The Call of Lazarus

“Hello, Maeve. I’ve been waiting for you,” his voice was but a whisper. Soft, sensuous, and strangely alluring…Was this a dream? She couldn’t tell.

As her eyelids fluttered open, she met his gaze. He was the most striking man she had ever seen. Long, raven hair fell perfectly over his eyes of shining silver. His skin, dark and grey.

“How…How do you know my name?” she blinked, trying to rouse herself from a deep slumber. “Wh–Who are you?” Maeve realized that she had been lying in a fairy circle.

The dark haired man smiled, almost imperceptibly. “Don’t you remember? You wanted this.”

“I…did?” She tried to recall something—anything—but the memories were hazy, as though they belonged to someone else. Why could she not remember?

“Look around you,” he said, sliding his elegant hand under Maeve’s head of flaming curls. As he traveled down her back to lift her, she quivered from his touch.

She sat up, her eyes widening with a rapturous wonder. The forest life surrounding her emitted a phosphorescent glow. Maeve looked up at the starry sky, tears welling up in her eyes.

Has she ever known such beauty?

“This can’t be…How can this possibly be real? Where am I?” She asked, her delicate lips parting ever so slightly. Maeve felt the man’s long fingers brush past her cheek.

He grabbed her chin and pulled her back to him slowly. “You’ve finally returned to me, back to where you belong.”

She broke away from his hold. “What do you mean? Who are you?” Maeve narrowed her eyes, searching for an answer.

He let out a graceful, breathy laugh. “You truly don’t remember me, do you?”

Maeve said nothing in reply.

“I’m the voice who has called out to you every night. Lazarus,” he called out his own name like the casting of a spell. Cool and deliberate.

Her eyebrows furrowed. “Lazarus? I don’t—” Suddenly, a flash of memory struck her.

“Maeve…” His voice had brushed past her ear, the smell of rot tingeing the air. Where had she been? All she could recall was the sunken loneliness she felt weighing down on her. She backed away from him, startled by what she remembered.

“I know it must not make sense to you now, but I promise that it will,” he said as he rose from the mossy ground. Reaching out his hand, Lazarus returned to a soft voice, “Come.”

She hesitated. A roiling unease simmered, yet his magnetic pull was far more than she could resist. At last relenting to the enchantment, Maeve allowed her hand to melt together with his.

Walking through the luminous woods, they passed by curious fairies peeking out from behind the glowing mushrooms of teal green. She stared back at them in awe, transfixed by their little faces. Lazarus continued to guide her towards the heart of the forest where a pomegranate tree stood.

The pair stopped before the hanging fruit as Maeve gazed intently into their deep red flesh. She reached a slender arm upwards to take one and snapped it off a branch. Wrapping her rosy fingers around the ripe pomegranate, a voracious hunger squirmed to be gratified. A gasp escaped her.

“Don’t be afraid,” Lazarus soothed, stroking her flowing copper hair. He draped his other hand over the fruit in Maeve’s grasp and bore his thumb into its crown.

Flinching under the cracks he made, she glided her fingernails to tear it apart. As she split it open, she watched a single drop of juice trickle down her palm. The plump arils made her mouth water with anticipation.

Lazarus plucked a single seed to gently place it upon her lips. A most euphoric sweetness and a pleasant tang enveloped her entirely, sending shivers throughout her body.

For a moment, all was still. Until the shadowed man tenderly caressed her face, his silver eyes glittering, and pulled her into an embrace. She took a sharp breath. Pushed against his chest, a familiar sensation grew. Was it…love? No. It was something darker, more compelling.

Maeve tilted her head up to see him, to admire his cascading raven hair. In a flurry of confusion and desire, she kissed him with that same voracious hunger. The pomegranate’s taste lingered as their tongues swirled with the lightest touch. She felt as though she might collapse. And yet, she was powerless to stop it. A writhing graze went unnoticed in the heat of their passion, with even the enchanted forest transmuting into a barren wasteland.

Another writhing graze. Writhing, crawling grazes brushed past her cheek, now her hand. Maeve froze in place and then steadily tore herself away. Why was she suddenly so cold? Looking down at the pomegranate in her hand, countless larvae wriggled to be set free. She dropped it at once.

Her pulse shuddered erratically as the emerging dread overcame her. Dark, earthy mushrooms flickered into view sprouting from her very flesh. The smell of a sickly sweet rot barred her from returning to the enchanted forest. Maeve clawed at her face to reclaim a semblance of sanity. The larvae, however, made it impossible. Letting out a horrible shriek, she ran from Lazarus and the tree.

“Maeve, wait!” he exclaimed, his whispering voice erupting into desperation.

She stood before the fairy circle, her own corpse flitting between this world and the one she left behind. A mother, a quaint village, happy bleating goats…had this been her life?

“What have you done? Where am I, and where is my mother?” she demanded.

“You don’t understand. I only helped guide you back to where you belong, just like you wanted. Back to me. Don’t you remember?” Lazarus was a walking corpse rather than a striking man.

Her eyes flared over with burning rage. “That was my life. I had someone who loved me, someone who—” another memory reverberated in her mind. This time, it was from yet another endless dream. She had ruled this underworld, her name gone unspoken for the dread she wrought.

Maeve looked down at the glowing mushrooms as flashes of her maiden corpse lay before her. Rotted, decaying, and melting into the earth, her prior fear sunk down with the dead. She had simply grown attached to the life she chose, before Lazarus called her back to him.

He was right. This is what she wanted, what the Queen had wanted. As the forest illusion was stripped of its grandeur, she witnessed its transformation with reverence. This was true beauty. Her body decomposed to bone, with her skull veiled by twisting thorns. Reaching down to break it free, she reclaimed her maiden head and gently stroked it with motherly care. How fragile, how delicate.

It all seemed so small to her now. And though she had lived a peaceful life on earth, it was time for her to return. She knew her mother was grieving, but she would join her in this world soon enough. The Dread Queen placed her skull’s mouth gently on her lips and left it with the final kiss of death.

Turning to face Lazarus, a creeping smile swept across her face. “I finally remember,” she said, in a voice low and hushed. “I’ve answered your call.”