Beyond the Fairy Gate

Chapter 15

Nyline

Nyline felt the pressure slowly leave her mind as the silence around her started to press in. Sitting up she looked around the room, had she passed out? She wasn't sure. It took a couple seconds for her head to clear before she was able to stand. The world seemed to wobble and tilt slightly, but it was only for a moment then everything leveled out. Then, as all the memories came rushing back, she felt her breath hitch as she glanced around the room again. The only sound that she could hear was the beating of her own heart. Letting out a breath in a rush she took another in through her nose, all her energy focusing on listening. The silence was making all the hairs on her body stand on end. It felt wrong in every way.

"Well this is a new one, I don't think it's ever been this quiet in my entire life." Her voice bounced off the walls and back to her making her ears prick. Glancing down at the patch-work teddy in her hands she slowly placed it back into the crib.

To distract herself she looked around the room for something, anything. It came in the form of an anti-chamber off to the side that she knew that her wet nurse would have slept in. Walking over she opened the door and found a small room that had a single dresser and a small bed. Then there was only one small window in the room, but it warmed the area. Her hands moved to the cloak that had been hung on the bed's frame. She only took one glance down at her hands to know that she was indeed cold; her skin was shaded a slight purple color. Throwing the cloak around her shoulders she felt the warmth almost instantly.

Walking back into the nursery Nyline glanced around and felt deep down in her stomach that there was something wrong, but she couldn't place it. Then, as her eyes scanned the room once more, she realized that the nursery was completely untouched. There wasn't a single thing that had been knocked off any shelf or any furniture broken or dislodged. How had the entire castle been ravaged but the nursery was completely untouched? Her hand landed on the side of the crib as her thoughts turned from the room to the double French doors that stood directly in front of the crib. Walking forward she looked through them and out onto the land scape beyond the small balcony. It was a large garden, or what was once a one, now it was just another place for the snow to pile up on the sides of the walls.

She didn't understand why there was so much snow here or why it was so cold. In truth, she knew next to nothing about her parent's kingdom. She had never planned on coming back here so she had never bothered Uncle John about it.

Turning, Nyline refocused her attention onto the room her eyes once again falling on the crib. It only took her a second before she had crossed to it and picked up the patch-work teddy as she held onto it as if it was a lifeline.

"Alright Teddy let's go exploring." Her words were spoken aloud as she crossed to the door that lead out of the nursery. Making a split-second decision she turned and walked down one wing of the large castle at random. At the end of that passage she had found that there was a large pane of glass that spanned the entire wall from floor to ceiling. The different colored pieces of glass had been organized to depict a woman with large white feathery wings coming from her back. Her featureless face was turned up towards the sky, her arms raised to shoulder height as if she was speaking to something beyond the glass. Behind her was a sky that was made out of different shades of blue with a large sun of orange and yellow.

Nyline felt captivated by the beauty of what she was seeing; however not even the amazing artistry in front of her could distract her from the silence that was pressing into her mind. Her thoughts shot around her head in a whirl wind that was making her feel hollow and empty inside.

After listening to the silence for what felt like minutes she spun on her heel and started to walk back down the glass hallway she had traversed originally. She passed a glass door on one side and realized that the castle must have been built into the mountain with doors on the second floor leading out to gardens. Then out front the gardens were level with the first floor. Right now, she was looking out at a garden that was level with the second floor and stretched to the retaining wall which was up against the forest.