There My Beloved Stands

A Gothic Romance for the Sunday Scaries

My offering for the latest Sunday Scaries prompt with Mat and Labyrinthia Mythweaver

It was there, in that mystic manor, sequestered in the sylvan reaches of the country, I awoke, from fever dreams awash with gore.

I had been in the vanguard of the punitive expedition, sent to the borders of our ancestral antagonists. What had been pontificated from the comfort of the capitol as a terrible, swift, and necessary measure for national vengeance soon delved into a rout of Tartarian terror. Our foes, long painted as being but a stone’s throw away from naked barbarity, had used the earlier frontier provocation to turn our simmering hubris against us. The narrow valley quickly turned into a crimson reservoir, as they rained down death upon us from the concealing heights above. Though only a newly minted subaltern, the massacre soon left me as the de facto commander. Struggling to sound the retreat through the savage cacophony of the maimed and dying, my voice joined their ranks with a sickening cry as a barbed arrow pierced my side, throwing me down from my horse and into the jaws of oblivion…

When the Darkness lifted - thanks to the inscrutable mercy of Providence - I found myself in the worn but comfortable environs of a large apartment. To the left of the four post bed upon which I lay was a large window, the musty draperies pulled back to reveal a sprawling, majestic parkland of stolid trees, crowns awash in sunlight. To my right the crackling of a roaring fire sounded. I sat up, surprised at the noticeable lack of pain in my side, to see before me a woman.

No - the woman, the very bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. Despite her slight frame she carried herself with a dignity than can, on reflection, only be called empyrean. She, indeed, walked in beauty as the poet once wrote, but hers was the glory of the Ancient of Days. Not a word was needed then- for ours was a love not to be known, but remembered. She had found me, in that valley of the shadow of death, and all that came before was as gossamer. Through her eyes shined the splendor of eternity.

Time soon lost its meaning as I convalesced. We set out continually, arm in arm, amongst the stands of pines, oaks, beeches, elms, and maples, their colors mixing into a glorious autumnal palette. My lady - for what need did we have of names - was, she said, the last in an ancient line of forest keepers, chosen by the elden kings to steward the royal preserves in perpetuity. Here no beast was to be slain beyond what was needed for nourishment, nor tree felled for more than basic fuel and shelter. Long had it served its purpose, providing the royal house with plenty which, in those halcyon days of enlightened sovereigns, was extended to the people at large.

Yet as that Golden Age began its inevitable corrosion down the aeons, the domestic boons and pleasures of the pastoral world were replaced by the blood and treasure of imperial vanity. The forest, which once spanned as far as mortal eye could see, had been steadily ravaged through to the present epoch, until the domain of my beloved was the last verdant plot on the edge of the realm. Her forebears, seeing their arboreal charges subjected to increasing violence with each generation, grew weary unto death before their time - so strong was their sympathy for the slaughtered victims.

From this depleting bond, she said, as we sat entwined one misty morning in the lap of a regal oak, even she could not be spared. And, as much as my soul rebelled against such a horrific verdict, my eyes rendered the evidence. Her complexion had always been wan, but now it bore the undeniable pallor of the grave. Looking down at her tender hands, I drew back in reflexive revulsion - for where they were normally as white as marble they were now as black as pitch, as if scorched by the fires of Hell. What had become of my angel of rosy fingered dawn?

She offered a pained smile, bidding me peace. Yes, her time here was nigh - but so was that of the long corrupted kingdom, as the unceremonious slaughter from which I had been spared portended. With the great leveling swing backward of the Pendulum balance would be restored and Nature, once more, would prove Her might. And she - my dearest, most sacred friend - would see it unfold. After all, her people had not spent centuries in the wild without learning something of its arcane mysteries, which she through diligent labor had mastered. And which she would in turn teach me…

With a final kiss of her ashen lips she stepped back, uttering a chilling incantation:

“My heartbeat whispers,

A language older than time,

Begging me to burst.”

Fibrous tendrils sprouted from her blackened hands, as the metamorphosis commenced.

Her skin stretched with a sickening sound, bones and tendons gnarling grotesquely, raven hair turning brittle -

Her legs sunk into the ground, torso and arms extending to an unholy height -

There my beloved stands, towering above all, her heartbeat pulsing the length and breadth of the Arcadian marches. And I, the next of the forest keepers, fulfill the ancient mandate, awaiting the coming end of empire as she whispers her secrets on the wings of the morning. Before long will I join her, high above the haunts of petty men.

© Conor MacCormack, 2026. All rights reserved.