Night's Omen

"I..." she started, looking down at their hands (his hand felt warm) and then up at his face (his eyes were gentle) and then out the window and the impossibly blue forever-sky, and it seemed to be reaching out with inexpressible potential and was, like a siren song, calling to her.

She looked back at Adam, her expression slightly scared. "I don't know if I want to come back," she said softly, as though it was shameful. "Is that wrong?"

"No," he said. "Everyone has to grow up and leave home eventually. Maybe if she'd let you out more you'd have more of a willingness to stay, but... Ava, I swear on my throne, I would never let any harm come to you. You could come back with me to the kingdom - we could make you a princess if you wanted. You would be free to come and go as you pleased, and we could even get you your own horse. We could go mountain climbing, riding, swimming, fishing..." he trailed off.

Adam couldn't help himself. The thought of this beautiful girl indulging the idea of leaving -- with him -- was too much. He leaned forward and have her a kiss - a light, quick press of his lips against her own. "Say you'll come tomorrow? I can help you pack your things. We can build you an aviary at the castle too, so you won't miss this too much," he offered.

The prospect was almost dizzying - and then he'd leaned forward, almost to quickly to catch, and brushed her lips with his own.

"Say you'll come tomorrow? I can help you pack your things. We can build you an aviary at the castle too, so you won't miss this too much."

Avalon laughed a little, suddenly feeling almost giddy, feeling unchained - it was like her heavy, heavy hair had been cut and she was floating upwards to the sky. Sometimes she felt as though the weight of it was the only reason that she couldn't fly, and this was one of those time.

"I... yes," she said. "Yes, yes, please yes - I don't know how much I have to take, only really my books and my drawings, some of them, but yes." She thought she wanted to kiss him in return, but she wasn't quite sure if she was supposed to or if she should - Ava was soft and innocent and naive, sweet and inexperienced in just about everything. Hesitantly she lifted her hand again and ran it down his cheek.

"... thank you."

He took her hand and held it tightly for a moment. "I'll be back tomorrow, I promise. Have your things ready and we'll head out. We can leave your mother a note, if you want. When she's ready she can come to the castle and we will welcome her," he promised.

With that, he gathered himself and went on his way, of course with Avalon aiding his flight down the tower. He got on the horse and rode away, becoming smaller and smaller until he was but a speck in the wooded forests that surrounded the tower.

Avalon nodded, trying to look a bit more serious but feeling almost dizzy. "Yes, I'll wait." She bit her lip for a second, glancing down, and then looked back into his eyes. "Hurry back." She'd... she'd miss him. And admittedly, maybe that was simply because it was someone who was THERE and someone NEW, but... but she didn't know.

The girl let her long, heavy braid slip out the window and let him climb down, wincing a little at the pain in her neck and scalp as she always did when the hair, which was heavy ANYWAY, suddenly dropped and then gained more weight, but also putting up with it as she always did. And then once he was down and had let go of her braid she didn't even pull it back in immediately, as she normally did, so that she wouldn't have to support the weight so long. She stayed at her window as he mounted his horse, as he rode away. She stayed until she couldn't see him anymore, and then even longer. Finally she turned away, pulling her braid back through the window and coiling it neatly so that she wouldn't trip over it whenever she moved (unless she kept some kind of order she really did, and then she pulled her hair and tripped at the same time which was - to say the least - not in the slightest bit fun).

She went and curled up on her bed for a few moments, looking at the sky outside her window - so blue - and wondering what tomorrow would bring.

Finally, with a happy sigh, she got back up again and set to ordering her belongings, deciding what to take and what not to. There really wasn't very much that she wanted, which made things easy enough, but there were a few things.

Unfortunately for Prince Adam and Avalon, there, Elke was a lot smarter than she seemed. Everyone was her spy - the trees, the birds, the very spring breeze. They came to her, telling her all sorts of interesting things about how her lovely Avalon had been corrupted by that - that MAN.

Elke decided to play a little trick on them, to teach them a lesson. She used her best illusion, the most powerful glamour she could muster, and the next day at the agreed upon time, summoned a horrible fog to slow Adam down enough in the forests while she dealt with her treacherous daughter.

Assuming the continence of Prince Valerius, she stood at the base of the tower and called up to Ava.

Avalon, of course, suspected nothing. She'd gathered her few books, some of her better drawings, a feather from a hawk that she'd found one day - it was almost gold, especially when the light struck it in the right way - and... well... she was waiting. Trying to draw as she waited, but her movements were too sharp and impatient, the pen felt fat and heavy in her fingers, lines would not go where she wanted them to.

Giving up after a while, she got up and paced. And then she heard someone calling her, and ran over to the window. She smiled when she looked down. "Adam! You came!" Her expression was soft and happy. Out the window with the braid - it was so heavy - but this was the last time anyone would have reason to climb it, and that thought made her smile. He felt lighter than yesterday as he climbed, but the world felt lighter, as if she might fly.

It didn't take but a moment for the glamour to melt away, leaving Avalon nothing more than a memory of her prince. Elke folded her arms, tipping her head to one side and speaking with a slipping, sliding tone of voice that was melodic and dangerous.

"Well, what my servants told me is true. I had such high hopes for you, Avalon, my child," she said, trailing off with a sigh. She made tsking sounds with her tongue and began to pace, slowly in a very definite circle around her, like a carrion crow signaling flesh for the taking.

"What should your punishment be?" she sang thoughtfully to herself, fingers tapping full lips as she stared at the floor. She looked up suddenly, and smiled, fingers splaying across her lower lip as her mouth turned up into a sadistic sort of smile that she'd had once before - on Avalon's behalf, of course, but in the sight of her as a baby.

"I know," she said again, this time softly. And with that, she grabbed a pair of shears that she'd allowed Avalon to have to cut at the blooming vines which twined her tower - and snatched that thick braid of Avalon's, cutting it at the middle of her back.

Thunk. It fell to the floor, and Elke stood, staring at it as though it were the greatest art she'd ever seen, shears loosely in her hands, a smoking gun.

Avalon had mixed feelings upon seeing Mother. She wasn't unhappy to see her - she was never unhappy to see her, not mother - but she was worried that mother would think that her going to even see anything with Adam would be bad, let alone leaving - but this tower was a cage and it was suffocating her. And, on another level she was confused - why had Mother bothered to disguise herself?

"Mo-" but she cut her off which was almost like a slap. And her tone...! Avalon had never heard it before, never even heard everything really like it, and it made her take a hesitating step backwards. And she started to pace, circling Ava.

"Mother?" she asked, her voice unsure and now slightly scared. She was ignored.

"What should your punishment be?" Mother sang, and Avalon stared at her, as warily as a squirrel. And then Mother smiled, smiled like nothing Avalon had ever seen before. "I know."

Avalon swallowed. "Mo-Mothe-" she began, but by then Mother had grabbed a pair of shears and grabbed her golden braid - grabbed it fast and hard enough that Avalon almost screamed - and then there was a snip and a heavy thunk and Avalon was feeling lightheaded, light all over, as though she might float to the ceiling unless she had something to hold her down, and in a kind of shock as she felt the ends of her hair brush against her arms, unraveling from the loose braid, for the first time in over ten years.

Trembling, half in shock, she looked at the braid on the floor and then back to Mother. She felt that she would float away, or that her head would leave her shoulders - she half wanted to hold it down to prevent that.

"Planning on leaving!" Elke shrieked, waving the shears around in a flippant manner, one that brought them dangerously close to Avalon. "After everything that I've done for you! Really, Avalon? And for a man?" she hissed. She threw the shears into the corner, where they clattered, smashing some glass figurines she'd given Avalon as a child.

"I told you constantly that this tower was to protect you, for your own good, and yet you still find a way to disobey me! Where did I go wrong?" she wailed, raising her hands in a frustrated manner. She looked for a moment to be upset, but then the real truth of the matter reared its head. "I think..." she said softly.

"I think I know just what I'll do." Avalon's packing was convenient enough, because Elke was planning on whisking her away with but a snap of her fingers - South, to the deserted plains where people went to die. There she would have no more protective tower, no more Adam, and no more Mother to care for her.

Avalon flinched back when Mother shrieked at her - shrieked. She'd never done that before. "Mother, I-" Avalon started to say.

Crash.

The girl looked in horror over at the remains of the glass figurines, then back at Mother, who had become not-Mother. She backed up against the wall, pressed herself against it - the light feeling of being free of the weight of her hair still as thought it might carry her away, still odd, and the feeling of not being chained to the earth by her braid almost making her dizzy.

"Mother," she whispered once again, as Elke snapped her fingers. She didn't know what else to say. Didn't know what to think.

The magic came and went, dissipating quickly. Where they had been in the tower had been changed, transformed into the small confining space of a wooden cabin barely big enough to hold the two of them. The tower had been a palace compared to this place - dust was all over, and so were mice. A small table sat in the center of the 'kitchen' sort of area, chairs overturned.

The windows were broken, and a swell of hot wind brought in a blast of earth through the glass, scattering it across the uncomfortably hard floor, which groaned with every step Elke took. She walked 'round in a small circle, and smiled. "This will do."

She turned and opened the front door, a thing that nearly came off the hinges, bathing the dirty and half-lit room in harsh sunlight. Outside was equally as desolate - the land had once been cultivated for its vegetation, but the greed of men had made the earth barren and dry. It rained, but nothing grew, not for at least a quarter mile where the edge of a forest was. To be sure, it wasn't the same forest, and Avalon would have a better chance of growing snowballs in the ground than finding her tower again.

"Ungrateful," she hissed again. "Now see how hard life is when you disobey."

She slammed the door and was gone.

It had felt, suddenly and for only a second, as though she were the only thing in the universe that was moving, or maybe as if she were the only thing in the universe that stood still. She-the-room flew apart into a thousand pieces like a stack of paper in the path of a tornado and then flew back together but in a different pattern, like it-she had been magnetized but the wrong magnets had aligned themselves with each other.

This wasn't right.

"Mother?"

Her throat was so dry that the noise hardly qualified as a whisper, but it was probably the loudest sound Avalon could have made in that instant. It mattered not - Mother ignored her.

She was in a state of shock, or entering a state of shock, and didn't react to much when Mother swept around the room with harsh, sharp satisfaction, sharp enough to cut yourself on like the blade of a knife, or the shears that she had used to crop Avalon's hair. The free ends - rough and uneven, having fallen out of what braid they had left - tickled her neck and arms with a sensation that she couldn't ever remember feeling before in her life. The lightness of her head added another layer of unreality to the package, and she felt as though she should be floating up to rest against the ceiling, so untethered was she.

Surely this was a dream.

Surely she would wake up soon, and she would be home, and all would be as it had always been, with only Mother and Ava in the entire world, by themselves and needing only themselves- but then what would that make Adam?

And the door slammed and Mother was gone.

Avalon did not move for ages. Stars could have been born and died in the space of time that she didn't move, hundreds of forests could have been born from a single seed and fallen into the decay of old age in the time that she stood there, civilizations could have risen and its citizens died of boredom in the time that she was frozen in place. As she stood, unmoving, the only thing that proved it was a living image and not a picture was the hot wind whistling like a lost soul across the harsh landscape outside, in through the broken window and through the loose, jagged ends of what was left of her hair.

After a second-year-eternity-minute-hour she started to cry, or realized that she had been crying, utterly silently, and finally she let herself sink down, as slowly as if the air were made of transparent tar, and then cried, utterly silently.

Mother. Adam. Home.

She didn't move from that spot on the floor for more then a day.

It was some sort of vain hope - that Mother would come back, that she would wake up, that she would die (but she didn't want to die) - and it felt as if movement, even in the slightest, would shatter that.

But mother didn't come, and Avalon didn't wake up, and she didn't really want to die, and her throat felt as though it were made of sand, so after that day she finally began to move again. She made it to the door and then stared - and there were trees in the distance. It wasn't a long distance, and there were trees.

Avalon walked the longest space she had in her entire life, away from the harsh openness of the wilderness and back home into the trees.

Only they weren't even the right trees. Her trees were different.

Avalon's world - always small - vanished into smoke.

And so, with nothing better to do, she wandered. She walked until the thin slippers that she'd been wearing - all she ever need wear, merely to keep her feet from becoming cold on the bare stone of her tower - shredded to pieces, and then she walked until her feet began to bleed and she left a trail of bloody footprints. She found a town but didn't know what to do with them, as they didn't know what to do with her, and so she wandered on. She wandered forever, meeting people and people and people, and she began to first resent and then almost-hate (except she couldn't hate) Mother, who had kept all this from her and then cast her into it, fickle Mother who had sheltered her too well. It was a hard season, but gradually Avalon began to learn.

Trust her, don't trust him, this is what you must do, this is what you mustn't do, this is where you are (though that didn't help her, as she didn't know where she'd been, not really - always she hunted for where she'd been, for a country with a castle as tall as the sky and as big as half the forest that had a prince named Adam), this is this, this is that, roads leading to the left and right and no roads at all.

Avalon grew as she wandered - became Avalon, and not merely Ava, became a girl and not merely a doll - but still she was lost.

And so she wandered.

  Adam, meanwhile, had his own set of problems to deal with. Well, not problems - problem. Singular. And it came at him in the form of a woman who was very much not Avalon. When he'd gone to the tower to see her as promised, he climbed right on up, and was met face to face with the witch. There had been a wild fray, and in the end, she'd thrown him straight out of the tower. By some grace, he'd caught footing on the brick for some of the fall, which probably saved his life.

  His eyes, however.

  He'd landed face first into the thornbushes that surrounded the base of the tower - things he'd carefully avoided, until of course, now. This was a failure and a half. When he'd finally crawled out of them in an incredible amount of pain, he found that he couldn't see what was going on. He couldn't see at all, actually. He yelled and searched around, for Avalon, but all he could hear was the laughter of the witch and the sensation of being lifted and thrown. He couldn't explain it, but when he was finally deposited with great force back on the ground, he had a feeling he wasn't anywhere near the tower.

  He wandered very blindly for what seemed like forever. Adam may have been fairly self-sufficient, but he was still born royal and raised as a prince, so the idea of having to amble without anyone to help him find his footing, literally, was foreign to him. He tried and failed for a few weeks at least, until by luck he came across a town with people in it who were kind enough to help him. The problem then was that they'd never heard of a Prince Adam, or the royal family - or his land. He began to wonder just where the witch had placed him.

  He could naturally assume that it was the furthest geographical point from Avalon, but it didn't stop him from "looking". He went from town to town, wandering with a walking stick and senses that once had been dull now slightly less since he had to rely on them to survive. He was robbed more than once, a humiliating experience, and he'd found that not every village or city he would enter was as full of kind people as he would have hoped.

  He knew, eventually, that he had to stop wandering. He had to give up. And so, with a heavy heart, the small village that he'd come to rest last would be the one he would stay at. He sat by the fountain, weary and tired, listening to women call after their children and men talk about the morning's finds at the market. If he thought about it hard enough, he could almost hear Avalon's voice, but no - that was cruel.

  His heart wouldn't let him give up, but his body couldn't do anymore with the aimless walking.

But a quest could not be left unfulfilled; the witch could not win in the end, the prince could not falter and die, the princess could not remain cursed and lost forever. It was a fairy tale, after all, and fairy tales simply couldn't end in such a manner. The story - for it was a story, all life was a story - could not be left unfulfilled. There wasn't always a happily-ever-after, but there did need to be a conclusion, an ending, a point at which one could rest.

It couldn't end yet.

Avalon wandered, and in some ways her sheer naivete protected her, as there was always someone who would watch for her, look out for the lovely girl with the hair and eyes like sunshine and the ever-so-innocent air. She had nothing to steal but her dress - Mother had left her with the clothing she was wearing but nothing else - though people certainly would have tried to take that if they'd been permitted to, and those not interested in her clothes were frequently interested in Avalon herself. She quite often stayed in the wilds, but if not for that and the strangers who protected her, she would have been raped many times over before her wanderings were done. Not all the people were kind, which she wasn't sure she understood at first, but after a while she began to catch on.

Still, she wandered - for what else was there to do? She was a bird who had been uncaged after a lifetime of bars, and see how big the world was. Yes, Avalon wandered and looked for a palace like the sky.

She never thought she'd find Adam elsewhere. Until... until she did.

It was the latest of many town, towns and villages and cities (though not many of those; Avalon stayed in the wilderness in her wanderings - cities boxed her in as she never wanted to be boxed in again, because this way even though it could be terrifying the world was there, it was there); she'd been so many places that they would blur together and she was no longer sure even of an exact number. She wasn't expecting anything different. Then she saw the figure on the fountain.

"Adam?" Her voice was hardly more then a whisper.

He was different - his clothing was muddied and torn and worn through, he carried a staff, but the biggest change was his face. It wasn't scarred, it was difficult for thorns to scar, but his eyes were pale and opaque and blind. It made her draw breath, quick and harsh as a gasp, but surely it was him.

"Adam?" Her voice was tremulous as she came up to him, then reached out with a single, no-longer-so-soft hand to brush his cheek.