Moonlight Waves

My love. My life.

                            Callum Roman
   
  Her body weight falls heavily into my arms and her head drops against my arm, and I curse myself for not catching her head before it fell so roughly. A small line of blood spills out of the corner of her mouth and trickles down her chin and I use the sleeve of my tunic to wash the blood away from her face. Her eyes are still trained on me but look right through me, off into the great nothingness that only dead people can see.
  Dead.
  Death.
  Sitara.
  My fiancé.
  My love.
  My life.
  Dead.
I lift her higher in my arms and bury my face in the crook of her neck, clinging to the little bit of warmth still left in her body.
  "No." I shake my head into her neck, "No. No. NO." My protest choked with tears. "It was supposed to be me. She wasn't supposed to die. You weren't supposed to die."
  I vowed to protect her and I failed.
She should have never left Crescent Island. She should have left me to die. This was supposed to be my fate, not hers.
  "God, give her back." I begin to pray out loud, my words drowning in tears and saliva. My lips trembling and body beginning to shake. "Give her back. Take me, take me instead. Please, God, let her live. Let her live. She has to live."
  I raise my head to look at her slowly paling face and kiss her still slightly warm lips. All my desperation poured into a rough and one sided kiss, as if I can breathe life back into her.
  "Why did you kill her!" I hear Sígrun shout and her question makes my tears cease for a moment as I watch her spit angry words at her brother. "She did nothing to you! You didn't have to kill her!"
  That's when it registers that someone had to have thrown the dagger. That someone had aimed for her and made her bleed. Captain Nico must have had a dagger hidden somewhere on his person and had used the crew's jubilation over winning as a distraction to murder the one person he knew would break the spirit of the entire crew, and cripple myself.
  Tommi and Abram hold Captain Nico's arms behind his back now and clasp iron shackles over his wrist. But that's not good enough, that's not sufficient punishment.
  An eye for an eye.
  A life for a life.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Captain Cutler draw her bloodstained rapier and slowly advance on Captain Nico with a snarl that would put any wolf to shame, but I won't have her avenging Sitara. 
  If I can't save Sitara, than I'll at least give her peace.
As if on their own accord, before my brain has fully caught up with what my broken heart is demanding, my hands wrap around the staff end of Sitara's discarded trident still laying by her lifeless side. I raise it level with my head and barely take a moment to aim before sending it flying through the air. I throw it with all the pain and sorrow I feel, all the grief and hatred, I use it to give me strength to propel the trident towards Captain Nico. It was too much power for such a short distance. The spikes of the trident tear right through his body and appear on  the other side. Blood sprays everywhere covering Tommi and Abram and Sí by his side. The life in his eyes disappears almost immediately and his body falls to the deck with a sickening thud that seems to echo through the shocked silence.
  "Nico!" His sister yells, crawling forward towards the railing where her brother lies dead in a twisted heap. Tears stream down her face as she pulls his head into her lap. "We were going to leave together."
  Her bleeding leg sticks out at an awkward angle and the siblings blood stains the deck and trickles over the edge into the sea. Sígrun's tears wet Nico's face, but no sound escapes her lips. Her grief soundless but as loud as the fading storm.
  She bends at the middle and places a kiss on her brother's forehead, a final goodbye. Her gaze turns up to me and something passes over her features that I don't quite understand and don't have time to decipher.
  Before anyone can stop her, she catapults herself over the side of the railing and towards the tumultuous sea.
  "Sí, don't!" Ian yells, but it's too late. Her body falls through the air and I can see her eyes are shut tight but her hands are opened wide and facing towards the sky as if waiting to accept a gift that will never come. Her body hits the water and she is quickly swallowed by the dark waves. Many rush to the side of the ship to see if she re-emerges, but I don't move, I stay standing where I am. I know she won't come back up.
  I slowly turn around and walk back to Sitara, who peacefully lays on the deck and watches the dark storm clouds roll away. I sit down next to her and very gently pick her up in my arms, letting her head fall against my shoulder and rest in the crook of my neck. Her body is even colder now, so I press her hand to my chest with my free hand, trying to give her her warmth back.
  Something small and shockingly cold lands on my cheek and I instinctively look up. Tiny white snowflakes fall from the sky, not fast, but softly and slowly. They float down and settle on Sitara's hair, eyelashes, and cheeks—resting there, not melting for the lack of heat emanating from her body. I watch them fall from the sky and I have a peculiar thought that this how the heavens weep for Sitara's loss. Their tears frozen in shock and heartache, because I knows that's how I feel. I want to cry more, to shed the tears that Sitara deserves, but I feel frozen over as if ice is spreading throughout my body and making the simplest of thoughts seem so difficult.
  Everything around me turns to a blur. Inconsequential moments that pass without my knowledge. The continuation of life as mine shatters to pieces. An ice sculpture thrown against the hard reality of love and loss. My shards scattering and never to be found again, a broken heart beyond mending.
  And I wouldn't have it any other away.
My heart was only ever hers—without her, I have no need of it. Nobody does either, nobody else will ever want it. My heart will be buried alongside her.
  I pay no attention to Captain Cutler's crew returning to The Hangman or our own crew tending to the wounded, cleaning the deck of death, and preparing to sail. Or the sympathetic hands that touch my shoulder, nor the The Moonlighter setting course for home. Those are all things that happen in the back of mind that I never truly notice are happening.
  All I can see, all I can feel, is Sitara in my arms and the small snowflakes slowly covering her entire hair and face. Some of the snowflakes land in the puddle of her blood and I watch as the white flecks swirl in the crimson pool. Dancing with their flawless and pure white partners in a mesmerizing ballet. One snowflake will melt away only to be replaced by another; again and again they dance in death—the pure white snow staining it's hands with blood.
  I look up from the swirling snowflakes and can no longer take Sitara's empty gaze. I reach a shaky hand up to her face and gently close her eyes. At first they refuse to stay closed, refuse to accept the darkness, but in the end they close for the last time.
   I feel a blanket being placed around my shoulders and when I look up to see Charlie standing over me, I'm disoriented when I see that night has fallen and what was once a slow snowfall is now a dark swirling sign of winter.
  Charlie stands there for a moment, lantern in hand and stares at Sitara, the snow sticking to his hair and clothes.
  "She wants to be buried on the water," he suddenly says, speaking quickly and quietly as though he might wake her from her eternal slumber. "under a full moon. She told me she wanted to be sent off on the water for the sea to do with her as it wished."
  I don't say anything because I can't say anything. Grief threatens to strangle me and it's all I can do to remember to breathe.
  As silently as he came Charlie turns away and walks the length of the ship, his lantern swinging back and forth, casting an eerie glow in the swirling snow.