Salt

Her door opened inwards.

She let them step in first, her insides shaking. She was caught out in the cold, her fingers turning blue despite gloves.

It shut behind them.

She stayed out in her hallway for a moment.

The sconces were lit, casting magenta onto the floor. Aro requested them when she was six. Thirty-seven magenta (“isn’t it just pink, pier?”) spun glass covers. They came from glass makers further down in Southern Italy. In the morning the servants changed them to normal clear glass.

But the others, the ones hanging from the ceiling, would remain. They were Moroccan style lanterns. Stars made of blue glass, green, orange. Aro had brought them home himself.

There weren’t as many, six or seven. They were lit infrequently, in dispersed as they were. She only asked them to be lit on special days.

When she wanted to be alone, every other sconce and regular light would be off. And she would lay down, carpet underneath her spine - only wanting to stare at the stars from the floor.

She would be covered in multicolour light that stained her forearms and ankles. In winter especially, when the rest of the outside world was stark white and made her shiver.

The familiar white wood walls in laid with flower patterning. The green couch she would sit on when she wasn’t permitted far from her room. This was hers. This was familiar.

Something in her unclenched and loosened. Her door opened (golden wood that was rare, Aro had told her) with a familiar click.

She stared at the softened magenta light of the wallpaper. It made most colours dark and shadowy, the detailing almost monstrous.

The click sounded again in her silence, “please enter, your highness.”

The frown that pulled itself on the corner of her lips was heavy and she forced them upwards.

Jane’s eyes calmed in the light. They didn’t crawl forward like they had in the dark, reaching forth so quick for her soul.

They would have swallowed it, if she didn’t look away. Taken her before she could even comprehend.

Now they were more…a shiver shade darker than the light. Not translucent and open but a shiver closer. It brought more focus to her face, her rising sharpness and her slight hair.

A question was forming. Deep and reaching. Stop it, her hands held the material of her dress as she walked forward, you hate her. It felt like a mutter to herself, a footnote. Just get this over with.

***

Sometimes the questions swelled. Their roots reached further into the soil of her mind. Tangled and twisting through her throat to latch onto the driving force of her heart.

Their roots were thick. They didn’t squeeze but they tapped in. And from her heart, they grew.

The petals so large and heavy, their edges turned purple. They fluttered their edges on the sides of her skull.

And when there were many, they burst to the sides of her brain.

“Why!” Bella wailed, her feet dragging into the ground and Alec careful in trying to pull her inwards.

Something silver glinted on the table.  It made her want to look. Stare at how the sun fell through its glass cylinder and shrill point that was so fine it was almost as thin as string. But it was clear and sharp and she knew it was bad, bad, bad.

“Enough, Isabella.” The light from the window blinded her eyes. Sulpicia’s shoulders squared away in black fabric. Rough hoarse shapes.

There was no kind glass face, eyes alien and red but also burgundy and the smell of sweet soft honey perfume. When she had first tasted honey it had zapped on her tongue and made her teeth sing with sweetness. None of it lay in the air.

Sulpicia was a shadow, tall and ebony and she leaned over like a wolf to the pigs. They came from the books Bella had listened to, the very same person at her side, reading and holding her hand. Despite how cold it was, Bella always held back.

The shadow filled the doorway, reaching.

“No!” Bella screamed. Alec’s hands weren’t painful but they gripped her sides as he tried to lift her upwards.

“I said, enough! Get inside!”

Somehow she, the shadow, elongated, fangs showing through her lips. Her legs took strides and Bella’s head spun, shattering rivers of fear skittering through her veins.

She’d screamed (it was sharp), tears warm and sticky down her eyelashes and head pounding. It collected in the corners of her nose and her mouth, it felt like her brain was oozing. Throbbing out.

Pound. I don’t want to. Pound. I don’t want to.

“My,” came from behind her and she stilled, “what’s happening here now, my sweet Isabella?”

Her head turned. Aro smiled down at her above Alec’s head.

His smile was caught in shaking clothes beneath blankets and snow falling like someone had a pile of it in their hand and blew. Cold fingertips and colder toes wiggling in restrictive socks but no relief. And red eyes and frozen hands reaching forward underneath a thin tin sheet roof the colour of silver and grey.

“A-Aro.” Her teeth clicked and voice warbled. It felt thick and bulbous in her throat. Even his name tripped over her tongue, mispronounced to be a weapon shot from a string.

“My Isabella,” his voice was sweet, ringing on the taste of her favourite lemon seed muffins. The light from the window illuminated his face to be softer rather than cut paper. His hair was hanging loose by his cheeks and in a brief thought she imagined tying it back.

Alec moved as Aro knelt, his hand gentle in laying pressure on her shoulder. He wasn’t wearing his cloak and he looked…smaller somehow. Bare within a black turtle neck.

His other hand went to her left shoulder and with slow movements, he turned her to face him head on. His eyes were open, not closed and shadowed like so many others she’d seen.

His thumbs rubbed at her cheeks. It was a soft and slow movement, wiping away the warm wet from her eye corners and cheekbones. She couldn’t help but pour out more, the action so soft, rubbing away ice.

“What’s wrong, sweet Isabella?”

Her lip curled, lips frowning and she dashed forwards into his arms. He was stiff and hard to her pressure but she pushed in, hands curling under her chin.  His arms didn’t close for a bit and she hugged him harder, body wracking with sobs so hard she felt them in her lungs and her legs. She felt like shaking, nose bridge pressing somewhere near his collarbone but not.

It all felt like betrayal. “Why do I have to do this? Why are you trying to hurt me? I don’t like it, Aro! I don’t! You said no one would hurt me!”

His arms close around her. The muscles in the section of his shoulder closest to his neck shifting deep at the action. She shoved her nose in hard to it, half hoping it would hurt and half not. The material was soft against her heated cheeks. He smelled nice, almost like  the sound of soft flickering embers and a faint orange glow. A fire that burned in a dark room.

It made her feel warm.

“I’m sorry my darling,” his voice rumbled through his chest into her ears deep but soft. “But do you honestly believe we want to hurt you?”

She sniffed.

A hand raised and stroked the back of her, gentle fingers running through the now soft strands. It was- Nice. Her shoulders released and the shaking in her arms lessened a little. She tried to squeeze him harder. Fists underneath her chin gripping the fabric of his turtleneck. It was soft.

“Do you think Alec, who brought you that octopus would hurt you?” She shook her head into the valley between shoulder and neck. “Do you think Sulpicia, who tucks you in and gives you all your nice food, would hurt you?”

She tried scrounging for any reason to say yes, flicking through but she couldn’t find anything. She shook her head.

“Alright, then there’s no-“

“But I don’t like to get hurt, why do I have to get hurt? Why do I always have to get hurt? Why can’t anyone else do it?” They felt small coming out of her throat. She felt small saying it.

“Many people are hurt everyday, sweet Isabella.” He murmured soft into her ear, “do you think they like getting hurt?”

Tears leaked slow from her eyes, two or three. His words felt like a black hole, sucking her in with insistent force. She didn’t like them but she couldn’t say yes.

“Do you want them to get hurt?”

“No,” it felt like they were getting tinier and tinier. She didn’t want to hurt anyone.

“Do you want Alec to get hurt?”

“No.”

“Do you want your Mier to get hurt? Do you want Sulpicia to get hurt?” Her head tripped over the word but she shook her head.

“No.”

“Do you want me to get hurt?”

“No!” She said, whipping her head back. He smiled gently with his open eyes. His hand lifted up to the top of her head to give a gentle pat.

It was a warmth to the ice cold that swept through her. Tears fell like crystals to her chin, “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.” She muttered through a shaking jaw. It even sounded warbled to her ears.

“Then, come,” he said, “let’s sit you in the chair.”

Her mind tracked over the memory as Sulpicia inserted the needle into her vein. It pinched and her nose twitched for a moment before she stilled again.

She glanced up at the dark hairs that blocked the view of Sulpicia’s face. There was no ease to the features and no tense locking of her cheeks and lips. Bella’s fingers twitched and she glanced away.

“She needs to give blood for an hour each evening at nine thirty on the dot. She’s old enough now to know when if you forget the first few times but you must remember the exact times. I expect nothing less than excellence. Do not allow her to insert the needle and always use a tourniquet and syringe, do you understand?”

“Understood.”

“Before ten o’clock enough blood should be drawn, it’s a very swift process, do not draw more than necessary. Understood?”

“Yes, your majesty.”

Sulpicia drew up, dress sequins scattering light across Bella’s arm and face. Her eyes followed her and she felt a weird sensation of crying.

“Then you should be capable, here are the plasters and the alcohol wipes,” they were moved forward on the table. “I will take my leave.”

Bella focussed forward as Sulpicia turned to her. She swallowed, almost looking, almost tilting or turning her head to the right.

Instead a hand tucked a hair behind her ear. It was gentle and warm,  grazing the shell of her ear before vanishing. She grit her teeth as the crying sensation spread with hands. It felt like two knuckle points facing off each other.

She thought of the Sulpicia from long ago. The living  swath of darkness and shoulders. Tightness awoke in the edges of her eyes.

The door clicked close behind Sulpicia. She breathed out the sensation she’d been holding. The ridged stretch that had been shaking in her lungs.

Something clattered and her muscles clenched like strings, head snapping to the side.

Her mouth stretched down with a pull.

Her favourite fountain pen rested between Jane’s fingertips. It was the one from Aro. He had given it to her when she’d asked for it as a young child. It was black and long.

It’s ability to hold ink was starting to fade. Growing less and less able, the ink starting to splitter dark spots onto her page in the middle of the night. She always squared her shoulders and sighed in annoyance. And yet she could never let it go.

“Please put that down,” she muttered, simmering trying to take place in chest. Her head was building to a drumming pressure and she felt the bones in her body longing  to rest.

There was silence. Only her breathing and dancing of dust in the overhead light. It was ornate and creamy glass. The dust swirled in its yellow. She glanced back.

Jane was sliding her fingertips over the spines of the books above her desk.

They lay in thin, fat curves. They lay in colours of older times, dark browns and deeper blues and emerald greens. Yet some were more light. White with gold trim, light green with sky blue lettering.

They bigger ones lay sideways, creating shelves for the smaller books to stand upon them. The ones that stood upright sometimes leaned or were sometimes closer to laying down than up.

She turned away.  Eyes falling instead to her cream and green carpet as embarrassment fussed in her chest.

Her room wasn’t unseemly.  Alec always put her books back. Or Sulpicia tutted and made her lay everything back into their rightful place.  Her wrinkled hands (only at the knuckles) smoothing down the lacquered surface of Bella’s desk.

But it was the bookshelf that always flowed and rumbled with texts. Scrolls and philosophies.

The air flowed from her chest, a soft sigh. A flower sprouted.

“This is a good collection.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Silence. Her head lifted.

Red eyes stared her down, filled with…things that flowed and cut and sparkled. Magma or a blade that had laid in fire and with slow breathing became deep heated. Cutting.

A smirk lifted onto Jane’s mouth and Bella’s teeth grit.

“You lie by omission by not telling them anything.” Jane said, stepping closer. Her cloak fluttered. Her hair was still wet enough for majority of it to be straight but the strands near her ears were starting to curl.

The edge of the seat cut into her thighs. “Why won’t you say anything?” Her tongue felt slit and sharp - forked, the words filled with venom.

Jane knelt and the beating and rushing that Bella hadn’t been heading (hadn’t been paying attention to) swelled like a wave. Dark and deep and frothing at the top.

It was warm across her face, head rising and pulling across her neck and ears.

Jane pulled out the needle and she hissed. “Who’s to say I won’t?”

“Stop it,” she muttered out, heart scattering, looking for a place to perch. “I say it. I say that you won’t.”

Jane’s head tilted and her arms rested on the edge of the arm rest, her chin falling onto them to look up at Bella.

The sight stirred and twisted and made her fingers shiver. The hairs on her arm were almost touching Jane’s sleeves. Blood welled slow.

“That’s a very bold thing to say to the head of the guard.”

“You weren’t the head my whole life.”

Jane’s mirthful expression fell and Bella’s head moved backwards a bit. The shadows seemed to fall into the corners of Jane’s eyes, her ears. “You’re wrong. We’ve met before, your highness. Just once.”

She shifted away. The air was cooling on her arm, swelling on her wrist where the needle had lain.

She imagined it to be Jane, sharp and silver and intrusive. Not belonging.

“I told you to stop it. That’s a lie.”

“Alright.”

The air left her lungs and her head lifted. Jane wasn’t looking at her but at the red.

Everything felt fused and burnt almost. Like the heat that had been sweeping her veins had touched too much. Now it lay passive underneath the surface, reduced but it’s aftermath still lay bare.

Jane’s hand lifted and Bella slowed. Heart almost seizing as a single finger touched the side of her wrist and a droplet flowed.

Jane’s hand yanked back before it could touch and she stood, black encompassing her front and shoulders.

She stood over her, shadows defining her face and hair slight in its curl. “Good night your highness.”

Then she was gone.

***

When Bella lay in bed that night, the sheets wrapping around her ankles  and a plaster on her wrist, she let her hand rub the glass she’d gotten from the beach.

It was smooth and not clear. Opaque and a little rough. Smooth but a little rough. Her fingers brushed across its rounded edges, its centre where dim lights and deep shadows coalesced.

Just off to the side of its middle lay embedded a weathered metal starfish. Maybe from a necklace or a charm.

She imagined a child cherishing the gift from their parents and holding it close. But also dashing into cold water, waves battering against their wrist with the metal charms. Maybe there was also a silver dolphin and a shell.

But only the starfish had fallen. And only it had been caught in the glass and battered beneath the sea. Rolling underneath pressure and scattering with sands.

But it still shone. It sparkled beneath the sun to draw her close.

She brought it to her heart, clutching it. You’re special, she whispered in her lungs and arms, you’re special to me.

If only it wasn’t bright red.