The Kingdom of Back(80)
Then she said, “How do you know this?”
I could barely force the answer from my lips. “Because Hyacinth entered the tallest tower of the castle and killed the princess confined there.” There were tears in my eyes now. “Because I did not know any better, and helped lead him there.”
The queen’s suspicion changed to shock. In that shock, I suddenly saw not a faery, nor a creature, but a woman who’d once had a son and a daughter. Her dark eyes blinked, turned moist, filling up until fresh tears ran down her cheeks. It had been her daughter in the tower, and the realization made her crumple there, defeated.
I waited, frightened, for her to unleash her wrath on me. Instead, she looked up at me with a sad gaze and shook her head. “He tricked you,” she said. “Just as he’d once tricked me.”
“What do you mean?” I whispered.
“The girl in the tower was you, child,” she said. “You still live, just as your brother does. But Hyacinth will take you both tonight, if you are not careful.”
Both of us. I trembled, struggling to understand her.
If Woferl was the princeling of Back, then I was the princess. It was why I saw so much of myself in the girl trapped at the top of the tower, how I’d felt like I was looking into a mirror. Perhaps it was even why I seemed to feel the pain of Hyacinth’s teeth sinking into her in that moment, why I woke with visions of blood staining my hands.
She was me, and I was her.
Hyacinth had devoured the part of my soul trapped in that castle. What he really wanted now was the rest of my heart. The entirety of me. And after I brought him my brother tonight, he would let the illness overcome me and take me with him too.
“Wicked souls always seek to trap us,” the queen told me. Her voice was so lyrical, so sad in its sweetness, that I could feel the crack it made against my heart.
“What did he do to you?” I whispered.
“I was a young queen who loved her husband and was eager to rule her kingdom. Oh, I had so many ideas! The king would sit and listen to me for hours, writing down all I wanted to do for the villagers. Give food and homes to our poor.” Her eyes shone for an instant with the past. A wistful smile played on her lips. “And then, in the woods, I encountered a young faery.”
I could see it now, the queen’s first encounter with Hyacinth, how she must have been as hypnotized by his charms as I once was.
“He cast a spell on me and led me farther and farther from home. When I tried to find my way back, I only stumbled upon the white sands of this shore.” She looked away. “He imprisoned me in here, cursing my legs to forever be trapped as part of this cavern, until the day someone came to free me.”
She turned her eyes up to me again. The glow around her pulsed with a life of its own. “Here I am. And here you are. Have you come to free me? Or are you his messenger again, to put me out of my misery?”
I stared back at her, remembering her fury and frustration the last time I’d seen her.
“Is it possible to find what you’re looking for?” I finally asked her. “Is it possible to get what you want?”
“These are questions I cannot answer for you, child,” she replied. “But we must still try.”
My gaze shifted to the night flowers growing along the wall. There were only a few left now, dying because the spirit of the queen was dying as well. I walked closer to one and ran my finger delicately along its enormous black petals. It cast its scarlet light against my skin.
Fill the night flower with water, the queen had said to me when I last stood in this grotto. Pour it on my feet. Free me!
I closed my fist around the stem of the flower. I pulled hard. The stem cracked, the flower coming free into my hand. I walked to the grotto’s pool and knelt over it, filling the flower with water. Then I returned to the queen and held it over her feet.
“Perhaps,” I said, “we should have helped each other all along.”
THE RETURN OF THE QUEEN
From a distance, we must have looked like a timid pair, the queen and me. She walked behind me, her form small and fragile in a riding cloak. Beneath her hood, I could see nothing but the line of her lips. But there was a strength about her tonight. When she looked at the night sky, to where the twin moons hung aligned, her shoulders straightened and she tilted her head up as if to soak in the sight. The light of the moons was a reflection from the Sun, I realized, and even this small bit of heat seemed to feed her heart. I could feel the warmth emanating from her skin, see the yellow glow growing around her, highlighting her features underneath the cloak.
Her breaths quickened as the distance between us and the castle shortened. When the first tall spires began to peek through the trees, she paused in her tracks, as if she could no longer bring herself to move forward. I stopped to look at her.
She had not seen her kingdom since it had first fallen. Her memory of this place was one steeped in beauty, filled with the love of her people and the affection of her king. Now it was emptied, the square no longer packed with smiling crowds or bustling merchants, the moat filled with dark water.
She stayed still for a long time, seemingly lost in thought. I wondered if she didn’t have the strength to go any farther.
Then she took one step, and another. She came to my side and we walked together, our strides even. The glow around her strengthened the closer we drew to the castle.