Vicky’s Story: the One that Got Away
From Changeling Venue
“I can’t remember much of my time from there… that place…. But I remember Her, as clear as day”, as a smile came across his face, but quickly disappeared as though he was embraced, “more clear then the memories that brought me back to this world. I remember her. She was my first and only Love… She was the reason I got home… and I fucked it up, for what?” He paused for a moment and then continued… “Oh well it’s in the past, anyways.” His face returned to the sharp scowl he usually carried on his amazingly plain face.
“The Duchess”, he said, his words dripping with distain, “was particularly rough with me one day, taking me to the rose garden to play ‘Tea Party’ like she had so many times before. It had been nearly thirty years at that point, best I could keep track of time at lest… and I had given up all hope of ever returning to what I could remember of my world… The Real World.” He hung his head in shame. “I had given myself over to her whim completely. When she said ‘play’ that’s what I did.” You could hear the pain in his voice. “There was no use in resisting; It would have just gotten me beat on the ground while she through a fit, and as I vaguely remember that hurt me a lot.”
“While I was being, for a lack of better word, violated”, he winced, “I remember tongues and vaginal fluids and blood and cuts and oh God” he held his held in his hands as if he was trying to squeeze the thoughts out. He took a deep breath and paused for a moment to compose himself and then said, “I… I’m… I’m sorry… It’s just that place… where was I?” He thought for a second, “Oh yeah. While I was being violated by that twisted girl, again and again, I noticed a radiant tree in the garden that hadn’t been there before, at least not that I could remember. It was tall and graceful looking, the branches were surprisingly strait, and the leaves were the most brilliant Greens, Browns, and Yellows. The Duchess liked to hang charms from this tree, but none others in the Garden. I know she was special. And when I looked at it in the right light”, the smile came back to his face. He covered his mouth as though he was trying to hide it, “I could swear it looked like a beautiful, young woman. I paid very little mind to this, at the time, as it had nothing to do with me. She was probably some poor woman the twisted child had taken and made her prized tree, in the center of the garden. What business was it of mine anyways?”
He got up slowly and walked to the couch in the living-room of the small apartment, saying, “Never the less, I couldn’t get the image of that tree out of my mind. It was calling to me. I was surely going mad. Trees don’t talk.” He said. “Over the next year or so I did what I was told and what The Duchess commanded. She was after all the master of the manor and I was just the servant. There to be her doll.” As he said this his brow wrinkle and his eyes squinted making it very apparent that merely the though angered him to the inth degree. He continued, “But my thoughts keep turning towards the tree.” A small bit of a smile returned to his lips. “I would stair at it every time I was in the garden, and I dreamed about it at night. I was becoming obsessed with it and I don’t to this day know why. I guess your heart just knows the future. But if it is it doesn’t share what it knows.” He shook his finger, as if teaching a rather pinion lesson.
“So one night the Duchess in all her hast to move on to the next “toy” she wanted to play with, like she had many times before, left the Toy Box opened, and I know I had to take the chance. To go see the tree I had almost been lusting after, for more then a year of my pathetic life, by now.” You could see the pain in his face. “I made my way down the stair case and through the parlor and to the garden. To her, To the tree. She was even more beautiful then anything that my frail and unraveling mind could even remember.”, the slight smile on his face was growing a bit bigger, and he was starting to drift into his thoughts when he started again with a jolt. “I just stared at that tree for hours, that first night. Not saying anything. Not moving. I was enthralled.” His smile was growing still and by the look in his eye one could tell that his mind was still in that moment, back then, when he was the happiest he has ever been and fears that he will never be again.
He continued on, “This wouldn’t be the last time I would visit the eloquent tree in the garden. Oh I waited for a while till the next time I was sure the Duchess would be busy, to sneak off to the Garden to see …her… my most perfect tree.” His lips were in a full grin now and glazed look in his eye was that of a man falling in love for the first time, except his mind was still wandering away from the here and now, away from the small apartment and maybe even this world. He continued, “I would sneak out more and more frequently, becoming more bold, in my pursuit of my obsession with this tree. I would stair, talk to and even cress the tree. I’m not sure why. I honestly think I was finally losing it, but then again that place will do that to … well…. Anyone.” His eyes lost the glint in them as if he snapped back to the reality of the here and now, but still thinking of the happy memories he has. “One night to my surprise the tree spoke. She said ‘Vicky’. I was obviously taken back. I said, ‘are you Vicky?’ No response.” He seemed hurried like he wanted to get to the real meat and potatoes of the story but was drawing it all out for some dramatic effect.
He went on, “That night I went back to the Toy Box not knowing what had happened. The next day,” he continued,”The Duchess of course wanted to play ‘Doctor’.” He shuttered a bit and went on, “all I remember about that was I could not walk, for what I figure was almost 9 days, afterwards. I don’t like to think about it,” he said. “When I could walk again I went to the tree… to Vicky? This time she spoke. ‘I’m Vicky… I think.’ I was amazed. The tree did speak. I wasn’t completely unhinged, much to my surprise.” His disposition seemed to perk up, just a slight bit. “Your beautiful were the only words that would cross my lips. I had so many questions and so many things I wanted to talk about, but I could not say them. I all I could say was You’re Beautiful, to the tree… to Vicky.” He was trying to hide the smile on his face with a scowl like he usually carried but that could not hide how he really felt about her. He continued on to say, “It got to the point that I was sneaking out to go visit Vicky every time I could. And it seemed that some how every time I saw her she looked more and more like a human and less like a tree.”
“Well that’s Arcadia for you, nothing is what it seems and even when it is that’s subject to change.” He let out a small laugh and went on. ”For months Vicky and I had long and meaningful talks in the garden where she was planted, until one day she moved slightly. She was actually able to move from her roots. It was truly a sight to see.” He was excited now, but kept an eerie composure to himself. But you could still here it in his voice. “She was the world to me. She was smart and funny and she was so beautiful. I still can’t believe that she was real. I couldn’t have dreamed a better woman up if I was given a thousand years to do so. And she loved my company. Hell I was her only company, now that I think of it.” His disposition waned a little bit , after realizing that she may not have felt as strongly about him as he obviously did for her. “well, no matter, the story does go on regardless of her motives or anyone else’s.” he said with a half smile on his face and a very low and calm tone in his voice. “She could move now. It gave me hope. Hope of maybe between the 2 of us we could get out.” You could hear the excitement in his voice, but his demeanor still that of a cold hearted, stone-faced killer. “One night I was in the garden, talking to her as usual, and asked if she could remember the other world, the one that I assumed she had been taken from as well. She paused and thought for a long moment and said ‘I think so’ almost asking me a question of sorts. ‘Think hard’, I said. ‘Who were you? What did you do? Who were your family? What were there names? She couldn’t remember specifics, but she did start to tell me something about protesting and something about the war. I had no clue what she was talking about? The war she was describing was not the war that happened when I was taken. She was speaking of planes and ‘Charlie’. Who was Charlie?”
“Anyway, it was apparent that I had been gone a lot longer then I had though.” He said. “We spent the next few times we meet talking about the hazy half remembered memories of our former lives, not really understanding what the other was talking about, but all the time giving me more and more hope that we could get away from this nightmare, we were trapped in. “ “After a few nights of talking together about the memories we had about the world we both came from, we decided to escape. To make a dash through the hedge. She could barely walk but was getting better with every passing day. We decided that when the Duchess took her next trip to the courts of the Fae we would make our move.” His expression was that of clam for such an intense moment in a story, he was telling about his former life.
He continued on, “When the faithful day came I was ready. I made my way down to the garden, shadowing the moves of the Duchess as she left for some distant dream. Down the staircase, through the parlor, and out into the garden, where I hid behind one of the many tall and thorny rosebushes the Duchess had planted in the rich soil of the vast outdoors play land that was the garden.” His face had an insanity on it, like he was telling a story from a war long past. “When I felt she was good and gone I ran to the tree… to Vicky. ‘I said are you ready?’ She shook her head reluctantly and said ‘yes’. With that I grabbed her branch like hand and pulled as hard as I could. Her roots made her move slow, but eventually she got the hang of running with out me having to even pull very hard.” His face had an excited fear, and you could hear the adrenaline in his now rushed version of story telling. “We dashed for the Hedge with all the strength we had. When we reached the thorny brush that seemed to be the barrier, that we both remembered, being drug through so long ago, we paused. Just for a moment and stared at one another.” The smile returned to his face, as bold as I had ever seen him smile and he said, “That’s when I kissed her for the fist time. Something that I had never had the guts to do before but had been wanting to do for as long as I had known her. She was a bit taken back by the gesture, but I didn’t give her time to respond. I pulled her hand as I entered the Hedge.”
“The thorns cut deep and tore at the skin like swords pricing flesh. I still had her hand; I could feel that her movement was getting stronger, less resistant to the moving. As I ran I looked down and could see that the roots were being replaced by feet and toes. She was becoming more human, and she was even more gorgeous than I can describe. The grace of an eloquent, flawless tree and poise of a beautiful, long haired young woman.” He went on with a smile and a hurried tone in his voice. “We ran and ran till we couldn’t run anymore, the sounds of the Hedge creatures echoing in the foggy branches of the jungle of razor-sharp, thorn covered branches. Then, as soon as we were about to collapse from running so long and hard we came across a clearing in the Hedge. There was a faint look of a building on the other side.” His words so intense that he even he had himself on the edge of his seat, to see what would happen next. “We could hear the sounds of the Duchess arriving home to find that Vicky was gone. Her child like whines turned to bellows of rage and echoed through the dense brush as we made a mad dash across the open field. As we ran I could see the beasts of the Hedge lurking on the edge of the field ready to pounce on us, once we were out in the opened. But we had to take the chance. I looked back at my beautiful tree and said, ‘ready? We have to go NOW’! She nodded her head in agreement and said Just hold my hand, and don’t let go.’ I smiled back at her and we ran as hard as we could.”
“As we neared the edge of the clearing and what seemed to be the window of a building on the other side, I noticed one of the beasts about to charge. Vicky most have noticed it too, because she let out a rather loud scream, as we leaped through the opened window.” His voice had a sound of relief and adrenaline and the expression on his face was like he had just had his first heart attack. “Vicky jumped up and slammed the window behind us just as the creature from the Hedge snapped at my foot. As we stood there looking back through the window we watched the misty, thorny Hedge fade away from view. An unfamiliar cityscape took it’s place.”
“We had landed in New York City of all places. As we looked around we saw that this was obviously an abandoned apartment on what we would come to find out was the lower east side. It was dirty and run down. There was trash and graffiti all over and the small was … well not very good. But we stayed cause it was out of the way and we had no money to go anywhere else.” He went on, with a feeling of warmth in his voice. It was if he was talking about the best years of his life had gone by without him even noticing but some how remembering them. “We cleaned the apartment, the best we could, and I boarded that window in hopes the Fae could not find us. There was an old mattress in the back room where we slept. Luckily, it was spring. We didn’t have blankets... or anything for that matter. We hid for weeks, just the two of us, and I was the happiest I have ever been.” He noted as an aside to the story, “a situation like that causes people to become very close.” He went on with his story. “After a few weeks of self imposed exile and no sign of the Duchess, Vick started to become more bold. She liked to sit on the stoop outside the building… in the sunlight. I would often sit with her and talk for hours… watching people rushing by; not knowing what was just on the other side of the Hedge.”
“One day while we were watching the sunset over the buildings down the block, Vicky spotted one of them, one of the Fae. At least that’s what we though. Turns out it was a one of ours, one of the ones like us… Touched by the cruel masters of Arcadia. He simply handed me a card after we got over our initial fear. He said check this place out, they’re friends. It just had an address. I was the safe house where one of the local freeholds meet.” His demeanor was very calm, to calm for an emotional story such as he told, but that was his way. He asked, “Do you want some coffee or … tea… or something?”
“Well it took some time for us to muster the courage. A few weeks if I recall, but finally we went. We were greeted with opened arms for the most part. They explained the ways of the Changelings of this world to us… Courtly politics… the duality of our being… and so forth. We had found a place to fit in. But that’s when it all started. Oh we didn’t realize it at the time, but now that I look back…” He paused as if he though he could change the end of the story, but he knew he couldn’t. He went on with a slight scowl on his face. “She took up more and more with the spring courtiers, reveling in her freedom and dragging me along with her. I always thought that it was a bad idea, but I love her, so I went along with it. I would spend many nights alone at the abandoned apartment that we had made our home, or at the dry cleaners job that I had managed to get after members of the winter court in the area managed to get me a new ID. She was out making herself a target, but I love her, so I stayed, but it wasn’t enough.”
“We argued often about her spending so much time out and the parties she through at our apartment. She was just making a target of herself, but I get it now. I didn’t then.” You could see the longing and the pain in his eyes. He went on, “after about a year it got to be to much. I had to leave. I don’t even think she misses me but I regret the decision. There was no reason, but I was scared, but I love her.”
Contents |
About Vicky Sage
Back to Malic Stitch
Basic Timeline
- A few years in arcadia
- A year of talks and falling in love
- April 12, 1999 - Escaped the hedge and wound up in New York City
- they live in an appartment together and keep to themselves for a few months
- Vicky joins the Spring court
- Malic joins the Winter court
- Malic creates his fist hegespun line of clothes.
- Vicky starts to venture farther out into the world and away from Malic and the relitive safty of there samll appartment.
- Malic and Vicky start to continually fight
- Spring 2000 - Malic leaves Vicky and New York
- Then utill Now - they speek on occasion and act as though they are good friends. even doing buisness together on many ocassions.
Soundtrack
- "A Thousand Miles" by Vanessa Carlton
- "Breakin' The Habit" by Linkin Park
- "Purple Hills" by D12
- "Were in Heaven" by DJ Sammy
- "Birthday" by The Sugarcubes
