Hopelessly Intertwined

Alcohol thickened the air, the smell clogged my nose and made my head pound. Slowly shutting the door behind me, I made my way blindly through the dark room. I always hated this more than any other in the mansion, it always smelled like this no matter how much the room was cleaned. Feeling my way around, I stumbled towards the candle illuminating a small corner and the desk it sat upon. The candle’s light allowed me to see papers scattered widely along the desk, some covered in drops of alcohol from the large, half-empty bottle placed haphazardly close to the open flame. Notebooks lay open, their pages covered in nonsense. A large hunting dagger sits at the top of the desk, resting in its sheath, along with wooden carvings, small paintings, and other gifts given by townsfolk. I stepped closer, approaching the dark silhouette of my husband.

He was never a kind drunk. He was never kind at all unless we were in public. His public image was the only thing he cared about. He was the person everyone knew and could go to with anything, but behind closed doors, he was cold, distant, and abusive. I pleaded with other women in the town to try and understand my situation and they laughed. He couldn’t be a bad person, he was kind, respectful, and most importantly, wealthy. I despised this marriage, but my family needed his money, so I would suffer for their sake. Despite all these actions, I still couldn’t stand to see him waste away like this.

I stepped beside him, grabbing the papers and arranging them in a neat pile on the side of the desk, “You need to be more organized, Alistar.” I said, sighing as I reached for the bottle, attempting to move it away from the fire. He grabbed my wrist, groaning in protest. I ripped my wrist away, quickly growing upset, “This can start a fire, Alistar. You’ve had enough.”

He glanced up at me, his head buried in his hands as he slumped over the desk. “You don’t tell me when I’ve had enough, wife,” he said with a smile that matched his annoyed tone. He always used ‘wife’ as a derogatory term.

“As your wife, I’m responsible for your safety. I am also responsible for making sure the house doesn’t burn to the ground!” I snapped, snatching the bottle off the desk and holding it away from him.

“Give it back!” He demanded, rising quickly from his seat only to sit back down, the quickness of the motion making him dizzy.

“No! You can’t even stand correctly! Why in the world would I let you continue this horrible habit? Especially next to an open flame!” I fumed, my voice slowly getting louder.

“Don’t tell me what to do, woman! I know exactly what I’m doing, and I am not taking orders from the likes of you!” he shouted, standing slowly this time and taking a shaky step toward me. I stepped back quickly, holding the bottle out to my left, taking all but two of my fingers off of it, threatening to drop it. Sensing what I was about to do, he held his hand out to me, “Give it to me. Don’t you even think about it, do you know how much I paid for that, Clover?!”

“Pocket change, that’s why you paid for it! You can do without an entire bottle for one day!” I shouted, stepping backward as he walked toward me. With his hand still outstretched he attempted to pull the bottle away from me, grabbing the wrist which held the bottle and tugging with all his drunken might. I hissed in pain and defiance, releasing the bottle and letting it drop to the floor. It shattered against the wood, the alcohol quickly soaking the floor. He stared, watching as the liquid spread across the floor. He glanced up at me in a drunken rage, nothing but hate in his eyes. He reached back to his desk, grabbed the nearest thing, and swung it at me in his fury.

The alcohol that ran through his blood ran cold, like ice forming in his veins. His hands began shaking as the drunkenness left him, realizing what he had done. He dropped what he held as if his hands couldn’t bear what weight of what he’d done. His hunting knife clattered to the ground. “...Clov?” He whispered, having quickly sobered and stepping towards me.

I hurled myself backward, doing all I could to escape, knocking things over as I scrambled. My head pounded in pain, my vision blurring from both my tears and the pain. I touched my face, half of it was soaked in blood, I ran to the mirror that hung on the back of his office door, staring at myself as if I was a stranger. My white dress was soaked crimson, blood flowing down my neck from the gash that made its way from my left eyebrow to my cheek. The pain was unbearable, it felt like the source of it was coming from under my eyelid. I kept my eye shut. I didn’t want to see it.

Covering my eye, despite it being pointless as the blood ran through my fingers, I turned back to him. He stared, silent and unmoving. The room was silent for a moment, the air thick with tension as I struggled to breathe normally. He took a step towards me, an apologetic look on his face, his mouth open with a fake apology halfway off his tongue. I sprinted from the room.

He called my name but I didn’t care, I ran as fast as I could, slamming into the edges of door frames and corners of tables as I ran semi-blindly through the mansion. Wiping the blind and tears from my eye, I saw clear enough to unlock the doors and run from the house. The sun hurt my eye but I kept running. I held my hand over my eye, trying to shield it from light and the world. People turned their heads watching in horror as I ran, covering the eyes of children or gasping in shock. I bumped into a woman and she caught me in her arms as I slumped to the floor in exhaustion. I sobbed into her chest, staining her apron red. She smelled like vanilla and flour, though my eyes were blurry I could tell who she was. My mother.

“Oh my days, darling are you alright?! What happened?!” She said, taking off her apron and attempting to remove the blood from my eyes so I could see. I stared at her, unable to answer her questions as I hyperventilated. “Open your eyes, baby, just open them for me…” She whispered as people began crowding around. People muttered, asking if I was ok or gossiping to themselves.

“Isn’t that Alistar’s wife? What’s going on?”

“I wonder what happened to her, the poor thing..”

“Do you think he did this?”

“It’s impossible! He’s so kind to us… when he’s sober.”

Their voices and their judgments faded from my ears as my mother gently forced my eyes open. She gasped in horror as did our entourage. I saw nothing, had she even opened my eye? “W-what?! What happened, what’s going on?” I asked, mind going blank from the pain. I could barely feel anything, but I began feeling very tired, and my eyelids began to fall. My mother muttered prayers under her breath, causing me to fly into a panic. My mother isn’t religious. “What?! Mother, what's happened?!”

“Your eye… it has a jagged slash down the center. Your pupil is split in half.” Though that confirmed my suspicion, the truth struck my heart hard. I burst into another fit of tears, people around me attempting to be a comfort as I came to terms with my blindness.

“Clover! Clover, darling!” The concern in her tone made me sick to my stomach. Alistar rushed forward, the crowd parting to let me through. I attempted to get away from him, getting as close as I could to my mother as I could. He reached out his hand, “Darling are you-” I smacked his hand away. The crowd gasped as he stared at me in shock.

“What have you done, Alistar!” My mother shouted, holding me in her arms, shielding me from him. “What did you do to my baby!”

“Nothing at all! I should be the one you are worried about!” He said, talking more to the crowd than my mother, “She tried to kill me!”

…What?

The crowd gasped, staring at the two of us in shock. Deep anger I didn’t know I was harboring quickly rose to the surface. Ignoring my pain, I opened my left eye to show him the gash. “I tried to kill you?! You did this to me!”

“Out of self-defense!” He shouted, “You tried to burn me alive!” I stared at him in disbelief, opening my mouth to protest but he cut me off. He glances around at the crowd, “This woman is the one to blame, she tried to murder her husband! Pouring alcohol on the floor and lighting it ablaze. I cut her with my knife to protect my life, if I hadn’t I’d have burnt remains! Just look at my home!” He said, turning his head in the direction of the mansion. A large pillar of smoke rose into the sky. I stared at it, terrible feelings mixed in my stomach as I recalled the bottle I smashed. He couldn’t have set his house ablaze to frame me, right?

The crowd turned their attention to me, and I lay helpless in the arms of my mother. Quickly becoming uncomfortable in my pathetic state I stood with the help of my mother, she held onto my arm to keep me from falling. “I did no such thing! I simply took the bottle away from you! Look at yourself, anyone here can smell the alcohol on your breath.” I gestured to the crowd, who nodded in agreement. The smell was so strong you could get drunk off of it alone.

“Don’t believe her lies! She has done nothing but takes advantage and lie! For a crime this horrendous she deserves to be burned!” The crowd gasped at his harsh words, looking to me for my response.

“To say such things of your wife, whom you forced to marry you! How dare you accuse me of such things after all you’ve done to me. You have no evidence of these claims because I did nothing of the sort! On the other hand, I have plenty of scars to prove you’re nothing more than a drunken fool!”

He turned his attention to the townspeople, “Who do you choose to believe, the person in your community who treats you with respect, kindness, and compassion, or this woman who has given you nothing but gossip?” The people muttered among themselves, glancing between me and Alistar. Of course, he would bring his money into things. He brought no kindness or compassion, but he did bring money to the town. They couldn’t afford to burn him. They could afford to burn me.

The townsfolk all turned their attention to me, silently making their decision. Many stared at me with pity as men surrounded me. They pushed my mother away, binding my wrists with ropes so tight I could barely feel my hands. Townspeople gathered straw and other flammable material at the bottom of a large wooden pillar. They bound my hands behind it while I kicked and screamed to be let free. Growing tired of my rebellion, they tied my feet together as well.

Alistar was handed a candle by a small woman, he smiled and thanked her as if this was a happy occasion. He walked up to my stake and stared into my eyes as my tears ran lines in the caked blood on my face. He smirked. He looked up at me as I was about to be burned and smiled at me. He mouthed a mocking “I love you” before dropping the candle.

The fire spread, slowly at first taking its time to consume the fuel that was gathered for it. The flames danced in the evening sun as the crowd chanted, “Burn! Burn! Burn!” My mother sobbed as two men held her away from my stake. I stared down at the flames as they slowly approached me, lapping at my feet as I struggled against the ropes. I felt them dig into my wrist, but adrenalin filled my veins so I kept going. I struggled in vain as the flames finally reached my skin.  I screamed as alcohol was dumped into the flames, making them explode upward and engulf my body. I screamed from the top of my lungs… but only for a second.

“Do you want to live?” A voice asked. I snapped to attention, glancing around and seeing nothing but blackness. I attempted to find the source, but of course, it was for nothing. I tried to move but found my hands and feet still bound. It was getting slowly warmer. The voice repeated, “Do you want to survive?”

“Who are you? Get me out of this thing!” I said in a panic, struggling to get down from the stake.

“I am a friend, I am trying to help, but you need to answer quickly. Do you want to live?” The voice said again, their tone indistinguishable.

“Yes! Yes, please get me out of this, I don’t deserve this!” I sobbed into the darkness, hanging my head pathetically as my tears fell. The voice paused for what felt like forever.

“I will give you a new body with old scars. You will be born a child of ash and be one with the thing that brought you so much anguish. You will get your revenge on those who put you to death as if you were nothing to them.” The voice said as the temperature began to soar.

“What does that mean?! Child as ash? Who are you?” Questions rolled off my tongue faster than I could stop them. Unfortunately, none of them were answered. The voice went silent as it began getting even hotter. I stayed trapped in the heat for what felt like forever, but the longer I stood in it, the less I began to mind it.

I heard something in the distance. Quiet and distant I couldn’t tell what exactly it was or where it was coming from. I attempted to move around, but the ropes that once held me in place had disappeared. I rubbed my wrists in shock, slowly beginning to open my eyes. I raised one of my hands to block my eyes from the sun. My blurry vision made it hard to see so I blinked. Again. And again. I quickly relieved what the distant noise was.

Screaming. People all around me were screaming in horror. I stepped forward as my eyes began to adjust. I stepped out of a large pile of ash, and back onto the road of the town that just burned me. I finally looked at my hand, looking down at it in shock as I noticed the change in my skin color. My hand was faint crimson, and large dark marks were left where the ropes once were along my wrists. “I’m…free? I’m free!” I muttered to myself in disbelief

“A Lircoon! She’s a Lircoon!” A woman shouted, grabbing the hands of her children as she ran away. Panic spread as people stared at me in horror, I watched as they all scrambled away. I scanned the crowd until my gaze landed on Alistar, who looked around frantically in confusion. I felt my body heat up as if I was back on the stake, heat rising from my feet to my head. My fists clenched as I stormed towards him. As I did, I noticed the ashes from my stake begin to float around me.

“Alistar! What are you just standing there for?! Run!!” A woman yelled, grabbing his arm and trying to pull him away. Upon noticing his confusion, she pointed at me as I continued approaching. “She’s a Lircoon! They’re angry spirits who only form from those with unjust deaths!” The woman paused before staring up at him in horror. Quickly, she yanked her hands away from him, “You lied… You made us burn an innocent person!” She shouted. Those around to hear slowed their running slightly to give shocked looks.

As I walked, the ashes made contact with many things: trees, houses, bushes, and anything else that was in my way. As the ashes touched these things they erupted into flames, quickly spreading fire across the entire town. Screams rang loud in my ears as people fled, but I didn’t care.

I was free. Free from judgment, abuse, and shame. And with this newfound freedom, I was ready to bring this town to the ground.