A dream of Spring, Chapter 4
Mar. 10th, 2011 10:46 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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tutufansTitle: A Dream of Spring, Ch. 4
Rating: PG-13? I guess?
Characters: Fakir, Mytho, Karon
Summary: Fakir is alive, key information is revealed, and people who live in storybook worlds can be very eccentric.
Previous chapters: 3 2, 1, all on FFN
Midnight had come and gone twice now, and neither Karon nor anyone he had asked at the academy or the town itself had seen or heard from Fakir. With children Fakir's age disappearing at an alarming rate, the news that Fakir had gone missing had spread like a spark through a drought-dried field within half a day, engulfing the whole of their neighborhood and half the town in gossip and chatter. As far as the rest of the town was concerned, having not seen the letter, Fakir was the first boy to have disappeared under these circumstances. That was, of course, until poor Mrs. Vonnegut had come shrieking out of her house, declaring that her own son had been taken in the night. News of that outburst had reached Karon by way of Mrs. Cohen, the neighborhood's most accomplished gossip, just as he was returning home for a uniquely lonely supper.
Nearly twelve hours had passed since then, and Karon had been wide awake for every strike of the kitchen's clock. Somehow he had found it easier to sleep the night before while Fakir waited at the clock tower. At least then he had known where the boy was, could go to bring him home if he grew impatient. Maybe he should have done exactly that and nipped this madness in the bud, Fakir's protests be damned. He drummed his fingers around the cup in his hands and watched the stars slowly dim in the gathering daylight.
It was at times like these, staring out the kitchen window in the pre-dawn hours of the morning and holding a cup of coffee that had gone cold without him so much as sipping at it, that he wondered if he truly could do nothing but ill for that boy. Fakir had come to him broken and distant, a silent shadow of the bright-eyed little boy he had watched his cousin raise. He'd only been able to coax a smile out of him by telling him the Knight's legend, by giving him the book that Drosselmeyer had spun out of that story. His connection to the legend and the book had given Fakir a sense of pride and purpose, one so strong and so sustaining that when Fakir's destiny had finally caught up to them in the form of a boy collapsed on the street, Karon had been only relieved and happy that Fakir had so immediately and enthusiastically embraced his role as Mytho's protector. He had opened up so dramatically; he had smiled, and laughed, and done more than read alone in the house all day. Mytho's placid, thoughtless kindness had provided a shelter from Fakir's troubled mind by simply giving him a reason for living.
Karon had seen nothing wrong with that, not for the first couple years. It was only when the damage of this indulgence had been done, when Fakir had pulled into himself again, grown angrier and colder, all for the sake of better protecting the Prince. What does an eight year old really know about protecting anyone?
He had hoped, when Mytho finally returned to the Story, that Fakir would flourish after being relieved of his responsibility. Initially, that had appeared to be the case. Fakir had been productive, talkative, confident. As with all positive developments in Fakir's life, that didn't last. His enthusiasm began to wind down by the next year, having enjoyed a swift boost that for whatever reason could not sustain itself. He grew distant again, not angry but listless and aimless. Karon suspected, though he was loath to admit it, that Fakir had never truly learned to function in any role other than that of the Knight and, being nearly grown as he was, could not retrain himself to live as a normal boy. Perhaps that was why he had argued so heatedly for his right to leave why he had stormed out of the house to go God only knew where and may never return.
All because he had been unable to predict what his inaction would cause.
---
Consciousness came and went several times from the moment the bolt pierced Fakir's lung to the moment he finally became fully aware of the world around him. His memory of those brief flashes of sound, sight, and feeling was all but lost. He recalled phrases sans their context, the sharp sound of cloth tearing divorced of any image or sensation to accompany it, and brief but blinding pain. Now, as his breath quickened and the drug-gummed gears in his head finally began to turn, he felt barely any pain at all. The dull, tight ache in his chest assured him that he was quite alive, but caused him no great discomfort. He flexed his fingers in the thin sheets tucked around him and, having discerned that he was safely and comfortably put to bed, found himself reluctant to open his eyes and fully wake.
Eventually, though, an odd scent – something akin to a cross between damp moss and incense – caught his attention. He blinked blearily up at the white canopy over his bed and turned his head as best his could in the direction of the smell, only to have his gaze met by Mytho's, the Prince's honey brown eyes sparkling and all but welling over in relief. He found himself caught in that tender gaze, immobilized as much by a look as by the promise of almost certain agony if he tried to move too much.
“Good morning,” the Prince said softly, a warm smile narrowing his round eyes and making the glisten in them even more pronounced. The urge to reach out for him fled the moment Mytho say back into the little chair at Fakir's bedside. It probably would have been a bad idea anyway, all things considered.
Instead, he turned to the darkened window on the other side of his bed, frowning. “You call this morning?” he said, shocked at the weak, raspy quality of his voice and the way his chest tightened and stung. A light touch on his shoulder told him that his discomfort hadn't gone unnoticed. He turned onto his back obediently, staring up at the canopy. His gaze wandered to the side, to Mytho and to the little censer on the table beside his bed. “Did you sleep at all?”
“Briefly, once I was confident that you would be all right,” Mytho said, his hand leaving Fakir's shoulder. Fakir doubted that Mytho had ever felt truly confident that he would survive; the unmasked relief on his face made that clear. Mytho could put on a brave front with words all he liked, but his honest face would always betray him.
“Hmph. You should get some sleep. I'll be-” The sound of glass on ceramic cut him off, and he turned in time to see Mytho pouring something from a pitcher into a large stoneware cup. The Prince looked... irritated.
“I have slept,” Mytho said, his tone uncharacteristically terse. He held the cup out for Fakir and waited a moment for him to prop himself up on the cushions behind him. “It's fault this has happened to you. Let me ease my conscience by caring for you for a change.”
Fakir accepted the cup and looked down into it, his frown reflected back at him by the liquid. He'd thought that it must be water, but it had a strong fermented scent to it, and against the grey of the cup appeared almost silvery at the surface. “You can't say it's your fault,” he said. He wasn't sure if he was trying to make a point or buying himself time in which he didn't have to drink whatever was in the cup. “Neither of us could have predicted it, and I came here willingly. It isn't your fault someone decided to kill me.”
Somewhere down the hall, a door closed loudly. The sound carried perfectly through the long corridor and into the silent room. Mytho set the pitcher down and took a deep breath. It reminded Fakir of the way he always calmed himself and shifted into character before making his entrance in the school's performances. It wasn't an association that he liked, and the stony expression that came over Mytho's face only strengthened it.
“The attempt was on my life, not yours,” he said. “If you hadn't stood at that moment, I would have been struck in the throat. I would not have survived, as you have.”
Fakir's face fell. Somehow, the more obvious scenario had not occurred to him. The thought that he had managed to save Mytho's life by getting clumsily, embarrassingly drunk was astounding and, frankly, quite terrifying. He'd been struck speechless.
“Thank you,” Mytho said after a long moment, the princely persona he affected falling away and leaving a small, sad smile behind.
Fakir noticed that Mytho's gaze had wandered, and was now fixed directly on the untouched glass of whatever-it-was in his hand. He tried to bolt it down, but only found up choking on the burning sensation it spread down his throat and into his chest. He sputtered into the cup and hunched up in pain, each contraction of his chest a terrible reminder of his injury. There was a flurry of motion at his side, and soon Mytho had taken one cup away and pressed another into his hand, encouraging him to drink while at the same time patting his back in a way that was as unhelpful as it was painful. He finally managed to gulp down enough of the water to cool and clear his throat, only to fall back onto the bed and attempt to catch his breath. Mytho, miraculously, caught the cup before it could shatter on the floor.
“What was that?” Fakir asked once he'd regained his breath, his voice now hoarse as well as weak.
“Medicine,” Mytho replied simply. He laid a hand on Fakir's bandaged chest, the touch feather-light. “It will help your body mend itself quickly. It's already saved your life by healing the worst of the damage.”
Fakir tried valiantly to sink into the mattress, away from Mytho's hand. “Does it not work if you dilute it?” he asked.
“It was diluted, very heavily so,” Mytho said, the vaguely sheepish expression on his face suggesting that he knew exactly how little that meant at the moment. He withdrew his hand and seated himself at the edge of the bed. “I should have warned you.”
The words held more meaning than any explicit apology, any automatic 'I'm sorry,' Mytho has ever offered before he had regained his heart, and it brought a tired smile to Fakir's lips even as an unsettling thought occurred to him.
“What about the man who shot me?” he asked. “Was he caught, or should I be worried even now?”
Mytho grew unhappily quiet and shook his head. “The woman. And yes, she was caught.”
Fakir raised an eyebrow. A woman had shot him? That was hardly what he had expected to hear, but it was far from impossible. “What's being done with her?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Mytho immediately replied. Fakir could practically see the tension in his shoulders, hear the discomfort in his soft voice. “Nothing needs to be done at this point.”
“Ah,” Fakir murmured after a moment. He decided to let that subject lie for the time being. As long as the attacker had been captured, he was in no hurry to learn exactly what had Mytho so troubled. With great effort, he pushed himself back up onto his elbows before settling back against the cushions. He felt quite proud of himself for sitting up. “Well, then. Since you obviously didn't get a chance to talk to me about it at the party, could you explain what's happening now that I've been rendered a captive audience?”
Mytho nodded, the tension leaving his body as that stern, princely expression returned to his face. It was such a firm expression that it almost looked out of place on the boy's round face. When he finally spoke, it was with a tone of certainty and authority that Fakir had never heard in Mytho's voice, and he felt compelled to listen in silence, his gaze never leaving the Prince's face.
“In the years following my departure from the Story, the world as my people know it ceased to move or change, as if my absence from the world had rendered it unable to continue on. So the world lie dormant, every last person effectively asleep save for one, how I may never know. And while the world slept, she gathered what power remained and waited, biding her time until I returned. We knew nothing of this until the snow from the mountaintops started to creep down into the valleys below in the middle of March, bringing with it deeply dark nights and hordes of vicious beasts. Crops failed and many died before we devised some way to congregate people within the major cities where we could raise barriers against the blight. That was over a year ago.”
Mytho paused as if awaiting some sort of response. The hardness had left his features, and Fakir was suddenly reminded of the haunted, implacable look that would cloud the other boy's face during that uneasy week they had spent in hiding in the mill house. Fakir leaned forward as best he could without wincing.
“What does she want, then? Why is she doing this?”
The Prince shook his head. “Besides the suffering of my people? I haven't the slightest idea. Recently her hordes have taken to abducting those wandering outside the protected cities. I cannot allow this to go on.”
Fakir nodded in dazed comprehension. The medicine, whatever it had been, had a distinct mind-numbing effect on him that made his head swim and threads of thought unravel. “So you plan to stop her yourself, then,” Fakir said, his voice grave but familiar as he placed a hand on Mytho's shoulder. “You really are an idiot.”
Mytho's own pale hand reached up to cover Fakir's. “I am an idiot,” he admitted easily. “But I'm not going by myself.”
“No, I guess not,” Fakir said. He reflexively pulled his hand back – or tried to, anyway – only to find it held in place by Mytho's.
Mytho had turned to inspect Fakir's hand, his thumb moving lightly over the raised gash of lighter skin that formed the scar from Drosselmeyer's pen knife. Fakir swallowed.
“It left a rather large scar, didn't it?” the Prince mused, his eyebrows knotted up in a mixture of concern and guilt.
“It isn't so bad,” Fakir said. Before he could move to pull his hand away, Mytho had gotten to his feet, still grasping Fakir's hand gently but firmly. He pressed his lips to the thin white scar, and Fakir felt their warmth speed up his arm and neck to his face. He sputtered and retracted his hand, muttering something half coherent about not being a girl.
Mytho smiled thinly. “As thanks,” he said. He pressed the back of his own hand to Fakir's forehead. Fakir figured he'd misinterpreted the red tinge his face had taken on, and was relieved by that thought. “You have a fever. You should sleep a while longer.”
Before Fakir could protest, Mytho had crossed the room to the door, wished him a good rest, and left. Fakir sank back into his bed, somehow freshly exhausted, and drifted to sleep.
Several hours later, far closer to lunch time than dawn, Fakir awoke again. Sitting up brought little discomfort this time, and he had decided immediately after discovering this that he was well and truly sick of lying in bed. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and poured himself a small cup of the awful mirror-sheen medicine, suppressing a cough after bolting it down. He then made a hurried trip to the bathroom that was part of his chambers, and started his search for another clean set of clothes. He wound up settling for the fresh nightgown draped over the chair. The flimsy white fabric made him look like a scarecrow that had caught a sheet carried off some housewife's clothesline by the wind.
The hallway outside his room was quite deserted, and he strode down it confident that no well-meaning nursemaids would usher him back to his bed. All he wanted was to walk around and breathe some fresh air, and surely he would be permitted that even if he was caught sneaking out of bed. The sound of his bare feet on the smooth stones of the floor echoed faintly down the hallway, growing fainter as he approached the staircase that would take him out into the courtyard. He shielded his eyes against the mid-day sun, a sudden warm gust whipping the nightgown around his legs.
“What a sight, what a sight,” a voice beside him remarked.
Startled, Fakir turned to glower at the old man who had sidled up beside him. He looked friendly enough – Fakir would call him too friendly – with his frazzled grey hair, and wrinkle-rimmed eyes in a matching shade magnified behind thick spectacles.
“It's not my fault nobody left me any proper clothes, so don't say I'm a sight,” Fakir said dismissively, turning to walk off. To his great displeasure, he could hear the unmistakable sound of shuffling footsteps pursuing him, ever so slowly.
“Your clothes aren't the thing I mean, and you know it, Sir Lohengrin.”
Fakir froze, then cast a cold look over his shoulder. “Don't use that name for me,” he said sharply. “It isn't mine.”
The old man chortled. “Oh, isn't it? You surely fooled me, then, wearing his face minus five years or so as you do. Your hair's straighter than I remember, but what's what I remember worth at the end of the day?”
“Very little,” Fakir replied. He turned to face the hunched old man, a bit baffled at himself for entertaining the conversation at all. “My face is my own. I look like my mother, not some dead knight.”
“Of course your face is yours, boy, I never said otherwise,” he old man said chidingly as he walked a full circle around Fakir, looking him up and down, appraising him. He nodded as if satisfied with his findings. “Even the way you stand is right. You can't be anybody else but who you are. Nobody can.”
“And I'm not.”
“Then it's settled, Sir Lohengrin.”
Fakir seethed. “It isn't settled. I'm Fakir, not Lohengrin, and you'll call me that.”
That outburst earned a small scoff and a wave of the old man's hand. “So you might be, but you're Lohengrin to me. I've been many different things to many different people, too. You were Lohengrin once, yes, then Fakir, yes. Now maybe you're not either. Just who is Prince Siegfried to you, now that you've known him twice over?”
Fakir didn't spare the question a thought beyond the brief moment it took him to connect the name to Mytho. “My prince and my friend,” he answered simply.
“Then that, at least, has never changed,” the old man said. He smiled, the expression creating far too many folds in his face, and tapped his temple. “He has kept you in mind since returning, you know. He would have invited you to the wedding, had the opportunity arisen.”
A frown pulled at the corners of Fakir's mouth. “I don't begrudge him for not inviting me,” he said, his voice calculatedly cool and unaffected.
For a split second, the old man's eyes widened, and he looked somewhat trapped. It pleased Fakir. “Well, you can hardly invite people to a wedding that never happens, can you?” he said, his bright demeanor returning at full force even as his voice took on a conspiratorial edge.
Fakir only looked down at him blankly. He'd simply assumed that Mytho and Rue had married immediately upon arriving in the Story. After all, wasn't that the way of things?
“You didn't know,” the old man said. He nodded sagely. “The princess's parentage presents some problems. People aren't exactly eager to see their prince wed the daughter of the monster that nearly destroyed their country. And who can blame them? In order for the union to go unchallenged, she would have to present some proof of her true lineage. No small feat when one's been taken to another world entirely.”
Fakir folded his arms, uncertain of what to make of that news. “That seems...” he began, not truly intending to finish the thought. The old man did it for him, regardless.
“Unfair? Oh, absolutely it is! Unfair and unjust and unusual!” He paused for thought, something Fakir imagined was a rare event he should savor. “Though, I may be embittered against the idea of setting up a challenge for a prospective groom. Or for a bride, for that matter. Failed my own, failed it utterly and lost a beautiful girl I loved with all my heart.”
The confession intrigued Fakir, if only because he had never heard such a story culminate in failure and loss. It was morbid curiosity that spurred him to prompt the old man to continue. “What did you have to do?”
The old man sighed and pushed his spectacles up on his nose. “Oh, it seemed very simple on the outset. Her father asked me to introduce him to a man who had never made a terrible mistake thinking he'd done only what was right.” He paused as if for dramatic effect, and Fakir sighed.
“Who did you bring, then?”
“Myself,” the old man said, shame tinging his voice for only a moment before he brightened again and turned on one barefooted heel to saunter off into the keep. “And that's quite enough story time for one day, Sir Lohengrin. You haven't the time for it, and neither do I. Keep in mind what I've said, unless you don't.”
Fakir could only find to drive to watch, dumbfounded, as the strange old codger let himself in through the keep's massive door and shut it quietly behind him.
Rating: PG-13? I guess?
Characters: Fakir, Mytho, Karon
Summary: Fakir is alive, key information is revealed, and people who live in storybook worlds can be very eccentric.
Previous chapters: 3 2, 1, all on FFN
Midnight had come and gone twice now, and neither Karon nor anyone he had asked at the academy or the town itself had seen or heard from Fakir. With children Fakir's age disappearing at an alarming rate, the news that Fakir had gone missing had spread like a spark through a drought-dried field within half a day, engulfing the whole of their neighborhood and half the town in gossip and chatter. As far as the rest of the town was concerned, having not seen the letter, Fakir was the first boy to have disappeared under these circumstances. That was, of course, until poor Mrs. Vonnegut had come shrieking out of her house, declaring that her own son had been taken in the night. News of that outburst had reached Karon by way of Mrs. Cohen, the neighborhood's most accomplished gossip, just as he was returning home for a uniquely lonely supper.
Nearly twelve hours had passed since then, and Karon had been wide awake for every strike of the kitchen's clock. Somehow he had found it easier to sleep the night before while Fakir waited at the clock tower. At least then he had known where the boy was, could go to bring him home if he grew impatient. Maybe he should have done exactly that and nipped this madness in the bud, Fakir's protests be damned. He drummed his fingers around the cup in his hands and watched the stars slowly dim in the gathering daylight.
It was at times like these, staring out the kitchen window in the pre-dawn hours of the morning and holding a cup of coffee that had gone cold without him so much as sipping at it, that he wondered if he truly could do nothing but ill for that boy. Fakir had come to him broken and distant, a silent shadow of the bright-eyed little boy he had watched his cousin raise. He'd only been able to coax a smile out of him by telling him the Knight's legend, by giving him the book that Drosselmeyer had spun out of that story. His connection to the legend and the book had given Fakir a sense of pride and purpose, one so strong and so sustaining that when Fakir's destiny had finally caught up to them in the form of a boy collapsed on the street, Karon had been only relieved and happy that Fakir had so immediately and enthusiastically embraced his role as Mytho's protector. He had opened up so dramatically; he had smiled, and laughed, and done more than read alone in the house all day. Mytho's placid, thoughtless kindness had provided a shelter from Fakir's troubled mind by simply giving him a reason for living.
Karon had seen nothing wrong with that, not for the first couple years. It was only when the damage of this indulgence had been done, when Fakir had pulled into himself again, grown angrier and colder, all for the sake of better protecting the Prince. What does an eight year old really know about protecting anyone?
He had hoped, when Mytho finally returned to the Story, that Fakir would flourish after being relieved of his responsibility. Initially, that had appeared to be the case. Fakir had been productive, talkative, confident. As with all positive developments in Fakir's life, that didn't last. His enthusiasm began to wind down by the next year, having enjoyed a swift boost that for whatever reason could not sustain itself. He grew distant again, not angry but listless and aimless. Karon suspected, though he was loath to admit it, that Fakir had never truly learned to function in any role other than that of the Knight and, being nearly grown as he was, could not retrain himself to live as a normal boy. Perhaps that was why he had argued so heatedly for his right to leave why he had stormed out of the house to go God only knew where and may never return.
All because he had been unable to predict what his inaction would cause.
---
Consciousness came and went several times from the moment the bolt pierced Fakir's lung to the moment he finally became fully aware of the world around him. His memory of those brief flashes of sound, sight, and feeling was all but lost. He recalled phrases sans their context, the sharp sound of cloth tearing divorced of any image or sensation to accompany it, and brief but blinding pain. Now, as his breath quickened and the drug-gummed gears in his head finally began to turn, he felt barely any pain at all. The dull, tight ache in his chest assured him that he was quite alive, but caused him no great discomfort. He flexed his fingers in the thin sheets tucked around him and, having discerned that he was safely and comfortably put to bed, found himself reluctant to open his eyes and fully wake.
Eventually, though, an odd scent – something akin to a cross between damp moss and incense – caught his attention. He blinked blearily up at the white canopy over his bed and turned his head as best his could in the direction of the smell, only to have his gaze met by Mytho's, the Prince's honey brown eyes sparkling and all but welling over in relief. He found himself caught in that tender gaze, immobilized as much by a look as by the promise of almost certain agony if he tried to move too much.
“Good morning,” the Prince said softly, a warm smile narrowing his round eyes and making the glisten in them even more pronounced. The urge to reach out for him fled the moment Mytho say back into the little chair at Fakir's bedside. It probably would have been a bad idea anyway, all things considered.
Instead, he turned to the darkened window on the other side of his bed, frowning. “You call this morning?” he said, shocked at the weak, raspy quality of his voice and the way his chest tightened and stung. A light touch on his shoulder told him that his discomfort hadn't gone unnoticed. He turned onto his back obediently, staring up at the canopy. His gaze wandered to the side, to Mytho and to the little censer on the table beside his bed. “Did you sleep at all?”
“Briefly, once I was confident that you would be all right,” Mytho said, his hand leaving Fakir's shoulder. Fakir doubted that Mytho had ever felt truly confident that he would survive; the unmasked relief on his face made that clear. Mytho could put on a brave front with words all he liked, but his honest face would always betray him.
“Hmph. You should get some sleep. I'll be-” The sound of glass on ceramic cut him off, and he turned in time to see Mytho pouring something from a pitcher into a large stoneware cup. The Prince looked... irritated.
“I have slept,” Mytho said, his tone uncharacteristically terse. He held the cup out for Fakir and waited a moment for him to prop himself up on the cushions behind him. “It's fault this has happened to you. Let me ease my conscience by caring for you for a change.”
Fakir accepted the cup and looked down into it, his frown reflected back at him by the liquid. He'd thought that it must be water, but it had a strong fermented scent to it, and against the grey of the cup appeared almost silvery at the surface. “You can't say it's your fault,” he said. He wasn't sure if he was trying to make a point or buying himself time in which he didn't have to drink whatever was in the cup. “Neither of us could have predicted it, and I came here willingly. It isn't your fault someone decided to kill me.”
Somewhere down the hall, a door closed loudly. The sound carried perfectly through the long corridor and into the silent room. Mytho set the pitcher down and took a deep breath. It reminded Fakir of the way he always calmed himself and shifted into character before making his entrance in the school's performances. It wasn't an association that he liked, and the stony expression that came over Mytho's face only strengthened it.
“The attempt was on my life, not yours,” he said. “If you hadn't stood at that moment, I would have been struck in the throat. I would not have survived, as you have.”
Fakir's face fell. Somehow, the more obvious scenario had not occurred to him. The thought that he had managed to save Mytho's life by getting clumsily, embarrassingly drunk was astounding and, frankly, quite terrifying. He'd been struck speechless.
“Thank you,” Mytho said after a long moment, the princely persona he affected falling away and leaving a small, sad smile behind.
Fakir noticed that Mytho's gaze had wandered, and was now fixed directly on the untouched glass of whatever-it-was in his hand. He tried to bolt it down, but only found up choking on the burning sensation it spread down his throat and into his chest. He sputtered into the cup and hunched up in pain, each contraction of his chest a terrible reminder of his injury. There was a flurry of motion at his side, and soon Mytho had taken one cup away and pressed another into his hand, encouraging him to drink while at the same time patting his back in a way that was as unhelpful as it was painful. He finally managed to gulp down enough of the water to cool and clear his throat, only to fall back onto the bed and attempt to catch his breath. Mytho, miraculously, caught the cup before it could shatter on the floor.
“What was that?” Fakir asked once he'd regained his breath, his voice now hoarse as well as weak.
“Medicine,” Mytho replied simply. He laid a hand on Fakir's bandaged chest, the touch feather-light. “It will help your body mend itself quickly. It's already saved your life by healing the worst of the damage.”
Fakir tried valiantly to sink into the mattress, away from Mytho's hand. “Does it not work if you dilute it?” he asked.
“It was diluted, very heavily so,” Mytho said, the vaguely sheepish expression on his face suggesting that he knew exactly how little that meant at the moment. He withdrew his hand and seated himself at the edge of the bed. “I should have warned you.”
The words held more meaning than any explicit apology, any automatic 'I'm sorry,' Mytho has ever offered before he had regained his heart, and it brought a tired smile to Fakir's lips even as an unsettling thought occurred to him.
“What about the man who shot me?” he asked. “Was he caught, or should I be worried even now?”
Mytho grew unhappily quiet and shook his head. “The woman. And yes, she was caught.”
Fakir raised an eyebrow. A woman had shot him? That was hardly what he had expected to hear, but it was far from impossible. “What's being done with her?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Mytho immediately replied. Fakir could practically see the tension in his shoulders, hear the discomfort in his soft voice. “Nothing needs to be done at this point.”
“Ah,” Fakir murmured after a moment. He decided to let that subject lie for the time being. As long as the attacker had been captured, he was in no hurry to learn exactly what had Mytho so troubled. With great effort, he pushed himself back up onto his elbows before settling back against the cushions. He felt quite proud of himself for sitting up. “Well, then. Since you obviously didn't get a chance to talk to me about it at the party, could you explain what's happening now that I've been rendered a captive audience?”
Mytho nodded, the tension leaving his body as that stern, princely expression returned to his face. It was such a firm expression that it almost looked out of place on the boy's round face. When he finally spoke, it was with a tone of certainty and authority that Fakir had never heard in Mytho's voice, and he felt compelled to listen in silence, his gaze never leaving the Prince's face.
“In the years following my departure from the Story, the world as my people know it ceased to move or change, as if my absence from the world had rendered it unable to continue on. So the world lie dormant, every last person effectively asleep save for one, how I may never know. And while the world slept, she gathered what power remained and waited, biding her time until I returned. We knew nothing of this until the snow from the mountaintops started to creep down into the valleys below in the middle of March, bringing with it deeply dark nights and hordes of vicious beasts. Crops failed and many died before we devised some way to congregate people within the major cities where we could raise barriers against the blight. That was over a year ago.”
Mytho paused as if awaiting some sort of response. The hardness had left his features, and Fakir was suddenly reminded of the haunted, implacable look that would cloud the other boy's face during that uneasy week they had spent in hiding in the mill house. Fakir leaned forward as best he could without wincing.
“What does she want, then? Why is she doing this?”
The Prince shook his head. “Besides the suffering of my people? I haven't the slightest idea. Recently her hordes have taken to abducting those wandering outside the protected cities. I cannot allow this to go on.”
Fakir nodded in dazed comprehension. The medicine, whatever it had been, had a distinct mind-numbing effect on him that made his head swim and threads of thought unravel. “So you plan to stop her yourself, then,” Fakir said, his voice grave but familiar as he placed a hand on Mytho's shoulder. “You really are an idiot.”
Mytho's own pale hand reached up to cover Fakir's. “I am an idiot,” he admitted easily. “But I'm not going by myself.”
“No, I guess not,” Fakir said. He reflexively pulled his hand back – or tried to, anyway – only to find it held in place by Mytho's.
Mytho had turned to inspect Fakir's hand, his thumb moving lightly over the raised gash of lighter skin that formed the scar from Drosselmeyer's pen knife. Fakir swallowed.
“It left a rather large scar, didn't it?” the Prince mused, his eyebrows knotted up in a mixture of concern and guilt.
“It isn't so bad,” Fakir said. Before he could move to pull his hand away, Mytho had gotten to his feet, still grasping Fakir's hand gently but firmly. He pressed his lips to the thin white scar, and Fakir felt their warmth speed up his arm and neck to his face. He sputtered and retracted his hand, muttering something half coherent about not being a girl.
Mytho smiled thinly. “As thanks,” he said. He pressed the back of his own hand to Fakir's forehead. Fakir figured he'd misinterpreted the red tinge his face had taken on, and was relieved by that thought. “You have a fever. You should sleep a while longer.”
Before Fakir could protest, Mytho had crossed the room to the door, wished him a good rest, and left. Fakir sank back into his bed, somehow freshly exhausted, and drifted to sleep.
Several hours later, far closer to lunch time than dawn, Fakir awoke again. Sitting up brought little discomfort this time, and he had decided immediately after discovering this that he was well and truly sick of lying in bed. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and poured himself a small cup of the awful mirror-sheen medicine, suppressing a cough after bolting it down. He then made a hurried trip to the bathroom that was part of his chambers, and started his search for another clean set of clothes. He wound up settling for the fresh nightgown draped over the chair. The flimsy white fabric made him look like a scarecrow that had caught a sheet carried off some housewife's clothesline by the wind.
The hallway outside his room was quite deserted, and he strode down it confident that no well-meaning nursemaids would usher him back to his bed. All he wanted was to walk around and breathe some fresh air, and surely he would be permitted that even if he was caught sneaking out of bed. The sound of his bare feet on the smooth stones of the floor echoed faintly down the hallway, growing fainter as he approached the staircase that would take him out into the courtyard. He shielded his eyes against the mid-day sun, a sudden warm gust whipping the nightgown around his legs.
“What a sight, what a sight,” a voice beside him remarked.
Startled, Fakir turned to glower at the old man who had sidled up beside him. He looked friendly enough – Fakir would call him too friendly – with his frazzled grey hair, and wrinkle-rimmed eyes in a matching shade magnified behind thick spectacles.
“It's not my fault nobody left me any proper clothes, so don't say I'm a sight,” Fakir said dismissively, turning to walk off. To his great displeasure, he could hear the unmistakable sound of shuffling footsteps pursuing him, ever so slowly.
“Your clothes aren't the thing I mean, and you know it, Sir Lohengrin.”
Fakir froze, then cast a cold look over his shoulder. “Don't use that name for me,” he said sharply. “It isn't mine.”
The old man chortled. “Oh, isn't it? You surely fooled me, then, wearing his face minus five years or so as you do. Your hair's straighter than I remember, but what's what I remember worth at the end of the day?”
“Very little,” Fakir replied. He turned to face the hunched old man, a bit baffled at himself for entertaining the conversation at all. “My face is my own. I look like my mother, not some dead knight.”
“Of course your face is yours, boy, I never said otherwise,” he old man said chidingly as he walked a full circle around Fakir, looking him up and down, appraising him. He nodded as if satisfied with his findings. “Even the way you stand is right. You can't be anybody else but who you are. Nobody can.”
“And I'm not.”
“Then it's settled, Sir Lohengrin.”
Fakir seethed. “It isn't settled. I'm Fakir, not Lohengrin, and you'll call me that.”
That outburst earned a small scoff and a wave of the old man's hand. “So you might be, but you're Lohengrin to me. I've been many different things to many different people, too. You were Lohengrin once, yes, then Fakir, yes. Now maybe you're not either. Just who is Prince Siegfried to you, now that you've known him twice over?”
Fakir didn't spare the question a thought beyond the brief moment it took him to connect the name to Mytho. “My prince and my friend,” he answered simply.
“Then that, at least, has never changed,” the old man said. He smiled, the expression creating far too many folds in his face, and tapped his temple. “He has kept you in mind since returning, you know. He would have invited you to the wedding, had the opportunity arisen.”
A frown pulled at the corners of Fakir's mouth. “I don't begrudge him for not inviting me,” he said, his voice calculatedly cool and unaffected.
For a split second, the old man's eyes widened, and he looked somewhat trapped. It pleased Fakir. “Well, you can hardly invite people to a wedding that never happens, can you?” he said, his bright demeanor returning at full force even as his voice took on a conspiratorial edge.
Fakir only looked down at him blankly. He'd simply assumed that Mytho and Rue had married immediately upon arriving in the Story. After all, wasn't that the way of things?
“You didn't know,” the old man said. He nodded sagely. “The princess's parentage presents some problems. People aren't exactly eager to see their prince wed the daughter of the monster that nearly destroyed their country. And who can blame them? In order for the union to go unchallenged, she would have to present some proof of her true lineage. No small feat when one's been taken to another world entirely.”
Fakir folded his arms, uncertain of what to make of that news. “That seems...” he began, not truly intending to finish the thought. The old man did it for him, regardless.
“Unfair? Oh, absolutely it is! Unfair and unjust and unusual!” He paused for thought, something Fakir imagined was a rare event he should savor. “Though, I may be embittered against the idea of setting up a challenge for a prospective groom. Or for a bride, for that matter. Failed my own, failed it utterly and lost a beautiful girl I loved with all my heart.”
The confession intrigued Fakir, if only because he had never heard such a story culminate in failure and loss. It was morbid curiosity that spurred him to prompt the old man to continue. “What did you have to do?”
The old man sighed and pushed his spectacles up on his nose. “Oh, it seemed very simple on the outset. Her father asked me to introduce him to a man who had never made a terrible mistake thinking he'd done only what was right.” He paused as if for dramatic effect, and Fakir sighed.
“Who did you bring, then?”
“Myself,” the old man said, shame tinging his voice for only a moment before he brightened again and turned on one barefooted heel to saunter off into the keep. “And that's quite enough story time for one day, Sir Lohengrin. You haven't the time for it, and neither do I. Keep in mind what I've said, unless you don't.”
Fakir could only find to drive to watch, dumbfounded, as the strange old codger let himself in through the keep's massive door and shut it quietly behind him.
