In the fading light, the bending boughs provided a canopy to shelter the cemetery from the fitful falling rain. A mournful wind blew; a few withered leaves, shaken loose by its pull, twirled down to rest on the shadowed lawn.

Jacob walked through the graveyard alone, the collar of his black coat turned up to ward off the chill. The paths were as familiar to him as the halls of his own home; he did not need to look up to know the way.

He reached the part of the cemetery where fresh-turned earth marked the newest graves. These he passed, until he came to one which had been covered with a single summer's grass and clover. Here, beneath her blanket of fading green, his true love lay sleeping. He knelt, heedless of the damp ground, to lay a bunch of asters tied with a black ribbon on the earth by her headstone.

"A year," he whispered. "A year and a day. Essie, I do not know how I have lived without you."

Jacob took a handkerchief from his pocket and brushed fallen leaves from the limestone grave marker jutting up from the earth. He saw it each and every day, but it never failed to give him an impression of unyielding finality, despite the hopeful words of affection he had chosen for it:

ESSIE CARVER

Beloved Wife

Died 2 October 1861

at the age of 25 years 6 months

Love Lives For Ever

He sat, leaning his back against the headstone as once his beloved had leaned against his shoulder, and looked out across the familiar view of the graveyard at eventide with a heavy heart. Reaching into his coat, he withdrew a small leather-bound book from his breast pocket.

"I wrote a new poem for you, sweetheart," he said, turning the pages. It was too dark now to read, and the drifting clouds had covered the glowing face of the moon, but it was as it had always been: the poems Essie inspired in him were graven in his memory, and he could recite them by heart.

"Beneath an earthen mantle sleeps

All virtue God did e'er impart,

For deep within a shrouded bow'r

Now lies my dear and only heart.

"I've sat a twelve-month and a day

Upon her grave to mourn,

And I will weep for my true love

'Til in death we are joined.

"Although her mortal flesh be cold

Her soul long flown away,

I crave one kiss from her sweet lips

For love cannot decay."

The ink on the pale page in his hand blurred as his tears fell to dampen the words, and Jacob thoughtlessly brushed the spots into smears. He leaned his cheek against the cool stone and drew a shaking breath. How could he go on for another year, and another, all without his true love? He had seen widows and widowers pass through the darkened valley of mourning, for Death was never far away from mortal men and women—but now, grieving for his own lost love, he could not fathom how they went on living a life that was forever changed.

Jacob clutched his diary to his heart. The dampness from the grass seeped in through his clothes to make him shiver, but the thought of returning home tonight to begin another year without his wife was too much for him. By and by, his sorrow drew him into its familiar embrace, and he sank into an uneasy slumber.

He was wakened some time later by the touch of a hand—Bill, the night watchman, no doubt—upon his shoulder. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the clouds covering the moon had parted, and a heavenly light fell upon the graveyard. The headstones gleamed, casting long shadows, and in the gloom, the bowed figures of weeping angels seemed almost as if they were living women.

Bleary-eyed, Jacob turned his head, half-rising to his feet. He had been woken more than once like this by the watchman and had been patiently sent homeward. But when he saw who had touched his shoulder, he fell back onto the ground, the strength flooding out of his limbs.

It was Essie.

She was dressed all in white, as she had been on their wedding day, and her dark hair and face were covered with a veil as diaphanous as cobwebs. She stood in the moonbeam, her hands folded together.

"Sweetheart," Jacob gasped. He drew himself up upon his knees, but he dared not touch even the hem of her skirt, for in the moonlight she was like unto an angel.

"Why will you not let me rest?" Her voice was a sigh; it was as soft as the wind soughing through the branches of the autumn trees, as gentle as the falling leaves coming to rest on the grass around them.

"Essie, it's Jacob. Your Jacob."

The spectral lady tilted her head. "I know you by your face, sweet Jacob, and by your voice, and by your mournful poem."

Tears sprang up in his eyes. He reached out for her then, still kneeing at her feet, and sought to touch her hand, but she took one small step back, moving just out of his reach. He fell to all fours and drew a gasping breath. "My love, I have missed you. I have missed you every waking moment."

"You do not eat. You do not sleep. You must leave me behind, Jacob."

The grass shivered beneath the fleeting touch of the chill wind, and the scent of petrichor surrounded Jacob. But the breeze did not seem to touch Essie; not even her light veil stirred. "I cannot," he said. "You were taken too soon, too young. I would give anything, pay any price, to hold you in my arms again. To kiss you just once more."

She shook her head slowly. "Oh, Jacob. Were I to give you but one kiss, you would not be long in joining me here in an earthen bed."

Jacob made a sound—a gasp, a sob—and clasped his hands together. "Yes. Yes. That is all I crave: to be near to you again."

Essie stepped back. Reaching out to touch her own headstone with the tips of her fingers, she stepped around it. Her gown made no sound as she moved through the grass to stand on the empty patch of grass next to it: the place where Jacob would one day lie. Gazing at the plot, she said, "'Tis a cold bed, sweetheart."

"My own bed is cold, and my heart. Do not leave me here."

She had noticed something. He heard the smile in her voice, but it was not a smile of pleasure, such as she had given him in life; but her tone was sad. Nostalgic. "You brought me asters."

Jacob looked at the flowers he had lain on her grave. He picked them up and offered them to her. "Autumn flowers."

She did not take them. "Do you remember the garden at my cousin's house in the country, Jacob? The place where we used to walk?"

He lowered his arm, smiling. "How could I forget? When our courtship was new, and secret still."

"Whenever I visited Edward, I would pray that his sweet friend Jacob would be there. My heart would thrill at the thought of seeing you. I spent each carriage-ride on tenterhooks, sick with anticipation."

"No better than I, standing at his window all morning and pretending to have an interest in the birds."

"And when we would take a turn about the gardens, and when we would talk together, you made me feel like the queen."

"You are the queen," he whispered. "The Queen of Beauty, the Queen of Virtue. The Queen of Love."

"Oh, my sweet." Essie took another step toward him and, slowly, she lowered herself to kneel in the grass as he knelt. "In the gardens where we met and fell in love, the flowers that once bloomed are faded now, and gone."

Jacob held up the asters again. "You never faded, love. Not in my heart. Not to me."

Essie lifted the airy fabric of her veil, revealing her face and her long, dark hair, tied back with white ribbons. The memory of their wedding came to Jacob; in that moment he was not kneeling in the darkened graveyard, he was standing in the chapel with his new bride, and the cloying scent of incense and the heat and light of a thousand candles surrounded him. All was silent. All was perfect.

She would kiss him now as she had then, and he would go with her into the great beyond and leave behind this empty, cruel world.

But, her sloe-dark eyes glittering in that golden candlelight, Essie looked at him with sorrow. A tear dampened her dark lashes. She reached out one hand and touched the asters he had brought for her. As she did, the petals faded and withered; the flowers drooped on their stems and then hardened into husks, and the warmth and happiness of their wedding day was gone in an instant, leaving Jacob bereft, on his knees in the graveyard.

"Even autumn flowers fade," Essie said, "as did I, and as will you. My mortal heart has withered, love, and so, one day, will yours."

"It doesn't matter. Kiss me, and I'll go with you. I care not for life, nor the living."

"But you live, Jacob. I loved you well when you were mine." She reached out to touch his cheek. "You are no longer mine. I am no longer yours."

As he gazed upon the saintly beauty of her face, he perceived a change in it: the cheeks, so plump and rosy in life, began to grow wan and sunken; the eyes, so bright and kind, grew small, nestled in shadowed hollows. Her lips, which he'd once kissed, became thin and bloodless and wasted. The hand with which she had touched him, already cold, was thin and skeletal now, and her breath smelled of the tomb.

He shrank back from her, his heart a stone in his breast—from the horror of seeing her as she must now be, deep beneath the earth, or from the pain of knowing she had left him behind? "Essie—"

Essie whispered, "Remember me as I once was, my love, but be content to wait until Death calls you away."

Jacob covered his face with his hands. "Essie, I cannot bear it."

She shifted then, lowering herself from her knees to sit on the ground. He thought there was a tenderness in her eyes, but her cadaverous visage was incapable of softness, incapable of a smile. She lifted one hand in a gesture of farewell. "I loved you, Jacob, but it is time now for me to sleep."

"Essie!"

She was lying down in the grass, pillowing her head on her hands. The dress, her wedding dress, seemed overlarge on her now, and he thought he could see the bones of her arms through the sheer lace of the sleeves.

Tears blurred his vision, but he watched as the form of the woman he had loved changed into the shell of a creature who had lain dead and buried for twelve long months. And then, as if the earth had opened to swallow her up, she sank into the grass and disappeared, leaving him utterly alone in the moonlit graveyard.

Weeping, Jacob slumped back against her headstone, covering his face with his hands. He sobbed, his entire body shuddering with the force of his grief and his anger: grief that he would never again see his sweetheart, and anger, yes—anger that God had taken her from him, anger that God had not seen fit to take Jacob himself instead...

A touch on his shoulder startled Jacob from his deep, peculiar dream. He jerked round, looking up to see the concerned face of the night watchman standing at his side.

"Mr. Carver, are you all right?" asked the watchman. "I heard sounds of distress."

Jacob dashed his sleeve across his eyes. He accepted the watchman's hand and got to his feet, looking around the quiet cemetery, where not even a breeze stirred the trees. "I'm all right, Bill. Just...just a dream."

"Makes for bad dreams, sir, sleeping in a cemetery," Bill said in a gentle, chiding tone. "Shall I call you a hansom, sir?"

"No, thank you. I prefer to walk. Clear my head."

"Very well, sir." Bill made to turn away, but something stopped him. "I'm sorry for your flowers, Mr. Carver."

Jacob looked down, following Bill's gaze, and saw the bouquet of asters he had brought for Essie. His stomach dropped. The beautiful lavender blooms had withered brown...but he leaned down to pick up the faded bouquet, marveling.

"It's all right, Bill," he said, reaching out to touch the white ribbon that held them together. "Even autumn flowers fade."