Castle High

In the harshness of the cold abyss I saw above me a house that was what I had dreamt of in my youth. It was taller than a mountain, but smaller than an average village dwelling from those more somber years of ages past, strong as a mighty oxen named Babe, and as light as a feather. You could pack it in a bag and tote it alongside you anywhere you had traveled to and never had to worry about leaving home behind for it followed you everywhere as it does to me now.

It was abandoned long before my eyes gazed upon the structure and having found that there was once a library held within, I had at once made it a point in the journey to one day traverse its halls and find that mysterious library that people talked about being inside of there. I was but a young man in my early teenage years when that had all occurred and it never occurred to me then that I would once again find myself thinking of being inside there as I had the moment the mention of the library had been spoken.

My father was a shrewd businessman and demanded the respect from the village that I was raised in until my fourteenth birth year. Upon to which I was then sent to a boarding house on the outskirts of Merriwell and given my proper doctrine in the absolute ways of the world of finance and collections. My teacher then was Prof. Abigale Dimswattle, we, my mates from house Four B called him Duck, due to his waddling nature as he went to and fro about the campus. But this Prof. of my youth departed me with an imaginative tongue and allowed me to indulge in a way which was where he told me more about the Castle on the Mountain High as it were.

It was in later that autumn when the leaves had changed from their green to a more reddish tone when he departed the knowledge of his kinship. His bloodline ran throughout the course of the village where I was made a home and that the castle had once stood tall in his family honor and not as it does this day and age, as a rotten vassalage of deportee and unsavory delight. He had told me of the fascinating tales that at once I knew were the markings of the Arthurian tales that which all good English children aspired to be like. It was of noble knights and lord and ladies in waiting and a mysterious library that had brought them all to life, as if the words once written on a page inside the library became alive in every sense of the word. It was then during the tales of his youthful delight that the Professor whom now stood before me telling me of such were old and decrepit, began to once more have that youth about him once more. He would fly about the room to which liking himself as to a reenactment of some kind, telling me the stories that he was able to recite with such great detail and expense of his honor and duty, with that being said, I must say that at this point where I thought him proud and true and most fascinating of all those who were on the campus then thought him peculiar and strange and as such a person does when finding such utter nonsense they abide to themselves for a while and they found the poor Professor mad. He was sent away on a carriage and taken to a shelter where I was once told was a place for the solitude and thoughtful gaining. It was later I found out the truth of the matter and that the once great teacher had been buried there alone and forgotten by all that he thought mattered to him.

My dear teacher and one friend, I shall not forget them again.

It was then nearest my graduation days that I clambered once again to my home at the age of eighteen and found the ramshackle cottage had been built into quite an estate of well doings and well biddings. There I found gainful employment with my father in his counting house. I was there for some time one night as I recall, and the coal was at full blaze in the fireplace where it expelled its heat amongst the desolate and long forgotten hours of the night. It was a cold summer night, as I recall, it was not average by any means, this cold, it was not of a natural doing or that of a God being unjust or cruel by any means, it was just cold. An unusual cold. It took me sometime before the hands that I had been working with to be able to feel the heat of the lamp or that of the fire, though I daresay I tried warming them often, since this cold was unknown as to the cause of a why or how without a leaf changing in color, I was caught unaware in the counting house of my father’s and had once sent the workers home early so I could tidy up without a distraction of those wanting that which my father had and not able to give early. There I do say that I found myself growing distant that night as the bell that hung over the doorway began to bellow is happy tune to say that some prospect or client had arrived. Thereby I stalled my hand warming for a moment and went to the waiting room to find a young half-soaked woman in olden attire standing before me.

She was seemingly drenched from what appeared to be rain water though there was not a drop ever parched from the rains as would have been the result, the land had been in need of the summer rains for some time now and as this woman whose dressing was of an older and earlier nature seemed to have been tattered or knarred by a loose hound or that of tangles in shrubs nearby, hence the tying of knots to keep it from the ground of getting caught on vines and whips along the way here. It was out of the ordinary I do say, as I looked at her attire and thought to myself that she looked out of place or something of the sort. Her dress was of red linen and seemed to have gold flakes embellished upon it. As if the golden flakes were sewn onto the dress to be part of it and not there for looks or that of fake profile, but as if she were to be of someone of importance. I took my place instantly and offered her my jacket which was hanging on the rack just to her left as she was still standing there nearest the doorway. Nodding was all she had done, and I took the jacket from its perch and placed it around her shoulders then attended my position once more to greet her a little more proper without too much gazing.

She then took a step closer to me and lifted her nose into the air as if she were smelling a fragrance that her attention was now attuned to and instantly thrusting herself pass me and nearly knocking over the vase my father had there of the flowers to which he would have left for his more single female patronage, she sat still by the fireplace and warmed herself there. I had no thoughts against her action for it was cold out and she seemed to have been wet by something and such thought it a regular normal reaction whence she found the flame alite. I then went back to cleaning the house and upon my finish I sat alongside her in the warm fire light.

I asked the woman of her name and where it was that she hailed from and upon finding the answer with her own saying I was taken aback and longed once more to learn more. She said that her name was Morganna and ostracized as a witch from her year and had been seeking a way to prove of her innocence, then upon the tale which she wove, as it seemed more fantasy of a young maiden than that of a grown woman, I sat there and pondered for a moment or two, then saying that I could win the favor of those who question her if she could tell me where it was that she was from or running from and then back too. She told me of the castle that I had seen not but five years prior, the same one that my Prof. was from, the very same one that had been haunting my dreams and begging me to find a way into. The library in the center of the Castle, the very place to which I was needfully drawn into.

I took it upon myself to ask more and more about the castle and all that she could tell me. The sights and sounds and people there, the comings and goings about the daily life and routines and those of the more unconventional ideations that I fancied from the private lessons from my Prof. years past. She did not look at me strange nor I her, and she opened her mind then to me and all I then saw only came to pass a more illumination of my will and desire to seek out what it was that I wanted and dreamt so gainfully. We embarked soon thereafter as her clothing had dried enough where she felt herself ready for travel. I then had a coach and carriage waiting outside for us and we left there to my fathers’ home where I gathered my things and made myself ready to venture to the destination that I sought after for so long.

It was my mother of all the people that found me packing and getting ready for travel. It was she who barged into my room upon hearing the woman Morganna and I talk aloud making plans to find the rooms and all the halls therein aligned with the multitude of books of all kinds ready to be thrown open and read aloud with abandonment. It was my mother who looked shocked to see a half-naked woman in my quarters and yet, she was more then well with it. She insisted on helping me pack my belongings and leave the house at once. She looked at the woman Morganna and thanked her for enabling me to escape with her and kissed her cheek and then mine. She said that the woman before looked as if she was in need of myself and my good-hearted nature and to do her kindly. Though thinking as I was, I took no words to heart of the merit which was being implied there. My thought was of the woman whose dress was tattered and tied in knots so it would not touch the ground, this however was not my mothers thoughts and so, as I were to find, it was the last time I were to have seen my mother and I can scarcely say I remember what it was she looked like, or what of the smell of her was like, now I am not sure if I were to ever see her or of my father again. This, however, is an ill-matter and one that shall not be dwelled upon often if again.

I was again rushed from the dwelling that I had barely knew and found my way to the gates of the vast castle in the mountains where Morganna and I then traversed the steep steps to the small opening that was remaining. We crept carefully and only by that light of a small torch that I fastened before making way that allowed us to have a small amount of sight in the dense thickening darkness that was trying to swallow us both up.

Here we found along the way books thrown haphazardly about the wreckage of the castle, as it had once stood high and strong and mighty, but now a mere ghost or shell of its former self. We found as we kept going inward that the building itself was not an entire loss, but that which seemed more of a protectiveness to it than that of a crumbling and desolated wreckage where anyone could stumble in upon it and make it their own. I watched the flame of the torch dance right and left as the woman then reached out and gripped in her hand another set of longer and brighter torches for, she and I to bare and thus we lit them both with the flame from the one that I carried along the way and cast it down on the stone behind us. We made our way deeper into what was, as I still believe, a labyrinth of unexplored and unexpected delights.

There were jewels of all kinds just lying about the floor all without care of finding and or for those who would have wanted to keep them, there were swords, shields, armor from the age’s past, there were weapons of every kind from every age that man has walked the earth there. There were things that were not to be believed at all by any man of culture or that of civility, they were all there just to tantalize my mind, as if they were there mainly for distraction. But I was not there for that and though the thought of grabbing a weapon for protection had crossed my mind, I felt as though I did not or would ever be in need of one, such I did no thing of toughing more than what my feet were walking on.

Morgana led me downward to a spiral staircase that weaved to the left in a more circular pattern. It was the opposite of the stairs that I had once climbed that always went to the right and upward, this was to the left and down. There was no one to stop us or ask questions along the way, nor any signs of other life, just us two. So we went onward and found a great door that guarded a great hall where I found that which I had been seeking and throughout the shelves were arrays of books, they lined the walls, halls, ceilings, every place I looked I found that which I wanted to find.

Morgana brought me to the center of the room and sat with me on a stone stool and in front of us was a round stone marble table. It was large and white and needed no light to illuminate how ghastly it was. It gave off a feeling that I was to be nearest it at all times.

She looked into my eyes and at once I knew what it was that drew me here to this place and the one thing, I needed to do to ensure that I never leave it or her side, write. I was to write.

And to this, I know not how long I have been here, but find solace in the pace. My mind awakened at last to all that ever was and will be and repeating all notions again and again. Here is where I must stay. Bye. For all times. Here with Morganna Le Fey.