Work Text:
Edward
Anthony
Mason
The words—the most important words Dominic will ever know—are inscribed on the tender skin of his left wrist. They are stacked and slanted; the loop of the ‘y’ skims over the ‘o’, while the final ‘n’ has a flicked tail. When the mark first appeared, Dominic had spent hours idly tracing the words with a fine tipped pencil, wondering how someone could write so effortlessly, so elegantly. His Ma had ruffled his curls and said too wistfully, “Perhaps your boy was an old soul.”
Dominic had been too young and too enchanted by the ink to take note of tenses: was . His mother had looked upon his fresh mark with swimming eyes, mourning a loss her child couldn’t yet fathom.
Dominic’s words were charcoal black and the edges crisp against the map of his skin.
It wasn’t until the last week of the summer holiday that his Ma set him down on the porch and placed her hands on his knees, crouching down to bring her sea-green eyes to his cerulean ones. She tilted her head and wet her lips, studying him forlornly while she tried to think of the words to say aloud.
“Dom,” She began. Her tone was careful and Dominic was reminded of the time when Sally had run away and never came back. He looked over his Ma’s shoulder, searching the yard. Had Sally returned? Did Ma bring home a new dog? He looked back to his Ma, mouth beginning to stretch into a toothy smile before he spotted tears slinging to her lashes.
“Ma,” Dominic mumbled, bringing small dirt smudged hands to his mother’s face. He hovered, unsure. Suddenly the air felt cold and Dominic felt small. “What’s wrong?”
He pronounced the words firmly. His mother had been teaching him not to slur the s’s together and to emphasise the r’s. He practised in the mirror with a mouthful of toothpaste. He didn’t think it was the easiest or smartest way to learn, but he liked making bubbles out of the paste and he even made doubly sure to clean any marks off the mirror and basin. Ma would scold him if he didn’t.
“Dominic, I need to talk to you about your Mark. Is that alright?”
Dominic nodded. “Oh, yes! Ma, do you think Edward will be at school?” Dominic couldn’t quite pronounce Edward yet. He fumbled on the ‘d’ and ‘a’. The name on his wrist sounded like ‘Eggwerd’ from Dominic’s clumsy mouth. His mother had corrected him repeatedly, but smiled all the same at Dominic’s attempts. Dominic hoped Edward wouldn’t be upset about his funny sounding name. “Do you think he’ll like me?”
His Ma seemed torn between gushing praise— ”How could he not like you, Dommy?”— and something else, something colder. She blinked, sighing in a way that was never a good sign and Dominic rested his hand against her cheek, awkwardly trying to brush his thumb against her skin. He hoped it comforted her. It did for him.
Ma turned her cheek so that she could press a ghost of a kiss to Dom’s wrist, barely brushing the mark. She plucked his hand from her face and held it, palm up, between her warm hands. She brought her index finger to his Mark, careful not to touch it directly. It was considered rude to touch somebody else’s mark, Ma had told him before when Aunt Greta had shown him her mark and he’d made grabby hands for it.
At the time, Aunt Greta had smiled her thin and tired smile and graciously allowed Dominic to trace his finger over the words. They were straight and clear, which made Dominic happy; he had only just started learning letters! They were also black and smokey on the edges. “From age,” Aunt Greta explained with a raspy voice, “And time, dear.”
Then Dominic had sat in her lap for an entire afternoon, babbling cheerfully about what he thought his mark would look like. He’d listed all kinds of names—boys and girls, because a child of three didn’t care for distinction—as well as colours. He’d built a soulmate in his mind and Aunt Greta had relaxed into his jolly speech. By the end of the day, her smile was wider, showing the tips of her false teeth. Dominic had been ecstatic to find that Aunt Greta had dimples when she grinned. He’d gently poked at them in the same fascinated manner he’d drawn over her faded mark.
His mother’s soft and careful voice brought Dominic back from his mind-wanderings. Something he did far too often for his mother’s liking. He perked up, trying to listen attentively.
“Dommy, do you know why my mark is white?”
At this, Dominic focused on his mother’s wrist. She had a thick strip of fabric tied around her wrist. It was dark blue and frayed at the edges. She had three bands: charcoal grey, dark blue and sunny yellow. The yellow was his favourite. Ma wore it when she felt happy. Dominic hadn’t seen it since last winter.
Beneath the band was his mother’s soul-mark. There were three names: first, middle, and surname. He didn’t know what the names were, his Ma had let him see the words once, but that was before he’d mastered the alphabet. All he remembered was lines and curves in a confusing order. But Dominic did remember the colour: a ghostly white that made the names even harder to see, let alone read. They looked like faded scars, almost invisible against Ma’s already pallid skin.
Dominic frowned, his bottom lip jutting out into a focused pout while he racked his brain to remember his Ma’s words. “Because…”
She watched him with a patience that knew no bounds and nodded along to his fumbled sentence.
“... Ma hasn’t met Da yet?”
She didn’t flinch, but there was a twitch at the corner of her eyes, a slight widening. Of shock or disappointment, Dominic didn’t know. Ma smiled, almost trembling and definitely soothing.
“Sort of. It means I haven’t met my soulmate.” She leans forward, watching as Dominic’s eyes go comically wide. “When you meet your soulmate, when you touch for the first time, the mark bursts with colour.”
How did a mother tell her child that his future love was already gone? Dominic’s mother shook her head, as though dislodging bad thoughts from her brain. If she didn’t tell Dominic now, then the children at school would take great pleasure in breaking the news. She let out a breath. She wouldn’t be able to protect him from them forever, but she could ease him into the grief.
“Dominic… Do you know what it means when a mark is black?”
Dominic hummed as he thought. He tilted his head and furrowed his brow. His Ma had always said he looked like a confused puppy when he had his thinking-face on. To that remark, Dominic had scrunched up his nose and shook his head roughly. “No, Ma!” He’d cried, as his mother dissolved into peals of laughter, “No doggy! Only Dommy!”
Now she wasn’t laughing, merely watching with sharp, albeit wet, eyes.
“I don’t know.” He said eventually, begrudgingly admitting defeat. Dominic didn’t like when he didn’t know things. It made him feel jittery.
“I’m sorry, Dommy, but it means that… It means that your Edward isn’t with us.”
“That’s ‘cause I haven’t met him yet.” Dominic stared at his mother as if he thought she’d gone silly.
Ma frowned, tutting softly. “No, Dominic, it means that he’s passed away.”
The little boy frowned, mouthing the words to himself as he often did when searching for an answer. His mother could tell he was trying to find ‘passed away’ in his young vocabulary.
“Do you remember Aunt Greta?” Dominic nodded slowly, a stray curl falling into his eyes. His mother pushed the hair away, smoothing warm fingers over his ruddy cheeks. “She had a black soul-mark too. Her soulmate was called Arthur. And he died three years after he and Aunt Greta were married.”
“Died?” Dominic frowned, the word tasting familiar and heavy on his tongue.
“Yes, Dom.”
“Like Sally?”
When Sally the terrier had disappeared, Dominic had insisted with chubby fists thrown against the door, that they search tirelessly for his friend. His Ma—being tired, alone, and just wanting the tantrum to stop— had conceded and told him what really happened. She’d spared the details of the car hitting the dog, but had explained, as gently as she could, that Sally had been hurt and had passed away. Dominic had nodded and slumped against the door, bringing his thumb up to his mouth with a clouded look in his eye. She knew the boy couldn’t fully understand, but she’d hope—as all young mother’s did—that her answer appeased his curiosities. For weeks after, Dominic had been awoken by nightmares, grappling with his bed sheets to find Sally’s spot empty and cold.
Slowly, Dominic’s blank look faded and he scrunched up his face. Fat tears fell from his bright eyes and he stared at his mother, mouth trembling; “No.”
His mother sighed, “I’m sorry, baby, but it’s true.”
The boy dissolved into a fit of tears and sobs. He clung to his mother, desperately seeking comfort. Ma leaned back, rubbing his shoulders soothingly as she thought of Dominic’s Edward. She wondered if Edward had seen Dominic’s name before he passed. If he too had traced the words excitedly, feeling giddy at the prospect of a person being made just for him. She smiled tiredly and hoped the child had been happy before he’d passed.
Dominic sniffled and buried himself deeper into his mother’s embrace.