Black Rose Red
Prologue
The grand piano in the drawing room was still the same after all these years. He remembered, as a child, how often he would climb upon that stool and slowly, very slowly, touch his fingers to the ivory keys. They never made a sound.
From the first moment he had played, he was enchanted. Music became part of his soul. Light, titling and playful. Dark, brooding and dreary. Beautiful, but dangerous. It could change within an instant.
He noticed wryly that the spirits had kept the imposing instrument gleaming and proud, though he gave strict orders for everyone that it was forbidden to come inside this room. The key was in a locket around his neck, but of course they had no problem dealing with that. They were keepers of the dead, after all.
That thought sent his mind in to the dark deep endless trenches of self-hatred once more. Dead. He would prefer death a thousand times than being trapped in this hideous form. He was a beast, neither human nor animal. A beast with hungry red eyes. A nightmare.
His wandering gaze settled on the grand piano once more. Perhaps, maybe he could….
His agile strong paws lifted the cover of the piano, and he let his eyes feast hungrily at the sight of the keys, ivory, so pale white. Before he could talk himself out of this foolish decision, he stood before the piano, and stretched out a paw…
"Clank!" As one of his enormous claws pressed lightly on the keys, the piano emitted a painful sound, almost like the weeping of hundred of lost souls.
An anguished, terrible roar shook the very roots of the castle as the beast stood and flung the instrument out of the painted glass windows, the deafening gasps that wracked his form seemed strangely like sobs.
He grieved for his past self, for what could never be, and a petal fell from the flower lying on the windowsill. It paused as it drifted slowly towards the ground, and fell.
Years later, the townspeople of Linnea would claim that had never seen such a storm. The waves crashed wildly against the shore as the wind howled above them, the lightning shattering the darkness of the night sky. The inhabitants of this little village stayed in their houses, huddled before a warm fire. It was in one such house, with its little wooden door and pots of fresh lilies on the windowsill, that a baby was being born.
*
"Push, Ildri, push!" Olina Akelson shrieked at the cowering form lying on the blood-soaked bed, her moans of pain faint and dying compared to the deafening noise of the thunderous storm outside, surely tossing ships to the bottom of the cold, dead ocean. Her plump red hands frantically clutched the thin bed sheets covering the tired, exhausted woman, folding and rearranging hurriedly.
"Oh dear, dear Lord." She muttered under her breath. "What shall we do? So much blood…" The quiet desperation in her voice was unmistakable, even to the feeble ears of the woman lying on the bed. "Perhaps we should…"
"NO!" Ildri Rahmer had always been a gentle, soft-spoken individual and the determination in her voice both surprised and terrified Olina. "You MUST take care of my baby, you must… it is…" Her voice faltered with each word she spoke, making Olina start with fright.
"No, Ildri, you mustn't tire yourself out… So blood has already been lost… I'm sure you can have other children, once you've…" Her words were cut off by the sudden harsh banging of the door, a crescendo in the rhythm of the pouring rain.
*
Christoffer Rahmer rode his horse hard through the rain, not hearing the midwife's valiant protests as she sat in the accompanying wagon, a thin, stiff cloth protecting her from the savage rain. He could hear nothing except the desperate pounding of his heart as his mind raced on, filled with worry for his beloved wife. His wife… and his baby. This thought made him shudder, but he pushed it away, pursing his tight lips with defiance.
She must not die.
He had left the cottage an hour earlier, when the bleeding had started. He dressed immediately in his customary jacket and breeches, leaving with the horse and wagon to fetch the midwife, who lived several miles away.
Amid the harsh weather, Christoffer could see nothing in front of him, and it was long before he spotted the cottage, the pots of lilies drowning helplessly in the rain.
Dismounting from his exhausted mare, he paid no heed to the poor animal and instead quickly gave his hand to the midwife, helping her from the soaked wagon. Then he quickly pounded on the door of the cottage, kicking it open before its occupants could even respond.
What he saw made him wish that he had never opened that door.
His wife lay pale and wasting on the bed, so soaked through with blood that the original color was only a forgotten memory. The only sign of life was the slight movement of her chest as she forced air through her lips, crimson with blood. He barely made a sound as the midwife pushed past him in to the room; her eyes alight with authority as she ordered Olina to give her wet towels, and hot water. Her words were strong and sure, spoken so quickly Olina barely had time to react.
His mind slowly faded as he leaned heavily on the doorpost and he could barely hear the midwife's next words.
"You'll have to make a choice. The child or the mother." He seized upon the words with vengeance, ignoring the slight twinge of guilt in his heart. A choice. He could have Ildri back again, sitting in the little cottage next to fireplace, waiting for him to come home as she made tea for their friends and neighbors, or mended clothes for their six grown boys… The boys. What would they say if they knew their mother was on the very verge of death?
Christoffer opened his mouth to reply, a mere parting of the lips, when he heard Ildri's voice. Once so familiar yet rendered unrecognizable by her dying body, merely a soft, weary gasp of air.
"Sa…save my bah…baby." His heart sank slowly as his eyes watched her face, memorizing her features. Those sea-blue eyes once lit with happiness now clouded with the mist of death. Yet he could still see his Ildri, in those familiar features. Her long wavy brown hair pooling in curls around her waist, light airy eyebrows, that strong defined nose, smiling mouth…
"NO!" The word burst forth from his mouth before he could even register the action in his mind. "No, Ildri," he began in a softer, gentler tone. "I cannot… our boys…"
She smiled at him as he slowly approached the bed and took her small frail hand in his large, calloused palms. "Christoffer, our boys are grown, living their own lives…And they still have you, they don't need me any more."
He took a deep breath. "But I do."
She smiled tenderly at him once more, but then a frown came upon her face. "Then you must not deny me this last wish. My daughter, our daughter… she must live." Her tone became pleading and weary. "Please."
*
So it was done. The infant was rescued. And her mother died in her place, an angel returned to heaven. The baby was named Freya, as her mother's last request. Freya, the goddess of beauty… and love. A mother's love, sacrificing her life in exchange for her child. A noble sacrifice, yet to many not worth it at all.
He turned away to hide his tears, only to hear Olina's gasp of horror filling the room.
"Oh, oh dear… Good Lord… The child is… crippled."
When he laid his eyes on his only daughter, he saw a pale, tiny weakling with eyes the color of the sea. And her right foot, a deformed twisted stump.
As horror and grief descended upon them all, none of the occupants noticed a shooting star twinkling brightly in the now clear skies as it fell towards the earth.
*
The funeral was a crowded one, for Ildri Rahmer was a woman admire for all her qualities and abilities. Though villagers whispered about the new born infant girl lying in her nurses arms, they were kind enough, out of respect for their blacksmith, to do so in the security of their own homes.
As for the infant herself, newly christened Freya Ylva Rahmer simply gazed about in wonder at all the gentle, peering faces, laughed and gurgled a while or two before falling quietly asleep in her nurse's arms, breathing in the aroma that her Uncle Espen always carried, a dry scent of leather and the smoky smell of guns.
Espen observed his small little niece slumbering in his arms, her tiny pale face, fierce blue eyes, and her twisted right foot.
"My Freya... my Freya. I'll protect you forever, my love, my beauty. When the world is against you, do not run away. Stand and fight. No matter how long it takes, you will win, in the end." He sighed, stroking her soft brown hair.
*
Christoffer Rahmer silently watched the coffin bearing his wife's body as heard the priest recite the Lord's Prayer. His mouth said the words, but inside, he was fighting against the urge to sob, cry out in protest that no, this was not his wife's body, it was the body of some nameless woman who died a few days hence, a woman who only bore a resemblance to his beloved. No, it could not be her. Never.
The six boys silently watched their father finally break down, his tears draining his face as his shoulders shook as if in terrible pain. Their faces registered nothing, but their minds were a strange curious jumble of images, words and actions.
They only knew two things, that their mother had died and that they had a new baby sister who seemed to take her place. On the former, it seemed impossible and of course, a terrible joke. On the latter, all felt indifferent on the matter... except for Boden.
Out of his five other brothers, Aren, Dyre, Erik, Rolf and Yorick, Boden was the one who never seemed to fit in. His days were spent in other words in imagination spun with threads of knowledge he gleaned from the few books on Papa's shelf; many people described him as simple-minded, though ethereal might have been a better word. He had hoped that, with the arrival of another sibling, maybe things would change. Then, his mother died, and his entire world basically fell apart in a matter of seconds.
Because that's how long a death takes. For a fairy, perhaps the spirit can linger, taking up to perhaps an hour, but a human death takes one second. A heartbeat, and then nothing.
*
Far far away, another pair of eyes watched. A pair of yellow grey eyes, eyes that were not human. Watching in terrible anticipation, for what was to come would be the story of the century.