Chapter Thirty-One
Kolfina
"Here we are, Le Chateau Daillant," the man says with excitement, helping the woman from the carriage before spreading his arms out in a great sweeping gesture toward the manor atop the cliff. "Home sweet home."
It's a beautiful thing, large and looming, the sea-washed stone nearly blending in with the storm clouds building behind it.
A maze of hedges wraps around the sides, growing all the way to the cliff's edge as if to protect the house from the perilous drop.
The forest behind them stretches all the way down the mountain, following the winding road to a quaint little village isolated from the rest of the world for miles and miles.
The woman smiles at her husband, her cheeks a fresh, dusty rose and her eyes bright with excitement.
“Though I suppose it is Le Chateau de Klein now,” he continues, sweeping the woman into his arms and twirling her around until her dress flutters around them like dandelion petals. “Isn’t that right, Lady de Klein?”
She laughs loud and bright, smacking her hands against the man’s chest. “Walden! Walden, you put me down this second!”
He doesn't. Instead, he settles her in the cradle of his arms and carries her up the stairs to the large oak doors. A footman pulls them open, and the man grins, wide and boyish and utterly charming. "May I carry you across the threshold, my lady?"
The woman huffs, brushing a stray blonde curl away from her red face, but she cannot contain the smile that stretches like sunshine across her lips.
"If you insist," she answers, mischief colouring her tone. "Far be it from me to deny a husband his duties."
He laughs again, swooping down to press a dizzying kiss to her lips. "And far be it from I to dare treat my wife to anything less than she deserves."
They cross the threshold, and it feels like the start of something new, something wonderful.
The ocean's floor is a cold and empty place.
No, not empty. It is littered with corpses, all weighed down by the water filling their bloated lungs. A graveyard for the unwanted, the lost, the forgotten.
There is no light down here, only monsters scuttling in the darkness to feast on the decay.
There is no sound or music, only the low hum of the void, an echo of the Earth’s pain and despair.
There is nothing but the sand, dust gathered from bones long since crushed beneath the pressure of the world above.
I sink and sink until the light from the surface disappears, and I am laid to rest amongst the graves of thousands of others sacrificed to the ocean's hunger.
I stare at nothing, and nothing stares back.
I wonder how long it will take to devour me.
Her eyes are covered by the blue silk ribbon she usually wears tied around her throat. Her curls tumble over her shoulders like spun gold, the sapphires dangling from her ears glittering in the lamp light as they pass by.
"We're almost there, duck. Just a bit further now."
He guides her forward with gentle hands on her shoulders and soothing instructions on where to step and when to turn. She giggles, holding out her hands to feel in front of her, toeing the rug beneath her bare feet to try and guess their destination.
"You best not be leading me to the edge of the cliff, Walden de Klein," she jokes, even as they mount the stairs and climb and climb.
"And lose such a beautiful bride?" he responds, stopping her just past where the stairs have ended. "I would never dream of it. Are you ready?"
She shuffles on her feet, a giddy sort of excitement bubbling in her veins when she nods. "Show me."
The ribbon is pulled away to reveal a door, freshly painted a pale blue with little yellow flowers sprouting from the picture frame molding.
A beautiful gold-foiled bird is pressed into the center of it, wings outstretched in flight.
She glances around for a moment in confusion, taking in the hall around her and the stairs behind them.
"The attic?" She asks.
The man laughs, tucking a curl behind her ear. As if by magic, he pulls a key from her hair, a matching blue ribbon tied around its head. "Silly duck, it's inside the attic. Go on, open it up."
Her curiosity betrays her confusion, and she takes the key with glee. Perhaps she is a fool to think that anything worthy of a birthday present might be hidden away in the attic, but nevertheless, she pushes the door open and steps inside.
It is a music room.
The entire attic has been cleared out and redecorated.
The old plain walls have been covered in pale-yellow wallpaper with blue peonies, a few empty shelves of white-painted oak are pushed up against the walls, and a large plush chair sits beside a little writing table in the corner.
And at the far end of the room, tucked away near the attic's bay window, is a white pianoforte with beautiful gold detailing and a cushioned bench to match, one of her manuscripts already splayed open on the music rack.
The rug is soft beneath her feet as she steps up to it, the ivory keys cool beneath her fingertips.
"I don't understand," she whispers, confusion at war with elation in her chest. "Why—I mean, we already have a piano."
Walden smiles, crossing his arms as he leans on the door frame. "Yes, but it's an old one, and it's all the way in the main parlor. So I bought you a newer one and had them set it up here. This way you can play as much as you like, even when I'm working."
The woman frowns, glancing back at him. "I thought you liked my playing."
"Oh, sweets, of course I do." Her husband swoops forward and takes her in his arms, laying kisses across her cheeks like offerings until she is left a giggling mess.
"You are a master of music. My own little songbird.
It's only that my work is so very important, you know.
I can't afford such lovely distractions pulling me away from it. "
She thinks perhaps he is right. Tucked away up here, in this lovely little room with this lovely little piano, she could truly dive into her music and spend as much time lost to it as she'd like.
"Do you like it?" he asks.
And she smiles, her heart warm even as her stomach swirls with something unknown. "I do, very much. Thank you, my love."
The man grins, swooping down to kiss her. "Anything for my little songbird.”
I do not know how to swim, not that I can remember. I reach my hands up and up and up, clawing for warmer waters and the cascading heat of the sun's rays. I kick my feet, imagine them turning into flippers and fins. I thrash and flail, but I do not move higher. I do not float. I do not swim.
The ocean holds me like a lover might, cradling me in its arms and pulling me closer and closer. It fills my lungs with its devotion, salts my skin with its affections, soaks my bones in its promises to never let me go.
I want to let it. I want to lose myself in the dark abyss where it no longer hurts to remember.
To exist. I want to let the water wash me away like so many others.
Erase me and let me be born again in the coral and the reefs.
Let the current take my bones where it wishes, no longer tied down, no longer caged.
Songbirds cannot swim, but oh, they are exceptional at drowning.
When she was a young girl, she used to imagine a life of hopeless love and endless affections as far as the eye could see. She would dream of dancing through halls and laughing during meals. She would giggle about kisses pecked across cheeks and arms wrapped around her deep into the night.
She longed for a passion like her mother and father shared. Days where he would bring wildflowers home simply because they reminded him of her mother's eyes. Fresh mornings when he sang love songs softly in her ear and swept her across the kitchen floor.
As she grew older, she would learn the grief that comes with longing.
She would hear the great heaving sobs of her mother as she led the girl down to the river to wash her father’s sick-stained linens.
She would learn the song her mother sang in between bouts of grief when Death came to take her father away.
She recalled a yearning so painful and consuming that it was only mere weeks later when the girl was at the water’s edge again, washing her mother’s blood from the linens, knowing she would be alone by the next morning.
“A heart is a terrible weight to carry, my lovely,” her mother told her, “but once you have given it away, it is all the more painful to lose.”
Her mother died with a broken heart and longing on her tongue—whispering pleas to the lord Death to take her where her husband rests, to let her dance and laugh with him again, to let her kiss him once more in death as she so often did in life.
The girl dreamed of that too, of a love so desperate and whole that she would die of a broken heart should she ever lose it. A love where the mere thought of a kiss would leave her smiling as the song of Death carried her away.
When Walden kisses her now, it is wet and demanding, devoid of passion and filled instead with a chasing lust.
He does not look at her when he fills her—he looks at her breasts, her stomach, her cunt, but he does not look at her.
His hands press bruises into her hips, and his teeth bite at her nipples until she is tender and sore, but he does not hold her, and he does not press his lips to hers in an act of love like her parents did.
There is no affection in his movements like in the books she has read or the songs she sings.