Scarecrow Stories: The Unattainable Heart

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While most romance stories are about the birth of new love, this tale is about love’s demise.
Once upon a time, there were two slaves of a terrible Prince. One slave, a man made of white wax, served as the Prince’s butler and vassal. The other, a slender woman of tan skin with black and white feathers forming a skirt around her legs, was a lady-in-waiting to the Prince’s many conquests. Over their many years of service to the foul Prince, the butler fell for the maid. He doted on her every word, and would never refuse to do something she asked of him. Every night they met on the parapet of the Prince’s castle in secret, for if the Prince found out about their affair he’d surely kill one of them, leaving the other alone, tormented, and still enslaved, so the two lovers plotted their escape. Both the butler and the maid spent their few free hours everyday searching for ways to get to freedom, until finally the butler had a plan. He had stolen some rope from the cupboard in the kitchen, which they would use to repel down the side of the castle and escape through the forest below. When they met that night, something was different about the maid. She was acting as she always did, but her skin was partially coated with ice with frozen tears stuck to the sides of her face. He would go first to ensure the Prince’s trained hounds were nowhere near the landing at the bottom of the rope. Once he was down, she would drop him his sword so he could protect her as she made the descent. At least, that was the plan.
The butler made it halfway down when the maid said his name softly and sweetly like pillow-talk between lovers. He looked up, his eyes widening at the sight of her using his sword to saw through the rope.
“I’m sorry dear, but I've found my own way to escape that requires me to leave you behind. I’ve found my own power to escape, although you’ll make a nice distraction for our Master.”
When the butler hit the ground below, he had to roll out of the way of his sword landing beside him. Battered from the fall, he couldn’t move again for what seemed like an eternity. He heard the alarms inside the castle begin to flare, but his heartbreak left him far more crippled than the fall ever could. Soon the Prince’s wolves were circling his body, waiting for their Master’s order to finish him off, but the waxen butler did not move. Then, the beastly Prince arrived.
“Well, it seems like your co-conspirator has left you broken... Hmm, in more ways than one I see. A broken heart is a potent magical tool for one such as her,and it seems your ‘friend’ means to use it. Well... don’t lie there on my account. Get moving! Your heartbreak fuels her power! I think it would be best for both of us if you prevented her from using it against me. So turn your despair into rage; let anger burn your heartbreak away!”
There was a brief pause before the Prince spoke again.
“We’ll be in touch once you’ve ended this.”
The man of wax soon felt the fires of passion for his maid light anew in a way he never foresaw, the heat of his anger melting his skin as well as his rationality. No longer feeling the pain from the fall, his burning hands grabbed his rapier beside him as he charged the forest. He found her talking up one of the cart-mules from the local town, a tall hairy man with the horns of a bull. A flaming hand around her neck began to melt away the ice on her body. As the mule turned and ran, the butler pulled the maid’s neck with a single hand, dragging her into the forest behind her.
“Please, love, you don’t want to do this! You love me, don’t you? You’d never hurt me! Your heart longs for me!”
The butler’s eyes flared with wrath as he let go of her neck, stepped back, and leveled his sword.
“You’re scaring me love! While I never truly loved you, you always had a place in my heart! You will always be the man whose blind love gave me the power to escape! So come with me! Do as I ask and I will always be at your side, the fruit just out of reach; and your Desire will give you the same power that it has given me!”
But the butler didn’t feel Desire and he didn’t want to, either. He felt Wrath, stronger than he had ever felt love, or wanting, or anything else. Without hesitation, He precisely aimed his lunge between her ribs. He would take away the one thing he could never have. Within a flash her heart was pinned, still beating, to the tree behind her, the sword still piercing both. That was when the Prince made good on his word of getting in touch.
The butler didn’t notice the Prince at first. His panting from the adrenaline of it all slowed, and the fire of his rage subsided. He felt alone, truly alone. Yes, this woman had broken his heart, but it didn’t make him stop loving her. All this rage, this Wrath, had turned him into a person he didn’t want to be. He hated how good it felt to end her, because it left him missing her even more.
“I can taste your regret, slave. You shouldn’t feel so guilty about what you did. You saved us both today from that horrible witch.”
The butler removed his sword from the heart and the heartless before him. He clutches his head, wiping the still-melting wax from his brow.
“Ah, I can tell you still love her, even after she used you for all you’re worth.”
The butler reached for the heart, thinking he could use it to bring her back. In doing so he believes that then her heart will beat for him, that his Desires will be reciprocated.
“Ah-ah-ah, I can’t have you bringing back the witch that could have killed me. That heart may still be beating because your Desires will it so, but a heart separated from a body cannot make it live.”
The heart slips out of the butler's hand, blowing weightlessly away on a gust of wind.
“Such a Contract will ensure she’ll never return. As long as you live, you will never get her heart. It will always be just out of reach, no matter how much you Desire it. Now come back to the castle; you have work to do.”
The self-absorbed Prince was too late. The butler had already ran after the heart. When the Prince’s hounds came after the fugitive, the butler left their bodies behind as a reminder of his never-ending burning Desire. One day, he will break the Contract and find the heart, and if the power of the maid’s Desire can’t kill the Prince, the butler’s will.
Category:Fiction