One Chance To Die

When lust and love collide you only get one chance at the real thing; Samuel Heath throws it away. (alternate happy ending for saps, though)

Rats squeak and I can hear the faint trickling of dripping water coming from just outside of the cellar. It looks dark and the cool air adds to the dreadful effect of the dungeon. My life is finished.

Now I haven’t lived it short, but I haven’t lived long either. The only thing I know is that I lived it at all.

In the cellar directly across form mine, I can see the slightest movement. A newly dirty hand clasps onto the bar of their cellar and I watch carefully and clear my throat.

“What’s your story?” a female voice asks

I inhale a large breath and release it slowly. “My name is Samuel Heath. I traveled the world to save the one I loved to find out that it wasn‘t love at all…”

 

1621 A.D.

It was the night of Prince Henry’s birth. He was turning to be thirty and the whole town was out that night watching fireworks and to partake of any free liquor they could. I, being merely a boy of the age 15 was only a servant at this party and so I did nothing but that. I carried around with me a large tray of cheese of all sorts: camembert, brie, cheddar, goat… and I waltzed around serving the rich, and all those who were wealthy or lucky enough to be attending the largest and most extravagant party of the year. It had been a long night, sweat was forming from my brows and at one point I set down the tray so I could wash my face. I was humiliated looking so disheveled in front of all those people.

As soon as my face was clean, I walked right back into the street, and when I returned to the place where I had set the tray down, I found nothing. Suddenly I turned around and I caught the eyes of the most beautiful woman on the entire planet staring right at me. In moments she had stolen me and we were on one of the lesser crowded streets, and she was laughing hysterically.

“What’s your name?” she asked me, as soon as she caught her breath. As soon as I realized where I was and that I was no longer doing my duty I started to get nervous and anxious.

“Ah,” I breathed. “The hour is late and I’m afraid I must be going.”

Before I could leave her she was right in front of me, tugging onto the collar of my tattered shirt. “Am I really that boring?” she wanted to know.

She was an enchantress or something, because I found myself staring back into her sea green eyes. She was radiant in all of her clothed glory, and I couldn’t even imagine why she was sticking around with me, a servant boy.

“Samuel Heath,” I blurted and she smiled, bringing me closer. I was getting delirious by now, and my head was spinning much too quickly. Her coaxing was starting to get dangerous, I could tell, but I couldn’t pull back.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Fifteen.”

She smiled once again, even brighter. “Me too.”

With that she pulled me close and started kissing me, right there. I was most appalled in every way because this beautiful woman was kissing me, a hapless boy. I didn’t even know her name or if we were ever going to see one another again but I stood my ground and allowed her to kiss me. That was the night she pulled me into her spell, and immediately after she breathed, “My name is Ivory, duchess of Purdelot. Meet me here tomorrow night.” and then she left.

We met. Night after night we kissed for endless time, and night after night we never missed a day to where we laughed or explored. In all this mess I knew I was in love the second that we met again.

It wasn’t until I was sixteen that she came to me one night, tears in her eyes. “I’m betrothed,” she told me.

“Then I’ll save you,” I responded. “I’ll come find you.” And then I told her I loved her. She beamed with excitement, and kissed me once more, and I embraced her in my arms tightly.

She was gone the next morning. The woman I so passionately loved was off and getting married to another man, and I couldn’t do a thing about it, except to keep to my vow. I would go and find her.

Ditching my master and all, I set off to find my love. I traveled through an icy winter, and when the first pink flower bloomed I could swear on my life that my death was imminent. In the near distance, I heard a scream of a distressed lady. Though I was tired and faint, I had always been very chivalrous so I headed to the screams and I found a girl all alone her foot caught under a rock.

She screamed again in pain I realized now, and I was at her side in no time, trying to lift the rock off of her foot. When I had succeeded she was ever grateful for my aid, though her leg was bruised and swollen. So what could I do? I stayed with her to help her.

“What’s your name?” she asked me, and my brain flew back to the memories of Ivory.

“Samuel Heath,” I muttered. “You?”

She sighed and then rocked her foot in her hands. “Aunna Louis.”

With a simple nod, I smiled. “What is a woman like you doing all alone in the woods?”

“Running,” she muttered. “From my father. He abused me. I’m not going back so don’t you dare try and take me.”

I shook my head. “And where do you plan to go?”

“To live with my cousin, the duchess Ivory.”

I gaped at her. “Do you know where she is?” For months I had been wandering hopelessly, just hoping I would happen upon my love by destiny one day. And here it was, my guide dropping at my feet.

“Of course,” she laughed. “What, you think me some sort of fool?”

When her foot healed, the two of us traveled together. We could hold on an argument for hours and in the end she would usually end up winning. She spoke in poetry it seemed. Every word might not have made sense until you deciphered it but it was all psychological in the end it seemed. And philosophical.

We traveled together for about a year, and that’s when we arrived in Harver, where her cousin, and my love supposedly lived by then. Only Ivory got there much quicker before because she had a carriage, but between Aunna and I, we took many, many, many side trips.

Aunna had never questioned about Ivory. Not once. I don’t know what she assumed, but Ivory’s name hadn’t even really popped up in the past year.

“Ivory is wed, right?” I asked her as we were nearing the castle. Aunna shot a glance over at me and nodded her head, her dark brown curls bouncing.

“Yes, of course,” she told me. I wasn’t going to tell her that I was planned on murdering her cousin-in-law so I could have her, so I just kept my mouth shut. I just had to clarify.

Then she stopped, and just stared at me for a long time. “Why?” she asked.

“Just curious,” I shrugged. Aunna just kept staring at me in confusion.

“Why’d you ask?” she insists again. I felt like I couldn’t lie to her, that I at least needed to tell her something. After all, Aunna had been my dear friend for the past year.

“We have a past together,” I blurted, slightly against my will.

Aunna gasped, as if coming into realization of it all. “You love her,” she gaped.

“Yes,” I admitted, and Aunna turned around abruptly.

“And you never told me?”

“I didn’t think you cared-” I told her, knitting my eyebrows together in confusion. “Why are you upset?”

“What are you planning on doing, huh? I wish to know.”

I immediately felt terrible. I was going to kill her cousin’s husband.

“Does she love you too? Why you dense little man, my cousin Ivory has been known to be a big flirt. Has she ever told you she loved you?”

I recall upon the time that I had told Ivory I was in love with her. No, no she had not told me she loved me too. “No, but she told me to come find her when she was taken away.”

“You’re not the first,” she guffaws, pointing her finger at me. “Did she tell you she was her age as well? She is not, nor does she look it. She is nearly twenty five now.”

I wanted to feel repulsed, but I simply could not. I was in love with Ivory, and I had stayed loyal to her all this time. I didn’t want to believe a word I was being told by Aunna.

A tear trickled down Aunna’s face and she just started shaking her head at me. “I thought better of you. I really did. I never would have thought you a man to be blinded by beauty so much that you believe her vicious lies.”

Aunna was in hysterics, and I gently grabbed her hand, trying to calm her. She seemed more upset then I would have thought could be possible over this, but I did think she was lying to me.

“No! You go talk to her okay? You go tell her that you just traveled the world for her, and then you can tell me what she thinks.”

Aunna left me then. And I thought I was going to see her again. I thought I was going to see her in the halls and I thought it was all going to be fine and okay.

I entered the castle with poise. I asked one of the manservant’s where I could find Ivory, and they told me she was in the games room. I made my way in there, and I planned on asking her right out whether or not she loved me. Her husband could hear or anyone, but it didn’t matter to me as long as I knew for sure.

I opened the door, and I instantly spotted Ivory, laughing and fanning herself. Her attention turned to me and she blinked twice and her smile fell.

“Who are you?” she instantly asked. She honestly looked like she had no idea too.

“Ivory, I walked the world for you. I came from one side, and I am in love with you. It’s me, Samuel Heath.”

She held her head back and raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think I know you um… Samuel?”

It all hit me then. Everything Aunna was saying was all the way true. But what did Ivory want from me then? Why did she let me fall in love with her if she was just going to forget me in the end? I have just traveled the world to see her. Through snow and through blistering heat, through mountains and through lakes, and now she was telling me that she simply didn’t remember me.

Shaking my head I turned around and walked right out of there. I wanted Aunna then, and I wanted to tell her how very, very right she was about Ivory.

It hit me then. It took me a while to realize I wasn’t as heartbroken as I thought I would be and I couldn’t reason with myself how I could not be down. I had just earned that the woman I loved didn’t love me. So it hit me that I did not travel the world for Ivory, the one I thought I had loved. I traveled the world mostly for Aunna, because she was the one I wanted to be with all alone. I was in love with her and I didn’t even realize it until then.

When I came back to town, asking around for her, I was told she was gone. Aunna had left to go elsewhere. So for days I tried chasing after her, but it was a lost cause.

I blamed Ivory for everything. It was all her fault in the end, after all. She was the reason that I started away in the first place, she was the reason I had met Aunna, and she was the reason that I was now aching inside. I did not ache for Ivory, not one bit, but I yearned for Aunna and I wanted to tell her that I loved her all along, the most, and I just hadn’t realized it.

I was so upset with Ivory I wanted to kill her. I wanted to kill her for seducing men against their will. When a man set off to die for her, she just would turn him away. And that, in the end, she deserved to be killed for.

And I wanted to do it. I wanted her to feel pain. It wouldn’t be the kind of pain I felt for knowing I was never going to see Aunna again, but it would be pain none the less. It took me three years to plan Ivory’s death, partially because a part of me kept waiting around for the woman I truly loved. When I finally realized that she really wasn’t going to come back, I made my plan.

I didn’t kill Ivory. When I found her I swore at her and accused her of everything she had ever done, but mostly I swore for Aunna. I can not even describe how much I loved her, how much I yearned to be with her again. I had started out as a simple peasant boy, but then I was a lovesick man.

And Ivory’s guards took me away. I ended up in the dungeon, doomed to die the very next day for attempted assassination of royalty.

 

 

 

Finishing my story, I look at the woman through the bars now.

“So they’re killing you tomorrow?” the female voice asks.

“Yes,” I groan. It didn’t matter to me though. I had fallen in love and betrayed her. So I deserved to die, but I was going to die in the name of my love, and that was for certain. “And you?” I ask.

The female voice sighs in the background. “I fell in love with a man. I tried to stop him from making the worst mistake of his life, but instead I was imprisoned in this castle when I‘d accused my cousin of being a harlot. And the man I loved never knew I loved him.”

Sighing, I put my hand up to my forehead and squeeze my eyes closed.

 

 

 

 

 

Alternate ending…. (if you choose tor ead this it may take away from the effect I meant to put on the original peice, this is only for those who INSIST on happy endings)

 

I should be dead now. But I’m not. I should be away in my coffin, sleeping with all of my sins.

But I’m not. At least I don’t think I am.

I slowly open my eyes, and all I see around me is a large field of grass. There were tree’s at the edges and occasional flowers, but not much else.

I moan. A dream. Just what I need when my true love knows I am soon to die and she knows I love her.

“Samuel,” I hear a whisper. I turn my head towards the sound, and I see Aunna lying right above me, her smile facing down at me. “You’re okay, Samuel. You’re safe.”

I sit up now, and I turn to her. This surely must be a dream now.

“But-”

“I spoke to Ivory. She came down with them when they were getting ready to kill you, and they knocked you out. I pleaded with her, and asked her to free us, and I told her we would never disturb the kingdom again, or give away her secret to her husband, who will be returning soon... Just like that she let us free. And I brought you here.”

I may only be a young man, but if I know one thing, it’s that Aunna had forgiven me for all the terrible things I’d done to her, and she had saved my life. By what I can tell, I’m pretty sure she wants to be with me as much as I need to be with her.

“Aunna,” I breathe slowly, inching closer to her. “Aunna I love you.”

She smiles. “I know.”

I lean into her, wanting so badly to kiss her. The last woman I kissed was out of lust though. But this really was love. I wanted to never spend another moment away from this one. If she were betrothed, I never would let this one leave in the first place, but I would walk five hundred worlds to find her if she were to ever get lost.

“Will you marry me?” I ask.

Her smile broadens, and she leans up to kiss me. “I’ve been waiting a long time to hear you ask.”

 

 

 

Reviews

[WriterMe]

Haha I liked the bit of two alternate endings. But the first one though, gives a quite a twist. The second one, I suppose you wrote it for happy ending suckers (like me =)
But anyway, I thought the story to be quite in touch with reality. I mean, its so common to see guys falling for the pretty girl but never the smarter one.
Your story all in all was once again, very well written. There are just a few parts where you wished to use old english, but added a few modern tinges to it as well.
Example:"No! You go talk to her okay? You go tell her that you just traveled the world for her, and then you can tell me what she thinks."

No on really says 'okay' at that time. Haha. It could be something like this:
"No! Why dont you go and talk to her?

All in all great work =]

--Niki