The Sisters That Met Misfortune

By Noura Maheeb

Three sisters seek to run away from misfortunes and ask an old witch, Miss Fort, to help them. Their quest takes them on a long journey, and on that journey of love and loss, they discover that there are bigger problems in life than the problems the world has set upon themproblems that come from within themselves rather than from the world outside.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Mar 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524678968

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© 2017 Noura Maheeb. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/09/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5246-7875-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-7896-8 (e)

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Contents

Prologue

Black - No, Dark Brown…

Part I

OPHELIA: Hamlet’s X

Introducing a Man of Faith and Patience

A Heart of Extremities of Feelings

Love and Poetry

The Poetry Festival

A Fairy

Error

The Witches of Macbeth

One More Night by the Beloved Waters

A Beggar

An Evil Often Welcomed

Part II

JUDIE: A Mountain

Soldiers’ Camp

Swindled and Abused

Surviving One Snare to Fall into Another

A Man of Honour and Fortitude

A Mind Sharp as a Knife

Fights and Games

The Game Begins

An Unexpected Turn in the Game

A Game… A Game?

Loss

A Predator’s Taunt

The Beggar Again

Part III

LAILA: A Starry Night

The Tempest

Haven

Eavesdropping on a Man of Wisdom and Modesty

A Guilty Conscience and its Perception of Life and Death

Conflict and Consensus

The Prince Tells His Tale

Whispers

Whispers Bring Poisonous Thoughts

False

First Sight

Tangled Midnight Blue Tresses

A Beggar No More

Part IV

SISTERS: An Infinity

Guidance From Above

Dawn

Note by the Author

People.

I think of them as irregular, shifting shapes.

26448.png

Few, but some, are regular.

Most, but not all, have sharp angles.

The most stable are the most smooth-lined.

And the perfect are the circles.

The perfect exist, but they are few.

Every vertex in the shape’s outline represents a separate character in a person. That is why people have many faces. The closer the contact and regularity between the vertices on the outside the less the conflict between the person and his inner self. Circles have infinite vertices so close to each other they become invisible until it seems as though it is one whole. That is what makes the circles the most stable.

26488.png

Triangles are the farthest polygons from a circle.

Triangles are the least stable people, the most imperfect.

With three vertices constantly in conflict, a triangular personality is the most likely to appear changeable and immature.

Prologue

It all happened in her head. There were many things going on there, more than one she was there. It was her own world only barely touching the other world outside, only looking at it through a small window while she remained in her small dark cave. She was always in that cave. Always, always, always. Even when she decided to get out, even when she thought she had went out, she was still inside it.

For it was all inside her head. My head; Welcome to My Realm of Dreams.

It is important to understand all characters and events occurred in the Parallel Universe of my brain. Fictional and Imaginary.

"What’s in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet"

Romeo and Juliette

Shakespeare

Black - No, Dark Brown…

Three moving dark figures flecked the otherwise empty expanse of desert. A chain of mountains loomed above them, ominously covering them in its grim shade.

‘Sisters, will you remind me again why we went to the scary old witch?! – Oh, how my skin crawls with fear whenever I remember her!’ said Ophelia shivering and leaning on the side of a large mountain rock for support. She had been crying all the while as they traversed the long miles that led them to this dark spot in this boundless desert whose sun had just gone down, her last rays still dwelling on the golden horizon.

‘Ophelia! How ungrateful you are!’ scolded her elder sister, Judie, ‘You should remember the good old lady with more respect; she was very obliging to have told us of a way to conquer all our enemies and prevent any from disturbing us again.’

‘We wanted a potion to mend our broken hearts, to keep misfortunes away from us forevermore, and she said our only solution was to come here to the Chamber of the Witches …’ replied the eldest sister, Laila, as she surveyed the endless desert then looked again at the hole that seemed to drink the air and swallow the wind into its hollow darkness.

‘She kindly suggested that we come here and find the Witches ‘ spinning wheel to give those who have wronged us the punishment they deserve.’ said Judie as her dark eyes fixed their gaze on the dark hole in the mountain that seemed to lead to an underground cave, ‘I told him he will regret what he’s done one day, and so he shall! He shall curse the day he took my son away.’ She gritted her teeth as she remembered her dead son.

Her drunkard husband, when he had gotten tired of her attempts at stopping him from drinking, left the house and took with him her dear boy. He prevented her from ever seeing him again, and left him to the care of a deaf old nurse who hardly understood anything about children. The nurse had neglected him completely, and the little boy caught a high fever and eventually died of illness.

‘I don’t understand how we can sit spinning in that dark cave forevermore and not grow old or tired or sleepy or hungry or anything… She said that if we ever come out again we’ll be as unaltered as these mountains above us, but I still can’t see how that is.’ said Ophelia.

‘The good old lady, as Judie chooses to call her, didn’t say we will not change; she only said we will look the same. That is to say we may change from within, our hearts may alter as well as our minds and natures, although the passage of time shall have no mark on our faces…’ replied Laila to Ophelia’s confused inquiry.

‘Yet, oh, sisters, my heart trembles to think of confining itself to that dark place forevermore; I fear it as much as I fear the witch that brought us to it.’ Ophelia said, sensing the foreboding atmosphere that seemed to radiate from the cave.

‘No, Ophelia, we must enter.’ insisted Judie, ‘The kind lady said it’s our only way out of this plight, and I will not bear my heavy heart all my life; I shall not have a wink of rest before I take my revenge!’

‘I can’t bear my heavy heart either; I’d go mad with grief before long…’ said Ophelia as she slid to the ground, her back leaning against the large mountain rock, and looked up at her elder sisters with red throbbing eyes about to pour out another stream of tears. She was only seventeen and had lost the man she had loved with all her heart and soul to a prettier rival whose voice could melt any man. Ophelia’s heart could not bear another buffet and so, she decided to hide from life and its hardships in the cave now before them.

‘Oh, how trying this world seems to me… I certainly would rather imprison myself in that black hole than face it… Prison is heaven to me if it can make me rid myself of all the tediousness, the sorrow, the purposelessness and hopelessness of life’ said Laila her shoulders drooping and her eyelids falling ‘Life may have much meaning and significance to others, but, to me, it is as worthless, as meaningless as an empty shell. What purpose should I live for when I value naught in all this world? I am myself valueless and shall do nothing should I go on living; I am too weak, too empty, and too purposeless to be of any use in this world, there is no reason why I should live, why I should make the effort to live through the calamities of life.’

Laila’s husband had been murdered by his only brother for money. Laila saw the murder with her own eyes; she saw the murderer raise the dagger above her husband’s chest while he slept by her side, but she did nothing. She saw him split her husband’s heart, yet she did nothing. She saw him run away, and still she did nothing. She did not try to stop the murderer, did not shout for help, did not try to wake the neighbours. She only lied there in her place on the blood-soaked bed, her mind numbed, her eyes on the ceiling, as unconscious of her surroundings as if she were only living a nightmare that was to end soon enough.

She got out of bed in the morning feeling hungry. She went into the kitchen and swallowed every edible thing she could find, even the yellow petals of the daisies her husband had bought her the day before. She kept eating and eating until she felt like she would throw up. That was when she joined her two younger sisters and after some debate the three decided to go to the old witch and ask for her help.

‘Will you give me your hand, Judie? My feet won’t support me.’ Ophelia pleaded and was given a helpful pull and an arm to lean on. ‘Will we enter now?’

‘Wait, we can’t go inside before we’ve decided who will spin and turn the wheel, who will measure and choose the threads’ colours, and who will thin and cut them with the shears.’ said Judie as she held Ophelia back, preventing her from going into the cave.

‘I’ll pick the threads; I’ll sympathize with people and will give them no misfortunes in their lives at all!’ said Ophelia.

‘I’ll turn the wheel; it is easy, and the monotony may put my mind off bitter thoughts.’ said Laila.

‘What, and leave me with the shears! By no means!’ protested Judie, ‘I’ll pick the threads; I always chose the best colours when we used to spin together. Laila, you will turn the wheel and Ophelia will be left with the shears; Ophelia is the most dexterous when it comes to thinning threads and that’ll keep us safe from killing people before their time.’

‘Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, please, no!’ begged Ophelia, ‘I can’t be the one to bring about people’s deaths! I can’t touch those dreadful shears!’

‘Ophelia, if I or Laila tried to thin the threads, we’ll cut them, and then we’d be killing people before their time.’ said Judie.

‘Oh, but it’ll be too much for me to bear! Oh, I can’t; it’ll only hurt my heart all the more! Oh, please, Judie, you do the cutting and let me choose the threads! Please!’ Ophelia said, turning a face full of anguish towards her sister.

‘No, I certainly shall not; I am very sorry Ophelia, but, I’ve already decided I’ll choose the threads.’

‘Oh, Judie, I’ll be all the more miserable if I go into that dark cave with such a dark purpose as to bring about people’s deaths! Please, Judie cut the threads yourself!’

‘You won’t be killing them, Ophelia, but rather saving them from an early death! You’re more nimble-fingered than we are; we may cut the threads while you could never so much as do the slightest mistake with the shears; you’re talented - Come on now, Ophelia! I said you’ll cut the threads and so you shall!’

And with that, Judie pulled Ophelia into the dark cave and Laila followed behind them.

The Chamber of the Witches was faintly lighted by a glow that came from the enchanted spinning wheel, threads and shears. The wind blew fiercely all around as it turned the wheel, measured the threads and cut them; the Witches had left their duties for the wind to carry out in their stead, and they went to rest under the sands forevermore – or so the old witch had said. As soon as the sisters touched the magical instruments, the wind stopped blowing, and the girls felt suspended in the air, or rather in space. They felt there, yet, nowhere; present, yet, absent.

‘Come on, let us set to work!’ Judie urged her sisters on.

She began rummaging through the heaps of threads she saw piled against the cave’s walls. She searched and searched, but however well she looked, she could not find what she sought.

‘What is it, Judie?’ asked Ophelia, noticing her sister’s heightening frustration.

‘Why, I can not find a single black thread in the whole heap! Not one!’ replied she.

‘A black thread, Judie! Why would you want a black thread?!’

‘To give my husband what he deserves!- But now I am utterly thwarted; there are dark green threads, dark blue threads, dark brown threads, but no black. What shall I do? - I wish we had brought black threads from the market with us!’

‘I dare say they wouldn’t have worked; there’d have been no magic in them.’ ventured Laila.

‘You can use the brown thread instead; it’s the darkest thread you’ve got, is it not?’ proposed Ophelia.

‘Humph, black, brown it does not differ much. I shall have the brown then if I cannot have the black I wish for, but I shall make sure that it is the darkest of all the browns!’

And so, the young women began spinning the life of Judie’s husband using the brown thread. The man caught the same fever his son had died from and became a weak invalid stuck to his bed for the rest of his life – which Judie insisted should not be long. All his friends deserted him; no one asked on his health or bothered to pay him a visit, and he began to feel that his loneliness will kill him before his fever. His house was broken into one night, and there was no one to stop the burglar from taking whatever precious item he found there, so he took all the money and the sick man became penniless.

So pained and hopeless was he that he began hallucinating and talking to himself in the mirror. The woman that came for a few hours every day to cook and clean thought that her master had become a mad man and eventually took him to an asylum. However, the poor man’s sickness brought him closer to his God, and his weakness made him see how insignificant he was before the Almighty; and so, he repented of all his sins and asked for God’s mercy and forgiveness. Eventually, Ophelia took pity on the poor man and decided to put an end to his suffering by cutting the thread of his life.

Judie felt dissatisfied about what she had done, though. Her vow of making him regret what he had done had been realized and she had caused a great deal of pain to her husband; yet, her heart still felt hollow and sad. Her obstinacy in making him suffer had made her suffer the more, she had wanted him to feel pain but in her impatient blindness she had forgotten that that will not stop her own pain but rather augment it – But, no! He had deserved what he got, and my conscience has not a cause to disturb me thus!, she thought to herself.

‘Do you intend to kill your husband’s murderer, Laila?’ Judie asked her elder sister when she could not bear her gnawing conscience silently any longer.

‘No, I do not.’ replied Laila absentmindedly.

‘Why so? Does he not deserve to have his punishment?’

‘Well, I do not really know, sister; I do not believe I am the one to decide whether he deserves to die or not. Besides, I do not really care about whatever happens to the man, in fact I never even think about him at all. What has been done cannot be undone; I am a worthless widow filled with depression and despair, prepared to spin men’s lives forevermore, and there’s nothing I can change about that. I have yielded to my fate for though I can change that of others, I can never change my own.’

‘Why did you want to make your husband suffer Judie?’ asked Ophelia

‘Well, I said he shall get what he deserved and so he did. I can not forgive the man who has brought about my son’s death, even if he is his father.’ she replied, ‘why did you do nothing to the woman who took your lover from you?’

‘She did me no wrong; she is not to blame, for she did not know he had been engaged to me before. I loved her voice and her beauty; she had a kind smile that made everybody love her, and so did I.’ said Ophelia.

‘So you both came here only to flee from misfortunes and not for revenge?’

‘I suppose’ replied Laila, and so, Judie went back to measuring the threads and choosing their colours while Laila spun, lulled by the sound of the turning wheel, and Ophelia thinned the threads and hummed.

Her humming got fainter and sadder and it began to take the shape of words as Ophelia’s heart poured out its essence in her song.

‘Where do dreams go when they die?

They soar up to heaven?

But, then, I can not fly…

My heart in white was woven

All my eyes saw was light

Mistakes were all forgiven

And life to me was bright

Where do dreams go when we awake?

With wind that does so harshly blow

Letting hearts fall down to break?

Love was mine and so was life

For I believed I’d be his wife

So happy was I that I did cry

For he loved me so, and so did I

But then from dreams I woke up,

And then my heart did drop

For away he had gone

Away with a prettier one

She sung with such bells

As put men under spells

And so he was taken from me

With the happiness I shall never see

Oh, where?!

Oh, where do dreams go when they die?

If they go up to heaven

Then why can I not fly?

Heart, so far!

Why have you gone from me?

Thus, lost you are

And so shall always be…

Sad, sad as the sea

A happy heart would easily be

When it finds no remedy

But in a love it can never see

Seas are now my tears of sadness

Though once I cried for joy

Now all is faded gladness

And love’s a frightful ploy

Oh, where?!

Oh, where do dreams go when they die?

If they go up to heaven

Then why can I not fly?

Well I would have died

And lived my dream in heaven,

Where no sorrows abide,

But then, I would not be forgiven

If in death I sought to hide

Oh, where?!

Oh, where do dreams go when they die?

If they go up to heaven

Then why can I not fly?’

Ophelia sung thus with a voice that broke and faltered getting fainter and fainter, weaker and weaker. Her voice was not beautiful in itself; but the feelings with which she sung gave her voice what surpasses beauty.

And so, the sisters spun the years of many men that lived and suffered and died, lived and suffered and died, lived and suffered and died…

Part I

OPHELIA: Hamlet’s X

Introducing a Man of Faith and Patience

‘Judie, why are you filling that man’s life with so many dark threads?’ wondered Laila at her sister when she saw her choosing another dark thread for the shepherd who had just lost half his sheep after his barn had caught fire.

‘He doesn’t mind and when one does not mind misfortunes it is better if we give him more. This way, God will reward him for his faith and patience.’ replied she, ‘Besides, I do not like it when I decide to make someone unhappy and am only rewarded with his indifference. I shall keep giving him dark threads until he declares he is the most miserable man on earth.’

‘Judie, why would you do that?! Instead of giving him a light thread after a dark one as you do with even the worst of men, you give him dark after dark after dark! Oh, Judie! Oh, how could you! And he bears it so manfully too!’ cried Ophelia, shocked at her sister’s harshness, ‘Oh, Judie, will you not show him some kindness and give him a white thread? Please, sister, do! My heart would break to see him thus pained with all these misfortunes you’ve piled on his head! Please, show him some kindness, sister! Oh, sister, sister, don’t be so heartless, don’t be so ruthless!’ begged Ophelia, her eyes overflowing with the tears of sympathy and compassion she suddenly felt for the poor young man as she watched him struggling without a morsel of food in his belly, having lost all his sheep and cattle either to the wolves or to disease, nor a drop of water on his tongue, having lost his way in the desert. He was barely able to put one foot in front of the other as he searched for a way out of the scorching desert. She wondered what had ever made him wander away from his homeland, Noroada. He would have been safe there; for somehow, the sisters had never been able to spin the threads of whoever went into that land, Noroada…

‘What! I did nothing wrong; I’m the one in control of the threads, you do not have the right to tell me what to do!’ shouted Judie, lifting her chin and busying herself with her work, but, deep inside, feeling the pricks of her conscience in spite of her words.

Ophelia, subdued by her sister’s harsh reply, only whispered softly, ‘But, oh,