Trigger Warning: mentions of deatha and depression
Novels, as delightful as they are, always lull you into a false sense of security. Their words curl around your throat, squeezing the breath from you until you beg for mercy, for forgiveness, for release from that life you’d rather have. The words let you go, begrudgingly, but you’ve already tasted the love you could have, sentences as tempting and as ruinous as a mortal drinking ambrosia. They know you’ll come crawling back, praying for more from false gods.
What the novels don’t tell you, however, is that love is never easy. It’s never easy for two mortals, arguments arising from simple frustrations such as a lost petticoat, a misplaced ledger, their child’s scraped knee bleeding through its stocking. It must be impossible then, for a mortal and immortal to love, presumably? We made it work. We wanted it to work.
Father had warned me of the banshee that walked the halls of our home, her mournful gaze watching us. It was as if she were terrified our lives would slip through her fingers like sand, here one moment and blown away the next. Some nights, her wailing would fill the hollow hallways, her voice as sad as her eyes had been. But I wasn’t afraid, no, I was fascinated. A young boy of fourteen, barely the beginnings of a man, desperately wanting to know more about this unknowable creature. I lay awake through the night as the weeping finally fell silent. My heart did not, hammering away beneath my ribs, and I knew then that I wanted to speak with her.
I did not have the chance to until I was twenty-and-six, returning to Ireland and a lonely house. The silence that swallowed the once noisy hallways made me uncomfortable, the quiet pressing down upon me. It had been a freak accident, they told me; my family had perished at sea on their way to see me in London. It was my duty to return home, to give up everything for nothing. As much as it pained me to leave the lifestyle I wanted, I honoured the ghosts of my parents more so than my own happiness.
My Father’s study–my study–evoked no passion in me. I stared at the ledgers before me, their contents unfinished as if promising that he’d return. Of course, he wouldn’t… A poor imitation was left in his place. A voice, her voice, called out to me then, drawing my thoughts away from loss and its accompaniment of grief.
'Séamus,' she said, the sound of my name on her tongue so foreign and yet so familiar, 'Welcome home.'
Suddenly, I was a boy again, prepared to follow that voice anywhere. And so, I did.
'What is your name?' I asked, suddenly breathless, entranced.
'Radie.'
Her voice was as beautiful as I imagined, as if it were sunlight reflected on the lake beside my home. Every waking moment I sought for her, searching for solace in the words that tumbled from her easier than I expected. Her presence soon filled the pang of loss I felt for my family, their faces slipping from memory as hers took residence, painted in the finest oils on a pristine canvas.
The novels are not eloquent enough to tell you the true sensation of ‘The Fall.’ They describe it as if it were a beast you could contain, could recognise and quell. In truth, I could never fight it; it consumed every fibre of my being without even uttering an apology. I managed to hold on for half a year, my fingers clinging to the cliff edge before they, finally, slipped. It was so easy to fall, especially when she was waiting at the bottom of the abyss.
We were drawn to one another like moths to flame, blindly reaching out with no care if our wings were singed. She was my second shadow, a promise of company never to be lost. I found myself looking over my shoulder for her, unease settling deep in my belly whenever the house was quiet for too long. My mind played tricks on me in these moments, whispering worthlessness in my ear until I could do no more than to cover my ears and scream. She would be at my side at an instant, gentle words and even gentler hands coaxing me back to myself.
My life brightened with her by my side, sorrow replaced with smiles. The house became a home, her presence known by the irises in an ornate vase and cotton dresses hanging beside my shirts. It wasn’t perfect, not be any means. I was plagued by nightmares of the sunken faces of my parents, their hollow eyes haunting me throughout the days. But with her beside me, it was enough. She was more than enough.
We were sat in my study, the fire grumbling in its hearth and a half-empty bottle of whisky between us, when she confessed. Her hands, which had been tracing the reflections of light the bottle had made, now lay upturned and still.
'Séimí,' she murmured, her voice fitting so easily around the nickname she had chosen for me, 'There is still so much of me you don’t know. But I want you. To know, that is. I want you to know me.'
A steadying breath. Her gaze lifting to meet mine, my hazel eyes reflected in her sapphires. Her hand raising to my cheek as mine moved the bottle of whisky aside. Words clogged my throat, their inadequacy bringing scarlet shame to blush my cheeks. I wanted to know her too. I wanted to know so many things: her favourite perfume, her favourite season, her favourite era of the multiple she’d lived through. Such trivial things, so inconsequential. But it didn’t stop me from wanting.
In that moment, however, I desired to know the shape of her lips. The first kiss was chaste, barely a brush of skin-on-skin, permission asked and given when it deepened, mouths parting to breathe the same air. I surged forward then, months of wanting and years of wondering having led to this moment. The warmth of the fire was nothing akin to the heat we experienced now, bodies too close and yet not close enough. My lips left hers so I could dot kisses over her face, mapping the constellations out of her freckles, our giddy laughter mingling in the small space between us.
The words tumbled out of me, but not with speech. There are many languages of love, they say, and I spoke of my adoration with kisses to her soft skin, discovering unknown stars.
The novels say that banshees are bad luck. They haunt us mortals to save us from death, and when they don’t, their voices rise into piercing screams, mourning their lost ward.
The novels lie. They can also sing.
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