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[Reverse integration]
And he made lords and ladies of them, untying the darkness in their hearts and dangling them upon puppet thrones.
I.
There was once a princess in a tower in a land far beyond the coldest sea, with rippling hair like ripened corn. She lived in sorrow and in strife, always searching, always yearning, always dreaming (of lands of gold and mountains of fire where the night touched the billowing grass), but all for naught.
The enchantress kept her under lock and key, and the princess sat and mourned, and all the while, she wept and spun, her tapestries dark and dangerous, like a biting secret waiting to leap from a loosened tongue.
Then the Earl came along, treading softly, feet following a zigzag line from side to side, crossing the chamber and slaying the dragon, breaking the wooden gate and putting to sleep the enchantress with her dark, empty eyes of molten iron.
He slipped his hand over the princess' forehead and makes a wish – psh.
The Noah awakens and her dark eyes glaze over with an orange tone.
"Rhode," he says, and whisks her away to his secret palace. There is no guile hidden in his words, for she knows, that eldest of his allies. She alone can decipher his thoughts; she alone can feel his genuine affection.
For that is how they are now – master and servant, father and daughter, teacher and student.
And they will always be that way. For eternity.
II.
Back behind the tallest mountain there stood a yawning, gaping hole.
Heave-ho, heave- ho –
And then the mountain heaved with otherworldly groans.
Split splatter splat.
The miners ran, tumbling out of the hell they dug, sprinting with great gashes of air, falling through the rending earth, twisting to hide from falling stones that rattled against the ground.
Death stalked the burial ground of nature, fondling the dead and dying and sucking dry their breath. When all was said and done, the Earl floated down from the torpid sky, eyes whirling, hands reaching.
There was a moan, and the Earl tackled stone –
A man, half alive, lay below the rubble. He reached out for him and brought him over the stormy seas, back to life, back to health, braiding vices into the man's mind. The Earl smiled.
"Welcome, my dearest Joyd."
For this is the house of your salvation. We will cut your strings free, and you will soar with me amid all my bounty. For this is your inheritance, and the inheritance of us who know the darkness.
III.
There was a spider and a fly, and that, as Rhode told it, was a sad tale indeed.
For once there lived a man, all wide smiles and leering eyes, and he tottered on the brink of power always. Not slave, but merchant, not wealthy, but comfortable; he used to rue the fateful path of the foolish stars on the day he was birthed.
Time was a coin in his pocket, and all too soon the years accumulated like the shining gold he loved to count and finger. On his deathbed he frowned and wept and sobbed, till ears that should not have heard the truth found his piteous cries.
It came, floating through centuries, leaving misery in its wake.
That was when the stigmata appeared; they left him crying for days, while priests chanted over him and hasty villagers crooked their fingers at him, afraid of witchcraft and sorcery.
Then he hearkened to the whispers around, and the Earl beckoned from his secret hiding place, luring the old man with tales of golden lands and blissful vales, with honey falling from the sky and gold uncountable and beautiful nymphs lying in shaded pools. Hence he came, he who desired power, he whose greed was beyond measure, reeled in by the promise of greatness denied to him in that miserable human lifetime.
Then did the spider catch his fly, displaying him as a trophy upon his silken web, Rhode said. She alone knew what had come to pass.
And yet she loved her foster father.
IV.
The piper came for Lulu Bell in the darkest hour of the night, when shadows hid within shadows and even wolves feared to tread alone under the skirts of dank, tall trees. Everything that was good slept at this hour and everything that was wicked walked abroad in shapes undimmed by the lack of light.
The fluting woke her, and she danced to its conniving beat, hands stretching, fingers grabbing, fleeting thoughts flying through her jagged mind.
This is the knife, and this is her hand,
and she must tread the road with its many bends.
In darkness she walked, skimming the ground, revenging fairy from tales long told but that were now forgotten.
She slit the old, weathered throat, licking at the running blood, following the scent, breaking her life, undoing what was meant, putting on the pyre what was meant to thrive.
Then the piper called again, and she danced out the door, her light hair flying, her thin lips moving, limbs struggling against the autumn cold, out into the embrace of the piping piper.
That was her destiny, the famished, raving-mad princess locked in a tower, who has now murdered the dragon and fled from the highest tower in the strongest fort.
That was her fate. She lusted for freedom, and freedom she got, free from poverty and the trails of spinning webs.
She murdered her father (oh sin of sins!), and now, her lust will no longer be tied down by the steady hands of wise men.
But still the wicked do find a way, though when the moon creeps behind flickering shadows, Lulu Bell's heart aches with all the world's death pangs, and she knows sorrow again, if only for a while.
V
Once upon a hideous time, they were boy and puppet, master and servant, child and toy. Then came the sleeping sickness which tossed the townsfolk into a sleep that never did break.
In the east room of the west tower slept a boy, his dark hair falling gently over his face, breathing so soft it was almost as if he were a well-preserved corpse and not a living child snared in the web of some greater power.
On the chair beside the bed sat a puppet carved of wood, with stiches for a mouth and brilliant yellow hair that brought the retreating sunshine back into the dusty room.
In those forgotten years the accursed sickness drew the forests and brambles tighter around the little town, and the canopies grew thick above the land. Nightmares trawled the land, and only foolish men dared walk the winding paths that led into the gate of the town where men lay in living death.
Even as the forest laid hold of the town, the dust continued to fall thick in the little room just south of the bubbling river.
Then the cracks appeared, and the boy-man yawned, the dust coated around his mouth falling apart slowly. He was returning to warm-blooded life, and beside him, the shadows crawled over the blonde puppet, its strings cut loose by the wear of centuries.
The yawns grew wider, until finally he awoke and found himself tangled in cobwebs and snow-like dust, his skin grown cold from years of silent slumber upon a bed of stone. Cradling his puppet, he wandered the ancient halls, calling for men and women who still slept upon their pyres, draped in the lingering perfume of the old days when fairies still walked the earth.
Then he came, daemon-child, floating down from the torpid sky.
The boy stared, clutching the doll to his scrawny chest. The plump figure came down ever so gently, umbrella in hand, a sorcerer from a bad dream.
"Good evening," the man said. "The Earl of Millennium, at your service."
The boy cowered, and the puppet bobbed in his arms.
"Don't be scared, Devitto. Come to me!"
The world exploded in a fury of red, and he clutched the puppet tight as the Earl let loose a chant, a string of words uttered with such force he almost toppled over.
Then the world turned black and grey, and Devitto and his puppet Jasdero ceased to be. They were now Jasdevi, joined for all eternity, bonded together by pain and blood and the travails of history.
VI.
The Earl finds the Fourteenth hiding in a pigsty.
It's a sad day when he does, for this is the beginning of his tremendous downfall.
And he will rue this day for ever and ever more, because it is at this moment when his world explodes into a cacophony of grey and black and criminalising crimson.
It's the moment when the thread unravels.
A/N: I enjoyed writing this. It's fun to consider the darkness in the Noahs' hearts – or do they even have hearts?
If you enjoyed the Jasdevi part (or is it Jasdebi?), I would recommend that you read elfenmarchen by SebonzaMitsuki27. It's brilliant and it's where I got my inspiration from for that part.
Part of the summary was inspired by this line in John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things: "And he made kings and queens of them, cursing them with a kind of power..."
Alright – thank you for reading, and reviews would be appreciated (: