Forbidden
Darkness
The darkness was suffocating, blacker than pitch. Here there was
no sky for the stars to dance in, nor moon for the stars to dance with. A black world, a cold world, with no morning to right this violation.
Only one minuscule light could be seen, moving fast in the interminable, dank murk. The flame of a lantern jumped and danced about in the pitch oblivion, so frantic that the flickerings suggested the image of a rabbit struggling as it hung from the vice-like jaws of a wolf; the girl who held the light, even more frantic. She stumbled and tripped as she ran through unlit streets she had trekked many times, choking on the black air and her own fears, fleeing from nightmares she could never fully escape, not while she resided here.
Slowing ever so apprehensively, at last, she reached her destination and dropped to her knees. The same horrible dark surrounded her, but she knew she had arrived because she felt safe.
Almost …
She sat with her legs under her, pressed against cold stone, and her head in her trembling hands. She questioned her own sanity. For how could she dream up such horrible things, if not damaged somewhere deep in her subconscious? But this wasn’t her first night flight, and she was stronger than to simply let the monsters in her head break her.
The girl forced herself to stand, taking up her lone lantern and using a spill to reveal the location of another light hanging by a metal chain that climbed up and into the dark above. She held the burning stick close to her face and ignited into existence a second lifeline, gazing quietly at the dance of the flame as if the light itself could brighten her ghastly thoughts and dreams. She worked in silence, lanterns burning to life as she shared the flame. Like magic, the area was soon filled with radiant, warm light. Stone walls crawled out of the shadows and a narrow stream running through the vault-like room awakened from what could have been an eternal slumber.
A quaint, little room when lit up, the hideaway appeared seemingly more lived in then the girl’s own bedroom. The right wall housed a small and cracked metal-backed mirror, and a long shelf supporting the girl’s private collection of forbidden gems. The treasures shimmered in the candescent light, aiding the already shadow chasing light in its efforts to recover some form of sanity for the quiet girl making her rounds about the room. The gems were forbidden, just like every other pure thing, now made into rare oddities most didn’t even know existed. But they all found a home here. The girl made sure of that, gathering them to herself like a magnet for the wonderfully bizarre. Yet, such an abundance of forbidden things could stay here solely because of the hideaway’s secrecy, making it one of the only places left where beautiful things could remain safe. The girl’s mother had called them gifts from the Creator, but she was gone … and where was the Creator then?
Under the shelf supporting the gems, resided an exquisitely engraved dark-wood chest, covered in markings of vines twisted in endless knots. The girl weaved her way through the hanging lanterns pushing them aside here and there and knelt down to the lock on the chest.
For one stagnant moment, she only stared, barely breathing, barely moving, save for her hand as she traced the markings with her finger. Tears brimmed in her eyes, but never wetted her cheeks. Lifting a delicate necklace up and over her head, she pressed the charm into the lock, a butterfly-shaped charm, wrought of both silver and black iron twisted together, its wings a tangle of the same strange knots decorating the chest. She heaved up on the creaky lid, setting free the musty smell of age and sour parchment. The chest was filled to the brim with old books which were, as the necklace, gifts from her mother. Holding the lid up with one hand, she gazed into the dark area inside the chest as tears made her vision misty. A familiar ache, never fully gone, surged with a fresh wave missing, like an irritating stick poking at an ulcerated wound that refused to heal. She had always been there to comfort her when the nightmares came, but now all she had left were these old, dusty tomes. Digging in the chest, she forced herself to get her mind off memories that stung and pained her and lugged out one of the heavy books. She moved to the other wall where a few blankets and a pillow she had smuggled long ago lay in a disheveled heap.
Though she was told that there was nothing outside of her dark, cold confinement, she believed what she read within the tattered pages of her mother’s precious parting gifts. She snuggled down into her makeshift bed and cracked open the cover. This particular volume was one of her very favorites, its entirety dedicated to the fantastic creatures she had learned were called fish. All the books were bursting with information and wonders of a world wholly unknown to her, her lack of knowledge only fanning the fires of her fierce affinity.
The small stream that snaked across the length of her little room trickled out from a crack in the wall under the gemstone shelf and ended in a shallow pool at the other end of the room. There lived the girl’s only friends, her very own fish, four of them, each one sightless and terribly unattractive. She read to them often and they listened better than most people. In her loneliness, she had even given them names, calling them each after some of her favorite precious stones: Amethyst, Tourmaline, Citrine, and Emerald. She adored her little handicapped friends, unsightly visages and all.
Sitting in contemplative silence, she settled into something close enough to peace. Then as the girl read out loud to her blind friends, the book came alive and (with a little help from her imagination) so did the great arapaima. So very fascinated with this majestic creature, she longed to one day see it in all its enormity, to admire the ruby scales that fleck its pitch body. One might tell her, if they could, be careful what you wish for.
The fear traveled to the back of her mind and ebbed to a numbness that she could bare, her lids drooping with the adrenaline crash and sudden lack of terror. She thought she’d give herself only a moment to close her eyes and, before she knew it she drifted off, head lulling to her side.
The ear-splitting banging of the town bell hammered out the call of midnight and she bolted upright with a gasp as if from the dead. Heart and mind racing, she couldn’t believe she let herself fall asleep here again.
In an urgent rush, she doused the lanterns and took off back home. The girl charged her way through the lonely dark, never lost, but also never knowing just where exactly she was, relying solely on a kind of certainty proven by a gut feeling rather than sight. She caught her breath when she, at last, arrived at her door and quietly slipped inside, careful not to wake her father. Her small feet noiselessly padded on the cold stone floor as she snuck past his door and returned to her room.
As she lay awake in her bed, exhaustion once again overcame her fears only to send her adrift into another sea of dreams.
Black surrounded her. Cobblestone tunnels stretched on before her, tunnels that carried both a familiar comfort and dread, yet she still didn’t know where they led. She had been here before, she just had no clue when or why. She held a light in her hand and at times she could see herself as a cloaked and shadowy figure, even the lantern couldn’t illuminate. Other times she saw only forward, knowing neither if she was girl or specter. She moved through the tunnels, an uncertain fear growing in the back of her mind. Sometimes she walked, other times she simply appeared at a closed door, and just before she could check if it was locked, in the blink of an eye, she appeared at a fork in the tunnel she hadn’t seen before, all without even moving a toe.
Then things halted, and the jumping about ceased, almost as if the crossroad before her demanded she make a choice. Nothing moved. She stared at the black wall in front of her like she had gone blind. With some effort, as if her neck sat on rusty hinges, she turned her head to the right. Firelight lit up a narrow tunnel with a cheery glow that promised safety and rest. The flames had no vessel, no point of reference; they just were, burning brightly on the wall with an eternal presence. Then they did something incredible, lifting up off the walls and rushing towards her in a powerful flurry, like an autumn breeze. They danced and spun playful circles about her. The flames licked her arms, but they didn’t burn, giving kisses of warmth that healed rather than scorched. Closing her eyes, a laugh escaped her throat, and when she opened them again, the flames were back on the wall, flickering quietly as if they had never left. She knew they beckoned her to follow their pathway to something, but what?
The girl turned to see what things the opposite way would hold. Before her yawned a cavernous corridor, blinking with blue lights.
Blue fire.
The corridor tingled with the whispers of mystery and new extraordinaries. The girl stepped a foot towards the miraculous wonder without a second thought, all but forgetting about the passage now to her back.
Towering stone pillars, topped in huge bonfires of blue, rose some twenty feet high, and smaller ones at chest level guided the way down the hall. She followed them into the distance, but soon realized she didn’t feel any heat from the flames even when she walked close. Instead, she almost shivered from the cold. She wondered if they wouldn’t burn like the last flames and reached out a hand to the nearest blue torch. The tongue nicked her finger and she recoiled with a yelp. It didn’t burn; it froze with an icy bite. Her hand shook with pain and where the flame had touched, the skin had gone black. And that black grew, creeping up her finger and spreading across her hand with no signs of stopping.
Without warning or reason, her lantern, the last warm glow untainted with blue, snuffed. Her heart pounded with fear. Then, when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, six grotesque, dark figures materialized out of thin air and began advancing towards her. Smoky black as if composed of pure shadow, their eyes burned blue in their lifeless sockets like the hottest flames in a sooty furnace. They bared their hideous teeth. She didn’t need any more persuasion to run. But her legs felt heavy and weak. She couldn’t gain the momentum required to flee. A clawed hand grabbed her from behind. She tried to scream, and only a choked garble escaped.
The girl squeezed her eyes shut.
Red
A threatening and (in so few words) very unhappy voice resounded
off the cold walls of their tunneling home and ripped Kiara from her sleep, the shouts of a tyrant. Her father’s rage-fueled shouts throbbed in her ears and though he had pulled her out of the nightmare, she wouldn’t say she was grateful. In fact, the ice that filled her veins and froze her in place just then made any remembrance of her dream feel like a fairytale. To make it worse, the adrenaline still coursing through her veins coalesced with the reality of his temper in this hazy area of sleep and waking and made her feel like she had yet to awake from any horrors. Tears welled in her eyes.
“Kiara!” he boomed from down the hall. “What is wrong with you? You’re going to be late for class! Again!”
He didn’t yell all that often, but that didn’t mean he was very kind too often either. It just meant that now he was especially angry. He never hit her, and yet his thundering voice and the ferocity of his anger and disappointment, were enough to make her fear him as though he did. She stiffened with such powerful fear, it controlled her every muscle, her every thought. Constantly, she lived with an awful dread of the next time she would do something to upset him so terribly and the time had already come again. She shuddered with a violent and uncontrollable shake.
“Answer me, girl!”
Kiara wanted to, she really did, anything to pacify his rage, but her lips could only manage to quiver, the heavy falls of his feet growing louder with each stomp. Oh, how she wished she could throw her sheets over her head and disappear forever!
Kiara thought her heart would beat right out of her chest and escape, knowing its keeper wasn’t about to move or hide herself, when her father burst into the room, face a raging red. Finding her just sitting there, his eyes flared with a new wave of anger.
“What is the meaning of this?” he interrogated. “Kiara, you’re a princess!” He shut his mouth after that, his silence demanding an answer, his severe features sharpening further with a glare in his dark blue eyes and a scowl on his thin lips. His eyes were so dark that from afar one might question if they were black, though close, you could see they were blue, like sodalite, and could be unquestionably piercing, but for Kiara, they were only something to fear. And he always had a scowling mouth, but at the moment, it was deliberate.
“I-I couldn’t sleep all night …” Kiara stammered under his gaze.
Yes, she was the princess of this accursed city, unavoidably making her father the dreadful king. Of course, Benevolent King Nnyric was ever the collected, humble ruler to the people. Sometimes Kiara thought his greatest wish was to make her life, and hers alone a miserable darkness, forever uncertain of his love.
“I suppose you’ll blame that on your nightmares then?” Nnyric scoffed, his voice quieting to a more natural volume for him, but retaining every ounce of serrated harshness. “That may have worked on your mother when you were young, but I won’t be so manipulated. You’re much too old for that pretext. I mean, really? Do you expect to tell your teacher and the whole class that you were late because of nightmares? I think not. My daughter, the princess of Caverna, will grow up and tell her class that she overslept, that she’s a lazy, woolgathering girl who thinks she’s much too good for school.”
“But–”
“No! Now get dressed and fix your hair! You look ridiculous. You have no idea how much of a grievance and an embarrassment it is to me.” With that he left and slammed her door. While he stormed down the hall, Kiara thought she heard him say some one word derision like, unacceptable! But it also wouldn’t have been that hard to imagine.
Kiara fell back on her pillow, her wild, fiery curls sprawling freely like the rays of a clear dawn’s sun. One hot tear escaped her eye quicker than she could acknowledge the extent of her heartache, and she swiped it away with a fist. She grabbed a spiral curl from her flaming crown and pulled it straight. She twisted it in her fingers, crossing her eyes as she glared at it. She pulled on the curl until her skin pleaded for her to relent, wishing she could just rip it all out by handfuls.
So what if he hated her hair? It wasn’t as if she didn’t also despise it’s hideousness. But why did he treat her as if it was somehow her fault? Like she could do something to fix it?
He couldn’t just be quiet about it, as if it actually pained him to have such an ugly daughter. It was the same with her grandfather Gareth’s hair, her mother had told her before. Nnyric never could stop moaning and complaining about the color, an atrocious red just like hers. Gareth was her mother’s father, just another person she missed. With everyone else and their beautiful, ebony locks and pure, blue eyes, they did stick out very much like a horrible, pus-covered wound on their perfectly soft skin. But that didn’t mean the words and looks didn’t hurt.
Of course, when Kiara knew her grandfather, his hair had already whitened with age, but his eyes had never dimmed. They had always shown as green and bright as her own. She never knew why they were different. Whenever she asked her father, he just got angry and told her there was no reason, that she was just the odd one … the misfit. It was the same with her mother. It had been four years since she died, but he still never wanted to talk about it, though Kiara had never once entertained the idea that his silence was due to grief.
She tried to get past it all, she really did. She needed to, before he returned even more furious. But her face stayed red with anger. Forcing herself out of bed, she placed her feet on the ground, despising the bite of the cold stone. She stomped over to her dressing table and flopped down on the low stool. Kiara fussed with and pulled on her curls until they stood fluffed and a thousand times more wild than before. She grimaced at her unsightly reflection and gave up, slamming her head on the table top with a moan.
She would cut it just so there was less of it, but it wasn’t the fashion, and for a princess of all people it would be an utter disgrace. So she was forced to pull it back or conceal it beneath ridiculous, formal headdresses whenever she had to attend any banquets, ceremonies, or high class events.
She thought to sit up, but her head felt like lead. She could actually feel the heat in her cheeks, in her chest. So much anger … and for who? If she was honest, most of it burned against herself. Why couldn’t she just be better? Why did she seem to do everything wrong?
After a great deal of fuss, Kiara put her curly catastrophe into a disheveled bun in a haste of uncommitted forfeit. As much as she hated her unruly curls and their cringe worthy color, she couldn’t stand being made to pull them back, every strand stuck tight to her scalp like she carried around the plague on top of her head and she had to keep others safe from it.
Kiara dressed herself, having long ago told her maids she didn’t need nor want their help. She threw on one of the many drab dresses she owned, cursing its lack of color as she did every morning and slipped on a pair of confining shoes as fast as possible for the greater good of rescuing her feet from the frigid fate of the stone floors. Lastly, as she returned to her mirror, she attempted to practice her best princess face for the day, but her features twitched with anger and then fell in sorrow.
Contrary to her own opinion, Kiara was always an adorable child and had grown into a kind of beauty, wholly unique to her. But it was those very things, the ones that set her apart and made her so striking, that she resented the most. Kiara had a pert, round face, dotted with freckles on her soft cheeks and button nose, and a curious collection of smiles that could usually portray more emotion than most words, being at times an unabashed beacon of blinding light or diminishing to a reserved and polite turn of the lips. Her smile could be playful and disarming or very sad indeed, to the point that you wouldn’t have believed there could be such a mix of emotions on a young lady’s face. Her big, bright eyes twinkled as verdantly as emeralds and seemed the very embodiment of innocence and at times happiness, but of late they were filled with tears and her fine copper brows, often knit with sadness.
Her eyes shifted in the mirror from her own reflection to that of the tapestry her mother had made years ago, just the two of them holding hands with simple smiles on their still faces. Kiara didn’t turn around. She knew exactly where it hung on the wall and how the thread had frayed where it held onto the nails. But the mirrored image held her gaze, vision growing hazy and obscure. It was moments like these, moments of such stark and aching loneliness, when she cried and no one came to wipe her tears, when she hurt and no one consoled her fears, that pained her most, that she missed her most.
A soft knock on the door did little to tear her away from her dark contemplations. She hardly cared who it was.
She made a poor attempt to swipe the tears off he face. “Come in,” she mumbled.
A young servant named Lucida walked in to see her sitting there, face still red and her hair a mess. “Oh, Miss, you poor thing. It's that father of yours again, isn’t it? I heard him yelling at you. Positively awful it was. He has no right. No right at all.”
Lucida was Kiara’s favorite servant, yet too young to be crusty like some of the others and too kind to gossip and tittle-tattle with her catty peers. A little out of place (much like herself) Lucida was about the only person that could ever cheer Kiara up. She had long, wavy, black hair that was almost always in a low bun and blue eyes like everyone, but though they were the color of ice, they were as warm as the tea rattling softly on the tray she carried in. Her voice was the sure opposite of her father’s, never harsh; always comforting and kind, with a soft lisp that could be heard most in her trailings and mumblings which she so often did.
When she finally turned to look at her, Kiara gave her a sad but brave smile. “I’m alright, Cida.”
“I'm sure you are. Tough as stone you are, Miss. But it doesn’t mean it’s right for him to treat you like that. Let me fix your hair for you. And here, I made this fresh for you.” She placed the tea in front of her.
Kiara just sat there. If it was anyone else she would have already screamed at them to go away and never touch her again (the majority of the royal staff had learned this first hand) but with Lucida she felt safe, and she could let her take care of her, at least every once in a while.
Lucida took her hair out of the bun, letting the long wild curls fall where they may, and then began putting it back up in a much tighter, neater knot.
“Did you have more nightmares last night, Miss?” Lucida asked while she worked, her lisp coming out as she trailed off, as if she didn’t actually want to know.
Kiara fidgeted her thumbs in her lap. “A few … but nothing I can’t handle.” She tried to force a smile into her voice though her face begged the opposite as she lied through her teeth.
Lucida’s hands stopped for a moment. “Right, of course.” And the conversation was over.
Finishing the coiffure with one last pin, Lucida took a step back. “There, now you look like a princess,” she said with a wry grin.
“Thank you, Cida.” She took a sip of the tea and savored the feeling of the warm liquid gliding down her throat. She didn’t want to go. She wanted to sit with a blanket around her, play Backlobash with Cida, and finish her tea.
“I should go. I'm already late.”
“Try to have a good day, Miss.”
Kiara managed to offer her a sad smile, knowing trying to and actually having a good day were two very different things.
Kiara made her way to leave, perfectly fine with not saying a goodbye to her father and allowing her temper to match her fiery hair when, like a fox just meandering through the greenwood, she spotted an opportunity for a bit of fun without even looking for it.
As she walked past the kitchen, the clamor of the cooks and the warm smells wafting to her nose turned her head and stopped her feet. Cida would have made certain that something was already prepared for her, but she was far too late to sit down and eat a meal, and yet … she’d have to put up with a disruptive stomach if she didn’t swipe something away now.
She rerouted for the detour into the narrow hall of rough stone, and that’s when she saw him, standing close to the entrance, most likely trying to get his greedy, sausage fingers on something before breakfast was actually done. Shrike stood with his back to her, yet she could recognize his squat, little stature anywhere. King Nnyric’s personal dullard, Shrike was a terrible excuse of a man. His scribe, message man, and virtual henchman, he did absolutely everything the king asked, obeying his every whim. He had a hooked beak for a nose, sunken-in, beady eyes, and sallow skin, stretching tightly across his plump face that never seemed free of a greasy sheen. His immaturities rivaled that of a child, all the while he slithered through life as slippery as an eel. His soul was as twisted as the most complicated knot, as nasty as the drippiest cavern, and as cold as the stone floor of their world, and yet the reason Kiara despised him the most was the blood boiling fact that her father paid more heed and attention to this imbecile than his own daughter.
Sure enough, as she approached, she could see him hunched over something he had already snatched from the hard working cooks, shoving little bits of a pastry into his smacking jaw.
Kiara sped her pace, racing into the kitchen and skipped a step as if she had tripped, shoving all her weight into him as she stumbled. Taken off guard, his opposite shoulder slammed the wall and his most coveted pastry jumped up and out of his hands, hitting the filthy ground with an unappetizing splat.
“Ooooo!” Shrike whined, his face scrunching in anguish as he gaped at the ruined pastry. Then, raising his face to identify his clumsy assailant, he gave a growl of a sigh, puffing his round cheeks. “You wicked child!”
Kiara stared with shock-widened eyes at the flattened pastry, before her lips curled into a cruelly innocent grin. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Shrike! I didn’t see you there, and I’m so late already.”
Shrike straightened and though he was a short man, he could still look down on Kiara. “Oh, you stand in my line of sight for a moment longer, girl, and I’ll give you a reason to be late for school.”
“Oi! Is that anyway to talk to your princess?” asked a tall lady with a wooden spoon in one fist now planted on her hip. With her other hand she waved a piece of charred toast at him.
Kiara threw the head cook a smile. “Really, Shrike, I don’t think that qualifies as an acceptable way to greet your princess.”
Shrike tried to win with a razor glare of his beady eyes, but resigned with a growl and turned away.
Flitting into the kitchen, Kiara grabbed the burnt toast from the cook’s hand before she could toss it. Turning to leave, she talked around a piece already in her mouth. “Thanks, Loretta!”
The cook just rolled her eyes.
When Kiara passed Shrike, she shook her head to see him, bent over and actually trying to pick the crumbs of the pastry off the grimy kitchen floor.
She wanted so badly to ask him if his brain was broken, but then she spotted something that would be immensely more satisfying. The shelf above him held a pale of filthy, black water meant to be dumped, the same shelf she had found out a week ago was loose and only held things when balanced perfectly. An impish grin curled on her lips as she contemplated her plan. It wouldn’t be the first time Shrike was the victim of her wicked mischief. One time, before even the servants got up for the day, she snuck into his room and placed a board, spiked with hundreds of black nails, at his bedside, her only regret being she hadn’t stayed to watch him sprout wings and fly.
Kiara moved to the other end of the shelf where a stack of heavy pots worked as a counterweight, hoping no one had fixed the shelf since she had seen it knocked down the first time. With a suppressed grunt, she hefted the pots off the shelf. To her delight, the shelf teetered, then it leaned, everything in the middle sliding to the right where Shrike scrambled on the ground below. Kiara hiked up her shoulders, bringing her hands together like a small child awaiting a surprise. She held her breath as the dirty water sloshed out of the bucket, the shelf growing ever more unstable by the seconds. Finally, tilting far just enough, it fell, soaking Shrike and his beloved pastry. The bucket swallowed his head, dazing him for a moment as the metal rattled in his ears. Kiara grinned at how beautifully her plan had worked, but she didn’t laugh, the kind of joy she got from the sight, very cold indeed.
Shrike raised his hands to pull the bucket off and she made ready her escape, but the handle caught under his chin. Snickering quietly now, Kiara listened to his muffled shouts. Instead of just dropping the bucket back down and moving the handle, Shrike only grew more and more furious, yanking and pulling to no avail, legs sprawled out in the sopping mess. All the cooks began to laugh at him now as he had started to make quite the scene with all his bellowing and griping.
Kiara did begin to feel rather bad, with so many eyes and mockery trained on him, but not enough to help him, knowing he would not look past her prank just because she offered him a hand.
At last he grabbed hold of the handle, seething hot breaths echoing off the walls of the bucket. He yanked it forward and off his head, but Kiara had already turned tail and booked it, so he only caught the fluttering sight of the hem of her dress as she zipped around the corner.
“Hrmf!” he growled, slamming a fist into the sour water.
Then he shifted his glare behind him at all the gawking cooks, sludge dripping from his hair and nose.
“What are you all lookin’ at?” he roared, flying out of the puddle.
Clearing their throats and tripping over each other, the cooks resumed their duties.