The ████████ of Julian Green

During the night, a storm had possessed Gallowglass Moors. Wind clawed at the stone face of the old manor as if trying to exhume every secret from within its walls. Inside the drawing room, the fire crackled and spat, throwing a swirl of sparks up the chimney. The hearth’s amber glow filled the room and elongated shadows danced like ghosts along the velvet drapes and ruby wallpaper.

Elara stood by the window, her sharp silhouette forming a dark line against the lightning-stroked glass. She watched her own reflection flicker with each flash–a pale specter superimposed over the churning moor.

She did not flinch when the heavy oak door groaned open. She did not turn when the sound of wet leather and frantic breathing filled the room.

“I could not stay away,” a voice rasped.

It was Julian. He sounded as though he had just walked through the very bowels of the tempest to be here. She turned slowly, pressing her back against the windowsill. His hair clung to his forehead in dark, jagged streaks, and his eyes—usually so cool and discerning—were wide, glassy, and fixed upon her with a terrifying intensity. He took a step forward, his boots leaving muddy, dark prints on her father’s favorite rug.

Elara’s hand fell from the window. “Julian. You’re soaked through. You’ll catch your death–”

“It is madness,” he whispered, cutting her off. His voice trembled like the floorboards in thunder. “I have fought against it, Elara. I have struggled in vain, but it will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. Cannot be.” He swallowed hard, his throat visibly working to catch his breath. “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I adore you, how fiercely and completely I love you.”

“I,” she breathed. “You’ve never–”

He moved closer again, reaching with a hand that he hovered near her cheek. She could feel the heat radiating from his rain-soaked skin. His eyes darted between her gaze and his fingers. Seeming afraid that if he touched her, they might learn how lightning was born.

“I looked for you tonight,” he stammered. “No. I looked through the world and saw only you tonight. You are the light. So bright it blinds me, Elara; beauty too fierce for this earth. I swear I never knew what it meant to see before this night.”

Julian sank to one knee, his fingers catching the hem of her silk robe. He gripped the fabric as if it were a raft and the room was a swelling sea. Elara caught the windowsill as her knees threatened to buckle, her breath shallow and excited. She fought against the smile that pulled at her parted lips.

“I cannot explain the physics of it,” he groaned, his head bowing against her knee. “It is as if my soul and yours are the same; whatever they are made of, they are identical. I feel the cord of communion between us, Elara. A silken thread that runs from my ribs to yours. I am certain that if you were to turn me away, that cord would snap. And I have a nervous notion that I should take to bleeding inwardly.”

He looked up then, his face pale and still slick with rain, his expression one of exquisite, agonizing devotion.

“Julian, stop,” she whispered. She did not offer him a lover’s embrace. Instead, she reached out a single, steady hand and traced the line of his jaw with the tips of her fingers, noting the way he shuddered at the contact, a small wounded sound escaping his throat. She looked at him with the terrifying pride of a sculptor who had finally made the marble scream.

“Tell me I am not mad,” he whispered, closing his eyes to her touch, cheeks flushed with fervor. “Tell me you feel it too.”

“You’re too late, Julian,” she whispered, her voice cool and devoid of the same passion that consumed him. “But your timing,” she said. She leaned forward until the heat of her words would graze his left ear, her closeness provoking a shiver in Julian. “Is impeccable.”

***

One Hour Earlier.

The kitchen had been stripped of its domesticity. The oak prep table was pushed against the wall, and a hand-drawn circle of crushed charcoal, chalk and hemlock obscured the flagstone floor. At the four cardinal corners sat the girls, their faces illuminated by the yellow glow of dozens of tallow candles scattered along the edges of the room.

In the center of the circle lay a white dress shirt belonging to Julian; a candle of red beeswax sitting just above the neckline wrapped.

“The anchor is set,” Elara said.

Mina stood first. From a battered and dog-eared copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare she tore pages. “I invoke the jewel of an Ethiop’s ear. May he see the ‘rich jewel’, a light so bright it blinds him to his own safety.” She rolled the pages and tipped one end into the flame of the red candle. Fanning the smoke of the burning Shakespeare over the fabric as she walked a slow clockwise circle.

Tess stood next. She stepped forward, ripping pages from Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. “Mr. Darcy I invoke thee.” She spoke, lighting the pages ablaze and joining Mina in her smoke and rotation. “I bind his tongue and his pride. Every instinct will tell him to run, but the ‘ardent’ need will be the only gravity he knows as he falls to our power.”

Nelly jumped from her seat, hardly able to contain her glee. With a screech she lept onto the shirt. Straddling the shirt on her knees she stabbed at the heart of the shirt, a rusted nail in her hands leaving reddened streaks and tears in the white fabric. “The spirit of Heathcliff I command thee!” She cooed. “He will not adore her, he will ache for her! If she breathes, he lives. If she leaves, he dies.” She jumped from her knees, joining her sisters in their circling with frivolous skipping.

Then it was Elara who stepped forward, her circling sisters began to twirl and dance chanting an ancient tongue. Their bare feet, lithe and quiet on the stone.

With her copy of Jane Eyre, she planted her feet at the foot of the shirt. She tore a page from the novel, a slow long tear that created rhythm as she began her ballad. “May he seekest thy long road, to all that’s foul and fair.” She sang with a sway, her chamise dancing from side to side, each torn page falling like a leaf to the ground. “No will, no reason, nor logic, deny that love is in the air. One for the jewel, bright and blinding,” Elara chanted, nodding to Mina as she passed.

“One for the pride, the tether to bind,” She smiled to Tess.

“One for the ghost, the soul’s undoing,” she locked eyes with Nelly.

“Blood to paper, ink to vein, Love as heavy as the rain,” Elara sang, each page tear and metronome of increasing cadence.

“Blood to paper, ink to vein, Love as heavy as the rain,” the others chanted back in chorus.

As the kitchen filled with the smoke of burning pages, the girls became a singing flurry of spinning chamise and waving hair. The candlelight flickered as their shadows danced and the girls sang. Elara raised her arms, spinning counter to her sister, her gaze locked on something far beyond and higher than the kitchen roof.

“Step by step, and line by line,

Walk the path I have designed.

No more logic, no more breath,

Faithful to the point of death!”

The chanting continued three times more, each one introducing a new chorus the girls would sing in round. When the third round completed, Elara dropped to her knees, leaning down on all fours, her lips inches from the collar of the shirt.

“The road is open. The heart is caught. Become the man the poets wrought.”

With a final, sharp exhale, she blew out the red candle at the shirt’s neck. As if on cue, every candle in the room guttered out plunging the girls into darkness. The only light that remained was a pattern not unlike the night sky; small orange lights scattered within the circle. The still smoldering remains of burned pages.

In the distance, the girls heard the distant sound of cracking, grinding shale and gravel with the rhythm of a galloping horse.

“He’s coming!” One girl whispered with giddy excitement.

“Go go! Quickly!” The girls shuffled with quiet giggles, shooing Elara from the kitchen. Pulling her silk robe around her, she dashed for the parlor. The ballad had worked. The road was paved, and he was coming.

***

Elara straightened as Julian pressed his face against Elara’s silk-clad thigh, his voice a broken whisper of Brontë’s greatest agonies.

“Tell me it isn’t so. Tell me I am not so late!” he sobbed. “I cannot live without my soul!”

“Then be still, Julian, be still,” Elara whispered, her fingers tangling in his wet hair.

She tilted his head back. His eyes were wide, vacant of his own will, his face flushed with a Venetian fever. He looked at her with a devotion so pure it was grotesque.

Elara leaned down. As her lips met his, she didn’t just kiss him; she drew the ballad back out of him. She felt the pride shatter, the light dim, and the cord snap taut.

Julian’s heart gave a final, desperate beat against his ribs. A frantic “thump-thump” that echoed the rhythm of the ballad chant. Then, with a soft sigh, he went still, collapsing to the floor.

The house fell silent. The wind outside seemed to retreat from what occurred.

Elara stood up, smoothing her robe. The kitchen door creaked open. The three girls stood there, silhouettes in the dim firelight.

“He’s… so perfect,” Mina whispered, stepping closer to touch the cold silk of Julian’s sleeve. “He looks exactly how I imagined him.”

“Better, I dare say,” Elara said with a self-satisfied chuckle, looking out the window where the rain continued to lash against the moor beyond.

Elara smiled at her reflection in the dark, rain-pocked glass. Flashes of lightning revealed bright white visions of the moors in stormy chaos.

“Careful with the hands,” Elara said, not looking. “The last one bruised.”

“Yes, ma’am” They replied in unison as they set to work lifting Julian’s body like washerwomen lifting wet linen.

She stayed at the window as they carried him out, watching the storm slacken, her lips still tingling. It had been a pleasant few months seducing and enjoying Julian. He had made her laugh more than once. She would remember him fondly. Elara pressed her fingers to her lips, still warm from the extraction, and turned from the window. In the cellar, her sisters would begin preparing the body. By morning, the moor would be green and quiet, and no one would think to look for him here.

No one ever did.