Originally published in Byzarium, January 2008
***
I woke from nothing. No dreams had stirred me. I had been a hundred years in darkness. I was a stone, waiting roundly. Blank.
I thought, Perhaps it is all over.
(When the sun was high I used to stand in the garden, toss a little golden ball to watch it shine. I played for hours that way.
It is for the best I pricked my finger.)
The keep was suspended, spider-webs gleaming in the open mouths of the half-dead. The vines had covered everything. There was no light left. I thought, Perhaps the sun has gone out, and despaired.
The table was still set for a feast, the plates buried in dust. I slid a knife from the bones of the boar. I had never touched a blade before; it was my first sharp edge.
The gatekeeper barred the way; he was trapped in the gears of the drawbridge ropes, melting into the machine.
The knife leapt in my hand.
When his arm was severed he fell without a sound, floated on the brackish water from a hundred rainy summers. The water swam into his mouth.
The gates opened for me and I clambered out across the bridge. I had to know what had happened to the sun.
“So the walls held you?”
They’ll ask. They must ask. They need to know it was a prison that drove me mad. They must have something to tell one another.
“So the walls held you?”
The knife held me.
I stood barefoot on the bank and watched the morning burn across a foreign kingdom, knowing anyone who has called me beautiful has lied.
The first sun after a hundred years is beautiful.
(The little golden ball has fallen to the robbers now, I think. It was quite valuable. I kissed my father on the cheek when he gave it to me. His gifts were always round.)
I could not look away. I needed the light.
There are no dreams, I knew then. The sun is the only living thing.
When it was too beautiful to bear I closed my eyes again.
The knife held me.
The scars under my brows are sharp and raised, like the bones of a boar. I do not miss anything.
My eyes were closed a hundred years; I am used to the dark.
END
