He spoke, face turned from me and hidden away in the front yard among the shadows of the maples. He had left the hilarious group inside abruptly, stalking out the front door with a set expression. I alone had seen him go - or at least alone noted it with enough concern to follow him. I expected to find him smoking, perhaps (though he said he'd stopped), or ready to leave. I had considered whether something had offended him - some joke had nudged at a rib too sensitive for tickling.
This complaint about the darkness of the night did not align with any of the possibilities I had juggled in my mind as I slipped out the front door in his wake. I stood in silence, quite certain there was a question in all that statement, and unable to discern what it was. Perhaps I did not discern the question because I did not want to, because I knew I could not answer it.
Our combined silences hung over us like a thick fog. At last, he turned his face toward me, but I could not see his features. He was pale in the dark, I knew - too pale to be seen, like a grey ghost's face set against the grey road.
"If it is so dark, you should come back inside," I said at last. It was a stupid suggestion. I knew it, and he knew I knew that. The sound of laughter burst from behind us. I had left the front door open in my haste. "See?" I gestured feebly at the door. "They're... they're having lots of fun."
A wave of laughter again, louder this time, but it seemed thin and faltering, like a frail wave straining to reach a child's castle on the beach and falling short. It could not cover us. We were left out.
I wished I was back inside.
"What are we, Anna?" he asked.
So that was the question. I knew not what to say. For a moment, I groped about for something - a word, an idea, a smooth change of topic - but then he drew a breath, and I knew he meant to answer his own question. I left off my own search and braced myself for whatever he was cooking up next.
"We are people," he said. I snorted, a little at the obviousness of his answer and a little at myself for not getting it, but he pressed on with his soliloquy. "But what are people? We are darkness. We are blackness and hatred and filth. We are anger and murder and lust. Surely it is a proud thing, to be called people - who need only think a crime before its stain is on our hands! Such a glorious thing, to be people, for it is to be stained--not in theory or metaphor, but with real, indelible blood-filth. Oh! I am glad we are people..."
His anger burned out into the night, scorching the thin thread of the people's laughter from inside the house and withering it away into a singed and crumbling line of vanity, like the thread of smoke streaming from the cigarette I now saw in his right hand. I saw the end of it flare as he flung it away with one jerky motion. I did not follow it to stomp it out, nor did he. The ground was wet; it would die soon.
There was another painfully stupid pause before I realized he was waiting for me to say something. I desperately fumbled with my memory, trying to sort through the thoughts about the cigarette (he said he stopped!) and the laughter from inside (what have I missed?) and the disjointed ravings about darkness from the man beside me. The smell of smoke still flailed about in my nostrils, making them twitch. I struggled and writhed, finally coming up with -
"I wish you'd come inside. It's warmer there."
He scowled. His face was still ghost-thin, but I could feel the expression. He always had a way of making his scowl known. "I'd rather be cold, thank you."
"Idiot." I tried to put a little lighthearted frustration into my voice, to dispel the confusion. Better to sound annoyed than clueless. "Come on. It's light inside, anyway."
I should have just left it at the idiot part, for my words seemed to act as a catalyst for... some depth of feeling in my strange companion. He abruptly stomped three steps away before turning and facing me fully. Deeper as he was within the shadow of the trees, no longer was his face ghostly; it was a tomb, a black hole against the road's grey.
"Light! Would you call that light?" He flung a hand toward the open doorway behind me. "It makes a pretty sight, sure, but it is a thin sort of pretty - not thick enough to be beautiful, much less penetrate the darkness that surrounds you and I. See how it barely reaches past the front step! Soon enough the bulb will burn itself out, and someone will have to change it. Electricity and wires and Thomas Alva Edison, but not light! Or that?" he jabbed accusingly at the pale moon above us. "I suppose you would call that 'light'? Borrowed light, I call it! A poor reflection of the sun's glory, it waxes and wanes at another's bidding. I would sooner call the tide a living man's heartbeat than call these things light."
Understand, if you haven't already, that by now I was very tired of this. There was a jolly little gathering inside which I was missing, and for what? To have my head talked in circles by some black-nosed brooding melancholic. I wished he would write it all down and let me look at it later - or, better still, forget the whole thing and go inside to relax a little. So! He liked the cold, did he? Then I would give him cold!
"If I knew you made it your business to go around depressing people, I would not have invited you." My tone was snide. I could hear it - snideness dripping throughout. This bothered me not. "Or do you mean to give up college and practice to be a professional bard?"
Silence followed. It was not the stupid sort that his remarks prompted from me. No, it was a strong and yet easy silence. Perhaps my words had pleased him. Perhaps really did enjoy more cold than temperature. The thought annoyed me not a little.
"Perhaps," he mused, and I heard satisfaction carving its way up his face as he spoke. He took a few tentative steps forward and his face became pale again, but now I could detect the hint of a smile.
In the words of the immortal Mrs. Bennet, it was all very vexing.
He seemed to hesitate, but there was no lack of certainty in his voice when he spoke again. "Anna, what if I told you ... I know a way to do it?"
(I wanted to say, 'to do what? To get you to shut up?' Unfortunately, I did not realize I wanted to say this until much later, and it went unsaid.)
"What if I know a way to turn a lifeless tide's ebb and flow into the pulse of a living heart? To make the palest, frailest of lights burn with all the intensity and everlastingness of the sun - no, and more besides? To burn with enough light to eradicate all that indelible staining that we own as people? What would you think?"
"I would think you needed little practice with bardship, still less need to practice on me." I tried to quip, but it came off as more of a snap. "Although, if I interpret the riddles rightly, you might do better as a Mayan priest, for all your talk of lights and frail moons. Soon you will have me worshiping the sun."
There was a pause. And then -
"It all depends on how you spell it," he said.
This was... I don't quite know how to describe it. The desperation, the unveiled guilt and looking at how sin is so firmly entrenched in all of us so that ripping it out of us must kill us first before we can live at all... And then that little line of hope at the end, like the first bar of sunlight on the hills in the morning... And not all the prickly annoyance could shake his firm conviction. Two things that, once we come to know them, are things we can not doubt: that the sin in us is deep and dark and terrible, and that the forgiveness of heaven is sure and brighter than the noonday sun.
Beautiful. The darkness of this was heavy-nay, oppressive. But the last line was pure hope. Well done. I need to read it again.