Death

Part Two.

‘You didn’t kill her, you were too late, but not by your own fault. Truth is, Lyre has been dead from the beginning. But there is still a way to save her, to bring her back, if you’re interested.’

A being greeted me when I turned around, not human, but not a spirit either, with eyes as dark as rainwater, and a crown of wilted flowers weaved through their hair.

Was I hallucinating or were they real?

‘I may not be alive long enough to do so.’ I said, slightly lifting my foot up to show her. ‘A Nymphe snake bit me. I have hours left, at most.’

‘Let’s say that if you succeed, you will be cured. Let it be an incentive to try to break the curse, and a reward if you do.’

‘You…can do that?’ I asked.

‘Of course I can, Aurore. No feat is impossible for a deity of the dead. Bring back Lyre, save her subjects, and you too shall be saved. And remember, not only your life is a stake here.’

***

Death incarnate had freed me from Princess Lyre’s room.

There was a forest beneath the castle, twin to the one that encircled the Heart, where the souls of the residents of Briar’s Heart dwelled, including Lyre’s.

Bringing her back would be enough to break the curse, so I needed to save only her.

I entered the forest with nothing but a spindle entangled with lyre strings.

“Pierce the princess’ flesh and saw the string onto her fingertip, and as you return to the bedchamber, make sure that the string doesn’t breaks.” The being had said. “But you mustn’t turn back once, not even for a quick glance, or you will have failed. Once you have returned to her room, Lyre will be there, alive. The villagers will soon awake, and the Stygian forest will turn back to what it once was.”

These woods were worse than the ones I had almost died in. Three headed dogs, lambs, red deer, and other beasts populated them. I hid from them in shrubs of bramble and thorns on my way to Lyre.

After hours and eons of walking, I reached a valley studded with baby pink spindle plants and arista flowers. ‘The Elysian Plaines’, the deity had called it, and among a floral crowd sat Lyre, playing her namesake. She stopped playing as soon as she spotted me, and before I could begin to explain why I was there, or even who I was, Lyre got up and ran towards me.

She threw her arms around my neck, the same girl whose skin had crumbled beneath my fingers, whose body had now turned to ash.

“I’ve been waiting for you.” She told me. “For lives I waited, but I never lost hope, and at last, you came for me.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that we had never met before, so I instead smiled and told her that I had come to get her, to take her back home to Briar.

“This forest is a treacherous one Lyre. In order to escape, you must follow my every step.”

She nodded and I grabbed her hand. I warned her about what I had to do, and how it would hurt, but I assured her that it was necessary, and soon the pain would cease.

 “I trust you Orphée.” She said. I sewed the lyre string on her smallest finger, and then onto my own thumb. The being hadn’t told me to do that last part, but I thought it would help me not sever or lose it.

We walked back through the forest past the beasts and the thorned brambles, through trees and darkness and moonflowers. Hours later I spotted a clearing, and a marble staircase: the edge, and thus end, of the forest.

I quickened my pace, but before I could step out of the woods, I heard a scream, and before I knew it, before I could stop myself and think, and remember what the being had told me, I turned around.

I saw a bleeding Lyre, whose string had been pulled out from her finger, for a mere second, before she vanished into nothing.

***

At the edge of the forest beneath the now perpetually cursed heart of Briar, I clutched a lyre string and awaited my death. I twisted the spindle in my hands and listened to the faint melody coming from within the forest that became louder and louder with each passing moment.

Lyre sang from the Elysian Plaines, unbeknownst to her that she had almost been set free.

If only the string hadn’t broken.

If only I hadn’t turned around to look at her.

She will sing for all eternity, pass her days with her cursed subjects, beneath her very own nation, while I will spend every infinity thinking about what could have happened if I had succeeded.

And then Lyre would find me and try to cheer me up. She couldn’t remember the life she had had before she had been cursed.

Lyre had been dead form the beginning