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Daniella flickers like flame.
Her mouth curves into a cruel smile, and suddenly there’s the glint of glass at her side. She doesn’t need to chase Fiona. She’s content enough to follow. Every step is measured and purposeful, and she always reaches Fiona eventually.
Because even when Fiona slips from her sight, Fiona soon stumbles upon her in the kitchen stirring a rancid stew, or discovers her straightening the sheets on her bed.
The flickering…it’s what terrifies Fiona the most. In these moments, Daniella lets her approach. It’s stupid for Fiona to give her a single moment – Hewie nudges her leg with his nose, a reminder to keep moving – but Fiona is drawn to her. Sometimes, Daniella meets her eye, and she almost looks warm, like blood runs beneath her skin and pools beneath her cheeks. Fiona wonders if Daniella likes this – having someone step around her work, step around her, concede this goddamned castle as the help’s and no one else’s. Maybe she just likes having someone to scare herself, since Ricardo doesn’t hesitate to try and dominate this awful place.
But then, in minutes, sometimes seconds, Daniella begins to burn. Her limbs twitch unnaturally, her eyes unblinking, her lips straining between a growl and a laugh. Daniella finds Fiona and her breath comes faster. It hammers in Fiona’s ears as she searches for another hiding space, never knowing if she’ll be greeted by a shard in her pelvis or an outreached hand. Her hand has found Fiona enough that she knows it almost better than her own. Daniella’s broken, bloodied nails and bruised knuckles are enthralling. It shows more life than most of the castle does. It reminds her of the groundskeeper, or the butcher, Fiona isn’t sure what he really is, but his doe-like eyes make her want to mourn him as much as she wants to just forget him.
So alive, and yet savagely kept in a dying grave of a castle. Fiona doubts either of them could survive outside of it, anymore.
But again, again, Daniella ignites, and her footsteps hunt Fiona through hall after hall.
Biting cold air greets Fiona as she slams through a door and outside. She tears through the garden. The bushes are filled with mist and thorns; they catch on her skin and pull. She doesn’t slow. She only hopes Hewie avoids them better than she does. A wayward branch scratches her cheek, nearly taking her eye. The world tumbles. Wet dirt seeps around her limbs as soon as she falls to the ground. Hewie’s at her side immediately. She lets him butt her head with her own, but Fiona knows where they are now. They’re in her garden, filled with beautiful things that can save you in one hands and kill you in another.
Both Fiona and Hewie look back to their pursuer, only to find her kneeling in her plants, brushing away dead and rotten leaves from the buds. It’s a reprieve, but Fiona knows better than to assume they’re safe. She points Hewie to a hole in the fence ahead.
“Go, Hewie!” she urges. She doesn’t need to say “stay safe”, “come back”, “don’t get hurt”. He knows. The dog gives a short bark and slides nimbly through. They’ve found enough keys in this place to know where the hiding spots are now, but never to the main gate. Even in this garden, the outside world is unreachable. The sky is bordered on all sides, by stone walls and drooping trees.
Fiona rolls onto her back. The humid hair soaks into her clothes and skin. Daniella is standing now, her weapon lying by her flowerbeds. In her hand is a white bellflower, thick with leaves and thorns. Daniella cradles to her chest. For the first time, Fiona thinks she might be as young as she is.
She should be standing and running, Fiona knows, but her legs won’t move. She hates herself for it. She hates that she lets all this happen to her, that she doesn’t sprint for the glass shard and plunge it into the maid. She can’t do it. The thought makes her sick. This whole place is sick and Fiona refuses to let it take her, too.
So she watches Daniella approach, her steady gait, proud and reserved at the same time. Even in the heavy, wet air, her violet ringlets are perfectly coiled. Does that frustrate Daniella, too? Does she long for knots and frizz and greys? Fiona thinks about Daniella’s envies, and her hand drifts to her abdomen, protective.
“Smell it,” the woman tells her, kneeling before her. Her voice is ocean-deep.
Fiona knows Daniella will cut her to pieces to steal what she’s missing. If Fiona smells it, will she choke the breath out of her? But she can’t really refuse, can she?
Fiona straightens her back, though her sore spine begs her not to. Her fingers, whiter than she has ever seen them, quiver as they encircle the blue-green stem. They kiss Daniella’s. She’s so cold. How can she so cold?
Then Daniella’s face swallows her sight. Before Fiona can pull away, her fingers are tangled in the maid’s, and the thorns prick her palm deep enough to draw red. Daniella’s eyes are wide and wild; her breath warms Fiona’s lips, and Fiona can’t help the pitiful, fearful sound that escapes her. She can’t predict this place. She can’t know this girl. She’s young and beautiful and skilled and strong but she’s dead and not real and mechanical and human and not good and violent and horrible, horrible, horrible.
Just as tears spill down Fiona’s cheeks, a frigid thumb caresses them away. The sob in her throat sticks. Shaking, Fiona forces her gaze upwards. Daniella observes her wet thumb, and then her tongue licks the salt tears away. She stills for a moment, but her eyes slowly fall to their hands. Daniella encases Fiona’s with her own carefully. The thorns still bite, but the gentle touch slowly numbs the sting.
“I can feel, too,” Daniella whispers, to herself, to Fiona. The fingers wedge themselves between the blood-covered thorns and Fiona’s palm. The flower drops into Fiona’s lap, but Daniella doesn’t seem to care. Her fingers prod Fiona’s cuts, the freckles across her knuckles, the mud in her cuticles. Fiona feels dizzy. The flower grows heavier and heavier in lap. She nearly cries for this girl. It’s all so pathetic…they both are. And maybe Fiona’s a fool, too, because part of her wants to steal Daniella away from this haunted place. She wants to know what this woman could feel when she’s not trapped beneath him, abused and locked away from the rest of the world. Fiona’s eyes cloud with tears. How can anyone feel anything here?
When Daniella’s pale eyes meet Fiona’s, it’s like they might be seeing her for the first time. Their hands rest between their chests.
Suddenly, a flash of white tears into Daniella, dragging her backwards. Fiona hurries to her feet, and she realizes it’s Hewie. A key lies in the mud beside her. How did she not hear him? What was she busy listening to? Fiona doesn’t name it. She can’t bear it, she thinks, if it has a name. She grabs the key, the cool metal gentling her still bleeding palm, and calls for Hewie to come back. He listens immediately; he always does. Fiona can’t remember how she made it through life without Hewie, without so much love. He doesn’t belong here…there is so much that doesn’t belong here. But Fiona can save him, at least. She will.
Fiona gives her friend an appreciative smile, and Hewie darts behind her to the garden gate. Fiona takes a step back towards the lock, and then another, before she commits to fleeing. Her hands shake, but the heavy lock slides with a click and the gate swings open. She moves to step through, but a voice hums in her ear, and Fiona can’t help but look back.
Daniella is there, in the blue-green leaves and purple mandragoras. The maid pulls herself from the dirt, laughing and laughing.
Her ringlets are loose.
Her hands clench and unclench, just like they had in Hewie’s fur. Maybe she can still feel it. Maybe she wishes she could. Fiona finds her own hands tensing. Daniella burns quietly, now, but burns all the same. Fiona wonders if she would suffer it, just to see Daniella again. And Fiona knows she wouldn’t.
Things don’t live long here, Fiona reminds herself. They can only die.
Daniella’s violet hair drips over her shoulders. A breathing watercolour, more ghost than flesh. She smiles. Fiona runs.