writing_shadows

The Lord of Darken Fel gazed out, across the crimson sea. Tonight, his eyes were as red as the waves, and his smile was damp with the blood he had licked off his fingers.

He sat at the prow of his ship (the ship made from gold, with silken sheets, and a jeweled statue at the prow. The ship that could sail on water or wind, with holds which could always fit one thousand treasures) with his foot resting against the woven hair of his figurehead and smiled.

"Tomorrow, my darling," he said to the ship, or maybe to the figurehead because she was the only part of the ship which could hear him, "we shall find my Lady a new treasure..."

The ship said nothing, because ship's can not talk. Even the figurehead, with her beautiful red painted lips, was silent. The Lord of Darken Fel had welded her lips shut fifty years ago.

The Lord of Darken Fel caressed the figurehead's hair gently with the toe of his boot.

"What to bring her?" he said, his eyes fixed on the skyline. "Perhaps a songbird?"

He shook his head.

"No," he said. "She has one of those already. I brought it to her when the Grey Lands were still thick with smoke and the little woman in black was on the coins. I heard its voice - its beautiful voice - in a cottage by a forest, and lured it out with a trail of golden crumbs."

He sighed, not without nostalgia.

"It was not so beautiful in person," he confided to the ship. "It had blotchy skin, and mousy hair. But its voice was superb, and when I had replaced the dull bits with crimson feathers, it looked divine.

"It sings still in my Lady's house. I fear its songs are fading. They used to be such beautiful sad songs. Now it just trills mindlessly. I will have to get a new songbird, but I think not today."

The Lord of Darken Fel glanced down, briefly, towards the figurehead of his ship, and then gently slid to a little alcove, carved into the prow of the ship, where he could gaze out at the ocean, apart from his crew. He touched the smooth gold cheek of his figurehead and continued to talk.

"I cannot get her flowers either," he said. "I've brought her those three times before, and they all just die from the cold up there. Even the singing orchid which I shaped from the singer and the flowers in her dressing room didn't last long, although my Lady loved it whilst it lived."

"Perhaps a mirror? No. I've done that before as well. I found a girl who loved her mirror too well, and placed her within in, so that whenever my Lady looked in the mirror, a beautiful face would gaze back at her.

"That was well done, I think."

The Lord of Darken Fel chewed on his lip, and for a moment looked almost insecure.

"It is hard," he confessed to his silent ship, "to constantly please a cruel and demanding Mistress. She possesses me utterly, and yet I know that if I cease to amuse her, she will cast me aside in a heartbeat. And I have run through so many ideas..."

"Dolls," he continued "do not please her. She breaks them when the mood is on her, and I loathe the waste. The lovers carved in ice were a triumph, and I believe they still stand there.

"Perhaps a light?"

The figurehead said nothing, but the Lord of Darken Fel seemed to see something in its eyes, because he shook his head.

"Of course!" he exclaimed. "You are right. I have brought her a lantern already. I brought her that lovely little light, made from the frost on a child's bedroom window, and lit by the child and the light he kept with him. He had always been afraid of the dark and so had always kept a light with him. There was something piquant about that."

The Lord of Darken Fel shook his head.

"What shall I do?" he said. "At this rate we will be forced into the Hedge, to pick up the waifs and strays from other Lords. Maybe one of them will have fashioned something that I have not thought of.

"But that will not please my Lady."

He sighed.

"Love," he said, "is a disease. It is a plague that rots at you from the inside. You strive to please another, whilst hating them for what you must do. You are desolate without them, but to be with them..."

The Lord of Darken Fel curled his lip slightly.

"She is not even true to me," he said.

He was silent for a moment, brooding, and then his face lit up.

"Of course!" he exclaimed. "The faithless lover. I shall find a faithless lover, naked in an adulterous bed, and I shall turn the jade, to jade. My Lady will be pleased, and perhaps she will hear my plea for fidelity. She will know that I know her to be unfaithful, by the manner of my gift, and in giving the gift I will say that I still desire her, in spite of it all."

The Lord laughed out loud.

"I am," he declared, "a genius."

He leapt from the prow of the ship, clambering easily back to the deck with the grace of a rat. His booted toe grazed the sapphire eye of his ship's figurehead, but as she could not feel anything, this meant very little to either of them.

As he reached the deck he cried out in a glad voice.

"Raise anchor and set sail, beloveds all. We go a'hunting..."