~24~

Now

It was ten minutes before 6 am on Saturday, October the 16th. It had been three days since Anna was last alive.

Elsa was standing in her bedroom, fully clothed, staring at Anna in the bed. From the bathroom the water was singing, and the steam rose in anticipation.

She tingled.

Sparks licked and popped down her nerves. She was numb, and the sparks were almost painful. She felt she had finally crossed some unknown precipice, until she was in this world but no longer of the world. Surely this is what Moses had felt when he first saw the Finger of God.

She had felt much the same way during the accident the night of the fair, when the water had swallowed her, had cleansed her with icy fire. Serenity.

She was an empty vessel, prepared for light and goodness, scrubbed clean by fire and water and intention. As she stood in her bedroom, she understood this without understanding it; it was no longer thought or belief. It had transcended thought and emotion to become distilled knowledge.

How had she discovered such knowledge here, in the seen world? How was it even possible?

Elsa had seen her dead father come to her as an angelic messenger in the night. How long had she believed in magic and the occult, even as she discounted the parables and myths of the Bible? Was not Saul similarly transformed in one blazing instant?

She was an empty vessel, and it was time to be filled.

Her eyes never leaving Anna, she stripped off her clothing, until she stood naked in the dark.

She found her strength, even as those who fast for forty days and nights without food still find their strength. It was a gift from beyond, a treasure of the divine. She peeled the sheet from Anna's body and lifted her as if she were a mere ember, a mere celestial spark.

Naked, she strode into the bathroom and into the warm womb of the shower stall. Her bones were old and strong; she discarded her invisible armour by the door. As her father suggested, she didn't need it any longer. She stood in the center of the shower stall, nude and defenceless; she carefully placed Anna on her own two feet, cradling her by the back as she always did these last moments before dawn.

Dawn, an orgasmic rebirth, the joyous coupling of light and darkness. The light and dark would shudder together and utter a subaudable cry of pleasure and release to echo throughout the world as showers and prisms of light.

Anna was cold and inert. It did not matter. This malady had a cure.

It was faith.

Elsa slid her right hand up Anna's slick spine, touching each vertebra on her journey. Once at the apex of Anna's neck, she tucked Anna's head in the hollow of her throat, so her lips were only a slight chasm away from the scars on Elsa's neck. Her other hand she left in the concavity of Anna's lower back, anchoring her. She nuzzled the wet and downy skin of Anna's shoulder, tired and cold to her bones, and only steam embraced her in return.

The sparks remained, lending her strength. It reminded her of that complete ecstasy she shared with Anna the moment of their joinings. They were one cloth, one fabric, woven inextricably together. No wonder the sound of ancient mourning was the sound of ripping sackcloth. Lives, woven together like fabric; the pain of the sundering was enormous.

In the last moments of darkness at 6:03 in the morning, Elsa remembered the discordant cry of the crow in the marsh. In between the strikings of water she could hear the shriek of the calliope at the fair and the laden voice of the fortune teller.

Free will is the last best gift of God.

There were no longer any emotional walls for those sounds to assault and erode. No vibrations to destroy her, like the army of Joshua at the city of Jericho. Just like that terrible night of the accident and the fair, she was open, and she would choose to bow to the will of the universe.

Even if it meant that, once again, Anna would never come back to her.

And she began to cry.

Even then her crying was not tempestuous, not wailing or shrieking or even sobbing. They were a slow leak from a punctured balloon, her tears mingling and joining with the water on her cheeks, both of them heated and unrecognizable. There, holding her dead partner upright on the cool tile floor of a shower stall, for the third time in her life Elsa completely surrendered.

The vessel trembled.

It was a two percent shift, the last best choice.

Imperceptible.

Meek.

Essential.

Her eyes were closed, so her world was dark, and wet, and warm. The change began so slowly she did not even recognize it at first. It was a swelling pinkness, as if light were blossoming against her eyelids. From the depths of her weary and humble soul, some rational part of her mind decreed that it was still far too early for the sun to be rising, not with this intent and fervour.

Had her father come again to her on the expressway of water, called forth from the unseen world by her unspoken plea?

It could not be Anna. She was dead, and she never shone at dawn. Only at death.

She continued crying, her eyelids the only dam now, yet the tears flowed forth in strong rivulets coursing down her cheeks. Short, watery gasps for air, and her hand tightened around Anna's waist even as her other hand plunged into the safe thicket of Anna's wet hair.

Doors stood open; the way was not shut. She was an empty vessel.

The slow blaze continued, light assaulting her closed eyes. Her tears dashed upon Anna's shoulder, so she blindly opened her mouth, to taste and reabsorb those tears with her tongue. Her moist and full lips hovered above the slick skin, and for a captured moment she hesitated.

Did the universe hesitate with her?

Then she kissed that skin, and in that contact there was an explosion of light and heat, a star come to earth, a fireball, a phoenix. It was contact without sound, yet there was a concussion of air, a pulse of emptiness before the atom bomb struck.

Her eyes flew open when that concussion of space struck her, and she actually reeled slightly from the invisible blow. What she saw next she could not comprehend.

Anna's skin was searing and incandescent. White light rippled along the edges of it, bathing her in a halo of heavenly light, yet not peaceful light, no, a detonation of light, a holy eruption, a celestial explosion that wreathed her in flames, burning without consuming. The heat coming from her was enormous; just like the concussion of air, the heat seemed to stun her, left her cracked and reeling.

Before her red-rimmed eyes, the effulgent woman lifted her head and stretched her limbs, lithe and fair and enormously beautiful. That holy fire continued to rage along her skin, and the water didn't even strike her skin any longer; it burst into puffs of steam before contact. Her hair was no longer a dark curtain; it was a veil of pristine and many-shimmering white.

It had been three days since Anna was last alive. Now she was resurrected, and they were rejoined.

And on this day of all days, Anna opened her eyes, her vibrant and constant teal eyes, and opened her mouth, to say the words she always said upon awakening in the shower, the words that had become as routine as the marker on the walls.

The walls had been erased.

And Anna did not say a word.

She drew Elsa to her, pulled her in careful and close, and then kissed her. The press of her skin was fiery, for Elsa had been so cold, always so cold before the dawn. She could feel the short bristles of the stitches against her skin, before she lost all sensation whatsoever, for only one thing mattered, and that was this kiss from her lover, her partner, who had come back to her now at the cracking of the dawn. Heaven was upon her lips, even as her face shone with the brilliant touch of the divine.

Anna's hands holding her so close, not moving in any frenzy; just one hand upon her waist, another hand upon the nape of her neck, and the kiss was infinitely sweet and long and tender. Elsa felt herself melting completely under the firestorm of Anna and her celestial arrival; they kissed with a simple press of lips, their wet bodies melded to each other in an embrace that could survive all calamities.

Anna pulled back slightly, only to catch a breath, oh God she was breathing again, and it was daylight, and though she held Elsa carefully due to the wounds upon her body, her love was palpable, a breathing and joyous thing, beauty from shadows and water, and then she begged for Elsa's lips from another angle; lips that Elsa eagerly gave, for her love had come back to her, from the dark abyss of despair she had come back to her, shining from her encounter with God.

How she shone! Still she shone, and though Elsa's eyes were closed, and she wept tears of pure happiness and joy, she could see the brilliance beyond, transcending time and place, a light that shone in blessing.

Was this ever really a curse at all?

Or only a gift, disguised?

Mount for God.

A light horse.

Her breath shuddered as she felt Anna's tongue graze against her lips; she allowed Anna to slip her tongue inside, teasing her open like a flower to the pulsing insistent press of the sun. Once she felt that even more beloved touch, she could not suppress a low and felicitous moan, one that seemed to be drawn deep inside her lover, causing her to shudder.

Anna clutched at her even harder, and only then did she gasp with the pain of her wounds, and retract suddenly from their kiss; Elsa found she could not release her so precipitously. Adjusting her body to shy away from Anna's greatest wounds, Elsa cradled Anna to her, Anna's mouth to her throat, opening her eyes only long enough to determine that Anna's hair had resumed its brilliant red.

Stillness. No words. Elsa, the diviner of tales, the spinner of stories, knew words were useless.

Water, hot and bright.

Steam, thick and fragrant.

Eyes lifted, their colour the depth of Aegean seas. Even before Anna spoke the words, Elsa somehow knew what they would be. For so long Anna had been searching for beauty, never fully realizing that this search for beauty was actually a search for truth. And like all truth, it was deep and hard and expensive.

Worth the price, in blood and tears.

Their paths had been parallel to each other, and only now could they be one, as they always should have been.

Anna caressed her cheek, rested her forehead against Elsa's forehead one moment before uttering the words, "I've made my peace with God."

Elsa kissed her again, infinitely glad they had finally met at this place, this moment of moments that would entwine the rest of their lives together like bolted cloth. She should have remembered that their love transcended the grave now, as it did once before.

Then

She thought she was in the garage. It was hot and her hands were sticky with oil. When she looked at the car with its hood up, she saw all the pieces of metal without comprehending them. She was afraid to touch them, for there was already oil all over her hands, and she was hot. She scratched at her thigh, and felt the bright heat in the garage as an insistent force, knocking at her skull.

Her eyelids felt gummy and thick, as if stung by malevolent wasps. She looked at her hands again and realized that she was most likely dreaming. What was wrong with her left hand?

She didn't care. She didn't want to wake up. She didn't want to leave here. She was comfortable here. This was a blessed space.

She felt a touch on her hand, and saw no one there. Her eyelids were so heavy. She closed them in the garage and almost felt the final death throes of the dream, a strange vibration through space.

It felt uncomfortable, like falling. When she hit the ground would she wake up, or would she die?

There was another warm touch on her hand. She struggled to open her eyes, astonished by the amount of pain she found dormant in her body. For a moment she considered returning to the garage, but then her name was called once more, by a much beloved voice.

It took her eyes a moment to adjust, to focus. She was in unfamiliar, yet recognizable surroundings. Her body was covered by a pale blue blanket, there were slats of sunshine through plastic blinds, the sharp tang of detergent touched her nose and she heard the relentless beeping of rhythm and blues from the hospital machines.

Warm fingers on her hand.

Anna turned to acknowledge the blessed fingers that were no longer part of a matched set, and it took a moment to realize that she was not looking at Elsa. She was looking at Haley.

A barely recognizable Haley. Whatever comet she had once been, blazing with light and glory, she was now doused and invisible. Her face was scrubbed clean, and she looked defeated. Haley, irrepressible Haley, who consorted with ghosts and laughed, who held the strength of her convictions in an easy hand, Haley was defeated.

As Anna's eyes opened, she forced her face into a game, joyless smile. "Hey, Anna," she said softly, squeezing Anna's hand.

Anna couldn't answer. Pain was striking her head, and she could feel the sting of seawater in her eyes. She looked across the room, for there was no curtain to shield her view. There was no other inmate with her in this prison of flesh and medicine, there were no cards on her windowsill, no flowers that screamed of imminent death. There was a jug of water on the plastic cart near her, and it was beaded with condensation.

In the hallway, a nurse walked by, and her shoes squeaked.

Pain was building the foundation for a mighty war; she felt it dig deep in her skull, and there was a flashing of it along her thigh. A sob rising, the memories returning, she asked Haley, "Where's Elsa?"

Brave Haley, who as a child had seen the unseen world and was forever changed. She didn't turn away. She swallowed once before she said, "Elsa is dead, Anna."

Anna blinked. She looked at the words Haley uttered as she had looked at the car in her dream, without comprehension. "When?" she croaked. "What day is it?"

"It's late on Sunday, October 30," Haley said. There was a horrific pause in her throat, her eyes swelled with tears. "You don't remember?"

Oh, Anna remembered. The true cruelty of God was more evident now than ever, for there was no veil or amnesia in Anna's memory. Every moment of the accident was there in striking clarity, as near and present as the pain in her body.

The guardrail had blinded her eyes, and there was a smear of moose blood across the windshield. Then the fearsome clack of her head striking the window, and she was swallowed in darkness and seawater, awakening only with the brutal embrace of ice cold. That bastard of water, the fresh and the brine, cold and terrifying, a dark and maleficent force that invaded every corner of the car as it invaded her skin.

The last image she remembered was of the water up to Elsa's neck, the car canted to the side, and Elsa cutting through Anna's seatbelt with her buck knife, unwittingly scoring a line into the flesh of Anna's thigh. Even more awful and frightening had been the absolute conviction in Elsa's eyes, as she lay trapped within the dashboard of the car. The absolute peace, the calmness, the surety. She knew she was sacrificing herself to save Anna's life.

A dark shape had swum outside the car, the window got smashed with a unknown object, and her rescuer must not have known that her head was so close, for it had exploded in pain once more before shutting down completely.

Bringing her to here, and now, and the emptiness of a future without Elsa in it.

Elsa was gone. Anna hadn't really needed Haley to say the words. Part of her had already known. Like the phantom pain in Elsa's amputated fingers, Anna had known that half of her soul was suddenly missing. She could feel the absence, and not only in the pain of her concussed skull or the raging fire of the wound along her thigh.

A squeeze on her hand, and Anna came fully back to the real and grotesque world, and Haley was crying, so low, so defeated, bringing tears from some deep well that had already been tapped again and again in these few and horrific hours. "It's all my fault," Haley sobbed. "I told you guys to go to the fair. I practically made you. If I hadn't told you to go, Elsa would be alive right now."

The fortune teller, and the fair. The shrill whistle of the calliope, and the smell of hot oil. Anna had been about to share her deepest secret, the secret of adamant and salted earth.

Free will is the last best farce of God.

"It's not your fault," Anna said, her voice as dead as her girlfriend. "You didn't hit the moose. You didn't crash the car." Tears trickled down her cheeks and she caught one on the tip of her tongue. It tasted like seawater, and she wished she could somehow solder her tear ducts shut and never taste such vileness again.

She had no such strength. Like Haley, she was defeated.

But Elsa was gone, and every moment held that weight, so more tears followed, a storm, a tempest, a raging hurricane, and she covered her eyes with her hands as she sobbed and sobbed. Though she was deafened by the agony of her heart, she heard a faint creaking and then felt Haley climb into the narrow bed beside her. She clutched at her friend, for the future was becoming more stark and empty with every passing moment. It was that terrifying weight of the loveless and Elsa-less future that pressed against her, a boulder of loss that struck her down, like Atlas with the weight of the entire world on his shoulders.

She could remember far too much. The life she had ached for, had fought for, had gained with Elsa by her side; that life and future was fading as thin fog under the heartless sun. They had had only a few months together to ease the pain of the past and future, only a few months of the most divine love Anna had ever known. Sticky heat and lambent stardust had pressed upon their bodies, slicked with adoration and desire. Every inch of Elsa's skin was a victory over the past, a reward for the present, a hope for the future. With her whole soul she had loved her, and every inch of her.

She had brought Elsa's fingers to her mouth, placed them upon her breast. With her hands, her tongue, she could make Elsa's spine arch, her hands gripping the headboard as her toes curled upon the sheets. When Elsa came, it was with Anna's name on her lips.

How could Anna have forgotten so fast what hell tasted like? Those aching years before heaven, how could they have been erased so completely?

Her secret would burn inside her forever. There would never be another for whom she would risk the salted earth, the pressing mountain of adamant.

Surely this was a nightmare. She must wake from it eventually, and Elsa would be there, and she could make her breakfast, and they would snuggle in the couch, and at night Elsa would rename the stars for her. Surely she must wake.

But, no. For God is cruel.

Weeping was not enough. Haley held her, and her sobs became great racking gasps, watery exhalations of deepest loss. They were both a whirlwind now, and they cried together for the girl they had lost. The girl of the shining platinum hair, the girl of the pencil and the sandwich. Then the girl of the lost fingers and buried hopes, who had embraced her own second chance with more courage than Anna could ever have imagined.

"I just found her," Anna sobbed. "How am I supposed to live without her? Dear God, how do I live?"

Haley's response was to cry even deeper, to hold Anna tighter.

"Why, God, why?" Anna wailed. "Why Elsa? Why not me?"

Anger and loss and pain simmering in her stomach, wracking her in convulsions and wrapping her in heated chains.

"Goddamn you God!" Anna screamed. She barely recognized that her fingers were pressing hard and deep into Haley's flesh, that the nurses had come with their needles and their opiate seduction. Anna fell down a slope of dandelion fluff to oblivion and unconsciousness, a place that eventually dissolved under loss and agony.

She woke again on Halloween, and Haley's birthday. Whatever thin fantasies she had enjoyed under the cloak of unconsciousness had faded utterly upon awakening, and she woke to a thin and cold world of misty skies and hardness. Elsa's death was not a separation. It was a severance. Elsa had been ripped from her. It was not a clean cut; it was ragged with fear and blood and panic. Every time the pain of her thigh rose, she remembered that Elsa saved her life. She remembered the absolute conviction and devotion in Elsa's eyes, even as her chest was trapped by the steering wheel and dashboard.

No one had ever looked upon her like that. That she was worth such sacrifices. That Anna was worth being saved, even at such a price.

Anna's parents came to see her at the hospital. It was torture. They had never met Elsa. Now they never would. Her mother's face was grey and haggard; Anna had been a single stroke away from death. Their visit did not last long, yet Anna's hands ached with gripping the sheets, her chest pulsed with lambent heartache.

When Kristoff and Renee came that day, it was even worse. Elsa's brother looked as horrified and stricken as she; God was destroying his family with the same detached ease as a child frying ants with a magnifying glass.

He told her in his broken voice that the funeral was scheduled in two days. Could Anna be released in time to be there?

There was no great injury. A concussion and a hard lump of broken blood vessels on her head, and the knife wound along her thigh where Elsa had cut the seatbelt.

It was torture being near Kristoff; she could see part of Elsa's face in him, hear some part of her voice when he spoke. She was grateful to him, more than he would ever know, for he had brought Elsa back to her once. For that same reason it was easy to curse him as well, to blame him for saving Elsa's life, rescuing her from one dire fate only so she could be deposited in another? Was it merely Elsa's destiny to die?

And whoever said it was better to love and lose than to love at all was high on crack or simply delusional.

Haley came that day as well, and spent the evening of her birthday with her in the grey shadows of the hospital room. Anna had been planning a surprise birthday party for her, was going to bake a cake in the shape of a pumpkin. Elsa had penned a hilarious Ode to Haley which they were going to present with a flourish, which Haley would then read aloud to a deliriously happy crowd.

Only bitterness now, and seawater leaking constantly from her eyes.