My husband, I said in my mind and the words were sweet on my mental tongue. He was that still.
“I fade,” he whispered softly, and his whisper was precious to me. “But I have a memory of a word upon your lips. You spoke to me of love.”
I love you, I said in my mind and the words ripped at my heart, shredding the last bits of me and I did not care that it was my responsibility to keep us all on this hopping toad. I shifted so that I could hold the lantern pole wedged under my seat and use my free hand to cup my precious Bluebeard’s cheek. With all my heart I do. If this world no longer holds you then I want no part of it either.
And in my mind his memories tumbled and fluttered and I saw myself as he did that day that I greeted him, only while that was most certainly my carefully remade dress and long pale face, and while that was the golden bell in my hand, I looked different in his mind’s eye — powerful, vibrant, alive in a way I did not recognize from any mirror. And his emotions in this memory were a sharp combination of shock, hope, and dread.
“My true bride,” he whispered but his eyes were glassy and his words stumbled and then stuttered. “True. True. Bride.”
And then they faded away and in their place his mental channel opened, but it was not words he gave me but rather a strange soaring emotion and with it, the memory of flying on the back of a dragonfly, my arms wrapped around him and the air streaming through our hair. With it came a burst of such true contentment that it made me ache.
My long-dead mother had wanted me to be married and happy. What would she think now if she looked down at me and at my collection of friendly corpses fleeing for our lives, and discovered that this is what a happy marriage looked like for me? Perhaps I was, indeed, never made for the mortal world, ill-suited for good or wholesomeness, as fit for grim adventure as my skeletal hand.
I let my Bluebeard drift, and did not try to wake him. If this was that of which he dreamed, then who would deny him? Certainly not me. Certainly not now. Let him dream. And if I could not call him back to life, then at least he would go to death knowing he was beloved.
