Version 2

Last night, I heard the cry of the whippoorwill. The mournful song has drifted through the old walls of my bedroom six nights in a row. If I hear it tonight, my fate will be sealed.

He's coming for me — my Bryden, my love, my loss. It won't be long now. The sound of his voice once set my legs to quivering and my heart to pounding. If only I could hear that voice again.

I sit on my bed and wait. Will the whippoorwill sing again? Will he call me to Bryden's side? The bird conjures memories, a sound we often heard as we lay hidden in our stolen bliss. In those purloined hours, the darkest of night just before the waking of dawn, we clung to each other, making promises that lovers make, clinging to one another as if we would never let go.

How long has he been gone? How many years has it been?

I drifted through those years alone, watching without seeing, as the world swirled around me. My home, living with my parents, had been perched atop a solitary hill, miles from nowhere, when I had known my Bryden. The world has enveloped it now, industry and urban crawl closing around it, surrounding my bastion as an oppressive scourge, stealing the air I breathe.

His arms once surrounded me, forcing away the world that now tries to swallow me. I knew there was no finer joy than to be held by him. It should have been forever.

That first time he took me, I was young, only twenty. Bryden, my Bryden, his eyes so dark, had looked upon me that night, taking my hand to lead me before the musicians. Holding me close, he had squired me about the dance floor, whirling round and round until I was dizzy and breathless.

But my father had disapproved of this man, so brazen in his attentions, had forbidden me to see him again. It was inquisitiveness that drew me out that first night. He stood below my window, his arms outstretched, his smile a flash of white in the dark.

Wearing no more than my cotton shift, I slipped into the darkness to meet with him. We stole away to the shelter of the weeping willow beside the clear waters of the river at Fallon's Crossing. The tree is gone now and the river runs murky.

How I loved the sound of my name on his lips. "Arabella," he whispered, his voice carrying on a gust of summer breeze. Sometimes I think I hear him say it, a soft caress on the shell of my ear. That night, he stroked my senses with my name, murmuring as he took me to that secret place.

Bryden, so dark and tall, laid me upon the ground. His hands ran the length of my body, grazing my curves over the thin, soft cotton until he found the laces that held it closed over my breasts. His gypsy's smile so seductive, his hands so masterful, I was unsure just how I became nude beneath that tree.

Just a girl I was, lost in his embrace. He tutored me in the ways of love, the joys of his body. I had never seen the form of a man's nakedness — so powerful, so beautiful. My desire flowed from between my thighs like that old river. So gentle was my lover, so tender in his passion.

He stroked my skin, making me sing in my eagerness. Taking my hand, he placed it on him, growling as I explored. His heat burned like fire, pulsating as I wrapped my fingers about his flesh. He was so dark, a startling contrast to the paleness of my own skin.

His hands spanned my waist, lifting me over his body as he encouraged me to open myself to him. The whippoorwill called as he breached my innocence, possessing me, making my body, my heart, his. Bryden, his hands so tender, held me against him, soothing away the pain. I gave him my blood, staining his dark skin crimson.

Such a child I was. How could I know it was just the beginning? He whispered my name when he began to move. "Arabella."

Lifting me slowly and pulling me back down, he spoke words of love, instructing me on how to find my pleasure. My body moved with its own desire, rocking against him. The sounds of his moans thrilled me to my soul.

My nails dug ragged furrows in his skin, his fingers bruising my hips. He suckled at my breasts as I lowered myself over him. I heard the song of our bird again just as I died a little death in his arms, crashing against him, crying out with a pleasure I'd never before known.

Then he rolled atop me, pounding into my body until he threw his head back and roared in his release. I felt him fill me, fill my womb with his potent seed.

The meaning of his name is love. Bryden Camlo, my gypsy lover. My heart aches for him. Will he come for me tonight? My wait has been so long, lingering out over the years that stretched into decades. Those decades now number more that six. Has it been seven?

In sadness and shame, my parents took to their graves after three of those decades had passed. In all that time, my father scarcely spoke with me. His disappointment had stolen his love away. The whispers of his contemporaries about his only child were more than he could bear. I became invisible, a wraith that haunted the shadows of our hilltop world.

Soon after Father claimed his peace, my mother followed, consumed by a loss I know only too well. Bryden...

Continuing on, no death to relieve my lonely vigil, I waited. With no knowledge of the world around me, I waited. The years whirled by, the world around me growing with the sounds of life, but death is what I crave.

Alone, my Bryden, I'm alone.

I begged him, called out to him upon his death to haunt me, to drive away all pretense of sanity, but still I wait. My gnarled fingers clench into fists when I shake them at the sky, a curse to the God who took him from me and left me to become this broken old woman.

My hair no longer glistens blue in the light of the moon. He said it was black as the gypsy night while his fingers played in the dark curls. In his coffin I placed the shorn tresses, my homage to the love we shared. When it grew back, it was the color of the ashes that I scrape from the hearth. It now sweeps the ground when I walk, never again cut as I wait for him.

His eyes were so unlike mine, black and burning with a flame so brilliant that he drove out the darkness. My eyes are no longer bright. The lonely vigil has taken the light away. Once he called them golden, now they are a dull brown.

Will he find me ugly now that I'm old? I had the softest skin, now weathered by time and isolation. I still feel his fingers tracing a path of fire, his lips scorching me, branding my flesh as his. Even now, my body stirs at those memories. Even now I long to feel his touch.

Bryden, my Bryden. I tire of waiting.

Where is the whippoorwill? The hour is late, dark as Bryden's gypsy eyes. Dawn will soon be upon me.

The hunger of darkness is unrepentant. It devours my soul, punishing me because I did not die. Bryden is the dark that chastises me. He mocks me as I wait.

When I heard the call last night, I chanced to look out the window by my bed. The glass is clouded by age and the sash is frozen shut by time and decay, but I thought I caught a glimpse of gypsy smile. I rubbed my shawl against the glass in an effort to clear my view.

I saw him. I know it was him, with his arms outstretched and that seductive smile playing about his lips. It couldn't have been a trick of the night.

This old body has become my prison. No longer able to run, I made my way down the stairs, out the door to meet him, but he was gone. All that was left was a whisper on the night wind, "Arabella."