Morad

PRINCE Virgil wakes with a start. It is a nightmare that pulls him from his deep and peaceful sleep. He wakes crying out, and it startles his mother, who dozes in the chair just beside his bed.

“What is it, Virgil?” Queen Clarion says.

“Mermaids,” he says. “There were mermaids in my nightmares. Not like the ones in the cove.”

Queen Clarion strokes his cheek. “What about the mermaids?” she says, for she knows that the mermaids in his dream were very much like the mermaids in the cove. The mermaids in the cove have not yet shown their true selves to her boy.

“They were reaching for me,” Prince Virgil says. “Fighting over me. There was one with red hair.”

Oh, yes. Queen Clarion had seen the mermaid with red hair, the one who held Prince Virgil in her arms and would not let go.

“And there were others?” Queen Clarion says.

“Three others,” Prince Virgil says. “With black hair and sharp teeth.” He shivers beneath his covers. Queen Clarion touches his hair.

“You are safe,” she says. “The mermaids cannot get you here.”

“Why did they let me go?” Prince Virgil says, and before his mother can answer, he moves on. “What if I should fall again?”

Queen Clarion is silent for a time. Truth be told, she does not know why her son was let go, but she is grateful. She looks at her son, but he is lost in the nightmare. She takes his hand. “Virgil,” she says, and his eyes raise to hers, so like his fathers and yet so very different. Gentler, perhaps. She cannot say for sure. “You have lived in this castle for twelve years. You have never fallen before.”

She does not say that he has never before ventured out at night, but Prince Virgil understands. The night is dangerous. Perhaps it was not always so. But he knows it today.

His mother’s eyes flicker in the candlelight. “You are safe now,” she says.

Prince Virgil looks away, toward the talisman he has buried in a chest. Perhaps he should take to wearing it again. Perhaps it would provide an extra layer of safety. Perhaps it might one day save him.

If only our prince could know. If only.

“There was one,” Prince Virgil says, as if thinking aloud. “The red-haired one. She sang over me.”

“In your dream?” Queen Clarion says.

Prince Virgil shakes his head and winces. His head is not yet healed, for wounds like these take time. “No. I remember.”

“What did she sing over you?” Queen Clarion says.

“It was not a song of our land,” Prince Virgil says. He peers at his mother, searching for the smallest clue. Her face does not change. “Perhaps it was a song from her land.”

Still he searches. And he is rewarded, for there it is, just a short darkening of her eyes, and then they return to their clear blue. What is it about the mermaid’s song that could bring fear to a mother’s heart?

“Let us not speak of mermaids,” Queen Clarion says, for perhaps she knows what her son has discovered in her eyes.

“She had a lovely voice,” Prince Virgil says. “It was warm. And safe.”

Queen Clarion leans forward, as if to make sure her son does not miss her words. “It was not safe,” she says. Her voice is soft, yet hard. “A mermaid’s voice is never safe.”

“She had the largest blue eyes I have ever seen,” Prince Virgil says. “While the others were fighting, she held on. She would not let them have me.”

“It was a trick,” Queen Clarion says. “Nothing more.”

Prince Virgil does not argue, for how does one argue with a mother and stories? Mermaids were never safe in any of the tales. How could it be that a safe one had found him?

“Tell me a story, Mother,” Prince Virgil says. Perhaps she will tell him something of value in a story.

“What kind of story, Virgil?” Queen Clarion says. It is clear that she is pleased with his asking, for Prince Virgil is growing up, and he does not often ask to hear his mother’s stories any longer. She has so many to tell, you see. So many that could keep him safe from other dangers besides mermaids. Dangers such as losing one’s bearings in the grip of power. Dangers such as believing one is better than another simply for one’s station in life. Dangers such as listening to the counsel of one’s father when one’s father is King Willis or worse.

“A story of mermaids,” Prince Virgil says.

Queen Clarion tilts her head, and her eyes narrow of their own accord. “I thought we might be done with mermaids,” she says.

“I want to hear a true story,” he says. “Do you know one?”

Yes. Queen Clarion does know one. But she does not know if her son is ready to hear this one yet.

“Perhaps I should tell you another story,” Queen Clarion says. “One about your uncle.”

“I want to hear a story of mermaids,” Prince Virgil says, and it is quite clear to Queen Clarion that he will not rest until she has satisfied his curiosity. And so, perhaps, it is precisely the right time for this story.

“Once I knew a man who was taken by the mermaids,” Queen Clarion says.

Prince Virgil’s eyes narrow. “Is this a true story?” he says.

“Yes,” Queen Clarion says. “Did I not say it was?”

“But you came here when you were just a little girl,” Prince Virgil says.

“Yes. I did,” Queen Clarion says.

“How was it you came to know a man besides my father and my grandfather?” he says.

She does not remind him that she also knew his uncle, for his father has been telling him stories as well, not the kind Queen Clarion tells, but the darker sort, the ones that hold Prince Wendell up as a villain and nothing more.

“It was quite a long time ago,” Queen Clarion says. “I was very young.”

They are quiet for some minutes before Queen Clarion says, “Shall I go on?” Prince Virgil nods, and she shifts in her chair.

“This man was sailing across the Violet Sea, on his way to another land to see about some velvet for a gown or two for his daughter. He was often gone from home on journeys such as this, and his daughter missed him so. Her mother, you see, worked long hours at the the village bakery, and so much of the time, she was left alone. She grew lonely without her father at home. This time she begged him to let her go with him, but the seas, he said, were far too dangerous. He could not let his beloved daughter even touch them.” Queen Clarion pauses for a time, trying not to let the story take hold of her. She had not told this one for some time.

“He was right,” she says. “The seas were dangerous, for one day he did not come back.”

“What happened to him?” Prince Virgil says.

Though it was years ago, Queen Clarion still remembers the day as if just yesterday she were five years old. She had been sweeping their cottage when the captain of the ship her father had sailed away on knocked on her door, back early from what should have been a two-month journey. She had looked around for her father, but the man’s voice had stopped her cold.

“He was a very brave man,” Queen Clarion says, a long crack climbing down her voice. “He tried to save one of the ship’s men from the hands of a mermaid.” She remembered thinking that if she had only been there, if he had only been slightly less honorable, perhaps he might have lived.

“What was it about the mermaid?” Prince Virgil says. “Her beauty?”

Queen Clarion looks at her son. Perhaps it is time to tell him. Perhaps it might save him where she could not save her father. “It is their song,” she says. “It is their song that drags a man to the depths of the ocean.”

Prince Virgil’s eyes widen at the thought. Perhaps he is thinking of that safe, warm song that is not so very safe or warm at all. Perhaps he is measuring what might have been.

“Who was this man?” Prince Virgil says.

Queen Clarion hesitates. She has never told her son the story of his grandfather. She hesitates to do so now. “A man who lived in the town where I grew up,” she says.

“And he never came back,” Prince Virgil says.

“No,” she says. “He never came back.”

“But you do not know if he lives or if he died?” Prince Virgil says.

“Had he lived, he would have come back,” Queen Clarion says, forgetting herself for a moment.

“How do you know?” Prince Virgil says. “Perhaps his life under water was better than the one above.”

The words tremble in Queen Clarion, for it is something she has considered from time to time, but something no daughter ever wants to admit is true. “He did not go willingly,” she says, and this is where she always ends. “He tried to save one of the sailors and was pulled under himself.”

They do not speak again for some minutes. The candles flicker across the walls, drawing long shadows into their light.

“Now,” Queen Clarion says. “Would you like to hear a happier story?” For she has many of those.

Prince Virgil lies back on his pillow. He scratches at the bandage on his head. “No,” he says. “I believe I would like to sleep.”

“As you wish,” Queen Clarion says. “Would you like me to stay as I did before?” Her voice is tender and kind.

“No,” Prince Virgil says. “I am much better.”

“But the nightmares,” Queen Clarion says. She kneels now at the side of her son’s bed. His hand is warm in hers.

“I will use my bell if another comes,” Prince Virgil says.

He does not say, but he would like nothing more than to be left alone, for it is the talisman he desires to retrieve, but he does not want his mother to see. Not for the secret it might keep between them but simply because he does not want to answer her question. Truth be told, his head has begun throbbing, and that makes it difficult to think.

“Very well, then,” Queen Clarion says. She kisses her son on his cheek and stands, her skirt swishing her out the door. “Sleep well.”

Prince Virgil waits until his mother shuts his door and he is sure she has moved back down the hall to her own chambers. And only then does he steal out of bed, his vision blurry still, and rummage through the chest of fine clothes and blankets until his hand closes on the blackbird talisman. He ties it round his neck and tucks it beneath the collar of his shirt.

And though it is quite some time before Prince Virgil finds sleep, it is a good, long, deep sleep without a single nightmare.

***

ARTHUR and Maude and the children run through the forest as fast as they can, knowing that Mercy saved them from some danger they cannot yet see. They must outrun it before it returns. Tom and Lina ride in the pocket of Arthur’s shirt, but the other children do as well as they can, dodging trees and stumbling over stones and trying to remain as quiet as the forest around them.

Why is the forest quiet? This is the question that moves Arthur’s feet faster than they have moved in nearly all of his life.

It might surprise you that the children do not mind this running as much as they might under different circumstances. Though there is danger, of course, the children have spent so many days trapped beneath the ground, with nowhere to play or stretch or run, if they so desired, that this is precisely what they have been wanting for quite some time. They are, indeed, so very glad to feel the ache in their legs and the burn in their chest. They are so very glad they can scarcely stop themselves from smiling and giggling and playing. The wind tears across their cheeks. They will all be red-faced by the time this is all over, and they will have to find water, for everyone knows that running at the pace Arthur and Maude and the children run at this moment, right now, requires water. But no one is thinking of this just now. They are merely thinking of running.

Oh, they have missed this so.

Never mind that they are running for their lives.

They run and run and run, past all the weeping trees, past the dangers the forest is said to hold, though it has grown silent in their stead, past the strange-looking flowers and the colorful grasses. They do not see the fairies, said to steal children if they dare venture into the forest, though Arthur keeps a diligent watch for them, prepared to swat them away should they appear. It looks as though no child will be taken to the Lost World today.

They do not see the giant cats that are said to live in the trees, with spots and eyes that glow in the shadows and a smile that curves up like a fingernail moon. They do not see the goblins or the birds or the dryads or any of the forest’s creatures. They see only trees with bark and without faces and what is there before them: green grass, a spattering of flowers, and, now, an opening.

As suddenly as their running begins, it ends. Arthur, in the lead, has only to hold up his hand. They all skid to a stop. There is only silence now.

“The boundary line,” he says.

The children do not know this boundary line. They have never been this far, you see. They have never, in fact, been inside the forest, for the stories kept them out. So they wait to step across, for the look on Arthur’s face says they must.

There is a strange sensation in all of them, a shiver, a pulling back and away from this boundary line, as if something in the forest is not yet ready for them to leave it. Something pulls them back into the woods, back toward Fairendale, back toward danger.

“Wait,” Arthur says.

Hazel gazes across the barren land before them. The children have never seen a land so stark and empty and brown. Where are the trees? Where is the beauty? Where is the color? This land is filled with dust and rocks that are larger than they are and mountains in the distance the same color as the land, as if Morad could not think of a single color to brighten its landscape. This does not look like a land with water or food or anything that might guarantee life. It looks like a wasteland, in fact.

“What is this land?” Hazel says.

Arthur takes a breath. “Morad,” he says. “We have reached the land of Morad.” His voice is soft, as if he is gazing out on something spectacular rather than a colorless desert. “The land of dragons.”

***

WERE Arthur and Maude and the children to look around, perhaps they might see a man, watching. Perhaps they might see his face only, for his body is dressed in bark and leaves and anything that might make him more invisible, more effectively hidden, more conspicuous. He has perfected this disguise, over many days, and now it looks as he always thought it would look—as if he is a walking tree.

He is disguised, you see, as a dryad.

Dryads, in the stories of old, are spirits that live in the trees, spirits with faces and, sometimes, hands. This man has become one, though not really. His becoming is quite contrived.

The unknown man watches Arthur and Maude and the children. His breath comes in puffs, silent, but streaming a momentary fog before him. He has only just stopped running as well, but his footfalls were silent. The children’s were quite thunderous, you see, so they had no idea that he followed them. Not even Arthur, who prides himself on hearing what others cannot (though you will remember that he did not hear the king’s men coming for the children that fateful eve not so very long ago. He would say it was the wind and the rain that masked those hooves, but one can never be sure.).

Maude, who has a better nose than any animal of these woods, does not even smell this stranger, for he has packed dirt and earth and leaves so efficiently that he does not hold a scent of humanity.

And so he stands, undiscovered.

He watches. He waits.

He hunts.

***

THERE is another who hunts as well.

Of course all those waiting at the border of the dragon lands cannot see him, but Death is here. Death waits. His black robes, by their very nature, keep him hidden. He does not speak. He does not move. He merely waits behind the trees with a grin that would frighten even the bravest of men, for it is a grin that belongs to a skeleton, with a hole for a mouth and little else, except for those white teeth gleaming from the shadows like garish lights. Perhaps it is better that he is invisible.

Death waits for what is to come.