. A prince.
He was perfect in all ways, brimming with vitality, with a face like paradise and strength well beyond
what an infant should possess. But he was unlike any child born in that land, because his hair was as white as the mythical snow in tales of places far away and his eyes gleamed like silver coins. So though the nurses marveled at the child in wonder, they also feared him because there was no other like him and that was a dangerous omen.
I was that child.
A day came when my father, King Saam, bid the women to bring me to him so he might call down a blessing upon his son, his only child.
There was not joy in that first meeting.
There was shame. There must have been because he ordered my death.
I don’t remember that day, per se. I was still a babe. Not newly suckled, but not yet of an age to run.
I did not remember my father or his words. I did not know if it pained him to speak them or if he spoke rashly. I did not remember those who carried me up the mountain or even the trip itself.
But I remembered the first moment I saw her.
A Phoenix as glorious as the sun followed behind us. Her long, glistening feathers seemed to cast rainbows back into the morning sky as she soared, but she cast no shadow over me. I watched her fly into the eye of the sun and return a ball of flame streaking through the vast blue.
I remember waving my pudgy hand at her.
She spoke inside my head. Her voice was as sweet as song. She told me to be brave.
But I felt no fear. I did not know the one carrying me had a knife at her belt to spill my blood. I only knew that I was seeing something wondrous. So I did not fear when they set me down upon the mountain. I did not look at them when they said it would only hurt for a moment because my Phoenix was coming.
Her wings were spread wide and her talons were like silver daggers as she let out a fearsome shriek and dove at the women. Her shadow obscured the ground, making the bright morning as dark as the deep of night. The women screamed and scattered trying desperately to out run the winged death chasing them as I sat upon the dirt clapping and laughing.
At last the Phoenix landed a good distance away from where I sat.
Her feathers seemed to flicker like fire in the sunlight.
She crept slowly closer to me. “Are you hurt, foundling?”
I shook my head and reached for out for her.
She came closer, close enough for me to touch her and from that moment I loved her.
And she loved me like her own hatchling.
2. Zal:
Many years I lived at the top of the mountain in the great nest with the love and protection of my adopted mother guiding me from an infant to a boy and from a boy to a man.
I asked her why, why would she save me? Why spare the life of an accursed boy sentenced to die? Did she not fear what those who cast out such a child feared?
But she laughed and she stroked my cheek gently with her graceful talons and she said, “when a wish is granted, Zal, you accept the treasure that the heavens have given.”
“I was not a treasure. I was an omen they wished to be rid of,” I replied quietly.
“No, my darling one, they just read their portent wrongly and one day they shall regret that error very deeply, but I will have raised you to the sort of man able to forgive. A man who is able to love what is deeper than beauty. A man who is brave in the face of danger, loyal in times of need and steadfastly upholds what is right. You see, Zal, my hatchlings were long gone. A Phoenix can remake itself many times as long as even one feather and the will to return exist in the world. I lost my will. I was ready to resign to the final fire but I asked the heavens to give me a reason to live and the women brought to my mountain the most perfect blessing in all of this world. You, my little foundling, are the reason the magic is still in this world. And as you died that day so shall you be reborn as the shining prince of Siestan, for you are also a Phoenix and that return shall be glorious. The destiny that awaits you in the world of men will live on through the ages.”
“I have no wish to return to the world of men,” I said softly, my eyes lowered.
She laughed again and pulled me close into the warmth of her golden feathers. “You have no wish to go right now, but one day you will. And you will find the love of a woman in that world. You will raise strong sons of your own.”
“I only want to stay here with you. I wish I could sprout wings and be like you and not be a man with this fragile skin. I wish...”
“Well you should not wish such things,” she said gently, her voice soft like a song. “You are made for a special purpose. All creatures are, it is how the world is balanced. Now sleep my son and tomorrow the world will be a different place as you see it with eyes another day older.”
But the world was not so different and I disliked my form, I found it weak in comparison to all the other animals that survived and thrived with purpose. I could not disguise myself as the others did when they hunted and avoided being hunted. I had not claws or sharp teeth nor even feather or fur to keep me warm. And I became sullen. Just as in the world of men I was a singularity, so was I here in the place that was my home.
I sat upon the forest floor and I did not have a care for where I was or what creature I might be disturbing. I just picked up the stones and unthinkingly threw them.
It was but a moment later that I felt such pain I thought my death had come.
Nine summers had passed and at last death had come to the mountain for me. I did not hear my scream, I only saw the fear in the eyes of the Serpent as he tried to escape my grasp.
My mother came. She saw the puncture upon my leg and the creature still writhing in my grasp. “Look at him, my son. Look at him well and then set him free.”
“He has killed me. Why should I release him?” It was not a bitter question, but a curious one.
“He has not killed you, child,” she said as she took one of her feathers from her tail. It turned to ash the moment she touched it to my wound, but the moment that ash kissed my skin the wound was gone.
“You should release him because he has only done what he had to do. Look at the serpent. What does he have? He has not arms or claws to fight off an invader. He has not wings to fly. He is not great in size. He cannot even frighten off the hunter with a fearsome scream. He has but one thing to save himself, his venom, but he must be brave enough to get to close to that which he fears and use it to save his nest. And you, my son, were throwing rocks.”
It was a lesson. She did not chide me or scold me for my ignorance. But I looked from her to the serpent still in my grasp and I asked his forgiveness as I set him free. I, like all creatures had to use that which was given to me and I had not appreciated enough the school unto which I had been sent.
And so from that day I learned all the animals would teach me. I learned how to hide myself and how to make myself seen. I learned speed and stealth. I learned how to protect and when to fight.
From there I began to grow into a man.
And my mother was proud.
3. Ruby:
The shining child. The people who loved me called me that.
The people who did not called me Descendant of the Serpent.
Both titles came with reputations that were hard to both live up to and live down. I was first daughter of the King of Cabul, a man unjustly judged upon the actions of his forefather, Zohak the Serpent, so even though my father was a good and just man and a fair ruler of his people, the distrust of the Shah of the World always hung menacingly over us.
In truth, Zohak was not entirely evil, he was simply under equipped to become King and relied on instinct, trickery, guile and nerves of steel to gain prosperity. He was not opposed to making a bloody mess to show his strength either. And yet though he made enemies, he also celebrated his friends and protected his people.
But some men can never let die injuries to their pride and they called us all serpents, deceivers.
I was only a child and as is the way of childhood, I ignored the troubles of the world. They were n
ot mine yet mine to bear.
Though innocence is far too short and rumors grow much bigger than the Cypress trees and from them there is no shelter.
With each passing year songs and tales about the beauty of the face I was born with spread from city to city. And with the praise there came whispers that I should be given to the Shah as a gesture of goodwill. Though I was only thirteen summers in age, the people who lived in fear that the Shah would raze our lands and exterminate all we were, thought that I was treasure of the sort that might quell the lingering bitterness. I feared to be such a gift.
I wished for a hero where none was likely to come.
And I do think that my father knew well that beauty was not enough to conquer the generations of hatred. He stalled the whispers, saying I was not of an age to be such a liaison. But he began to take me among his entourage as he traveled the kingdoms seeking friendships and alliances, speaking kind words and giving extravagant gifts to kings who might call him friend.
I do think he was hoping that there existed such a prince who might desire me for a wife and have enough might to protect our people.
But such a man was nowhere to be found.
It was en route to our last visit that I beheld a sight that struck both fear and awe into my heart. The sun was shining down upon the land as it made its journey toward the horizon. Our caravan was about to enter the mountain pass where the trees would obscure the last of the day and bring relief from the heat. I looked upward, marveling at the beauty of the slopes and tall trees when something at the peak caught my eye. It seems to glitter like silver, backlit by the sun, but as my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw that it was man. I could not see his face, but only his size and the perfection carved out against the fiery rays of the sun. And at his right hand was a vast bird, so bright she seemed to be a ball of flame with spread wings. I shook my father’s arm and bid him to look upon this marvel that I could not tear my eyes from. I heard him gasp and call a blessing upon the one who ruled the mountain. But a moment later as the horses continued upon the path he was lost to me.