Down empty corridors and through dark hallways
She runs
Hair streaming
Eyes pouring tears from a pale face-
A face translucent and hollow
Gaunt with loss and horror and a love ripped asunder
Tearing at her- rips her apart
Her sundered soul and her broken heart
And her tears are all she has.
A ghost.
She haunts the White City-
She was once the White Lady but no longer.
No longer.
Now she fades.
Her skin so pale it is transparent
Her dress so tattered it appears to drag the stone corridors
She weeps, she wails, she screams
But none seem to hear her.
Trapped forever in a mortal world her soul
Tries to escape in vain-
No use.
There is no escape from the soul, from the mind.
Castle that was once her home- now her prison-
The library, where they danced-
The garden, where they sang-
The bedroom, where they loved-
The courtyard, the bells that rang-
The books, the parchments, the scrolls-
That bear his script, his seal, his crest
But he is gone.
No longer.
His hands shall no longer hold her face
His eyes shall no longer scan the crowd.
His arms shall no longer embrace-
And she no longer shall smile,
Nor draw breath
For she fades.
Even now, she fades.
Day by day, she decreases
Thinner and thinner and thinner-
But no end.
No end for the ghost of the White City,
For she who was once a beautiful maiden-
Now fated to roam
To wander
To weep-
She haunts the passages
The empty rooms-
His room.
Their room.
But their room no longer
For he is not there-
And never again shall be.
Into the study she wanders one night-
Screams when she sees his shadow
But he is not there-
Only his beautiful handwriting and a shadow
A shadow of her son-
Their son.
Now the king, now the leader,
But he knows her no longer.
She is alone.
Alone she sweeps rolls of parchments off of the desk-
She weeps.
Her tears drip onto the papers
But no stain-
For she is not there
But still she lingers.
Her pale fingers grasp ink bottles and quills-
She smashes them into the wall-
They shatter
The broken pieces ooze with black ink
And she thinks of her heart,
And tears run down her face
But do not fall.
And instead they linger as a shadow-
And again she is reminded of her heart.
She screams
With no voice
And none can hear her grieving-
But still she cries,
In a forgotten language and a dying voice
And wishes he could hear her
And wishes he could save her-
But none can save her now.
So she fades,
A silent scream in the dark
And a disturbing dream in the shadow.
The new king (he is her son) tosses in his sleep
But he cannot hear her
Nor can he see her-
But she sees him,
Oh, she sees him every day
And every night,
And she cannot help but think that he looks
So remarkably similar to his father-
And she screams
And gouges her lover's name into the walls
With red fingernails that cannot drip blood-
For her blood is
No longer
Though her heart pains her still.
And the new king gasps when he wakes
For his father's name is scratched into the stone
And he orders that it be erased-
Have this removed at once!
He cries, half in panic
Half in pain
For the memory is still too raw
And too near.
But she cannot erase it from her mind
For her fingernails are worn to nothing
And the ghost of the scars in the stone remains
And though she can see it all.
None can see her.
In the dark a fire burns in the hearth-
The flames are flickering,
Dancing-
Just like they used to dance
In the garden.
And she shrieks in madness
And casts forgotten love letters into the flame,
And the color burns red like her blood-
But her blood is there no longer.
The ashes dwindle but cannot burn
And the wind blows...
And sweeps them across the stone floor,
And into her hair,
And onto her tear-stained face,
And she is reminded of her soul.
Still she fades,
Turns ashen gray and pale-
Her skin no longer white
But the sickening color of a dead flame
And the hue of the winter sky-
Cold and lonely and distant,
Never to be touched-
And doomed to fade
Forever.
Neither living nor dead
But trapped between worlds-
A dead flower pressed between pages of a book
And lost in the parchments between lines of script
That she cannot read, nor comprehend-
And she is doomed to watch it all happen
And she can do nothing.
And nothing can be done for her.