Oh goodness, oh goodness. This began as a simple idea, and then grew into a monster. It is my darling, but I can handle honesty. After all, how else is one supposed to improve?
Anyways. Phantom translated into another world, full of quiet magic(k) and power, inspired by the likes of Charles de Lint and Peter S. Beagle, both of whom are geniuses. Everything you recognize is not mine, everything you do not belongs to me. I do believe that's it, so enjoy!
Prologue 1: First Time Around
He came to her in dreams, this strange phantom lover, in the suspended limbo between sleep and reality. No matter how she tried to focus her mind and her eyes, he remained just out of reach, a lethargic haze moving exquisitely slowly over her senses. They burned in the night and cooled to mirror the dawn, as he fled with the rising sun.
Marguerite Dubé had never been anything more or anything less than a practical, church-going girl. She was a second-glance beauty, as she tended to wind her hair too tightly and squinted her eyes to see the world in front of her; but her lips were full, her nose turned up delicately, and she held herself with a certain proud grace. Over the years, she had collected a respectable number of suitors, but none had ever seen or predicted her sudden glimmer, the tendency to retire earlier with every night. In fact, no one seemed to notice any difference in her composure, other than a relaxing of her frequently pursed lips and a newfound strength in her laughter.
As a nice, practical Catholic girl, Marguerite knew the time spent twisting in the sheets, sweat pooling on her brow and in the small of her back were a sin, an so she spent hours in from of the Virgin Mary, praying over and over for forgiveness, for deliverance from the unseen demons. However, her prayers were half-hearted at best; still he came, and still she submitted willingly.
Nights passed and their couplings grew and multiplied until it seemed she did nothing but sleep, even though lines began to etch themselves around her eyes and her skin grew dull and sallow. By the time he chose to reveal his true form, she was too far gone to do anything but accept him into her bed regardless, unheeding of the caresses burning her skin with frost, the yellow eyes holding her defenseless and writhing under his nonexistent weight.
The next morning, she knelt not in front of the Virgin, but her chamber pot, emptying what little remained in her stomach.
Three months passed, drenched in nervous secrecy and evasions. Her dream-lover had not returned, and yet she did not sleep, praying to whomever might listen to cleanse her body, to take away the life she became aware of growing inside her. Yet again, no matter how much she poured into her pleas, no matter what she offered in return, no help came. When her stomach began to expand noticeably, she went to confession for the first time in nearly a year, hoping to salvage – at the very least – her soul.
The remnants of her pregnancy were spent in a nearby convent, where the nuns tended to regard her as a particularly dim fern who had somehow learned how to talk, or did not notice her at all. That was when her mind truly began to curdle, in the endless silence of stone walls and among the exacting reminder of God's wrath. Eventually, even solitude was denied to her; after she threw herself down the spiraling stone steps in an attempt to smash in her head or her abdomen – it made no difference, not anymore – she was not allowed a moment to herself. Not to bathe, not to eat, not even in nightmares, where they lingered as he once did.
It was not an easy birth: Marguerite dared to hope that might serve as her penance, but when she heard the midwife's shrieks of terror, she realized that her own personal hell had just begun.
They were married at noon, with the fluttering of green leaves as their only visible witnesses – but there, and there and perhaps there, just beyond the boundaries of this world, figures large and small gathered around the sun-dappled clearing, straining for a glimpse of the happy couple.
"I heard…" from the carpet of bluebells,
"Did you ever…" from a passing brook,
"Can you…" from the sap in the trees,
"Ssh," said a leaf – who was not really a leaf, but had taken the form of one for the better view. The babbling stopped; a sudden hush fell over the forest. Dressed in white, dark hair tumbling down her back, bright eyes smiling, the bride not only glowed but shimmered. Beside her, hands clasped around the tips of her fingers, the bridegroom recited his vows with a gravel tongue, having trouble speaking through the wide smile on his face.
At the time, Charles Daae was nineteen years old and he was a romantic.
It had been a month since he had been brought, by way of cricket-song and moonbeams, to Faerie; as it seemed renown of his violin had spread even through the magickal lands. He had played for the king and queen and their court, and in return he had been granted the chance to stay for as long as he wished – if he would play again, of course. That was he first time he had seen the lady Evangeline, smiling at him from behind her father's knee. She had flushed at his unabashed gaze and averted her eyes.
During the next few weeks, they had danced around increasingly frequent, clandestine meetings and shy letters; when he played for all of Faerie, he played only for her enjoyment.
"Do you think you're under a spell, boy?" she had asked once, as they sat on the curve of a cherry blossom and watched the moons rise.
"I don't know," he had replied. But he was smiling, and she laughed softly as their hands joined. "I want to ask your father for your hand in marriage," he had said nervously, quietly, ready for her rejection but not daring to look at her pointed face and ever-changing eyes. "I have nothing to offer him that he does not already have."
"We are not like your people," she had told him, head tilted upwards into the night sky. "Offer him what you can, pretty boy, and we shall see."
Charles locked himself in his room without food or drink and emerged a week later with a fistful of manuscript. And so the King's daughter was given a lifetime as a mortal for the price of a song; they were married not a week later.
"To thee," Evangeline said softly, "I give my mortal life."
The forest erupted in celebration.