the Shadows that Haunt Me

I am thirteen.

Saved by Ivar as he throws himself in front of me.

Time slows to a dawdling pace, and I see the arrow hit Ivar’s chest with a hollow thud. See him fall to his knees, then the gritty ground of Lypophrenia Forest. Black tendrils inch out of the wound, swallowing his limbs, his face. “Goodbye-” he chokes out before he is cut off.

I turn and run.

There is no hope for Ivar. The arrows are cursed and claim souls within a heartbeat. Goodbye Ivar. I mouth the words even as I gasp for breath.

Behind me comes the sound of baleful howling- they have set the hunting hounds after me. My legs are sliced up and down from the scrub I run through, my hands torn open and bloody. I stumble, grabbing the closest branch to stop myself from crashing to the ground. The little skin left on my palm is cut from the fabrics of the Fates, the fabric of agony. But it is a preferable alternative to falling.

Ferocious growling and snapping at my heels confirms my thoughts, my reasoning.

If I go down, I do not get back up.

I am fourteen.

I am sick to my stomach. The silver oil lamppost beside me, shaped like a skeletal hand and created by one of the most well-known artists of our time, is the only thing holding me up.

Without it, I would surely fall.

Ivar used to be the one to hold me up- now he marches beside the King’s gilded carriage.

His eyes, once the startling blue of the faraway sea at sunrise, were now the colour of ebony stone. Identical to those of the guards flanking the streets, and of the King himself.

The Princess alone is still free, her eyes a silvery hazel.

The crowd is restless around me, but Ivar takes a menacing step towards the surging line of people and it immediately retreats.

If I squint, screwing my eyes up in the most unattractive way possible, I can almost see transparent shadows writhing around him.

I am fifteen.

Watching my house.

Not a house anymore, but a raging fire that none of the citizens can halt by the way of buckets of water. No matter how many.

Tongues of fire slither across the remains of the blackened garden, as if searching me out.

A cloak is wrapped around my shoulders and people huddle closer to me, questions spilling from their lips.

The flames are so bright that we do not need to light lanterns to see by.

I am asked if I knew who started the fire. The fire that I’ve just been told my parents have perished in. Goodbye Mama, goodbye Papa.

I love you both, but I also love Ivar, so I do not tell the people with harsh voices of the boys I saw escaping down an alley. Ivar was among them, and despite what has happened, I cannot risk him being hurt.

I am sixteen.

I am sitting on the corner of the street. The cobblestones are dangerously cold beneath me, and I wrap my arms around myself in the hope that I will not die today. Though perhaps it would be a blessing.

In front of a stall a little distance away, an elderly man plays an instrument of some kind.

The mournful tune dances along the breeze to trouble my ears and mind. The music is beautiful- no, graceful, even though it tells the story of heartbreak and war.

Indescribable sadness shoots through my blood. I am alone like the man, but at least he has the beauty of his music to warm himself during the cold nights that linger around our city.

I can almost see black webbing wrapping itself around me day by day. It’s not real, of course, but it might as well be.

It’s like fire, consuming me faster and faster the more it grows.

There is no way to stop it. I’m not sure I would if I could anyway.

I am seventeen.

Thunder booms from somewhere above, perhaps a sign of the Gods anger and disgust at the world as it is now.

Perhaps I’m just being stupid and fanciful.

Lightning flashes but I don’t flinch. If I was to be hit by a bolt, then it would be welcomed.

The rain slid fingers of cold over my copper coloured skin and I shivered. Ivar’s face was an ever-present image in my thoughts, burnt into the inside of my eyelids.

To my left a door swung open with a creak and yellow light shone from the gap.

A lady swamped in a maid uniform ten sizes too big for her hurried out and bent to put a little bowl down beside me.

Before I could say anything, she ran back inside. A little of the stew inside had spilled over the side, and I picked it up carefully.

Despite the stew being scalding, it couldn’t thaw my body. My bones could have been icicles for all I knew.

All I cared about was getting out of this world, out of my own head- and right now I was stuck.

I am eighteen.

Drowning my sorrows in a tavern filled with drunks and addicts.

It lets me forget. My only reprieve from my deathlike life.

Ivar.

His name means light, and he was. He was always my light, the beacon I looked to.

The only light I have to look forward to these days is the freedom the alcohol gives me. Nothing can take you down if you don’t properly exist.

And if there’s one thing I know, then it’s that beyond the flashing lights, the pounding music, the drunken babbling, I don’t exist.

I don’t exist without him, and he might as well be gone.

Goodbye, I’d whispered when he’d been hit.

I’d meant it, but I could never truly forget Ivar- not when he was all that mattered.

I am nineteen.

I haven’t seen him smile, haven’t heard him laugh, haven’t been held in his arms for so long now.

Alcohol isn’t my only friend anymore.

There is a girl who visits me sometimes. She always wears brown, silver and green. I don’t know why, and I don’t care enough to find out.

She says she’s a friend, that she can give me purpose if I just take her hand.

But even she cannot keep me from the glass bottles which hold the only thing that allows me to remember what life is like, if only for a moment.

I am twenty.

The chinking bang of gunshots echo in my ears. A hole sits directly in the middle of my wooden target.

I never miss.

The girls name is Sadie. I took her hand and she brought me here, to the rebellion. I don’t- can’t, cry anymore.

The rebellion is run by Princess Coralie, the only of the Royal Court not to fall to the shadow curse. We wear brown, silver and green in honour of her ebony free eyes.

Hunting dogs howl from somewhere in the city.

I fire the gun again.

I do not do this to serve the Princess. No, I do this because there is only one way I can give Ivar freedom now.

I am twenty-one.

Ivory light shines off the metal bars of my cell.

I can hear the clinking of iron keys from somewhere close. It does not matter.

The scuffling of the rats in my cage fall on dead ears, and the beauty of the sliver of night sky I can see is impeded by its frame of iron bars. I suppose I should be thankful that at least I’m in my own cell, others are not so lucky and are thrown in with far too many people.

Though I cannot hear footsteps, the eerie rattling of keys draws closer.

The rusty hinges protesting, the door to my little prison room is pushed open.

I look up with hollow resignation.

Sure enough, Ivar stepped out of the thick shadows.

“Hello Ivar.” I whispered.

I do not turn twenty-two.