a

For Love Is As Strong As Death

by Honorat
July 21, 2006

She had expected to be married to Will by now, not killing him.

But now he is bound to a far darker mistress, chained by the choices of love and responsibility, trapped by remorseless rope to a bride of sky-flung explosion. And she will consummate that union herself. Hers will be the hand that pulls the trigger.

The fire that has always flowed under the surface of his skin, that has always kindled an answering blaze in her own blood, will burn against the sky in an inferno of annihilation. He will be all the light in her life for one last time before their world ends.

Whatever you do, don't miss, he has commanded her. As soon as you're clear, she has told him. But he will never be clear, now. And though the heat of a grief yet to come sears her heart, the barrel of the rifle is steady. She will not miss, because she must not.

The slender hollow cylinder of steel tracks the wild gyrations of the net that is Will's prison and his shroud. The fair day—and how dare the day be fair—recedes from her sight. The cracking, thundering destruction of the leviathan's embrace cannot reach her ears. The smell of hot metal and gunpowder fills her nostrils.

And she remembers.

Hazy golden mornings. Azure sea. The first unfamiliar feel of well-oiled mahogany against her shoulder. Scents of sweat and molten steel, so different from powder and pomander. Warm, callused hands, so strange and yet so right upon her own, guiding her fingers on the barrel and the firing mechanism. A game for the sheltered child she had been. Deadly earnest for the young lad who'd seen what fate could serve to a woman defenseless. Even then Will had sought to protect her by making her strong.

Now she has need of more strength than she possesses to pull a single trigger one last time. To send the shot that will touch off the conflagration of Will's funeral pyre. The shot that will widow her before she has been a wife. That will end her life as surely as it does his.

Her eyes, in which tears must not blur her sight, are filled only with Will—his dark hair that she will never again thread through with her fingers, the pulse on his arched neck that she will never again taste beating against her tongue, his chest against which she will never press to feel the twin pounding of their hearts.

He is hanging now, a sacrifice, an offering to appease the wrath of the sea.

She is surrounded by death, but this is the one that matters. All her choices, all her chances, are gone now. For the sake of life, for the chance it will give the others, one man must die. And she must be his murderer.

"Elizabeth!" he cries. "Shoot! Shoot now!"

His final words to her.

I love you Will. I will always love you.

She prays this will not be in vain. She prays she will follow him soon. And her finger tightens on the trigger.

~.~

All our authors thrive on feedback. Email the Webmaster to have comments forwarded to the author.

Back to One-Shots Menu