"i know history. there are many names in history but none of them are ours."
-richard silken
Their story begins in a village by the sea. Small homes built along the cliffs. Surrounded by the sea and fields and sky. Life had always been simple. Harvest season came and passed. Winter came and everyone tucked away into their homes. And then came the warm months –bringing with it the sun and the sea and the travelers on their white sailed ships. They brought goods and stories and men from the furthest corners of the empire and sometimes beyond. The village was the same as every other village dotting along the coast. Except, it wasn't.
There was a woman, because with any good story there is always a woman. Beautiful and with four daughters more stunning than the last. Their names swept through the village like wildfire. Often spoken in fear. Because that which the world did not understand bred fear. And a woman without need of a man was a terrifying thing.
Herbs hung from the woman's windows and dark hair floated down to her waist. Despite any fears the people came to her. Their worries and pains. All soothed by the woman's wicked grin and hands gifted by the gods. Until the warm months began, and the woman vanished.
The four daughters brought herbs to the market and laughed and smiled and braided their hair with yellow flowers. Rumors spun through the village of where the woman had gone. Those who had let fear rot in their hearts to hate spat out the woman had returned to whatever hell molded her. Others, who came to the woman with belief and knowledge of the old ways, simply believed she had returned to the gods. Many speculated the woman had merely gone to be with a man, perhaps the one who had given her so many children.
The daughters heard these tales and smiled the same wicked grin. For they knew their mother had returned to the sea which had born her. But what the woman truly was and what she did is of little importance to the story. Her tale was not one of a woman who had begged or wept or suffered, so the world had little need of it. No, of all the woman's stories and of those of her children, it was the youngest –a girl named Lena who was destined to have her story told across lands and time.
So, shall we begin?
496 A.D.
The first time they meet is in the middle of the village, under the stars. Lena spinning wildly around the flames. Hair flying around and dress sweeping along the ground. Yellow flowers her sisters had delicately woven into Lena's braid lay strewn around her feet.
Her world tilts as she stops before him. Lena knew him for what he was, the moment her eyes meet his. Traveler. One of the men who come with the ships twice a year, bringing wonders from worlds Lena has never known. He kneels at Lena's feet, plucking one of the yellow flowers from the ground. Gently brushing the dirt off the petals as he tucks it back into Lena's hair.
"Beautiful." He whispers, hand grazing the side of Lena's face.
Before anything else, Lena notices his eyes. Like the sea after a storm blows through. When everything is cleared away, leaving nothing but the pale blues and greens swirling together.
People dance around them, not noticing the two standing frozen by the fire. Lena gathers her white dress in one hand and with the other, reaches towards him. Moon high in the sky above them, casting everything it touches with an orange glow. They spin madly together, cheeks flushed from the heat and the cups laid scattered on the ground.
Later when they both run through the tall grass, laughter trailing in the wind behind them, they collapse in the clearing where the trees end and the seas begins. Holding onto each other, memorising all the lines and details.
"Are the seas a dangerous place?" Lena ask him, hands admiring the blue markings on his arms.
He pauses, taking time to run his thumb over the edge of her cheek. "Isn't everywhere? Men are always searching for the next war –eager for what they do not understand." His eyes close for a moment and Lena wonders what all this traveler has seen. She maps the veins under his eyes with the tip of her finger, the colour of the lavender fields in spring. His hand reaches for hers, turning her palm up, tracing the lines. "You haven't asked me my name yet?"
"And you have not asked me mine." Lena counters, shifting around in the grass until her legs wrap around him. "But tell me, what is your name traveler?"
"They call me Harry."
"And what land do you come from Harry?"
"Very, very, very far away," he says against Lena's lips. They stay like that, lips hovering over each other, and Lena ghosting her hand over some of the markings along his collar. He catches her hand once more as she dips down to the hollow of his throat. "And what is your name?"
"Olena, but everyone calls me Lena."
"Olena." Harry allows her name to roll off her tongue, saying it over and over. Whispering the name into her skin until Lena can feel it everywhere.
//
They meet a second time at the same clearing by the sea. Lena likes the way Harry's eyes follow her as she moves down the rocks. How his eyes had widened when she stepped into the clearing. Hours pass and Lena watches as Harry tosses the net out into the sea. They talk about nothing and everything until the sun dips below the horizon. Sending a thousand colours scattering around them.
"Why have you come down here?" Harry ask, weaving some of the broken rope of the net back together.
"My mother wanted me to collect some of the sea grass."
Harry glances down to her empty basket. It is a lie. Lena had set off earlier that morning to where the ships dock, asking if they knew where Harry had gone off to. Judging by the way Harry nods, and his lips lift the slightest bit on the left side, he knows Lena is telling a lie.
Neither of them say a word.
The clearing by the sea becomes the place they always meet. Lazy, slow summer nights when the heat is unbearable but Harry still builds a fire. After many nights Lena realises it is so they are not surrounded by darkness.
Lena takes to leaving her dress in a pile along the edges of the water. Floating on top of the waves as they roll under her body. Harry joins her. Moonlight shining down on both of them. Sometimes Lena forgets to pay attention and floats to far, Harry always grabbing a hold of her hand.
He shakes his head at her. "One day you will float away with the tide and never be found again."
"Then I will become a siren," Lena laughs, splashing water towards him. "Waiting on the rocks and singing my songs until one day your ship passes and I am found again."
"And what a siren you would make."
Lena swims closer to Harry, arms wrapping around his neck until she can trail her lips up his jaw. Taking her time, and finally whispering in his ear. "But none of that will ever happen, you would never let me just drift away with the waves."
Harry says nothing, only moving them back closer to shore.
The day comes and Harry leaves with the ship, Lena watching from their clearing as the white sails disappear on the horizon. Nights turn into days, summers into winters, months pass and one day Harry returns. Despite the time separating them, they still meet by the sea. Allowing their words to hover across each other's skin. Promises of the life they will someday have. When night falls and Harry builds a fire, he tells Lena of his home. One day, he swears he will take her there –to see the cliffs, to see how the sea there is an inky black and terribly angry. Sometimes Harry speaks of his family, old stories from when he was young.
There is one night, ripples of water lap along Lena's ankles as she walks the shoreline. The water is turning colder, the nights longer. Pulling her cloak around her shoulders, Lena closes her eyes as the breeze blows across the water. Air heavy with salt and the coming winter. Lena makes her way back to the small fire. Flames crack and spark into the night. Mixing with the sounds of the water hitting the rocks down the shore. Winds rustle the leaves on the trees, in the distance Lena can hear an animal calling out, and then, the sound of Harry humming.
Stretched out along the blanket he had brought, eyes closed, a tune on his lips. Lena finds it impossible for her mouth to not twist into a smile at the sight. Settling down in the place beside him, Harry shifts closer until his head rest on Lena's lap.
Absentmindedly, Lena runs her fingers through Harry's hair. Twisting the curls and dropping them back into place. His hair had grown longer in his time out at sea.
Harry takes Lena's hand in his own, running his thumb along the ridges of her knuckles. Cracked lips brush over the back of her hand and Harry opens his eyes. "I believe I could love you forever," he breathes over her skin.
Thousands of words tangle in Lena's throat. Chills traveling up her spine and covering her chest. Gently, Lena pulls her hand from Harry's, trailing it along the edge of his jaw. She wants to remember all the lines of his face, remember the way Harry looks as the sun sets before them, remember how the light of the fire reflects in his eyes.
Lena watches the boy in front of her and loves him so much she can barely breathe from her heart pressing against the cage of her ribs. Lena takes Harry's hand, mapping the veins along the back, the callouses on his fingers, the black markings around his wrist. Lena dips her head until her lips brush his. "Forever is a very long time."
Harry does not reply, but his eyes –his eyes tell Lena there will never be enough time.
//
Weeks later a plague sweeps through the village. Lena almost loses Harry. Suddenly, forever does not seem long enough. The two of them, hand in hand, walking through the years together. A life where time is nothing, where death is nothing. Thousands of years, lifetime after lifetime. Running wildly through time together. Standing and facing the rise and fall of empires. And they laugh because they have a thousand more years stretching out before them.
Lena spends days and nights pouring over the books her mother believed she had hidden. Until finally, one night with nothing but a candle guiding her through the trees, Lena meets Harry by the sea. Tattered book in one hand and a knife gleaming in the other. Magic pours from Lena's lips and Harry steadies her hands when they begin to shake. Cuts are made across their ribs, in the place where their heart beats underneath. Blood spills across the rocks, running down to the sea at their feet. Lena speaks in a long dead language, ancient words tumbling from her mouth into Harry's. Around them the flames rise higher. A thousand years of her coven whispering the words with them. And then, it was done.
"What if we cannot find each other in the next one?" Lena ask, worry lacing through her voice.
Calloused fingers weave their way through her hair, brushing over her temple. "I will always find you, in this life or the next."
//
Time slips away, the cuts in their ribs heal to faint white lines. They tell no one, what they have done a secret between the two of them. Until the time comes for them to leave.
But there is one night, as Lena's sister combs her finger through Lena's tangled hair, when Lena cannot help herself. Words spill over from the place she keeps them buried deep in her chest. Lena turns around when her sister's hands stop moving. In that moment Lena realises her mistake. She watches as her sister's eyes grow wide. Fear and revulsion crossing her face. Dark magic, she spits as she backs away from Lena, blood magic.
That night, Lena runs. To the clearing by the edge of the sea where her blood had spilled only nights before. Crawling down the rocks until she reaches their place. Harry is meant to be there waiting, Lena had sent him the signal that they needed to run –to begin their lives, to begin forever.
Nothing is there.
Only the sounds of the waves breaking on each other, lapping against the rocks on the shore, the wind echoing in the caves. Thick silence wraps around Lena. Her skin prickling with fear. Again, Lena runs. Dress flapping around her legs and muscles burning as she races back to the village. The smell of smoke reaches her before she clears the trees.
The screams are next.
Harry is there. In the middle of the village under the stars where they had once danced together around the flames. Only now the flames work their way up a pyre, licking their way up his body. Wild eyes find Lena in the crowd. His eyes –once the colour of the sea when it was calm, darkened to colour when it storms.
Hands grab her, tearing at her dress, pulling her hair, dragging Lena across the ground until ropes tighten around her wrist and wood is under her feet. Heat rises through her body. And she cannot breathe, she cannot move, all Lena can do is watch. She mutters words in the ancient language until Harry's pain vanishes, taken away and given to Lena to bear. Because she would burn a thousand times over if it meant Harry never beared that pain.
Flames engulf them both as they watch each other burn. Stars above them begin to fade to black and Lena can no longer hear her own screams ringing in her ears. Breathing becomes more and more difficult, each one more painful than the last. Blood pounds in her ears and Lena knows this is the end.
Forcing her eyes open, Lena watches as Harry closes his own one last time. Watches as his chest rises and falls like the waves on the sea, and then, he is still.
The night is ripped opened as Lena cries his name. Until the sound echoes through the village and all the people gathered around the flames. She screams so loudly the world and the skies can hear her. Throat burning with the sound of his name until it no longer sounds like a name at all, only a broken cry of love and death.
Blinking through her blurred vision, Lena glances up to the stars one last time. Focusing on them, burning bright in the night sky. Soon everything fades to black. Lena takes her last breath of this life.
In the morning, the sun rises over the village as it always does. Bodies are taken and buried in shallow graves. All day people in the village whisper the names of those they burned the night before. Guilt clear across their faces. Night comes and blankets the people and their homes. There is no fire, no dancing, no celebration. In the middle of the village the ashes still smoke, curling up into the night sky.
Moonlight reflects on the waves of the ocean. Somewhere along the water's edge, along the rocks, Lena opens her eyes once more.
//
present day
The salt in the air stings Lena's cheeks as she walks down through the town. Winter has led the sea to become colder, crueler than Lena could ever remember it being. Although it had been decades since she had come back to this place.
The path down to the sea had once been familiar. Now, the small village Lena had been born in was long forgotten. Replaced by a picturesque town on the edge of clear, blue water. It now looks like it belongs on the front of a postcard. All small buildings and sleek boats docked out in the cove. The trees Lena had loved to run through all cut away.
Lena finds the graves near the sea.
Years had slipped away since she has been to this place, and there are times when even Lena cannot remember everything as clearly as she once had. But they were still there. Under an old olive tree, twisted and worn by time and the salt in the air. On a small overlook, hidden behind the tall grass. This was the highest point in the village, the clearing where lifetimes ago the trees had opened to the sea. One could stand here and see the whole world stretching out before them. Lena like to believe Harry would like them to be at this place. It was one time had left untouched, one most people had forgotten about.
She had considered having the graves where Harry's home was. But that was not a place Lena had been yet, still waiting for the time when Harry would take her there.
Tugging the scarf around her neck, Lena buries her chin further into the wool. Hiding away from the sharp bite in the wind. Whitecaps break over the waves as they crash into the rocks. Lena always thought this placed looked like the very end of the world. Sky reaching down and touching the sea. Vast blue that went on as far as the eyes could see. Only now, with all the years, Lena knew this place was only a small part of the world around her.
Lifetimes ago, this had been the very hill all the girls would climb to catch the final glimpse of the boats. Hands twisting in their skirts as they watched the white sails fade away, swallowed by the sea and the sky. Flowers twisted in their braids and desire filling their eyes. Wondering when one day they too would go and sail the endless sea. Time after time, Lena had watched the ships come and go. Sat in this very spot in the tall grass with her sister, watching, waiting to see the white sails. It was here, Lena had waited for Harry to return that first winter –their last winter in that life.
A breeze rustles the grass around Lena's legs, the wind cutting through her jacket to her very bones. Chills ran down her spine as she steps closer to the graves. Wind from the sea blowing her hair in a thousand directions, and Lena closes her eyes. Feeling the salt against her skin and the smell of the sea, remembering a life so long ago. Despite the cold, the sun breaks through the clouds, shining all around her. And somewhere in the wind, Lena swears he can hear Harry whispering her name.
Lena jerks around, and there is nothing. Nothing but the grass and the sky and the graves at her feet.
Years had worn the names away to almost nothing, the date etched below them all but faded to the point of never existing at all. But they had.
Kneeling until the grass reaches near Lena's shoulders, she presses her palm to the stone. Thousands of memories rush forward, each more painful than the last. There is an ache in her chest, and it feels like time is slipping through Lena's hands. Blowing away like sand in the breeze. One day, there will be nothing left. Lena is not sure what happens then. The ache beats deep in her chest as she drags the tip of her finger along the letters of his name.
Clouds begin to roll in off the sea, darkening the skies. Scattered rays of sun shine down around her as the wind picks up once more. It sends the nerves buzzing through her body, like a fire running through the forest. Tilting her head into the sun's warmth, light and shadow dance around her and the stones and it breaks Lena's heart. For this is all they are now. Two stones, two names. Side by side with nothing but the entire world laid out before them.
Palm resting on top of the stone, Lena stands and stares out onto the sea. Watching how the sky spills over into the water. A thousand times over their story has played out. Lena wonders if they will find each other in this life. If Harry will remember her in this life. And the ache within her flares once more, but despite all the death and pain, Lena would spend a thousand more lives searching the world for Harry.
"My love," she speaks softly, hand still on the stone and the wind carrying her voice out to sea.
Her hand slips from the stone as Lena takes a step back. Reminding herself that there is nothing here anymore. Only two graves, worn by all the years. So, Lena turns and walks back down the familiar path through the grass. Not allowing herself to look back.
And the graves were alone once more.