My name is Blanche
I died in the snow
It was cold and white
My breath was white
And it had added to the whiteness of the sky
The snow had been falling
It had covered me, when I died.
My name was Blanche
My name was white
And I died
In the snow
It was cold
And white
I disappeared, white in the white snow.
I had loved a man. How I had come to meet this man had been outside of my will and power. I had known that he was a prince, and I had heard that he was awful. Now that I am only whiteness, frozen in white nothingness, in the snow…I can fade and travel back. Where I am going, it was-
Green. So green and beautiful, these flowers on the road mixed in with the shrubbery.
The horse was steady, an obedient beast, content to serve in his old age, his spirit broken by the weight of man's plows and the length of his fields. So the animal was an appropriate stead for a small woman. Blanche was a name that suggested the woman who possessed it was beautiful and noble, but this servant was neither. She was stout, though she was not fat, just short, with thin hair tied back inside her bonnet, hiding a white scalp that was otherwise too obvious to be attractive. Dark hair, black, some of it loose and mussed from traveling with a breeze, was glinting with sunlight that reflected how infrequently the head had been bathed. The eyes were small, the centers brown and plain, framed by short lashes. Her eyebrows were two thick, flat logs that lacked expression. Her lips were thin while her mouth was large and already signs of wear added creases besides her lips and faintly lined brow. The beauty of the name clearly outshone the beauty of the woman, which was unfortunate. But the name was also her only source of beauty, so it was fortunate that her parents had been able to see at once that she would never be pretty and so had pitied her and given her a pretty name.
Now she had been sent off to serve a prince, a great honor that had delighted her parents. They would not miss her, having been blessed with four healthy boys and three homely looking girls who might be married off to sons of families of equal, if not a little higher, social standing. There was no such hope for a daughter who had become a woman years ago, and had failed to catch the eye of a single suitor. Not even the masters or sons of the houses she had served in had ever been inclined to bother her, which was a blessing for the girl who had known others who had fallen into rather unpleasant circumstances, some disappearing forever. But this indifference had suggested that there was no hope, and so her greatest honor would be to serve, to cook and clean and obey the prince who had called for a woman to come unaccompanied, who would be hired because his castle was in need of more hands. It was a strange summoning, but one that could not be refused. It glittered with blinding opportunity.
But the greenery could not mask the foreboding shadows, the stones and the gargoyles with twisted, hellish maws gaping at the woman entering the gate as if hungering to consume her, waiting gleefully for the iron to clang shut and imprison her.
No one had come to welcome Blanche, and outside of the natural splendor that flourished without the taming hand of a gardener to regulate it, there were no signs of life. Nothing human, in any case. Nothing civilized. It, the castle with its stone pillars and stairs, felt wild, somehow as if the stone had always existed on this spot and had been chiseled by wind and rain to reach the shape it now held. It had no touch of man, and coming from a society that revolved around man as the earth revolves around the sun, it was unnerving.
But the sturdy beast the woman rode felt no alarm, and he carried her to the castle's entrance; then the horse stood by, leaning to chew the grass as Blanche timidly dismounted and held his reigns in an unsure grip. The hands were not petite, white, and smooth, but they were hands that could hold a beast in place, as long as the beast had already been tamed and was willing to remain beside her.
Looking but seeing nothing else to consult before making a decision, the reigns were placed carefully on the saddle so that the poor creature would not tread on them if he wandered while he grazed. Blanche, a woman with little use – having been born without the characteristics that give women worth – ascended the steps and reached for the cruel, iron face of the knocker welded to one of the massive doors into the castle. She let the sound pound its way through the wood and echo, expanding to fill the hollow castle, pushing breath into a dead creature as if to make it live again. Or so, that is what she felt she had done, stepping back and releasing the iron face as the door opened, hinges screeching and frightening most of the birds in the untamed garden, so that they twittered and rose, flapping away as one great force of surprise that settled somewhere beyond the gate while the birds themselves perched on the black metal structure to become it's speared points. They watched as the woman slipped through the door.
They flew away.
*~*~::..+..::~*~*
The great door, in opening, threw swirls of dust that flitted away from the woman, clumps breaking and casting off gray particles, sweeping over the length of the end of the great crimson rug that traveled down the hall, leading like a prodigious tongue deeper into the mouth of the dead thing this castle had become. The neglect was startling, more so than the feral garden that had grown as twisted and gnarled as the horns of the castle gargoyles. Together, having witnessed the state of the outer shell and inner substance of the castle, trepidation and then doubt rose to the woman's face, twitching her brow before the expressions faded, darkening with shadows as Blanche moved deeper into the poorly lit and cavernous hall, where the smallest movement of her cloak would ripple on the surface of the pervading silence, the wretched emptiness. The small woman stepped lightly on the rug, following it as the castle swallowed her, mute for the fear of speaking and giving herself away to the ghosts that must own the haunting feeling that chilled her flesh, as if touched by the cold hopelessness exhaled in some surrendering sigh. The contrasting feeling of a guilty predator prickled on the surface of her arms, holding her hands together as if pleading a bargain for the safety of her soul. But her soul was shut in by walls of fear and she could not reach her God.
Come in.
The silence spoke with no existing voice, but there was a feeling, an essence. The feeling was stronger than any words the woman had ever received, this chill burrowing into her marrow, creeping and writhing, her clasped hands trembling beside a rapid heartbeat, making her fear the thought of turning back. Must go farther! – it said, again with the aura of the dead, a bone white hand coaxing her nearer, raking her mind so that her body followed. That's it! Now farther woman, go just a bit farther, my sweet. Poor…sweet love.
These were not words. There was never a voice, but some celestial, bodiless force tugged at Blanche, a rope fastened somewhere beneath her ribs that pulled her forward and made her shoulders shiver against the fear that the door behind her inspired. The illogical fear. There was maturing panic as well, but that was subdued by stunned numbness.
And so she came to stand at the base of the stairs, one lungful of hesitation before the pull brought her foot upon the incline of her ascent. She went deeper, deeper into the bowels of this dark place, where dust filtered and cobwebs glistened with the sheen of a blade in the rays that broke through the windows, like holy stakes pinning a demon - the sinful power crippled now but fated to be released as soon as the night falls. It was yet another disturbing aura in the dead castle, but it did not dissuade the woman, if she had noticed it. The stairs were climbed, her form briefly disrupting the golden stakes, where darkness scurried at the opportunity of her shadow – the darkness following her. Gargoyles looked down from their perches along the walls, two at the top of the stairs, brooding in the gloom with bottomless black voids, their eyes, forever watching. But none of these creatures moved to pursue her, though all of them saw Blanche pass them, peering up fearfully into their intimidating leers. She held her hands to her chest for comfort. Her brow remained furrowed with apprehension.
Creaking down below, with a faint cough and no booming echo, the door shut and the dust settled someplace on the rug or the marble floor, no longer bothered by the intruding outside air. It could be dead again.
The mouth had shut. The wind, its life, had been severed.
The castle held her in. Blanche would not escape, so the gargoyles, the darkness, all of the lifeless could afford patience.
It was in another hall where the red carpet continued over the granite tiles that were not as dusty as those by the entrance, within a corridor lined with many open archways that served as doors - Blanche was passing by them with curious anxiety in her glances that dreaded an awaiting form. Here a voice, one with words and real substance, spoke and welcomed her, holding the power to break the silence that had kept the weak woman mute. The tone was warm and colored, not bone white.
"Hello my dear. The journey must have been warm for you in this weather. Hang your cloak and remove your bonnet and come with me. -You can take your time, dearie. No need to look so nervous either, your cheeks are pale. It doesn't look like it's your natural color."
Frightened like any creature flung into an alien environment, Blanche pressed her trembling hands into her heart and stared through an archway to her left, seeing nothing that could have emitted the voice. Then she started, tripping but catching herself as she retreated from the arm of a black coat hanger that had appeared in her vision, never having noticed it before. With hesitation, but considering the voice's patience, she removed her cloak and bonnet and placed them on the offered limb before stepping beneath the arch to pursue the voice and follow her order.
The voice had been unmistakably female, and eerie only for the shock of its bodiless presentation and the setting it had come in. It had actually been comforting, much like the sun outside. So familiar, the manner of the tone, quite friendly, and unanticipated as the woman, upon seeing the state of the entrance hall, had not expected there to be any living occupants in the castle. No, it should be empty, her mind still insisted, following the direction the voice had come from. Then the black haired woman crossed an empty room and doubted whether she had really heard a voice at all. The lack of a body corrupted the welcome now, and her thoughts turned to ghosts and dead souls which could quite possibly exist in the castle, it being so large and old. Though no contact with any had yet been converted into rumors.
Perhaps the castle was too dead to contain a raw soul. All the souls it did have were packaged in bodies.
She was nearing the center of the room, open archways around her, when from one of these arches a force was thrown at her, feeling much like a harsh gust of wind. Then it transformed. It clutched and dragged her down to her knees as a wave of drowning grief. Blanche gasped but could not cry out. Frozen, her lungs were petrified by the dark desolation around her, having lost the warm voice when this woman – this specter that clung to her now – spoke. Blanche gazed into eyes deepened by terror, real human eyes, and heard a voice that shook, shrill with something akin to madness. The woman shook Blanche as she cried in a pleading voice, made airy by an attempt to keep it contained. She looked like a maid.
"Did you shut it?" Her round eyes, her voice echoing, a din that made Blanche shiver when the cold hands pulled on her clothes - the woman seemed to be without reason. "Did you? D-did you shut-t the doors? Are- are they open?"
Blanche nodded, her mouth drawing in a fragmented breath before her teeth bit into her bottom lip, pain to let her voice surface. "I didn't close it. No, it- it is open." A compassionate hand slowly reached to comfort the cold arm of the ailing woman. She looked so sick and frail, so desperate and afraid. It filled Blanche with both fear for herself and concern and pity for a creature so similar to her. They were both sitting on the floor, holding one another, when the woman broke away without warning, falling back and then scrambling to her feet. An open grin, horrible for the madness and glee that flared in her eyes, caused Blanche to cower instinctively and instantly lose the urge to comfort this being. The woman became a ghoul before her eyes, a wretch with a human form that cackled, a shriek higher than her first plea. And then like some soul offered an escape from Lucifer's domain, the boney, angular creature fled. Her panting breath was loud and frantic to match the stumbling racket produced by her shoes.
Unconsciously, frozen on the floor while her own lungs panted with emotion - dominated by surprise and horror rather than the other woman's rejoicing relief - Blanche lost the substance of her emotions. She rose and went after the fleeing being, following her panted laughter that rung against the granite in the entrance hall as she clambered down the stairs. To freedom, the deranged woman shrieked with joy as she leaped forward, from this hell…she was finally escaping. She ran to the front of the dead castle's maw, down the rug that would muffle her feet when she tread on it as opposed to when her delirium staggered her and her shoes clapped against the stones, falling forward and laughing, madness in her features, still there when her eyes reflected the wall of wood. No crevice or sliver could be seen leading out from the doors that were unmistakably closed. She still ran, panting, staggering, laughing until her body hit a door. Her hands patted it briskly, touching the seams, thin fingers attempting to pry it open. She laughed again, a pale face with ringed, wide eyes gaping and glistening, seeing the door she could not open, fighting with the latch that would not budge.
Finally, with a screech that shredded her grin, the woman kicked at the door, her foot planted against its surface, her hands pulling on the latch, her body arched back with the strain. The pale face turned up to the ceiling, contorted with the effort and her own despair. She screamed in anguish, wordless, wailing with tears streaming over her temples and into her hair. She cried.
"It's shut! Oh, oh- the liar! The liar! Oh-" Her moans were silenced by a bludgeon to the head, the great paw of a creature more powerful than a bear sweeping through her. The force of the motion and the sudden appearance wrung a scream from the witness who saw the head, like some ripened fruit, fly from the stem of the woman's neck and smash against the stone, against the many daggers of a gargoyle grinning from its station. Pulp splattered on the floor if it did not hang like the deformed mass that had once been the crazed woman's mind and identity, now caught in the grin of the stone demon. Fangs bore down on the splintered and ragged death mask that bore sightless, dim eyes, filled with blood.
Red welled and then dribbled from the gargoyle's mouth, moving slowly, painting its body or dripping from its neck.
It had been quiet, with the echo of Blanche's single scream dying so that some of the splattering pulp had been heard by the horrified woman's ears, white as her name as she held her face. The snout of the murderous beast turned to her, a crimson cloak flowing and revealing the power in the arms and chimera body that had destroyed the maid, whose body lay crumpled and bleeding in a growing pool that matched the color of the rug – the tongue of the dead castle absorbing her departed life. The cloak filled with air as the beast charged on all fours like a wolf that has spotted an intruder or its prey, a bristled tail lashing out behind it. Blanche stumbled back with a voiceless scream, swallowed up by her terror that grew with her eyes and the approaching form her body then turned from – she ran. Blanche reached the stairs only to fall on them. Scrambling and clawing frantically at the steps, her breath panted and she moved upward, but movement and despair stopped her. She curled into herself and pressed into the rug, wailing, doing what she could to shield herself from the fanged jaws and the hot breath. The snort of an animal parted her disheveled hair while a shadow darkened, looming over her where two clawed feet were planted on the stairs.
They were in the gloom that the gargoyles also shared - the nearest ray of sunlight above them and outside of the reach of a desperate hand, should the woman have made any attempt to find it. Instead the woman lay like the dead, becoming like the castle itself, stiff with terror - though her lungs gasped for the life they believed would soon be denied to them.
She believed the beast would maul and crush her and then consume her, likely taking her soul to its master. Her face buried in the stairs, she panted and whined, no way to beg a beast to spare her as she might beg a man. No, she would die.
She would die. Even the castle believed this, the momentary quiet whispering thoughts. She would die, a little, worthless woman would die.
The creature snorted again, this time with a rumble that was a growl somehow transformed into a voice. The beast huffed, sniffing the human once and scowling, disgust in the blue orbs - eyes that belonged to something human. He had crouched lower to smell her and this had drawn a cry from the woman, increasing the demon's disgust as he watched her. The red cloak was still, unmoving as the beast was silent - reproachful and filled with a dulling rage that was slowly expiring.
There was a sound at the top of the stairs which lifted the beast's head, but he again turned a glare to the pathetic woman as she gave a shriek, pleading to some potential savior. Blanche's fear only grew when she heard the warm female voice from before – the fear of her own sure demise and of the other woman's fate - though the voice's tone was without fear, only heavy with grief and sorrow, pain that ached and made one's heartstrings coil.
"Master…please. There are so few left…"
There was a snarl over her head which made Blanche cry out, cutting into the voice that had begun to emerge from the beast. With a roar he silenced her, though she started to whimper pitifully on the stairs, wet tears blotting the rug. The successful emergence of a voice surprised the woman, but fear prevented much more than this basic reaction from developing.
"They must never attempt to leave." Anger reverberated in the air, the growl dark and heated from the monster's chest, a core full of hatred.
The female voice spoke softly, sorrowful yet somehow calming in spite of the horror that stood on the stairs and the one that looked out from the jaws of a statue. "Yes Master, and I have told them-"
"BUT STILL THEY TRY!" The roar exploded from the beast, the castle walls ringing, echoes building off of one another so that even outside the living fled in fear. Blanche screamed and pressed harder into the rug covering the stairs, weeping and hysterical as the roar and the demon were so close to her, unable to understand the meaning of the conversation she was hearing, too much fear for words to matter. The living gargoyle, like some medieval monster conceived by the minds of those who had feared the power of Satan, with his snarling, beastly voice, barked at the woman for silence and in returned received sobs. His anger rose in his voice, sent to the female at the top of the stairs over Blanche's shuddering whimpers and a cracked sob. "Why do they try when they have been told not to? Why can they not obey? WHY? THEY KNOW I WILL KILL THEM AND YET THEY STILL TRY?"
"Master-" The voice began but was cut off by another wave of passion.
"DO THEY WANT TO DIE? IS THAT IT? IS LIVING HERE SO TERRIBLE THAT THEY PREFER TO DIE? Then FINE!" He roared, his chest of brown fur heaving. "I'll slaughter them all if that is what they wish! I'll kill them all here! Bring them to me!"
"No Master, no! They are very glad to serve you! Now please let this poor woman go. She has had to travel her on her own and she must be very tired..."
"SHE WAS TRYING TO ESCAPE!"
"No!" The voice rose to something that resembled a screech for the first time, and this seemed to startle the beast as his expression and mood became less violent and hateful. The female voice continued, no longer shouting but with her resolve evident in her voice. She carried no fear. "This woman did not know what the other was doing! She has just arrived! She knows nothing yet- none of the rules! There was no reason for the poor woman to want to leave!"
"But how she weeps!" The beast scowled and crouched low again, having stood to speak to the voice. His growl rolled over the muddled mass of weak tearful cries and quaking sobs. "The sound is vile! Why should I bear to hear it? If she wants to leave so badly, I'll send her off just like the other! IS THAT WHAT SHE WANTS?"
The snarl in her ear, brought about by the beast's returning fury, terrified Blanche and she screamed again, this time begging to be spared. She was not capable of reason.
"I don't want to die! I don't- I don't want to! Please! I'll stay! I'll stay- oh God- But I'll stay-!" The whines were heard below the beast while he heard the female voice from above.
"See Master, she says it herself, in her own words."
The beast growled at the pathetic form, still disgusted by it. "Then why can't she speak normally? Why with the 'Please' and the begging and the screaming! The weeping wench! How this weeping rings in my head, these screams! Make her stop or I will kill her!"
"Let her come to me, Master! I will make sure she won't bother you, if she is with me... Please rest- Go back to sleep and I'll manage the servants. Please, Master."
This seemed to pacify the monster, for he took a step back from the crying woman. After considering her for a moment, his crimson cloak filled when he turned and then went off, bounding and leaping like a great agile dog up the stairs and out of sight. Behind him, Blanche continued to weep. Kind words could not bring her from this state and though some queer, thudding steps came near her head along with a tutting, sympathizing voice, Blanche remained as she was. She lay draped over the steps until she was too tired to continue her tears and prayers for help. When her grief had died down, the warm voice spoke, caressing and consoling her with the same effect a familiar hand might have had. This voice…this woman, Blanche recognized as her mind cleared, was her savior. The fatigued and newly established servant peeled her face from the rug and looked up to find her own red and swollen expression reflected in a porcelain form.
A pot. A teapot. And now it hummed like a human content with what it saw?
Fearful again, Blanche yelled in alarm as she lunged away from the pot, crawling along the steps rather than down them. The door and the hallway were objects of fear to her now, so she dared not move towards them. But the female voice was kind and there was no way out. She had no other choice but to allow this possessed object to be her savior. So she calmed, or rather, she became numb.
"You have had a terrible day, my dear. I am sorry, but- …please do not hate the Master. Do not fear him. I will tell you, I will explain, but come with me for now. I will take you to the others, or-" The teapot, though silent and faceless, released an aura that implied that it had smiled in some sad and humored way, "you will have to carry me. I can't for the life of me get up these steps. They're too steep, though with getting down them I have no problem. It's really so silly isn't it, dearie? That I can't get up them though I can go down just fine. …" Her expression, her aura, changed, reverting back to sorrow and pity as her voice took on the same solemnness. She had seen that her chatter had failed to comfort Blanche. "Here dearie, stop your crying. The Master doesn't like people crying in the castle… And I don't have to explain why you shouldn't upset the Master, do I?" The teapot stopped and seemed to watch Blanche, reflecting her as the woman pushed back the hair that had become loose and was hanging in her face, some of it plastered against her wet cheeks and obscuring her eyes. But then the woman heaved a quivering sigh and gently took up the teapot now overflowing with its aura of sympathy. If the possessed object could have shed tears as it was carried, it would have. "…Good girl…" The pot murmured to console the woman who was now pale and ghostlike, infected with some of the madness that had driven the miserable maid to her violent end. They ascended the stairs in relative silence, and once they were passing through the hall and the archway they had first met in, the teapot spoke.
"You may call me Mrs. Potts, dear. I'm not someone you need to fear… You needn't fear anyone here. You need only be cautious…and careful when dealing with the Master. There was a time when he and I would never dream of anything remotely like what you witnessed down there…ever happening. Never... -Please dearie, just put what you saw aside, and please…don't hate the Master. …I will explain. I promise I will explain all of this to you, as best I can. But do not hold this against him."
With dull eyes and a face, white and lifeless as the head in the gargoyle's jaws, Blanche was silent as she walked, following the directions the teapot gave her, cradling it in her arms.