The breaking ice

I was running. I was running to a place I knew I had been before, only not exactly. My body was exhausted, knees aching, feet sore after each thud on the ground, the impact of each step julting my system. No breath left my lungs, no large gulps of air taken into my body from exhaustion. I was also not able to tell my body where to go. It was going where it wanted. No thought, no decision, it knew as it always did. I started falling, slipping, jumping; my feet hit the ice slamming into the lake. Submerged completely into the frigid water my hands pressed against the ice. I knew the struggle would come next, unable to free myself from the water trapped under the ice I kept pushing, struggling to free myself. The locket fell out from its prison within my shirt. I saw the heart float in front of my eyes reaching for it as it sank deeper into the abyss.

My eyes flew open, heart pounding, soaked in a cold sweat I lay on the hard cot letting my breath slow and my fear fade. Light was just sifting in from behind the grate outside my door. It was dawn and I had visited the lake again. It had been 10 years since the incursion and I had visited the lake again making it every night this week. The dream always stopped in the same place every night waking me at the worst moment of my life. My wrist was sore, the phantom hand wanting to grasp at the heart locket it would never hold again, reaching out for it as it sank beyond my fingers into the darkness below. I knew it was still down there waiting for me to join it some day in that cold watery grave.

I removed myself from the cot taking care to remain silent sweeping through the room like a phantom. First bell rang and I needed to be dressed by second bell. It had been so long since my hand had been taken that I could dress with ease even with only my left remaining. I was irritated by the soreness my stump still held after the dream but it did not slow me.

I dressed, put my hair in the expected binding net tightened at the base of my neck and knelt before the grate sealed door. Breathing slowly I waited for second bell, not wanting to let my mind go elsewhere, into the fog beyond the lake. The fog that engulfed me cloaking me in green eyes and auburn hair. I knew it was time I needed it to be time. Second bell rang and my guardian appeared, unlocking the grate and leashing me as was customary for the morning walk of voices. I walked placidly behind, hearing the voices ring out with absolute clarity and obedience. My guardian led me to the kitchen and grated the door again behind me as I knelt. The blessing came and I knew I could begin my work.

I worked in the garden which was a greenhouse and adjacent lawn that was attached to the kitchen. I had been a botanist before but they didn’t need or want a woman doing that job now so I was a gardener or should I say a tender. I was the first room resident they brought down each morning and so I gathered what I needed quickly and silently. I was not a threat, one handed and silent tending the edible needs of the voices and the true innocent. It would be tonight and no other. I wanted to rest, wanted to be at rest.

My day passed as usual, in silence, the cold of the lake still clinging to me even during the July heat. We were not allowed to speak. Speech was for the daily voices and the true innocent. It had been so long I was not even sure my vocal cords actually worked anymore. To be honest it didn't even matter to me, I had no need to speak to anyone nor did I want to. Tending, drying, trimming, harvesting consumed my day and I didn’t visit the lake during my work.

The light changed, shining low through the garden, coral light blazing over my green smock. Third bell rang and I finished my harvest, washed, and knelt before the grate to be again escorted to my quarters. My guardian appeared opening the grate and leashing me for my nightly escort. Evening voices sounded clear and cold as I entered my quarters. Fourth bell rang and I undressed, getting ready for acquiescence then bed. After final chimes i knew I could slowly move.

I opened the corner of the hay stuffed mattress. Finding the hair dressing I had hid and pressed the plants into. In this world nothing was the same as it had been and I had not been just a tender always. I knew plants, I knew what they could do to someone, and how long it would take to do it to them.

As I laid back on the cot the bitterness of the herbs on the back of my tongue, I began to sink into the fog allowing it to finally overtake me.

I was her and she was me. Mine again and I hers. As I drifted into the cold abyss to join her my heart fled forward my hand reached and this time there was a hand there. This time the love and tattoo of the locket I was mammed for was visible, my hand whole once more. The tattooed chain encircling my wrist, the heart locket open to match hers in the depths below.

I saw her running then, hitting the ice and going under into the actual lake just as she had 10 years before. I reached for her as I yelled her body never breaking the surface after being pulled under the ice; my phantom hand ever reaching for my love and the lockets that bound us. Mine in ink, hers in gold, always open to each other, our hearts finally beating as one into the beyond at last.