A night without end

The girl who bowed the time

It is often said in her land, that grace had a human name when she was born. She heard many other accolades in her life of twenty one years but that was the one she remembered the most on the last day. As her feet shook in fear and her hands shook with tiredness she dug out the walls of the old well. Her brother was there holding a lantern but his huge structure did not allow him to enter the narrow pathway. Her mother stood on the other side of the wall believing that was the exit. She knew more. She knew that the labrynthine ways of hell was just starting. This was no old well.. this was the dungeon, disguised as a well.. giving the prisoners a false hope that if they found a way out , thy would be free, if they could scale up the well.

She felt in her bones as did her mother of a rain. A much welcome rain in their dry areas would mean that day an end of her quest and possibly her. She did not mind the last for she knew her time was done but she minded the first. So she commanded time to wait. People said that day the night never came. It hoovered in dusk for hours.. stretching time to give time to the brave woman. Even as the rain fell and made the Well dangerous, she continued her quest. She had hoped that the passage that she and her brother had discovered many years ago , extended somewhere in the well, to enter the dungeon. The other entrance had been blocked with the largest boulders and concrete and was not approachable. It was almost funny as to how they had discovered the way as kids. While her mother thought they were safe, they had opened an entrance everyone had forgotten to step into a passage that led to the old palace now in ruins. Prathama managed to find the dungeon, because whenever the windy night came she could hear the passages echo with the howl that shook her tothe core. She imagined a man whose eyes were taken out of him, skin peeled off, brutally tortured still begging and demanding for a confirmation that his beloved was fine. 

She knew once the dungeon was connected to the well. The evil king enjoyed brutally torturing his enemies for long in the dark of the nights and the sound escaped into the forest through the well. He was known to lose interest in those prisoners soon and then give them a falsehood freedom if they could find their way out of the well. No one could find the way out till the Nomadic King. It was said that he broke the narrow wall separating the well and the dungeon. But he never left. He climbed up the treacherous well but was pushed down by the villagers who were afraid of the going around of the palace and did not want to anger the King. That break was what Prathama wanted to locate but time hadblocked it and she could not locate. 

She had tried to approach the dungeon from many ways through that passage that they discovered. But the dungeon was truly locked away, it's entrances a memory everyone had chosen to forget. Prathama could not forget that Malik had lost his life in the forested areas near the old well. He remembered a story her mother had told her , of a father who failed to save his daughter. He then looked for his daughter whom he had lost. The daughter's mother indicated the she may have ran away into the forest. He never returned. Till his death, he searched for his daughter.

 Coming back to the task at hand, she knew that the well and the dungeon was not connected anymore, one had to know a narrow wall to break to enter the dungeon from the well. She knew this through studying through years the old structures that were first f*******n and then forsaken. Structures where the creepers had taken over.. where the path were blocked and ofcourse her uncommon feelings about freeing a ghost..

It was said that the King and the Princess of the cursed tale would meet at dusk, when the villagers and his tribe were busiest .. it was also the time they were attacked and betrayed. Prathama knew for practical purposes she had to break in while the sun was still setting. 

Prathama dug carefully, feeling the gushing water a few feet beneath. She did not want to cause a flood in the town as much as she wanted to stop the curse. With each little blow her mind started painting picture of the time .. and with every whimper above she knew her twin was seeing almost the same. Such was the bond and such was his punishment. 

A story which has sang to her from childhood speaking of beauty and the bold to be together in her hands, started feeling like a heavy duty she would gladly give away. She heard her mother's frantic plea to remind her that her hour was done and she should now return. It was not Ma.. she reminded.. see the time stands still. 

She remembered the light joyful songs of childhood , her mother's rigorous lessons, her father's pampering and adoration, ultimately the one who would truly not survive this would be her kind hearted father. He never was meant for this unkind world where people deliberately hurt one another. She would never know that both her brother and her mother felt the changes in her father. As if with the pause of time, the vilainous actions of another was trying to target him. He raged in his room, where her mother had deliberately locked him in asking to be let out. But the scattering servants had heard stories of evil possessing the men of the family and instead ran away. 

The joyous tinkles of childhood that came from her magical forest , slowly turned into songs and stories of a brave land. She loved that of all things, this was one her twin did not really feel. She shared with her mother when the songs became so haunting that it started dragging her to the forest where she realised everyone called it doomed and not magical and even she could not enter it from the known pathways. Many months later she found an easier way to approach from the roof only to have her brother and twin tag along. The first visit stunned her for the well was beautiful. It seemed the nature had decorated it with flowers till she realised it was a mirage for her twin said .. what flowers.. they are all thorns. 

But he was wrong too.. when she went alone and plucked one .. it was indeed flowers. She knew the well wanted something. Free them it said.. free them please.. 

She went back and rested against her mother. For this was not the magic she wanted. Why would she give up her life in order to free others..  

But slowly through years she knew this was her destiny. Setting them free.