Once Upon a Time

Chapter Three

Clary P.O.V

The feeling of falling is horrible. It feels like your insides are coming to life inside you and the helplessness you feel is just as bad. Knowing that no matter how hard you flail or how loud you scream, it won't stop you from eventually hitting the ground.

But that doesn't stop me from trying.

A scream escapes my lips the moment the rope splits in two and I plummet to the ground. This is it, I think, this is how I'm going to die. It's quite ironic really. The day my opportunity to escape my wretched tower arises is the same day I fall to my death.

I grasp at empty air as I fall to the ground, my dress flapping around me like wings. I can sense the ground drawing nearer and I brace for the impact.

My breath is knocked out of me, but that is all. I've hit something, but it is not the ground. Something, someone is holding me.

I open my eyes and look up and meet golden eyes, the eyes the color of honey, filled with worry and shock. Jace's eyes. Gingerly, he puts me down but keeping his hands on my shoulders to steady me. "Are you okay?" He asks, his voice soft and lovely. Perhaps it may just be the shock of my ordeal, I doubt it, but I feel that Jace's hands linger on my shoulders longer than necessary.

I nod and hear Alec snort.

"She's fine Jace, com'on, we have to get moving." He says bitterly before storming away.

"Alec," Jace says, a grin paying on his lips.

He doesn't turn around.

"Alec." He says again, this time drawing it out so it sounded more like Al-eh-k.

Still he doesn't turn around and the Jace's grin is growing, I begin to wonder what could possibly be so funny about Alec leaving us in the clearing.

"Alec!"

"What!?" He spins around, his face and eyes blazing, a scowl set onto his face.

Jace starts walking away in the opposite direction to Alec, the grin still on his lips. "You're going the wrong way."

.o.O.o.

Grass is strange. For years of my life, I've been looking out that tower door, wondering what things felt like, what they were made of, how they smelled. After walking barefoot for 4 hours, I've become very acquainted with grass and dirt, but it still puzzles me, as everything in this world does.

I can tell that Alec and Jace, probably more Alec, are getting frustrated by my constant stops to inspect things like bark or an abandoned well. But when I spot a beautiful purple and white flower, I simply cannot resist the urge to study it. "Just wait a moment." I mutter to the boys, who have been talking about some dance in the kingdom at the moment with eager tones.

The chatter stops as I kneel before the flower. The petals are a peculiar shape, circular and curved to a point, white in colour with purple edges, it is beautiful. I caress the plant, its petals soft against my fingertips. "What is this?"

Jace sits down beside me and gives me an odd look. "It's Clary Sage. Some say that eating its seeds will allow you to see the Fairfolk."

"Fairfolk?" I ask, not breaking my gaze with the beautiful flower.

A can hear the grin in his voice. "Faeries. If you believe in that kind of stuff."

A look at him now. "You don't?"

His eyes harden slightly and for a moment I expect him not to answer, but he says, "No, I don't. I believe in myself and I needn't worry about anything else. There may be such thing as Faeries, maybe even a God, but either way, we're on our own." His voice is distant, though not exactly cold. He stands up and holds a hand out for me to take, which I do.

It surprises me how well our hands fit together, like they were carved from the same origin. It seems he is surprised as well.

Alec clears his throat ahead of us. "We should keep going." He says, his voice tight.

I begin walking and Jace, surprisingly, walks beside me instead of Alec. Alec also notices and stalks away. I can almost see the steam escaping his ears.

"I don't think Alec likes me very much." I mutter to Jace.

"Oh, I wouldn't go that far. He simply has a grudge against most women." He says with a smile, he really does have a beautiful smile. "Isn't that right Alexander!" He shouts, cupping his hands to magnify his voice to the faraway figure who I have to assume is Alec. If Alec hears Jace, he doesn't acknowledge the comment.

The next few minutes we walk in silence, a nice silence, not awkward. I look at the many interesting natural wonders that surround us as we walk and Jace puts names to them for me, laughing when I have trouble pronouncing them. It is nice. I never thought that I would ever laugh or talk with another human being. It simply was not in the world that came with my imprisonment.

"Do you?" He asks abruptly.

I'm caught off guard and have no idea what he is talking about. "Pardon?"

"Do you believe in anything?" He clarifies.

I think for a moment. "I don't know. Faeries may exist, who knows. Maybe we are a part of their world but blind to it. Maybe those who people say are crazy are really seeing the world as it is. Beautiful and deadly. Anything is possible."

He is quiet and I worry I may have said something to offend him, though I can't imagine what. "You're really strange, you know that?"

I furrow my eyebrows and look at him to see if he is joking, but he is calm and quite serious. "Why do you say that?"

"You've spent years locked away from the world, yet you seem to trust it more than anyone I have ever met. You're not angry at the world or the person responsible for locking you away. You understand and see things with a beauty that I can't understand or quite comprehend."

The path we have been following widens slightly and the trees begin thin out, the sun shines over head like a cheery companion.

"I see no point in being angry." I say quietly. "Why waste all that emotion on something so little as anger? I let go of that feeling long ago, and honestly, does is matter anymore? I'm free, I'm finally living." I skip ahead and twirl around, my head spins when I finally stop and Jace has to steady me so I don't fall down. "The world is beautiful. You simply cannot see it as I do because you have been living among it your entire life, while I have always been apart from it. Always on the outside looking in." I look into his eyes and see he is looking at me like he doesn't understand. "The world is beautiful, Jace." I repeat. "You just can't see it."

"Will you two hurry up!" A voice shouts in the distance.

We both look and see a very frustrated Alec standing in the middle of a clearing, not very big, but big enough. We run to catch up to him and the boys start to walk in different directions.

"Wait, where are you going?" I ask, half frantic with the idea that they may be abandoning me alone in the woods.

Alec rolls his eyes. "Calm down, we're just getting firewood."

"Oh, right. Sorry." I look down at my feet and knit my hands together.

"Hey," Jace says, making me look up. "Just, stay here, okay?"

"Okay."

.o.O.o.

'Staying here' is harder than it sounds. I sit on a log and play with the fabric of my dress, the hem now tattered and stained with dirt, and let out another sigh. It's very tedious, waiting for the boys to return. And I have the distinct feeling that Alec wishes he didn't have to.

A rustle to my side catches my attention and my head jerks to the origin of the noise. A small, chestnut brown animal hops out of the bushes that encircle the clearing and wiggles its nose. It is very cute, with long, floppy ears and intelligent brown eyes that seem almost black.

I stand from the log and take a small step forward and the animal bolts away into the underbrush. "Hey," I call. "I'm not going to hurt you." I run after the creature and through the trees, constantly on the look out for a flash of brown fur.

After who knows how long of searching, I become acutely aware of the sound of flowing water. I follow the sound and come out onto a stream, water rushing over the different coloured stones. A large rock cuts halfway through the creak, big enough for someone to sit on I notice, so that's what I do.

I watch as the water flows down stream and into the distance, vaguely aware of the fact my hem was hanging in the water. A peculiar blue stone catches my eye and I carefully pluck it out of the water.
It is strangely vibrant for a stone and it gives me an idea.

I rub the still dripping stone on the rock I sit upon and it leaves behind a blue-white mark. This could be interesting...

.o.O.o.

I crush the rest of the white stones I found near the centre of the stream until they resemble a creamy paste and add them to the picture. After seeing that using the stones I could make a sort of coloured mixture, I set straight to work finding the appropriate colours for my piece.

After adding the white, I stand up and look down on my work. When I had first seen him, his eyes had been the first thing that had caught me off guard, they were so vibrant, so unique. Now, looking over my work, I see that my stone selection can only be described as perfect.

"Hello! Are you out there?" A voice rings out, not far from the creak.

At first, my instinct is to hide, but then I realise that this voice is not one of a stranger, but Jace. "I'm over here." I yell out.

Moments later, the sound of twigs snapping and branches being brushed away announces his arrival. "I thought I told you to stay at the campsite." He says, clearing weary from what I guess has been a long search.

"You did." I admit. "But I saw this little creature by the bushes and it ran off, so I followed it-"

"Wait." He says, coming to stand in front of me. "You followed a wild animal into the woods, without anyone to go with you?"

"Yes."

At this I see that he is fighting to remain serious, his mouth has gone firm and it looks like he is trying not to laugh. He looks down and sees my stone-painting. "Did you do this?"

I look down to and shrug. "Yeah, I guess so."

He sits down beside the drawing and dabs his finger in the still wet white stone-paint. "How?"

I join him on the ground. "I found a pretty stone, so I started scratching it on the ground and the colour came off." I shrug again.

"Yeah, but really? Alec?"

I look to the piece again. The pretty blue stone-paint I used for his eyes is starting to dry and the black is smeared slightly where Jace touched it. "I though it might make him like me better. And also, I've been dying to draw his eyes." A smile slips onto my face as I talk about Alec's eyes. "They're just so beautiful and expressive. Like when he looks at you, they're like a warm lake, alive with movement, but when he sees me," I laugh a little. "It's like a sheet of ice lowers over it."

"What about my eyes?" He says with mock indignation. "How would describe mine? Luminous, radiant-"

"Weird."

He scoffs and shakes his head. "Well, that one's new."

"No, I didn't stay that right." I search for the right word as he watches me, expectantly. "They're, they're strange. No, not strange, but, unique maybe? I don't know, I can't explain it."

He is quiet for a while as he watches the stream and turns a grey-blue rock over in his hands. For the first time I notice how nimble looking his fingers are, they're thin and long and callused. "We should probably get back to Alec." He says, not taking his eyes of the stream as he stands up and skips the stone across the water.

"Okay," I stand up and brush dust from the back of my dress. "If I bring Alec here to show him the portrait, do you think he might stop plotting to murder me in my sleep?"

"I doubt it."

.o.O.o.

"It's really pretty," I say as I gaze down at the jewel embedded in the tiara, the light of the fire reflecting in the cut gems surface. The sun went down a few hours ago and the moon hangs high in the sky, surrounded by stars. "But what's it for?"

Jace, who has been cooking rolls of meat he calls 'sausages' over the fire, hands the stick to Alec who shoots daggers my way with his cold, blue gaze. He sits down on the log beside me and takes the crown from my fingers and places it on my head. "It's supposed to symbolise royalty. This particular tiara," He says, tapping me on the head. "Was intended for the Fairchild princess."

"Was?"

"Yes. A decade or so ago, the Kingdom was attacked and the King and Queens daughter disappeared, along with her tiara. The King sent us - Alec and I - on a search and retrieve mission for the tiara and princess after discovering which Kingdom was responsible for the attempt invasion. But we could only find the crown."

"Wow," I say. "That's so sad."

He shrugs and smiles at the crown atop my head. "Yeah, I guess. But I gotta admit, it doesn't look too bad on you." He gently tugs a lock of my hair in his thin fingers. "I've got to start calling you Red." He says with a smile.

Alec snorts from across the fire pit. "She probably has some horrid name, like Gladys."

"Maude." Interjects Jace with a grin, then he frowns and looks at me. "What is your name?"

"Um," I search my brain, what is my name? I've never really had use for one before, never had a need. "I don't know." I say with a shrug.

Alec snorts again. "She's probably a Downworlder spy, sent to take the crown." He mutters.

"Downworlder?"

"A term we use for the Kingdom that tried to invade all those years ago." Jace explains. He reaches around the fire, takes the stick back from Alec and pulls a sausage off. He holds out the stick for me and I take one. "What about Clary Sage?"

"The flower? What about it?" I ask around a mouthful of hot meat.

"I mean what we can call you Clary, you know, as a name. What do you think?"

"Clary," I say, trying it out. It's nice, simple, easy on the ears. "I like it."

"Well then," He says, taking the rest of my half-eaten sausage. "Clary it is."

"Clary," I repeat. I used to wonder as a little girl what my name might've been, but after the first year, I had given up trying. What was the point really? But now, I'm not a nameless girl, trapped in a tower and the world oblivious to her.

I'm Clary.

I'm free.

I'm ready to take charge of my life.