Reflected sorrows

Chapter 13

It was there, hidden among the mountains of possibilities; mountains, and yet one had called her to read those letters and scan the words, her eyes focussed and her gaze so intent that the world had blurred around her, and the paper shaken in her hands – and the gaze reading those accursed words had known it wouldn't help, but rain had not come to quench to fires of sorrow; a murder of crows could not be shot down by five feeble guns, or pistols; not 10 000 bows could sink the ship of sorrow she floated upon, wishing she could just sink into the water, fountains full of joy dancing before her weary, lassitude-tormented gaze. She couldn't weep – she could not lie in a peaceful slumber, still blankets over her like content waters and her hand like a ship sinking among unrelenting torrents that drowned even the bravest. But the mansion's calls were muted, like calls from a faraway sea in a land far, far from here. It was distant; but now there was only the somehow charred walls to cling onto, with childlike fists. Only loneliness kept her grasp chained around hope, around the letter; only her fingers, cold metal tendrils over paper that gazed upon her insidiously, steely glare cold as the rapidly burning tealight. It was only there for a mocking, woeful moment before darkness falls. She grasped it in clenched fists as she fled timidly, through the trees once again. Her heart a slow, steady mass of footsteps in a cold hallway, she made her journey over to the door. On the way, she never halted once, as if in a trance, only looking upon every object acrimoniously – there were half-melted candles like the faces of past lovers now engraved on the windowsill, and something in them was resemblant of someone she knew; perhaps the girl with blood trickling down her face, past her eyes like tears. Perhaps the yellow tint of the candle and the stale stench.

She saw every painful detail, could see faces engraved deep inside every one; the trees danced in circles of regret, writhing away from chains – the door was open, an eye unblinking and insidious malice in its silence. Surely the wind was supposed to blow in howling gales? She... What was here that she couldn't see? She could see, in her mind's eye, the door spilling out tendrils and drowning out her screams. What was it that was so vivid about that image? The black tendrils of ink spilled like entrails out of a fallen soldier, bravery feeble and weary as the face became pale and the skin cold, cold as the gaze of a hateful and despising mother; the tendrils smelled of a thousand mothers killed and their gleeful murderers seeing their body glinting in candlelight, the blood gleaming with satisfaction. She saw it choke the screams on the tongues of speaking voices as they tried to battle the oppressive silence against an enemy who was unfazed by their desperation. And the wind, though it tried to howl, and the trees, though they writhed in terror, remained unheard by her ears, their screams nothing but a movement; she shuddered. The tendrils, entrails grasping the throats of joy and deafening her to their laughs, tore down the howls, once so unbearable, and cast their corpses aside to remain as reminders to those who stayed. And the trees, so phlegmatic, were choked, faces contorted into a mass of green smoke reflected in mirrors, black fading in as they cascaded to the ground. The entrails of inky black retreated slowly and were for a few moments seeped like tentacles, their slow movements seething and scouring beneath her skin. She saw the outside in that moment. The lantern of hope intermittent but still there, smiling. She was something more to them; but still nothing but a pawn wracked with malady and grief, nothing more than that.

Her stare found the drawers and for the first time gazed upon them with curiosity- why had she so swiftly cast them from her mind moments before? She could not recall. Her mind felt a hollowness, cold and carved away of all light, in the farthest corners; it was spreading the closer she got the wood, beginning to rot and mould. She welded that to her intentions, forcing the unwilling victim to crawl toward the wood; hesitance would not stop her – she had the address! She had everything! She may not have been eager, but she should at least try to look like she had been. She had the paper in a furled fist, a wilting plant without water. So the first drawer was all she needed, perhaps, to leave it to perish. There lay a jewel among the mottled brown wood of the beads that lay there; perhaps it felt like sacrilege to hold in her hands, but she just had to try and understand... Why. Why it felt horrible to think of what she was doing. It was a scrying glass. A mirror to what she knew was missing. This had belonged to her mother- a gift on the wedding of their two hands so that she may hide her poverty. An attempt to forget their sorrows- she might have worn it on the day she died, perishing with the skeletal figure of hope that had once been – joy that had once burned so bright, but faltered leaving her skin to be covered with a veil of welts, and her widow's curtain of grief to be placed over her face. She couldn't remember how the woman had looked before the wallpaper had been laid and a black mask of shame placed over her eyes even as she slept. An act of remembrance, she told herself, but death lurked in those beads, and every part of her knew it.

Still, as she placed it around her neck, a chill trickled down her spine; a cold hand of death, stale and sorrowful as the hand of the corpse that haunts, was dragged along her spine, carried by unnatural forces, jagged and somewhat familiar – there was something graceful about how it jittered and held still, as if it were staring right into her gaze, greeting it with an eerie stare before walking away and glaring insidiously as it left; something unholy had just pecked at her spine like a murder of crows picking at scraps of a perishing deer, the corpse rotting slowly as they devoured its life force and swallowed with disdain the bloody flesh. She had done something she wasn't supposed to have done, hadn't she? Something uncanny told her in a whispered voice that she was breaking sacred land. It was only a necklace – it was just... Just her imagination; the thoughts were gunshots swallowed by silence; every scrap devoured in small chunks at a time by crows. A head swallowed. A forest covered in bones. She felt that hand still, vengeful as it was understanding, cruel as it was coldly kind. Without a moment to think, fearful of the mage hand resting on her shoulder with intentions malicious and sinister, she fled, the window slamming shut as she closed the door, letting out a silent, muted complaint, like the last breath as a sick child dies, more like a whimper, as it was slowly closed, as fast as the decaying flesh of memories rot. Swiftly and agonisingly. The door was the shutting of eyes, and she gazed into the world, dress whispering in the wind as the tide of air rushed over her face. She heard them talking and felt shame as they spoke – surely it was just cold winds. Just that, she told herself; a whimper of the wind as she passes through endless and unceasing veils of trees. She took the first steps into the forest, somehow feeling unfamiliar with the folds of the leaves as they danced to music dissonant and unrelenting; they did not welcome her. The trees turned their heads in shame and her weeping eyes were left alone in the whistles of long-gone joy.

There the first turning lay; she held still the letter in her hand, and her eyes began to wind toward it, gaze unwilling but still eventually settling upon the letters, cruel and cunning to her paranoid, sleepless eyes.

Please let us meet in the old park, where we used to play so merrily as children – you were joyous, we were so merry and so full of joy that we shared it to all we saw. The swings were given light back then. I hope we can meet there once more. To see what it felt like to find swings mountains; please, if there's hope, meet at midday.

Love, it was signed, your most cherished friend. Cherished, and yet she could not remember a single part, a single letter, a single syllable, a single note of familiarity or warmth within the name. A cherished friend – perhaps like a saint she'd be given a chance. But hope is a flimsy message, filled with obscurities; in comparison hopelessness has less of a fall, she realised. So the park. Perhaps it was fitting, perhaps she was just mad; but it showed that once there were mountains, crevices large, victories unobtainable. But now, with eyes in the fog of malady, it was nothing but a hand of despair crushing those boulders down to a pebble you stepped on or a slide you went down that was simply that- a slide and nothing more. She knew she couldn't see the doors of joy any longer, and that she was too blinded by the darkness. But she fought against the tendrils to where she was. Surrounded by hands, emerald entrails. Surrounded by a sea of viridian that writhed in the wind like a cruel laugh, acrimonious and trenchant. It shook the ocean of its phlegmatic joy. It mocked her sure footfalls across a path she had walked years before from that same house, holding the hand of a giant.

The rain fell and trickled down like molten copper, growing stagnant and suffering in ceaseless anguish until the rain of blood fell, slowly washing away the sins in an ocean of poppies and good messaging and postcards and woe. The leaves did nothing to halt it as it fell, the blood staining the leaves crimson; and yet they did not seem to notice. It was as if they were all one mind, writhing in an ocean of bare branches that starves but walks despite the anguish. That laughs in merriment but inside weeps and weeps and weeps until its tears form stars in the night sky. They all danced to one sorrowful, woebegone tune full of cold and distant melodies. Melodies Celeste had not heard since childhood. But still they writhed, and the blood still poured relentlessly upon their leaves, and the notes of fury began, shattering the peace that the deep viridian hues had lived in for so long. A silence fell over the forest. One heartbeat. Two. Three. Another making four. Another making five. Another making six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. And silence. The blood poured still but, though stolid and seemingly imperturbable, the bark quivered with rage, and the first tendril reached out and shook the crimson liquid from its leaves. One more moment. A couple more heartbeats. Tendrils of spider legs crawling over her shoulders. And an eerie, tranquil peace befell the mass of green and brown mottled spots. They mocked the molten copper and glared at the woodland path, a vein flooding over the forest like a whirlwind torrent of bloody Autumn leaves. And she stood among it all, bewildered. A tormented soul surrounded by yellow walls. Yellow. Yellow. Only yellow walls as her companion.