When Hell Sings

A heart for fire

~Chapter 3~

“A heart for fire”

After breakfast, Mirella took me outside the walls of the manor to see the grounds around the mansion for the first time since arriving here, which was three days and nights ago according to her. She was right of course, breakfast was the best thing for me, nothing like a good breakfast after death and three days of unconsciousness to get you back on your feet. We ran through the mansion and out the back exit towards the garden at the back of the manor, following closely behind her as we laughed and ran through the patio door, revealing a huge and breathtaking fountain at the bottom of the stone steps. Two stone dire wolves stood back to back in the center of the fountain with water shooting upwards through their howling mouths which where pointed to the sky as if talking to the moon. The sunlight shined through the spraying water creating a rainbow which streamed over the fountain. As I marveled at the sight, I was suddenly stunned and froze like the statues in the fountain when I noticed the garden maze at the end of the stone path leading away from the fountain ahead of us. I stood on the high patio scanning the area ahead of me as she smiled at the sight of my amazement, “Look over there!” She shouted with excitement in her voice, pointing over the maze at the high hill just on the other side of it. The hill was on higher ground than anything else around the manor, and at the top of it a single tree stood strong and tall, towering over all else. “I’ll race you to that tree on the hill, you ready?” With a smile on my face I stood there looking to the tree with a squint in my eyes as to get a clear view of it from the great distance at which I was standing. For about two seconds of my staring, the great tree along with everything beyond it was blurry and unclear like steam on a mirror, until the colors slowly became brighter and the shapes became sharper as I looked ahead with the sun in the horizon blasting light into my eyes, though I did not seem to notice, not even a blink. Everything ahead of me, stretching all the way to the horizon was now as clear as if looking through a spyglass. Never before had my vision been as vivid as it was at this moment, staring at the horizon with a giant smile on my face as I marveled at my new sight. “Beautiful isn’t it?” She softly says to me as she walks up beside me also staring into the horizon, her silky crimson hair reflecting the bright rays of light like a second sun I could reach over and touch. She looked at me with her blue eyes like sapphires peeking through the red strands of her curly hair hanging over half of her face, and her skin like powdered milk in the midday sun, shyly smiling at me with her ruby red lips. “Yes you are. It! Yes it is!” I yet again foolishly said with an outburst as I cleared my throat and continued to point to the maze. “Don’t get lost!” I yelled as I ran down the steps, with Mirella right behind me giggling with clearly visible blush on her cheeks. “I think I should be telling you that!” She says to me with excitement and laughter in her voice as we rush down the steps reaching the fountain at the bottom.

We split up with her going around the left side and me going around the right side of the fountain, with the water from the fountain being blown by the wind and sprayed onto my skin. As I ran past the fountain I stared at the wolf statues towering above me, the sounds of crashing water rung in my ears and then I saw her. Like I was staring through a diamond, I saw her, her hair reflected through the water reddening every drop like molten scarlet quartz. I reached into the spraying water and ran my hand through it, all the while wondering if it was the sun or the girl making the water as warm as it was. When we reunited on the other side of the fountain on the stone path leading to the maze ahead of us, I was certain of two things. I still had no idea where I was, but I was happy I was here with her.

We continued down the stone path heading for the entrance of the maze, the maze with walls standing about twenty five feet high and the entrance having two tall black steel braziers on each side of the gateway. As we drew closer to the maze I felt a mystique to it, a strange presence which seemed to whisper to me without making a sound. Mirella looked on ahead seeming not to be experiencing what I was, her lips moved as she spoke though I heard no words, she held my hand though I felt no warmth, like I was grasping the wind. The crimson of her hair slowly dulled to a deep black and the red of her lips turned as grey as a storm cloud, before the blue of her eyes darkened like black diamonds. It was as if I had stepped into a void where all my senses along with everything around me had been thrown into nothingness, making my body entirely numb and the garden in which I stood as drab as a colorless painting. She spoke to me as if explaining something of importance but the words did not leave her lips, while I smiled with my heart in panic as to not alarm her of what was happening.

The unclear echoing of a thousand voices stopped abruptly, and as if nothing at all had happened the melodic singing of the robins and the rattling of the leaves along with the crashing of the waters behind us once again livened the air around me. The warmth of the sun’s kiss once again caressed my skin as the sweat from each other’s hands seemed to cement them together. Before my very eyes the black of her hair turned back to a raging scarlet like how the dark of the night falls to the light of the sunrise, as her eyes turned to their usual color of mountain pools under the midday sky. “..And that’s pretty much all you need to know. Hey are you okay?” she asks me as she shakes the bewilderment from my face, with concern on hers. “Yeah I’m fine. I just can’t believe you’re real.” I say to her as I gently run the back of my fingers across her pink cheek and watch her smile once more, a sight that continues to force a smile on my own face no matter how hard I try to resist, and why would I want to.

As we approached the gate way to the maze the black steel braziers in front of us suddenly ignited and burned in blue flames as if caused by the gaze of Mirella’s eyes. Along with the blooming of red roses on the walls of the maze right before our eyes, as if it had become the first morning of spring or an army of red troops, thousands of them saluting the crimson of Mirella’s hair. We each took a step into the maze and as if a deity had snatched the sun from the sky, the light that had illuminated the garden at midday suddenly became a darkness that drowned me in shadows caused by a midnight moon now lurking above me. The once crimson roses that bloomed within the hedges of the maze now flowered in blue, as blue as the midnight sky. With my face now filled with awe as I looked around to find myself completely alone within the darkness of the maze, once again grasping nothing but the wind, a cold chilling wind blowing through the corridors of the maze as if the moon itself had taken a breath. A breath that had wiped the air clean of all warmth kissed down to me by the sun just moments ago.

“Mirella…Mirella!” I screamed down the corridor of the maze, my words echoing back at me more times than possible with each echo sounding louder than the last as if the maze itself was shouting back at me. Bewildered in my lonesome, I stood in the mysterious light of the moon as still as a sleeping owl, grasping my own head as the voices of my own making become too loud to bare. Fearing what was happening I ran down the corridor as fast as I could, my breaths freezing in the air as a thick fog starts seeping through the green hedges of the maze and also from the grass beneath my feet. As I sped through the maze I looked back to find an avalanche of fog coming towards me as the voices became louder and louder as it got closer to me. “Mirella…Mirella…Mirella!” It screamed at me with my own voice, as if I was chasing myself. My vision slowly being obscured by the rising fog, and fearing the worst if the avalanche were to catch up to me I ran even faster, straining the bones in my legs and feeling my muscles tense to the point where I felt they would implode. I ran for what seemed to be forever, turn after turn I rushed through the maze like quick silver, the fog now splitting ahead of me like the red sea and turning into twisters as I pass through. ‘What is this?’ I thought to myself, my thoughts echoing in my mind, as I looked back to find tornadoes of fog, blue with the petals of the roses blown off their stems by the gusts of twisting wind. Time seemed to have stood still, everything around me moved as if the gravity had been sucked from within the maze though I kept on running with petals of blue bouncing off my face and chest, slowly floating away and leaving a trail of rose petals and a strange mystic light of a luminous blue, illuminating the corridor of the maze behind me.

Slowly but surely the voices became more faint with every step I took, and for a brief moment my dread turned to exhilaration forcing a smile on my face which almost stretched from ear to ear. As I sped through the seemingly never ending maze I noticed the sound of the screams coming from the fog dissipate completely, and as if nothing at all out of the usual had happened the maze was once again as silent as a graveyard. I stopped running and skid down an endless corridor leaving a long and muddy skid mark on the lush green lawn, with thousands of rose petals beating on my back and falling to the ground as if it were a windy autumn morning. Now standing on an ocean of petals I looked down both sides of the corridor, fear no longer present in my eyes, only curiosity as proceeded onwards deeper into the maze, deeper into the unknown. “Okay, I’m pretty sure Mirella was saying something about this earlier on, too bad I never was good at listening.” I whispered to myself as I squinted my eyes as to see what lay ahead of me. As I walked through the maze and approached a left turn a few feet ahead of me, I felt a presence from within the shadows cast by the hedges of the maze. I stopped and took a few deep breaths, while clenching my chest, struggling to breathe. The dew dripping from the roses froze instantly, followed by frost covering the hedges entirely like forest trees during a snowy winter.

I cautiously approached the corner, slowly taking small steps with the grass shattering like fallen snowflakes beneath my shoes. Fear once again filling my heart and showing its presence on my face as the shadows start to boil like tar in a cauldron and a towering figure looming in the darkness stepped forth about three feet onto the frozen ground. The shadowy figure was that of a grown man, whose face was as grey as the moon above us with no eyes but random images flashing on the surface of its face as if being the memories of a past life projected for all to see. The creature wore a black cloak with its surface bubbling and steaming, with a hood lined with silver streaks along with a wolf engraved in the silver front of its hood. It stood in front of me motionless and not uttering a word with its hands folded into its robe, its face like a gallery of a thousand paintings starring right through me and gazing into my soul, making my heart beat so hard and fast that even my body begins to shake. The silver of the priest collar it wore glimmered in the moonlight like sunlight on a mirror, almost blinding me and like the head of medusa freezing me where I stood with my consciousness and all my senses still with me.

“I am not to be feared young Beuren.” It says to me in a deep gurgling voice, my eyes opening to the size of dinner plates. “H, ho, how do you know my name? What are you, why can’t I move?!” I asked with a stutter. “You cannot run from your fears young one. Even with the speed of ‘The Divine’, you must eventually face the terrors that haunt the crevasses of your darkest dreams.” It continues to say to me and on hearing this, I stood there like a statue befuddled at what I had just heard. “Okay, now in English please. ‘The Divine’?” I arrogantly asked the creature. “You are the bridge that bonds the world of the living with the world of the dead and must purge your soul of all your mortal fears before your transformation is complete. You have just purged the fear of losing the one you love most I this world. The fear of losing Mirella. If the fog had caught and swallowed you, you would have wondered this maze for all eternity calling out and searching for your sweet Mirella, with absolutely no way to escape its mystic confinement.”

With a look of realization on my face I struggled to move my lips, mumbling as I forced words out of my numb face. “Oh, is that all? Guess that’s what Mirella was trying to tell me earlier.” I confidently and cockishly said to the boiling shadow in front of me all the while trying and failing to pull a smirk. “You have very little regard for own life don’t you Beuren?” “Well I died and came back to life with super powers and now I’m a bridge! So do forgive me for not knowing the appropriate reaction to this whole situation!” I shouted while mumbling with my lips puckered to the side of my mouth and saliva being sprayed out of my mouth, freezing in the air and falling as snow. “Your words and doubts are to be expected. Your life is more valuable now than it ever was young fool, for you have barely scratched the surface of your full potential.” He says yet again with his right hand extending outwards from inside his boiling cloak and pointing down the corridor to the left. His hand was wrinkled and aged like that of a mummy with skin made of shining silver, my eyes following it like moths to flame as he continued to say, “Follow the light Beuren, it will be your guide to what you need most.” As he said this to me he began to fade away and like a phantom walking through a wall he backed into the shadow from which he came and disappeared, his words echoing from the boiling shadow and the frost that covered the corner of the hedge slowly melting away and turning to a warm steam.

Immediately after it disappeared I fell to my knees with pins and needles stinging me from under my skin throughout my entire body. “Argh! What the hell was in those eggs?” I said out loud as I got myself off my feet and continued down the corridor to my left, with my hand on my lower back lightly massaging it and an irritated expression on my face. As I walked down the corridor filled with a light mist I noticed a glowing object a few feet ahead me, and on investigating I found it to be a rose, a blue rose emanating a neon blue light with what seemed to be glowing dust dropping from the rose onto the grass below. The glow of the rose got brighter with every step I took moving towards it, a relief after what I had seen just a few moments ago. “Please don’t turn into anything creepy.”

I whispered to myself as I approached and reached for the flower, the light pulsating as I picked it from the hedge. It was warm to the touch and shined like a lantern in my hands. I stood there admiring the spectacle I held with very own hands with the look of befuddlement on my face swiftly turning to shock as the rest of the thousands of roses lit up the entire corridor. “Hey creepy, um, thing. Is this the light you told me about?” I shouted over my shoulder. After a short silence I looked back straight ahead, “Yeah I didn’t think so. Here goes nothing.” I said to myself as I cleared my throat and confidently walked forward into the unknown depths of maze, the moon being my only companion.