Little Dreamers
Her name is Calysia Theamber. And she is drowning. She shouldn’t be by all logic. She was in a very large, posh looking room in the middle of an enormous castle with no indoor plumbing, roof wells, or even a rain bucket within several hundred feet of her. So to wake up in the dead of night to see water rising over the edge of her bed and soaking her nightgown caused a shock. She did the smart thing by rushing through the rapidly swelling water to see if the door would open. Of course it was locked and though all the latches were on the inside, they did not budge. If she was a smart girl she would have swum back towards her bed, or her tall dresser, and waited for the weight of the water to break the locks or the hinges, and grant her freedom. Unfortunately she was a princess which meant that she was being raised as a damsel in distress. She screamed at the top of her lungs for help and pounded on the unyielding wood of the door.
The weight of her wet clothes pulled her under the water before she had realized it had risen so high. Her upbringing had ingrained in her the thought that to be seen out of proper attire would be tantamount to public suicide; it didn’t cover the fact that swimming in thirty pounds of saturated satin and linen was a guaranteed private suicide. Calysia struggled to swim to the surface but her strength, so wisely spent beating on the door, was failing her and she was soon pulled beneath the quietly rising tide. Her eyes were wide open as she slowly sank to the floor of her room and saw her toys and possessions floating merrily around her. She had everything she had ever wanted but none of it could help her now. Alone, and in the dark, the last breath of air escaped her burning lungs.
Fear and panic dissolved into a calm acceptance in her final moments. A dignified death was expected of someone of her position. She resolved herself to that fate and she was a complete idiot for doing so. And I could say that because, well, she was me in a sense.
It’s complicated.
***
I burst to the surface of the water with a cough for air and a mad struggling of limbs. I sucked deep lungfuls of the life giving substance and as it restored me, I stilled my flailing arms to just the gentle motions of treading water. My deprived brain swam with the sudden influx of oxygen and I felt dizzy as I tried to get my bearings. A distinct ‘plunk’ near my head made me circle about in the cold water to find a small brightly colored wooden bobber bounced in the waves I had created. The line it was attached to ran towards a small shore beneath an old stone bridge where a bulky figure in flannel worked his fishing pole.
“You’re scaring away the fish, Lucinda.” Gorty, my self-designated subconscious, admonished me from his usual perch on an old metal bucket.
“Sorry.” I managed between chattering teeth. The water was cold and I was probably in shock. Not real shock, just a kind of borrowed shock. I didn’t want to get into it until I was warm and dry. I used Gorty’s line as a guide to shore and rejoiced to see his small fire burning in the center of the ancient circle of stone. It encouraged me to swim harder which wasn’t so difficult when you were only wearing a single thin layer of cotton pajamas. The muddy banks of the small meandering creek were not as slippery as I always believed they would be and I pulled myself from the water with ease. Which was good because Gorty made no move to help me, but then again that wasn’t what he was there for. I waddled, the only way to move in cold dripping clothes, to the small glowing fire and stuck as much of myself over its rising heat as I could. “I didn’t ruin your fishing, did I?”
“Only the rain can ruin a good day of fishing.” The bulky man spoke over his shoulder.
“I thought that not catching anything would make for a bad day.” I sniffed and wiped a half dry hand over my still wet face, trying to get the straggling drips that tickled where they ran.
“Then you have never gone fishing before.” Gorty reeled his line in a little. “It is never about the fish.”
I turned myself around and hung my head back to let my hair spill out and catch more heat. I knew that none of what I was doing was any good. And not because having wet clothes meant I wouldn’t really get warmed up until they were dry. This was all just a dream. It all had been. The drowning, the swimming, the fire, Gorty, all of it. Just one very intense, very real dream. I've had them before. This, I will admit, was the first one in which I had been killed. I had come close before but that had been the last time I had seen Gorty. Which peaked my curiosity as to why I was seeing him now.
“It is never about the fish.” I put emphasis on the 'is' and took a step away from the fire. I had been too wrapped up in the illusion of the fire and drowning to not notice it the first time. Normally when I was in this dreamscape, or whatever it should be called, the lucidity of the place would fracture and warp as I moved and interacted with it. I remembered the bridge would stretch to infinity and the water would shrink to a ribbon, and then it would all snap back together. But now, nothing. I took a few hops to test it out and still it remained exactly as it was.
“If you want a fish you can go to the market. If you want to catch a fish you can have someone throw it at you.” Gorty pulled his line all the way in. He reached his thick hand down and dug a fat slimy worm out of a bag by his feet. I had to look away as he impaled the poor thing on his barbed hook.
“So what’s it all about?” I knew this was a vastly loaded question. I only ever saw Gorty when I was not dealing with something in my life or, more accurately, not dealing with it properly. Last time, well, I had to deal with a lot. Elves, Trolls, a homicidal creature that killed with fear, and that didn’t even get as bad as discovering my family wasn’t my real family and that I might not have actually been myself. I was me now, or I was me all along, I just didn’t know it at the time. And seeing myself as Calysia meant that I might not be anymore. My family, the ones that were not my real ones but more real than any other, liked to always avoid telling me things with the excuse that it was complicated. And this time it was.
“It is about peace and connecting with something more than yourself and yet still a part of yourself." A typically cryptic answer from Gorty. I hated the part of myself that liked to present the solution to my troubles in a riddle.
“You were a lot more helpful last time I had weird dreams.” I mumbled. I really didn’t know why I bothered. I could have said it in my head and he would have still heard me.
“You were younger then.” I could almost hear the smile in his words.
“It has only been a year and a half.” An awkward year and a half.
“And you have grown so much in such a short period of time.” Gorty slung his line back into the water. “But if you wish to be treated as a child still...”
“No!” I snapped at my subconscious and this time the fake reality did react and shiver. That's a little more like it, I ruefully thought.
“Then go out into the world and figure out what it all means for yourself.” The line in Gorty’s hand jerked violently towards the creek. “See what you can catch.”
I prepared a haughty laugh for the pun but an ear piercing wail tore me from the land of fishing and insight.
***
I angrily swatted my alarm clock silent and nearly off my nightstand. The dreams had denied me a good night’s sleep and in frustration I flopped back onto my pillow. I rubbed my face and ran my hands up through my hair. They came back dripping wet.
Homework and Hope
“So why didn’t you tell your uncle?” Frankie asked. With the ‘psh’ of the air brakes releasing and the school bus revving up to move down the block I had to have him repeat the question.
“You know why.” I spat in annoyance as we started to walk the opposite direction of our transportation. I would have actually spat if one, I could, not due to it being unladylike but it was a messy process whenever I attempted it, and two, if it wasn’t such a cold afternoon. The stuff inside my nose already felt frozen so I assumed anything that tried to escape me, that wasn’t breath, would be solid before it hit the ground.
“I do?” Frankie looked at me in confusion. Or I assume he did. The blast-shielding thick glasses that dominated his face were steaming over from the breath that escaped from his coat's high collar. “I think if I knew I would not have asked.”
If it was anyone else, I would have thought they were being sarcastic, but Frankie was cursed with being very literal about things. It was the burden of our friendship. Considering he was my only friend it was a burden that I gladly shouldered.
“You probably knew without knowing.” I explained. “He would just tell me that it was all a strange dream and that it didn’t mean anything. And that I was wasting energy fretting over something so superficial.”
“Oh.” Frankie fiddled with a loose mitten. “I don’t think I knew any of that.”
“He would say something about not being stimulated enough either in school or at home and suggest chores or other activities to curb such a rampant imagination.” I tisked in a tone mocking my uncle and faked his accent to curse, “Idleness.”
“I don’t think it was a dream.” Frankie said, after I steered him around the corner before he tripped into a garbage can. I wanted to sound all shocked and say ‘You don’t?’ but knew it was a waste. “You said you knew that you were Calysia?”
“Yeah.” I had a sneaking suspicion that Frankie was going to voice the very same thought that had occurred to me.
“Then perhaps it’s the Changeling thing.” Frankie shrugged his small shoulders beneath his massive winter coat. I was right and that didn’t make me feel any better. Out in the world, both seen and unseen, there were two perfect copies of me running around pretending to be me. Well, not pretending. Most likely they never even thought for a moment that they were not exactly who they were or had been since the first moment that their brains had formulated a sense of self. And if it wasn’t for Frankie, I would have thought the same thing for the rest of my life. He had monkey-wrenched my life and for one horrible weekend I had doubted my very existence. But now I knew the truth. I am Lucy Bison, the original, and my two changeling doppelgangers existed as a kind of mental and emotional leech, sustaining their false sense of being from a connection that we all shared. A connection that I hadn't even suspected or noticed until recently.
“But why would this be happening now?” I asked the question that had been burning inside me since I woke up and formulated the dread theory. “I mean, we three have coexisted this long without me dreaming about them.”
“But that was before you knew they did exist. Perhaps that’s all it took.”
“Just knowing they existed made me start to dream about them?” I gave Frankie my best doubtful look.
“It is not likely that you would dream of them before you knew about them. How would you have known anyway?”
The second burden of my friendship with Frankie was his frequency to be right about things. I had slowly become aware of the fact that I didn’t know everything and that there was an entire world out there that he already had some knowledge of. I was just aware. I didn’t like it or admit it to Frankie, I just deferred to his judgment in those matters without admitting my own deficiencies. And I was certainly not going to tell him that he was right if it could be helped.
“That is one way to consider it.” I gave it a dismissive wave of my hand, learned expertly from my grandmother.
“What’s another way?” He happily asked as we turned down the driveway to my house.
“Well,” I had to think quick, “perhaps what my uncle would tell me, if I told him, is the truth. It is all just imagination and probably a desire to be somebody else.”
“Why would you want to be anybody else?” Frankie sounded shocked by the very idea.
“Why wouldn’t I?” I was equally astounded that he asked. “I would love to be someone who isn’t harassed at school constantly, who doesn’t have to live their life under lock and key.” Less scared, more beautiful. Maybe someone who didn’t know that there was a whole world of creatures that only a very special few knew about or even saw. “Wouldn’t you want to be someone else?”
“If I was someone else, then I don’t think I would know that I wanted to be that and not someone else.” Frankie fiddled with his glasses.
“Like how you can’t change the past because if you managed to, you would never know what you went back in time to change in the first place.” The classic time paradox argument. It had the effect of making Frankie stop as all his brain power became devoted to the task of sorting out the thought. I grabbed his sleeve and kept him moving to the back door.
“How would I never know that if I just did it?” He asked as I opened the door to the house and was overwhelmed by the wonderful scent of blueberry muffins.
“The complexity of temporal science is something I can’t get into with you right now.” I said, happy that there was one subject that I would have an advantage on him in the future, no pun intended.
“Is she speaking the nonsense of science fiction, again?” Uncle Mort said, coming back into the kitchen and going to the oven.
“It is called speculative fiction, nowadays.” I corrected my uncle as he reached in to pull out a tray of hot muffins. It unnerved me that he could do so barehanded and with no ill effect.
“In my day it was called alchemy. Or witchcraft.” He chuckled to himself.
“Would you ever want to be someone else, Mr. Claus?” Frankie asked.
It looked to me like he was someone else already. He was the picture of domesticity as he grabbed a stick of butter and rubbed it across the golden tops of his baking endeavors. I couldn’t actually remember the last time I had seen him bake anything that wasn’t bread or a birthday cake. It made me worry that there was a special occasion coming up that I didn’t know about.
“Wanting something impossible is a waste of energy.” Uncle Mort said sharply. “It is better to know and accept what is within your realm of control and maximize its potential to your benefit.”
“That is what I was thinking.” Frankie said, giving me a look after he took off his coat. I don’t know if he did it on purpose, but more often than not he took my uncle’s side.
“You would not change just one thing about your life.” I pressed the point on Frankie and saw the intense stare from my uncle. “Not even to no longer wear your glasses.”
“My glasses protect my eyes.” Frankie said, touching them defensively.
“Yeah, but wouldn’t you like it to be that you didn’t need to protect your eyes.” I knew we were getting off our original topic but that is how most conversations went with Frankie. One minute we were discussing Genghis Kahn and next thing you know we were arguing over wallpaper patterns. Not kidding.
“You should always protect your eyes.” Frankie said decisively.
“Listen to your friend on this one, Lucy.” Uncle Mort set two muffins on a plate and carried them into the dining room. “Unless you have a heightened sense like one of the Heralds you need every one that you have.”
“More so if you're a Wisp.” Frankie said as we followed after my uncle.
“They have fewer senses or something?” I didn’t understand what he was getting at and didn’t know any other way to ask without sounding stupid.
“No. They are very much in tune with their sense of sight.” Uncle Mort answered for my friend.
“They are the Herald of the air.” Frankie told me what I already knew. “So they have eyes like a bird.”
“Not like a bird.” My uncle corrected him which I always. “They have a third eyelid similar to a bird and the same level field of focus, but their eyes generally appear like a human.”
“That’s what I meant.” Frankie defended his statement.
“Then that is what you should have said.” Uncle Mort set the plate between my seat and Frankie’s as we began to pull our homework out of our book bags. “So what is this project that you must collaborate on?”
“We need to make a diorama for Halloween.” I told him and felt the tingle of nerves in my stomach. There was something I did want to talk to my uncle about and it was dream related. A dream I wanted to come true.
“And your teacher thought that it would take two people to complete?” I wasn’t sure if he was confused or disappointed.
“Mrs. Howard likes to make us pair up on projects all the time.” I shrugged. “She says it's good for team building and socializing, or something.”
“But the two of you are always the two working on them together. How does this help with socializing if there is no variance to the teams?” I remember saying once that my uncle and I didn’t talk much about things that didn’t directly affect his duties as my guardian. Since the attack on my life a few summers ago, that had slowly changed. He had opened up and we, dare I say, shared more of our lives with one another. There were a few things that he still kept the lid on and that was fine because I did that too. He still got uncomfortable sharing a portion of the information but I think he was warming up to the idea that knowing more didn’t put me in harm’s way but helped me to identify the threat before it could harm me.
“No one else wants to partner with us.” Frankie sadly said. I sympathized for him. He had come to this school and this town with the hope that he would be accepted and be able to make friends. It was his parent's hope too. So far he had made me as a friend, and that was it. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was what was holding him back in the social standings. I mean, befriending the least popular kid was not the smart move before the first day of classes.
“I have seen both of your report cards,” Mine because he was supposed to; Frankie’s because he was bragging, “and you both are exceptional by today's educational standards.”
I worried about what standards he was comparing us to. I knew that my uncle was younger than my grandmother who bragged about centuries, but I had yet to get a specific year from him. One of the remaining secrets between us.
“Our social standing doesn’t correlate with our intelligence.” I reported and my uncle gave a nod of understanding.
“Society is full of people who were never appreciated by their peers for their inherent greatness.” He tucked his head as a dark cloud came over his face. “Let us wave the flag for the inbred king but spit on the man who keeps the people fed.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I grabbed one of the muffins and took a big bite. Words and thoughts failed me as my mouth exploded in delicious sensations. It was quite possibly the best tasting thing I had ever devoured. And I do mean devoured because it was gone within seconds and I covetously eyeballed the one that was still sitting on the plate. Frankie saw my hungry look and picked up the muffin to take a small nibble. Once I swallowed the last piece of mine, I praised my uncle endlessly. It didn't earn me a second muffin but the promise for another after dinner. A rare treat indeed.
“Speaking of social matters,” I began nonchalantly, keeping my true intention vague for the moment, ”Halloween is coming up in a few days.”
“Very astute of you.” Uncle Mort said, delivering two cups of milk for Frankie and I and picking up the now empty plate. “Your powers of observation and deduction are either at their peak, which is most unfortunate, or I have given you some strange impression of not being aware of the calendar and the holidays that fall on them.”
I frowned at the remark but carried on.
“Well since you mentioned observations,” I was learning to turn his words back at him on the occasions I really wanted something, and I really wanted this, “it is customary for children and adults to observe the holiday with several traditions. For example, carving jack-o’-lanterns.”
“There are better uses for a pumpkin.” Uncle Mort said strictly. “And for a knife.”
“There is decorating.” I shuddered at my uncle’s chilly mention of the weapon and the images of his efficiency with it.
“I may be okay with displaying a witch burning at the stake in the front yard.”
“I don’t think Mother Morgan would care for that.” Frankie piped up. Most times that I was over to his house and he would be bugging his parents for something, I would stay out of it. It seemed a courtesy and I had no right to butt in. That, and I couldn’t stand watching Frankie beg like a little kid.
“Handing out candy.” I was testing the water of intent with my toe.
“And promote diabetes and tooth decay? I think not.” I followed my uncle into the kitchen, removing Frankie’s opinions from the conversation.
“You could hand out apples.” Why not? Every kid avoided the houses that handed out apples but all the kids in the town avoided my house already. And no one would dare throw an egg or a roll of toilet paper at it in retaliation either. My uncle’s influence on the neighborhood, no doubt.
“Hand them out to whom?” Uncle Mort had not looked my way once during this conversation which tipped me off that he was going to try to play this off by letting me talk myself into an argument I couldn’t get out of. He knew that I didn’t think that asking him directly would work and he had played his part perfectly. If he wasn’t so good at it, I might have actually gotten upset with him, but it was my own fault for trying to sneak one past him.
“I want to go trick-or-treating this Halloween.” There! It was out and no turning back now. Uncle Mort looked at me with his cold blue eyes for several long seconds and I tried to keep the pleading expression on my face to less than desperate.
“That reminds me,” he turned to the pantry, “we need more onions.”
“So is that a yes or a no?” I scurried ahead of him so he wouldn’t be able to hide his expressions from me. Not like they were easy to read in the first place.
“Neither. It means the household supply of onions is dangerously close to being exhausted.”
“I don’t care about onions.” He could be so frustrating.
“You do if they are not in your egg salad.” My mouth hung open as I couldn’t argue that and realized that I was chasing the wrong argument anyway.
“What about trick-or-treating?” I got back on point.
“What about it?”
“Can I go?”
“Go where?”
“Err!” I groaned and threw my hands in the air. My uncle was starting to creep up on levels of irritation that I had not experienced with him in a long time.
“Why the sudden desire to participate in this juvenile ritual?” Uncle Mort nudged me aside.
“Sudden!” I snapped. “I have wanted to do this for years. Ever since I learned there was a holiday where you get dressed up and got free candy. I stopped asking after the third year in a row that you told me no.”
“I assumed that was a phase.” Uncle Mort shrugged.
“How is wanting to do things like a normal kid a phase?”
“And what things do normal kids do?” I was caught in my uncle’s gaze. The one that said I had better have all my facts straight when I spoke next.
“Go trick-or-treating.” I waved my hands about because I was extremely uncertain on what normal was. Someone once said normal was relative, but they clearly hadn’t met mine. “Stuff like that.”
“'Stuff like that'?” Uncle Mort rolled the phrase around as he picked up a bottle of olive oil. “I am sure that you already do plenty of 'stuff like that', so you must be normal.”
“No I am not.” I all but shouted. If we were alone I might have. I was getting too irritated. But it also gave me an idea. “I am not a normal kid because of certain truths about my parentage.”
“Oh, so it’s blackmail is it.” Uncle Mort said the words with nearly a smile.
“That isn’t blackmail.” I didn’t think. “All I'm saying is that you are always trying to keep me a big secret from the world and when I was younger that probably worked, but I am getting older and that means an increase in social awareness and activity. If you try to keep me under wraps, it will look suspicious.” The smile vanished from Uncle Mort’s face and he actually appeared to be listening to me. “Halloween is a way for me to get out there and do something normal but still provides adult supervision. It helps sell the whole non-fey-princess-thing.”
“I suppose.” Was that the faintest light of hope?
“And they always say the best place to hide something is in plain sight.”
“And they are wrong.” My uncle’s serious face returned. “The best place to hide something is the first place you would look because once you don’t find it there it is the last place you check again.”
“Fine.” I crossed my arms over my chest and stood right in his way again. “They are wrong but I'm not and I want to go trick-or-treating with Frankie.”
“Ah.” My uncle said it with the air that it all made sense to him now. “So this is Francis’ influence coming out.”
“What? No.” Well, a little bit. He had been going off for the last few days about going trick-or-treating and asking me if I was going to go too. It sucked to tell him that I would not. One more thing that he got to know and experience that I never would.
“If the boy jumped off a bridge, would you do the same?” Wow, that was a chestnut I never thought I would hear uttered by my uncle. He actually looked a little proud at having said it.
“This is Frankie. He would spend three hours arguing with the bridge before he ever jumped off it.” Uncle Mort gave a nod of begrudged understanding. I decided to give him the full story after that. “He is going out trick-or-treating on Halloween and asked me to go with him. Actually, his parents asked if I would be going out too. Even offered to chaperon the two of us if you wanted to stay home and hand out candy. I told them that you do not and they said they would be okay if you wanted to tag along. Tim actually said that if you wanted to go along, Cecilia would stay at home and hand out candy because–.”
“He doesn’t trust me alone with his wife.” Uncle Mort looked a little ashamed. I think that was one of my uncle’s biggest regrets. Cecilia was a good and kind woman and he never should have tried to kill her. Her husband never let him forget it and I don’t think either man would ever forgive Uncle Mort.
“Yeah.” I sighed. Not much could be said to change what had happened or make it better. Uncle Mort just played nice with Tim and did nothing to cause them any concern for their own safety. I decided I would get off the sensitive subjects and back on point. “Besides, I am nearly eleven years old which means next year I will be too old to go out on Halloween, so this is the last chance I will get to do it.”
“So why would you want to experience it this one time and forever be denied the chance to do it again?”
“Why?” Why! Maybe because I felt like I had a lifetime of experiences robbed from me by my over protective family. Or perhaps that I knew I was not an average kid but would enjoy the few opportunities to be one and forget about who I really was. Maybe I just wanted candy and to wear a dumb rubber mask for one night, or to not have one more thing to be jealous of my friend for. I had too many reasons and none of them seemed good enough or right enough to say without hurting an uncle who always tried to do his best with me. “Because it is something I would really like to do. No matter how much it might hurt later.”
“Very well.” Uncle Mort said, returning the oil to the shelf. I almost threw my hands down in my first tantrum in a long time until it dawned on me.
“Very well?” I repeated catching up to him. “As in yes.”
“As in you going trick-or-treating depends on if we can very well find you a costume in time.” My jaw hit my chest and I think there was the slightest hint of a smile on Uncle Mort’s lips. It is a good thing he put down his bottle because I couldn’t help wrapping him up in the biggest hug my skinny arms could manage. I didn’t even stop when he complained that I was making a fuss over nothing.
***
“What have you learned, Captain?” Juni lowered the smoked prism from her eye and turned to salute the All King. He snarled at the gesture and waved it away.
“How fares the princess?” She asked, tucking the crystal away into a leather pouch on her hip.
“She is being tended to.” Manus said irritably. He glanced around at the servants that were still diligently swabbing water from the hall floor. Juni had never seen the All King give his retainers more than a second look before. He was clearly being cautious. “Your findings, Captain?”
“A few things of interest, my liege.” Juni crouched down to the edge of the door frame. It was mostly splintered and broke, riddled with deep gouges from where guards and servants had hacked at the wood with whatever implements they had at hand. “I calculated that the amount of water that could have accumulated in the room should have been sufficient to tear the doors off their hinges long before it reached the top of the frame.”
“Your men reported that it was leaking water from the top sill when they sprang into action.” Manus glared at one of the guards that still stood on duty next to the shattered portal. Juni knew the man and knew he was as good a guard as the next. She hadn’t conducted interviews of her own people but had turned it over to the chief steward as a way to show that she was not giving partiality to any member that could have under-performed in the situation.
“That is because of the wood's enchantments.” Juni knelt down on the damp floor and tugged on a sliver of wood that had been holding viciously onto a crack in the stone. She turned it over to show the small roots to the All King. He looked as unimpressed as she knew he would. “I know that there were several wards set in the door over the years to increase the security for your heir, but as we both know, they were set on the outside of the room. Whomever is responsible for this heinous act somehow managed to simply move them to the inside of the room.”
“And the Art in the wood interpreted the water as some kind of assault and reinforced itself. Locking my daughter in there to drown.” Manus angrily slammed his fist into the remains of the door frame. “Where did the water come from, Captain?”
“That is another interesting thing.” Juni hurried into the princess's room, the carpet squelching under her armored feet.
“I am so glad the attempted assassination of my daughter is so fascinating to you.” Manus said bitterly. It made Juni hesitate in her actions. There was disappointment and an implication in the All King’s voice.
“I meant no disrespect, my liege.” Juni lowered her head subserviently, but kept her back to the ruler of the Elven nation.
“I know, Juni.” Manus said her name softly and touched a hand to her shoulder where the sash of her station ran. “I'm just out of sorts over this whole thing. I know you mean well.”
“This is an upsetting time for us all.” The captain of the guard kept her head bowed. She knew that there were those out there that would be upset at the news of the assassination attempt, but only in its failure. She did not wish her face to betray the knowledge that some of those people were closer than the All King would find comfortable. After a deep sigh of resolution, Manus gestured for Juni continue. “The cup.”
Laying nonplussed in the center of the saturated carpet, among the debris of toys, clothing, and various items of the princess’s station, was a simple brass chalice. It had some signs of age scratched into its metal surface and there were marks to indicate that at some point and time it was set with either stones or filigree from a richer metal.
“It is a cup of plenty.” Juni retrieved it and held it upright for Manus to inspect. The king took the cup and saw that it had filled itself to the brim in the space of time that it took to lift from the floor. “I haven’t seen one that worked correctly in several centuries. I don’t know how it was done, but it has been altered in some way to not recognize when it became full. That is what flooded the room.”
“Why is it not overflowing now?” Manus dumped the cup out on the floor and turned it back up to watch it fill again.
“That I am not sure of.” Juni took the cup back from the All King when he offered it. “I know that the princess always had it at her bedside should she ever get thirsty at night. I conjecture that it may have activated when she touched it and stopped when another person laid hands on it. I will need to examine it more thoroughly to be sure.”
“Have whomever touched the cup first questioned by the steward next. He may have touched it intentionally.” Manus slowly looked around the devastated remains of his lone heir’s room. “This was done by someone who knew this castle and knew our people. Not some red gloved assassin for hire.”
“Of course, my liege.” Juni was going to voice her other evidence when one of the clerics came hurrying to the room. She gave the guard a nod to let the man pass before the All King could turn to acknowledge the disturbance.
“Your majesty.” The cleric went to take a knee but Manus caught his arm and stopped him.
“What is it?” He snapped in the medical man’s face. “Is my daughter well?”
“It’s…we discovered something unbelievable, my liege.” The cleric refused to meet the All King’s penetrating gaze. “I fear that the news will displease you greatly.”
“If you do not speak to me of what has so distressed you, I will give you news that will displease you and your next of kin.” Manus did not threaten idly but very efficiently.
“It is the princess, my liege. She is…” The cleric looked around at the others within hearing distance and leaned in close to Manus to report. Juni steeled her reaction at over hearing the news nonetheless.
“She is a what?” The very walls of the castle shook with Manus’ rage.
Her name is Calysia Theamber. And she is drowning. She shouldn’t be by all logic. She was in a very large, posh looking room in the middle of an enormous castle with no indoor plumbing, roof wells, or even a rain bucket within several hundred feet of her. So to wake up in the dead of night to see water rising over the edge of her bed and soaking her nightgown caused a shock. She did the smart thing by rushing through the rapidly swelling water to see if the door would open. Of course it was locked and though all the latches were on the inside, they did not budge. If she was a smart girl she would have swum back towards her bed, or her tall dresser, and waited for the weight of the water to break the locks or the hinges, and grant her freedom. Unfortunately she was a princess which meant that she was being raised as a damsel in distress. She screamed at the top of her lungs for help and pounded on the unyielding wood of the door.
The weight of her wet clothes pulled her under the water before she had realized it had risen so high. Her upbringing had ingrained in her the thought that to be seen out of proper attire would be tantamount to public suicide; it didn’t cover the fact that swimming in thirty pounds of saturated satin and linen was a guaranteed private suicide. Calysia struggled to swim to the surface but her strength, so wisely spent beating on the door, was failing her and she was soon pulled beneath the quietly rising tide. Her eyes were wide open as she slowly sank to the floor of her room and saw her toys and possessions floating merrily around her. She had everything she had ever wanted but none of it could help her now. Alone, and in the dark, the last breath of air escaped her burning lungs.
Fear and panic dissolved into a calm acceptance in her final moments. A dignified death was expected of someone of her position. She resolved herself to that fate and she was a complete idiot for doing so. And I could say that because, well, she was me in a sense.
It’s complicated.
***
I burst to the surface of the water with a cough for air and a mad struggling of limbs. I sucked deep lungfuls of the life giving substance and as it restored me, I stilled my flailing arms to just the gentle motions of treading water. My deprived brain swam with the sudden influx of oxygen and I felt dizzy as I tried to get my bearings. A distinct ‘plunk’ near my head made me circle about in the cold water to find a small brightly colored wooden bobber bounced in the waves I had created. The line it was attached to ran towards a small shore beneath an old stone bridge where a bulky figure in flannel worked his fishing pole.
“You’re scaring away the fish, Lucinda.” Gorty, my self-designated subconscious, admonished me from his usual perch on an old metal bucket.
“Sorry.” I managed between chattering teeth. The water was cold and I was probably in shock. Not real shock, just a kind of borrowed shock. I didn’t want to get into it until I was warm and dry. I used Gorty’s line as a guide to shore and rejoiced to see his small fire burning in the center of the ancient circle of stone. It encouraged me to swim harder which wasn’t so difficult when you were only wearing a single thin layer of cotton pajamas. The muddy banks of the small meandering creek were not as slippery as I always believed they would be and I pulled myself from the water with ease. Which was good because Gorty made no move to help me, but then again that wasn’t what he was there for. I waddled, the only way to move in cold dripping clothes, to the small glowing fire and stuck as much of myself over its rising heat as I could. “I didn’t ruin your fishing, did I?”
“Only the rain can ruin a good day of fishing.” The bulky man spoke over his shoulder.
“I thought that not catching anything would make for a bad day.” I sniffed and wiped a half dry hand over my still wet face, trying to get the straggling drips that tickled where they ran.
“Then you have never gone fishing before.” Gorty reeled his line in a little. “It is never about the fish.”
I turned myself around and hung my head back to let my hair spill out and catch more heat. I knew that none of what I was doing was any good. And not because having wet clothes meant I wouldn’t really get warmed up until they were dry. This was all just a dream. It all had been. The drowning, the swimming, the fire, Gorty, all of it. Just one very intense, very real dream. I've had them before. This, I will admit, was the first one in which I had been killed. I had come close before but that had been the last time I had seen Gorty. Which peaked my curiosity as to why I was seeing him now.
“It is never about the fish.” I put emphasis on the 'is' and took a step away from the fire. I had been too wrapped up in the illusion of the fire and drowning to not notice it the first time. Normally when I was in this dreamscape, or whatever it should be called, the lucidity of the place would fracture and warp as I moved and interacted with it. I remembered the bridge would stretch to infinity and the water would shrink to a ribbon, and then it would all snap back together. But now, nothing. I took a few hops to test it out and still it remained exactly as it was.
“If you want a fish you can go to the market. If you want to catch a fish you can have someone throw it at you.” Gorty pulled his line all the way in. He reached his thick hand down and dug a fat slimy worm out of a bag by his feet. I had to look away as he impaled the poor thing on his barbed hook.
“So what’s it all about?” I knew this was a vastly loaded question. I only ever saw Gorty when I was not dealing with something in my life or, more accurately, not dealing with it properly. Last time, well, I had to deal with a lot. Elves, Trolls, a homicidal creature that killed with fear, and that didn’t even get as bad as discovering my family wasn’t my real family and that I might not have actually been myself. I was me now, or I was me all along, I just didn’t know it at the time. And seeing myself as Calysia meant that I might not be anymore. My family, the ones that were not my real ones but more real than any other, liked to always avoid telling me things with the excuse that it was complicated. And this time it was.
“It is about peace and connecting with something more than yourself and yet still a part of yourself." A typically cryptic answer from Gorty. I hated the part of myself that liked to present the solution to my troubles in a riddle.
“You were a lot more helpful last time I had weird dreams.” I mumbled. I really didn’t know why I bothered. I could have said it in my head and he would have still heard me.
“You were younger then.” I could almost hear the smile in his words.
“It has only been a year and a half.” An awkward year and a half.
“And you have grown so much in such a short period of time.” Gorty slung his line back into the water. “But if you wish to be treated as a child still...”
“No!” I snapped at my subconscious and this time the fake reality did react and shiver. That's a little more like it, I ruefully thought.
“Then go out into the world and figure out what it all means for yourself.” The line in Gorty’s hand jerked violently towards the creek. “See what you can catch.”
I prepared a haughty laugh for the pun but an ear piercing wail tore me from the land of fishing and insight.
***
I angrily swatted my alarm clock silent and nearly off my nightstand. The dreams had denied me a good night’s sleep and in frustration I flopped back onto my pillow. I rubbed my face and ran my hands up through my hair. They came back dripping wet.
Homework and Hope
“So why didn’t you tell your uncle?” Frankie asked. With the ‘psh’ of the air brakes releasing and the school bus revving up to move down the block I had to have him repeat the question.
“You know why.” I spat in annoyance as we started to walk the opposite direction of our transportation. I would have actually spat if one, I could, not due to it being unladylike but it was a messy process whenever I attempted it, and two, if it wasn’t such a cold afternoon. The stuff inside my nose already felt frozen so I assumed anything that tried to escape me, that wasn’t breath, would be solid before it hit the ground.
“I do?” Frankie looked at me in confusion. Or I assume he did. The blast-shielding thick glasses that dominated his face were steaming over from the breath that escaped from his coat's high collar. “I think if I knew I would not have asked.”
If it was anyone else, I would have thought they were being sarcastic, but Frankie was cursed with being very literal about things. It was the burden of our friendship. Considering he was my only friend it was a burden that I gladly shouldered.
“You probably knew without knowing.” I explained. “He would just tell me that it was all a strange dream and that it didn’t mean anything. And that I was wasting energy fretting over something so superficial.”
“Oh.” Frankie fiddled with a loose mitten. “I don’t think I knew any of that.”
“He would say something about not being stimulated enough either in school or at home and suggest chores or other activities to curb such a rampant imagination.” I tisked in a tone mocking my uncle and faked his accent to curse, “Idleness.”
“I don’t think it was a dream.” Frankie said, after I steered him around the corner before he tripped into a garbage can. I wanted to sound all shocked and say ‘You don’t?’ but knew it was a waste. “You said you knew that you were Calysia?”
“Yeah.” I had a sneaking suspicion that Frankie was going to voice the very same thought that had occurred to me.
“Then perhaps it’s the Changeling thing.” Frankie shrugged his small shoulders beneath his massive winter coat. I was right and that didn’t make me feel any better. Out in the world, both seen and unseen, there were two perfect copies of me running around pretending to be me. Well, not pretending. Most likely they never even thought for a moment that they were not exactly who they were or had been since the first moment that their brains had formulated a sense of self. And if it wasn’t for Frankie, I would have thought the same thing for the rest of my life. He had monkey-wrenched my life and for one horrible weekend I had doubted my very existence. But now I knew the truth. I am Lucy Bison, the original, and my two changeling doppelgangers existed as a kind of mental and emotional leech, sustaining their false sense of being from a connection that we all shared. A connection that I hadn't even suspected or noticed until recently.
“But why would this be happening now?” I asked the question that had been burning inside me since I woke up and formulated the dread theory. “I mean, we three have coexisted this long without me dreaming about them.”
“But that was before you knew they did exist. Perhaps that’s all it took.”
“Just knowing they existed made me start to dream about them?” I gave Frankie my best doubtful look.
“It is not likely that you would dream of them before you knew about them. How would you have known anyway?”
The second burden of my friendship with Frankie was his frequency to be right about things. I had slowly become aware of the fact that I didn’t know everything and that there was an entire world out there that he already had some knowledge of. I was just aware. I didn’t like it or admit it to Frankie, I just deferred to his judgment in those matters without admitting my own deficiencies. And I was certainly not going to tell him that he was right if it could be helped.
“That is one way to consider it.” I gave it a dismissive wave of my hand, learned expertly from my grandmother.
“What’s another way?” He happily asked as we turned down the driveway to my house.
“Well,” I had to think quick, “perhaps what my uncle would tell me, if I told him, is the truth. It is all just imagination and probably a desire to be somebody else.”
“Why would you want to be anybody else?” Frankie sounded shocked by the very idea.
“Why wouldn’t I?” I was equally astounded that he asked. “I would love to be someone who isn’t harassed at school constantly, who doesn’t have to live their life under lock and key.” Less scared, more beautiful. Maybe someone who didn’t know that there was a whole world of creatures that only a very special few knew about or even saw. “Wouldn’t you want to be someone else?”
“If I was someone else, then I don’t think I would know that I wanted to be that and not someone else.” Frankie fiddled with his glasses.
“Like how you can’t change the past because if you managed to, you would never know what you went back in time to change in the first place.” The classic time paradox argument. It had the effect of making Frankie stop as all his brain power became devoted to the task of sorting out the thought. I grabbed his sleeve and kept him moving to the back door.
“How would I never know that if I just did it?” He asked as I opened the door to the house and was overwhelmed by the wonderful scent of blueberry muffins.
“The complexity of temporal science is something I can’t get into with you right now.” I said, happy that there was one subject that I would have an advantage on him in the future, no pun intended.
“Is she speaking the nonsense of science fiction, again?” Uncle Mort said, coming back into the kitchen and going to the oven.
“It is called speculative fiction, nowadays.” I corrected my uncle as he reached in to pull out a tray of hot muffins. It unnerved me that he could do so barehanded and with no ill effect.
“In my day it was called alchemy. Or witchcraft.” He chuckled to himself.
“Would you ever want to be someone else, Mr. Claus?” Frankie asked.
It looked to me like he was someone else already. He was the picture of domesticity as he grabbed a stick of butter and rubbed it across the golden tops of his baking endeavors. I couldn’t actually remember the last time I had seen him bake anything that wasn’t bread or a birthday cake. It made me worry that there was a special occasion coming up that I didn’t know about.
“Wanting something impossible is a waste of energy.” Uncle Mort said sharply. “It is better to know and accept what is within your realm of control and maximize its potential to your benefit.”
“That is what I was thinking.” Frankie said, giving me a look after he took off his coat. I don’t know if he did it on purpose, but more often than not he took my uncle’s side.
“You would not change just one thing about your life.” I pressed the point on Frankie and saw the intense stare from my uncle. “Not even to no longer wear your glasses.”
“My glasses protect my eyes.” Frankie said, touching them defensively.
“Yeah, but wouldn’t you like it to be that you didn’t need to protect your eyes.” I knew we were getting off our original topic but that is how most conversations went with Frankie. One minute we were discussing Genghis Kahn and next thing you know we were arguing over wallpaper patterns. Not kidding.
“You should always protect your eyes.” Frankie said decisively.
“Listen to your friend on this one, Lucy.” Uncle Mort set two muffins on a plate and carried them into the dining room. “Unless you have a heightened sense like one of the Heralds you need every one that you have.”
“More so if you're a Wisp.” Frankie said as we followed after my uncle.
“They have fewer senses or something?” I didn’t understand what he was getting at and didn’t know any other way to ask without sounding stupid.
“No. They are very much in tune with their sense of sight.” Uncle Mort answered for my friend.
“They are the Herald of the air.” Frankie told me what I already knew. “So they have eyes like a bird.”
“Not like a bird.” My uncle corrected him which I always. “They have a third eyelid similar to a bird and the same level field of focus, but their eyes generally appear like a human.”
“That’s what I meant.” Frankie defended his statement.
“Then that is what you should have said.” Uncle Mort set the plate between my seat and Frankie’s as we began to pull our homework out of our book bags. “So what is this project that you must collaborate on?”
“We need to make a diorama for Halloween.” I told him and felt the tingle of nerves in my stomach. There was something I did want to talk to my uncle about and it was dream related. A dream I wanted to come true.
“And your teacher thought that it would take two people to complete?” I wasn’t sure if he was confused or disappointed.
“Mrs. Howard likes to make us pair up on projects all the time.” I shrugged. “She says it's good for team building and socializing, or something.”
“But the two of you are always the two working on them together. How does this help with socializing if there is no variance to the teams?” I remember saying once that my uncle and I didn’t talk much about things that didn’t directly affect his duties as my guardian. Since the attack on my life a few summers ago, that had slowly changed. He had opened up and we, dare I say, shared more of our lives with one another. There were a few things that he still kept the lid on and that was fine because I did that too. He still got uncomfortable sharing a portion of the information but I think he was warming up to the idea that knowing more didn’t put me in harm’s way but helped me to identify the threat before it could harm me.
“No one else wants to partner with us.” Frankie sadly said. I sympathized for him. He had come to this school and this town with the hope that he would be accepted and be able to make friends. It was his parent's hope too. So far he had made me as a friend, and that was it. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was what was holding him back in the social standings. I mean, befriending the least popular kid was not the smart move before the first day of classes.
“I have seen both of your report cards,” Mine because he was supposed to; Frankie’s because he was bragging, “and you both are exceptional by today's educational standards.”
I worried about what standards he was comparing us to. I knew that my uncle was younger than my grandmother who bragged about centuries, but I had yet to get a specific year from him. One of the remaining secrets between us.
“Our social standing doesn’t correlate with our intelligence.” I reported and my uncle gave a nod of understanding.
“Society is full of people who were never appreciated by their peers for their inherent greatness.” He tucked his head as a dark cloud came over his face. “Let us wave the flag for the inbred king but spit on the man who keeps the people fed.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I grabbed one of the muffins and took a big bite. Words and thoughts failed me as my mouth exploded in delicious sensations. It was quite possibly the best tasting thing I had ever devoured. And I do mean devoured because it was gone within seconds and I covetously eyeballed the one that was still sitting on the plate. Frankie saw my hungry look and picked up the muffin to take a small nibble. Once I swallowed the last piece of mine, I praised my uncle endlessly. It didn't earn me a second muffin but the promise for another after dinner. A rare treat indeed.
“Speaking of social matters,” I began nonchalantly, keeping my true intention vague for the moment, ”Halloween is coming up in a few days.”
“Very astute of you.” Uncle Mort said, delivering two cups of milk for Frankie and I and picking up the now empty plate. “Your powers of observation and deduction are either at their peak, which is most unfortunate, or I have given you some strange impression of not being aware of the calendar and the holidays that fall on them.”
I frowned at the remark but carried on.
“Well since you mentioned observations,” I was learning to turn his words back at him on the occasions I really wanted something, and I really wanted this, “it is customary for children and adults to observe the holiday with several traditions. For example, carving jack-o’-lanterns.”
“There are better uses for a pumpkin.” Uncle Mort said strictly. “And for a knife.”
“There is decorating.” I shuddered at my uncle’s chilly mention of the weapon and the images of his efficiency with it.
“I may be okay with displaying a witch burning at the stake in the front yard.”
“I don’t think Mother Morgan would care for that.” Frankie piped up. Most times that I was over to his house and he would be bugging his parents for something, I would stay out of it. It seemed a courtesy and I had no right to butt in. That, and I couldn’t stand watching Frankie beg like a little kid.
“Handing out candy.” I was testing the water of intent with my toe.
“And promote diabetes and tooth decay? I think not.” I followed my uncle into the kitchen, removing Frankie’s opinions from the conversation.
“You could hand out apples.” Why not? Every kid avoided the houses that handed out apples but all the kids in the town avoided my house already. And no one would dare throw an egg or a roll of toilet paper at it in retaliation either. My uncle’s influence on the neighborhood, no doubt.
“Hand them out to whom?” Uncle Mort had not looked my way once during this conversation which tipped me off that he was going to try to play this off by letting me talk myself into an argument I couldn’t get out of. He knew that I didn’t think that asking him directly would work and he had played his part perfectly. If he wasn’t so good at it, I might have actually gotten upset with him, but it was my own fault for trying to sneak one past him.
“I want to go trick-or-treating this Halloween.” There! It was out and no turning back now. Uncle Mort looked at me with his cold blue eyes for several long seconds and I tried to keep the pleading expression on my face to less than desperate.
“That reminds me,” he turned to the pantry, “we need more onions.”
“So is that a yes or a no?” I scurried ahead of him so he wouldn’t be able to hide his expressions from me. Not like they were easy to read in the first place.
“Neither. It means the household supply of onions is dangerously close to being exhausted.”
“I don’t care about onions.” He could be so frustrating.
“You do if they are not in your egg salad.” My mouth hung open as I couldn’t argue that and realized that I was chasing the wrong argument anyway.
“What about trick-or-treating?” I got back on point.
“What about it?”
“Can I go?”
“Go where?”
“Err!” I groaned and threw my hands in the air. My uncle was starting to creep up on levels of irritation that I had not experienced with him in a long time.
“Why the sudden desire to participate in this juvenile ritual?” Uncle Mort nudged me aside.
“Sudden!” I snapped. “I have wanted to do this for years. Ever since I learned there was a holiday where you get dressed up and got free candy. I stopped asking after the third year in a row that you told me no.”
“I assumed that was a phase.” Uncle Mort shrugged.
“How is wanting to do things like a normal kid a phase?”
“And what things do normal kids do?” I was caught in my uncle’s gaze. The one that said I had better have all my facts straight when I spoke next.
“Go trick-or-treating.” I waved my hands about because I was extremely uncertain on what normal was. Someone once said normal was relative, but they clearly hadn’t met mine. “Stuff like that.”
“'Stuff like that'?” Uncle Mort rolled the phrase around as he picked up a bottle of olive oil. “I am sure that you already do plenty of 'stuff like that', so you must be normal.”
“No I am not.” I all but shouted. If we were alone I might have. I was getting too irritated. But it also gave me an idea. “I am not a normal kid because of certain truths about my parentage.”
“Oh, so it’s blackmail is it.” Uncle Mort said the words with nearly a smile.
“That isn’t blackmail.” I didn’t think. “All I'm saying is that you are always trying to keep me a big secret from the world and when I was younger that probably worked, but I am getting older and that means an increase in social awareness and activity. If you try to keep me under wraps, it will look suspicious.” The smile vanished from Uncle Mort’s face and he actually appeared to be listening to me. “Halloween is a way for me to get out there and do something normal but still provides adult supervision. It helps sell the whole non-fey-princess-thing.”
“I suppose.” Was that the faintest light of hope?
“And they always say the best place to hide something is in plain sight.”
“And they are wrong.” My uncle’s serious face returned. “The best place to hide something is the first place you would look because once you don’t find it there it is the last place you check again.”
“Fine.” I crossed my arms over my chest and stood right in his way again. “They are wrong but I'm not and I want to go trick-or-treating with Frankie.”
“Ah.” My uncle said it with the air that it all made sense to him now. “So this is Francis’ influence coming out.”
“What? No.” Well, a little bit. He had been going off for the last few days about going trick-or-treating and asking me if I was going to go too. It sucked to tell him that I would not. One more thing that he got to know and experience that I never would.
“If the boy jumped off a bridge, would you do the same?” Wow, that was a chestnut I never thought I would hear uttered by my uncle. He actually looked a little proud at having said it.
“This is Frankie. He would spend three hours arguing with the bridge before he ever jumped off it.” Uncle Mort gave a nod of begrudged understanding. I decided to give him the full story after that. “He is going out trick-or-treating on Halloween and asked me to go with him. Actually, his parents asked if I would be going out too. Even offered to chaperon the two of us if you wanted to stay home and hand out candy. I told them that you do not and they said they would be okay if you wanted to tag along. Tim actually said that if you wanted to go along, Cecilia would stay at home and hand out candy because–.”
“He doesn’t trust me alone with his wife.” Uncle Mort looked a little ashamed. I think that was one of my uncle’s biggest regrets. Cecilia was a good and kind woman and he never should have tried to kill her. Her husband never let him forget it and I don’t think either man would ever forgive Uncle Mort.
“Yeah.” I sighed. Not much could be said to change what had happened or make it better. Uncle Mort just played nice with Tim and did nothing to cause them any concern for their own safety. I decided I would get off the sensitive subjects and back on point. “Besides, I am nearly eleven years old which means next year I will be too old to go out on Halloween, so this is the last chance I will get to do it.”
“So why would you want to experience it this one time and forever be denied the chance to do it again?”
“Why?” Why! Maybe because I felt like I had a lifetime of experiences robbed from me by my over protective family. Or perhaps that I knew I was not an average kid but would enjoy the few opportunities to be one and forget about who I really was. Maybe I just wanted candy and to wear a dumb rubber mask for one night, or to not have one more thing to be jealous of my friend for. I had too many reasons and none of them seemed good enough or right enough to say without hurting an uncle who always tried to do his best with me. “Because it is something I would really like to do. No matter how much it might hurt later.”
“Very well.” Uncle Mort said, returning the oil to the shelf. I almost threw my hands down in my first tantrum in a long time until it dawned on me.
“Very well?” I repeated catching up to him. “As in yes.”
“As in you going trick-or-treating depends on if we can very well find you a costume in time.” My jaw hit my chest and I think there was the slightest hint of a smile on Uncle Mort’s lips. It is a good thing he put down his bottle because I couldn’t help wrapping him up in the biggest hug my skinny arms could manage. I didn’t even stop when he complained that I was making a fuss over nothing.
***
“What have you learned, Captain?” Juni lowered the smoked prism from her eye and turned to salute the All King. He snarled at the gesture and waved it away.
“How fares the princess?” She asked, tucking the crystal away into a leather pouch on her hip.
“She is being tended to.” Manus said irritably. He glanced around at the servants that were still diligently swabbing water from the hall floor. Juni had never seen the All King give his retainers more than a second look before. He was clearly being cautious. “Your findings, Captain?”
“A few things of interest, my liege.” Juni crouched down to the edge of the door frame. It was mostly splintered and broke, riddled with deep gouges from where guards and servants had hacked at the wood with whatever implements they had at hand. “I calculated that the amount of water that could have accumulated in the room should have been sufficient to tear the doors off their hinges long before it reached the top of the frame.”
“Your men reported that it was leaking water from the top sill when they sprang into action.” Manus glared at one of the guards that still stood on duty next to the shattered portal. Juni knew the man and knew he was as good a guard as the next. She hadn’t conducted interviews of her own people but had turned it over to the chief steward as a way to show that she was not giving partiality to any member that could have under-performed in the situation.
“That is because of the wood's enchantments.” Juni knelt down on the damp floor and tugged on a sliver of wood that had been holding viciously onto a crack in the stone. She turned it over to show the small roots to the All King. He looked as unimpressed as she knew he would. “I know that there were several wards set in the door over the years to increase the security for your heir, but as we both know, they were set on the outside of the room. Whomever is responsible for this heinous act somehow managed to simply move them to the inside of the room.”
“And the Art in the wood interpreted the water as some kind of assault and reinforced itself. Locking my daughter in there to drown.” Manus angrily slammed his fist into the remains of the door frame. “Where did the water come from, Captain?”
“That is another interesting thing.” Juni hurried into the princess's room, the carpet squelching under her armored feet.
“I am so glad the attempted assassination of my daughter is so fascinating to you.” Manus said bitterly. It made Juni hesitate in her actions. There was disappointment and an implication in the All King’s voice.
“I meant no disrespect, my liege.” Juni lowered her head subserviently, but kept her back to the ruler of the Elven nation.
“I know, Juni.” Manus said her name softly and touched a hand to her shoulder where the sash of her station ran. “I'm just out of sorts over this whole thing. I know you mean well.”
“This is an upsetting time for us all.” The captain of the guard kept her head bowed. She knew that there were those out there that would be upset at the news of the assassination attempt, but only in its failure. She did not wish her face to betray the knowledge that some of those people were closer than the All King would find comfortable. After a deep sigh of resolution, Manus gestured for Juni continue. “The cup.”
Laying nonplussed in the center of the saturated carpet, among the debris of toys, clothing, and various items of the princess’s station, was a simple brass chalice. It had some signs of age scratched into its metal surface and there were marks to indicate that at some point and time it was set with either stones or filigree from a richer metal.
“It is a cup of plenty.” Juni retrieved it and held it upright for Manus to inspect. The king took the cup and saw that it had filled itself to the brim in the space of time that it took to lift from the floor. “I haven’t seen one that worked correctly in several centuries. I don’t know how it was done, but it has been altered in some way to not recognize when it became full. That is what flooded the room.”
“Why is it not overflowing now?” Manus dumped the cup out on the floor and turned it back up to watch it fill again.
“That I am not sure of.” Juni took the cup back from the All King when he offered it. “I know that the princess always had it at her bedside should she ever get thirsty at night. I conjecture that it may have activated when she touched it and stopped when another person laid hands on it. I will need to examine it more thoroughly to be sure.”
“Have whomever touched the cup first questioned by the steward next. He may have touched it intentionally.” Manus slowly looked around the devastated remains of his lone heir’s room. “This was done by someone who knew this castle and knew our people. Not some red gloved assassin for hire.”
“Of course, my liege.” Juni was going to voice her other evidence when one of the clerics came hurrying to the room. She gave the guard a nod to let the man pass before the All King could turn to acknowledge the disturbance.
“Your majesty.” The cleric went to take a knee but Manus caught his arm and stopped him.
“What is it?” He snapped in the medical man’s face. “Is my daughter well?”
“It’s…we discovered something unbelievable, my liege.” The cleric refused to meet the All King’s penetrating gaze. “I fear that the news will displease you greatly.”
“If you do not speak to me of what has so distressed you, I will give you news that will displease you and your next of kin.” Manus did not threaten idly but very efficiently.
“It is the princess, my liege. She is…” The cleric looked around at the others within hearing distance and leaned in close to Manus to report. Juni steeled her reaction at over hearing the news nonetheless.
“She is a what?” The very walls of the castle shook with Manus’ rage.