Scarlet Magnolia

I was at the age of 12; I had always loved collecting beautiful things. From feathers, flowers and leaves, to pictures out of magazines and pieces of trash I found on the ground. Really it was anything that caught my young and curious eye.

My mother was taking me to visit a client of hers who wanted to try and sell their house. We were driving down a road that was utterly suppressed by trees, nothing, not even the sky could be seen between the thick layers of leaves and moss that hung still and damp in the humid air of the south. The smell of the swamps crept into the car from the cracks of the window, that wet cardboard and fresh rain smell that seems to rise from everything like steam. She said that I was being taken along so that I could me her clients daughter who was the same age as I. I have to admit that even than I was not too found of other children. I would much rather run freely by myself, doing what I want with no one else to question or suggest anything else, for kids can sometimes be what I hated most, bothersome. The car pulled onto a dirt road which led woundingly up to the front of a beautiful southern home. The kind that you see in the movies, with wrap around porches, wide windows, and magnolias blooming sweetly in the front yard with a weeping willow streaming its limbs to the ground sadly. My mother parked the car next to the house, as we got out we were greeted warmly at the door by my mom's client. She was a blonde woman with a deep southern scent, slow words and long drawn out vows. She hugged my mom and thanked her for coming all this way. I was looking at the beautiful flowers in bloom on her porch when she rubbed my head, giving me comments on my cute face and curious looking eyes, she smelt like fresh made cornbread, buttery and sweet. I followed them inside into the lounge where we sat down on a parlor sofa and were served iced tea and slices of pie. The tea was sweet and cooled my throat while the pie was warm and comforting. They went about talking while I gazed around the room. Pictures hung on the wall and flowers were potted in the corners, ferns hanging from the ceiling. I had no idea why anyone would want to sell such a beautiful home, maybe they were longing for the city and found the sparse population too peaceful.
"Your son must be bored. My daughter was down here when I got up to greet you, but I guess she wandered off." She called for her and with out even hearing her footsteps a girl appeared in the doorway to the hall.
"Belle come say hello to Mrs. Barley's son." The girl walked in and stood next to her mom.
"Belle, this is my son Sebastian." She curtsied to me, but I could only manage to raise my hand in a meek hello.
"Why don't you two go out and play, we will be done here in a little bit." I nodded and followed Belle out the back door to the yard where a tire swing hung from a gnarled cypress and a pound lay still in front of the forest, holding its image on its mirrored surface.
"So what do you want to do?" She asked.
"I usually just explore the forest I like to look for pretty things." I answered shrugging and she smiled.
"You like pretty things?" Her voice was sleepy but the slight accent smoothed her words as they came out.
"Do you think I am pretty?" She held up her skirt and twirled around, the ribbons danced on her white dress like blue satin people waltzing through lace and cotton. I thought she was more then pretty. Her hair was such a deep and rich black that in the light it seemed to gleam a dark blue, a gloomy midnight hue. She had a face that reminded me of summer, freckles swept about her small nose and round cheeks underneath eyes that were the color of cherry oak.
"I do. "She smiled again, a small coy smile and ran ahead of me into the forest. I followed of course, feeling a stir in the bottom of my stomach.

The path we walked was mossy and thick with the smell of earth. Much like the road it was suffocated by trees. I passed my hands through the pillars of light that fell through, trying to grab hold of them. Yet all I felt was their empty warmth.
"Where are we going Belle?" I called out to her and she only answered by seizing my hand with hers, pulling me closer as we continued down the path. Her flesh was even warmer then the small pieces of light I was trying to hold in my palms. We soon reached a clearing where the sun poured in intense and proud. In the middle there laid a dead log half covered by bushes and moss. When we sat down I hesitated to speak. I felt like we were in some sort of church, a cathedral of wood, with stained glass leaves and flowers illuminating everything in an almost divine radiance.
"Have you ever been in love Sebastian?" She asked me, her voice seemed to roll through the air like a puff of smoke, curling and dissipating. She watched me intently, waiting for my answer.
"I don't even think I know what love is." I said wistfully and she seemed disappointed, turning her head away, her long hair brushing my arms and face.
"Well I have, it was last year." She sighed and hunched her elbows onto her knees, her face in her hands. "He was older, tall and handsome with long hair down to his shoulders, blonde and curly. He said I was the most gorgeous girl he had ever seen. When he took my hand it felt like my heart was going to fall down into the pit of my stomach" She stopped and looked at me, waiting for a response, but I offered nothing but the wanting to hear more. "He kissed me once, it was the most amazing thing I have felt, his lips were so soft, his hands holding onto my arms firmly." She swooned a little but her smile was still deviously crooked to one side. "Have you ever been kissed?" I shook my head slowly. "I figured." Her tone was harsh and it hurt to hear it, a quiet pain started to cease my heart. "You don't seem like the sort of person who would care for such things." Her lips turned into a full smug grin, waiting for my face to contort with sadness. "Rather, I don't think any girl would love you. You're not much to look at, with your simple face and sad looking eyes. No girl wants to deal with sadness when all she wants is love." She sounded matter of fact, as if she knew of everything, about me and of the world.
"I don't believe you." I said calmly.
"About what? That you're cursed with such things?"
"No, that you were once in love." This caught her off guard and I will admit I enjoyed the look of exasperation that sparked across her face. Yet she smiled again, her hand grabbing mine.
"It's true, it was a lie." I thought I saw tears creep up in the corner of her eyes, but it must have just been wishful thinking.
"Why did you lie?" She stood up and pulled me with her, leading me further into the woods.
"I guess I wanted to make you jealous, but when I saw that you weren't, I grew angry. How did you know I was lying?"
"Your expression never really changed when you talked about it." She stopped, turned, and looked at me with a smile as if she had heard something amazing.
"I think I found one of your good points." She clenched my hand and we continued deeper into the forest.




"Do you want to see something beautiful?" She asked as we came upon a cluster of large fanned ferns. I nodded my head and she pulled back a few and under it laid a dead rabbit.
"There's nothing more remarkable than what is inside of a once living creature." She picked up a stick and pushed it onto its back. The belly was gashed open and its insides were exposed in a mess of congealed blood, matted fur and entrails.
"It's like some sort of bloomed flower." I said and crouched down close to it.
"Isn't it amazing? We have pretty the same things inside of us, it's humbling to see up so close." She said standing next to me as I prodded the animal's body with the stick, lifting up the tender pieces of flesh, the smell of decay heavy in my nose.
"Have you ever wanted to see the inside of a human? All of those muscles, veins, and organs pumping and flowing creating what we are. That's true source of our life, not some power we can't see." Belle's voice was clear and had a hint of fondness, as if she was reciting her favorite lines of poetry. I stood up and wiped my hands on my pants.
"Let's bury it, give it a funeral." I walked under an old tree, its leaves never to flourish again, only to hang sorrowfully in their death.
"Why do you want to do that?" She asked as I got on my knees and started to dig up the soft earth with my hands. "It's not like anyone is going to miss it, no one loved it." I didn't answer I only dug, pulling away clumps of damp earth, feeling it under my nails and between my fingers. Belle watched me silently until the hole was deep enough. I ripped off a piece of bark from a fallen tree and slid it under the rabbit's corpse, then carried if over like a lone pallbearer, and dumped it into its grave. I decide to bury it on its back so that its sick bloom could not be seen. While filling the hole I noticed that Belle was not there, but I could hear her rustling in the back ground. I patted the dirt into a small mound, now all I need was some flowers to lie in its behalf, a make shift tombstone.
"Here, I got these for it." Belle had returned holding a few magnolias in her hand. She placed them on the grave. The flowers being a sort of epitaph of its own, one of the forests, written in petals and pollen by nature it's self.
"I'm glad you did this Sebastian." She whispered over the funeral like silence that had fallen over us
"Why did you change your mind?" I asked. She had just before said it was useless.
"I don't know why I talked about love it has nothing to do with some rabbit carcass in the middle of the woods. I mean what's it matter, even if you didn't bury it, it would have just decayed naturally like anything else." She bent down and ran her fingers through the fresh dirt. "But I guess when I saw how you looked at the rabbit despite the plain ordinariness of it I just sort of wanted to see you do it. I wanted to see you dig the hole, place it in its grave and look so mournfully at it like you did." She stood up and looked at me with this deep intense gaze. The back of my head tightened and tingled as if I was looking down a deep hole, its depth much like here eyes, both freighting and tempting me to heave myself into them.
"It was so beautiful it seemed like a shame to stop. The way you look at things must be so different from me."
"I could show you, if you want." I told her and she only shook her head.
"No, I'm fine just watching you live them."
A smell floated through the air, I wasn't sure from where, but it smelled like honeysuckle, a timid sweetness that danced against the breeze and caressed my cheeks and lips. Everything seemed to go out of focus the colures of the forest seemed to infuse into each other in sweeps of dark and light green, the small ribbons of light gleamed in long glistening arches. I only saw Belle's face softening the more we stared at each other, her eyes waning into two half moons of a smooth dark lacquered red. I bent forward and kissed her, we watched each others eyes close.
It wasn't some lustful lock of the lips no it was more of an innocent embrace. My whole body seemed to beat with my heart, as if it was sending its pulse through all my veins and nerves in a hollow echoing thump. The smell I once caught a faint hint of was now more powerful and pure, it was Belle.

When we broke our kiss we only looked at each other, her face was flushed and I could feel my own burning. She reached out and placed a hand over my heart, and I did the same to her. I could feel it beating it pounded just as hard as mine.

We walk back to her house hand in hand, no one pulling or leading, just together. We were quiet for most of the way, just smiling at each other and to our selves.
"Do you think well ever see each other again?" She asked and I didn't want to answer.
"Who knows, we might be able to." That seemed like a lie, and we both knew it.
"Can I give you something to remember me by?" We had stopped at her back door.
"I'd like you to." I answered and she ran inside, telling me to stay where I was.
She returned with one closed fist and an excited smile. She held open her hand and in it laid two tiny vials and a sewing needle. I put two and two together she wanted to shed blood for each other.
"Will you do it Sebastian?" Her cheeks were still dusted with a slight blush.
I didn't even hesitate, I did it. I squeezed drops of my very essence into that minute old perfume vial gave it to her, and in return I was given hers.
She went first, sticking the needle into her thumb, quick and deep. The blood instantly appeared in a scarlet raindrop, as if she unintentionally caught it falling from the sky. I held the bottle as she squeezed it till it was full, it didn't take much. I did the same, puncturing my thumb in a quick slightly painful motion and filled up her vial.
"Now we have something very precious from each other." She connected her vial to a silver necklace and put it on. It lay on her chest like a pendant, crimson on her skin.
We said our goodbye, a tearless kiss, a painful smile.
I went inside alone. My mom was already saying her own goodbye to Belle's mom.
"Ready to leave" She asked me and I just nodded my head. We left the same way we entered, out the front door, down the steps, into the car and down the dirt snake of a road. I clutched the vial in my hand it contained the most beautiful thing I shall ever hope to see.