Nameless - Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

“Do you want us to leave you alone with her for a while, Aaron?” His mother asked as they crowded into Bethan’s camp.
Aaron didn’t speak but nodded to his parents who turned and walked into the middle of the forest, now appreciating their newfound sense of freedom.
The small boy looked at Bethan’s body as she lay on the bed that she had made and allowed him to sleep on. Her hair had began to dry and was lightening in colour back to the autumn red that he had loved from the moment he met her. Though the colour hadn’t returned to cheeks, she looked more like the Bethan that he knew now that he was back in the home that she had made so many years before he had met her.
“Oh Bethan,” he whispered, hoping with all his heart that there was even the smallest chance that she was somehow listening to what he was saying, “How could I have let this happen to you?”
Now that the day’s events had begun to sink in, Aaron found that he could not cry anymore. Though the pain in his heart still burnt and a lump still built in his throat every time he spoke, the tears wouldn’t come. He guessed that this was what Bethan would have wanted as she had always hated it when she or anyone around her cried.
He would always be haunted by the injustice of Bethan’s trial for witchcraft – whatever the outcome, Linchester was sentencing her to death. Of course he had known all along that she was just an average girl; nobody could be that strong, that clever and that beautiful without being special. The way that she sang and the way that she was always mixing her potions told him that she was like nobody that he had ever met before, nor that he would ever meet again.
“I’m sorry,” he told her, “I’m sorry that I didn’t try and stop that guard when he took you away, I would’ve made everything so much better if I had been able to stay with you and we would have fought Linchester together.
“How come I didn’t even recognise you when I went to that awful, awful trial until the very last minute?” Aaron wondered, “How come even the doctor couldn’t save you when every single day that I’ve known you, I’ve been admiring how strong you are?
“You were the strongest, smartest, most amazing person I could have ever dreamed of meeting and I feel so privileged to have met you.” Aaron’s voice begin to trembled but still he could not cry, “When I first set eyes on you, my first thought was simply ‘wow, she is beautiful.’ And in that tiny week of a relationship, that first opinion of you has never even thought of changing.
“Bethan, my lonely Bethan,” he stroked the cold skin on her cheek, “Why didn’t I tell you how much you meant to me? All those days we were talking about my parents, Linchester and your mother’s necklace and I never even said-“
He pulled the necklace from his pocket and, lifting her head carefully with his palm, placed it around her neck. If possible, it made her look even more beautiful than usual. “I never even said that I love you,” he whispered.
It was then that the tears began to fall down his cheeks. He rested his head next to hers and held her hand tenderly in his; he cried for every single second that he sat and watch her work, every single smile that she gave to him, every single hour that she spent trying to help him and she had never known that he loved her.
“I knew,” Bethan whispered, squeezing his hand tightly as he held hers close.