It was late, the very same night. The packing of my trunk long
ago completed, I now sat watching the Princess prancing daftly
about in delightful feathery diaphanous scarves, gaily scattering
belongings first here and then across the room, as the gaggle of
girls giggled and gathered.
“We get to camp out! Under the stars!” she exclaimed, scurrying
about in giddy excitement. “I love camping out.”
Off to visit Aunt Peg, sister of the Princess’ mother, the
ex-Queen. Vanished Queen, hence unseen. Perhaps not simply
disappeared, but vanquished, banished. I should have prevented it
— I was the one — but how was I to know? In the corner I sat,
motionless in the shadow of remorse. But perhaps I was being too
harsh inflicting reflexive flagellation. How was I to know? That
the King and Queen would ride off to disappear, that the shadows
would draw long across the lawn, that whispers would grow, and
everyone know they should have returned? But not to panic.
It was only then that I searched as best I could, but found only
darkness. Only after they had not come back that I realized the
folly of my failure to prevent the dark magic. King Hieronymus
and Queen Megan, their laughter no more to be heard reverberating
from the walls and flagstones, and the best magic I could produce
was painfully inadequate.
How was I to know? The Sangrelysia I was born and flourished into
was a celebration, a paradise. Golden sunlight flooding rich
green grassy fields and forests full of colorful sweet-scented
flowers, chattering birds and prancing playful fauna. Jauntily we
rode, thundering across the plains, while a roaring fiery dragon
in the distance patrolled the Northern borders to turn back the
very evils which had descended, becoming now only too real.
It was always from the North that the vile ways of thinking would
arrive, the chilly chaotic land where pale-skinned invaders
schemed and fought amongst themselves. I had always thought to
close off the border entirely, but King Hieronymus would wisely
refuse. “A well-designed fortress always has a weakness,” he
would reply. So we, knowing the weakness, could anticipate the
course of the intruders.
Besides, now and again we would have a worthy visitor, one who
genuinely did not belong in the world-without-magic, who would
arrive and breathe a sigh of relief, settling in gently to our
peculiar ways without a tremor.
Back then, tales of ancient long ago battles had floated
carelessly across the breeze on the lips of overacting bards
intoxicated with conceit at their own storytelling. What could be
worse than a pompous narrator, unconcerned with the feelings of
the listener? But it was all in good fun, as it should have been.
“What about my harp?” the Princess shouted.
“Your Aunt Peg has one you can use, I’m sure,” I said. “The
carriage will already be stuffed full enough as it is.”
Her face fell.
“Alright, so take it along if you want. You’re the Princess.”
She beamed, running over to me, placing fingertips of both hands
gently on my knees, and kissed me on the lips. The kiss was a
lingering glimmer of the former joyful state, as our tongues met
and explored momentarily. Then she was across the room,
transporting some article of clutter from where it was to
somewhere else.
The Sangrelysia of my youth was pointedly carefree. We went out
of our way to indulge in reckless abandon. It was our mission,
our accomplishment. I grew up knowing about the dark secrets,
books filled with spells cast to cause pain and submission, but
why would I want to fill my head with such things?
It wasn’t until disaster struck that I found myself desperately
skimming such tedious, grey dusty volumes, clad in the spiderwebs
of neglect. I sat in my tower frantically seeking to fill in the
gaps. Into the shadows I had gazed, as far as I could, but still
nothing. Never before had I needed to look into the depths of
night with such intensity, shadows cast by invisible demons.
Yet unpracticed in the ways of darkness, I saw only vague forms,
slithering in the half-light, impossible to grasp. And my stomach
churned at the idea that someone had sought out such things, that
these very ideas so violently revulsed my mind, were intimately
cherished by some perverse creature, the form of whom I scarcely
dared imagine.
No longer innocent now, my eyes. Thief and detective must share
the same grimy affliction, obsession with the perverse. As
detective, forced to explore the hideous gears of criminal
churning, dutifully I descended to the depths of comprehension,
to follow the logic of the absurd, to trace the wires of greed
back to their source, compiling a mental map of the terrible
circuitry. To foil the devices of evil, one must trace the course
of cramped paranoid desire, hunch over to occupy the grim hovel
of dread and deceit, to reveal the tangled, obfuscated workings
lurking within.
Had I been looking with the eyes of today, perhaps the answer
would have emerged. But submerged instead into the inky mud, it
has already been enveloped in the depths. And the kingdom became
as a ship rent by jagged reefs, sinking in mired decay. Behind
ones back, the weeds and thorns may grow, the spiderwebs and
mildew overwhelm all that is fair and bounteous, the insects
devour the interior of the support beams, leaving behind only the
thin veneer of apparent strength.
Then the insect emperor, greatest of cockroaches, King George
himself swept in, and toppled the beauty of the old ways. Brought
down with the nudge of a finger, the beautiful, venerable but
naive majesty of centuries-old wisdom was no match for the
cold-hearted ambition of power-lust.
Too long had we averted our gaze with carefree youthful
arrogance. Too long had dark magic been permitted to fester. The
ascension council bribed or poisoned, or corrupted by evil
incantations. The council, for want of eligible heir, crowned
George as the brother of the King. Rumors of the evil doings of a
certain wizard Elwrong, master of darts, were instantly quashed,
and the official news was twisted to proclaim the glory and
virtue of the new King.
The princess skipped, then flounced onto the bed, out of sight
amid giggles behind the sweeping pleated curve of the regally
amethyst velvet curtain, leaving me to only imagine the soft
tickles and girl-snuggles within. The curtain, drawn back by an
ornate cincture, hung from the false draped sky suspended from
four intricately lathed wooden posts.
In my pocket, my fingernail clicked the cold, smooth surface of
the crystalline globe I had found, the one the Princess had
fathomed more deeply than I (perhaps I was irrelevant after all).
The crystal ball, I felt a need to keep with me now, disturbing
though it was. Somehow it held the key to unlock the secret of
the theft that had so cruelly taken place. Worse than the theft
of an Empire, the devastation of an ideal.
Was my struggle only futile? How long would I need to continue
digging into the stinking bowels of deceitful lies? To disinter
the gruesome worm-eaten carcasses? In the end, would it even make
any difference?
In vain, I listened for even a whisper of the voices of my
ancestors, the nameless wizard who held the post before me, who
so calmly instructed me in the ways of magic. I had a name back
then (not telling, sorry!) until he conferred on me the sacred
status of namelessness, so that he could recede into the autumn
sunlight, to bask in the fading yellow rays. Now I could
understand the faint sadness that I found such a mystery in my
youth, the elegiac longing of one who had stared evil in the face
and now reminisced on the days prior to such knowledge.
Mercifully, he had departed, with a faint smile on his face,
faintness to match the sadness that had so mystified me. A face I
could almost no longer remember, as the glaze of each passing
sunset varnished another layer of gray fog over the memories to
which I clung.
A scuffle and flurry, a handful of bounces, and my Princess stood
grinning, face upturned to me. “Hi,” she said.
“Hello,” I reluctantly replied.
“Why so sad?”
A heavy sigh, I’m afraid. “Thinking about your mom and dad.”
She thought, and shrugged, then grinned again. “You’ll find them,
don’t worry. And I’m going to help!”
Her idiotic, silly cheerful bluster brought drops of warm
refreshing salty moisture to my eyes. She put her arms around me,
and I caressed and held her delicate, fragile, sweet precious
softness with my palms and fingertips. It was her future that
kept me going. The woman she would become, and the men and women
who would emerge childhood into a world we were now creating.
Eventually, I let her go. I had to, so she could finish getting
ready.