Prologue

It was that very same dream that always haunted him.

The young woman was incredibly beautiful with the thickest of black hair cascading past her shoulders surrounding a pale, thin face with thickly lashed black eyes brimming with tears. She stood in a bare room of slick grey tiles just in front of the window. From outside the bright moonshine fell on the sheerness of her thin nightgown.

He had been young, only four or five years old, dressed well in warm pyjamas and thick boots. She had gotten him out of bed and carried him up all those stairs to the top of the towers, and touching her had revealed to him how cold she was in her almost nakedness. She who was always so warm felt like ice under his little fingers. She who was his life, shivering so much it frightened him.

She was speaking to him; sobbing and tears running down her face, and he watched her quietly. It was not the first time she cried, and as always he didn’t understand what she was telling him. On naked, bony feet she approached him for a soft kiss and a sad smile. A whisper in his ear, words only for him she said, and then she left him for that window and the moon in the sky behind. The next moment she was gone, gone forever. He stood there, still sleepy and confused, wondering where she was.

Where did mother go?