Fae Light
Fae sprinted down the corridor, lit only by the flickering light of a half dozen candles, their dim luminance serving only to lengthen the deep shadows, almost making them seem to chase her. Her lungs rattled with her jolting progress, the air barely managing to be pulled in before being forced out again. The corridor around her seemed to spin, her legs wobbling with the pain of having ran so hard for so long. Stop, her brain begged of her, just rest for a moment. But then she remembered what she had seen in the room and she found the energy to go on, quelling the shouting in her legs and chest.
A screech echoed from behind her, seeming to chase her down the dark, endless corridor like a spirit. Fae did not know if it was pain or anger that caused that sound but she still felt determined to put as much distance between her and the one who had screamed as she possibly could. But the sound echoed around and around, seeming to grow in volume until Fae was certain something WAS following her, and almost wanted to turn just to see what it was. But she kept running, her feet pattering and her breathing ragged and creaking. Something cold touched the small of her back then flowed around her, her body feeling weightless as the cool sensation twisted through her body. As it covered her face, her mouth, her eyes she felt uncaring release flow through her. She fell forward, into the past, events gone by.
Her memories.
Chapter 1
Fae Keithe looked up at her new home with a certain amount of fear; the large grey walls of New Lake hostel were a far cry from comforting in any circumstances and for a girl new to the area, they were positively demonic. Around her the wind ran its fingers through the dead leaves newly shed by the coming autumn cold. There was an eerie silence, the taxi that had dropped her off at the end of the street having long since become nothing but a far distant hum of an engine. Everything felt still, as if she had stepped into a picture, the life of the place absent, replaced by a cold, oppressive weight.
Her bag was strangely heavy, as if in holding everything she considered truly ‘hers’ it took on a weight of responsibility. A few unframed pictures, some clothes and her purse, the bag was far from weighed down with goods. But still her shoulders sagged and she felt a strange reluctance to lower it to the ground, as if fearing it might disappear. Still, she would have to put it down one day, have to start a real life eventually. Maybe, here, she could finally lose the burden.
A curtain twitched. Behind it someone looked on. The girl, barely out of her youth, stood staring at the home, something like longing on her face. A longing, maybe, for a new life. Peace, maybe. The watcher could not be certain. After all, it had not felt true feelings for such a long time, it sometimes struggled to understand the weight humans put upon them. The certainty that a fleeting feeling that love or compassion could ever last more than a brief time.
The watcher stepped back, allowing the curtain to return to as it had been. Time enough, she was sure, to find out what it wanted later.
Fae jerked alert, certain she had seem movement out of the corner of her eye. Just for a moment, there, she could have sworn a curtain had twitched...
But now the door of the building had opened and out stepped the woman she guessed ran the home. Ms Kentra, she had been informed by the maid at her old home, was a strict but motherly woman, commonly considered weird by other social service workers. In person she was, indeed, intimidating, with her gaunt face and slender, willow like build, only emphasising her towering height. Fae was in no was tall but this woman dwarfed her as surely as an old oak tree, carrying a similar majesty and authority as one of those ancient trees. Sleek, brown hair cascaded down her back, kept out of her eyes by a simple, black hair band that didn’t quite manage to capture all the strands, leaving some to tumble across her face. Dark green eyes, shot through with hazel brown streaks, stared out at the world with the gaze of one who has time itself planned out, and is simply waiting for what they know will happen to come about.
“Can I help you, dear?” Ms Kentra said, her soft, even voice slightly at odds with her intimidating, powerful figure. Fae stood for a moment, lost as to how best to address this woman, but she was saved the trouble by Ms Kentra herself, who shook herself as if arising from a stupor and took Fae by the arm.
“Of course, you’re the new girl aren’t you? Sorry, but it has been a trying day and that you were coming has just slipped my mind. I’m Ms Kentra; I’m in charge of this home and take care of all the girls here. I’m sure you’ll love it here in New Lake.”
And so she nattered, her soft, simple words eroding any sense of foreboding that Fae had felt previously, replacing it simply with a need to try and stem the tide of conversation. So she chatted back, following behind the imposing woman as she bodily lifted Fae’s bag and carrying it, despite her insistence it wasn’t heavy, carried it through the old, worn corridors of the house to a small, cosy room and left it there with her, the automatic discussion about the weather and current goings on ended abruptly by the words “Dinner begins at the sound of the bell. Sorry I can’t be more accurate than that, but with so many people to work with here I sometimes struggle to have dinner ready at any reasonable time.”
So saying, Ms Kentra floated out of the room, the door drifting shut behind her and leaving Fae to look around her new home. The room was hardly spacious, she could walk from the simple wooden door to the wide square window set in the opposite wall in two steps, and the bed stopped her from taking more than three steps across the floor. The walls were painted the monotonous beige favoured by people who never really wanted to use the room and about as emotional as a rock. There was no other furnishings in the room, nothing but the bed and a small carpet lain underneath the window, its threadbare old weave fraying from age and the scuffing of generations.
Fae sighed and slumped onto the bed, her bag slipping to allow her to look into it from her weight. A single photograph slipped from the bag, sliding across the clean bedclothes and almost under Fae’s hand. She rose it to the level of her chest, looking carefully at the picture she had seen so many times before. There she sat, laughing up at the photographer without a care in the world, the ashen yellow sands of the beach beneath her stained with the same sticky white ice-cream running that dripped unnoticed from her chin. Fae smiled to herself sadly, remembering the day. The combination of ice-cream, fish, fairground rides and her own giddiness at being somewhere that wasn’t the care-home had combined to make her vomit into the toilet. But instead of feeling ill and wanting to slow down, she had thrown herself into the day all the more, enjoying every moment of it as much as she could, the fear that it could disappear, the fun could leave, at any time making her want to do sixteen different things at once, frustrating the young adults that accompanied her to no end, although her childish seriousness had kept them laughing and joking even as the day wore on. She hadn’t cried when she left, she remembered, although a lot of the other children had. She had always thought she would be able t go again, be able to revisit the place of her childhood fun and recall perfectly the feeling.
She never had gone back.