Topic: A Story... | |
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I'm warning you now...my story is not of any great importance. It's just a silly story of a silly girl, and in many ways it's one which has been written many times before. It's a tale of joy, love and loyalty...and a tale of deciet, betrayal and heartbreak. It tells of life and of death, of a longing and a search. I beg of whom ever reads these words to help me in my quest, for though my story started long ago, my search is long from over....
I am the youngest of seven children. We are five boys and two girls. Since I am the youngest, and a girl, I am often overlooked by my large family. I am most invisible to my father, who at the time when I was born, valued only my brothers, so much so that my being a girl was a great dissapointment to him. Some may have been saddened by the knowledge that they were not wanted, but not I. I was a strange and solitary child, shunned by even my elder sister, Tatiana, who thought only of herself. I reveled on the fact that I was not seen. It gave me a luxury that not many females were afforded in those days. Freedom. I spent my days learning the castle. I'd found many a secret passage, through which I gained a reputation for appearing and dissapearing so easily that many including my governness, had simply given up on keeping track of me. These passages shaped my life. Secret. Dark. Hidden in shadows. It was through one of these passages that I found my light. For the first seven years I was alive, I knew that there was life outside the castle walls, one couldn't not know that my world wasn't the only thing that existed, for hour;y people came and went through the great gate at the forground of the castle wall. I knew outside existed, but it never became a reality to me until that day mid-spring that I found yet another passage. This one I spent hours exploring. I knew it was one of the forgotten, one of the ones that even my great father knew nothing about...for it was dusty and dark. It haddn't been used for generations. This one was strange though...most didn't take me long to explore..they led from point A to point B. But this passage kept going...I started to believe that it was never going to end, but curiousity drove me ever onward...deeper and deeper into the darkness. Then, one day, I came to a door unlike any other I'd ever seen. It was stone. There was no key, or knob, just a simple latch. I undid it and pushed at the door. Nothing. Sometimes it was frusterating being a small girl. I must have spent hours there, pushing at that door. Then suddenly it gave...and opened. I found myself in a cave. It was very dark, but I saw the light coming from not far ahead, so I ventured on. When I reached the light I fell in love. This passage had led me to the sea. When I walked out onto the beach, I quite literally ran into my light. I dont really know who was more suprised, him or me. I found out later that he had thought that I was an angel, for what else could I be? Nothing and no one lived here save his family and though I was dirty and dissheved I was dressed all in white that day. Dear Johnny. I fell in love with him that day too. Him and the sea. Two halves of a whole we were. I guess that you could say that that was the day I was truely born. My life and my story begin and end with him and the sea. I was only seven, but I found in him a friend and companion beyond any other thet I could ever wish to find anywhere. He was everything to me. The food on my plate was nothing unless I was thinking of him. The air wasn't worth breathing if he wasn't around. Word started to go around that not only did I dissappear at will, but also that I was not quite right. It wasn't that I was stupid, which was often said when people didn't know I was there, but rather that my mind was occupied with other things. After that day, I was out by the sea almost everyday, and being the youngest and frequently missed, I was not missed. My childhood thus became enchanted beyond any comprehention. Johnny and I grew up togeather as time flew by...best friends at first...then our friendship grew deeper, and we fould a love such that few are lucky enough to find. We were two halves of the same soul. Two lonely, solitary children who found joy and laughter in the tiny miricle of a hidden passage. By the time I was ten, no one whom I was related to knew me at all. I was a mystery to everyone, and as thus was ignored by everyone, as often happens when people know no what to say. To them I did not exist. It looked as though my enchanted word would never end, but as all things with childhood must end, so did this enchanted world of mine. With no warning, my enchanted dream-world came suddenly and harshly to a screaching crash into reality. And so we come to the war. The war that would end all, and bring me to adulthood at way to young an age. When the war started there was a whole-hearted feeling of patriotism and rightousness, as there is only in the fool-hearted. We would win of course. Being a female there was nothing to think of, execpting of course that it was more dangerous to stir out of the castle walls. Then word started filtering back through the lines. We were not stronger than the enemy. Acutally, from what I could gather, our two forces were rather equal...not only in strength and ability, but also in number. I walked a ghosts existance, face hidden in passages or behind tapasteries. I ate in the kitchens and became great friends with the servents, who, like myself, were invisible and non-existant to "my" people. The years slowly moved by, each one being marked not by a birthday, but instead by a deathday. First to fall was my second brother, Ethan. I was eleven then. At tweleve it was Stephan, the forth. At thirteen, Colin the youngest of the boys. Forteen was Derek, the oldest, and heir. That was when the darkness started to fall on the castle. During these years of loss, I learned more than any girl of my age or birth should know. I watched my sister Tatiana, who was elder than me by three years, grow into a great beauty. I saw the men fawn over her, and then watched them lie to her, the proof unfolding before my eyes from behind tapasteries. I talked and laughed about the men of court with Johnny. Then to my horror, one day I saw one of them glance my way. I quickly did one of my dissapearing acts, and found a looking glass. My invisibility had been total, even to myself, for what I found was devistating. Somehow, the years had taken their toll on me as well, and even at only fourteen it was blatently clear that my beauty would far surpass my sisters grace. Mine was a face that with one glance could win a heart, and with one smile could melt ice. I was like a willow. Eyes the color of spring leaves when the sun shone through them...a size to large, reveiling a false innocence, yet full of secrets and knowledge. Hair a dark aurburn that the sun had turned into a rainbow from black to red, which hung nearly to my knees when plaited back. I had grown golden with sun and had the mysterious arua of an ocean breeze. My body had grown willowy from avoided dinner parties and lean from races on the beach. I had seen all that was going on around me, but had forgotten to see myself. That was the day I dissapeared completely. Instead of letting my hair be plaited back by my servent, I allowed it to flow free as the ocean I loved so dear, hiding my face and body in it's tangled camoflage. I lost myself even more frequently in the darkness of my passages and the light of hidden beaches with my Johnny. I managed to become more of a ghost, and with great effort, managed to become the one that no one remembered to forget. Again, I simply did not exist. When Derek fell, my father recalled Devin, last remaining brother home from battle. He was third born, and now last remaining heir to the throne...but the enemy was expecting that, maybe even counting on it. While my other brothers deaths were accidental casualities of war, Devin's fate was to be differant. They knew that my father would recall Devin rather than lose his last remaining son, so they watched and waited. I can only think that all passages were watched, for were it I, that's what I would do. Within a week of being recalled, he to fell. My father was furious, my mother devistated...at that point I can only say that parts of both of them went mad. Mother refused to eat, and never slept. In time she started to fade...and she would only allow Tatiana to be near her. My father took the opposite approach. This was now an obsession to him. Wealth no longer mattered. Winning no longer mattered. The only thing that mattered was making sure that every last one of them paid. That every last one of them died. I can't coun't the times when I almost ran into him in the passages...but I always wore grey these days so I could always blend and hide. He was to busy muttering to himself to notice anything anyway. I guess that brings us to Tatiana. She was the only one I truely felt anything for, and the only one I regreted anything happening to. Maybe it was because she was a girl, and also mostly ignored as I was, or maybe it was because she was the only one that I personally saw. It was just around twilight, because I had just come in from seeing Johnny, and I heard a noise coming form down the corridor leading to our wing. Footsteps. It was an instinct to hide...it was simply what I did. Then I heard the crying. It occured to me then, that I had never heard her cry before...it made her a bit more real to me and part of me wanted to reach out to her. I started to go to her, for what could be wrong except that she had found the truth about a beau...or a dress had been stained. She really did lead a sheltered life. Before I had even gotten a hand to the tapestry the light started to come my way, and I stopped. I watched through the tapastery as she was carried by my hiding spot. I saw her eyes, wide and terrified...her wrists and feet bound and her poor mouth muffled...but mostly I remember her eyes. Big blue eyes red from crying. Then she was gone. A week later her body was found...but I wont go into the details of that. At this point in time I was 16 years old...and I stopped being invisible. Against all odds, my father remembered I existed...he had no choice but to remember...as I was now the heir to the throne. This news startled me, as I had never thought of myself as royality. Reality fell cold as snow on my life. Few other than servents even remembered that there had been anouther daughter, and the few who remembered thought me long dead by some childhood illness. One night, coming in from a troubled talk with Johnny, I found the way to my wing blocked. At first I was frightened...but I recognised these men...they were my father's personal gaurd. They escorted me to my fathers suite. This is the first time he had laid eyes on me since the minute of my birth...and I could not inagine why he would want to see me now. He sat, gaunt and hollow eyed looking at me. He had my hair pulled back to reveal the beauty which I had kept carefully hidden, and my heart stopped beating as my blood turned to ice when a slow smile spread across his face. It wasn't a smile of fatherly love. He smiled at me as though I was a new weapon, a dangerous and hidden one, to ready for the strike. Then he let me go back to my rooms...not a word having been said. In the next few days, I trembled in fear at what that smile could have meant. Johnny begged me to run, said that no good could come out of this madness...but I chose to stay. I'll never know why. Then came a note from my father, and I knew that my strength was to be tested. It said simply that I would be married to a neighboring king, and the two kingdoms combined would create a force which would massicre the enemy at the gates. The note slid slowly to the ground as my skin turned ashen. Marry? Me? But I was to marry Johnny...my love, my soul. For the first time in my life I set out to find my father. I told him that this match could never be. I told him of Johnny and our love, and that I would belong only to him. I told him that if he tried to make me marry this unknown king, he would surely find himself with out an heir. With every strong and intelligent word that came out of my mouth, his face grew more red and aggry. I ws sure he would rid himself of me right then and there...but I was wrong. He turned and went into his private room. I stayed there, stubbornly...waiting for a repreive that I was sure would never come. But I was wrong. After what seemed like hours he came out of his room, handed me a scroll, and walked away. With trembling hands I read what he wrote. "Dear Sir, My daughter Gennifer, last remaining heir to my throne has informed me that she will take to wed none other than yourself. This disturbes me, for as heir to the throne, her husband will be king, and having not met you, nor seen how you can defend this kingdom, I cannot allow this to be. I have thought long and hard on this...and I think that I have come up with a solution. If you are inclined, as she is, to take no other to wed, then I bid you prove yourself. Go to battle. Make a name for yourself, and come back to claim your prize, which will of course be my daughter's hand and the crown." I read it time and time again, each time not knowing weather to be full of joy or terror. Johnny? Go to war? Images of my brothers crossed my mind. Each of them went to war. None of them returned. A dread crept into my soul...and as the sun rose, I went to him. I went to tell him he was right to want me to run. I went to him to tell him to make plans to flee the following morning...that I would go with him. I told him to make ready, and I went back to do the same. Looking back, I see that my mistakes that day were many. First, I confronted my father. Second, I went to Johnny to tell him to make ready. But most importantly, Third, I went back to make ready myself. *Sigh* I'm sorry. My heart still is breaking, knowing that so many times I could have stopped the pain that was to come. I was nieve...I was stupid...but mostly I was careless. Anyway. On to the darkness that was to be my life. I rushed back through my tunnel of stone and went to my room to pack what I deemed nessisary. Then, I went to the kitchen to stash a bit of food. I knew something was very wrong then. The servents, my dear friends know everything that is happening at all times...and they looked at me with saddened eyes. It was their eyes that stopped me...and their silence. I can't remember a time when I entered that kitchen to silence... Finally the cook came over to me took my bag, set it on the floor and took my hand. Genni, said she...and burst into tears. I looked at her in horror. Never had I seen her frown...let alone cry. What could be wrong? Genni, she started again. You were followed today. Your father sent a currier out just after you came back with a letter saying that all he said in his previous letter still stands. He has distroyed the tunnel...there will be no escape for the two of you." With these words, my world turned grey and the room started to fade from view. The silence grew loud as my heart beat a thunderstorm into my brain. Johnny. My dearest friend. My soulmate and love. Johnny. Go to war? NEVER. The haze followed me, as I rushed half crazed through the castle, for once not caring who saw me. I had to get to him. Had to get to my Johnny. I ran to the tunnel...through the narrow windling stone...to the door...and pushed. Nothing. Not a budge, and my heart died, knowing that what cook had said had been true. My way was blocked...the door would never open again...and even knowing this, I couldn't accept it. I pushed at the door, beat at it till my arms were bloody from finger to elbow...and still didn't stop. I screamed and cried till my voice, unheard, was no longer there, and still my mouth agape, voiceless cried out in anger...in a hopless plea, that would never be heard...finally, later, a hour, a year, I know not, I fell to my knees in exhaustion. Still I silently pleaded to ears that weren't there, and placing a bloodied hand to the door, I hung my head and cried till there was nothing left but darkness. I know not who found me there, or when. When my eyes opened, I was in my rooms. I had been washed, my arms bangaged, and garbed in a simple white shift with sleeves that fell far below my fingertips. My hair had been carefully braided back, and standing on unsteady legs, I walked to the windows, and pushing them open, walked out on to the balcony. Below I could see the courtyard...and Johnny. He looked up at me, somehow knowing that I stood there, and raised a hand. A greeting? Or a farewell? My dearest heart was dressed for war...how strange to see armor on a child of the sun, a sword hanging at his side. I turned and rushed to the door to my chambers...and found it locked. I rushed, trapped like a bird in a cage, back to the balcony...back to Johnny...but he was no longer there. My hands, on the cold stone, trembled with fear...anger...and heartbreak. A river of sorrow ran though my soul and emptied though my eyes, as knowledge gave way to truth. Johnny was to war. Johnny was in danger...and it was my fault. I turned into a different type of ghost that day. Before they never saw me...now, they did, but I was no longer there. My eyes were distant and I was still...a statue who sat quietly in corners...waiting. Waiting for him to come home...waiting for news. Waiting for a ray of sunshine to enter my soul, where an empty dread ate at me. A year passed...then two. I saw the seasons pass, and with them I grew. I was now 18 years old...old to me unmarried in that time, and it did not go uncommented on. I heard nothing of all this, of course...The thunder that had started that dreadfull moment in the kitchen had continued on, unrelienting. And finally news came. I remember the letter being passed to me. Who handed it, I don't know. All I knew were the dreaded words. The news I never wanted to hear. Johnny had fallen a hero...a merit to his country and.....it fell to the floor. Johnny. So many times, for so many seasons I had seen his arm raised to me. Now, there was no more. No hope. No joy. The sun eclipsed in my heart that moment, and my eyes were no longer distant...they were empty. I didn't faint...or cry..the river inside my soul dried up in an instant, and I was just numb. The mirror showed me to be pale. A whispy figure, almost like smoke. I wanted a ocean breeze to enter the room, for it would simply blow me away, and I would be no more. This thought echoed in my mind, and I opened the balcony doors...and sat in a chair near them. That's how they found me...pale and silent, with empty eyes staring off towards the sea which was far beyond my sight. I would move if they made me. Sleep, wake, bathe, dress, play with food. But mostly I just sat in my chair, looking back through time, to a place where Johnny was alive and in my arms. The day I turned 20, my father entered my rooms. He said words I didn't want to hear. He spoke of duty and such, and rambled on, my ears not caring what he had to say. Something about me being the only one left...the only heir. On and on he talked, all the while I simply wished he would leave me to the silent storm which thundered within my soul...the rain that fell endlessly, but never hit the ground. Then he said something that I did hear. I was to be married. It was arranged. Tomarrow. My eyes lifted at thes words, shock running from my head to my toes. Married? Tomarrow? But how? Johnny was dead? Who....... He continued on, and I queitly accepted what he had to say. I was the heir. Johnny was gone. I would do as he said, for nothing mattered anymore...I had no fight left within my soul, so I just looked at him, and looked away, saying nothing. The sun rose on my wedding day, to a cloud-filled sky. The women fluttered around me...doing this and that. I was dressed and powdered, flowers were weaved through my hair...but all the while, I stood silent, my eyes staring off into the distance....toward the ocean. I was led down a corridor, then another, and then out into the light of day. It occured to me vaguely that this was the first time in four years that I had been outdoors. As the sun started to set, I was led to a church, and told to walk down the aisle. I drifted toward the alter, graceful in my uncaring, a pale figure of silent beauty, as long as you didn't get close enough to look into my eyes. The ceromony started...and the rain began to fall. I vaguly heard the words swirl aruond me and felt the ring be palced on my finger...I didn't care. Nothing mattered. Nothing at all. Then it was over...and I was his wife. It occured to me I had no clue who "he" was...I turned on this thought, the irony of it making a slight smile cross my face. I thought had known sorrow. I thought I had known heartbreak. I thought I had known betrayal. But all I thought I had known paled to nothing, as the thunder crashed in an anguished scream, and the lightning flashed. All blood drained from my body, and in an instant I could see everything clearly. *Flash* my fathers smile. *Flash* the letter he had written. *Flash* An arm reaching up toward me. *Flash* A letter being written by my father. *Flash* That self-same letter being handed to me and falling to the floor. *Flash* and in an instant it all became clear. Because, as I turned, the door to the chuch was flung open and the lightning did indeed flash to reveal a solitary figure. My eyes grew wide as this figure lifted his arm toward me and cried out in misery. Johnny. He was alive, and come back to claim his bride...only to find her belonging to another. Johnny turned and ran into the night...the darkness once again stealing him from my eyes. I turned to look at my father, and saw that he had noticed nothing. Noone had seen him, for all eyes save mine were on me. I didn't think then, I just acted. I lifted my skirts and ran, once more blinded by sorrow and betrayal into not caring. I ran into the night, into the storm, and took all my courage and followed his footprints into the unknown. On and on far into the night I flew...racing against time...searching for my love. Johnny. My heart beat his name, and I cried out to him. I could see him far ahead of me...the thunder deading my cries. He couldn't hear me. So on and on he ran...and on and on I followed. I grew closer and closer....till he was just ahead of me. I could feel the heat from his breath..and hear his anguished tears as has heart cried out in pain. Then I heard the ocean...my dear childhood friend. But it was angry, it's waves crashing thier fury against the cliffs ahead. Once more I cried out...I cried out my pain, my sorrow, my love and my joy. I cried out, and he finally heard me...and turned. His eyes shone a moment with understanding as the lightning flashed for him as it had for me, making all things clear, and hope shine through. Then hope was replace with horror, as in turning his foot slipped on the muddy cliff, and he began to fall...and the world seemed to stop. I looked behind me and saw a group of people led by my heartless father. I looked in front of me to my love, falling backwards, his arm once more streached out to me...and *Flash* I lunged for his hand...taking it, and the moment of truth we could have togeather, instead of a long life filled with lies. As we fell togeather, arms finally around each other once more, I looked into Johnny's eyes and promiced I would find him again. I would search through time endlessly till I found him...and with one last kiss, the ocean reclaimed her children, one soul blended for an eturnal moment....then torn apart and thrown back into oblovion to search each other out again. And search I have, lifetime after lifetime. Never a glimpse of your face have I seen, and yet I search...I love...I yearn for a day when we can once more walk down the beach, away from prying eyes and hardened hearts. I chose an eturanal moment...but in that choice, I took my life. Am I to be punished for this choice forever? Johnny, if you can remember, if you can hear me, I beg you to forgive me...and come home...I'm still searching and waiting, trusting fate to guide me back into your arms... |
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