Authors: Lynette Ferreira
Softly he tells me, “You are Elizabeth, you returned to me today after centuries of waiting.”
He smiles and looks away across the distant hills. “When you came stumbling into the forest almost a year ago now, just after you moved back, I recognized your soul immediately. Physically you looked different, but your eyes were the same. You were so sad that day, and as I sat there with you, I noticed calmness come over you. I was glad to make you happy, even if you could not hear my voice. I could always be there next to you, always make you feel safe, always make you believe that everything will be okay.” He turns towards me again, searching my eyes. “You cannot imagine my joy, when today as any other day when you come into the forest, I called your name – and you responded!”
He reaches towards me when he sees the shock on my face. “I am sorry. I did not want to scare you.”
I pull away from him.
Pain etched across his face, he looks into the distance and starts explaining, “The last time I saw you as Eilish, was when your father chased me off his land, after finding us together.”
I gasp as this sinks in, and he continues hastily, “I decided to go to Dublin, and I walked there, took me all of six weeks. All the while, I berated myself for not staying and fighting for you, we never had the opportunity to say goodbye. I knew that I could never live the rest of my life without you, because I lost my heart to you that first moment I saw you. The day after arriving in Dublin, I decided that I was going to go back for you, start my journey the following day and steal you away in the middle of the night. The two of us could make our own life somewhere else, but unbeknown to me, in 1355 an illness had come to the streets of Dublin. That night I started with a fever so grave it rendered me unmovable, and then later swellings grew in my groin. The swellings grew as large as eggs and they started spreading across my body, turning black and purple. I had no choice during those days but to live on the streets, and …”
He looks at me, tears running down his cheeks. “I died there Eilish, wishing that I could see you only once more, convince you of my love. I did not even realize that I was dead at first. I came back to our forest, our meeting place, but you never returned until now.”
This is too much for me to understand
.
I tentatively reach out and touch his cheek, to console him and more to convince myself that he was real. His skin under my hand feels warm, so he must be
here and not a ghost
.
“How can you be dead, if I can touch you?”
He puts his hand over my hand on his cheek and smiles sadly. “You moved on, Eilish. You are now Elizabeth and as Elizabeth you were in an accident and this is only a dream for you.”
I gasp. “But it feels as if I have always been here
.
I even remember yesterday.”
“I can’t explain how it works. I can still barely believe that you are here with me.”
I whisper, “I don’t care if you say I am now Elizabeth, someone with a different life apart from you. I still love you and I never want to be without you, something brought me back here to you.”
He is silent for the longest time, searching my eyes and then he says, “Eilish, I don’t have a choice but to force you to make an informed choice one way or the other. Either you can stay with me for eternity and it would forever just be you and me, or you can go back to your present life and continue what you have not yet finished.
I reply adamant
ly
, “I obviously choose you. There is not even a choice to be made.”
He lifts his hand to brush my hair out of my face and fold it in behind my ear. Smiling sadly, he says softly, “You can’t imagine the loneliness, the longing. Now that I have you here with me, feeling the warmth of you next to me, I do not think that I would ever want you to leave again. I do hope that you choose to be with me, but if you decide to turn it all around, then it will be okay too. I will risk everything for your happiness.”
He stands up then and pulls me up with him.
We walk hand in hand towards the horses, not as exuberant as before, because sadness has replaced our happiness.
We walk the horses back up the hill. He leads me towards a cliff and we walk down a steep pathway. We leave the horses at the top of the hill.
Devlin holds my hand and steadies me over every boulder and as we reach the bottom, we walk out onto the white sand of the beach.
I feel the air sucked out of me as I recognize the beach we are standing on.
The same beach where I fell in love with Jared, where he sat so close to me, tracing butterfly soft patterns on my arm, where he said he would never let me go.
I gasp as I remember sitting in the car next to Jared, seeing the silver car sliding at an amazing speed towards us, looking to see if he was wearing his safety belt and I remember that he was.
I hope he was all right and I hope my mom was okay, always so over-protective wanting to know where we all were at all times, because of the suddenness of my dad’s death. One moment you are there and the next moment gone, forever.
Devlin looks at my face. “I am so sorry,” he says. “I had no choice; I cannot risk you finding out one day, when it is too late for you to make the choice, when he might not be there where you might find him now.”
The pain in my heart is suddenly excruciating and the tears are streaming down my face.
Devlin looks in my eyes and sadness clouds his, when he sees the pain in mine.
He says softly, “No matter what you choose now, it will be okay.”
He takes a deep breath and then he breathes out slowly.
“If you decide that this is the end, then this is the end.”
It breaks my heart, anticipating the hurt in his eyes, but I ask, “How do I wake up?”
He says with acceptance, “You are going to have to trust me.”
The sun is starting to set over the ocean and he looks at me urgently now
.
“We have to
hurry.
I did not realize how late it was.”
He grabs me by the hand and we hurry up the hill. He waits nervously for me to mount the mare, before he jumps onto the stallion. He does not race away, but keeps pace with me, looking over his shoulder at the setting sun every now and again.
We reach the cottage, just as the last lick of light leaves the horizon and he runs me into the cottage, dragging the horses behind him and locks the door.
He sighs with relief and walks towards me. “I’ll keep you safe, do not be afraid,” he whispers, “Just keep quiet, they will hear the horses and move on.”
I start to ask who they were, when a gust of wind rocks the cottage. He puts his fingers over my lips, looking into my eyes urgently.
In the wind, I c
an
hear moaning, crying and screaming and I shiver. The wind batter the cottage, wood panels creaking and rattling.
I look at Devlin with fear in my eyes, while Devlin continues to look into my eyes, keeping his hand over my lips and holding me tight to him.
The horses start to panic and whinny.
There is a brief silence in the wind and then it starts up again, until I do not know who was making the most noise, the horses or the wind.
Just as suddenly as it started, it ended.
After a while, Devlin lets me go with a groan of relief.
“What was that?” I whisper scared.
“I think it is unhappy souls. They only appear once the last ray of sun disappears from the sky. Scared the color off my skin, the first time I saw them coming towards me. It seemed to be a thousand spirits in a cluster, whirling around, creating this huge cloud, swirling and twirling about, with faces, legs and arms everywhere.
The faces in there are pulled
in hideous expressions and …
”
H
e smirks, “I don’t think I would want to meet them in a dark place.”
My eyes are wide and I am scared.
“This of course creates a problem for me. For me to cross over I would have to travel through the shadow of the valley of death, literally a forest of lost souls and then leap off the edge at the end of the world into the light.
In the process of getting there, I have to avoid this cloud of spirits, because I am sure that once you are stuck in there, there is no getting out for eternity. For you to wake up Elizabeth, all you have to do is choose to wake up, which you could do at any moment.”
He hesitates for a moment and then he says, “You finally came along and broke the spell that kept me here. Now it is time to say goodbye and you can go back. I will be okay. I have avoided them this long, so I am sure that I could get to the end of the world without running into them – literally.”
“No. I want to stay and help you,” I say sincerely.
He smiles. “You have always been so concerned about the lost and injured, looks like time changes nothing.”
I nudge him playfully and then seriously I ask, “Will they be back tonight?”
“They are very unpredictable, you must be tired though.” He smiles reassuringly.
I lay my head on his lap and he plays with my hair, twirling it through his fingers.
After a while, he says softly, “I thought I would be able to say goodbye, but this is hard.”
Remembering how I felt earlier today, the intense love I felt for Devlin, the joy of seeing him and then the immense love for Jared that overwhelmed me on the beach. I chose there on the beach as memories of Jared flooded over me, but being here with Devlin, I wonder if it was the right decision. Did Sean not say that Eilish always proclaimed that Devlin was the love of her life, what if I let him go and I realize too late that I had made the wrong choice? This choice has no second chance. Once Devlin goes into the light, he will be gone forever.
If I choose to stay, I would not be selfish surely, because, as he said, we would be together forever, instead of waiting to meet each other in another life, with all the complications that might have been added to the mix, we would just remain as it is now.
We do not talk and I struggle through the night with my thoughts and my indecision. The howling, screaming and rattling does not return.
When the first light of the new day breaks, Devlin bends down and kisses me lightly on my cheek. “If we start early, we can cover a great distance before nightfall.”
I get up and stretch. He stares at me and feeling embarrassed I walk towards my horse, but he stops me, saying, “Where we are going, we would not need any horses.”
I look at him, frowning.
“Trust me,” he insists.
We walk through the door and he takes my hand. We leave the door to the cottage standing open.
“Would we not go faster with the horses?” I ask.
“Not really. We have to walk towards the forest now and would have to leave the horses at the edge anyway. The pathway, as you know is only wide enough for one person to walk on at a time.”
We walk up the hill towards the forest. The early morning sunrise behind us, the sun highlights the clouds scattered throughout the sky with shades of yellows and pinks. It feels warm and balmy, not as you would expect Ireland to feel. I wonder if it is always warm here where Devlin is stuck, or maybe I just do not feel the heat or cold, because I am dreaming.
At the edge of the forest, we stop and Devlin starts to take off his shoes. I start to sit down to take mine off as well, but he stops me. “No, there is no need for you to take your shoes off, you will see soon enough why I am taking mine off.”