100 Years of Despair

It was a terribly unremarkable Wednesday morning when Ozias returned. The dew still clung to every blade of grass he crushed beneath his feet and the rooster’s crass song fell heavy through the chilled air as he passed by a barn that listed to the left. He balked the entire way, through forest and over hill, that his long-awaited return would fall on a Wednesday. Who looked forward to the middle of the week? Wednesdays were stuck halfway between where a person had been and where they were headed. No one waited for Wednesday with bated breath. 

No one waited for Ozias either. 

Except for her. 

For centuries they played this maudlin game. All immortals were prone to finding ways to pass their endless years. A challenge, a task, an impossible goal. Something—anything—to make the tedium of eternity worthwhile. Through war and tragedy and all of humanity’s turmoil, he always found her. Nothing had stopped him and nothing ever would. 

In exchange for one solitary day at her side, Ozias would be banished for one hundred years. Never more and never less. His exile, however, extended far beyond his own existence sometimes. Thousands of years ago the shape he took drove the snakes out of Ireland with his banishment. They never returned, but he did. How could he not return to Beryl? 

Ozias and Beryl were older than the mountains that cut across the south of Africa, older than the seas that saw conquerors sail across them, and older than half a dozen dying stars in the night sky. Creatures born of ancient magic, but wrapped in the fabric of humanity. 

The twisted irony of their little game was that while Ozias lived in exile among the beasts, Beryl lived in luxury among the people. Her winsome beauty always found her suitors. She had lived a thousand lifetimes and found love in each of them. Ozias didn’t begrudge her for the lives she led or the comfort she found. It was all part of the game they had yet to grow tired of. It made their short-lived reunions even sweeter. There was such wonder in the tragedy of their inequity. 

A beauty and her exiled beast. 

#

Beryl marveled at the subtle movements of the mechanisms within the pocket watch resting in her palm. Each tick of the hand echoed the steady beat of her heart, marching her ever closer to his return. 

The pocket watch was a remnant of a different life. She lived by the sea back then, married to a sailor who never once questioned why his beard turned more grey with each passing voyage, yet her hair burned true like copper flames. On the eve of his last journey across the ocean, he had presented her with the pocket watch and a valiant attempt at poetry. 

“One day this clock’s hands will still, but time will not cease because it has grown quiet. Think of that like my love.” 

She was thankful that he died at sea with his true love. Beryl knew she wasn’t capable of loving him like the ocean and, in the end, his words had only made her ache for Ozias. 

Their game was a wicked one. 

At first, she relished the thrill of it all. The anticipation of their reunion. But as centuries passed, Beryl began to envy the freedom that Ozias won. He could take the form of any creature—fly to the farthest reaches on the map, swim to the depths of the ocean, and make a home within the most remote corner of the forest—but there was only so much she could do to survive. 

Mortals were easy to win over. With soft smiles and even softer sighs, she could make them fall in love with her. It was unrequited, but they never knew that. Some she truly cared for and mourned their loss. Others, she counted the seconds until her never-changing appearance would become too obvious and she could escape into the night. She left behind lovers and the children she bore them without a second thought. They were simply there to pass her time until she arrived at the threshold of another hundred years. 

It was a sacrifice she was willing to make for a day in Ozias’ arms.  

#

For the first time in one hundred years, a wolf set foot in Belgium. He kept away from main roads and skirted along the fence lines to avoid the scrutiny of being a predator. Ozias had learned more as a wolf than he learned as a snake or an owl or a bear. He related to the heart of the beast he possessed. He understood the drive that pushed a wolf to seek solitude, just as much as he understood the need for loyalty and communion. 

With mud turning his black paws a dingy shade of grey, Ozias finally found himself at Beryl’s doorstep. She had done well for herself. There were workers in the field that labored to keep wood beneath her mantel. He envied the permanence of her existence. The safety and security she felt when she rested her head on a plush pillow at night. She had never had to fight for a meal—she had never had to fight to survive. 

“You get out of here you great, mangy mutt!” A woman bellowed in her native tongue. She came at him, swinging a broom like a knight brandishing a blade. “Be gone you beast!” 

Ozias crouched and bared his teeth, standing his ground. He wouldn’t be run off by some old bat. Not before he set his eyes upon the crimson-haired siren that haunted his nights. 

As if she had heard his innermost thoughts, Beryl appeared in the doorframe, wrapped in the black shroud of a widow. “Gertie, put the broom down.” 

“Miss, get back. There’s a wolf!” The old woman—Gertie—was still swinging the broom and valiantly playing the role of hero. 

“Yes, I can see that. It’s fine, I promise you.” She knelt down, the hem of her skirt dragging through the mud he had tracked to her door. “Hello, old friend.” Beryl stretched out her hand to him. 

Ozias had little control over the natural responses that she inspired. He pressed his muzzle into her palm, relishing the scent that he had never forgotten. His tail swung side-to-side, revealing his emotions with more transparency than his eyes could. 

“You know this beast?” Gertie questioned in disbelief. 

Beryl smiled, and all was right in Ozias’ world. “Come inside, my friend, I am sure you have had a long journey.” She pushed open the door and welcomed him into the life she had made for herself. 

Instinct demanded that he sniff every inch of the rooms that they walked through. It was like reading a guest book. He could catalog every scent that had wafted through the space—every man and every beast. 

There was a clock ticking somewhere. It was a faint sound that caught his attention, pulling him back into the well of humanity that rested beneath his ribs. It anchored him to the then and there. To the him and her.

Beryl stood before the great hearth in the room, where the morning’s fire lay dying in the ashes. Just enough sun streamed through the windows to set her hair alight. She looked like something summoned from the imagination of a great poet. An ethereal beauty that was hiding a dark secret. 

He was her dark secret. 

“It is time, Ozias.” She clasped her hands together and mouthed words that never fell from her lips. They were words that unbound him from the skin he wore for a century. Stitch by stitch, she tore him apart: bones broke, skin stretched, muscles molded to foreign, yet familiar shapes. 

When it was over and he was once again merely an immortal man and not a four-legged beast, Ozias caught his reflection in the looking glass over the fireplace, startled by the stranger looking back at him.

His hair brushed his shoulders, a mess of ink-black waves that reminded him of the fur he’d grown accustomed to. His face was half-concealed beneath a beard, just as wild and untamed as his hair. It had been a very long time since his appearance had mattered to anyone other than Beryl. She was the first and last set of eyes to see him at the dawning of each new century. 

Ozias found her watching him in the looking glass, looking at him with pure adoration that felt like a knife to the chest.

“Beryl.” He blamed the harshness of the sound on the newness of his voice.  

“Ozias.” She met him with an easy sort of kindness that made him grit his teeth. Of course, kindness came easy for someone who lived as she did. There was malice festering in his chest, and he didn’t know how to root it out before it was too late. 

Beryl peeled off her gloves so she could reach out and touch Ozias’ face without a barrier between them. Her touch was hesitant like she was petting a wild wolf and not the bearded jaw of a man who was made of the same stardust as her. 

“I missed you,” she confessed on an exhale. 

Ozias longed to return the sentiment, but the words stuck in his throat. They always did. 

She tried again, “I saw your eyes in every adoring gaze.” 

“And I saw you in every scornful glare,” He snarled, dropping the facade. “I remembered you when farmers took aim at me, and their wives screamed for the children to hide. When they set their hellhounds after me, it was your pulse pounding in my temples as I sought out high ground.” 

“Did you find your high ground?” She taunted, already knowing the answer. Ozias wouldn’t be standing before her, gripping her wrist like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to stop her touch or guide her wandering fingers to new skin if he hadn’t survived his plight. 

In the end, it was a draw. They both pulled away from each other. Retreating into themselves. 

“Not always,” Ozias said, his gaze unwavering as he stared down his nose at her. “How many lives have you lived this time?” 

Beryl shrugged, feigning indifference they both knew she didn’t possess. “Two and a half.” She looked to the window to their left for relief, but she could still feel the heat of his stare. 

“A half?” 

“Arnaud was sweet, but war took him from me soon after we were married. He reminded me of you.” From the corner of her eye, she watched Ozias but he refused to yield. “After that, there was Gaëtan and Yannick. They were serviceable husbands. Loyal until the end.” 

“Aren’t they always?” he questioned. “For some reason, you inspire undying loyalty from the men caught in your web.” 

Beryl shot him a withering look. He was grinning at her like a cat that had caught the canary, and she realized, far too late, that she had delivered him a victory. “You bastard.” 

Ozias threw his head back and laughed. It was a hearty sound, one that echoed off the hand-hewn beams above them and filled her belly with a familiar warmth. Longing. That was the feeling that had finally resurfaced. Beryl knew the touch of a lover’s hand, the brush of passion’s kiss—but longing was a beast that only belonged to him. 

“Refresh my memory,” Ozias straightened. “Does my victory allow me to choose if I shall slither, crawl, walk, or fly to you in a century? Or is the first win to decide your fate?” 

“Is it really a win if you haven’t set the rules?” 

“The rules were set long ago, my sweet.” He crowded into her space, and Beryl maintained her composure. “Tell me you haven’t forgotten our games already.” 

“I haven’t forgotten anything.” She looked up at him through her lashes and mulled over her next words. They were one hundred years in the making. “Perhaps it’s time for our game to change.”

“Change?” 

She gestured broadly around them, “This is no life, Ozias.” 

His expression grew tight as he narrowed his eyes. “Is it so tedious to live in a mansion, Ber?” His questions were sharpened like blades. “Perhaps I forgot how difficult it is to be saddled with the burden of reciprocal love.” 

Beryl’s lips parted, words dancing on the tip of her tongue, but Ozias cut her off, right at the quick. 

“Have all of these centuries made you cynical? I never thought you would take a life well lived for granted.” He clicked his tongue against his teeth as he stalked around her. Still a beast, even on two legs. “Or is this a new part of our game?” 

She finally came unglued. “Aren’t games supposed to be fun? Tell me, is this fun, Ozias? Do you truly enjoy wallowing in despair for unending years?” 

“Despair?” He flashed her a toothy, halfway-to-sinister grin. “I find despair quite comforting, Beryl. Do you know why?” He waited for the briefest shake of her head to continue. “It is the one emotion that will never truly abandon you. Once it takes hold of you, it is with you for life. It seeps into your pores, burrows into your bones, and becomes part of you forever. Joy may visit, but despair never leaves.” 

Ozias reached for her. His fingers brushed against her cheek like a whisper as he swept a wisp of hair behind her ear. “You are the embodiment of despair, Beryl. You are the thief of joy. The night that steals away the sun’s warmth. The frost that silences spring blooms. You—” 

“You say the nicest things to me.” She hissed, interrupting his bittersweet nothings with a kiss that silenced them both.

#

It was not the wolf’s return that made Beryl quake; it was his reluctance to leave. The crescent-shaped marks he left on her skin forced her to reckon with the truth. How long had she looked beyond the mask of his cruel indifference and taken it as a desire to keep their twisted game going? In the quiet of the night, she saw Ozias for who he was. 

For centuries Beryl had sought comfort in the arms of men who reminded her of the ache that he had left within her, but he had never known the same. The only mistress Ozias had ever known was solitude. He had lived in the isolation that she had forced upon him, wilfully and blindly. 

Somehow, without even fashioning his words into weapons, Ozias had managed to rip her open. As she lay beside him, consumed by the darkness that engulfed them, she was slowly bleeding out. The blood felt like an ocean churning beneath them, driven into motion by a tempest. What she felt was dangerous. As dangerous as the ocean that drove men to madness.

“Have you ever been in love?” The words slipped past her lips before she could stop them. It was a foolish and trivial question. Across the tapestry of time, there had never been a version of Ozias that was capable of love. Except, perhaps the first—the one who had taken a piece of her soul with him. 

The silence that followed felt like a chasm between them, growing wider and deeper with each agonizing second. When he finally spoke, Beryl wished he had wallowed in that silence longer. Ozias was good at wallowing. Despair, self-loathing, hatred. He’d gathered up a myriad of emotions over the years that he seemed to relish the comfort of.   

“It would be easier to count the days I cursed your name than to count the days I have been in love.” 

Against her better judgment, she sought clarity. “I did not realize you had been in love so often.” 

“I have only been in love once,” Ozias gritted out, before promptly extracting himself from the bed they shared. 

Beyond the east-facing window, the world remained cloaked in the ink-black night, but the essence of the soon-rising sun provided Beryl with just enough light to make out the shape of him. The floorboards creaked beneath his bare feet as he moved to the window. 

Beryl found that she didn’t have to give flight to the words sticking in the back of her throat. Ozias knew what they were and he knew how to answer them. 

“I have only cursed your name a handful of times, and it is every time you send me back into another hundred years of despair.” 

She bought herself time as she gathered up the sheets, hugging them to her chest as if modesty mattered in the darkness. A few seconds was not enough time to gather up a lifetime of questions and uncertainty. “It would have been easier for you to simply say you have only been in love once. Must you always antagonize me?” 

Ozias let out a rueful laugh, “Does this work on your mortals? Surely you’ve not secretly been a fool all of this time, Beryl.” 

“You’re a bastard.” 

“I am.” He agreed without hesitation. “A bastard who has loved one seemingly foolish woman his entire life.” 

Beryl’s anger manifested then, hot and pure. “This was your game!” 

“It was never my game.” He refused to rise to the occasion, opting to meet her anger with acceptance. “Who laid the rules?”

“We did. We—“

“You did.” Ozias corrected, cutting her off. “I made some silly jest about how all I needed was a single day in your arms, and you took it to heart. In the morning you sprung your game on me. One day, every hundred years, you would be mine.”

“You could’ve said no.”

“When have I ever said no to you?” He scoffed. “I thought when I returned you would realize that you couldn’t stomach another century without me. Instead, when I returned you were still soft from having some mortal’s brat.” 

Beryl threw her head back and laughed a bitter laugh. “You think you made the greatest sacrifice don’t you?” She threw back the covers and leaped from the bed. “Was it so terribly hard for you, Ozias? All alone out there, free to roam and live without restraint? Immortality means nothing if you’re a woman. While you were free, I was caged within my femininity.”

Ozias remained silent. 

“Don’t you dare damn me for surviving. I could fill graveyards with the families I have parted ways with for you. I have grieved lives that I only half-lived because you weren’t in them. The fact that you think I’m the thief of joy tells me that I’ve become a mirror in my old age. Because you have robbed me of every happiness, Ozias.” 

“Beryl—” He reached for her in the darkness.

“Don’t you dare!” She twisted out of his grasp before he could touch her. “Why now? Why did you wait until this moment to lay bare your heart when mine has always been open to you? You could’ve spared us so much pain.”

#

That was the question, wasn’t it? Why now? 

While Beryl had tossed and turned at his side, Ozias had been left to ponder that very question as dusk gave way to night. For centuries, he had lived within the delusion that some of her time was better than none of it. All the while, half convinced that she would eventually take pity on his stalwart dedication. 

She may have birthed their game, but he had given it life. Rather than face his feelings, he had allowed them to carry him across continents and seas.

It pained him to admit that she was right, but she was. She always remained right where he left her, but he was the one who wandered. He was the one who abandoned her time and time again. 

Ozias wore the scars that life had given him on his skin, but Beryl wore the ones he gave her on her heart. He saw that now. He mistook the meaning of her stories—the ones she told about the husbands and the children she’d had—for her own when they were the tragedies that he had written for her. 

The first light of dawn allowed him to see her plainly in the darkness. Her cheeks glistened like starlight in that early morning light, but he knew that wishes weren’t made from tears.

“Because I was a fool.” He answered, at last. He meant every word. “I was a fool, but I swear to you that I will spend the next lifetime making it up to you, Beryl. I let ego and pride blind me, but I can see now. I see you.” 

She shook her head slowly, “If you truly saw me now, then you would see that it is too late, Ozias.”

“It’s not too late.” He closed the distance between them, cradling her face in his palms. “I don’t have to go this time. The game is over. It’s not too late.”

“Perhaps five hundred years ago, I would have believed you, but not now. I know the hearts of men, that is the fate you damned me to, and now I know how dreadfully fickle they are.” She placed her hands over his. “You still have not said you loved me, at least in so few words. You love the game. You love not having me. If we bring this game to an end, where will your fire go? You burn so bright, but you cannot sustain it.” 

The world suddenly felt as if it had been thrown off its axis. “What are you saying?” He had heard her, despite the ringing in his ears, but her words did not make sense. 

“I’m saying I love you, but I do not wish to be with you. Not now at least. She brushed her thumb over his cheek, and only then did he realize he was crying too. “Maybe someday.”

“Why are you doing this Beryl?”

“Because you said you would spend the next lifetime proving yourself.” Her voice did not waver. “So do it.”

“You want the game to continue?”

She nodded. “I’ve already chosen what beast you’ll be.”

Ozias clenched his jaw until it ached. She was testing him—he was convinced of that. He only had to prove himself to her, and then all would be right. The game would end, and he would have her. 

“As you wish.” He said, resigned to his fate.

“It’s a terrible monster,” She told him, tracing her fingers over his lips. “The worst I’ve ever met.” 

“I’ll do it. Whatever it was.” 

All at once, Beryl withdrew from him. She put a wide berth of space between them, and he felt the absence like a blade through the ribs. Her demand, however, was the final twist of the knife. 

“For the next one hundred years, you will be a man, Ozias. You will not wander, and you will not be free.”

He blinked in confusion. He expected a fate worse than that. Her venom had led him to fear that he would be exiled in the desert, damned to be a rodent or an insect. 

“Where will I be?”

A smile twisted her lips, but he failed to see it reach her eyes. That alone filled him with dread before the words passed her lips. “You will be with me. Wherever I go, you will follow me. A brother, a laborer, a tenant—but never my lover, never my husband. I want you to see all of it, Ozias. I want you to love me in secret. I want you to find me in the arms of others. In the faces of pretty barmaids. I want you to feel trapped like I did.”

He chased after her as she retreated across the room, “Why are you doing this? We have a chance to end this now!”

She slammed her hands into his chest, shoving him before he could take hold of her. “All you had to do was say three words, Ozias! Instead, you opined about how hard you had it, while I was trying to survive. Now you’ll see what true despair is.” She jabbed her finger in his face. “You did this.”

Ozias warred with the sudden anger burning in his chest. The wolf was a pacifist in comparison to the beast rattling at the cage of his ribs. The rage he felt was unfamiliar, and he loathed the way it painted the world red, like the flames that fell from Beryl’s head or the cresting sunrise. 

“You want to hurt me, don’t you?” Beryl’s voice barely punched through the rapid beat of his pulse in his ears. He forced himself to focus on it. “You’ve never wanted to hurt me before, have you? Does that scare you?”

“What have you done to me?” He snarled, fists clenched at his sides. The truth of her words terrified him, but the images they conjured in his mind’s eye frightened him more. 

“I made you into one of the monsters you forced me to live with for centuries.” She turned her back on him, head high, and flames trailing behind her as she slipped out of the room. 

Ozias collapsed to the floor, defeated. He looked down at his hands and wished he saw claws or talons instead. They had purpose. Beasts didn’t kill without purpose. But men? Men killed to soothe bruised egos. 

Men maimed to prove a point. 

Men hurt because they could. 

How foolish he had been to think he could storm back into Beryl’s life without recognizing that his despair was worth nothing compared to hers. A hundred years was not enough time to make it up to her, but he would try. He fought against the monster she had made him, to prove he was a man worthy of her.