Work Text:
Zoey is used to hearing music. Music surrounds her and weaves through her life – and it helps her help others, help herself, as she tries to reach out and offer a hand whenever the songs lead her somewhere important. Whether it’s the living or the dead, the communicate with her freely, throwing their own concerns at her through songs she’s heard, songs she barely remembers, and tunes she can almost hum.
She’s not surprised when she’s in Denmark – alone, on a vacation, surrounded by fellow tourists – when she starts hearing old-fashioned music seeping out of the walls. Unfortunately she doesn’t speak Danish; it takes awhile for her to figure out what she’s being told and why, and by whom. Which is not convenient at all when you were trying to relax and enjoy yourself while on a nice, prepaid vacation.
“I wish I had a ghost translator,” she murmurs to herself as she climbs into bed that night. But help isn’t coming at all, and now Zoe had to make plans to figure out what the heck this lady was trying to say to her.
When she’s alone at night – in her room, deep in the middle of the ink-colored wash and barely awake – she hears again a girl singing about lost maidens and fairy princes, about broken hearts and failure. And the closer she comes to the room, the more Zoey wonders if she’s overhearing something private and personal – if the ghost doesn’t actually want her to solve the issue.
“I can hear you. I promise I can hear you. But I can’t help you out if you don’t explain who you are and what you want from me,” she mumbled out loud, rubbing her temples. This was a new event, a potentially dangerous one, too. “Come on, this is silly. I’m not afraid of you. And you’re not afraid of me! Can you please talk to me in a way I can understand? I don’t know why you want me to help you if I can’t speak your…”
“There was a maiden who lived in the glade,” sings a pretty, high thin voice. Zoey looks up and then she sees a blonde girl, wearing a flowered crown and long, flowing robes. She dances around Zoey’s bed in a wild fashion, her little feet moving with all of the grace that spoke of centuries of practice. “She dressed in myrtle, she dressed in silks…”
“Why did she do that?” Zoey wonders. She sits with her chin upon her knees, listening intently as the spirit continues through her story.
Intense eyes settle upon her face. Her thick, blonde braid swings away from her shoulder. “Because her love has left her, of course. Most stories like this end with a love leaving for no reason.”
“And I’m guessing that might be your problem,” Zoey remarks.
The girl smiles. “My brother dead, my love says ‘take thee to a nunnery, sweet.’ And what am I to do with such harsh words spoken from a mouth I once kissed so sweetly.”
“That’s terrible,” says Zoey. And really, it is.
“If he doesn’t want me, I might well take a veil,” she says. “But instead I lay in the river, to drown. Drown surrounded by the herbs of a virgin bride.”
Well. That’s quite a story. Zoey can only imagine what it must be like to be young and sweet, and have that sweetness injured and corrupted by a man who didn’t care for you in the end. Or...maybe cared for you so much he drives you away.
“Why did he want you to go to a nunnary?” Zoey wonders. The very idea of being driven off that way by a lover hurts, and she doesn’t even know the girl at all.
***
Zoey spends her time in Denmark seeing castles, eating delicious food – and researching suicidal royalty from decades before her birth. It’s not a pleasant topic. Where’s her cute, Instagrammable holiday with a handsome guy and a fun bunch of friends? Nope, instead she’s just hauling around dusty books until she sneezes.
She finds the answer in a dusty library – Elsinore, Prince Hamlet, Lady Ophelia. A failed betrothal. A dead brother. A drowning, a stabbing. More theatrical tragedy.
They all rest in various vaults either miles from where Zoey is staying, or right on the property.
The inn is said to have been built over Lady Ophelia’s grave.
***
“You with the sad eyes…” Zoey sings, almost to herself, after she comes back to her room. No one at dinner was even remotely interested in what she had to say about the princess buried under the castle. And so she goes back to her room, and sings to a ghost who gives her an eerie, far-off smile.
“Do I have sad eyes?” the ghost asks.
“You do,” Zoey agrees. “But that’s totally not your fault. We’ve all got a reason or two to be sad, don’t we?”
Ophelia lets out a soft laugh. “I suppose we all do. And I more than others.”
“Have you ever tried to find him?” asks Zoey. “Your prince, the one who loved you so much?”
Ophelia shakes her head. “I don’t suppose he actually loves me at all,” she says, her voice as airy as a bird’s call.
“We should try to find him,” Zoey says. “Do you want to spend the rest of your eternity wondering what might have been?”
It’s a question compelling enough to make Ophelia reach her slim hand out for Zoey’s.
She feels alive, somehow, as Zoey walks her outside. The spirit isn’t by his own grave, or his father’s – or thankfully beside his mother. Instead, it waits beside her bier.
Perhaps the centuries – and the satiating power of revenge – have cooled the prince’s anger at his former beaux. In any event they melt into each other’s touch and walk into the distance – leaving Zoey to hear other songs, to help other people.
*
Zoey leaves Denmark with teeshirts, chocolate and many odd memories. She doesn’t know where the next song will take her. But whenever she hears “True Colors”? She’s totally going to think of Elsinore and Ophelia and the look on her face as she walked into the distance with her prince.