The Tearsmith: A Novel

And so, Love was born. He started to wander

the world, and one day met the Sea.

The Sea was enchanted, and gave him his tenacity.

He met the Universe, who gave him his mysteries.

Then he met Time, who gave him eternity.

And finally, he met Death. He was fearsome,

greater than the Sea, the Universe and Time.

He prepared to face him, but he gave him a light.

‘What’s this?’ Love asked.

‘It’s hope,’ Death replied. ‘So I can see you

from afar, and will always know you’re on your way.’

When I was a child, they said that it was the truth that brings colour to the world.

That is the compromise. Until you know the truth, you can never see reality in all its colours.

Now that I knew everything I had never realised before, I should have been able to see all the world’s brilliant hues, with the eyes of someone who finally understood.

And yet…everything had never looked so grey.

The world, reality, even me.

When I was a child, they also said that you cannot lie to the Tearsmith. Because he can read the depths of your soul…there are no emotions you can hide from him. He is the one who instilled in you all your desperate, agonising, heart-wrenching feelings.

When I was a little girl, I was scared of him. I thought he was a monster. For me, he was exactly what they wanted us to believe: a bogeyman who would come and take you away if you told lies.

I still didn’t know how wrong I was. I would only realise at the very end.

Only with my eyes full of that truth would I finally understand that fairy tale I had carried with me all my life.

—

Adeline told me everything.

Through her words, I reconstructed that solitary life lived parallel to mine.

Each piece, each scrap of paper…everything fell into place, forming the pages of a story that, finally, I could read.

From that moment on, the only thing that dwelled in my eyes was the awareness of an ending I never could have predicted.

The next day, a police officer came to ask me some questions. He asked me to tell him what had happened, and I answered his questions in a monotone. I told him the truth: the meeting with Lionel, the fight, the fall.

Eventually, after having jotted down a few notes, the man looked me in the eyes and asked if Lionel had deliberately pushed us off the bridge.

I was silent. My mind replayed every moment of what had happened, his anger, his vindictive fury, his face twisted in disgust. Then, once again, I told the truth.

It was an accident.

The man nodded, and left as he had arrived.

When they heard about the accident, Billie and Miki rushed to the hospital.

Miki arrived very early. She waited outside on one of the chairs in front of my room, and only got up when Billie ran breathlessly into the corridor, her eyes full of tears.

They looked at each other as the nurses bustled by, one with lips tight with stress, the other with a face red from crying.

The next moment, Billie threw her arms around Miki and sobbed.

They held each other tighter than they ever had before, clutching on to one another, and their embrace radiated with all the warmth of reunited love. They stayed in each other’s arms for an eternity, then slowly pulled away, looking each other in the face. The look they gave each other before coming into my room promised light and clear skies after a terrible storm.

They must have spoken.

A lot. At length.

They still had time.

‘Nica!’

Billie ran to my bed. She threw herself on me in a hug. My cracked ribs throbbed painfully, but I just half-closed my eyes without making a sound.

‘I can’t believe it,’ she sobbed. ‘When I heard the news I couldn’t…I swear I couldn’t breathe…God, how awful…’

She gently wrapped her fingers around mine.

Miki squeezed my hand, her eyes stained with smudged mascara.

I couldn’t summon the strength to tell Billie that she was hurting me.

‘If there’s anything we can do…’ I heard her murmur, but her words got lost in the black hole that was my heart.

At that moment, Miki turned towards Rigel. I remembered when she told me there was something about him she wasn’t sure about. Like everyone else, she had seen the wolf, and hadn’t been able to glimpse the soul that flickered beneath.

‘Oh, my photo…’ Billie smiled, drying her tears with her hand. ‘You kept it…’

The polaroid was there, flimsy and crumpled, tethering me to reality with its unbearable, banal light-heartedness.

I felt my heart rotting against my ribs as she whispered, touched, ‘I didn’t know you kept it…’

I wanted to tell her what that photo meant for me. I wanted her to feel the excruciating pain devouring my insides. It was killing me.

Maybe one day I would tell her.

One day, I would tell them that not all stories are contained in books. That there are invisible, silent and hidden tales that live in secret and die unheard. Fairy tales without an ending, destined to always be unfinished.

Maybe, one day, I would tell her ours.

They looked at me, uncertain, looking for any remnant of my usual carefree self. When I did not move, they decided to leave me in peace.

It was only when they were at the door that I heard myself whisper quietly, ‘He protected me.’

Miki, behind Billie, stopped and turned around.

I did not look up, but felt her gaze on me. After glancing at Rigel one last time, she turned around again.

Alone, my attention fell to my hands.

They were both completely white. My skin was bare from my wrists to the ends of my fingernails. On my fingers were constellations of red marks, little cuts and scars.

I slowly looked up. A nurse was arranging Rigel’s IV drip on the other side of his bed.

‘My Band-Aids,’ I murmured mechanically. ‘Where are they?’

She noticed I was watching her. Seeing a strangely bright flash in my pale, stagnant eyes, she hesitated.

‘You don’t need them any more, don’t worry,’ she replied gently.

My expression didn’t change. She came closer to me, and lifted my hand to show me my fingers.

‘See? We’ve disinfected all the cuts. They’re clean.’ She tilted her head and smiled at me. I didn’t smile back. ‘Were you doing gardening? Is that how you got all these scratches?’

I stared at her silently, as if she hadn’t spoken. Maybe she noticed that I was still looking at her with serious, destroyed but shining eyes.

‘I want…my Band-Aids.’

The woman looked at me, taken aback, not knowing what to say. She blinked a few times, not understanding.

‘You don’t need them,’ she repeated, maybe wondering whether my senseless request was just a consequence of shock.

After I had lost my mind, shouting and scratching and tearing the IV drip away, the nurses on the ward had kept looking at me warily.

The woman seemed very relieved when someone else came in. She turned slowly and disappeared, forcing me to open my eyes.

But I wished I hadn’t.

The air froze around me, trapping the saliva in my throat.

Lionel was warily coming in, invading the room. His eyes were haggard and his lips bitten, devoured by stress. That was all I could see, because my eyes mechanically moved away from him to the wall.

I wanted to stop him, to tell him not to come any closer, but I realised that my throat was so tight I couldn’t make a sound. He stopped next to my bed and more than ever I smarted from how powerless I felt.

For what seemed like an eternity he sat next to me, in a silence he didn’t know how to break.

‘I know I’m probably the last person you want to see.’

He couldn’t even look at Rigel. The idea that he was lying behind him, hanging on to life by a thread, made my stomach twist like a cigarette being stubbed out.

‘I…I hear you spoke to a police officer. I know that…you told him it was an accident. I wanted to thank you for telling the truth.’

I stared numbly off to one side. Lionel kept trying to meet my eyes, as if urgently seeking atonement.

‘Nica…’ he whispered imploringly, reaching for my hand. ‘I never wan—’

He jumped as I forcefully jerked my arm away. The tubes of the IV drip flashed and I looked up at him, my eyes wide and white-hot like never before. My hands shook as with a glacial slowness I enunciated, ‘You cannot touch me again.’

Lionel looked at me, hurt by my unexpected reaction.

‘Nica, I didn’t want this,’ his voice was a remorseful lament. ‘Believe me, I’m sorry…I shouldn’t have said those things to you…I wasn’t myself…and the punch, Nica, I promise I never wanted to hit you…’ He looked at the capillary he had burst in my eye and bit his lip, looking down.

He still couldn’t look at Rigel.

‘I won’t tell anyone. About the two of you…’

‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ I breathed.

‘Nica…’

‘No,’ I whispered, inconsolable. ‘Nothing matters any more. I thought you were my friend. My friend, Lionel…do you even know what that means, friendship?’

My voice was unrecognisable, an icy hiss.

This wasn’t me. I was always gentle and tender. I had a smile for every occasion. There were crystals of wonder set in my eyes and my fingers were always covered in colourful Band-Aids.

But in that moment, I was the result of a tale torn in two.

The result of a birthday present shattered next to an ice cream kiosk. Of fleeing from a party. Of shuddering gasps of fear when his hands had grabbed me. Of the disappointment that had stung my heart when he spat out all his disgust and anger and threatened to condemn us.

No, this wasn’t me.

Parched, ashy pages scratched my throat as I said, ‘I would have forgiven you for everything. Everything…but not this.’

I knew it wasn’t his fault. And yet, looking back on the sequence of events that had started with a little snail, I wondered if Lionel had ever cared for me with the pure and unconditional selflessness that I had felt towards him.

‘Leave.’

He swallowed his distress.

It was true that I had a moth-like heart.

It was true that I pursued the light until I got burnt, because what I had gone through as a child had broken me, beyond repair. But even though the most ruined parts of my soul tried to persuade my eyes to meet his, nothing could convince me to forgive him.

He had torn away half of my soul.

Lionel pursed his lips, and tried to say something that wilted away into silence. There was nothing he could say that could bring back what he had taken from me.

In the end, defeated, he lowered his face. He turned and slowly walked away. I called after him.

‘Lionel.’

I lifted my faded eyes and finally met his gaze. ‘When you walk out that door, don’t ever come back.’

He swallowed in dismay and threw me one last look. And then he left.

Not even then did he look at Rigel.

Maybe, people like Lionel can never see reality’s true colours. They don’t have the courage to face the truth, to see it inside themselves.

Even if they did everything in their power to bring out the darkest shades, if they tore and scratched to let the ink spill out.

In the end, all they can do is walk away, not brave enough even for one last glance.

—

It was difficult to eat.

I never had an appetite, and sometimes I left the trays they brought me untouched. Anna tried to encourage me to eat, but there was a discomfort in her gaze that made all her efforts fruitless.

I could see it in her eyes that evening too, as she helped me to get into a position in which my cracked ribs wouldn’t hurt.

‘How’s that?’ she asked. ‘Does that hurt?’

I shook my head, almost imperceptibly.

After a while, Anna put her hand on my face and I looked up. I saw a trembling, sorrowful love in her eyes.

She caressed me for an extremely long moment. She examined every inch of my face, and I sensed what she was going to say before she said it.

‘I thought I’d lost you too.’

She looked in my eyes and the furrow in her brow deepened.

‘For a moment…I thought you’d vanish like Alan.’

She tried to hold herself together, but couldn’t stop her eyes brimming with tears. She lowered her face, squeezing my hand in her lap.

‘I don’t know what I would have done…without your sweet smile. I don’t know how I would have managed, not finding you in the kitchen in the morning, saying hello, looking at me like you do. I don’t know what I would have done without your happy face reminding me that it’s a lovely day even when it rains, or that there’s always a reason to overcome sadness. I don’t know what I would have done without you…without my Nica…’

Her voice broke and I felt her breaking through the numbness inside of me.

I moved my free hand to put it on hers, which was warm and trembling.

Anna looked up and I saw in that sky I loved so much the reflection of my tearful eyes.

‘You are the sun,’ she whispered, looking at me like a mother. ‘You’ve become my little sun…’

I wrapped my arm around her as tears streamed down her exhausted face. Anna desperately held me close to her and I closed my eyes, cradled like a child.

Our hearts laden with sorrow, burning together like a single flame, I shared the sobs shaking her chest, and she shared mine.

Like mother and daughter. United. Close.

Anna tilted her head and her eyes slid to the side. She looked at Rigel with the same desperate love that she showed for me. Then…she pulled away and looked me in the eyes, in that deep and knowing way that adults have. No, actually…that only mothers have.

And I realised. There, in the silence of the hospital, I realised that she knew.

In that instant, my heart collapsed like a house of cards.

‘I didn’t know how to tell you…’ I whispered, annihilated. ‘I couldn’t…I didn’t know how to show you that lying to you broke my heart. You’re the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me…I was scared of losing you.’

Hot streams of tears rolled down my cheeks. I was in pieces.

‘My heart was torn in two. I waited for you for so long, Anna, longer than you can imagine, but Rigel…Rigel is everything I have. Everything. And now he…’ I wiped my bony wrist over my eyes, burning with tears.

Anna hugged me but said nothing. Even she knew there was something unbreakable in the bond between us.

And yet…she didn’t make me feel wrong.

‘Rigel told me,’ she whispered, and something in my heart jammed like a rusty gear. I trembled in disbelief, overcome with confusion. All I could do was hug her tighter and wait for her to continue.

‘I know now that he would never have told me if he had any other choice. He knew that otherwise I would never have agreed to what he asked me. He…wanted you to have a family, more than anything.’

Anna held my face and looked for my eyes, only to find them lowered above my trembling, chewed lips. She leant her forehead against mine, holding me until I stopped crying.

‘The doctor didn’t tell you because he didn’t want to give you false hope,’ she whispered after a while. ‘But…he told me that hearing the voices of loved ones can sometimes help.’

I lifted my dull eyes and she continued. ‘It stimulates the consciousness, he says, and the long-term memory. None of us would have the power to make a difference. But you…’ Anna looked down and swallowed. ‘You have that power. He might hear you.’

That night, when the hospital fell as silent as a sanctuary, my heart was still quivering. For I don’t know how long, Anna’s words carved channels within me, echoing through my despairing mind.

I stared into the darkness. The only thing I could make out was an immense void that made every breath meaningless.

He was there, a few steps away. And yet…he had never been so distant.

‘You wanted to leave,’ I whispered into the darkness.

He didn’t move. I could hardly see him, but I would have been able to trace the outline of his face even with my eyes closed.

‘You wanted to leave without saying anything to me…because you knew that I would have done anything to stop you. You knew that I wouldn’t have let you.’ I stared at him blankly. ‘We have to stay together. But maybe that’s always been the difference between me and you. I’ve always deluded myself. But you…never have.’

My throat closed slowly, but I didn’t take my eyes off him. I felt something inside, pushing to escape.

‘The rose was yours,’ I continued. ‘You tore it to pieces because you didn’t want me to understand. You’ve always been scared I’d see you for what you are…But you were wrong,’ I whispered, my voice breaking. ‘I see you, Rigel. And my only regret…is not having been able to sooner.’

I didn’t want to feel tears burning my eyes again, but it was inevitable.

‘I wish you’d let me understand you…but every time you pushed me far away. I always thought you couldn’t quite trust me, that you couldn’t give me a chance…It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t me you didn’t give a chance to, but yourself.’

I clenched my eyes shut.

‘You’re unfair, Rigel.’

There was a silent earthquake trembling inside me, and everything became harsh and boiling.

‘You’re unfair,’ I accused him through my tears. ‘You’ve never had the right to make decisions for me…to keep me far away. And now you’re about to leave me again…Always alone, even at the end. But I won’t let you,’ I insisted. ‘You hear me? I won’t let you!’

I tore the bedcovers away. I reached my hand out towards his immobile body, burning with desperation when I realised he was out of reach.

I slipped off the mattress, and my feet shook as they touched the floor. My ankle hurt, stiff and swollen, and I gripped the bar of the bed as hard as I could, but it was a pathetic gamble. My legs gave way and I collapsed to the ground, falling on my free forearm with a searing pain. My cracked ribs screamed under my flesh and a rush of pain took my breath away.

I couldn’t imagine what people would think of me, if they saw me then. I was a pitiful spectacle, pressing my lips together, tears splashing onto the tiled floor. But in some way or another, I managed to find the strength to crawl to his bed.

I took his hand and struggled to pull it towards me. I held it, as he had held mine so many times, in that dark cellar when we were children.

‘Don’t leave me alone again,’ I begged, on my knees, my eyes ruined by tears. ‘Please, don’t…Don’t go where I can’t follow you. Let me stay next to you. Let me love you for who you are. Let’s stay together forever, because I can’t stand a world where you’re not with me. I want to believe, Rigel…I want to believe that there’s a fairy tale where the wolf holds the girl’s hand. Stay with me and we’ll write it together…Please…’

I pressed my forehead against his hand, bathing his knuckles in tears.

‘Please…’ I repeated, my voice twisted with sobs.

I don’t know how long I stayed there, wishing I could meld with his soul.

But something changed that night.

If it was true that he could hear me…

I would give him everything I had.

The next day I asked the nurses to no longer close the curtain that separated me from Rigel. Not in the morning nor the evening: at every moment, I wanted to be able to see the face of the boy in the bed next to me.

When Anna arrived at the hospital, she didn’t find me with dull eyes and a blank expression as she had the previous days.

No.

When she arrived, I was already awake, sat up in bed, my gaze alert and attentive.

‘Hello,’ I greeted her, before she could say anything.

She stared at me in surprise, blinking, and when I realised Adeline was with her, a wave of warmth softened my gaze.

‘Hi,’ I said quietly. Speechless, she glanced at Anna and then looked back at me with a heartfelt expression.

‘Hi…’

A little later, as she braided my hair, I ate a spoonful of apple sauce.

—

Relentlessly, the days went by, one by one. As my medical situation stabilised, I spent every free moment making sure Rigel might hear me.

I read him books and stories, tales of the sea. I read whatever Anna brought me, and my words accompanied the silence until evening fell.

Doctor Robertson came by regularly to check on me. He looked at the book I was holding, and when his eyes moved to Rigel, the world suddenly stopped and I felt a suffocating hope take my breath away.

I froze and stared at the doctor with a burning hunger, as if he might glimpse in that immobile body some detail that others hadn’t been able to see. Some movement…or reaction…anything that could catch his professional attention.

Each time, when Doctor Robertson left, my heart ached so much that I had to bite my lips so as not to ruin the pages of the book with my fingernails.

The darkness of the previous days was fading.

I had asked them to always keep the curtains open so that Rigel could sense the sky. Or so that I could see it for him, and tell him about it.

‘It’s raining today,’ I told him one morning, looking out the window. ‘The sky is glistening…It’s like a sheet of metal, dripping water.’ Then I remembered something, and meekly added, ‘Like when it used to happen at The Grave. Do you remember? The other children would say it’s the colour of my eyes…’

As always, my words were met with no response. Sometimes that silence stirred in me a desire so absurd that I imagined I could hear him reply. Other times, the suffering was so heavy that it seemed like a battle I could never win.

And the more time passed…the more the hopes that he would wake diminished.

The more the days relentlessly went by, the more my frustration seemed like a venom that took away my hunger and the flesh off my bones.

Billie and Miki tried their hardest to stay with me, and Anna sought out countless ways to comfort me – she brought me the mulberry jam I so loved and sometimes she pushed me around the ward in a wheelchair.

One day, the nurse called her and she left me for a moment next to the coffee machine, promising she’d be right back. She must have been frightened when she came back and didn’t find me where she had left me. She looked all over the ward for me, worried to death, and it was only when she passed by our room that the panic gripping her throat finally lifted. I was there, next to Rigel’s bed, my hand on his, my shoulders hidden by the back of the wheelchair.

‘You have to eat,’ she whispered, after throwing away the Melba toast with jam that I had refused to touch. I didn’t reply, trapped in an impenetrable world of my own, and all Anna could do was lower her face, vanquished by my silence.

She helped me wash. As I unbuttoned my shirt, in the bathroom mirror I saw all the sharp edges of my body, evidence of the loss of all the lifeforce I had tried to transmit to Rigel. If there was a price to be paid to give him all I had, it was in the dark circles that encroached on my protruding cheekbones.

I couldn’t sleep at night. Wrapped up in the bedsheets, I counted the sharp beeps of Rigel’s heartbeat, the only sound in the darkness, praying I wouldn’t hear them stop. I was crushed, suffocated by the terror of falling asleep and no longer hearing that sound when I woke up.

When the nurses noticed the stress on my face, they gave me drugs to help me sleep, but I persistently struggled against them, bringing my body close to exhaustion.

‘You can’t go on like this,’ Doctor Robertson said to me one evening, when I had reached my limit.

I was verging on a breakdown, and my healing progress had taken a terrifyingly sudden dip.

‘You need to eat more and rest, Nica. You won’t get better if you don’t sleep.’

He looked at me, dwarfed under the bedsheets, as slender and frail as a chrysalis. He seemed to have reached the end of his tether.

‘Why? Why are you struggling against the drugs to sleep? What are you fighting?’

I slowly, torpidly turned my face to his, and saw my ghostly reflection in his eyes.

My grey eyes overwhelmed my emaciated face, shining with a mad determination.

‘Against time,’ I confessed without blinking.

My voice was as soft as a silk thread.

All he could do was look at me, defeated and knowing.

‘Every day takes him further away.’

Billie and Miki came often to see how I was doing, and Adeline was there every day, taking care of me and braiding my hair as she had done when we were girls.

By now, I was used to visitors. But I never would have dreamt that one afternoon, I would see Asia walk in.

Initially, I was certain I must have been mistaken. But when Adeline got to her feet, surprised to see her there, I realised that my eyes were not deceiving me.

Although there was no trace of make-up on her face, I couldn’t help but notice that she still looked clean and tidy. Her hair was held back in a ponytail and she was wearing a grey hoodie that did nothing to detract from her sophisticated charm.

Asia looked around warily, like an animal in an unfamiliar environment, and for a moment I wondered whether she was just looking for Anna.

Then our eyes met. A moment passed before she looked at me fully. Her gaze ran over my thinned face, then to my body wrapped in the baggy shirt.

Adeline interlaced her fingers then said meekly, ‘I’ll leave you alone for a little while.’

‘No,’ Asia retorted, stopping her. In a softer tone, she added, ‘Stay.’

When she got to my bed, she didn’t sit down or come any closer to me, and I couldn’t imagine what had brought her there.

She stared at the IV drip that ran into my arm. Then, without me saying a thing, her eyes moved slowly to Rigel. She stared at him for an extremely long time. When she finally spoke, I noticed she was biting her lip.

‘I’ve often felt jealous of you,’ she murmured out of nowhere, without taking her eyes off Rigel. ‘We haven’t had much chance to get to know each other. But it’s always been clear you have no idea what it means to give up. You never stopped trying to build a relationship with me…even though I always pushed you away and treated you like an obstacle. Even though I didn’t know you well, it didn’t take much to realise that you don’t know how to give up.’ She turned slowly to meet my gaze, her eyes brimming with accusation. ‘But look at you now. You’ve stopped fighting.’

No, I wanted to say to her, that was exactly what I hadn’t done. There was an uncrushable tenacity within me that was sapping the breath from my lungs. I was reduced to this precisely because I couldn’t give up.

But…I said nothing. I kept still, and my lack of reaction provoked something that I never would have expected.

Sadness. For the first time since I had met her, Asia seemed to understand. More than anyone else.

‘You can’t help him if you don’t help yourself first,’ she whispered in a completely new, heartfelt tone of voice. ‘Don’t do as I did…Don’t let pain destroy you. Don’t let yourself drown in regret. You’ve got something I never had. Hope. If you throw it away, I’ll never forgive you.’

She stared at me harshly and I saw her trembling, but in that tremble I glimpsed how she was trying to break through the wall I was wilting behind.

‘You can’t fight death with sacrifices. But with life. You made me realise that. She’s still in this room – the girl who went through hell and then looked me in the eyes to say she wouldn’t step aside, wouldn’t give Anna up. Come on,’ she growled, ‘let her out. You won’t save him by effacing yourself…You have to give him a reason to wake up. To make him see that you’re here, that you’re well, that you’re fighting to stay alive, even though living right now is killing you. Don’t let suffering turn you into someone you’re not. Don’t make the mistake I did…We don’t choose pain, but we can choose how to live with it. And if living means enduring, then do it for him. Give him your strength and courage. He’s there, life is still beating in his chest, and you’ve got to grab on to it with everything you’ve got.’

By the end of that speech, she was out of breath, tears in her eyelashes and her hard eyes welling with emotion.

She had never looked at me like that. Never. Not once.

And yet…. I would remember her gaze forever.

Asia looked away, maybe annoyed at herself for that outburst of emotion. Even Adeline, behind her, was staring at her, speechless. Asia hid her face from me and once again her shining eyes fell on Rigel.

‘You still have a chance,’ she said quietly. ‘Don’t throw it away.’

I watched her turn to leave as abruptly as she had arrived, her fingers tight around her bag and her shoulders stiff.

‘Asia.’

She stopped. She conceded me a glance over her shoulder, and found me between the covers, my face gaunt and my eyes glimmering with a fragile light.

‘Come back and see me again.’

Something shone in her eyes. The next moment, she left, after giving Adeline one last look.

Nothing had changed. But in that moment, it felt like I could see the world more clearly.

‘Adeline…can I ask you a favour?’

She turned to look at me expectantly.

I looked up at her.

‘My Band-Aids. Could you bring them?’

For a very long moment, Adeline stared at me wide-eyed, as if she had grasped the meaning of my words.

Then…

She smiled.

‘Of course.’

—

When my Band-Aids were back on my hands, bringing colour to that white room, I felt something within me fall back into place. I chose the colours carefully, and started to feel more like myself again.

One yellow, like Klaus’s eyes.

One sky-blue, for Anna and Adeline.

One green for Norman, subdued like his smile.

One orange for Billie’s bubbliness, and one sea-blue for Miki’s depth.

One red, for Asia, for her fiery personality.

And finally…

Finally a purple one for Rigel, like the one I had put on his chest that night in his bedroom.

Looking at them all together on my hands, I realised that even though love has many different colours, they all pull at the same strings – the heartstrings. Together, they are a unique, invisible force that only the soul can feel.

Those days were difficult.

My stomach was a bitter knot that refused all food. My insides twisted with the need to vomit and Anna ran to me, pulled back the covers and helped me lean over to regurgitate the meal onto the floor.

But, slowly, slowly, I started to eat again, with more determination than before.

Soon, I started to walk again. My ankle healed, and my ribs no longer stabbed like shards of glass when I stood up. Slowly, food started to stay in my stomach and my healing process got back on track.

Asia came to see me again as I had asked her to. She didn’t seem convinced, to start with, but when she saw I had regained some colour and was doing better, a little edge in her gaze softened.

Day by day, my face filled out, and the bones of my shoulders vanished back under my skin. The brace was taken off my arm and I slowly started to be able to move again.

But as my body got back on track…Rigel’s remained exactly the same, immobile, trapped by his feeble heartbeat.

Wake up, throbbed in my chest, as slowly I came back to life.

He was still hardly breathing. Nothing seemed to alter his precarious condition.

‘Wake up,’ I murmured under my breath, as the nurses changed his bandages.

But his face just became thinner, the veins in his wrists stood out even more.

The shadows under his eyes got deeper, and the more I held his hand, the more his skin felt limp under my fingers. The more I watched him sleeping, the more he seemed to fade away under my eyes.

I told him old legends, tales of wolves coming home, but while in the daytime, I fought with light and hope, at night the desire to see him opening his eyes overwhelmed my soul.

‘Wake up,’ I implored him, prayed, in the darkness. ‘Wake up, Rigel, please, don’t leave me – I can’t carry on living without your eyes. My moth-heart can’t warm up without you; all it can do is burn and flutter. Wake up and hold my hand, please, look at me and tell me that together, we’re eternal. Look at me and tell me you’ll stay with me forever, because the wolf dies in all the stories but this one…In this one, he lives, and he’s happy, and he walks hand in hand with the girl. Please…wake up…’

But Rigel didn’t move, and in my pillow, I stifled the sobs I couldn’t let him hear.

‘Wake up,’ I whispered until my lips cracked.

But he…didn’t wake up.

—

I was discharged a few days later.

The doctor’s encouraged eyes shone with the relief of seeing me on my feet, healthy, ready to leave. He couldn’t know that my heart was bleeding and tormented, just as it was on the first day, because I was leaving a piece of me behind in that room.

Slowly, I started going back to school.

The first day, just like those that followed, it was impossible not to notice people’s eyes always on me. Whispers followed me wherever I went, and everyone was still talking about the accident.

That same day, I learnt that Lionel had moved to another town.

My life went by, dull and ordinary, but there was not a single day I did not go and visit Rigel.

I brought him new bunches of flowers to replace the old ones. I kept telling him stories and did my homework on a chair next to the wall. I went over geography and biology with him, and together we studied literature.

‘Today the teacher asked us to write an essay on a classical work of our choice,’ I announced one evening. ‘I chose The Odyssey.’

I flicked through the pages of the book, his heart monitor still sharply beeping.

‘In the end, Odysseus makes it home,’ I said quietly. ‘After many difficulties…After having overcome unspeakable trials…Odysseus makes it. In the end, he comes back to Penelope. And discovers she’s waited for him. For all that time, she waited for him…’

Rigel, dull, white, didn’t move. His eyelids were pale and thin; they looked like a shroud. Sometimes I found myself wondering how much it would cost him to lift those two thin veils covering his eyes.

I stayed there as long as I could. The nurses tried to send me home, to push me away from those four white walls, maybe more out of concern for my wellbeing than because of the hospital’s regulations. But when they found me there one evening, trying to sleep huddled up on the metal chair in the corridor, for once they didn’t scold me. But the head nurse told me that in the evening, at least in the evening, I had to go home.

But I didn’t want to…

I wanted to stay with him.

Because every night, Rigel became paler and more distant, and my soul gnawed away at my bones every moment I was not clutching his hand, trying to pull him out of that abyss.

Every day I arrived at the hospital earlier and earlier, and spoke to him for longer and longer. At the weekend, I drew his curtains and whispered good morning to him, always bringing a new bunch of flowers with me.

But at night…

At night I dreamt of his white hands, and his eyelids opening onto starry galaxies.

I dreamt of him looking at me with those unique, deep eyes, and in every dream…Rigel smiled at me.

He smiled at me in a sweet, sincere way I had never seen him do…In an honest way, that carved an excruciating longing within me.

And when in the morning I realised that it had all been a dream, when I realised he wasn’t really there, my chest broke in half and all I could do was sob into my pillow, tasting tears in my mouth.

But the next day, I would always be there with him in that white room, with my flowers and my shattered soul.

‘Oh…’ I exhaled one morning, seeing the sun finally break out after a storm. The light broke into a million pieces and a shimmering rainbow appeared.

‘Look, Rigel,’ I whispered gently. A sad smile tightened my throat. ‘Look at all those beautiful colours…’

My hand shook. A few moments later, I was leaving the room with my lips tense and my fingers over my eyes.

—

There was something desperate about life continuing onwards, despite my grief, coursing on like a relentless river.

It didn’t matter how much I wanted it to slow down.

It didn’t matter how much I prayed for it to stop, to look at what it was leaving behind.

The world didn’t wait for anyone.

Holding the string of a balloon, dressed in a rib-knit dress, that spring day I stared at his bed from the doorway.

My hair was falling down the sides of my face. There was still that same beep echoing through the silence that the room had been suspended in for so long.

I slowly approached his bed and summoned the courage to look him in the face.

It had been almost a month since the accident.

‘It’s from Billie,’ I whispered quietly. ‘She brought me a few, actually. She says that a birthday without balloons isn’t really a birthday.’

I lowered my face, as fragile as a leaf. Then I reached over and tied the balloon to the metal headboard. Seeing that balloon so close to his immobile body made my heart ache.

I sat on the bed.

‘Anna made a cake with strawberries. It was perfect…The cream melted in your mouth. I’ve never had a birthday cake before…But maybe, now that I think about it, you wouldn’t have liked it. I know you don’t really have a sweet tooth.’ I looked at my palms in my lap. ‘Klaus is still sleeping under your bed, you know? Even though you never got on…I think he misses you a lot. And Adeline does. She doesn’t say so, she’s trying to keep my chin up, but…I can tell from her eyes. She cares an awful lot about you. She just wants you back.’

With my hair covering my lowered face, my eyelashes poking through the locks, I sat there listening to the sound of the heart monitor for what seemed like an eternity.

‘You know, Rigel…this would be a good time to open your eyes.’

My throat was burning and I swallowed, trying not to crumble. Slowly, I looked up at him.

The light coming through the window kissed his closed eyelids. It had been a week now since they removed the bandages from his head, and the doctor said that as he wasn’t moving, his ribs were starting to heal.

But his mind had never been so far away.

Looking at him, I couldn’t help but admit that even touched by death, Rigel was still heart-stoppingly beautiful.

‘It would be an unforgettable birthday present.’ I felt tears welling up. ‘The best present you could give me.’

My hand slipped into his, and I wanted him to squeeze it like never before. I wanted him to crush my fingers until they went numb. I felt again that shattering sensation, the sense of foreboding that I was about to go to pieces.

‘Please, Rigel…There are still so many things we have to do together…that I have to tell you…You’ve got to grow up with me, graduate, and…have so many more birthdays and you have to…you deserve so much happiness…’ Tears blurred my vision. ‘I can give you that. I will do everything to make you happy. I promise you…it’s all I want. Don’t leave me alone in this world. We’re broken together…and we…we fit together. We fit together so beautifully…’

My tears fell on the back of his hand. My heart floundered and once again, I felt hopelessly his.

‘You’re my light. I’m lost without you. I’m lost…Please, look at me…If you can hear me, please, come back to me…’

Something moved inside my hand.

A twitch.

It took a moment for me to register it…and the world turned upside down.

He had moved.

A violent emotion seized my throat. I was breathless for so long that my voice failed me.

‘D…doctor!’ I managed to cough.

Gasping, I stumbled off the bed and ran shakily to the door.

‘Doctor!’ I shouted. ‘Doctor Robertson, come! Quick!’

Doctor Robertson rushed towards me, and seeing the expression on his face, I realised that my unexpected shouting had broken through even his professional demeanour.

‘What happened?’ he asked, hurrying to check Rigel’s vitals on the screen.

‘He…reacted,’ I blurted out frantically. ‘He reacted to what I said to him…He moved…’

The doctor stopped looking at the monitor and turned to look at me. My eyes were red and my fingers interlaced, slender and trembling.

‘What did you see?’ he asked, more warily now.

‘He moved,’ I replied again. ‘I was holding his hand and he moved his fingers…’

Doctor Robertson threw another glance at Rigel’s vitals, then he shook his head.

‘I’m sorry, Nica. Rigel’s unconscious.’

‘But I felt him,’ I insisted. ‘I swear, he squeezed my hand, I didn’t imagine it…’

The doctor sighed, then plunged his fingers into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out something that looked like a metal pen. He turned it on and a very narrow beam of light came out of it, which he pointed into Rigel’s eyes after having pulled up his eyelids.

There was no reaction.

The world slowly crumbled around me. All I could do was stand there staring at him, fragile and useless.

‘But I…I…’

‘It’s not unheard of for patients in a comatose state to twitch every now and then,’ the doctor told me. ‘They can have spasms, contractions…Sometimes they even cry. But that…doesn’t mean anything. His movement was probably just a reflex, an involuntary reaction to the drugs.’

He looked at me with an embarrassment that broke me even more.

‘I’m sorry, Nica.’

For the first time, I felt something much more painful than tears burning in my eyes: disillusionment.

I understood, like never before, how destructive it could be to cling on to hope.

Doctor Robertson put a hand on my shoulder before leaving. I knew that if I had the strength to look at him, I would see the pain he felt for tearing away yet another dream.

I spent my eighteenth birthday there, with my heart pounding against my ribs and that balloon hovering over his immobile body.

—

When I was a child, they said that it was the truth that brings colour to the world.

That is the compromise. Until you know the truth, you can never see reality in all its colours.

But some of those colours can destroy us.

Some truths have stories that we’re not ready to let go of.

I wasn’t ready to let go of mine.

But I had no more smiles to show Rigel. I had no more fairy tales to tell him.

I just had an empty heart, eroding me from the inside like a foreign object. There were times when I felt it slipping out of my chest and thudding to the ground under my blank gaze.

In times like those, I thought that if my heart really did fall out, I would kneel down to gather it up without batting an eyelid. All I could feel was pain.

As I stayed there with him that evening, not even the nurses came in to tell me to leave.

Maybe because they had seen my glassy eyes and hadn’t been able to tear me away. That bed that seemed to keep not only one, but two hearts beating.

It had been several days since my birthday, and still nothing had changed. He was still there. I was still there.

Maybe we would be there forever.

I had run out of stories, and every light I tried to give him had flickered out like a match behind his closed eyes.

There was nothing left.

My soul was just a deep emptiness, from which resurfaced words that I had carried all my life.

‘Once upon a time, in a distant, far-away place, there was a world where no one could cry.’

My voice was a shaking whisper.

‘Emotions didn’t burn, and feelings…didn’t exist. People’s souls were empty, stripped of all emotion. But hidden far from everyone lived a little man cloaked in shadows and boundless solitude. A lonely artisan, with strange, incredible powers and whose eyes, clear as glass, could produce crystal teardrops.

‘One day, a man turned up at his door. He saw the artisan’s tears and, spurred by a desire to feel a shred of emotion, asked if he could have some. Never, in all his life, had he wanted anything more than to be able to cry.

‘ “Why?” the artisan asked him, in a voice that sounded unlike a voice.

‘ “Because crying means feeling,” the man replied. “Because tears encapsulate love and the most heart-wrenching of farewells. They are the most intimate extension of the soul. More than joy or happiness, it is tears that make us truly human.”

‘The artisan asked if he was sure, but the man begged him. So he took two of his tears, and slipped them under his eyelids.

‘The man went away, but many more came after him.

‘Each one of them asked for the same thing, and one by one, the artisan fulfilled this desire. And so it came to be that they learnt to cry: with anger, desperation, pain and anguish.

‘Excruciating passions, disappointments and tears, tears, tears – the artisan corrupted a world of purity, tainting it with the deepest and darkest of emotions.

‘And humanity dispersed, to become what we are now.

‘That is why…every child must be good.

‘Because anger isn’t in a child’s nature, nor jealousy, nor spite.

‘Every child must be good, because tears and tantrums and lies are not in their nature.

‘And if you lie, he will know. If you lie, it means you’re his, and he sees everything, every emotion, every shiver of your soul. You cannot deceive him.

‘So be good, child. Be obedient.

‘So don’t be naughty, and above all, remember: you cannot lie to the Tearsmith.’

My words faded into silence. Now they were there, glistening in ink, it seemed as if they had been waiting for this ending all along.

‘That’s how he always was for me,’ I confessed. ‘He was always what they wanted us to believe. A frightening monster…But I was wrong.’

I looked up at him, my eyelids heavy with tears.

I had looked for our fairy tale for so long, without knowing it had been inside me from the very beginning.

‘Look, Rigel,’ I whispered eventually, destroyed. ‘Look how you make me cry. The truth is…You are my Tearsmith.’

I shook my head, utterly shattered.

‘I realised too late. Each one of us has a Tearsmith…A person who can make us cry, make us happy or destroy us with just a glance. A person who’s inside us…who’s so important they can make us despair with just a word, or thrill us with a smile. And you can’t lie to them…You can’t lie to this person, because the feelings that connect you to them are always stronger than any lie. You can’t tell someone you love that you hate them. That’s how it is…You can’t lie to the Tearsmith. It would be like lying to yourself.’

I was overcome with anguish, every inch of my being was suffering. I knew that if there was an ending to this story, it would always be with that dark-eyed boy I had seen many years ago on the threshold to The Grave.

‘I wanted to look you in the eyes when I told you,’ I sobbed, clutching his bedcovers. ‘I wanted you to see it in my eyes…but maybe it’s too late. Maybe our time is up…and this is my last chance…’

I lowered my forehead to his chest. And as the world faded around me, I confessed to him the words I had been saving for our ending.

‘I love you, Rigel,’ I whispered, my heart in pieces. ‘I love you like loving freedom from a dark cellar. Like loving a caress, after years of bruises and punches…I love you more than I’ve ever loved any colour in all my life…and I love you…as I can love only you, you who hurts me and heals me more than anything else, you who are light and dark, the universe and the stars. I love you as I can love only you, you’re my Tearsmith…’

My body was wracked with sobs and I clutched on to the pages of our story with everything I had.

With every desperate shred of me.

With every tear, and every breath.

With all my Band-Aids, and my soul that would never be able to feel again.

And for a moment…I swore I could feel his heart beat harder. I wished I could take it in my hands and hold it to me, to take care of it forever. But all I could do was look up at his face, like I had done every single day.

All I could do was muster the courage to look at him again.

And this time…

This time, when my heart fell out my chest…I heard the thud. But I didn’t bend down to pick it up.

No. I stayed still.

Because my eyes.

My eyes were looking straight into his eyes.

Tired, weary eyes…

Black eyes.

The emotion that overcame me was so visceral and incredulous that for a moment I ceased to exist. I was too terrified to hope.

My vision drowning in tears, I stared at that thin gap between his eyelids. I was unable to move. I felt like if I dared to breathe, that moment would shatter like glass.

‘…Rigel…’

But his eyes…

His eyes were still there.

They didn’t disappear, like in dreams.

They didn’t evaporate, like an illusion.

They stayed right in front of me, fragile and true, exhausted wolf eyes that reflected my own image back at me.

‘Rigel…’ I shivered violently, too destroyed to believe it.

But I wasn’t imagining it. Rigel was looking at me.

This wasn’t a dream.

Rigel had opened his eyes.

My forehead furrowed, his name erupted on my lips. I eventually let myself go and that consuming void burst free from me in an earthquake of pain and anguish.

My body was overcome by such an intense joy that my breaths became shuddery gasps. My head collapsed on his chest, drained of energy. His eyes were the most beautiful miracle ever.

More beloved than any sky.

More desired than any fairy tale.

It is true that there is a fairy tale for everyone. It is true, but mine was not a tale of sparkling worlds or golden flourishes. No…Mine had spiky rose gardens and eyelids opening on starry galaxies.

It had constellations of shivers, and thorns of regret, and I clutched at them desperately, hugging each of them one by one, every last spine.

I put a hand on Rigel’s cheek, sobbing, and he continued staring at me as if, despite his state of deep confusion, my face was stirring a deep and boundless feeling in him.

And I…I didn’t take my eyes off his.

Not even for a moment. Not even as I stretched my hand out and pushed the button to call the nurses…Nor when they ran in, and incredulous voices burst out.

Not even when the whole ward was suddenly plunged into commotion.

I stayed with him the whole time, chained to his gaze, body and soul.

I stayed with him, just as I had every night in my dreams, every day of every week.

I stayed with him, never leaving, until…

Until the very end.

—

It was a little while before Rigel could speak.

I had always assumed that when people woke up from a coma, they were immediately lucid, or at least in control of their body. I discovered that this was not the case.

The doctor told me that it would take a few hours before he would regain complete control over his movements, and that after more than two weeks in a coma, most patients fell into a vegetative state. He was happy that after so many complications Rigel had at least been spared that.

He also explained that after waking up, some people could be agitated and aggressive because they didn’t recognise where they were. Because of this, he urged me to speak calmly when I went back to him.

Before he left me alone with him again, Doctor Robertson placed a hand on my shoulder and gave me a smile so full of hope I felt my chest swelling.

When he left, I tucked my hair behind my ear, turning towards the boy lying in the bed. Seeing him so peaceful gave my heart an immense sense of relief.

I ran my fingertips over his face, tracing his features, and beneath my touch, Rigel opened his eyes.

He slowly blinked, still too weak to move, and his eyes focused on the outline of my face.

‘Hi…’ I whispered, softer than ever before. The line on the monitor that pulsed in time with his heartbeat showed two palpitations in quick succession.

Hearing his heart so present, my throat tightened with tears of uncontainable joy. He recognised me and his eyes anchored in mine like binary stars.

I tenderly brushed several strands of hair off his face, convincing myself I wasn’t dreaming.

‘You’ve come back,’ I breathed. ‘You came back to me.’

Rigel looked deep into my eyes, and even though his body was visibly worn out, I thought he had never looked so wonderful.

‘…Like in your stories,’ he blurted out hoarsely. I trembled with a burning love when I heard the sound of his voice again. Tears brimmed in my eyes like old friends. I let myself be overcome with weeping, too shocked to struggle against it.

‘You…heard me?’

‘Every single day.’

I smiled through my tears, feeling them stream down my cheeks. Everything I had told him, whispered, confessed – he had heard it all.

He knew that I’d never let him go. Not for any reason in the world.

‘I waited for you a long time,’ I exhaled, my fingers interlocking tightly with his.

We held hands, wolf and girl, and in our united palms I found all the light I had never stopped looking for.

‘Me too.’