Breathing His Heart Into Her

We walked side by side along the calm shore of the lake, caught up in a lively debate over what the treasure truly was.

“Most who’ve heard that rumor swear up and down the hidden treasure must be the Taaffeite brooch. The one the late Empress was so fond of wearing while she lived, I mean.”

I’d heard of the Taaffeite brooch myself. A piece the late Emperor had commissioned as an anniversary gift, said to be worth something on the order of two thousand gold coins. After the Empress passed, the brooch’s whereabouts had grown murky, and all manner of speculation had trailed after it. The rumor of a secret chamber deep in Rosenwald Forest was one of them.

“Do you think the treasure hidden here is that brooch too, Herman?”
“No.”

Herman shook his head, unconcerned.

“The treasure’s likely nothing of the sort.”
“Nothing of the sort?”
“Knowing the late Empress’s nature, I doubt that’s what she meant by it.”

Not following, I knit my brows.

“Now, this is a secret.”

At that, Herman lifted a hand and smoothed the space between my brows.

“I’ve already found it.”
“Found it? When?”
“Well now — think it over carefully.”
“…”

A riddle of a remark, that. I turned his words over and over, racking my brain for what the treasure might be.

Watching me, Herman’s face softened and he let out a small laugh, and all at once the thoughts crowding my head scattered.

I do wish he wouldn’t smile like that.

There was a power in that laugh of his, one that left me quite at a loss. The low voice that slipped out from between his even teeth set my heart trembling to its core.

“I’d quite forgotten how sweet the smell of grass could be, and how lovely the sound of birdsong. Perhaps this place itself is the treasure.”
“Well, perhaps.”

I said it while making a show of glancing idly around the woods. I’d blurted it out to cover my fluster, but I meant it. The scent of the deep greenery was like the breath of the earth, and the chorus of the birds like a symphony of nature.

About then some strange sound reached me, drifting in from I couldn’t tell where. Rap, rap. A repetitive noise, more than enough to catch the ear.

“What was that sound just now? It sounds like something tapping on wood.”
“A woodpecker, most likely. A great many of them live in this forest — the kind with bright red crowns.”
“Goodness — a woodpecker with a red crown, of all things.”

To think a bird I’d only ever seen in books stood near enough to touch, if only I reached out my hand. It struck me as the most marvelous thing.

My reaction seemed to puff him up a little, for Herman took it upon himself to play guide to the forest, offering up one explanation after another.

“Perhaps because so few people ever set foot here, all sorts of creatures live in these woods. Deer, foxes, hedgehogs, weasels — you’ll spot them easily enough.”

His words pricked my curiosity. This forest was surely showing me a world utterly unlike my everyday one.

Before I knew it, we had reached the water’s edge. Smoothing my skirts to keep them from the dirt, I crouched down at the lakeside.

How could water this clear glow such a jewel-bright green? It seemed almost bewitched, enough that I rolled up my sleeves without thinking.

As I splashed at the water with my small hands, a low laugh reached me again from behind. When I turned to look back at him, puzzled, Herman offered a word of earnest advice.

“The water’s deep.”
“So it seems.”
“The ground near the water’s slippery — I’m telling you to be careful.”
“All right.”

Out of some needless contrariness I swept my hand through the water a few more times, in broad strokes, and the surface rippled and swayed in the wake of it.

“!”

It was then. A rustling came from beyond the underbrush.

“Herman.”

I rose hurriedly to my feet and called out to him.

“I’m only asking just in case, but surely there aren’t any dangerous animals here too — wolves, or the like…”

With a spring, before I could even finish, something leapt out from the brush. A white, nimble blur grazed past my feet.

A small, fluffy white weasel. But there was no time even to feel relief that it hadn’t been a wolf.

“!”

Startled half out of my wits, I lost my footing, and heeled shoes on moss-slick ground made for the worst possible pairing.

“Gloria!”

Herman lunged to catch me as I lost my balance and pitched toward the lake. But even he couldn’t stop my fall once my weight had already tipped past saving.

Herman’s startled face drew further and further away. I reached for the hand he held out, but it was no use.

— Splash.

A great ripple broke across the once-calm lake.

As the cold water closed over my whole body, I thrashed, straining to breathe. Water poured in through my nose and mouth, and my vision clouded to a blur.

Too heavy.

The dress winding itself around me made it hard even to kick my legs. It felt as though someone were dragging me down from the very bottom of the lake.

My consciousness grew dimmer and dimmer. Each time water forced its way up into my nose, an indescribable agony clamped down on my face and chest.

I can’t die like this.

Only a few months ago, surely, I had wandered lost, unable to find a single reason to go on living. I had thought that if I alone vanished from the world, not one soul would care. And yet now, with the shadow of death hanging before my eyes, one thought alone filled my head: that I simply wanted to live.

I don’t want to die. Save me. I want to live.

There was still so much I had left to do.

I still have my name to reclaim, and the truth to bring to light, and more than any of that — to Herman, I…

It was then. A firm, thick arm wrapped itself around my waist, and a hand steadied me, sure and solid, where I’d been flailing without direction.

There was no hesitation in the motion. Even through my ever-dimming sight, I could make out Herman’s face, teeth clenched hard.

Had I known I would die as Gloria, I’d never have fought so desperately to deny it.

At first this man, so tightly bound up in duty and certainty, had been a mystery to me. I used to wonder why he would go so far to carry everything himself.

When I came to see that the road he had walked was far rougher than I’d imagined, I let myself pity him. And from some point on I found myself wishing, earnestly, that he might be happy.

And above all — that you accepted me, that you respected me.

That, I loved. More than the moments he was tender by design, it was the goodness that spilled from him unbidden that set my heart swaying. Even as I told myself I was in no place to feel such a thing.

Often, there at your side, I would forget the very fact that I had lost my name.

I learned, for the first time, that the mere sight of his jacket hung neat over the back of a chair could set my heart heaving, and I learned, for the first time, that the way he rubbed the ridge of his right brow whenever he laughed aloud could set it fluttering.

Perhaps Gloria and I are alike even in this.

And so I turned my back on it with all my might. I told myself that if I only ignored it, the feeling would die down. Though of course, that was nothing more than my own arrogant conceit.

Herman…

Only as my last breath scattered was I finally able to admit it. The true feelings I had never so much as dared to think of conveying rose to the surface of the lake, a fistful of air bubbles. And with those bubbles drifting off into the far distance as the last thing I saw, my consciousness faded.

“Haah, haah.”

Herman broke the surface of the lake, dragging in ragged breaths. The weight of the water-soaked dress was more than any grown man could lift alone, but he paid it no mind; catching hold of a branch nearby, he heaved his wife out of the water in one motion. Water streamed steadily from his black hair as he dragged himself up right after her.

“Haah— Gloria. Hah.”

His breath had climbed to the very top of his throat. But this was no moment to stand and gather it.

“Stay with me. Come on, open your eyes.”

Herman went to his wife, who lay limp and slack, swept the hair back from her face at once, and laid a single finger beneath her nose.

She’s not breathing.

Herman muttered a low curse. Then he pressed his ear hurriedly to her slender frame and listened for the sound of her heart.

A faint pit-a-pat reached him; her heart was still beating, weak as it was.

“Please.”

He could say with fair confidence that no noble in all the Empire had seen as many drowning victims as he had. And yet this once, even he found it hard to stay calm. It was as though every drop of blood in his body were running cold.

“Please. Please.”

He had only to perform the first aid the way he’d done, wearily, so many times before. And yet he could not master his own heart, which kept pounding away with dread.

Here there was no apparatus to force air into a drowned sailor’s mouth, no physician to tend her the instant she came to, and the knowledge of it swelled into a terror he could not push down.

Get a grip, you damn fool. Pull yourself together.

He drove his great fist down against his own thigh, without mercy. He could not lose family this way, not again. He could not lose someone he loved this way, not again.

Herman went straight into the rescue drill he knew by heart, loosening the ribbon at her waist. Then he tipped his wife’s head back to clear her airway, parted her lips, and breathed his air down into them.

Wake up, Gloria.

The air he could scarcely spare for himself he gave over to her without stint. Each time, he watched her chest rise, and prayed, and prayed again.

Just open your eyes, I beg you. That’s all I ask.

Though the dizziness rose in him as if he might drop dead at any moment, he did not stop.

I’m begging you. Don’t leave me here all alone, Ria.

And so, over and over, he breathed his own heart into her. In that moment, a feeling that until then had been formless was stripped clean of all that clouded it.