Black and White

Chapter 1

           The silence of the forest was broken by the fractured sobs of the terrified girl as she ran blindly across the hard frozen ground. The ancient trees stood reluctant sentinels to her flight. A tall girl in her late teens, she could have been girl next door pretty if not for the blood that streaked across her horrified face. Tears cut paths down her pale cheeks, from large brown eyes that scanned the area around her.

            Desperately she searched for some kind of hiding place, as her tangled and knotted brown hair whipped from side to side and stuck to her sticky damp skin. Her torn and bloody clothing told something of what she was running from. 

           She couldn't stop her gasping cries of panic. He was right behind her. She had to get away. Her lungs screamed, and her legs were on fire. She couldn't breath, but she couldn't pause, couldn't stop. He would get her, and she would die. She couldn't let him get her. So she ran, tripping and stumbling all the way. Never giving up.

            Suddenly she gave an involuntary cry as she fell and landed hard against cold unyielding stone. Frantically she scrambled to her hands and knees, crawling up. Behind her she could hear his cold amused chuckle. He was there, he had found her, oh god, she had to get away.

             Sobbing she climbed, hands slipping in her own blood, but she couldn't stop, she wouldn't stop. Blinded by her terror and tears she didn't realize she had made it to the top, she just kept going. Suddenly the world went white, and everything went away.

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                 Far away, in the city of Gwrtheyrn the shining epicenter of the court of the Seelie Sidhe, a tower rose from the white city, a bright sword that pierced the very heavens. And in that tower a woman sat. Blind eyes that once shown like starlight now stared at nothing. She was a vision of beauty that would have rivaled the very city she rested in. Hair the color of virgin snow, glittered in the silvered moonlight that filtered onto her through the open windows. Her translucent skin was shadowed and highlighted by the surrounding night. She was beautiful in the darkness.

                   And in that darkness there was a sudden pulse that burst across her blind vision and caused her heart to falter. A silvery tear slid down one perfect cheek gone marble hard with time and age. With that, her eyes that had brightened briefly, dulled and glazed over. The room began to dim, as the light of her presence faded away. Though the woman sat there still, she was gone.

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                 Kate woke to bird song. The sun was warm on her skin, and the breeze gently tickled her cheek with her hair. Her mind was fuzzy. She opened her eyes and gazed up at an amazingly beautiful blue sky marred only by the purity of white clouds, the living emerald of leaves, and the rich browns of branches. She frowned at the scene she saw. She didn't think she had seen a sky so bright and clear. She tensed as more troubling thoughts began to trickle into her mind. Why was she waking up outside? Where was she? She couldn't think. Her mind was a massive blank where random questions and disjointed thoughts seemed to flutter like the birds in the trees above her.

                 Slowly she sat up and looked around. She lay at the foot of a giant black stair case. She frowned at it. It was a beautiful piece of work, broad at the base and gracefully curved. Each step seemed to flow into the other leading strangely nowhere. Elegant rails grew at its sides that were almost supple in their smooth curves and twists. It looked so out of place in the tiny clearing where Kate found herself, yet it felt right. It was like the clearing would be incomplete if the stair case was not there. Kate stood, grabbing one of the rails to assist her, but the instant she touched it her vision became slightly blurred and out of focus. She swayed dizzily and nearly fell over. Alarmed she let go, dropping weakly to the ground. Almost immediately she felt better. She looked back at the staircase and shook her head, suddenly unable focus on it. Just the sight of it now began to make her sick. Quickly she turned away. Focusing on the bright blue flowers that sprung up from the ground near her hand, she breathed in and out until her head stopped spinning. She couldn't figure out what was going on.