“Love will save me. I just need to remember what it is,” I think, as this witch hovers over me with a welcoming gaze and inviting smile. However, I know her facade is only a mask.
“You do not even struggle Prince Orpheus. My magic must soothe you,” the witch says to me.
The wretchedness of her voice is compounded by the corrosive dankness of the rotunda where I am imprisoned.
“I am only becoming colder and weaker,” I reply.
“Yes, those are the side effects of quieting your young, hungry heart. That coldness is the feeling of you slowly dying. But I promise you my prince, that is a fate better than living with the disease of love. It has only fooled you with its false warmth and charm. I have saved you.”
Her words were poisonous, but I could not avoid them. And from her magic I could not escape. Enveloped in her spell’s green misty plasma, I knew my end was approaching. If only I could reach her vile, deceptive snake of a wand, but I am bound so tight to this stone slab. If only I could remember love, then I could find the strength. Whatever love is, why must I be killed over it?
“Young prince, I can hear your thoughts! My spell is not killing you, it is saving you from a life of pain. That is all love is; pain. I will show you true love, and you’ll be glad to never have to experience its cruelty yourself.”
“So all this is love,” I ask?
She laughs.
“No, no, no Prince Orpheus, this is love.”
I heard the windy, rustling sound of a curtain drop, and turned in its direction. There was a dim shimmer of light where there used to be only darkness. Standing in the dull magical illumination, on the cold stone ground, amongst dirt and dead moss was a fair, innocent, but disheveled young lady.
“Orpheus,” the barefoot girl yells!
She looks so very familiar. I know her, it is Miseria. But why does she scream for me in that way? The witch watches Miseria too, but with disgust. She waves her hand as if issuing a command, and Miseria’s mouth goes shut, but through her closed lips she continues spewing unintelligible sounds in my direction.
I was still doused in the tight, rippling embrace of the witch’s magic and my body heat continues to leave me as my heart steadily slows. Miseria is panicking at the sight of me. She’s in a frantic display of agony, looking as if she has been electrocuted by misery itself. Her face distorts with such displeasure, that I can only see her sorrow and not the tears covering it.
“I love you,” the she mumbles to me through her closed lips.
I did not know how to reply.
“You see this Orpheus? This is love. Look at the pain she suffers,” the witch says down to me.
Losing my energy, I slowly, with the effort I can muster, turn to Miseria, and see her on the cold, damp ground in a fetal position crying and reaching for me. She feels something I can not understand or remember, but I so greatly wish to try before I die.
“Let me hear her pain. Let me die happy that I will never have to suffer love,” I weakly plead up to the short-haired witch in a tan dress.
The witch smirked, pleased by my request. Yes, the last sound you’ll hear will be Miseria’s screams of love. A prince deserves to be put to rest in peace. Peacefulness that will come from your princess-to-be’s pain.
With my eyes barely open I gave the witch the meagerest of nods. The clean, very traditional lady immediately reaches out into the distance towards Miseria and then yanks her arm back as if she was extracting something buried deep inside of her.
“Orpheus, please don’t leave me. I can’t live without you,” Miseria struggles to say through her crying. “Don’t believe this witch. Live and find out what love really is. Die, my prince, and you will never know,” Miseria said, continuing to sob.
I am very cold and so weak. All I can see is the fluorescent green glow of the witch’s magic. “I don’t know what love is,” I whisper.
“Yes you do! It is pain,” the witch says, wholly entertained.
“Don’t listen to her. This is not pain, Orpheus! This is love! I cry because of all the happy moments we shared. I cry because I remember how you were always there for me. My tears are for you, Orpheus! They are a gift for all the love you have given me. In the cold your love gives me warmth. In the dark your love is my light. We were meant for each other, Orpheus. Don’t think of love my prince, fear never knowing it.”
All I can do was listen and think. My eyes are closed and I am freezing. Tired, weak, and close to death, I wonder about never experiencing something that can be so cherished. And in my dying incapacitation I start to become nervous. “I wish so dearly to know what Miseria feels. I don’t want to die. I want to live. I am so scared of never knowing what it feels like to have my heart burn with emotion such as hers. I want to live to shed those unrelenting tears,” and those thoughts gave me a little warmth.
My eyes reopened, and through the veil of emerald magic I find a depressed and devastated Miseria, displaying what I would be missing once death overcame me. Her hair was a mess, her face a splattered collage of makeup mixed with dry and wet tears, yet she forced a smile through her anguish so I knew whatever love was, it made it all worth it.
“If you can’t feel real love, you wench, I will steal it from you too,” the angry witch screams at Miseria!
“See, Orpheus, my love? Look at us and where we are. This disgusting old prison is a place of hate, not love. Is this perfect lady really a savior or is she a pariah? You know fear, prince. Fearing death is like loving life, I know you can break this witch’s spell.”
“SILENCE,” the witch roars and recast the spell to seal Miseria’s lips, but the message was already sent. Fear was warming the prince’s heart, and the spell was fading away.
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