(A/N) Yay! A great and Terrible Beauty has a Fanfic File! My first fanfiction for this series ever. Be kind!
I give a hard sigh as I consider my life and my possibilities. Ann is sleeping soundly on the bed across the room, completely undisturbed by her loud snores that keep me from sleep. Ann was happy with her life, or maybe too afraid and beaten down to do anything about it. It frustrates me that Ann, one of my closest friends, probably wouldn't understand if I told her my desire to lash out, or my strange feelings for a certain long lashed Indian boy...
Ann was like the Lady of the Shalott at the beginning of the poem, the one who sat in the tower and sewed away her life. Ann was the Lady of Shalott who was happy to stay in the safety and familiarity of the guarded tower. She had expressed that fact in Miss. Moore's painting class.
I get up and throw my legs over the bed side so they dangled limply, pointing towards the worn floorboards. I blow a raspberry to the room that only responded with silence.
"Hello there," I say to the room, hoping that maybe Kartik was there... But he's choosing to leave me alone for the night, and that thought depresses me. I've grown quite fond of him, but I know I really shouldn't. He's an Indian, and a Rashkana! He wants me to stop using the powers that allow me be free of this world...
"Well, you're being rather rude..." I mutter and, defeated, I lay back on the bed, my legs still dangling over the edge.
How I wanted Kartik to come and keep me company tonight, I miss our happy jaunts to one another... no matter how dangerous it all was, I am growing dependent on him to chase the thoughts and doubts that everyone else places on me.
I sit back up again and fold my legs like the Indians used to do early each morning, and began to sing a deep 'Om'. But it doesn't calm me like it used to, it merely upsets me.
"I'm half sick of shadows!" I cry loudly, and possibly over dramatically.
"Shush, Gemma," Ann scorns as she shifts in her dreary threadbare sheets that cover her bed.
I half wish to room with Felicity, she would probably stay awake with me. But her advice would probably be bad... She would puff up my confidence until I determined to run out to the gypsy camp and confess something, anything, to Kartik in a dizzy of female hormones.
I slip off the bed and walk to the window, and my eyes sweep across the green grounds that is covered in a blanket of fog. I finger the thick rope that Kartik stashes by my window, and I wish to the heavens that he would emerge from the base, and climb to me. But no matter how long I wait, my Kartik doesn't come. In the distance I see the lights of the gypsy camp dance in the wind, and the music from their late night party travels to my ears.
Its exotic and wild, and it wills the body to bend to its will. I jump back from the window and try my own dance to the music. My hair flows out around me, and it glistens in the moonlight. The pale light isn't exactly flattering its strawberry coloring, but it lights my pale skin up. My body is caving in to an inner force, the same force that draws me to the realms, and it is now drawing me to Kartik.
I run to my small closet and find my school dress. It's not the most suitable thing for what I'm about to do, but I could really care less. I slip it on, and with difficulty, I manage to do the laces on my own. I sit back down on my bed and pull on my lace up boots, lacing them up tight so they don't fall off.
I pull my cloak off he rack from next to Ann's, an I stand and look over to Ann who still sleeps. I am took over by her beauty at this moment, she looks so close to the Ann I know in the realms. I give her a genuine smile she will never know I've given her, and then I pull my door open.
The hallways are dark and ominous, as if they are threatening me to turn back. But I've faced enough things that go bump in the dark to know I could take on anything the rears its ugly head. I wrap the blue cloak tighter as I descended into the shadows that I have grown to know so well. I slowly weave through the hallways that lead me a few floors down, to Felicity's room.
I arrive at her large door, that seems so much more polished then Ann and mine. I knock three times, and I'm surprised that she answers almost immediately. Her white blond hair is down around her elbows, and flows easily in the cold night air. She is so beautiful, and even more so as her candle light catches the crystal blue clearness to her eyes.
"Naughty Gemma, up at past 10:30!" Felicity says, and though she is trying to be stern and uninterested, I can see that her eyes are gleaming with malice and her smile is wicked and eager. "Come in before someone catches you."
I walk into her room and remember that it is I and Ann who really got the short straw on rooms. Felicity's room is bright, candelabras at each corner and lighting the room in a heavenly glow. Her bed is covered in only the finest silks, and her closet is white and has gold leaf in a vine design. The room smells like lavender and rose petals with a hint of warm milk. I can tell she is trying to create something similar to the smells of the realms.
Her vanity mirror has a white and blue vase on the white marble surface. I walk up to the vase and see water in it, and I bend down and sniff it. The smell of Lavender is strong here. I look into the mirror in front of me and see that Felicity is moving up behind me.
"I'm trying for a different take on rose water," Felicity explains.
"Lavender water?" I ask her and she gives me a nod. She is wearing a white slip that reaches the floor, and I can see her teeter on her heels excitedly as she takes in my dress.
"Where are we going, Gem?" she asks me. "The realms? I can get Pip, but where's Ann?"
"Where we're going I can't have Pip or Ann with me, I need you Fee." I say to her, turning away from her mirror and out the window that had an even closer view of the gypsy camps light.
"I'm intrigued!" She cheers. "I'll get dressed. You explain."
"We're going to the gypsy camp for the party tonight," I say plainly as I play with my gloves.
I hear Felicity choke on fright as she whips round to face me, her hair spins out and for a second she eyes me like a caged animal.
"Why on earth would you want to do that?" she almost yells. "Its that gypsy boy isn't it? That stalker guy! You're going to him!"
"Fee, you can hardly judge me! What about your gypsy boy?" I ask her.
She gives me another one of her charming smile and says, "I'm not judging you, Gem! I'm beginning to appreciate you even more." She turns and gets her corset, school dress and shoes out of her large closet. And as she throws off her night dress, she interrogates me.
"A gypsy boy, hmm? Does he have a name?"
"Kartik... and he's Indian."
"How exotic. Why him? There are plenty of English boys you can marry respectively."
"How boring! Kartik is just not what I expected him to be when I first saw him."
"And he knows of the realms?" this is when Felicity looks at me, her eyes searching mine. What she's really asking is if he rill pose a threat to that world... if he will try and stop us, or maybe he'll take advantage of the link.
"He knows of a different side to the realms- the scarier side." I hold her gaze and am forced to tell the truth. "I think he admires my strength to enter the realms, but he certainly doesn't crave the power we have, he lost his brother to the realms, you see..."
"You aren't wearing your hair like that, are you?" she asks me. Felicity is finally finished with her boots, and is walking up to me. I have my hair up in a loose bun, and I thought the loose tendrils were alluring enough.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"Let me fix you up, Gem." Felicity says kindly.
Her thin hand reaches up and pulls then pins from my hair and it fall past my shoulders, and my tendrils hold a bouncy beauty I haven't seen in them. Felicity has to blink a few times t make sure she's seeing them properly, and I can't help but feel slightly insulted.
"If he's anything like Ithal." Felicity began, and I bite back the desire to inform her he is nothing like Ithal. "Then he'll like a wild woman. Now to make up."
She rushes to her vanity table and picks up some of her lavender water, and dabs it on my neck and wrists. Then she rushes back to her table.
"You don't actually have make up do you?" I ask her.
"No, no, mother knows better then to give me anything so lady like. But I do know a few tricks." she says as she walks back with a few cherries in her hands. She crushes the fruit and then rubs the red dye onto my lips, and then begins to peace my cheeks fiercely.
"She left the web, She left the loom. She made three paces through the room." she quoted Lady of Shalott to me as I turned and crushed cherries for her lips. "All for Sir Lancelot..." she says airily.
"It was worth it, Fee, she finally lived." I say to her and she gives me a shrug.
"Maybe we'll see eye to eye when I find my own man." Felicity says back, the man is made the most prominent word, and I can fully understand why.
We take a breath and open her door, once again to be greeted by the dark hallways. They loom before us, but Felicity doesn't take in a sharp breath like I do. She gazes at it as if enjoying the threat it poses, and that's why I love her. She takes my hand and we run through the hallways quickly, not wanting to dwell in this dark place for too long.
We reach the final level, jumping down three steps until we land on the bottom floor. Felicity lets out a joyous squeal, and she gives me a brief squeeze. The joy and excitement of breaking the rules once more is like little electrical shots surging through the both of us. And with the added element of danger of going into the forbidden Gypsy camp leaves us giddy.
"So, out for a stroll girls?" a voice calls, and Miss Moore steps into the moonlight, smiling tightly at us.
"Miss Moore!" I cry, and am humiliated to be seen by her like this. I am wild and untamed once more, I am becoming the Gemma from India, just for an Indian boy. Its everything that Miss Moore most likely doesn't approve of. She'll never see me in the same light, I will always be the miscreant, some one she cannot trust. "We were just..."
"Going out, like you said." Felicity finishes for me. "Please don't tell Mrs. Nightwing! We merely wanted fresh air, to talk about things."
Miss Moore inches towards us easily, and she has her hands clasped together as if contemplating us. "What could possibly worry two innocent English finishing school girls to the point they cannot sleep."
"What you said about the balance of light and dark, and of Lady of Shalott." Felicity responds quickly. I can see her mind quickly formulating a plan.
"Then I shall walk with you, it seems only fair that you should be allowed talk about these things with the very teacher the inspired the topic." Miss Moore says, she throws her hands over our shoulders and moves in between us.
"Sounds lovely," I say weakly, and glance over to Felicity who seems to shocked to speak. I can tell she's wondering why on earth she hadn't been able to talk her way out of this one.
We walk out onto the front lawn, and I can hear the music, the tambourines and shouts, they are beckoning me to the lights, to Kartik. But Miss Moore's arm is tight around me as she stands on the front steps and lets the music fill the air.
"Wonderfully joyous Gypsy music." Miss Moore sighs. "Its so freeing for the soul."
My soul could be free, and with Kartik for that matter, if she hadn't screwed it up. We walk towards the edge of the forest and I can see the gypsy lights dancing, I can even see a few silhouettes as the small gypsy girls run a little aways from the camp, seeing how scared they get, before they jump back towards the camp lights. I wonder if Kartik is tempted by any of those girls, if their loose clothing beckon him closer, to touch their curves. Unlike my artificial ones.
Felicity peers across to me, and widens her eyes, beckoning me to speak. Try something - She's urging to me - just get her to go! But I can't say anything to get her to go, for some reason I want Miss Moore with us, but only for a little while, and I want her to give me her views on what I want to do. If I'm going to serve my heart to Kartik on a silver platter, I at least want my favorite teacher's opinion.
"Do you think that if the Lady of Shalott knew she was going to die, would she have left the tower?" I ask her, and she glances to me as if she knows what I'm referring to, but she couldn't...
"I think that she wouldn't have cared anyway, she thought the idea of being with Sir Lancelot was romantic." Miss Moore says.
Felicity gives a small huff and crosses her arms. "Dying for love? A bit of a stretch for a caged up shrew!"
"No matter who you are, Miss Worthington, you can still find love in the most unknown of places." Miss Moore says to Felicity coolly, and she's put in her place. Miss Moore turns back to gaze towards the gypsy camp where the music drifts to us still.
"She may have died," Miss Moore begins, not taking her eyes off the distant lights. "But Sir Lancelot finally got to see her. If she had stayed in her tower, all she would do is pine for something she would never have."
"No one wants that, everyone wants to be seen. To live." Felicity mutters, and I'm pretty sure its not Lady Shalott or me she's referring to.
"Well," Miss Moore began. She draws away from us and wraps her dark blue cloak around herself. "Its getting cold, and I can barely see Spence anymore because of this fog!"
"Are you going?" Felicity beams, and she tries to hide it by coughing, but Miss Moore seems to have heard, and gives Felicity a tight smile.
"Its almost 11, I trust you'll see yourself back before dawn." She says it as a joke, but none of us laugh, we merely glance at the gypsy camp.
"We wouldn't dare be any later," Felicity says with a cunning smile, and Miss Moore turns and walks up towards Spence. She's telling the truth, I can barely see it, and it sends a fear through me that is then smothered by the excitement of what I'm about to do.
"How peculiar," I say, referring to Miss Moore.
Felicity strings her arm through mine, and throws her shoulders up. "Who cares! We are free once more to run to your Indian man and his party!"
I cry out in happiness as I'm, dragged into the thick forest by Felicity. Her hair is flicking behind her, running like water in the breeze. My hair bounces along in trail behind me, like an excited bunny. The lights are growing bigger, the music louder, and the silhouettes more defined.
We stay just at the bushes that skim their camp. The rich foliage is covering us as we peer over the top to observe the goings on. Our parties were refined, a certain amount of space between each person, and a list of dances that have been planned out step by step. You can only dance with people of your circle, or must be previously introduced. The dances I was seeing were completely different to those.
The girls wore short dresses that skimmed their knees, and as they dance up close to the boys, their heads are thrown back with drunken laughs. I am torn between being disgusted about the whole vulgarity of it, and craving to do the same thing. The boys are deeply entranced with their dance partners, and they watch them, their eyes heavy with lust.
"There's Ithal!" Felicity almost screeches. She seizes my wrist tightly and points me towards the brim of the crowd. No doubt there is her tall man, he is towering over a curvaceous gypsy girl, who is smiling up at him. "Does she know who I am?"
I almost smile at her obvious distress. "Even if she did, no one knows that you have claim on Ithal."
"I don't have claim..." Felicity mutters. "Not that he seems to care, even if I did or not... look at him flirting!"
I get bored with her ramblings about Ithal, she hurt him badly by crumpling his flower. I try to see through the bright torch light for Kartik. I realize that even though he could look like a relative of this family, he looks really nothing like them. They are tall and lean, there eyes aren't large, and their eyelashes aren't beautifully thick. So when I do spot a short but muscular man leaning against a tree, my heart stops.
He is draining a dirty glass of what looks like rum as he gazes at the dancers. His long hair moves slightly in the wind, and he glances back at Spence ever so slightly. I wonder if he's thinking about me, and if they are pleasant thoughts. Does he know I'm watching me? Has the stalker finally become the stalked?
"Is that him?" Felicity asks, he eyes are finally drawn from Ithal and she too is facing Kartik. She gives a loud hoot as she sees him. It draws a few eyes to our hiding place, and so we duck down to the dusty ground. "You have got great taste, Gem!" she whispers. A protective surge flows through, and I justs stand back up and slowly skim along the clearing.
"Kartik!" I hiss now that I am only a few meters back. The fire light highlights my full lips and shows off the many volumes to my red hair, it looks alight. Kartik's form stiffens and he subtly turns around.
His wide brown eyes find my green one and I smile. He starts at the site but smile too. Slipping away from the lights himself, Kartik is soon in the shadows with me. The fire flickers across his handsome features and I am awe struck for a moment.
"Why aren't you in bed, Gemma?" Kartik asks me, and I love the way my name sounds in his tone. Like I am worthy of anything, that I could be something more then a high society wife and mother.
"Your music is keeping me up," I reply with a smile. "I wanted to know if you would - "
"Dancing?" I hear Felicity yell in the distance. She storms up to me, and the soft charming Kartik I know is gone. "He's dancing with her! The nerve of that man!"
"You are Miss. Worthington I presume," Kartik says. He already knew, he's been following me to the caves, where Felicity comes too. Its scary, but Kartik knows a lot more then he lets on... He probably even heard Felicity's ghost story about us four girls.
He doesn't bow to her, but Felicity is to infuriated to take offense to something that would usually cause her to slap someone. If anything I'm going to hear about it tomorrow, because I can see her taking a small not of his rudeness.
"And you're Kartik," Felicity begins. She glances back to our hiding spot which gives her a better view of Ithal. "Excuse me, but a rather unfaithful gypsy boy is forgetting that he once said he loved me."
"That was before you crushed his heart," Kartik says bitterly to the floor, and Felicity doesn't hear him, which I think is the best thing. She turns to me and points to our spot.
"I'll be right over there." she says, and she runs off.
"Sorry about her," I say, turning back to Kartik to see him staring at me too, his eyes were wide. "I needed a little bit of company in the dark woods."
"This is certainly odd," Kartik mutters, he is drawing closer to me, but I do not retract, I stand still and smile at him. "Showing up to my gypsy party..."
"I wasn't really showing up for the party..." I admit, looking down to my boots. "I wanted to see you."
"On what grounds?" He is so close to me I can see every pore to his face, every defined eyelash. I lean against the tree behind me, and he smiles even broader as he still moves in towards me. I move my face forward so that his spicy scent almost tickles my cheeks.
"To show you something," I whisper, and I give him only a moment to think about it.
I kiss him deeply, torn between kissing him harder or laughing at the fact his eyes have shot open with surprise. Its stiff at first, his hands aren't grasping me and he hasn't changed his shocked face. But in the blink of an eye his body is reacting to mine. He melts in my mouth like melting chocolate, and he slings his arms around my waist. He brings my body so close to his that I can feel his hard stomach that is ripped with defined abs under my ribbed corset.
He draws away for a second, but I'm not having it. I want to kiss him forever, so I draw him back and explore his mouth with my own for a few moments longer until the need to separate is imminent. If I stayed so close to him for too much longer we'd probably do something we'd regret.
"I never thought you'd let me do that," he whispers to me, our foreheads are leaning against each other as a quick breaths puff out in the comfortable space between us."And here you come, asking me to..."
"I wish I could join the party, and dance with you," I whisper to him. "But I don't think my reception would be a warm one."
"Yeah," Kartik nods, and I feel slightly crestfallen. But he wraps his arms around me so that he is hugging my waist, and my thoughts disappear and there is only him. "They already consider me an outsider because I'm not pure gypsy blood. I don't think I'd be making my status here any better by bring a beautiful red headed English girl into the camp."
My heart flutters at the term beautiful, and I realize I haven't ever really been courted. Kartik glances over to Felicity who is ducking behind different bushes as she stares at Ithal. I know she only cares what he's doing because she misses having complete control over him...
"I'd invite you to my tent," Kartik begins. "But your friend seems too disturbed to be left alone..."
"We should really get going," I mutter as I realize how much darker its gotten. "A teacher of ours saw us leaving."
Kartik gives me a reluctant squeeze, but nods and releases me. I lean forward and kiss him once more, and he kisses me back with just as much force and passion.
"This isn't the last time I'll see you, right?" he asks me.
"You always find a way to pop up, no matter how far I roam." I reply and he gives me a sweet and gentle smile that I've never seen on his lips. He gives my hair a subtle brush and smiles.
"Go now," he commands, and I nod.
"Fee," I hiss, and she stands to attention. "We've got to leave."
She smiles knowingly at my reddened lips, and my messed up dress. "Of course, Gem." she says.
I watch as she casts one last venomous gaze at Ithal and his gypsy dancer, and she walks up to me. Our hands find each other and I walk to her side, and away from Kartik. His arms are crossed and her has become defensive, his walls are up.
"I suppose we'll be seeing you again?" she asks him and Kartik gives a short nod.
"Can't push me away," he replies and puffs up his chest, I can read the very gesture as a dare, as if he wanted her to try, just so he could prove he was worth my affections. "Just because I'm Indian doesn't mean I am intimidated by you rich English."
I can't help but hope I'm not included in that.
"Hey, you rather add to the adventure," She says mysteriously. "I mean I've been to a magical realms, I've seen gargoyles come to life, and now my mysterious Gemma has an even more mysterious lover."
He nearly choke son the term lover, but Felicity doesn't stick around to show how much she could care less. And we are running through the forest once more. I cast a last look and watch Kartik staring after us. He shakes his head with a bemused smile, and as he strokes his lips where my scent still lingers, he walks back to the party.
I know that I've gone and done something irresponsible, I've joined forced with a Rashkana. Now we are both outcasts from our groups. The Rashkana would kill him for having those feelings for me, and I would be left vulnerable and open if Cerise should find out I have a weakness. I realize I am risking a lot falling for Kartik, but I can't stop now. I can only hope, that unlike the Lady of Shalott, that now that I've left my tower, I will not die for my Sir Lancelot.
(A/N) Yay! Done! What do you think? I want LOTS of feed back so I know what to do when I write my next AGTB story.
So who is jazzed for the Third installment? I so totally am! And did you hear that like a script is in the works for AGTB movie! I don't know if they're doing the trilogy or something... but I shall die if it doesn't go through!