| |
THE dungeons beneath the dungeons have not grown any warmer in the days since the children have been here. Most of the prophets hang by their very last breaths. They are old, you see. Old and weary. But they hang on for the children. They know they are needed, and sometimes this is all a person needs to hold tightly to life.
The children have developed coughs that worry Aleen. She has heard these coughs before, and they always meant Death. But her birthday is coming, and then, in one great act of magic, she will escape from here. And though the road will not be simple and straight, she has Seen what is next. Her Sight gifted her with that and then quickly faded away forever.
She has Seen what she must do.
So she counts down the hours and waits.
“You will go,” Yerin whispers beside her. The children are sleeping, or at least trying to sleep. They have forgotten day and night, for it is so dark in this dungeon that they do not know how many days and nights pass. “You will go tonight.”
“Yes,” Aleen says. “On the hour of my birth.”
“You will die,” he says.
“I am not afraid to die,” she says. “For this.”
“No,” Yerin says. “You were never afraid to die for anything.”
Aleen is quiet for a time. She considers. She listens. She lets the voice of yearning open the chambers of her heart, and it does not take long to know whose hand she has been holding all these hours that lead to her birthday. Ah, yes. Yerin. He was not Yerin when she knew him once. He was someone else. But he is one and the same.
He will care for the children like no one else would have cared for them. She knows they will be safe and that she is completely free to do her one last great act. She is permitted to give her life to save them all.
“Jem,” she says.
“Yes,” he says. “It is I.”
“How did you come to be here?” she says.
“In quite the same way you did, my dear,” he says. And then: “We have found each other at last.”
“And now we must lose each other again,” Aleen says.
“But true love endures,” he says. “Even after death.”
“Yes,” she says, for she knows of what he speaks. There are stories that tell of life after death. “I suppose it does.”
Yerin wraps his arms around Aleen, and though the dungeon is damp and cold, she feels warm and dry in the circle of him.
“Would that I could go with you,” he says.
“You must remain here,” she says. “You must take care of the children. They will need you.”
“Yes,” he says. “I suppose they will.”
“They are coming,” she says.
“Yes,” he says. “I have Seen them, too.” And then he pauses. “Did your Sight return?”
Aleen shakes her head. The braids of her hair slither about. “Only momentarily,” she says. “Today.”
The silence does not feel so thick as it once did, only comforting. Aleen thinks that perhaps he has fallen asleep. So she whispers her next words. “You will not be here forever.”
“But you will be gone forever,” he says.
“No longer than most,” she says. “You will join me. When it is all finished.”
Yerin knows this as well. He knows what great act he will be asked to do, one that would commence on the morning of his birthday in six months. And perhaps this, the knowing that they will be together again even in death, is what causes him to chuckle softly, close to her ear. “How fitting,” he says, “that we should be together in the end.”
“Yes,” she says. “How fitting that I should be the one to leave you this time.”
“I tried to find you,” Yerin says.
“I was practiced at hiding,” Aleen says.
“I searched high and low,” he says. “And to think, I found you in a dungeon.”
“You came here first,” Aleen says. His hand strokes hers.
“That I did,” Yerin says. “And I shall be here last.”
They do not say anything else for some time. They merely lean against one another, Aleen silently counting the hours until she will do her last disappearing act and lift back into the world above the ground and see the stars and the moon and the woman she must find. She knows where the woman is, of course. Her Sight provided that much. She will have perfect aim when the time is right.
For now, she rests. She awaits the hour.
Hazel is staring, as she nearly always is, outside the window that faces her mother’s house. She is alone in the house of the Enchantess. The Enchantress has been gone for some time. A child appears in the distance, then disappears just as quickly. Her mother must have let the children outside for a time. Hazel watches to see if another will appear, but no one does.
And then, as quickly as the child appeared, a whole line of them shows through. Something must have happened to the spell. Hazel rises from her seat. No. They must go back inside. But even the house shaped like a shoe is visible now.
Hazel lifts her staff from where it rests against the entryway wall and moves to the porch of her home. She leans on her staff. The cold traces her cheek. She watches her mother hug the children one by one, as she once hugged Hazel before she came here. She watches Maude kiss their heads and wonders what it is that her mother tells them, where they might possibly be going. The Enchantress has said nothing to her. Has it grown too dangerous for them to stay here? Is that why they have risked moving outside the home that makes them all invisible?
Maude is clearly telling them goodbye. Perhaps she is leaving. Hazel feels a lurch in her chest. Perhaps the children are leaving and Maude is staying. Hazel does not know, cannot know, for the Enchantress...
Where is the Enchantress? Why can Hazel see them all?
And then an ache nearly bends her in two. She would like to tell them goodbye. She would like to see her mother again. If she could let them know how much she loves them and how she will miss them. If she could look in Mercy’s eyes again. If she could feel her mother’s arms around her.
Something flickers in the corner of her vision. Another movement. Shadows have begun to gather, as if the day is quickly turning to night. It is precisely what is happening, for a wood grows darker more quickly than any open land. The terrors of the forest are beginning to gather as well. At least this is what Hazel first supposes. She sees the children’s faces written plainly with fear. Hazel can tell, even from this distance, that Maude is nervous, as if she is unsure whether she should send the children back inside or wait for whatever it is she waits. Perhaps she is meeting someone. Perhaps that someone is not coming.
“Go back inside, Mother,” Hazel says, without realizing that she has spoken aloud. “I can see you. Go back inside and take the children. Please.”
But Maude, alas, cannot hear the voice of a daughter so far away. She can only watch the world growing dark and wait for the one who does not come.
Again, the flickering in the corner of her vision draws Hazel’s eyes toward the wood. Something is moving. Something swift and dark. Something running. Hazel knows, without knowing how, that whatever it is—man or animal or some other danger entirely, has come for the children who wait outside the home that cannot be seen and yet, now, can.
And so it is hope and sadness and desperation and anger that drives Hazel from the house she has been strictly forbidden to leave. It is all of these and more that makes her break free from the enchantment that holds her prisoner. It is all of these and more that makes her raise her staff.
She knows she is supposed to save her magic. She knows she cannot risk using it until it is needed for something important. She knows she could very well die for casting a spell outside the presence of her twin. But there is a man watching. There is a man moving swiftly and relentlessly toward the children. There is a man who will take them. Who is he? She does not know. She only knows that she must be the one who saves them.
Yes, she was supposed to save her magic for something important. But is this not something important? Is this—saving the children and her mother with them—not important enough to risk her very life? She could not save her father or her brother or her best friend, but can she at least do this?
Yes. She can. She will. She will save the children. The Enchantress could do it, but she is not here. She is somewhere else, and there is only Hazel, the running man and Maude and the children. Something must be done.
Hazel begins the incantation. She lifts her staff and points it toward the children. She releases a magic like none the land has ever known, more powerful, even, than the magic of the Enchantress, though she does not know this. And with it, she releases her own power. Hazel crumples to the ground and cannot even open her eyes to see what her spell has done.
Let us see for her, dear reader. Let us see the children who are here one moment and gone the next. Let us see Maude, looking around as though she has lost something and then retreating back into her shoe-shaped house. Let us see the man dressed as a dryad who stops, falls to his knee, rises, clutches his chest, stares, bewildered. Let us watch him turn all about, as if he, too, has lost something.
Where moments ago he saw everything, now he sees nothing. He does not see the girl who lies on the ground outside the invisible home of the Enchantress. He does not see the woman fly inside the door of her shoe-shaped house, where she will sit, alone, and wonder what happened and whether the children are truly safe now. He does not see the children, who have vanished into thin air, each to their separate places, lands far away, where they are, most of all, safe.
He does not, in fact, see anything at all.
The Enchantress, as we speak, is at the castle. She has been held up by the king. First he was not here. And then, when he returned, he merely stared at her. She is well aware of her beauty, of course, but it was quite embarrassing the way he stared, as if her eye held some sway over him.
It is only just now that she has been able to tell him why she has come to the castle. She does not know how late it has grown.
“You know where the children are?” the king says.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” she says.
“But I have just hired a Huntsman,” the king says.
“You have no need of a Huntsman,” the Enchantress says. “I have all the information you desire.”
“The Huntsman is already hunting,” the king says.
“You need only an Enchantress,” she says. “I will take you to them.”
“Take the Huntsman, then,” the king says.
“He is not here,” the Enchantress says.
The king looks around. “Yes, well.” He looks back at the Enchantress. “You know where all of them are?”
“All of them,” the Enchantress says, but this is not entirely true. She knows where most of them are, but she also knows King Willis is not interested in most. He is only interested in all. But the king will not know her secret for some time. She will find the rest.
“Where are they hiding, did you say?” King Willis says.
“I did not say,” the Enchantress says. “They are hiding in the Weeping Woods.”
“But the woods burned,” King Willis says. “No one survived.”
He has said these very words before, if you remember, and was proven wrong, which goes to show that King Willis does not yet fully believe that the children survived.
The Enchantress smiles. “They have magic, Your Majesty,” she says. “They can survive much.”
“Yes,” King Willis says. “I suppose they can. And how is it you know where they live?”
“They live very near me,” the Enchantress says. “In a house shaped like a shoe.”
Oh, dear. You may have thought you could trust this Enchantress, but it appears that she is giving away an important secret to the very man who was supposed to never know that secret.
“Why have we not found them yet?” the king says.
“It is not so very simple,” the Enchantress says. “They live in an invisible house.”
“Ah,” the king says. He looks on this strange woman with the flashing green eyes. She has a gleam of cruelty buried there, and while it bothers him a bit to be under the spell of a woman, as he supposes he is, he also knows that this partnership might very well be beneficial. She needs him for some reason unknown to him. So he will make his move and she will make her move, and this will be a great game of wits.
“I can uncover it,” the Enchantress says. She says nothing about how she is the one who made the home in the first place, or how she struck a deal with the woman who has kept the children safe since the roundup. These things should not be said in the court of a king. So she merely says, “I have the power. They will be in your hands in no time at all.”
“And what is it you want from me?” the king says.
“I would like a place in your kingdom,” the Enchantress says. “At your right hand.”
The king stares at her for a moment. There has never been a woman at the hand of the king. He does not know if he could stand something so foreign and awful. He does not know if he can agree.
And then he remembers his son. “My son,” King Willis says. Our king did not realize just how much he had come to enjoy the days when his son stood in the throne room with him. He feels the loss in his chest. Who would have thought that a man like King Willis might feel anything at all for another person? But it is clear, dear reader, that he has begun, against all odds, to love his son. And perhaps it is not only for the future of the kingdom.
“Your son?” the Enchantress says. She pretends to know nothing of what the king says, though, of course, she does.
“My son,” the king repeats. “They took him from me.”
“The village people,” the Enchantress says. “Yes.”
“He is alive?” the king says.
“Yes,” the Enchantress says. “I have seen him in my looking ball. I have seen him alive, but he is quite changed. You would not recognize him, I fear.”
“Changed how?” the king says.
“You shall have to see that for yourself,” the Enchantress says with a smile. “He shall be the last child I will deliver to you, after all the others have been found. We will let the people keep him for a time. But certainly not forever.”
It is unusual that the king does not argue with the Enchantress. King Willis is a man who wants something and wants it now. Could it be that the Enchantress is truly enchanting? That would surely explain his silence.
“I cannot begin my work until you have agreed to my conditions,” the Enchantress says.
“Yes,” King Willis says.
“I will have a place in your kingdom?” the Enchantress says, just to be sure. “Your right hand?”
“Granted,” the king says, for, at this moment, he has no other counsel, and, besides, he wants those children once and for all. He wants his son. He wants the kingdom to continue on as it has always done. “Provided you can work with the Huntsman to capture all the children.”
“We have no need of a Huntsman,” the Enchantress says. “We only have need of me.”
“But the Huntsman is an expert at hunting,” the king says.
“As am I,” the Enchantress says. Her green eyes flutter a little and then widen, as if she knows the hold they have over him.
“I have secured his services already,” the king says. “He has a vested interest. A king cannot go back on his word.”
The Enchantress can see that she will not win this. She will have to find something to do with that Huntsman. But, for now, she says, “Very well. I will work with your Huntsman. But it is a very simple procedure.” She moves closer to the king. He moves back, on impulse, but it is not a quick move, for nothing King Willis does is quick, only sluggishly slow. It has gotten worse in these days after his son’s disappearance, though he has not eaten and his skin has begun to sag. King Willis, in truth, has begun losing his will. For what good is a kingdom if there is no heir to inherit it?
“Simple,” the king says. “Nothing where the children are involved is so simple.”
“This is,” the Enchantress says. “The children are all in the same place.”
The king grins, a slow, wide grin that spreads across his face and makes its way into the hard flint of his eye. “Just so,” he says.
Finally, for once, it appears, something is going right for him.
But our king could not be more wrong, as we shall see soon enough.