The carriage creaks and tumbles along the worn path, it’s loose wheels rolling over various objects and sending Neve reeling to one side of the vehicle or the other. She had drawn the curtains of the little window in the carriage door when it had gotten dark, the spindling silhouettes of the trees along each side of the road appearing too much like shadowy figures running alongside the carriage for her to be comfortable.
Neve’s fingers clench the swathes of fabric that overflow from her waist and pool at her feet on the floor of the carriage. The vehicle veers dangerously to one side, and she presses a fist covered in lace gloves into her mouth to prevent any involuntary shrieks from falling from her lips. She hasn’t heard from the driver in over an hour, and Neve is almost sure that they have gone off path. The carriage increases in speed, the sound of the rain pouring in sheets outside drowning out the near-constant galloping of hooves against the ground.
The lightning splits the sky into two, a jagged line of light ripping the dark purple into two halves. Neve clenches her jaw, her chest heaving for breath from where it is strapped firmly into a restricting corset. She counts to five. Thunder shakes the earth, and Neve lets out the breath that’s been stuck in her throat.
She sits like that for what must be another half hour when the carriage careens to the left with a sickening lurch that sends Neve flying to the other side. She lets out a yelp of surprise, clutching at the only available handhold -- the curtains -- as the vehicle teeters on the left wheels, gravity doing the rest of the work and pulling it the rest of the way down.
Neve shuts her eyes and braces for the impact, her teeth chattering and shoulder aching from where it is pressed up against the inner carriage door.
When she opens her eyes again, she’s drenched. The metallic stench of blood quickly wafts by her nose, causing her stomach to feebly protest as bile rises up her throat. Neve’s face has been pushed into the wet earth, and she spits it out of her mouth as she slowly sits up. The carriage has been turned on its side, wheels still rotating in the wind, just barely remaining on the spokes.
The bottom of her white dress is covered in a dark, seeping liquid. Neve looks away, firmly telling herself that it’s the mud and nothing else. She manages to stand, quickly realizing one of her ankles is badly mangled. Neve can’t get a good look at it in the dark, but her stomach turns abruptly when she sees that her foot is bent almost completely perpendicular to the rest of her leg. There’s a glint of white poking out from the mess of torn skin and seeping muscle. Neve bends over at the waist at the sight of it, spewing whatever had been left in her stomach into the mud.
She begins to feel a sense of dread wash over her as the sky continues to upend itself around her. The shocking pain from her ankle is the only thing she can feel, her mind giving up all other thoughts. It shoots up her leg like a thousand needles piercing into her skin at once and then it snags and burns and pulls like a knife being twisted into her mangled skin and bones. The unbearable agony of it clouds her senses, the rain and the sound of her heart hammering in her chest synchronized like a dreadful chant inside of her. For a second, she thinks of lying down and giving herself over to the pain, to let it take control.
The ground underneath her is warm and wet, the mud seeping into her skin in a motherly embrace. It’s a welcoming contrast to the frigid rain that pounds at her, sending shivers crawling all over her body like hundreds of little beady-eyed creatures. When Neve eventually manages to lift her head, her drenched hair weighs her back down. It pulls at her, as if telling her she shouldn’t get up. She should stay right there. Close her eyes. Let the ground take her within.
The wind howls at her in defiance. It screams at her to move, to leave from this place. Something else joins in the howling in the distance, soft at first but slowly getting closer. It propels her into a sitting position and immediately her broken ankle throbs agonizingly at the sudden movement. Neve glances around, blinking the rain out of her eyes.
The horses are nowhere to be seen. The body of her carriage driver lies on the wet ground next to the fallen carriage. His eyes remain wide open, his skin grey and peeling horribly down his face. He’s been dead for a while.
She allows herself to crumple back to the ground for a second and then sits up again, pushing up against the ground until she’s crouched on the wet grass, her thigh trembling as it holds all of her weight off her injured foot. Neve can’t bear to think about standing up, but she manages to do so anyway, with the help of a low hanging branch over her head and adrenaline swirling through what blood is left inside of her.
Gasping for breath, Neve throws her head back in exhaustion, feeling the rain pelting her from up above. When she swings her head back down, she notices a small light in the distant darkness amidst the black spots infiltrating her limited vision.
Energy renewed with the mere idea of shelter, warmth, food and some way to take the pain away, Neve hobbles forward. She uses the trees along the side of the road for support, but at times she resorts to dragging herself forward on all fours. In all her agony, Neve forgets to pray that she be spared from the fatal strike of lighting.
The light begins to get brighter and brighter, the looming structure she had seen earlier soon revealing itself to be a glorious Gothic castle. It’s stone walls are covered in thick and dark strings of crawling ivy. The thicket that surrounded the structure is overgrown and has clearly remained that way for years, possibly decades. Neve’s exhausted mind is cast back to the fairytale of the sleeping princess and her castle surrounded by a forest of dangers for her prince to battle.
The light that she had spotted from a distance shines from within a thin window at the top right corner of the castle. The sight of something other than darkness spurs Neve on, and she forgets about the rest of the tale.
She arrives at the door, her foot barely hanging on to the rest of her body by this point and her dress torn to shreds from her dragging herself along the road. Neve raises a hand to knock at the large wooden door, her fingers broken and bloody, trembling like a leaf in the wind.
The door swings open inwards of its own accord. Neve startles backwards at the sudden movement, nearly taking a tumble. She thinks there’s a voice in the back of her mind, buried so deep inside of her underneath the agony and the exhaustion, telling her to step away from the door. It tells her to run. Run, even if there’s only bone left at the end of her ankle, even if she barely makes it three steps away. Her mind swims with bewilderment and apprehension, but the thought of someone inside, maybe someone who could help her, beckons her forward.
She shuffles forward, leaning heavily on the stone interior of the castle wall. She drags her hands over the smooth surface of the wall, feeling slightly grounded at having something solid beneath her fingertips.
Neve jolts when a dim light turns on from overhead. She looks up sharply, breath catching in her chest to see a singular wispy flame alight within a chandelier above her head. One by one, each candle is lit on its own, slowly illuminating the dark area. Neve finds herself mesmerized by the dancing reflections of the flames on the crystals.
She stands in a vast foyer, with a floor made of marble, a winding staircase leading up, up, up, the railings made of fine gold and steps inlaid with delicate velvet. Neve limps towards the stairs when a light turns on in the room directly to her left. She is unwanted upstairs, she quickly realizes.
Neve barely resists to get on her hands and knees and crawl over to the next room, but the morsel of sense that remains somewhat alert in her mind refuses to let her abide by her bodily needs lest there be company. There was the light upstairs, after all. She leans against the tall wooden doors that are half-opened and they slowly move inwards, revealing a massive dining hall. A long, narrow table with a rectangular piece of white cloth running lengthwise down the centre with trays of whole chickens, boats of gravy the size of her arm, cakes taller than her entire torso and platters of roasted vegetables greet Neve as she steps inside.
A singular plate filled with food from the table sits in front of a chair. Next to it is a set of silver utensils and a neatly folded napkin; a table set for one. She doesn’t need further invitation. Neve collapses into the chair, foregoing the utensils to inhale the food with only her filthy hands to shove each piece of food into her mouth. When she’s done, she sits back in the chair, the slow drag of sleep pulling at her.
The lights in the foyer turn on again, and Neve somehow knows it’s for her. She’s meant to follow it. That small part of her mind makes itself known once again, this time energized and dragging its heels in as she unsteadily lifts herself up from the chair and slowly shuffles back into the lit foyer, nails scratching along the walls as she leans her weight against it. Neve resolutely ignores the voice in her mind in favour of shivering with vigour in her drenched clothes.
The light at the very top of the staircase turns on, and Neve takes it as her cue to go up. She prepares herself to take the stairs at a crawl, letting go of the wall to bend forward onto her hands and knees. When her ruined ankle brushes against the first step, Neve grits her teeth against the wave of agony that she is sure to crash over her. But she feels nothing. She drags herself onto the next step, her mind going blissfully quiet. With each step, she begins to place more of her weight on her foot. It must be a miracle, it must be. By the time she reaches the topmost step, she doesn’t even feel a lick of pain. When she looks down at her foot, it looks as it always has, bones back inside of her skin, muscles cradling them in position, and skin knit back in one piece over it all. Neve rolls her ankle, marvelling at the ease of it.
The voice returns to her head, this time more desperate than ever. It tells her that she cannot go on. Her heart hammers in her chest in response, almost as if her mind and her heart are working in tandem, both of them shouting at Neve to get the hell out of this place while she still can. But she walks on, now on both feet.
The lights continue switching on and off, leading her through the winding stone hallways, turning one way and then another. Neve finds herself in a bathroom on one occasion, a brand new white dress identical to her ruined one before her journey hangs on the inside of the door. The claw-footed bathtub is filled with water already, and the room is filled with the calming scent of vanilla. The wall above the sink where a mirror should be is empty, four identical nails sprouting out at each corner.
Neve strips off her filthy clothes and climbs into the bath, noting with a fleeting thought that there is no wound on her skin. She climbs into the warm water, sending the black petals of dahlias, her favourite flower gently floating away from her. Neve lets her body rest, the water coating her skin like the memory of her mother’s warm blanket. She nearly falls asleep like that, but all of a sudden, the light in the hallway switches on again. At first, she thinks she can ignore it for a moment. She’s made it so far, she just wants to close her eyes for a while. But the lights get more insistent, blinking faster and faster, flames in their candles flashing as they are lit and then smothered in quick succession. It wants her to follow.
Neve lifts herself out of the tub, dries herself off and slides on the new dress, wishing she could catch a glimpse of herself in a mirror. The fabric feels like heaven against her newly washed skin, draped over her like liquid. Smoothing her clean, mended hands down the sides of her dress, Neve slowly walks out into the hallway. She rests her hand against the cool, stone wall, dragging it along the surface as she follows the blinking lights. The bath has calmed the sensible portion of her mind, and it has retreated to a deep, dark place where it lays in unrest.
All of a sudden, the light in the hallway turns off. Neve’s fingers curl into a fist where they rest against the wall of the castle. She turns, sees a door behind her cracked open, bathing the dark corridor with a soft beam of light.
Neve is sure that is the light she had seen in the window. With a blinding smile of relief, Neve bounds towards the door, her feet light against the cold floor as she runs like her life has never depended more on her moving. Her uninjured hand brushes against the wall, the friction causing her skin to warm as she goes faster and faster.
She reaches the part of the hallway where the light bleeds out of the doorway. Neve inches one foot inside the lit part of the floor, pulling it back instantly to herself, like a child. The light comes out in swathes; it’s an invitation. For her. Neve, it says.
Neve. Neve. Neve.
Neve.
My love. You’re finally here. You’ve made it at last.
It sounds just like her mother. Neve opens her mouth to call out, to ask where she is. How did her mother manage to come so far?
It’s been so many years since she saw her last.
Neve forgets that she last saw her when she had watched her body being lowered into the ground.
Neve. You’ve found me. Come here, Neve. Come to mother.
She opens the door.
Shaki Sutharsan (she/her) is a nineteen-year-old, Tamil, Canadian writer based in Toronto, Ontario. She is the Assistant Editor of the Kiwi Collective and contributes to her blog, Kutti Corner. Currently, she attends Ryerson University where she is studying Journalism.