(i saw pale kings and princes too)
Their whispers followed her through the dream—elegantly dressed socialites hiding their scornful sneers behind embossed fans and feathered masks.
So plain. How droll.
Such a pity.
She wanted to scream, but forced herself to keep winding her way through the crowds, intent on capturing that elusive shadow wreathed in blue.
Turn back, said an amused, mocking voice in her mind. Turn back before it's too late.
"I can't," she whispered. "Don't you understand I can't?"
Such a pity.
She felt a burning gaze on her, and turned to meet those eyes.
We would have remained strangers.
Too late now.
oooooooooo
oooooooooo
(i saw their starved lips in the gloam)
She had the oddest craving for peaches.
In her mind she saw swirling gowns and grotesque masks and she had a sudden urge to check the clock because there's something I've forgotten.
She could taste the sticky sweetness in her mouth.
She chose an apple from the bowl on the counter.
Tasteless, bland, not good enough.
Nonsense, she scolded the voice in her mind. Apples are perfectly good enough.
She was lying.
She longed badly for a peach, wanted the smooth golden skin under her fingertips, the tart flesh on her tongue.
Not for an ordinary girl, whispered the voice.
oooooooooo
oooooooooo
(and there i dreamed – ah! woe betide! - )
She wasn't sure if it was the song in her head that woke her, or the owl on her windowsill whose eyes bore into hers like sharp gold needles.
The tune from the dream was fading away.
She blinked sleepily at the bird, watching her with such solemn, curious dignity. Her lips parted.
Come to me.
Stay away.
You have no power here.
The owl spread its great white wings, taking flight as silently as a memory.
She frowned, feeling oddly abandoned.
When she finally fell asleep again, she would wake with no memory of the owl, or the song.
oooooooooo
oooooooooo
(and on thy cheek a fading rose)
They told her there was nothing wrong with her, but she ignored such drivel. She knew better.
Her heart was broken, and she had no idea why.
She was homesick, even as she sat in her bed.
She was drowning in memories, and she didn't know where they came from
She'd never held a fairy. She'd never fallen into a dungeon. She'd never danced at a ball or battled an army or
rejected a king and his offers of forever and his pledge of love
any of those half-remembered things.
But she was dying—fading slowly like a shattered dream.
oooooooooo
oooooooooo
(look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair)
It didn't occur to her that she'd conquered a king and collapsed an empire until the evening before her eighteenth birthday.
She was sipping a glass of lemonade and listening idly to the chirping of crickets, the rumble of cars, the whisper of the wind, and suddenly she thought, Oh my God, I destroyed him.
She saw herself in her mind's eye, standing atop a ruined tower while rubble and fragments of stone floated through the air around her, and she heard herself say calmly, coldly, cruelly—
You have no power over me.
The lemonade grew warm as she wept.
oooooooooo
oooooooooo
('tis not through envy of thy happy lot)
She honestly didn't think she'd have made a good queen, anyway.
She had been so childish then, and even now had no idea how to please a king.
Maybe I'd have learned—No, he would never have been happy with her, she thought, and smiled up at her
perfectly mortalnew husband as they danced. Images of a masquerade ball flickered in her mind almost pleadingly, and she closed her eyes firmly, resting her cheek against her groom's shoulder.
She never saw the white owl winging away, weaving through the sky as if it had been shot through the heart.
oooooooooo
oooooooooo
(yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep)
No one could have predicted it, she was told. It wasn't her fault. It was one of those things.
One of those awful, terrible, unpredictable things.
"I can't save you this time," she whispered to the grave. "But it's still my fault you're here."
"You're wrong," said a quiet voice behind her. "You could no more have stopped it than you could have foreseen it."
She didn't turn to look at him, only ran a finger over the letter T mindlessly, her eyes so dry they burned.
"It's not fair," she whispered, but for once, he didn't argue with her.
oooooooooo
oooooooooo
(like a sick eagle looking at the sky)
In her fifteen-year-old mind, she imagined that he was crushed by her refusal, humiliated at his own defeat, and utterly despondent at having lost both the fight and the lady fair.
She pictured him pining for her, wasting away, wretched, gray with sorrow.
It was her consolation prize for so bravely forfeiting her own dreams and desires to selflessly rescue the child.
Years later, when she'd grown up, the wind whispered that the Goblin King had died of heartbreak, of shame, of despair.
She trembled silently and kissed the sky with tear-stained lips.
It was her apology for killing him.
oooooooooo
oooooooooo
(as if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing)
The storm raged around her as she gasped for air.
She was pressed against the trunk of a tree by an unseen, unrelenting pressure as her hair whipped around her face in the wind. Phantom fingers glided over her hip, and she tossed her head mindlessly.
Thunder rumbled menacingly. The rain pelted the ground mercilessly. Heat built in her stomach, melting through her.
The ghostly sensation of a mouth against her breast made her gasp, then let out a ragged plea.
"Yes…"As lightning flashed—in the sky, behind her eyes—she closed her eyes and let herself be taken.
oooooooooo
oooooooooo
(meet in her aspect and in her eyes)
He'd told her that she had cruel eyes, and he made sure she didn't forget.
She'd be examining her reflection in the mirror, as vain as any other woman, and the sound of low, mocking laughter would dance in the air like smoke.
She'd be smiling or laughing with a friend, only to have them shudder and at her oddly, unable to explain why, only able to tell her she'd just looked…different for a second…
She would demand that he come, explain himself, stop it—but she only ever received one answer, invariably.
You precious thing…I can be cruel, too.