SECRETS OF GOLD

Out by the old bridge, deep in the forest where fireflies lit the forlorn path and the moon gazed at her prudently from the infinite heavens. Where the gentle stream of water would carry away the last piece of the past, which she had so dearly, desperately, clung onto. The perfect golden chain with a small key shone delicately under the moonlight, though dimmed was its light, bleeding with the tainted memories of a time long gone.

It was time to let go.

The full and wise forests surrounding Selsmire Castle anointed her very being with a peace she had never known living in the city. Comforting whispers, the promise of amity, clung onto the tender breeze that streamed through the woods.

It had only been a month since her ordered departure to the mountains, her sickness having grown too severe for her to continue living with her parents in London. Tuberculosis, the doctors had stated. For which there was no cure. Her countenance had since visibly brightened, but as had her soul, shedding its many burdens one at a time; like the golden leaves that tumbled from the trees. Tonight, she felt brave enough to finally relinquish the last piece of her misery, the cherished token of love gifted to her many years ago, by the boy she’d sworn to marry one day. She still recalled that day when he’d pressed the key into her palm, pledging that their friendship would last until the end of time.

As her health had worsened into adulthood, the bonds that had once kept them together faded slowly and painfully. He promised his heart to another. Since then, Aurelia’s heart had been left with an ugly, irreparable scar.

One which she would learn to accept once she got rid of this damned necklace.

Her hand was still as she held the pendant over the tranquil stream, water glinting like diamonds under the silvery light. The fabric of her white dress swayed gently in the wind. Once, she might have had tears to shed, but they had all been spent.

This wretched key was all she had been left to remember him by. A quaint little thing, with a shiny, intricately carved bow, shaped like a heart. Hauntingly beautiful.

Her body shivered once, violently, in the cold. She felt weak, and her fevers got worse at night. She had to make it quick.

Just as she was about to release her hold, she caught a glimpse of something else in the corner of her eye. Somewhere farther up the mountain on the other side of the bridge. From behind the foliage emerged a tower. Though it was only a silhouette, there was no mistaking it. It was most definitely there, black roof tiles glinting under the moonlight. She’d visited the old bridge plenty of times, and yet she’d never seen a tower before, fully certain that Selsmire Castle was the only habitable structure within miles.

Nevertheless, the tower intrigued her. There was something altogether strange and otherworldly about it. With its decrepit nature and overgrown surface, it clearly did not belong in this valley.

Somewhat distraught, but even more curious, she held onto the necklace that night and hurriedly returned to Selsmire, hardly able to rest until the next morning.

Her aunt and uncle were gone, away to Italy for the week, so she rushed to the only servant in the estate, Mrs. Elwood. She was a small woman with a kind face and white streaked chestnut hair, whose benign voice never failed to soothe her in times of hardship. Upon inquiring about the strange tower in the woods, Mrs. Elwood merely smiled and shook her head.

‘You’re spending too much time with those fairytales of yours,’ she said, gently stroking Aurelia’s golden hair. ‘Perhaps you should try reading something else. There is quite a fascinating volume on the flora and fauna of these mountains in the library.’

Aurelia pursed her lips, frustration brewing in her chest, but she said nothing. She’d already browsed through every nook and cranny of the dilapidated castle library and she’d found nothing to quench her thirst, only interested in the books she had brought from home. Amongst her favourites were Goldilocks and the Three Bears, as well as Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books, which she fondly recalled marvelling over as a child, cozying up to the fireplace with her mother.

The memories were nothing but distant murmurs in the back of her mind now.

As for the tower, there was nothing to detail its existence. She would’ve known. Only further proof that it had been no more than a mere dream; a hallucination of the moonlight.

She took to the forest again that day, bringing a basket of food and a book, but there was no tower to be found. Perhaps she had just been imagining things that night. The key still hung heavy around her neck, but something within her did not let her part with it quite yet. Nevertheless, she spent the day reading under the shade of her favourite oak tree, drawing fairies and dipping her bare feet in the cold stream, basking in the quietude of the woods and momentarily allowing herself to forget about the strange vision she’d seen.

Come nightfall, she found herself at the bridge again. Wanting answers. Or perhaps wanting to neglect the existence of them. She knew not which. But she was not in doubt that there was something strange afoot, stranger than she could have imagined, for once she stood on the apex of the old bridge, where the moon beamed down directly onto her frail form, she saw the tower once again. Dark, jagged, thin, and so mystical looking.

She glanced back at the path she’d come from, then towards the opposite end of the bridge, where she’d never crossed to before. The forests around Selsmire Castle were just as beautiful as they were dangerous, or so Mrs. Elwood had told her. Never venture there at night. You’re too sick.

Drawing a deep breath, she clenched her hand around the key and stepped towards the other side of the river, where the trees seemed to bend above her and the light of the moon waned through their craggy branches. A thin, meandering path led up farther into the woods, where the vegetation was dense and dark. She saw no fireflies, and heard no crickets. There was nothing but the hushed drifting of the wind, rustling the bushes and branches around her.

It felt like she had been walking for much longer than she should have, her body trembling by the time the tower was finally in sight. Her head felt hot and heavy compared to the rest of her. Cold wind bit at her exposed skin. Her breaths were suddenly shorter; shallower.

The structure was taller than it looked from afar, extending up towards the night sky like an enormous thorn, its dark bricks crawling with dry vines and moss. A single door at its foot.

She was inexplicably drawn to it, dry leaves crunching beneath her feet as she ventured closer, into the shadow that the tower cast onto the mossy ground. She would have sworn she heard whispers streaming from the tower, though it could’ve well been the wind brushing past the trees nearby.

Her pale fingers, trembling, clasped around the aged iron handle of the door. It hardly budged. She pushed, pulled, shook it, but it might as well have been bolted in place. Not that she was strong enough to push it out of place.

There was something that caught her eye, though. A curious golden keyhole, much too pristine and shiny for the rest of the building, almost glowing in the dim light.

She felt her fingers starting to go numb, the frigid night air coursing straight through her, and yet her gaze trailed down towards the necklace still in her quivering hand.

A golden key, and a matching keyhole.

Her hands acted on their own. She sank the key into the opening, click. A turn. The handle gave away when she pushed. The door had unlocked, by some miracle, creaking open like a sigh of relief, and that realization took a long time to settle onto her.

Another chill. Her teeth clattered. Before she knew it, she had pushed past the door and stepped inside, clinging to the wall and taking a deep breath. It was too dark to see much of anything, but for a moment, she swore the air was saturated with the scent of blood and metal.

A light flickered on. The flame of a torch suddenly lit up a staircase, crooked and stoney, spiralling farther up into the tower. She peeked into the middle, towards the ceiling, and saw nothing but an endless abyss of blackness.

She swallowed thickly. A bead of cold sweat trickled down her forehead. Something wasn’t right about this place. She should have thrown the key when she’d had the chance. Her hand slid against the wall and felt for the door again. She was unable to tear her eyes away from the staircase, not even when she felt the door stuck in place again. Something heavy sunk to the bottom of her stomach. She tried again, pried with all of her might, pushed the door handle until her face went red, but for all intents and purposes, she was stuck here.

Aurelia was breathing heavily now. She grit her teeth and lifted the torch from its support on the wall, figuring that if she climbed to the top, she could get back down using some of the vines on the exterior of the tower.

As she began ascending, the whispers permeated her mind again. An unintelligible clutter of words, spoken by a chorus of voices she could not recognize. The key felt increasingly heavier in her hand, tears stung in the corners of her eyes, and she rushed to climb faster, but the tower seemed never ending.

Alas, the stairs ended in a cramped chamber. The only light that reached inside was through a small, circular window near the ceiling, where the moon’s rays bled through crimson stained glass and shone onto the only object in the room. A desk. Around it, glimmering just faintly, were—strangely enough—shards of broken glass. No, a broken mirror.

The whispers only loudened. Release, she heard. Free.

The air here was thick with dust and age, causing her to cough dryly. Her whole body was in tremendous pain at this point, and her mind was struggling to keep up with what was happening. It could’ve all just been a dream. Her thoughts were clouded with mist.

On top of the desk lay a red leather tome, thick and aged. It was bound by thick silver chains, conjoining in the centre of the book into a lock. A golden lock. She noticed scratches on the metal, claw like scratches, flashing in the blood red light as she approached.

She knew what to do. The key waited patiently in her palm, and nothing had ever felt so right before. Like her actions no longer belonged to herself, she gently felt the intricate embossing on the leather book, appreciating its intricate design, though unable to decipher its strange glyphs and symbols. The chains were icy cold to the touch. She fit the key into the lock.

When she turned, another soft click sounded throughout the room, and the chains fell away, clattering onto the desk.

It was only then that she snapped out of her trance. A deep terror racked her body as she witnessed the tome flutter open entirely on its own, its yellowed pages flipping rapidly, a piercing hiss ringing in her ears. She cried and stumbled back, pressing herself as tightly against the wall as she could, but the voices grew louder and louder, engulfing her mind in a cacophony of nightmarish screams. Her arms shook around her own body. She knew not what manner of evil she had unlocked, but she had to put an end to it!

Before she could gather the courage to approach the book once more, a crawling shadow emerged from the yellowed pages. Flickering and static like, the black mass took form right before her, starting with a head, then a torso, arms, and legs…

It was a girl.

A girl with long hair and a flowing dress, standing in front of Aurelia like a mirror image. Featureless. Colourless. And everything went silent.

She felt breathless as she stared into the empty void of herself. When she moved, it moved. When she stood still, it did too.

‘Who are you?’ she whispered. There was no answer.

The book was just in sight, but she had no way of getting past the shadow. And just as she ventured close enough to touch the book, the shadow suddenly lunged at her.

She screamed and flailed, her back hitting the wall with a painful thud, shaking her to the very core. Another cough forced its way through her throat. She was too slow to recover.

The shadow grasped around her neck with an iron grip, and her own hands immediately flew up in an attempt to pry it away, but it was entirely fruitless. It squeezed. Her heart hammered loudly in her ears, her vision soon spotting with darkness. No matter how she struggled, she could not move the shadow’s hands. She was far too weak to fight such a thing, despite how it ironically seemed to mirror her.

‘What a pitiful sight,’ a voice—the shadow’s voice, crooned out, wispy syllables echoing throughout her mind. ‘Entering my domain is the last mistake you will ever make. Just like the rest of them!’

It was all just a bad dream. That’s what she told herself as her air began to run out. A cruel nightmare. Soon she would wake up in her flowery bedroom, in her white silken sheets with the morning sun streaming through her windows. Where nothing and nobody could hurt her.

And yet her heart contorted with such vexation as she gazed upon the blurry silhouette that resembled herself.

Her jaw clenched. Even if this was a dream, something within her did not allow her to stop fighting just yet.

With the last of her strength, she brought her leg up and kicked, as hard as she could. Much to her surprise, the shadow’s grip faltered for a moment, but a moment was all she needed. Aurelia wrestled the dark creature off of her, tripping in her dizziness and scrambling onto the floor, letting out a pained scream as her hand squeezed around one of the broken mirror shards near the desk.

Just as the shadow rushed towards her again, hands extended with murderous intent, she closed her eyes and dove into it. The shard sank into its chest effortlessly and Aurelia felt breathless. There was no blood, none except for her own, trickling down her hands and staining her white dress red. The girl struggled against her, twitching, quavering, until the black mist that made up its body finally dissipated.

Aurelia collapsed against the floor. The whispers were gone, and the floor felt as if it was shaking. Her mind felt strangely relieved for the first time in a long time. She was light.

She looked down. Her palm was evidently mangled from the mirror shard.

But she felt no pain.