Dreams

Raven steeds, their hooves a thunder against alabaster stone, drew the night cloaked coach with lanterns burning like stars. Their tracks fell into silence as their orchestra met a net of foliage. Carriage wheels buffeted dense beds of vine and thorn to slice an alabaster scar in the crimson impediment of flora. 

Whether the beasts failed to discern the stretching spines that bore into their hooves with every step or if training forced them to give no notice could not be ascertained. Onlookers who dared gaze upon the devilish transport were met with the burning mark of the rose.  

The panting steeds shuffled to a halt at the great gates of the aging estate. The driver’s hunched silhouette made no motion or sound as the portal opened to his presence. 

The shriek of metal betrayed this otherwise stealth arrival. The cobbled pass to carriage house and stables remained clear enough of reaching briars to allow the clop of hooves to be heard once more. Though silence may have been less torturous. The obsidian steeds beat a funerary dirge, quite unlike the saunter of a common carriage pony. A glint like firelight caught in the eyes of the beasts as they drove onward into the mouth of the carriage house. The ride disappeared, swallowed in the protection of the unlit stable.  

The driver, an ebony cloaked phantom hidden within broad riding hat, emerged alone from the cavern of the carriage house. The sole rider to emerge from this grim transport. 

A wraith-like form, yet he closed the wood and iron doors of the stables as if drawing no more than velvet curtains. His cloak churned, scattering carmine petals as he whirled. He stalked from yard to house. 

In his march he freed the stark flesh of his gnarled hands from thick leather gloves.  

This austere wardrobe doubled the hollowness surrounding him. His spectre bled into the blackness of the arching rear entrance to the outer courts of Yarrow Hart. 

Weighty footfalls betrayed his movements through soulless halls, an aura of command and threat sparked in the tone of his steps. With a mere glint of moonlight as his guide, the coachman enrolled into the labyrinth bound to his destination. Trained by instinct and unseen forces he tarried not at all in choice of the doors he opened, and yet he drew up at once. Captured by foreign scent or estranged energy he paused. Between hallway and dormitory his focus bore into the door. Instinct urged his gaze across his shoulder. Reassured the path vacant, onward he strode rid of the feeling of watchful gaze greater than his own.   

The vision twisted as brow and jaw clenched against the discord of this man or monster on nocturnal hunt. A door slammed. My mind shattered the sound in myriad directions yet I sought the pieces of this puzzle with a fevered passion. 

“Who are you!” The shout burst cacophonic as it danced from shard to shard of memory. “Why are you here?” 

With unhallowed ferocity the voice cut back my query with his own. “Why are you here!” 

The invitation from the cottage scrolled before me as bulwark against this contentious assault. The thundered utterance crashed against the missive to whither at the shield of damask. 

“I am welcome here.” The walls of black roses embossed my words with strength. 

The affirmation claimed the fear that might yet linger from the vision of the dark cloaked man. 

When no retort assailed my assertion my resolve should then have been unrefuted. I was allotted a breath before the same cold hands from the cottage vision rendered asunder the paper walls of my sanctuary. Parchment fell to petals as black bled to ruddy hue. The rain of red flora again assailed my visions, this though with more violence. Each razor edged tear painted crimson gashes upon fabric and flesh. The riding dress of dense tweed fell to ribbons leaving my skin defenseless. Instinctive modesty driven initial reaction drew limbs to fetal coil before pride or hubris spread my stance.   

Word nor letter meant anything to lord of Yarrow Hart, judge of Hadowen, and executioner of false succession. 

Against this affliction of supplication I would not bow. It was a dream. I counseled my sleeping psyche. A dream that slit and sliced, that cracked and cleaved. I watched the petals of my own flesh tumble into the void as one great hand clasped my grey green stem. Roots hung ragged torn from the safety of familiar soil. Head and bloom plucked barren by accompanied titan fingers birthed by the vastness to which I floated.  

Blood was tested at Yarrow Hart, for virtue, vitality, and viscosity. I would be tested if I stayed. This black fancy left no doubt. 

Petals plucked, roots yet seeking purchase to my captor’s flesh, into its grip I succumbed. The pulse of gulping tendrils thrummed new life to quicken through the crushed and twisted stem. Drawing from the old to revitalize my bloom. Thorns, strong and straight, honed as blades pressed between sinew and bones, free through papered flesh. From the slough peeled from my skull silken petals renewed my youthful visage. It yet cocooned to suffocating bud as still my roots tapped sanguine sustenance from my captor’s veins. I was at once victor and damsel as breath awaited efflorescence. 

“Resilience is the rose in the garden of mortality.” 

The words split the suffocating bud to collar my upturned face in crimson petals. Though my eyes stared into my imprisoning void, no face appeared as the owner of the crushing hands. At once I was aware the hands had fallen away to become instead the earth from which my roots now drew nourishment. It was only at this that I enlightened to the manifestation of captivity renewed. 

I was but one bloom in an ocean of red. No feature to discern from the next and as this conformity came to nest against rising anxiety the army of blooms lolled in my direction to reveal my face reflected ad infinitum.