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A night to remember
Fiction: Now, after all this time, it had come.
Oh, she really could not wait; it was here. Here at last! Was she even ready? Now! Now, after all this time, now it had come. She couldn’t believe it.
Eve had spent a year preparing for this, but really she knew this was what she had spent every moment of the twenty years of her life waiting for. Waiting, so used to waiting. The drag. The long game. The hardest hours. She could condemn it as she wished, but the burning in her heart told her that it was good; it was true. It was worth it. This longest night of her life was worth it all. For Eve was getting married in the morning.
Samuel would stand ahead of her, her man and her expected. She expected, indeed that the long parade down the aisle would match her aspirations. How could it not? It would be beautiful, for he was beautiful and she was his new hand. Forever, and again, and again. She was the luckiest woman in the world.
Her life had been perfect thus far, with the closest of families, the best of friends; the strongest of knights. The nights they spent, stolen from suspicion, in their own starry snow globe, were unforgettable. Each day she relived and cherished them, hardly able to believe that she had struck such great fortune. Samuel had been the one for her since childhood, and would be the one for her present, her future and her dreams. The future, the closed door, some part of her breathed.
“The wedding of your dreams” had been one of Samuel’s great promises. Always grand and rarely unfulfilled, were such promises: the benefit of being of such strong name and position. However, this latest promise was different, certainly unattainable for the poor man, she would hope. ‘The Great Wedding of 1950” perhaps, she thought, but never the one of her dreams. For of late, her dreams had been of the most peculiar nature.
Dark dreams of clouds and mist, they were. Often she could not remember specific sequences, only individual images: one such was of an old oak tree. It seemed to weep its leaves, golden and proud, falling to the grass below in a slow dance through the fog. Other times she dreamt of her wedding, of what could come to pass: Samuel’s strength of hands carrying her into the future, with children and love and time following them through in their symphony.
Time, the broken clock, the shadow, some part of her grimaced. Still - they were only dreams. They had carried her this long through her journey, against the backdrop of luck and love. Always waiting for the right day, the best day. Nearly here! Nearly now! 25th November 1950. She would always remember the day.
Eve shivered in her bed with excitement, before slowly edging herself out of bed to pace the floor: the insomnia of anticipation had crept into the room. She wanted to check herself in the mirror before morning came, to make sure she looked good enough for Samuel. One can never be prepared enough, she thought. However, she had forgotten, evidently in her excitement, to hang up her old mirror in her room after using it earlier in the day.
Chastising herself, she crawled back into bed. She had always been the forgetful sort. Memories, the faces in the mirrors, some part of her urged. And with the waiting almost at its deathbed, Eve finally decided to give in to sleep. For some reason that she could not quite discern, her eyes had welled up with tears. Perhaps she did not even herself understand how excited she was. With this final thought, she closed her eyes and thought of her time to come.
The man in white came with the dawn. He spoke softly, with measured tone and pace, to the bleary eyed woman who had approached. “I’m afraid there has been no improvement in her condition. Her time has almost come.” The woman nodded and turned away, her acceptance in contrast with her mother’s denial.
She stared outside the window as the clock above her struck 10 am, Thursday 25th November, 2010. The old oak tree facing the hospital was almost bare, with only a few scattered specks of gold hanging on, while the rest long since wept into the dance of the fog. In her bed, Eve still slept. She dreamt of the future that was her past, the night to remember; the day she lived to forget.
By: Grainne Wray
