Page 94 of Sweet Silver Bells
He paused, not knowing if he could give the right answer. “The person I was with Sarah is not the same person I am now, Olivia.”
“Perhaps it’s best if we stay in the darkness,” Olivia said. “The light can make us so ugly. Will you sing for me, Hunter?”
It was as if he could hear a symphony around him: the soft strokes of a piano key in his head, the sad, sweet notes of a violin. The back of the car, waiting for him like it was magic.
Is this what you hear, Olivia?
“If I say no, would you make me anyway?”
He had to know. He had to see that he was here, his free will intact, that it wasn’t all a spell, a haze that he had convinced himself of breaking.
“If I feel helpless, I will protect myself,” Olivia promised.
“Do you feel helpless now?”
“I feel safe with you, Hunter. You and the darkness are one, wrapped around me.”
Hunter nodded. It was answer enough.
“I feel the same,” Hunter said. “I can hear music.”
“Can you still hear it?” Olivia’s eyebrows raised.
Hunter nodded; he could.
“I hear it,” she said. “I hear it always. It’s the Earth; it always sings.”
With a deep breath, even though everything in his social conditioning resisted it, Hunter opened his mouth, found the notes in his chest, and let them out.
“Your song is a curse that I wear like a crown
And I’d fall through your hell just to not let you drown
You bloom in the dark, where no garden should grow
But I’ll drink of your thorns and I’ll never let go.”
“I’ve never heard that song before,” Olivia said, smiling. “Sing more.”
“Come back to me, my siren, my moon
My silver-bell song, my haunted desire
You breathe like the forest; you break like the sea
But I’ll be the storm if it brings you to me
Come back to me, come back to me
My siren.”
“It’s about me?” Olivia breathed.
“My life, Olivia, is now about you.”
“You called me a siren again,” she said. “I can’t say that I have ever tried to swim.”
Olivia leaned in to Hunter, and her lips touched his. The heat in the car seemed to soar, and his heart beat like he was running in a race, the finish line just ahead with promises of uncertainty, only the beauty of the moon in his view.
