I had been sitting for quite some time before the man arrived in the graveyard. He took his time; frequently, he paused at headstones too crumbled by moss and sanded by rain to be recognizable, and put his worn hat to his chest. I did not see him approach. I suppose I should have, but the day was especially misty, and it seemed that every time I laid eyes on him, he became thin and indistinct.

The man’s soft shoes stopped before me, the soles bowing daisy stems.  I ignored him, and he I. Together, we considered the stepping-stone mountaintops scattered amongst the clouds, their peaks jagged and blackened. Upon recent years, their sharp edges had begun to erode, their color just starting to bleach out. Given enough time, their woody spines would wear away entirely.

The man spoke:

“You should stand. It’s disrespectful to the dead.”

That headstone had been my resting place for a long while, but in the interest of respect I clambered off. The rounded flagstones were far colder on my feet, and even my shadow seemed to sway in discomfort. He made a low sound when I attempted to sit back down, something just short of rolling thunder, but once I was good and out of the way, he ignored me entirely. He knelt before my seat—I glimpsed his long coat, the grey-blue of weighed down clouds—and did not speak for some time. 

“Who were they?” I asked.

“She was my home.”

He seemed loath to say more, so I left him to reminisce, amusing myself with the budded daisies creeping from the ground. They would overgrow the mountain soon, and hopefully wash away the graveyard with it. 

“She was my home,” the man said again. The wind swept up then, catching the mist, and with his flapping coat and worn felt hat, he became wraithlike. His voice took a harsher quality, rolling the same warning as bare feet on a gravestone. Nevertheless, I stood and tiptoed my way to his soft shoes, morbidly curious. “I grew up alongside her. I woke to her screams, and I stayed up late to watch the fires. I laid at the window and listened to her growing pains. When I was grown, my father gave her to me.

“She would clamour at him, nipping at his hands and only relenting when she tasted blood. ‘She has a temperament,’ he would laugh. He told me to love her, to quell her temper so she could be protected, because you know to love is to protect.”

“I did not know,” I said.

The man’s soft shoes turned toward me. “Do you see those mountains? They belonged to her. And those clouds, she spent long hours gazing at their bellies. When she was not in one of her moods, she was contemplative. It was a lovely side of her, the truest side of her, and I resolved to protect it.”

I crept to the edge of the graveyard. The clouds laid below us, their misty tails curled round each other. I could not imagine treating them with such regard. 

“The first thing to do was protect her from Death. Death, you know, cannot be reasoned with, so I went to its lesser evils. I swept her from her valley home up to the mountains, so tall that War could not climb its peaks. When she grew hungry, I cut Famine’s tongue, and filled the fields with corn. When she grew sick, I sliced off Disease’s bloated hands. And when she began to age, I blinded Time for looking upon her, so she would not grow old.

“The second thing to mind was her temperament. She was a fine lady, though easily excitable when she was caught up in her games. Yes, easily excitable, and vulnerable to whims of violence. She came to me often, bearing drawings of the sky and the things she imagined laid beyond it, and stories she penned that she offered with delighted, inkstained hands. There were embers in her smile, easily inflamed, and they encouraged her to speak and laugh at my side. And she did, just as often as she would cry and scream. Her tears always disturbed me, nearly as much as her laughter, so similar did it sound to the screaming I once heard outside my window.  

“On rare occasions, she was docile and lady-like. She would sit in the grass on warm days and stare at passing clouds as if they held answers I did not. It must have been her favorite place, for how contemplative and still she became, and I resolved to preserve that tranquility for her. So I moved her again to the highest peaks. I built walls around her, high enough to brush heaven. I offered her my own blankets and canopies and candles, so she might view the open sky in comfort and safety. But she was not pleased, oh no. She came to me again, screaming about her lost stories and drawings. She nipped at my fingers, and it hurt, and I resolved that she would always be bloodthirsty. And a good lady, you know, is not a bloodthirsty one. So I pulled out her teeth.

“Finally, finally, she was at peace. Death and his lords could not reach her, and waited silently outside my walls. She had no more creations to needle at her, and no reason to come to me, to cry or laugh or scream. She was protected. I protected her, and because she was protected I loved her.”

“But,” I told the wraith, “she is dead.”

“But she is dead,” he agreed.

My skin prickled when he looked at me. I turned away, itching at an old burn, hoping very much that I was well-shadowed. “How did she die?”

The man waited a moment, perhaps considering if he should refuse me, but nostalgia and momentum carried him forward on tripping feet. “It was just the same as when I was a boy. I woke in the night to screams. I went to the window. Before I opened it, I already knew she would be burning. And she was. She was. Her skin was incandescent, her bone inflamed. She set ablaze everything she touched. Death waited with his entourage just beyond the burning walls. She took his hand and led him inside.

“She must have seen me watching. Just like when we were young, she hurled a rock at my window and called to me. Like when we were young, she opened the door and beckoned me outside. She walked toward me with a smile, Death her shadow, and I recoiled, for she had no teeth to smile with.

“She threw herself into my arms with a cry of mad delight, and the pain shocked me. I screamed. I pushed her away. She fell to the floor. I doused her with clods and clods of earth.” He laughed quietly. “My desperation stains these memories. I only recall a blur of guttering warmth and broken fingernails, and a bone-cold chill as the morning came. The first rays of sunlight illuminated us. I, kneeling. Her, I, I do not know. I discovered that I had dug a grave to suffocate the flame, and suffocated her in the process.” 

I regarded the rain-worn stone with perverse amusement. “You buried her alive.”

“I saved her. From a fire she started, I saved her.”

A swell of clouds darkened the charcoal peaks. It was impossible to tell if each jagged edge had been a home built by her hand, or a wall by his; if the razed ground had been the man’s doing or the flame’s. I wondered if it would matter. 

“I saved her,” the man said again, insistent. His scarred hands caressed the headstone. His voice lowered. He pressed his lips to the stone and murmured, “I saved you.” He patted the flowers beside him, running his fingers over new buds. I saw his hand clench around their stems. Sap leaked from beneath his thumb. He deposited a handful of crushed flowers upon her grave, taking, as usual, little note of my disgust.

By this time, I decided he’d had long enough to mourn. I put a hand on his ghostly shoulder and made him turn. For a moment I saw him. His lapels were burned into dark, ragged scallops, and his chest was puckered and cratered with burns. His flesh was tinted blue, his eyes yellowed by age, his lips pressed together. I suppose it must have irked him to see me in the pink of health, while his greys and blues were all but an afterimage. I smiled at him. His face contorted, and he recoiled, for I had no teeth to smile with. The moment passed. He was gone.

Edited by Ryan Grogan

Artist Statement: I intended to write a short story about an immortal man who guarded his nation too closely, and like his father, it overthrew him and destroyed itself in the process. I ended up writing it more open-ended, wanting to leave as much perspective as possible. A wraith, a woman made of fire, and a child made of her embers. I like it better open-ended, and I think it reflects “bloom and decay” better without names, as if the story and its cycle of possession, stagnation, and rebellion could happen over and over.