The Girl In The Window

Once again, Cathrine throws aside her bed covers and her night gown trails across the floor. As if in a trance, she glides towards the window, the moon peers down at her through the glass. 

***

A young woman turns in her bed, she is restless and wakes. She sits up on her silk sheets and squints in the darkness. An array of light dances in front of her, illuminating her face, but this is not any ordinary light, this is the light of the Moon King. Lady Helen knows that something isn’t right, fear creeps up the back of her neck and she calls for her maid but there is no response. She stumbles to her feet, avoiding touching the light and rushes towards the door, it’s locked. She pivots on her foot as the light grows brighter and slams her hands against the window panes and looks up at the moon, tonight it’s at it’s fullest. 

“Oh no,” she mutters and scrambles at the lock on the window, but it’s stiff and doesn’t open. She looks round to see that the light is taking a form.  

“HELP!” Lady Helen’s screams fill the space in her room but they do not reach anyone who could save her, she has been chosen tonight. So she stays by the window, still as a statue and waits for something to happen. After all, that’s all she can do. 

He arrives, dressed in white, his clothes shine in the light from outside. Silver buttons shaped as half moons on his waistcoat and the same on the cuffs of his sleeves. A ridiculous white top hat decorated with silver half moons matches his white trousers held by a silver belt below his hips. He leans on a white staff with a silver orb on the top where his long, bony hands rest. There is a glow around him, like the one you see when you watch the moon. His eyes are silver and his pupils slits, they search the room through the long white tufts of hair which cover his face before resting on Lady Helen. 

“Lady Helen, how lovely it is to finally grace me with your presence.” He speaks his line, practiced to perfection, his voice is airy and not of something belonging to the earth, but he does not then ask her to curtsy or speak or do anything for that matter. She just stands there like a doll held in place by invisible strings, all life drained from within her fragile body, her skin now white as snow, her silver hair hanging limp down her back and her eyes black as the night. Her eyes, like all those before her, have failed. Lady Helen is destined to join the discarded walking corpses in the shadows below the moon now that her Core has been awoken and is not what is wanted. 

The king sighs, “You are not her,” and places a sharp, long fingernail between her eyes. Her face cracks down the middle, splitting her body in two and she shatters into a million pieces, dust as black as death flows out of the cracks in the window frame, the lonely remains of Lady Helen, goes up into the sky and enter the shadows of the moon for all eternity. 

***

The door unlocks with a click.

“Pardon me, Miss,” Abigail knocks on the door just to check, she steps inside, carrying an overflowing breakfast tray. “Cathrine?” Making sure no one is there, the young girl looks around her mistresses’s chambers, searching for something she has been sent to get. 

She puts the tray down on the small table before skipping over to Cathrine’s gilded drawer. She pulls on the knob but it doesn’t open. She tugs harder, it doesn’t budge. She suddenly has the feeling that something is behind her and looks round to find Cathrine sitting at the small table, slowly putting food in her mouth. Abigail stays kneeling on the floor in front of the drawer, eyes wide and staring at Cathrine. Her mistress swallows then speaks, her voice raspy and barely a whisper, “It’s locked you know… It has been for a while now.” She doesn’t look up, “Even I have forgotten what’s in there. Maybe whoever wants it should too.” She gives her plate a sad smile and continues eating. 

Abigail jumps up, “Yes, sorry.” She watches Cathrine for a bit, her mistress’s cheeks are sunken and pale, the food she puts in her mouth sticks out in the thin layers of skin. Her hands are bony and shake each time she lifts her fork up. Abigail feels a pang of sympathy for Cathrine; she looks like she will perish soon. 

***

A month goes by and Cathrine grows weaker. The night with the full moon arrives. Yet again, she locks eyes with the moon and stays there, awake, all night. Staring out the window in hope of being saved. The Moon King visits another, awakes their Core and still, he has not found her. 

She is trapped here, she can’t escape and she can’t be saved.

Days pass, then weeks and soon it is the full moon again. That night, Cathrine is so frail she can’t bring herself to the window, instead she keeps her eyes opened wide and watches from her bed. However, this time, her prayers to the moon will not reach a possible hearer. She knows this but resists the easy temptation to accept it.

Core after Core is awoken and each are sent to the shadows of the moon. And still, Cathrine waits. She waits patiently and soon a year goes by. She hangs onto the thin threads of life; she doesn’t speak, doesn’t move, doesn’t eat or drink. She just waits.

One day a doctor is called and she is prescribed medication, something that seems to only make her health worse.

Abigail brings her mistress food and washes her daily, it doesn’t help but makes Abigail feel like she’s doing something. 

The gilded draw is locked and hopefully forever will be, that is what the sane part of Cathrine’s mind thinks. 

The full moon rises for the last time for Cathrine. She has tears in her eyes and prepares to say goodbye. 

There is a blinding light and finally he has come. 

“Cathrine, how lovely it is to finally grace me with your presence.” She looks up and her mouth part slightly in surprise, that is all the movement she can make. 

Her heart shines through her chest, outlining her ribs, she grows brighter and brighter until she is white and silver all over, her eyes not black but a perfect resemblance of the Moon King.

“I have found you at last.” He searches her face for any sign of recognition and finds what he wants. 

They both elegantly melt into Moon Silk and seem to smile before dancing through the slightly open window and floating up towards the sky, back to the moon.