Rosalind: Book One

5- The Rose

Rosalind sat perched on the sill of the large window in her bedchambers. Patterns of frost formed on the glass making it look sugary. When Rosalind placed her hand upon the window a deep cold welcomed her. For her whole life, all Rosalind Hershel had ever known was frost, ice and snow. An eternal white. Though the snow was only harsh and bitter in the dead of winter, even in the gentler temperatures of summer and spring there was always a fine blanket of white upon the ground.

Little flowers with their pudding faces attempted to push through the sheet of white come May. The buds stood resilient against the cold that nipped all their leaves away and frost-bit the brown stems. These little yellow and beige flowers lasted a week, sometimes two. Soon enough, Rosalind saw them wilting, bowing their heads towards the ground before giving in to the frost.

Rosalind sometimes picked these little flowers before the snow got to them. She took them home and kept them in a porcelain cup which was decorated prettily with red robins and blue daisies. Neither Rosalind nor anyone else in Transylvania had ever seen a real flower that was anything but yellow, beige or had a golden tone to its petals. All the colourful flowers Rosalind had ever seen were either in picture books or painted on household items such as her cup.

A storybook on one of the shelves of her bookcase held page after page of glorious flowers. Some of the flowers were quite simple, some quite complex looking. Bright colours shot forth from the pieces of paper. Reds and blues and oranges and pinks decorated small delicate petals and long, pointy ones resembling bird beaks. Rosalind had even been named after the first flower found in the book, a rose because her mother had said that there was nothing so fair in the world as a beautiful rose.

Rosalind barely remembered her mother yet she remembered the way the woman had smiled. It was one of the few things the young girl had of Heather Hershel who died from scarlet fever when Rosalind was just four years old.

Glued onto the page where the red rose bloomed, Rosalind stuck a photograph of her mother. The woman's face was alive with joy as she held onto her baby girl. Though the picture was black and white and fading, Rosalind remembered the colour of her mother's eyes for they had been the same shade as hers. Green. Green as emeralds.

Rosalind's hand left an imprint on the window and she noted it as she pulled her hand away. She saw the way the warmth of her skin left a visible mark on the glass. Though however warm her skin was, the wintery chill crawled over to the warm spot until it took it over and Rosalind's hand-print was no more.

Night stood silent. It stood macabre with its eerie blue-black sky fringed with streaks of red. Stars shined rarely, and tonight not a single one graced the heavens. The girl wondered if sleep would find her but the dream lingered too thick and vibrant in her brain. When Rosalind looked at the snow outside she envisioned the pale slender hand reaching for her. She wondered if it were man or beast for where skin should have been reptilian scales lay. When the hand had moved closer, Rosalind saw that it was silvery and pale; it shimmered with an iridescent glow when it caught the light of the lone candle. The hand was grotesque yet beautiful like a hybrid of butterfly and snake.

Rosalind blinked the stinging ache of sleep out of her eyes. In the icicles forming on the tree branches, she saw the creatures long nails, sharp and nearly transparent. A gust of wind tore through the trees, breaking brittle leaves off only to toss them onto Rosalind's bedroom window like confetti.

Rosalind leaned her head against the glass. She felt the cool sensation on her temples and cheek. Rosalind closed her eyes and felt herself slip into something akin a dream.

In her dream, Rosalind saw the fury of a black horse tearing into the twilight of some snow-less season. The horse's hooves trampled brightly coloured flowers and striking green grass. The animal rode on towards a thick forest full of wide-branched trees that umbrellaed the world below them. Upon the black stallion sat a figure in black clothing. His hands held onto the horse's reins expertly, his body arched towards the mane of the horse. In the feral wind, the rider's hair flew in sliver-blond streaks. The look on the rider's face appeared as wild as the wind urging him on. Rosalind shivered when the saw the intensity in the rider's icy blue eyes as he kept his gaze locked forward, following some little beast that began to make the most horrific of sounds.

Rosalind heard the sound of more horses galloping in the background but could neither see their faces nor their riders, but the girl heard voices calling to the man in front of the group. Sounds moved towards the first rider and his black steed before traveling to Rosalind's in an inaudible mumble. She was only able to catch fragments of sentences. The words she heard did little to settle her now-quickly beating heart.

'Kill it!'

The sound of the shrieking creature pierced Rosalind's brain. The animal was cornered among a small grove of thorn filled rose bushes with no chance of escape. When the rider of the black horse stopped his stallion, Rosalind saw him raise a bow and aim it at a wounded, bloody wolf who looked as though it teetered on the line between childhood and adulthood, a wolf clearly too young to slaughter.

'Kill it!'

The wolf's tail dripped blood, as did a hole where its left eye used to be. The small animal had given them a hard time for it was faster than most wolves the hunters had ever chased.

'Again!'

When the hunter shot his arrow through the wolf's beautiful gray and white marbled body, the creature fell to the ground with an almighty scream. Blood poured from the wolf's fatal wound turning the ground into a pool of vermilion. All around the fallen wolf, roses as red as its blood began to bloom. It was at that moment the man knelt before the fallen wolf and plucked a single rose out of the ground. When the hunter got up his dark cloak fluttered around him like a thousand bats. The man brought the flower up to his nose and savored its scent. Without warning, the hunter extended the rose to the girl as if an offering. The man then turned his head and looked right at Rosalind with those cruel blue eyes.

Rosalind jerked out of her slumber feeling a horrible ache in her heart, like a pain she had never known before but she was unsure if this dull throbbing ache was for the wolf...

...or for the man.