Flame de Sol

I slept for a very long time.

By the time I awoke, he was bones. They were strewn across the bed. The sunlight had eaten everything. I held his skull in my hands. It looked forlornly at me.

"Samael?" I whispered.

I'm here.

He smiled. Just like he always had.

Tears stung my eyes. I could barely form thoughts past my panic. I was angry at him. Sad. "What kind of game are you playing."

It will be alright. Just hold me.

"Samael. What- What do I do?"

Bring my remains to the river. Anoint me with the waters of life.

I gathered his bones in the black sheets, now a shroud. They were ragged like torn trashbags. I carried his remains like Ezekiel, knowing the marrow hid life. His room was vast, endless. I would call it a tower if it had any humanity in it. Instead, it was a living thing. At its center grew the Tree. The vine that Samael planted. Oh how much it had grown.

Fall with me.

I did. Over the edge of the balcony. Into the waters below. They frothed with Cronus' foam.

I washed his bones until I was raw, and my bloody hands painted them red. I laid him on the bank and sang to him as he dried, songs I half-remembered. The pieces of a god.

His spirit lay still and reached into me, gently touching my heart. For an instant, I was his skeleton. He used my limbs to rise. The bone man followed my lead, exploring the world through my eyes. I, who followed my heart, had known his paths all along.

He looked at the lines on my hands, the swell of my breasts and legs. The sinews and tendons fascinated him. We walked barefoot together. He tasted the air with my lips.

I've missed my heart, you know. His bones rattled, aching for life. The black shroud wrapped around us, and he formed himself from the wind.

Will you dance with me? said the Reaper.

"What are you?" I asked.

Your companion. He looked at my hands, now his. They were bare bones. Maiden, you will never be rid of me.

"Death and the Maiden, then? Is that what this is all about?" I was the skeleton now. My environment was visceral, once I was stripped of the buffer of skin. I'd harbored false fears when I thought he'd felt nothing. The slight breeze was electric. Dew burrowed into the cracks of my bones. My teeth tasted the air, the aleph and omega of all things.

Finally, I felt that I knew him.

I thought I lost you, you know. You've been under this mask, all this time?

"My face is really anything but a mask." I touched it, not feeling the flesh. "Funny, how you don't miss your skin until it's gone." Vast mountains rolled out before us, riddled with rivers and streams. Not earth, but the roots of the Tree, into a rainforest that looked like the Andes. Rain shadows crowned their peaks, and lush vegetation coated them, dotted with innumerable flowers. Vines and roses- so many roses- and paths that led to nowhere. It looked like Aligheri's Purgatory. The basin of the river I stood in was riddled with precious stones, worn to carbuncles by the water.

The beauty was overwhelming. Sickening, even.

"No wonder you wanted to be blind." I waded slowly, letting the bones of my feet sink into the mud. The jewel silt settled between them. "Now I know why you hide in the cloak."

He lifted flowers from the riverbank, weaving them into my hair. Our reflection gleamed back. His bone girl crowned with forget-me-nots, memories returned.

You never came to me. You promised you would, but you lied. Why? I've waited ages for you.

I slipped under the water. It was too much for him, the sudden plunge into the cold, and he let go. I returned to my flesh, he to his bones, and he watched me swim like a fish. Death lazed on the riverbank, basking in the hot sun and gentle, flowered breeze.

The river tasted like heaven.

"I learned that I like living." I splashed him. He flipped me the bird.

Women. Always making us chase after you. His grin betrayed his contentment. Don't expect me to treat you differently. Nothing has changed, lemming. Nothing has changed at all.

I floated on my back, watching as stars were erased by the sun. Like a medieval illumination, the celestial sphere turned, blue black to rosy dawn. "I can't expect anything Samael, when I don't even know what I am or who you are. A dream doesn't change the world. I'll wake up tomorrow the same."

A dream? He asked, perplexed.

"This place and moment is your dream. Of how the world should be." I picked roses from a vine hanging into the river. He drank me in like Esau, starved from a day in the wastes. "Even gods can trick themselves."

Don't deny what you are, girl.

"Yours?"

How could it be otherwise.

"Lemming or not, I'm not jumping that cliff with you. And I'm done being a maggot. I'd rather be a butterfly. Something that can fly away." One crept out from behind a leaf, a scintillating Morpho. I coaxed it onto my palm then blew it in his face. "That way, if we fall, I won't smash open like a pinata."

He sneezed as it landed on his nose. I hate butterflies. Useless pathetic things. Now spiders are another matter. But you? You're hardly a widow. It climbed into his skull and perched inside an eye socket, fanning its jewel blue wings. He plucked it from the hollow. You could always be a fly, you know. But that's more Beelzebub's domain.

"I don't like Beelzebub. Why can't he be Lord of the Butterflies?"

And all the Lords loathe you.

"Lords? As in evil demon overlords? Well, I'll be damned. When do I meet Cthulu?"

He's not something to make light of. I hoped that Sammael was joking. The butterfly's wings crumpled. It flitted slightly in his palm. Its soul danced out of its body, a little sparkling light, and darted into his heart's abyss.

"You killed it," I complained.

Indirectly, it's your fault. You gave it to me. There are many things I could blame on you.

"Like what?"

My current pitiable state. I've been reduced to a pile of bones. I don't have the will to stand. A margarita appeared in his hand, and sunglasses shaded his eyes. He looked like Baron Samedi on sabbatical. His drink even had a little umbrella in it. Sammael sipped it aimlessly.

"Where does it go, Sam?" I imagined ribs drenched in ice cubes.

Where you all go. The abyss. How do you think chaos works? I get raging drunk. Drunk, off your little sparkling souls...

"I think you're an alcoholic."

Only because of you. You're the death of me. My end.

I swam further downstream. Sighing, he forced himself up, following me like a warden. The stream rounded a corner, settling into a lake clear as glass, studded with white lilies. Cattails trimmed the banks, and insects buzzed around us. A thick forest rose at its end, barring the view of the mountains.

He rounded the corner, having procured an inflatable chair. He muttered to himself as the current spun him in circles. If you hadn't broke my jet ski, I could take us some place interesting...

"I didn't think Hell was the Amazon."

This isn't hell. These are the roots of the Tree of Life.

"That sounds important."

From its heart flow the Waters of Life. They trickle down its veins in seeps and channels. Each stream leads to a different place: planets. Dimensions. Ages. The Tree grows throughout the realms, its branches connect all worlds. When a new world is born, a branch grounds itself there and grows into a sapling. It germinates like an idea and becomes the axis mundi of that realm. A bough over Asgard, a branch in the Hesperides, a clipping in Gan Eden-

"So it's the ultimate invasive species?"

Let me finish the spiel, dear worm. The Tree has slept since the age of time, filled with the dreams of the world. Parts of it die and wither, others bud anew. It always perseveres. Each blossom is a life, on every leaf a Name. When they fall, yellowed and aged, the Named one dies in forty days. Just enough time for the leaf to touch ground.

"You sound like you're intimately involved."

His teeth clacked. A jet of water smacked me in the face. I yelped as he continued. I rake gods with the angels, but they have an annoying habit of reseeding. I suppose it's immortality. The blossoms of humans bear no fruit. But their blooms- they are the most beautiful. Though they're terribly annoying to prune.

Water was lodged in my ear. I tried to get it out. "Soooo, you're an immortal weed-whacker. That explains the angel in the woods. You had OCD, and you trimmed it. Does Death get a flower too?"

I do. It's an old, old rose.

"What's mine like?"

A lily of the valley.

"That's lame. Too much like the Song of Solomon. I think I should be a ginkgo."

They smell putrid.

"They're pretty. Why aren't you a Venus flytrap? Not a stupid, clichéd rose."

I am a cliché, maggot. So is this whole bloody place. I am alone. It sickens me most of the time. I liked it when it was cold. When there was frost and the hills were barren-

"That doesn't work, Sam. Snakes are cold-blooded animals. You'd shrivel up and die." The torrent of water hit me again. He laughed meanly. I sent a volley of waves his way, kicking my legs in anger. "You stupid walking corpse!"

I'm not talking for my own amusement! he berated me. I'm trying to tell you a story. There were woods then, Shannon, true woods. Dark and loathsome where nothing grew. I wandered this place for ages, a seed burrowed in my heart, seeking higher ground. I'd stolen it from heaven.

His jaw crooked in a rueful grin. The solace was immaculate. Rains came and flooded my soul. For the longest time, I was alone. I journeyed in dreams and shadow, through the valley of the damned. I walked and walked, until I could walk no more. When it was time to plant, I did. And now? I am the Reaper.

"And what did you plant, Mr. Gardner?"

Somehow, his skull smirked. The brightest seed of rebellion. The act of life is war. But I showed you that this morning. Mourning my impossible dreams.

"So angels dream, Samael?"

I do. Perhaps it's sin. He whistled with his bare teeth. Two birds darted from the canopy: one lush red black wings; the other a crow. I scrutinized the first.

"That's a Scarlet Tanager."

Good job, Audobon. These are Gog and Magog, the Birds of Death. They fit my color scheme.

I floated on my back, watching Gog and Magog fly circles above us. "Interesting names. So what happens next?" I asked.

Well if this is a dream, you wake up.

The birds perched on his shoulders. He crooked his head, let them nuzzle his brow. Magog the crow fixed me slanted eyes- it was the stupid bird I'd fed in the woods months ago, the month I'd met Sammael. It cawed, expecting Crasins. The fruit-crow Gog hopped into Sammael's hood and settled against his cheek, like it was incubating his skull. Gog peered out, sinisterly cute. It cheeped; Sammael whistled in reply. They entered a conversation completely devoid of me.

I really didn't get Death.

"Will I remember anything?" I interrupted.

That's an infantile question. The birds crowed in agreement.

"What is the point of the birds!"

The point of existence.

I waited for it.

They amuse me. And perhaps to irritate you.

"Oh. That's cute."

Like you.

I grimaced. "I don't like where this is headed."

Water only flows downstream.

"And there's a lot of it under the bridge."

Shall I play it again? Sam began humming As Time Goes By.

"Sam, you're not Humphrey Bogart. And this is Hell, not Casablanca."

But I'm the hard-boiled antihero. Sam Spade, at your service. You're the office wench-

"I'll be your wench!" I flipped his stupid chair. The Reaper roared as he tumbled into the water.

My margarita, you louse! The birds landed on the inflatable, cheeping in irritation. The pile of bones sunk regretfully.

I climbed onto the chair. "You deserved it, Bonebutt." The water was still. Minutes wore on. No Corpseboy. A breeze kicked up with the smell of a bay, and I felt like I was on the Chesapeake in May. I used to float in the doldrums, drifting in the sun, sketching osprey and herons.

I entertained the possibility he'd finally given up. I yawned, stretching out for a nap. This place was beyond idyllic. The perfect place to sleep. My head was level with the lilies, my feet drifted in the water. Childhood jealousy of Tom Sawyer sprung to mind.

Like him, I'd run away. I'd been nine, and the summer had dragged on into oblivion. The poisonous heat stirred impossible thoughts in my mind. I had made a raft of branches and rope then snuck away to my secret lake, expecting to pole to New Orleans. I tossed the raft into the deep end, with sharp logs perfect for drowning. Pole in hand, I jumped in.

The ropes unknotted under my weight. The raft snapped clean in half. My legs caught in the rope, and the rope stuck to the logs. I flailed like a fish but only sunk deeper, until my head was dragged under by a tree dislodged by my weight.

The last thing I heard were my screams, then murky black nothing. I tasted foul water in my throat and the thought that I was dying.

But something touched my ankle. They scraped against my skin and untied me. And something- someone pushed me up, carried me out of the water. It was the last thing I remembered.

I woke up in a chestnut skiff, made of a wood long dead on the East Coast. By my head lay a journal. A slender, black thing, with a pen fifty years out of fashion. That was my first notebook. I'd stumbled out of the skiff, too terrified to find the path. I wandered and wandered until something glinted by an oak- a window. Made of broken blue glass, it was an angel imprisoned in an abandoned church. I thought that he had saved me.

And since that night I wrote. Wrote and wrote in my books. Trying to find the secret of the woods. He was the thing I always came back to. The closest I had to a God. I would tell the angel my secrets. After my first heart break I cried in his soft light. I imagined he was my guardian angel. I mourned the passing of my grandmother with him. Just little sufferings, compared to the ages he had seen. His cheeks were stained by dust and grime.

The same hands that had lifted me up ten years ago locked around my ankles. I screamed as they dragged me off the inflatable. I flailed as the bone hands locked around my waist, holding me chin-above the water.

Samael emerged, pond scum on his skull. He spat a fish at me. I grabbed his sopping hood and wrestled it over his face. He released me to wrench it back. I backstroked away.

"How long have you been waiting?" I called, rounding a bank and drifting behind some ferns.

Always. He knifed through the water after me. Though sometimes I don't know why.

A beach with golden sand welcomed me onto its shore. I scrambled out, wringing the water from my hair.

"You lied when you told me the woods was the first time we met."

He glided out of the water like a ghost. Gog and Magog pirated past him, paddling the inflatable with their wings. Samael glided towards me until I was dwarfed by his shadow. He traced my chin with his forefinger so that I shivered.

Everything I tell you is a lie.

I touched the cracks on his skull, the ones I had given him. They'd scarred with time, leaving faint traceries of the blow I'd dealt. He cupped my face with his hands. His breath played across my brow, ripe with expectation. I parted my lips to inhale the jasmine air. He leaned down so there was a hair's breadth between our foreheads.

His hollows bore into my skull. My heart lurched. Something sparked in their depths, and he was whole again. Fleshed and pitilessly beautiful. The angel that smited firstborns and had leveled Sodom to dust.

It is through you I die and live. He sighed, voice still inhuman.

Death's lips lingered on my forehead. He moved his hands down my back, and I realized I was naked. He didn't notice, tracing the script of gods on my skin. His touch left trails of warmth, like he was writing new life in me.

I wondered if everything was just a story, shaped by the whims of spirits. Spirits that were born of our dreaming. So in the end, nothing was real, just layers of smoke and bone.

"I'm not her anymore," I whispered. "I've grown, Samael, changed."

He was too far in the past to hear me. He sunk to his knees and rested his head on my lap. Without a whisper, he cried, and folded his cloak around me. He smoothed his hands up my thighs, like a blind man covering his wife.

You will never change to me. His hair pooled at my feet as he trailed kisses down my breast. His tears skimmed my legs.

I could never touch you, he whispered. He clasped my hands like a repentant sinner as his lips slid past my waist.

There was a faint pain at my hip bone. I gasped as his fangs pierced me, knotting my hands through his hair. He lapped at the blood like a newborn. Without warning, he slipped his fingers inside me. I gasped and sunk to the ground. Ribbons of red pooled at my waist. His tongue snaked out to follow the rivulet, then into me. He moaned, drinking me in.

I tried to scream but couldn't. The barbarity of his actions stole my speech. It was a carnal possession I had no words for. I watched, horrified, as he took me, and shuddered in ungodly pleasure

He sighed, tasting me with a cat-rough tongue. Every time you wounded yourself, I cursed my ineptitude. I had no means to heal you, to take your pain unto me. He sucked, drawing stars from my eyes. I was called Nachash then. Shining Enchanter. The Whisperer. But I lost my tongue and mind. Those were the first things taken from me.

His hands danced up my sides to cup my breasts. He slid on top of me. Our bodies met like mercury on water. The next thing stolen was you. He burrowed into my neck, whispering psalms on my skin. He felt my wetness and groaned, eyes rolling back in his head. I was pinned by the dead white of his gaze.

You don't know how much casting you out pained me. I could give you my heart, Havah: it has always been yours. But I could not follow you into the day. You were my light: when you left, I was blinded. I have searched for you through eternity.

"I have a phone, Sam."

It is no matter. For at last, you see, we are here.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I wrapped my arms around him, pulling him into me. My skin hummed under his working, and his consciousness slipped into my mind, cold and heavy like rain. The air sagged with the smell of a storm.

I am Nachash, the chained. I crawled forth from a dreg of wine, eternally drunk off you. You blind me, Havah. Delude me.

"Wait. I thought you were Death. Is 'Nachash' a Hebrew nacho?-"

He grinded his hardness against me. I cried out as a sudden ache filled me; my breasts rubbed against his skin.

My thrumming heart skimmed his hollow one. His eyes widened. He trembled in my grasp.

Why do you cause me such pain?

"That's a bit cheesy, dude."

You mock me?

I raked my nails down his back, distracting him from his sorrow. He gasped, and his mouth became razor-edged, sucking and piercing me. I arched my back as he plowed dizzying paths to my breasts, taunting their peaks. He caught one between his teeth and smirked.

He teased my wetness until I was begging him, filling it with his mouth and hands. I looked down the slope of my stomach and he leered back like the Cheshire Cat.

"You're one hell of an angel," I gasped, not sure if I meant it as an insult.

Mmm, he agreed, voice thrumming through me. He surfaced, breathing ice air over my groin. Are you making the sign of the cross? He sneered. This is sin, Shannon, not repentance.

"Sorry," I gasped. "Irish Catholic. It's kind of second nature."

A deep rumble came from his chest. Catholic? he purred. I should have known. He arched over me, teased my legs open and took me quickly. He hissed. Lightning cracked above as he lost himself in his thrusts. My knees were over my shoulders, and his wings shielded us from the rain. I stroked his face, drawing his head towards mine. He groaned when our mouths met and thrust his tongue past my teeth. Very unangelic, unless the angels were French.

He pounded into me, and I returned him thrust for thrust, unable to keep up. I stretched as he burned through me. He was too big, and not just physically. It was like mud-wrestling a Titan. I sympathized with Jacob, wondering how he had survived.

Sam stroked my hair and skin, murmuring in angelic. What I couldn't contain below he poured into my skull. My heart burst as he snaked around it. He took my tongue in his teeth and raked it with his incisors. We held each other in a death-lock, careless of sensuality. Raw physical urge ruled. The need to be. To join. It was the clinging to will before the cold numb of death bore him away. The gravity with which stars held their light. He knew no other way.

We joined until the sun hung high in the sky and I was on the verge of fainting. Like an adrenaline junkie, I couldn't stop. My survival rate did not calculate nicely. It was more of a roller coaster ride than anything else, which is why I hadn't run screaming for the hills originally. Amusement parks cost money, and despite possible maggots, this was free.

After one too many coasters, I fell limp in his arms. He paused, gazing at me in wonder. He tilted my head up like a doll's to kiss it sensuously. Sam cradled me against his chest, playing with my hair. I clung to his shoulders, sighed into his cheek. He shuddered.

You are so beautiful, he whispered. My canary in the coal mine. My one and only light.

I struggled to lift my head, stupor sinking into me. I looked at him with unfocused eyes. He still filled me below, as if he did not want to leave. I reminded him without words, embracing him inside

No! His temple throbbed. Not that! We cannot- oh dear God... His will mattered little, and I didn't care. I constricted around him, taunting him, just as he'd tortured me.

He pinned me to the ground, eyes boring into mine. A final thrust and he slammed into me, so deep I swallowed him up.

With a harsh cry he spent himself. A sudden acid filled me. It stung sweetly as it poured inside, replacing the blood I'd lost. The punctures at my waist sealed shut. On and on he throbbed. He dug his fingers into my hips and grinded me down against him. He cried, snarling my name. I melted inside. He bucked until I fainted, then collapsed onto his wings, his limbs encircling mine. He looked at me, incredulous.

My little flower. Havah? This isn't the first time you've killed me.

He held me against his breast. In his arms I sank into sleep, his whispers ghosts on my ear.

Your torture is worse than Gehenna. I love you eternally.