Bridge

THOSE underground do not hear the bugle call, for the earth is too thick. But they do feel the shaking of the ground, and then, miraculously, the restoration of the portal. The children cheer. Maude silences them, for something else has caught her keen eye, twirling in from the portal. It is a strip of cloth, a grayish sort of color, with the single word, “Wait” written in black fountain pen, bearing Mercy’s handwriting. The children look at each other. No one had a fountain pen, did they?

“Wait,” Maude says. “There must be danger. She has seen the danger, and she is ensuring that it does not find us.” Maude looks at Arthur. He smiles sadly.

Maude and Arthur know there are dangers in the Weeping Wood that have nothing to do with the king’s men. Perhaps Mercy emerged in the dead of night, when creatures roam and stalk. Or perhaps it is the lesser danger—men.

You might wonder, dear reader, why these woods bear the name “Weeping Woods.” One would have to read a story called “The Good King’s Fall,” which the children of Fairendale have been told all their lives, to understand why, but I shall do my best to explain it here. These are the very woods, you see, where King Sebastien’s men marched in the Great Battle, the very woods where the dragons of Morad opened their jaws and breathed fire onto the enemy, the very woods where most of the dragons fell. They have long since disappeared, those bodies, though no one knows, exactly, where they went. The woods were practically destroyed in the fire, but when they grew back, they grew darker and more dangerous and crowded with mysteries of which even Arthur and Maude do not know the names. Those creatures come out in the dark of night, the very moment the sun sets. So, you see, it is quite dangerous for a child to walk the woods herself, and it is dangerous for all these children to emerge with Arthur and Maude, if it is, in fact, night. We know it is not, but the ones trapped underground have no way of knowing. And so they wait.

They must not wait very much longer, for then they will not have enough light to flee these woods, and what might happen if they do not find a hiding place come sundown?

Maude looks at Arthur. He looks at her. Neither of them knows quite what to do. They wait.

They wait for hours. They wait for days, for weeks, for months. At least this is what it feels like, locked underground, with nothing to do, with a hunger and a thirst that one can feel in one’s head and shoulders and even to the tips of one’s feet. They wait until they cannot possibly wait a moment longer.

Were they on our side, dear reader, they would know that they wait precisely a quarter hour. Just long enough for all the king’s men to disappear in pursuit of a light, after one of them shouted out, “Magic!” and the rest of them turned to see a shining ball that could very well hold all the missing children inside, for such is the nature of magic. And if Maude and Arthur and the children could have seen this glowing orb, they would have called it green.

The soldiers chased this green object through the woods, jumping to grab it when it seemed reachable, racing farther and farther away from the spot where Maude and Arthur and all the children would emerge into the light of day.

So when they stepped through the portal, not a single man or woman was to be found. Not even Mercy.

Hazel begins to cry.

***

KING Willis waits on the castle steps. The village people reach him before his royal guard. “My son,” he says to them, though they could not possibly empathize with a king who has lost his son, could they, now, dear reader? He has, after all, stolen their children from their homes. “My son is missing!”

And it is true that the villagers know this desperation, this pain that could never be explained, the suffocating panic that clamps a parent heart in a grip much like the one the cobbler must use to mend shoes. Yet before them stands the man who caused it all. Perhaps he deserves this pain. Perhaps knowing it will soften his heart. So the people hope.

And yet King Willis does not make this connection. Queen Clarion, though, is standing beside him, and she cannot look into the faces of the villagers, for fear that she will see the very reflection of her own pain. And then, in a great act of courage, she does look. She is surprised to note, however, that it is not so much pain that twists their faces and shadows their eyes, so much as it is anger. They stare at their king, without saying a word. It is clear that the hatred crackles between them.

“We need your help,” King Willis says now. Queen Clarion would not have advised such a foolish request, but the king is not a man who will listen closely to women, though women hold wisdom in as great a supply as any man ever did. “We need your help to find them.”

Poor Queen Clarion. She has married a very daft man, indeed. What sort of person would help their king find his missing son, when that king has taken all their sons and daughters and holds them, still, as his prisoners in the darkest dungeon one could ever see? Certainly none of these people.

The people stare at their king, and their looks grow darker.

“Your children are safe,” Queen Clarion calls out.

“Woman!” King Willis says, and he turns to Queen Clarion, raising his hand as if to strike her. Someone in the crowd shouts.

“You are no king,” the anonymous voice says. It belongs to a woman. Or, perhaps, a man with a higher-pitched voice. Queen Clarion cannot tell from where it originates. “You are a coward.”

King Willis roars toward his people. His face has, in seconds, grown red as the flowers that line the castle steps. “My son is missing!” he says. “Search for him!”

“What about our children?” another voice calls. Deep this time, a man’s, surely. Queen Clarion searches the crowd for the owner, but there are too many. King Willis’s head whips back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

“Who said that?” he says, but, of course, the people do not answer. Who would answer an angry king when certain punishment waits for the offender?

“Give us our children,” another voice calls out, this one a woman’s. Queen Clarion squints. They must be hiding the speakers. “And perhaps we will help you find yours.”

“Obey your king!” King Willis shouts, but the people do not move. “Or suffer the consequences of treason!” Still, the people do not move, except to shake their heads in the most imperceptible movement Queen Clarion has ever seen. She feels it more than she sees it, deep in her heart. If there were a way she could change this man, the king. If there were a way she could use her magic.

The people look as if at any moment they will storm the castle stairs, their anger building to a collective fire, and then the sounds of a thousand hoofbeats dance upon the air.

It is the captain. Queen Clarion looks toward the woods. The king’s men are coming. The people turn. Sir Greyson pulls up short.

“What is this?” Sir Greyson says. He looks at the people. He looks at his king. “Your highness?”

And the king, you see, is torn right down the middle. Should he command his captain to capture all the people who did not listen to his orders, or should he command his captain to begin the search for his son? Every moment is another moment of danger for his son. And yet if he does nothing about the defiance of his people, what will they do next? He must maintain his power. He must.

In the space between Sir Greyson’s question and King Willis’s answer, Queen Clarion’s gentle voice says, “Our son. He is missing.”

Sir Greyson looks at the people again. “The prince is missing?” he says. There. There is his mother. She is walking. She is here. She is looking at him, meeting his eyes with her wrinkle-rimmed ones. Her face wears something he has never seen before. Shame? Disappointment? Sorrow, perhaps? He is not sure. One could get lost in those wrinkles.

“Find him,” the king commands, but Sir Greyson cannot stop looking at his mother. She has become so old. So gray. So wrinkled. When did this happen? While he searched for the children, his mother grew old.

And now he is being asked to search for another child, when he is so close to finding the others?

She does not want him to do it. She would like nothing more than for Sir Greyson to take the people’s side. That much is clear in her milky eyes, still fixed upon him. Sir Greyson’s mother, you see, does not know why he does what he does. If she did, dear reader, she would urge him to let her die, for she would rather have a son who did what was right than a son who kept her alive.

What will this man of honor do? Will he listen to his mother, to the words she does not speak, or will he listen to his king, to the words that feel heavy and black?

Sir Greyson is so tired of searching. He is so tired of the dilemma. He does not answer his king. He does not answer his mother. What he does, instead, is take off his helmet, trying to speak across mind and space, so that his mother will understand. He has taken vows, you see. Vows he must uphold, vows that require him to do whatever it is his king commands, vows to protect the kingdom. Vows to leave his family behind.

Please understand, Mother, his eyes say.

But his mother only turns away.

“Captain?” the king says, surprised that his captain has not immediately begun his search, since Sir Greyson usually follows his king’s orders as soon as they are made. “The prince must be found.”

“Yes, sire,” Sir Greyson says. “As you command.”

And then, as if the world has split open and dissolved into song, a voice pierces the air. All the people turn. Sir Greyson dismounts from his horse. He walks to the bridge, where it seems the sound grows louder. He peers over the edge. A group of mermaids gathers around something. A sack? A body? Perhaps a boy?

Queen Clarion puts her hand to her mouth. Somehow, she is beside Sir Greyson, peering down as well. “My boy,” she says.

Is this the price they must pay for all that King Willis has done? Is this what will be taken from them? Her beloved son? Her boy who used to sit on her lap when she read to him from ancient storybooks?

Why could it not have been his father?

In the crowd, Cora watches her queen. Her heart twists the slightest bit. There was a time, you see, when Cora and the queen were great friends, and a time, soon after, when they became great enemies, and yet now, witnessing the grief that bounds across her old friend’s face, Cora cannot help but empathize. She knows how it feels to lose a child. She has, after all, lost her only daughter. The daughter who might have married the prince, reuniting the friends once more. But such happy endings do not always come to pass.

Cora moves closer to the bridge, but she does not dare join her queen.

Sir Greyson bounds down the hill, toward the water beneath the bridge. A boy is cradled in the arms of the mermaids. They look at Sir Greyson as he approaches, hissing and warning him to keep his distance.

“He is not well,” they say.

Sir Greyson backs away. Mermaid teeth are said to be sharper than the point of a dagger, and he knows, from the stories, that mermaids do not take kindly to people walking on the land so near their waters, unless, of course, they take an interest in the person. Sir Greyson does not have their interest today, though any other day he might, for Sir Greyson, though many years older than the boy, is a handsome man, with ruddy cheeks, turquoise eyes and hair the color of the dust along the road to the village.

Is the land beneath the bridge the mermaids’ terrain? Or does it belong to the king? Sir Greyson does not know for sure. He only knows that he must deliver the prince to his king. He looks up at the bridge. Queen Clarion and King Willis stare down at him. Villagers crowd around the sides. He turns back to the mermaids, who stroke Prince Virgil’s curls.

“He is alive?” Sir Greyson says.

“Barely,” they say. “He is wounded.”

“Where?” he says.

“His head,” says a particularly beautiful mermaid. Her crimson hair billows out behind her, the wind shaking it in waves. Sir Greyson pulls his eyes from her face. Mermaids are dangerous creatures to look upon. The stories say they make a man fall in love with them so quickly he loses reason and it becomes easy for her to drag him down into the depths of the water. The mermaids do not always live under this bridge, of course. They come back for entertainment, to watch the people, to sun on the rocks with their tails still touching the salty waters of the Violet Sea.

“I need him,” Sir Greyson says. He points toward the prince.

“He is ours now,” a black-haired beauty says. Sir Greyson takes a step closer. She bares her teeth, which, just moments ago, stood perfectly white and straight behind a perfectly reddened mouth. Now look at her. Showing her fangs.

But Sir Greyson is a courageous man. That much must be said. “No,” he says. “He belongs to the kingdom.”

“He fell into our water,” the black-haired mermaid says. “He would have drowned without our help.”

This puzzles Sir Greyson, for he thought mermaids did not care so much about drowning, if the stories are true. “Why did you spare him?” he says.

“He might be useful later,” the red-haired one says.

“But you must release him,” Sir Greyson says.

“Not a chance,” the red-haired one says. “I have taken a liking to him.”

“But he cannot survive here,” Sir Greyson says. “He will die.”

“All men die,” the black-haired mermaid says. “Some sooner than others.”

“But you spared him once,” Sir Greyson says.

“For another purpose,” the red-haired mermaid says.

“What will you do with him?” Sir Greyson says.

He is beginning to think, dear reader, that he will have to fight the mermaids for the boy. He looks up at the bridge again. His men stand at the corners, ready to come at his word. Perhaps some of them would be lost. Perhaps he would. Would it be so very bad to die in the arms of a lovely woman, even if she were only half a woman?

He takes another step forward. The mermaids bare their teeth once more.

“He shall be my souvenir,” the red-haired one says. “Of another world.” She looks around at the woods, the bridge, the grass waving in a wind that, moments ago, did not exist. “A better world.”

And then, at that very moment, a golden-haired mermaid breaks the surface of the water. “Arya,” she says. “Father has sent for you.”

The red-haired beauty sighs. She puts the boy down. “Take him, then,” she says, in a voice that sounds as if she has suffered a great defeat. Her eyes are sad. Sir Greyson does not quite understand, but before he can question her further she disappears beneath the surface, along with her sisters.

Sir Greyson waits until they have vanished from sight before he drags his prince’s body away from the water. Blood makes the prince’s hair sticky. It looks as though it comes from a large wound on the right side of his forehead. Prince Virgil must have fallen and hit his head before slipping into the water. What was the prince doing near this bridge, so close to these mermaids?

“We need a healer,” Sir Greyson says to the crowd peering around the bridge.

“There is no healer,” a man calls out. A man, Sir Greyson sees, who used to be the village healer. But he has lost his child, and, like the others, will do no favors for the castle until his son is returned.

Sir Greyson picks up his prince’s body, limp in his arms, and on his way to the king and queen, he does not meet a single eye of the villagers. He merely bows his head to his king and awaits further instruction.