The Ballad of Thornbound Strings
A wanderer’s lute weeps notes of shattered spring.
His name, a whisper lost to frosted time,
His heart, a vault of ballads left to rhyme
With winds that moan through gnarled and ancient trees—
The Haunted Wood, where daylight dares not freeze.
Here phantoms waltz in silks of silver mist,
Their faces veiled, their hollow hands unkissed
By living warmth. Yet midst this grim ballet,
A voice once sweet now calls him to betray
The path of flesh, to tread where spirits yearn—
For her, his soul’s first flame, shall he return?
Three winters past, fair Eveline’s last breath
Had merged with fog that choked the glen in death.
The village swore the wood had claimed its fee:
A life per decade to preserve its decree
Of silence. Still, he scorns their trembling lore—
Her laughter haunts him, luring to the core.
“O Theodore,” the oaks seem to implore,
“Play forth the tune she danced to, now no more.
Let chords cascade where roots drink tears of gloom,
And dare the dark to yield what it entombs.”
His fingers bleed, yet still the strings obey,
Unearthing echoes of her last display—
A waltz she spun in moonlight’s pallid glaze,
Ere thorns erupted, ending mortal days.
The forest stirs; the air grows thick with ghosts
Who clutch his cloak with memories engrossed.
“Turn back,” they hiss, “or join our ceaseless hymn—
No love survives where ancient shadows brim.”
But lo! A glimmer parts the shroud ahead—
A gown of starlight, hemmed with threads of lead.
Her eyes, twin pools where sorrow drowned the light,
Her voice, a breeze that fractures endless night:
“Beloved fool, why court the curse’s blade?
This realm devours all vows the brave have made.”
He kneels, his lute a shield ‘gainst fate’s decree:
“If chains bind thee, then they shall fetter me.
No grave nor god shall claim what I adore—
I’ll rend the veil or feed the forest’s floor.”
Her spectral palm meets his in brief eclipse,
A touch that scorches like a comet’s kiss.
“Then play,” she mourns, “the anthem of our prime,
When life was honeyed, robbed of reason’s rhyme.
Yet mark this well: the tree that feeds on pain
Demands a sacrifice without a chain.
To free one soul, another must descend—
Choose now, sweet bard, whom you shall call ‘the end’.”
No pause disturbs the rhythm of his soul;
His smile outshines the abyss’s gaping hole:
“Strike, cruel roots, and let thy thirst be fed!
What is a breath, if yours remains unshed?”
The lute’s last chord, a thunderous decree,
Cracks earth asunder ‘neath the elder tree.
Vines serpentine, embossed with centuries’ ire,
Ensnare his limbs in coronas of barbed wire.
“Farewell,” he gasps, as petals made of frost
Bloom where her prison’s iron bars are tossed.
Her form, once air, now solid as the dawn,
Weeps mortal tears o’er flesh the thorns have drawn.
“You gave,” she cries, “what time could never steal—
The final gift no reaper can repeal.
Go not to silence! Let this curse be mine!”
But death, a craftsman, severs line from line.
His blood inks runes on roots that twist and groan,
The forest’s hunger quelled by love alone.
Now travellers swear, when midnight’s clock is tolled,
A lute’s lament escapes the earth’s cold hold.
And paired with it, a dancer’s stifled cry—
Two freed, yet bound where stars refuse to die.
Thus whispers say true liberty is wrought
When hearts, not hands, renounce the wars unsought…
Yet none dare tread where shadows breathe his name,
Lest thorns inquire what price they’d pay for flame.
