Hebe

“Now, my precious little flower, you must stay here and stay quiet. Do you understand? This is very important. I love you more than anything in the world.” “I love you too, mum,” Hebe whispered, confused and frightened, but always obedient. The door shut. She sat huddled in her parents’ closet on the floor, in the dark. Muffled voices came from downstairs. Two were harsh and stern, two defensive, and then came a fifth voice that had a distinctly pompous air to it. She heard her name. Pressing closer to the wall, she squeezed her eyes shut, tried not to breathe too loudly. She listened as best she could to the sound, and realized something that made her heart seem to squeeze in on itself: Her parents were arguing with guards. Royal guards. They were essentially arguing with the prince himself. And then to her dismay, steps fell on the stairs. The door of the closet creaked. Opening her eyes, she was greeted by her father. He looked exhausted. “Hebe, the prince wants to meet you. Come downstairs.” Now they were downstairs, and Hebe’s mother was held tightly by one of the two guards who gleamed with armor. A sword was held against her neck, and she glared at her husband so fiercely that Hebe felt like crying. Instead she found herself ushered out into a glittering carriage with a travel case of her most important possessions. She was taken to the castle, first, and then out and through the court. That was exciting, except then they kept going - she was made to walk up stairs until her little legs ached. The tower room. It was gorgeous, decorated lavishly, and yet it seemed darker and gloomier than even the little closet had. Hebe wanted to go home. She didn’t like it here. She didn’t like the golden band clasped shut around her neck, or the tiny square window, and she didn’t like the dry meals that were pushed through a slot in the door three times a day. Everything hurt, for some reason. The food felt like it was sticking to her throat and strangling her. It tasted like dust. She stopped eating it. Somehow she was aware that it had been a year, though she couldn’t have said how she knew that, and she was being dragged by chains down the stairs in a gown she didn’t remember putting on. Faces she recognized but didn’t remember passed by in large crowds. Desperately she tried to remove the chains. They only got tighter each time, until she couldn’t breathe… The world went foggy. She screamed, suddenly sitting bolt upright in her own bed, in her own room, in her own cottage. That was worse. Mirror would have wept for the mother she couldn’t remember, or for her present predicament, except she was so very tired that she could only stare blankly at the blanket. Slowly, mechanically, she laid back down and set her head on the pillow. It felt like a bag of slightly squishy rocks pressing into her skin. Everything ached. She stared at the wall, now, with its pale green wallpaper that had vine-like stripes and leaves. “Hebe,” she mumbled. It was the only thing she remembered from the dream. What was hebe? Or… who? Did it even matter? She sighed, and waited for sleep to return if it would. Even the energy to close her eyes seemed like more than she possessed.