Twila

Introduction

Madame or Sir
I write not as a heroine haloed by the recordings of her good deeds, nor a survivor of some unhallowed torment who lives to retell the tale. I write not as the tragic orphan, or seek for my windy life, though I lived half of it inside the shelter of dreams, your sympathy, when I have already childishly indulged in my own.
I desire
No glory for my younger self. It is true that I have followed a fatal and turbulent spiral in my flight, to catch others before they fell, but it was only selfishly out of that word love.
And when I returned it was not to fame or festivity. I do not see my name engraved on a plaque, or written in history in calligraphic ink. But it stirs no unrest in me, for I hardly deserve, but have received the two greatest gifts of all: loving embraces of a family, and the end of a daily craving for my dreams.
Today I sleep to pass the night onto a new day. But I remember it was not always so. For my story, I offer you the work of tools that were shaped by a thousand volumes of lamplit poetry, as I ardently chisel out what has gone. Listen to what I have done, and acknowledge me, but remember that I am not good against evil, or light in the dark. I still wander through grey mists looking for myself, and residing in my gardens are still circlets of bitter thorns that will damage your soles. Listen to my story, but remember it is only my goodbye to the past, before I can happily greet tomorrow.

Part 1: My previous life

Should I start at the beginning?
Well.
In short, I didn’t have much of a happy childhood. Those playground days were a blur of my nose bleeding because I’d been beaten up, drawing hateful pictures in the back of a classroom, or crouching over a book, lamp in hand in the library in the dead of night because I couldn’t sleep.
Mother, I wrote, next to the picture. Father. Twila. The people in the orphanage told me at a very young age how I’d come to be. They said: I’d been found just outside of the village, dropped in the snow in a bundle of cloth, nearly frozen to death. It doesn’t bother me. Pain that I cannot remember cannot hurt me. But I do wonder, sometimes, what it’d be like if... I was the one standing between a mother and father in the portrait. To wear a pretty dress, be placed on a sapphire pedestal, with a mother to cook the meals that you liked, a father to take you to the park to feed the swans...
The strange thoughts followed me to bed, and were with the fall of my eyelids washed in amber twilight. Did it seem unfair that I was alone? When the birth of luckier infants are celebrated and cherished, and they are adored by all for their sweetness, and pushed in a pram, why was it that I fell onto a cold floor? Where were the arms waiting to cradle me? I crawled, hungry and bruised, in search of comforting skin, but all that I gained was a rough hand pushing me back where I was supposed to be.
I did have my mind, behind the iron bars of my bed. In my second reality I saw my mama bursting through the every door I passed, eyes widening at the finding of her daughter at last. I swear I could feel the soft slam into me as she embraces, the feathers on my skin. I swear I could smell her perfume, and blinked away the hair falling into my eyes, closed my hand around the folds of her clothes. I often lifted my arms in the air and pretended to fall backwards, though it was only to stare up at an austere ceiling. In the loneliest times up in my room I heard voices drifting up from down the stairs. Voices that asked for “Twila”, for “Which room is she in?”
All children play pretend when they are young. But as I grew, the hope of it ever happening drained away, and so did the bright, joy-filled apparitions.

Most nights, I’d bring myself to hide away another borrowed book in the small hours of the next day. Turning on the electric light was a dodgy game, but I had a habit of leaving a little crack in the curtains so that a shaft of moonlight could find its way into the thin room, and so I could see the sky above the murky rooves, and wish I were there instead of here. Later I placed myself down on the hideous lumpy thing that was my mattress, and pulled up the stiff scratchy sheet. Comfort was a good thing to have, but lack of it in the orphanage was one thing that I wasn’t overly bothered by.
I had borrowed books from the library before I could read. Night was my parasol against blinding light, and it was then I dropped through the broken window into dark paradise. In the moonlight, I traced my finger along the pen lines, the curves of faces, the semi-circle of a teary eye. Let me be transported away into another place, another time... one containing more colour than mine. In those grey times, I found my strength flying alongside my favourite storybook characters, and I spent my days up in my room, deep inside books. I knew, the older I got, the more words I would understand and I would have even more wonderful places to go. The library ladder became a pet under my hand. In the times I traversed the floor my feet polished the floorboards clean. I read through entire sections of chronicles, tomes, scrolls, and followed more imaginary lives than the stitches in my clothes.

When I wasn’t reading and was back in reality, there was nothing between me and the other orphans. As we grew older the hatred intensified. Half of them don’t even remember why. Violence began to bloom amidst us like black roses. A simple slap, a push out of the way... that was how it began, but even as I felt the full coating of thorns I could only suffer to a certain degree. After time that became apparent. Then it was my books that suffered the most, and, oh, lovelorn! I chased after them. Watching the torn pages falling to the floor, the beautiful stories being pulled apart, my gardens ruined with the mud of wretched children’s shoes... was unbearable. These things that were so beloved and sancted to me being broken in front of my eyes. There was only one way to truly hurt me, and sadly they found it within a short elapsing of time.

But I wasn’t completely weak. My very appearance put shivers through some. Ice-white hair and red eyes, that was. Albinos weren’t uncommon in the bleak North but the same superstitions hung around our kind. One mishap during my time at the orphanage made me look at the sky every day and ask “Can you see me?” It took one to believe, but two to receive.
My gift turned me into an exile. Is it a good thing to be seen this way? A child with blood on her hands, walking a lonely path? Should I be punished for what I had not intended to do? My questions floated unanswered across a stagnant pool. All I know is that I screamed. I screamed and screamed and screamed and glass splashed everywhere, as the window beside me shattered, scattering a thousand sparkling pieces across the floor. Then a maid entered the room, skin white and shrieking that the great landing window had smashed of its own accord, one shard striking a student in the neck.

Devil child, they said.
I wasn’t to stay at the orphanage for much longer – that much was clear. It didn’t bother me. Wherever I was going to next could only be better, if only for the excitement of change. The orphanage was no home. I spent my time lurking in the shade, watching boys run after a ball, girls skipping rope; their thin feet were always loose in the threadbare shoes we wore. I never understood how they could laugh. I wasn’t like them, was never ordinary... they said.
That autumn arrangements were made for me to be moved. I was in my room on the night, sitting on the bed, reading. It must have been October. There was a storm outside. Wood creaking, rain lashing against the smoky glass of the window, but I felt safe, here within the lumination of the electric lightbulb. It was an illusion of warmth, but it worked to some extent. As the wind symphony rose to such a volume I barely thought it could be any louder, there was suddenly a bang and the door was thrown open. I looked up and the visions I’d been painted by the book melted, to be replaced by the broad-shouldered character entering the room.
His appearance was rather queer to me. He had a shiny bald head, and was wearing a long coat of thin white material over all of his bulk. Yet his comical appearance was accompanied with no affectionate smile. A woman followed him and stopped short of the threshold, one who I recognized as the house-mistress.
“Up, Twila.” She said sharply. “Get all your things at once. You’re leaving this house.”
Though I was unhappy, logic suppressed my burning urge to retaliate. If I deterred them for several seconds, and ran outside – what then? I was still very much a helpless child. Oh, the silly tears I cried, when I found myself trapped in this thorny circle.

I was escorted outside into the street, holding a cloth bag containing my allowance of a change of clothes (inside of which I had slipped a book, of course). I was provided with an umbrella over my head, but my thin white nightdress was barely sufficient protection against the cold, and I dared not open up my wings. I did my best to shield myself against the raging wind with my arm. The sky was ink-black and haunting. Underneath it, across the wet street, was a small horse-drawn wagon, into the back of which I was lifted by my burly escort. The opening at the back was fenced off with a type of gate, which had a panel of wire mesh in the top half, like a cage. He swung it shut it after me. I heard tinkling and knew he had locked it. On the wooden floor I pulled my knees to my chest and held my wrapped-up book close to me.
A few minutes elapsed before a whip cracked and the horses snorted. I slid across the floor a few inches as they moved, and suddenly, sitting there, I had an extremely disturbing revelation. This cart, with the cage and the lock – it only meant – they couldn’t allow me to escape and were taking me away to – to... I was going to die! They were going to kill me! My breath was shortening, my heart thudding with blood inside my chest, and I rolled over in pain, weeping, feeling it may fail soon.
“I didn’t mean to do it!” I screamed.
“It was an accident! It was an accident!”
I wasted my breath. There would never be mercy for an orphan like me. No, the world was better off without us...
Clang!
It occurred to me that I wasn’t the only one who was shouting. I lifted my head, confused by the different sounds on all sides. All the time the wagon was gaining speed. Clang! What was this? I turned and caught the shadow of an adult fly past the translucent tarpaulin walls. Someone was attempting to jump onto the wheels.
In a moment the wagon had lurched to a halt. The horses neighed nervously, their hooves tapping to a stop. I looked about myself, dazed, and watched the same figure rush around the side of the wagon, until the top of his grey head appeared behind the wire mesh. There was some brief tinkling, a light clank, and then the gate swung open.
Starlight.
That’s what I saw. The brightest starlight in the world. The rain had stopped. The sky was black, but his eyes glimmered with the light of a thousand brilliant stars. The sky I had longed for all my life... had found me.
He said something, but his voice floated soft and unregistered around my head and my drowsy thought. His mild face was lined with true concern, and as he stretched out his arms to help me down I felt as though I had been immersed in the most wondrous circle of warmth.
“Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?”
That voice. Why did it seem so familiar? I felt an attachment to him, felt something move in my heart, like a key being turned in a lock. The trust was immediate and absolute, as though I had trusted him before, in some other distant time far before this one.
Incensed voices of protest drifted over to us on the wind, but they went ignored.
“Are you alright, m’duck?” My rescuer said. He was in his later years – a human, no wings on his back or ears on his head, but tall and in good health, with a head of soft grey hair. Gently he took me around my back and under my knees and lifted me out from the belly of the wagon. There was nothing perverse. The way he held me was simple and fatherly, and I rested there, let my eyes half-close and, remembering the precious cloth bag clutched in my own hands, only held it tighter.
I was beginning to be flooded by a strange emotion, something I didn’t remember feeling before and didn’t recognize. As my heart warmed and my weak hand grasped the person’s sleeves, I realised it must be that phenomenon I had heard about. Happiness... In this person’s arms, I was perfect. I could go to sleep inside the swirl of cloth and stillness and never wake again. And in a breathtaking rush the tears came. It was too much for me. Too much of a new thing too fast all in the same remembered second.
The tears spilled down, lacing warmth into my front. He carried me inside. I turned away from the sharp night and buried my face in his jacket.
That night, Mr Derelith Dakkaneya adopted Twila, the devil-possessed little girl. The staff only stood back and watched us walk out. No one called us back to do the adoption papers.