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“Teach me how to live,” she smiled, and that was always how her stories began, with a twirl and a smile, the distances echoing around her, washing away like faith and memory. “Teach me how dance, and breathe, and think as you do –“ Her hands were like fairy wings as she gripped him, flesh threatening to crumple, bones shaking within her fingers. “For I want nothing else, and can not find rest.”
What could misconstrue one in such a way? Favillous daydreams, otherworldly skirmishes? Marks from creatures unknown to disbelieving eyes, wounds never to heal but in the imagination? Softness, he sought softness in the solitude she provided, isolation stronger than the winter falling around them, the lace tearing from the sky, the shapes wearing thin.
He fell into her gaze and it was a deadly trap. Many men could have died there. Many could have tumbled into that ubiquitous shade, drowning far beneath the surface, dying in euphoria, lavished and adored, a place of loneliness until that morning. Slowly… He looked into her, through her, through out her; the wind was lashing her pale face like a regretted kiss from long ago -
And he saw everything, the wind, the winter, the silence, and what words alone could never teach.
“You’re so beautiful,” he laughed, and it was without a shade of remorse. The world fell around them in pieces, shards lack-luster of meaning, glistening with empty pride. Sweet, tremulous oblivion rains her sorrows like a song, pouring from a great beyond, covering her hair in a bridal veil torn and tattered - hair that was uncovered and darker than sunshine. She did not need that radiance.
Like rain her smile did grow, broadening as she turned about, flowing and glittering in parts, dancing to his unwritten songs. She imagined her hands smoothing across her beloved cello, clasping its neck, bow quivering, song humming over the frozen fields, between the snow flakes, empty streets, and him, not around him but through him, not twirling about, but settling somewhere deep within his chest, singing to him where she could not. Her hair flew about her as she moved like something unearthly in her innocence… Unsleeping, feeling deeply….
Sometimes she slipped. It was a pattern of joy. His hands were pale spiders over the piano keys, thin digits pressing and rejoicing, snow melting over his prints, joining the ivory. He would never understand why they did this; the lake was solid only for a time – he laughed inwardly, celebrating in their echoing song, the music she so unintentionally gave, for reason was an existence not yet undertaken; flitting silently, childishly, stunningly. A brumal light from beneath the water.
Every chord, harmonic and melodic, bled at a slower pace, moving with less vigor, the waves beneath them indifferent to her dance steps, to the piano legs, to his pleas of desperation and of worry - indifferent in the way that society found itself to be, a rough patchwork of scowling faces, wrapped in rage and weariness and intrigue. So slowed the maiden in her tapestry of movement… Without question, without a saddened face. He was drawn to a close and was sinking with the weight of the keys. The ice remained solid. “You are eternal,” he declared, voice small but exalting, proud yet subservient in awe, meaningful yet so far beyond any grasp of structure. “You never tire, you anticipate life and love…” His eyes fell upward as his hands lifted, gliding with slowest of emotions, the most consuming ones of all, resplendent and desperate, “You could make even winter stay forever.”
They had committed this act against his person, she knew it. One by one, in the night, binding him in the corner, cinching him with rope, the night filling itself with harmonized screams, disorganized parts. Dragging, she knew, dragging the wooden creature by its legs, hauling it past the veranda, lifting when necessary, ignoring his demands, savoring his helplessness, misunderstanding his need. Darkness… Glittering, glistening heartbreak; it shone in shades of white and blue.
Her sprightly, light footsteps descended to hammering blows when she heard his song in the night, echoing in the wind, flowing clearly when the breath of nature directed her sighs to the north on this candle lit occasion, dimming greatly when tossed to the South, penetratingly deeply as it reached the East, and heartbreakingly soft as it stretched to the West, wrapping the world in musical ribbon. No ear would be deaf to his melodies when passing his door, no skin left uncrossed of notes, of fragrances without perfume, invisible flowers. And now never a deaf ear could be turned toward any street, any path, any road, for they were all wrapped, now - drenched in music and concertos and light.
They had moved his piano to the center of the frozen lake.
He could not help but smile as she began to spin; could not help but chuckle as her bow stretched and strained across the strings, feeling unfolded inside, stirred somehow, bewitched, when she missed a note because of her whirling, sweeping steps, bow sliding madly out of place more times than in.
And when he missed a key that night - an occasion that she would let pass without mention – because he was too focused on her, music spilling out of him as quickly as it was created, she smiled… Filled with sound, harmony, melody, song; a composition too brilliant to be real.
“We could try again,” she whispered on that cold, winter’s night. December abandoned the trees, seeped into the ground, remained white but without tiding of Holiday or spectacle; when January dances, she brings with her a great many partners, none so prominent as the anticipation of a new year, no cellos or violins, no violas or pianos. A stretching and straining of different strings. “Harder this time. I could send for help.”
“And who would come?” His voice was a seasonal revenant, prone to migrations and flights toward silence.
Her smile flickered as she pursed her lips, the edges lightly chapped from the chill’s kiss, fingertips pink as she pressed them to the window pane, delicate, without any appropriate dexterity for heavy lifting, feminine, young, curved – and the hope within her did not die; he felt it glowing like a star struck embrace.
“We will find a way,” whispered she, the breeze howling as a lost toddler would, hands gripping his own – and it felt so odd to hold them, unmoving and without song, just holding back, the most difficult of tasks, pressing so many keys within her.
His chin rested on her shoulder, one arm curled about her waist, watching January dissolve from the sky, scattering and landing in fragments, and breath could have never been more treasured or fate more adamant. Numb circles, collecting an air all of their own… Words, like time on the brink of true love, stood still. “No,” his reply resounded, and he drew her closer, grasped tighter, heart stilling, breath turning, eyes closing, world shaking, acceptance presiding - “Spring will come.”
She played her cello in her room that morning, but it was not her room, this nook of pleasance and affection. A no man’s room, a room without a title, a room he kept tucked away in the upstairs corner. ‘Not specifically for you,’ he blushed a few weeks ago, desperately clutching for words, their petals falling between his fingers, discomposed. ‘For company of any sort, they do come around sometimes, every now and again,’ and she knew he had not had guests in years, and pretended that she had not seen the music stand in the corner, acted like every room had one… The blankets were tinged subtly around the edges with pink trim, the room bright and calm, feminine if one were to peer very intently, prepared and doted upon with care.
He would listen to her cello, sometimes. Outside the entrance, standing in the hallway. An eager ear pressed against the wall. Search for it, even. Let the sound wander from room to room as he opened every door.
The low notes, the high notes… They jumped without extra life from her person, meaningful but without sparkling white, robbed of niveous flutter. The chair held her too properly and appropriately; the bow, adequately placed, did not skitter long the strings, dragging in suitable descents and slides, fingers warm and feeling – experiencing every vibration, every note on the paper, every crescendo and rest. She felt it to be magical, but lacking contained in that small, comfortable room, pressing against the walls, crawling beneath the covers... Everywhere…. Trapped, imprisoned sound, everything gasping for breath but asphyxiating before it even began.
Her bow stilled.
It was the beginning of March.
The lake had dressed itself in seasonal despotism. Wretched and half covered, wet and partially weathered with frost, hidden self-consciously – only daring, halfway, perhaps not even, to peer above her faltering moisture, glancing at the world, shoving at her covers. Her puddles were leaking through the ice like linen over a spill, darkening to a shade of funereal green as she coyly hid them from the world; but they were growing, threatening to break every trace of Winter, creeping in tangled paths and lacunas, spreading everywhere; beneath every trace of sound and sight.
He opened the door on this land of providence.
She will remember his face in this moment for years, its pink edges like blanket trim, its hard angles and its chivalric inclination toward sacrifice, beauty, and honor; the thin, masculine line of his lips, gently riven, soft somehow, recalling the texture of snow; his hair, shadowed and disheveled, as straight as their path to and from this day - as dark as blindfolded death – as dark as minor keys and augmented chords - as dark as the bottom of the lake. She will remember it, and it will remain inviolable and safe. She will remember it, and it will remain.
His footsteps sunk readily into the alabaster white, only moistening him to the ankles, and hardly - the liquid must have strained to reach any further, coagulated and helpless, crying out with wet scuffling as it met its end. He heard its sounds like rolling thunder, the cadence of everything breaking under his shoes… Onward he trudged, eyes intent, fixated and driven. Onto the ice.
An ice like love, an ice like winter. An ice like the recollection of ancient truths and unknown secrets – Rosetta stones and tests of strength, of everything open to interpretation.
She held her breath from just behind him. Watching, watching only, watching without his knowledge – but then she was always watching, and he knew she was – and felt the ice within her melting, digits tightening around her bow, eyes wider than the lake, deeper than his greatest passion, eyes grayer than overcast, autumn twilight. Watching, fixated.
And she was dragging her cello by the neck as she hurled herself down the hallways, over stairs, beyond the kitchen, past the parlor, out of the door, and into the snow.
Words almost began. They tried to take hold, desperate in their selfishness – weakened, and lost, frozen over, perhaps melted away – with every pummel beneath her breast, feet planted firmly at the edge of the ice, teetering there suddenly, wanting to go farther, needing to, craving need in itself, the essence of everything, of anything, of music, of –
Never would he leave, for she was drawn to him like a phantom, haunting him always in her unfading hope and her smile, the amaranth that was her, an unobservable, glistening light. Syllables in their uselessness; they still refused to fall - her feet, denying silence, stepped forward again. And again. And again.
Always, again, and again, and again.
“Teach me how to live…” Her words began, slow and choked, wrapped in understanding and fear, a frightfulness of loss perchance, terror itself breathing heavily, taking in the dying cold. “Teach me how to dance…”
He turned, the piano resting just below his hand, her words echoing around him as her dancing used to, eyes wide and as wet as the – “And breathe – “ lake, unblinking, unable to look away, mesmerized by this bridesmaid of winter, a woman so simply pleased by the sweetest and most intangible gestures, moments that may never exist.
“And breathe…” The lake made a long, slow groan as she stepped closer. The dame quickened briefly, caught in a twist of fear, heart wrenching from inside of her - but unable to capture even her attention now, because it belonged only to one thing, that statue of what could never belong, what will never belong.“- And think as you do…”
Breathlessness. Emptiness. A lack of everything. A wealth of wordlessness. Sorrow, fragrance, happiness, truth, underlying shades of gray concealed within the white. Can not look away now, he can not, he can not. Was never free all along, lost somewhere in between. The notes beneath her fingers, the world spinning around them…
Her hands took his, foreheads pressed together, breath flowing in a tribute to harmony, all harmonies, even the ones so silent, so cold that they could never be felt, or heard, or experienced, or touched. “… For I want nothing else, and can not find rest.”
There would never be anything else, not now, not in several years when all of this was gone, when the piano was withering beneath the coldest of waters, dissolving in the streams, filling them with tragedy; not when Winter returned and scattered herself in celebration, or when the streets were filled once more with children and revelry, delight and splendor. Keep these memories close, he knows. Guard them preciously, and they will never be taken to the place of silence where no sound may be, trapped beneath the ice.
The bow moved in her hand because it had a life of its own, his companion pulling away, gripping her instrument, twirling slowly at first, like a fairy waking from its nest of daisies, lilting from side to side like a vague recollection of something not real, unremembered completely… Unforgettable somehow, a turning of hope and desperation. Of love, light, winter mornings, and songs. Lilting, turning, dancing, spinning, lilting again, playing into the wind, fingers skittering along strings.
And how could his fingers not find those keys, feeling how familiar they were, their solidness, their reassurance, their meaning? He found them there, as he always did. They rang with a chill that winter could never know, flowing from his fingers like the trace of warmth from a sudden awakening, the end of a dream, the end of a lifetime.
March ice is indecisive; thin in some parts, cracking beneath feet, and she felt as if she were dancing on a window pane; thick in others, as unyielding as it was in February, stronger than wet silk, safe and glowing brightly. A world bedecked in reflected light, a mirror of everything, even what was within. Traces of nothing. Everything erased. Thoughts remained dormant as her footsteps grew faster, her bow strokes more vibrant, and she couldn’t stop now, and neither could he - life and treachery swam below, fish twisting and writhing, darkness testing the boundaries of its reach, mysteries, aching loneliness; everlasting piece, a quietness unknown to all but the dead. Those who would never stop dancing, and singing, and existing.
She felt another crack in the ice.
But so swam on their dance, a remontant sting forcing itself to the surface, a careless and necessary exchange like tree roots growing where the sun can not burrow, twisting deeper even, shedding the layers of everything she ever hid from him, everything he had found regardless, deportment and all, unraveling in the wind.
Beautiful… He might whisper now. What I could have never believed; what I have now seen.
And she might have replied, Sorrow disguises itself with virtue.
To which his eyes may have watered and his fingers missed a key, knuckles trembling and white, wind shredding the dreary tones of his coat, the dark fabric of his clothing. Shining against the melting snow – how those tears may have fallen then, had she uttered a word, breathed a syllable so carefully, holding its delicacy together like moth wings, refusing to let the creature die.
“But you have never known deceit,” he whispered aloud, her ears unhearing, understanding, perceiving - inventing any previous exchange, hair sliding around her like the shadows of tree branches, cello tipping to and fro, sweeping into the air at times, threatening to fly away. The wood hummed against the cold and she grinned, smiling as an ever present, celestial radiance fills the sky. “For I have loved you without guise, even to myself.”
Too many words left drifting, sliding across the ice.
Too much weight to them, no balance, no wickedness. Oceans…. Miles of them… They could have been over one, her mind grew so clouded, spinning and whirring faster than she had ever moved, or played, or felt pain. A crack resounded, the ice broke free. Her cello slid away from her body like a frightened child, clumsily prying from her grip, twisting, turning over on the way down, sliding over the ice, abandoning the fingers that could make it sing, no longer hugging close, no longer embracing, no longer there. Nothing solid to catch her, not even the man who dreamed so readily. Loud sounds, gravity, silence.
Too many words left drifting, gliding downward in the cool, rapacious water.
He fell so deeply into her gaze, lost there, heart cracking as the lake began her own destruction, hands shaking, missing a note, missing several at once, jumping, shaking, disbelieving, disbelieving, not believing any of it, never -
Beneath the water. Her, that creature of delicate wanderings. Beneath… Flowing… Coldness burns and heat stands still. Beneath the water. The ice. Screaming. Dying. Breaking free. Unable to. There, beneath the ice. Beneath the water.
His vocal chords rasped in choked, low moans as he clambered to the site of the disaster, clumsy and rushed. Hands that sorted through the water as if through mercury; growing madder each moment, accepting this insanity, plunging deeper, found no heat, no pleasure, no delicate, feminine warmth. Deeper then. Stinging cold and shards of ice. Broken glass shard-like. Without glitter or feeling.
Those eyes, brown and panicked, epicenters more precarious than thin ice, strained toward his piano.
Movement beneath the white. Beneath the ice. Softness, skittering. The tiniest, most poetic of fingers pressed against the frozen water - pressing against it like an antique, attic window, sliding slowly, shocked and fragile, designed for orchestra strings and dance steps – there! Hand prints, lost in winter! Losing strength, helplessly wrenching! Just beside his darling piano, just underneath, caressing the surface, begging for emancipation.
He flung himself across the ice, laying at the piano’s legs, prostrated before it as if in worship, praying for mercy to an unhearing deity. Crouched there, now. Body unwilling to tremble. Seized upon that hand, where the ice was thickest. No longer paper thin, but like wood, transparent somehow…. Imprisoning…
His hand struck the ice. Struck again. Hollow thuds, water cringing beneath. A few air bubbles grew trapped beneath the ice, begging to kiss the sky. He could not see her face. Gone, now. Lost in the water. Her hands, ever desperate, remained pressed, hitting childishly. Tap, tap, tap… He could not even feel her efforts, those fingers made of delicate windings.
Tap, tap, tap.
Tap…. Tap…...
A slight brush……. A delicate slide to the left…..
No strength, now. He watched her hand turn over with the drifting tide of water, only the top of her hand visible, and he was striking the lake with such vicious force that he could no longer tell just how hard he was hitting. Could have been a pummeling force, something strong and unyielding, Herculean and unstoppable. Or nothing more than a soft, summertime caress; lost and gentle and gone.
Her instrument lay strewn to the side.
And his eyes never said goodbye to his beloved piano as he gripped the cello by the neck, swung it over his head, and with reckless force, unceasing force, implacable force, brought it down to the ice, wind whipping around him, splinters everywhere, loud songs, strings vibrating and loosing their place, sounds like thunder, discordant and horrifying, exploding through out winter, ice shards cutting, splinters rushing forth, everything gone now, dead, executed, crumbling, dying, taking its last breaths, holding them deep within their lungs…
The ice shattered, fragments of wood floating in the water.
He gripped her hand through the mess of tangled, metal strings.
December reeled on her tiptoes and January rethought her life span; March, laughing in its indecisive temperament, sat stoically, eyes intent, destructive and calm, watching the young pair battle its amenities, its hidden blessings and its faults.
… Another crack resounded.
He looked to the side as he pulled, tugging her arm desperately, begging her to rise to the surface through this war zone of wetness, cold, and dying instruments…
And his piano, unable to support itself, the ice around its legs broken – and he knew this would happen, had seen it, had accepted it and traded realities for it – sunk through the ice, soaking him in unforgiving cold, shockwaves of that which withers, sadness, sorrow, loss, heart ache, and winter.
He felt himself plunge into the watery deep.
“I would have taught you everything…” his voice choked, quivering more than a cello string; more than piano hammers battling against the silence of an auditorium. “How I live, and dance, and breathe, and think…”
And her ear lay pressed against his chest, there, on the bank of the lake - bodies numb with cold so deep that is was not enough to die, but to inherit so much more sempiternal slumber - listening to the gentle tap, tap, tap of his beating heart, the pulse of a different rhythm, a spectacular cadence, a melody from a silent, beautiful place… A steady pattern, over and over again, like small hands beating against a sheen of ice, caressing with growing weakness - the lake was silent, drained of its music; the ice was torn and dying.
Snow cupped them like delicate blankets as she exhaled a fragile whisper, letting it melt into the earth, into the water, into the season, and into him, with a smile so gentle that it craved evaporation.
“I have heard silence so deep that it penetrates me still, caught within my breath,” Her hands, smudges of pink and white, wrapped themselves about his own. “December, in all its bleakness and pull, could have never compared, could have never been so dark and without music…”
Her dress was soaked and sprawled upon the shore, delicately shaded, drab but light, her voice incarnate; unfading with that same, relentless hope. “But you filled every cold edge with your deepest intricacies. Your fingers balancing on piano keys conveyed what words could not, for words were never a vessel for your heart. You do not need to teach me anything, my sole companion, for even in the dark, silent deep…”
Her hand was a glimmer of white as she struck the snow in muted sounds - a tapping, like hard, pummeling fists smothered beneath water and ice, fingers curled in resolve, “I could hear what lies deepest within you.”
