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Seeds of Madness
Oct. 3rd, 2010 12:15 amI am no hero. I cannot even say that no one is truly in love who would not unthinkingly sacrifice for love.
They are not kind, the goblins. She reminded me of that in stuttering whispers and shaking limbs. I ran my finger over her lips and lied to her. I wove a peace of the types of falsehoods you only say to one you love. I chanted that things would get better, as if I had some kind of control over the universe. My litany of how it would be all right, how she would recover, of how I would make it good somehow turned to lullaby so she could sleep.
I could not sleep. I stared out the window. The moon was always an inconstant friend, and silver shadows slipped across in the darkness, a reminder of cold wraiths playing in the propinquity of fear.
I left no note. I had made no preparation. I only knew I had to leave and that I had to leave at that moment, before it slipped away, before the lies were revealed in sunlight. In the twilight haze of possibility I still had the power of the madness that seized me.
They are not kind, the goblins.
They stripped me to skin. I said nothing, even as they took their time revealing my flesh as if unwrapping a present. They held me in place with their collective gaze, some pitying, some lascivious, some cruel. Their touch was the same. They caressed and gouged me in tender place after tender place with gnarled skin, some scaled and as rough as cat tongues, some slippery and slimy like that of eels. Horns and broken claws scratched at me. My skin and my silence were as armor against them. They were bound by their own rules, each waiting for the other to go past the line. They were hungry for it, I could feel.
Goblins may like nothing better than the taste of their own.
I heard them titter in my head and with my ears. I thought of her, my resolve the shield I held against fear. There were crunching noises, tearing noises, rending of cloth and skin and bone, and the smell of raw meat. I stood there, alone, and silent, matching them gaze for gaze.
Go on, my eyes said. You cannot treat me cruelly, or I will treat you in kind.
"Your knees," one said, and I was pushed to them. So many of them were only half my height, but the collective was a morass of grotesque. My eyes craved symmetry, and I sought to find it amongst my captors. This one would not work, his head a broken triangle of black knobby spots, and that one could not work for the five eyes were placed at random, blinking in no sequence I could fathom.
In front of me was one in armour made of the partial remains of cats stretched and stitched together with stringy bits. In one of his three arms was a quiver of fully fleshed peacock feathers. In another was a beautifully thin silver wire. He pulled out one of the feathers, to reveal its sharpened tip. No feathers, no decoration these; they too were made of metal, a striking beauty in this place.
He moved behind me, and then I felt the first needle go through my arm, a cold shock from wrist to shoulder. I gasped, and my arms were cruelly twisted so I could not move. The needle continued to pierce my skin, and I could feel blood drip down into my hands, wire wrapped
around to hold my arms together, feather-like filaments drawn close and then released in new bursts of pain.
I was laced in goblin silver. It was a wound that would distract, would weaken, would hurt, but would not fester. To prevent me the use of my hands as a weapon against them. I still had the power of my voice, my mind, and my feet as tools. Three magics for the hero in the goblin's cave.
"You have lived all your life in the shadow of this," I told myself. "You have held close your dreams and stories, all to enter this world. For a fey love, for your acceptable madness, what seeds did you think you planted?"
They are not kind, the goblins. She reminded me of that in stuttering whispers and shaking limbs. I ran my finger over her lips and lied to her. I wove a peace of the types of falsehoods you only say to one you love. I chanted that things would get better, as if I had some kind of control over the universe. My litany of how it would be all right, how she would recover, of how I would make it good somehow turned to lullaby so she could sleep.
I could not sleep. I stared out the window. The moon was always an inconstant friend, and silver shadows slipped across in the darkness, a reminder of cold wraiths playing in the propinquity of fear.
I left no note. I had made no preparation. I only knew I had to leave and that I had to leave at that moment, before it slipped away, before the lies were revealed in sunlight. In the twilight haze of possibility I still had the power of the madness that seized me.
They are not kind, the goblins.
They stripped me to skin. I said nothing, even as they took their time revealing my flesh as if unwrapping a present. They held me in place with their collective gaze, some pitying, some lascivious, some cruel. Their touch was the same. They caressed and gouged me in tender place after tender place with gnarled skin, some scaled and as rough as cat tongues, some slippery and slimy like that of eels. Horns and broken claws scratched at me. My skin and my silence were as armor against them. They were bound by their own rules, each waiting for the other to go past the line. They were hungry for it, I could feel.
Goblins may like nothing better than the taste of their own.
I heard them titter in my head and with my ears. I thought of her, my resolve the shield I held against fear. There were crunching noises, tearing noises, rending of cloth and skin and bone, and the smell of raw meat. I stood there, alone, and silent, matching them gaze for gaze.
Go on, my eyes said. You cannot treat me cruelly, or I will treat you in kind.
"Your knees," one said, and I was pushed to them. So many of them were only half my height, but the collective was a morass of grotesque. My eyes craved symmetry, and I sought to find it amongst my captors. This one would not work, his head a broken triangle of black knobby spots, and that one could not work for the five eyes were placed at random, blinking in no sequence I could fathom.
In front of me was one in armour made of the partial remains of cats stretched and stitched together with stringy bits. In one of his three arms was a quiver of fully fleshed peacock feathers. In another was a beautifully thin silver wire. He pulled out one of the feathers, to reveal its sharpened tip. No feathers, no decoration these; they too were made of metal, a striking beauty in this place.
He moved behind me, and then I felt the first needle go through my arm, a cold shock from wrist to shoulder. I gasped, and my arms were cruelly twisted so I could not move. The needle continued to pierce my skin, and I could feel blood drip down into my hands, wire wrapped
around to hold my arms together, feather-like filaments drawn close and then released in new bursts of pain.
I was laced in goblin silver. It was a wound that would distract, would weaken, would hurt, but would not fester. To prevent me the use of my hands as a weapon against them. I still had the power of my voice, my mind, and my feet as tools. Three magics for the hero in the goblin's cave.
"You have lived all your life in the shadow of this," I told myself. "You have held close your dreams and stories, all to enter this world. For a fey love, for your acceptable madness, what seeds did you think you planted?"