Elegy

First posted July 2021.

Stone walls are meant to keep. They keep precious things safe, dangerous things hidden, and threatening things away. In all cases, they are a barrier between something loved and something unloved, something treasured and something unwanted. The walls in which Catherine had lived were not unlike the ones in which her body was laid to rest; the castle and the mausoleum differed in size, but not purpose. However, the intentions of both could not circumvent the nature of walls — namely, to keep the loved and the loving together and safe from those who would threaten them.

Belle lingered on this thought as the other mourners departed, the mausoleum still warm with their breath. The walls retained the heat from their bodies, and she wondered what else the walls would keep.

Grey light filtered through the space in the doorway and illuminated each side of the closed door in an ethereal glow. The muffled sound of rain outside droned in a distant, monotonous rhythm, harmonising with the whistling of the wind. It smelled, somehow, of absence; inside there was no smell of rain, nor earth, nor death, nor decay. Outside the door, light and sound slowly faded away, and Belle felt the mausoleum had detached from the plane of existence. In the dark, silent abyss, the only sound was the beat of her heart, echoing off the stone of Catherine’s tomb.

She placed her hand on the cold sarcophagus and closed her eyes. Beneath her fingers, each divot and pore in the stone pulled as if trying to absorb her into their voids. The resounding drumbeat of her blood pounding in her ears reverberated through her body.

Though none were bold enough to say so to her face, she knew Catherine’s family were afraid of her. They perceived her as a witch, convinced her connection with their beautiful, innocent heiress could only be the work of dark magic. Something monstrous inside her threatened to destroy them, and indeed, their entire way of life. It was almost a blessing, they thought but did not voice, that death saved sweet Catherine from Belle’s wicked touch.

She had always protested that she was no demon or monster, that she posed them no threat and intended them no harm. It was not precisely a lie, but she was aware of some magic about her that she could not see echoed in any of them. What power there was within it, she never pursued to know. Perhaps it was out of fear that they were right. Perhaps it was fear they were wrong.

Her breath hitched in her throat, and steam softly wavered in the air above Catherine’s resting place. The pulse of her heart was so strong it shook her, yet her fingers were bloodless and white as bone. Something rose inside her with each beat, the drums summoning the force she could feel, but not name. It crackled in her fingertips, it boiled in her stomach, it filled her throat.

In time with the beat of her heart, she sang. It was an old song in an old language, and each verse came in a different voice, conjuring images of different times in different places. Delicate hands intertwined, voices laughed like ringing bells, lips brushed bruised knuckles and caressed bare shoulders. The words changed, but the story in each verse was the same: in rising and falling scales, in discordant chords, in sharp and minor.

Pale fingers curled around the lid of the sarcophagus. Beneath her hand, Belle felt the stone move, and the song disappeared. She stepped back as Catherine rose, the coffin’s heavy lid falling to the floor with a reverberating crack. Catherine was pale as marble and red as blood as Belle took her cold, dry hand. She felt sharp teeth bite into her lip as they kissed.

“Keep singing,” Catherine spoke into her mouth in a rattling whisper.

Belle tasted copper and salt in the blood between their lips. “I don’t know what comes next,” she replied.

Catherine leaned back, hand still tangled in Belle’s hair, and grinned as red rivers dripped down her chin. “Of course you do,” she said. Her voice grew stronger, clearer, like a sustained note. “Now we live forever.”