We
met in the rain, without words. It was beautiful. When my lips met hers,
slowly, hesitantly, it was without restraint, or care. They were soft, wet from
the cold dripping rain, and chapped from the constant howling wind. I didn’t
care; neither did she.
We
met in the ruins of the abbey atop the hill and hid in the archway that now led
to nothing. In days of old it was proud and tall, a safe haven for all the
townspeople and travelers and monks, now abandoned but for us.
I’ve
known her my whole life, but I’ve always thought of her as mine, my Eliza. I
don’t know if she ever thought of me the same, but when we were in the abbey
ruins, our lips pressed tightly together, I felt like I was hers. She could
have had me for all our lives, had they not been so short.
We
only ever met in the rain.
Alanna
dashes up the hill, stumbles, falls. She pushes to her knees and crawls
forward, willing herself to stand again. She slips in the mud and the wet and
presses ever forward. The hill is steep, the many stairs too visible for her to
dare approach. Instead, she uses her hands to claw herself determinedly up the
mossy slope, drowned in rain and lichen.
The
hill overlooks the entire town to the south, and to the west lies miles of
ocean. In the autumn storms it lies dark and dormant, rain meeting waves in
cacophonous marriage. Atop the hill lies graves, and the ruins.
An
abbey, once rivaled by none, now lies downtrodden. Its stone walls and vaulted
ceiling are gaunt and broken, with centuries dividing it from ruin and its life
as vanguard of the faithful. Its grand face remains, with large windows devoid
now of glass and merely a gaping mouth where the grand wooden door once
welcomed worshipers. The roof protected one last remaining transept, connected
to the rest of the ruins by a tall tower visible for many miles.
It
is in this last vestige of hope and piety that Alanna finally arrives, cold,
wet, and dirty, like many a weary soul searching for guidance. But instead of
clergy she seeks the company of another young woman, for whom she has been
longing to see.
Alanna
waits in the transept under the tower, wrapping her dampened cloak tighter
around her. The thunder rolls, and she trembles, but not for the cold.
She
trembles with apprehension, with anticipation, with desire. Will she be left
alone, as the sky darkens and grows dim, til the only light to shine her way
back the lightning striking ever closer?
She
trembles.
A
clap of thunder shakes the crumbled abbey, and Alanna’s eyes dart to the
patches of clouded sky. She blinks just as lightning illuminates the entire
hillside, leaving sizzled dirt where damp earth once lay.
She
blinks and sees for just a moment a specter, the bright white outline of what
she can only describe as something unnatural. Something that cannot be. Something
dead.
For
a long second it stares back at her, this shining specter of a girl with long
unkempt hair and sunken eyes, staring at Alanna as if they’re old friends.
Alanna
blinks again, her face stricken in silent screams. Then the thunder rolls and
the lightning strikes again, near the first patch of fire-struck earth, and
Alanna is once again alone.
“Are
you there?” a voice calls, gently but urgently, barely audible over the din.
Alanna
tries to call back. It takes three strangled tries before she manages.
“Eliza?
Is that you?”
Another
rain-drenched woman, young as Alanna and just as beautiful, emerges from the
darkened empty doorway and rushes to her, desperate. They grab each other and
hold on, tight enough to leave reddened marks on frozen skin.
For
many seconds they don’t speak, merely touch. Eliza, the taller of the two,
presses kisses to Alanna’s forehead, gripping her by the head as though she
might disappear. Alanna wraps her arms around Eliza’s waist and pulls her
close, hands slowly making their way up Eliza’s back.
“I
missed you,” Alanna murmurs, accepting every kiss like the blind man receiving
Jesus’ healing touch.
“Not
as much as I missed you, my love,” Eliza says, resting her head against
Alanna’s. “It was nothing short of torture to watch you in the square yesterday
and not call out.”
Alanna
smiles, burrows closer to the other girl, impervious to the rain that once
caused her to tremble. “I saw you looking, and I’ve thought of nothing since.”
They
stay like that for long minutes, swaying gently back and forth in the wind.
Their arms keep each other warm, their embrace staves off the chill. And for
these long minutes they feel nothing but the deepest, most perfect love. They
stand protected under the tall shadowed tower, sheltered from the wind and the
fear and the rain.
And
then the thunder rolls, and the lightning flashes closer and closer to the
ruins. Alanna gazes skyward, pulls back in alarm as a crack echoes through the
transept.
“Shh,
my dearest,” Eliza comforts, pulling Alanna close again. “It is only the storm.
Nothing more.”
“But
if were followed – ”
“We
weren’t.”
“But
if we were – ”
“No
one dares to come here but us, Alanna,” says Eliza. She looks Alanna in the
eye, hands caressing her cheek and hair. “No one but us and the spirits that
dwell here.”
“Don’t
speak of such,” Alanna begs, but she doesn’t break her gaze from Eliza’s.
“Then
let us not speak,” Eliza grins.
Their
lips meet gently, held back by the sins they are so ready to commit. They take
their time exploring this long-desired closeness, pressing ever inwards until
it’s unclear where Alanna’s skin ends and Eliza’s begins. Neither have a
thought nor care beyond the feel of the other’s touch.
And
then the thunder rolls, and the lightning strikes, and three horrifying things
happen at once.
From
the darkened doorway comes an angry shout, as two men stand frozen in shock.
From
the rain-soaked transept, barely sheltered from the elements, Alanna and Eliza
spring apart, caught mid-embrace.
From
the sky, a mighty crack as lightning strikes one final time, illuminating the
four figures as the stricken tower crumbles.
Mere
seconds pass but Alanna feels the weight of every one of them as heavy as the
stones surrounding her. She watches as her dearest Eliza stands one moment in
front of her, hand still clinging to Alanna’s cloak, and in the next moment, gone.
Where
she once stood was now only rubble, as the once mighty tower disintegrates into
ruin. The last vestige of light and clarity, the final champion of truth and
love, now dead on the muddy ground, beneath layers of lightning-scorched stone.
Thunder
rolls, and Alanna screams.
The
men drag Alanna from the ruins. The stonemason and the priest, sent to
investigate reports of ghostly sightings in the storm, see her only for her
sins. They listen not to protestations or grief, and pause only to wonder if
there is anything to be done for the other girl…but her body is not to be
recovered, this night or any.
Alanna
knows nothing but her pain, and sees Eliza disappear with every falling tear. The
men carry her to the town hall, where a waiting council of stern-faced elders
await, her father among them. Eliza’s father, among them.
“We
found no spirits, save only she,” begins the stonemason, casting Alanna to the
floor with disgust.
“Alanna,
I demand the truth!” Her father’s words register only dimly.
“…and
one other,” finishes the stonemason.
“Another?
Where is the culprit?”
“Young
fools in love?”
“Has the young man
escaped you, then?”
The priest
speaks up, still as the grave. “Young woman, actually.”
There is silence.
Alanna cries and shivers and remains prone on the dirt floor. The fire lit in
the room is not enough to warm her, will never be enough again.
The priest
matches solemn gaze with Eliza’s father. “It was your daughter, who now answers
for her sins before God, for she no longer stands on this earth.”
Gasps are
drowned out by Alanna’s frightful sobs. She wishes to be dead as well, and not
here, alone among her nightmares.
“Eliza?” the man
says. “My Eliza, dead?”
“And what manner
of sins were you committing there together, that she may end up dead?” demands
Alanna’s father, fear and anger lovingly intertwined in his voice.
“I…” she begins,
but her voice cracks and fails. “I loved her, and she loved me. She…she was
mine.”
At her
confession the rain seemed to pour down harder, gaining torrential power as it
sought to drown out her wails.
The men murmur,
and seem not to know what to do.
“We cannot let
our town fall to sin,” begins the priest.
“My daughter is
dead and yet you speak of sin?”
“Was it not her
sin that caused her to become so?” spits the stonemason, who had seen the
wickedness with his own eyes.
“Mine is alive,
though I refuse to be grateful,” says Alanna’s father, stern and strong. “She must
be punished.”
There are more
whispers, suggestions, and Alanna hears none of them. She craves death. If they
choose to spare her, she will seek it herself. It was a pact she had made, not
with Eliza but with herself, and she knows deep inside she cannot live in this
world freely, openly, and without reservation. She is either a lover of women –
a lover of one woman – or she is no one at all.
The men come to
a decision, and Alanna only realizes this as she is grabbed by each arm and
hauled to her feet. They do not hold her, and the men are forced to drag her
out of the town hall. She dimly notices that one of them is her father. He is
not looking at her.
The rain shocks
her into feeling once more, and she raises her head to stare deep into the
darkness. She gazes towards the direction of the abbey ruins, of Eliza’s final
resting place, and knows she will be there again soon.
Alanna is taken
to her home, her father’s house, and shut into her room. She knows not if the
door is locked or barricaded for she does not test it. She does not think. She
does not sleep.
The rain
continues until morning. It does not stop, but merely lightens as the sky turns
from inkbottle night to the green-tinged grey unique to the seaside. The light
has barely touched the earth when her door opens, and her mother stands before
her.
“Is it true what
they’ve said?” Her voice is falsely strong, as though she is only allowed so
many words before her mouth fails.
Alanna turns to
meet her mother’s eyes. She does not need to speak.
Her mother
gasps, and one hand rises to shield her mouth. The other whips out and catches
Alanna across the cheek. The pain is sharp and smart but Alanna has no tears
left to shed, no emotion left that could broach this unending chorus of
desperate screams that blind all her senses.
Her mother
leaves. Alanna does not see her again.
Her father comes
for her and, wordless, takes her by the arm and pulls her outside. She does not
resist, and trudges behind him, head down, rain seeping into her still-damp
clothes. She only know realizes she’s still covered in the mud of the night
before.
They continue on
a long-winding path through town, displaying her wickedness for all to see. She
distantly hears shouts and perhaps jeers, but cares little for them. She raises
her head when she realizes that they have started to ascend up the hill to the
ruins, and the men from the night before are waiting at the top. Right next to
Eliza’s remains.
Her father drags
her towards them and throws her to the ground, as if she were nothing more than
something dead and rotten washed up from the sea. He moves to stand with the other
men and she looks only at the pile of stones where Eliza lay crushed.
The priest
begins to chant, a call that echoes through the ruins and invites all manner of
ghostly responses.
They do not
disappoint.
The sky darkens
so suddenly that all look up, only to see tumultuous dark clouds rolling in
from over the ocean, swiftly coming to swirl above them. The priest falters,
but renews strength and faith and continues on, despite thunderous melodies of
sudden roaring seas.
Lightning
strikes and in her heart of hearts Alanna calls out for Eliza to be with her.
She waits,
staring only at the ruins, until lightning strikes again. One of the men shouts
in alarm, and soon they all turn to stare. Alanna looks on in solemnity as the
specter, so fearsome to her the night before, arises again from the stone and
mud. But this time it does not disappear as quickly as it comes; this time, it
drifts ever closer.
Within seconds
the dead-eyed ghost girl is close enough to touch, and a few of the men
splinter off and run down the hill, screaming. Another faints at the sight.
Still more stand in frozen silence, and one prostrates himself, begging for his
life.
Alanna just
waits.
The luminous
ghost of love once killed beckons for Alanna, and she rises to her feet.
“Begone, foul
demon, I cast you out in the name of the one and Holy God!” cries the priest,
the only one brave enough to speak.
Alanna brushes
past him, and he proves not brave enough to do much else. The specter leads
Alanna past Eliza’s tomb and through the ruinous remains, past grassy mounds
and dried-up wells to the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea. The abbey once
proudly beckoned ships and spirits alike to its misty shores and now is warns
all away from the poisonous town below.
The ghost pauses
only at the very tip of the headland, and waits for Alanna to come so close
they are nearly touching. Alanna finds herself enchanted by this apparition,
for although it appears only in the form of some nameless girl, she sees in it
Eliza, and herself, and many women before and after, dressed in strange attire
as they smile sadly at her, reaching out their hands. She reaches out her own,
and it gently passes through the shivering death, and for a moment she feels
the truth and beauty known only in the afterlife. She understands love, as pure
and boundless as it can only seldom be, between mother and child and selfless
lovers.
It is with this
last joyous reproach that she is encompassed in the ghost’s embrace. She sways
gently with the cold absent touch, and as she sighs out in contentedness, lightning
cracks.
Thunder strikes.
The headland
crumbles into the sea, and Alanna crumbles with it.
