May Day

This is a strange little story born from a desire to write something dark and too many fairytales. I have yet appeased my need for very dark, vaguely distrubing things. Expect more from me in the future ;)

I.

There is a girl in the tower.

She has been there for a long time, before even my grandfather was born, locked away behind a cage of thorns and frozen in her endless sleep. Mama used to tell my brother and I stories about her when we were very small. She told us that the girl was a princess, cursed by a witch to sleep for all of eternity. There were a thousand stories about her, all of them as true as the first. Kelsey Bingham at school said she was a ghost. David McCabe said she was a vampire.

            That morning, none of it mattered. We congregated in the church, squeezing into the pews and pushing against the walls. It smelled like burning flowers and sorrow. Mama smiled at me, one arm wrapped too tightly around my shoulders. She smiled, but her eyes were empty. Dad clapped me on the back. He stared at Mama, at the window, the wall, anywhere but my face. Cecily smacked a childish kiss against my cheek, hot and stick. My fingers itched to wipe it away.

            Then the reverend was calling for us. Lucas waded through the crowd, his fingers tight around my wrist. They parted for us, sliding on the waxed floor as they tried to get away. They did not need to be afraid. Death was not a contagious thing. I hated them for it.

Hayley did not move. She stepped in front of Lucas and refused to move, her face all set in hard lines of determination. “Move, Smith.” My brother said through clenched teeth. His hand tightened, crushing my bones together. My skin tingled and stung with the loss of blood.

“No,” she said simply. I met her eyes over Lucas’ shoulder and she sadly smiled at me. When she stepped around him, my brother did not stop her. She clasped her hands and rested them against the nape of my neck, rested our foreheads together. I tried hard to memorize every detail of her face: her brown eyes, the freckles on her cheeks, the curve of her lips. “Love you,” she whispered, so, so quietly. I closed my eyes and let her take me somewhere far away.

“Jamie.” Lucas said sharply, tugging me away. “Come on.” Hayley let me go and her arms fall loosely to her sides. I wished she wouldn’t. I wished she would hold onto me forever.

My brother led me to the front of the church where the other boys stood. Some stared blankly at the floor, their hands fisted at their sides. Some trembled like birds. David McCabe grinned triumphantly at me, as if he was afraid of nothing. When his arm brushed against mine I imagined his carelessness imprinting itself into me, melting away my fear. I needed his fearlessness now.

It was May Day, and so one of us was going to disappear.

II. 

There is a girl in the tower.

For as long as anyone could remember the entire town of Daren squeezed into the church on the first of May, dressed in red. The reverend burned roses and thyme at the altar until the air stung with smoke and smelled like decay. He sang softly in a language that twisted and hissed around his tongue. Slowly, one by one the boys came to the altar. He split the skin of their palms with a dagger shaped like a cross. On my father’s hands, I could not tell where the lines ended and the scars began.

The dagger did not hurt. I watched in awe as bright blood welled up and spilled over my skin, dripped down my wrist onto the pyre. The flame hissed, sputtered smoke in wisps. Then went out. The rose was withered and cracked beneath the ash, charred grey and brown. Only the very edges still had color, and they were as red as my blood.

When the reverend stopped singing and took my wrist with cold fingers, raising my fist in the air, I didn’t cry. I didn’t screamed when Lucas bowed his head and Hayley pressed her lips together to keep the tears from spilling over. I didn’t run when Mama buried her face against Dad’s shoulder. I was completely numb.

Every year, one boy is chosen from the congregation to go to the girl in the tower.

Every year, one boy leaves and never comes back.

III.

They opened the fence around the tower before the sun was up. The sky was stained pink and orange around the edges and I stood close to the fence, gripping the chain link in trembling hands. Hayley curled her fingers around mine. “Don’t you die on me, Jamie,” she said. Her voice was steady, but I saw the tears in her eyes. “Tomorrow morning you’re coming right back, alright? Alright?”

“Yeah,” I said. My voice was threadbare. She kisses her fingers and pushed them through the fence to my lips. “Love you,” I pressed the words into her skin so she would always, always know.

“I love you, too.” She told me. The reverend put his hand on her shoulder and led her away. I watched them, the shaking tilt of her shoulders as she cried and the curl of hair, everything precious.

            Lucas was there. He came up to the fence, stood with both hands in his pockets and a sense of desperate urgency. “I’m sorry,” he told me in the softest voice I had ever heard him use. “I’m so sorry, Jamie.”

            “For what?” I said, scuffing my shoe in the dirt. I could feel the tower behind me; beckoning in a voice only I could hear. It made my skin prickle and my body trembled like a hummingbird.

            Lucas rubbed the back of his neck and squinted into the sun. “’Cause it should have been me. But it wasn’t. It was you. It should never have been you.”

            “Well, it is. There isn’t anything to do about it.” My brother bowed his head, and I couldn’t help but think that this was goodbye. “I-I have to go now,” I told him.

            “I’m sorry.” He said again.

            “Don’t be. Maybe I’ll bring her back and then you’ll all have to bow and scrape at my feet.” I tried too hard to laugh and it fell strangled and twisted into the air.

            “Come back.” Lucas told me. His hands were fisted tight at his sides, the knuckles white. “Just come back.” I nodded and turned away toward the tower. It cut into the sky like a black knife, surrounded by a forest of thorns. I closed my eyes, remembered the touch of Hayley’s lips and something broken on my brother’s face.

            When I pushed aside the first twisted branches, I was not afraid.

            The thorns covered the sky. They blocked the sun, curled and twisted around me like lives things. My clothes hung off me in strips, my skin cut in thin lines of red. I had more lines on my palms then my father now, more tears on my face then Hayley and more goodbyes on my lips then Lucas.

            But then I stumbled from the forest of thorns, farther along then some boys had gone, and there was a door, the rotting wood sagging and damp when I pushed passed it. Steps spiraled above me into the darkness. The air was still and thick with dust. I coughed into my arm. It hurt my throat. I held my sleeve over my mouth. The spindly iron creaked beneath my feet, rust leaving copper marks on my skin. My hand slid against the wall. I tried to curl my fingers into the rough stone but it only scraped my fingertips; if the stairs gave way, there would be nothing for me to hold to. I shivered, hugged myself so tight I could pretend there was someone behind me.

            When I thought that the stairs had to go on forever, they ended.

            The room was round, impossibly big. White clothes lay in tatters on the floor. There was a bed beneath the single dirt smeared window, surrounded by threadbare curtains. There was a girl in that bed. Her hair was dark blonde, and so long it curled across the floor in thick strands like living things. Her skin was tight and pale as a ghost.

            Carefully, I went to her. She was beautiful, in the way that forbidden things are beautiful. I touched her face, tracing her cheekbone with my thumb. Her skin was dry and as cold as the dead. Something inside of me trembled at the feel of it.

            I leaned down on my elbows and kissed her on the mouth.

            I was not as strong as Lucas, not as brave as David McCabe, not as good as my father. I couldn’t save her from her endless sleep. I couldn’t love her like I loved Hayley. This was all I had to give: my lips against hers like she was something now instead of something that had been.

            She opened her eyes, and I hoped it would be enough. 

VI.

There is a girl in the tower.

Every year on May Day, one boy is sent to appease her. Every year, one boy leaves and he never comes back. She takes them away, disappears them off of the face of the planet, because they never have what she wants.

She wants to be loved.

And she’ll do anything to get it.