This story was written for my English 4 class and posted on 4/25/20. 

I was awakened in the midst of my deep slumber by soft, slender hands. I have great difficulty getting aroused, as my time of retirement is obscenely late at night. I groaned as I sat up to face the Waker. Nobody but an unknown individual would dare rouse me at such an hour.

I am a slender woman with mussed brown hair; she was stocky and had long blonde curls that shimmered as if struck by glitter. She was clothed in a long white gown. I felt as though I should recognize her, but I was so groggy I could not make out where she seemed familiar.

She spoke. "I told you we would take our journey tonight, my dear."

"I don't remember agreeing to such a thing," I mumbled. The headache that had been characteristic of my existence for twenty long years had vanished a few nights ago, but I was still unused to the feeling of levity that came with freedom from the Shackles that had bound me for so long. The freedom to be what I, not the Shackles, wanted was almost a prison in itself.

"Nonsense," she laughed, grabbing my hand. I am a strong woman, a retired soldier, but I was unable to shake my hand from her embrace. This person was not the Shackles, yet I loathed her all the same. I loathed everyone, just as I had when they controlled me.

The angelic creature dragged me to the great open window, which whispered cool air into the room. "Fly," she said simply out the door.

I did not have the Shackles to save me from death; though I am accomplished in such superhuman arts, I was terrified of what should happen. Why should I trust her? Everyone else had left me. I had no friends, only people who pitied me and did not wish me dead. None of them knew of the Shackles. None knew what madness I had only just been healed from.

But gnawing sorrow pushed me out the window. The Lady followed, blonde hair flying out behind her. I walked on the air, unable to die, and for a frightful moment I feared the Shackles had returned to me, but the Lady shook her head. "You are so afraid, child."

At the word child, a gale of laughter burst from my throat; I am a woman of forty-five years. "I have subdued entire armies alone. Everyone fears me. There is nothing that can harm me worse than it already has."

"So proud," she whispered, ignoring my retort, pacing around me in the cool night air. This time I had no answer. I had come out of the Shackles, healed at last from insane madness. I should be a diamond. Yet I felt as though I was a crushed rock.

(I am a crushed rock.)

The Lady flitted off into the night, her glowing skin and hair an admittedly welcome lantern. "Come." And I was forced by an invisible hand to follow. I concluded that she was not a figment of the Shackles, for I had felt the release of their dark hold around my heart the day the Healer's soft hands had touched me and He said you are mine.

I followed the Lady, and the scene changed. I am well-accustomed to flying, you see; the Shackles had granted me the freedom to decide the laws of the world - what was right or wrong, good or evil, light or dark. But never before had I felt like I was flying backwards, though I went forwards; I had never felt as though the residual wrinkles around my eyes were fading while I soared through the sky. Instinctively, I padded along with alternating steps, walking in the air.

The lady descended in the middle of a quiet town, and I followed her. My bare feet were cold against the wet, moonlit cobblestone streets, for a light rain must have fallen. I shivered in my nightgown. So far from home! And in such a timely manner, too!

"Do you know of the Shackles?" I asked her. "That is the sole way you could have brought me here."

"Ah, is it?" the Lady said. "Or perhaps, is that what you have been taught to believe?" 

"That has been my experience," I admitted. A light mist was pouring downward, and I squinted as I spotted a huddled figure moving in the dark. I was alert, moving within the shadows and watching for the lump of darkness within the gray.

Perhaps one must wonder whether it was being a soldier that made the Shackles grip me so. But this was not true; the Shackles were the reason I, only a scholar, could be a soldier to begin with. Practice for twenty years made moving amidst the moon and the black effortless, as easy as walking or breathing.

I spotted the figure and came up to him. He spoke in a frightened voice, in the tongue of my ancestry. "It is the year fourteen-eighty-seven."

"Fourteen-eighty-seven," I repeated. By the stars, that's nearly twenty years ago! I bent down, unable to see his face, though he could not have been much more than a boy.

The Lady padded slowly up behind me. "You must recognize him," she said.

"I know my own mind, and truthfully, I do not know this boy."

She illuminated his face, dispelling the shadows. Small, hungry dark eyes gazed upon me. And I wished not to know who he was, though I did.

"My child," I mumbled, growing colder in my clothes. I reached out to touch him; my hand passed through his body. Though I had not birthed the boy, he had been like a son to me.

Memories dove and swept through the surface of my mind. The Shackles no longer taunted me, but they were the reason I wished to forget the boy ever existed. That I had ever loved him.

"You remember, don't you?" the Lady whispered. "What is wrong? This is what happened in your life. Why are you so afraid?"

"The Shackles," I said, loathing the sob in my throat. "They were the reason I could not save his life when my forces raided his home."

"Save him?" the Lady murmured. "And why did you put the Shackles on?" 

"Because I was afraid. Afraid he would die." I dropped to the ground, soiling my nightgown, tears threatening to spill loose.

"Tell me, child," the Lady said, her voice soft. "Why did the Shackles fail you?"

I paused. Why had they? I had chosen to put them on my heart in order to be free of the limitations of mortals. I could decide what I wished to do. I could fly above the world. I could make my body like that of a diamond, invincible to injury. I could heal or kill whomever I wished with a single word.

I had chosen them to heal my beloved. Indeed, the Boy – my child – had recovered from the illness which had plagued him prior to my Shackling. But the Shackles, my madness, were eventually what killed him.

"You still wear the Shackles," the Lady continued. "That is why they failed you in the end. You never gave them up for yourself – they were taken from you." 

"I tell you truthfully that I am powerless without them, my lady. You have seen such things"

"Powerless," she repeated. "Power is so relative. Perhaps the biggest lie is that the powerful ones are the ones who win in the end. You won against him, your foe, but how do you feel?"

"As a crushed piece of coal."

"And why is that?"

"Because I...I loved him," I whispered, gazing with longing at the small boy. He rose, his tattered vest and trousers dripping wet from the dirty water, and passed through us, running away. I could not tell whether the water on my face was due to rain or tears.

"That is the key, then," the Lady whispered. "Love. You never lost the Shackles, but you can if you choose."

I stood there, wet hair sticking to my neck. "Love," I repeated, my hands numb. "The key...is love."

"He is gone," she said softly. "But there is another, child. Another you can choose. She lived right beneath you before I took you away."

She flitted into the air, and I followed her, energized by the dull desire in my chest that soon grew to ravenous longing. The absolute agony of seeing the Boy again began to fade, and the rainy night no longer chilled my skin as I whipped forward, a breath escaping my lips.

I woke the next day, my robes dry. To this day, I do not know whether the Lady was a dream, or whether I was too exhausted to process what had happened that night. But I did not forget a word she said. And as I stared ahead, warmth filling my broken chest, the Shackles truly gone once and for all, a small girl with the Boy's same black curls entered the room.

"Tessa," she said, "you slept later than usual today."

A soft smile came to my face.