A Rose in the Dark

 

            Even now, through the dusk of time, I vividly recall the day I came to Arawn, and the first time I chanced to see her. After boarding my horse in the stables, the innkeeper's servant showed me the lay of the town. A group of youths came running down the street in a rabble. Slipping among them was slim, beautiful, dark-haired girl, whose laughter rang richly above the rest. The sight of her stopped me. For the fleeting moment our eyes met, I was set adrift in her jeweled gaze. I'll never forget that first smile. Reminiscing at this hour, although I didn't know it at the time, it was then I made the decision to remain in Arawn.

            Delilah was her name.             She was a year younger than I, still a girl.  Working the stables, croppers' plots, and inn, to earn my keep, my hours were toil-filled. When lulls in chores permitted, I often watched the youths from afar, too timid to approach Delilah, hoping to merely catch a glimpse of her. Now and again I spotted her playing with the other Arawnun children and adolescents; or about her chores, and on occasion with her well-to-do family. Alone, sometimes I would say her name to myself, touching its alluring shape.

            From the first I knew there was something special about Delilah. She laughed and smiled brightest among these austere folk; rare, like a petal blown in from a sunshine-filled country. Though in the beginning she was mostly removed by circumstance, when our gazes brushed, a mysterious understanding passed between us, or so I sensed. There was a secret she kept, a beautiful thing. Unfortunately, on those chances, few and far between, in which we crossed paths, despite my curiosity and desire to know her, I could scarcely speak. In her presence my self-doubt reduced me to offering a brief hello, nodding, and being on my way, as if against my own will. Still her eyes smiled upon me, as if she understood, and waited with important words yet unspoken.

            By and by, gaining friendship with a number of her companions, we were brought nearer. At first I was still too nervous to speak with her freely as I wished, but what confidence I had was enough for a friendship to grow between us. Nevertheless, while the first year churned slowly along, and the next, an unyielding barrier stood against me. I feared she would always be too good for me. Such low estimations of myself I regret to admit I have always kept. Those and other doubts are perhaps what drove me to journey so far from my homeland, hoping to find my true self in another place. However, in this particular lack of faith I think others would have quickly agreed. You see, Delilah was beautiful in so many ways, and hailing from an affluent, well-respected family; while I on the other hand was a nobody who had drifted north like a nameless leaf.

            Dreaming of more than friendship with Delilah was akin to hoping I would one day caress the face of the moon. Therefore I held back, reserved in her presence, thinking she was unaware of that secret dearest me, and not sure whether I ever wanted her to know, lest it be lost.

 

            One day Tomsun, a farmer who regularly hired out my labors, bade I find one of his lost sheep. The task took me further from Arawn than usual, sending me on a trek into the surrounding hills. There I found myself alone in a green, windswept region of highland, and with no sign of the sheep. While scanning the horizons, the whisper of a song found me, sifting the billowing grass. Unable to see from who or where it originated, I wondered if it were not a spirit? I waited; the melody steadily drew closer. Through distant fields I saw the girl wading, her hair, and her dark indigo dress undulating. She seemed to roam, lost in the breezes, her eyes closed. Of the song I couldn't understand more than a word or two, for she sang in the ancient Deorun tongue, a language carrying the echoes of the sea and the winds from forgotten hills. Still, I believed I could sense the essence of her aira: a nostalgic memory stirred by the whisper of the grass, the remembrance of a place before time, a freedom from this realm.

            "Delilah!" I called out when she drifted within earshot.

            She turned, calm as mist, and brushed away strands of long hair to look at me and smile. She walked to me.

            "Hello Adeon," she spoke in her gusty Deorun accent. "What brings you out here?"

            Words abandoned me. We'd been brought together, far from the town in this interminable rolling country. It was the first chance I'd had to converse completely alone with her. I noticed more vividly than before, the sweet perfume of flowers about her.

            "I came to find a stray sheep for Tomsun," I said. "And you Delilah, why have you strayed so far from Arawn?"

            "Oh, just on and out for a stroll," she answered. Everything about her was at peace, gentle as a willow. "It's not the first time I've lost track of the time and where I'm going. This seems to be one of the places I come to most when it happens." She lifted her vision to the overcast heavens, smiling with a wisp of ecstasy. 

            For a while we stood together, enveloped by the cool embrace of the highlands, listening to the rustle and swoosh of the currents. As she gazed over the country she seemed under a spell, one that had taken her spirit above Deora's mists. I looked into her eyes when I thought she wouldn't notice. They were the color of twilight, and into them she drank deeply of the sky and country.

            "What was your song about?" I asked at length.

            She looked back at me, her gaze dreamy. "A song of the wind."

            "Ah, I thought so."

            I'd never imagined I could be so at ease in her presence. It was soothing to be close to her. We talked a time onward, sharing a familiarity that revealed itself as the time flowed.

            With twilight deepening, Delilah had to return to her family, lest they worry.

            "I'll come back sometimes, to hear you," I told her before she started back. "If that's alright."

            "Of course Aedon." She smiled in a way that showed me it went without saying. "I'd like it if you did. And I promise to sing a song for you."

            Though I never found that sheep, I did return to hear Delilah, as often as I could when my duties permitted. True to her word, she sang me a song. It was about a bird on the wind, and how it sailed the currents to an undiscovered country. Sometimes while singing she would dance, mostly in a slow, swaying manner with the swoosh of the wind. Though she wished to teach me this Deorun art, I knew I could never express it like her.

            We became good friends. Come to think of it, she was my best friend, and I told myself that I perhaps was her best. Whether I saw Delilah in Arawn, or in the neighboring hills, I made her smile and laugh more freely than anyone else. Despite it all, I remained an outlander, and nearly poor as a pauper to boot; while Delilah descended from a wealthy, well-respected Deorun family boasting ancient lineage. They were cordial towards my person, yet they didn't approve of their daughter spending time with my likes, especially alone. This, coupled with my farm drudgery that varied in hours, forced our paths to seldom crossed. When they did cross however, it made those occasions shine the brighter.

            Every time Delilah's smile blossomed there was a joyful aching in my heart. She was divine, like the seldom seen stars. I'd protect her. I'd do anything for her. Those moments we stole alone, we joked and laughed about everything. More often there was a quietness between us; and in this a peaceful warmth. Within this silence also rested something we wished to bring to fruition, but were hesitant to express. I suppose we were too young. Nevertheless it was a beautiful silence and hesitancy, and I savored every moment.

            I loved Delilah. I knew I always would.

            The emotion was so powerful I suffered for it, yet this too I savored. I painted her name in the sky with my finger, thinking of the sea, the highlands, and those times in other lands when I'd contemplated the constellations unclouded. Someday I'd take her to such places, far from Deorun, so she could see the wonders of the world. To discover things with her, even if I had known them before, would be to discover them again, more alive than before.

 

            In early autumn not long ago of this very year, there came a day when I was returning from the village of Leitir-fairge, by its range of hills near the coast. I was still far from Arawn when I found Delilah there, on a solitary road traversing the grassland, under drizzling clouds. It seemed like she had been waiting.

            "Where do you go Delilah?"

            "I was looking for an iris in the meadows," she said. 

            I well knew one of her favorite pastimes was to collect wild flowers, or to find where they grew and just be near them.

            Walking down the road together our solitude brought us close. I don't know who reached first, but our hands came together. Further on I walked with my arm around her.  Though we didn't speak, I can say with perfect confidence, that in my short life, these moments were my highest happiness. It's clear now there had always been a bond between us. I wished the road would go on forever, so we'd never have to part.

            When the town was on the horizon, I held her close. She looked long into my eyes, smiling, with a touch of sadness gleaming in her eyes. We needed say nothing. She kissed me. I wanted to tell her my secret. There could not have been a clearer time. Instead, I simply stood there like a dolt, too overcome with her enchantment to react. Before I could gather words, she bid farewell of me and went her way, taking the branching road that led to the reach of the town where her family dwelt. I remained where I was, watching her go. 

            Now it was obvious she knew what I felt for her. This was not enough however. I had to tell her myself. Sharing our dreams, our lives, was interwoven into a greater destiny for us. As Delilah receded into the twilight skyline, she turned a last time and waved farewell.

            Delilah. The dancing girl. The singer. The red rose in the dark. The most beautiful thing I had found in this melancholic earth.

            Not long after that dusk we shared on the road, labors of wagon-craft saw me to the town of Ratheach. There my work forced me to remain almost a month, the days entering deeper into autumn. The entire sojourn I slept and breathed visions of Delilah, visions scented with her perfume of flowers. I resolved I would give her my secret when I returned to Arawn, and do everything in my power to make our destiny come true.

 

            It was only the day after I had returned to Arawn that I heard the screams. I'll never forget the sound, for it stabbed the heart of the grey sky. And the weeping that followed was a knife twisting.

            Something was direly wrong. Making my way down the streets of the town to see for myself, I was met with several acquaintances. Their distress was evident, like they'd been gravely wounded inside and were grimacing against the their injuries.

            "She's been missing since last night," said one.

             "Aye, her family thought she'd gone to her cousins' and great-aunt's in Gasan-baile"

             "What are you talking about?" I asked, suddenly worried but not knowing why. I wanted to shrink away from them.

            Another ploughed forth, speaking in uneven shock. "A team of field-hands found her a few hours ago,... on the outskirts, near the highlands. She,... she was lying in a wild meadow."

            "Who?" I asked, warier yet, sensing we neared a dark place I desperately wanted to turn from.       

            I shook my head and backed away. No. I could not believe it. Never. The weight of the tidings built up in me though, like a stack of stones I would henceforth be forced to carry. I nodded and walked off, the world a strange blur. Others talked, but I limited myself to listening, addled as I was. There was a foreignness to everyone's words on the matter, and at the same time a terrible intimacy. My focus drifted, ebbing between the present and another place, within, or perhaps unreachably beyond me. What I heard came in broken stretches and fragments. Yet it was enough for me to piece together. Everything the townsfolk spoke of revolved around the same desolation. The more I heard the clearer I sensed it, even saw it, like an innocent bird mangled by a storm, and fallen from its place in the sky.

            No one knew how it happened. There was no injury to her, no sign anyone had done her harm. Strewn beside her in the grass was a single white flower they said, a neamhaidh nightshade. The folk of Arawn speculated that she suffered an extreme reaction to its poison, or, that it was a rare species of the flower, deadlier than its kin. If not the flower, then she had passed suddenly of an unknowable ailment. It was not unheard of. Setting other questions aside, it was agreed she collapsed in the fields, and had not been long departed ere her body was found, cold and abandoned under a twilight sky.

            Integrating the impossible truth, day and night I wandered Arawn like a sleepwalker. At least it hadn't been a grisly end; it was even a beautiful one, it could be said, when compared to most other ends. Nonetheless she was dead all the same. Gone. Before I had a chance to see her again, to tell her my secret, that which was the most important part of me.

            A day has passed since, and I have not shed a single tear. I don't know what's wrong with me. It's the most surreal thing I've ever experienced. I continue trying to comprehend what it means. There are moments I think I know the significance of it; but just then it rushes back, bigger, a dark veil. I can feel it also. Where she had existed is now a hole in the universe. It is a small rent when compared to everything, but through it blows a cold wind, one which traverses me, sighing a dirge sad beyond tears. I shake my head. There's no logic in this, only an incomparable defeat of all that is.

            Somewhere in the unknowable distance, I think I can hear the echoes of one of the songs she used to sing, drifting the highlands, a song of the wind.

            I'm forced to admit that I am a fool; small and alone; that perhaps I know nothing, and everything I've ever hoped or prayed, is less substantial than ash in the wind.

Author's Note