The Keepers' Evil

Nineteen: How did things go so wrong?

Song- I found: Amber run

"How did things go so wrong?"

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Madeleine looked out over her mother's shoulder as she was tucked underneath the veil of a dark hood, her now brown eyes staring up to the stars outside of the window as she had done at the painted ones in her room. I wondered how significant stars were for this girl, and I wondered if she grew up to see starlight in the eyes of those she loved.

Though hidden underneath the cloaked disillusionment charm, I trod carefully, tracing her mother's steps exactly as she had as if the path had already been paved, as if it were a safer bridge over the crashing waves of Gabriel below us. Madeleine's mother had taken nothing, I presumed she owned nothing and that her daughter was the only thing she needed to take from this house.

The Gaunts, and presumably their eldest son, were sat at Gabriel's long, dark, dining table which was just hidden from the front door, Madeleine's escape. Even though I knew this plan was tied into a fate of disaster, my breath still seemed to hold itself as Celeste tucked Madeleine's locks of brown hair into the hood, and agonisingly slowly tiptoed towards the double doors that felt inviting to anyone that wasn't a member of this family.

Celeste winced with every slight clink her soft heel made on the wooden floor, the echoes of such a noise travelling down to her husband just a few feet ahead. But Gabriel was too involved in which red wine he felt the Gaunts deserved to taste, another way to show his superiority, to realise that his wife's fingers had just unlatched the large golden hoop that locked the door, and that the cold air that brushed their cheeks had just clattered the door ajar.

Madeleine smiled, and her tiny fingers pointed to the stars she had only ever seen from her window, her eyes lit with the ropes of midnight clouds, and I felt a warm tug to my cheeks with my own beam as I could see that in her eyes, her mother had given her a beautiful opportunity to see that the stars had strung together into a smile just for her.

Madeleine's childhood home was encompassed in a somewhat enchanting forest, the deep green pillows of leaves on the floor seemed to cushion their movement, the cold breeze didn't seem all that cold when it was unshackling the handcuffs of expectation, and the dangerous depths of the darkest woods seemed like a good place to hide a little girl when you were all that desperate.

The arduous breath in Celeste's chest expressed clouds of despondency, ones that didn't match the dusky purple ones Madeleine's eyes ogled at as she watched the clouds set the scene for the moon and stars to act a play in her mind. The sleepy smile that held back her sleep was one that she had never grown out of, but those eyes glazed in hope were things I had never seen in the face of the Maddie I knew.

Celeste forced her feet through the wooded forest as though she was physically restrained in the arms of the night. Her head darted to every small sound of nature that lay dormant in leaves around them, her hands brushing every slight branch that tickled them in fear of it being the crepuscule's fingers to snatch them back home, her lips hushing every yawn her daughter whispered just in case the only witness of the moon heard and told her husband.

Celeste walked, she ran, she cried, until she could no longer muster up enough energy to do any of those. She had walked for hours, and her feet were bleeding in sore blisters that scratched the insides of her shoes, but she had just carried on. London had never slept, but that night it seemed to feel particularly busy, as Celeste stood with her daughter who had long fallen asleep, atop the last hill that marked the very end of the countryside before the landscape became the city.