The curse

By Suzette Drake

Chapter Four
In the arms of the dreamer




Somehow Charlotte found her way back to the bed-chambers assigned to her. Despite the noise inside her head, the fact that she didn’t know her way around the palace, she found her way, undisturbed from the Undranes. She had somehow managed all her clothing off and herself under the heavy covers and into the embrace of the dreams…


She was shouting in her dreams. Shouting at the three. Confused and alone, charlotte had become frustrated with all the dreams. None of it made sense. It had been her in the dreams, yet it had not been. Charlotte did not understand and this aggravated her next to the breaking point.

Her body tossed and turned as she dreamt. Tears were covering her face…
Inside her dreams things were not so mild.

“Why do you torment me!?” Her dreaming self shouted, asking, begging to be answered.
The voice of the three answered,
“We do not torment you. We keep you company in this strange land.”
Her dreaming self threw up her arms in aggravation. “Company? How do you keep me company? You keep me mad, is what you do!”
Her dreaming self turned ‘round and ‘round, searching the darkness that was her dream.
Her sleeping self continued to toss and to turn.
“Why do you not show yourselves to me?”
The voice spoke, “Our presence and appearance disturbs you. You are yet to accept us. When last we showed ourselves you were too frightened. You need be given time to accept us”
“Accept you?” Her words were almost as an animal’s bite. “Why should I need to accept you? I want you to leave me be!”
“Child, you need us” The voice of the three replied. The voice had half lied.
This time the dream was getting nowhere, the three had decided. They woke her from the dream. They flung her from sleep.

She awoke than, feeling more scared and alone than before. She wanted answers and the dream refused to tell her. The dreams spoke in riddle. It all confused her, and she was so very tiered. Yet she could not sleep, no matter how much she tried, she could not sleep. They would not let her sleep until she would be ready to listen to them. Her tears were spent. She took to a vacant stare at the dark ceiling above her. In the morning, or what was supposed to be morning in this dark country she was exhausted. Servants did not disturb her though. They were instructed by the queen of the Undranes not to. The queen now had entered Charlotte’s chambers without her even noticing. The queen stood at the foot of Charlotte’s grand bed. Her skin was dark and her eyes had no whites, they were seemingly slits of green light. It disturbed Charlotte the night before, but she had ignored it. Or had she seen them? No, she hadn’t. Why do I remember things I have never seen? She thought at that moment. The queen’s hair was mangled and hung down, yet it was ordained with gold pieces, all strung together. Charlotte also noted that the queen was crowned with a not gold, but of some other ore. She took a longer look and decided it was obsidian, the black stone that was not stone at all but volcanic glass. The queen also wore the contrasting gold on her wrists and fingers. The queen began to speak to the young princess.
“Princess, I am here to greet you good morrow and ask you to come and break fast with us in the grand hall.” The queen saw the girl’s unwillingness. “There will not be such an entourage as last night, nor will there be dancing.” The queen, Charlotte could tell, was attempting to be sympathetic with her, but it was hard for the young one to get past the fact that all the queen’s teeth were fanged and each time the queen spoke to her, that was all she saw.
Soon after the monotonous conversation began to die. The queen left Charlotte alone. Charlotte walked around for the next few days like a zombie, slowly getting accustomed to the life in the dark palace. Each night sleep was denied her, This went on for a few weeks.


Charlotte had not seen the prince since the first night she had arrived, but this night, he found her. Motzelar had been watching her all this time. He had actually been the one who gathered Charlotte’s shuddering body and bore it to her chambers the first night. She did not remember, nor would she ever. That was even something he would always keep to himself. He did not see himself as she saw him; he being dark.
Charlotte walked over to her vanity, somewhere she had not bothered to go to since she had arrived. She had not cared about her appearance; not cared about how they saw her. Though she went to look at herself now, at what she had become. She had been feeling like an empty shell. She half knew what she would look like because of this. Charlotte looked in her mirror, crafted out of the ore that in a time long into the future would be known as platinum, rimmed with colourful stones that her People had uncovered and crafted for her. She now looked into the lavish gift from her People, into the mirror of her vanity. She had grown pale, yet not just as ivory; she seemed to have taken on a transparency.

Motzelar knocked once and then without hesitation stepped into Charlotte’s chambers.
“Greetings, your highness.” She said out of habit. She had always been taught to respect authority figures. “Please,” He said, putting up a hand to the formality she used. “ I was just hoping we could maybe spend some time together.” He was still looking the same as when she first had met him; as tough he was made up of soot itself. His eyes, though, she could not see from where she stood. She was looking at him in her mirror. He was behind her, some distance off. She turned around on he stool, so she could better see him.
Charlotte replied to him, coldly. “Well, I do suppose that we should at least talk because we are to be wed.” Was the prince hurt? Could he be? She couldn’t tell. She didn’t allow herself to care. He continued attempting conversation with her.
“I don’t know much about you. I was hoping that you could help me out with that.” Charlotte sighed at this. Perhaps it was out of annoyance, or perhaps she felt as though he was attempting to be affectionate. It wasn’t enough for Motzelar to even hear, therefor he did not have these questions going through his head. He simply saw what had come to him a beautiful flower (though he had no sense of what beautiful meant). With the short time this flower had been with him she had been wilting. He wanted desperately to know what exactly had happened with her. He wanted to know how she thought and why she thought what she did. He also needed to sleep with her. He would not rape her though.


“My prince,” Charlotte said to him with the same detachment she had with the world, “I am alone. I am torn from a land that is a blooming flower and a joy. I don’t want to be here. For the love of me, I wish I were not here. My land is my heart beat and now I am torn from it and dying.” That was what it all came down to. Charlotte had told him how she felt. Perhaps now he would understand.

“Please madam,” Motzalar began, “I am not the one who dragged you here. I am the one however who is to wed you. I am the one who is supposed to keep you. You have been here for days that have grown to weeks and weeks that have given way to moons. It is past time for your comfort.” Surprisingly he felt bad about all of this. He carried some guilt, as much as any of his people could. He was still a creature of the dark lands. “Tomorrow, rather than tonight, we are to share our wedding bed.” “An unsanctified wedding bed, for it will be before the wedding!” Charlotte shouted back at him, like she was biting at his heals. And it was like she was doing just that because he was calmly leaving the room as she spoke, as if she was never heard.

Charlotte cried. She slept. She dreamt and she awoke in blood sweat and shedding blood tears.


Motzalar did not need to take her by much force. Charlotte was detached from her body. Her mind was more than a world away. It was past her childhood, past the afternoons when she would fall asleep in the arms of dragons. Past the morning she would ride unicorns no one else could see. It was past her memories of flying. Those memories others told her were nothing more than her imagination. No more than her dreaming things that were there.


The darkness grew inside her. Each time his seed infected her body her skin grew to be the same as his: covered in soot. Her eyes lost the life they once had. Charlotte lost herself. It was like a drug, her letting herself go the way she did. Then one night (or was it day?), Charlotte began to like it. Charlotte stopped crying. Charlotte became sadistic. She could no longer remember who she was, only that she was princess of a powerful nation.


The prince adorned her with many beautiful pieces of jewelry. She no longer was looking in the mirror. She never felt the need. She never looked out the windows. She didn’t feel the need to. She didn’t care. The only things that filled her days were meats, wines, gifts and sex. She never made love. Never once came close to it. Though she did learn how to enjoy what she must endure. She didn’t dream for this time. Or rather, what she did dream no longer bothered her. It didn’t wake her. Mostly, when she woke she recalled nothing of what she dreamt. Charlotte was completely disconnected from the world. She somehow, through all of this grew more powerful then she had ever been in her entire life. Her wings that were mostly only shadows when seen before she went to live as an Undraine were now fully visible. Though her wings were not as beautiful as they once had been. They, like her skin, were covered in blackness. She did not use her wings however. She had forgotten how to fly. This was something that saddened her. Though she did not feel her own sadness. She didn’t feel anything really. What she pretended to feel was wickedness. She came across as being just as sex crazed and detached as her betrothed prince. Weeks went on still. And still she was not with child.

A wolf cannot breed with a tiger.

Her wings changed to be now not like that of a bird’s but of a bat’s, leathery and dark.


Chapter one, The Loss

Chapter two, The nightmares

Chapter three, Strength

Chapter five, The day the whole world went away

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