We stand there, both of us, staring at the too-small mound of fresh earth, and the stone that shows birth and death on the same day, in the same year.

“Dearest, it is growing dark; are you certain you wish to remain here?”

“Just a little longer,” I tell my husband. “Please?”

It wasn’t usual anymore, the burying of bodies, but I had insisted. “I want to bring him home. I want to bury him next to his grandfather.”

And so, even though we live in an age when the dead are cremated and the ashes mixed into the gardens, or, if you had the resources, consigned to the heart of a star, we put the body of our stillborn son in stasis and carted him half way across the quadrant for an old-fashioned funeral.

Our friends had returned to the spaceship that had brought us here, but we’d be staying on, in our jungle bungalow, on the privately-owned planet that was sometimes a retreat, sometimes a refuge, sometimes a vacation destination, and always – always –  the place we both considered home, even more than the silvery ship in orbit, where my husband worked.

I don’t know where the roses had come from. Obviously, someone had sent them, as you do. We’d received all kinds of flowers and cards. My uncle, the rock star, had even planted a grove of trees on one of the colony worlds where he was donating performances and music lessons – part of his image restructuring, I knew – but a nice gesture, even so.

I do know that the sharp thorns were the only thing I could feel, biting through the gloves my husband had insisted I wear, and drawing blood that is dripping steadily to the ground, sinking into the soil – a part of me, left with my child who will never grow up.

“Dearest, you are shivering and you are bleeding. Please allow me to escort you back inside.”

I turn to look into his face, etched with sorrow and grief that matches mine, and worry lines that are all his own. “I don’t want to – I’m not ready to leave him.”

“And we shall not leave him, beloved. We will only be inside, a few meters away. We will not leave him until you are ready.” His tone is gentle. Patient. Careful.

I answer with a nod. I allow my husband to pry the rose from my hand. He stares at it for a moment, my blood staining his skin, and then he drops it and leads me inside.

The rest of the bouquet is waiting there, on the counter, the card unopened. I wait to read it until after I’ve changed into an old t-shirt and sweatpants and allowed the thorn-picks in my hand to be treated.

My reaction to the words is immediate and violent. I sweep my hand across the counter knocking the vase to the floor. It shatters on the tile, water and broken glass spraying everywhere.

My husband shouts my name, filling the syllables with alarm and concern. “What is wrong?” he asks me, leading me away from the mess.

I hand him the card, see his expression change as he reads the simple message addressed solely to me. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Pigeon.” There is no signature, but it doesn’t matter, we both know who sent the flowers.

“I should have recognized that these were not sent from a close friend,” my husband says, taking the blame for my upset as his own. “You have never cared for roses.”

Truth

“Mommy, why is that man wearing a crown of lights?”

My little girl clutched at my hand as we watched the ritual unfold before us. Was she too young for this? But I answered her question: “He is the embodiment of Truth, that which illuminates us all.”

“Then, why is his face so dark?”

Oh, child. That you must learn such things. “Because, precious girl, Truth is often obscured – that means hidden – by other things.”

“You mean Lies?”

“Sometimes,” I answered. “But sometimes Truth hides in darkness because it’s too real, or too painful, or because we aren’t yet ready to see it.”

Power

At fourteen, the mirror mocked her, with her acne-prone skin and mousy brown hair. Every time she looked into it, her self-esteem plummeted through the linoleum-tiled floor, and through the carpeted living room floor a story below. She was certain she would never be pretty enough, tall enough, thin enough.

At forty-seven, the mirror no longer mocked her. Instead it told her the brutal truth: She had never become conventionally pretty, or thin, or tall.

She planted her bare feet on the cool tile floor and stared at her reflection with confidence.

Once, its touch had been lethal.

Now, there was power in the truth of a life lived on its own terms.

We all know that rosemary is for remembrance. Ophelia made that bit of flower-lore beyond famous. Easy to do, what with the dramatic exit she made. Drowning? Really?

Okay, okay, there’s never been firm agreement on whether her death was murder or suicide or just an unhappy accident, but still, who doesn’t hear the name Hamlet and immediately think of Yorick’s skull or that poor, waterlogged crazy girl?

I, on the other hand, died in the prettiest way possible. No, not alcohol. Not pills either.

Consumption.

Oh, you call it tuberculosis these days, but when I was living, it was consumption.

Sure, consumption had some nasty symptoms. You become weak, and your body wastes away until your bones show and your eyes look sunken. And there’s a horrible, hacking cough.

But at the same time?

There’s a rosy glow to your pale cheeks, and while your skin becomes nearly translucent, it remains warm. Hot even. And your lips? Your lips end up being vampire-red up to the very end.

Or at least that’s how it was for me.

It took a while, that whole ‘dying gracefully’ thing. I had three different suitors bringing me flowers and sweets, things to keep me interested – to keep me alive.

But in the end, I never got beyond the occasional chaste kiss with the one boy I really loved.

So, Ophelia can keep her weeds and herbs.

The flower in my hands when I was buried – the flower I carry now to touch the foreheads of innocent lovers in their dreams, and wish them well – it’s the white carnation, the flower that symbolizes purity.

Notes: Special thanks to my friend Debra Smouse for the second layer of inspiration for this piece.

“Psst! Your birds are showing!”

Ren looked around, searching for the source of the whisper and eventually meeting the gaze of an old woman bright eyes and blue-tinted gray hair. She was a jay, then. They were always pointing out the obvious.

“I know,” he said, trying not to be sullen and failing utterly.

“Don’t you think you should do something about it? The pure humans will drive you out of town if they see.”

“I know,” Ren said again, putting a bit of a growl in his throat. Well, he tried for a growl; it came out more like a croak, and he rolled his eyes in displeasure.

“Yes, that’s what they’ll do. They’ll drive you out, the humans will. Drive you out then go looking for more, and then we’ll all be at risk.”

“I know,” Ren repeated a third time, letting his anger out. “Look, I’m trying. I know they’re visible, but I can’t… the spell doesn’t work.”

But the old woman was still chattering. Jays tended to do that. “All of us at risk, and then we’ll have to find a new planet, and this one’s so nice, with the plump worms and the tall trees and the skies with room to really fly, and then – what do you mean the spell doesn’t work?”

“I’ve grounded and centered and counted to ten – to fifty, even. I’ve done the incantation. I’ve drunk the calming tea, and no matter what I do, I cannot banish the thoughts of Unkindness for longer than a couple of minutes.”

“Unkindness? Unkindness?” The women tilted her head one way then another, peering at him from one bright eye at a time. “But, you’re not a Raven. You’re a Crow.”

All of Ren’s senses suddenly focused on the old woman. “I’m a what?”

“You’re a Crow. Banishing Unkindness doesn’t work for Crows. You have to banish – ”

“Murderous Thoughts,” he said with her. “I have to banish Murderous Thoughts. I… my mother was a Raven,” he spoke the last five words very quietly.

“I’m sure she was, dear. Happens all the time. She probably pushed you out of the nest much sooner than the rest of your clutchmates, didn’t she? She’d have to, if she knew.”

Ren nodded, his head bobbing in a birdlike way that he usually managed to hold in check. Humans were too perceptive. They might not be able to see his Birds most of the time, but they’d notice the body language that was just a bit… off.

The old woman – the Jay – had gone quiet and still. That was odd, Ren thought. Jays only in did that when they sensed danger.

He looked at her more closely. She was old, yes, but not so old that there wasn’t some plumpness left. And she wasn’t too big… and he could – oh, God – he could hear her rapid heartbeat threatening to burst through her body.

He was a Crow, she’d told him.

He couldn’t reintegrate his Birds with the Unkindness spell – that only worked on Ravens. Crows required… blood. Blood and death. They had to give in to their Murderous Thoughts in order to banish them.

Silently, Ren thanked the Jay, the old woman, before he lashed out.

Hours later, all that was left in the street were a few blue feathers, and a handbag full of birdseed.

“Well, hallelujah!” Aunt Beulah declared. “It’s just like that song. It really is raining men.”

I glanced out the window to see yet another pair of black-trouser-clad legs slowly descending. “That’s not normal,” I told her. “Less messy than the time it was cats and dogs, though.”

But my aunt, who – in truth – was barely older than me, close enough in age to be my sister, really, was already pinching color into her cheeks and smoothing her cotton calico dress as she bolted for the door.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Yes, come on. This kind of Rain comes only once, maybe twice, a lifetime. You go and catch one before his feet touch the soil, and he becomes the partner you always wanted.”

“What if you miss?” I asked. Some of the forms coming down weren’t exactly compact. I’d noticed more than a couple beer guts beneath the nondescript suits.

“Most of ’em just disintegrate. Makes the garden soil really rich, though. How do you think my mamma grew such luscious tomatoes in this godforsaken place?”

“Water and sunlight, I suppose,” was my drawled response. “Like everyone else.”

But Aunt Beulah just gave me her ‘you know nothin’ honey-child’ look. Then she pulled a barely-there shade of lipstick from her handbag and used the hall mirror to make sure she got it on right. “You coming?” Her hand was already hovering over the lit-up door-plate. A touch of her palm would activate it.

I thought about how Billy Ray had kissed me under the bleachers the other day when we were supposed to be catching critters for the biology lab. It’d been like kissing cold liver. Gross!

Then I thought about my friend Rhonda Sue and how she had the softest, flow-iest, golden hair and got this sweet blush on her face whenever our eyes met during literature class, especially if we were reading poetry. Kissing her wouldn’t be like liver, cold, hot, or drowned in ketchup, I thought.

“I think I’ll have to find my ideal partner the old-fashioned way, like back on Earth. By meeting them.”

“Suit yourself, Lisanne.” And she disappeared out the door.

Me? I went to the computer to call up the Almanac. Rhonda Sue and I might end up better as just friends who practice kissing sometimes. And there had to be a day when the sky rained women, right?

The hardest part, as the water fills your mouth, nose, lungs, is not to struggle. We’re drilled on this when we start the program. “If you struggle,” they tell you, “you could choke and die.”

Instead, we were told, we must stay calm, relaxed.

I start my mantra, chanting in my head before my feet leave the deck. “The ocean is the cradle of life. The ocean is the cradle of life.”  I imagine the sea as a great mother, her blue-green arms keeping me safe from harm.

I plunge backwards into the water. They always push you overboard in the split second when you forget to anticipate the shove. The theory is that if you can’t see the waves coming to greet you, you’re less likely to panic.

But I never panic.

I let myself fall into the ocean’s embrace, and I’m struck by the beauty of the bubbles rising up around me toward the expanding rings of my entry-point. It’s my air forming those bubbles. The former content of my lungs.

The first time I did this, I was terrified. Humans only breathe liquid when they’re in the womb, after all, but once I got past the initial disconnect, the fight against my own instincts, breathing water was as natural as… well, you know.

I feel the gill-slits behind my ears opening and closing – it tickles a little. They pass their undulating movement down my neck, to the two other pairs there. With the bottom one responding to the pressure of the water, I can feel a sort of current in the back of my throat.

The next set of gills – four pair – are on my sides, between my ribs. Those are larger, and just the first one kicking in helps me shake the rapture that is caused by weightlessness, low oxygen, and the salty indigo that surrounds me.

It’s experimental, the body-mod I’m using now, but I’ve been fascinated by mermaids for as long as I can remember, and when I saw the ad in the back of a science magazine, I had to volunteer. Initially, I thought the gills were going to be some kind of external apparatus, but no. They triggered a t-cell here, massaged a little-known gene there, and within a few months I was essentially amphibious.

I move in the water, my nude form completely at home. My gills are functioning exactly as they should. I consider the blue world surrounding me, and feel a pull, a longing to go deeper, to swim further, to stay here in the ocean that has always been in my blood.

The watch strapped to my wrist vibrates. My fifteen minutes are up. I’m supposed to return t the surface, to the boat. Reluctantly, I begin my upward swim, hoping beyond hope that the next trip will be a longer one.