A Princess's tale of Madness
By: Meghan Coley
My mother used to tell me stories every night before bed. I can’t remember ever falling asleep without one, even once I had surpassed childhood and entered into my teenage years. But my mother seemed to have a never ending supply of them, or at least it seemed that way to me. When I was still small enough to do so, I would sit on her lap in the chair in the corner of my chamber and stare out the window. Her voice transported both of us to the mystical places where her characters lived.
It was an ordinary night when I asked her how she had managed to come up with all of her stories.
“Oh, my darling, I haven’t made any of them up,” she said with a smile.
I tilted my head back to look at her.
“How is that possible?”
“Well, my mother told stories to me just like I tell stories to you.”
“How do you know that she didn’t make them up?” I countered.
“Because I’ve seen for myself some of the things she told me. The things that I tell you.”
I had sat in silent awe, thinking about what it must be like to see fairies that lived in houses under the ground, mermaids who could see into the future, and goblins who had carved hidden mines in the faraway Melragon Mountains. She had played with my hair as my mind ran wild.
“Have you seen scary things?” I whispered. “Like the trolls near the Lihnari River? Or the ghosts of those people who died in the shipwreck in Frenarken Cove?”
Her eyes had taken on a faraway look, like I had conjured images of the places with my mere words. She stared silently out the window for several seconds before shaking her head.
“No. No, not those things, dear. I have seen… one scary thing, though.”
Naturally, I had begged her to tell me about it. She said it was a story she hadn’t told me yet. A story that she didn’t want to tell me.
It took three weeks of begging and several temper tantrums to finally get her to relent. At the time, I hadn’t taken any note of how uneasy she had seemed. How many times she had paused to seem to try to catch her breath. How her hands had been shaking as she held me closer than usual and shut the curtain over the window.
The story went something like this:
“There was once a god named Dionis. He was capable of many things, but known most notoriously for his abilities of madness and insanity. He was like all of the other gods in his immortality and tendency to visit Earth to stir up trouble. He liked to wander through the Hilgaria Thicket and drive the animals mad, which led the people that lived in the kingdom next to the woods to grow wary of its shadows and strange sounds. It was when Dionis met a mortal woman that his troublemaking turned on him. He fell in love with her, well-aware of his inability to stay with her as an immortal being. But he thought he could love and hide her from the gods that would surely destroy her if they found her with Dionis. He thought wrong. The other gods found out about the woman and turned her into an orb of light that followed Dionis around as a reminder to never trifle with the delicate balance between human and ethereal again.
Dionis, driven to a madness deeper than his own -- the madness of grief -- worked the gods’ decision to torment him with the orb for his own benefit. He chose to remain on the Earth with his orb and use his magic to drive anyone that he came into contact with insane. He was able to turn them into orbs just like his unlucky lover until he had collected a whole army of broken souls. The people in the nearby kingdom changed their stories and warned their children to stay away from the woods lest they wanted to end up like those from the village who never returned. Little did they know that some people were brave enough -- or broken enough -- to seek Dionis out and beg him to help them with his magic. These souls had something Dionis had lost to the clutches of grief -- desire. He granted their desires with the last ounces of pity he had left, always attaching a condition to his transactions that brought their souls back to him to be claimed as his own. His army of orbs grew larger and larger. But it was an army that never went to war. Dionis had nothing he could feasibly fight against.”
My mother had always stopped the story at this point despite it feeling incomplete. She would tell me that Dionis was still said to live in the woods, and that if you got too close to the tree line, he could sense your deepest desire and lure you to his home within the heart of the thicket. I had looked at her in confusion when she told me something that she had told me all of my life: “Never set foot near the trees.” It was strange to hear her repeat it as if she had never said it before. Every child in Rubis knew to stay away from the woods. But then I realized that perhaps I was the only child to know that the trees held more danger than mad animals.
I went to sleep that night wondering how something like desire could be strong enough to destroy. I couldn’t think of anything I desired largely enough to destroy me. Not even when I met Terrowin.
Now I’d like to tell you a story if you can spare some time. It doesn’t have a happy ending, but not all stories do.
This is a story of warning. It has to do with the story of Dionis -- the parts of it that make my mother’s story complete. The parts of it that have to do with me.
I hope I have your attention for just a while, that you’ll listen to what I have to say. I would really hate to see you end up like me.
~~~
My mother was standing over my bedside the morning of my eighteen birthday. This was not unusual; she had always woken me up on my special day to give me a hug and sing to me before the sun had risen. But something about her voice as she whispered above my head wasn’t right.
“I love you, Edeline. I’m so sorry for everything that I’ve done, but… it had to have been worth it. It had to have been.”
I was still trying to wake up as she spoke. Her words jumbled together inside of my head.
“Goodbye, my love. I pray that I will see you again soon. Terrowin will bring you back to me.”
Her hand had smoothed hair off of my forehead as I opened my eyes. I caught a glimpse of her shining eyes before she disappeared from my view and was gone. The sound of the door creaking prompted me to sit up. I saw the end of her skirt slip through the door frame as someone else made their way across the room to crouch by my bedside.
“Get up, Edeline. We’ve got to go.”
I squinted up at a familiar face. Dark eyes glistened in the early morning light that had begun to creep through my chamber’s windows. I rubbed my eyes and attempted to sit up.
“Where did Mother go? What time is it?” I whispered.
It was when Terrowin took me by the shoulders that I knew something was wrong.
“I know it’s early, but you and I, we have to go. Now.”
I don’t know if it was his strong grip or the sight of ten guards positioned by the door that prompted me to throw back the covers and take Terrowin’s waiting hand. I thought to ask about my mother again but thought better of it. Perhaps he was taking me to see her. He beckoned me to follow him down many sets of cold stone stairs. I had so many questions, but I remained silent, choosing to trust that the captain of the royal guard had woken me up for a good reason.
I held his hand and fought against my confusion as he led me through the castle, away from my mother’s chambers. His men surrounded us as we exited into the crisp air outside. We walked through the eerily silent townsquare and approached a small wooden cart parked behind a shanty on the outskirts of the city’s walls. I felt my confusion heat up like a pot on a stove.
“What is this?” I said. “What’s going on?” There was no one around, but I felt the need to lower my voice. I let go of Terrowin’s hand to wrap my arms around myself.
“I can’t explain now,” he said in an equally low voice. “But I need you to trust me. I can explain on the way.” The thought of leaving the safety of Rubis without any indication as to why made me think of my mother.
“Why are we leaving like this? Where’s my mother?” I asked.
“She’s safe. Don’t worry about her. But we have to leave, now.”
He leaned forward and kissed my forehead as I opened my mouth to protest again.
“Trust me,” he murmured against my skin.
I’d only ever doubted Terrowin once before. It had been the moment he told me he loved me. He had told me at our meeting spot behind the stables in the middle of a hot summer night. I had left my room, careful to avoid main stairwells, with every intention of telling him that I didn’t love him. At least not enough to pretend that a princess like me could entertain the possibility of marrying a knight like him. It had been easier to tell him that we couldn’t see each other anymore than I had thought. No tears blocked my throat and the words flowed easily. It was when he had whispered “I love you” under his breath that I began to feel an uncomfortable confusion in my chest. I had left without responding, the flow of words suddenly stopped as if with a cork. I had stayed up for the rest of the night, wondering what my life would have looked like if I had said “no” when he’d first asked me to meet him behind the stables.
That had been a month ago. We had met several times since then, each more chaotic than the last as I tried and failed to convince him that he didn’t love me. He couldn’t have. Not when I didn’t love him.
Nothing about those heated exchanges had hinted at Terrowin’s desire to run away with me, to convince me to abandon my position and responsibilities as Rubis’ future queen and start a new, simple life together. I doubted if that was what was actually happening and, if it was, if it was something I wanted.
Perhaps it wasn’t a matter of what I wanted, or even what Terrowin wanted. I believe that what prompted me to get into the cart and leave with him that morning was the look of genuine fear on his face as he pulled his lips away from my forehead. Something was wrong.
My heart pounded as I stared at him, and then I was nodding slowly. I expected him to do something, to finally tell me what was going on. But all he did was lift me up onto the cart’s hard wooden bench. I watched the guards saddle a pair of dappled horses as he jumped up next to me. He took the reins and held them tightly, taking a deep breath as he whipped the horses into motion.
We met no disturbance at the drawbridge and took one of the main roads towards the north. I wondered if we were going to Karkon, one of our allies in the Melragon mountain region. Perhaps he had a remote village in mind where he could explain why we had left with the cover of the early morning. where we could lie low until whatever danger I seemed to be in had passed.I couldn’t keep myself from glancing back towards the receding outline of the stone fortress we were leaving behind.
I soon grew accustomed to the swaying of the jostling cart. The movement could have been comforting if not for the fact that Terrowin’s silence was starting to get on my nerves. I watched him out of the corner of my eye as the sun steadily began to climb up the sky.
His thick brown hair was as long and unruly as ever. My eyes traveled to his ankle where I knew a long, painful scar from a fight with an ogre was concealed. I remembered that fight vividly, how he’d thought that the quite stupid decision to take on a creature three times his own size would impress me. I never actually admitted that it did.
Nothing about his solemn face offered me the clues I was after.
I could have sworn that the sun was rising faster than usual. I was sweating through my nightgown, sure that time was speeding by as we left cobblestone streets for rougher, unpaved roads. We were going towards the Melragon Mountains. I was sure of it. I glanced behind me again and saw the Hilgaria Thicket stretching out towards the horizon. It had completely blocked my view of the castle. It was so wide, so black, so… intriguing. I felt strangely drawn to leave the cart and enter it, to walk until I found something that I couldn’t put my finger on. It was an unpleasant feeling that started as a seizing in my mind and turned into a thrumming near my heart. I didn’t have an explanation for it, nor did I have an explanation for why it ceased as suddenly as it had started. Every passing second increased our distance and decreased the thrumming. I turned to look at the horses’ shining manes and put the strange sensations out of my head.
“Terrowin?” I murmured after a few minutes of silence.
His gaze remained fixed on the road ahead.
“Terrowin?”
When he looked at me, I tried to read his eyes like books. They were light brown volumes I’d breezed through hundreds of times. But I had to read a new chapter in that moment. A chapter of fear.
“Can’t you tell me what’s going on now?”
I could feel a blush rising up my neck as he reached out a hand to touch my cheek.
“I wish there wasn’t anything wrong,” he murmured, his hand still against my skin. “But I’m taking you somewhere where you’ll be safe… until the danger has passed.”
“What sort of danger?” I asked as he took his hand away and I felt like I could breathe a little easier.
All he did was shake his head.
“Is my mother in danger? Why didn’t we take her with us?”
“No, no,” he said as the blush began to burn even more. “Your mother’s safety isn’t of any concern.”
“Then tell me why my safety is.” He shook his head again and I took a deep breath.
“Terrowin, don’t shelter me like this. I’m already scared. You said you would explain. So tell me what’s going on.”
I attempted to swallow my annoyance and confusion as his silence persisted.
“At least tell me where you’re taking me?”
“What’s going on here,” he said slowly, “It’s something you should have been told a long time ago.”
He slowed the horses back down to a walk as the expanse of trees behind us grew smaller and smaller.
“You’ve never been lacking in imagination,” he began with a small smile. A melancholy smile. “You believe all of the stories your mother’s told you. It’s one of the things I love most about you. So it pains me to tell you that… that you’re mixed up in one particular story in a way you can’t even imagine.”
I blinked, unsure of what he was trying to get at.
“Alright… which story are you referring to?”
He looked forward and sighed.
“I don’t want to have to tell you any of this,” he muttered. “I just want to get you to safety and wait this out until we can return.”
“Tell me, Terrowin.”
He sighed and I wondered if my tone had been commanding enough. I wouldn’t hesitate to remind him that he was obligated to follow my orders whether he wanted to or not. I could order him to turn the cart around and take me back.
He set the reins in his lap and met my eyes. “It’s… Dionis.”
I could feel the thrumming near my heart start again as he whispered the name.
“Don’t lie to me, Terrowin.”
He had turned around to look at the slope that hid the woods from our view. Out of sight yet on my mind. I didn’t know if I could ignore the magnetic compulsion.
“You can’t be serious,” I whispered. “I couldn’t possibly have any relation to… his story. That’s not possible.”
We made our way up another slope that brought the tips of the thicket’s tallest trees into my line of sight. Terrowin brought the horses back to a trot.
“I wouldn’t lie about something like this,” he muttered as the animals picked up speed. “We should have left last night instead of this morning… We need to get farther away. Just a bit farther.”
“No,” I said sharply. “What we need is for you to stop being so cryptic. What is going on here?”
“Dionis messes with peoples’ desires,” he said in an almost stern tone. I nodded, well aware of his devious tricks. “And your mother. She… sought him out.” he finally said. He hung his head to avoid my piercing gaze.
I barely had time to digest the realization that the encounter my mother had told me she’d had with Dionis hadn’t been accidental. The horses whinnied and reared, and my heart lurched within me as the cart threatened to topple over. Something had spooked them, but I couldn’t see anything on the road ahead of us. The guards in front of the cart threw themselves away from the horses’ trampling hooves.
“Your Highness!” one of them called from behind the cart. I turned and saw him pointing at a strange thing a little ways down the road.
It was a floating orb of light. It flickered in the still air as if it were waving at me. I almost felt compelled to lift my hand to greet it. I stared in disbelief and fascination until it vanished. Terrowin and a couple of the guards were still struggling with the horses as I struggled to find my breath.
The light reappeared in a blinding flash. It flared up mere inches from my face and bathed me in a light so hot that it burned like ice. It looked like the tip of a candle’s flame delicately pointed towards the sky, but enlarged and round at the bottom like some sort of flower bulb. As it hovered I felt like my mind was falling asleep. It had no face, but it was watching me. I had met this peculiar thing before from the safety of Mother’s lap before bed. But I felt like I knew the little being of fire as if it were an extension of myself.
The orb flew back to where it had come from. I yelped as the horses reared again. The motion threw me against Terrowin’s shoulder as they turned the cart back the way we had come. They began to gallop towards the orb. The tops of the thicket’s trees came into view for a second time.
“No, no, no!” Terrowin roared as sped down the slope at far too fast a speed. I barely registered his panicked cries as the thrumming took on an excited beat within me. I felt a strange giddiness course through my blood as the horses careened off of the path to the right.
“They’re heading for the woods!” I cried as the giddiness threatened to send me into a frenzy of giggles. Terrowin didn’t hear me, too busy trying to snatch the horses’ reins.
Before we knew it, we had reached the edge of the woods, the orb flitting to and fro as the horses raced to catch it. We crashed through underbrush, dodging trees and low hanging branches.
I could hear the guards running and yelling behind us, but the horses were too fast. They continued their chase as the orb flew through the trees like some sort of fiery arrow. I bit down on my tongue to keep from laughing as twigs and leaves whacked my face and arms.
“We have to jump out,” Terrowin had yelled. He grabbed my arm and took my chin in his hand. “Are you ready? We have to jump!”
I nodded as he let me go and grabbed a sheathed sword from the back of the cart.
“On my count… 1… 2… 3!”
I tumbled over the side of the cart before I could even think twice, laughing the entire way. I hit the ground and rolled until my right shoulder slammed against something sharp. The pain that followed took all of my giddiness with it. I could feel blood seeping through the sleeve of my dress as my head hit a tree trunk. The sound of thundering hooves and squeaking wooden wheels faded as I lay there. The blood from my arm was sticky and mixed with the smell of the earth below me. I wanted to get up, but the orb was floating towards me.
“Please…” I whispered as it came to a stop above my face.
“Get away from her!” Terrowin appeared out of nowhere and thrust his sword towards the flame. He helped me to my feet as the thing floated a few feet back. I could hear the guards coming towards us, having finally caught up to our runaway vehicle. They stopped in shock and stared at the orb. The orb seemed to stare back at them. And then it set them on fire.
It multiplied in the blink of an eye and shot itself at their heads. Their helmets melted onto their faces as they screamed and ran in circles. I could smell their burning flesh.
A hysterical laughter filled the air as they ran off into the woods. It awoke the thrumming and made me want to laugh along with it as it rang like a bell inside of my head.
“Well that was quite a show, wasn’t it?” the laughing voice said between chortles. I looked at Terrowin, at the horror on his pale face, and knew he could hear the voice too. He stepped in front of me.
Two orbs had appeared like floating eyes. Their glow deepened into the color of a golden sunset, and then a gleaming, human-like figure was standing before us. I closed my eyes and the laughing started up again. It wasn’t in my head. It hung in the air like a low-hanging cloud.
“Looks like you took quite a fall, princess.”
When I opened my eyes again, I was staring at Dionis. I was taken aback at the normalcy of his black hair, leather tunic, and cloth pants. He looked too normal to be a mystical being of madness. He didn’t look capable of the magic I now knew my mother to be far too acquainted with. The only thing abnormal about him was his smile. It was a twisted grin that didn’t quite reach his green eyes. I was convinced that he had somehow painted it on.
“Stay back,” Terrowin seethed. He stepped forward and took up his sword, blocking my view of the twisted grin.
“Calm down, knight,” Dionis said, chuckling under his breath. “I was only making an observation. Seems you haven’t noticed that your darling is hurt.”
I could see him pointing at my arm. Terrowin’s eyes widened when he saw the blood. I looked down and could see a stick protruding from the soft skin under my shoulder. Terrowin’s fingers danced above the wound as I kept my eyes on Dionis.
“Allow me to fix that for you.” He lifted his hand and snapped before Terrowin could even touch the stick. It flew out of my arm in a flash. But there was no searing pain. There was only a numbness that left me laughing hysterically. Terrowin took a step back.
I took a couple of deep breaths and managed to stifle my chuckles as Dionis giggled under his breath, watching me in fascination. Terrowin took another step back, though it seemed to pain him.
“What are you doing to her?” he asked in a dangerously low tone.
Dionis’ laughter stopped abruptly and his eyes narrowed.
“Me? I’m not doing anything.”
I met his inquisitive gaze as I thought more about what it meant for my mother to have sought Dionis out.
“The princess knows more than you do,” Dionis said as Terrowin turned to look at me. “But not everything. Not yet.”
He snapped his fingers and Terrowin and I were forced to our knees by some unseen force. Terrowin’s sword flew from his hand to Dionis’ in one swift motion.
“Thought you could get away without me finding her, did you?” he said with a pointed look at Terrowin. The twisted grin made a second appearance, just as startling as the first time. I averted my eyes.
“Well, I’ve got news for you.” He walked towards us and leaned over Terrowin with the sword near his neck, like some sort of cruel imitation of a knighting ceremony. “You can’t outrun magic. But more importantly, you can’t outrun desire.”
He stepped back and admired the sword before thrusting it into the ground. It wobbled as a hundred orbs flared to life in the branches of the trees around us. It didn’t matter that the sun was right above us, which shouldn’t have been possible according to the time we left Rubis -- the orbs’ light was like another sun.
“You already know the desire burning inside of you, my dear,” Dionis said as he grinned at me. “You just haven’t let yourself admit it.”
My heart ran around my chest like a caged animal as he sat down on a log that I swore hadn’t been there a moment before. He crossed his ankles and grinned at me.
“Princess Edeline of Rubis,” he began, as if telling an elaborate story. “Born from a desire that would one day doom her to these woods. A most tragic tale if you ask me.”
I only stared at him as the unseen force pressed my knees into the moist earth.
“Your knight here already told you that you have a connection to me, didn’t he?”
I glanced at Terrowin before nodding. He was staring at his sword with a rageful longing that scared me almost as much as Dionis’ grin.
“And you know the stories of my magic… my madness.” The grin stretched wider. I struggled to nod this time.
“Then allow me to tell you the parts of your mother’s story that she left out.” His voice dropped to an octave that didn’t match the joy on his face. The mention of my mother made my skin crawl. The orbs’ light dimmed, seeming to take the light of the sun with it. Everything was still. And then suddenly the orbs were creating pictures in the trees.
“There was once a fierce and beloved king by the name of Hurandon,” Dionis began as the orbs showed me a gleaming silhouette of my father, adorned with a crown. “For as fierce as he was, he was defeated on the battlefield, killed by the ruler of a kingdom his men were able to completely destroy after his demise.”
I watched as my father was swarmed by a hundred men, swords pointed towards his heart.
“He never returned to his newlywed queen. She nearly died in her grief, what with losing her husband and any chance of having the children she had desired since she had met the king.” The orbs formed a woman on her knees, crying into her hands. I watched the image and felt a sense of hope begin to bubble up within me. Dionis was telling me something that couldn’t possibly have been true.
“Liar,” I muttered. Terrowin tensed next to me. I was surprised to hear the disgust in my voice. “My mother was pregnant before he died. There’s no way that what you’re suggesting is possible.”
Dionis’ eyes narrowed again. I was a child who had spoken out of turn.
“Me? A liar? Never.” He shook his head like it was the silliest thing he had ever heard. “I assure you that what I tell you is true. Your father died before he could ever give your mother a child.”
I looked at Terrowin. I would only be convinced if he could confirm this. I silently dared him to deny it, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“That can’t be true,” I whispered. “No.” The earth below my knees continued to form around my skin.
“Don’t call me a liar again,” Dionis murmured. His green eyes had darkened to match the forest leaves around his head. I remained silent as the bubbling hope disappeared.
“You know that your mother believed the stories about me,” he continued. “Just like you.” He took a step towards me and I forced my chin higher. “She believed that if I existed, my magic existed. There was still hope.”
The orbs were rearranging themselves to show my mother, slender and tall, standing before what I assumed could only be Dionis. Her arms reached out to him. I thought of her, back at the castle, and remembered her shining eyes above my bedside. Why hadn’t she given me a proper goodbye? Because she was confident that Terrowin would keep Dionis from harming me? That we would be reunited soon enough? I cursed at the ground as tears began to flow.
“There’s no need to tell what happened when I believed that there was still hope for me,” he said. “The stories acquainted you with that.”
I looked up at him through my tears and saw wistfulness all over his face. I found myself wondering how beautiful Dionis’ lover must have been to have caught and held the attention of a god.
“Love,” he murmured through the wistfulness. “Hear me when I tell you that love does nothing but destroy in the end. It’s why you’re here now.”
I wondered why an inkling of pity was trying to worm its way through my heart. Perhaps it was because I could see real pain in his eyes. Perhaps it was because I could see him trying to pretend like losing to the cruel hands of time the one woman he wanted to share his own immortality with had not made him into the monster standing before me and Terrowin.
The pain left Dionis’ eyes as I continued to stare. He turned his back on me and kept speaking in a hurried tone.
“Your mother possessed a strong enough desire to be able to find me.” He paused. “And you possess a desire just as strong as hers, though you know it not.”
My head began to spin. I wracked my brain for what I could desire enough to have allowed Dionis to lure me into his clutches. It was in that moment that everything that had happened felt real. I really was some helpless, confused princess in a fairytale, desperately trying to figure out what she wanted.
I could think of nothing other than my mother.
It was when Terrowin reached for my hand that I realized he hadn’t even crossed my mind. I could hardly feel his skin against mine as his fearful eyes tried to reach into my soul. I wanted him to stop touching me, to stop looking at me like I was his world when I had known for months that his love for me was not something I could reciprocate. My pity transferred from Dionis to Terrowin in a matter of seconds. It was a pity that came from the very depths of me, a pity that mingled with the fact that I had convinced myself that I could love him when I had never actually loved him. I pulled my hand away.
“Your mother contemplated asking me to raise her beloved husband from the dead,” Dionis said as Terrowin looked at me with even more fear. “I can do that, you know. But she decided to ask me to create a new life. To create you.”
The orbs showed a tiny baby appearing from a flash of light and floating into my mother’s arms. I stared at the image and knew. Despite being a god of madness and deception, he wasn’t a liar. I really was a product of his magic.
I really was doomed to be yet another unlucky soul in his story.
“Yes.” The quiet word lifted my head. I looked into Dionis’ green eyes and felt like I could start hysterically laughing again. He ripped into my thoughts with a power I couldn’t understand and saw that I knew the truth.
“You understand. You were never really your mother’s, or your so-called lover’s. You were always mine.”
“What is he talking about, Edeline?” Terrowin asked as I struggled to keep the laughter inside of me. I couldn’t look at him, not when I knew that the desire that had drawn us to Dionis and away from the Melragon Mountains had been my desire to get him to stop loving me.
“Well?” Dionis said. “Why don’t you tell him?”
My stomach hurt like it had been punched. I swallowed before answering.
“He’s saying that… I’m like the other girls in his story.”
“He already knows that, darling.” Dionis sounded like he was close to losing his patience. “Tell him what he really needs to know.”
I tried to swallow again, but a giggle escaped before I could. Another one slipped out, and then another, and before I knew it, the notion of having to tell Terrowin that I didn’t love him was terribly hilarious.
“I don’t love you,” I managed to say as the giggles turned into chuckles. “I’ve never loved you. And my desire is for you to finally see that.”
Terrowin’s steely eyes and tensed jaw made me laugh even harder. Dionis rested a hand on his shoulder as the unseen force released me. I rolled on the ground, laughing until my sides ached from the effort. I felt a strange sense of relief wash over me as the laughter faded. I had finally said what Terrowin hadn’t let me say that summer night behind the stables.
When I found the strength to sit up, my eyes rested on the orbs’ display of a brilliant outline of our wooden cart and dappled horses. I could make out Terrowin and I sitting next to each other with the guards all around us. I watched as the orbs scattered, shattering the image as they flew in all directions to settle in the trees. The sun had dipped even lower in the sky. I watched as Dionis lifted his hand and pointed towards the west. The sun inched even farther as he did, shifting the light on the ground with it. I looked at Terrowin and could make out tear tracks on his ruddy face.
“You’re bewitching her, you’re… you’re making her say things she doesn’t mean,” Terrowin muttered as he stared at me.
“Like I said before… I’m not doing anything.” Dionis crossed his arms and shrugged. “Edeline has always been destined to return to these woods. She came from them -- they’re in her blood, calling out to her more strongly than any love she ever could have had for you. And you knew of her mother’s deal, to return her to me after eighteen years had passed. So don’t act so surprised.”
Dionis watched Terrowin watch me. I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know why I felt so numb. I just stared back at him.
“Say something, Edeline. Anything,” Terrowin whispered.
“There’s nothing left to say.” My voice was even more numb than I felt.
“I don’t believe that.” Terrowin tried to stand to his feet, fighting against the unseen force with visible pain on his face. Dionis snapped and the force was gone, launching him to his feet. He staggered before falling down in front of me.
“You have to fight against his mind games,” he said as he took my hands. “You can say that you could love me. You could love me, Edeline, even if you don’t now.”
I took a deep breath as more laughter threatened to overtake me. I couldn’t take the pleading look on his face seriously. Nothing felt serious anymore. What did any of it matter?
“I don’t love you, Terrowin. You never let me tell you that.”
He shut his eyes and shook his head.
“Stop… please don’t do this.”
“There is nothing else I can do. I have to stay here,” I said as the giddiness swelled within my chest. “I can’t go back with you even if I did love you.”
Terrowin opened his eyes again and squeezed my hands tightly enough to be felt through the numbness.
“Then I’ll stay with you.”
Dionis let out a harsh snort. He had been standing by the sword and inspecting its fine engravings.
“You’ll stay with her? You do know what that entails?”
“I know full well what it entails,” he said, swinging around to face the scoffing god. “But it’s like you said: love destroys in the end.” He turned back to me with a look that began to thaw some of the cold that had seized me. “But it’s still love.”
Silence reigned. Even the orbs seemed expectant. Dionis flicked the hilt of the sword and shook his head. I detected some of the wistfulness returning.
“Staying here won’t change the fact that I don’t love you, Terrowin,” I found myself whispering. “Staying here only destroys both of us.”
“I’ve never had someone voluntarily stay,” Dionis said before Terrowin could respond. “But there’s a first time for everything.”
Terrowin turned to look at him and nodded, hands still squeezing mine. I wished he would let go of me. The disgust I was beginning to feel towards him was scaring me.
Dionis could sense it. I know he could. But all he did was look away. Terrowin must have reminded him of the desperation he once exhibited before gods who could care less about his love for a mortal.
The last thing Dionis said to me before he snapped his fingers rings in my mind to this very day.
“Love. Sacrifice. They’re interchangeable, Edeline. Seems Terrowin knows more about that than you ever will.”
The orbs radiated a pale yellow glow. I tilted my head back to look at the sky through the trees. It was so pretty, so peaceful, so blue and wide. I could have looked at it all day.
But then my mother’s voice was calling out to me. When I looked around, Dionis was gone. Terrowin had disappeared. Her voice continued to ring and an unplaceable anger began to gnaw at my heart. Was the mother who had known I would one day return to this forest here right now, trying to get to me? I wasn’t sure. But my feet were moving before I could know anything for certain.
“Hello?” I called out. I wanted to believe that I was somehow waking up from a horrific dream, but the anger was still gnawing, telling me that something wasn’t right.
When she didn’t respond, I began to walk towards where her voice had come from. Everything was bright and soft. The trees had become green clouds. A lingering sense of dread refused to leave me alone.
My mother was standing behind a particularly large green cloud, her long blonde hair flowing in a breeze I couldn’t feel on my numb skin. My feet began to run, but she stayed where she was. Or perhaps I was the one remaining stationary. My anger was replaced with laughter as everything became incredibly hilarious, just as before. My legs moved beneath me but my mother remained by her cloud, calling my name in low, melodic tones that made me forget about how selfish her desire had been those eighteen years ago.
I began to move all at once. My feet hit the earth, propelling me towards my mother’s waiting arms. I fell into her embrace and lifted my head to see Dionis’ twisted grin.
Instead of fear, I felt joy. The thrumming in my chest was thrumming under Dionis’ as well. The green clouds turned back into trees, filled with orbs glowing red.
“Happy birthday, Edeline,” he said in a soft voice.
Suddenly Terrowin was screaming from somewhere behind us. I looked back and saw him doubled over next to a tree. He had his hands against his ears like he was trying to block out a sound. And then he started to laugh. It was Dionis’ laugh coming out of his body.
I should have screamed, should have felt some sort of pain at seeing the man who loved me driven insane, sacrificing his sanity in the name of a love I didn’t return. But all I could do was laugh.
Dionis released me from his embrace, caught my wrists, and twisted. My arms lit up with a fiery pain. The rest of my body began to burn with it. It was a pain more unbearable than anything I had thought a human body could endure. But I never really had a human body. I was nothing more than a desire that had served its time in the world. So when all I could see was red light, I had no idea if my body had become a body of orbs or if the orbs were attacking me, ripping me apart limb by limb.
The light consumed me as the pain threatened to stop my heart. As I was consumed, I felt myself shrinking. My arms and legs disappeared. The pain subsided.
But my mind remained.
Everything that had happened washed over me. And it was terrible, because I could finally think clearly, without a chest to feel the thrumming in or a mouth to release hysterical laughter. The worst part about remembering it all was the knowledge that I had become one of the orbs that had lured us into the woods in the first place. That I would never see my mother again.
In that moment, feeling her arms around me was all that I desired.
I floated up into the trees, watching Dionis stand in the middle of the clearing, admiring his army of orbs that I was now a part of. I had no idea where Terrowin had gone. I like to think that he is an orb as well, floating somewhere in this damned place rather than in the forest, as mad as the animals Dionis used to mess with.
So you see, this story doesn’t have a happy ending. I’m sorry if it’s made you sad. But please remember my story. That way it will have made all of the pain my mother, Terrowin, and I have gone through worth it.
If you can remember nothing else, remember this:
Love. Sacrifice. They’re interchangeable.
My mother used to tell me stories every night before bed. I can’t remember ever falling asleep without one, even once I had surpassed childhood and entered into my teenage years. But my mother seemed to have a never ending supply of them, or at least it seemed that way to me. When I was still small enough to do so, I would sit on her lap in the chair in the corner of my chamber and stare out the window. Her voice transported both of us to the mystical places where her characters lived.
It was an ordinary night when I asked her how she had managed to come up with all of her stories.
“Oh, my darling, I haven’t made any of them up,” she said with a smile.
I tilted my head back to look at her.
“How is that possible?”
“Well, my mother told stories to me just like I tell stories to you.”
“How do you know that she didn’t make them up?” I countered.
“Because I’ve seen for myself some of the things she told me. The things that I tell you.”
I had sat in silent awe, thinking about what it must be like to see fairies that lived in houses under the ground, mermaids who could see into the future, and goblins who had carved hidden mines in the faraway Melragon Mountains. She had played with my hair as my mind ran wild.
“Have you seen scary things?” I whispered. “Like the trolls near the Lihnari River? Or the ghosts of those people who died in the shipwreck in Frenarken Cove?”
Her eyes had taken on a faraway look, like I had conjured images of the places with my mere words. She stared silently out the window for several seconds before shaking her head.
“No. No, not those things, dear. I have seen… one scary thing, though.”
Naturally, I had begged her to tell me about it. She said it was a story she hadn’t told me yet. A story that she didn’t want to tell me.
It took three weeks of begging and several temper tantrums to finally get her to relent. At the time, I hadn’t taken any note of how uneasy she had seemed. How many times she had paused to seem to try to catch her breath. How her hands had been shaking as she held me closer than usual and shut the curtain over the window.
The story went something like this:
“There was once a god named Dionis. He was capable of many things, but known most notoriously for his abilities of madness and insanity. He was like all of the other gods in his immortality and tendency to visit Earth to stir up trouble. He liked to wander through the Hilgaria Thicket and drive the animals mad, which led the people that lived in the kingdom next to the woods to grow wary of its shadows and strange sounds. It was when Dionis met a mortal woman that his troublemaking turned on him. He fell in love with her, well-aware of his inability to stay with her as an immortal being. But he thought he could love and hide her from the gods that would surely destroy her if they found her with Dionis. He thought wrong. The other gods found out about the woman and turned her into an orb of light that followed Dionis around as a reminder to never trifle with the delicate balance between human and ethereal again.
Dionis, driven to a madness deeper than his own -- the madness of grief -- worked the gods’ decision to torment him with the orb for his own benefit. He chose to remain on the Earth with his orb and use his magic to drive anyone that he came into contact with insane. He was able to turn them into orbs just like his unlucky lover until he had collected a whole army of broken souls. The people in the nearby kingdom changed their stories and warned their children to stay away from the woods lest they wanted to end up like those from the village who never returned. Little did they know that some people were brave enough -- or broken enough -- to seek Dionis out and beg him to help them with his magic. These souls had something Dionis had lost to the clutches of grief -- desire. He granted their desires with the last ounces of pity he had left, always attaching a condition to his transactions that brought their souls back to him to be claimed as his own. His army of orbs grew larger and larger. But it was an army that never went to war. Dionis had nothing he could feasibly fight against.”
My mother had always stopped the story at this point despite it feeling incomplete. She would tell me that Dionis was still said to live in the woods, and that if you got too close to the tree line, he could sense your deepest desire and lure you to his home within the heart of the thicket. I had looked at her in confusion when she told me something that she had told me all of my life: “Never set foot near the trees.” It was strange to hear her repeat it as if she had never said it before. Every child in Rubis knew to stay away from the woods. But then I realized that perhaps I was the only child to know that the trees held more danger than mad animals.
I went to sleep that night wondering how something like desire could be strong enough to destroy. I couldn’t think of anything I desired largely enough to destroy me. Not even when I met Terrowin.
Now I’d like to tell you a story if you can spare some time. It doesn’t have a happy ending, but not all stories do.
This is a story of warning. It has to do with the story of Dionis -- the parts of it that make my mother’s story complete. The parts of it that have to do with me.
I hope I have your attention for just a while, that you’ll listen to what I have to say. I would really hate to see you end up like me.
~~~
My mother was standing over my bedside the morning of my eighteen birthday. This was not unusual; she had always woken me up on my special day to give me a hug and sing to me before the sun had risen. But something about her voice as she whispered above my head wasn’t right.
“I love you, Edeline. I’m so sorry for everything that I’ve done, but… it had to have been worth it. It had to have been.”
I was still trying to wake up as she spoke. Her words jumbled together inside of my head.
“Goodbye, my love. I pray that I will see you again soon. Terrowin will bring you back to me.”
Her hand had smoothed hair off of my forehead as I opened my eyes. I caught a glimpse of her shining eyes before she disappeared from my view and was gone. The sound of the door creaking prompted me to sit up. I saw the end of her skirt slip through the door frame as someone else made their way across the room to crouch by my bedside.
“Get up, Edeline. We’ve got to go.”
I squinted up at a familiar face. Dark eyes glistened in the early morning light that had begun to creep through my chamber’s windows. I rubbed my eyes and attempted to sit up.
“Where did Mother go? What time is it?” I whispered.
It was when Terrowin took me by the shoulders that I knew something was wrong.
“I know it’s early, but you and I, we have to go. Now.”
I don’t know if it was his strong grip or the sight of ten guards positioned by the door that prompted me to throw back the covers and take Terrowin’s waiting hand. I thought to ask about my mother again but thought better of it. Perhaps he was taking me to see her. He beckoned me to follow him down many sets of cold stone stairs. I had so many questions, but I remained silent, choosing to trust that the captain of the royal guard had woken me up for a good reason.
I held his hand and fought against my confusion as he led me through the castle, away from my mother’s chambers. His men surrounded us as we exited into the crisp air outside. We walked through the eerily silent townsquare and approached a small wooden cart parked behind a shanty on the outskirts of the city’s walls. I felt my confusion heat up like a pot on a stove.
“What is this?” I said. “What’s going on?” There was no one around, but I felt the need to lower my voice. I let go of Terrowin’s hand to wrap my arms around myself.
“I can’t explain now,” he said in an equally low voice. “But I need you to trust me. I can explain on the way.” The thought of leaving the safety of Rubis without any indication as to why made me think of my mother.
“Why are we leaving like this? Where’s my mother?” I asked.
“She’s safe. Don’t worry about her. But we have to leave, now.”
He leaned forward and kissed my forehead as I opened my mouth to protest again.
“Trust me,” he murmured against my skin.
I’d only ever doubted Terrowin once before. It had been the moment he told me he loved me. He had told me at our meeting spot behind the stables in the middle of a hot summer night. I had left my room, careful to avoid main stairwells, with every intention of telling him that I didn’t love him. At least not enough to pretend that a princess like me could entertain the possibility of marrying a knight like him. It had been easier to tell him that we couldn’t see each other anymore than I had thought. No tears blocked my throat and the words flowed easily. It was when he had whispered “I love you” under his breath that I began to feel an uncomfortable confusion in my chest. I had left without responding, the flow of words suddenly stopped as if with a cork. I had stayed up for the rest of the night, wondering what my life would have looked like if I had said “no” when he’d first asked me to meet him behind the stables.
That had been a month ago. We had met several times since then, each more chaotic than the last as I tried and failed to convince him that he didn’t love me. He couldn’t have. Not when I didn’t love him.
Nothing about those heated exchanges had hinted at Terrowin’s desire to run away with me, to convince me to abandon my position and responsibilities as Rubis’ future queen and start a new, simple life together. I doubted if that was what was actually happening and, if it was, if it was something I wanted.
Perhaps it wasn’t a matter of what I wanted, or even what Terrowin wanted. I believe that what prompted me to get into the cart and leave with him that morning was the look of genuine fear on his face as he pulled his lips away from my forehead. Something was wrong.
My heart pounded as I stared at him, and then I was nodding slowly. I expected him to do something, to finally tell me what was going on. But all he did was lift me up onto the cart’s hard wooden bench. I watched the guards saddle a pair of dappled horses as he jumped up next to me. He took the reins and held them tightly, taking a deep breath as he whipped the horses into motion.
We met no disturbance at the drawbridge and took one of the main roads towards the north. I wondered if we were going to Karkon, one of our allies in the Melragon mountain region. Perhaps he had a remote village in mind where he could explain why we had left with the cover of the early morning. where we could lie low until whatever danger I seemed to be in had passed.I couldn’t keep myself from glancing back towards the receding outline of the stone fortress we were leaving behind.
I soon grew accustomed to the swaying of the jostling cart. The movement could have been comforting if not for the fact that Terrowin’s silence was starting to get on my nerves. I watched him out of the corner of my eye as the sun steadily began to climb up the sky.
His thick brown hair was as long and unruly as ever. My eyes traveled to his ankle where I knew a long, painful scar from a fight with an ogre was concealed. I remembered that fight vividly, how he’d thought that the quite stupid decision to take on a creature three times his own size would impress me. I never actually admitted that it did.
Nothing about his solemn face offered me the clues I was after.
I could have sworn that the sun was rising faster than usual. I was sweating through my nightgown, sure that time was speeding by as we left cobblestone streets for rougher, unpaved roads. We were going towards the Melragon Mountains. I was sure of it. I glanced behind me again and saw the Hilgaria Thicket stretching out towards the horizon. It had completely blocked my view of the castle. It was so wide, so black, so… intriguing. I felt strangely drawn to leave the cart and enter it, to walk until I found something that I couldn’t put my finger on. It was an unpleasant feeling that started as a seizing in my mind and turned into a thrumming near my heart. I didn’t have an explanation for it, nor did I have an explanation for why it ceased as suddenly as it had started. Every passing second increased our distance and decreased the thrumming. I turned to look at the horses’ shining manes and put the strange sensations out of my head.
“Terrowin?” I murmured after a few minutes of silence.
His gaze remained fixed on the road ahead.
“Terrowin?”
When he looked at me, I tried to read his eyes like books. They were light brown volumes I’d breezed through hundreds of times. But I had to read a new chapter in that moment. A chapter of fear.
“Can’t you tell me what’s going on now?”
I could feel a blush rising up my neck as he reached out a hand to touch my cheek.
“I wish there wasn’t anything wrong,” he murmured, his hand still against my skin. “But I’m taking you somewhere where you’ll be safe… until the danger has passed.”
“What sort of danger?” I asked as he took his hand away and I felt like I could breathe a little easier.
All he did was shake his head.
“Is my mother in danger? Why didn’t we take her with us?”
“No, no,” he said as the blush began to burn even more. “Your mother’s safety isn’t of any concern.”
“Then tell me why my safety is.” He shook his head again and I took a deep breath.
“Terrowin, don’t shelter me like this. I’m already scared. You said you would explain. So tell me what’s going on.”
I attempted to swallow my annoyance and confusion as his silence persisted.
“At least tell me where you’re taking me?”
“What’s going on here,” he said slowly, “It’s something you should have been told a long time ago.”
He slowed the horses back down to a walk as the expanse of trees behind us grew smaller and smaller.
“You’ve never been lacking in imagination,” he began with a small smile. A melancholy smile. “You believe all of the stories your mother’s told you. It’s one of the things I love most about you. So it pains me to tell you that… that you’re mixed up in one particular story in a way you can’t even imagine.”
I blinked, unsure of what he was trying to get at.
“Alright… which story are you referring to?”
He looked forward and sighed.
“I don’t want to have to tell you any of this,” he muttered. “I just want to get you to safety and wait this out until we can return.”
“Tell me, Terrowin.”
He sighed and I wondered if my tone had been commanding enough. I wouldn’t hesitate to remind him that he was obligated to follow my orders whether he wanted to or not. I could order him to turn the cart around and take me back.
He set the reins in his lap and met my eyes. “It’s… Dionis.”
I could feel the thrumming near my heart start again as he whispered the name.
“Don’t lie to me, Terrowin.”
He had turned around to look at the slope that hid the woods from our view. Out of sight yet on my mind. I didn’t know if I could ignore the magnetic compulsion.
“You can’t be serious,” I whispered. “I couldn’t possibly have any relation to… his story. That’s not possible.”
We made our way up another slope that brought the tips of the thicket’s tallest trees into my line of sight. Terrowin brought the horses back to a trot.
“I wouldn’t lie about something like this,” he muttered as the animals picked up speed. “We should have left last night instead of this morning… We need to get farther away. Just a bit farther.”
“No,” I said sharply. “What we need is for you to stop being so cryptic. What is going on here?”
“Dionis messes with peoples’ desires,” he said in an almost stern tone. I nodded, well aware of his devious tricks. “And your mother. She… sought him out.” he finally said. He hung his head to avoid my piercing gaze.
I barely had time to digest the realization that the encounter my mother had told me she’d had with Dionis hadn’t been accidental. The horses whinnied and reared, and my heart lurched within me as the cart threatened to topple over. Something had spooked them, but I couldn’t see anything on the road ahead of us. The guards in front of the cart threw themselves away from the horses’ trampling hooves.
“Your Highness!” one of them called from behind the cart. I turned and saw him pointing at a strange thing a little ways down the road.
It was a floating orb of light. It flickered in the still air as if it were waving at me. I almost felt compelled to lift my hand to greet it. I stared in disbelief and fascination until it vanished. Terrowin and a couple of the guards were still struggling with the horses as I struggled to find my breath.
The light reappeared in a blinding flash. It flared up mere inches from my face and bathed me in a light so hot that it burned like ice. It looked like the tip of a candle’s flame delicately pointed towards the sky, but enlarged and round at the bottom like some sort of flower bulb. As it hovered I felt like my mind was falling asleep. It had no face, but it was watching me. I had met this peculiar thing before from the safety of Mother’s lap before bed. But I felt like I knew the little being of fire as if it were an extension of myself.
The orb flew back to where it had come from. I yelped as the horses reared again. The motion threw me against Terrowin’s shoulder as they turned the cart back the way we had come. They began to gallop towards the orb. The tops of the thicket’s trees came into view for a second time.
“No, no, no!” Terrowin roared as sped down the slope at far too fast a speed. I barely registered his panicked cries as the thrumming took on an excited beat within me. I felt a strange giddiness course through my blood as the horses careened off of the path to the right.
“They’re heading for the woods!” I cried as the giddiness threatened to send me into a frenzy of giggles. Terrowin didn’t hear me, too busy trying to snatch the horses’ reins.
Before we knew it, we had reached the edge of the woods, the orb flitting to and fro as the horses raced to catch it. We crashed through underbrush, dodging trees and low hanging branches.
I could hear the guards running and yelling behind us, but the horses were too fast. They continued their chase as the orb flew through the trees like some sort of fiery arrow. I bit down on my tongue to keep from laughing as twigs and leaves whacked my face and arms.
“We have to jump out,” Terrowin had yelled. He grabbed my arm and took my chin in his hand. “Are you ready? We have to jump!”
I nodded as he let me go and grabbed a sheathed sword from the back of the cart.
“On my count… 1… 2… 3!”
I tumbled over the side of the cart before I could even think twice, laughing the entire way. I hit the ground and rolled until my right shoulder slammed against something sharp. The pain that followed took all of my giddiness with it. I could feel blood seeping through the sleeve of my dress as my head hit a tree trunk. The sound of thundering hooves and squeaking wooden wheels faded as I lay there. The blood from my arm was sticky and mixed with the smell of the earth below me. I wanted to get up, but the orb was floating towards me.
“Please…” I whispered as it came to a stop above my face.
“Get away from her!” Terrowin appeared out of nowhere and thrust his sword towards the flame. He helped me to my feet as the thing floated a few feet back. I could hear the guards coming towards us, having finally caught up to our runaway vehicle. They stopped in shock and stared at the orb. The orb seemed to stare back at them. And then it set them on fire.
It multiplied in the blink of an eye and shot itself at their heads. Their helmets melted onto their faces as they screamed and ran in circles. I could smell their burning flesh.
A hysterical laughter filled the air as they ran off into the woods. It awoke the thrumming and made me want to laugh along with it as it rang like a bell inside of my head.
“Well that was quite a show, wasn’t it?” the laughing voice said between chortles. I looked at Terrowin, at the horror on his pale face, and knew he could hear the voice too. He stepped in front of me.
Two orbs had appeared like floating eyes. Their glow deepened into the color of a golden sunset, and then a gleaming, human-like figure was standing before us. I closed my eyes and the laughing started up again. It wasn’t in my head. It hung in the air like a low-hanging cloud.
“Looks like you took quite a fall, princess.”
When I opened my eyes again, I was staring at Dionis. I was taken aback at the normalcy of his black hair, leather tunic, and cloth pants. He looked too normal to be a mystical being of madness. He didn’t look capable of the magic I now knew my mother to be far too acquainted with. The only thing abnormal about him was his smile. It was a twisted grin that didn’t quite reach his green eyes. I was convinced that he had somehow painted it on.
“Stay back,” Terrowin seethed. He stepped forward and took up his sword, blocking my view of the twisted grin.
“Calm down, knight,” Dionis said, chuckling under his breath. “I was only making an observation. Seems you haven’t noticed that your darling is hurt.”
I could see him pointing at my arm. Terrowin’s eyes widened when he saw the blood. I looked down and could see a stick protruding from the soft skin under my shoulder. Terrowin’s fingers danced above the wound as I kept my eyes on Dionis.
“Allow me to fix that for you.” He lifted his hand and snapped before Terrowin could even touch the stick. It flew out of my arm in a flash. But there was no searing pain. There was only a numbness that left me laughing hysterically. Terrowin took a step back.
I took a couple of deep breaths and managed to stifle my chuckles as Dionis giggled under his breath, watching me in fascination. Terrowin took another step back, though it seemed to pain him.
“What are you doing to her?” he asked in a dangerously low tone.
Dionis’ laughter stopped abruptly and his eyes narrowed.
“Me? I’m not doing anything.”
I met his inquisitive gaze as I thought more about what it meant for my mother to have sought Dionis out.
“The princess knows more than you do,” Dionis said as Terrowin turned to look at me. “But not everything. Not yet.”
He snapped his fingers and Terrowin and I were forced to our knees by some unseen force. Terrowin’s sword flew from his hand to Dionis’ in one swift motion.
“Thought you could get away without me finding her, did you?” he said with a pointed look at Terrowin. The twisted grin made a second appearance, just as startling as the first time. I averted my eyes.
“Well, I’ve got news for you.” He walked towards us and leaned over Terrowin with the sword near his neck, like some sort of cruel imitation of a knighting ceremony. “You can’t outrun magic. But more importantly, you can’t outrun desire.”
He stepped back and admired the sword before thrusting it into the ground. It wobbled as a hundred orbs flared to life in the branches of the trees around us. It didn’t matter that the sun was right above us, which shouldn’t have been possible according to the time we left Rubis -- the orbs’ light was like another sun.
“You already know the desire burning inside of you, my dear,” Dionis said as he grinned at me. “You just haven’t let yourself admit it.”
My heart ran around my chest like a caged animal as he sat down on a log that I swore hadn’t been there a moment before. He crossed his ankles and grinned at me.
“Princess Edeline of Rubis,” he began, as if telling an elaborate story. “Born from a desire that would one day doom her to these woods. A most tragic tale if you ask me.”
I only stared at him as the unseen force pressed my knees into the moist earth.
“Your knight here already told you that you have a connection to me, didn’t he?”
I glanced at Terrowin before nodding. He was staring at his sword with a rageful longing that scared me almost as much as Dionis’ grin.
“And you know the stories of my magic… my madness.” The grin stretched wider. I struggled to nod this time.
“Then allow me to tell you the parts of your mother’s story that she left out.” His voice dropped to an octave that didn’t match the joy on his face. The mention of my mother made my skin crawl. The orbs’ light dimmed, seeming to take the light of the sun with it. Everything was still. And then suddenly the orbs were creating pictures in the trees.
“There was once a fierce and beloved king by the name of Hurandon,” Dionis began as the orbs showed me a gleaming silhouette of my father, adorned with a crown. “For as fierce as he was, he was defeated on the battlefield, killed by the ruler of a kingdom his men were able to completely destroy after his demise.”
I watched as my father was swarmed by a hundred men, swords pointed towards his heart.
“He never returned to his newlywed queen. She nearly died in her grief, what with losing her husband and any chance of having the children she had desired since she had met the king.” The orbs formed a woman on her knees, crying into her hands. I watched the image and felt a sense of hope begin to bubble up within me. Dionis was telling me something that couldn’t possibly have been true.
“Liar,” I muttered. Terrowin tensed next to me. I was surprised to hear the disgust in my voice. “My mother was pregnant before he died. There’s no way that what you’re suggesting is possible.”
Dionis’ eyes narrowed again. I was a child who had spoken out of turn.
“Me? A liar? Never.” He shook his head like it was the silliest thing he had ever heard. “I assure you that what I tell you is true. Your father died before he could ever give your mother a child.”
I looked at Terrowin. I would only be convinced if he could confirm this. I silently dared him to deny it, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“That can’t be true,” I whispered. “No.” The earth below my knees continued to form around my skin.
“Don’t call me a liar again,” Dionis murmured. His green eyes had darkened to match the forest leaves around his head. I remained silent as the bubbling hope disappeared.
“You know that your mother believed the stories about me,” he continued. “Just like you.” He took a step towards me and I forced my chin higher. “She believed that if I existed, my magic existed. There was still hope.”
The orbs were rearranging themselves to show my mother, slender and tall, standing before what I assumed could only be Dionis. Her arms reached out to him. I thought of her, back at the castle, and remembered her shining eyes above my bedside. Why hadn’t she given me a proper goodbye? Because she was confident that Terrowin would keep Dionis from harming me? That we would be reunited soon enough? I cursed at the ground as tears began to flow.
“There’s no need to tell what happened when I believed that there was still hope for me,” he said. “The stories acquainted you with that.”
I looked up at him through my tears and saw wistfulness all over his face. I found myself wondering how beautiful Dionis’ lover must have been to have caught and held the attention of a god.
“Love,” he murmured through the wistfulness. “Hear me when I tell you that love does nothing but destroy in the end. It’s why you’re here now.”
I wondered why an inkling of pity was trying to worm its way through my heart. Perhaps it was because I could see real pain in his eyes. Perhaps it was because I could see him trying to pretend like losing to the cruel hands of time the one woman he wanted to share his own immortality with had not made him into the monster standing before me and Terrowin.
The pain left Dionis’ eyes as I continued to stare. He turned his back on me and kept speaking in a hurried tone.
“Your mother possessed a strong enough desire to be able to find me.” He paused. “And you possess a desire just as strong as hers, though you know it not.”
My head began to spin. I wracked my brain for what I could desire enough to have allowed Dionis to lure me into his clutches. It was in that moment that everything that had happened felt real. I really was some helpless, confused princess in a fairytale, desperately trying to figure out what she wanted.
I could think of nothing other than my mother.
It was when Terrowin reached for my hand that I realized he hadn’t even crossed my mind. I could hardly feel his skin against mine as his fearful eyes tried to reach into my soul. I wanted him to stop touching me, to stop looking at me like I was his world when I had known for months that his love for me was not something I could reciprocate. My pity transferred from Dionis to Terrowin in a matter of seconds. It was a pity that came from the very depths of me, a pity that mingled with the fact that I had convinced myself that I could love him when I had never actually loved him. I pulled my hand away.
“Your mother contemplated asking me to raise her beloved husband from the dead,” Dionis said as Terrowin looked at me with even more fear. “I can do that, you know. But she decided to ask me to create a new life. To create you.”
The orbs showed a tiny baby appearing from a flash of light and floating into my mother’s arms. I stared at the image and knew. Despite being a god of madness and deception, he wasn’t a liar. I really was a product of his magic.
I really was doomed to be yet another unlucky soul in his story.
“Yes.” The quiet word lifted my head. I looked into Dionis’ green eyes and felt like I could start hysterically laughing again. He ripped into my thoughts with a power I couldn’t understand and saw that I knew the truth.
“You understand. You were never really your mother’s, or your so-called lover’s. You were always mine.”
“What is he talking about, Edeline?” Terrowin asked as I struggled to keep the laughter inside of me. I couldn’t look at him, not when I knew that the desire that had drawn us to Dionis and away from the Melragon Mountains had been my desire to get him to stop loving me.
“Well?” Dionis said. “Why don’t you tell him?”
My stomach hurt like it had been punched. I swallowed before answering.
“He’s saying that… I’m like the other girls in his story.”
“He already knows that, darling.” Dionis sounded like he was close to losing his patience. “Tell him what he really needs to know.”
I tried to swallow again, but a giggle escaped before I could. Another one slipped out, and then another, and before I knew it, the notion of having to tell Terrowin that I didn’t love him was terribly hilarious.
“I don’t love you,” I managed to say as the giggles turned into chuckles. “I’ve never loved you. And my desire is for you to finally see that.”
Terrowin’s steely eyes and tensed jaw made me laugh even harder. Dionis rested a hand on his shoulder as the unseen force released me. I rolled on the ground, laughing until my sides ached from the effort. I felt a strange sense of relief wash over me as the laughter faded. I had finally said what Terrowin hadn’t let me say that summer night behind the stables.
When I found the strength to sit up, my eyes rested on the orbs’ display of a brilliant outline of our wooden cart and dappled horses. I could make out Terrowin and I sitting next to each other with the guards all around us. I watched as the orbs scattered, shattering the image as they flew in all directions to settle in the trees. The sun had dipped even lower in the sky. I watched as Dionis lifted his hand and pointed towards the west. The sun inched even farther as he did, shifting the light on the ground with it. I looked at Terrowin and could make out tear tracks on his ruddy face.
“You’re bewitching her, you’re… you’re making her say things she doesn’t mean,” Terrowin muttered as he stared at me.
“Like I said before… I’m not doing anything.” Dionis crossed his arms and shrugged. “Edeline has always been destined to return to these woods. She came from them -- they’re in her blood, calling out to her more strongly than any love she ever could have had for you. And you knew of her mother’s deal, to return her to me after eighteen years had passed. So don’t act so surprised.”
Dionis watched Terrowin watch me. I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know why I felt so numb. I just stared back at him.
“Say something, Edeline. Anything,” Terrowin whispered.
“There’s nothing left to say.” My voice was even more numb than I felt.
“I don’t believe that.” Terrowin tried to stand to his feet, fighting against the unseen force with visible pain on his face. Dionis snapped and the force was gone, launching him to his feet. He staggered before falling down in front of me.
“You have to fight against his mind games,” he said as he took my hands. “You can say that you could love me. You could love me, Edeline, even if you don’t now.”
I took a deep breath as more laughter threatened to overtake me. I couldn’t take the pleading look on his face seriously. Nothing felt serious anymore. What did any of it matter?
“I don’t love you, Terrowin. You never let me tell you that.”
He shut his eyes and shook his head.
“Stop… please don’t do this.”
“There is nothing else I can do. I have to stay here,” I said as the giddiness swelled within my chest. “I can’t go back with you even if I did love you.”
Terrowin opened his eyes again and squeezed my hands tightly enough to be felt through the numbness.
“Then I’ll stay with you.”
Dionis let out a harsh snort. He had been standing by the sword and inspecting its fine engravings.
“You’ll stay with her? You do know what that entails?”
“I know full well what it entails,” he said, swinging around to face the scoffing god. “But it’s like you said: love destroys in the end.” He turned back to me with a look that began to thaw some of the cold that had seized me. “But it’s still love.”
Silence reigned. Even the orbs seemed expectant. Dionis flicked the hilt of the sword and shook his head. I detected some of the wistfulness returning.
“Staying here won’t change the fact that I don’t love you, Terrowin,” I found myself whispering. “Staying here only destroys both of us.”
“I’ve never had someone voluntarily stay,” Dionis said before Terrowin could respond. “But there’s a first time for everything.”
Terrowin turned to look at him and nodded, hands still squeezing mine. I wished he would let go of me. The disgust I was beginning to feel towards him was scaring me.
Dionis could sense it. I know he could. But all he did was look away. Terrowin must have reminded him of the desperation he once exhibited before gods who could care less about his love for a mortal.
The last thing Dionis said to me before he snapped his fingers rings in my mind to this very day.
“Love. Sacrifice. They’re interchangeable, Edeline. Seems Terrowin knows more about that than you ever will.”
The orbs radiated a pale yellow glow. I tilted my head back to look at the sky through the trees. It was so pretty, so peaceful, so blue and wide. I could have looked at it all day.
But then my mother’s voice was calling out to me. When I looked around, Dionis was gone. Terrowin had disappeared. Her voice continued to ring and an unplaceable anger began to gnaw at my heart. Was the mother who had known I would one day return to this forest here right now, trying to get to me? I wasn’t sure. But my feet were moving before I could know anything for certain.
“Hello?” I called out. I wanted to believe that I was somehow waking up from a horrific dream, but the anger was still gnawing, telling me that something wasn’t right.
When she didn’t respond, I began to walk towards where her voice had come from. Everything was bright and soft. The trees had become green clouds. A lingering sense of dread refused to leave me alone.
My mother was standing behind a particularly large green cloud, her long blonde hair flowing in a breeze I couldn’t feel on my numb skin. My feet began to run, but she stayed where she was. Or perhaps I was the one remaining stationary. My anger was replaced with laughter as everything became incredibly hilarious, just as before. My legs moved beneath me but my mother remained by her cloud, calling my name in low, melodic tones that made me forget about how selfish her desire had been those eighteen years ago.
I began to move all at once. My feet hit the earth, propelling me towards my mother’s waiting arms. I fell into her embrace and lifted my head to see Dionis’ twisted grin.
Instead of fear, I felt joy. The thrumming in my chest was thrumming under Dionis’ as well. The green clouds turned back into trees, filled with orbs glowing red.
“Happy birthday, Edeline,” he said in a soft voice.
Suddenly Terrowin was screaming from somewhere behind us. I looked back and saw him doubled over next to a tree. He had his hands against his ears like he was trying to block out a sound. And then he started to laugh. It was Dionis’ laugh coming out of his body.
I should have screamed, should have felt some sort of pain at seeing the man who loved me driven insane, sacrificing his sanity in the name of a love I didn’t return. But all I could do was laugh.
Dionis released me from his embrace, caught my wrists, and twisted. My arms lit up with a fiery pain. The rest of my body began to burn with it. It was a pain more unbearable than anything I had thought a human body could endure. But I never really had a human body. I was nothing more than a desire that had served its time in the world. So when all I could see was red light, I had no idea if my body had become a body of orbs or if the orbs were attacking me, ripping me apart limb by limb.
The light consumed me as the pain threatened to stop my heart. As I was consumed, I felt myself shrinking. My arms and legs disappeared. The pain subsided.
But my mind remained.
Everything that had happened washed over me. And it was terrible, because I could finally think clearly, without a chest to feel the thrumming in or a mouth to release hysterical laughter. The worst part about remembering it all was the knowledge that I had become one of the orbs that had lured us into the woods in the first place. That I would never see my mother again.
In that moment, feeling her arms around me was all that I desired.
I floated up into the trees, watching Dionis stand in the middle of the clearing, admiring his army of orbs that I was now a part of. I had no idea where Terrowin had gone. I like to think that he is an orb as well, floating somewhere in this damned place rather than in the forest, as mad as the animals Dionis used to mess with.
So you see, this story doesn’t have a happy ending. I’m sorry if it’s made you sad. But please remember my story. That way it will have made all of the pain my mother, Terrowin, and I have gone through worth it.
If you can remember nothing else, remember this:
Love. Sacrifice. They’re interchangeable.
All Text Copyright (C) 2023 Meghan Coley