Songs: Permanent -- David Cook, Unintended -- Muse  

For Kat's Contest  

---  

Her name flooded the headlines.  

“Gondola Girl is at it again!” 

“The Masked Musician Spotted Late Last Night!”  

Like she was some sort of twisted super hero, saving little children in perambulators and helping old women cross the street? Rubbish.  

Elizabeth gathered her skirt in her hands as she hurried toward Holly. When she approached her, she peeked in both directions, making sure her father wasn’t listening in.  

“Have you heard?” she whispered, her eyes still shifting. Could Elizabeth's obsession with gossip not seize even on their trip to Italy?  

“About what, Elizabeth, dear?” Holly asked, her mind distracted. Her eyes were looking at Elizabeth, but they weren’t seeing her corn silk ringlets, her sparkling sapphire eyes, her thin waist and bust. They were seeing the water lapping against the sides of the gondola softly, the silhouette of the houses by the alleys of water. Elizabeth’s pink lips were moving quickly, explaining something in a hurried undertone, but she was remembering the halo of light around the lanterns, reflecting in the milky waters like faces of the dead looking back.  

“Good Lord, Holly, did you even hear a word I was saying to you?” Elizabeth’s cheeks were flushed a rosy color, dashing on her porcelain ivory skin. Holly always wished to be as beautiful as Elizabeth. No men wished to chase her, with her boring blonde hair and green eyes.  

“No,” she admitted honestly. “I’m terribly sorry. I seemed to have dreaming on my feet.”  

Elizabeth was used to Holly’s daydreaming, but it didn’t mean she tolerated it. She rolled her eyes and exhaled, shifting her weight onto her right foot.  

“I said,” she explained slowly, “that the wretched girl is at it again. Her ridiculous violin playing kept me up last night, and Daddy’s on the look out for her.”  

“He is, now?” Holly asked dully, her attention elsewhere. She was thinking of Michael, the way his fingers felt on her skin as he caressed her cheeks. Did they feel like rose petals to Elizabeth?  

“Yes,” she answered, impatiently pushing a curl out of her face. “He said if she comes by our window one more night, he’s going to point his riffle and shoot her himself.”  

“Now, now, Elizabeth, I’m sure that’s all just your father’s big mouth.”  

“Just you wait,” Elizabeth warned. “Just you watch those headlines tomorrow.”  

* * *  

The sunset was beautiful that night, a wonder of pastel pinks, fiery oranges, and brilliant crimsons. When it finally faded into a blanket of azure, freckled with the silver glimmerings of stars, Holly snuck out of her bedroom, the midnight blue silk of her skirt like wisps of moonlight in her hands. She crept on her tip-toes down the stone staircase to foyer, and with one last look behind her, she nudged the wooden door open and exited into the night.  

Holly’s dark blonde hair fell in limp waves to her waist, where the mahogany of her corset transformed into the indigo of her skirt. A red silk ribbon was tied tightly around her throat, and a brilliant masquerade mask concealed her miserable face. It was pink like Elizabeth’s cheeks and laced with gold patterns, twining and lacing together into intricate knots.  

She placed her foot gingerly into the gondola, making sure her skirt didn’t drag into the water. When she was settled in, she pulled the violin out from under her arm and pushed away with the bow.  

The water was calm, rippling around the boat gently. She thought of Michael, the way he would sail them across the lakes back home in London. He always made her smile and laugh, soaking her dresses by splashing too recklessly with the oars.  

But now Michael was gone, snatched from her grasp. When he had introduced her to Elizabeth, she’d never had thought they’d fall madly in love. Infatuated, Holly thought. That’s what they are. So caught up in each others’ presences they forget all about who established their romance.  

Holly didn’t use oars here; she let the current take her where she liked, the trail of lanterns like fireflies in the night. She closed her eyes and bowed her head as a single tear fell behind the mask.  

“This is for you, Michael,” she dedicated quietly. It was the same five words she said every night before she played.  

She held up her bow straight to the moon, and then brought it down to the violin. She began playing a slow and mysterious song, the tune almost haunting. She continued playing the gloomy melody, the only way she could vocalize her pain.  

Several people in their night-clothes stepped out onto their porches to watch. An old man in white pajamas and a night cap, all striped with turquoise blue, squinted to see Holly’s face. But no one knew who the young girl was behind the mask. To them, she was just the familiar stranger, the girl who played the violin on a gondola late at night.  

The moon hung like a glittering gem in the sky. It was as silver as Elizabeth’s wedding ring and sparkled just as bright. A memory of Holly and Michael floated into her mind. It was the two of them basking in the warmth of the sun, his gentle touch brushing a tendril of her hair away from her face.  

“Your eyes, my love,” he said drowsily, “are as bright as the stars at night. No, they’re greater than that. They shine just as the moon. Possibly brighter.”  

Holly closed her eyes as her heart clenched. How was a heart expected to beat after being shattered into dust? Was it possible?  

She remembered the day she found out. Elizabeth had come to talk to her, no doubt to tell her, but she already knew. She had seen Michael. She had witnessed the dazzle in his eye. Holly knew she didn’t matter anymore. Her imagination had been transforming reality, distorting it. She thought her words weaved together like a silky spider web, just as his did. Fantasizing that her laugh would caress his face like angel’s wings, as his did.  

And then came the evasion. Michael started to avoid her, thinking of excuses whenever she approached. He turned away whenever he caught a glimpse of her hollow, broken face, with its sunken eyes and hopeful quiver.  

Holly didn’t realize where she was going. She heard a low rumble, then a shattering. She opened her eyes and glanced up to see what was going on, and that’s when she saw Elizabeth standing on a balcony up ahead, tugging at her father’s arm, which had a shotgun pointed at the river.  

“Father, stop!” she hissed.  

“Absolutely not!” he bellowed, jerking free of her grasp. “It’s obvious someone needs to step up and take responsibility for this girl.”  

“Leave it to the police. Please, Daddy, just go back to sleep,” Elizabeth pleaded.  

"I will not sleep until this...ruckus has been seized! I have a meeting with the Italian army to prepare for, and nothing is going to be settled if this girl is riding around at night with that damn violin!"  

“What ever is going on?” said the voice, that beautiful, smooth voice that Holly knew so well.  

Michael emerged onto the stone porch, rubbing sleep from his eyes. His ink black hair was tied back in its usual ponytail, reflecting the silver orb that was the moon. One tendril, that one pesky tendril he always dragged out of his face on hot summer days, framed his angular cheekbones and pointed chin.  

“Admiral, what on earth do you think you’re doing?” he asked, his eyes widening at the sight of the gun.  

“Doing what the authorities should have done two weeks ago, when all this blasphemy started!”  

The admiral aimed the gun, pointed it straight at Holly. But she continued to play, hunched over her violin, the miserable song floating, tempting to reach out and touch Michael’s heart, the way he touched Holly’s. But he had eyes for no one but Elizabeth. His brown eyes saw no other woman that existed. She closed her eyes, the tears leaking down her cheeks.  

Boom.  

Holly heard it before she felt it. She heard Elizabeth gasp, and when she opened her eyes, she had run and buried her face in Michael’s chest. Michael was staring at her in shock, and the Admiral looked smug as he set the gun down.  

Holly dropped the violin, and it fell to the floor with a clatter. She placed a hand to where she had been hit; the place just shy of her heart. When she removed it, she caught the glimmer of scarlet dripping down her fingers. She looked back up at the balcony where it had all taken place, and the Admiral was gone, leaving Elizabeth sobbing and Michael’s face frozen in surprise.  

The end was coming soon; Holly and Michael could both feel it in the cool night air around them. The corners of Holly’s vision grew blurry, like looking through tired eyes.  

Another memory of Michael popped into her mind. Falling asleep in the dark forest, waking to see Michael smiling sleepily, a finger tracing the features on her face. The pain caused her to stumble off the seat and onto the floor next to her violin, and the gondola swayed beneath her.  

Holly could feel life slipping away. She could feel darkness threatening to close in on her, trying to detach her from the twisted world of reality she was trapped in. But there was one last thing she wanted to do before she died, and even if she had to fight off the black shadows, she was going to do it.  

Her head, propped up by the wooden seat, was angled toward Michael. She lifted a heavy hand, and though the movement felt like wading through thick mud, she pulled off the mask. When Michael saw her face, crumbled and sagging, tired from Death’s call, he let go of Elizabeth, who crumpled to the ground. He ran to the banister of the balcony, reaching his hand over.  

“No!” he screamed. “No, Holly, no!”  

As the gondola drifted on, Holly watched as he followed it, up until he ran out of ground to follow. The balcony ended, and gondola kept floating away, gliding further away from her love.  

This is it, she thought. She blinked slowly, the pain creeping up into her chest, then her shoulder, then her arm. It was steadily dispersing throughout her body, but nothing compared to the pain of her already-broken heart shattering into dust. Life, love, meaning, gone…  

I love you, she struggled to think, blackness rushing over her eyes like a thick shield. I’ll always love you, Michael. Even if you have her. You’ve always been in my heart.  

That’s when darkness reached up and took her into its clutches, and Holly finally let it pull her under.  

* * *  

Elizabeth’s prophecy had been right. The newspapers were overflowing with news of the Masked Musician’s death. The Admiral had made the call anonymously, and searches for the body turned up blank. Some people suspected she was lying at the bottom of one of the waterways, trapped in her watery grave.  

Only Michael really knew exactly who she was. The next morning, Elizabeth came out onto the balcony to find him staring blankly out at the water, both hands on the railing as if they were holding him up. She slithered her arms across his chest and hugged him.  

“I wonder where Holly is,” Elizabeth muttered idly.  

“Yes,” Michael answered robotically.  

“I have to show her that I was right. I told her my daddy would do it,” she said haughtily. Obviously, she had ignored the memories of her breakdown the night before.  

“It’s not right to boast, Elizabeth,” Michael scolded, and then returned to the house for some tea.  

That night, as Elizabeth lay sleeping by his side, Michael heard the heartbreaking melody floating in from his window. But when he rushed to the balcony, his heart beating at full force in his chest, his eager smile fluttered away. The reflection of the lanterns in the waterways stared back at him, glistening the way Holly’s eyes used to shine.