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PRINCE Virgil did not sleep the entire night. He could not cease thinking about what his father intends to do today. He does not know for sure what his father has planned, of course, but he can guess. A man such as King Willis is not so very hard to read, after all. So in the dead of night, Prince Virgil decided that he would warn his friend on the morrow, and it was only then that he was able to fall into a restless sort of sleep.
Our prince wakes this morning with dread in his heart and a mission on his mind. He dresses quickly, runs to the banquet hall but passes up the sweet rolls in favor of a slice of warm bread and melted butter, for he does not want to be like his father even the smallest bit, and then he races toward the castle entrance at the very moment he hears his father wheezing through the halls. He does not wish to run into his father, you see. He does not want his father to know where he is going.
Prince Virgil slips out, thinking he is unnoticed, though the servants are always watching and listening, at every turn. They have, in fact, seen him today, flying through the castle doors and down the path that leads to the village. They wonder what would make a boy like Prince Virgil, a boy who walks slowly everywhere he goes, run like that. They have never seen him hurry in all his days. The sight of it stills their breath, until they remember he is a boy of twelve. He is a boy. He is twelve. Of course.
Prince Virgil dashes toward the bridge, for once he crosses to the other side, he will be out of the sight of the castle. His father must not see him. He stops to catch his breath on the bridge’s safe side, listening for approaching footsteps. There are none.
But there is a voice. It calls out to him. He looks down into the water. He has seen her before, this mermaid, but never so close. He ventures the slightest bit closer.
“Hello, my prince,” she says.
“Hello,” he says, unsure whether he should move any closer. He is on a mission, after all, and, besides, he knows the dangers of mermaids. He has heard the tales, about how they seduce men into the water and then pull them down into the depths until they cannot take another breath. The tales do not say what happens after that, whether victims turn into mermen or whether their bodies populate the bottom of the Violet Sea, but Prince Virgil is not the boy to find out today.
This mermaid is as beautiful as the rest of her sisters, but where the others are dark, she has white skin and flaming red hair and eyes the color of an evening sky moments before the sun disappears.
Prince Virgil steps closer, without thinking, and then remembers that he plans to stay on dry land. He backs up again.
She is very beautiful, though. The wind twists her hair around her face, and Prince Virgil thinks of Mercy, only this mermaid is ice where Mercy is grass.
“I have seen you before,” she says. “Crossing this bridge. Walking into the village.”
“Perhaps,” Prince Virgil says. He does not mention that he has seen her before.
He takes another step back. He must go. The sooner he can get to his friends, the sooner they will be able to flee. The sooner they shall be safe.
“Why do you go to the village?” the mermaid says. “Those people are not worthy of my prince.”
“They are my friends,” Prince Virgil says. He turns. He does not know why he stopped on his way. The mermaid’s eyes freeze him.
“Do not go, my prince,” she says.
“I must warn them,” Prince Virgil says, though he does not mean to say these words aloud.
“Warn them of what?” the mermaid says.
“About my father,” Prince Virgil says. “What he plans to do.” He does not know why he is telling a mermaid this secret.
“But my prince,” she says. “It is already too late.”
“No,” Prince Virgil says. “It is not too late. My father has not given the orders as yet.”
“It is too late to undo what has been done,” the mermaid says. Her eyes sparkle in the sun. “My father has seen what is to come.” Her voice grows softer, as if she, too, is telling a great secret. Prince Virgil takes a step closer, careful to stay well out of the mermaid’s reach.
“And what is coming?” Prince Virgil says.
“Destruction,” the mermaid says. Her eyes widen. She does not smile. “Death. Do not let the prince get caught up in it all.”
“But I must,” Prince Virgil says. This brave boy. He knows what it is like to love a boy and two girls. He must do what he can to save them. He turns.
“The kingdom will be taken from my prince’s hands,” the mermaid says. “Unless...”
She does not finish. But Prince Virgil has heard the important words.
Oh, yes. They have begun to sink down deep.
And instead of running, dear reader, he now walks with measured steps along the road to the village.
He is a boy on a different mission now.
***
THE sun continues to shine brightly in a blue sky, traitor that it is. The sky bears only the smallest spattering of white clouds. It gives no indication that it knows what is coming. One would not even be able to guess, by gazing at this clear, happy display of shining sun and smooth blue, that what is coming is dark and jagged and terrifying.
The somewhat later morning finds the girls of the village still gathered in Arthur and Maude’s kitchen. They are still studying magic, this time baking cookies with no hands. Theo watches them, not daring to move after yesterday’s mistake. Every now and then Arthur studies his son.
His boy will be happier somewhere else. Somewhere he can use his magic. Somewhere he will not have to hide. Somewhere safe.
Arthur knows precisely the place. He knows precisely the spell. Hazel and Theo and the rest of the gifted children are strong enough to perform the magic necessary to keep the place invisible, but he will have to convince them that they must go.
He does not know how to do this.
The village people love him, for he is good, kind, virtuous Arthur, but they do not understand the urgency he has had over the years, each time a new prophet came to town, for the people do not know the secret he carries.
For a while he believed they were all safe, for all the prophets disappeared and, with them, the danger. But now, after so many years, another has been found.
Another who must have new information for the king.
On the last eve, Arthur stared in the direction of the palace long into the night, watching until the torches went out, but they never did, at least not while he was awake. They remained blazing in the very place he knew the throne room to be. He fell asleep with fear spidering to the corners of his heart.
He told Maude of his plans early this morning, before Theo and Hazel woke. She wanted to leave before the sun came up, but he could not leave the other children. The king is rash, he knows. If there is a male child with magic, he will capture all the children, male or female, until he finds the one. Arthur, good man that he is, cannot leave the village children to this fate.
Arthur’s heart is no longer in magic lessons, though he did well enough in his teaching when the morning began. But every sentence, now, ends in a thought he does not finish. It is Hazel who notices. “Perhaps we should run along and play,” she says. Arthur does not argue.
The girls scatter, Hazel and Mercy walking arm in arm and Theo walking behind. All the village boys are busy doing chores, but Theo has already completed his. He rises earlier than most of the others, for he wants to sit in on the magic lessons, though he can never use what he learns. Boys are not permitted leisure time until they finish the village chores. So Theo rises at first light, when he hears Hazel leave her bed. He has never been late to a lesson yet.
Theo spies Prince Virgil walking toward them up ahead. He calls to his friend. When Prince Virgil looks at the three of them, it is as if his brown eyes reach out and strike their cheeks. His eyes are angry and hard, enough to make Theo shiver, enough to make him believe that his friend is very dangerous indeed.
“Want to play with us?” Hazel says, though it is clear by her wide eyes that she, too, has noticed the change.
Prince Virgil does not answer. Instead, he looks behind Hazel, to Theo. Theo, who is looking back at him. Theo, who notices the change. Theo, who suddenly wants nothing more than to run from his best friend.
“What are you doing in the streets already this morning?” Prince Virgil says. “Why are you not doing the village chores like all the rest of the boys?” Prince Virgil sweeps his arm grandly to the side, as if to say, “You see all the others?”
“I finished my chores,” Theo says. “I always rise earlier than the rest.” He does not want to look at those malicious eyes, does not want to read what is written there. But he does. And the fear crawls up his neck.
Hazel turns to look at her brother. Perhaps she has heard something in his voice. Perhaps she has sensed a change in his breathing. It is difficult to say how twins know the deeper knowings of one another.
“What is it, Theo?” Hazel says. Her eyes study him.
Mercy turns, too.
Theo shakes his head.
Prince Virgil smiles, but the girls are not looking. “I know what you do, Theo,” Prince Virgil says. His smile is wickedly hateful.
Truth be told, he looks just as his father did last night, when he ordered the prophet Aleen of White Wind down to the secret dungeons beneath the dungeons, with the other one hundred forty-two like her.
Why would Prince Virgil, who left the castle walls to warn his friends about his father’s plans, suddenly turn against those friends?
Well, reader, desperation makes people do strange things. Many times cruel things, shameful things, things they would never do in a right mind. Despair takes a right mind and twists it until it nearly breaks.
What we do in that breaking moment tells us not who we are but the powerful grip our feelings have on our actions. Prince Virgil, you see, feels confused and angry and desperate. But most of all he feels fearful, for he is a prince, but he is not a prince. He desires a throne, yet he has no claim to a throne. He loves his friend, yet he feels threatened by his friend.
Fear can turn a heart inside out.
See what it does to Theo. See him shake. See the despair hang over him like the heavy clouds gathering in the sky just now. See the sun grow dim, all light hidden behind grey.
“What do I do?” Theo dares to ask.
Prince Virgil takes a step closer. His black boot crushes something beneath it with a snap that startles Hazel and Mercy. “You watch. You learn. Magic.”
This is not who Prince Virgil is. This is not the Prince Virgil that Theo and Hazel and Mercy know. He is someone different, someone they do not know and would not like, even a little, if they did.
They all stand in silence, for one heartbeat, two, three, all staring at Prince Virgil with gaping-wide mouths. “I know you want the throne,” Prince Virgil says. “But you will never have it.” His face grows darker still, and the children, Theo and Mercy and Hazel, take one collective step back. “You will not have it.” His words clamber across their necks and chests, beating them in the most tender places.
It is no small sorrow to lose a friend. And that is precisely what is happening. They are all losing a friend. They know this. It is this, not the danger, that leads our brave Theo to speak.
“No,” he says. “No, I do not want your throne.” His hands move into the air, as if trying to find a rope, trying to pull his body up from the Swallowing Sand that has opened before him. “No.”
“Yes,” Prince Virgil says. But now his eyes have turned wild and stormy, and the wind has begun screaming, whipping their faces as his words whip their hearts. And then the worst words of them all: “My father knows.”
Hazel gasps. A new fear crawls over all of them, squeezing into their aching heads and their dried-out mouths and mostly their quaking hearts.
“I could not take your throne away,” Theo says. Remarkably, his voice remains calm. Remarkably, he keeps his head. Remarkably, he loves his friend, still, even after this ugliness. For Theo, you see, is a true friend, though one might argue that a friend who lies to another friend is really no friend at all. “I have no magic.”
“But you do,” Prince Virgil says. “I saw it.” He takes a step closer to the children, his whole face twisted into an ugly sneer. “Yesterday.” He points his finger. “Right over there.”
“It was I who did the magic,” Hazel says. Her voice, unlike her brother’s, has turned shrill. “It was I, Prince Virgil.”
“Yes, it was you,” Prince Virgil says. “That puppet came to him when he held out his hand because you made it.”
“Yes,” Hazel says. “Yes, of course.”
“The only way magic is passed through two is if you are twins,” Prince Virgil says. “I have read the magic books.” Prince Virgil’s cold eyes move from one of them to another, freezing them to their spots on the cobblestone path. His eyes rest on Theo. “Which means Theo has magic after all.”
Hazel gasps again, and Prince Virgil’s eyes flash in triumph. He has won. He has won this battle, for there is nothing left to say. And no one does, for some very long minutes. The wind speaks for them, shrieking and howling and tearing at their limbs. Who will stand the longest?
“Please,” Theo says. “I do not want your throne. I never have.”
“You lie,” Prince Virgil roars, and the wind comes behind him and picks up his words and lashes them against his friends so they blink and turn their faces away from the force. “You will never have it!”
Prince Virgil turns on his heel, presumably to run off. But he turns back to the children still frozen in fear. “He is coming,” he says. He stares at them each in turn, and then he runs with the wind, back up the hill to the palace, while the children stand in a wind that will not die until many more do.
***
IN the kingdom of Fairendale, Death does not come swiftly or easily. He is a man, dressed in black, roaming the streets only when he has become especially hungry for life. The villagers can usually feel him coming, though they cannot see him. At times he stands at a door for days or weeks or months, listening, living through the ones who still live. At times he comes in a great, rapid, unexpected flight and takes as many as he can with one hand, flinging cholera or dysentery or scarlet fever. They are quick and miserable illnesses, and he is always to blame.
He is invisible and unannounced. The living can only feel his cold, rancid breath on their faces.
Today, the village people look at one another. Today they wonder how it will come: quick or many days long. Today they wonder who.
Death is not a welcome guest, to be sure, though the villagers have become accustomed to his presence, for life does not last forever for anyone, not even the people of Fairendale. He is expected and yet unexpected. He is never easy.
If the villagers could see Death, they would, just now, see him walking into their village, his black robes still and calm, though the wind today is frightful. They would see him move past their houses. They would see him mark the top of a door here and another there. They would wonder if those marks mean what they think they mean.
They would see him lift his hand that is not really a hand but is, in fact, more white skeleton than flesh, and touch the door of Arthur and Maude and Hazel and Theo.
Which will it be? All? None?
Does the mark mean live or die?
There is not time for questions right now, reader.
Death continues moving, continues marking, until he reaches the very center of the village, where the fountain still spouts water, clear and pure.
There he waits.