-Sable-
I got the book when some great aunt on my mother’s side died, she left it to me. She said that I was the only one in the family with any imagination left, which was strange because the only time we had seen each other I was five and every five year old is imaginative to some degree. Whatever her reasoning was the book was mine now. From the outside it looked like a plain old writing journal with a boring brownish color to it but the inside was a beautifully decorated story. The first page however, had a warning that advised the reader not to read the rest of the book and to make sure they kept the book a secret. I felt like it was a sort of silly ploy to get people to avoid it, after all it was just some musty old note pad from my aunt. As I read it I began to become enthralled. At times it seemed that characters in the book were taken straight from my daily life. All sorts of people that reminded me of friends, family, teachers, and faces around town occupied some sort of role in it. I was so excited to read the full description of what my best friend Amber looked like that I took the book to her and showed her the page. The odd thing was she just said, “It’s blank Sable”. I told her I had mistakenly picked up the wrong book and went to the city library to try to finish reading it. I got to the last chapter before dusk started to settle and I had to walk home. Everything I saw on that walk home was an image from a fairy tale. The tall city buildings gleamed golden in the fading sun and blurry images of people from another world brushed past me unseeingly, the images from the book fading back and forth from reality. I read the last chapter at home in a daze not believing what I had saw. It told me to go to the Hedge so that I could live there, with them, in the city from the story and I believed it.

It was everything they promised, maybe more, their world is almost intangible now but I remember my master. She was impossibly thin and shined so bright that her features blurred into her light. She kept me and one other extremely close to her and we loved her so. She was everything to us and all she ever asked is that we sing to her. We never dreamed of running away from her but rather we dreamed of staying in her light for all eternity and from what I could tell that was exactly what she intended for us. For what felt like a hundred life times we stayed by her side and she cared for us as if we were part of her ethereal family and everything was so beautiful.

I don’t know what I did to displease her or if I did anything at all. Maybe she just didn’t want me any more, like some snotty little girl throwing out her best doll. Whatever happened changed everything about her in an instant. Her light was sucked away by a growing, infinitesimal darkness and her soft bell of a voice now boomed like thunder, commanding that I leave. When I looked around I realized that what had appeared to be a glowing palace to me for all these years was actually some sort of disgusting swamp or sewer. Suddenly the all the time that had past in Faerie replayed in my mind as it really was, with out my masters spell veiling the truth. The whole time I sang to her as she slithered though this vile underworld she had created commanding her tortured slaves to dig farther into the filth. The vaguely human forms of the slaves writhed all over the walls, clawing and digging. I couldn't believe what they had become. I begged her not to abandon me but my voice was just eaten away by the dark. Then, she grabbed me up in her black claws and threw me into the Hedge. As I struggled in the briar I called and cried for my master. I needed her protection, I was scared and the thorns bit at my flesh. I could see the souls of other entangled in the thorns, lost and confused with out their lord. They tormented me I had to get away from them even if it risked the losing the master for good. I fought against the Hedge for I don’t know how long but when I reached the other side I found out that I missed no time at all in this world. I crept back to my house in the night and saw a version of my self sleeping soundly in my bed. I thought it was all for the better and left my old family alone. I’m not who they knew me as anymore.