Archive of Our Own

“My leaves have drifted from me. All. But one clings still. I'll bear it on me. To remind me of. Lff! So soft this morning, ours.” —James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

Illinois, not too far from Chicago, though it felt very much so.

The sky was overcast, a pale grey that softened all the colours. Snow had fallen overnight, enfolding the world in a soft white blanket. Now and then dark dots came by and went away into the distance. It was quiet, as if the whole world was content to let the day pass by unmolested.

Houses spread themselves across the plain, dark squares interspersed with white. Smells of gingerbread and cider and mulled wine drifted through the air. It was peaceful, but the scene in one of those cute and picturesque houses belied that descriptor.

In the attic, two children, one dark-haired and one light, both twelve, were pacing about.

In the corner was an old armoire; while dusty and broken-hinged, it still possessed some sort of gravitas. Next to it lay a slew of cardboard boxes filled with old journals and pictures. A window let in the soft golden morning sun; its rays, however, lacked warmth.

“I’m sorry.”

“What?” Luke asked, caught off-guard.

“I’m sorry,” Leia repeated, “for, uh, you know.” She looked away, biting her lip.

“Oh,” said Luke. He sighed. “It’s okay. I don’t care anymore.”

A drop of meltwater, glistening in the sunlight, trickled down an icicle outside, then fell down towards their father, who was drinking his coffee on the porch with a cigarette in hand. Leia sat down on an old steamer trunk.

“Did you notice how tense mom and dad were?”

“Of course they were tense,” Luke scoffed. “We were fighting.”

“No,” said Leia. “Like before. Mum didn’t add blueberries to the pancakes. Since when does she do that?”

Luke pursed his lips, then resumed pacing. “It doesn’t matter.”

A movement outside caught his eye. Some black dots in the distance were quickly growing larger. What would they be? Cars? They were rare now. They came closer; yes, they were cars. But why come here? He didn’t know of any family visits, not that he had been told of much lately, and not that family he knew actually owned cars. No, it was a dream. That it was. That it must be. He’d been having a hard time with separating those from reality lately.

“Cars.” Leia appeared next to him, propping her elbows on the windowsill.

Perhaps it wasn’t. They watched the cars make their way from the main road to the street that led to their neighbourhood. An unexpected visit, then. Or a funeral at the cemetery a ways further down said street, but the last thing to die hereabouts was his goldfish. They’d flushed Ben down the toilet.

He hadn’t mourned Ben much initially, but then it hit him. Strange, really, now that he thought about it, to get so worked up over a goldfish, but he had, and he had hurtled down that dark road (dark! ha!—so he thought, not a few weeks later) , and up the road the cars came back into view, curving past the copse of birches, closing in like ravens, circling, circling.

“They’re coming for us.”

That they were, thought Luke. Now it all became clear: the tension, the hurried whispers. Late-night conference calls involving names so fantastical as to evoke thoughts of gallant knights and terrifying beasts and great deeds of chivalry, but the only fantasy was that Mordred’s forces remained in the yore of old.

Their parents had certainly noticed by now; their father stubbed out his cigarette, then made eye contact and a gesture: go, fly, far, far away .

They stepped out into the air, leaving behind the house, white fields of snow and cloud, and two sounds of gunshots. It was beautiful, perhaps, or so noted Leia, grimly, but Luke found himself lost in a desert of emotion.

[An excerpt from “Rivers of Sand” by Mara Jade Skywalker.]

There are hundreds of deserts scattered across the world of varying hardiness; the Colorado in California is characterized by dry winds whipping through scraggly brush that can barely be counted as such. The Namib, despite its extreme aridity and age (it is perhaps the oldest in the world), encounters every morning a bank of coastal fog—it directly abuts the South Atlantic—and the little life that there clings onto the murk for precious, precious water. The Antarctic desert is cold, cold, and katabatic winds race down the Polar Plateau to batter at nothing but pitiful and little manmade structures and open ocean; Croatia in winter, with its howling buras pounding frozen jetties, essentially, but bitterly cold, far colder than gentle Adriatic climes; or the craggy rocks of the Transantarctic Mountains. In all cases a traveller passing through is hard-pressed to survive, but there comes a point where the vicious world comes to be beautiful, great wide expanses of sand or unearthly blue ice. Life clings on; those who live there are hardy, resilient. The desert is peaceful, clean, clean of the sin and smoke-stains of civilization. In a caravan making its way across the Sahara, perhaps, night brings with it not just a welcome respite from fire and brimstone but also a sense of contentment and grandeur with the towers of golden sand turned silver in the moonlight, beneath the expanse of distant silent stars, cold jewels in the sky. “What makes the desert beautiful," said Saint-Exupéry, “is that somewhere it hides a well.”

(In Luke’s hand, scrawled in the margin with shimmering teal-based multicoloured ink: well but not so well, welling up with salt-lakes and salt-rivers, Somorrah. Develop. )

Moments, here and there, everywhere, like sand in wind, worming its way through microscopic cracks, through the hallways, avoiding rugs and carpet (cleanup would be horrid), and presenting themselves at Luke’s feet in his room, alone with his thoughts, evil thoughts:

Walking through dark and damp alleyways in some dream, an unkempt and unshaven man grabbing Luke’s arm, spinning him around, and telling him, rancid breath wafting right into Luke’s nostrils, nothing is real, the world is not real, wait for the signal, the clarion call (here Luke shuddered and wrenched his arm away and ran). Then—

Falling, falling, onto an operating table. His arms and legs were strapped down; people in surgical gowns and scrubs surrounded him. One of them raised a scalpel and cut into his chest, one, two, three, dissecting him alive, and now there was blood everywhere. And the blood rose and formed a figure of a woman, hair shimmering in the light, face turned away, and then the scalpel glinted in the corner of his eye and cut through her and into his heart, and oh , the pain was unbearable, and he wanted the last thing he saw to be the stars but—

There, the woman again. Her face was still hidden, but now he saw her on a park bench amid verdant leaves, writing furiously in a little notebook, pausing every now and then to massage her hands, and oh! what was that bulge in her boot? And—

What was that city? Oh. O New York! O corrupt city, dank and reeking of piss, muggy and hot in summer, unbearably cold in winter, ruthless, with extortionist rents, O lovely city, thou art the greatest in the world, universal home! Flying uptown down Fifth Avenue, a hat-tip to the good sir waiting on the corner while the natives breeze through the red light, on past Grand Army Plaza and the victorious statue of Sherman, mounted, and suddenly the Met, in all its Beaux-Arts glory, graceful Corinthian columns fluting their ways up towards the sky, appears. In we go, right, past the ticket counters, right again, then left, through the chamber of Egyptian artifacts, through two more rooms, left, through another room, right, then left into a dreamy expanse of blue and glass and grey and gentle sacred stone.

Here, in this little expanse of Ancient Egypt, the Temple of Dendur lies in repose. Central Park presents itself outside the glass-and-steel separation which does not demarcate so much as elevate.

Thousands of admirers descend upon and pass through this chamber every day, if only to worship, with their eyes and cameras, the pleasing union of imaginary sand and very real sky.

Around the platform upon which the temple is raised are slabs of smooth sanded concrete which many use to rest for a moment. One of these people, a woman, dressed in black, was writing in a notebook. She was wily now, young, fresh out of university but a long ways from the Academy.

Now she stood up, stretched her arms a bit, then set off, determinedly, towards the double doors at the other end of the hall.

Through the corridors she walked, briskly, shoes tap-tapping on the floor, digging in her purse for her phone as she went. It had buzzed, after all, and she was expecting a certain text. What to do, what to do, she had mused, all those years ago, when she was all alone, all her friends and contacts disappearing into the woodwork and the clutches of intelligence agencies, but to put on metaphorical masks and forge new lives for herself and bide, patiently, her time for justice.

Now, she thought, satisfyingly, the first domino should fall. She opened her messages (now she passed a Cranach painting, one with an elaborately dressed woman standing over a severed head).

A text. Have you talked to your agent?

She took a breath. About to .

Good , came the reply.

“Miss Arundel,” came a call. A man, coated, gloved, and bareheaded, had appeared next to her. “I presume?”

“Yes,” she said, shaking his hand. “Miss Arundel would be me. Mr. Aumerle?”

“Yes.”

They set off through the halls.

“So,” began Aumerle. “I hear that you have something to offer.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me more. There’s no need to be nervous. I’ve heard great things about you.”

“I think,” she began, haltingly, “that the role of women in post-democratic American society has been glossed over heavily. I’ve gone around and I must tell you that there is—”

“Now, now. No need to rush. Do you have samples of your past work?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” Mara scrabbled in her purse. “I have here some essays that—”

“Let us play, then, at characters we are not.”

Mara raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

They were in an elevator. Aumerle stabbed the button for the fourth floor. “Your CV indicated that you had studied Creative Writing at Brown.”

“Yes.”

“That’s funny, because I called up my old friend there, and he couldn’t find any record of you there. Come, friend, up these stairs. Take my arm.”

She took it, chills running down her spine. “There must be a mistake. I wouldn’t like to know that I wasted four years of my life for nothing.”

Up the stairs they went, then into a narrow mirror-lined hallway with a door at the end. Aumerle pushed it open, and then they were on the roof.

“Yes,” he said, drifting into a quasi-faux-British accent. “I suppose you might not like to.”

AUMERLE.

Dear woman, what we mean to do is such

That we shall play-act, act personas, ho!

What’s that? For all the world’s a stage, and all

The men and women merely play’rs.

ARUNDEL.

I see.

AUMERLE.

Say, faeries, take me out of this dull world.

Let rest your gentle hands upon my hands.

Oh, heaven, what a world is this, that I

May take up such great hopes? Look now, snow falls.

What foul evil is at hand? And yet God

Grants me—nay, us, some modesty, forsooth,

No man or electronic eye may gaze

Upon this pleasing scene.

[ He turns and looks out over the cityscape. ]

ARUNDEL.

I find great beauty in’t.

AUMERLE.

This?

ARUNDEL.

Yea, this snow doth make great beauty.

AUMERLE.

Snow? Snow? This substance which freezes,

Drives flowers to death and man from nature,

Oh, you will be the death of me.

MARA.

So be it.

[ She stabs him. ]

AUMERLE.

My heart! Thy treacherous, scheming, mercurial beast!

I curse you, she-devil, myling, femme fatale!

[ He dies. ]

MARA.

That fucking piece of shit. Okay then, next.

Report, debrief, then comforter and bed.

Goddammit, that verse was horrendous.

Back in bed, she dreams.

She dreams about fire and ice, about sea and sky, while cocooned comfortably in crisp linen sheets.

She dreams on, unconscious of the world, conscious of everything else and more.

She dreams about the debriefing earlier that evening, where her handler, pleased, had given her some long-overdue vacation time, a few pats on the back, and a folder ( that’s your next target, Arundel, to observe at your discretion, to kill at mine ). She could not object, and so had skimmed its contents, nodded, and left. It was late, and it was still snowing. Across the street was a neon sign (no, Christmas lights left too long) , and in its light snowflakes shone red and green. It should have been beautiful, but she had felt nothing.

She dreams of a time when she was still naïve enough to trust in dreams, in others, in herself.

She dreams of a little girl, golden-haired, tottering into the arms of a man whose face she cannot see but knows to be her love. He lifts the girl up, giggling, the two of them (a smile tugs at her face), and sings, “Rose grows from her nose to her toes and she sees clothes for when it snows.”

She dreams about a man (Bolingbroke, she thinks, for some inexplicable reason) drawing a dagger and stabbing her Rose, and bright red blood sprays everywhere in the snow. Red splotches in the snow. Roses on a blank canvas.

TOP SECRET

REPORT - COPY

Foreign Agent “BOLINGBROKE”

The agent in question has been circumstantially observed to have made contact with numerous persons of interest to the Director and to the Prime Minister. It is unclear whether these contacts are made partially or completely at the volition of his superiors, who we suppose to be high-ranking Rebel Intelligence officers.

The agent’s known physical characteristics are as follows:

• Male
• ~170 cm in height

Anything further cannot be determined due to convenient breakdowns in surveillance technology or inexplicable losses of contact by our agents. We credit this to his skill and chance; these occurrences are far too common to be random.

From captured American marks we judge his demeanor to be genial and slow to anger and violence. We also infer that he is well-educated, but given the stranglehold the incumbent American government has on higher education nowadays, it is unlikely that he was not self-educated or tutored. If the latter is the case, we suppose him to be a surviving member of a once-prominent family, possibly in political circles. Candidates include the Mothmas and the Organas, though probably only of a cadet branch with regard to the latter.

Agents YORK and GREEN have previously attempted surveillance; while under surveillance, the subject appears to undertake no behaviours remotely worthy of suspicion, but once lifted, there have been rumours to the contrary. The Director remains intent on prosecuting this course of action until suspected results are confirmed. Great care must be taken to not only avoid detection by the subject but also by American counterintelligence and security forces while on mission.

Sometimes, Luke supposed, life wasn't all that unbearable. Sometimes, the sky was clear and a beautiful blue and the air was crisp and clean and all was right with the world.

[Journal entry, Luke, undated]

to mara? draft letter. must copyedit and send asap, ideally before laura gets here on friday. so:

This is from the heart , that infinite roiling mass of emotion: it’s so incredibly hard to elucidate this morass of thought, but some songs have no words. They are still beautiful. Words cannot express everything .

Oh, fuck this all. It’s not like I actually feel anything. I’ve made my piece with the Empire, but, well, you know that passage? Well:

For if of joy, being altogether wanting,

It doth remember me the more of sorrow.

Or if of grief, being altogether head,

It adds more sorrow to my want of joy.

“I want to buy a pen,” announced Mara.

“Very well, then,” said Luke, gathering up his coat. “Let us go out and buy a good pen.”

“A good fountain pen.”

“A good fountain pen, yes. Let us.”

So they did. They stepped out into the late afternoon air. The light was soft, the air crisp and glowing with sociability, free of the summer desire for shade and solitude. Now they became part of the grand fellowship of street-ghosts, floating and tramping along, all snugly wrapped up, and shed their shells for partial comforting anonymity, reveling in it, if merely subconsciously.

The avenue stretched itself out before them, closed but inviting doors and windows making way for an oblong frame of sky. As Mara slipped her hand into Luke’s, a cute shop caught their eye. She tugged him in; it sold some expensive trinkets: porcelain elephants and blown-glass birds and a novel wine dispenser-cum-opener, rock-like in appearance and substance. Did the store sell pens?

Not so, but it did keep cheap ballpoints for its own purposes, and would that do? said the clerk, turning back to a well-dressed lady whom she was helping. (It would not do). “Your card, ma’am,” and the lady was off with a smile. But she left in her wake some faint smell of cinnamon and sandalwood (mother’s perfume, thought Luke, and tamped down painful memories), and outside chanced upon a vagrant, whose eyes flicked to her right hand-side coat pocket, and spotted a careless flutter of green cloth from within. “For Alderaan,” he murmured, and was rewarded for his efforts with some coin and a canister of microfilm. (He also remembered how the lady had turned the corner, and, he having tailed her out of curiosity, rounding the corner himself, had seen only a large cat with arresting blue eyes regarding him with an air of detachment).

Strolling now on U Street, Luke and Mara made out other dark figures out and about.

“I spy,” said Luke, squeezing her hand, “a mother, loaded down with bags and children, perhaps on her way to make a late dinner.”

“I spy,” said Mara, “a Volkswagen Thing, full of magnificent holes and plastered all over with campaign stickers. If it could be moth-ridden, I suppose it would.”

“I spy,” said Luke, “a nice apartment, in which we could live. Imagine a good shag rug in the sitting room, bookcases with enough space for you and me, desks for writing and plotting.”

“I spy in that house,” said Mara, “A good kitchen, industrial in vague style, for you to use and me to play at. The whole house, actually, should be better angling towards the utilitarian.”

They turned right towards Logan Circle.

“And maybe you could hang a painting in the foyer,” she continued. “We might go out and buy a nice one.”

It’s worth noting, perhaps, that a few years ago, his favorite artists were Classical and Baroque— Caravaggio, Rembrandt—and now his preferences have shifted more modern, more abstract, sometimes darker in some intangible way.

“But we can’t live here. Not in this place, with its snakes rolled in flowery words.”

“No,” she agreed. “I imagine some place charming and convenient and clean. I imagine a place where our minds may be as a sceptered isle, a fortress and home for ourselves against a sea of troubles.”

“Paradise on some gemmed island set in a silver sea, rather, but the sea is as mercurial as the moon, that arrant thief. In her light we dance.”

“Dance. A ländler , then, with you? Reasonably light, and I trust you would not betray us.”

They waltzed. Up to the end of the block they went, back down to a flickering streetlight they came. Oh, the streetlights are on, thought Mara. I do hope this one doesn’t go out.

“Do you remember,” he asked, “the last time we danced?”

(A few months ago they had spent the better part of a day trying to find her birth parents on a lonely highway in the middle of Pennsylvania when the car broke down from the cold and her from frustration, and he put his foot down and whispered no, that’s it, we’ve found you already . Then she had cried into his shoulder, and he had clasped her (and she him) with arms of iron, and she was lost (forever, she thought, forever and ever and cursed to haunt the earth, to have unquiet sleeps. Cursed to forge a new path for herself, but perhaps that wasn’t really a curse, but felt so, what with enemies all about. Difficult, though. And oh, Luke had now seen her cry, and she was bare to him, and he and Leia wouldn’t let her around Jasa and Jaya after this, and fuck , she’d gotten attached to those two as well. They didn’t judge; they were too young, but they were also exceedingly blunt in their observations, and she thought she might have died when Jaya asked, the other day, why she was so sad. Time to run.) and then there Luke was with an arm slung around her shoulders and tears streaming down his own face, guiding her up a ridge (evidently they had stopped close to a trailhead), trees parting and bowing before them, a lone crow following them.

When they reached the summit, Luke gingerly let go of her and sat down.

“It’s okay,” he said.

No, of course it would not be. It never had been. The crow landed on the bare branches of an alder, then regarded them carefully with beady black eyes. Icicles shone in the light like crystal.

“It’s okay,” he repeated. “I’ve got you.”

Drifting on and on. Unanchored. Was that alcohol on Luke’s breath? It was , that little scamp.

“That's rich of you to talk,” she replied. “Lagavulin?”

“Ardberg.”

She sat down next to him. The crow croaked.

Ardberg. Also distilled on Islay; close enough. Should have paid more attention when she was on a mission there. Memento mori and all that. It would be stormy there this time of year, great walls of seawater smashing into the shore.

She vaguely remembered outings to the sea as a child, and once, she had begged to visit, and her faceless parents had acquiesced, if it did not rain the next day. But it did, and she was sad. What struck her most, she realised, was that her father did not promise to take her there later. He was better, though, than His Majesty by far. But His Majesty—not His Majesty, that bastard, but plain old Palpatine—wouldn’t really beat four year-olds, would he? At least he kept his promises.

And now Luke could see it all—not the specifics, of course, that she took perverse comfort in—but could she trust him? And if she could, she would ruin him. He would not want her. He has his goodness now; I shall not take it from him. Damn Arthur Miller. Damn Miller and herself, and Nietzsche and herself, and Schopenhauer—well, now antinatalism looked particularly attractive. Damn them all. Not Jacen and Jaina, not after she saved them. Not Leia and Han. She did not deserve them. She had tried to kill them before, and yet they forgave, or so they said. Of course they would lie. Everyone lied and everyone died under the eyes of the unforgiving sun and the cold stars, dancing their ways through the heavens.

“You’re my best friend,” said Luke. “I genuinely enjoy your company. I would not want to part with you. I would never, not of my own free will, perhaps not even if forced.”

“Thank you,” she replied. “I appreciate it.”

Not yet, but perhaps soon. She hoped it would be soon. She also thought he was lying a bit, but then again, she herself was unreliable too.

“I just want to be happy for more than a day, you know? Is that too much to ask?”

“O-of course,” he said. “It’s not too much to ask for. Rhetorical question, but I answered it.”

“Every day,” she continued, “I see people going about their days, happy—happier than me, at least, so it is—and I want to hurt them so badly so that they might feel a bit of what I do, that I might be happier than they are. It’s perverse, but I think that it might make me actually feel better. I feel horrible about that, but, you know? I shudder.”

“Well,” managed Luke (he was trying valiantly, but all this was a shock to him—the scale of it, at least, and how open Mara was), “everyone is at varying degrees of misery.”

“Mmm?”

“But yeah. I think you should recognize your internal envy. That would help a lot.”

Not quite the right thing to say, but maybe Luke was trying. She did love him so. Platonically. Platonically. It must be so. And if he lied about his love for her? No, no, she mustn’t. But she liked this misery, this dark swamp, and in wallowing in it she found some degree of comfort bred from familiarity. Alone in the world. That was all she knew—all she had ever really known. Mara against Palpatine, against the Empire, the Republic, the Rebels, Leia, Luke, Karrde, Aves. Mara against Mara. Alone, like those lonely nights spent curled up in her sheets, shivering and sweating, then, after hours of tossing and turning, rising to meet the sun. The sun would always be there to meet her, she thought, but cruelly, once, on assignment in fucking Fiji of all places, it hid from her behind a bank of fog, then one of clouds.

That was her life, indeed. Searching for light, but in vain, and as if the universe loved cruel japes, she found only light insufficient but incessant. The crow gave another croak, then hopped up onto a higher branch, and as the tree swayed, the sun was blotted out. Something inside her snapped.

“What is there to do, then? I envy. I am justified in my envy. I am bitterly jealous of every marginally happy person I see. Do they have no semblance of self-consciousness? They say social media is a highlight reel ( yes , I have one; I use it for work), and that everyone’s really just like you, sad in places. Pessoa called us a flagless army fighting a hopeless war. That’s...that’s not fucking true. They say that it’ll all get better, that life’ll work out eventually. That’s not fucking true. They said that you’ll find someone who loves you; that’s not fucking true. My parents abandoned me. The Emp—nay, I shall not speak his name—treated me like shit. Or that’s what you might say. Karrde’s taken care of me, but he’s my boss . There’s no one for me. No one wants me. They say later life is great, that after school and all, it’ll be fine. I never went to school per se . Look at me, this merry fellow. Is later life better, at least? A pittance at the most.

“Friends? I must ‘go out and find some.’ I cannot. My work requires too much of my time and energy, and even when I make the time, no one is willing. Not even Aves or Faughn. I trust them with my life, and they entrust me with theirs, but we share no love. They do not love me. Do I love them? I don’t want to. Or I don’t want to say that I do. They much prefer the company of others. Everyone does, and most do not even trouble themselves to spare me that harsh truth. I see it in their eyes. I feel it in my heart. Just because I don’t think they love me doesn’t mean that they do think of me in that way, but they do. I trust them, I think, because it is necessary. Look at me, this...this bit of dust. Who could want me? Who could ever? Why would I? Why should I? Must I?

“I am alone, all alone, forever alone. The world is cruel— don’t touch me, Luke, ” she spat vehemently, twisting away. Those she does not kill, she breaks, and those whom she breaks, she kills slowly and painfully.

She took a shaky breath. Two. Then a deep one, then another. “I loved someone once, you know.”

Luke was watching her intently. A soft halo seemed to surround him.

“It was on assignment in Paris. I was young. Young and stupid. And in the archetypal romantic city, too...I met this Australian expat. He cut such a handsome figure, and was oh-so-charming, and I fell hard. It was beautiful. It was sick. I was inexperienced, and I was wholly infatuated, and I thought that, impossibly, I was going to run away and marry him and have children and live all over Europe.

“He turned out to be a trap. So I did what I had to. Now you know. If it seems that I shut myself up in some adamantine tower, it is for myself. It is so much easier to shut myself away, to not let the world touch me. Love is dead. Love is not for me. I shall not love, for I cannot be loved. And yet, one cannot live without it—so say the poets. They are uncommonly perceptive and prescient. Ah, yes, it was Woolf: ‘there is nothing more tedious, puerile, and inhumane than this; yet it is also beautiful and necessary’. I cannot have love; I have established that. But can I not have at least some friendship, camaraderie?”

Luke looked quite overwhelmed at all this. Belatedly, she realized that she must have hurt him with all those pronouncements. No, of course he deserved it. He was an actor too, merely better than those who came before.

“I think,” he attempted, “that when they say ‘it gets better’, they reference much longer timescales.” ( How long, then? In the long run we are all dead .) “Please don’t be too pessimistic; everything fluctuates, so we might as well stick around to see if it really does get better. Do you read McCarthy? ‘So everything is necessary...we have no way to tell what might stand and what might fall.’

Silvertongue. That damned man. He could be infuriating sometimes, and she dearly wished to be angry at him now, but she found she could not, which itself infuriated her. If he would only shut up and listen right now. He listened well at other times. Maybe he really was surprised, but that was his fault for ignoring her. He was uncommonly perceptive, or at least he seemed to be. Now, though, was time for—what was the term?—venting.

“When they talk about depression, they never mention the parts where there is nothing in the world that could ever make you happy anymore, and you’re out and about and the sun is always cold, or you’re in bed and so tired , and you can’t get up for the life of you (heh, life, as if you have one worthwhile) even though you’ve slept for the past day, and it’s been like this for years , and no one has noticed . I do want to be happy. But I cannot get too desperate, because once I did, once I saw a light in the dark, and you know will-o’-the-wisps? Of course you do.”

“Well of course, because most people just don’t understand what it’s like—”

“They don’t mention the parts where you spend hours researching methods to hurt and to kill oneself. For someone who moonlighted as an assassin and enforcer, that’s weird, I suppose, but I just can’t bring myself to cut myself open. I can take bullets, but I can’t take pain, not when it’s from me. God.

“Everything is a weapon. I should know; I’m trained in their use. Now it’s just, I don’t know, this thing ” (finger-snap) “keeping me from ripping myself apart. But I drink. Heavily, in hopes of an early death. Cirrhosis is painful, so I hear. I don’t know why I do it then, but it’s therapeutic. The most horrid bit is when you think that this is it , that this is the last bit of hurt you’ll ever truly feel, that you can take everything from then on, but no —.” She buried her face in her hands. Deep breath. Eh bien, continuons :

“Will I ever be at peace? I don’t know. I’ve got my whole life in front of me, but I don’t fucking care, because it really fucking hurts, okay?”

Luke pursed his lips. His knuckles were white. The air was still. “This may be a...strange question, Mara, but...how can I help?”

Mara gave a shuddering sigh and clutched at the icy ground. “I honestly don’t know.”

“Right then,” said Luke. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help you, but I’ll do my damndest. I’m here because I love you. I love you . I really do. I love you, deeply, as a friend. I’ll make mistakes; please inform me of and forgive me for them. I love you, Mara.”

She sighed, stretched her arms, and got up. Luke followed her; ice cracked underneath their boots. There was the crow again; his feathers were glossy and had a violet sheen.

“Mara,” said Luke. “Look at me. Into my eyes. Breathe with me. In...out. In...out. You’re a good person. You make me better, and I’m honoured to have met you. Is there anything, I wonder, that you would do not out of pure duty but of some sense of enjoyment? I will try my very best to help. I think I do know something of it; I did lose my parents too.”

“I used to dance,” she managed. “I loved being a dancer on missions.”

“Tell—”

“I used to sneak out, when I was younger, when he wasn’t so strict, to dance in seedy bars. Any excuse, you know? During downtime on missions. During downtime anywhere. I wasn’t particularly picky as I grew older. And then he found out (now that I think about it, I think he always knew), and he used my love of it against me.

“Will you teach me, then?”

“Yes.”

A pause.

“Is now fine?”

“It won’t work, but why not.”

So they danced. Luke tried not to step on her toes, but to little avail, and even then, it was Mara, distraught, who did most of the stepping. She led, of course. Up a little path, then, snow crunching, towards the curve leading to a clearing...

They turned, like a story folding back upon itself, and Mara returned to Washington, to Vermont Avenue.)

“Yes,” Mara replied. “Of course I remember.” Then: “I love you, Luke.”

When was it that she knew? Was it back in the car then, after the revelations told, when waves of gratitude washed over her and washed away her sins? Was it three months after that, a month after they started dating, when he pulled out all the stops for a wonderful romantic evening? She did not remember. It was not, in any case, the first time that she had said that she loved him, neither the first time she knew the fact. A black limousine pulled up by them, disgorged its passengers, then flew away into the night. Fireworks emanated from its tailpipe; multicoloured stars found new places in the sky in chains like Christmas decorations.

Just yesterday, on Christmas morning, she dropped by his place, as was now more than usual. Luke presented her some mulled cider, and they spoke about all manner of things, then retired together, but all throughout, he seemed a tad stiff. What could ever be on his mind now? A good Malbec and some judicious caresses had allayed some of her gnawing fears, but she now found it hard to resummon Yuletide cheer. Luke might have noticed. Oh, of course, a pen. She must not forget to buy one. Quickly, for the wind had now begun to bite, and she also wanted some hot chocolate.

In they went, assailed by a burst of warmth, and found two men and a women setting up for what seemed to be a performance. A crowd had gathered. “No, no,” cried the proprietor, “there is still a bit of time until we start. What is it you need? A pen? Ah…” and scrabbling amongst the drawers behind the counter, she came up with quite the selection.

“I think I’ll have this one,” said Mara, gesturing, and the pen was replaced in its box, bagged, and purchased. The band was ready now, and the crowd, most of which seemed to consist of regulars, settled down in anticipation. Glancing over at Luke, he seemed to be in tacit agreement with them, and so she took a proffered cup of hot chocolate—“oh no, it’s chocolatl”—chocolatl and his hand and settled down.

Ah, merry, merry. Here was a warm omnipresent blanket of friendship and love and comfort, here were books and music and food and drink. Ah, merry. The band took their bows. Was it really that soon? Hours had passed by unnoticed. Out, then. Home and bed. Back out the door, exchanging fond smiles and regards, then to Luke.

And what was he doing now? There must be a lucky penny on the ground. It was a rare find indeed. Yes, there was something bright in his hand, and now their fortunes would be assured for the next year. They were lucky to find one without having to fight through hoards of competitors. Indeed, it was one, for now they began to float up into the night sky. Now he was speaking, and—no. Not a penny. It was a sapphire. A band of metal. A ring. And the gem shone, and the moon shone, and the stars shone, and his eyes shone, and her eyes shone, and—

Ah. It was then that she realized:

(Postbellum La Jolla, California. Late January. Early afternoon.)

“Max mentioned that VG’s is good. For donuts.”

“Max?”

“Max, you know. Max.” She flapped her hands in exasperation.

“That doesn't help at all,” said Luke, making a face.

“He was that guy in the Geisel Library. Medium-ish height, brown hair, lugging around an instrument case?”

“Who? Ah, him. What about VG’s?”

“Its donuts are good, apparently. We should go even if they aren’t, explore a bit.”

Up the 5 (an uncommonly smooth drive, for the West had been relatively unscathed). Off at Birmingham, a few turns, then darting in for a dozen donuts, then away and back towards the highway, back towards the city. Luke turned onto the onramp. Mara rubbed the box and glanced out the window. “I saw a lookout point on the way here.”

“You want to go there?”

Mara made a noise of vague affirmation and stretched herself as best she could. The roof, she found, was too low.

“It’s the next exit, I think.”

It was. The point was on a small rise; they pulled up facing towards over the ocean. Waves broke silently in the distance, and they could imagine being pressed up against the windshield or some windows closer to the sea, on the strand, perhaps, and foam would spray and they would hear nothing except that of smooth jazz emanating from the radio. The radio was on? Luke must have been responsible. It fit the ambience regardless.

“Donuts.”

Yes, of course, the donuts. How could she forget? It must be the charm of it all: a picturesque scene, pleasant warmth, not a cloud in the sky. And donuts too. It was contentment she felt, contentment with being here, with donuts and the sea in the distance, the sapphire-blue sea (what she would give to fly over this sea, to gape at its beauty), with being with Luke. His hands now proffered the opened box of donuts. She took one: chocolate glazed.

“Here goes…”

She loved it. It would not be too much an exaggeration to say that her life had changed. Luke looked much the same.

(Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness - And Wilderness is Paradise now.)

Luke licked the last bits of donut from his lips. “Eh?”

“It’s good,” she said. Luke was shining. His blue eyes had flecks of gold.

“If I would die right now,” he said, “I would be happy. Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high; whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die.”

“That’s a bit dreary.”

“It’s true.”

It was true for her too, but she felt that being with Luke was more enjoyable than the donut-ocean-car scene. She wanted this to go on forever. She wanted more, more of this , some barely-describable warm fuzz of contentment, together, forever, sempiternal happiness. It was a strangely emotional and somewhat illogical attraction; intense, full, kaleidoscopic.

“I love you,” she blurted, and promptly choked on her donut.

(I am weary of all thy words and soft strange ways,

Of all love's fiery nights and all his days,

And all the broken kisses salt as brine

That shuddering lips make moist with waterish wine)

(“Isn’t a bit too early to drink?” he asked.

“Shush,” she said. “I don’t suppose it ever will be.”)

Ink dancing across the page, loops and whorls of black and green and gold:

Mara,

You asked when I first fell in love with you. I said that it was when I first saw you, and you laughed at that clichéd answer, and we both knew that I could not really name when. I’ve thought about it for the past few days, and last night, in an epiphany, I thought of a moment, before we began our relationship, before we realized our love for each other, that, I think, instilled a subconscious burning desire for you in me.

I regret to say that I don’t remember every bit of that moment, and I would like to have, but what remains is precious all the more. The night before, some idol of yours had won some competition halfway around the world, and you were ecstatic (we shared that moment over the phone, breathing heavily, suppressing cries of delight to try to not wake the neighbours). We met the next morning at the bench by the morning glories in the park; I arrived first. The wind was soft, the sky blue-grey. You wore a royal-blue dress.

When you came up to me that morning, face alight, I looked up and saw before me the sun. You clasped your hands together in ecstasy time and time again, your right hand occasionally flying to your breast, fingers splayed. You bounced in a circle, springing silently about on the balls of your feet with a radiant smile on your face. I felt a surge of affection for you such that I wanted to take you into my arms and kiss you senseless right then and there, and I would have, had the location not been inconvenient and my tongue not turned traitor.

Oh, how my heart fluttered, how enchanted I was.

Yours,

L

Zürich, 2010

Mara,

I came upon a poem by Yeats shortly after I sent my last, and I could not wait to share it with you, for it expresses more of what I feel than I think I ever could.

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

L

Their vows:

Luke, I do swear, upon my word and honor and blood, that I shall be with you through the darkest of nights, through the brightest of summer days, through snowball fights, through hot chocolate sessions before crackling fireplaces, through auroras borealis and australis, through coffee and tea, through thick and thin. I love you, Luke, more than I do my pens and inks, and do take you as my wedded husband.

And:

Mara, I promise to love and care for you, and I will try in every way to be worthy of your love. I promise to be a true and loyal friend to you. I promise to love you every day and to never let us lose our spark, to cuddle with you during rainy days and through all the lonely nights, to pet cats and dogs together. I love you, Mara, from Patagonia to Kamchatka, and do take you as my wedded wife.

(For oft when on my couch I lie

  In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

  Which is the bliss of solitude…)

“Roses are of many colours but are all delicate and beautiful. ‘Ware the thorns in this dear, dear land, this joyous land.”

—Anonymous

In his effort to find variety in mundanity, Luke lost himself.

Walking down a cozy street somewhere in Europe, festively lit shops and homes all around, he felt a soft touch on the back of his neck. Was it? No, merely the wind, feather-light and pleasantly cool. And those green eyes spotted with a glance? A cat’s. A black cat’s. They sparkled, though, like emeralds, like stars, like—no, one mustn’t go there—like what? They were deep, too, like volcanic pools. That should do it. Now, what was that? A dress shop. There were lovely dresses. He did like them so, and so too would Mara, what with the greenery and flowers and—no. No, no, no, no, no. Not her. Not her. Not her, not now. Too late. He clawed at the air; the sky turned dark. The flora wilted. A chasm opened up in front of him, and he collapsed.

Rose: pink, delicate, beautiful. What Luke would not do for her was bleed; Mara already did. So now to bring her up from and through the tangle of thorns; even in death, roses are sweet.

Memory faded into monotony broken by distinct scenes few and far between, viewable only through roseate lenses; he desperately longed to return, if only for a moment, to those hyaline days of youth. Those were more wondrous days. His younger self knew nothing of loss and most everything; now, he knew far too much of both.

Out came the CD player; in went Sergei Babayan’s recording of Gretchen am Spinnrade . Out came a stream of sixteenths, F-A-F-E-D-E (repeating), and over it emerged a lovely melody, swimming and slipping in and out of mind.

Out came hopes and dreams, and he spied Mara in her usual perch atop the kitchen countertop, swinging her legs to and fro, just so, sometimes in exercise wear, sometimes in a bathrobe, sometimes in that wonderfully soft pale grey sweater that reminded him of clouds and which he loved to run his hands over, to stroke, to caress, to feel, to comfort.  

The world spun on.

Sometimes she would sit there stoically after one of her little excursions, scraped and cut and bruised all over, and he would dab at her hurts with iodine under the gentle lights. She would occasionally flinch in pain, and sometimes, even hiss, but when he was finished, she would stroke his hair, and they would hold each other, and he would hide his face in her shoulder and she in his. So they went on, a merry little duo of broken fellows, stumbling their way through the treacherous path of life, plied liberally with drink and drug.

The world spun on.

Sometimes he would see her stretched out on the carpet, annotating books and essays (here he gasped with love, then and now) in the soft light of the morning, made gentler by mist and the morning glories outside the window. Or she would be curled up in the golden beams of the afternoon sun, dust motes winking in and out of existence, stroking the cat, a majestically fluffy Maine Coon.

The world spun on.

And there she was, sitting in the breakfast nook, sipping coffee. Always black coffee, and every once in a while he would chance a sip of her drink and make a face, horrified and fond, and she would chance a sip of his and make a face of hers, bemused and loving (you’re so soft , Luke).

The world spun on.

There was Mara, now singing along ( Meine Ruh’ist hin— ). He could touch her, see her smile, see her happy, green eyes shining with love. He could see a luminous halo all about her. And then just like that, the piece ended, and away she went, and out came the tears.

( Was entstanden ist

Das muss vergehen! )

[An excerpt of a draft letter in Mara’s hand, undated. The rest is lost. Ed.]

-ed you, this, that moment. But regarding your last:

In re self-worth—how is it gained? How is it measured, if at all?

The concept seems to me some nebulous compendium of mercurial emotion and mental situation propped up by external relationships (inherently unstable) and something deep inside the mysterious self, the formation of which no one can truly comprehend or elucidate.

There are self-help books which attempt to do just the latter and more, though, however insincere and ultimately unhelpful; there are trials by fire that, like a smelting furnace, break down the self and hammer so brutally that it ultimately turns out stronger—and yet there are thousands, millions of instances of mental illness amongst the medical profession, soldiery—those on the front lines of hurt. Training cannot account for the horrors of the world, those extraordinary and mundane.

Absent these experiences, proper family, friends, is it really all that surprising for people to seek some measure of comfort in alphanumerical measures of performance, somehow encouragingly objective, however counterproductive?

Can you blame them? They have nothing else.

Back in New York, for example, when I found her (I suppose you wouldn’t remember that), a-

(When Luke read this, he released a tiny oh , rubbed his eyes, and reached for Mara to enfold and comfort, but she was not there. If only he had found this draft, lost among their stacks of papers, and read this in time. He should have done better. But he was careless, complacent, and now cursed.)

“Her physical energies had been depleted by illness, anxiety and overwork, and although she had for so long managed to be gallant and equal to the life-experience, some darker day than usual had temporarily made it seem impossible to pursue.”—Aurelia Plath, in reference to her daughter

(A way a lone a last a long the)

Fog. Fog all about, encompassing and stifling and suffocating. Wet, too, as he ran through it, invisible hands of vapor caressing his cheeks. He could see nary fifty feet ahead of him; the occasional set of headlights appeared as muted spots of light. Here, now, the set of streetlights ended, and ahead him lay darkness. He had walked this route many times before with Mara, but this time, he felt the urge to, every now and then, turn his head about, searching for another soul in the chthonic murk. But no earthly souls were here.

Rose! Oh rose, why doth thou prick me? I meant you no harm, and now thou wilt. I grieve so.

A letter to Leia:

Mara died yesterday.

The funeral will be held at 2 pm on Friday at All Soul’s.

Whose shade did she leave behind on that fateful September morning, that and a letter to dear old Luke with “I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been," and then filled her pockets with stones and walked into the river?

For there she was.

( Y nave y costa y mar

y tierra y canto

navegan el olvido .)

He saw a steady light in the distance among the stars. It seemed to grow bigger as he approached, and did not at all remind him of a plane, what with its jerky movements and all. Then it was right outside his window, that ball of pale fire, but he was not afraid. He felt awed. Comforted, even. He reached out a questioning, trembling hand, but the light recoiled and sped away into the cloudy murk below.

Mara, he thought, and then suddenly wanted to cry. Dead, dead. Forever gone.

Hours later, he found himself at the wheel of his rental car with no recollection of how he got there. Dazed, he drove past the bright skyscrapers of the city, past the dark homes of suburbia, until there was nothing around him but open fields.

The road stretched itself out before him; he went where it took him. The sky lightened, and a crack of red appeared in the east.

(More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.)

So.

Her mark-cum-contact was a man called Bolingbroke.

That must be him, the man coming along the way, singing quietly to himself. Up, now. Time to intercept. Oof, the sun was in her eyes. She mustn’t be caught like that again. No matter: he was going into the chapel. After him, then. Turn a bit and oh, lord. What wondrous scenes. And the rose window too! Ethereal, heavenly, for once (truly). Colours spilled all over the stone floor. Focus! All right. He was looking in her direction. She caught his eye, and—

BOLINGBROKE.

How now, good lady—

“I know that voice,” she said, swallowing hard. “Hello there, Luke.”