I thought of the letters, folded and tucked in their envelopes and sitting neatly under my pillow in the keep. I thought it fitting that Keats would keep a box of old love letters, that last living witness to something as profound as what Atlas and Fawn had experienced.
I decided then that my next step involved a soapy bucket and bristle brush.
Within minutes, I was walking out to the graveyard, full wash bucket, brush, and rags in hand along with my defunct smartphone that now was only good for its camera. At least with a photo, I could document the lost souls still bound to this land and Leith. I could cement their existence in the history books of time.
And I knew exactly which gravestone I would start with.
The big one.
The angel wings were poised to spread but were also hanging with moss and dead thorns, as if being held back from ascension.
I started first with pulling down the debris, admiring the delicate work of the angel’s wings the more the sun was allowed to shine on its sculpted planes. I then moved to the front of the stone, working at the epitaph and wondering who had been so special to warrant the expense of a stone this large. People whose souls were worth remembering, I figured.
I scrubbed with the coarse brush first, dipping it into the soapy water until shades of moss colored my soap bubbles. I scrubbed the length of the stone and then worked along the next path. My fingers twitched with awareness when I realized what I’d found.
The epitaph read:
When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half brokenhearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.
The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow—
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
In secret, we met—
In silence, I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?—
With silence and tears.
I worked quicker then,anxious to confirm my assumptions as hot tears hovered at my eyelids. The grime came easily off the first name:
