I chose none of this.
His words echoed in her head the following days and she smiled because was that not always how love was? We did not and do not choose who and how. We simply fall. We plummet in love and collapse into love and we do what we can to keep from drowning in it, to keep it from consuming us.
For she had not chosen him either.
His arrival struck like a thunderbolt and she was a tree set to flame by its touch, for she could not escape or even evade its coming. No, she did not choose but only loved in return. She promised herself to always give him what he gave to her.
And he saw her love for her in every gesture, in the way he kept a watchful eye always on her, as if she would leave him. As if she could.
He was drowning in her and she smiled, swelled at the thought of it. The intimacy of their bond. So much more than flesh. It was like their souls enmeshed and she could not remove herself from him even if she had a thousand years to attempt it and neither would he be able to remove her touch and memories from his own soul.
She’d seen the fabric of his soul pulled taut by the winds of fate and she’d seen it grow ragged and tattered by the calamity of gods but he was here now and she would weave his soul back together and patch any holes she found.
He woke in a jolt to her song like he could not wait to leave his dreams. She watched the moment of panic that he always woke with, his eyes seemingly bruised, until his gaze landed on her. Then his smile came and she touched him. A touch like a thunderbolt that made him shudder and recoil for a moment as he shook off the terrible dreams he had of drowning, of people dying.
So many had died in his life.
She sought to soothe him. Not to forget, for she saw how bound to his soul these moments were, but she could ease them into the pattern of his life.
“What today, my love?” His voice thick with sleep, with dreams, strained by thirst and the efforts of passion.
She only smiled. Could not stop smiling.
I will remember you.
He set down the roasted rabbit and sighed. “I couldn’t eat another bite.”
“You need to regain your strength.”
He cocked his head and smiled. “Am I not strong enough, my love?”
She laughed, wanting him to take her right then in the dirt and the grass beneath the screaming bright sun. “You came to me with the body of a warrior.”
“Well,” he took a breath. “I’m a warrior no longer.”
The curtain of sorrow fell so suddenly and it was her fault for reminding him. She touched him and he lurched and she grabbed his shoulders then firm with both hands and brought herself close to him, faces close enough to share the same air. “You are so much more than your memories. They have made you but you are not subject to them.”
He nodded and tried to smile but it reminded her of his smile in those first days on her island.
"The wind blew. It always blew. A constant hushing push over the island carrying the scent of the sea and distant fishes. The sun shined, as it always did. The trees stood tall, their leaves blushing as the seasons changed. And she held him close to her and whispered into his ear, “Tell me.”
His voice broke as he said, “No.”
The seasons passed and the wind blew and the sun and moon shined and his hair and beard grew longer and he began going through the martial motions of his days as a sailor and warrior and she watched as his skin slickened with sweat and she tasted it and she loved it and she luxuriated in his strength and determination and rough midnight touches where only the stars and the deepdark heard hear cries and she wept sometimes for the beauty bestowed upon her and she saw how he cried at the beach staring out at the everness of the sea and she understood that he too felt blessed by this gift that they were for one another.
He remained leery of the seas even after two years on her island but when she pressed him on it he grew stern and his face hardened even as he kept his voice light and told her some impossibility like, “I cannot swim,” or “I fear drowning,” for no one with shoulders and thighs like his would fear drowning in such calm waters.
But she remembered his dead. The ones he dragged behind him as if chained eternally to their corpses. And she let it go.
“Why do you hold it all inside?”
He clenched his jaw. “What does it matter?” His voice came sharp and he looked at her with the ferocity of a warrior for the first time since he first tried to throttle her when he believed she was only a woman.
She touched his shoulder, his hand, but he pulled free of her. “I do not want to be touched.”
“My love—”
“I do not want to be soothed! That’s all—” He caught himself and clenched his jaw closed. He exhaled slowly through his nose but the rage never fell away from him.
It frightened her to see him so. It hurt her to know how much he still kept from her.
“What is the matter, dear heart?”
He stared back with such malevolent intensity that she looked away, unable to bear his gaze. “You are not yourself today. I’ll leave you in peace.”
He said nothing, only watched her go.
He stared out to sea not only for the afternoon but for the next eight days. He did not return to her or their cave but only stood there staring out.
Occasionally he spoke but the wind swept it away and would tell her nothing of his words but that they were not for her but another.
It cut her, these words. That he may be talking to another. Perhaps reaching out to some god. Perhaps speaking to the sea itself or to the wind in an attempt to leave her.
He would not.
He could not.
Fear.
Tentacles snaked up her legs and into her stomach and chest, wrapping round her throat to throttle her. Her vision swam and her thoughts reeled and she let him have his peace, let him keep to himself.
He loved her.
I chose none of this.
She held onto that sentence, those simple words. But when the moon rolled high over the sky or hid entirely, she crept to the edge of the beach and watched him sit there staring out at the sea.
The wind blew harshly, conspiring against her, perhaps taking his side, but she did not need to hear when she saw how his shoulders shuddered, how his face lowered into his cupped hands.
What restraint, she told herself, to let him hurt, to keep from going to him and loving him and soothing him and washing the pain away.
His memories threatened to drown him and they would pull her under too.
He needed to unburden himself.
“I’m sorry.”
She went to him and held him at the mouth of the cave on the ninth night since his anger flared. “My love., you don’t need to apologize to me.”
His body stiff, arms at his side, he only leaned into her. She held his weight, thankful even to be given that much. Starving for him. Needing him. She took in a lungful of breath to sing to him but he said, “I’m sorry, even so.”
“Your memories—”
“I feel shackled.”
“By the past.”
He swallowed and when he finally spoke his voice was strained. “Yes.”
“I once heard that the only way to escape the horrors of your past was to carve a hollow into a tree and whisper those memories into it.”
He only breathed.
“I will be your tree, my love, my heart. Tell me all of your hurts, all that has tortured you. Together, we’ll work through it.”
Shaking, his tears came and he fell to his knees and she held him up and he wept and she wept with him but she was strong and would remain strong, would become whoever and whatever he needed. She begged him to tell her, to unshackle himself, to unburden himself, to step into the light, into this new life clean and naked as a baby without the memories scarring his soul.
When finally he calmed, he said, “It’s not a story for the night.”
“Let the dark swallow these terrible memories, my love. Speak and be rid of them.”
The wind blew.
The stars shined.
His heart beat and hers in time with it.
She tried to hold in the tears and fears, how much she needed his arms round her, holding her, loving her. But she waited as he sat in silence, in darkness.
At last, he took a deep breath and began.