~~~Trigger Warnings~~~

The Darker Tale Of DIlly-



This was not how life was supposed to be for the fair young lass, the little dove of the mountainside. That was the nickname the villagers gave her, and just like her mother, her voice was as whimsical and healing as a delicate wind chime. They lived in the countryside of the rolling hills of France, that poured into the lower valleys below. Lush overgrown emerald strands and tree's carolling over watercolour of wildflower fields hugging along the veining of rivers and streams, and the mountains so vast and high they French kissed along heaven's breath.

Their cottage had been in her father's family for centuries, passed down from one generation's hands to the next, all the men were merchant mariners supplying goods between neighbouring villages and colonies around. In winter months or any other seasons, their home seemed to always be shrouded in ghostly mist, not threatening or harming in any way, on the contrary, it held to the magicks history it kept. Her mother would tell her stories and explain it was because the forest held to many secret realms. Some we could see with the human eye, as with other's it was only seen by unseen forces around. This was never frightening to her, in fact is held its own enchantment she thought, and she used to pretend she was living in the clouds when the mist hung extremely low. Her mother would even make her angelic wings out of the bedsheets and twigs she would find.

As Ella would dance and prance around all day as her mother would tend to the gardens she planted that she loved. They were not rich, nor were they poor, and the lands provided much of the vegetation and herbs they would need. They even had a small farm she would help tend too, and her mother planted marigolds, lavenders and buttercups along the lining of the tree's. Ella's young life was just like a fairy tale, the ones her mother used to read to her every night and she never forgot one word or sentence and dreamed of a man with oceanic eyes. Her mother would brush her long blonde hair and tell her it was made from fallen stars and winter frost that braided together and framed her pale pink complexion and kissed by the heavenly gods. Ella would just giggle and laugh and tot her tiny stems and dangle her toes, calling her Mama so silly, and she was more dreamy than even her!

But that was long ago, long before the fairy tale would shatter and break like an exquisite magical looking glass captured in time with memories that would no longer be. It started the day her mother took her very last breath and all the shine that held to her eyes spilled over from her sacred chalice holding her spirited soul. It was nearly two years later, after her father had travelled to a village nearby, he would meet Ella's soon to be step-mother and her two daughters. One with hair as dark as a raven's wing as the other in an almost devilish crimson fire.

As soon as the girls and their mother moved in, even the cottage seemed to turn brittle and pale bone white and the mist that once held the magic of the mountainside evaporated, pouring over the edge and never returned after the very first night. But Ella always wanted to be pleasing to her father and ignored the voice that drove deep inside. Like a serpent lashing its venom, a voice that she felt crawled straight from her stepmothers mind. She couldn't understand what her father saw in her. Her eyes were as dark and dead as the unmovable sea and her fingers were long and almost snake like, and Ella couldn't help but to stare when she coiled them around a cup of tea.

But as shrouded and dark as everything seemed, Ella still held her innocence and wonder in her creamy toffee wide wild eyes until the day after her father had left for a business trip one later spring day and nearly two weeks would go by.  Her stepmother and sisters paced in the estate, often keeping Ella quite anxious as she trembled with her own fears in her precious soul. They were more concerned about the dresses, silk and gems he had promised when all she requested was a tiny branch from the oak tree he would pass on his journey on the outskirts of town and to keep it in his pocket over his heart looking at it each time her would enter another village and think of her while he was away and bound.


The day the telegram arrived, the ghostly mist would enclose around the cottage once more and the hint of rain whispered almost angrily, mizzling clumping on every flower's open pore. Something heavy could be felt in the air and Ella could feel it upon her sweet puffy breast as she opened up the cottage door and gazed upwards at the sky as rickety pearl - like clouds clustered, telling her a storm was near. That's when she caught the gaze of her father's old childhood friend with the look of dread upon his face, and she could immediately feel her heart sink in her chest as he made his way up towards the entrance-way.

His voice was raspy, broken and tight as he told her the news of her father's passing. He had caught consumption only a mere week before and in a matter of days he was gone, no more. He longed to write his beloved daughter a note, but he was gone before he could ever get a chance and when his childhood friend finished speaking her handed Ella a thin envelope with a tiny coiled twig. It almost looked like a heart, but had little ridges that bubbled up at the edges of it bark covered vein. As she held the twigs in her fingertips, twirling it as her eyes welled with tears, she felt her legs go numb, and she spilled in a puddle upon her tiny legs. She couldn't be sure how long she remained there, but the fireplace roared before she received the news, and by the time she came to once more it reflected of her heart's dying embers in a sea of deepening blues.


Ella couldn't remember when it first started, for the first time she felt the glint of the whip across her incandescent flesh, it felt as if it was a haunting of a previous scar. It was the look in her stepmothers eyes when she first met her. A spooling of dark vines swirling, trying to contain all the lies she told her father to get into his heart. The crackle of the braided rope upon her arching back that night as tears poured over her delicate flesh. The hissing of the storm brewing outside, mother natures way of drowning out Ella's stolen tears. Ones that she held deep inside since her father's passing. She couldn't break or even allow a whimper to slip past her lips because she knew once she did she may never stop crying.

Her once upon a time was now shrouded in her stepmother's talon like hands. At first, it was the young girls that would pick upon poor Ella, dropping buttons, ribbons or perhaps even a brush. Then demanded that she pick it up immediately and by the kindness of her heart, Ella would bend down and hand it to them. This game would last for a long time, almost like cat and mouse. Snickering, watching Ella over and over again pick up the various items they would purposely toss to the ground. They even, on occasion, if it tickled them to do so, would press their un-lady like hooves upon her back and knock straight into the ground. It took everything inside to swallow the pain, sting it would cause, and she would slowly rise up from the floor, always with a smile, and hand them whatever items they sought.

She remembers on days such as this, it was hard to sleep in her nights for not only did they take away her bed filled with dreamy feathers from an ostrich tail, they replaced it with a thatchle of sun burnt hay that was left over in the fields. Her room was not the attic upstairs where they kept all the old things of Ella's previous life. But this wasn't so bad for the young beauty, for she felt her parents' hearts, spirits lingering in the surrounding room, protecting her in her nights. Her stepsisters, though with all their evil teasing and random demands, were merely child's play compared to their mother, who was much more sinister in her twisted calculating ways and no matter what Ella did for her, she could never find a way to get into her ironclad.

She dotted on her hand and foot and even combed her long crimson straggly hair in the night, as well as applying a rare lotion from the south of France upon her feet, massaging and kneading for hours.  She so longed for a mother's love again and remembers the excitement held in her heart when her father's first told her he was remarrying, she danced and spun around their countryside home thinking of her own mother, the stories they would tell, and her fingers muddied from the garden when they planted fresh roots in the soil. But her stepmother could not be any farther from the light her mother contained. It was like two opposite ends of a storm. One gleaming in all the colours of a rainbow, while the other the thunderous sounds, lightening streams that could break one's very soul.

When her father passed, many changes occurred in her life, and it became an unbalanced pendulum that teetered in her mind. Her stepmother was always worried about her social standing and the money her father had left would quickly diminish and run out. She grew up poor, Ella would come to learn and stepped on many backs to obtain her own blood stained wealth. Within a day or two, she would fire all the servants and staff. Most Ella knew her entire life. They were not hired help or soulless bodies. But the faces and hearts of the remaining family she had. Many offered to stay for less pay, or simply for shelter and nourishment in the days, but it seemed nothing they said or bargained with helped at all.

She remembered the way the water felt. The heat, pressure, comfort it brought as she now shivered outside her childhood home with nothing more than a bucket and a single bar of soap to wash herself off after a long day of gruelling work. After she dismissed the staff is when the truest of nightmares would begin. She told her she was doing her a kindness, allowing her to remain under the roof which was now theirs and even when they allowed her to have the attic She should be thankful for the extent of care they gave her in those days. 

Ella was now told she would sleep alongside of the farm animals in the barn, which would become her home and even in the wintry months would pass, frost pouring over the mountainside in silvery steaks of gold. She clung to the one blanket she was given, made of thin strangles of hay braided as one to keep her dainty frame warm, as she huddled close to the farm animals shivering all night long.

The day she dared to escape, taking her father's strong trusted steed into the forest beyond their watchful gaze, is when she encountered Mr. Kit for the first time and embarrassment clouded upon her eyes and face. She was unsure if he noticed, the embedded dirt and muck clinging to the tips of her fingers and toes as she curled them under her paddings and smiled with a warmth she hadn't felt in so long fill inside of her heart and bones. But as she watched his hopeful sparkling eyes and listened to his velvety baritone voice, she could feel in the distance a darker presence beyond the bushing that surrounded the two.

It was later that night she would find out to whom the presence surely was when she heard the barn doors open with a flickering light and her two-step sisters and their mother were accompanied by a stocky, short man with lustful eyes.

The Journey to The Castle.....
TBC