Wilted (240 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 1.33 on 7 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Crystle (View user info) at 2006-10-24 03:00:27 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
Have you ever experienced the feeling of being invisible? Being the one that is passed over - the one that just isn't seen? The forlorn flower, wilted, noticed only when brushed aside?
My sister, Bianca, and I were born on the same day but we always were polar opposites. She was everyone's favorite, the golden child with blonde curls that caught the sunlight, blue eyes that reflected the sky, a delicious smile that flashed dimples and feet that danced into the hearts of everyone that she met.
In contrast to all her brightness and light, I was dark and quiet. My black hair stubbornly refused to curl no matter what torture it was subjected to. Where my sister was golden skinned and pink cheeked, I had milk-white skin and dark brows. The only color was the startling red of my lips, the reason my father named me Rose. I was once told that my dark eyes seemed to swallow the light in the room. I was shy and hid behind my mother's skirts, rarely smiling and never at strangers.
My father was a land-owner with a small holding sufficient to provide for our needs including a handful of fields for various crops and wood-lands for hunting. He governed the nearby village, but it was fairly peaceful with no major issues. Bianca and I grew up in this sheltered existence for the most part as happy as two girls could be. Our small world was all neatly tucked into the foothills of a mountain range which provided protection from packs of renegades.
We entered our adolescent years, and the gulf between us widened. Although it may sound as if I'm bitter or that she was spoiled this isn't the case. Bianca flourished under attention. Her hair shone brighter, her eyes twinkled and sparkled, her laugh infected whoever she was with. She glowed, and the world around us was alive with her exuberance. I don't think anyone else would have recognized her when she was quiet, as she was when the two of us were alone. While she had always enjoyed being the focal point, Bianca began to prefer male attention, and with her dimples and curls she got what she wanted. She wasn't by any means demanding - she just couldn't be ignored.
In stark contrast, when brought to anyone's notice I would stutter and cringe, wishing nothing more than to somehow disappear into the floor. Awkward and gangly, I'm sure I was as painful to watch as it was to live through. My father, bless his heart, unsuccessfully tried to bring me into the light that surrounded my sister. He would ask me for an opinion or a simple question at dinner in the great hall and silence would fall. Always the deep silence as everyone would turn and look at me, waiting for my response. All those eyes would stare at me, and I could feel the gazes burning my face. My tongue would grow thick and I'd forget how to talk. I always knew the answer but knowing something and being able to say it are very different things. Bianca would squeeze my hand under the table and effortlessly distract the group with some pretty comment. At moments like that she was my savior.
There were few people I could be myself around. Bianca was my other half, my companion, and the one who listened to all my outrageous flights of fancy. There were my parents, of course, and the tutor who ruled the school room. I thrived in a world of books, and he was the doorway to that world so I trusted and loved him. Cook always had a treat for us, and a willing ear for the grand adventures I would invent for Bianca as we crouched by the fire on stormy winter days. The stable master was also subjected to my long-winded fairy tales and childish dreams, and was guilty of encouraging me.
This was all very long ago and I'm sure there were one or two others, but to be honest I don't remember any one else. Rather a limited circle but it was all I wanted, or needed. I was happiest when Bianca was in the lime-light and I was hidden in shadow, passed over.
When we were about 15, Bianca came bouncing into our room, flushed, rosy, and very excited. She had fallen in love and was eager to detail the charms of her latest fancy. Henry had ridden up on a beautiful roan stallion with a small company of men, and flashed a smile at Bianca as she passed through the yard. The romance of the moment had swept her away, and now she was pouring her heart out to me. He was from a few provinces over and had come to confer with our father over some minor land disputes. The next morning after the business was concluded, the visitors rode away.
I'm afraid I didn't pay any more attention than I usually did. After the first few dozen "eternal loves" that Bianca had lived and cried through, they all seemed to blend together for me. I didn't realize then how different this one was.
Some weeks later, Bianca came to me in tears and said that Henry had sent a letter to Father requesting permission to court her but had been denied. Never one to do things quietly, she made sure the entire household was aware that Father had forbidden it, telling her that she wasn't old enough to marry.
Bianca's disappointments usually lasted two to three days, after which she was immediately love-struck once more. After the first quiet week had passed, and then the second, it became apparent that this attachment was different. For the first time she really was truly heart-broken. Her laughter didn't reverberate in the halls, and her normally quick steps were slow and silent. She didn't smile, laugh, or sing anymore. Mother planned fetes and outings to try to shake Bianca out of her desolation, but nothing worked. New clothing was ordered, and although Bianca quietly submitted to the fittings, she didn't delight in the colors and textures of the fabrics as she always had. Even the whispered late night confidences that she and I had always shared stopped. Having never fallen in love, I was unable to understand her and so I was useless.
A month later my world turned upside down, and I learned the depths of Father's temper.
I woke that morning to find Bianca's bed empty and was wondering where she was as I readied myself for the day when I heard Father's roar. Suddenly the entire courtyard was full of clattering hoofs and rough commands as the guards and men from the village assembled.
Looking down from the window of my tower-room, I could see the sense of urgency apparent in every movement. Men were in groups, gesturing wildly and pointing at maps. Horses neighed and stamped as the grooms strapped saddles, bags, and weapons to them. Women of the household were scurrying in all directions, carrying things, stopping to gossip, throwing their hands in the air and shaking their heads. Father stormed out, with Mother behind him wringing her hands and crying. He bellowed, and the entire company of men mounted their horses and left in a great cloud of dust.
As quickly as the uproar has started, there was silence. Alone in my room, watching the events unfold, I could feel the ominous heaviness of waiting start.
Mother came to me a while later and told me that Bianca had had left a note saying that Henry had come to meet her in the night and they had stolen away together. Father had ridden off in pursuit of the pair, and so that I wouldn't have the opportunity to run away, had decreed just before leaving that I was to stay in my room until Bianca returned.
Sometimes sisters can do the cruelest things to each other.
A fortnight later, Father returned without Bianca. We were forbidden to speak her name and I was to stay in my tower, my movements limited to the few rooms there. The pain and betrayal he felt at losing Bianca colored his judgment, and he was determined to keep me insulated and safe so that he wouldn't lose me too.
I felt my life crumble. To be honest, in the beginning, I didn't mind the confinement. Without Bianca I was lost. I had needed her to show me how to act around people and what to do, to be the buffer between myself and the world. I felt as if half of my soul had gone missing. It seemed that to live without Bianca was not living. I buried myself in books, needle-work, painting, and anything else I could busy my hands with, happy on some level to be hidden away. Months passed, and as my tower rooms became filled with pillows, and the walls covered with the tapestries and paintings I made, I became numb.
I took to wandering restlessly through the tower rooms, finding nothing to enrich my days. I would sit in the window watching the changing of the seasons, the coming and going in the courtyard below me, the general movement of life, and I realized that I was being passed over. Instead of being comforted by being out of the public eye, as I always had been, I began to resent not experiencing society for myself.
One year stretched into two, and my frustration at being held captive grew. No longer allowed to have a tutor, I felt cut off entirely. While my mother said she understood, I couldn't feel she really did. She could walk free of the thick walls and feel the caress of the summer breeze and the bite of the winter wind. She could smell the earth as it warmed in the sun after a rain storm, and the fields as they ripened. She did her best to cheer me up by bringing me snippets of town gossip, but eventually that became more of a torture than a pleasure.
Her pleading on my behalf fell on deaf ears.
Father never came to see me. He was a proud man, and would not reverse his decision. It was as if he wanted to forget he had ever had children. I had never been one make him smile, and at times I was sure I was being punished for not being his golden bright Bianca. I not only reminded him of her, but also her absence, and that she had flouted his paternal authority. He had to be sure I wouldn't embarrass and hurt him in a similar manner.
I often wondered what had become of Bianca. Part of me hoped she had found the happily ever after she had been chasing, but another part of me hated her for leaving me, and although she didn't know of it, I began to resent her as the cause of my bad fortune.
More than anything, I began to want to be noticed. I had had my fill of being passed over, of being invisible to the world. I felt my existence fading into the very walls that enslaved me, and I became desperate to somehow break free. Because I had been shy and retiring, I didn't have any friends outside the walls that confined me, and everyone inside lived in Father's shadow. At first, I could think of no way out of my tower. Night after night I would dream of turning into a bird and flying out the window, over the horizon and seeing places that I'd read of.
Inside, I was dying like a castaway flower; A Rose, cut off in the prime of life, hidden from the bright sunshine and closed in darkness, wilted and forlorn.
Time has a funny way of twisting things into what they aren't, of making small things seem big and big things small. Stories are told and retold, changing because people don't understand how the extraordinary could have come about in a mundane fashion. Fantastic imaginings begin to embroider the events, and these embellishments grow with each repetition, and so magic enters the imaginations of those who hear and repeat the tale.
Left virtually alone in my tower, I thought of a way to escape. While I appeared to be working on yet another even more intricate piece of needle-work, I began in fact to make a sort of knotted-rope ladder. Hours at a time, I would sit by the window and twist together silk bits of thread pulled from the tapestries. Periodically someone would climb the steps to my room. Hearing the approaching footsteps, I would hurriedly hide the rope under my skirt. To seem more innocent, I kept a comb on the window sill, and when the maid arrived in the room, I would be gazing out, listlessly combing my waist length hair.
Even as hour seemed to follow endless hour, time passed. Two years turned to three.
I was now spending nights as well as days fashioning my salvation. I began testing the rope. Strength I tested by tying one end to the massive bed and pulling with all my might. Length I would test by attaching a kettle, which I then lowered slowly out the window in the middle of the night when no one would see.
As the rope grew slowly longer, I began to gather supplies. I would lose a boot and need a replacement, my dresses would seem to shrink overnight, and I developed quite an appetite for aged cheese, chunks of dried meats, apples and oranges. I think that perhaps I was indulged in these odd tastes because the maids and cooks had some measure of pity for me.
When I felt my knot ladder was long and strong enough, I began to practice climbing it until I could move either up the ladder or down, carrying my pack tied to my back. When I first plotted to free myself from the tower, I had thought to leave once and be done with it, but during my many hours of weaving and binding, I realized that once I was out of the tower, I would have no place to go. So I climbed up the rope, to make sure that I had a way of returning until I was ready to be free for good.
My first night out of the tower was an anxious one. I felt exposed and incredibly helpless. I knew where the village was, and walked there, feeling that at any moment, one of my father's guards would jump out from behind some shrub to drag me back. I made it to the edge of the garden of the first house, and felt an icy band of fear tighten in my chest.
I paused in the moonlight, uncertain if I should proceed into the village, or scurry back to my tower, which now seemed to have taken on a warm cozy appeal I certainly hadn't felt in years. After standing for quite some time, I realized that someone in the village might recognize me, and then I really would run the risk of being dragged back home.
I turned back away from the village, and climbed back up the rope to my room. I hid the rope, put my pack securely away, and crept into bed. I lay there, my heart pounding so loudly that I was sure everyone heard it. I cursed myself for being so naive and unprepared, and after a time, I slept.
After that, I began to ask the maids various questions about where they had visited, and what lay beyond the village, and tried to glean any information possible about the landscape beyond my view. Some nights I would climb down my rope, and explore various paths to see where they lead. When I got back to my room I would draw what I had found, or mark the places that the maids referred to on a rough map. After a few months, I had gotten to a point where I was taking long treks, trying to find a place where I could build my future and flourish.
One night, after several hours of travel I was much further into the woods than I had been on previous trips. A clearing opened, and I almost literally stumbled across a small abandoned hut. Dirty but habitable, it was what I had been searching for. Better that I had dreamed even, as it hadn't been easy to find my way to it, and I got lost several times on my way back to the tower. To my delight, while making several pilgrimages to the hut to be sure I had all that I needed, I eventually discovered that several miles past the hut was a village I could visit without fear of being recognized.
A week later, I climbed down my silken rope for the last time.
And so the first chapter of my life, the story of wilted Rose ended. I was freed from my tower, and became another person. A small cottage in the forest, plenty of woodland creatures and the occasional lone hunter, I was not captive.
...But that is another story entirely.
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