The Kingdom of Back(33)
“Why do you think he left?” Woferl whispered.
I thought of little Hansel and Gretel abandoned in the woods, stumbling across the witch’s house of gingerbread. I thought of the smith of Oberarl, offering his daughter to the devil in exchange for the healing waters of the Gastein Valley. The faery tales swirled in my mind as I tried to think of what Hyacinth’s history might be.
Finally, something came to me. I looked at Woferl. My story came out hushed, dark as the shadows flickering in the corners of the room.
“The castle is crumbling now, for no one has been there in a long time. Years ago, a young king named Giovanni ruled the land with his beautiful queen, whom he loved dearly. In fact, everyone loved the queen, even the great Sun, who bestowed his golden magic of fire unto her so that the land flourished under her warmth. The light and the heat restricted the land’s faery creatures to the woods, where their dangerous magic could not harm the kingdom. All was well for many years. When the queen finally announced that she would have her first child, the people rejoiced and counted themselves very lucky indeed. Everyone waited eagerly for the birth.”
As I spoke, Woferl grew quiet, his aches momentarily forgotten, so that the only sound in the room became that of my voice.
“But the queen fell ill when the first snows arrived that winter. Her rosy cheeks drained of color, and her shining hair became dark and limp and damp from her lingering fever. The king’s doctors would boil their medicines and feed her teas made from strange, exotic roots. The queen began having terrible nightmares. During the day, she saw visions of death and suffering, and at night, she witnessed strange dark figures glide past her windows and her bed. She grew paler, even as her unborn child swelled in her belly.”
The story unfolded and my voice began to change. It became wilder and deeper, as if it belonged to another. The words did not quite match with the movements I made with my lips. A strange fog in my head left me feeling distant. The candle burned lower. From the corner of my eye, I could see a shadow at the edge of the room growing, until it looked as slender and graceful as the dancing shape of a princeling.
“The queen gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, in the spring of that year. Although ravaged by illness, she did not die, but sank deep into a permanent madness. Frightened for her, the king assigned his champion to her side in an attempt to keep her safe. But it did no good. She rose one morning, took her baby boy in her arms, and walked out into the forest, murmuring about the faeries calling for her in the woods.”
“What happened to them?” Woferl whispered.
“I don’t know,” I replied, but through the fog in my mind, I could hear someone else continue the story, as if the answer had existed all along. “The faeries are always looking for something to devour. They find the sadness in souls particularly enticing, and when they happen upon them, they will do whatever they can to get it.”
Woferl looked grave. “Then they must certainly have taken her,” he said.
I shivered at the finality in his words as I went on. “When the queen and her son did not return, the entire kingdom went to search for the pair. No one ever found them. The grieving king lost all will to live, leaving his castle unguarded and untended, so that it began to crumble from disrepair. He ordered his daughter locked away in the tallest tower of the castle, so that the faeries could not steal her away too. He lost his memory over time. He forgot his wife and his two children. The Sun, devastated by the young queen’s disappearance, abandoned the kingdom and plunged the land into eternal night. The crops withered. When the king finally died, the people fled the land until the castle stood empty and alone.”
“What about the princess?”
“No one knows, although some say that she is still locked away in the castle’s highest tower, waiting for someone to remember her.” My words seemed so true in this moment that I found myself thinking of the faery witch trapped in the cove. She had told me how lonely she was too.
Woferl sighed deeply and sank his head into the bed’s pillows. “Hyacinth is the son who disappeared,” he added. “He comes back to the edge of the river every morning and every evening to stare at the castle. But he can never reach it. He cannot swim.”
He cannot swim. Suddenly, I remembered Hyacinth telling me this in my dream of the night flower. Woferl, instinctively, knew this too.
I hesitated for a moment, surprised at where the story ended. In the corners of the room, the shadow that had been a princeling now faded to a flicker. I could still taste the wind of his voice on my tongue, as if he had told his story through me. For the first time, I thought I understood why Hyacinth had chosen to become my guardian.
He had been abandoned too, left behind like I feared I might someday be, forever yearning for a world to which he cannot return.
“That is what happens to children who are forgotten, Woferl,” I ended, leaning over to kiss his forehead. I was exhausted now, and the castle had suddenly become too real in my mind. When I looked down at my brother, I saw that he had fallen mercifully back to sleep. “They stay forever trapped,” I murmured to myself, “nothing but a lost memory.”
* * *
Woferl’s doctor, a man named Herr Anton von Bernhard, came late that night in a quiet flurry to stir a cup of medicine for my brother.
He looked at Woferl’s eyes, listened to his heart and his lungs, and studied the angry rash on his skin. In the candlelight, I could see Mama’s face. She wanted to say something, perhaps ask Herr von Bernhard a few questions, but each time she looked at Woferl she closed her mouth, as if she’d forgotten what she had to say.