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Dr. ANITA L TRINGALI - NURSE PRACTITIONER

Snow fell from branches, dusting the hillside like soft down feathers as Embla leapt from tree to tree. Down the way the stream bubbled along, the rind of ice just melting in the coming sun, and somewhere in the woods the bears made their first stirrings as the spring wind blew through their caves. She stayed one step ahead of change, ducking out of sight of the coming dawn, into the shadows as she watched him come down the road, his cloak the red of autumn leaves, his hair the waning gold of summer’s sun.

“You know you can’t hide from me for long, Embla,” he called, pausing to shake the branches of last-jump’s tree, the snow falling, melting on his lips and brow. “You’ll have to say goodbye to me sometime. I’ve brought cakes and mead enough to last a lifetime.”

“And only time enough to last the daylight.” Embla slipped down into the brambles by the riverside, the water cold on her feet. She pulled the shadows around herself like a cloak, hiding her face from the stray sunbeams spilling through the trees. His music reached for her, a faint beat that thrummed through the air, but she dare not be drawn to it no matter how tempted she was, lest it coil around her ankles and pull her down beside him. It would be too easy to slip into that sleep with him, dozing peaceful in the grass as the world went on without them. “Will you give me up so easily for a scrap of metal? Is a bit of jewel and gold enough to give up your godhood? Speak the word and the mountains will open their tombs of silver and gold to you; whisper to the wind and bring a fire that will forge steel stronger than any mortal hand. You don’t need to do this; we need not say farewell. Stay with me.”

“Come, now, you sound like a child!” Laughter followed his words and though he tried to disguise the barbs of them, she felt them all the same. He came down the path, his boots squelching in the mud and his cloak whipping around his ankles. Blue eyes searched through the darkness for her; the color had risen in his cheeks, pink like twilight. “Sweet Embla, you know I cannot. A god can rule a land, but a king must rule the people. A king of flesh and blood, a man they can write songs about, who can lead wars to win honor and glory in a way no god ever could. And a king must have his crown. Is this how you’d spend our last night?”

“You’re ignoring the point,” she said, and moved in silence through the dark, for fear that his eyes would find her. He could not say goodbye if he couldn’t find her—he couldn’t hurt her with the carefree look in his eyes if he couldn’t see her. “If all you want is a crown, I’ll make you one. Bring me a bit of holly and some birch, a rope, a—”

“And you’re being purposefully difficult!” he said, and then paused to draw a breath. “You’re right. It’s not the crown that matters.” He crouched by the river, looking down at the print of a heel left on the bank, washing away with the course of the river. Running his fingers through the mud, he smiled. “I need to see you, I need to hear you this one last time. Don’t make me do this alone, Embla. Please.” He cast the accusation out into the dark underbrush, maybe hoping for a response to lead him closer—he would be disappointed—she made no move. “I’m doing this for my people.”

“And what about you?” Embla climbed again into the trees, creeping from branch to branch overhead, using her words to disguise the rustle of the leaves. She peered down on him from above, his golden hair a sun in winter. “What about your magic? You’ll have to give it all up. Your nights of coming out here to see me will be over. Once you cross that veil, there’s no coming back.”

“The people don’t need magic now. Nor do they need a king who believes in it and spends half his life wandering across the veil,” he said, his voice so soft the babble of the water nearly hid it. He looked up into the trees and her heart froze—almost she thought he had seen her, but he was only staring into the shadows, his eyes wet. “Please don’t do this to me. Do you think I enjoy this? Do you think I don’t long to run away from it all? I’m not happy to give this up!”

“Then don’t,” she whispered, edging closer, dragging the shadows and holding onto her magic by a breath so that he might not see her. “Stay here with me. Time runs away from us, but if we stay… if we stay and fight it, we can find peace here, still. We can live like this, right here, untouched by anything. Time can pass somewhere else beyond that veil where gods can die, and kings can lead their little lives apart from us. There must be someone else who can sit in that nasty throne and be bored all day listening to men and their problems. You’re more like me than like them. You can’t tell me you don’t sit at the window and look out across the fields and long for something more. Tell me you do not listen for my music calling out to you. You must hear me!”

“Of course I do! Sometimes I hear you so clearly I run to the window and look a fool, half fallen over the sill before I stop.”

“And still you stop.”

“That’s why I can’t come back. I can’t always be chasing fairy stories, half alive in dreams. I thought you understood that, I thought maybe you understood me. I’ll leave. It would have been easier had I never stayed here so long.” Standing, a few small stones tumbled down and plunked into the water as he turned away.  “We are different creatures, you and I. You would ask me to be still, to stay in this place of gods and music while the world moves on without us, but no more could you ask the wind to be still or the sea to stop churning. This time is over now, for me.”

Embla dropped down from the tree, nearly bowling him over as she landed behind him. He caught her hand in his and their music joined together, a budding symphony that rose between their touch. The shadows parted around her as she drew him in, twining her arms around his waist and burying her face into the crook of his neck. She wept.

“They will make mortals of us all, one day,” she said through tears, the fabric of his tunic soft against her hot face. “They’ll put crowns on our heads, or bind us in voice, singing songs of heroes and men, making us little more than flesh and bone because they can never understand what we really are. But I will not go, not yet, not ever. I’d rather disappear with this world, with the fog. I cannot go to that place. I can’t be made small.”

“And I would never ask you to.” Frozen at first by surprise, he softened and pulled her against him, whispering by her ear, “It’s all right. We still have time.”

“The sun will be gone soon and then comes the moon; the veil is getting weak. Soon you’ll be gone.”

“But not yet,” he said, pulling back enough to see her face, so she could see the pain in his eyes had melted. Touching her cheeks, he smoothed the black hair back from her face and drew in the scent of her. “We still have all of the day to get through.”

“They won’t miss you?” she asked, dreading even having to. The castle loomed like a great beast beyond the hills, past the mist covered fields, the torches on the wall shining dimly through the veil.

“Who cares? I’ve given the rest of my life to them. Let them look for me, they won’t find me here. If they should have to worry about me for one night so that I can have the only thing I want, the only thing I cannot have, then it is a small price to pay.” Catching her chin on his finger, he turned her face up to him. Embla ducked away from his kiss and retreated as far as his arms would allow. “Why?”

“You have to promise me that you won’t forget.”

“I could never—”

“Not me.” She pushed her palm against his chest so he could feel the warmth that had grown there, so he could better hear the quiet fluting of her own song, like the wind blowing through a flute in the crisp fall air, twining around his own song. Pulling her hand away, she showed him the light she’d drawn from him, the way it danced against her fingertips and burned through the shadows truer than any flame. “This. Your magic.”

“It cannot be a part of me anymore. You know what this means, Embla. I give up everything for my crown. I will turn the fields by hand and I will fight the wars with just my arms. I will be the king they need, if not the god I long to be, calling up the sun so that I might glance upon the moon.” His thumb brushed her cheek; his lips touched her ear. “There won’t be any more magic, not for me.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I’m not. Let me go to my crown, to that silent life, at least knowing that you are out here, that this life still exists somewhere.” He lingered, releasing her from his hold and for a moment she feared he would leave. Quickly, he continued, “I would have you take my magic now. Let that part of me live here with you, at least. It’s a pitiful gift, but it’s all I have to offer you.”

“It’s not pitiful,” she said, “but it’s not right, either. You shouldn’t go through life deaf to everything, not for anything. I won’t do it.”

“Not for anything,” he repeated, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “For you. None of this is right, Embla. If my brother hadn’t died, if my people didn’t need me…” He looked away, finding her hand in the dark and placing it against his chest. Through the rich weave of his shirt she could feel his heart hammering around her palm. “Everything would be different. Tell me, Embla, what use do I have for my song without yours to join it with? What purpose could it find?”

“You don’t know what you ask of me,” she said, drawn as far away as the circle of his arms would allow her. “How could I live that way? With that kind of burden?”

“When all the world changes, Embla, my love will hold you here.” He drew his arms away, a slow retraction as if worried she might flee; he placed his hands upon her face, tracing his fingers back through the dark curls of her hair. “Let me live alongside you and our song will sustain us both. Let me go and this magic will stay a dead thing in my heart, for how can it live without you?”

“I—” she began, but stopped at the look in his eyes. She eased the nerves from herself and smoothed her palm against his chest, seeking the warmth hidden behind cloth. Her hands slipped beneath his tunic, cold fingers skittish on warm skin, trailing the tautness of his belly to his heart where she could feel the song singing through his veins. Twice she made to pull away, the wrongness of it sending gooseflesh up her arms, but he put his hand over hers and held her steady as she curled her fingers and drew away his song.

His music was like a harp, strings warmed by the summer sun, sound like honey from the crock. He gave a gasp, his pale lips parting slightly, but she pushed past that look—forced herself past how wrong it all felt and dove inward, pulling more from him. She took everything and let his sound fill the hollows of her bones, the blackness of her shut eyes.

When she finished, he was too weak to stand and she had to help him down to the river. Embla sat with him cradled in her lap, scooping cold water into her palm and helping him drink. Finished drinking, he held her hand aside and turned his head to look back at her. She cursed herself for a moment of weakness, looking away. She couldn’t meet his eyes. He drifted for a time, his eyes shut and his body lax in her arms.

“What is it?” he asked.

“The music is gone. You’re so quiet, now…” She held him still and listened to the silence enveloping them; she did not tell him how empty he seemed, now—how empty he would always seem, past the veil. Another mortal, shining among their own kind, but a shadow of his true self, so dark that she dare not even look at him and yet still her heart yearned for him. He reached out, his fingers curled around her own, and she let out the breath she’d been holding. They spent their last moments like that, holding one another and watching the water flow silently down the river.

Embla fell asleep, the last fingerlings of waning light warming her eyelids, and when she awoke darkness had settled and he was gone, just a warm memory in her arms. Back beyond the hills she could hear the trumpets blaring from the keep. The fanfare swelled, but no music—no real music—could be heard in the king’s coronation day. She had taken that and she held it in her now; she would hold it for the rest of her days, a heavy twining rooting her to the forest floor. Spring would come and melt the winter, and then summer would burnish the sky to cold blue, but she would remain.

Embla went often to the edge of the veil, to sit among the branches and look out through the fog; she watched the dryads become trees, the selkie become seals who would never again slip into their mortal skin; she watched gods become kings and kings become cold bodies in the ground and still she held his song and with it weathered the coming change, because she remembered once the way things had been: a kiss, a blush of frost, a young god who laid in the hollow of the world with a girl whose hair, as dark as night’s last breath, curled around his fingers.

Alone, she carried that memory with her into the night, the fog beckoning at her heels.