FALLEN in NAMES ARE DANGEROUS THINGS

For a little haunting beauty :

Fallen's story continues from LIES THAT LOCUST TELL as she awakens in a British insane asylum ...


I drew in a breath from the cold breeze bleeding from the wounded window. The sharp tang of Autumn.

Oak. Ash. Thorn. Decay.

Rotting leaves, mottled in bright hues of strangled life. The dark and bloody soil beneath them breathed out its lineage. An aching sadness hollowed out my chest. The Misty Isles. Albion. England.

I whispered, the words feeling like dewdrops of blood on a wounded deer, "The lonely season in lonely lands."

"Oh!," whispered the girl sitting on the next bed. "You like Robert Bridges, too? No one reads him anymore, you know."

Not rising, I turned my head and studied her. A tiny field mouse of a girl. Bright eyes, so clearly wanting to be liked, so clearly showing they often hadn't been.

Those quivering eyes were mute witness to the fact that Man had plowed through her world. And unlike the poet Robert Burns, Man had not cared overmuch. How human.

I rose slowly to a sitting position. "Fragile beauty is like that. Easily destroyed. Even more quickly forgotten."

She cocked her head as if studying me. And it was then I noticed the corpse-yellow bruise covering the left side of her face. I felt mine harden. Her frightened eyes darted to my chest then flinched away. I felt the breasts under my dingy hospital gown burn.

And I knew. I knew. I had been touched, fondled without invitation or delight. And even more, this tiny field mouse of a girl had come to my defense. And had paid the price.

"You were my champion I see."

She looked miserable. "I wasn't able to stop him."

"Few humans in your position would have even made the attempt."

She kept studying me. I wondered what she saw. One human in a generation saw me as I was. The rest of the herd saw only what they were looking for. And I? What was I looking for?

I turned to the face reflected in the barred window. Certainly not that. Not that.

From beyond the wounded window I heard a mournful singing. Nightingales. Far off and forlorn.

To do a service for a Sidhe was a fearsome thing indeed, never to be done lightly nor without cost. But before the field mouse found that out I would do her a kindness. I smiled bitter. A breaking of tradition, true, but I broke every rule I could not bend.

I brought the faint, bittersweet song to the ears of the field mouse and murmured lines from the poet she so liked,

"Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams;

Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams,

A throe of the heart,

Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,

No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound,

For all our art."

She clapped her hands like a little girl. "Oh that was so beautifully done. Your accent is the oddest thing I've ever heard. Even more haunting than those nightingales."

She stuck out her hand. "My name's Clover."

"Of course it is."

"No, really. My Mum was a bit spacey I'm afraid. The last of the Flower Children."

"We might have gotten along then. I am the last of my kind, too."

She paled, lowering her hand and her voice until even I had difficulty hearing her, "Y-You haven't told me your name."

"Names are dangerous things, Clover."

"They're just sounds, that's all."

"No. True names are runes that foretell the end of those who hear them."

I ran my tongue over my needle teeth and decided to give this addled human fair warning. "Call me Fallen."
***