The Forsaken

Chapter Fifteen - The Forsaken

The white glimmering palace looms high above her, surrounded by the wild forest city. The quaint little houses and shops along the streets and the main square of the city are all hauntingly vacant, like an old western ghost town.

 Someone has to live here, Gwen thinks absently. She can’t remember how she got here, but all at once she finds herself standing before a strange castle in a mysterious kingdom. And  someone is waiting for her somewhere within.

Taking a deep breath, Gwen tentatively ascends the stairs up to the entry. Apprehensively, she raises her fist to knock on the gold-gilded door. Before she can make contact with it, the doors suddenly swing open, inward. Pausing just a moment, Gwen slips inside. into a bright entry hall, the walls around her pearlescent white, white and grey marble beneath her feet, and a beautiful crystal chandelier hanging from a vaulted ceiling above her. In front of her, a massive curved stairway wound with gold scroll railings and carpeted in red velvet.

Having no other option, Gwen decides to take the stairs and see where they lead. A strange sensation comes over her as she takes each step upward, coming that much closer to the mysterious personage who awaits her. She can feel this presence beckoning her onward, leading her as if she were following the sound of a voice or a particular scent.

At the top of the stairs, she comes to a landing where the steps split in two directions, one leading to her left, the other to her right. Before her on a golden pedestal is a sculpture of a man’s head, beautifully chiseled out of white marble. Gwen walks up to it so she can examine the sculpture more closely. It is the face of a young man in his teens, delicately-boned and handsome, his lips and eyes large and round like a child’s, his nose long and straight, his jaw line sharp with a pointed cleft chin. Something in the stranger’s visage hits a familiar chord somewhere within her.

“How do I know this face?” she asks aloud, her voice echoing endlessly off the elegant walls and floors, bouncing deeper into the castle and the winding stairways beyond. Suddenly, she feels vulnerable standing out in the open like this. Tearing herself away from the oddly familiar sculpture, Gwen hurries off to her right, taking the velvet-covered steps upward to the next story.

She comes to another landing, the stairs winding off to the right again and a long hallway with many arched doorways leading off to the left. While she stands there in deep contemplation, her eye is caught by the large tapestries hanging from the wall above her.

A royal family crest with an emblem made up of a Hawk encircled by a ring of thorns is brightly woven into the fabric. Beneath it in golden shimmering thread is a single word: Hawthorne. After a moment, she feels the need to move and continues onward. Following her gut, she takes the stairs again.

This time, when the stairs come to the next floor, she notices a painting displayed before he. It takes up the whole wall, maybe ten feet high and four feet wide. Portrayed within it are two women, both of them strikingly beautiful. They are obviously sisters: they each have the same high cheekbones, the same strong features, and almond-shaped eyes, high inquisitive arched eyebrows, full pouty lips, and proud noble chins. Their demeanor, however, is so marked, so opposite that their personalities seem to radiate outward through the paint and canvas, almost as if they will suddenly come alive and step out of the painting to introduce themselves.

The older, taller sister looks thirty-something, with long platinum-white hair piled on top of her head in a massive heap of curls and ringlets that cascade in strands about her shoulders and long feminine neck. Her eyes are violet with a hint of gold around the pupil, her gaze fierce and commanding, and her mouth tight in a grim yet contrived smile. Adorned in cascades of fine jewelry, in diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, and rubies, she looks as regal as a queen. Dressed in a long flowing Grecian-style gown of scarlet, her slender lanky figure sits erect upon an ornate gold and ivory armchair.