The stairs unfurl before me like they have materialized from the very air itself, I know that it is simply the mist thinning but the castle before me is swathed in legend thicker than the perpetual mist surrounding it and it is all too easy to believe the stories. The insubstantial silk of the wedding gown swirls on the wind and I draw my whisper thin veil closer to my bare shoulders. This is not the vision I had of my wedding night. Just a day past, I had been a peasant girl of the Village-in-the-Mist. I had done the things all other girls do, filling the water, getting the evening meal for my father and brothers, a normal work a day life. I had no dreams of the castle of the hill or it’s notorious master. I had never participated in the Choosing, the ceremony that happened whenever a wife was required for whoever the lord of the keep was in need of a wife. I had never fancied the longevity of the job! Yet here I was climbing up the stairs to the keep, officially wed by proxy to the Beast of the Mists. When his Lordships man had knocked on the cottage door, my father had welcomed him with the finest mead and bread, and shaken hands over a deal that would make him the richest man in our village. Yes, for bolts of Orient silk, gold and gems, my father had sold me to the Beast. He had dismissed my fears and signed on the banns. My brothers brought me as far as the knights would allow, and now as the feast fires burned bright in the village far below I was climbing to an unknown fate.

The pale disk of a winter moon finally crept over the horizon and in the rising dark, the stone crags of the Lair became visible. The castle rose from the mountain like a great dagger, each of the windows illuminated with the yellow light of tallow candles. I had expected a waiting party, some servants, or at least a knight but the castle doors remained shut. Their iron studded exteriors seemed forbidding in the extreme. I briefly considered running back down the jagged stairs, back to the confines of my room with the white drapes, but the retribution of the Beast and the fate of my brothers, the youngest of whom had cried when leaving me at the monastery, stopped my steps. I knocked firmly on the door and stood back. The door opened silently, and silhouetted in the light streaming from the castles empty door, stood a woman I recognized from the village. During the witch-hunts, priests from outside our village had come despite protests from our own monks, they had picked out women from our village. Women like Goodwife Riche, who had saved my mother’s life when my youngest brother came into the world feet first, were tried and uniformly killed. Despite the women of our village protesting , the men had lit the pyres, I still remembered my mothers cries ad Goodwife Riche burned. She stood before me whole and unharmed. The jagged crevice of fear inside my belly opened wider, I looked in wide eyed terror for an escape, from this place where the dead seemed to walk whole! Was Goodwife Riche a ghost, a vampire? The legends of the Beast must be true! I thought hard to vespers and the lord’s prayer, of which I remembered naught! Goodwife Riche looked at me, my heart stopped as she reached across the threshold to touch my face. She touched the curve of my face and exclaimed in her low voice: ‘Ava Lisabeth’s Daughter, I never thought I would see those grey eyes again.’ Goodwife Riche had been there at my birth, her blue eyes had been the first to see the silver grey of my pupils. Her hand was warm and her voice still stirred my memories, I allowed myself to be drawn over the threshold.

I reasoned that the fate of being shunned that awaited me in the village, could not be worst than the fate that awaited me in the castle. My father would surely shun me, if I came back and he had to return my bride price. No one would dare trade with me or help me plough, if I returned I would surely die. If I stayed, I was warm and though I would eventually die I would satisfy the one question that had been burning in my mind since I was in my 13th year. That day had been the first time the monks had allowed me in the Vespers. The library was filled with stories and I desperately wanted to read. Only my brothers knew their letters and numbers and then too only enough to trade and keep the records of births and deaths, reading was a luxury few men indulged in, and no women was allowed to read.
Widow Gwen who lived on the edge of our village had always been kind to me, often when I was fetching water, she would give me warm ginger bread, as I had grown up and after my mother passed, she had taught me fine sewing and cooking, and whilst I practiced she had read out aloud from large tomes she kept hidden in the floor of her cottage. The books had to be kept secret for it was a crime a women could be beaten for, but I loved her stories. The tale she loved to tell was of Nephilium, a race of angels who had loved man so much they had remained on earth, to teach them the ways of civilization. Certain Nephilium had even loved and married mortal women, producing children who safeguarded mortals and had the angelic wings of their fathers though not in golden white but inky black. Her stories made me forget that my father would not let me ride, or made me wear a veil on market day. She had taught me certain letters and with much help I could sound out words but I longed to look at the strange symbols and make tales. When Widow Gwen had told me of the library at Vespers, I had to see, walls of books! I had completed my chores early and whilst my brother s and father made the journey to market two nights away, I had used our oldest horse to ride Vespers. The monks were kindly though a little surprised, a bent old monk had brought me to the library. I had slid out the first book with a red leather binding, it was unwieldy but somehow I brought it to the table. The library was empty, so I began to sound out my letters to read the richly illuminated page.

The sound behind me had informed me that someone else was in the room. I had turned at once, afeared of finding a monk to throw me out or my father to drag me home, it had been the most beautiful boy I had ever seen. His eyes were luminous and golden, the planes of his place carved perfectly , my breathe caught in my throat. It was the time when I had first noticed boys, but none of the boys had the grace or dignity of the golden eyed boy. He had sat down beside me and helped me sound out the letters. In the weeks that followed each market day I had returned to Vespers and each week he had come, until one day whilst we were reading , a woman’s voice had sounded from outside the room. ‘Gabriel’ The boy had turned and left, and in the all the times I returned to Vespers, he had never returned. His seat empty next to me had worried me, had he been punished? All I knew was his name, and even as I became a young woman and my father had offers for my hand. The golden eyed boy had haunted my dreams. I imagined all a manner of fates, maybe the Beast of the Lair had captured and harmed the golden eyed boy. Maybe the golden eyed Gabriel was killed by the Beast! Now as I followed the Goodwife Riche into the Beast’s Lair, I could finally question my husband, The Beast, had he murdered the golden eyed boy?

Goodwife Riche chattered away as she led me up the Lair’s great curving staircases, she was as she had always been. I longed to ask her how she was alive, but I wondered whether this question would lead me to dungeon somewhere. The walls of the Lair were not the gloomy stoney crags the stories spoke of, they were finely painted and hung with all a manner of art. Torches lit all the sconces and the fires created warmth that quickly dissipated the goose bumps on my skin. In all the village there had never been rooms like these. The richness and comfort were overwhelming. The Beast was certainly wealthy, from the gold and jewels paid for my bride price and the finely armored knights that had escorted me to Vespers, I had guessed at his holdings but now in the light of his Lair, I now realized he had amassed far more coin than one man could in a lifetime. Surely this coin was ill gotten gain, no man through ploughing and trade would amass such wealth. I was now the mistress of a lot of coin of dubious origin. As I passed row upon row of armored portraits each with eyes that seemed to glow out the frame, my fear increased, Goodwife Riche finally opened the door to a room at the end of this long hall. She let me into a bright room and intoned mysteriously yet with a strange smile: ‘his lordship will be with you soon’. I expected to find myself inside a bedroom, the girls who had dressed me had told with giggles of the night, yet the thought of the Beast of the Lair ran my blood cold. I shut my eyes and prayed my hardest not to the male god of Vespers but to the old Goddess the women of my village prayed to. I prayed that this wedding night would not be the last night I took breathe. Anyways I comforted myself, if I died I have at least seen more in these few hours than the women of the village saw in a lifetime, I had read great works and brought wealth to my father.

As I opened my eyes I exclaimed in delight, instead of the shadowy bedroom of my imaginings I found myself in a library! A great bright room, filled from floor to ceiling with books of great variety. I was overwhelmed by the sheer luxury of these unread books waiting for me, even if the Beast was beastly, these books reassured me, for what evil would choose to spend so much time and coin on books! I heard the door of the library open and then shut with a soft snick. I turned at once. Before me his golden gaze in a finely planed face was Gabriel. He still was the most beautiful but he was now a man. A man the likes of which had never been seen in all of the world. I gazed at him in wonder,
‘ The silver eyed girl’
He smiled at me crossing the room in slow relaxed strides. As he came to a stop almost nose to nose with me.
‘The Golden eyed boy’
He smiled down at me, and I looked at him his skin seemed to glint with metallic glimmers, his black hair glowed with a life of its own. He was too beautiful to be real, I was at once elated and afeared, I drew back from him until my back hit the shelves. Surely the Beast was using magic to become the boy who had become the object of my musings for years. The smile melted into a rueful look as he began to unbutton his shirt, as his fingers unclasped his silver buttons, I felt a strange compulsion to reach over to him, yet I was strangely afraid, the human I was did not recognize him as one of us. As he drew his shirt from his shoulders, wings unfurled from his shoulder. I opened my mouth to speak but the word escaped on a breathe
‘Nephilium’


My entire body shook, Window Gwen’s stories were true, and before me was a real Nephillium. He gazed at me waiting for me to speak, yet I could not. Discovering someone you had thought of incessantly for 10 years was actually a mythical creature, had an impact the likes of which I cannot express in mere words. He gazed at me, the light in those golden eyes fading, he began to draw his shirt back on as he spoke:
‘You will be settled in the nearest town, with enough gold to live a wealthy life, the knights will escort you on the morrow’
He was sending me away? I did not want to leave the golden eyed boy when I had just found him.
‘You do not wish to escape the village, it was what the other women wished’
At once it dawned upon me, the Lord, the Beast had not married and disposed of many women, the women chosen had always been those at risk of beatings , those who could be possibly burned as witches. He had used his reputation and his wealth to rescue these women. I crossed the room at once.
‘I wish to escape the village, but I am married to you’
The dizzing smile returned.
‘I have waited a whole lifetime to marry you, Ava. Looked forever for the girl with silver eyes, and now I have found you. Even as my wings came in and I couldn’t return to Vespers, I never stopped searching for you.’
As he enveloped me in the double embrace of his arms and his wings, I felt the sense of comfort that Gabriel had always given me. At last together the golden eyed boy and the silver eyed girl, who had met in fairytales found each other in the hard world outside it’s pages.