No one at all

She had never met him before. The girl had grown up in the village. Ignored and indulged. A mere daughter while her brothers were trained. As long as she was quiet at meals and stayed out of the way, she could do what she wanted.

She had never thought that her life was going to cease being what it was. Sure, she knew that one day she would have to get married but she thought that it would be to some local boy and she would become what her mother was.

But now she was gone.

She was admiring the sandstone while trying the steady herself. The beauty. It was a more beautiful building than she had ever seen before. But it was more than beautiful, it was sublime. A castle.

In the village where she had grown up, she lived in the grandest house. But it was still a house and streamed water during the rain, had mold in the spring, and was full of vermin.

She was scared. Was that supposed to happen? The girl had been told what was supposed to happen but did not really know what was supposed to.

That was when she saw him. He might be considered by some to be handsome but she was not sure. He had dark hair and sharp cheek bones. He smiled at her but it was not a look of pure joy.

As she climbed the tower, she couldn’t help but marvel. She looked out the window and saw precise gardens. She had never seen such designs. They were only possible to appreciate from above. She looked out to the forest and could see the path that she had come from.

As the days turned into weeks, the girl was surprised at how empty the castle was; she did not even pass anybody in the hall. When she came to the dinning hall, the food was waiting for her. She left when she had eaten her fill and her bed would be made up.

The girl spent days without seeing anybody; her affianced had vanished. She would walk in the morning, do needle work in the afternoon, and read at night.

Her life went on in this monotony until he came. She recognized him though she had never seen him: he was the monarch.

He had a bald head and graying complexion. He was sitting when she unwittingly entered for breakfast. Her hair was still curling from sleep when she jumped at the sight of him.

He chuckled a little and said, “You may sit.” He was in a velvet thrown that had not been there before.

She curtsied as she had been taught to do and then sat down on a wooden chair.

He surveyed her for a moment and then said, “Good.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So you have met with my son. Is he suitable to you?”

She did not dare to say no. So she nodded.

“I am glad... No doubt you heard about your sister.”

She nodded.

“Shame that. Such a foolish girl.”

The girl knew that her sister had run away rather than get married. But that was very much her sister. She was a tomboy always more interested in climbing trees and dressing strangely. It wasn’t that this girl wanted this life but she did her duty.

Then he said, “Have you seen my son yet?”

“Only once.”

“Well, he is being trained.”

A few days later, the girl was out on the grounds when she saw her affiance making sparks fly from his sword while sparring with no partner. He barely looked up but then smiled again and said, “Well, hello, my little princess.” But that did not seem like a compliment.

She did not know how to react and said, “Hello.”

“So what have you been doing?”

She shuffled a little.

“I’ve heard about you, you know. I heard about you and that village boy.”

“Village Boy?” the girl asked though she thought that she knew who he was talking about.

There was the son of a farmer. Nothing important. But they had spent all their time together when they were young; then they had hit puberty. She was forced to do more inside learning and he had to work on the farm more. Her hands could not get rough.

So she studied. The son of the doctor’s boy was the only other one who learned in this village. And they studied together.

“Yes. Now, we will have none of that.”

She shuffled a little. It had not been much really. No great love. But she felt dirty like she had done something that she shouldn’t have.

He took his hand and pressed it on her chin and then kissed her. She didn’t know if it was supposed to be romantic but it was rough and her face hurt. She didn’t like it but there was nothing that she could do. Only a fool would fight against her affianced.

But there were other ways to live.

She had not been looking forward to it but her wedding day came. It was the first time that the girl had seen people in months. Though her veil was so thick that she could not see much.

She had started the day not knowing that she was going to get married. When she had awoken it was not in a natural way. She was jerked awake as if somebody else had awoken her but there was no one there. Not even a window was open with a breeze. That would have made sense. The girl felt like she was being watched but shook it off.

She saw a dress lying out for her. It was white and long. The girl knew what that meant but decided to bathe instead. There was no water ready so started for the stairs. But she tried the door and it was locked. She pulled and nothing. The girl just shook her head. She walked to the window and tried to look out but the curtains would not budge and she knew when she was beaten.

She put on the dress.

When the girl finally reached up to her bridegroom, she didn’t know what to think. This was a day that she had thought of for years. She had imagined that it would be full of love and romance.

There had been a time when she had dreamt of running off. She would become a mere farmer’s wife. Life would be simple and primitive but beautiful. Such an elegance.

When she got older, she thought that she would become an abbess. That was alright for a woman of her birth. She was drawn to the life of academic rigor and lack of change. Not to mention she had a guarantee that she would be well taken care of. In fact, if her sister had not run off, she might very well have done that. But the family depended on at least one good marriage.

She looked only at her bridegroom, his cheekbones had gotten more prominent. He was staring intensely but not at her.

Walking back down the aisle she looked at the guests and they were all faceless. Literally, speaking. There was no feature and the skin was grayish. Their hands were normal, even their necks were so.

The girl was not allowed to go to the banquet in her honor, so instead she waited in her room. She thought what her life had been like if she had married either of her lover interests.

To be the wife of the village’s doctor, would have had some type of privilege. She would have been expected to pitch in from time to time but had enough food and a warm life.

To be the wife of a farmer, would have been hard. She would have had to have cooked all the food, helped plant the crops, plow the field, keep the house clean and tidy and anything else that could have been thought of. As the woman, she would have been last for food or clothing and had to have been happy with it.

Then she thought of her sister. Heaven only knows what happened to her. If she was caught she would be brutally punished. If she wasn’t, she would be having to live by her wits. Though Loura was smart and a tomboy, she was not ready for roughing it on her own. She had done it before from a velvet arm chair.

Her husband came to see her. He did not smile but said, “Jordana.”

She looked up, relieved to just see his face. She wanted to ask so many questions but he was not open to them. She was looking forward to just the comfort of someone in bed next to her.

He motioned for her to sit next to her. Then he awkwardly put an arm on her shoulder.

She put her head on his shoulder without a feeling of tenderness. She thought of all of the times that she had done this before to a man. It had always seemed like there were sparks when she did this.

He spent the night. It was nothing like what she had expected. When she awoke in the morning, he was nowhere to be found and she was once again alone in the castle.

She shuffled down to the great hall and tried to slit her wrists. She watched the blood pour out. As she was bleeding out, she wondered who would clean up the mess.

The girl eventually woke up. She was in bed with her wrists bandaged. Eventually, the king came in and said, “Naughty, naughty. You won’t get out that easily. There’s no escape.”

Jordana blinked and he was gone.


She knew that death was not an option and felt like a caged animal. Jordana started to pace but her room was only so big.

So she started to explore the castle. She never saw a soul but there was sometimes a rustling as she came into a room. She started to enter quickly and unexpectedly. If there were multiple doors to choose from she would just jump into a room at random.

The girl found the library eventually, the books were thick and musty and they were old tomes. The girl opened the first book but the characters were squiggles. She looked at another and had the same problem.

The girl spent the whole afternoon there and ended up falling asleep on it. She half woke up and with her face on the book. She swore that she heard scuttling. Her face was sticking to the book. It was like it was dough and she could not properly raise her neck. As she tried, the scuttling got faster.

When she finally got her face up there was nobody or nothing there but her face felt burnt.

The girl found a salve for her face the next morning at the foot of her bed. This was the first time that she knew that they, whatever they were, had been around while she was asleep. She did not think that she had locked the door but could not be sure. There had been little incentive for that before.

The girl felt that from this strangeness that she could not go back to sewing all day. She started trying doors but today they were different. Many of them were locked. Most of them that she could get into were ordinary rooms that had only mundane things.

She decided to go down to the kitchens. That was not a place that she would have ever gone to before. The servants were there for that. Knowing how to cook was a liability.

But she had an idea where it was; she knew that it was at the bottom so that food would have to be brought up. She knew that it was in stone as would could catch fire- fire, one of the few things that she understood.

Finally, she found it. Though she had not been in the kitchen since she was a child, it was a similar to how she remembered though this one was larger and brighter. There was not a speck of dust on the table and not a thing out of place. There was not a cup to wash or an onion that was in the midst of being chopped. She did not see any food either. She saw that the fire was flaming like it had been going for hours.

The girl went to the gardrobe. This was certainly a place that she had been to before but had never thought of it. But she then wondered why it was always clean. There was never a stink. Then the girl looked down into it. She saw her own waste. She was a little bit surprised.

The girl went down into the foundations. She walked with a candle being glad that it at least was alive with fire. She went down and down. The black consumed her.

It got damp and the stones gave way to dirt, which began to get wet and be covered in green. She heard the dripping then looked up and saw the mushrooms. Finally, she saw a spider crawling down. It was the first animal that she had seen alive since she came there.

She stared at it with relief.

With a sense of relief, the next day she traipsed onto the grounds of the castle. She had been trained not to go out alone but everywhere was alone. The stables were empty, even of dung.

Finally, she went out into the woods. Woods were a place that she knew that she was not supposed to go to. No nice girl went into the woods. The woods were full of nasty beasts and robbers and oh…

She shuddered as she thought of her sister for a second. Lord knew where she was, but she must have gone off in the woods.

The girl shirted around it for a while. There was not even a butterfly or a chirpy bird in sight. Eventually, she knew that she was going to have to go in. She couldn’t just sit around and wait. The girl never could stand a mystery.

She started off down the sunny path. It was dirt and she felt the dust plooming up into her skirts. She hadn’t felt this way in years.

The girl kept on walking and walking. The trees got thicker and thicker. Sunlight filtered through.