Page 66 of Witchlore
“Oh?” I raise my eyebrows suggestively and he tuts, poking my nose.
“I’ve wanted to be here for a really long time,” he says slowly. “With you.”
I look up at his beautiful face, the disheveled hair, the hazel eyes that are full of gentleness, the many necklaces and chainshanging over his bare chest. I smile and reach up, playing with one of his necklaces, a row of shark teeth on a leather cord.
“It was sort of a date, wasn’t it?” I say. “The bar?”
“I was nervous enough for it to be,” he says ruefully. “But I don’t think it was the right time for you. I felt so stupid afterward.”
“You are lots of things, but you are never stupid.” I tug on his necklace, pulling him down to meet my lips, oily from the biscuits, his mouth tasting so sweet. This is the wonder of it, the intimacy that comes once the threshold has been crossed. Before, every time he touched me I noticed it; now, I’m so full of his touch and his skin and his body against mine that I don’t even notice the closeness. I can relax into it entirely, knowing that any casual kiss or stroke won’t be spurned or pushed away. I’d forgotten this, too, the happiness being with someone brings, the change from friends to something more.
“So your shifter was an ambulance driver in the Second World War?” Bastian asks, twisting his fingers into my curls as I pull the Oreo apart and lick out the middle. Above me, Bastian makes small noises of disgust and I smirk with the predictability of it.
“They’re not my shifter, but, yeah, they were. Their father died during the First World War and he was angry that they had taken a male form and fought in the war, so they didn’t want to do it again. They took a female form when the Second World War started and then… well, they fell in love with a witch who was also an ambulance driver.”
“A shifter and a witch, who’d have thought it?” Bastian says, and I pinch him softly.
“I wonder what she was called, their lover.” I stroke the page with the old ink on it, my fingers brushing over the letter “B.”Bella? Becky?
“They must have kept a young form, to stay with them.”
“Yeah, but they felt really seen by her.” I smile fondly. “They weren’t afraid.”
“Which is kind of amazing considering they were basically lesbians in 1940.” Bastian shakes his head. “That’s a rough time to be gay.”
“Yeah.” I don’t add that I think, sadly, the lover might have died in the bombing of the cathedral. How would I justify it, since I haven’t read it yet, only seen it in my vision? I feel a shiver of discomfort at all the things I can’t explain to myself. “But sometimes you can’t help yourself, can you?”
“You’re right.” Bastian’s voice is distant as he strokes my thigh. “Sometimes you can’t help yourself.”
We fall asleep like that, wrapped around each other. Elizabeth and I never got to do this and I realize that it’s the nicest thing in the world, falling asleep hearing someone’s heartbeat in your ear, the sound of their breath like the ocean. Bastian smells like antiseptic and blood but underneath, that unique scent that each person has. His is sweet and musky and utterly delicious. It’s the easiest I’ve fallen asleep since Elizabeth died. Then I dream.
I’m standing in front of the mound of fresh earth that’s marked with a simple cross, too early for a headstone. With trembling hands, I lay a bunch of carnations on the dirt, their petals white against the dark mud, cold with the early-January frost. I shiver and feel tears slip down my cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I couldn’t get to you, I tried so hard but… I couldn’t save you.”
I sniff and wipe my cheeks with chilled hands. I remember the peopleI have lost, my father, my mother, the years of my life that now seem agonizingly stretched.
“I’ve lived so long and never loved anyone the way I love you,” I murmur. “I miss you so much. Don’t leave me.”
I drop to my knees and press my hands into the cold earth, my tears falling on it like rain, instantly lost. I wish I could dig down into the ground and lie there with her. I do not know how to live without her.
“Lando.” Someone is rubbing my back, holding me gently, kissing my shoulders. I’m sobbing into the sofa with all the pain of this loss but it’s not just the shifter’s loss, it’s mine, too.Elizabeth is dead.I can smell salt and eucalyptus.Bastian.
“She died, the witch died,” I gasp, turning around and pressing my face into his chest. It’s so warm and the scarred skin has a stretched, smooth texture in some places and bumpy in others. I brush my lips against it, comforted. “I saw her grave, the shifter’s lover, the one who died in the Second World War—”
“You saw what?” Bastian asks.
I don’t answer. I sniff and wince and wrap my arms carefully around his torso, wanting to squeeze him tightly but aware that he’s wounded. Bastian strokes my back and kisses my hair. It’s so comforting it makes me cry more. Aside from Elizabeth, no one has ever touched me like this. I don’t have any memories of my mother or father doing it when I was little and had nightmares. Suddenly, I’m not just crying for everything now, I’m crying for the child I once was, lonely and without comfort. There’s one thought, repeating in my mind:None of it has been fair.I cry until I’m just hiccupping quietly, my cheeks and nose wet against Bastian’s skin,and he kindly doesn’t push me away. If anything, he pulls me closer.
“Are you ready to tell me what you’ve not told me?” Bastian whispers into my hair. The muscles in my back tighten with nervousness, but of course he’s worked it out.
“Yes.” I sniff.
“They’re not normal shifts, are they? Or normal nightmares?”
“No, they’re…” I take a great, shuddering sigh and shiver against the cold. “I don’t know what they are.”
“Tell me.” Bastian pulls a heavy, slightly itchy wool blanket over us. Its dark, ruddy colors make me think of big Canadian trees and shiny glaciers, and I feel cozy and safe enough to talk.
