we will fold and freeze together
It had been a later day in a long-ago life, when the spring had begun to bloom in. The air had gentled enough that a young Aden Brande could take a fragile Mercedes (she, seventeen) out among the orchards in the wheelchair.
"My tutor suggested we make a time capsule," Mercedes said, in her thin little voice, a sound her brother felt then he'd remember long after he forgot so many other things. "We put our favorite things in a box and bury it, and then in twenty years you dig it up, so that you can remember what we were interested in when we were young."
You dig, she said, talking of burying things. She spoke this way more and more lately, of a future without her in it. Aden knew it was her way of acting out in pain, in comprehensible envy, possessiveness for the years ahead of him. That she didn't mean to injure him, really.
"That seems kind of like a waste of time," he said, laughing quietly, halting with her by their customary place, where the dogwoods had given way to apple trees, at the edge of the cool grassland. "If we bury all of our stuff, of course we'llforget it."
"Would you really?" asked Mercedes, softly, feigning a pale little pout as he came around to lift her, insubstantial as a paper doll in black and white, out of the chair. She weighed nothing; twined her arms around his neck for intimacy rather than support, and whispered, fey, into the shell of his ear. "Forget things, when they're buried?"
"Stop it." Dark, his throat seized up, pained. He was older than she; he had empathy for her anger, for her fear, and so loathed to staunch it, this boy who loved even the hair she shed in her comb, the spoons she had eaten from, the warmth her fevers left behind on her bedsheets. But sometimes, sometimes these ideas of hers were much too much.
"I want to make a time capsule anyway," she said, lifted into his lap when he sat beneath the apple tree in flower, gathered her dress, her knees, on either side of him. "...You'll want it someday," she said.
He knew she needed him to acknowledge it. He knew it was unfair of him to refuse to accept the loss of her, that she needed him to say I can't live without you, even though she hated herself for demanding such a confession. That, with all the treading gently round her, she relied on him who truly loved her to be honest -- yes, you'll die.
But he still desperately believed a world without Mercedes was impossible, that justice in the natural world could never allow it. Even in these days, when she was routinely whiter than a sheet and as fleeting as smoke, he still believed with certainty that he would, could save her. The world relied on laws, nature hinged on balance and justice, and therefore, Mercedes must live.
But for her, for her, he said, quietly. "If you want to make one, let's make one." And it sounded so dark, like such a concession, that he put his forehead to hers, yellow eyes to yellow eyes, and smiled to ameliorate the ghosts over their shoulders. "What do you think we should put inside?"
"Something about our love," she said, without much hesitation, speaking our love like something sacrosanct, like asecret as precious as the true name of god. They knew, they knew it wasn't meant to be spoken of. Only here, miles from the main house, could they even embrace.
"Like what? Your violet dress--"
"Silly brother, not just about the physical part," she said fondly, averting her face as his lips went for hers. "I think," said his dark little sister, who had a streak of the sinister in her, "we should put bits of our hair, and drops of our blood."
When she was this close, Aden could admit he often forgot to listen to what she was saying, so entranced was he by her lips moving, by her scent and sound, and so maybe he was trying to quiet her, aimed to kiss her again. "What, doyou want to put in fingernail clippings, too? Gross, Mercie."
She laughed, and denied him. "Things that represent the soul, Aden," she insisted. "Do you have any better ideas?"
"You want to take out a little piece of your soul, and put it in a vessel, and bury it underground?" He said, bemused, laughing. "You can't --"
But, unexpectedly, she'd begun to cry.
"Yes," she said, her eyes welling up rapidly, immediately, pale face breaking, lashes dampening entrancingly, mouth open and downturned heartbreakingly. "I want... to send out a little piece of me... so that it can stay with you, when this body dies."
"Mercie," he said, his voice failing him, pressing her face quickly to his shoulder because of the thought he'd die right then himself if he had to look at that expression of hers for more than a heartbeat.
"The best parts of me," she wept, muffled, into his neck. "The best parts... our things."
"I'd bury the whole of my soul if it'd save you," he heard himself whispering, and save you was the very first admission of her eventual death that he'd ever accorded her. She became silent; her weeping stilled.
He took in his breath, once he could breathe again, and told her, "Hair, blood, okay. Some of our letters, and our Tarot deck?"
"Yes," she said, "and the ring you gave me."
"No," he said, hoarse, breathless. "Not that. Wear that until--"
And she quickly picked up her head, put her lips over his to silence him, her mouth moving -- "Okay. Okay. Not that."
---
The day he and his sister had put that capsule into the earth -- the best parts of me -- had felt like the day he'd put the rest of her into the earth. Some years ago since, he'd unearthed it, prized its contents, kept them precious, like every other little artifact of her.
She'd been right. He had been glad, so desperately glad, that it had still been there.
Eurydice, on the other hand, was still nowhere to be found, and instead of a sense of alarm, all Brande was able to muster was an old, old ache. Maybe she was walking into a hereafter, carrying a piece of his soul inside her. Maybe she'd disappeared into the earth or into the aether.
Maybe Eurydice would convey the last surviving threads of his heart to Mercedes' heaven throne, once Brande had been condemned to elsewhere.
Maybe, like Mercedes, he was leaving a piece of himself behind just before the end.
--
Far away from here
There is sun and green and Spring forever
