THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART ELEVEN:

Without even realizing she had done it, Eden had laid her palm on his right leg as she watched him sleep. Harold's coming in the front door had roused Marshall enough so that he gradually became aware of her hand.  He didn't move his head at all nor open his eyes, he simply slid his own hand down a bit and covered hers with it. She started slightly, but remained where she was, kept her hand where it was. And so they stayed that way for several quiet moments.

As he woke to awareness of her hand, he was, in that state of just awakening, back in the rain

on the path and her hands were on his cheeks. Of everything that happened to him after he

fell, that was the one most real moment. Now here her hand was again, only he came to know that he was dry and not in so very much pain as then. He didn't know, really, why she was

there, why her hand was on his leg, but he liked the sense of it there. In the rain and mud, her hands had been his brief connection with...relief.  That he had not died, not drowned in the

mud, was not going to die that day...because of her hands.

They were small, slender hands and he wanted to cover the one on his leg, to surround it with himself and shelter it as it had sheltered him, to offer to it warmth in some small return. And when he'd moved it there, there was a rightness to it that surprised him. When one is not

looking at all for rightness and yet it comes, it requires a certain degree of attention. He had

not thought to leave it there, just a brief, acknowledging, covering touch and then a moving on. But he did not wish to move on and so he simply let it remain.  Hers lay quietly compliant beneath his much larger one, indicating in no way that he should lift his away.

He could hear her breathing. She made the slightest sound deep in her throat and it was then

he did lift his hand and touch her cheek. Still she remained perfectly still and his fingers moved on, walking softly down her cheekbone as his thumb pad followed the line of her jaw. Two fingers traced her lips then, barely touching, lightly found the form of her nose.  He began to wonder if this might be too much and made to move his hand away, but her fingers took his

wrist and moved it back, guiding it to her eyes. She wanted him to touch her eyes as she had touched his.  Silently he accepted her invitation, finding her lids closed. He traced the arch of her brow then let his fingers follow down her temple to her cheek again. It was then he curled them back and rested his hand again in his lap. "Thank you," he whispered, honored.

She didn't want to open her eyes. The whole thing had been somehow magical and even when

his hand was gone, she felt it still. By the time she did open them, he was settling his dark

glasses back into place. "Why," she asked softly, "why the glasses?"

He tipped his head to one side and gave her a small smile. "Not for me. It's not for me."

"Why then?"

"Because...," he hesitated. "Because the light is not there. And it bothers...some people." He

was thinking of Beatrice. He'd asked her to marry him just before he'd gotten his doctorate.  She, a native Bostonian, was getting an advanced degree in music theory. They'd been more or less together for nearly two years. But she didn't like his eyes, had told him they were definitely not the windows of his soul because their shutters were closed and gave her the creeps. He'd

met other people like that from time to time. A few kids when he was young and too free and active to bother with dark glasses.  Some pretty cruel teasing, a few black eyes produced by Jeffrey's fists on bully's faces. But Beatrice had come to it gradually, after he'd let himself become committed to her. In the end, it was probably why they'd parted company. It had

come down to things like him waking up next to her in the apartment they shared and her saying, "Good grief, Marshall, at least keep them closed!" 

"Eyes that do not see," he continued, "have a different appearance to them, so I am told, especially ones that have never seen. I just...well...it's just better this way, with the glasses."

She saw she'd touched some sort of nerve with him and let it rest, but for one final question. "Ok, then, what color are they?"

"Jeffrey always said they were green, though Mom insisted on some days they were blue."

She smiled, liking the thought of him with green eyes. "Mine are green, too."

"And your hair?"

"Sort of a really deep auburn, almost a chestnut maybe."

"Ah, a lovely color," he said, which made her wonder how he knew, and so she asked.

"Colors are an 'iffy' thing for people like me," he admitted, "but Jeffrey used to work with me on it, finding things that were not only a color, but said something about the essence of the color.  Like freshly-mown grass, for instance. He'd mow our yard then come get me and stand me in the middle of it and say, 'Smell hard, Marshy. That's green.'" He smiled at the memory. "He found something for all the colors, their scent, their sound, their feel. We'd lie under the maple tree on a June day, listening the the breeze blowing the leaves against each other. I even wrote a short story once called 'Green Is the Whisper of Leaves.'"

"So what is auburn then?"

"When you're standing on a hilltop and the sun is low in the sky and hot on your face and you wait there a while as it disappears a moment behind a cloud. Then suddenly it's there again...

just briefly before it sets...and there's this flow of warmth on your face after the chill. Not hot like before, but spreading over it soft and comfortable and somehow deeper and richer than

just the regular heat...that's auburn."

She knew that never again in her life could she ever brush her hair and not hear his deep voice saying those words. Profoundly touched, she had to blink away more tears. "I like you, Dr. Marshall Sinclair.  I like you a lot."

He touched her cheek again, encountering a single tear as it tracked downward. Saying nothing, he wiped it away with his thumb pad, then curved his hand around to touch her hair. "Thank you," he murmured, meaning it in many ways.

"Oh, God," she moaned, pressing her palms to her face.

Quickly, he moved his hand from her hair, afraid he'd offered offense. "Eden? I...I'm...."

"No!" she said, almost fiercely. "Don't say you're sorry. Please. Don't say that. It's just... I...I'm...."

Damn! She was flooded with emotions, so many they collided and jammed together and almost hurt. She knew she was embarrassing herself now, but she scrambled to her feet, finding one

leg had gone entirely asleep while she knelt, lurched, tripped over Wadsworth, who never moved out of the way of sighted people, and fell hard against the side table, almost knocking the lamp off and ending up back on her knees again. 

Marshall was instantly beside her, his right hand gripping her shoulder. "Eden?" He could feel her trembling under his hand.

Why wouldn't the parlor floor open up when she needed it to?  She hid her face against his shirtfront.

"Eden, what is it?"

"Me," she said, her voice muffled. "It's just...me."

He sat all the way down, pulling her to him as best he could with one arm. "Tell me."  He ran

his hand down the back of her hair. "Please?"

She could hear his heart beating. That was all she could think of at the moment, that she could hear his heart beating.

As she rested quietly against him, it was then he knew. Very faint, as though she hadn't applied any fresh this morning, but still definitely there. "Roses," he whispered almost in awe. It was

the scent out of place in the cold rain. It was...her. She had to have been bending very closely over him, sheltering him with her body.  Scent...touch... both so vital to him, such connections

for him...and she had offered him both not even knowing what it meant to him.  So terribly cold, in so much pain that he almost floated free of the world, the touch of her fingers on his face, the slight drift of roses had bade him stay. The top of her head was right under his chin and he rested his lips on her hair. Not a kiss, just a resting of lips...just a beginning.

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