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IT was a bright, sunny afternoon with not a cloud marring the sky, a typical sky of this most beautiful of all kingdoms, when Greyson’s father came to him and said, “I must leave on the morrow, at first light.”
“But where, Father?” Greyson said, for his father had only just returned from another trip, and it was unusual for him to travel so much this time of year. They were coming up on the Year’s Last Day and the new Year’s First Day, and though nothing much kind could be said of King Willis, he did always let his men spend those days with their family.
“The king asks that I take some men with me to Ashvale,” his father said.
“But for what?” Greyson said. He was a strapping boy of sixteen now, his face mostly smooth lines and patchy stubble. His father put an arm around him, though Greyson stood almost as tall as he did.
“It is a routine peace-keeping trip,” his father said, which Greyson knew to be code for “Someone is angry again and I have to fix it.” One could not speak so freely in the streets of Fairendale, for there were always ears listening, and one did not know if they were the right ears. The king was said to have a spy, though no one had ever seen him. “Nothing to concern yourself about. I will return before you know it.” His father cleared his throat. “We will have dinner early tonight. And then I must rest before the departure.” He looked at his son, his eyes flashing with laughter. “Try not to be late.”
Greyson, you see, for all the good that was in him, had most always been late for supper. Usually he was about in the streets, talking with the children or with the men, sometimes visiting the widows. Sometimes watching the girls and their magic.
Sometimes watching one girl.
“Yes, sir,” Greyson said.
His father ambled away, and there she was, before him. She did not speak, was merely passing in the street, but he could not see anything else but her.
She was the most skilled of all the girls in the village, said to have a great gift of magic that made her fit for a king. Greyson was not king, but she was beautiful, and his eye was caught.
As far as he could see there was only one problem. She was older than he. No, that was not the problem, of course. The problem was that it was known about the village that she despised men, for she had once been promised to Prince Willis, before he was king, but the arrangement fell through when his brother was banished and there was another girl with stronger magic already living within the castle walls. The girl did not even speak to men any longer. Whatever Greyson tried to do to catch her eye, she would not be moved. But still he tried, and now she was nearing the age when it was said a woman would never marry.
He watched her from the street. Her flaming hair shook about her shoulders. It was long and straight, swinging into her face until she flung it back out. Her grassy eyes met his for a moment, or half of one, and then looked away, as if she did not, in fact, see him standing there at all.
She touched her staff to the ground, and the flower before her dried up.
“Why must you do that?” Greyson said. “Why must you steal its beauty?”
She did not speak to him, as if she had not heard.
She moved toward the water fountain. He followed her. And when she turned, when she hoisted herself up to the lip of the stone, she finally spoke. “You are like a shadow,” she said.
His cheeks grew warm. He turned away.
“Do not go just yet,” she said. He turned back around. She had never spoken more than five words to him, and that was only moments ago. Her eyes watched him, burned him. She held a flower in her hands. “See. It is better.” She held it out to him. “Take it. Please.” She leaned against her staff.
He shook his head. His tongue always felt tangled when he was around her. He could find no words now, much less trust them to leave his mouth.
“Have you nothing to say, boy?” she said. The young men in the village whispered that she was cruel. Perhaps he should have left her alone.
“Yes,” he said. “Just...” But he could not finish.
She smiled at him as if she knew what he might have said if the words had come more easily. “I am beautiful,” she said. “And you. You are besotted.” Her eyes grew soft for a moment. She walked closer to him. Her emerald skirt, trimmed with black, bunched around the dirt so he could not see her feet. She was said to walk barefoot, but he could not confirm whether this was true or merely story. She was close enough to touch him now, which she did. She patted the side of his face. “You are too young, boy,” she said. She tossed the word “boy” at him. He had nothing else to do but catch it, hold it, wear it. She turned her back. “You are too young to understand.”
“I am not,” he said, and he sounded every bit of a boy. She whirled around. “I will be seventeen in a few months.”
“And I,” she said, “will be nineteen. Do you think a woman of nineteen could love a boy of seventeen? Look at me.” She crossed her arms across her chest and looked more beautiful than ever. “I am a woman. You are merely a boy.”
And then she danced away on light feet, her staff tapping the ground until she was lost in darkness.
“You are wrong,” he said to the empty space that grew between them. And then he returned home, where his mother and father had already begun their supper.
Before retiring to bed, Greyson and his father said their goodbyes. The two men hugged, Greyson’s father kissing the top of his head, and as he walked to his room, Greyson tried to ignore the dark feeling spreading in the pit of his stomach.
When he woke, his father was gone.