by P. Clinen
Good night, little man. Sleep now or you may not wake up at all…
21: Exiled
Had Bordeaux known of the true whereabouts of the black rose brooch and of the dire consequences that would tail behind it, he certainly would not have raced so directly onto the course of his final desperate plan. For though the brooch had disappeared from the tree stump, it had not been gleaned by the sprawling wood golems. Rather, the relic was concealed in the dusky confines of an old messenger bag that rattled its way about the hip of Madlyn in time with her steps.
The girl had stumbled onto the black rose completely by accident and immediately taking its discarding by Bordeaux as a blow to her person, had plunged further into the forests of Tenebrae. She had done all she could muster; her heart had been left out on a limb in a desperate yearn for affection, yet now it sunk deep into her chest with a weight of bitter sorrow. If Bordeaux could not be hers, then surely she would have been able to live with that. But it was the thought of him alongside Libra that tore her apart. Madlyn's mindless acceptance of the grotesque woman's orders had withered slowly to a tipping point, where she had instead begun to loathe her. And now, now that the bane of her simple yet strenuous existence had stolen her one dream of happiness, Madlyn had resolved to run away from Tenebrae Manor.
Nobody had seen her preparations; no attention had been arrested by the sounds of her shuffling about her room, cramming her belongings into the bag, last of which being the page she had torn from Bordeaux’s book. The sketch of the tree with black roses mesmerized her so much that she wanted to keep it with her. She somehow believed that things of such beauty – even just a drawing of such things - could imbue her with utmost happiness. Where she would flee to, Madlyn did not know. She had stepped out the front door of the manor, the door held ajar by the vigilant Usher. Tenebrae's humble servants had gazed briefly at each other, yet Usher made no inquiry into the intentions of young Madlyn, nor had she indulged him with a reply. And why should they converse? With both clinging to the lower most rungs of the house's hierarchy, what cardinal significance would be gained by any discourse? With both submerged in pitying selflessness, the Usher closed the door with Madlyn on the other side, his mind ignorant to the finality of the girl's impending mission.
Her initial wanderings had been indecisive at best. The paths were infinite, spanning all degrees of the compass, yet their likeness to one another had caused her to stumble. There stood naught but trees in all directions and she could not know the swiftest path to the forest shoreline, where the tide of trees would recede to less monotonous fortunes. The endless night that enveloped Tenebrae Manor was not without limit of coverage, this she knew from Libra. Madlyn would need to travel until the dawn broke but the miles that stretched under the extremities of the spell were unknown to her. Perhaps the cycle of night and day returned to normal on one trip to the horizon - she could traverse that in a few hours. However, there was nothing disputing the night sky stretching for leagues on end, perhaps the perimeter could not be reached promptly on foot.
Madlyn thought not of the dangers that lurked in the forest surrounding and with her thoughts clouded by the ideals of fairy tales, she foolishly assumed her own safety to be unthreatened.
As the stories she remembered circled through her mind, Madlyn mused over the direction of her adventure. Recalling no blessings of a warm place in the days of her sanity, she sighed longingly for the southern lands of children's stories, where fields drowned beneath a sweet sun. The place where evil was abated - she prayed that such a paradise could exist for her and, through no logical process, set off in the direction she assumed to be south.
The taiga was impossibly vast. Each tree she passed a mere drop in a deep green sea. Madlyn scrambled through terrain that grew steadily more resilient as she progressed. There were times where the trunks huddled so closely together that even her gangly frame struggled to pass. Grass grew thick in patches; waist high on one uphill slope that Madlyn spent a painful amount of time ascending. But then the grass would fall away and give way to stubborn shrubbery that gripped her frock as she tried to pass, grasping with hideous claw-like branches.
Madlyn was unable to say how far she had travelled when she first noticed the diversity of trees around her. Though overwhelmed with pines, there loomed other variations of birch and sycamore, elm and oak. There they stood, vigilant sentinels of a silent army, their formations disorderly yet effective in hindering swift travel through.
Soon the forest became alive with a silvery glow, as a full moon appeared from behind the canopy. Madlyn cast her eyes skyward and became drunk with its beauty as a moth to flame, until she lost her footing and stumbled down a small grassy slope. Tumbling head over heel to the nadir of the hillock, she landed with a thud into a muddy creek. The smell of wet soil was overpowering as she sat up unhurt yet startled. Mud had ruined her navy blue dress and white smock and she gingerly picked the leaves from her tangled hair. Her arm must have skimmed a sharp stone or branch during the fall, for a stinging graze ran up her right forearm. Although nature had tried to rattle her tenacity, she resolutely pushed back and rose to her feet. She had to press on, it seemed that nothing in this world was willing to show her any kindness.
The light of the moon made her travels easier and for a further few hours she trudged ever forward until fatigue began to envelop her. How long had she been walking? In the eternal night it was difficult to discern, though Madlyn knew that she should rest soon. She came upon a large oak tree whose massive roots were interlocked over the ground like tentacles. There, beneath the mighty bole she was able to comfortably sit in a nook of roots and drift into a fitful sleep.
The moon had set when she awoke but in the darkness her eyes had adjusted and vision was somewhat clear. When Madlyn had walked a little further, she felt her foot kick at something in the dark and on bending down to inspect she picked up a large pinecone. It felt rough and weighty in her palm, yet the thing fascinated her so that she rummaged through her bag to try and make room for it. Her messenger bag was full enough already, stuffed with withered fruits and bread she had stolen from the kitchen, her quill, the mirror shard and a lantern. Acknowledging the darkness that had settled around her, Madlyn took the lantern from the bag and put the pinecone in its place. Only then did she realise that she did not have any oil with which to bring light to her murky perimeter.
The sounds of the wilderness overwhelmed her of a sudden and she became blinded by simple logic. Ill prepared as she was, a useless lantern was the first acceptance of failure that Madlyn recognised. Dryness cramped her throat; unease crept up slowly behind her. Madlyn had no water either. There was no saying how long she would have remained stationary, had a crow not suddenly swooped from a branch above and startled her into movement. Unease loomed and she hummed to herself in an attempt to ward off rising wariness;
Oh persnickety wickedly witch
Who tried to stave off dandruff itch
Used a cat to cushion her head
And fell with a grunt out of her bed
Oh persnickety wickedly witch
Of flake and flurry scalp twitch
Sought bats to beat the snow away
But wings clapped her hair to grey
Oh persnickety wickedly witch
Heard the cure from a snitchy-snitch
On her crown she let perch an owl
That pecked her head and made her howl!
Oh persnickety wickedly witch
Who tried to stave off dandruff itch
Inhaled the dust with every breath
And promptly sneezed herself to death.
She fought on and presently the ground beneath her aching feet began to slope so that she was walking steadily downhill into the concave of a valley. Her steps fell heavily as she went, the weight of her tired body thrown onto her knees. Yet Madlyn felt drawn towards the pit of the valley by some surreal force. The grass became mere tufts of dry straw, sprouted from dusty outcrops of knuckled rock; the fo
rest's shades of green receded to make way for a dried world of earthy colours.
Her legs throbbed with pain as she pulled up beside a large rock but no sooner had she leaned her hand upon it than she snatched it away. A sharp gust of pain pierced her palm and when she looked down, Madlyn noticed the boulder was covered with thorn-laden vines.
With her hands clutched to her chest, she followed the trail of thorns and saw that they were strewn everywhere around her. Jutting from thick black tendrils they protruded, sprawled across every rock and tree in sight. Madlyn felt overwhelmed by the parasitic nature of the tendrils, gripping the ground like the roots of a tree, seemingly draining the earth's very core to a husk.
For a moment she considered turning back, until something glistened in the corner of her eye and in a second, her heart leapt in amazement. When her eyes confirmed the astonishing sight, Madlyn dashed recklessly into the thorny bracken.
Blossoming effortlessly from the dusky gloom of one particular tendril was a black rose - not unlike the relic of Libra's brooch. Madlyn's heart beat like a hummingbird; plucking the rose from its host, the vine shivered at the disturbance. With her free hand, she rummaged through her bag and withdrew a crumpled piece of paper - the page from Bordeaux's book about wood golems. It had caught Madlyn's eye during her failed avowal in Bordeaux's quarters, displaying beautiful sketches of a magnificent tree that sprouted black roses from its branches. The plumage on this vine was the very same, it had to be and Madlyn had a sudden revelation. To follow the trail of thorny tendrils to their origin; perhaps there she would find the tree that grew the priceless talismans.
The path was narrow and unrelenting. Madlyn endured the nicks and cuts of the thorns that reached out to her from her sides, the scent of wild roses saturating her senses so that she barely felt the pain.
Before her it appeared, a tree larger than any she had ever seen, though perhaps not as tall as conifer, certainly its roots and branches reached further lateral distances than any rival. The branches were skeletal, save for sparse blossoms of black roses dotting along them. Madlyn saw nothing else, considered no danger and plunged headlong towards the base of the tree, where she pulled up panting for breath. A cavernous hollow in the trunk stared at her like an empty black eye socket and Madlyn could not help staring back into its void. It burrowed into the tree at her head's height and would certainly capacitate her entire skull were she to place it inside. Yet she dared not, as a shudder convulsed through her, a detesting of total darkness and claustrophobia.
Madlyn reached out with her hand and brushed her fingertips around the circumference of the hollow. The trunk was rough to touch; Madlyn was gazing absently into the void when on a sudden, a vine lashed out from within the hole and coiled violently around her wrist. Madlyn gasped and tried to pull her arm free but the artery-like tendril grasped her like a hungry leech.
She panicked, the tendril secreting an otherworldly screech, as around her the branches of the tree lowered. To her horror, the lowered branches brought into view the swinging of numerous corpses that hung from the branches as gallows.
Her heart beat furiously, the eyes of the ancient dead bored into her with abhorrence from the rotted flesh of their faces. Below the hideous screech of the tree and the crackling of the dead-adorned branches, there rose a throaty thrumming behind her. Madlyn flung her head around and saw she was surrounded by wood golems. Their grotesque humanoid forms left her aghast and Madlyn felt a long lost emotion return to her - a feeling she had repressed since childhood. The feeling of raw fear; of unequalled fright that held her in paralysis.
From the hollow of the tree, more tendrils oozed outwards towards her and as she tried to fight back, she felt the wood golems draw ever nearer. A scream burst from her throat, previously choked back by unbridled terror but it was not long until her cries were muted by a tendril that wound about her throat. The world faded darker than she had ever known and the last thing she saw was the glimmer of steel flash once before her, though it may have only been a fabrication of her failing senses.
****
Back inside Tenebrae Manor, the atmosphere crackled with an ominous chill. Bordeaux - the master of affairs, servant to the castle's concord, waited in the shadows behind a candelabrum on the highest stairwell. Regardless of his impatience, he had to bide his time and just as the silence grew to an unbearable pitch, a soft sound cut through the gloom and evolved into the sounds of footfalls coming ever closer.
The crimson demon froze, holding his breath for fear of disclosure, until Lady Libra shuffled past him and out of view down the stairs. He had not been seen.
Still he waited, lurking there in the shadow of billowy curtains that draped about the floor length window in the hall. The wait became agonizing; Bordeaux whispered a treble count before sliding swiftly from his hiding place and into Libra's room.
The door was closed quietly with painstaking precision, the demon wasting no time in advancing to the corner of the room where Libra had concealed a secret passageway.
"Here..." he whispered, standing before the great dusty wardrobe.
He braced himself against the side of the cupboard and pushed hard. It was certainly heavier than he expected and as it budged from its resting place, the groan of it scraping the floor resonated through the room. Bordeaux cursed the sound, pausing for a moment to make sure nothing stirred.
With the wardrobe moved; an eerie light shone from the exposed entry, throwing the shadows of Bordeaux's ankles along the floor. The demon winced at the sight of grime on his burgundy coat, rubbed off from the face of the wardrobe with his pushing. Pedant even in this hasty mission, Bordeaux did not fancy dust on his refined clothes. Intrigued though he was with the light issuing at his feet, he still sighed awkwardly at his next task.
He got down on his knees and peered through the opening, the room on the other side was quite small, perhaps the size of a storage closet. Libra had not been able to fit through but Bordeaux had no doubt he could. He considered removing his coat to prevent further begriming, though he realised that his time may be limited.
Stealing himself, Bordeaux threw himself down to the floor and shuffled urgently through the opening, his broad shoulders being of only minor difficulty.
When he had pulled his legs through, he stood up and brushed down his arms and shoulders, grimacing at his now filthy hands. Bordeaux believed he had reason for suspicion of Libra; her protective defense and prolonged secrecy of this hidden room surely had some significance. And it was now before his very eyes that his accusation found proper footing.
Atop a small shrine there sat, as an egg is cradled in a nest, a beautiful relic, which glowed vibrant colours of red, amber and green. It was this very object from which the strange light was produced. Its beauty infatuated Bordeaux as he cautiously grasped it in his palms. The thing was roughly heart shaped and its glowing was not unlike that of a log in the fireplace, warm to the touch.
He shook himself out of the trance; time was not on his side at present. Libra could return at any moment. He pushed the thing through the entrance and followed in tail, crawling desperately back the way he had come. The colours that pulsed from the relic threw dim light on the floor surrounding and Bordeaux still on his knees, froze suddenly in terror.
Behind the relic, a dusky foot; now red, now amber, now green, belayed the presence of a figure looming above him. The Lady Libra's eyes struck fear in Bordeaux's heart as they tore into him with a hideous fury. The corner of her lip twitched and through her gritted teeth she hissed, "You."
"Libra," stammered Bordeaux. "This is..."
“Enough!” her voice was menacing. “I knew I should have stamped my authority sooner. I show you a little respect and suddenly you think yourself as my equal. Given my echelon, I knew reprimanding you without a more just cause would rob me of some dignity but you just couldn’t accept it could you? Instead of pledging fealty like a good little insect with the basic will of maintaining order, you keep coming after me! Well
, you will not make a fool of me, Bordeaux. You want to know what you are dealing with? Let it be!”
Libra raised her arms slowly, her white limbs quivering with an unseen force. The room shook and Bordeaux cried out, his very being evaporating before his eyes. He felt himself plummet backwards, crashing headlong into a murky brine. A sharp gust of torrent cut his lungs as his vision vanished into a blackness deeper than the night of Tenebrae Manor.
END OF PART TWO.
PART THREE
22: The Conclave
In a certain part of the forest where the trees stood somewhat wider apart than elsewhere, the makings of a crude trail lay buried beneath a littering of pine needles. Like the matted stubble of an unkempt peasant, the rotting needles stuck to the soil, weather-beaten and uninspiring, blemished only by a protuberance of debris that broke the otherwise flat surface of ground. This debris, which lay directly in the centre of the badly worn path, appeared not unlike any other tree branch presenting itself so disconcertedly mangled in attempt to impede a jaded traveller. Of its construction, twisted wooden roots molding into the thicker bole of stump, riddled with rotten holes and knots, one would not give it a second glance. Yet given the now severe threat of wooden monsters in the area, closer inspection revealed it to be a perished wood golem that lay strewn across the road. Yes, its squatted humanoid shape was discernible, that horrid mouth of crooked stitches ghastly to behold. And in the hollow sockets of its displeasing face, where the eyes of the beast should have been, a rodent crawled quietly betwixt. Its whiskers twitched in the night air as it ventured ever cautiously across the gnarled body of monster.