Shake off that cold, she’s in love with you. Don’t look at those ducks and wonder whether they know the water’s dirty, imagine being free to fly to some other river. The mists lifting don’t mean you’re losing time. Mists lifting means sunlight. Turn to it for a moment. Kiss her cheek. Hold her hand tighter. Go ahead, trust the roots of that old oak, the ones that reach out into space. Stand over the empty canyon air. Look across to her. Drink in her smile. Hear the geese. Enjoy the sight of their passing. Let your shoes slide, nothing fits right unless you’re happy. Let her in your jacket. Put your cheek against hers. Feel the heat against the frigid air of morning. Consider how cold the world is and go where it’s warm. Go without thought. Be glad. 

She took her coffee in bed. Old letters, the same letters she always read, were strewn about the heavy covers and she was already reading as she accepted the steaming mug. And it would have been just another morning had she not seen her servant’s face. 

“Tom,” she said, pointing.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he replied, “I’ll shave this morning.”

She shook her head.

“It’s grey.”

To this, her servant smiled.

“Yes ma’am.”

She considered this a moment before she ripped back the covers and leapt from her bed. Her landing was not as triumphant as she had hoped. Her back popped twice and she was forced to halt and wait to see if she’d go into a fit. Tom the servant watched with big eyes.

“You-?”

“I’m fine, Tom. Fetch me my coat.”

As Tom rummaged through her closet, she yelled to him from a large mirror beside her bed. She asked him of the past and the present and wondered at the lines in her face. Tom returned with a green sea-colored wool coat that hung down past her knees. She spoke to him as she fastened it.

“How has long has it been, Tom?”

“Some time, ma’am.”

She frowned at the state of her body before they stepped out.

Tom had kept the garden up. The paths were neat. The ivy was green and alive. But Tom had ignored her requests to remove the many cats that took residence there within her walls.

“Bad luck,” she grumbled. 

Tom knew she wouldn’t get rid of the cats. She had grumbled those same words of him when they found him in the desert when he was—when she was—still young.

The walls. She stopped now and stared at the walls. After a lifetime, she had gotten what she wanted. 

She walked through the courtyard, unaware that her hands dangled at her sides. Her eyes were on the walls she’d forgotten and the sky above them. The gate to the outside was the only thing Tom had neglected to upkeep. The massive latch and bar were secured by years of weather and settling in the way old things are. 

She could hear children playing outside the walls.

“Tell me Tom,” she said, “what is it like out there now?”

“We could step out the servant’s entrance, ma’am.”

“I want this open,” she said.

And while most servants are annoyed at such requests, Tom smiled, for he had wished for this for some time. In fact, he had waited years.

“I’ll get a hammer,” he said.

Tom was handy with a hammer as he was handy with most things and soon—after a few well-placed hammer strikes—the gate’s latch lifted and it’s bar slid through. Tom pushed the heavy gate open. The metal groaned. Light filled corners it had missed for years. 

Outside, skinny children played in a dirt path someways from the gate. They stopped and stared. The rags they wore for clothing hung from their sharp, knobby shoulders and their skin was dirty and their hair matted, but their eyes were big. It was one thing the world had not taken from them.

A few of the children whispered, “witch” at the sight of the old woman in her strange coat. She was tall and her back was straight, which struck the children as odd for all their parents were crooked and ruined from the work they left to each morning. But a few of the older children knew exactly who the woman was. They told stories about her at night when the littler children needed hope.

She stared back at them, horrified.

“Tom, what is this?”

And for the first time that morning, Tom was not smiling.

“The state of things, ma’am.”

Horror and shock sped from her face. A bit of her old self showed then. Her hands pulled her coat back and one foot shot forward. 

“Children,” she barked, “where are your clothes?”

They blinked back at her.

“When was the last time someone gave you any food?”

One child, bolder than the others stepped forward, and told her. He was a saucy runt who spoke with scorn as he told her of the sheriff and the sheriff’s men and how they robbed he and his family and all their families for that matter and how they had the king’s blessing to run all his people into the ground if it so pleased them. And then the boy spat with pride.

“Why the king would never,” she began, but stopped before she turned and asked Tom, “who is king now?”

“I tried to tell you ma’am,” Tom said, “But grief can remove us from the present.”

Then a voice of gravel and grinding fell over their ears like a dark spell. 

“Go back into your castle, hag.”

The children scurried away to avoid the voice and the boots that followed. 

She stood, still looking at Tom.

“Tom what did he call me?”

Tom glared past her at the man. 

“Hag, ma’am, and I believe he issued you a threat.”

And then. Then, she was back. 

She looked up to see a brutish man, belly spilling over his belt beside a wide broadsword, shoulders thick under a large, wool tunic. Behind him, other brutes, no smarter by the looks of them, fell into rank at his side.

The brute grinned and said, “Your time will come.”

She knew that look in the brute’s eyes. She had seen it in monsters around the world. It was a look of hunger, of eagerness. She turned and walked back under the arch of her gate. Tom followed.

“Tom,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“My sword.”

“Ma’am.”

“Yours too.”

She marched into her room and snatched a belt from a table and cinched her coat tight at the hips. She saw herself in the mirror again and was taken aback. But her old self pushed forth again and she set her jaw and decided she had no time for reflection. 

Tom appeared at her side and offered her weapon.

The sword resembled her. It was clean and clear. A two-handed, simple design. Simple, but effective. The blade was sharp and straight, narrower than the common broadswords of the era, but then this sword was not for hacking. 

She whipped the sword up and away with a flourish and let it rest on her shoulder.

“I’m sure you’re enjoying this, Tom.”

He was smiling again, “not at all, ma’am.”

He had his own sword, and it was not a common broadsword either. The blade was long and curved, thick near the point with a pommel that curved to fit his hand.

“Death to tyrants,” she said, and just before she left she caught sight of herself in that mirror, and acknowledged herself in the eyes.

That night the children feasted and played in the garden while the burly sheriff’s head stood on a pike before her gate, for while she considered herself civilized, there were parts of the woman’s past she could not help but indulge in.

Dear Mona, 

Were that I could go back, if we both could. 

It’s raining here just like it used to. When we wandered those streets, walking under the bridges and looking up as though they were ancient ruins. When we sat beneath those giant trees and you told me stories about where the river went and the villages along the way and the colorful people that live there and the heavy blankets of the inn beds where we’d stay. You were always good to make believe for me. 

I want to tell you that I can still see those days. The greens, the grey. I see them all in your face. And I see your face in those days, hair clinging to your face, rain drops rolling down your cheeks, the only red in the world your lips there in front of me. And not that taillight red, that’s not red. Not really.

I want to tell you I’d do ten more years to have another afternoon in the rain with you.

To think all those lights in all those cars has at least one heart beating behind them. On they go, passing by and we’ll never see a one of them. Is that where you are now, Mona?

If I don’t stop myself now, I’ll start begging.

Just know that if I go tomorrow or any day and I show up to a gleaming golden heaven, I’ll barter my way down to a rainy city full of trash and rusted metal, concrete bridges with cars roaring over ‘em. And I’ll take the deal even if I never find you there. Even if they promise me again and again, and I never find you. It’ll be enough to know you’re there in our city and I might be just around the corner from you. It’ll be enough to sleep on the street and let all those no-face lights fly by. 

Mona.

Where are you?

Where do I send this letter?

Do I bury it?

Think I’ll burn it. A little orange to compliment your lips. A little light in this grey dream. I close my eyes and I see the light play off your face. 

There’s something that’s been on my mind. If I jump where you did, will I find you? 

I’ve decided it’s as good a plan as any. 

I walk down to the river to find an old man sitting in my spot. Though suddenly I am embarrassed, for I’ve stumbled into myself there on the banks.

I know myself by my eyes. Because otherwise there isn’t much else the same. But there they are, the same bursts of blue and yellow, the sclera none yellower for age. Wrinkles draw back my eyes and my bones are knobby once again as though flesh were a gift reserved for the vibrant. The me before me more resembles a skeleton. But my skeleton self looks on me and smiles. 

He asks me,  “what’s wrong?”

And I tell him exactly what’s wrong.

“I just walked away from the love of my life!” I say.

He laughs, “That wasn’t her.”

And I snap back, “what do you know?” 

So he looks at me with those eyes of mine and cocks a smile and I see in that moment why David from fourth period wanted to punch me in my nose.

“So who is she?” I ask, “the one.”

And the old skeleton man does something only old men do. He takes all the time in the world to stare off to the horizon and enjoy his thoughts. He takes a drink of air before his eyes—my eyes—return to find me waiting.

He nods.

While I consider:

Do I make it? I ask, but wait of course I do, unless he’s a ghost. But why would a ghost wither? He’s gotta be some kind of ghost though. Why would an older version of myself take the time to time travel to this moment? Unless this moment was of  some significant—

“Enough,” he says,  “consider me a ghost.” 

“Damn,” I think, he’s in my head. At least I have a good memory. Unless I’m crazy.

I look up from my thoughts to see him waiting, watching me. He watches me the way a mother watches her beloved little toddler destroy the kitchen.

“What happens to her?” I ask, “To us? Do we have children? What do they look like? Do they survive? Do we? Is It okay?

Is it all okay?

Please.”

The old man lets the questions fall away, until there is only the sound of the water and the birds chirping. The skin pulls tighter at his temples. His hair has thinned. He looks even more like a goddamn skeleton.

“I just want to sit by the river for awhile.” He says.

“But why, why are you here?” 

My eyes blink back at me from his near-skull.

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“But if you know she isn’t,” I gesture up the hill, back to paved streets and homes and telephone poles. 

“You already forgot her,” he says, “you forgot her as soon as I mentioned another.”

He holds a hand out to the river. It’s a gesture I recognize. He laughs.

I’ve never liked my laugh.

Turns out I despise it coming from a preachy skeleton man who looks just like me only dying. My youth escapes from my lips.

“This is fucked,” I say.

“Not as much as you’d think,” he says.

I sit down.

“What do we do?” I ask.

“I’m gonna sit awhile,” he says, “watch the water a time. I always liked watching the water.”

“Yeah, I know,” I say.