Mallore

Good evening. As you may be aware, candles are often used in occult rituals. As a matter of fact, I’ve used them myself during out-of-body experiences, but not recently. Take a look at this scarlet candle – tonight’s item. Your eyes do not deceive you – it is lit and steadily burning, though the flame is frozen, unmoving, like a still photograph. That seems impossible, doesn’t it? But this ancient candle is quite real and I assure you (OUCH) hot even - but the red wax isn’t melting and try as I might I just can’t (PUFF) blow it out. An eternal flame. But nothing lasts forever, does it? And if it did, at what cost?

Mallore - by M.O.Granger

Life. An interesting concept upon which we inflict meaning – then what is meaning? A mere concept, too? Who on this earth, or elsewhere, knows? But a candle is not a concept. A candle is solid, tangible, material. When a candle burns you see it. You feel it. There is no doubt.

The match is struck, the wick flickers, and the wax melts, dripping, crying, slivering away until no more. Some are fortunate enough if someone snuffs out their light before others are left to clean up the mess.

But for Mallore, in her castle of ice and stone, her candle was perpetual. It burned but the wax did not melt.

She was too old to remember what she was. A bloodsucker? A reanimated corpse? A fallen divinity, perhaps? The mirror reminded her each morning that she was beautiful. Beautiful and cold, like the sole surviving snowdrop on a frosty morning where all others had perished.

Mallore rose, draped in a scarlet gown, from her bed. She never slept, never could, but something inside told her that was what all living things did. The remnants of a time before this existence, perhaps, where she felt she used to rest while the moon was up and not the sun. But that mattered not.

The castle was empty, and she was young forever.

In her chambers, the black candle burned on the bedside table. For as long as she could remember, it had been there. Like her, it did not age, existing in a blissful limerence, caught between life and death – indecipherable concepts to Mallore.

Tap tap tap.

At first, Mallore thought it was a bird trapped in the turrets above, its panicked flutters echoing through the great halls, but…  

She listened again. Tap tap tap. A desperate plea rang out. Unmistakable this time.

Who would dare climb so high in this desolate and frozen terrain? Curiosity ensnared her. A moment of excitement as she made her way to the large doors of this grand castle. For the first time in days or centuries, she opened the doors. Groaning on their hinges, they shuffled open.

It was a human. A woman. Young. She stood shivering from the cold. Her clothes were ragged and torn, modest in comparison to Mallore’s regal attire, though she was fair and bright like springtime sun. Before she could say a word, the stranger collapsed in the doorway.

Mallore did not know what possessed her to take the human in – boredom, pity – but she did it anyway. Carrying the stranger like a rag doll, she laid her down on the rug before the hearth in the great hall and kindled a blazing fire that spat and cast warm light on the woman’s face.

Freckles… Young skin…  Plump lips… Dark eyelashes… Slender neck… A fine pet. But what to do with it?

Though Mallore hardly felt the fire’s heat, it certainly seemed to have an effect on the human, who stirred every few minutes, rolling sideways to face its red, flickering tongues lapping at the hearth. Eventually, her eyes fluttered open. She was from a city far away, she said. Had fled from war, the terror of what awaited survivors and had come this far out expecting a nonviolent death. But when she had sighted the peaks of a great castle, she felt she had one more chance at life.  

Mallore offered her the hearth for the evening. Then the next. She brought her warmed mead. Eventually she offered her a room. It surprised her, this generosity. It was something akin to a feeling, a feeling like a stale morning touched by a sharp and delightful gust of spring wind…

Time passed. The wind howled on, and snow tumbled down upon the mountainous slopes surrounding the castle.

Mallore and the woman dined on meat and red wine, seated at opposite ends of the table in silence. The woman began to clear away the plates and offered to cook. She hunted wild hare and brought it back for a stew. Then she started asking questions. Who was she? How did she live here? Where did she come from?

Over time, Mallore’s answers shifted from Do not question me to I do not remember to I wish I knew to I wish I could tell you. In the library, they read to each other. Histories, tragedies, comedies… Mallore could barely tell the difference, but the woman explained. The outdoor terrain was bitter and unsuitable for the woman, so Mallore made warmer clothes from curtains, drapes, and clothes she herself did not wear. The castle was grand and spacious, so they strolled its corridors together admiring the artwork on the walls. Mallore had seen them a thousand times before, but they glowed like new when the woman stood next to her, gazing in awe at brushstrokes older than her ancestors. In her room, the mirror grew dusty. What beauty lay in looking inwards at oneself after all?

As every moon rose and sunk, it seemed more difficult to say goodnight, for them to go their separate ways to bed, as though an intangible thread had brought them together and pulled them closer still.

Then, one night, it happened as they sat by the fire in the room where Mallore had first laid the woman to rest after collapsing on her doorstep. The human laid down next to the fire as she had grown into the habit of doing of an evening. This time Mallore held her head in her lap. She began stroking her hair then gently kissed her head. Then her lips.

Hand in hand, they walked the winding staircase together. Without discussion, without pause, they entered the chamber that Mallore had gifted the woman all that time ago.

It was like sinking, afraid and trembling at first, then falling all at once, blissfully, into a bath. With each touch, warmth spread from the woman to Mallore, filling her body with its tendrils as her scarlet robe lay discarded on the floor. When morning came, they woke together with the rising sun, blinking away their new-found vulnerability, stroking the hair off one another’s shoulders, speaking soft words.

As the days and nights passed, Mallore quite forgot about her chambers and what she left behind in there. They spent their time as before, walking, reading, exchanging looks and words. But now it was more than that. Now when Mallore awoke it wasn’t to the same mundane existence.

Mallore felt a strange sensation in her chest, a painful but delightful ache that wanted to climb out her mouth and say something she might have said in a life before but had no recollection of during her time in the castle. To be truthful, she did not know that the three words forming in her head even were the natural thing to say but it could not have felt more…human.

And her heart. With each adoring look the woman gave her, the more it thawed.

One morning, she must have had a dazed look, for the woman giggled and asked her what was on her mind, tracing the curve of her nose playfully. She had seemed rather tired of late, but perhaps their late nights had exacerbated her appearance.

Tired? Mallore laughed away the woman’s comment at first, but it nagged at her for the rest of the day. She could not be tired.

In the evening the woman dozed. Mallore felt a pull towards her own chambers that she had neglected of late. She walked in and wiped dust off the mirror with her sleeve. She squinted her eyes to ensure they weren’t deceiving her.

What was that in her hair? She felt for the silver strand in her long, dark hair, and plucked it out, examining this parasite with confusion and anger. And that was not all. Again, the mirror showed her something else. A crease on her visage, a line on her forehead. Even the skin around her eyes appeared sunken. What was happening to her? In all her time at the castle, nothing like this had ever occurred, nothing ever changed, ever grew, ever died –

Then she noticed the candle, gleaming with a vengeful light.

It was melting. A single drop of wax had run down its side. A pool of black sat beneath the flame.

Not long after, Mallore stood over the woman’s unconscious body, a knife in one hand.

If she was sleeping, she would not feel pain. Mallore never would have seen those eyes regard her with anything but joy and pleasure. Everything would be as it was. Perfect. Undisturbed. Eternal.

What was love but a concept, after all?

The dagger plunged into the woman’s heart, so deep it penetrated through her back and into the sheets where they had loved. Blood soaked the bed, the pillows, the covers, and Mallore struck again and again and again, the sound of abused flesh and cracking bones disturbing the air, until… With ragged breaths, Mallore slowly stood up. She dopped the knife. Its clanging echoed throughout the castle.

The woman was heavier when dead. Cradled in her arms, she hung limp, childlike, innocent, dripping red in Mallore’s nightgown. She descended the staircase and out the great doors into the snow. Still, a more peaceful end than any she would have faced had she stayed in the city.

Gazing upon the icy shards of rock plummeting to lower depths of the world, Mallore raised the woman above her head as if this were a sacrificial ritual. Whispering an apology that the wind snatched away, she sent the body into the abyss where it dropped clumsily out of sight.

She followed the drops of blood on the snow that led back to her castle and her chambers, empty once more.

The candle had stopped melting. The wet stream of wax had hardened in place. It no longer stood as tall as it used to, but it had stopped.

With a sigh, Mallore looked in the mirror, raising a pale hand to her face. The imperfections she had developed remained, but never again would she bear such damage by exposing herself to weakness. They would serve as a reminder.

It was as if her heart froze all over again, she thought, smiling.

She was still beautiful. She was still young.

This tale is apocryphal, of course, and this example eternal flame kept here in the Scarlet Vault is not Mallore’s symbiotic avatar as featured in the story. No. This particular candle is bonded to someone else… I suppose I could tell you who that person is, but, well, that would be telling! This story always makes me feel rather sad, but not for the obvious reason. When I first heard it, many years ago, I thought that Mallore was a cold-hearted monster. That in her position, I would have given up anything for love, even everlasting life. That I could never have acted in the way she did.

Of course, back then, I was still mortal…

Time for you to go and get some beauty sleep! Enjoy your nightmares.