Daughter of the Dark King III
The leaves rustled, they were deep and green and rich, and they were almost within reach. The walk was long, an hour, a day, perhaps an age; but it was long and the wood looked inviting and cool under the eaves.
She knew them, though she did not know why, the tree tramps. They could be seen in the deeper wood as she approached, some tossing sunlight in autumn’s colors to the wind that shook them and shattered there peace, some smiling as it abated, becoming once again just trees. Their’s was a light much like her own, though she did not know it, and they cast it about more freely never having had visitors and all.
She stopped at the wood’s edge for a time, watching, and letting the cool green grass tickle her toes; it was long and played both between and atop them. It whispered to her then – the grass, and bid her stay and take root with the rest.
“The rest?” she said, mostly to herself.
She was surprised when the grass answered in its wispy tone, “The rest who stopped here to let the grass entertain them and chose to stay, this place is of them, with green leaf and thickened bough they are all – all except the sprites, the tramps you know, and her!”
“Her?” she asked, but the grass had fallen silent and lay now silent at her feet – in shadow. A dry wind passed over her and took her comfort and she stepped into the wood, if that is what it was, to rest and watch the tramps play in the sun.
…
“Who are you?” said the Dark King’s daughter. She had seen her as she walked moving deeper and deeper into the wood. She had followed the tramps for a time, as they slipped away from her every approach, then tired of pursuing them as they fled. She spoke now to a dark haired woman who sat weaving grass in the shadow of a cottage. It seemed odd to her that anyone would build a cottage so, with the sun rising behind and setting for it’s front door’s pleasure.
“Is this your cottage?”
“I am the keeper here, and yes, this is my home.” said the dark haired woman as she turned her dark and somber eyes from her work to look for who had spoken to her.
“Why do they flee?” said the Dark King’s daughter.
The dark haired woman did not answer, she merely looked more closely at her visitor.
“Do you wish to rest here, are you alone?” the dark haired woman asked, and peered around and about her as she answered.
“I am alone and would rest for a short while with you if I may.”
“None may rest here for just a short while my dear. If you sleep the grass will take you and give you autumn for your eternal fair. But my, you have no shoes, let me get for you some that I have made of the grass, to comfort your feet and speed you on your way. You are young yet for autumn’s rest, as all here would tell you if they could.”
She turned away then into her cottage and returned with eyes aglow and trembling hands holding slippers woven of golden grass which she brought and placed at her visitors feet. She looked once again about her as her eyes grew wide with wonder as she spoke.
“Upon your feet my dear, upon your feet!”
So the Dark King’s daughter came to step into the slippers of sleep as had all the rest who had come here and asked for a moments rest before her. But her feet did not spread to root as had the rest, nor her shining hair to leaf and branch, but only did a smile cross her face and a light shone from her breast, the like of which the Autumn Keeper had seen before.
“How old are you?” she asked with dark and widening eyes.
“I have been for a day, and slept a night, and have clothed myself against the nakedness and the cold. And now I have slippers against the stones and dust – and you?” she said as she admired them delightedly.
“I have been autumn here for long and long again, I have gather my sleepers as I was bid and lived well for my time, which I see now has become very short, very short indeed!”
“Thank you for the slippers my lady, but as you say, I must go. Is there a path I should follow?” the Dark King’s daughter said as she stepped away. But there was no answer as she sought the sunlight once again, and a moment again to watch the tramps before she left the forest behind.
And the Autumn Keeper watched as the king approached, satisfied now to go to her final rest.
And the Dark King took her, and the wing covered the forest and the desert wind withered to dust the cottage. The Dark King waited now as the people he had hidden began to awake one by one, as leaf retreated and root crumbled away.
Daughter of the Dark King II
She awoke to the first inklings of the dawn’s morning chill, shivered, and this was new to her. All that was around her was deserted; and the village, though it looked no different than before, was empty of light and life and curiosity. She remembered now only the confusion and the fleeing people. She felt naked now, as she had not before, and cold, and looked away from the village now for warmth and freedom from the nakedness.
She turned her gaze to the horizon, turning slowly as the distant view passed first the first then the second point of the compass, settling on the third as a place to reach, as there was a sign there in the distance with arrows that could barely be discerned; one to the left and one to the right, and from her very feet a path that traveled there. And the shadow that followed slipped from the well’s rock side to the dust that fell from her heels as she walked, and the curling wind made no sound as it carried it along behind her – waiting.
His words came to her on the morning mist as she walked, whispers, it seemed at first, that grew more clear as she approached. She liked the voice she heard, not hearing so much the words as the kindness in it; her light grew in the mist as her heart quickened to the sound of it.
“Mere madness, it must be, that this single droplet of a tear could be not more, nor less, water than the sea,” the jester said, for a jester he appeared, with peaked hat and leotard, sitting at the crossroad with the arrows and the branching of the road.
“How should I live for the moment it remains in the midst of my cup hands.”
And indeed there was a tear whose light shimmered with a glow that lit his face ever so slightly, and lent it kindness.
“How so?” said the Dark King’s daughter, “except with the kindness that I see and hear!”
And the jester looked through the shimmer of his madness and saw her, and her light, and her nakedness; and he felt his madness fall just a little from his eyes. At this he whimpered and clutched closer to him his tear and let it take him once more to comfort and safe blindness.
And the jester heard her say, “My nakedness does not become me, will you help me?” and he could not refrain. He arose and danced round about her waving hands in weaving motions, faster and faster he danced and the fabric of his moving hands made silk of the morning breeze and he clothed her with it.
“Even clothed with the morning breeze you cannot pass. I hold these crossroads by madness as the village holds the gate by sin.”
“I saw no sin in the village as I passed,” she said, “and it is empty now. I left because I was cold and naked and alone, and am much safer and warmer here.”
She smoothed the silk in the sunlight and delighted in it. She smiled at the jester now standing before her and his madness slipped once again at the light of it, and he clutched all the more his tear as she asked. “To whence do these crossroads go, of these two which do I choose?”
“I do not know,” said the jester, “none come here to the village and none leave.”
“I will take the left way then because it leads toward the sun.”
He looked at the way she choose and at the way his madness stood in her way. He looked at his tear and its light from which the spell came. And as he looked she bent and kissed his pale cheek in return for the silk and the kindness in his voice. She did not see his tear wash away in his outstretched hands, nor his gentle sadness turn to fear as his madness passed, and his eyes cleared, and his mind became as it once had been – thin and shallow like a child’s.
And the Dark King saw him and his spell dispelled, his tear washed away, and took him, and the wing covered and the desert wind dried and blew away all that had ever been there. The Dark King rested then at the crossroad where there was no one and there were no arrows to show the way, King now of this unknown crossroad…
His daughter did not look back, but walked onward letting the sunlight wash the cold from her cheeks, warming the silk made from the morning breeze, smiling at the kindness she remembered.
Of dark edged somber wing and stirring desperate arrivals were made his mind. His wind proceeded him, a wind of shadows and desert sighs, a wind that cloaked and hid him, a wind that begat his daughter.
Of full body, though small, she arrived, a mind hungry from emptiness, a heart full from innocence with a light that shined from its center like a sliver of sunlight breaking now and again thru the treetops to light her way – and always behind, though she knew it not, was the shadow, the wing, and her mother the wind.
And she walked from the wood of her beginning, and the shadow watched from its eaves and boughs.
And she walked through the meadow before her,
smiling at its newness, for she had never seen one.
And she beheld the far village at its distant end and
said in her mind “I will go there and see all that there is”,
and through the meadow leapt the shade from stone to stone its wing cutting leaf and bough as it passed, leaving forever behind a field of sighs who’s trees looked much dismayed…
and she neither turned away nor saw this as she passed.
She came, after a short while, to a gate. It seemed odd to her that one would place something so, two columns of rock – rock that looked burnt and tortured that stood not wide enough from side to side for more than three to walk abreast, with nothing on either side to keep one from walking around them. Though the gate stood open, the making of it was clear as the tines and bars hung from hinges on either side, opened inward as if blown by a great force, burned and broken like the rock.
The light of her shone then, at its utmost, into the village which it was her desire to see. From door to door, window to window, her eyes took in all there was to see. They lit at last upon the well, a singular thing that seemed the center of the rest, and she stepped, without glance or further thought, through the battered gates. The shadow thrilled as she stepped through, all but upon her heels it rushed forward through the broken spells, free at last to pass where all else had failed.
She stepped into the village square and saw the people there. She saw the fear in their eyes and did not understand it. She saw them back away and hide, some looking back at her as they fled, others turning to look and stopping with eyes glazed in terror. She looked at them and at herself and saw only that she wore no clothing. She did not see the shadow and the wing, she did not feel the hot and arid wind, they were always aside from her gaze and did not encroach upon her person, but the villagers saw and fled and knew that all was undone and that it was the end. When all had gone from her sight she felt tired – tired from the unhappiness she felt for the first time. She curled up in the village square, and rested in her nakedness from the unhappiness and her first day’s toil. And while she slept the shadow slew and the wing covered and the desert wind dried and blew away all that had ever been there, and then the shadow rested too and played in the moonlit village, his now for the ages.
