(We are in a new reality. The vastness of empty space.)

THE MEDIUM
Silence
is the sound
of a heart
growing cold.
As the mountain
throws its shadow
across the grove.

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
Cold heart, cold bones,
weak heart, my heart was weak.
Rheumatic fever
when I was three.
Sentenced to half a life.
Weak heart. I was weak.
I couldn’t bear for her to know.

THE OUTLAW
Greetings, good day.

LEONA
Darkness falling.
Ambrose. We need to go.

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
So I kept it from her. My heart.
Kept it from me.
Pushed it down,
under the skin
of who I was,
how I wanted to be seen.

THE OUTLAW
Greetings, good day.
I’m on my way to dig up
a haul of shining gold
you’ve never set your eyes on.
Care to join me?

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
And so,
needing to prove
I was invincible,
wanting to give her the moon,
I fell for his ruse.

LEONA
Moonstones? Opals?

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
Her glow so bright.

LEONA
Moonstones? Opals?

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
I could hardly believe—
Was she mine?

LEONA
But I don’t care about—

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
Needing to prove—
I walked into his net,
left her waiting,
alone.

(Jumping forward in time.)

Blindfolded, bound,
my mind’s eye—
Sounds too terrible to—

THE OUTLAW
I will take her
from you,
I will break her into bits.

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
As he lured her and he took her,
as he used her,
as he broke her,
as, my back turned, bound,
I could do nothing.

LEONA
Ambrose!

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
She stops him with a stone.

THE OUTLAW
Sky spinning, lights flashing—

LEONA
Look at me!

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
But I don’t.
Fearing the weakness she sees
inscribed in me—

LEONA
I don’t understand.

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
Afraid to face my own frailty
reflected in her gaze—
My heart—

LEONA
Your heart?

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
My heart.
I try to speak—
I fail.

I should have told her then.

LEONA
Your heart?

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
I should have told her then,
but I hated her
like I’d loved her—
swept up in a storm
of love and hate—
hated myself more than anything—
I was in too deep,

LEONA
Ambrose! You brought us here.

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
I’d obscured who I was.

LEONA
Do something!

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
My feebleness an afterthought,
I gave in to the fate—

LEONA
Don’t just—

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
—written on my leaky valves.

LEONA
Ambrose!

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
Less than half a life.

THE OUTLAW
I pull myself up, unsteady—

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
I had no choice but to fight.
I faded soon enough.

(Reprise echo of decayed gunshot. As he’s dying.)

Hating her for stepping in,
hating myself more than anything—

THE OUTLAW
I grab the gun and go.

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
I hold it close—
My heart’s atrophy—

LEONA
Agrimony, yarrow, goldenrod—
Ambrose, why won’t you look at me?

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
I heard, I saw—
I cut as she tends to me:

LEONA
Nothing. You saw nothing.

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
I heard, I saw, I know—

LEONA
Nettle, dock, pyrola.
I can help you—

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
You’re nothing to me.
I leave her.
I slide towards unknowingness,
letting her believe—

LEONA
I failed to apply pressure to the wound—

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
And so I broke her.

LEONA
It was me. I killed him.

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
And now—
There’s no turning back.
I can’t absolve her.
No matter how far she travels
from this blackened grove—

LEONA
Heartwood cracked.

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
—every time she shuts her eyes
she’ll see what she believes
she did to me.

LEONA
I stand before you, a murderer—

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
So I stay—
here,
in between,
splintered saplings,
trampled ground.

LEONA
Smoke, ash, smoldering ghosts—

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
A bed of broken fireweed.

THE OUTLAW
The grove, as quiet as the grave.

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
Lost, lurching through the emptiness.

LEONA
Looming trees—

THE MEDIUM & AMBROSE
Haunted by her opal eyes,
even in this dim.
Blockaded
by venom, dolor, remorse.

Silence is the sound of a heart
growing cold.
As the mountain
throws its shadow
across the grove.
Hemlock fading,
birdsong flown,
shrouding
the silence of the sky’s
dissolving
as I fall into the arms
of unending dark—