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SOON after taking over the throne of Fairendale, King Sebastien found a beautiful wife, from the kingdom of Eastermoor, known for its beautiful women and strapping young men. His wife was said to possess a powerful gift of magic, though she never used it in front of him. She never did much of anything in front of him but smile demurely and dip her head. She was precisely the kind of wife a man such as King Sebastien desired.
There were men in her own village who wanted to marry a woman as beautiful as Vivian, but her father gave her willingly when a throne was involved. King Sebastien admired her wild red hair and did not care whether she loved him or not. He merely needed a queen with magic to prove he was a king with staying power, passing along the gift to his sons and securing the throne for another generation.
Not that King Sebastien was at all interested in any generation but his own. He did not, in fact, wish to have children. Children were what stole the gift of magic from a man, after all. He had taken the kingdom as a young man of magic, and he desired more than anything to hold on to that magic for as long as he could. He did not wish to become vulnerable as had that old man King Brendon.
And he would not have chosen children at all but for an old, bent prophet who traveled to the kingdom wearing eyes that looked vaguely familiar to our dear King Sebastien, as if he had seen them before. But King Sebastien had met many a man over the years of his life and could not be expected to remember where he had met the one. The prophet seemed to know much about him, as is expected of prophets. King Sebastien did not fear the man. Not until he croaked out in an ancient voice as bent as his back: “Soon you will die, Your Majesty.”
His words startled King Sebastien. Surely a man as powerful as he was had many more years to live. Surely he would rule the throne until he was old and grey and wrinkled. But no man or woman in the kingdom of Fairendale, nor in any other kingdom, no matter how powerful, has ever been so powerful as to prevent death.
“Die?” King Sebastien said. They were alone in the throne room. King Sebastien had dismissed all the servants when the prophet asked to speak with him privately.
“Yes,” the old man said. “You shall die.”
King Sebastien cocked his head. “And how shall I die?” he said. “By your hand?”
“No,” the old man said. “Of course not, Your Majesty. You will die by a blackbird’s beak.”
King Sebastien drew in a sharp breath. He would not have believed something as preposterous as this had it not been for the nightmare he had had since he was a boy. In it, a bird chased him, relentlessly, hungrily, unmercifully. He could never escape from it, but he always woke before it landed upon his face.
He never knew what to do with that dream, but now, with the words of the prophet hanging before him, he felt the dark fog of fear settle over his chest.
“And how will a blackbird kill me?” King Sebastien’s voice sounded strangled, as if the blackbird was already doing its work. King Sebastien wondered if the old man was a shape shifter. Would he die, now, in this very room?
“The blackbird,” the man said, but he did not finish. He looked into King Sebastien’s eyes, and King Sebastien felt a charge of something he could not quite place. Respect, perhaps? Anger? Recognition. Where had he seen those eyes before? “The blackbird will tear out your eyes and feast on your flesh.”
Perhaps it was gruesomely jarring for an old man to tell a king something like this, but this was what King Sebastien had feared his strange dreams were trying to tell him. And so it did not take much convincing for him to believe it.
“What can I do?” King Sebastien said, for a dying man always wants to live. If one had looked into his face at that very moment, one might have seen something one had not seen on King Sebastien’s face since he was a boy: Fear.
Perhaps this is what softened the old prophet’s heart, what made him tell the only thing left to tell. “Have a child,” the prophet said. “This will give you many more years.”
“But the blackbird,” King Sebastien said.
“It will come,” the prophet said. “Once you raise your son.”
And so it was that King Sebastien fathered a boy at the age of forty-three. He gave his magic to his firstborn son and had nothing left to give to the one who came a mere ten months later. This is the way of magic. King Sebastien knew the rules, but he thought, perhaps, that by continuing to have children, he could somehow delay his death. Queen Vivian, sadly, died soon after their second son’s birth, and he could find no other woman who wanted to marry a man such as him.
No other woman wanted to be a queen?
Being a queen, dear reader, is not so attractive when it means you are forever chained to a disagreeable man. It is better to remain alone in such cases.
King Sebastien raised his two sons, Wendell and Willis, alone. The kingdom knew them as twins. Only he knew them as first and second born.
So it was that the secret began, and to this day remains.