(no subject)
"No," he said. He, too, spoke softly, as though in the sacntuary of a church. He turned and lifted a hand to the wall behind us, where the deer leaped and the cranes soared into space beyond the stone.
"No," he said again. "The folks that made such beasts...they couldna do such things." He turned again then to the two skeletons, entwined at our feet. He crouhed over them, tracing the line of the bones with a gentle finger, careful not to touch the ivory surface.
"See how they lie," he said. "They didna fall here, and no one laid out their bodies. They lay down themselves." His hand glided above the long arm-bones of the larger skeleton, the dark shadow fluttering like a large moth as it crossed the pile of ribs.
"He had his arms around her," he said. "He cupped his thighs behind her own, and held her tight to him, and his head is resting on her shoulder."
His hand made passes over the bones, illuminating, indicating, clothing them once more with the flesh of imagination, so I could see them as they had been, embraced for the last time, for always. The small bones of the fingers had fallen apart, but the vestige of gristle still joined the metacarpals of the hands. The tiny phalanges overlay each other; they had linked hands in their last waiting.
Jamie had risen and was surveying the interior of the cavern, the late sun painting the walls with splashes of crimson and ochre.
"There." He pointed to a spot near the cavern entrance. The rocks were brown with dust and age, but not rusty with water and erosion, like those deeper in the cave.
"That was the entrance, once," he said. "The rocks fell once before, and sealed this place." He turned back and rested a hand on the rocky outcrop that shielded the lovers from the light.
"The must have felt their way around the cave, hand in hand," I said. "Looking for a way out, in the dust and the dark."
"Aye." He rested his forehead against the stone, eyes closed. "And the light was gone, and the air failed them. And so they lay down in the dark to die." The tears made wet tracks through the dust on his cheeks. I brushed a hand beneath my own eyes, and took his fee hand, carefully weaving my fingers with his.
- Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber.