The Call of the Banshee

A short study in metaphors. Or it's more like after read some Neruda, I wanted to try his random metaphoric style.

 

The air here was calmer, somehow; quieter too. When I had begun to follow the mysterious girl, there was a rush of excitement. A thrill of…of something, running through my blood. However, at some point, it had left me, and a total crushing quiet had replaced it.

We had walked through the town, then the fields, along the rims of hills, and past the lakes; and finally, as we walked through the un-aging trees, night had fallen. I hadn’t thought we’d been walking for more than two, or maybe three hours. However, as I lay behind the concealing grove and looked at the stars above, I could now tell it had been quite a bit longer. It was long enough past middle night that I could almost call it morning. And yet, the curtain of dark had not yet released its hold on the Earth.

I sat up, and checked that the girl was still in the clearing. She’d been doing something that looked like meditating to my uncultured eyes. It’s had been almost an hour since she started, and I was starting to wonder if I could make it back to town without my lovely guide.

And she was lovely. Of that there was no doubt; her hair, the color of soft liquid gold, her pale skin smooth and uninterrupted by unsightly red stains. The color of her eyes should have been described as icy, but nowhere in their depths could one find a single drop cooler that blue fire. She was simply alive. In every pore, in every movement, life flowed from her being.

That was why I followed her. Her beautiful, wondrous life, that she kept hidden behind tightly shut blinds, and locks, called out to me. I had been shopping in the square, something trivial for my sisters’ three children, and she gently floated past me.

In that moment, nothing could stop me from following her. I dropped whatever fabric toy I had been holding and turned, searching for the faint scent of perfection that she left behind her, like a trail of bread crumbs.

Unfortunately, the bread crumbs were useless, now. Faded into the surround pine, and faint spring daisies, I was stuck here until she saw fit to leave. And from the look of her trance, it would be a while before I would get back to my sister and her small tyrants.

I settled in for a longer stay; the soft grass coming up to ease my transition into slumber.

By the time I woke, I knew something was wrong. Before I even opened my eyes, I could feel the presence of the beast. Too close. The lust for blood and meat radiating out from its short, quick breaths.

As first, as I slowly looked at my eyes to see the creature, the sun’s bright waves temporarily blinded me. Somewhere in the fog of my confusion I asked myself why this beast saw fit to attack me in the sunlight. A creature of shadows did not belong here, so close to the goddess past me, in the long grasses and ferns of the forest.

But then it registered. The beast, this creature, was my goddess. She looked the same, I was sure. Her hair still a soft gold, her eyes clear and blue, her skin white as snow.

But something was also very, very wrong. The tent her long mane made around my chest was drenched in shadows, nothing like the pure halo of the market. Her pale skin no longer looked as fragile as the first snowflakes of the year, melting away in my palm. It was hard, and cold, solid.

And those eyes. Those terrifyingly beautiful eyes. The palest blue I’d ever seen, but hard, as if every bit of ice that melted in her radiance of before now lived, thrived in her soul. Cold and cruel.  Dark. Mean.

I shivered, and the beast smiled; an evil look that would have frozen the blood of any man. I admit I was no less fearful. It was awful. Seeing my beauty, my angel, like this. I felt an almost physical acute pain. I wanted to run, to put as much room between myself and this denizen of hell.

“Sweet,” it said, and the words were as hard and cold as the eyes, the lips that spoke them. “Are you lost, out here, so far from the town?”

And I couldn’t answer. Her voice was the only thing, the only remembrance of the goddess that had led me to this remote nightmare. Sweet and alluring. She smile again, and the momentary awe was once again replaced with a rush of ice through my blood.

“Sweet,” it repeated. “You feel it, don’t you? The fear. But it’s good. Embrace it. It will be the only thing to save you.”

This time I managed to find a voice, small and shaking as it might be.

“What....What do you want?”

It laughed. “Sweet, you followed me here. I should be the one asking you that.”

“I didn’t…” I began, but what would I say? How would I finish the obvious lie?

“Don’t fret. I don’t mind. In fact, I’m flattered, but sadly, your time is short.”

The ice returned to my blood, sharper, and fiercer than before. “What?”

“Sweet, your time of death is upon you.”