Nightflower.

For months Erika would disappear for hours while the rest of the world slept in silence.  Every night she would slip out of the sheets beside me and inch toward the window, grinning as if it were some sort of new game. 
In her silk nightgown, she would slide over the splintering window pane, and, if she saw me stir, place a finger to her lips as if we might wake the parents she moved away from seven years ago.
"Where are you going?" I would whisper, beginning, myself, to feel the excitement of sneaking out with the possibility of getting caught.
Her voice was intense, yet barely a breath.
"To bathe in the moonlight and chat with a new friend."
The first night she crept out, she held a bottle of water in one hand, and the other gingerly fingered a sharp toothpick.
When she saw my eyes tracing the shadows in her hands, she hesitated outside the window.
"My friend, he's always thirsty," she tried to explain. "He wants to be king someday, but he needs a backbone if anyone will ever bow down to him.  He's going to be brilliant."
The look in her eyes, one of insecurity and worry, warned me not to ask anymore questions. I nodded my head as if I understood.

She danced silently down the driveway and the thick summer heat danced with her.
The chorus of crickets continued chirping, not silenced by her steps.
Erika was always too innocent and vulnerable to frighten even the smallest creatures. The singing sparrows and young rabbits seemed to fear they might break her in her fragility.
No one dared break her spirit or quiet her music, the reason I watched without protest as she bound down the street under the stars, barefoot in her shining skin and silk nightgown.

I would fall back asleep and dream of my sweet Erika advising her king and sipping red wine beside him. She swept across ballroom floors so gracefully she was floating, more natural than walking.
I would wake to the queen racing across the pavement as the sun rose and tapping on the window with a regal urgency, as if she ran from the light.
As I slid the window open she would reach her porcelain fingertips to brush my cheeks and then press her pale lips against mine.
These kisses tasted like the dew of morning and smelled of fresh rosewater. Her lips were the petals of a carnation and the warm air after a storm. They never ended and never began. I still feel them on my lips and throughout my soul.

One morning Erika shook me from my sleep two hours after I'd let her in. She said she was trapped. She said she couldn't breathe and the walls were too tight around her waist. She wanted to get out for a while. She asked if we could drive downtown for a little bit.
"I want to wave at my friend, just once, in the sunlight."
It was just past seven on a Saturday morning. The whole town was sleeping.  But I'd stopped asking questions. Erika answered them with just another riddle.
Erika slid into the front seat and stopped my hand as it reached for the radio dial. She turned off the air conditioning and rolled down the windows. Heat rushed in and tugged her hair into her face. Her breath sounded like a leaf shaking in the wind.
She let  her bleach blond hair tickle her face and neck without ever pushing it back and her eyes fell shut to memorize the sensation of the moment. The silence of the town swallowed my thoughts and all I could do was absorb the golden street's every detail.

I drove for twenty minutes, and we pulled up to a traffic light at an intersection, nearly approaching the next town.
"Stop," Erika commanded.
Her voice was calm and quiet but firm.
The tires screeched to a halt, but there were no other cars around.
Erika turned and opened her eyes, looking out the left window, she waved with a golden smile across her lips.
There was nothing but an island of cracked and faded concrete with weeds sprouting up.
"Where's your friend?" I finally asked her. "Huh, Erika, where's your king now?"
She pointed straight at the island, eyes gleaming like she saw someone beautiful.
The wind sent more hot air through our car and Erika giggled.
"He's waving back."
She nodded and closed her eyes.
I turned the car around and began the drive home.

"So this is where you vanish at night. Why don't you take the car? Why are you so quiet and secretive? No one would try to stop you."
She tilted her head toward the ceiling and her smile faded.
"I wanted to feel young," she whispered.
Then we were silent.

Every few weeks she would carry something different in her left hand.
From a toothpick to twig to a dowel.
The night before her last, Erika clutched a silver rod, not much wider or longer than one that would support a desk lamp.
It was rusted and faded in the dark bedroom, and the water bottle was old and misshapen, but when she stepped into the moonlight, Erika carried a vile of crystal and a silver scepter.

She returned hours before first light and I woke with a start to her urgent knocking.
I slid the window open but she didn't kiss me.
"I want you to meet my king. He's ready and time is short," she gasped, her voice raised louder than usual.  Her tone made my heart race.
"Why don't I meet you outside the front door? Should we take the car?"
She took my hands and helped me through the window.
"This is his land. We walk."
Her strides were long and fast but she took them with ease as I struggled to keep up.
We arrived at the intersection an hour before the sun would begin to rise. I was out of breath and my legs throbbed, but Erika stepped with pride as she approached the island. She turned to face me.
"Kneel at the throne of the king," she demanded. "Close your eyes."
The sense of purpose in her voice made me do so without asking. She kissed my eyelids with lips dripping with sweet moonlight.

My eyes opened and suddenly her world was revealed.
Once a weed, a tall flower, cloaked in green and crowned with gold, stood tall, arms of vines wrapped around his silver scepter. His subjects withered to bow in his majesty, their roots sprawled across his palace of brilliant marble and moonlight.
Erika, my wife, his queen, stood at his side, over twice his height, a humble adviser. 
Overcome with a sense of inferiority, my head sunk to my knees, I bowed to my new king of the night and wept.

Erika stroked my face and lifted me back to her level.
The stars were fading in his kingdom and the sun began to watch us from the horizon. I took her hand and our eyes locked. Her sense of fear passed into me and we sprinted all the way home.
I rushed through the window behind her, bumping my head on the way in, just before the sky was fully lit by the sun.
We were free and fell asleep in each others arms.

Erika kissed me awake that night. Our kiss was thirsty and withered. She seemed broken, more fragile than ever.  She hesitated outside the window as on her first night with the king.
I longed to go with her to see the king again, but I knew better.  This wasn't my time.
Her eyes were swimming with tears but alive with the night.
"I'm going home," she declared, her voice strong and loud but her frame shaking in the light breeze.

As she reached the end of the driveway, she shed her nightgown and stood looking up at the stars.  Her skin and hair shown pure silver, white, glowing moonlight. She stood in perfection, flawless as smooth new petals of a white rose.
Something glistening rolled down her cheek and splashed on the pavement, scattering diamonds of stardust on the road.
Finally she stepped forward, bounding eagerly, but a drag in her feet I had never seen before.

I stood looking out the window for hours after she left, until the stars began to fade. Then I slid through the open window and sprinted as hard and fast as I could, yet never growing weary.
Finally I reached the king's palace. I was taken back its magic and beauty yet again, but when I recovered, I knew what had changed.

Next to the towering golden flower of the kind, a flawless white rose stood, ruby blood dripping from the thorns. Around the base of the flower, Erika's wedding ring christened the dirt just above its roots, glistening in her moist tears, too small to have been forced over the pristine petals.

As the sun rose and the sky grew lighter, the king's majesty faded and his subjects were reduced to shriveled weeds. But my wife's beauty remained and shined even without the moonlight. She was never the king's adviser, I realized, she was his queen.  And her most powerful words were communicated through silence, here on a concrete island to a nurtured weed she transformed into a king.

I tried to keep a wild flower in a vase for myself, and nearly killed it. Now she's home.