Quickly, sleep came over her, a slight snore fluttering the bangs that fell in front of her eyes. Elle fell into a dream.
Walking along a small white stone pathway in the rose garden behind the mansion, she heard someone calling her name. Elle spun, suddenly encumbered by a large gown just like the one she was forced to wear at her coming out party. The pink tulle of the skirt blended with the pink roses in the background.
“Elle.”
Elle started walking towards the farther out gardens, passing under a white gate. She heard the twittering of many birds around her, and they seemed to be egging her on.
“Keep going!” They sang. “Keep going!” Elle felt a heavy dread set on her heart, and reached for the revolver by her side, but somehow could only graze her fingers on it through all the tulle.
“How odd.” She thought.
“Elle.” A voice called again, stronger.
“Yes, I’m coming.” She replied and passed through some bushes.
“Elle, you must hurry.” The voice said. Elle began to run.
“Elle.. He’s gone now.” Elle suddenly recognized the voice. It was her mother’s.
“Mother?” She called. “Mother are you there? Who’s gone?”
“He shouldn’t have messed in with our business.” Her mother’s voice said. “Now I have to make him disappear.”
“Mother? Make who disappear?”
“Your father was so proud when he was asked to lead forces in the Army.”
Elle’s forehead broke out in a cold sweat as she ran down the garden path, her dress being ripped and torn as she passed roses and bushes.
“Father? In the Army?”
“But then he, he had to ruin it all. The common filth.” Elle suddenly came to a large stone circle, where a body was laying on the ground.
“Wha-?”
Her mother’s voice was even louder now. “How could he start a resistance in this village?! Here, where we took the stupid orphan in, after we clothed and fed him. After we taught him to work, after his father died we could have turned him into the poor house! But no! I always said your father was too soft.”
The colors around Elle began to spin and blur around her as she slowly moved towards the body in the circle. The muddy hem of her dress dragged in a red puddle as she stepped forward.
“..No..” She moaned.
Gregor’s body was laying in the circle, his wide blue eyes staring straight above him, glossy.
Elle heard her mother’s voice again. “And when I found out he was trying to woo you, into poverty, into a life of filth and nothingness. I knew what had to be done to the filthy little ingrate.”
“Gregor.. They didn’t..”
Elle felt the familiar grasp of her mother’s long cold fingers, and turned to see the disdainful look on her mother’s cold face. But there was something wrong about her. Her mother usually had bright green eyes, but now they were a solid black. No whites were showing. She looked like a sinister doll.
“You.. Killed..?” Elle asked, afraid to know the truth.
The doll-mother replied. “I did what had to be done. And now you’ve ran away and broke my heart. Your father was so displeased. With his new contacts in the military though. We should be able to find you.” A cruel smile teased the lips of the doll mother. “We’ve missed you so..”
Elle’s mother took her hand from her shoulder and as if in slow motion, put it on Elle’s neck. “Being ungrateful is so unladylike.” Long cold fingers clamped around Elle’s throat, suffocating her. Tears mingled with the cold sweat, and she watched in horror as her mother’s faced changed. It became a gruesome smile, and a small trickle of blood ran from her lips.
The doll mother laughed, and said. “You… will… learn… to be... GRATEFUL!”
Elle woke again in her tent, her back drenched in sweat, sobbing and gasping for air.
“It was only a nightmare.” She said. “Only a stupid dream. Gregor’s death was an accident. Nothing more.” But somewhere in the back of her mind, she couldn’t shake the feeling that that wasn’t the whole story.
Elle wiped her face on her blanket and sat up, finding suddenly that the sound of the rain wasn’t comforting anymore, and she no longer wanted to be alone. She closed her eyes tight and wished silently for a companion, but none sprang out of the ground.
“Perhaps I should move to somewhere less secluded.” She thought, but moving around was hard in these uncertain times, and she could not risk being dragged into prison or even worse, taken back to her parents.
Elle rubbed her forehead and got out of bed, knowing that sleep would be no where near her now. She grabbed her sword and began to sharpen it, if only to ease her mind. The thought of her parents having Gregor killed seemed ludicrous, but she could not deny it altogether.
The thought made her sick to her stomach.
