The Black Crows of Morden 

The winds were bitter that winter. Tumbling down the mountainsides
they screamed between the black trees, that stood like naked sentinels
over the lands of Morden. Inside the mean shacks the peasants huddled
together for warmth and reassurance. For it was coming up to the time.
The dark Lord's time. When he despatched his hooded crows amongst the
people to choose his new bride. 

Terror gripped the land in its icy hand.

Young maiden hearts fluttered in panic in byres and sleeping berms
around the countryside, as they waited for his emissaries to descend
and carry off the choice. No-one knew how they chose, nor indeed how
they travelled. All that was known was that they would arrive in a
dual column of dark hooded figures. No-one had seen their faces, nor
heard them speak. Nothing was said, no spark of human warmth or
understanding  was ever offered to her bereaving family, as they led
the chosen one away to her fate.

Never to be seen, nor heard from, again.

No writing, no voices, no lasting testament to her ever having had
existed, or indeed the continuance of her existence. 

Nothing. 

She would vanish as if she had never been.

It was always thus, since the dark Lord came to dwell in his massive
black castle. Perched high on a mountain with the crows circling and
cackling around its turrets. No-one had seen him, or if they had they
had not lived to tell the tale.  Alone among the Lords, he demanded no
other tribute save the sacrificing of a single virgin every year. He
sought no contact, nor leeched no produce from the peasants who
scratched a precarious living from the thin, barren soil. The
minstrels sang that in previous times the Lords demanded much penance
for the right to exist on the land and, as such, this Lord was just
and mighty. 

But the Peasants trembled.

Poor, uneducated and caught in a cycle of backbreaking toil and
misery. They were overwhelmingly superstitious of the brooding power
that seeped from the Black Castle that threatened menacingly from upon
its hilltop. The rumours about him eddied around the settlements like
the wind driven snow as, in the absence of surer knowledge, the
conjecture grew into mighty proportions of fear and dread.

Mistrale, the eldest daughter of Ulna, had developed into a beautiful
young maiden of comely proportions. Clean of limb, proud of back, with
a bright, flashing smile and a ready wit, she was a favourite amongst
her village. For eighteen summers her presence had enlivened the bleak
huddle of huts that was a village with no name, one of many such
villages hereabouts.

Although but a mere wisp of a girl she too had to suffer the burdens
of their fruitless existence, with its spiral of backbreaking toil
leading, without respite, to an untimely death. This morn found her
yoked to a plough, alike to the oxen that her father was too poor to
buy. Pulling with all her puny strength as the plough cut through the
boulder strewn field that begrudgingly yielded up its fruits in summer
with the surety that the winter rains would again seed the soil with a
liberal scattering of rocks. Which would lay mocking their labours,
when the snows receded and the late spring sun cast its feeble glow
across the benighted land. 

It was ever thus, in the darklands of Morden.

Mistrale never thought to question her father as to why she must turn
the soil on such a pitiless day, with its flurrying snow and its
biting winds. Such was her demeanour that she accepted his decision
and his decree. 

Her thin clothes clung to her nubile body as if seeking her protection
from the inclement climes. Such was her youthful perfection that her
beauty shone through her humble rags to project an image of vigour and
vitality, that had quickened the breathing of many a lustful swain.

And still she toiled. The whirling snow covering her tracks is a soft,
fleecy blanket as surely as if she had never been.

The wind screamed.

The trees shook their branches angrily at the intrusion upon their
winter slumbers.

The maiden toiled.

And the Black crows came. 

Silently, menacingly, inexorably. A dual row of evil portents,
pursuivants of the Lord. Cowled, cloaked, their faces hidden deep
within the recesses of their hoods. Heads bowed, as if in prayer.
Their intonation, if such there was, was secretive and silent and
buried by the passage of the wind.

They took her away. No-one saw her passing. The plough upended and
abandoned, the only witness to the fact that she had once trodden
these blighted fields.

The snow buried her prints and the crows buried her past.

************************************************************************

"Hi. My name is Andy. " The decoratively clad stranger held out his
hand in a friendly manner unknown to her. "And you are?"

"My name is Mistrale." She said, eyes cast down modestly.

"Nice name." His accent, and indeed his manner, were unknown and
unusual in these parts. It spoke of a carefree land where all peoples
were free. Even the crows shed their capes to reveal the faces and
bodies of happy, carefree people.  Such as she had never seen.

"Welcome to Andy's." He laughed to try to put her at her ease.

"Please, my Lord, may I speak?"

"Sure honey, it's a free country."

A free country, that concept seemed so alien to her that it stilled
her tongue.

"Go on honey. I won't bite."

Mustering her courage she took a deep breath and spoke. 

"Are you going to sunder my maidenhead, my Lord." She asked,
fearfully.

He looked at her owlishly. "Hell no Honey. I'm not that sort of guy.
Not unless you want me too, of course." He winked.

"Then, what is to become of me my Lord?"

"Hey! Less of this My Lord stuff huh. I told you I'm Andy."

"But surely you are the dark Lord?"

He laughed. 

"They all say that." He said. "I'm no Lord baby. Just a talent scout
for a modelling agency which happens to own a castle, which it uses
for its more exotic shoots."

"You are not a Lord?"

"Nope. Just a working Joe, who happens to think that you have the face
and the body that could be big in next year's season. Listen I'd like
to offer you a contract. You ever heard of Vogue............"