Creative Writing

Shadows and Starlight

☽◯☾⬤☽◯☾

Night. No moon dulled the darkness, the stars were shrouded in pale wispy clouds and in silence. The wolves did not call; only the wind howled. An owl floated across the sky like a pale ghost. Nothing was real in that realm of shadows. Shadows slipped across the hills, twining through the blackberry brambles, through forests, shadows falling through the towering pines that reached upward forever. The night waited. 

A white wraith drifted through the wood. Only a young woman, but somehow ethereal in her softly billowing night dress, her fair skin, her pale blonde hair. Her eyes shone silver in the darkness, though no moonlight lit them. Tall and beautiful, dressed in silk, and heavy with child, she should have seemed out of place in the forest, but she had a wildness about her, an untamable presence that called to the tangling trees. Though she followed no clear path she seemed to know exactly where she was going. 

She slipped between a stand of snow white birches, the trees enveloped her in their spindly arms. Then, they abruptly ended and she knelt beside a small pool in the center of the clearing. The dark water stretched forever into the deep dark. A sky void of stars but when she twirled her fingers across the surface, sending ripples dancing, reflections slipped across the water. The woman watched them, thousands of unfathomable thoughts passing through her eyes. A young girl was dancing across the water, her pale hair and grey eyes a mirror of her mothers. The pregnant woman watched the child, letting her hand rest on her swollen belly. The girl laughed. Cried. Her face slid between expressions, melting and reforming into haunting smiles. She walked across the water alone. Her feet bloody. She walked across the water grinning, hand clasped tight around the hand of another girl. She stood, proud by the water, defiant though she seemed so fragile. 

The woman cried silently as the reflections slowly disappeared, plunging her back into darkness. 

Her hands trembled and she dropped the knife she had been gripping. It clattered softly on the smooth stones surrounding the pool. The blade shines silver white, forged moonlight. Wiping her tears she buries the thin dagger under the stones, and sets a smoothed river rock atop its grave. Out of place, white and smooth, a moon amongst the black sky stones. 

Bound. Tamed. Back in the clutches of her husband's house. She clutched the midwife's hands, white knuckled, and though she seemed fierce and strong, forcing her child out into the world, it was clear she had already given up. Her voice grew hoarse with screams, but she didn't try to stop them. In her eyes was submission. Sweat ran from her brow, her white shift clung to her damp body. Sweat and blood and motherhood. In the unnamed  hours between midnight and dawn, firm hands pulled a baby from between her legs. But already the woman was fading. Mother and daughter crossing paths only briefly. A glimpse, a caress. A whisper, 

“I love you.” A name, “Nox”  

☽◯☾⬤☽◯☾

The years passed in silence, and Nox survived, though small and hungry, she survived. Though starved for love, she grew, wild and tangling, reaching for an impossible sun. 

She clung to life, learned to walk, and run… and hide. She learned to tread softly when her father yelled, his voice slurred by drink and by sorrow. Nox was skittish, a stray cat beaten too many times to trust a human hand. She was always on edge, afraid, always slinking. She woke early in the mornings, before the servants rose, and crept from the house, fleeing into the sanctuary of the woods. She returned in darkness, when the house was quiet, sleeping, her legs scraped and her hair tangled, but with a scarce smile playing across her face. 

The servants called her ghost in their whispered conversations. Ghost creeping into the trees, ghost disappearing before the golds and pinks of sunrise had flushed the sky. Ghost in her long nightgown, her pale skin, her blonde hair, shining white in the darkness. Ghost, a thin slip of a girl whom no one seemed to know.  

A ghost lives a lonely life. 

Nox’s father pushed her away, trying to forget. A mirror of her mother, a memory from happy moments, it seemed he could not see her without drowning in an ocean of pain. He left her in the care of the servants, and tried to lose her too. The siren and her sea were dangerous. Nox too, forgot, she forgot that “father” could mean anything more than a sire, forgot nurturing hands and soft words. Love was a monster and she fled. 

She grew lean and quick, spending her summers in the fields and in the ancient woods. She stained her fingers and face purple with the black berries hidden at the forest's edge, scavenged wild apples and nuts in fall. Warm long days. Happy days. Sleeping, curled in the grass, the stars spread out above her, as far as she could see and beyond, sunlight and wild chases through the forest, shrieks of laughter as she threw her sweaty body into icy waterfalls. Only her and the world. Or they were one and the same. 

But the winter always came, sweeping cold winds across the hills and sending frost creeping over the leaves, and Nox reluctantly retreated to her father’s house. Although she wished to stay in the woods and avoid the confines of her home, she was not immortal to the cold, and she shivered in her thin dress when the snowflakes began to fall. 

Nox would slink about the house, avoiding the irritable servants, and hiding from her distant father. On the good days he was distant, glancing at her sometimes as she passed before turning away, pain in his once soft eyes. On the bad days, when his breath smelled of alcohol, and his eyes were red from crying too long, she feared him, and kept to the shadows. 

Shadows stretching from the tree trunks and striping the forest. Shadows in the corners of rooms, in the darkened hallways of the house. Nox liked shadows. They concealed, cold and quiet like the night. Like her.

Shadows, sanctuaries, Nox managed to find them in the cold indifferent house. The kitchen, when the cook was jovial, but she grew less and less so as the winter months lingered. The attic and the abandoned halls. Her fathers study, and his shelf of musty books. He didn’t read anymore. Books were from a happier time, a lost time. He had read once, the servants said, he had laughed, when her mother still lived. 

Nox treasured the volumes, tracing their thick spines, and cradling them in her lap with the gentle respect of a much older child. She didn’t know the authors, she couldn’t read their words, but she read her own stories from the drawings that covered the butterfly thin pages. She adored the black and white sketches of old men and their old deeds, the botany drawn in flat detail. They were all she had and she hungered for them with a terrifying desperation. 

Nox discovered every secret of the old house, she learned every corner and closet, straying down long hallways which had lain untouched for years. Once, she stumbled upon her mothers old rooms. Empty now. The servants did not come there. Nox hesitantly pushed the door open. This moment seemed important somehow, and Nox felt strange, invading such a personal space. Her bare feet whispered across the floors. Cobwebs had begun to fill the corners, slowly creeping across the ceiling.  This room had not been touched for many years. She left small footprints in the dust. She savored the room, slowly letting her eyes take everything in. River smoothed pebbles and jagged chunks of quartz lined the buros. Skulls and bones were tucked in the corners, fox and owl and mouse remains. A row of bird feathers, each one beautiful in its blues and grays, or speckled browns.  She was afraid to touch a thing, afraid to break this memory. This room revealed so much to Nox of her mother. 

Dust sparkled in the air, caught in a weak sunbeam, the room seemed alive with the woman’s presence. Nox surveyed the bed. Still unkempt from the last time her mother had slept there. A small indentation in the corner showed that the cat had once curled up here on a warm day. Nox realized that her eyes were filled with tears. She blinked, and rubbed them away, sinking onto the bed.  Pulling the cold blankets over her shoulders, Nox’s glance was caught on the bedside table. Curled nonchalantly beside a half burned candle, lay a silver chain, thin as thread, and shining in the thin rays of sunlight. Hanging from the chain was a small pendant, only as large as her finger nail, the shape of a crescent moon, and shining silver white like its light. Nox stared, mesmerized. It pulled at her heart, urging her to slip it over her head. Hands trembling, she obeyed its call, the sickle unnaturally warm against her breast. 

Winter passed in whirling snow storms and cold icy winds, and Nox spent her days in her mother’s old room. She swept the cobwebs from the rafters, and shook the dust from the blankets and rugs. She stole discarded candle stubs, and set them on the shelves, lighting the room in flickering shadows. She brought her Peter Luctus’ books to the room, and she discovered that her mother, too,  had books. Much stranger volumes, much stranger pictures. Nox marveled at the elves painted in mystic silvers and emerald greens, the beasts painted in reds and blacks that made her shiver at night, the mermaids with their sparkling tails, and underwater places, painted in sapphire and aqua and gold. 

The old house cat took to sleeping at the foot of her bed. He purred softly as Nox dreamt,  a warm companion in a cold world. But the cat was always gone by morning.

The sugar ran low, then the potatoes and squash of the summer's harvest. Then the flour. Even her father grew thinner. He didn’t invite Nox to join him at the dinner table and she did not ask. He ordered the servants to leave her food, but they were hungry too, and the plate did not always arrive full. 

When the oldest of the servants fell sick, she did not last longer than a month. 

Nox grew gaunt and malnourished. She took bread from the counters at night, but bread quickly grew scarce. The Hunger month stretched on, and Nox stared glumly at the snow covered gardens. Was there food buried under the snow? Once she had tried to dig the snow away from the squash patch, but all she was rewarded with was dead vines and bloodied, frostbitten fingers. 

 Tempers rose in the depths of winter and Nox feared to stray from her hidden havens. Tread softly on the polished wood floors, hold your breath as you pass by the doors. 

☽◯☾⬤☽◯☾

Night. The full moon shone off the snow, casting eerie shadows of bare branches and shifting clouds. They reached across the ice. Otherworldly. The stillness. The snow. The night waited. 

A child slipped across the snow, she was small for her years, pale and malnourished. Ghostly in her white night dress, which dragged on the snow, her mothers shift, too large for her slim frame. Blood follows her footprints, red on white on memories. It drips down her cheeks. Red tears. On white. On memories. Perhaps Nox is crying, she tells herself it is only blood that she wipes away with one trembling hand. Her feet were bare on the snow, and the icy crust bit her toes like daggers. 

She still clutched the small chocolate in her little first. Red paper wrapper. Blood red. It had begun to melt in the heat of her palm, and it was smeared across her hand and fingers and on her face to where she had touched it. Blood and candy. It had seemed so innocent, lying on her fathers desk, beside the untouched book that had slept there for years, the black ink in its little jar, gathering dust. Surely no one would notice. But fate was cruel.

Tread softly on the cold wood floors, hold your breath as you pass by the doors. Be wary.

She had not been wary. He had heard her footprints on the floor perhaps. She could see her father, his fist, the mad smell on his breath as he yelled.

In the dim candle light Nox looked almost like her mother. 

Dawn came and Nox kept walking. She should have collapsed, she should have been taken by the cold. The pain had come, her body was ice, she was ice, but she didn’t fall didn’t let the night take her.

Nox wandered farther than she ever had before, as the hours passed every landmark disappeared, even the sky seemed unfamiliar. She followed frozen streams, once her friends, now transformed by distance. Nox should have been dead, but she kept walking. She had lost the trail of the river, and now she followed the delicate footprints of a red fox, but abruptly, the tracks ended. She looked up, white birch towered above her, she had to crane her neck to see the tips of its branches. Birch did not grow in this part of the forest, but before her streaked a wall of white. Slowly, reverently, she stepped into the stand of ghostly trees. The wind murmured across their bark, a susurration of almost voices. 

“Hello?” Nox called hesitantly. Her words echoed strangely through the trees. Hello. Hello. Hello… hello…. hello…….Abruptly the trees grew sparse, a small clearing, and in its center, a pool, no wider than her father’s study. The moonlight fell on its surface and shone as bright as day. Mesmerized, Nox knelt by the water. Why was it not frozen? 

Her small pinch face stared back at her from the surface, and she saw what the servants saw. A scared little ghost with a dark bruise blossoming on one cheek. Nox ran her fingertips through the water, it seemed to stretch forever into the darkness. Perhaps it was only ripples on the moon’s reflection, but a humanoid figure began to appear in the water. Gracefully she danced across the surface until she was close enough to touch. With her white gown falling to her ankles, her blonde hair shining white in the darkness, she seemed a ghost. But nox had never been scared of spirits. The little girl slowly reached out, a word coming unbidden to her lips, 

“Mother?” but as her fingers brushed the reflection, it disappeared again into white birch and moonlight and ripples. 

Another figure slowly appeared in the water, and this time Nox was sure it was no reflection. The girl shone like the sun in this world of grey and white. She moved like a butterfly, no destination, featherlite wings dancing across the watery sky. Nox tried to study her, but each time Nox caught her gaze, the girl floated away. A sprite on the wind. She stayed a while at the clearing before turning and tracing the cold trails home. 

Nox slipped into her fathers house that morning, shivering and purple lipped. No one stopped her as she hurried to her mother’s room, but she thought, perhaps her father looked up when she passed his study, his eyes following her down the hall. 

☽◯☾⬤☽◯☾

Another year passed, and another, Nox’s childhood faded into the past. Once there had been a small chocolate, wrapped in colorful paper, left beside her door, but she ignored cowardly repentance. Perhaps Peter Luctus felt some ounce of regret, but the time for forgiveness had passed so Nox remained distant, a ghosts in the winters, slipping from room to room, chasing the firelight and food, a nymph in the summer, returning to the cold house only once or twice in a moon. 

Nox grew into her body, though still slender, the starved demeanor had disappeared and she was, in her own strange way, beautiful. The sharp lines of her face were striking, her golden-white hair fell past her hips in thick cascading sheets, and when the sunlight hit them, her silver eyes shone like the moon. It seemed that one day she entered the woods a scrawny child and emerged tall and graceful, a woman of the wild night. She no longer went unnoticed by the servants, the stable boys watched her with a look of almost reverence in their eyes, the maids murmured among themselves, and her father looked at her in a new way that scared her. Nox noticed their glances and the tight fear that had lain dormant for a few almost good years reclaimed its hold on her heart. She escaped as much as she could, fleeing to the forest for weeks on end.  

It was more than escaping the house, then escaping her father, the night felt beautiful and strange and infinite, and it was all hers. Sometimes she ran for miles, tearing through the briars and weaving between the trees, for the pure sake of ecstasy. When the wolves howled she did not shy away, but called back in an inhuman voice. She moved light footed as a fox and graceful as a stage. When she ran through the fields, bare bodied, her hair unbound,  the mist still rising and the dawn light half shrouding her, she seemed almost an animal herself; a creature of the wood and sky. Those were the best moments, long nights spent with the ghostly owls, midsummer afternoons laying in the sunlight, the first apples of the year, crips and sour on her tongue. 

On the damp warm mornings of spring, Nox woke to the dazzlingly blue sky and an orchestra of small songbirds, hidden in the budding trees, serenading the day with their small voices. If the wish pulled her, she would scrabble, cat-like into her favorite old oak, resting her head on the bark worn smooth by her visits, and listen to the dawn. She was more than a woman then, more than a lonely girl running from life, she was there, watching the world wake, belonging utterly to that beautiful moment. 

Slowly over the summer days the loneliness frozen deep in her chest began to melt. Though she had no human friends, the wild, the wood, was enough,  for a little while. 

Once she had searched for the birch grove and the pool, but no landmarks led her, and the streams she followed showed no path. After wandering circles through unremarkable trees, she came back to familiar forests, wondering if it had only been some strange illusion. 

Nox returned begrudgingly to the house for winter, dread hanging tight to her heart, she had avoided people for much of the summer, lost in the wilds save a few trips home when berries and nuts were scarce, and now she thought again of their strange assessing looks and the long cold halls.

Nox went to her mother’s rooms, where the gray tabby waited at the foot of the bed. It was always strange, coming back, while she had changed and grown in the wild, the room had not. She brushed the dust from the corners, and added a scarlet cardinal feather to the bedside table and a delicate sparrow’s skull to her arrangement on the top of the dresser. Subconsciously she had continued her mother’s strange collections. When she found a river smoothed stone she would slip it into her pocket, flowers, she pressed between the pages of her books. Little memories of summer warmth. 

On winter’s first morning, a soft knock sounded on Nox’s door. She threw off her mismatched assortment of blankets, sending the cat fleeing under the bed, and threw a shawl over her nightdress. Who would come to her room so early?  Her father? Anxiously she stepped towards the door, hands trembling. 

“Who are you?” She asked, her voice sounded strange in the quiet room. 

“Amari Solis. I just arrived here… I… I’m the new servant” A girl’s voice, tentative through the wood. Nox slowly pulled open the door.  She was dressed in a plain shift and her chestnut curls were  twisted into a short braid. She gave Nox a little smile. 

“I’m…Nox” her words caught in her throat. This girl had smiled at her. At the wild and lonely night child. At the ghost. 

“Peter Luctus’ daughter?” Nox nodded. An awkward silence settled over them, and Amari’s face flushed. “I should go.” she said, but she gave Nox one more lovely smile before she turned and disappeared down the hall. Nox sat alone staring at the walls that now felt so lonely, her mouth still trying to speak.  

Days passed and Amari didn’t return. Nox began to wonder if her gentle smile and kind eyes had merely been a desperate dream. Perhaps she had just been a curious servant passing her door. Nox felt more alone than ever. The endless hours without company that had once seemed a given, grew treacherous. She walked alone on winter nights, ignoring the cold wind on her face, but even the wild did not give her what she now craved; a friend, a human companion. 

Nox found herself crying as the moon swelled again. Only a few weeks in, and winter felt endless. Even the cat, for the first time showing some slight affection and curling up on her lap, offered no console. Nox stopped eating, the tabby grew fat on her unfinished meals. She left her rooms and wandered the halls passing by her fathers study and found herself turning back to walk by his door again, hoping he would look up, meet her eyes, anything to know that somebody cared. She lingered outside kitchens wishing only to listen to the muffled human voices inside. Sometimes her fingers drifted to the crescent moon hanging around her neck, wondering what would have been different if her mother had lived.

Night. The stars shone cold and distant through Nox’s window. She whistled the soft cry of a songbird to herself, if only to drown out the silence. The cat flicked his ears, agitated by the eerie sounds. Nox didn’t hear it at first, the gentle knock on her door, she jumped to her feet, heart hammering like a hummingbird's gray green wings. Was it Amari? Did she want it to be Amari? Why was she afraid? Was this the end of her solitude? The moment she had always been waiting for?  She pressed her palm to the smoothed wood of the door, trying to calm herself, to harness an ocean of desperate thoughts. 

“Hello…” she whispered breathlessly. Then, “Amari?” 

“...Yes” her voice sounded unsure through the wood. 

“You came back?” 

Silence. Nox fumbled with the lock, pulling the door open. Their eyes caught, she had such enchanting eyes, green and brown and gold, a thousand hues of the earth, Nox knew she stared too long, but Amari made no effort to break her gaze. 

“I… ummm…” abruptly Nox grew flustered, “I… Come in… I mean if you would like to…” Nox opened the door and led Amari inside, her face flaming. Suddenly she was seeing this room with new eyes, how strange it seemed in daylight, all her woodland treasures lined up on the window sill and the buro. She thought Amari would laugh at this room, Nox’s pathetic existence, a lonely stammering woman with tangled dirty hair and a stained dress. But she didn’t laugh, didn’t leave, and Nox’s heart swelled in her chest. Amari crossed to her bedside table, running careful fingers over her crooked row of feathers, an owl’s flight feather, the blue grey of a jay, even a ruby red feather from the throat of a hummingbird, found half eaten in the woods. 

“These are beautiful…” Amari gazed at the colorful array. Nox lifted a fox's skull lightly from its place on the shelf, like a young child giddy with her toys, she showed Amari every little beauty she had found. This girl was the only one who would listen. 

Nox lay staring at the ceiling. Though her eyes kept drifting closed, she couldn’t seem to sleep. Amari’s face swam in her vision, every tiny freckle of her nose, the gentle curve of her lips, so prone to smiles. Suddenly the house was no longer a trap, but instead, perhaps a chance for friendship. Perhaps. When she finally fell asleep, she slept peacefully, and the hazel eyed miracle girl flitted through her dreams like a promise. 

A day and a night went by with no sign of Amari, and Nox began, again to think that she had imagined those smiles, but as the pale pink and purple clouds of dawn drifted above the bare trees, Amari slipped into her room, and giving a small smile, and sat on the floor beside her. 

“Hey.”

“Amari… Hello.” It seemed as if they had known each other for years as they fell easily into conversation. Amari told Nox of the servants' world, and of the infinite tasks the house provided. 

“...and it gets lonely.” Amari confessed “I am the first new girl they have seen for many years,  the women don’t accept me as their own, not yet. The only children here are the stable hands and the boys who work the fields in the summers, and our worlds are so separated, I am a ghost passing in the morning as I pump water.” They both were quiet for a while, but it was a silence that didn’t need words to fill it. Finally Nox said, as if admitting a great secret, for she had never truly admitted it to herself.

“I know what you mean… I am a ghost while I still live… a ghost of my mother, a ghost of a normal child… I always spend the winters alone,  there is no companionship for the lord's daughter, in the summer I can escape and the woods  is almost  a friend…almost, but sometimes it feels as if I don’t fit in this world any more then the fish-tailed maidens in my books.” Amari looked at her, a question in her eyes. Nox pulled a leatherbound book from beneath her bed. Its worn cover was familiar on her fingers, and it was strange to share something that had always been her secret, but she opened the thick volume turning the thin pages, and she smiled to see Amari’s entranced expression. 

Nox flipped to the mermaids page, and it did seem like her blue-gold half-human face looked almost lonely. Amari traced the pages with the same reverence as Nox once had, and they fell again into silence, but Nox felt that perhaps, for the first time, someone understood.  

The days passed in shared laughter and smiles. Amari came to Nox’s small room as often as she could, and when the house was quiet she would venture out and follow Amari about the house as she worked. Sometimes she caught the other servants staring at her strangely, but she  didn’t care anymore, even the curious glances of her distant father didn’t phase her. A week passed, then a month, during which Nox never wandered the snowy wood, seeking solace in the windswept hills, Amari was her shining beacon, drawing her to the house she once hated. She waited in Nox’s mind, a blazing sun burning away the mist and the shadows. 

Nox felt herself telling Amari things that she hadn’t even admitted to herself, the strange half memories of her mother seen in a strange forest pool, moments that she had tried hard to forget; chocolate melting on a little girl's bloody fingers. Amari would speak, softly as if it hurt her to say the words, of a childhood raised by a sullen aunt without the time to care for a child. They were as different as night and day, but somehow not, the hurt, the fear, the lonely hours, they both understood. 

So they poured out their secrets, and wove tighter the bonds of their friendship without hesitation.

On the darkest night, as the servants prepared extravagant meals, and in the village, the people crammed themselves into each other's houses, Nox sat alone. This was a time of celebration, the time when Nox had always felt most  alienated. But tonight Amari’s quiet knock came on her door, and she burst inside with her bright eyes,  bearing cakes from the kitchen, and a bottle of mead smuggled from the cellar. She grinned and set them down on the bedside table beside the rainbow of feathers. 

“Why can’t we celebrate too?” she said smiling softly, the one Nox had grown to love, “these days are always so dark for the lonely.” Nox just nodded and took the proffered cake. Nox remembered dozens of nights, curled into herself on her hard bed, hearing the muted sounds of laughter that she could never understand. The cat had lay splayed out beside her, but he, unlike her, had chosen the quiet and solitude. Amari’s voice called her back again, “Try not dwell in the memories, we will not be lonely tonight.” and she lay a sugar sticky hand on Nox’s, squeezing her fingers slightly in soft reassurance. 

“I will try not to.” They were quiet for a bit, savoring the honey drizzled and sugar powdered desserts. 

“Do you hear the owls?” 

“I used to think they sounded sad.” Nox said, “But now I think not. They are only calling to each other, and it doesn’t matter how dark the night is they can still be heard.” 

Amari watched her sadly, but she whispered quietly, in Nox’s ear, “I will always listen.” Perhaps it was the mead, or the muted voices drifting from the kitchen, or perhaps the impossible presence of Amari’s warm hand on her own, but Nox felt a rush of some strange emotion unknown to her scared wild self. It seemed that her heart pounded a hundred times louder in her chest. She held Amari’s hand a little bit tighter. 

Nox slept unusually late, most mornings she was attuned to the bird songs and rising sun, and her body would wake with the world. Amari still slept, slumped against Nox’s shoulder. She was mesmerized by her delicate lashes, her rosy lips against tan freckled skin…. Her eyelids fluttered and Nox’s heart jumped in her chest. Was it with happiness or deep rooted fear? Their fingers were still twined, and she gently tried to pull her hand away, but Amari’s fingers were curled tightly around her. Trapping her. Something had changed between them when their fingers touched, and the feral animal inside Nox writhed with new fear. Her wild self had begun to be tamed, so slowly that Nox had not even realized at first, but now she saw, suddenly, how vulnerable she had become, how her sharp edges had been dulled. When was the last time she had run barefoot in the snow, jumped into the half frozen river? But what if she was meant for this human world? Maybe the only thing she was waiting for was someone to accept her? 

Before Nox could untangle the thoughts writhing in her head, Amari’s eyes fluttered open. She felt her hand tighten around hers. Nox panicked again. Amari looked up at her and smiled as dazzling the bright blue sky, and Nox met her eyes trying to count the thousands of colors swirling in them. 

Gold, 

hazel, 

forest green, 

sand on the river shore, 

spring buds. Their noses were inches apart. Nox felt the brush o f Amari’s lips before she knew what was happening. 

She jerked away on instinct.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Amari bolted upright and ran from the room.

“...I’m sorry.” Nox whispered, later, but Amarai had already left the room.

Later that day Nox had searched for Amari, but the hallways were empty. She cried to herself and tried to forget that that morning had ever happened. 

Her fathers study door hung open and Nox saw, to her surprise, that a book lay open on his desk and his cheeks were cleanly shaven. She did not know what prompted her to do so, but she peered through the door and slipped quietly into his study. He looked up with a look of bewilderment on his aging face. 

“I loved these books…” He gave her a surprised look but she fled the room before she had to say more. 

As the week passed, Nox caught him watching her. Sometimes she would spare him a smile and his mouth would tense and twist strangely in an attempt to smile back. 

She and Amari had fallen back into their old friendship, although the silences stretched longer and Amari seemed to smile less. When the snow began to melt and the first flowers poked tentative heads out of the mud, Nox dragged her outside. She laughed and followed her to twisted old apples and strangely shaped boulders, but she tired out much faster than her sprite-like, bare footed companion, and when rain battered their faces and mud soaked through her patched boots, Nox reluctantly followed her back to the house.  She missed the quiet hours alone by the stream, just her and the burbling water, but she drove it out of her mind, she had traded those moments for a human friend 

and 

wasn’t it a bargain she would make 

again? 

This summer was unlike any other, Nox returned to her room every night. She missed the stars, the quiet nights, but everytime she wondered about leaving Amari’s warm face drifted into her thoughts. Her father seemed to notice her presence, and sometimes he watched her, his eyes calculating and hard, sending fear writhing up in her stomach. 

As she walked with Amari back to her room one evening, she found him standing outside her door. Amari glanced back at Nox before retreating down the hallway. 

“What are you doing here.” Her voice was cold when she spoke to him. 

“I know I have neglected you, and I am sorry.” Was this finally his apology? “But I will not let you rot in my house forever, you are a maiden now, and I have found a husband for you. He will come to wed you before the end of the summer. “ He paused, seeing Nox’s furious expression, “I am giving you a future, my daughter.” 

“No!” Nox spat, her voice growing angry despite her efforts to stay calm “How dare you abandon me for fifteen years, only to barge in and give me to some uncaring man as if I'm your prize, when everything is finally working out! And Peter Luctus, I am not your daughter.” She saw the pain flash across his face at her last words, but he only said, 

“It is not your choice.”  

Nox slumped onto her bed. Silent tears had begun to slip down her cheeks, little sparkling rivers. Her life had suddenly been uprooted in one swift final moment. What did this mean for her new found friendship? She would be shipped away to some merchant's cold home. And Amari, would she stay at this house? Find new friends in the servants and villagers? Forget her? She curled up in her bed, she didn’t have the strength to run to the river or the sunny hills. 

The dark room held her in its hard stone arms.  

That night, Nox told Amari of her father’s plans. She saw a look of shock in her eyes, and then one of quiet pain. She did not cry, though her eyes were glassy, but she embraced Nox with a tight ferocity. 

“The world is cruel, and we do not deserve to be torn apart, but never believe that I will forget you.” and then they both cried, as if finally realizing the truth of the situation.

Though they still spent hours together, the undeniable presence of Nox’s marriage lingered over them like a thunder cloud, roiling in the distance, and ever nearing. Every moment they talked was a moment closer to her departure. 

Nothing beautiful lasts forever. 

To Nox it still seemed unreal, surely she wouldn’t be wed, how could she, a wild creature, who grew on the blackberries and warm sun, be bound? 

The sky shone sapphire blue, and a hot breeze played through the grass. Amari had left her duties in the kitchen, ignoring the cook who shouted after her, and found Nox in her dark room staring glumly out her small window. 

“Come, let’s not think of your leaving now.” Amari whispered “The forests will offer shade, and perhaps comfort, and the man has not come yet.” Nox smiled sadly at this, 

“Father says he is coming in two nights…” she caught Amari’s surprised expression, it was sooner than they had expected. “But I will walk with you , I miss the wild and the woods, it feels as if I have left them already.” 

“I know….promise not to think of him?” 

She nodded softly, “I promise.”  The shadowed figure of a strange man  haunted her every hour, it felt as if he had come already and taken her away. But the looming wedding loosened its hold on her as they crossed the little river, the cold water on their bare feet. Nox let her lips whistle the bird songs she had almost forgotten, and giggled at Amari’s feeble attempts to whistle with her. They filled their bellies with wild blueberries and crabapples, and climbed the willows beside a small pond. The water shone green and brown under the hot summer sky, as the reflections were disrupted by a heron. Its huge wings beat the sky as it lifted off, sending the water rippling where it left,  in ever growling rings. Cradled in  willow bows, the leaf dappled sunlight warm on their faces, the two girls dozed in the branches . 

Sometime later the heron they had scared returned to stand still and quiet by the shore, the turtles basking on the nearby logs returned, and the day went on, oblivious to their presence. 

Nox awoke to Amari’s hand on her shoulder, shaking her gently. 

“We must return soon, before they miss us.” 

“Yes.” Then, “Amari, Amari…. There’s something I need to show you.” 

She didn’t know what had prompted her to search again for the birch grove and the silver pool, but Nox had felt a strange longing to bring her there, to show Amari that small piece of herself that no one else knew. Her feet seemed to know the path they followed, one her mind did not remember, and she tugged at Amari’s hand, urging her to run faster. 

Nox heard Amari gasp as they came into the clearing. It was a stunning picture, tall white birches reaching past the sky, against the darkening clouds, the strange little pool at the center, stretching down until the darkness swallowed it. Nox didn’t explain, she didn’t fully understand this place herself,  it had a magic that held her in its presence. Amari felt it too, for she seemed to relax, letting her toes play circles in the water. 

Nox saw Amari’s eyes grow sad. Moving to sit beside her, Nox whispered 

“I will not think of that, you can not either.” 

Amari laughed sadly, her eyes were sparkling, and they shone green and gold as the sunlight hit them. Nox felt her fingers move of their own volition, twinning between Amari’s. Her perfect lips quarked in a little smile, and she lay her head on Nox’s shoulder. Watching Amari’s watery fingers trace her own, she saw herself smile, her face so different then the pinched sorrowful one she had last seen in these same waters. She watched their reflections for a moment, then she twirled her toes gently in the water, sending ripples across their bodies, slowly distorting their smiles. Between the ripples, their shadowy forms shifted and changed, two girls, cradling a heavy book between them, sharing a quiet moment in a cold room, drinking mead and sharing stolen food while the rest of the house gleamed with candles and voices. Tears and memories and sweet sunlit moments. Nox watched everything swirl across the surface, not knowing what was true and what illusion. She felt Amari tighten her grip on Nox’s fingers. Could she see it too? Then Amari reached down and set the images swirling again. They were blurrier this time, a white clad woman, two smudged figures, bare feet running in the darkness. Nox tried to find faces and familiar forms, but the ripples settled much faster than before and Nox did not have the courage to set them moving again. 

Their own eyes stared back at them. Her life before Amari seemed a thousand years behind her now, how had she survived all those years alone? Amari looked up at her, and Nox felt her heart pounding, loud as thunder. She realized suddenly that perhaps she wanted to be tamed. She didn't want to be a lonely creature any longer. Could she keep her wild heart and still be loved? Nox watched their reflections in the still water, her pale skin and hair beside Amari’s warm complexion. Sun and moon, sat beside each other, their fingers tangled in a quiet clearing no one else could find. They were here for a reason, in this impossible moment, so Nox leaned towards the other girl and kissed her softly on her perfect lips. And Amari kissed her back, and Nox was scared but she didn’t care. She felt words welling up, hundreds of them, how could she say enough? Amari. You are everything. You are the sun and the rivers that let me live…. 

“I think I love you.” Nox managed to whisper, and even as she spoke the words she knew it was true, for what was love, a word she had never truly understood before, if not this? So she murmured again, softer this time, more sure 

“I love you Amari, no matter how far apart we’ll ever be.” Amari met her eyes, and she did not need to answer with words. Nox felt the other girl’s hands on her cheek, her soft finger tips warm on her skin. A hundred small affections in the brush of a finger or a lock of hair. 

The world was misty 

And strange 

And wild 

And tender and Nox felt everything she knew begin to 

Shatter.

☽◯☾⬤☽◯☾

Nox watched her future husband’s cart trundle up the thin dirt path towards her, and she felt the tendrils of dread that had followed her all summer curl around her arms and legs, wrap around her neck, suffocating her. The man who stepped down, accompanied by a few servants, was not old, as she had expected, but young,with a face still childish behind a small beard. Nox heard her father knocking at her bedroom door, and hurried to lace the lilac gown delivered to her rooms the night before. She pasted a cheerless smile onto her lips as Maritus  opened the front door. Nox gritted her teeth to hold her grin in place. She hated this man, hated his blue-green eyes and brown hair, and it didn’t matter if he was kind or cruel because he would own her either way. And either way he would tear her away from her life that had finally started to go right.

She forced out pleasantries, and as soon as was acceptable, she hurried to her room. She didn’t bother to loosen her corset, before collapsing on her bed and crying into her blankets. She cried for Amari, for the woods she would leave behind, for each branch and rock that had been her only family, she cried for the child who spent everyday alone, afraid. For everything she would lose to an unknown man chosen by an unknown father. The summer day outside her window shone beautifully, each flower unfolding to the sky, but she could not bear to see it all, not now when she would never again touch those petals or feel the sun, peeking through the oak leaves. That thought sent a stream of tears down her pale cheeks. Nox wasn’t one to cry, not for scraped knees or lost treasures, so how was it that she had shed so many tears in her short life? 

Her father had come to her once, tried to speak, but Nox had given him a look of such hatred that he turned away and kept his silence. She avoided him as avidly as her husband to be, whom she had seen only briefly since their first encounter. He had tried, it seemed, to talk to her, but her barely contained rage kept him distant as well. Nox knew she should not entirely blame this boy, hardly older than herself, perhaps with a future of his own, but he would not lose much, he could return to his same life, merely with one more body to control. 

Amari came as often as she could, but the house had been set to preparations and she was busy in the kitchen from dawn to night roasting lamb and boar, stirring great stews, and cooking enough pies to feed the village. The  servants brought aged caskets of mead, and great wheels of cheese clothed in grey mold. Blackberry and honey and wild fruits filled the house with their fragrance. When Amari could escape her work they would sit quietly in Nox’s room, or out under the shady maple in the yard, but the passion and the love at the otherworldly pool was suffocated in the miserable truth of their futures. Amari’s warm hand on hers only made Nox’s heart ache, and so she pulled away, and Amari looked at her in betrayal.  

The nights passed much too quickly, Amari’s days spent with the servants, and Nox’s spent in solitary, bemoaning her cruel life. She had given in and now she wandered the halls, an imposter to her own house. The night before her wedding dawned, and after a meal hurriedly scarfed down with her father and husband to be. 

Her two masters,  

She lay forlorn on her bed, hair half twisted in a braid, giving a soft goodbye to the cat who had always been an ally on the coldest nights. She stroked his gossamer ears, laying her cheek on his fur. 

“Will you miss me?” she whispered, the cat purred softly. Why would he care what fate awaited her? But perhaps, when the moon hung a crescent in the sky and her bed lay empty, he would wonder where his fateful companion had gone.  

A soft knock at the door, Nox opened it to Amari a little red eyed from crying. Old memories flashed in her mind. How many times had she stepped through that door, smiling her bright smile? 

“I couldn’t let you go without a goodbye.” Amari said softly, leaving the door open behind her and sitting beside Nox. She felt herself begin to cry but she stopped the tears, she had shed far too many in the past days, so instead she laughed sadly. 

“It feels like I’ve already gone.” she confessed, and the look in Amari’s eyes told Nox that she had felt it too. But she leaned closer and whispered 

“Don’t leave me yet Nox.” she felt Amari’s lips on hers, felt her hands tighten around her waist. Both girls were crying then, their tears smearing together on their cheeks, but they didn’t notice, or didn’t care. They were desperate in their caressinges, this night was all they had and the moon did not care if Nox's betrothed slept a hall away.  Nox tried to remember Amari’s every curve and feature, tried to hold her presence in the thought of her soft hands tangled in Nox’s hair. The room disappeared around them, until nothing mattered but their hands and their lips and this last moment together. 

When the door was pushed ajar neither looked up, neither knew anything but the other.  Nox didn’t hear her father hiss under his breath, nor his footsteps as they approached, but she felt his large hand clamped on her shoulder, wrenching her away from Amari.  Time slowed, she felt her legs fumble uselessly on the floor as he dragged her up right, then abruptly let her fall stalking towards Amari, his eyes smoldering. 

“What have you done to my daughter?” his voice was barely audible even as he spat in her ear. Amari flinched but didn’t answer. “I gave you food and bed and a job and you repay me by bewitching my only daughter the night before she will be wed! I want you gone by morning.” Nox cried out as Amari ran from the room. Disappearing. 

Forever. 

Nox did not see Amari depart, but she was gone before dawn, leaving, only a small piece of folded paper riddeled her messy script. One last goodbye. The final end to all those happy moments. Every string was cut. Nox ran her fingers over the paper. Just then the door was pushed open and Nox hurriedly set the letter on the table and opened the door. Servants came to bathe her and dress her in expensive finery and Nox let them lead her away, too exhausted to fight her fate any longer. She barely felt the water running down her hair and face, or their hands on her skin as they dried and dressed her. She was laced into a corset much too tight. Over underclothes and skirts, they laced a white gown falling past the floor. Her hair was tugged and plaited. It seemed her entire body was laced and tied and braided. And……Bound. 

Nox felt panic coming in a swift wave. The silver crescent moon hung on its chain, burning fire hot on her breast.Was a life indoors, tied to an unknown man a life at all? 

Nox stood suddenly, mumbling quick words to the servants attending her. She ran barefooted down the hallway, pushing the door open. The midday sun already hung in the sky casting its beautiful golden light on the trees and hills. A swallow dipped in the sky, flying perhaps after bugs or perhaps for the pure joy of its freedom. Nox watched it glide effortlessly on a draft. This magnificent, impossible world would disappear. She would never again feel roots and moss on shoeless feet, warm sun bathing her face as she lay alone under an azure sky. She would lose her wildness, year after year. The hard soles of her feet hardened by years of running barefooted, would grow soft and tender, her body would lose its light grace. A voice called for her from down the hall, and in that moment, under that free sky, Nox decided her fate, and ran towards the wood. 

As she ran she gathered her numerous skirts in her hands and pulled the pins from her hair, letting it fly in a white gold sheet behind her. 

Already she heard shouts behind her. 

Her father’s voice raised above the turmoil. 

She risked a glance behind her to see horses being saddled and mounted. A few servants had followed her on foot, but even encumbered by a gown she out ran them easily. 

She knew these woods.  

Sometimes Nox heard galloping horses behind her, muffled voices and steady hooves, but strangely she was not afraid. In the act of running she had set herself free, and she knew now, that whatever awaited her she would never be caught again, never be owned. She ran across meadows paths traced with her footprints, trees worn smooth by her hand. The wild knew her, or …was her, and she deftly wove her way across it, managing somehow, to stay ahead of the horses. Her side began to hurt as she ran on, but her legs did not slow. She ignored the building pain and let her fear and love and desire keep her running. A small girl with lonely silver eyes followed Nox as she ran tracing her path a thousand times. A thousand mirrors, leading her.

The sun was setting but Nox knew her father would not give up. Between his wounded honor and his burning anger at Amari and her, he would not stand to let her go. The forest grew streaked with shadows, and finally, too exhausted to keep running, she retreated into the branches of an ancient willow. The limbs cradled her, filling her head with memories of that perfect day with her. 

Sunlight glinting off the pond, the gentle wing beats of a heron. 

But now she had no friend beside her, no warm summer breeze to dance in the silvery leaves. Nox had lost the sounds of men and horses, but her ears strained for any warning of her pursuiters. After a quiet hour, she began to relax, shifting a little to hide herself in the branches. The moon was glowing between the trees, full and round, and so bright it lit up the wood as if it were dawn.  

Perhaps she had drifted into sleep, for suddenly she woke to voices, much closer than they should have been. They may not have noticed, she could have remained in the shielding branches of the willow,  but something forced her to leap deftly to the ground. She set off running, fast as before, her strength regained. The night's shadows did not phase her, and her eyes adjusted quickly to the half darkness. Following a small stream, she darted between the trees, not knowing where she was running, but knowing that she must not stop. 

Tall white birches. 

Glinting water. 

Somehow it felt right that she should come here. 

Nox had tried too many times to find this place and knew that it must be some 

greater force 

that had guided her feet here again. 

The clearing was utterly silent, almost foreboding, and 

Nox felt a chill, 

though she had never feared the wood. 

The full moon was reflected perfectly in the center of the pool, 

as Nox had known it would be. 

She stood still a moment afraid to approach the water, until finally she sat, kneeling by the shore, letting her hand send ripples across the surface. Was it a tall woman dressed in white or a birch trunk, its reflection distorted in the ripples? Nox thought that perhaps it was both. In the water she saw herself. A small child crying in the comforting branches of a dearly loved tree, running with the butterflies one warm summer, and the deepest memories, buried beneath protective shells of forgetfulness. A bloody faced girl fleeing through the snow, flying hair and falling tears, Amari, torn away, her last goodbye forgotten on a table for some servant to find. The images changed again, Nox running through the trees, her wedding dress torn and flying like wings behind her. Then, the water went suddenly still, and the birch trees disappeared, and the moon went dark, and Nox felt her body go cold. 

The wind seemed to change suddenly, sending the birch leaves shivering, and Nox heard voices, saw horses and torches through the trees. Her blood ran cold, and with sudden clarity she knew this place would not protect her, they would find her and she would be caught. She would be caged. She fell to her knees, abruptly feeling exhaustion sweep over her, and her eyes were drawn to a pearly white river stone, strange among the moss coated pebbles. Her hands were pulled towards it by some unstoppable force and she half expected the glint of metal that came as she lifted the stone. Her fingers fumbled at the dirt, tugging at the handle of a small dagger. Nox lifted it in trembling fingers, the metal gleamed in the moonlight. Nox stood, her hand shaking, as she saw, reflected in the pool, another woman robed in white, her belly swollen with child. She watched Nox, her hands resting lovingly on her stomach, a little smile playing at the corners of her mouth. 

Nox looked up at the moon, the half visible stars,

the perfect pale branches. 

She heard a whippoorwill  trill a few sad notes, and then the horses were coming, heavy hooves beating against the moss and roots, and Nox had no more time. She glanced once more at the water, but only her own slim form watched her. Only her own silver eyes met her gaze, glinting like the blade in her hand. Nox didn’t flinch, she might have even smiled as she looked up at the moon and, keeping her hand steady, forced the dagger into her chest. She let out a small gasp, red already seeping through the white of her gown, but there was no pain in her face as she fell, hitting the surface of the pool without a ripple, and sinking, slowly down forever. Her body fell spinning slightly like a snowflake, her dress billowed out around her as she sank, her hair drifted about her face, white as her gown. She grew smaller and smaller, a single star in a dark sky. Nox shone free in the vast midnight expanse. 

☽◯☾⬤☽◯☾

The seasons change, snow falls thick over the hills and trees, 

Sometimes,

 If you wander, you will find a strange clearing where the birch trees meet the sky in their tall white splendor, and a pool stands still and glassy in its center, a sanctuary and a tomb. 

The water seems to go on forever into the darkness, but 

Sometimes, 

When the moon is full a ghostly form is visible at its bottom, a pale skeletal girl in a frayed white dress, the skirts still billowing about her bones, a silver chain about her thin neck. A crescent moon hangs there, at her throat, and when the moonlight shines just right, it lights up the Darkness, 

Reflecting its skyborn twin. 

She watches the world with her wide azure eyes 

Despise this 

Disguise 

She wishes for the thousandth time 

All lies 

Sky child 

Her dark hair drifting across her face 

Clouds like gossamer lace 

This is not her race 

But still they chase 

Her

A thousand times 

Sky child 

Quiet now 

She wonders for the thousandth time 

How 

Will she bow? 

Or keep on standing 

Sky child 

With her ragged wings 

Brings the world to halt when she 

Sings 

Flings 

Away her sorrows to the wind 

Sky child 

And 

Her blue expanse 

A thousand miles

An endless whirling swirling unfurling dance 

Is this her last chance? 

To be free

Once 

When we were young we tried to 

Fly 

With stunted cedar bows 

Clutched in our small hands 

Their needles pricking instantly  at our bare scrawny arms 

Wings nonetheless 

Twisted 

And one much larger than the other 

Heavy 

Clunky 

Nothing like the wind-hearted feathers 

We had tried to emulate 

But 

Wings nonetheless 

We thought we were brilliant 

We believed 

Truly 

That we would soar 

With our mismatched contraptions 

We dreamed such big dreams 

Once 

Then 

We ran 

Flinging ourselves down that hill 

Flailing our enlarged arms 

And trying 

Desperately 

To catch the sky 

Tripping 

Tumbling 

Jumping a little as we went 

Refusing to let go of that 

Hope 

That  

Dream 

To join the swallows in their azure domain 

We didn’t fly 

Of course we didn’t 

But does it matter 

Because we were still standing their 

Wingless creatures forever bound to earth 

Gazing up at the 

Blue blue sky 

And 

I wonder 

Now 

Do I still dare to dream? 

Would I still throw myself down that looming slope 

Today 

Without hesitation 

Would I still wish 

Try 

I wonder 

Now 

Can I still fly? 

Summer song 

Heat that sticks and slinks and stinks 

And suffocates 

Run to refuge 

The pond not cold 

Not really 

Not after soaking in the sun just as long as we have 

But enough for us 

Bull frogs 

And familiar turtles 

One has a hump on her shell 

Scraggly willows I’ve watched grow 

Snakes 

They hook and hang and hug the branches   

A far off fear but they don’t dissuade us  

We reach the water naked 

We don’t know 

Yet 

What modesty means 

We throw ourselves into 

Brown water 

Murky and muddy and messy 

And full of fish that bite 

It’s worth a respite from the day

We race across the water 

It seemed so big back then 

Big and 

Bold and 

Beyond us 

Who can make it to the other side? 

Who can stay under just until their breath breaks? 

Who can jump off the dock like a rhinoceros?

We can 

Itchy 

Dirty 

Tangled hair 

Tangled in 

Tangled trees 

Ticks in the grass but butterflies too 

Who can sing the summer song? 

We can