Post by Thunderstar~Moonheart on Jul 22, 2007 12:32:27 GMT -5
Kk, well Barnes and Noble is having a short story contest, so I'm posting a story here that I wrote in English last year...yeah. I'm thinking of entering it, we'll see. Maybe I'll write something else.
But here it is.
Riley L. Dawson
“Threnody”
It was they Year of our Lord 1507. The air was thick with plague and my city, the beautiful Vanezi, was but a shadow of her former self. Witchcraft was the fashionable crime and many a person, noble and peasant alike, would sneak to the forest during a full moon and dance a volta or consult with a strega. My family moved out to our country home to avoid the body-cluttered streets of the city. I was seventeen, and would have been long married, but as an alternative I sit in this moldy cell, condemned to die at twenty-five as a result of my actions these eight years past, writing my memoirs in my mind, My story, like so many others, will soon be lost in the sea of time. Soon, nobody will remember the story of Elena d’Anele, the most fantastic with ever to walk this earth.
I grew up with the name of Maria. I had six siblings, though my childhood was not a difficult one. I had everything I wanted: gowns, books, treats, trinkets. My sisters, Petronella, Eva, Maddalena, and Donata, were not as troublesome as other children. My brothers, Piero and Gioco, were haughty and ambitious and, therefore, never around. Piero spent his days with his friends in the pleasure district- as the second son he was not concerned with his reputation. Gioco, soon to be responsible for the family’s welfare, spent his time with his tutor. We were an altogether happy family, but the day that I turned seventeen, all began to go wrong.
I had been feeling ill the whole week, and by my birthday I was in no mood to celebrate. My favorite sister, Petronella, woke me early in the morning with a broad smile on her face. By sunset, she was dead of the plague. The next day, my mother followed, and three days after my seventeenth birthday, I was an orphan. Gioco decided to move the rest of us out to our country home as soon as our dead were taken care of. By the end of the week, the six of us- my remaining siblings and I- were settled into the country manor.
I took to walking the paths throughout the forest near the house, no longer interested in books or in talking to my sisters. One day, about a month after the move, I came upon a strange stone in the path. It had a hole through its center and strange carvings around it:
Some sort of ancient runes, I thought, and thinking to look closer at it later, I picked it up to put it into a pocket and it began to feel warm. Stunned, I dropped it. The stone began to spin, gathering speed ad it went round and round. After a moment it stopped spinning and shot off into the underbrush of its own accord. As if this was a completely normal occurrence, I followed it. I didn’t catch sight of it again until I had gone about twenty meters from the path, into a small clearing dotted about with white mushrooms and clumps of yellow-flowered St. John’s wort. It was a strange place, perfectly circular with no trees in its interior and a strange energy in the air. I felt terribly excited as I walked toward the middle of the clearing and came upon a strange stone for the second time in as many minutes, this one similar to the first but this time engraved with legible words, seven of them in a circle around the hole in the stone: Inanna, Ekstasis, Mana, Theban, Malachim, Robatian, Enochian. Though I had never seen the words before, understood their meanings: Appear, Remain, Destroy, Construct, Submit, Obey, Begone. Power radiated from the strange words and I was afraid to touch them. I began to turn away, afraid of what I had found, and saw that a circle of strange women had appeared around the clearing. They all wore robes of white- white for birth, white for purity. The circle grew smaller as the women stepped forward until they made a ring around me, as if playing a children’s game. Strangely, I was no longer afraid. The women sat me down on the large stone as if I were a small child and anointed my head with oil. They then knelt before me murmuring praises. I felt as if it were both the most scandalous and most sacred thing at the same time, as if this was exactly where I was supposed to be. The oldest of the women stood and placed her hands on my head. She looked about my late mother’s age, yet I had a strange feeling that I was her superior. She began to speak, a strange rite previously unkown to me:
‘Blessed be thy feet, that have brought thee in these ways,
Blessed be thy knees, that shall kneel at the sacred altar.
Blessed be thy womb, the fount of life, without which we would not be.
Blessed be thy lips, which shall utter the sacred names: Inanna, Ekstasis, Mana, Theban, Malachim, Robatian, Enochian.’
All of the women then stood and murmured ‘Blessed be’ befor walking away. The youngest placed the stone I had found on the path what seemed like a year ago at my feet. I looked down and discovered that the strange runes were now legible:
At that moment, in my heart I knew my name to be Elena- Helen- not Maria. I picked up the still-warm stone and stood slowly. I could feel immense power coursing through my veins. Almost subconsciously, I pointed a finger at a mushroom and murmured, ‘Mana’. Destroy. The mushroom burst into flame instantaneously. I fell on the ground in shock. Trembling, I looked at my hands. They seemed no different than they had that morning. Horrified, I got to my feet and ran back to the summer home, a world comforting and familiar.
Throughout the next year, I stubbornly tried to forget my experience in the woods. I did not stray far from the house and hid the strange stone under a loose floorboard in my bedchamber. The name in my heart, Elena, I could not forget no matter how much I tried. The power in my blood did not fade. As time passed, I came to realize that it would not; it was part of me now. I began to feel enormous, powerful, superior. I stopped praying and attending Mass- after a certain point it was physically painful for me to be in a holy place. I ignored my brothers’ scoldings and the pleas of my sisters, begging would I please be normal again. In time, they began to ignore me too. By my twentieth birthday, we had not spoken to each other for nearly eighteen months. I stopped attending meals- I no longer had an appetite, yet my weight did not change. It was as if I was living off my own thoughts an dnothing more. I holed myself up in my chamber and did not leave it for anything- as I no longer ate or drank, I no longer needed to relieve myself.
There, in my chamber, I resisted. I read to myself, I sang, I wrote poetry, anything to get rid of the strange and frightening thoughts in my head- thoughts of cutting, killing, controlling. I did not want this power, and yet it possessed me. There were times that I would wake up with dark stains on my hands and clothing, having no idea how they got there. The more I tried to control my mind, the more I realized there was no saving me. Eventually, I let the power take me over. I was tired of fighting. I became obsessed with the idea of control. I took a strange delight in using my powers to force animals outside my window obey my every whim. I was especially drawn to black cats. Soon I had a brace of sable-furred felines that I kept around to do my bidding. I called them Thought and Memory. I spent three years using the beasts for various tasks, learning how to use my powers. On my twenty-third birthday, I knew I was ready. I went back to the clearing after blurring the memories of those who knew and remembered my birth name and therefore could use it against me. I left them, beautifully ignorant, in the dark house without a second thought.
The women were waiting for me. I now recognized each of them and looked inside their minds for their names: Hermione, the youngest, with whom I felt a special connection; Pandora, an ignorant, curious woman; Hera, protective of the younger girls; Iris, vibrant and whimsical; Persephone, a dark beauty; Eris, sly and clever; Medea, quiet and compassionate; Diana, brave and ambitious; the sisters Aglaia- beautiful and munificent, Euphrosyne-always laughing, and Thalia-pleasant and cheerful; and finally Leda, the eldest, the one who had performed my initiation into the coven. Leda was like a mother to me, Hermione like a daughter, the rest my beloved sisters. If I chose, I could have let them in, told them my darkest secrets, my greatest ambitions. But I did not choose. However close these women may be to me, they were not my equals, nor my superiors. Nay, these were my subordinates, my minions, my slaves. They belonged to me. And they were just the beginning.
I spent the next fortnight learning about my maidens- my Valkyries, if you will. I learned their loves, their fears, their weaknesses. I sent Thought and Memory, my faithful cats, out into the world to learn what they could about it. They returned to me each night with more to report. Soon, I had enough knowledge to begin my quest. I bound the minds of all to do my bidding. I craved control and threw myself into the work with zeal. I built walls around their minds, stripped them of independent thought. But I overlooked one of my own. Diana, the ambitious, broke free of my chains. She fed me with tales of my greatness, inflated my confidence, made me reckless. All the while she was freeing the rest of my Valkyries, slowly pulling them out of my control. When they were all free, Diana led them all to believe that I was a modern-day Hades, a demon, and that my cats were succubi come to prey on them all. Within two months of my coming to power, I was destroyed. They- my Valkyries- finished my work, put all of humankind under their spell, including me. I was thrown into this old monastery almost tow years ago. It took them half that time to decide what to do with me, the harpies. Tomorrow, on my twenty-fifth birthday, I will be burned to death at the stake. It is a death fit for one such as me, they say, those who tore me down only to finish the evil I had begun. It is how it always has been, how it is, how it always will be. It is the way of the world, and with the last vestiges of my power, I have set it to be so forevermore, so that others shall suffer as I have. All that is left now is to compose my funeral lament, my threnody. The threnody of a witch. Blessed be.
there you have it. I thought the mood was appropriate for the contest, seeing as the prize is a book about vampires.
But here it is.
Riley L. Dawson
“Threnody”
It was they Year of our Lord 1507. The air was thick with plague and my city, the beautiful Vanezi, was but a shadow of her former self. Witchcraft was the fashionable crime and many a person, noble and peasant alike, would sneak to the forest during a full moon and dance a volta or consult with a strega. My family moved out to our country home to avoid the body-cluttered streets of the city. I was seventeen, and would have been long married, but as an alternative I sit in this moldy cell, condemned to die at twenty-five as a result of my actions these eight years past, writing my memoirs in my mind, My story, like so many others, will soon be lost in the sea of time. Soon, nobody will remember the story of Elena d’Anele, the most fantastic with ever to walk this earth.
I grew up with the name of Maria. I had six siblings, though my childhood was not a difficult one. I had everything I wanted: gowns, books, treats, trinkets. My sisters, Petronella, Eva, Maddalena, and Donata, were not as troublesome as other children. My brothers, Piero and Gioco, were haughty and ambitious and, therefore, never around. Piero spent his days with his friends in the pleasure district- as the second son he was not concerned with his reputation. Gioco, soon to be responsible for the family’s welfare, spent his time with his tutor. We were an altogether happy family, but the day that I turned seventeen, all began to go wrong.
I had been feeling ill the whole week, and by my birthday I was in no mood to celebrate. My favorite sister, Petronella, woke me early in the morning with a broad smile on her face. By sunset, she was dead of the plague. The next day, my mother followed, and three days after my seventeenth birthday, I was an orphan. Gioco decided to move the rest of us out to our country home as soon as our dead were taken care of. By the end of the week, the six of us- my remaining siblings and I- were settled into the country manor.
I took to walking the paths throughout the forest near the house, no longer interested in books or in talking to my sisters. One day, about a month after the move, I came upon a strange stone in the path. It had a hole through its center and strange carvings around it:
Some sort of ancient runes, I thought, and thinking to look closer at it later, I picked it up to put it into a pocket and it began to feel warm. Stunned, I dropped it. The stone began to spin, gathering speed ad it went round and round. After a moment it stopped spinning and shot off into the underbrush of its own accord. As if this was a completely normal occurrence, I followed it. I didn’t catch sight of it again until I had gone about twenty meters from the path, into a small clearing dotted about with white mushrooms and clumps of yellow-flowered St. John’s wort. It was a strange place, perfectly circular with no trees in its interior and a strange energy in the air. I felt terribly excited as I walked toward the middle of the clearing and came upon a strange stone for the second time in as many minutes, this one similar to the first but this time engraved with legible words, seven of them in a circle around the hole in the stone: Inanna, Ekstasis, Mana, Theban, Malachim, Robatian, Enochian. Though I had never seen the words before, understood their meanings: Appear, Remain, Destroy, Construct, Submit, Obey, Begone. Power radiated from the strange words and I was afraid to touch them. I began to turn away, afraid of what I had found, and saw that a circle of strange women had appeared around the clearing. They all wore robes of white- white for birth, white for purity. The circle grew smaller as the women stepped forward until they made a ring around me, as if playing a children’s game. Strangely, I was no longer afraid. The women sat me down on the large stone as if I were a small child and anointed my head with oil. They then knelt before me murmuring praises. I felt as if it were both the most scandalous and most sacred thing at the same time, as if this was exactly where I was supposed to be. The oldest of the women stood and placed her hands on my head. She looked about my late mother’s age, yet I had a strange feeling that I was her superior. She began to speak, a strange rite previously unkown to me:
‘Blessed be thy feet, that have brought thee in these ways,
Blessed be thy knees, that shall kneel at the sacred altar.
Blessed be thy womb, the fount of life, without which we would not be.
Blessed be thy lips, which shall utter the sacred names: Inanna, Ekstasis, Mana, Theban, Malachim, Robatian, Enochian.’
All of the women then stood and murmured ‘Blessed be’ befor walking away. The youngest placed the stone I had found on the path what seemed like a year ago at my feet. I looked down and discovered that the strange runes were now legible:
At that moment, in my heart I knew my name to be Elena- Helen- not Maria. I picked up the still-warm stone and stood slowly. I could feel immense power coursing through my veins. Almost subconsciously, I pointed a finger at a mushroom and murmured, ‘Mana’. Destroy. The mushroom burst into flame instantaneously. I fell on the ground in shock. Trembling, I looked at my hands. They seemed no different than they had that morning. Horrified, I got to my feet and ran back to the summer home, a world comforting and familiar.
Throughout the next year, I stubbornly tried to forget my experience in the woods. I did not stray far from the house and hid the strange stone under a loose floorboard in my bedchamber. The name in my heart, Elena, I could not forget no matter how much I tried. The power in my blood did not fade. As time passed, I came to realize that it would not; it was part of me now. I began to feel enormous, powerful, superior. I stopped praying and attending Mass- after a certain point it was physically painful for me to be in a holy place. I ignored my brothers’ scoldings and the pleas of my sisters, begging would I please be normal again. In time, they began to ignore me too. By my twentieth birthday, we had not spoken to each other for nearly eighteen months. I stopped attending meals- I no longer had an appetite, yet my weight did not change. It was as if I was living off my own thoughts an dnothing more. I holed myself up in my chamber and did not leave it for anything- as I no longer ate or drank, I no longer needed to relieve myself.
There, in my chamber, I resisted. I read to myself, I sang, I wrote poetry, anything to get rid of the strange and frightening thoughts in my head- thoughts of cutting, killing, controlling. I did not want this power, and yet it possessed me. There were times that I would wake up with dark stains on my hands and clothing, having no idea how they got there. The more I tried to control my mind, the more I realized there was no saving me. Eventually, I let the power take me over. I was tired of fighting. I became obsessed with the idea of control. I took a strange delight in using my powers to force animals outside my window obey my every whim. I was especially drawn to black cats. Soon I had a brace of sable-furred felines that I kept around to do my bidding. I called them Thought and Memory. I spent three years using the beasts for various tasks, learning how to use my powers. On my twenty-third birthday, I knew I was ready. I went back to the clearing after blurring the memories of those who knew and remembered my birth name and therefore could use it against me. I left them, beautifully ignorant, in the dark house without a second thought.
The women were waiting for me. I now recognized each of them and looked inside their minds for their names: Hermione, the youngest, with whom I felt a special connection; Pandora, an ignorant, curious woman; Hera, protective of the younger girls; Iris, vibrant and whimsical; Persephone, a dark beauty; Eris, sly and clever; Medea, quiet and compassionate; Diana, brave and ambitious; the sisters Aglaia- beautiful and munificent, Euphrosyne-always laughing, and Thalia-pleasant and cheerful; and finally Leda, the eldest, the one who had performed my initiation into the coven. Leda was like a mother to me, Hermione like a daughter, the rest my beloved sisters. If I chose, I could have let them in, told them my darkest secrets, my greatest ambitions. But I did not choose. However close these women may be to me, they were not my equals, nor my superiors. Nay, these were my subordinates, my minions, my slaves. They belonged to me. And they were just the beginning.
I spent the next fortnight learning about my maidens- my Valkyries, if you will. I learned their loves, their fears, their weaknesses. I sent Thought and Memory, my faithful cats, out into the world to learn what they could about it. They returned to me each night with more to report. Soon, I had enough knowledge to begin my quest. I bound the minds of all to do my bidding. I craved control and threw myself into the work with zeal. I built walls around their minds, stripped them of independent thought. But I overlooked one of my own. Diana, the ambitious, broke free of my chains. She fed me with tales of my greatness, inflated my confidence, made me reckless. All the while she was freeing the rest of my Valkyries, slowly pulling them out of my control. When they were all free, Diana led them all to believe that I was a modern-day Hades, a demon, and that my cats were succubi come to prey on them all. Within two months of my coming to power, I was destroyed. They- my Valkyries- finished my work, put all of humankind under their spell, including me. I was thrown into this old monastery almost tow years ago. It took them half that time to decide what to do with me, the harpies. Tomorrow, on my twenty-fifth birthday, I will be burned to death at the stake. It is a death fit for one such as me, they say, those who tore me down only to finish the evil I had begun. It is how it always has been, how it is, how it always will be. It is the way of the world, and with the last vestiges of my power, I have set it to be so forevermore, so that others shall suffer as I have. All that is left now is to compose my funeral lament, my threnody. The threnody of a witch. Blessed be.
there you have it. I thought the mood was appropriate for the contest, seeing as the prize is a book about vampires.
