Chapter 1
Candles flickered with grace as they were placed around the parlor by a maid, prepping the house as if it too was mourning. A girl saddened by the death of her twin sister looked out of the window that overlooked the city, a cold gust of wind gently brushed over her, a strand of her black hair cascading over her shoulder. But, I, your narrator, cannot tell you the name of the sister who had just recently died because it would be too much too soon. A drop of rain splattered before her eyes, snapping her out of the numb trance she had been in before.
This girl’s name was Silver, chosen because her eyes were most unusual. Tears streamed down Silver’s pale cheeks as memories of her and her sister came to her mind. She could feel her sister’s steady hand on her shoulder but knew no one was behind her. Her parents had gone on a business trip for two days, and the nanny would take care of Silver in their absence. All Silver wished for was to know what had happened to her closest companion and sibling, but no one would say anything. Not even her parents knew the entire story. Leaving her perch near the window, Silver gave a sigh and sluggishly made her way down the stairwell, opening the door to the outside world.
Silver put her hand on the wall of her house, a habit she had developed since she was a small girl. She had just turned sixteen before news of her sister’s death made it to her. Rounding the corner to her backyard, Silver let a small sob escape her lips. She had been bottling up her feelings, trying not to face the truth. A cross stood before her when she arrived in her backyard. Silver knelt down in front of it, hanging her head as her silvery eyes welled with tears and her hair fell over her shoulders like a dark waterfall. Her tears fell to the ground silently, the only sounds were her cries and the rain falling onto the earth around her.
Questions raced through her mind causing her, even more, distress than she had already felt before. After a while of crying, her eyes had become red and swollen and her throat stung from the sobbing. Standing up, she threw a lock of her jet black hair behind her as she turned around, not daring to face the cross her sister’s body lay under. Silver pulled a black, lacy hood over her head so that it would shield her eyes from anyone else’s vision. When a drop of rain fell on her back, and it started to downpour, Silver thought that the sky was crying as well for the loss of another person. The reason Silver covered her eyes was that she thought that grieving was better handled alone, but her parents disagreed. Whenever she stepped in the house with even a single tear stain on her cheek, her parents would smother her and make her feel highly uncomfortable.
Making the silent trek to her bedroom to mourn in peace, something caught Silver’s eye. All she had seen was a gleam, perhaps some metal? Silver shook her head, thinking her mind was playing tricks on her, and shifting her focus once again to trying to figure out the cause of her sister’s death. Then she heard her sister’s voice, singing like a sparrow, so beautiful. I must be going insane… She thought, shaking her head.
The stairs groaned underneath her feet as she traveled up the stairwell, entering her room. The curtains were drawn and candles lit the room, no natural or artificial light made its way into Silver’s room. Death, to her, was something that shouldn’t be experienced by the young and innocent, but Silver knew that sister would not have taken her own life, neither would she have let someone else take her life on her own free will.
“How could this have happened?” Silver murmured to herself, her brows furrowed as she went into her sister’s room. It had mostly been cleared out, besides the bookshelf and her bed. Silver saw a tainted piece of paper underneath a book, the title of which had been covered by a piece of tape. Eagerly did she shove the book away and snatch the paper off the shelf. Her sister’s beautiful cursive writing covered the tattered paper, comforting Silver immensely. It was a poem that Silver’s sister had written two months ago. It read:
Black hair,
Silver eyes,
Held in my heart as
Kind,
Beautiful.
My blood and bone.
We share the same smile,
Face,
Heart.
I love you, Silver,
Forever and always.
Never had Silver seen this poem, then again, she had rarely seen her sister’s poems. Folding the paper into a small square, Silver tucked it in her pocket. Slipping out of her sister’s room, her nanny confronted her.
“What were you doing in there?”
“N-Nothing... I was just in there to relive some memories,” she answered numbly. The nanny, by the name of Cassie, nodded her head abruptly and strutted off, smoothing out the ruffles in her skirt and holding her head high. Silver knew that Cassie had never been extremely attached to Silver’s sister but Cassie did tolerate Silver’s sister. Silent tears made tracks on her cheeks, the hood being pulled even farther over her face as they disappeared. Her feet dragged on the carpet as she made her way back to her room, pushing lightly on the wood of her door and dropping down on the bed.
Taking the poem out of her pocket, she read it again aloud. Wiping away all of her tears she looked out the window, the gloomy town lying before her. She looked out upon it, knowing, and yet refusing to believe, that it was a prison she would never be able to escape; a prison of her own memories.
