We moved along the mountain path. The moonlight was very bright, and there were rocks everywhere, and to me it all looked dead and yellow, like the moon. I had just spent several hours with three men who were openly planning to kill her. So why, I wondered, was I more frightened now than then? Who was the horrid hooded figure to strike fear in me so? What could be worse than dying? I offered him money as ransom, the man in black just laughed. Many times, he would spin off the path, heading into wild terrain, running and pulling me behind him. I fell, when I told him I could not move that quickly, he yelled back, “You can! And you will! Or you will suffer greatly. Do you think I could make you suffer greatly?”(Goldman). I nodded. I did my best to keep up, I was frightened as to what he would do to her, so I dared not fall again. “Where… do you take me?” (Goldman). I gasped, when he gave me a chance to rest. He did not answer. I warned him that Prince Humperdinck would find us. He mocked me, saying I wasn’t capable of love, he mocked my pain. We ran again, not talking for hours. As we were running along the edge of a towering ravine, we stopped, I sank down to rest. The man in black stood silently over me, he pointed back the way we had come. I stared, as I did, I saw the waters of Florin Channel filled with ships. “‘He must have ordered every ship in Florin after you,’ the man in black said. ‘Such a sight I have never seen.’ He stared at all the lanterns on all the ships as they moved”(Goldman). I once again warned him that he can never escape Humperdinck, I tried to promise him that no harm would come to him if he released me. He, once again, did not take this offer seriously. This man in black, though he seemed very cruel and frightening, also mocked me, my love, my grief. I told him I had died the day my love was killed. When he was distracted by the ships once again, I shoved him and he fell down the steep ravine. I told him that he could die too for all I care. From the bottom of the ravine I heard words whispered from far, weak and warm and familiar. “As… you… wish…” (Goldman).
I was shocked. I was thrilled. I felt sick, what had I done to my poor, sweet Westley. I did not hesitate a moment, I went down after him, keeping my feet as best I could, my balance quickly was gone, and the ravine had me. I fell fast and I fell hard, but that did not matter, I “would have gladly dropped a thousand feet onto a bed of nails if Westley had been waiting at the bottom. Seeing him again, my one true love, who I thought was dead. Seeing him again could not be described in words, it was pure bliss, pure love. Westley held my face in his quick hands. “‘When I left you,’ he whispered, ‘you were already more beautiful than anything I dared to dream. In our years apart, my imaginings did their best to improve on your perfection. At night, your face was forever behind my eyes. And now I see that the vision who kept me company in my loneliness was a hag compared to the beauty now before me’” ( Goldman). Such words, such beautiful words, but all he spoke of was my beauty, I wondered if he loved me for anything more than that. “‘Enough about my beauty,’ I said. ‘Everybody always talks about how beautiful I am. I’ve got a mind, Westley. Talk about that.’ ‘Throughout eternity I shall do that very thing,’ he told me. ‘But now we haven’t time’”(Goldman). We started hurrying down the ravine floor. Being reunited with my love was honestly more than I could ever hope for. We ran faster and faster, neither of us spending breath in conversation. We were finally able to slow down, Humperdinck was far behind us, I was full of relief. At least I was, but then Westley gave me his best attempt at a smile and said, “With any luck at all, we should soon be safely in the Fire Swamp” (Goldman). I heard his speech, of course. But I did not, I did not, take it well… I had spent long, nightmared years dreaming that I would die in the Fire Swamp. I searched somewhere for a sufficiency of courage. Evidently, I found it in his eyes. At any rate, hand in hand, we moved into the shadows of the Fire Swamp. The Fire Swamp was terrifying, we encountered all of its known threats: the fire spurts, the Snow Sand, and the ROUS’s. My Westley saved me, he saved me from all of that. I will not go into too much, believe it or not, the Fire Swamp doesn’t hold very fond memories. Though while we were in the Fire Swamp, Westley told me of the Dread Pirate Roberts, more specifically, he told me how he came to be the Dread Pirate Roberts himself. It was a wonderfully fascinating story, though one he is far better equipped to tell, I’ll make sure to ask him to tell it in his own writings. It was nearly dusk when we at last saw the great ship Revenge far out in the bay. When we left the Fire Swamp, we were surrounded by the great Armada, “a hundred mounted horsemen, armored and armed. In from of them the Count. And out alone in front of all, the four whites with the Prince astride the leader” (Goldman). “‘I accept your surrender,’ the Prince said. Westley held my hand. ‘No one is surrendering,’ he said. ‘You’re acting silly now,’ the Prince replied. ‘I credit you with bravery. Don’t make yourself a fool.’ ‘What is so foolish about winning?’ my darling Westley asked. ‘It’s my opinion that in order to capture us, you will have to come into the Fire Swamp. We have spent many hours here now; we know where the Snow Sand waits. I doubt that you or your men will be any too anxious to follow us in here. And by morning we will have slipped away.’ ‘I doubt that somehow’, said the Prince, and he gestured out to sea. Half the Armada had begun to give chase to the great ship Revenge. And the Revenge, alone, was sailing, as it had to do, away. ‘Surrender,’ the Prince said. ‘It will not happen.’ ‘SURRENDER!’ the Prince shouted. ‘DEATH FIRST!’ Westley roared”(Goldman). My heart burned within me, my Westley had died once and it killed me, if he died again, I could not have lived knowing I could have saved him. ‘…will you promise not to hurt him…?’ I whispered. Both Westley and Humperdinck were confused and shocked. I took a step forward and said, “‘If we surrender, freely and without struggle, if life returns to what it was one dusk ago, will you swear not to hurt this man?’ Prince Humperdinck raised his right hand: “I swear on the grave of my soon-to-be-dead father and the soul of my already-dead mother that I shall not hurt this man, and if I do, may I never hunt again though I live a thousand years’”(Goldman). My heart was slowly breaking inside of me. I could not bear to stay. I went away with the Prince. It was the worst mistake of my life.
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AuthorPrincess Buttercup of Hammersmith was once a poor peasant. She fell in love with the farm boy, Westley, and they decided to get married. Tragedy strikes and Westley is reported to have died at sea. Buttercup vows to never love again, even though she gets engaged to Prince Humperdinck roughly five years later. Buttercup is almost assassinated by Vizzini, Inigo, and Fezzik, but saved by a mysterious man, who is in fact her long lost love, Westley... Quotes"Enough about my beauty. Everybody always talks about how beautiful I am. I’ve got a mind, Westley. Talk about that.”
“Westley and I are joined by the bond of love and you cannot track that, not with a thousand bloodhounds, and you cannot break it, not with a thousand swords.” “I love you, I know this must come as something of a surprise, since all I’ve ever done is scorn you and degrade you and taunt you, but I have loved you for several hours now, and every second, more. I thought an hour ago that I loved you more than any woman has ever loved a man, but a half hour after that I knew that what I felt before was nothing compared to what I felt then. But ten minutes after that, I understood that my previous love was a puddle compared to the high seas before a storm.” "Let me get this straight. Are you saying my love is a grain of sand and yours is this other thing? Images confuse me so - is this universal business of yours bigger than my sand? Help me, Westley. I have the feeling we're on the verge of something just terribly important.” “Westley, my passion, my sweet, my only, my own. Come back, come back. I shall kill myself otherwise. Yours in torment, Buttercup." She looked at Humperdinck. "Well? Do you think I'm throwing myself at him?" |