anastasia lightwood // one {resubmission}

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INFORMATION

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BIOGRAPHY

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Anastasia Lightwood stands completely still. The wind catches her hair, making it's golden strands dance in the wind and brush against her rosy cheeks. She holds her breath. Fallen leaves scatter themself across the pavement, moving this way and that, forging pathways upon which they flee from the trees. She watches, feeling her heartbeat in her ears - it is unavoidable, a persistant hum, a constant and pulsing reminder that she is alive. No matter how hard she tries, she cannot suspend herself in time, melt away into the motionless bricks that form the timeless buildings or the crooked streetsigns that guide the busy inhabitants of District One. Despite her best attempts, she is human.

Anastasia blinks, her eyes the colour of puddles on a rainy day. And then, feeling the tug of time at her wrist, she allows herself to move again, to weave in and out of the homebound crowd, fighting the constant stream of quick footsteps and exasperated expressions. She chases the sunset.

. . .

At five years old, Annie curls her fingers around the paintbrush. She feels the rough skin of her mother against the back of her hand. Too tight. "You don't hold it like that, Annie," Mama tells her, digging perfect nails into her flesh. A heavy tear rolls down the little girls cheek and lands on the paper. She begins to apologise, her words broken and afraid. "What have I told you about doing as I say?" The child moves to comply, adjusting her grip just as she was instructed. Around her neck, the string of pearls feels restrictive. She does not complain. 

"I'm sorry."

. . . 

"Come inside right this minute."


Anastasia's chin snaps up, as though she is being awaken from a trance. She glances around herself, eyes wide. Looking as though she has been awaken from a dream, she brings her camera in close, a handful of polaroids between her gloveless fingers. The snow has melted on the grass where she sat, and now icy water seeps between the fabric of her clothes. She doesn't notice - it eats away at her mother how completely oblivious she can be of the world around her. "Anastasia!" her tone is demanding, and the seven year old is on her feet before the breeze can carry her precious pictures away. As she arrives in the doorway, her lips downturned into a frown, her mother scolds her again. 

"Always, Annie, you look miserable. I give you everything. Smile, girl."


Her grazed knees knock together; cold has bitten it's way deep into her bones. She parts frost-bitten lips to show her mother pearly white teeth, and feels the jewels on her rings pressing into her back as she is guided inside. "I'm sorry."

. . . 

Anastasia doesn't want to learn to use the sword. It's heavy - heavier than her bony arms can manage properly. At ten years old, she's barely taller than the shining weapon, and she doesn't like that she can see her reflection in the shining blade. Mama always told her she was ugly - that she was a curse of a daughter, with a blank mind and a maze of thoughts she couldn't untangle herself from. Not beautiful, like the children of her friends. Annie nodded, biting at the inside of her cheek, eating herself away as though if she tasted enough blood she might disappear. 

"Don't embarrass me, not here." 

She is used to making flames flare up in the cheeks of her mother; never is she good enough to carry the weight of their failing social class. The lights in the training centre are too bright, but watching the world hesitantly through her eyelashes, Annie does as she is told. She swings the sword and throws the knives and pulls the string on the bow and wields the spears. Mama observes her disapprovingly, muttering to herself about the children she might have had if only her father hadn't gambled his riches away and left her a widow to deal with the consequences. 

"You'll never be as dangerous as I once was," Mama says. 

Annie is not sure why this is so bad. She'd rather be safe, with soft edges and smiles and a world filled with the feeling that lingers between awake and asleep on a Sunday morning. "I'm sorry," she says, regardless, like a broken record. 

. . . 

Her slap stings. Later, the mirror shows a handprint etched across her cheek. It's blue and black, fading in sickly yellows and greens. Mama was right, Annie thinks, she must have been a wonderful fighter. She brings her tea and toast, desperate for redemption. 

"How dare you show your face in here?"

A lump forms in Anastasia's throat, and despite her swallowing, she can't force it to leave her alone. She backs away, her tray of offerings shaking as she does. 

"And toast? Are you trying to sabotage me? You know I'm not to eat things like that - are you trying to make me ugly? You are!"

Her hands fly out, and Anastasia winces, ready to feel the blood spilling beneath her flesh for the second time that morning. Her mother does not strike her, however. Instead, she sends the breakfast tumbling, boiling water flying into the air. The burns on Anastasia's legs still have not faded by the time her twelfth birthday arrives, and Mama makes her wear thick stockings in the sweaty summer sun. 

"I'm sorry," Annie says, when her furious parent tugs the fabric over the scars. She winces, but her mother moves roughly and carelessly as though forcing her daughter to feel her sins long after she has lived them. 

. . .

It's four o'clock in the morning and Anastasia watches her mother shake. "Call the doctor, you hear me? All I need is the injection. Just do as I say." The girl nods, just fifteen years old and confident in the darkness. She leaves the room, barefoot on the cold floor. In the kitchen, she leans against the bench, hearing her mother's sobs from upstairs. Annie closes her eyes and waits, counts to ten, forces herself to go somewhere far away. She does not move to the phone; nor does she fetch her coat and walk the easy path to the house of healer across the street. She waits. 

Two hours later, dawn breaks, and Anastasia brings her mother coffee. She sets her cup down on the vanity dresser and lets her eyes rest on the still form of the woman. She looks so much younger, so innocent - the deep lines that were once etched into her skin have faded almost completely, and lying still on the sheets she's vulnerable and open. "I'm sorry," Annie tells her, and she speaks the truth. At the funeral, Anastasia speaks. Inside her mind, she reminds herself that she did not kill her. She is not a murderer. Her mother died of a sickness she had carried for many years. There is a difference, the girl decides, between slaughter and simply not saving someone. Instead, she chose to save herself. 

. . . 

Anastasia has stopped doing as she is told. The carers at the community home tell her to be back by dark. Instead, she spends hours wandering around the abandoned houses in the forbidden side of the district. Her feet ache, but she floats around the rooms imagining the lives they once held. She thinks of the people who moved between the walls. Perhaps they died in the very place she stands and perhaps they laughed here, too. She is silent, always, carried in with the wind and leaving behind only footsteps. 

. . . 

The Lightwood household is different from her previous home in many ways. Although both were grand and filled with riches, spending too long looking at anything in Anastasia's new bedroom didn't give way to a thousand imperfections. Once, she lived in a world covered beneath a facade of money - beneath that, everything was a moment from crumbling to pieces, fragile and filled with lies. Here, things are perpetually stable. Annie likes it.


For the first time in her life, she is a princess, and if she closes her eyes she can almost capture the entire world in her mind. Vaguely, she remembers her past. But it is not with hesitation that she looks to the future.

"I'm not sorry."

The polderoid photograph of her mother does not reply, so Anastasia lets it go. 

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COMPLETE

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