Melissa's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

Melissa held her lover's warm hand until the sun sank. His fingers stayed still. His face stayed gray. She wanted to lift his head and see his eyes open. But if she did, and if life crept up to his stone face while she watched, her gaze would freeze him a second time. She had no way to blind herself. She had turned away from her own reflection for years to spare others. Now the thing she most wanted to see was the thing she could not risk. Lyra knelt across from her, tears still falling. "You cannot be here when his face wakes," she said. "You know this." A voice answered from the dark. "Then let someone stand between them who has never needed eyes." A young woman came over the rubble, tapping a carved staff ahead of her feet. Her eyes were clouded white. This was Zora, a blind poet who wandered the Reach. Melissa had heard her verses drift across the field for two days. Zora found the cracked statue by touch, laying one hand on the cold face. "I can guide his shape without looking," Zora said. "Your curse cannot touch me. I have not seen a face in twenty years." Behind her ambled a man in a bright, ragged hood, chewing a fat green leaf. He grinned at the statue like it was an old friend. "Man's halfway home already," he said. "We just gotta walk him the rest of the way." Melissa did not know his name. She only knew he had shared his strange calm with Zora on the road. "There is a shrine near here," Zora said. "A dark room, sealed, no windows. Serpents carved on every wall. Inside there is no light at all. Take him there. In that black, your eyes are as blind as mine. You may hold his living face and he will be safe." Hope struck Melissa hard. But she had no way to cover her gaze on the road to the shrine. One glance at a waking eye would ruin everything. Lyra drew something from her robes. A small stone locket, carved and worn smooth, cracked down its middle. "His mother made this. Two halves that shut over the eyes." She pressed it into Melissa's hands. "Bind it across your face. Stone cannot petrify stone. You will walk blind, but you will not kill him." Melissa tied the locket over her eyes. The world went dark. Zora took one of her hands. The hooded man lifted the statue's shoulders, humming. Together they carried her lover toward the shrine. At the shrine's black mouth, Melissa untied the locket. She could not see. Neither could her gaze harm. Inside, in total dark, she pressed her palm to his stone cheek and waited for it to warm. She had found a way to touch his face. But the moonbloom was gone, and half his face was still stone.