bluebird {h.s. - au}

.01

I live as a phantom. A ghost. I live in a world where right seems hardly anything different from wrong. Where good common morals are blackened into evil and evil is gilded into gold so that the truth is hardly recognizable.

 My world is caked with dust.

There is no truth.

We have no friends.

The world where I live in is a mirror, reflecting only of itself. No one has ever broken the mirror. They are too distracted at what is inside.

My world isn’t true or real. It is simple a fairytale, like Rapunzel or Cinderella. And I’m the china doll, sitting on a shelf. Waiting to be used for a while and then cast back into nothingness. I am here only for a while to do nothing. And then I am gone Forever. Forgotten.

I live in a world where right is wrong. Where doing the right thing means sacrificing everything else. If you do the right thing in my world, you are silenced forever. And you never regain your rights.

In my world, the Pale Faces beat and destroy the Darkies, trampling over them like yesterday's rug. This has gone on for years and years. Today, it seems easy to pass the blame, to look upon the Pale Faces with scorn. "How could they do such things?!" the modern day sixth grader may ask. But, in my world, that is right. That is the truth.

That is reality.

In my world, wrong is right. It’s ugly and dirty. Everyone tramps over everyone else. We are only pieces of paper, blowing bitterly in the wind. The wind whispers threats to us, whispers lies to us, and carries us past the beautiful sunlight of truth and love and light. We are only fragments of our own imaginations, here for a small amount of time, and then gone.

This is my story.

This is my world.

This is who I’ve become.

December 7th, 1865

Call me crazy if you wish, perhaps even demented. Rushed. Worried. But, in my life, I have seen more stars than suns, more fields than horizons and perhaps even more people than place. I have lived my entire life, stuck in northern Virginia on my father's plantation, Roselands. Life wasn't even an ultimatum for me, it was simply a choice- to live or to die. I had had the option, all my life, of just simply surviving. Surviving the endless parties, endless parades of fake passion over glasses of champagne and the latest gossip, hot from Paris. Surviving the brutal glances from strangers, hungrily eyeing over my body.

Surviving life itself.

Which, I have come to realize, is no manner of living. Who wants to spend one's whole life just simply surviving? There's so much more to life than that- there is blue skies, and sunrises, and birds that sing songs made just for you. Life is not meant to be survived. Life is meant to be enjoyed, meant to be savoured, meant to be experienced.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Most usually, stories start at the beginning of one's life; the start of something beautiful. But the beginning of mine- Elizabeth Marshall's- story, does not start there. Oh, of course, I was born in 1843, I grew up (mostly) on a southern plantation called Roselands. But my story- the story where I truly found myself, the story where everything fell apart and then flew back together again- begins where most stories end.

Because my story started when my father, Henry J. Marshall, died.

--

"Elizabeth!" someone called up the stairway, awakening me from my deep and dreamless sleep. "Ella!"

I muttered something to myself and rose in my bed, looking out the window to the bright, moonless sky. It was still dark; the cotton fields still slumbering from it's usual toiling labour. The slaves did not buzz about outside, there was no clattering of footsteps or hushed words spoken in the hall.

What on earth...?

Swinging my legs out of bed (which did require some work, considering my nightgown often decided to strangle my legs in the night), I pattered down the hall, letting my feet jerk a bit as the cold floor awakened my toes. Even my heart seemed to quicken as I scurried down the hall.

"Ella!" The person shrieked again, and I hurried, listening to the urgency in whomever's tone. "Coming!" I screeched, almost tripping over Fluffy, my cat, as I stumbled down the marble stairs. In the daylight, the house seemed so much more warm and beautiful.

At night, it was actually a bit frightening.

My feet came to a dead stop in the middle of the parlour, as Betsy, the house marm, swung her huge, black body around to me. "Ella, thank dear Jesus," she whispered, out of breath. She grabbed my arm, and I did not try to fight her. Betsy was strong and huge and terrifying. I was small and weak and humble. "It's your father," she explained, marching down back passageways and doors. "It's his time."

The words I had dreaded to hear came too quickly to count the ways it affected me. I slipped silently behind Betsy as she came to my parents door. Hushed voice were spoken inside; I could hear my mother, and our doctor. They sounded worried. "She's coming," Mother said worriedly, and I pushed through the door, as Betsy stayed outside, where she belonged.

"I'm here," I announced, and Mother and Dr. Phillips looked at me with sad eyes. Mother's nose was red, her face pale in the candlelight. She had no makeup on, and her nightgown was just as wrinkled as mine. "Good," she whispered, clutching my hand as I neared.

I risked a glance at my father, who lay silently on the bed. Sweat was beaded on his forehead, no colour in his cheeks. He had been sick for most of my life growing up. Mother and I had had to fend for ourselves. I had expected this, I told myself. I had known this day would come.

But why now?

Just a few weeks ago, just before Christmas, South Carolina had seceded from the Union, followed by many of our southern neighbouring states. Each and every one of our neighbours around Roselands had a different opinion. The Smiths were with the South. "I think Virginia should secede, as well," he had puffed out with his pathetic little cigar. "It's high time we ended the so-called war against slavery." Meanwhile, his sister and half brother, the Kellers, thought the North was right. Meek little Jenny Keller had sipped tea and discussed the matter with Mother and I, "If you ask me," she quailed, "The North is right in accusing the South of this." That was the first time I had ever heard her speak more than five words in the same sentence. "It's time slavery was abolished, once and for all."

Mother seemed to be thinking the same thing, as she held my hand tightly in the moonlight. "It's up to us now," I heard her say.

Yes. It was up to us.