Stolen
Simran Kaur
The air was filled with phantoms.
I was walking. The night was filled with clouds, snow on the ground. Where am I going? Into night, into snow, into wind.
The path connives to trip me. My thoughts turn ever to the pain of deceit, of lies told to my face.
The city lights are behind me. Behind are cars roaring, headlights staring, buildings that hang stonily, wind that is suffocated.
I am free. Beyond the lights, beyond the selfish people called Man. Beyond control. The tree that hangs before me beckons me forward. Forward. But why does something look so sinister about it?
“Bryony! Where are you going?” cried a playful voice behind me.
I barely look back. Timothy.
“Sister where are you going?”
Doggedly, I kept my stare to the ground and continued. I felt the wind about us, wild, listening, but unreachable.
“Dare you speak to me?” I said, quietly though steadily. “In your guilt, you come to me in such a manner?”
“Come, forget all those tangles with morals. Come home. I did the best for us.”
The wind picked up and howled. But suddenly when I turned my head, I was alone. On the ground lay my own steps, nobody else’s.
My heart beat. I turned. The air was filled with the snow that had begun thrusting itself within wind. White, hurling phantoms, shifting between my sight and something before it.
Before me stood something. Standing where they had not stood before. They were dark things, with single words. Gravestones.
“Hope,” “Dreams”, “Youth.” My heart beat. Under the words, other words were covered with snow.
Trembling, I dusted off the snow. Trembling, I read the words. “Bryony Wilder.”
My heart beat fast. Freedom once again in chains, struggling against those city lights, those voices of my youth that stole time away. A blindness enveloped me, holding me tightly.
“Why do you torture me?” I cried. “Why?”
Suddenly, I saw a horse. Distantly in this blindness of my sight and heart, I saw a creature. Instantly, a creature that seemed to have freedom beyond my own.
Flashes of memory. Of hope. Of dreams. Of youth. They appeared, they went like the ebbing of a tide, so cruel, so wonderful.
I was at a crossroad. From that night, it be etched upon my mind. I woke as if it were a dream. Yet a dream that was alive. Memories can be cruel and joyful at the same time. I had youth before me when my brother stole my stories and made them his own. I had ideas and wonder before my name was soiled when I tried to reclaim them. I wonder if they feel guilt. They stole not only my ideas or fame. I do not care for such. They stole trust, youth, dreams.
But now, I live on. In a moment of will struggling with will, I won. And I think not of their guilt, but what there is to come.