This freebie story for my surreal steampunk Work in Progress, On the Other Side of the Mask was the result...
Something tickled his cheek, bringing Shelley back from dark dreams. Something soft, silken that clung to his skin. A flower petal. Someone stroked him with a flower.
“Wake up, sleeping beauty.” It was Nathaniel’s voice, half-mocking, half-sad, uttered with a musical lilt. “Look at me.”
Shelley obeyed, raising his eyelids to behold the young man leaning over him. Auburn curls dangled around Nathaniel’s face, close enough to Shelley’s own to grab and pull. He’d tied his cravat into a bow tie, giving himself an almost clownish appearance. He held out a daisy in one gloved hand, letting it glide over Shelley’s cheek.
“Should I expect a prank?” Shelley moistened his lips, wondering if the tie or the flower would spit water at him. It was a trick he’d sometimes seen on the streets of Paradise on Festival of Fools Day, the one time of the year clowns were allowed near the Cathedral of the Goddess and its songbirds. “Does Lord Ruthvyn allow such clownish behavior on his estate?”
“Oh, he always has a least one fool in his entourage. Often more than one.” Dark blue eyes, the same vivid hue as Olympia’s clouded even as Nathaniel smirked. “Right now he has you and I. Perhaps Olympia and Byron as well, but neither of them are as foolish as you or I.”
“Why do you say that?” Shelley raised himself from his bed to look Lord Ruthvyn’s servant in the eye. Nathaniel was baiting him as usual, but he might reveal a clue about Byron’s well-being or state of mind while doing so. Shelley was so hungry for any crumb of information about his proud songbird, he was more than willing to endure the abuse.
His songbird. Shelley might no longer have the right to consider Byron his. Lord Ruthvyn could have gotten to him, crawled inside his head, changing who knows what.
For a moment, the room swam around him, the red velvet hanging over the bed transforming into a waterfall of blood, falling into a pool. Byron floated in the pool; naked, pale, disturbingly exquisite in his stillness as any boy in the paintings upon Lord Ruthvyn’s walls. All the fire in his luminous dark eyes was gone, leaving them as cold and empty as their pale master’s. Long, white arms reached from the crimson depths of the pool, to clasp Byron, dragging him down into their wet embrace. Byron disappeared from sight, his face as blank as a doll’s. Not seeing Shelley. Not caring. An emotionless mask of Byron’s once animated features was swallowed by red water.
“No!” Shelley clapped his hands to his own cheeks, banishing the vision. “This is a trick, an illusion!”
“Maybe it is.” The vision swam into red velvet hangings and a ruddy golden pattern on the walls.
Shelley was back in his own bed, if he could anything in Lord Ruthvyn’s estate his. Including himself. Especially himself.
No. Don’t think that way. Shelley couldn’t let his mind sink into such submissive despair, he couldn’t let their pale lord win. He’d be betraying the name he’d chosen, the poet it belonged and the freedom Shelley represented. Worst of all, he’d be betraying Byron and the bond between them. He couldn’t ever think that way.
“It was a prank.” Nathaniel gazed at him as if Shelley were a rare work of art, a creature of spun class. One he yearned to touch but didn’t dare. “Your Byron remains your fool, holding true to the promise the two of you made.”
The young man brought the daisy in his hand close to Shelley’s cheek once more, brushing it. “How long can he keep it, Shelley? How long can you resist Lord Ruthvyn? It’s only a matter of time before our lord drains the vitality from both of you, transforming you two little rebels into pieces of silent art, a pair of spiritless toys.”
“You’ve seen him do this again and again.” Shelley studied Nathaniel’s face. Young, with delicate features, a small, snubbed nose, yet immobile and unlined, it was very like the servant’s mask. Only Nathaniel’s eyes retained a spark of emotion. “Were you one of his victims, Nathaniel? A cherished songbird until your lord tired of your song?”
“My song? Lord Ruthvyn would laugh at the idea of me being able to sing a note, let alone divert him with it.” Nathaniel shrugged as if his master’s disregard was nothing of particular interest, but there was a flicker of pain in his eye. “I’ve never been more than a doll to him, a toy for Lord Ruthvyn’s diversion, and not a very diverting one for all that. Much like Olympia.”
Nathaniel withdrew the flower to press it against his breast. He stood up, looking down at Shelley. “It’s time. Go to your cage. Get ready to sing for Lord Ruthvyn, little songbird. Pray that you satisfy his hunger with your voice.”
The young man turned his back on the boy in the bed. Stiff and rigid, he walked towards the open door. Once he crossed the threshold, he slammed the door behind him.
Shelley was left alone in a silence which breathed and quivered.
“Are you really just a toy?” he whispered into the silence. “For all your taunts, that reaction was very human.”
Perhaps there was more life lingering on Lord Ruthvyn’s estate than the pale lord realized. It was just a question of rekindling it. Perhaps with the right song.
This was the one power Shelley had, which he was encouraged to exercise. He could still sing, even if it was without Byron.
If only he knew where Byron was in this vast estate. If only Shelley could catch a glimpse of him, hear his voice. The smallest sign of the other songbird would give Shelley courage. It would rekindle his own dwindling hope.
No. Shelley had to hold onto hope even if he had no one but himself. He had to be brave for both Byron and himself. It was the only way of navigating this surreal mansion and its mazes back to Byron’s side. It was the only way the two of them would be reunited. At least Shelley hoped so.
There was no point in praying for a miracle. The Goddess who ruled Paradise was on the pale lords’s side. She wanted to suck the stolen vitality from her servants just as they sucked it from their songbirds and the other sad citizens of Paradise. Shelley couldn’t look to a higher power for help. He had to rely upon himself.
He could almost see Byron’s sly little half-smile, the sardonic arch of his brow. “You are mine and I am thine. All we have is each other. Believe in us and no one else.”
“I’m trying.” Shelley knotted his hands against his breast. “I’m trying, but it’s so hard, Byron. I feel so lost without you.”
He bowed his head and began to weep. For a moment, he could hear the others, what was left of them. The lost, abandoned songbirds, trapped in paintings, statues, the very furnishings of the mansion silenced forever.
“No.” Shelley forced himself to smile through his tears. “You still have a voice in me. I’ll give you one. I can hear you crying. Even if you no longer can, I’ll cry for you. Cry and sing.”
He allowed his smile to twist into something savage. Lord Ruthvyn wanted Shelley to sing? Oh, Shelley would sing for him. He’d sing for everybody. He’d sing something not even a pale lord could ignore.
“Just you wait and listen for me, Byron,” he murmured. “I’ll sing for us all.”
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