ashore amongst the coral and the silicone. She gives me a small smile, a faded look, and hiccoughs blood into her handkerchief in the key of sadness.
The doctors say today is her final day. They always say that. Today she will fall. Prepare yourself Florin. I wish to understand Aster’s emotions, but how do you understand the feeling of death – knowing you are going to die so soon and so quickly, and that there is nothing you can do but wait?
I guess you could kill yourself. It is heartbreaking.
She turns to me.
“Hello Natvig.”
I choke back sobs. “My diamond.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t think I’m worthy of being called a diamond. How about coal. I’d make a nice lump of coal, don’t you think?”
I laugh, tossing the imagery of a naked Aster covered in black dust, around in my head like a rag doll.
“Are you going to be okay” She asks.
I consider this, humming Lilith.
“No, wait, of course you won’t. But you have to be. You have to push aside any sadness and let go. Otherwise you’ll go mad in the isolation.” She coughs. “Don’t worry about the Ark, it can waste away along with me. Take care of that owl though. He is my friend. Although I never gave him name, he means so much to me. Will you give him a name?”
“I will.”
She smiles.
“Aster, why did we buy the land? The Ark, the Amphitheatre, the Seedbank. I can’t quite remember?” I question, trying to keep her lips moving, her pulse steady.
She grips my hand tighter and tighter, forcing the skin pores to gasp with breath. My knuckles whiten. “Why we bought to cherish our marriage. The Ark for myself, my dream - you fulfilled it. The Amphitheatre was so that you could continue performing your music. It was all for us, for everything.”
I shake my head. “But what about the Seedbank.”
She forces a tittered gasp. “That is irrelevant. We had to buy and maintain the building if we wanted the land. It was a small price to pay.”
Silence.
She rolls her eyes. “I hate that Seedbank.”
And then she laughs, harder and louder, brighter and more beautiful than ever.
“It is irrelevant.”
-
The owl gives me an expectant look.
I breathe heavily.
“I’m so sorry,” I explain. “I got so caught up after her death that I forgot what truly mattered. I got obsessed with a fucking Seedbank, when I should have put all my effort into caring for you, the Ark and the Amphitheatre. I wasted away in isolation and defeatism.” My eyes are filled with oceans, leaching my skin with silicone. “I’m so, so sorry, Athene.”
The owl remains cold and calculative, body as stiff as the victims of Medusa, but then, momentarily, a smile forms across his face. He likes the name. It is suitable.
It is time to leave. Without shadow and tones of obsession. It is time to let go of the past and break free, exposing the wind to his wings, letting my final wish be fulfilled. Goodbye my friend.
And he is gone.
Isolation of this biosphere
I’ve forgotten how to count to ten
Oh and a thousand crawling men
The ash grows closer, escaping over the snow crusted mountains and leaking into the deep valleys. The Seedbank continues to scream in my mind, craving for me to submit to its darkness. But I do not trust such a disgusting piece of metal.
For it is the parasite, the coward, the monster.
“Florin.”
I rotate around and see a familiar face, hear a familiar accent, and sigh a breath of relief. It is Øyvind, his grin wide, sauntering towards me in a golden robe.
“I thought you would have killed yourself by now?” I ask him.
He turns his head. “No. I thought about death and sacrifice and your words and my own. I don’t care for a painful death. I don’t care about anything. I just want to die happy. And after watching you – seeing you go mad, I just had to help you. I had to listen to your song.”
Suicide you shall befriend
“Help me with what?” I question, eyes wide, tears streaming haemoglobin.
Shed away the scarab husk
Before all our bones bare to rust
“Help you die peacefully.”
-
“Now don’t you get obsessed with the Seedbank, Florin?” Aster instructs. “I can’t have you obsessing over something so extraneous. When I die I want you be free, spread your wings and leave Svalbard. It is too isolated, too cold, and too empty. Return to the land of the living and experience what life has to offer. It is not your sanctuary, Svalbard. Your eye is.”
I begin to panic.
“Aster don’t even think about leaving me behind.”
She shakes her head, flinches and her heart beat subsides, to a gentle tempo. “Repeat after me – my eye is my sanctuary.”
I’m crying. “No.”
“Say it. Susanne wrote this song for you. I’m not leaving you Natvig, I’m just fading."
I hold her close. “My eye is my sanctuary. My eye is my sanctuary.” The tears stream down my face.
She goes limp in my arms, her pulse fading, her breath shrivelling into the sound of a bird.
Dead.
-
“What do I have to do?” I ask Øyvind. “What must I do to die peacefully and be with her?”
He stays quiet and hands me a small object, which I smooth carefully in my palm and rotate its contents. It feel wooden and strong. Powerful.
“Burn it all.”
He turns away and runs, straight towards my song, the Amphitheatre, chuckling and crying and screaming and yelling. Repeating my song with his husky, bass baritone voice. I hold my fingers in the air, tracing his movements. And then he disappears. Gone. Forever.
We ride along in this rickety car
Morelia Viridis against the ochre
I thought you got rid of them – I said
So did I
So did I
My feet becomes the limbs of an antelope, rushing across the Aster blooms, between the scolopendra eyes of the ibises, following the cold tones of the Seedbank. I hear it whispering, and I call to it, soothing the beast within that craves to be released.
The grass is so emerald, so vibrant and lush. Thick with fungi and lichens. So beautiful. The terraces along the edges are white and clear, the stone of which the Amphitheatre is carved, begging me to free them of the parasite which has latched onto their skin and drank their fortune, their hope. Like a leech.
And there it is.
Tall and black, metallic and grey, covered in icicle teeth made from the bodies of its victims. The parasite I have always been afraid of.
“Florin,” it says deeply, echoing beneath my toes.
“Hello old friend,” I assure it. “I’m here to help.”
I puncture in the code, before slipping inside, my hand gripped around the item, the match. The singular piece of death I hold beneath my palms. But I am not afraid of it, like I am with the ash. I am free, my wings spreading, my cold and calculative stare filling the Seedbank with dread. It knows why I am here.
Breathe.
The match lights amongst the darkness and I throw it towards the Aster seeds, watching the spark alight and explode into luminescence.
“Now you know what it is like,” I laugh. “You understand what it is like to die. To feel death grip you neck and squeeze.”
The flames ignite and I am blown backwards, outside of the doorway, onto the field where the terraces cheer. The Seedbank cries, so loud, screams – hatred and anger and pain.
“Parasite,” it names me.
I shake my head. “No. In isolation we are all parasites.”
They surround me. The ash and the ibises, the words and the imagery. The monstrous snakes of my imagination shout at me, their voices flowing. Morelia Viridis. Parasite, Coward. Monster. Yet the ibises protect me, they understand. Evolution has allowed them to deflect darkn
ess into their scolopendra husks, their scarab shells, and care for the beauty retained.
The ash enters my system and all I see is black.
I call out for the ones I love.
Athene.
Øyvind.
Abram and Helga.
And Aster.
“Take my hand,” Aster says, stroking my lips which are filled with uncertainty. She is young and wild and free, her aquamarine eyes tracing my body with clarity. I am scared.
But I trust her with all my heart.
And for the first time in thirteen years, my senses awaken.
AFTERMATH
Athene flies over the aftermath. He sees no more ash, no more toxin.
All he sees is death.
But that is okay.
For the people he loves have died peacefully. Beneath him Florin lies protected, his body surrounded by a hundred lavender ibises, who blend in with the blooming Aster buds.
At the Amphitheatre, amongst the tune of the repeating song, Øyvind lies. He could be sleeping. No one could know.
The only sadness is the parasite.
The Seedbank.
Who slowly burns and weeps to the tune of Svalbard.
Parasitic bass lines, like Aster blooms upon the field
And dictators of our kind, blacken all the atmosphere
The owl must leave now. Escape this terrible cruel monster they call emptiness. Flee from the coward they call the cold.
Oh it’s so cold
Oh it’s so cold
Oh it’s so cold
He must follow the final wishes of Florin and Aster.
He must, fly free.
Burn my dear
The Seedbank
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