As weeks became months, she reluctantly gave him his space and did not force him to come to her night after night but instead let him wander where he would and sleep wherever he wanted but she also watched him and no longer relied upon the whispers of the trees and stones and birds and bees because she knew he would return to her if given time and space and she accepted that it may take a lot of time even as every night without him hurt her and every day where he did not seek her out or return to the cave or her beach carved scars in her heart that only love would heal.
His love.
She would have his love.
She knew this. Felt it. Heard it in the trees and the breeze, in the stones and the bones of the earth.
He was hers.
He came across the seas to be with her, to belong to her.
I want you she breathed into the wind on nights when he stayed away.
All I want is you she sang into the sky and the deepdark of the cave when she didn’t sleep, when she lay there alone, without him.
It’s hard for me to let you go she spoke into his dreams while he slept beneath her trees, surrounded by brush and bramble, by flowers and foxdens.
She felt entrapped by him. Though he was only a man, the air round him thrummed with sorcery, with some deep and wild magic that wrapped round her and dragged her ever after him, transforming her into his captive.
A love prisoner caged by desire, by want, by need, by all that he was, all that he would be for her.
Because he so feared the gods, she tried to taste their touch upon him when he slept, when she crept to him silent as the sun, for the gods left traces of themselves upon men. They couldn’t help it, such was their egotism and profound sense of possession.
They reminded her of the lynxes and jackals pissing here and there upon her island as if they could have any claim upon her creations. The gods didn’t understand that they could not own men, that they could only possess them through brutality.
The same brutality they flung at her to enforce her submission.
It was a disease in them and a horrible failing. It was why so many men hated the gods and dared to defy them, why their sons so often proved that the power of men was greater than that of the gods, that the wild Promethean fire still burned ever in their chests.
A permanent rebellion.
She smiled at the thought, remembering her own revolutionary century.
Had the gods known of her island, they would sure come to take it or destroy it. Every day they did not was another glorious reminder that she had fooled them, had escaped them, had given herself agency and forged her own identity.
The only hint she had of the gods upon him, though, was his fear of the sea. There were days when he went right to the water’s edge but never did he swim or fish or even wash himself in the ocean, choosing instead to wash in her river, as if all waters were not but one great water.
It told her little yet also so much.
Though he regained his strength and ate once more, he ate sparingly. This left him haggard and weak but alive.
He would change his mind. He would relent.
She knew he must. She would not let him die and she would not let him come to harm. When he understood that, when he felt how much love she had for him, he would turn back to her and accept her and grow in strength and love as his will to blossomed once more.
She would wait.
She would have him.
Come to me.
Run to me.
Belong to me.
He marked the days on a tree by digging his thumbnail into the bark to draw a straight line. She wondered what he would do when he ran out of space or if he’d give up counting the days before then.
“He’s lonely,” said the lynx.
“I’m here for him. He doesn’t need to be lonely.”
“Then go to him.”
“He doesn’t want me to yet.”
“He wants someone. Anyone.”
“Not anyone.”
“Perhaps.”
She sang that night and wove the changing of seasons. It was nearly summer once more. Nearly a year to the day since he came to her and looked upon her for the first time.
Nearly a year since he first said her name.
She lay in the cave holding in her tears full of want for his touch, for his embrace, for his voice, for him to turn to her and smile, to look upon her with friendship, with love.
Footsteps shuffling in the distance. The rough soles of his feet against the dirt of the path—she held her breath. Shut her eyes as if to disappear, as if to make him come to her, as if hope had the power to make him love her the way it seemed to draw him to the island all those months ago.
He stopped at the mouth of the cave while she lay in the deepdark.
“Are you in here?”
Her chest tight, her lungs unable to fill, her mouth locked, her words trapped within.
He called her name.
And all loosened within her. She took in a breath and called back to him.
He said, “I want to show you something.”
Trying to keep her composure, she did not run. She did not leap. She did not yelp or cry or sing. Calmly, as if this was nothing, as if the love of her life came to her every evening to show her something, she rose and walked to him.
“Come on,” he said.
She could not see his face, silhouetted as he was by the moonlight, by the stars, by the vast canvas of night, so she teased out meaning from every syllable, from every note in his voice and the way he spoke these few words. Wanting to take his hand and walk beside him but afraid he’d reject her once more, she followed a pace behind him and recalled every word he said only moments before. Memorizing the texture, the shape, the sound.
The wind blew the way it always did yet she noticed it in a new way. The way it brushed his hair. The way it caressed her skin. The way it rippled the seas and cooled the heat of her want. The stars shined as always yet they seemed to all be watching her. For once, they tracked her every movement.
Because of him.
He led her over stone and through the trees along dirt paths that were hers but had become his, become theirs. This island she built for herself, not knowing he would arrive, that she made all of this for him. For the two of them.
A paradise, a refuge, a haven of love.
Their hands brushed against one another for a moment and it took all within her not to take hold of him, to throw herself upon him. But she kept her composure, remained casual, curious, cautious.
“Just here,” he said, gesturing forward with his right hand. He didn’t slow but continued leading her while her heart erupted volcanic in her chest.
He brought her to a large stone that came up to his waist where a crown of flowers sat. She turned from it to him, to his face. His expression one of hope and fear, as if her displeasure could hurt him, could break him.
Lifting it gently with only her fingertips, she said, “You made this?”
“For you.”
And though she wanted to remain calm and serene, queenly and godlike, the stones she piled round her heart as walls, as protection, to keep from hurting every single day that he ignored her, the fissures cracked wide the moment he spoke.
She wept and then he was there, holding her up, shushing her, telling her he was sorry, that he didn’t mean to, that he would do better, make her a new crown, a prettier one, that his hands had been forged for war, not gardening, and she knew only one way to quiet him, to tell him that her tears were not of sorrow or disappointment but love, and she pressed her mouth to his and wrapped her arms round him.
And when she was finished, he found the forgotten crown and placed it atop her head and said her name and called her his queen.
She had never been so happy.