Content warnings

Death. Grief.

The first thing to know about this letter is the hardest: no one’s delivering it to you. You’ll have to swim against the current in a river of forgetfulness with a coin under your tongue and wander amidst the poplars of the next world while still drawing breath. If you do it right, you’ll find me under their shade, with pomegranate seeds between my crooked teeth, and you’ll pry the letter out of my fingers. They will have long turned to dust of course. But you’ll find a way. The postman is dead, you see. So you, my child, my heart, will have to make do.

Let me tell you about the postman. Cypress-tall, chestnut-haired, pale, for he spent most mornings of his life delivering to the underworld, where no sunray reaches. And his shadow—

You’re young. Soon, you’ll learn. Our stories will become etched in your tongue. You’ll hear them talk about me, calling me alafroiskioti, light-shadowed, because I danced with fairies at dusk. All it took to stir my shadow was a breeze. The postman was the opposite. His was the heaviest shadow I’ve seen, dark and near-solid against the dusty road, with an aftertaste of bitter almond chocolate and sugarless coffee. Yet he smiled always and greeted all passers-by as he cycled home each evening, bag full of dead letters.

At the sound of his bike’s horn, we’d gather at the square. Old men would wave from the kafeneio’s outdoor tables. He could never refuse the rose-flavoured loukoumi the owner saved for him. But when they offered to treat him to a coffee, he’d shake his head, asking for nothing but a glass of water, very cold. He’d down it in a couple of gulps lest he keep us waiting. He knew all eyes rested on his bag.

He’d bring out the letters first. Dead letters, written with the remains of the authors’ blood, or the ashes of their funeral pyres, or, in the absence of those, the juice of pomegranates that only grow where the dead reside.

Love letters: 

These poplars are only bearable because they remind me of the ones next to our house.

My only regret is that I never gave you flowers.

Do you still kiss my photograph by moonlight when you think no one’s watching?

Then a few curt messages, a handful of requests: 

Water my chrysanthemums.

That cat that ate at my doorstep each day, I want you to take her in.

Wear my best dress like you mean it, are you still afraid to open my drawers?

The gifts would follow; a bracelet some dead woman found on her person one day, encircling bare bones now instead of a wrist–she’d rather it stayed in the family; a lock of brittle hair; the occasional fingerbone. Once he came with his breast pocket stained red. A dead teacher had given him a handful of pomegranate seeds and he’d brought them back to show us, because we loved that old man and his stories. The seeds had rotted on the way, and, after holding out his palm for us to see, he tossed them in the pyre around which we danced at night and washed his hands in the stream. They weren’t meant for the living.

Sometimes, rarely, he carried curses. (Your mother says you never should have left, your father says it’s your fault, you didn’t keep your promise so they curse you even beyond the grave.) He had to deliver those too, whether he liked it or not. His grin would fade then. Yet, he still had smile-wrinkles at the corner of his eyes, he simply couldn’t stay sombre for long. That’s why I loved him. Afterwards, he’d ask if anyone had letters for their dead. He’d collect them all and go again come morning.

If I could deliver a gift to you, my tiny one, my little light, it would be a last kiss to your forehead to remember me by. By now, you’ll have forgotten all about me. But, in time, you’ll grow curious about your mother, so you may scribble a letter, not dead but alive, not in blood but in ink, to ask me what lies beyond.

The only postman who could deliver between this world and the next is dead though. I know, because I died with him. So if you wish to write me a letter, you must deliver it yourself.

I’m far away, I can no longer see you. Do they still gather at the square in his memory, hoping someone new might brave the river of forgetfulness? All I know is that his shadow is free now, light at last, sheltering little birds and children in the scorching summer days. His bicycle is gathering rust, bathed in the rose-powdered sunrise. I can imagine, too, what they’re saying about him, us.

It’s over, some will lament, the postman was our last link with the Other World. Now there’s no one left to deliver a word to our dead. Others will appear at his mother’s doorstep, demand to know if she’s seen him, if his soul visited her, moth-formed, if she has reposed under his shadow. Did he talk to you, they’ll press, heedless of her black headdress and crouched frame. Didn’t he ever say how he managed to cross between this world and the next? And when she shakes her head and sends them on their way with a bunch of koliva, some will resign to a world without dead letters. A few will keep whispering; we should’ve checked the trapdoor she covers with rugs. She must be hiding the tunnel through which he travelled between the two worlds. Perhaps we could go through, like he used to.

The most persistent ones will knock the chipped blue door of my own family’s house. My mother will welcome them, wild hair free, apron dusted with powdered sugar. For koliva, they’ll ask her, or for offerings to fairies, to ask for news of your daughter’s soul? Is she even in the next world, or did she pull the postman into an eternal fairy dance? When he lived, he made it to the underworld just fine. If he’s there, shouldn’t he still be able to visit ours, even if he’s dead?

The truth, my little one, lies between the worlds, between a shadow heavy like his, and a light one, like my own. It’s etched in your bones, weaved in your own shadow. I wish I’d had time to explain. I wish I could have held you for longer. Then it wouldn’t be so hard to conjure your face, as I write these words in red, blood mingled with pomegranate juice. Forgive me, I forget. Is his mother looking after you these days, or mine? What have they told you? That the bike got overturned from the heaviness of too many dead letters? That I pulled him into a fairy ring from which he never could untangle himself? That delivering between forever-separated lovers was his only calling, that he was never meant to find love of his own? Or to father one like you?

No matter. I see you, ten, twenty summers from now, drinking pomegranate juice under his shadow by the great oak tree, writing to me. You’ll find a dowry coin in one of your grandmothers’ drawers and learn to swim holding it under your tongue. Your shadow, semi-sweet almond chocolate, will guide you under, deep enough to find us hand-in-hand under the poplars.

And then my letter will finally be in your hands, and this last kiss, light breeze against the branches, will finally find your forehead.

END

Madalena Daleziou

Madalena Daleziou is Rhysling and Brave New Weird finalist. Her work has previously appeared on The Deadlands, Haven Spec, and other venues. She is working on a dark academia short story collection and a novel featuring pirates and ghosts. She lives in Athens, Greece.