The Emerald Tragedy

He stands at the edge of the pier, watching her the way children watch fireflies dance—with wonder and amazement. She holds the light dutifully. The green aura flickers, illuminating the features of her face. Her visage is that of Helen of Troy, of Aphrodite, of Cleopatra. Beauty unfathomable by mere mortals.

He soon finds himself spending the nights sitting on the edge of the dock, wood biting into his legs through his trousers, but he doesn’t feel it. Nor does he feel the sleep deprivation weigh on him, stealing his youth away. His mother watches him from the window and worries.

He knows, of course, that it can never be. He knows that she could never love him back. He knows her heart is made of stone—it is cold and unfeeling. But, still, he gazes longingly every evening over the water at her form, and he breaks his own heart imagining a life with her.

Over months his mother introduces him to dozens of girls in the hopes that one might break this curse, but the sleepless nights wear on her son, drawing the color out of his skin, the flesh off of his bones. Soon he is a shell of the vibrant boy he once was. Eventually the girls stop coming.

His father pretends—as fathers sometimes do—that nothing is happening. When people dare to ask about his son, he says he is away at university. He will not address this madness. Instead, he drinks his gin and reads his law books in his study. He smokes cigars and fills the room with their grey-brown stench. He does not worry—he does not care. He has already an older son, serving in the war and making him proud. The sickness overwhelming his youngest is of no consequence to him.

The boy sits again on the edge of the pier. His mother brings a blanket to wrap ‘round his shoulders, but he hardly notices. He only sits and watches the woman over the water, holding her emerald light high overhead. He wonders what she’d say to him, if she could see him, if she could speak.

“Hello, my love.”

“Hello.” she answers. Even over the river he can hear her. Her voice is dark and smooth. Her lips do not move.

He sighs, and his breath billows out before him. In the same way he doesn’t feel the splinters in his skin, he does not feel the winter creeping in. He is warmed by his love for her.

“How was your day?” he asks. “Mine was dreadful without you. It always is.”

She almost smiles, he thinks. “Oh, how I longed for you, my dear.” she says. “My world is so small and cold in your absence. When will we be together at last?”

He throws the blanket from his shoulders and stands on the very end of the dock. He undoes the buttons on his shirt and casts it aside. “Tonight!” he calls to her. “I’ll swim to you!”

With that declaration, he dives into the biting waters. His mother, who is watching from the sitting room, screams, but he does not hear her. Faintly, he hears his love laugh with glee.

He pumps his arms over his head, propelling his body forward, but the river is so much wider than it seemed a moment ago. He pushes onward, swimming as far as he can before his limbs become stiff. Finally, he is almost to her!

But when he sees her, she is not as he remembers. Her face is contorted and twisted. She moves at last, lowering her light to the water. “Come, you’re so close!”

He stops. His brow wrinkles in confusion. He hears now his mother, weeping from across the current. He feels the ice of the water cut into him.

His mother watches as he sinks, slowly and without struggle, into the river. She cries and falls to her knees, clutching at her chest, where her heart has shattered. Across the way, that damned statue stands still, holding her sickly green light over the terrible scene.

Days later, his brother and father lift an empty casket, and carry it to his place in the cemetery. They lower it into the ground. The eulogy, given by his brother, is brief. No one knows quite what to make of this tragedy. His headstone reads simply:

Peter O’Connell

Born January 21, 1782 Died December 31, 1800

Beloved Brother and Son

It makes no mention of the manner of his death, nor of his great love. All that remains of his one true romance is a statue, purchased from the family across the river, standing over his grave. In her outstretched hand she holds a lantern, softly glowing green.