Sorry this took so long. Thank you for waiting. This is almost an interlude, though things do happen...it's build-up again...sigh. I'll stop making excuses.
Thank you to all who have reviewed and are granting this story the time it seems to be demanding. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Dedicated to
The Writer you Fools, alena-chan, Cherry Jade, and castle in the air, writers I admire with great joy and dance for when I realize there's been an update. Heh.
Glass
Chapter Nine: Apart
Pulling a grimace, Raven sighed another long, airless sigh.
For years she'd honed the virtue of patience, needing it to keep herself from saying things like 'No, I really don't like you' or 'Actually I think dancing is quite stupid' and other similarly impolite, if honest, responses. She'd worked to carefully craft the visage of unreadable indifference, nodding when needed and only truly being herself around her family, Garth, Gar, and Vic.
But it wasn't simply out of the necessity of politeness that she did it. Raven knew well what kind of trouble her tongue could get her in, worse than Terra which was to say something indeed. More importantly, she knew what trouble it could get her family in and that was where she drew a thick line. The death of father and mother came so early that to Raven, Terra and Star were her parental figures, mother and father, Garth a brother at this point, all the kinds of people she would never be, but would not want to trade for all the world.
This, however, was something rather different. It was a broken lamp and Raven had never been as handy with mechanics as she should have, for all her artistry with glass-blowing and whatnot.
"I ought to have listened to Vic after all," she said to herself absently, finger tracing an edge of one of the larger shards of the lamp. He'd tried to teach her the basics of all that was to being not only a worker in a forge but other things—things that would be useful in mending a lamp, for instance. But she hadn't had the inherent knack and being Raven—still honing patience at that point—had turned her eye from it, remarking in a mutter that, "I prefer glass. It's more human."
To which of course Vic had inquired, "Why?"
"It's more fragile," she had said and left to return to the cottage in time for dinner.
Far from home now, a pang in her heart reminded her of the distance and so absent in her thought, she became careless, hand slipping and she hissed as it left a shallow slice across her palm. Wincing, she lifted it instinctively to her mouth and blew to soften the sting.
She sighed again. "You're maybe more trouble than you're worth," she spoke to the broken lamp. "I've not the skill for this sort of thing, you know. I'm sorry," she added the apology, wise enough to take heed of the likelihood of every inanimate object in the palace not truly being as inanimate as one would assume. "I do wish I could fix you."
Then do it.
Raven's head shot up, looking around wildly.
"Who's there?" The long, carpeted hall, lavish in its wall fixtures and high with its arched ceilings did not have a whisper of a breeze, no click of a door, nothing...
Fix me.
Nothing but the voice...somewhat monotone, but not flat, simply unreadable really.
"Hello?" she called out, her own question echoing back at her tenfold.
Fix me...please.
"But how?" Raven asked the nothing, moved less by the word 'please' than by the tone—longing, sad, wistful...human. She daren't look at the pieces of lamp sitting limply on her skirt for fear of eyes staring back at her, or the like, but waited for an answer.
You can. I know these things.
"What things? I'm just a person, a...a..." she trailed off dumbly. She was about to say 'prisoner' but that wasn't right...she wasn't that.
What am I?
Magic things.
"Magic!" she sputtered incredulously. "Forgive me, but I'm afraid you are mistaken. I do not know magic. I am not magic!" Raven shook her head, not believing the conversation, and believing even less what she was having it with, eyes still carefully tracing the designs on the ceiling rather than the shards in her lap.
You can! Just think it, gather the pieces, lay your hands over them, and think it...believe you can fix me...
Shutting her eyes hard against everything, Raven inhaled deeply, her exhale seeming to breeze through the endless corridor.
"You're enchanted, and I think you're quite mad too," Raven said after a long, pensive silence and she was disturbed by the voice's response of:
Mad? I might be. But I know you can fix me...you can heal me...
"Very well, I shall try," she replied after another pause, staring at the pieces dubiously as she gathered them in a small pile on the carpet. "You know, that was a bit of a nasty cut you gave me," she remarked as she gently laid each piece against the other.
My apologies, Raven.
"You're not calling me Beauty," she thought aloud, pleased.
That is not your name.
"Well, then! You are at least a sensible mad being," she said amiably and then, "Alright, if this does not work, I am not responsible, you hear?"
A silence.
Just try.
"Yes, alright," Raven replied doubtfully but laid her hands over the shards—gently this time so as not to cut herself—and closed her eyes, concentrating.
Briefly she wondered: I don't suppose there are magic words for this sort of thing.
And then she felt something strange...though not unpleasant. A warmth, similar to when she had healed Robin, poured through her and she felt suddenly foolish. She had indeed helped Robin that time, so why not this being, this time?
It is a lamp, she reasoned stubbornly. How was I to know it would work the same?
But in remembering Robin's recovery, she found new belief in her ability and her focus came more easily until she realized her hands did not rest over cold, uneven bits...but something relatively even and warm.
"Thank you." It was the voice from before, but different as it resonated from a human chest.
She opened her eyes slowly, as if to avoid morning's first glow.
"You're wel—" she began but stopped short.
The lamp no longer sat, shattered on the floor. Well, alright, true, she did remember thinking anything that had a voice would probably become human, alive as it were. It was a man, from voice and form she could tell—lithe of limb and tall. But curiously, he stood before her, clothed but beneath the clothes all over his body there seemed to be a wrapping, as though his entire body was bandaged for fear of it escaping him. The only exposed portions were his two eyes, black as coal, reflecting the light that came in through the windows of the hall.
"Yes, I know. My appearance leaves something to be desired," the man said in the same nearly monotone voice, but it was with a hint that seemed to smile as he said this, a wryness—of someone used to people not taking to his physical traits. Immediately Raven felt a twinge of shame.
"Well, it is not what I expected," she said truthfully, also apologetically, eyes finding her feet unduly fascinating to distract herself from her moment of surprise.
"Don't worry, Raven. I am indebted to you," he said and she heard no begrudging in his voice, just plain and simple gratitude. Of course, this only served to make her shift her feet, more uncomfortable. She did not feel like someone anyone ought to be 'indebted to'. Barely containing a laugh, she mused that she did not feel quite like anyone at all here, so many things whirling anew and estranged to her.
"How do you call yourself?" she inquired at last, facing the new stranger again and to her surprise, he bent at the waist.
"Well, I have several names, but most commonly they call me Negative," he introduced himself and rose from his polite bow.
"Negative?" she asked, doubtful even as she conceded that Hotspot was perhaps more unlikely and that she'd accepted that one without a blink of an eye.
"You might have noticed the penchant for odd names here lately," he said thoughtfully and she nodded, thinking: or no names—here she thought of Robin. But less put off by the bandaged appearance now, feeling somewhat accomplished by the success of the 'fixing' of him, Raven took this moment to subtly examine the man called Negative. She watched as he looked around him, and she realized he looked as a man might who thought he would never see the world again as a man should.
Her heart ached and the curse echoed strangely in her chest.
"Do you know anything of the curse that lays upon Robin...Robin's castle?" she asked softly, eyes following the sun through the window into the vast lands around the castle itself. She'd been about to stop with 'the curse that lays upon Robin' but thought better of it. She felt more than saw Negative sigh beside her as he rubbed the back of his head.
"I know it can be undone," he said after a pause in which the sunlight seemed to cascade in silver-white waves through the windowpane, glimmering in a shining dance on the elaborate walls behind the odd, but amiable pair.
"Ah," Raven said, trying to indicate her acknowledgement of his answer without disclosing her disappointment with the brevity. Turning her hand over, Raven eyed the cut in her hand as a problem one is not certain one can solve and laid her other hand over it, closing her eyes, and concentrated.
There was a familiar flush of tingling warmth.
And when she opened her eyes to look at her palm, there was hardly anything there at all, just the smallest white sliver of a new scar.
"I see you're catching on," Negative remarked, his voice still unreadable, but—Raven noted much like her own—not unfriendly. Somehow she thought he meant far more than he said but she did not look at him this time, simply nodding in response.
"I think I might be," she said softly, inattentively running her hand across the smoothness of her skirts, marveling at the absence of the sting from the cut just moments before. Engrossed, she was surprised when she felt another presence enter the vicinity and when she looked around to find nothing, she paused before a soft half-smile made its way almost reluctantly across her features. "Speedy," she called more than asked, recognizing the invisible swish of air before his contour materialized, that same faint glow clarifying his shape. He too wore a smile, his being more of a grin really that bordered on a smirk, simply because Speedy tended to always look like he knew something you didn't.
"You did it," he said cheerfully. "Knew you would," he added smugly and then, "You know it is these times I wish I wasn't like this. I should like to embrace you." And the silence that followed was not awkward but understanding as Raven felt some sense of mission within her, an actual desire to help. But what can you do? Some part of her asked. Magic, apparently—another part said and chuckled. Yet, what will become of everything even if you do lift the curse? You don't know what you're doing.
But I must try, was her finalizing thought as she turned to Speedy, her smile more than half now, even a glimmer of it reaching her eyes.
"One day," she said gently, a promise yet again. For Robin, she thought momentarily and shook it off. For everyone, she amended and that sat much calmer in her heart than anything else had lately.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
She did not see Robin for many days. Suspecting X greatly of knowing his whereabouts, at first Raven did her utmost to elicit an answer from the grumbling young man—who she also continued to try and examine for his source of enchantment, always coming up empty-handed. X was a mystery within the mystery and often when she would speak with him—or barrage him, as it were—he reminded her of Robin. And that was strange perhaps because Robin had, overall, been what could only constitute as nice, if sometimes standoffish and admittedly confusing, but always kind.
X on the other hand...
"Cease your inane questioning, please!" X exclaimed at one point, hands waving erratically in the air, a sure sign she was getting to him because rarely did he show any physical distress.
"If you tell me where he is, I'll stop presently," she replied, unfazed. X groaned, rubbing his temples.
X was not by nature accommodating, however, and did not answer her.
Yet there was something about him, the way he turned to run his hand through his hair, was like Robin. The way his lips curved down when he was seriously considering something he refused to share...even the way—when she wasn't bothering him as he put it—he would have peaceable conversations with her, intelligent and witty to a fault.
Perhaps that was why she continued to inquire concerning Robin's whereabouts to him and his chagrin. But X, though sometimes less grumpy—as she put it—than usual, refused adamantly to tell her much of anything—as usual, she would always say at which he would flinch and mutter something back.
And so, discouraged, after five days of dedicated badgering of X, Raven said: "Fine, then," and left him to his own devices.
If X would not tell her, she would wait. It was not like she did not have time.
But she would not yield to sitting around dumbly for hours, certainly not.
So Raven explored.
The grounds were inarguably lovely, endless winter or not. Thick evergreens chorused over the land in melodic twists that made the estate around the castle itself seem almost maze-like. But Raven never found herself lost, to her surprise and relief.
Sometimes on her walks Speedy would materialize, and used to this now, she smiled a greeting and he would talk with her about what seemed to be nothing in particular, but eventually seemed to be something after all.
If only she knew what, was a common feeling of misgiving after he would disappear.
Other hours spent reading in the library, careful not to touch any stray papers, Raven found herself joined by Negative who appreciated the company in a solitary activity, much as she did. If one or the other felt talkative—usually neither felt talkative per se but if one or the other perhaps was interested in what the other chose to read, they might sit a while, speaking on fine words and not so fine words, afternoon slipping away behind them as they reveled in the written pages.
On one afternoon, head nestled in the crook of her elbow as she paged through a thicker binding, Raven sighed carelessly. To which, Negative turned, inquisitive. He sat a few feet away, back against a particularly sturdy pile of books, one knee bent to prop his book on, one hand turning a page even as he continued to watch Raven thoughtfully.
"Troubled?" he asked in a way that could be mistaken as uncaring if one did not understand that if Negative truly didn't care, he would not ask in the first place.
This Raven understood.
"I'm not sure," she answered, pushing herself up on her hands, stretching like a cat. The way the sun chose to dance across the room made the air filter gold and the entirety of it looked ageless, busy, studious, and mysterious. As she brought her arms around herself, Raven considered her current company a moment before asking, "Why a lamp?"
"Pardon?" he asked, edging the slightest bit closer.
"Why a lamp? Maybe Hotspot, though a fire makes more sense for him, but why were you turned into a lamp? Is everything here really a...a person?" she asked. Negative let slip a rare chuckle as he laid his book, spine up, on the floor beside him.
"No, much of what you see now is only what it appears to be—a book, a book...a chair, a chair...and so on," he said and then continued after a probing look from Raven to say, "I do not know 'why a lamp' precisely except that perhaps the curse was feeling particularly vindictive when it got to me."
"Oh," Raven nodded blithely and shrugged her shoulders and turned back to her reading.
That was something that never changed, except for the increasing affection she had for the tomes, perhaps. Raven would even wander through the dimly lit halls at night to the door to the library, which eventually seemed to come to her a lot faster—which was silly almost, except that this was an enchanted place, so perhaps not as silly as one might initially assume. Grasping in the dark, her hand would settle over the cool metal of the door handle and with a soft, resounding click she would open it, stepping in and shutting the door equally as quietly behind her.
"Azarath, metrion, zinthos," she whispered during nights like those upon entering and the immense archived library would light with a white glow.
Finding the use of these words beyond halting a frightening black wind had been much of an experiment, an accident even. She had merely wondered what they meant, said them to herself one night in her room, barely a whisper.
But something in the castle, or the air, or something, had heard her.
And the reaction had been for the candle at her bedside to flare up. Already lit, she'd thought it might have been the wind, but ever curious, she'd put it out and said the words again, concentrating deeply on the candlewick.
The flame was bright and very real and as she came to visit the library more and more often at night as she could not sleep, Raven was glad for them, strange as they felt still on her tongue.
Having said the chant, she would wander the library and its labyrinth like towers of books, selecting them randomly because there were far too many to be picky about it...and Raven adored most writing as a general rule. It was one of those things, after all, that did not change, even for all that the rest of her life had.
Books were her solace more often than not.
So when Robin was missing, she spent the better part of her days there when she did not feel like exploring the castle or its grounds beyond where she'd last left off and neither Speedy, nor Negative seemed to have a problem with this, nor X—after all, if she was reading, she wasn't pestering him about Robin.
Hotspot she did not see too often, and then, only in passing, but he was ever kind and would ask 'how is the lady doing?' with a kind tilt to his eyes.
Yet every day she spent with one or the other friendly personage of the palace, or even alone, she more distinctly felt the absence of a certain Robin and for some reason, she worried.
But if he had gone into hiding, Raven was wise enough to tell herself there was a reason, and more so that if she could not pluck the answer out of X after so much concentrated insistence, it was best left alone.
Of course her curiosity picked at her mercilessly, but she did her best to distract herself.
But sometimes at night especially, she turned in the luxury of her down covers, twisting unhappily as her heart wrenched uncomfortably, as if it were being tugged in one direction it could not go. She realized the time apart from Robin was doing something strange to her and she almost felt ill with it, so joined were they from the spell and the meeting in the glass garden.
"Where are you?" she whispered sometimes, standing at the window, hand pressed against the cold clearness, eyes searching the snowy horizon for a black caped figure.
But no one answered and then the day would come, and she would try her best not to think on the elusive master of the castle.
In these days she also visited Arella, talking to her when she needed a glimpse of the life she'd left behind, and especially—though she had yet to admit it to anyone, even the ever genial Speedy—when she felt the pangs of homesickness.
It was one such day, in fact, that Robin decided to reemerge from wherever it was he had been. The disconcerting pains that Raven had been experiencing had been received by him as well, causing sharp pains to course through his head, distracting him, reminding him of her presence...not that he could forget her if he tried.
Not that he wanted to.
X's words from before echoed in his head...he had to tell her the truth of the curse eventually and that morning he'd had a particularly bad bout of tumultuous emotions, translated through his bond with the young girl.
So acknowledging, he left where he had gone—where he always went and where X did indeed know he had been—to locate his Raven.
His Raven?
Shaking his head, he did his best to also shake off that foolish notion.
His Raven indeed, his mind laughed darkly and he shut it off out of necessity.
He found her, standing in the stables, talking to Arella, gently stroking the great animal, almost like she might stroke a child's hair to lull them to sleep or out of a bad dream. And he thought, watching her unseen, that for all her intellect and sharp wit, and even quick temper, Raven was very beautiful, some element of unnamed kindness evident in her mannerisms. The gentle hollow of her throat, the fair unblemished flesh, her wide, knowing eyes the color of dusk, the delicate nature of her wrists and the elegance of her fingers...the lush quality of her lips in an almost eternal frown, which amused him once he learned to understand it did not mean displeasure as much as it was her usual expression to have.
About to make himself known, black cape fluttering in the afternoon wind, Robin halted as he heard Raven's voice, directed at the beautiful horse over her right shoulder:
"And he won't tell me a thing, Arella. You know? I just wanted an idea, the vaguest would do. I'm certain," she sighed and turned, leaning against the door of Arella's pad and the horse affectionately mussed the girl's hair, at which she laughed. It was not a high and light laugh but something with more elegance, more age to it...it was attractive, Robin thought softly, like her.
Don't think these things, something told him. You know what is to happen, it said and Robin's eyes hardened.
Yes, he knew.
But watching her, watching Raven, speak and laugh so freely...he told himself there must be another way and for the voice or the something to quiet itself.
The curse was a curious thing, invoked by the reading, cast hundreds of years ago...binding them all to the eternal winter...to the glass.
And this was odd in itself.
Glass was so very fragile.
And being bound to it made those attached to it also very fragile, immortality inclusive. A bond now formed between him and the girl, and another she did not realize, Raven was indeed what could, in the end, only be defined as an honored captive—not a guest.
A guest could come and go.
A captive must stay until otherwise was said.
And not for the first time, while glad it had been Raven to stumble into the wood, he wished for her sake it was someone else. His heart was mimicking her emotions and Robin winced as the intensity of her feelings made the pain seem a physical knot in his chest, writhing and blind.
Do you feel this way often? He wondered sadly. He had tried to make it hospitable here for her, in small ways that he hoped made a difference—given her a room with wide, open windows that looked out on the snowy hills where she could ride if she wished, made certain the colors were simple, the wardrobe one of the kinder enchanted ones so that she would not have a fuss made over her when she wanted breeches instead of a gown...trusted her.
That one was, perhaps, not so small, he thought as he remembered the black wind with a shiver. He had not accounted for that, never having had anyone there to read the spell, to set things into action, the first step to unraveling the curse. Nearly he'd died for folly.
But no, because she...because Raven, saved him.
That I could do the same for you, he mused wistfully and listened again to Raven who still did not know he was there.
"I miss them," Raven whispered to Arella, as if afraid her voice would carry to the castle and repeat itself magically to everyone in it. She said it like a secret. Sinking down against the wooden gate of Arella's stall, Raven drew her knees to her chest. "I know it is foolish. They are kind here, and even with that horrid spell in the library, everything was fine, but...oh Arella," Raven whispered still, but Robin heard as her voice broke.
It broke like glass.
"Do you think I shall be able to go...to go home if the curse is lifted?" she asked her horse softly, lifting her hand up without looking and Arella nuzzled it as if to say that she hoped so.
Then the violet haired girl's shoulders began to shake ever so slightly and if he had not been listening specifically for her, Robin would have missed it, but he did not. He heard.
She was crying, soft, quiet sobs and he stood, paralyzed as Raven clenched her skirts in her hands. It had been too long since he'd had human company. She was right. For he knew what he saw, hurt, distress, turmoil...but he knew not what to do for it. Mater of this castle, master of this place and I am as useless as a child, he thought darkly.
What he wanted to do, longed to do, was go to her, comfort her...hold her.
He, Robin as she had named him so whimsically, wished to say those words, "Everything will be okay...I will make sure of it." He wanted to make grand promises and to quit his brooding over the whole situation and to forego caution and whatever else held him back.
But the depth of Raven's sadness proved too much for him to understand, overwhelmed by the translation of it between their bond, inundated with sorrow and an omniscient sense of foreboding. Almost he was driven to his knees by the severity of her pain and only just heard her as she spoke again.
"I hope they're alright," she said brokenly between shivers.
And then Robin slipped away, head filled with the troubled girl he could not comfort, heart overflowing with the words he had not the courage to tell her, knowing already the likelihood of her fate.
Review please and thank you!
-Rei
P.S. Next chapter of Hush soon and MAYBE even Without You if it warrants time...I hope. I'm enjoying dabbling in multiple areas.