The Pilgrim Soul in You
They left him shackled in the sell and unshackled me. For what reason I did not understand. Loki sat against a wall, leaning his head against it, watching me pace.
“I will fix this.” He said to me, quietly, muffling his voice in the hair that fell over his face, the hair he was unable to push back behind his ear.
“I promise you I will fix this. I will not let anything destroy you there, I have friends in dark places, and you will be safe in their keeping. I promise you I will fix this, and you will return, unchanged. You should not have to suffer on my account. ”
I looked as he sat stoically in the shackles that held him. I looked down at my own hands and feet, free and moving. Terror shook me to the core, a cold feeling, the feeling of unknown, of remembering, of pavement.
A man walked in, and I could see several guards posted at the door, making sure we did not attempt anything.
“Autumn,” the man said. “Please sit down somewhere.”
Loki nodded his head, motioning that I should sit near him. I picked a seat just a few inches away from him, a tiny gap between us, making sure I did not touch him but listening to his silent direction to sit near him.
The man grabbed my arm, and pressed a syringe into it.
“Thank you for being so calm about it,” the man said to me. “I’m sorry.”
He rose from his position kneeling by me, walked towards the door and unceremoniously was let out of it. The door clanked shut behind him.
My body shuddered as I felt whatever it was I was given course through my body. I looked at Loki, wide eyed. I could feel a chill freezing my heart, breathing became somewhat difficult, shallow, and I felt myself losing the ability to move my toes. The ice came up to my knees, my hips, creeping up my spine, quicker than I had thought it would. He was watching me, and his face was crumbling as he came to the realization of what they had just done to me.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “It’s okay.”
He leaned forward against the restraints. I could see his legs moving forward, his hands moving forward, and then stopped against the restraints, dead. Futile. I knew he had instinctively leaned out to take my hand, to comfort me through the freeze and then shatter of my soul, the end of me and of all things, my two lifetimes, the unremembered one on earth. The remembered one here in Hel. He pushed himself near to me, his shoulder touching my shoulder, and his head resting on mine.
My legs froze, then my back and shoulders and arms, and it moved down to my fingers. I wiggled them and fought against the paralysis the freeze was giving me. He saw those futile efforts, and he held himself still against me, not daring to speak. I looked at him, next to me. I knew I only had minutes to speak to him but I couldn’t come up with anything to say, my mind blank with terror, as my body seized into permanent stillness. I looked into his eyes, deep black pools of sadness, of honestly, and of empathy. And I looked through them into the wells of his life, and recognized the ache he held the first day I met him, of all good things ending, regret, fear. And from those wells tears fell, and he instinctively reached up to wipe them, jerking again against the restraints.
“It’s ok,” I slurred, my neck and jaw almost immobile. “Please don’t cry.”
He looked at me, sorrow flooding his face. “Autumn, I promise you I will never cry again.”
I couldn’t say anything back. My face and head had frozen, only my eyes could track the shadows of face, the softness turning to steel, but beyond that face eyes that were pools of ache fathoms deep. I could see him forcing himself to look blank, to look as if he was untouchable, as if he could never be hurt again.
I wanted to tell him that it was okay to sit with pain, that I didn’t want sorrow on his account, pain on my account. I was not a sacrifice, I was a friend, a friend who had nothing left to lose. I was scared of not existing any more, the pain of being frozen and then shattered, but I wasn’t scared of anything else.I didn’t regret anything else. I was terrified for him, who would be cast into dark places where the wretched lived. I would cease. He would have to go on, with no choice but to continue forward.
I could not blink but a tear pooled and fell down my face, my cheek, my chin, into my lap, and I watched quiet agony contort his face for a second.
“I am sorry.” he said again to me. “I will fix this.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw two men come.
He gasped, as if he knew what would come next.
“No!” he yelled. “NO! Don’t you ever dare do that. Don’t you do that to her. I know what you will do! Don’t you dare do that. You must not ever do that! You must not! I will never allow this to pass! Give her to me, do not do this to her! I will take her myself to the darkest places, make sure you never see her. I promise!”
He was pleading, unhinged, the effort to conceal his agony completely gone. My ears rang with the cries, and I saw the pain on his face, the black eyes flashing sharp and cutting through the room.
The two men looked at him, and then began to grab at my numb arms and legs. They lifted me from my place next to Loki, carried me from a sitting position, his hands fighting the ties, legs kicking against the shackles.
They turned me and he was gone from sight, but I could hear him. They carried me down a dark hallway, his cries and his voice staying with me. No muffling, no closed doors between us could ever mute the sound of his agony.
They placed me on my back on the cold table. I thought about how my eyes hurt from several minutes without being able to blink. I could not take deep breaths, my chest was frozen and they remained shallow. I remembered the pavement, the coolness of that autumn morning, the confusion of falling into Hel. I remembered all that I had learned here, of love, of loss, of the way sound travels through the universe, unrelenting, infinite. I remembered my twelve poems, how each of them had been comforting to me, and I began to mumble and slur, voice rising from a frozen mouth.
“When you are old,” I spoke. “And full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and remember the soft look your eyes once had.”
“You are ready to be shattered now,” The man said kindly to me, placing a mask over my eyes, relief from the brightness of the room flooding me, calming my soul.
“And of shadows deep. Many loved your moments of glad grace, loved your beauty with love false or true.”
“I am going to count down from five” he said again, soothingly, and then paused to catch his breath before he began to count, and steady his hand on the machine
“Five, four”
“But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you...”
“Three”
“And loved the sorrows of your changing...”
“Two...”
“Face”
“One.”