| |
AT the time our story begins, the kingdom of Fairendale, though not as brilliant a land as it was before the days of its tyrant kings, overflows with color and music and the laughter and presence of children. Children peeking into a shop window, where the baker puts on his elaborate show of kneading bread on a wooden table and flipping it into the air and catching it with his eyes closed, pretending not to notice all of the eyes watching him. Children standing as near the shoemaker as they can manage, trying to predict how many times he will punch the awl through the leather before he decides the work is done. Children racing to the warm home of Arthur and Maude, where welcome lives in smiles.
Arthur is the village wood maker, a gentle man nearly as narrow as he is tall, with hair the color of dirt dusted with snow. Maude is his stringy wife, so thin and stretched she could very well disappear in the space between their red oak door and their home’s front window, where she stands every morning to watch the village waking. One hardly sees her hair for the kerchief tied around it, but when wisps do escape their hiding place they are the color of wet sand. The two are terribly poor, but they are happy and generous, the kind of people who always have spice cookies to serve and a lesson to teach, especially when it comes to the friends of their two children, which is practically every child in the village. Arthur and Maude’s children, Theo and Hazel, love everyone they meet. And everyone they meet loves them as well.
Arthur spends his days making ornate furniture in his workshop directly behind his family’s humble cottage, though the villagers are much too poor to pay him a decent wage for his craftsmanship. Instead, they pay him in bread and shoes and milk. (He would have done it for nothing, but they insist. “You have growing children to feed, my good man,” they say. As if they do not have children of their own.). When he is not working, Arthur teaches magic to his daughter and the village girls. He is quite proficient in the world of magic, having studied it for many years. Arthur does not have the gift of magic, of course. He, of anyone, understands quite how dangerous the gift of magic could be for a man or a boy who carries it. He merely teaches it, and the kingdom looks on with curiosity but no real alarm. Arthur is no threat. He is simply an old man with great knowledge. Great studied knowledge.
Magic, you see, is a very powerful gift in the kingdom of Fairendale and its surrounding lands. A male with magic is considered a grave danger to the royal line, for the king’s crown can only be stolen by a magical male child. Females with magic are coveted, but, sadly, largely dismissed, mostly promised to princes in hopes that they will produce a magical child and secure the royal family’s throne for many years to come. But they are never regarded as a serious threat of any kind. Of course we know how powerful females can be, but, alas, the land of our story is not so keen to notice such things.
Perhaps what is to come could be blamed on that very oversight.
The kingdom of Fairendale is ruled by King Willis, known as Your Most High King to the common people. He is not a very kind king, as we shall see in the pages to come. He is partly the reason Fairendale has lost its loveliness, though he is not entirely to blame. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
King Willis was born the second son of King Sebastien, a poor boy from the kingdom of Lincastle, which one can find by traveling southeast to the very edge of the Violet Sea. Lincastle is not nearly so beautiful as Fairendale, and when King Sebastien was just a boy of sixteen, a magical boy of sixteen who believed he had been born on the wrong side of gentility, he decided to use his magic to steal Fairendale from the hands of its beloved Good King Brendon.
Every boy in the seven kingdoms of this magical land has been told the ancient stories all his life—stories where magic is more powerful than blood, where a boy born with magic can steal a throne right out of a royal line, where magic is a dangerous game of power and uncertainty and death. Every parent tells their sons the ancient stories in hopes that they will not try to overthrow a kingdom, as King Sebastien did, for a boy who tries this quest and fails it is banished, for all the rest of his days, to sail the Violet Sea, a sea full of monsters and the living dead and horrors one cannot even imagine.
King Sebastien, however, stole the crown and wore it for fifty-eight years before it passed to his son. He is an exception to the line of boys who have tried and failed.
It is not entirely easy for parents to convince their sons that King Sebastien was an exception. It is, in fact, quite often that sons will interrupt the stories of their parents by saying, “But King Sebastien did it.” So the stories these parents tell their sons become more dramatic, more fantastic, more dangerous every year, as I am sure you will understand. Parents who love their children do not want their boys banished forever on a sea as dangerous as a violet one.
Not that there are many boys who possess the gift of magic in the land of Fairendale.
No, there are not many at all.
There is only one.
***
IN the cobblestone streets of Fairendale’s village, magic is not hidden among the female children. And there are many female children with the gift of magic, presumably to provide the luxury of choice for a prince who wishes to marry a magical girl. So it is not entirely unusual to see shoes flying from one house to another or dolls walking beside a little girl instead of held in her arms or a wooden car, made from Arthur’s scrap wood, piled beside his workshop, driving itself in and out of doorways.
Let us see what we have today: the daughter of a man who used to be a sailor, until he fell into the Violet Sea and was dragged to the bottom by mermaids; the daughter of Arthur and Maude, gathering scraps from Arthur’s wood pile so they can make them fly; and her brother, dragging his best friend behind him.
“What if Papa needs those?” says Arthur’s son, Theo. He is a handsome boy, with wild black curls and clear eyes the kind of blue that makes one wonder if the sky lost some pieces when he came into the world. His eyes dance with more merriment than concern, for Theo is a boy who loves fun as much as his sister does.
“Oh, Theo,” his sister says, leaning against her gnarled staff. She has the same black curls, except they fall all the way down her back, rather than framing her face, which is home to the same blue eyes as her brother’s. Hazel grins at Theo, her pink lips stretched wide across her teeth without showing them. She knows he is merely playing at concern. Arthur has never been cross with his children—not even when they were little and made it practically impossible to get any work done, what with Hazel’s unrefined magic building boats in the air and Theo swiping perfectly good planks to duel with the other boys in the streets. The wood pieces always ended up splintering, but Arthur simply smiled and said he would find more. They did, after all, live near a populous wood.
Can you imagine a father like Arthur, reader?
Yes, well, he is real. He is standing in the doorway of his cottage, watching his children with that same satisfied smile that has often passed his lips of late. Perhaps it is because his children are growing older. Perhaps it is because Hazel has advanced in her magic in such a way that has attracted the notice of the villagers. Perhaps for some other reason, such as only parents know.
“Come, Hazel,” says the sailor’s daughter. She is a girl of twelve, like Hazel, with milky white skin and flaming red hair and eyes the color of Fairendale’s grassy fields. “Let us take these pieces into the streets. Entertain the younger children.” She lifts her own staff, thicker than Hazel’s, and a bit more crooked, though its hooked end is not nearly so curved as Hazel’s, who uses hers to tend the village sheep.
“Make it fly first, Mercy,” says the boy behind Theo. It might surprise you to know that this boy is the king’s very own son.
Perhaps it is unusual to see a king’s son with peasant children. But this particular king’s son is a friendly child and an only child, and he has a kind mother. When Prince Virgil asked his mother if she might bring him some friends, Queen Clarion opened the palace doors and sent him along the dusty road to the village. He would find friends there, she said.
And he found three of them.
Theo was the first of the village boys to offer his toys to the lonely prince, instead of cringing away from him, afraid of offending the spoiled boy the village children had only heard about in stories. Prince Virgil is nothing like the stories. He loves Theo as if he were a brother. In fact, sometimes he wishes Theo were his brother, though Theo is a year younger than all the rest of them. A younger brother would suit Prince Virgil just fine.
Prince Virgil has a round, boyish face framed by tight curls the color of the village garden’s soil just before the gardener waters it. His brown eyes, only a shade darker than his hair, smile for him when something amuses him—like magic, most days.
“You make it fly,” Mercy says, her voice clipped and short. Mercy, you see, does not like Prince Virgil. She has a reason. Most females do.
“Too easy,” Prince Virgil says. His dark eyes narrow, the fluffy brows drawn low. His fingers, wrapped around the smoothest staff of all those gathered here today, turn white. “I want to see if you can do it.”
Mercy narrows her eyes and grips her wood chips tighter.
“You are afraid of the king?” she says, and her smile turns mocking. Years ago, when Hazel and Mercy urged him to use his gift of magic to make a wilting flower rise again, a simply rejuvenation spell, Prince Virgil told them that the king and queen forbade him to use his magic outside of the castle, away from his instructor. Prince Virgil glares at Mercy.
“Why do you bother bringing your staff at all?” Mercy says.
“Stop,” Hazel says, and the wood chips suddenly suspend in the air. She looks from Mercy to Prince Virgil and back again. “It is really not so difficult,” she says, and it is clear she is not talking about making wood chips fly.
We could fill in the blank for her, could we not, reader?
It is really not so difficult to get along.
It is really not so difficult to keep peace between friends.
It is really not so difficult to be kind.
It must be said, however, that Hazel will learn, soon enough, precisely how difficult it all is. But that will come.
For now, let us see what will happen when two girls and two boys take some wood scraps from a wood maker’s pile and play with magic in the streets.
Hazel and Mercy skip ahead of Prince Virgil and Theo, their staffs clicking against the stone path. They laugh at the way the chips spin in the air, almost out of control, the magic keeping them afloat but not stopping their endless twisting in the invisible wind.
“Make something!” Theo says.
“What shall we make?” Hazel says, turning back to her brother.
Before he can answer, a few of the pieces move into position, becoming a wooden flower. Theo plucks it from the sky and leaps up six steps to hand it to a little girl watching him from the doorway of a home with scarlet flowers lining the walk. He pats her head and she grins up at him, awed that a boy like Theo would give notice at all to a girl of seven.
Hazel shakes her head at Theo, smiling, then points her staff at the pieces that remain, concentrating so hard she does not hear the call of “Dragon,” that her brother flings in her direction. The wind whips her black hair around her face, her blue dress around her feet. She squints her eyes. Her friends watch her, knowing that something brilliant is coming. Hazel’s eyes are always wide with wonder, except when she is performing magic.
Mercy, of course, could have made something absolutely spectacular by now, but she does not interfere. Sometimes the best way to be a friend is to permit a friend to struggle into doing something she may not have thought possible. And soon enough, the wood pieces rearrange themselves and become something quite brilliant indeed.
“A puppet!” Mercy says. “Well done!” She would not have thought of that. She had thought of a ship or a house or a castle, perhaps, something more impressive and intricately complicated. But a puppet is far more fun.
Hazel is always the best one for fun.
The children laugh at the puppet that is not really a puppet at all yet, because it is only wood.
“He needs a face!” Theo says. He raises his hand, and the puppet flies to him. He pulls a dagger from the belt tied around his tunic, where it sits beside the slips of parchment and charcoal piece he carries everywhere, and etches two eyes and a nose and a mouth.
He does not realize that the other children are staring at him. He does not see his sister’s mouth hanging open. He does not notice his best friend take a step back. Just a small one. But enough.
“Now he is a real person?” he says, asking more than declaring. He holds up the wood with a carved face.
The children stare at him. He stares back, confused, until Prince Virgil says, “Did you just use magic to take the puppet from the sky?” The prince’s eyes have turned nearly black, as if a storm lives inside them.
You see, Prince Virgil knows all the stories, too. He knows that his throne can be stolen from his hands by a boy with magic. He knows he is assured nothing unless there is no boy in Fairendale who possesses this gift.
And, dear reader, it is unfortunate but true: He wants the throne, at least at this moment, more than he wants a friend. More than he wants a little brother.
It would be difficult to miss the stricken look that passes Theo’s face, the way his skin pales just the slightest, the way his eyes turn the color of a sky at dawn rather than midday. Still he clears his throat. Still he says, “No.” He looks at his sister.
“No,” Hazel says, shaking her head. “He does not even have a staff.” She looks at Mercy, then at Prince Virgil. “I knew what Theo wanted to do. I heard him and...” She waves her hand in the air. “Big sisters know their little brothers.”
And who could not believe a sweet, innocent face like Hazel’s? Because big sisters do know their little brothers, and of course she would realize what her brother wanted at nearly the same time he did, and of course she would use her magic so that he could make his contribution, an etched face on wood, to their magical fun. This boy who has no magic. This boy who is no danger. This boy who is her brother.
What she does not say, what she cannot ever say, is that she and Theo are twins, born the same day. Yes, she is the older sister, by seven whole minutes, but this would not help their case, you see. Twins are rare and extraordinarily powerful, both born with a magic made stronger by the other’s presence.
So if she told the truth, Mercy and Prince Virgil would know that, yes, her brother possesses the gift of magic, and it is a magic that does not need a staff, for it is far more powerful than any other gift.
Hazel widens her eyes more and arranges her face into as truthful a look as she can manage.
“It appeared that you used magic to grab it,” Prince Virgil says. His eyes watch Theo, not Hazel. Fear is not as easy to hide when you are the one in danger. Theo’s eyes tell the real truth, and he cannot change that. So he looks at the ground, not his friend.
“Oh, come, Prince Virgil,” Hazel says. She touches the prince’s arm, but he shakes her off. “He does not even have a staff.” She looks at Mercy, as if pleading for help. “I put it into his hands. Believe me, I would know if my brother had magic.” She takes the puppet from Theo and throws it up into the air, where it hangs suspended again. “You have a face,” she says. “Now you need some hair.”
Mercy plays along. She points her staff at some straw in the street, and it flaps to the puppet’s head. She and Hazel spend the next few minutes searching for street scraps to clothe the puppet, trying not to notice the way the whole mood of their play darkens behind them. Soon enough they turn back to the two boys.
“Your turn, Prince Virgil,” Hazel says. She is laughing again, and when Hazel laughs, it is nearly impossible not to laugh right along with her, which Theo and Mercy do.
Prince Virgil, however, is harder to break. He turns away. “I do not want to play anymore,” he says, but he makes no move to leave.
“Come,” Hazel says. She takes his arm, turns him back around. Mercy sends a burst of magic from her hands, and the puppet starts dancing on the air. The children watch, mesmerized by his twists and turns. It is a he, dressed to look like Arthur, dark brown boots strapped up to his knees, pants the color of the baker’s bread, a sleeve-flapping shirt overlain with a tunic and tied with a bit of string.
Not one of them notices Prince Virgil’s eyes turn mean and hard. Still he smiles and laughs and plays along.
Prince Virgil, you see, carries a secret of his own, a secret no man or woman or child must know. And that secret is clamping down on him right now, blackening his eyes and his vision and, yes, his heart.
Hazel flicks the wrist of the hand holding her staff and sends the puppet flipping, one turn after another. The children laugh again at the awkward piece of wood bending and turning and now walking and running, as if it is a miniature version of their long-legged father.
“Make him talk, Prince Virgil!” Hazel says.
Prince Virgil gives a violent shake of his head.
“Please!” Hazel says. “Do not be a prude.”
“I am no prude,” Prince Virgil says. “I just do not want to play. I must return to the castle now.”
Mercy flicks her wrist, and the puppet’s mouth opens. “Whatever is the matter, Prince Virgil? Lost your magic?” it says.
It takes only a second for Prince Virgil’s hand to reach out and grab the puppet and hurl him to the ground, where he breaks into a thousand wood scrap pieces. Prince Virgil’s friends look at him, their eyes wide. Never before have they seen something like this from their friend Prince Virgil.
He stares back at them, ashamed at this thing he has done, this thing that has, by the looks of it, shocked and perhaps even frightened his only friends in the world. But he is more ashamed of what he cannot do.
“Magic is foolish,” Prince Virgil says in a voice as cold as his eyes, and then he turns away, gripping his staff tighter than ever.
The children watch him until he disappears.
***
IT is nearly dark. Hazel and Theo sit outside the doors of their home. The cottages of the kingdom do not have porches, only a small patch of earth lined by flowers on either side. This is where the villagers gather at the end of their days, for if there is one thing of superior beauty over all the others in this fair land, it is the last lights of the evening sky. Just as the sun touches the shining gray stone of Fairendale castle’s West tower, it lights the Violet Sea tributary and the whole sky on fire, such as a painting of brilliant colors could never capture. One can only stare. It is a spectacular sight, those oranges and reds and purples both above and below the bridge Prince Virgil crosses every day to see his friends. If one is very fortunate and does not need to blink at the exact moment the sun disappears beneath the land, one will see a ring of water swallow a mermaid’s tail. Those who see it are rumored to have good fortune for all the rest of their days.
The villagers of Fairendale have never seen a mermaid’s tale at that exact moment, for mermaids are sly creatures who do not grant their good fortune to just anyone. The people remain collected on their elaborate lawns until the sun disappears and the sky darkens and all the stars line up in their majestic places. They stare at those stars and breathe their day’s end, and then they return to their homes for the night’s preparations before retiring to sleep. It is the same ritual every night of their lives, yet it never grows old.
Tonight, Hazel and Theo sit a bit removed from their parents, which is not so unusual for children of their age. They do not always want to be where their parents are, but they certainly do not want to miss the night’s soft arrival. Tonight they are talking in whispers, sorting through what happened earlier today in the streets, for they have not had a safe moment until now, the time when their father and mother talk with one another.
“Why do you remain friends with Prince Virgil?” Hazel says. “He is a horrid boy.”
“He is lonely,” Theo says. “He is a prince, from a different world than ours. He is not easy to understand. I suspect we are not, either.”
“All the more reason he should not be here,” Hazel says. It is unusual to hear her talk so harshly as this. You will remember that Hazel is mostly fun and games and good nature, but today’s events have shaken her badly. Fear has a way of turning a heart in quite a new direction sometimes, hardening it in protection, rather than softening it in love.
Theo, however, still loves his friend. “He does not have any friends at the castle,” he says. Theo does not look at his sister but stares instead at the sky. He does not really want to have this argument. Perhaps he should have pulled his chair closer to his mother’s.
“But he is horrid,” Hazel says. “He does not wish to ever have fun.”
Now Theo looks at his sister. His eyebrows pull close to his eyes. “You would never tell me to let anyone else play alone.”
Hazel looks toward the tributary, where she has always hoped she would see a mermaid. Just one glimpse. Just one tail. Just one promise for good fortune all the rest of her days. “I do not like him,” she says.
Her brother does not answer, and even in the fading dark one can see Hazel’s eyes soften. Her brother has been her dearest friend since she was born. “I do not know what it is about him, Theo,” she says. “But there is something that frightens me. It is as if he carries a dark secret. I have seen it, in his eyes, though I do not know what it is.”
“I carry a secret,” Theo says. “So he is like me.” His eyes rest on Hazel’s face. “He is like us.”
“Yes, I suppose he is,” Hazel says. “But I fear he may be more dangerous than we want to believe.”
“That is foolish,” Theo says. “Prince Virgil is our friend. He would never hurt us. He loves us, as we love him.”
Oh, reader. If only being a friend were an accurate measure for good and evil. If only we could know for sure that friends could never hurt us simply because they love us. But we know that is not true. And poor Theo. He will know soon enough.
“You used magic,” Hazel says. “He knows.”
Theo hisses, an effort to quiet her. He glances at his parents, still talking. They do not seem to notice anything but each other and the fiery sky. Theo sighs. If his parents heard of his mistake, they would never permit him to play with Prince Virgil again. They would never permit him to sit in the back of his cottage kitchen, pretending to work on whittling but listening to Arthur teach magic to the village girls. They would never permit him to be anything but a boy, and he is more than a boy. So much more.
“I know,” Theo says. His shoulders sag. “I did not intend to do it.”
“You cannot make foolish mistakes,” Hazel says. “Not around a horrid boy like Prince Virgil.”
“Please stop calling him horrid,” Theo says, his voice jagged and prickly. He loves his friend. But he also loves his sister.
“He is the most dangerous of all the village boys,” Hazel says. “You must be more careful.”
“Yes,” Theo says. “I must.” He must. “I will not let it happen again.”
“Especially not around Prince Virgil,” Hazel says, as if she truly wants her brother to understand her urgency, as if he has not already fully understood it, as if, perhaps, he has not comprehended the gravity of such a mistake.
“Yes,” he says again, his whisper just a touch sharper than it had been before. Then, thinking better of his bother, he says, “Thank you for stepping in today.”
“Do you think they believed us?” Hazel says.
“Certainly they did,” Theo says, though he is anything but certain, truth be told. Hazel is a reliable source, which makes her not a great liar. He is not certain at all if their story was believed by anyone who saw his mistake.
Theo and Hazel smile at one another and then turn their eyes to the fading sky and its orange sun, which hangs in a sliver above the fresh-water cove ending the Violet Sea’s reach onto the village grounds. Now is just the moment when the stories say one might see the elusive mermaid’s tale. Theo stares, afraid to blink, until his eyes begin to water, until they burn like the sun did mere moments ago. And all his effort is rewarded, dear reader. Just before his eyelids close, he sees the tail and hears its subsequent splash.
He does not say anything to his sister, who blinked at the exact wrong time.
He keeps this secret to himself.
***
ACROSS the Violet Sea tributary and the curved gray stone bridge, where flowers burst even through the gaps of rock, Prince Virgil sits all alone, watching the sky long after it has turned dark and the stars come out in earnest. His staff leans against a corner in his room, useless to him. A staff only does what a magician bids it, and Prince Virgil is no magician.
He has only been thinking about what he did earlier today. Only been feeling bad. Only been wrestling with questions and going over and over the events to imagine they had played out any other way.
Magic is foolish? What kind of prince who is supposed to have the gift of magic, who is supposed to be a king in a magical kingdom like Fairendale, says such foolish words? They will surely guess his secret now. What will he do now?
“We will protect the throne,” his father had said the day Prince Virgil tried to do magic like his mother and failed. “We will pretend. No one will have to know. A king does not use his magic, at any rate.” King Willis had sent for all the prophets in the land, from as far away as Guardia, the kingdom in the far, far north that was said to never know warmth, only ice and cold, hoping to discover what was wrong with his son. Queen Clarion’s magic, coupled with his, should have been strong enough to produce a magical son. Why had Prince Virgil been born with no magic?
The prophets all said the same thing. Only the worthy are given magic.
Only the worthy.
His mother had cried. His father had raged. The prophets had looked sadly on, and then the king, flying into the same fit of rage he always did when the prophets pronounced their diagnosis, which was nothing new to anyone in the royal family, threw the prophets into the dungeon for their efforts. After the prophets had left his presence, Prince Virgil, every time, would watch the king pace the throne room, pontificating on the injustice of magic and how a royal line should be secured by blood rather than a silly gift, appearing to forget altogether that magic was how His Most High King had gained the throne in the first place. King Willis would talk until his wife quietly reminded him that if they wanted to keep this knowledge a secret from the kingdom, they must silence their monologues. By “they,” of course, the queen meant King Willis. She was a woman of few words, where her husband was a man of many.
“What kind of king is born without magic?” King Willis whispered when the one hundred forty-second prophet—a bent, white-haired old man—came to tell them what they had already heard from so many before. King Willis entertained them all, after the first several, only because he hoped that someone would bear different, better news—that his son did, in fact, have magic. It had merely taken a number of years to show itself. But, alas, there was no cure for “born without the gift of magic,” and King Willis, to preserve his own skin and that of his son, threw them all into the dungeon beneath the dungeons, a place no man would willingly go. No man, that is, except the trusty assistant cook Calvin, who is sent every morning at 7 o’clock and again at 6 o’clock in the evening to deliver bread and water to the prisoners. The prisoners have learned to ration their nourishment in the hours between.
Fairendale and the lands beyond hold no more prophets now. They all live in the darkest place one can imagine, a place where eyes grow accustomed to seeing nothing. And, sadly, their hearts have grown accustomed to waving away hope, for there is none to be found for a man in the dungeon below the dungeons. No one but Calvin and the royal family, and, perhaps, the captain of the king’s guard, even know they exist.
Why does the king keep them? Why does he not kill them? Well, now, our king is not so heartless as that. He does not want the blood of one hundred forty-two prophets on his hands. There are stories, of course, stories about what happens to a man who might kill a prophet. Our king does not wish to discover for himself whether those stories are indeed true. So he gives his prisoners water and feeds them, twice a day. And they live. Though we might all agree they do not really live at all.
Prince Virgil thinks of them sometimes, trapped in the same cell, pressed against each other in the cold, unable to see one face from another. He has never been to the dungeons below the dungeons, but he imagines it a frightful place, as any place too far for light to reach it would very well be.
“Virgil,” Queen Clarion says. He turns to the doorway, where she stands in shadows. Her eyes look black from here, though he knows them to be the deepest blue of the evening sky. “What are you doing out here?”
“Watching the sunset, Mother,” he says.
She laughs. “The sunset finished hours ago, dear.” Queen Clarion steps out onto the stone balcony, her hand searching for her son’s shoulder. It is dark on his private terrace, for he has so lost himself in his thoughts that he has forgotten to light the torches.
Her hand warms his skin. His mother always feels warm to him, perhaps from all the kindness that lives inside her. She is the kindest woman Prince Virgil has ever known, outside of Maude, who is much older and much less beautiful than his mother.
Queen Clarion visits her son’s chambers every night to bid him goodnight. Though most queens leave their children to others, Queen Clarion has always loved her boy with a fierce love that does not depend on whether or not he carries the gift of magic. She does not care that she gave up her great gift, as every magical parent must, so that he could get nothing. He is her son. That is the only story a mother’s love tells.
She touches Prince Virgil’s curls. He tilts his head onto her shoulder, which he almost never does anymore. He is a boy of twelve, after all. The unexpected gesture makes his mother drop a kiss to the top of his head.
And that is what makes Prince Virgil feel safe enough to question, to work out his bothers, to lay them at the feet of one who loves him with a love that might very well listen. This question has been torturing him all night, stinging him as the wind that gusts from the north never could. “Are you disappointed you gave up your gift of magic for me?” he says.
If one could see her lovely face in all the shadows, Queen Clarion would not look the least bit surprised. She is a good mother. She has already guessed what has kept her boy out on his balcony long into the evening. She knows he has spent his day with magical children in the village. She knows he does not understand the reasons for a boy born without magic. She knows that he wishes he could have this gift, more than he has ever wished another thing in all the world.
“No,” she says. “I am not disappointed in the slightest.” Her voice is sure and solid and strong. He breathes the relief it brings.
And then he says, “Why was I born without magic?”
She does not answer immediately. Her eyes fix on the dark sky, a painting of tiny pinpoints of light. But Prince Virgil notices, because he is looking, that she is no longer smiling. “We do not know why,” she says, but there is something that happens when Queen Clarion lies. At least Prince Virgil suspects it happens when she is lying, for he has only seen it once before, when he asked about his Uncle Wendell and why he was banished from the kingdom of Fairendale, and his mother answered simply, “He was not a wise man.” The lids of his mother’s eyes get the slightest bit thicker, her lips the slightest bit thinner. It would take an observant child to notice such small details. Prince Virgil has always been one of those.
“But you and Father had magic,” he says. “Why do I not?”
“Well,” his mother says. “Well.”
They are quiet for some moments. Prince Virgil wonders if she is ever going to answer, and then Queen Clarion turns to her son and takes both his hands in hers. “I think it is time we talked with your father,” she says. She drops his hands and moves gracefully, as she always does, back into the deeper shadows just outside Prince Virgil’s balcony door, where a woman like Queen Clarion is prone to standing. It is not right, reader, of course it is not, but in Fairendale, the virtues that Queen Clarion carries deep inside—gentleness and kindness and love—are not the virtues that are said to be the right ones, the ones that can rule a kingdom well. The powerful virtues in this upside-down kingdom—ruthlessness, selfishness, perfidy—those are the characteristics that give a kingdom to a man like King Willis.
A woman like Queen Clarion cannot do much here. At least not yet.
But let us follow Queen Clarion and her son into the shadows and through the doorway and down the long, torchlit hallway with ceilings high enough to comfortably accommodate three giants standing atop the shoulders of one another. Let us enter the royal chamber, where our great king awaits.
***
THE king, of course, is not waiting for his son or his wife. He is not a man accustomed to spending much time with the lesser people, which is precisely how he views his son and his wife. Lesser, for they are not important rulers of a kingdom. Lesser, for one is a woman and one a child. Lesser, for they are not him.
King Willis is a man who keeps himself busy running a kingdom, though the kingdom is mostly peaceful, and a man running a kingdom can hardly be counted upon to sup with his wife and only son, much less converse with them in the margins between settling disputes (there are none) and making kingdom decisions (what kind of sweet rolls he would like today) and protecting his people from the dangers of the outside world (no one has invaded the land since his father stole the throne).
Yes, reader, it really is a tragedy of the most avoidable kind. A child is a transformative gift. A father should always want to know his child.
The king, even now, is waiting on someone else and has no thought reserve in his large brain to waste on his wife and son. He does not wonder what they are doing. He does not consider leaving the throne room to bid his son goodnight. If one were to look inside his mind for just a moment, one would see that he is not in this room at all, but very far away, waiting.
He waits for someone very like the other one hundred forty-two people hidden in the deepest bowels of the castle, where one can easily forget them if one were a man such as King Willis. A woman is coming, after all these years. A woman he hopes will bear good news where all the others brought bad.
So when the queen knocks on the door at the precise time he expects another, King Willis, of course, believes it is the one on whom he waits. It does not even cross his mind that his son and wife might stand on the other side of the door, about to enter and soil his perfectly planned evening with unexpected questions and wonderings. He does not expect that he will be sharing any secrets this evening.
But, alas, doors do not always open on what we expect.
The king calls out in a jovial voice, a voice very unlike the one Queen Clarion and Prince Virgil have heard before today, though not often. “Come in, come in, please,” the king says.
The royal chamber is a large room of red and gold. It is the largest room you can imagine, with such a distance from the door to the throne that one cannot even see the face of the royal body sitting on the throne, even if one has perfect vision. One would have to walk halfway down the red velvet carpet to see clearly enough to know whether a king was happy or angry that one had interrupted whatever it is a king does in such a room as this one. Its ceilings are as high as the hallway ones, but these are carved with elaborate works of art, pictures of nighttime skies, a portrait of the giant who guards the Great Mountains, the faces of past kings who do not share the same family but all share the same gift: magic.
King Willis is surprised enough by the ones who enter that a “You” escapes his lips and booms all the way down the carpet to his wife and son. They stop for a moment, familiar with the contempt that meets them. And then he says, “Come,” so they continue on. By the time they are halfway down the carpet, the king’s face is blank, as if he is not made of emotion at all, as if he is merely a body on a throne. Prince Virgil tries to keep his eyes on the red drapes hanging from a gold tunnel attached to the ceiling. He tries not to notice how his father’s fat body leaks and spills over the throne arms set in gold, how one cannot even tell that the throne carries a cushion of midnight blue. Jewels blink at him as he moves closer, shimmering in the light from candles on gold pillars that line the walk from entrance to throne.
Garth, the king’s manservant, stands at the foot of the throne, at the bottom of the steps, ready to fetch a drink or some food or to simply help the king rise from his seat, since it has become difficult for His Most High King to squeeze in and out of it without a little extra help.
“Well?” King Willis says when his wife and son have reached the place just in front of Garth and done their obligatory curtsy and bow. “What is it, now?” He looks toward the door, as if he is already wishing them away.
Imagine facing a man like that with nothing to offer but questions.
But Queen Clarion, for all her kindness, also possesses another virtuous characteristic: bravery.
Bravery is what takes her foot and plants it on the first step and then the second, and one after another. Bravery is what reaches her hand toward her son to pull him forward with her. Bravery is what brings her to the space that is inches in front of the king, where almost no one goes, and it is what bows her head low, and it is also what pulls these words from her lips:
“Virgil has been asking questions.”
“Virgil has been asking questions,” King Willis repeats. He looks at his son, as if surprised that he is there. “Well, my queen, Virgil is a child. Children ask question, do they not?” He looks at his wife as if she is simply another commoner interrupting his noonday meal. They stare at one another for a time. And then King Willis seems to recognize something in Queen Clarion’s eyes, for he says, “What sort of questions has Virgil been asking?” though it is clear that he is not at all interested in the answer.
Queen Clarion nudges her son forward and nods at him in that way a mother has, encouraging him to find his bravery and speak with a king. She squeezes his hand in her own. A gentle touch. An empowering touch. A touch that says, “I am here.”
Prince Virgil has only spoken to his father three times in his life—once when he was merely a baby and Queen Clarion brought him into the royal chamber to show King Willis that his son had learned to say Father, once when he was a young boy of five and Queen Clarion brought him into the royal chamber so he could explain to King Willis why the curtains in the ballroom were missing three inches from their bottom (he did it, reader, because no one ever opened the curtains, and there were so many windows, so much light, and the room had the best view in the whole castle. He merely wanted to see outside. He did the best thing he thought possible), and another time when the king and queen discovered, after the first ninety-nine prophets said the same old thing—that Prince Virgil was, surely and certainly, a boy born without the gift of magic.
And now, today. Only four times in his twelve years has Prince Virgil spoken to his father.
He stammers a little. (Wouldn’t you, dear reader? If you were speaking to a king, a king who rules a whole land, a king you did not really know, a king who is your father? Of course.)
“W-w-why was I b-b-born without m-m-magic?” Prince Virgil says. He hates the way his voice sounds so squeaky and nervous and weak. He would like to have a different voice, one more like Theo’s, who sounds like a boy but also sounds like he may be on his way to becoming a man. He does not want to disappoint his father with this voice. So he does not say more.
His father looks at him. Queen Clarion squeezes Prince Virgil’s hand, and that is the only reason Prince Virgil looks at his father. And when his father does not answer, Prince Virgil clears his throat and tries again, encouraged by his mother’s warmth. This time his voice sounds thicker, though not any older. “Why, Father?” he says.
The king lets loose a great laugh, which shakes his whole belly in a way that looks much like waves rolling across an ocean, pitching into a shore. Prince Virgil tries to keep his eyes on the king’s face rather than that great grey velvet ocean with buttons that hardly fasten anymore. A gold piece at the center of his father’s belly is held on by a tight belt that looks as if it may burst at any moment. Prince Virgil lifts his eyes up, away from the shaking. The crown on the king’s head is large and shiny, with red and blue and purple jewels studded in all its spikes. It is so heavy, and King Willis has so much extra flesh on his forehead, that the wearing of it produces an almost permanent scowl, even when he is laughing. Prince Virgil feels the urge to laugh at the frightful sight.
“Son,” the king says. “Of course you were born with magic.” The king glances at his manservant, Garth, as if Garth has not listened at doorways and heard what one hundred forty-two prophets have told the royal family in years past.
“No,” Prince Virgil says. He looks at his mother, who lets out a breath. “No, Father, I was not.”
“Silence!” King Willis roars. The whole royal chamber echoes the word, and the world holds still, everyone too frightened to even breathe. “Leave us,” King Willis says, a touch softer. The king does not specify to whom he speaks, but Garth has already begun to move.
Queen Clarion smiles at the meek, homely boy. “Thank you, Garth,” she says. King Willis does not know his manservant’s name, for this is not something important to his life and well being. But Queen Clarion knows the names of every servant in the house.
“Yes, m’lady,” Garth says, his eyes on the floor.
King Willis moves in a flash, surprising for his bulk. Prince Virgil hears the smack and sees his mother’s face twist to the side. Did King Willis hit her? Did he strike Queen Clarion on the cheek? What kind of man would do something so cruel and unnecessary?
Well, reader, men do cruel and unnecessary things for all kinds of reasons. Arrogance. Conviction. Fear. For our king, it is some of all of those that move his hand.
Queen Clarion touches her cheek, staring at the floor. “How dare you!” roars the king. “How dare you address my manservant by name!” His hands fly, his arms bouncing against his sides and then spreading back out again. “They are little more than dogs. They do not deserve a name.”
Prince Virgil stares at his father. This explosion does not surprise Queen Clarion, but it surprises Prince Virgil, indeed. He has never seen his father this angry, over something so simple as calling a boy by his proper name. Prince Virgil looks at Garth, this boy who is older than him by four years? Five? Perhaps more? It is hard to tell on a face like his. Garth pulls at his brown belt splitting his deep green tunic in half, as if unsure of what he should do.
“Go!” King Willis roars again.
Garth scurries toward the door, like one of the mice Prince Virgil frees from the traps in the castle library. He does not mind the mice so much. A few of them are blind and merely enjoy sitting in a place filled with the scent of ancient days. Or so he believes. He does not know, of course. Mice cannot talk.
As soon as Garth has closed the door behind him, King Willis takes a deep breath. One. Two. Three. Then he clears his throat. From the sweat collecting on his brow, one might think the king was uncomfortable or nervous or caught.
Yes. Perhaps he is caught.
“Why do you not have magic?” King Willis says. “That is a question your mother can answer just as well as I can.” King Willis glares at his wife, as if she is to blame for putting him in this uncomfortable circumstance.
“No,” Queen Clarion says. Her voice is kind, but the words hold a steel bar. Prince Virgil watches it take a swing at his father’s face. But Queen Clarion is not yet done. “This is a question for his father.” She peers at the king. Prince Virgil stares at the red flower on her cheek, an exaggerated hand.
Were he to look at his father’s hands at that very moment, he would see the sausage fingers clenching into fists, turning the knuckles white. One might, perhaps, suppose that King Willis would strike Queen Clarion again, but our king has more discretion than this. Discretion, of course, can be lost in a moment of fury, as it was mere moments ago, but King Willis, for now, is calm.
Prince Virgil peels his eyes from his mother’s damaged cheek and turns them on his father. His anger bites out words. “I want to hear it from you,” he says.
King Willis waves a hand. “You have magic,” he says. “Dormant magic. We have not found the right prophets to uncover it yet.”
“There are no more prophets,” Prince Virgil says.
“Ah,” the king says. His eyes turn glittery. “That is where you are wrong, my boy. There is one who comes this very night.”
Prince Virgil tilts his head. Could this prophet, perhaps, carry the answers to questions he has wondered all his life? “Who?” he says to his father.
King Willis leans forward in his chair, but he cannot place his elbows on his knees, for there is no room. So he rests his arms on his belly instead. “A prophetess,” his father says. “Come to bring good news, I suspect.”
Prince Virgil shakes his head. He has hoped for so long, through one hundred forty-two of them. Is there any hope left? And if there were, should he waste it on something as uncertain as this?
“Tell him,” Queen Clarion says, and Prince Virgil looks at his mother’s face. Her eyes are icy and hard and unsafe. So he moves his gaze to his father.
“Tell me what?” Prince Virgil says. He keeps his eyes on King Willis, who glares at the queen.
“Ask your father what he ever did of magic before you were born,” Queen Clarion says. Her voice is marble, cold and unbreakable.
Prince Virgil does not know if he wants to hear the answer to this question. But he asks it anyway. “Did you practice magic before I was born?”
King Willis stares at him for far too many moments. He does not think his father will answer. And then King Willis surprises them all. His face softens.
“Come closer,” the king says. He folds himself back into the throne, and the gold lets out a squeal of protest. Prince Virgil steps to his side. Queen Clarion sits on the stairs and smooths her billowing blue skirt so it fans out across the red carpet. King Willis takes a deep breath. Prince Virgil wonders how his father can breathe at all, stuck in a throne as tight as this one. “In the kingdom of Fairendale,” his father begins, “magic rules the throne.”
Yes. Prince Virgil knows this.
“Eighty-three years ago,” King Willis says, “my father stole the throne from a man who had only the smallest threads of magic. A girl to carry his name.” He looks at Prince Virgil with shadowed eyes. “Your grandfather had some of the most powerful magic in all the lands. And so he took the throne from the king who had so little. He was about your age, I think. How old are you, son?”
“Twelve,” Prince Virgil says, trying to imagine leading a rebellion at his age.
“Well, then,” King Willis says. “Never mind. Father was sixteen.” The king clears his throat. “For years my father ruled the throne with justice and set the people in their rightful place. You must understand that in the days of King Brendon, the common people ate a great feast on the lawn of the castle every Year’s Last Day. They would visit the castle. They would walk its halls and eat its leftover food and take whatever it was they needed.” His eyes narrow, just the slightest bit. “That is not a proper way to run a kingdom, you see.”
King Willis glares at his wife, then looks back at his son. “So my father restored the balance that every kingdom needs. The common people remained in the village. The royal line remained in the castle. Still, to this day. It is as it should be.” He stares at his son, as if trying to determine whether Prince Virgil feels the same. But all Prince Virgil can think about is his best friend being a commoner. What would it be like to sup with his friend? What would it be like to play hide-and-seek in those great halls? What would it be like to swim out in the cove, protecting one another from the mermaids?
“Your grandfather was forty-four years old when he brought me into the world,” King Willis says. “But there are rules to magic.”
Prince Virgil does not know any of the rules of magic, for he has never had a reason to learn them. He does not know about vanishing spells or precisely how magic is passed on to children or that something cannot be magically created from nothing, for no one has ever formally trained him, since he did not have the gift.
“When a magic person has a child, all of his magic passes to that child,” King Willis says. “His son or daughter receives the gift of magic.” King Willis looks at the floor. Prince Virgil wonders, more now than ever, why the magic did not pass to him, then. If magic passes from parents to children, why was he skipped?
“There’s a catch,” Queen Clarion says. She looks at her husband.
“Yes, a catch,” King Willis says. His fingers turn white against the throne now. “If there are any other children, they do not get a single ounce of magic. Not one single ounce.” King Willis stares out toward the door, as if he is seeing something entirely different than this room and these people and the candles painting shapes onto the wall.
Prince Virgil still does not understand. But he knows better than to ask any questions. He looks at his mother. She stares at the king, waiting for what comes next.
King Willis shifts in his chair, but there is no shift that really happens. A man as large as King Willis does not shift, merely rearranges. “I have a brother,” he says. “An older brother.”
The words slam against Prince Virgil’s throat. An older brother? But the only brother his father had was Wendell, a younger brother who was banished from Fairendale long before Prince Virgil was born. Because he was not a wise man.
And then another thought scratches past all the others. If his uncle got all the magic and his father got none, where was the hope for him?
“But,” Prince Virgil says. “But where is he?”
“Banished,” King Willis says, and for a moment his eyes look just the tiniest bit sad. Could he have loved his brother, reader? Could he have adored him in the way younger brothers often adore older brothers? Could he have grieved when his brother left?
“For kindness,” Queen Clarion says, her voice almost a whisper.
But the words, unfortunately, are not lost on her husband. He tries to stand again, but this time he has slumped too far and cannot rise without taking the golden chair with him. And, alas, its weight is greater even than his own, and it pulls him back down. “For treason,” he says, and the sadness is gone. There is only anger now.
“What was his name?” Prince Virgil says.
“Wendell,” King Willis says.
Prince Virgil shakes his head. “But you told me he was younger,” he says.
“To protect you,” King Willis says. “To protect the whole kingdom.”
Prince Virgil tries not to think what this may mean. “What did he do?” he says instead.
“That matters not,” King Willis says. “What matters is that the throne passed to me. And I had no magic.” He lets out a great, long breath. Prince Virgil is close enough to smell the rye bread and garlic. Prince Virgil loves rye bread, especially when dipped in Cook’s best chicken soup. King Willis, for his part, prefers sweet rolls. But regardless of what he prefers, it has been hours now since the king has had something to eat. In fact, his stomach is rumbling at this very moment, reminding him that it is long past his normal dining hour, because he has been waiting on someone. Waiting on someone who, every minute, is another minute late to the agreed-upon meeting at the agreed-upon time. King Willis does not like when people are late. King Willis is a punctual man himself, particularly when it comes to food.
Minute by minute, he is growing hungrier. And more peevish.
“Where is my uncle now?” Prince Virgil says.
“No one knows,” Queen Clarion says, at the same time King Willis says, “Dead.” The king and queen stare at one another, neither one willing to back down from their answers.
“Your uncle,” Queen Clarion begins. Now that she knows her husband will not be rising from his chair without help, she would tell her son the truth. “Had a kind heart. He could not bear to see people go hungry or sleep cold. So he used his magic to give them bread and blankets and houses that kept them dry in the spring rains.”
“A king is not a wish-giver!” King Willis roars. “That is not the point of magic! A king is a ruler!” And, dear reader, should we be able to go back in time, we would see just how much our king sounds like his father before him, the day his brother, Wendell, was banished from the kingdom. They really are two of a kind.
King Willis lets out another breath. Prince Virgil turns away this time, afraid he will be sick. “We had beggars, lined up for miles. My brother wanted to help them all.” The king’s face is red and splotchy. “It was just like the days of that weak King Brendon. We could not have that kind of kingdom again, you see? My father cleaned it up. We could not be wish givers or we would never be permitted to rule. The people would run wild, as they did in those days. It would be uncivilized. They would take liberties and sleep on the steps of the castle and break into our halls and dirty up our floors. They would expect handouts when they were fully capable of working for themselves.”
“A king should help his people,” says Queen Clarion. She has risen from her seat. Her face is red, too, but it is her heart that has our attention. Her heart, you see, is so tender. So sad. So broken.
What no one in the room has said is that Queen Clarion was chosen to rule the kingdom alongside Prince Wendell, when he became king. She was brought to Fairendale castle as a child of six, as the promised bride of Prince Wendell upon reaching the age of sixteen. But when Prince Wendell was sent away in disgrace, she was forced to marry his brother, Prince Willis, instead.
Her misery is great, as I am sure you can imagine. We must not let her beauty and kind countenance fool us. Queen Clarion loved her betrothed desperately, and when he disappeared, he took a large part of her heart with him. She tried her best to love King Willis, but he was the opposite of her beloved in every way.
It is not easy to love a man so disappointing.
“A king should rule his people,” King Willis says. “A king should make them work. A king should be a leader, not a magician who grants all their wishes and makes their lives easy. Workers get lazy when they have no work.”
Prince Virgil does not argue with King Willis, but if he were a different boy, a braver boy, perhaps, he would side with his mother. He has seen the poor in their homes, after all. He has seen the way they work, the way they play, the way their stomachs are almost never full because there is almost never enough. He once tried to give his friends scraps from his own rich feasts, but as soon as he opened his pack and took out the first chunk of bread, his nurse slapped his hand hard enough to make it bleed and looked around the village, as if fearing for her life. Then she poured the contents of the sack down the well where the villagers drew their water. He watched the villagers watching his nurse, stricken. And then Arthur climbed down inside the well and picked out all the soggy food so it would not contaminate their water supply. He never tried to bring food to the villagers again.
Prince Virgil decides to steer the discussion in a safer direction, so his father does not guess what he is thinking. King Willis is staring at him, and he does not want to be the disappointing son. So he says, “But you had magic.” And this time he looks at his mother.
Her eyes glisten. “Yes,” she says. “I did have magic.”
“Your mother had the most powerful magic in the kingdom of Fairendale when she was young,” King Willis says, the first good word he has spoken of his wife in a very long time. “That is why she was chosen as a queen.” He looks at his son again, stroking his chin. “We thought her power would be strong enough to pass along to you, even without my contribution.”
“But it was not,” Prince Virgil says.
“We suspect it is because it takes two magical parents to make a magical child,” Queen Clarion says. “Though we do not know for sure.”
“So I must keep this a secret,” Prince Virgil says.
“Yes,” King Willis says.
“But how did the people not know about my uncle?” Prince Virgil says.
“The kingdom believes we are twins,” King Willis says. “My father had the foresight to spread this story early enough. No one thought to question it. As far as the people are concerned, I had the gift of magic before it passed along to you.”
“But someone will surely find out, Father. Will they not?” Prince Virgil says.
His father’s eyes grow dark, a muddy pit in a candlelit room. King Willis leans forward, as much as he can manage with his bulging belly. “No,” he says. His voice is not loud this time, which makes it all the worse. “No. They will never find out. The throne will never pass from our hands.”
“But they will surely know,” Prince Virgil says. “When I cannot perform magic.”
“We will make the necessary arrangements. There may yet be another way. A magic way,” King Willis says, and Prince Virgil is wondering what that might possibly mean when another knock echoes into the great room.
“Ah,” King Willis says. “Ah, yes. Forty minutes late. It is about time.” He settles back into his seat.