The Christening
The King stood before all the court and said, "Behold my beautiful daughter, is she not a jewel - the ebony hair, the pearl skin, the emerald eyes, the ruby lips."
The Thirteenth Faerie whom the King had neglected to invite to the christening strode into the great hall, gazed upon the child and frowned. "In her fifteenth year she will prick her finger on a spindle and fall down dead."
All in the room shrank back in one movement, sharply drew in a breath and stared in horror at the Thirteenth Faerie, aghast at this dread pronouncement. The crowd of onlookers took on a buzz shrill and loud. They gathered protectively around the royal cradle like a host of angels.
Then from the shadows stepped the Twelfth Faerie who had not yet bestowed a gift upon the newborn Princess and all heads swiveled toward her expectantly.
"In her fifteenth year, the Princess will indeed prick her finger on a spindle, but she will not die. Instead, she will fall into a deep sleep. She will sleep one hundred years until one day when one pure of heart shall find her and kiss her awake again."
The room exhaled a loud collective sigh. The King bellowed for all spindles in the kingdom be destroyed at once. They lit a great bonfire on the outskirts of the village and all gathered to rejoice. And glad they were for the wisdom of their King. And glad too for the welfare of the beautiful little Princess.
Secret Garden
In the garden walked a girl in white silk. Jet hair spilled like ink to her waist. Her skin like a ripe peach, her lips like strawberries. Her eyes were green as mint. She gathered flowers in a basket.
She slept through most days, avoiding sunlight. She liked to nap in the afternoon beside a window full of rain, to walk alone in a midnight garden. She loved to drink in starlight and moonlight till she glowed. She could find the flower in a dung heap, if ever a dung heap were presented her. She liked to breathe the smoke of candles. She only danced alone, behind closed doors - for fear of eyes.
Up the coiling staircase, round and round she ascended. At last, above the clouds, the stairs gave upon a single wooden door - a skeleton key in the lock. She turned the key and the door creaked open arthritically.
The room was a tangle of dust and cobwebs and glittering black spiders trickling over the walls and floor. It smelled of rot with a brittle green edge of mold and damp - for the three arched windows of the round room held broken stained glass and let the rains come in.
At the window, the air blasted against her face like an icy wet kiss, the wind whipped her hair, clung to the tear streaks on her cheeks; she left the print of her hands and little ghosts of breath fading on the glass. The blue-violet sky was full of falling starflakes. The scents of rain and cinnamon and roses unfurled from the garden below and coursed through the window. She sighed deeply, breathing in the scents.
In the center of the room a rickety spindle stood sentinel, and beside this a bed - as thin and narrow as the girl herself. She walked slowly toward the thing, her feet wading through the decay of withered leaves and scuttling insects and ran her hand over the wooden wheel. But withdrawing her hand, the prick of the spindle stung her finger.
The room began to revolve - the ceiling sinking toward her and the floor pressing upwards. The walls began to breathe and shudder and a thousand vines crept through the cracks in the walls.
The air was full of broken glass glitter shimmer and smelled of red wine and blood and incense and candle smoke.
A single drop of blood fell from her finger as she too fell onto the bed.
The sea of leaves parted and made a path for the drop of blood as it hit the floor. The light shivered in it as it rolled towards the door and tumbled slowly down each step of the coiling stair and out the main door and into the garden where it sank into a patch of sunlight next to the cool stone wall of the castle.
And from this blood-stained patch of light a vine grew. It scaled the heights of the castle - a thorny web of nettle with the girl in its apex.
The blaze of sunset turned the walls to bronze.
The black spiders glittered.
I am a princess asleep in a high tower. I lay in a cold bed of leaves and I never dream. I eat sunlight, dead leaves, spiders. I drink rain. I hear the rain fall and thunder crash, the leaf rustle, the warm light, the ice frost, the metronome pulse of my own heart. I smell the pools of stagnant water, the musky decay of the leaves, the roses blooming still in the thorn garden below the tower window. The water smells of pennies and rain. My mouth tastes of wind and dark grey skies and spiders and black black leaves. I see only blackness and shadow. I dream of my father's face: stricken,, and so very tired. I dream of my mother's face: broken and shining with tears. In dreams, I see my gown torn and mildewed and stained from the rot and mold of the rain and the dead leaves that form my only bed.
I sing to myself - inside myself. There is a humming in the darkness. I hate the drip drip drip of the rain gathered on the windowsill and falling with a little plash beside my head - the droplet shattering and the tiniest shard always striking my cheek. I hate the cold wet leaves that gather around me like hungry animals. Sometimes I hate the sound of birds calling to one another as they fly by the window for they are so free free free. I live in shadow, within a secret cocoon and no one calls for me to let down my hair. I can let you in but never may I be let out. Only you can come and go as you please.
I see the tower in dreams. Outside my midnight window the streets shine with icy rain. The broken panes glitter with snowflakes. The brittle leaves make me itch. I am hidden. I hide. I never leave. I never move - dust coats me. The wind jingles a skeleton key in the hall beyond my closed door, the wind wheezes at the window. I stare out at the moon: blank-faced and tight-lipped, as always - giving away nothing. Down the dark road a river flows black. It glitters with winter ice and golden windows. And further still - the sea crashes against black jagged rocks. The sea too is black and empty. The sea, the sky, the river, the road, the night at my window. I watch the night fade, dawn glimmering through the glass, translucent haze through the dark trees.
In dreams I see a great ancient castle, caught in a web of hundreds of years of thorny vines. I see figures writhing in the vines, and the vines tightening around them, strangling them. I see skeletons and rotting corpses that have ceased struggling.
Dead vines twist in through the tall wooden door, crawling up the plank walls like withered veins.
But I know that one day, someone will come up to this stone wall and each thorn will burst into a beautiful red rose, and the vines will part for them, and the roses will bow at their feet.
They will find the door unlocked, and everyone inside will be sleeping, having slept for many many centuries. But they will open every door, searching for something, driven by something unknown inside of them to search this place.
They will walk every creaking crumbling step to the bowels of the earth, then they will follow every stair spiraling skyward, and at the crest of these stairs they will find a door with an ancient skeleton key still in the latch. Within the door they will find a dusty dim-lit room. A beautiful girl will be sleeping on the bed, her long black hair frothing over her, having grown and grown throughout the years of her deathless sleep...
I want to hear the soft sounds of feet coming up the stair. I want to hear the groan of the door flung open - the steps coming nearer and nearer to where I lay. I want to feel hot breath upon my face and soft lips melting into mine. I want to feel the butterfly kiss of lashes on my cheeks. I want to rise off this damn cold hard miserable floor and dance in the flower garden, chorus with the birds and sing the song of the rain. I can't wait. I can't move. I can't I can't I can't. I don't want to wait any longer. But who will want to kiss some mold-stained bug-eating old princess who's been laying around in a stinking pile of wet rotting leaves for a hundred years anyway?
Within the thorny scale of briars, within the icy walls of the glass palace, within the high windy tower, in a bed of leaves where she fell - she slept, and waited.
For 100 years she drank rain and ate light and dreamed a dreamless sleep and never moved. In winter the snows came and iced over the form. In autumn new dead leaves rained in drifts upon her, then in spring the rains washed her clean, and the summer light warmed her pink again.
The room is dark and cool and musty. She sleeps curled in a nest of leaves - dreaming. She - the sleeping one - in a high tower - the stone walls made impenetrable by sharp thickets of thorn and nettle - awaiting some fair lover to come and touch their lips to hers and show her the way out of this place. For that's what she is, truly: trapped. And afraid too, of seeking her own escape. Let another weather the scrapes and cuts of deciphering the maze, the sweaty toil of cutting a new path.
But why would they come? How would any know of her solitary plight? And why care to trouble themselves thus if they had? Myths? Faerietales?
As the years flew by and none came, the castle began to fade and soon it became quite invisible and became no more than an old fireside story to the folk of the town. Now and again the castle would flicker into sight for one or another and cause a bit of uproar in the town. But one soon learned to say not a word when one did glimpse the thing, for the reactions of the others were never very kind.
The Traveler
She liked to wiggle her eyebrows. She constantly made noise to remind herself and others that she existed. She liked to swing in the treetops and rolls in the grasses. She danced when there was no music. She could find the needle in a haystack, were a haystack presented her. She always slept fully dressed - in case of fire and she sang in her sleep. Seeing a single tulip standing sentinel in a yard she'd long to run and behead it with her foot, watching the red arc fade into the blue sky.
"Who lives in the glass palace, there on the edge of the hill?" she inquired of the barmaid. The entire bar fell into a chilled silence and the patrons quickly looked away from the girl they'd been staring at and crossed themselves, for only a few had ever even seen the palace, and all that had, now were dead, and all that ever did - died.
"I - I'm sure I know not of what you speak. 'Tis no palace of any sorts within the valley or without."
"No, I'm sure of it. It was all towers and pinnacles and spires of spun glass, that shone like the very sun itself."
"'Twas an illusion, a trick of the light, nothing more. Trouble yourself with it no longer."
The girl strode to the window and flung open the drapes. The shadowy bar was illuminated by a blaze of blinding light.
"There!" she exclaimed, pointing into the distance through the window. Those who dared to sneak a glance saw nothing - nothing but the rolling emerald hills and the blue mountains in the distance, the soft blue sky and gently drifting clouds.
"'Tis nothing there but the hills, miss, and never were. Now sit down here and let me get you an ale." She quickly glanced about the bar and noticed several were making to leave before their usual time and usual number of drinks. "On second thought, I think perhaps you should be on your way," the barmaid said loudly as she reached up with both arms and thrust the drapes shut again. The bar was again swallowed in shadows. "You're disturbing the others. Be off with you now." she hissed.
The girl strolled down a quiet deserted street. A gnarled hand reached out of the air and spun her into a dark alleyway. She stifled a scream. An old woman stooped before her, clad in black.
"I understand you can see the palace." the woman said.
"Aye, what of it?"
"I know of that palace which you proclaim so loudly you have seen. Though I've not seen it myself. I've known of those who have seen it - and they've died because of it. You'd be best forget what you saw and be out of the village as quick as you came."
This piqued her curiosity even more than the strange reaction she'd received at the bar earlier that afternoon. "But why - what is this palace and who dwells there? Why should I alone be able to see it?"
"As a girl my nursemaid told me, she said in the highest tower a beautiful priceless treasure lay - but there were other doors in that high tower - doors to other rooms - where the darkest horrors lurked, and if the man-eating briar didn't get you first - a horror will - for many doors line that shadowy hall - and only a one of them hides a treasure. Heed me now - only death awaits you there. It lures by showing itself. It will eat you surely as I speak to you now."
The girl began to laugh and the old woman tottered off down the street without another word, shaking her head sadly and muttering the words, "Her hair is like the midnight sky glittering with stars, her skin ghost-pale, eye's green as a cat's, and lips like blood."
"I wonder what treasure, if any indeed, awaits me: a kings ransom - coffers of gold, bracelets of emeralds and rubies and sapphires, diamond tiaras - one could only imagine." she thought. She knew from her history books the sorts of troves those old kings loved to store up.
The Dark Dark Wood
A dark dark wood surrounded the castle. The trees were watercolor ghosts in the fog - the world veiled and smoky, softly blurred at the edges, bleeding into one another.
She came upon a faerie caught in a great spider's web. "Pray, help me down from here or I will surely make a tasty meal."
"I'm sorry I haven't the time now. A hurry I'm in, but be sure I'll be back for you when I am through."
But the faerie called out to her, "Where are you off to in such a hurry?" The stars were silver buttons stitched on black silk.
The sky broke open, torrents of rain slapping the ground, the trees new green leaves spread wide like hands to catch it. "I'm off to the palace of ice - which no eye save mine can see. Surely this is a sign my future beckons me there."
"Ah. No doubt. But then, it may be too late - if not for me, then for you. Please, if you will, help me down." Sploosh went the drop of rain on the leaf.
"But too, I must save my strength for the journey. I'm sorry truly but I'm unable to help you just now." She said as she turned to go. The leaf wobbled and waved.
"Wait!" cried the faerie. Plash went the rain on the leaves, plash, plash. "If you help me down I will give you magic that will speed your travels and give you greater strengths, for I know something about the castle of which you speak." The stream bubbled fitfully.
The girl turned and eyed the trapped faerie carefully and considered this. Little birds rushed down to genuflect at her feet. She may indeed be a faerie as she appeared and weren't faeries after all privy to some small magic's?
"Alright then." She said and though she was in a hurry and needed to save her strength, she took pity upon the poor trapped thing and set to the task of helping the faerie down. She shimmied up half a dozen trees - slicing down the web with her knife. The stars glittered like fireflies in the treetops.
Once freed, the girl gazed upon the faerie expectantly and presently the faerie bowed deep and said, "For your trouble and your kindness, my lady, I have that which may aid ye in your quest - for I have heard of the luminous castle and of what lives and dreams there. In a high tower there are many doors - but you daren't open but a one or death will seize you. In a garden grows a flower - at midnight this pale flower blooms and its petals open like a shell and glow in the darkness like a silver moon. Hold this flower to each door and listen with all your senses and you shall know what waits inside that room for you. Do this and no harm will befall you." Whoosh went the birds through the rain-slick wood, whoosh.
The wet leaves trembled ever so slightly as the birds rushed past. "This flower you speak of, how shall I find it, where does this garden grow?"
The faerie took a velvet pouch from around its neck and held it out to the girl. "The garden lies in the middle of the labyrinth." The gold air turned blue, the leaves shone, wide as hands - fingers splayed.
"What have ye in this bag of tricks that may help me?"
"Why magic stones, my lady, with a moon caught in each. Drop them behind you to find your way again from the labyrinth." The faerie took a stone from the pouch and held it up for the girl to see. A full moon glowed within. "But bring them back you must - on your return through the labyrinth pluck each one up and hide it in the pouch again and leave it for me in the hollow of this tree. For if left alone each will bring peril to he who treads upon it and I will be left helpless in the forest without my magic to save me." The rain stained the branches ink-black, twisting upwards and outwards, they too, shone.
"I promise it." She said, snatching the purse from the faerie's hand and was away.
"Be back by sunrise," the faerie called after her, "or all will be lost." A crow cried out. Little rivers swelled beneath the trees. The girl was already out of sight.
The forest was silent and shadows moved with her, as if the very forest held its breath. The branches of the trees trembled for they knew where she was headed, and what waited there. The path gleamed like a mirror - a black glass plate that ripples open, parting in waves for her passage and closing again in her wake.
The Garden of Thorns
In the midst of the forest there rose an ice palace of slim glass towers and turrets, spun sugar spires and porcelain columns, cream colonnades and arches, gardens of glass crystal roses.
A castle of ice, spunglass spires, frosted turrets, crushed diamonds, as ephemeral as wind and moonlight. An emerald sea of grass transformed with icing sugar to a lawn of white velvet by the snow. Dusk and dawn turning the land and castle walls to blue.
The castle was frozen within a perpetual winter, jet-black windows, cold and glittering, roofs trimmed with dripping stalactites of ice. Behind the castle wound a labyrinth and she entered and as she walked, dropped the magical moonstones from the faerie's pouch behind her. The snow cracked and splintered beneath her boots, as though she walked on bones. Each stone shone like a full moon and she would find her way back by them. The labyrinth unspooled before her like a ribbon of blue fog. A shadow followed her, hiding behind trees - the pearl crescent of a face, skin like frost, a flash of ivory marble hands and eyes like the scales of a mermaid's tail.
In the center of the labyrinth a secret garden bloomed. Here all winter was melted away. It was not quite midnight as the moonflowers slowly began to unfurl. But instead of the single flower the faerie had promised, now a hundred bloomed: one for each year the castle slept. The flowers filled the garden with a sweet perfume - the smell of the sea, of rain, of a first kiss long awaited.
An overgrown labyrinth. Thickets of wild roses. A chessboard terrace. A moss-eaten angel with a broken wing. A fountain of ice - golden fish suspended like yellow flames in its depths.
The ground was tiled in cracked chessboard marble, in the center of a fountain spitting chips of ice across white velvet lawns an angel wept - ravaged by moss, one wing broken, veined with capillaries of ivy, and a well encrusted with mother-of-pearl hung back in the shadows.
"How am I to know which flower?" she wondered, "Perhaps they all are magic the same." Unable to wait for midnight, she walked towards the moonflowers, her hand outstretched. She plucked one and parted its petals. Nothing lay within the bud but a whiff of decay and as she parted the petals thorns sprang out and stung her hands. She threw down the flower and yanked another from its roots and parted its petals too and yet again thorns bit her flesh and she repeated the process again and again. A soft chill wind began to blow as the pile of discarded flowers lay dying. The stench hovered over the garden like a heavy mist. The wind formed a voice like a soft whisper and said to the girl, "Please, return us to the soil and give us a drink from the little well. It has been so long since we had a drink and we are so thirsty. Do this, and you'll be forgiven."
"Forgiven?! Why, you're only plants!" she exclaimed haughtily and laughed. "I haven't the time. I must find the magic flower and be on my way for I must search the castle by dawn and be gone."
"We will help you. Just do as we ask and we'll show you which of us is the flower you seek - then you may be on your way."
"Very well," she sighed. Secretly, she was glad, for yanking up all the flowers was tiresome and soiled her hands and clothes. She grabbed up a handful of the flowers and one by one scrunched the roots down in each little hole she'd made pulling them up and squeezed the soil shut at the base. By then her hands were painted in blood and dirt and this the flowers drank greedily, for they were so thirsty. And as they drank a single bead of blood glittered at the tip of each thorn.
Finished, she shook the dirt from her hands and wiped them on her shirt, sat back and waited. "Well?"
"A drink of water, if you please, from the little well." the flowers whispered.
She rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically, increasingly annoyed by the demands of every little plant and creature she passed by on her way. She tromped across the garden to the well and began turning the crank to bring the bucket up. The crank however, over the years had rusted and soon would turn no more. She grunted and pushed herself away from the well and strode back into the flowers. "The crank won't budge. There's no water to be got for you."
"Pull the bucket up yourself then." the flowers replied.
She returned to the well and set to pulling the rope up herself. It was old and slimy with mildew. Shortly, the rope pulled taut and there was a snap and a thump thump thump and a splash and the rope went slack and all she pulled up out of the well was a frayed end of rope.
"The damned bucket's broke off!" she yelled over to the flowers, tired of pacing back and forth between garden and well, "You'll get no water here!"
"Climb down in and bring it up in your hands. Just a little water will do."
"Aye! Will my toil never end?" she sighed. "I'll never get in the castle at this rate! Do this! Do that! I needn't have left home to escape the endless chores, for now I've even more!" and grumbling to herself she hauled herself over the lip of the well and scaled down the rocky walls like a spider - arms and legs outstretched, for it was a small well and fit her size perfectly. Presently she fetched up a handful of water and soaked her clothes with it in the process.
In the garden again she sprinkled a handful of well water over the flowers and they quivered visibly with delight. "Ah, more would be even better!" sighed the flowers.
"Well, I shan't be climbing down into that dark again! Ye can skinny on down yourselves" she cried, "or if ye better like - I can throw ye all down and ye can suck your fill and find your own way out!" Her face reddened and she clenched her fists at her sides. "The only well water I can give ye weighs down my clothes."
"Pray, remove them, miss, and wring the water into our petals and lay the damp cloth about our roots. You'll not need them within the castle walls and they'll be dry and fragrant against your skin at your leave."
"Very well. But then you must show me the flower - so I might be on my way at long last."
"Yes, of course."
And she did as they asked.
At the stroke of midnight, she stood naked before the flower bed. In the center one flower bloomed and a blue flame flickered in its center. Its petals glowed and shone like moonlight, which was good for the night was dark and without moon. She quickly plucked up the flower, turned abruptly and fled the garden without another word.
The flower cast a pale eerie light on her path through the labyrinth and the moon stones too glowed to show her the way. She stopped short and her hand flew to her mouth. "The stones!" she cried aloud. She looked behind her back through the labyrinth unable to see the garden any longer then looked before her a good ways to go still to get to the castle but closer now then the garden. The pouch was back with her clothes. She didn't have time now to go back and retrieve it, besides stopping to pluck up each and every stone on the path. "Silly rocks." she said and scrunched up her nose at them. "All they are is glowers anyhow. No magic there. I shan't waste my time." and she took off then - running breathlessly through the labyrinth, following the glow stones back to the castle door as fast as she could, strangely unaffected by the cold.
Thorns, briars, nettles, burrs, prickly spurs. A great thicket rose in a tangle and held the castle like a fly in a spider's web.
And the bones caught in the briar rattled and glittered, but the thorns retracted like the claws of a cat and did not reach for her - for this was a man-eating briar and she was not a man.
The Palace
The castle interior was a puzzlebox: mirrors reflecting mirrors, a maze of secret passageways, honeycombs of doors and windows, a labyrinth of bridges and staircases. The silver stone sweated. Fine green hairs shivered in the cracks that ran like veins across the walls. Starlight burst in cool splashes of white gold through the narrow arched windows and lay in puddles on the marble floors. The ceilings were high as the sky and painted with peeling frescoes of stars and angels.
An icy wind blew in through an open window and shattered an angel, scattering its brittle limbs across the floor - here a wing - there an eye, a mouth - brittle stars crumbling to dust underfoot. Her steps rang out, echoing throughout the desolate halls.
She passed a cavernous ballroom - once the sight of glorious banquets of flickering candles and pale shimmering wines and rare fruits and thick warm breads. She could see ghosts performing elegant waltzes - ladies skirts like roses blooming in dizzy circles of silk and velvet and spicy perfumes. The crystal sparkled; silver clattered and clinked. Cool night breezes rustled in the curtains framing the tall windows, crystal teardrops tinkling overhead like rain from chandeliers big as grand pianos that glittered down at them from the high ceiling, bright shards of light shuddering on their expressionless faces.
Clusters of black-haired angels, specter-thin and cold as porcelain drifting through shifting cones of light. She saw only their faces raised as in supplicant prayer, the glitter of black eyes, mouths parted like wounds in a swirl of velvet capes.
The Tower
At the end of the great hall she found the stairs for the high tower and bounded up, stone steps tightly wound as a spring with little diamond windows letting in little diamonds of light. She took two steps at a time, till at last she came to the top and stepped out into a long narrow hall. A dozen doors lined this hall - tall and intricately carved - a skeleton key on a cord hanging on each knob. Her heart throbbed. Her lungs heaved. "Well, at last!" She scowled at the flower. It said nothing. The blue flame sputtered and hissed and the petals continued their moon shine.
She crept to the first door and held the flower to the latch and concentrated. Loud as horses hooves heavy on cobbles she heard the click of claws quickly crossing a damp stone floor, a wet hungry panting. A cold shudder ran down her back. "Aye, not that one," she muttered, crossing herself. She crept to the next door and held the flower up. Before her very eyes there came a mouth with rows of teeth long and sharp as needles, and at the tip of each there glittered the tiniest pearl of blood. She felt the tiny hairs prick up along her arms and at the nape of her neck. "Not this one either then," she shuddered and proceeded to the next.
This continued for six doors more and her mind was filled to overflowing with claws and teeth and blood and shadows hungry for her own. Her lungs filled with odors foul and rank: odors of rotted flesh and wet excrement and stagnant pools of thick clotted blood. Bile rose like a flower from the deepest pit of her stomach and lodged in her throat, bloomed at the back of her mouth.
Her hands shook terribly as she lifted the flower to the next door. Here the stagnant pools were filled not with blood but rain, rain that had fallen through the high arched stained glass windows. The smell of death was not human here but that of the small birds that had shattered the glass throwing themselves against it.
She saw a beautiful girl in a bed of leaves. A girl clad in silk and velvet, her fingers shimmering with jewels, her neck slashed by a choker of rubies, her ears dripping pearls. She felt a stirring between her legs as she gazed upon the thick black hair, the pale skin, the ripe plump limbs, the red red lips. Her heart thumped wildly against her ribs. Surely this then be the treasure. And she saw too other treasures heaped and glittering in the corners - pale and shining - carvings of ivory and strings of pearls.
She glanced down the hall at the four remaining doors. Surely these held only more terrors and horrors and she could take no more of that. This - this was the treasure. This was hers. This is what awaited her. And she plucked up the key - fit it into the latch and turned, listening close for the click and quick as a shadow she let herself into the room and shut it fast behind her. And so excited by the spectacle of the beauty in the leaves and so filled with anticipation she did not hear the click of the key turning in the lock behind her, the soft clang as the key fell to the stone floor in the shadowy hall and was silent.
The rain on the windowpane sounded like fingernails tapping on the glass. Someone's knocking at the window.
Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the white walls were planes of static, rippling.
The ebony blaze of hair, the pearl skin, the red lips. Her long narrow hands crossed over her chest - like a corpse in prayer on her flowered bier.
There she lay in a drift of decaying leaves - right where she'd fallen.
A ripped up wedding gown spun of spiderwebs and tied with fallen stars. The arch of the neck, the folds of heavy hair rippling against her long throat, the tenderness of the swollen mouth, the bloom of the aureole, the plump curve of breasts and hips, the dust of silken hair that hid between the thighs.
To have lain so long on the cold stone floor of this narrow tower - your only bed and only blanket these leaves which so softly drift like rain in through the high arched windows - her white silk gown was stained from the rain and laced with filigrees of mildew. Her hair straggled out in a leaf-strewn fan behind her head like dead Juliet having just drunk her poison draught.
She caressed the girl's face. "It's raining," she whispered to the darkness, to the girl. "Can you hear it?" The rain.
Shadows drifted soft as the brush of angel's wings upon them.
The rain like fingernails tapping on the window.
The girl she wanted desperately - but ah, she could wait, she would know no different. She wanted to check out the other treasures first: the ivories and the pearls. She tiptoed across the chamber and held the flower over the scattered heaps that lined the walls. But what - what were these - not carvings, not pearls - but piles of bones - ivory white they were - picked clean of their meat - the bones of birds, yes, but too - and too many there were - human bones! She choked on the bile then and spun around and stared hard at the girl in the leaves. She walked slowly toward her and peered down into her face. Such rosy cheeks for one so long dead, she thought. Perhaps she wasn't dead, perhaps she wasn't dead at all. Perhaps she was merely sleeping, waiting. The girl in the leave's eyes snapped open. They were seagreen ice. Piles of ivory bones glittered in the corners.
She shrieked and leapt away, scrambling for the door, dropping the flower in a stagnant puddle of rainwater where it hissed and fizzled and the shadows of the room swallowed all the light in one gulp. She clawed at the doorknob but it was locked fast. She peered over her shoulder. The room was black and silent. Then she heard the whisper of leaves like a soft wind, leaves rustling as in a dark dark wood, the crunch of dead leaves underfoot.
She felt a cool hand on her arm.
It is she. Yes.
The eyes. The lips. The hands.
The black hair streaming like a dark rain into my hands. The smell of her hair like snow and stars and wind and burning leaves. Her hair in the rainy night - a black sea glittering with stars. I want to drown beneath its waves.
Her mouth tastes of blood and wine, rain and tears.
I touch her lips, the lids of her eyes, the skin of her face, her long throat, translucent skin traced with blue veins, the pulse of blood beneath her fingertips, soft as silk - her skin, her silk.
Silky pale thighs. My hands on her thighs like nervous spiders.
She is the moonglow on the windowpane at dusk, the mournful cry of the loon, the wolf howl echoing in the forest, the mist of cold that drifts from our mouths as we walk through a dark winter night.
She is the smoke of a candle, the crack of the whip.
She is blue rain shining.
She is the sadness that wells from the belly and lodges in the throat.
She is the long pale arm that reaches up from the depths - the arm that beckons, the hand that breaks the surface.
She is a halo of glitter, a garden of rain and stars, pools of black water filled with stars and leaves, a flower, a bouquet of dragonfly wings shimmering.
She is wind chimes, hollow eyes, the space between two hands clasped in prayer - between two lover's hands clasped - their fingers entwined.
See her teeth on my neck, my teeth on her breasts, my hands in her hair.
See the black sea of her hair in my hands.
So cold - the roar in my ears. The roar of her breath. Her heart beat in my ears, in my throat, in my belly, between her legs.
Her back arches and the great wings unfold behind her. She is ringed in light.
Violins. Cellos. A drum tight skin beating somewhere.
A knocking at the door. No answer. No answer.
Nothing exists but her eyes, her mouth, her hands, her thighs, and this taste - this taste of blood and ice and tears and wine and stars - which is life - which is everything.
Then there was blackness, and this blackness was the last thing she ever saw.
Down the hall another door - and there the spindle, and on the thorn-tip of the distaff a ruby teardrop glinted - the frozen pearl of blood. Down the hall another stirred in her sleep. One beautiful and pure and cursed to sleep until the kiss of another pure as she would wake her. Not like this one, her mad twin, locked in the tower and forgotten, left to die.
At dawn, in the forest a pile of faerie bones lay in a heap, picked clean by small birds. And in the labyrinth poisonous mushrooms sprung up along the path that led to the secret garden.
New bones rattled in the briars below the high tower, and in the garden the moonflowers were red - for the rain from the tower window had quenched them and they were so very very thirsty.
