Cursed
Prologue
Once upon a time, in a far away land, there lived a lord in an enormous manor that stood deep within a dark forest. He owned much land and governed a small town. All who lived on this land had to pay him heavy taxes while working long hours for very small wages. Many of the townspeople could not afford new clothing and proper amounts of food. They could not afford to have a doctor in town and the lord refused to supply one, so they turned to a witch by the name Miranda, who became known as the town healer.
Miranda was an astoundingly beautiful young woman of many hundreds of years. She kept her appearance strictly between the ages of ten and thirty depending on what kind of mood she was in and the situations she was working with. She was a very skilled healer and an extremely powerful witch.
When the Black Plague swept through the village the witch watched with sad eyes as families she had known for generations dropped one by one. She was busier than ever, caring for the sick, but not even she could keep the Black Death from spreading.
One particularly busy night, one of the lord's servant boys with long blonde curls falling into his eyes came knocking on her door. He was breathing hard and had run all the way from the manor. He told her that the lord had caught the Death and that she was ordered immediately to him.
She had many dying patients to tend to and viewed their lives higher than that of the selfish old lord but the boy in front of her would surely be thrown to the streets if he returned without her. So she called her long cloak, which slid itself over her waves of red and held out her hand for the boy.
The boy took her hand and waited. Nothing happened. He expected the healer to say an incantation, or something but she stood motionless, staring straight ahead and didn't even walk towards the door. He looked up at her and watched as nothing happened. When he looked away he found that he was standing in front of the iron gate of the manor.
He blinked a few times, not believing his eyes. Then the gate began to creak open on its own. He was not accustomed to magic and was frightened. The healer must have sensed this for she squeezed his hand and told him not to worry.
He led her through the gate and down the long path, up the steps and stopped at the door. He knocked as hard as he could and they waited to be admitted.
Miranda knew she could easily have let herself in but decided that at a time like this she would rather be polite. Besides, every moment wasted waiting outside the manor door was another moment she could have been saving the lord's life, which truth be told, she did not care to save.
The boy by her side was thirteen, she knew this from the thirteen years worth of memories that his bones whispered to her about. They also told her he was infected. She made a promise to herself that she would tend to him as soon as she was through with the lord.
The large wooden doors were opened not by a servant but by the lord's only son. He offered her his arm and she reluctantly took it, abandoning the frightened boy by the door. He led her through the enormous house and she would have liked to admire it but she was overwhelmed by the story his bones whispered.
The young man's name was Daurien. He was a spoiled brat and cared nothing for the people in the town below. He lived a life of luxury, fancy foods, expensive wines, and the finest fashions from overseas. And women. Every night since he had turned fourteen, Daurien had gone into town and lured a poor girl to his manor with his good looks and a promise of a full five course meal. Then after she was bathed, fed and content, he would pay her to spend the night in his chamber.
Miranda did not need her witchcraft to know this. It was common knowledge that the lord's son was making half the townswomen harlots. Bones only ever whisper memories, not feelings, so she could not know whether he was truly cruel or if he felt remorse. She found the saying, “feel it in my bones,” ridiculous but cared not to find out whence it came from, though she surely could.
She would have punished him then and there but the immense grief running through him was enough to make her think he could change.
He lead her to a large bedroom, the details of which she could not notice, and brought her before the lord of the land. He lay in an enormous bed with excessive pillows and several blankets. Many of her patients did not own a pillow and barely had one blanket per family member. She felt a pang of anger at this sick, selfish man. He could have distributed his extra blankets to the people he governs, but he preferred to keep them for himself.
The man in the bed looked very small to her, buried in all the blankets and pillows. His skin was papery and pale, splotched with black rings. She had seen many with the Black Death, but this patient revolted her more than the rest. This might not have been solely because of the sickness.
She knelt by his bedside and knew immediately that she was too late. She would have saved him, too. Despite the fact that she hated him, she could never refuse another being treatment. She would have put all of her heart into it, for she was a caring being.
She stood back on her feet and looked solemnly at the young man before her.
“I am sorry, truly I am,” she told him. His knees buckled beneath him and she watched as he fell to the ground and wept.
Each breath he drew shuddered in unison with his body, curled up on the fine imported rug. And with every beat of his heart she could feel his deepest fear, screaming over and over. He never loved me. He never loved me.
She left him there and returned to the sick in her home, for there was nothing she could do to help him.
The next morning, there came a knock yet again on her door. This time, however, it was the new lord himself. There was something different about him, but she could not put her finger on what it was.
“I'm sorry for your loss, Lord Daurien,” she apologized yet again. He blinked a few times, as if adjusting to the sound of the word, “lord,” in front of his name.
“Witch!” he hissed, “You are under arrest for the murder of countless lives, including that of the lord.” His heart beat quickened in the excitement and she realized what had changed in him. It was his heart. No longer soft and broken, it was hard as a rock on the outside and she could feel nothing but cruelty, pain, fury and anguish.
It must have happened overnight, while he was healing his heart. He had, instead of patching it, frozen it. Cold ice, beating only to keep him alive.
“You cannot arrest me for a crime I never committed,” she replied coldly.
“You have cursed this town, my town with the Black Death and have acted as a healer so that we do not hang you, but I have seen through your facade with the death of my father. You shall leave this town and never come back, banished for as long as you live or you shall hang tomorrow at sunrise.” He spun on his heels and she shut the door loudly, his footsteps growing feint as he went his way.
Miranda did not want to leave town. She had lived there for hundreds of years and was connected to the land. No one could force her to leave and they might as well try to count the stars with the same success of trying to hang her. But if the lord created a suspicion in the people that the Plague was her doing, there was no doubt in her mind that in a time of such desperation, they would turn on her. Not that they could do anything to her, but she did not want to be hated.
She decided to give the young lord a chance to prove to her that he was more than just a block of cruel, unrelenting ice.
At exactly midnight, an old woman, bent over in exhaustion stood in front of the large wooden doors of Lord Daurien's manor. The cloak she wore was tattered and drenched in rain and her feet were bare and muddy. Her face was old and wrinkled with age and blemished with scars. Her skin was stained with black rings. She knocked on the door with one weak fist.
Miranda had not been this old in decades and disliked it very much. She hated the sluggish movements, the effort of every step and would have much rather liked to have been her usual youthful self, but for the circumstances it was absolutely necessary.
Yet again, it was Daurien who opened the door. He scowled down at her in disgust and asked her if she would kindly leave as he was extremely busy.
She said, “Young sir, I am going to die in the next few days, I am very weak.” He continued to stare in distaste.
“What do you want me to do? I'm no healer.”
“Young sir, I wish only to have a bed in which to die.”
“Haven't you your own?” he demanded.
“I have none. And I can pay you. Just one night. Please, young lord.” She pulled from her cloak a magnificent red rose and held it out to him. He stared at it blankly then continued to frown at her.
“What is this?” he commanded.
“Your payment, sir. It is an enchanted rose, with powers of healing both the body and mind, and even the heart.”
“I cannot accept your offer. Now leave me be,” he said curtly and began to turn back.
“Please.”
“I will not accept a rose for my death! My father died of the plague just last night and I will not allow that filth back into my house!” he barked.
“As you wish.” The witch said as she backed away from the door. The lord was startled by the sound of her voice which was suddenly song-like and full of youth, not at all like that of a sick old woman.
Her hunched figure straightened itself out and the hood of her cloak dropped to her shoulders as the long mess of grey on her head became striking waves of red. Her face became smooth and clear, and her figure became lean and long. The rings on her skin disappeared.
Daurien gasped, “I – I did not mean it. I wanted only to see how badly you wanted to come in. I would have let you stay the night.” By the end of his confession he had sounded almost confident. Miranda knew better.
“Lord Daurien, your heart is of ice. You are cruel and uncaring and you judge solely by appearances. The people you govern are starving and cold, but you care not to give them some bread or hand them your excess blankets. Only pretty young girls who are willing to spend the night ever go to bed full and warm. You must be punished.”
“No, no, no, please no, you do not understand,” he begged, but it was now her turn to look down at him distastefully.
“Sir Lord Daurien, I sentence you to an eternal life as a beast,” It was then that she remembered how soft and weak his heart had been just the night before, “I am giving you a chance to break my spell.”
“Please, please...” he repeated thoughtlessly.
“If you should fall in love and this woman shall, in turn have fallen in love with you before the last petal of this rose falls,” she held out the rose to the lord. He reached out to take it from her but seeing the paw he now possessed instead of a hand, he dropped it, “If you should manage to love a woman who could return your love and kiss you to prove it, the spell shall break and you shall return to who you were before and begin to age again.”
He stepped back into the manor and gasped at his reflection in a looking glass. Miranda appeared beside him.
“How can I make a woman love me looking like a beast?”
“With an open mind. And an open heart.” And with these last words she was gone.
A/N
Hello lovely readers. Thank you for giving my story a chance. If you like my work, let me know! Comment, vote, follow :)
On a side note, I have finally recorded a song that I have written, so feel free to check it out!! (or feel obligated because it would make me super happy)
Look up "Summer Fling" by Inbar Friedman or here's the link: https://youtu.be/XkPFPnlHMpU