Prelude (prelude, or, in other words, introduction, or Author's Note. Do not use my new expression, or if you want to, send me two pounds. Yup, this, ladies and gentlemen, is a copyright. Perfectly sir!)
So, um, here is the first chapter of this tale. I would like to give a plea, and a warning: the plea is that you may review. I just need to know what people think about what I write. And my warning is: there are some things you may not understand with what's happening, and if there isn't any explanation in the next chapters, well, I can't do nothing, because I myself probably don't know. Nevertheless, do not hesitate to write to me.
Anyway: read and enjoy. And review…
Chapter the One
Tal-Narra
It was a decaying gothic mansion, carved in the outside in old pictures, too old, really, to see what they were supposed to be originally. The spider webs and incrusted dry leaves in the cracks had given the carved creature utterly bizarre airs, as sinister as strange, and the two trees that grew at either sides of the tall, massif wooden door were so old, so twisted, there leafs so cracked and rotten, and strangely chiselled-looking, that the gloom was total; the manor seemed like a place of phantoms and dooms. Situated very far away from the village at the bottom of the landscape's sharp, long slope; protected from the rest of the world by a living gate of trees, which stretched in a wide crescent of massif, guard-looking greyish oaks, and backed with a dangerous forest no one had yet explored, it was overhanged with the heavy dark grey sky, and standing in the middle of a real, nearly touch-like current of chilling, horrifying cold. The animals in the surroundings were wolves, only to be heard, strange, squawking birds, of inky colours, prowling cats, black cats, cats that puzzled with their living in such places.
It was an ideal place for tragic romance, for doomed loves, for ruthless vampires, for ghost dramas, a place a lot of Ladies of the Novelettes would have longed to live in. Yet, when the luxurious coach pulled down the half-erased, great steep road, Ember's cold grey eyes didn't reflect any excitement whatsoever. She knew well enough that her parents had exiled her, and the fact that she wasn't wanted didn't thwart her, it was more her parents' actually sending her away that had so much hurt her feelings.
Ember pulled away from the thin-glassed window, sitting back in the comfortable chair, and snapped the little curtains shut. She grudged the landscape being so dreary, for dreariness she had already seen, like many other things: colour she had tossed away, laughter she had scorned, joy she had been kept away from while benefiting from a beautiful view of it, sadness she had bitterly endured, hate had been her mother, love she had buried away, light she had enjoyed, then discarded for boredom: in her parents' magnificent domains, she had been able to do nearly all she wished, and now she was left wry and old morally, while her body, which had for a while possessed the blossom of youth, was finally withering with her heart: at sixteen, she was tall, not fat enough to be slim, with a face that no blush came to light, a skin as white as chalk, sickly white, eyes wide and as cold a grey as the cruellest fog, lips colourless and thin, a nose as sharp as a blade and slightly pointed, hair she plaited away negligently, hair as black as the deepest, coldest night, black as despair, as ink, as jet, as a raven, with scraggy ends, hanging silky and wild down the straight back past a nearly impossibly fine waist, and down graceless, craggy hips. The legs were long and thin, so were the incredibly skinny, white arms. The hands, however, were beautiful; all the beauty forsaken from the poor, feeling-less face had been given to the hands, long fine, spidery, white, bewitching, light as fluttering, aerial butterfly wings, lightly translucent over the greenblue veins. Her hands, however, she hid in gloves of silk, for she always believed that the beauty of the hands had been given only to outline even more the ugliness of the ghastly face.
The coach suddenly came to a shaky stop, and Ember, without any preamble, slammed open the lustrous, smooth wooden door, and jumped gracelessly down. The coachman had already taken down both her two effect-cases, and had awkwardly dragged them up the thirteen stairs to the door, which had open wide, revealing the one that would be Ember's tutor for the few years to come.
She was tall. Slim, with a huge amount of the most dazzling white hair ever seen, piled up in an elegant heap over her face, and hanged with strings of chiselled jet-stones and glittery garnets that slithered in and out of the hair, over the tall, broad white brow, the temples, and the small ears; this woman had something puzzling about her, and this was the fact that she seemed to have no age. Her hair was completely, snowy white, yet the wrinkles on her face could only but outline the small, very neat red mouth, and the narrow, dark slits of emerald that seemed incrusted in her marmoreal face. Her stature was healthy and full of energy.
And she was dressed like queen. An elven queen, straight from the most fantastical tales and legends. First, a layer of elegantly crumpled, pearly white silk, with sleeves hanging loose and large from the elbows to the knuckles, and tightened around the waist with a lace-trimmed, dark orange corset. The white overdress stopped at half-thigh, opening form the front, and hanging lower behind the knees, and under it was a layer of dark blue silk, like the first one, with a royally crumpled air, and edges that had been craftily cut to look like ripped, yet had a kind of wild beauty about them. This blue layer stopped a little bit under the knees, opening to the front, and like the first one, hanging lower, to half-calves, behind. The last layer was a Bordeaux-red silk, like the others, and trailing on the floor, with the same ripped hem. In an elegant white hand, the woman held a large, richly bedecked fan: with drawings of heroic scenes and a bundle of mixed savage feathers and large, beautiful orange dead leafs dangling down the fan where she held it; the other hand, she held drawn before her bosom, as if resting, yet not touching; only brushing. The tons of thin black threads that tied the skirts and materials to each other hung here and there, and the eccentric air of this woman was complete.
Quickly, with a sweeping grace, she walked down the stairs, waving her fan to the coachman for him to put the effect-cases on the floor and go. He hastily did what he was mutely bid and climbed back in his coach, looking nervously back behind.
Ember, meanwhile, nervous and restless, waited for her host to come down. She was afraid of this woman, for already she couldn't understand her. And if Ember had always hated thinks of hidden beauties like books, it was because she couldn't understand them.
The tall woman stopped before her new charge, and smiled, shivering slightly, for her throat could be seen and was free to the cold. She then stretched her elegant white hand:
'Lady Opal Angel,' she introduced herself, 'Lady Ember, I daresay?'
Ember nodded, and took the hand, which shook hers in a warm, energetic welcome.
'Welcome,' said Lady Opal, 'to Tal-Narra, your new home.'
'I am grateful,' muttered Ember awkwardly.
Lady Opal, took her arm, and in a firm yet gentle grasp, she led her up the thirteen marble stairs, and took her in.
The main corridor of Tal-Narra was a very wide hall, with a tall, arched ceiling, at dark, and glittering with silky spider webs. Doors, behind old velvet curtains or unveiled, tall and narrow, of dark, glossy wood, rose all along the two walls, separated from each other by little tables with old baskets of withered flowers, or velvet-cushioned, high-backed chairs, which themselves were standing under imposing portraits of Lords and Ladies, or peoples, or creatures unknown, portraits strange because unflattering, painted with morose colours, with subject looking glum, or evilly satisfied, or sad, or hateful, or wrathful, of sorrowful. The floor was of hard, chillingly cold flagstones, and no rushes nor carpets came to warm feet that would wander upon it: instead, it was laid with dead leaves, and withering roses, and even here and there roots from the outside trees had pierced the stone, growing tiny, sickly, greyish little saplings, and also mushrooms.
As they walked in the hall, and while Ember looked around her with a horrified curiosity, Lady Opal clapped her hands together, and immediately, out of the shadows, as if from nowhere, a slim, stealthy silhouette rushed past Ember, who nearly screamed with the fright, and went to quickly sweep up the two cases on the threshold, and slam to doors. When she heard the bolt shut with a scarily loud clicketing sound, Ember shivered, feeling trapped in this gothic, decaying place.
'Gold, the cases to Lady Ember's rooms, and warm a bath and clothes for her while I'll show her through Tal.'
The Gold vanished away in a staircase hidden by a dark golden tapestry representing an old woman holding a flower to the sun. The sun rays had lost their shine, and looked mourn and colourless, but the normally kindly face of the crone had taken an evil, bloodcurdling appearance, and moths had made holes in her eyes and in the flower, taking away all comfort.
Lady Opal, however, was already taking Ember in the first room, which had, unlike the others, two doors. The doors opened by themselves as the two women approached them, revealing the first real room. It was a very vast room, an immense room, and the colourful appearance of the walls were in fact due to the thousand upon thousand of books that lay in hundred upon hundred of rows, all around the room, and creeping up to lost themselves in the tall ceiling's shadow. The only places were there was no bookcase was the tall, large window giving upon a tiny garden of dead rose-trees, and the fireplace, which was large as well, and deep, with a terrible, roaring fire in it, and piles of wood logs lying near. On the mantel-piece, a large clock was echoing all around the vast room its eternal, frighteningly solemn ticking. Two large sandglasses were at each side of the clock, and they were fantastic, for the glass was thin crystal, and the sand, was not sand, inside, but tiny gold nuggets, that glittering like rich fire-seeds in the firelight. The rest of the mantel-piece was occupied by little figures of porcelain: black witches with streaming raven hair cursing over white cradles, executioners about to fall their shiny axes in the necks of heroic young men, knights with heads impaled of their lances, maidens riding dragons, hanged men, little faeries in flowers of violets and roses drinking from bowls of blood…A whole collection of beautifully detailed, sweetly morbid little characters.
The rest of the room was comfortably furnished with sofas and armchairs, all different: some narrow and of red velvet, some large and deep, and to die for, covered in luxurious creamy furs, one sofa that had the shape of a half-arch, a long couch laid with cushions of silk, and an army of leather armchairs: wide and soft, cracked and crisp, cushion covered, lacking an arm or a back…Next to those were little tables with bowls of fruits, a harp of gold, a basket of knitting kit, a large cushion with a black cat dozing in it, and the spider webs, all around, on the books, in the corners of the window, in the folds of the damask curtains, hanging form the ceiling…On the floor, finally, half a hundred furs, of every colour and seize, lay, covering every single inch of the flagstones, and brushing against the flat of shoes.
'This,' said Opal cheerfully, 'is the living-room. It is here that I spend most of my time.'
She backed away, taking Ember, who was absolutely entranced, to the next room. This one was a narrow room, rather small compared to the loving room: a tall, narrow window at the far side let the greyish light enter in, but the tones of colours, excessive in this room, turned it in green; a dreary green. For it seemed that all, in this room, was green: green curtains, green carpet, green armchairs, green ivy creeping on the green-tapestried walls, and hanging from the ceiling, copper cages dangled, incrusted with emeralds, jades and onyxes, and filled with rackety hordes of green birds, which flapped their green wings against the cage, and yelled in the green atmosphere.
'The Green Room,' said Lady Opal in a solemn voice, 'used to be the Lord Green's favourite room. He was the one, also, who made the garden of the East Wing.'
She led Ember out of the glaucous room, and went on, all along the corridor, showing her in room after room: the 'Ancient Library', a circular room that was in fact a little turret, and climbed for a few yards up, with two sliding, richly polished ladders, and no seat or window at all, only rows and rows of books; then the 'Blue Ballroom,' a vast room with a shiny marble dancing floor and a wall that was entirely a window, and screen with blue muslin, so that the light coming from it was a dreamy blue; the Dining Room, a vast, imposing room that glossed eerily from all the burnished rose wood, and a horde of other rooms, some comfortable, some dark and dreary, some too-colourful, some too vast, some too narrow…
And finally, after having seen the rooms to the left side and the rooms to the right side of the main hall, Ember was taken up a large stone-stepped staircase, which led to yet another huge hall, which stretched to the left and right, leading to the East and West wings. And again, the procession of rooms began: incredibly luxurious bed-chambers, cell-chambers, bathrooms, little studies and libraries, closets, nursery rooms, all as strange, beautiful and decaying as the rest of the house; with ripped curtains, spider-webbed ceilings, dark massif beds, cracked bath-tubes, cages of gold or silver filled with savage birds, crystal, gargoyle-shaped bottles, libraries with dark, dusty books, broken mirrors, wardrobes filled with the most magnificently gothic garments, mantel-pieces covered with horrifying, lovely little figures, chairs with missing feet, desks crumpling under piles of stacked parchments and leathered volumes, great clicking clocks, jewel boxes, embroidered cushions, little flights of bats running away by opened or broken windows, portraits of the most beautiful yet terrifying peoples, myriads of moths of all colours fluttering in the air, bouquets of withered flowers, trees growing form behind cracks of the stone, moss creeping on the floor…
It was absolutely, utterly magnificent; never had Ember seen such a dwelling place: it was a ruin, yet still filled with it past grace and richness, filled with mute secrets, forgotten things of the past; the walls seemed to whisper, the prowling cats here and there seemed to dare with their goldengreen eyes, carvings of gargoyles and magical creatures looked enigmatically out of their strangely alive eyes. It was a new, secret world, and it was to be her home.
When they had finished exploring the second floor, Lady Opal stopped.
'I daresay you to not need to see further. The donjon is locked heavily, and nobody was able to go in for centuries. Now, I presume you must be tired. I will show you your rooms, were you will be able to bath, and then dress and come down for dinner. Gold will show you the way, if you do not remember.'
She took a candle form the twisted hand of a little stone faery on the wall, for the light outside was lowering, and the inside of the manor was growing darker and dimmer by the minute, and led her to the other side of the West wing, taking her to he East Wing. There she walked all down the hall, to the very last door, and opening it, she said:
'After you my dear.'
Ember took a deep breath, and hesitantly walked in.
The room was vast, with dark walls of stone, which were covered with dark blue and red tapestries, representing the heroic scenes of the Moth Battle, and the life of its heroin, Mindelle MoonMoth. The floor was covered in a deep, warm red carpet, with many puzzling, complicated patterns. The two tall, large windows in the left wall were framed with several layers ripped dark old gold velvet curtains, and the net-curtains were flowing shreds of multi-coloured muslins. The room was furnished with a canopy bed, hung with the same curtains as the windows, but thicker, and covered with a trailing patchwork kilt of mixed gold, red, blue and green, and a heap of dazzling white cushions at the head side. A little rose-wooden bed-side table next to it held a green vase full of mixed dark green weeds and fawn-coloured feathers, and three little boxes could be seen in the compartments below; dazzling jewelled boxes. A very large wardrobe was wide opened in one corner, revealing surprising amounts of dresses; the piece of furniture was next to a wooden, carved chest, which was opened too, and filed with fancy corsets, girdles, sashes, sleeve-corsets, petticoats, stockings, chemises, gloves etc, etc. then, the last wall, the one facing the door, was covered in bookcases, which stretched from either side of the dark, richly wooden mantel piece, to the end corners, filled with books of all sizes and colours. The mantel piece held a tall clock, which was carved in the wooden figure of a maiden balanced on one slender foot, and holding up in both hands the perfect ivy-circled clock screen. Other figures of dancers, all in dark wood, some with flowing skirts or nothing at all, stood all over the wooden line, decorating in their elegant and bizarre way. Two comfortable armchairs covered in furs faced the roaring fire, with a little table between each, on which a tall vase of delicate porcelain contained a pile of pale pink and pastel blue sweets.
The room was warm, comfortable, welcoming. Ember felt good in it, as if plunging in a warm bath. The smell was one of sweet flowers, to remote to be too strong, agreeable to live with, and even if spider webs domed over the room, and that a flight of red and blue moths kept fluttering near the windows and bed, it was a beautiful room.
'Well, how do you find your new room?' asked Lady Opal.
'It looks lovely,' said Ember reluctantly.
'I hope you will find yourself comfortable. Gold has prepared a bath for you in the bath-chamber, so you'd better be quick before the water cools. Then she will help you dress and lead you downstairs, to the Dining Room. See you hopefully later.'
Lady Opal withdrew to the door, and added:
'And welcome again, dear Ember. If you knew how much I am happy to have you here.'
Ember smiled a small smile, and the door closed.
The dress suited her well. It suited her, in fact, like never a dress had suite her before, no matter which most talented tailor in fashion she had employed. It was a long dress of ink-like velvet, tied from the top to the bottom of the bodice by long satin ribbons, which hung long after to last knot. Long sleeves with the same ripped end as the ends of Lady Opal's skirts reached her white knuckles, tied around the top of the arm, from shoulder to elbow, by same satin ribbons with hanging ends. Under the skirt she wore tight stockings, of white and black stripes, and tied at the top of the thigh by yet other hanging satin ribbons. Then fine leather boots, and a series of other ornaments, which were at the same time grand and discreet: a string of sapphires, rubies and diamonds, in ragged splinters, hung around her brow, in and out of the hair, which had been gloriously smoothed until silky, and raised behind the head only to fall the more cascading down the back, mixed with tiny star gems. Tiny falls of jewels made twinkling and clicketing earrings, while a last ribbon, of dark blue silk, coiled around the knuckles, the thumb, the wrist, and up the arm, with minuscule little star and moon and bat gems. It was glorious, fit for a queen of night. And when she saw herself in the mirror, Ember just couldn't believe it: excitement and tiredness had given a gleaming shine to her grey eyes, which had darkened to a nearly black cloud of thunder. Little puffs of pale pink had appeared under the arch of her eyes, and the lips had slightly filled and coloured. The skin had become less greyish, whiter, and perfumed by the bath. Gold, it seemed, had worked a miracle.
She was a small woman, and like Opal, didn't seem to have any age. She spoke in an old and cracked voice; her hair was a rich, full brown, glossing over her small shoulders, and yet thin wrinkles, like Opal's, showed around the eyes, which were dark glitters of gold, and the mouth, with was small, and wore a slight, frail smile. She was dressed in sweeping dark clothes, which seemed to have no colour, hanging between green and black, or blue and black, or red and black…A little string of pearl disappeared in the high bodice of the dress, and a medallion hung over it.
'What does it represent?' Ember asked shyly as Gold tied the end of the ribbon-bracelet around her arm.
'It is the symbol of my family,' Gold said in her cracked voice, 'We other Emethinds were once a great family. Even now, I should own the Castle of Canna, but a cousin stole it from me, saying that heirloom didn't work with women…Well, I have learnt to deal with the regret and forget it.'
She finished tying the ribbon, and added:
'How beautiful your hands are! Even more beautiful than Lady Opals'.'
Quickly, for she did not think shyness suited her, Ember asked:
'How is life here, at Black Arrow?'
'Tal-Narra. You should call it Tal-Narra. Here, everybody calls it Tal.'
'Everybody?'
Ember turned in surprise, but Gold went on quickly:
'Life here is strange. It seems that time doesn't really exist…And also, the mansion is filled fit to burst with secrets…Recent secrets, ancient, haunting secrets…You cannot open a door without facing one, or bothering some sleeping drama…It is sometimes unnerving, you know…'
And she vanished.
Ember turned around a few times in flabbergasted circles, looking around. Gold had actually vanished.
'Don't look so gobsmacked,' said a young voice behind her.
It was a boy's voice, drawling, full of hidden mockery.
'And hurry yourself down with me. I'll take you to Opal. (Also, what really stupid questions.)'
A small, slender form emerged from the darkness and beheld a cat. Long and black, it had nothing in common at all with a human, except for the clever, sly goldengreen eyes, and a tiny silver collar hung with a tiny, glittery silver key. The cat ignored her air of total astonishment, and led her away from the room, and all across the manor to the dining room, giving many chilling details as he went.
'That manor was not build for a good reason, and not with good money either,' he said as they passed through a most incredibly beautiful gallery of enigmatic portraits, 'The man was called Lord Shadow. It is this fellow, here, the one dressed all in jet-black.'
The cat thrust a lovely little chin upwards to a huge portrait hanging exactly at Ember's size, so that she felt like a facing the man in the face. The man was beautiful. His face was shaped like the sharp blade of a dagger, and was as white as the finest ivory. His hair hung pitch-black upon his tall and broad forehead, and his eyes were deep and endless pits of darkness. He had a strange air about himself: an air of savage sorrow, an air of wild grief. He looked so intense, so true; Ember stepped back and hastily followed the cat, which already was at the end of the gallery.
'Poor guy,' the feline went on in a banal voice, 'He married a woman, a fair maiden, who's beauty was so great she couldn't keep on living with it. He had killed all his family, including his parents, brothers, and sisters, to get the fortune to build this mansion for her, and the last day, when the peasants had put the last stone and carved the last figure up the donjon, her own beauty hurt her so much she just went up, and threw herself down. So he became a monster, a kind of blood-thirsty ghost: every night, he would marry a girl, or woman, doesn't matter, and kill her, by stabbing and pushing from the tower. The donjon is doomed many peoples say. Anyway, the peoples went on living, going generation after generation from a secret child an escaped of the wives had had.'
The cat turned a corner, and they crossed an empty hall that was all, form the ceiling to the floor, spider-web-covered mirrors, and went on:
'The fifth daughter of the escaped wife's daughter built a hall, called Mirror Hall. She would sleep and eat and live here, and grew as beautiful as the dead Lord-Shadow's first wife. She was as beautiful as her, and she had thought that living with this beauty always in front, behind, under or over her in the mirror Hall would perhaps diminish the beauty. Alas, every day the beauty became keener, and every day she became madder, and hurt more. One day she took a hammer from the floor, a hammer she had kept for long years; she was not married yet, that day, and was just twenty three. She broke every single one of the mirrors, and then impaled herself with a piece of it. The Hall was locked up after this sanguinary event, and one of those stupid heirs tried to rebuild one, but it is not as magnificent as the old one.'
And he went on, as they reached yet another corridor, with was hung of red velvet tapestries form top to bottom.
'Dame Scarlette commended for kilometres of white velvet. Her husband had deceived her with a kitchen maid. She stabbed both of them in the middle of a tender act I shall not describe, and then she just pumped their body of all blood into a great basin, in which she laid the whole content of white velvet. Then she dried them wet, and hung them here. A few generations later, this lace was named Hall of the Lovers: many passionate scenes have happened in those crimson folds of velvet's lovers' blood.'
On and on he went until they reached the Dining room's door. Ember was staggering, sick with all those stories of blood and love, and the cat finally turned towards her.
'Don't look so choked, my love. One day it will be your turn to imprint a terrible story somewhere in Tal.'
He turned away, and walked idly down the corridor, sinking in the darkness. His voice, one last time, reached her:
'And remember I don't exist.'
Ember stumbled in the room, and shook herself, looking around.
Lady Opal was sitting at one side of the table, an elbow on the glossy wooden table, her chin resting in a hand, and the other hand slowly fanning her pale face. It was bizarre, utterly out of place, for the house was creaking and shivering its whole single stones with the stone-splitting cold.
'I am not hot, my dear,' Lady Opal said smilingly, 'I merely need to move my arm, so it won't rust.'
Ember only wanted to do one thing, and that was to turn around, and run, run away as fats as she could from this house of doom, of strangeness, of darkness, of ludicrousness. She went slowly to the table and sat down.
'I can see Gold has done a good job of you, my sweeting, yet this stupid ghost shouldn't have tell you all this.'
She sighed, and then raised a hand in the air, with a soft.
'You can serve. And don't linger. And don't forget the bats.'
The bats, like a massif, horrifying cloud of black, swooped down, and filled the entire room, silent in voice, but flapping their shiny black wings like mad. It didn't look as if they had any particular destination, or even that they were coming from somewhere, but after a few minutes, they were all gone, and Ember had no idea where.
'Oh, I am awfully sorry. I forgot about the bats,' Opal said apologetically.
She added:
'Eat, darling, you need force, and a little bit more flesh upon those fine bones of yours.'
And sure enough, lying on the table, dishes upon dishes of succulent food had appeared, from nowhere as it seemed.
'I don't understand,' said Ember.
Opal sighed, looking sorry:
'You don't need to. You'll soon be used. Eat'
Requiem Soooo…what do you think about this dear Lady Opal? I, personally, love her. And Ember? I bet you noticed a little resemblance between our heroin and the Ugly Duckling. Well, this story is a little bit of the retold fairy tale: the Ugly Duckling, but with human characters, and with the Ugly Duckling coming back to its family after she'll become a swan. Well, I hope you didn't get anguished by all the descriptions. I had just the manor so vividly in my mind I just couldn't help tell all there was to tell about it. So, review, and tell me what you think about all this.