Eternal Life

The call for lights out came echoing through locked doors followed by a stifling darkness that was soon driven away as emergency lights flickered on with a faint hum. Mary sat on a stark, blindingly white bed fingering the journal in her hands and glancing absently to the strange bundle of sheets also unnaturally white, knotted together in a strangely familiar rope fashion and looped together to form a crude circle at the end.
She was so tired of white, a suffocating, blinding white that reeked of sickness and chemicals. For so many years, to many to count her eyes had cried out to once more drink in the magnificent colors of the world, delicate pinks, calming yellows, soothing blues. Her nose thirsted to fully once again drink in the welcoming sweetness of spring, but all she had was her small white box like cell and her recollections. At times she would close her eyes and see the lush, fertile green valleys. But all to soon, at those times, she would open her eyes and once again face her prison, a small box like room, more cell, with adjoined restroom, all together in size totaling no more than a few feet wide with a white floor, lights, bed, bathroom and doors. For herself night and day mingled together in her windowless room, announced only by the coming and goings of overhead lights, yet she could always feel a minute spark deep inside her soul that told her night had arrived.
She was never meant to end life like this or to have lived so many years as she did. She was a child of the sun, meant to bask in its light and bounties till the end of her day. Was it truly possible she had journeyed so far and lived so long and seen the world evolving around her so much only to end it all in this white box?
She fingered the soft, buttery leather one of her only two possessions, her journal, inhaling its sharp, warm scent wrapped around and concealing the soft cream parchment from her eyes. She would write tonight and for a few more nights to come, she would force remembrance let her eyes fade from white to see her past as it was. Her journal once to precious to be used to precious to even smudge, but with her life nearing an end she hoped someone would find it and she would not simply be tossed aside as mad but her story told even as a children’s fable if it came to that.
Yet now knowing herself to be at the end of her life she could gaze ahead and clearly see the mountain peaks surrounding Bathsephany, so naturally white and pure they seemed to be singing, not stifling, and ethereal tune drawing one in with a feeling of home.
Over there, before the mountains border in the valley was a peek of vibrant red announcing the coming of spring and bravely daring the last few weeks of cold. Looking behind, towards the forest there lay a field of soft purple, mixed in with pale yellow and every color of the rainbow like a colorful shroud belonging to some magnificent fairy queen of lore.
Bending Mary gathered an armful of the blooms, their scent rich, heady and tantalizingly sweet filled her white room, coloring the whiteness and awakening her long shriveled up soul. A resounding birds’ call made her lift her head. What manner of bird was that she heard on the hunt for food. Surely she must have met him before on her many secret climbs up the mountains. “Fly free,” she called. “Touch the clouds, soar high, high and free.”
A sob chocked her bringing her back to her white room. She had lived to long in to many prison, her heart and spirit were weary. Once she had stopped fearing one prison she was tossed into another. At least this current one was always silent except for the lights out call. The silence was welcomed the silence was safe.
Mary leaned over her journal chocking back her tears, she could cry later, and at once started to write hesitating only a moment fearing what her memories would bring.
So many pictures flashed before her eyes. Names like an archive flowed into her mind Lucinda, her dearest friend, Luke her father, Jane, her mother and Mark her brother. She remembered her brother always dragging her to the river to show her what he had caught that day no matter how insignificant.
“Come Elizabeth, look what I caught!” Marks eager voice called to her from a long ago time as she gently stood up brushing grass and dirt from the back of her brown cotton dress. The carefree village girl she had been allowed her brother to grasp her hand and drag her behind him at a full out sprint.
“See!” Marks over excited childlike voice would call and drag her attention to where his finger was pointing. Usually there was only a few scrawny fish but she loved her brother dearly and always would praise him on his catch as he grinned at her all his pearly white teeth showing.
Elizabeth and her brother Mark were the only children of her father, a field worker and her mother the castle laundress. After Mark her mother had not been able to bear more children and with no sons old enough to work the fields for food and profit her mother was forced to take up the position as a laundress in the manor to add to her fathers measly income while she had been forced to take up an apprenticeship with the local seamstress Madame Rose helping her family by giving them enough to get by on.
As the only girl of her family prosperity was supposed to comer from when she married and when the seamstress finally could work no more, due to her bad eyes and old age, she would inherit the position brining in more than enough money to support her family and make any repairs on their old cottage.
She remembered one summer day sitting besides the dirt rode that wound through the town with a uniquely white cat that had decided for some reason to keep her and her sketchpad company. Her sketchpad upon which she was using a small piece of coal to draw out a design for a simple cotton dress. After months of saving she finally had enough scrap material to make a summer dress for her mother and even ass a few decorative flowers. The day was hot like the fires of hell the priest lectured about at mass, so hot she could feel her back dampen with moisture, her dull cotton dress clinging to her body and her hands dampen so that the piece of coal she held smudged her hands even more.
The pounding of horses hooves beating against the dry dusty road brought her head inclining up to see two horses stopped in front her, one as dark as sin yet sinewy, sleek and tall the other white as snow smaller but still as sleek. The dust caked on her as the two horses came to a whining halt and off the black stallion descended Lord Gregory, the heir to Fieldcrest manor and the surrounding village and vilens, with raven hair, blue eyes as hard and cold as the iced over river in winter and a muscular tan body accompanied by a sharp angled face and even sharper nose. He exuded a male power that made many of the villagers swoon with just a glance. A year earlier Gregory had tried to get her in his bed, village wide he was known to have a new woman every few weeks and that to the women residing in the village made him even more irresistible, he was hard to tame, he was also the reason she was one of the few pure women in the town, she had slapped him sharply, when he had offered to bed her, and with her hand still ringing and he looking murderous she had ran. She had kept the incident quiet sure that the morning would bring her death warrant, but instead it seemed he chose to humiliate her publicly as she had done to him privately, though no one understood his actions towards her from that day forth as he had kept silent to save his pride.
Lord Gregory offered his hand to help his sister the Lady Jennifer dismount with the grave of water. Lady Jennifer looked similar to her brother naught for the fact that her hair was the palest blond like newly spun silk, her nose sharper almost beak like and her eyes even colder than her brothers with a spark of cunning.
It was after a minute had passed helping his sister off her horse and handing the reigns to a passing boy to watch the horses did Gregory spot her. His eyes suddenly shined with unhidden malice telling her to brace her mind and expect the worse. She only managed a small gasp and a wince as Gregory walked up to her and sharply, with the pointed toe of his boot, kick her to the ground coating her in even more dirt, and smudging her drawing by stomping on it with his boots. “Slut,” he spat down at her before walking off amidst the snide laughter of his sister and the jeers and laughter from the villagers. It was the jeers that caused her to pick up her sketchbook with the now unidentifiable, horribly smudged drawing and run off with her shoulders shaking but naught a tear fell, points for her.
She rand taking the side streets her feet smacking soundly against the dry, pact dirt, her hair coated with dirt and sweat swaying limply behind her the jeers still stinging like hot coals in her ears, her side smarting. Keeping up her pace she finally broke into the line of trees that bordered her village and started the forest. Elizabeth had grown up running wild in the forest and despite her parents wishes she went there more and more everyday. It was her haven her refuge, where she would have chosen to hide from Gregory, and she knew the place quiet well. Stepping into the shade of trees was like getting welcomed home. The sweet tang of forest pine tickled her nose, the songs of the birds filled her ears like an angelic choir and the heat of the day vanished. Her troubles peeled away from her like one would peel potatoes. Feeling her restricting dress of frayed dull brown was to drab for the forest gaiety she chose to shed her dress and prance through the forest in her light, white cotton shift and dance along the forest path like a wood nymph children were told about in stories. Letting her feet lead her and her mind fly with the birds of the forest, she darted like a white rabbit to and fro through the brown of tree bark and the lush green of forest floor until exhausted she collapsed on the bank of a small pond.
It was her secret, her special place; she had come here for years ever since she was allowed to wader free on her own. The pond reflected the sky above, blue and clear, sparkling as if strewn with the jewels that noblewomen were famous for. The pond was round and large enough for one person to fit in comfortably with a little extra space and was a place of magic with rocks surrounding the pool of water and wildflowers’ carpeting the area around, it was her faerie glen. No one knew about this place it remained undisturbed, it was safe enough to strip to the barest and dive into the cool waters which caressed her like the silk she worked with instantly easing the smarting from Gregory’s kick to a dull throb.
She was slowly drifting to sleep her now clean hair cushioning her head against the stones when a shadow blocked light from her closed eyes. Elizabeth opened her eyes lazily she only had an instant to see green eyes before a spot at the base of her head was pushed making everything go dark.