TALL AND PROUD IN SILENCE, HE WILL FALL
In those rare moments of silence, Rook could only hear his own ragged breathing and eternal hiss of the wind. In every other moment, it was filled with the voices from the cloak. They whispered, oh, they whispered so.
Gnashing, biting, sometimes frightening
Like the soft glance of a cloak against his ear, against his jaw
They brush and whisper and they laugh, or tears, is it tears?
This dying man cannot know for certain
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The snow was up to his knees, but he staggered on, Elaine draped over his back. Her breathing was so very faint, her skin so very cold, Rook wasn’t entirely sure she was alive. He had no way to know, they was not a moment to spare, exhaustion was simply not an excuse. Black, dead trees, their roots and claws bore down over him as he walked and walked to what he hoped was salvation. Maybe the Farming Steeps were ahead. Abandoned houses, red mud, overgrown plantations, maybe, that place that the cold did not reach, maybe it was there. Feeling the frost glance off his bones, feeling it kiss his flesh and leave ice where its lips had brushed, Rook let his thoughts be only consumed by the idea of finding the end to this forest. He held the picture of the Farming Steeps exist in his mind’s eye and gripped it as though if he were to let it go he would simply cease to exist. Rook marched a silent march, until the dead tress thinned and then there were none, in fact nothing but snow, the storm and a world of white to greet him at the end of it all. With one leg that grew colder and colder with every step and the other infused with the soul-pieces of others, sewn together to save his life, the Knight felt them betray him as they buckled and shook as he collapsed into the snow. Snow so deep that as Elaine crumpled beside him, he felt his arms sink into the snow until the tip of his nose was pressed into the ice and his dreads fell a dark waterfall.
Rook, Rook, Rook
Don’t let winter eat you
You’re a piece of yourself, you promised, indeed you promised
No lamb, no butcher, no beast, you are our protector
No oath breakers will keep servants
They’ll stab, stab, stab
You can die, you can die, but don’t let it be certain!
For but a moment he pushed, but even Rook could not resist the call of the soothing Winter Dream. And so he fell into the comforting darkness that beckoned.
When he arose, Rook felt a measure of distance between himself and himself. The vague fogginess only present in a dream washed over his senses, and he stood tall and met no wind, bite of frost or snowfall. The world was white, but it fought him no longer. At his feet, poppies pushed up through the snow and bloomed within a matter of seconds. Finding Elaine was not laying on the snow beside him, Rook found no alarm flaring within him, instead, only curiosity pricked at him as he found the Church, broken and open as always just a few footsteps away. Here, in the Spider-Witch Woods, the black-stone and vines lining the openings and windows frost-touched, lay his home. The voices of the cloak at his back remained silent. Maybe they could not reach him here, maybe it was that even they with their insistent, nagging, pleading, angry voices could not push and claw into this Winter Dream of his. It gave the Knight a soft moment of faint, guilt-ridden relief. Even perhaps pleasure, if he would dare to call it that. They were not there to cry out as Rook walked to the Church, the poppies bright as the bloodiest sun sprouting from his boot-prints. Inside the Church, his home, his place, a place so warm, so perfectly warm, Rook find snow coming from the hole in the roof. The branches of the great oak were naked, the dead leaves carpeting the floor. His curiosity ate itself deep within the pit of his stomach.
“You must feel so lost, I thought I’d remind you of home.” This voice belonged to the Prince of Whispers, standing casually in his kitchen, in his kitchen. For a moment Rook did nothing, if that is the right word, nothing, is what he did. Simply and complicity he stood for a moment and in the next, found himself a seat on one of the bar stools. The Prince, kind as he apparently was had made the Knight a warm cup of the tea, the type with steam and a sweet scent rising loftily, the type that filled his nose with the scent of rose petals and made his mouth water. The type that Elaine would always make for him.
“You made this dream…?” Rook rasped, surprised at his own ability to speak coherently. The Prince nodded and Rook drank his rose-petal tea. Looking to this pale-skinned, blue eyed man it was hard to deny the beauty he held as one born of winter as if he had stepped out of a frozen lake. His eyes the unmoving water, his hair the snow skirting the ice and skin the air that bit at Rook’s skin. Hands clasped and lent over the kitchen bench, the Prince looked to him with eyes that asked for him to listen and listen carefully. “I must apologize, before I say anything more. The ways of spirits, especially those that have been in isolation from the flesh and blood for so long, well, we get out-of-touch as how to properly handle humans politely. The way we approached you went as planned but we got, uh, side-tracked. Handed you off to some of our Spider-Witch friends until we could speak – but – you took my collection. My friends. So, I’d ask that you don’t leave my kingdom yet, Knight.” Rook, had no intention of staying here and yet wondered if he had such a choice. Maybe his flesh would turn to stone and his spirit would wander, lonely and without a single cup of tea to pass the time. The rose petal tea became sour on his tongue and a prick of fear took the place complacency, slithering in like an unwelcome fiend to curl around his insides and simply wait to twist. Rook did not like this once unfamiliar taste of serpentine, reluctant cowardice in the face of this winter made man.
“I have those I must care for. I have those who I have made promises to and I have much to do before I sleep. Elaine needs -” He began but his sentence, his words, his thought was broken when The Prince interrupted him with a shard of ice on the tip of his tongue as his unbroken words sent a shiver down Rook’s spine. “Elaine is dead.” And maybe she was. The Prince was kind enough to motion over to the couch where in this dream she lay, almost, just almostpeacefully tucked in with a woollen blanket. Rook understood that in this Winter Dream not all was real and realwasn’t what he could ever really understand but maybe it was true indeed, maybe his friend, his fellow knight, his sister, maybe she was laying there at this very moment, dead. Rook returned his gaze to this Prince of Winter, this Prince of a frozen waste, a dead place, this Prince of Nothing, well Rook looked to him with eyes that told him he would find a way for even the dead to die again.
I know enough of loss, to say the destruction of ice
Is also great
And would suffice
Rook left the Winter Dream, and fell to a dream only carrion know. A different kind of darkness engulfed him.
~
Elaine felt the snow she had been left upon. It was like floating about on an icy cloud. Cold yes, but the cold felt good. Because she could feel it. Her back, her legs, most of her arms – she was cold. Well, yes she was cold but the thing was that she couldn’t feel a lot herself. But her face and her fingers – yes – the snow felt good against them. I wonder if Rook is okay. I hope he is. He’d always been so nice to her. He’d even carried her all this way. Elaine tried to move, just a little, but she knew it was in vain. There was no moving a puppet if its strings were frozen. Those strings would be cut soon, she suspected. But it was that thought that scared her and honestly she’d never been scared of the idea of death before I mean why would she? Elaine had but two human friends and the kids on the farm whom she cared for deeply but couldn’t really completely understand and why would she ever be scared of death when all of her dear friends were dead already? But right now in this very, very moment as she lie frozen atop this frozen cloud in this frozen waste, Elaine the Knight of the Blue Rose was scared because what if she was stuck here? What if she’d become stuck, so stuck in this cold, cold place with these mean, mean spirits. I don’t think I could be friends with these kind of spirits. They don’t seem to be able to make very good conversation. A fear that Elaine disliked the taste of slipped its way down her throat and ensnared her panicking yet slowing heart. What could she do…what could she do…A voice appeared, to answer her question. The very same curly, sneering, whispery yet curious voice that had kept her company in the cocoon.
“I have…an offer, Elaine,” The Voice proposed, its legs, hairy, oh so spiky, caressed her numbed back.
It wasn’t really there but this thing, this spirit, this creature that had insisted upon its own company was in her head, spreading its long eight black legs down her back.
“What is it?” Elaine asked, her frozen lips and jaw moving like a wooden puppet.
This spirit sought to please her to ease her, to show her this other way,this opportunity that he offered in the palm – well no – the claw of his arachnid leg. “Your friend will freeze and you will both wander this lonely plane all by yourselves if you cannot summon the strength to walk out of his hell. This is no time to rest, no time to search for warmth – for there is none in this kingdom – there is no time indeed. What opportunity do you have left but to accept this gracious offer, to allow me, a friend, a kindness, a blessing with a grin most handsome, to become part of you and lend my strength into your decaying body?”
I have nought but death.
“Then would you accept me?”
I don’t – I’m not su –
“Do you want to leave your friends, all of them? To kill Rook, to abandon them all - ”
-I understand the cost of refusing but I question the cost of accepting because you are fear and I’m afraid but can I accept you, something like you? I think I have no other choice. I think my choice is whether I want to lay on this cloud forever, or have enough strength to take those final steps and save my friend. And is now I’d have to say, yes. Please.
Elaine did not feel her back her legs nor most of her arms again but oh they moved all the same. They blackened and twisted and clawed and from her back came three black, ghostly spider-legs. She felt none of it, she did not feel the corruption surge up her neck and claim half of her beautiful face, no – she simply stood and with a strength she could never remember having, picked up a crumpled Rook into arms that no longer belonged to her and she walked.
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