16
Time seized to be. There was no difference between day and night now, no passage of days and months, no change between light and darkness. There was no light. He was in darkness, all the time, and in pain. His whole body screamed as if under torture, and there was no healing for him. Magic cannot heal a suffering soul. She could have helped him – she was the only thing in the world that could have saved him. One glance at her, the very feeling of her presence would have been enough. Yet she was the only person in the world he could not let near him.
He was a wizard; he should have known everything about curses. He should have forethought that the curse he put upon himself, closing himself against the onslaught of love, would have its' consequences. The side-effects, so to speak; but these are always difficult to predict when one is cursing oneself. In his rage, in his rush to save his magic and his self he did not see the obvious: the glaring and fatal flaw in his curse. Yes, it worked effectively – she could not reach him anymore, her love was struggling in vain against the spell that surrounded him, unable to get through to him; she could not love him. But it did not stop him from loving her.
Her love was powerless, now, though still present. His love was locked with him in his cell, burning him all the stronger because it now had no chance to fulfill itself. His curse did not stop his longing; it did nothing to weaken the pull he felt towards her. It did not diminish his frustration and regret, and his wish to run to her for consolation. Diminish? Why, they came back hundredfold, made stronger by his knowledge of the total impossibility of getting what he wanted, by his guilt at having broken things himself, by his anger at himself. Yes, he was angry at himself. While he was dreaming of her, picturing their union, while he was basking in the happiness of having her near, while he gloried in the miracle of having found his one true love – how could he have not thought of the power of this magic? He should have seen it coming – he should have at least thought of a possibility of her kiss changing him. Yes, her kiss worked with such terrifying force because she meant it to work. But it could have happened anyway; their love was such that she might have ruined him unwittingly. What was he thinking of? How could he have been so blind and careless? And what was the point of dwelling on that, now that everything was lost? He would not have been able to stop himself, anyway, even if he did see the coming end. Looking back, he knew he would not have been able to change a single thing between them. Well, he could have been wiser, and more honest with her. He could have explained her things about himself. But how was he to know? Her loving him was just a distant possibility in his mind – he had no way of learning it would hit him so suddenly.
Roaming his castle at night, pestering the magic land by day while carrying out his various errands, he never was completely there, with people whom he met. His mind was always elsewhere – he was thinking of her, calling to her, longing for her. He yearned for things that only she could give him – for things that were her, from her beauty to her stubborn kindness. Anger did not help him distract himself – he could not be angry with her; it took him very little time to work out her reasons for trying to change him. Once he accepted the truth that she did love him, and he had no choice but to do it, in the face of things this love achieved, he could see clearly that there was no malice in her deed. She pitied him. She cared for him. She thought that he suffered from his curse. She did not know him, for she had no chance to know him. She knew only what she saw, and what she saw touched her and moved her. It was amazing that she loved him so strongly without knowing him at all. But then, that was magic.
She wanted to help him. What was it that she said? 'You were freeing yourself, you could have been happy…' Poor child. How simple, how straightforward life was for her, how strongly she believed in the importance of love, and how sweet was her determination to right the wrongs. How he needed this simplicity, this generosity of heart, and how impossible it was for him to get them. She would have given him a second chance; she was kind. And, given the force of his love for her, she might have broken the new magic wall he surrounded himself with. But he could not ask for that, for he did not have the right to happiness, and did not have the right to freedom. Now, after the way he treated her, he had even less right to them than before. His crime against Bae's trust came back to haunt him, and he committed it all over again. For the second time he rejected a person who loved him and whom he loved for the sake of his power. The fact that in the second case he had some justification did not matter. He committed a second crime in an attempt to cover for the first – he was just getting deeper into the darkness. He had offended love in two worst possible ways – he has abandoned a child, and he has rejected his true love. No wonder love punished him so, tormenting him with the yearning for the impossible, with memories of things that happened, and of things imagined that were right here, in his grasp, and were now gone.
Every second of every day he wanted to crawl to her on his knees, asking for forgiveness, begging her to use her magical strength to free him – he knew she could have done it, for, despite his curse, despite this new self-imposed punishment, he could still feel their bond; weak and wounded, it still glowed in the dark, still pulled on the strings that connected his heart with hers. It was amazing, it was hardly believable, but then, he knew better than anyone that magic always worked in strangest ways. She was holding that bond – in the vastness of magical space he felt her will, her hope, her determination to reach him, to show him that she knew him better than he knew himself. His curse said she could never love 'him', whoever he was. Her love, reaching for him in the darkness, showed him that she knew that 'he' was not who he thought he was – there was a man inside him he didn't see clearly, but she did. Not the beast, not the ordinary man whom she seemed to want at first – somebody else. His true self, perhaps. She just didn't find a way to embrace him yet. But she would – who else would discover a man's true self but his true love? And he wanted her to. His relentless love for her showed that he wanted her to change him, despite all his reasoning. It was absurd – of course he could not break the bond when his whole soul strove to keep it.
He was holding their bond, too. And cursing himself. And raging with regret. And crying with longing. And burning with hope that somewhere, somehow things could right themselves. In a way, he was just as stubborn a dreamer as she was – no wonder they fell in love.
And then he was told she was dead.
His pupil, his daughter (he always thought of her as of such, for in all ways apart from the purely formal one she was his child), his ungrateful creation came to him and told the news in a light, calculatedly sneering way, watching his reaction, waiting for him to collapse. How did he manage to create such a monster?
He did not collapse, not in front of the Queen, though he gave her enough reason to gloat. And, when she left, he did not collapse either. He did not rage, nor break anything around him, as he did sometimes when passion overcame him. He felt no passion now, and no rage. He was… cold. He even reflected, wildly, that it was weird – he should have been crushed with grief, overcome by loss, devastated with guilt. But then he realized, with sudden lightheartedness, that the coldness he felt didn't mean that he didn't care any more. He was cold simply because he was dead. Dead like her. Yet he was walking around, and even breathing. His body moved, as if on its' own volition, and took 'her' cup from the shelf, and placed it on the pedestal in the middle of the room, to remain there forever, meant to show him his own humility and helplessness, meant to always, always remind him that there are things that are, once done, could not be undone.
His world was empty. She was gone, she was gone forever, and he was gone with her. He could never think of her, as he used to. He could not dream of her. He could not turn to her, in his thoughts, for hope and consolation. He could not remember her. Any of these actions would mean he had a right to touch her or reach her, to be with her, and he had no such right. Everything that filled his mind, everything he was, was now forbidden to him. It was untouchable. His very soul was not his anymore.
And yet he could not die.
That was when he wept.
It all went downhill from there, spiraling almost out of control. He stopped sleeping, for fear of closing his eyes and seeing her face – for of course he did dream of her, however sternly he forbade himself to. He stopped eating, for the thought of feeding his body, supporting life in it repelled him. He became truly ruthless in his dealings, for he dealt with loving people, and he hated them. He had to help them – he had to unite a loving couple so that they would serve his means, but he hated them, he envied them, and he burned with the wish to explain to them just how blind they were in their self-confidence. He felt an eager and pitiful desire to belong with them – it was stronger that ever now that he knew he had a chance to that, and lost it. Sometimes he couldn't stop himself and would even mention her.
He had to share the fact that he had a suffering heart, as if anybody would care.
He acted and looked in a truly weird manner now – people had talked that he was mad, for many years now, and now he really did behave like a madman.
He was going mad for, with all irrevocable knowledge of his loss, he still felt her. The bond was still there – holding on to him, held on to by him, unbroken, unchanged. He loved her still, but that was only natural: he was meant to love her forever. He felt her love still, which was beyond magic. Oh yes, people said that true love surpasses the grave, but that was supposed to mean memories, blissful or stained, but just memories nevertheless. She was no memory for him. She was real. He tried to shut himself out from her, but it was impossible, of course. He could not break the bond while she was alive – how could he do it now, when she was gone and beyond his power?
He must have truly, truly offended love for it to treat him so. The torment of loving and feeling the love that was unfulfilled, and had to remain unfulfilled in a very final way was punishment that defied his imagination.
He wondered if that was the price for the miracle of finding her at all.
A dead man raked with constant pain, he drove on with the building of his curse, relentlessly, though sometimes he would have difficulty reminding himself what and why he was doing. The mission he set himself seemed empty and hopeless and very distant, moved to the edges of his mind by his immediate loss – that loss felt just as fresh and cutting a year later as it did the moment it happened. Yet he kept going, like a mechanical toy, or a slaughtered chicken that keeps running even after it was beheaded.
Imprisoned by the 'good ones', he felt relieved. There was no need for pretense or action, no need for magic – and he was tired of magic by now, exhausted by it, eaten away. He could really let himself go now, and howl and rage in his cage like a beast they have branded him to be long ago. He could really become the dark and horrible creature he felt inside.
If only he could stop feeling her. If only he could, somehow, forget. If only the pain eased.
When his curse came, finally, when the clouds of black smoke, which represented the darkness of his mind in such a fitting way, engulfed the world, going through it in terrible, earth-shattering waves, he waited by the grill of his cage, transfixed. He was strangely proud – he was in awe: he never did magic on such a scale, and was amazed he had it in him, amazed to realize that such a force was his. He was empty – he was on the verge of fulfilling his task, on the verge of getting what he has spent hundreds of years planning and for what he has sacrificed everything, and he didn't know what he would do when he finally achieved it. What would he live for? He was afraid – such magic as this had to have a price, and he didn't want to think of just how great it could be. Yet more that anything, he was grateful for the main condition that was set in the structure of the curse – for the loss of memories of all loved ones.
He would wake up in a new world, and forget her. He would forget his guilt, and his hope. And, terrible as it was to lose all memory of her, he was not sure he could endure his present state any longer. He was dying, and not just any sort of death – he was dying of pain; his was the death when heart stops for it is unable to handle the shock of torture. He was dying with each breath, and coming back to life again to die a second later. No man can endure that for long, however great is his love. No man can endure that forever.
If he forgot her, the pain would be gone.
He pressed his face to the rusty rods, and closed his eyes. He felt the cold wind of his own magic blow in his face, stinging his closed eyelids.
He welcomed oblivion.
When he woke up, he knew a lot of things about himself, and was satisfied with most of them. He had a settled life, a respectable trade, and power over people. He could have been happy, or at least content, if not for one thing. He felt he has lost and was missing something – some part of him that was extremely important. He did not know what it was, and it was frustrating in itself, but even more disturbing was the fact that this loss felt like pain – physical pain. It never left, and it never eased. He felt like people who, being seemingly lightly injured in some accident, walk home with but a couple of bruises and die an hour later from internal bleeding. Only he did not die – he bled and bled, inside, feeling the pain gathering in his body and eating it from the inside, poisoning it and taking him over until he felt like pain itself was the main thing about him.
He never bothered to share this depressing feeling with anybody. He had nobody to share it with, anyway. He didn't have any friends, for he was a difficult man to love.
