He slept as close to the mouth of the cave as was possible without being outside and she lay in the deep dark where she had often slept as the days and years went by because of the comfort she found in that consuming blackness that bellowed from far below to her at times like the voice of a father echoing across memories that frightened her but that also reminded her of a long ago and far away place that was once her home where a father’s loud anger and a mother’s quiet indifference sent her running for a place of freedom to call her own.
But on her worst and loneliest nights, she missed it.
Those terrible memories resonated in her chest and the child in her felt at home amongst them. For they were her parents and it was her home.
He sat up and she watched his silhouette against the moonlit night. Sitting there with stooped shoulders, he stared out.
She held her breath, hoping he would turn to her.
How she longed to touch him. To be near.
But she understood that he needed space. That he was not ready to be one with her.
She listened to him. Heard the ragged breathing. Felt the air vibrating round him with tension. It roiled within her.
She said, “I know you’re broken.”
He flinched and was on his feet with fists clenched before she’d even finished speaking.
“I can see it. You’re like me.”
He sighed and unclenched his fists and turned back to the night. “You do not know me.”
“I see you. I see it in every movement you’ve made on this island.”
“You cannot.”
“But I do.”
He said nothing to that and she took his silence to mean he considered it. Considered her words. Considered this place and what it could mean to him.
“That you’re here at all tells me that you didn’t belong out there.”
“What is this place?”
“Paradise.”
“You think I deserve paradise?”
“You’re hurt. I see it. Not only your body but your mind. Your heart. I can see it so clearly as if it was all laid out there on the beach before me. What you’ve done and what’s been done to you are like constellations on your soul. Looking upon you is like looking upon the nightsky.”
He shuddered. His teeth chattered. He sucked in a shivered breath. Looked down. Looked out at the world beyond the cave, at the night, and then raised his face to the sky. “I see nothing among the stars.”
“You’re lost. Forced from your home beyond your control.”
His head slumped forward into his cradling hands.
She went to him then. Quietly. Her heart hammering in her chest and filling her skull with the galloping beat as she held her breath. Those were the longest steps of her life. Not wanting to startle or frighten him but fearing he’d turn her away, she crept closer and closer while his silent cry filled her cave, her chest, her ears, her mouth. She bit down tight to keep from crying with him, to keep from letting him know her own need in this.
And then she was upon him. Within reach, able to stretch out her hand and touch his back, his face, his hair. His back racked by seismic sobs that he was ashamed of.
She saw it. Saw in the square of his shoulders, the breadth of his chest and neck, that his had been a life of power and perhaps violence. But it was not the violence done to him or that he’d done that hurt him so.
She saw that he was like her.
And quietly, carefully, fearfully, she reached forth and pressed her palm flat on his back.
He stiffened for a moment, his weeping halting, but he said nothing and she kept her hand there. After a moment, the rest of her followed. She came closer and slid her hand over his back to his shoulder and then his chest, her other arm wrapping around him as she pressed her body to his back.
Enclosing him.
In the dark, beneath the stars and the moon, she wrapped herself round him.
And he let her.
His right hand came to her right wrist and she felt the tension within him, the power of his grip, and she feared he’d pull her hand away and separate himself from her.
A future flashed before her like a thunderclap. Of him wrenching her arm away, throwing her down, and then abandoning her in the cave. Of him running from her through the forests and to the beach. Of her chasing him, begging him to stay, begging him not to leave her alone again. Of him throwing his life away into the sea only to wash ashore once more to reject her again and again, her heart transforming into Sisyphus’ rock, into Prometheus’ liver.
His grip tight on her wrist holding her firmly for a moment.
The indecision in him.
The pain.
All that hurt.
“I know you’ve been hurt. You’re filled with sorrow and hatred and the pain of your life. Lost. Abandoned. I cannot return what you’ve lost. I cannot give you back your home. But I know what it is to lose, to be lost, to have nothing, to be no one. And together maybe we can heal one another. Or at least soothe each other’s hurts.”
His grip tightened and she shut her eyes tight, forehead pressed to his back, waiting for him to reject her, to run from her, to crack what remained of her, to murder the last remnants of her heart.
His lungs took in a breath. She felt the way his lungs expanded, the vibration of speech deep in his chest before they became words, and then his voice, quieter than before but roughened by emotion. “And what if we cannot be healed?”
“Then we will be broken together.”
“Failures together.”
“Better than to fail alone.”
His chest quaked in a different way. In a new way. His grip on her wrist loosened and he instead slipped his hand to hers and held it while laughter bubbled up from deep within him. A laughter unlooked for, unexpected.
She smiled and pressed her cheek to his back, her ear to his heart. That steady beating.
He took in a deep breath and shook his head. “I cannot save you.”
“I don’t ask you to.”
“I cannot love you.”
She swallowed. And, lyingly, she told him she didn’t need him to.
For she would love him anyway.
She knew it. Knew it from the moment she saw him that she would love him for the rest of her days, for all of time, until the ends of everything. She needed him and would do everything within her power to keep him, to have him, to be one with him.
“What is this place? How did you come to be here?”
“Like you, I was lost. All I’d known was loss. And in my fear and pain and sorrow, this place revealed itself to me. It became a home, unlooked for, but needed. A refuge from the world out there.”
“Has anyone else ever been here?”
“No.”
It troubled him. She felt the questions rattling in his chest.
She did not want such questions. Could not answer them. Not yet.
“In the morning, I’ll show this place to you. The trees and the animals and the birds all thrive here in a strange sort of harmony. This is a blessed place. A paradise.”
“Paradise. A paradise of the lost.”
She felt his smile and it warmed her. Such joy swelled within her and she laughed for him and then with him.
Laughter like a prayer. Like a ritual binding them together.
Together, they stared out into the nightsky, to the constellations marked by the gods upon the vast palimpsest stretching over the earth where all pasts and futures were writ.
She searched for herself there among the stars and she searched for him.
“I cannot sleep,” he said.
“Me neither.”
The moon arced across the deep blueblack sky as she held him, barely breathing for fear that he’d change his mind, that he’d disentangle his body from hers, but he kept on holding her hand. His grip no longer tight with the threat of violence but firm. Like a lover. Like a future.
Two hands together could build a future. Could build a life.
Love.
His body, sore and torn by whatever shipwreck brought him to her island, began fading.
“Sleep,” she said. “It’s all right.”
He stiffened for a moment, fighting for mastery of his body. But in a few moments, his body relaxed.
“Will you stay with me?”
“Always.”
“Just through the night.” She heard his smile, felt it in his chest, in her own.
“And every night after.”
He sighed. “Don’t let me go.”
“I won’t.”
“I dreamt…I wonder if I’m yet dreaming. If I’ll wake and be alone at sea.”
“I thought you were my dream and I fear to close my eyes and let the dream fade.”
“Perhaps we dream each other.”
“I won’t let you go.”
“Just until morning. Then you can show me this place. This paradise.”
I will never let you go. “This paradise, a dream dreamt together.”
He laughed. A weak nothing laugh. More a sound in his nose and a slight bubble in his chest.
I will never let you go. Silently, she promised to be his. To belong to him.
She promised to make him hers too.
To make him love her.