On top of a wooded mountain that stands in an Enchanted Forest, there once lived two little girls. The girls were closer than sisters, and all day long they would play together in the trees.
Miss Clementine was the name of the eldest girl. She had golden blonde hair and wore a hood of scarlet red. She frequently mispronounced her name: “My name is Clementime,” she would say anytime they met a new woodland creature—and indeed, Clementine was good with woodland creatures. She liked to care for and play with them.
Miss Margaret was the name of the youngest girl. She had ebony black hair and wore a hood of periwinkle blue. Margaret could never focus on one thing for very long; she had a wild imagination and was always making up songs and rhymes and stories and games.
These two little girls lived in a happiness unknown to those of us who reside in Mundane Town—the ‘real world’. But I can assure you: there is nothing real about our world. On the contrary, the Enchanted Forest is the most real place there is—and there, Miss Margaret and Miss Clementine spent their early years, playing the games Margaret made up, acting out the stories she wrote, singing her songs and rhymes. At the peak of the mountain, there was a little lake, and during the warm Moons, the girls spent so much time in the water that they may as well have been mermaids! (They often pretended they were.)
There were other children who lived in the Enchanted Forest, but mostly Miss Margaret and Miss Clementine played with the woodland creatures. Because of Clementine’s way with animals, it had been easy to befriend them.
They had even befriended a mountain lion! Now, normally such a forest beast would pose a threat to two girls so small. But when this particular mountain lion heard their beautiful singing, he had decided to not eat, but befriend them. For if he were to have eaten them, never again would he have heard their beautiful voices—and that would have been a tragedy!
Miss Margaret in particular had an incredible voice, almost angelic. The mountain lion would listen to her for hours and hours. But he feared what would happen if, one day, one of the dreaded Huntsmen came for her. Undoubtedly, the Puppet Master, king of Mundane Town, would want to take Margaret away and make her a star…
As the Suns and Moons waxed and waned, the mountain lion’s fears only waxed. His fear grew so much that, one day, he decided to give Miss Margaret his own lion-heart. Now, the mountain lion wasn’t capable of any more magic than you or I. But he felt if he were to bestow this gift upon Margaret, she would be protected from the perilous Puppet Master and his haunting Huntsmen. So the mountain lion blessed her with his own heart and dubbed her the ‘lionhearted girl’.
Miss Margaret was over the Moon to receive such an incredible gift. Miss Clementine, however, might as well of been wearing a hood of not red, but green! For many Moons Clementine went on carrying this envy—a burden that only grew heavier and heavier.
Miss Margaret sensed that something about Miss Clementine was off. Inspired by the mountain lion, she decided to give Clementine her own gift: a music box she had possessed for as long as she could remember. The music box was as enchanted as the surrounding forest, playing music that mirrored the listener’s emotions.
Miss Clementine appreciated the gift from Miss Margaret, and for a while its music soothed her. But, by and by, Clementine found herself eyeing up the lion-heart that Margaret wore around her neck, and soon the envy was at full force once again, the burden heavier than ever before. The burden grew so strong, in fact, that Clementine’s heart turned to stone.
That was the day that the chanting in Miss Clementine’s head began: “The Huntsmen are coming! The Huntsmen are coming!” But only she could hear it. Miss Margaret could not. Nor could any of their animal friends.
“It’s all in your head, Clementine,” Miss Margaret said.
Miss Margaret had meant for these words to be reassuring. Unfortunately, however, they only further upset Clementine. The chanting in her head was very real, so much so that she could no longer sing Margaret’s songs or rhymes.
During these Moons, Miss Clementine could often be found hiding in her bed, with the covers pulled over her head. As though this would stop the chanting. As though this would stop the Huntsmen.
The Huntsmen come for everyone eventually.
Only those who are pure of heart are protected—and Miss Margaret had, indeed, the purest of hearts.
Miss Clementine, however…
It was a golden Autumn day on which the Huntsman arrived at the top of our familiar mountain—a golden Autumn day that soon turned grey and stormy. Moments before he came, there was a chill. Then the sky turned dark, and the wind whistled through the trees, sounding like a strange siren song.
And then, out from the trees, a large hunting knife came spinning through the air. It landed, piercing the mossy forest floor, and the glade split into two. A great chasm formed, with Miss Margaret on one side and Miss Clementine on the other. Quickly, the lake at the peak of the mountain filled the chasm, and a stream formed.
All the woodland creatures fled and hid, as did Miss Margaret. But try as she might, Miss Clementine could not find a place to hide. “Hurry, Clementine! Hurry!” Margaret called and called, but Clementine was disoriented. The trees spun before her. And the chanting only grew louder and louder—“THE HUNTSMEN ARE COMING! THE HUNTSMEN ARE COMING!”—until eventually Clementine collapsed on the mossy forest floor and the world turned black.
When Miss Clementine awoke, a full-grown adult man stood above her. He wore a tunic of brown and green, colours that mimicked the woods, and he had black, shoulder-length hair. Atop his head sat a pointy brown hat with a red feather sticking out its end. He had retrieved his hunting knife from the forest floor, and was now holding it in the air, above Clementine’s head. But to Clementine’s surprise, in a low, stern voice, he said, “I come for the lionhearted girl.”
This only fed Miss Clementine’s envy. “The lionhearted girl? Of course you come for her. All the forest dwellers like her better than me.”
The Huntsman was still holding the knife high above Miss Clementine. “You can show me where the lionhearted girl is,” he told her, “or you can break your own heart of stone and use the pieces to drown the lionheart in the stream.”
Now, Miss Clementine may have been envious of Miss Margaret, but she certainly didn’t want to murder her. “No! I couldn’t murder Miss Margaret! Not ever!”
The Huntsman smiled at Miss Clementine. “What if I told you that, if you do, in Mundane Town, you will go far?”
Miss Clementine narrowed her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I too have heard you sing. You have a beautiful voice—far more beautiful than the lionheart.”
“Really?” Miss Clementine asked, eyes lighting up.
“Yes really, child,” he said, smiling. “Would I lie to you?”
Of course the Huntsman was lying. In truth, being pursued by one of the Huntsmen is nothing to be envious of!
You see, the Huntsman hadn’t really come for Miss Margaret, even though she was the better writer, singer, and artist. What the Huntsman understood was that none of that matters in Mundane Town. In Mundane Town, all that matters is that you are kept in line. The Huntsman knew that Margaret could simply never be kept in line, for, as mentioned earlier, she was too pure of heart.
Miss Clementine had always been this Huntsman’s target. With Clementine, he knew just what strings to pull. She was his puppet, his wind-up doll.
“You’re going to be a star,” he concluded.
And Miss Clementine was filled with hope and glee.
“But,” he then added, “only if you murder the lionheart.”
Miss Clementine didn’t want to murder Miss Margaret, and she was determined to say no, despite how tempting the Huntsman’s promise was. But when she went to decline, she couldn’t form the words. She was too overwhelmed by that same chanting, “The huntsmen are coming! The huntsmen are coming!”
The chanting grew louder and louder—“THE HUNTSMEN ARE COMING! THE HUNTSMEN ARE COMING!”—hypnotising Miss Clementine until she blacked out once again. Only this time, she did not collapse and faint. While she had lost her mind, her body still carried out the request of the Huntsman…
First, she broke her own heart of stone, crushing it to pieces with her bare hands. Then, she found Miss Margaret asleep in some grass beside the lake. Carefully, ensuring that she would not wake, Miss Clementine stuffed the pieces of stone into her periwinkle-blue pinafore.
When Miss Margaret awoke and went for her morning swim in the lake, she found her body much, much heavier than it had been before. This was the heaviness Miss Clementine had been carrying around for many Moons, and it was heavy enough to drown a person, especially a person as small and light-hearted as Miss Margaret.
The moment Miss Margaret’s body met the water, the heaviness proved itself insurmountable. The current of the newly formed stream pulled Margaret deep down underwater. In mere minutes, she ran out of air and died.
All the while, Miss Clementine, though still unconscious, watched from the trees, almost as if she were a mountain lion herself. The voices were still singing: “The Huntsmen are coming! The Huntsmen are coming!”
In fact, these voices did not stop until Miss Clementine was in Mundane Town. But to get there, Clementine had to first use the Huntsman’s knife to harvest Miss Margaret’s bones, and then she had to build a ladder out of them.
Once her ladder was built, Miss Clementine climbed and climbed and climbed. She climbed so high, in fact, that she wondered if she was going to reach heaven and meet Miss Margaret herself—for surely, the lionheart was an angel by now.
How unlike Miss Clementine.
*
Miss Margaret would often wander aimlessly, visiting the children she had once played with in the forest—only now these ‘children’ were different. They had changed, but Miss Margaret certainly had not.
Indeed, Miss Margaret was still a little girl dressed in a hood of periwinkle blue. When she observed herself, it appeared as though no time had passed. And yet, when she observed her friends, clearly time had passed.
The title ‘Miss’ no longer suited them; their accurate honorifics were ‘Misses’ and ‘Ms’. “They are women in the world,” Miss Margaret would often say to herself, “but they were once just little girls.” It was true that her old friends were no longer children at all, but boring adults living boring adult lives in boring Mundane Town.
And then Miss Margaret would wonder, Why can’t I be like them? Why are they all grown up? And why am I still a little girl?
But what had been most distressing was how no one seemed to pay any attention to her. Before long, however, she came to realise that it wasn’t that they were ignoring her. It was that they couldn’t see her at all!
It was on the last day of a particularly gloomy Autumn that the memory came back to Miss Margaret: the horrible act Miss Clementine had performed.
The girl who she had been closer with than a sister.
Miss Margaret hadn’t yet seen Clementine. No longer a ‘Miss’, Clementine had grown into a scattered adult, easily swayed and easily distracted. She had forgotten the things that had once brought her joy, and was desperately trying to become famous and make a lot of gold. She had even sold her beloved music box in the process.
So often this is what happens to people after they enter Mundane Town. They leave the Enchanted Forest wanting one thing, but then the Puppet Master pulls his strings, convincing them that they need something else.
Whenever Clementine wasn’t making frantic efforts in Mundane Town, she was sitting on the porch of the little house she rented, watching the birds fly from over sea, and waiting for one to sing to her the way the music box had. But no bird sang for her.
As the days went on, fewer and fewer birds came by, for a terrible Winter was plaguing the land. Bizarrely, the wooded mountain Clementine had grown up on stood tall in the distance, not covered in snow, but still green.
As Winter dragged on and on, for many more Moons than it would have in a standard Solar cycle, Clementine was still waiting for her bird call, yes—but more and more did she find herself gazing off at that familiar mountain…
Before long, she found herself wishing for Margaret. But what had become of the girl? The girl that she had once been closer to than a sister? Even though Clementine no longer carried her heart of stone, emotionally she carried a weight a thousand times the size—and yet she failed to remember the horrible thing she had done.
All she remembered of the girl was how they had spent their days not working, but playing. Clementine was tired of this bleak Winter! Oh, how she craved Spring on the forest mountain! Oh, how she longed to write stories and songs!
Then Clementine had a thought: Margaret had easily been the most creative of the two of them. Clementine was trying to make it in Mundane World as a singer-songwriter. She wondered if she ought to get in contact with Margaret and ask her to help her write a song—a song so beautiful that the Puppet Master would give Clementine the fame and fortune she so desperately craved.
One day in the dead of Winter, Clementine wrote Miss Margaret a letter:
Dear Margaret,
How have you been all these years? I would love to catch up.
I am trying to make it as a singer-songwriter, but I seem to be going through an unnaturally long Winter. I am hoping that your creative, playful spirit can help me get inspired again.
My address is 666 Humdrum Street. Feel free to drop by anytime.
Clementine
As she waited for Margaret’s response, she sat on the balcony and sang to birds. She tried to sing Margaret’s song. Of course, Margaret had written a great many songs during their days on the wooded mountain. But there was one song in particular that she had sung over and over again, and this was the one Clementine remembered.
Or partially remembered. Clementine was having a hard time with the words.
Only a day later was a letter left at Clementine’s doorstep—but it wasn’t from Margaret. It was the letter that she herself had sent to Margaret, returned to her by the postman.
She decided to try again, and she wrote another letter, but that one was returned as well. So she wrote another and another and another… but they were all returned.
Eventually, she sent a final letter that read:
O, Miss Margaret!
Where have you gone?
I’m singing your song!
O, Miss Margaret!
Don’t leave me alone!
Please take me home!
I write you but my letters get returned, Miss Margaret!
By and by, these had become the words that Clementine had been singing to the tune of Margaret’s favourite song, as she still couldn’t remember Margaret’s words.
The letters yielded no results in contacting Miss Margaret. All of them were returned by the postman, for you cannot send mail to a dead girl. However, what did get Clementine in contact with Margaret was her singing. While the birds ignored Clementine, Margaret most certainly did not…
When Miss Margaret heard the familiar voice singing that treasured melody—“Oh, Miss Margaret! Where have you gone? I’m singing your song!”—the ghost travelled through Mundane Town until she found Clementine’s house.
While Clementine still failed to remember what she had done to Miss Margaret, Margaret did remember. And when Margaret heard Clementine singing her song, she was livid! Clementine had drowned Margaret! How dare she sing her song?
But before Miss Margaret entered Clementine’s house, she first watched and observed. What she saw was the ghost of the girl she had once been so close to. While Margaret was the dead one, she was still somehow filled with life and joy. Clementine, however, had lost her joy.
It wasn’t long before Miss Margaret observed that Clementine wanted to be a singer-songwriter. But Clementine wasn’t writing any songs! There she sat on her balcony, singing Margaret’s song to the birds and frequently dropping the key. The birds paid her no mind, and this only caused Clementine to make more blunders with the melody. Clementine was drowning in her own melancholy, waiting for the Puppet Master’s golden seal of approval. Little did she know that these birds worked not for the Puppet Master, but for Mother Nature herself, Queen of the Enchanted Forest.
Finally, Miss Margaret had had it with Clementine! She had grown tired of watching her waste what precious time she had not writing, not creating, but waiting for the approval of the Puppet Master.
In came the ghost of the girl, singing in her voice sweet as sugar…
Clementine! Clementine!
You wonder why the world is mine!
I know the song! I hold the key!
It’s a haunting melody!
You ask me how! You still don’t know!
Still drowning in the undertow!
Clementine! Clementine!
Wanna know why the world is mine?!
At first Clementine could not see Miss Margaret; she could only hear her. The voice, however, Clementine recognised immediately.
“Miss—Miss Margaret?” Clementine stammered.
But Miss Margaret kept singing…
Put on your dancing shoes!
Take a leap! Over the Moon!
It could all be over soon!
Memento mori!
As Miss Margaret sung the chorus to this creepy little song, her silhouette revealed itself. What was once her body was white, grey, and silver—but her hood and pinafore were still that same periwinkle blue. Worst of all was how she was still a child.
The horrible memory flooded Clementine’s mind as quickly and as overwhelmingly as the water from the stream had flooded Miss Margaret’s lungs.
Miss Margaret dived towards Clementine as she continued to sing…
Clementine! Clementine!
You wander in a world unkind!
You sing the song! But drop the key!
And wait for birds on your balcony!
Don’t ask me how! You’re in the know!
Stop putting on the puppet show!
Clementine! Clementine!
Wanna know why the world is mine?!
Put on your dancing shoes!
Take a leap! Over the Moon!
It could all be over soon!
Memento mori!
Finally, when Miss Margaret felt as though she had given Clementine enough of a fright, she stopped singing, hovered in her face, and said, “You don’t have forever—you know that, right?”
Clementine just stood there, wide-eyed and paralysed.
“I of all people would know that,” Miss Margaret then continued.
Clementine tried to apologise, “Miss Margaret, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to! It was the Huntsman! He—”
“Shush!” Miss Margaret silenced her, bringing a translucent finger to Clementine’s lips. “You know how you can make it up to me?”
“How?” Clementine begged. “I’ll do anything!”
“You must live each day as if it were your last,” Miss Margaret said simply, “for each day very well could be your last. Stop living for the Puppet Master and start living for yourself. And if you cannot do it for yourself, do it for me, your dear old friend, Miss Margaret.”
And then, before Clementine could respond, Miss Margaret was singing again…
Do you wanna take flight?
Or do you wanna lay down and die?
Jump now! You’re running out of time!
As Miss Margaret circled the room and sang, Clementine dropped to her knees, clasped her hands together, and cried, “I’ll change!”
Clementine then dashed over to her bookshelf and retrieved a bundle of sage and a box of matches. She struck one of the matches, lit the sage, and held it high in the air.
Miss Margaret was still circling the room but had finished her song. So Clementine, although she didn’t know what she was about to sing, opened her mouth and let the words come out…
Who’s that singing?
I’ll banish you with my burning sage!
Mountain’s calling!
And now you will hear me!
Get out of my house! Out of my house!
Get out of my house! Out of my house!
Get out of my mind! Out of my mind!
Get out of my heart! My lionheart!
All night, Clementine sung, and Miss Margaret harmonised. Meanwhile, the sage burned, smoke filling the little house.
In the wee hours before dawn, the two girls left Mundane Town and ascended the wooded mountain. The early morning twilight was with them by the time they reached their familiar glade. The Full Moon was low in the sky, nesting right by the peak, casting its reflection onto the lake.
Miss Margaret began singing once again—“Do you wanna take flight? Or do you wanna lay down and die? Jump now! You’re running out of time!”—and she gestured towards Clementine.
Clementine did as Miss Margaret was suggesting, and she took a leap off of the mountain’s peak, ascending into the Starry night sky.
And for the rest of her finite time, Clementine was over the Moon.
A note from the band: This dark yet whimsical fairy tale was written by our lead singer, Melody Daniel Luna, and edited by our guitarist/back up vocalist, Eric Hogg. If you enjoyed The Haunting of Miss Margaret, then you will want to dive into MD Luna’s high fantasy series, The Sun and Moon Saga, or her collection of short stories, The Tales of the Sun and the Moon.