The End of The Cursed

The King of Eillene’s disappearance the night of his army’s slaughter was suspicious. While almost all historians agree he died, rumors of his escape…and planned return, lingered for years.

Fairlight was having a nightmare. She was a small child, no more than an infant really, and she was locked inside a dark confined space. The space was cramped and quiet. If she moved her little chubby arms they hit the sides of the box she was in. The darkness inside was total and oppressive. There was no sound at all other than her own panicked wailing. She needed to wake up. This was not really a dream, it was an echo of her past. She could not live through it another time. Memories and echoes were different. A memory can be dashed from a mind, while an echo submerges a witch as if she was drowning underwater and refuses to let her surface. If she failed to escape the memory she’d get sucked back into the past…a woman cannot survive in the body of an infant. She could feel her tiny body panicking and hear her own wails of fear. If she continued to the point in the echo where she had almost suffocated, she might follow the pain and never wake up.

This was how her father had tricked her mother’s visions. He had drugged a tiny baby until it was as still as death. He had put his own little girl into a coffin, and buried her. After holding a small funeral, and just before she ran out of air, he had dug up his living daughter. When the witch had looked for the death of her child, she would have found it immediately. After seeing her baby put into the ground she would have found it too painful to watch further. Visions had no sound. Her mother had not been able to hear the steady heartbeat of the infant lying still as wax in the coffin, and she had not heard the wails of the child from under the earth…she would have been completely fooled. Why had he done it? If he was just going to send her to live with strangers in the mountains, why had he done it? He must have known that the witch would watch him continuously. He knew after he enacted the little ruse, that he could never see his baby daughter again. He hadn’t even been cursed yet. He had no reason to punish his witch…why had he been willing to sacrifice a lifetime with his child to hurt a woman who had yet to do him any wrong? It made no sense, and bothered her continuously.

Fairlight thrashed in her sleep, falling out of her chair and onto the floor. The fall had thankfully torn her out of the echo. It was a vision she never wished to repeat. It made her hate her father with a passion so intense that she knew only one way to end it. It sat like a hot coal in her chest, burning every time she inhaled and exhaled. From the first time she had experienced the echo as a child, and for 45 years afterwards, the pain was her constant companion. She didn’t even know who she was without it. It was as much a part of her as her arm or her eyes.

A noise startled her from her own thoughts. It was the low rumbling of a bear’s sleeping breath. She looked up at the bed. The noise of her falling had not awoken the King. The massive bear was still motionless beneath his coverlet. Behind the black metal curtains she knew the sun was shining brightly on the new layer of fresh white snow. The snow turned the world outside into a white flame of light. Thankfully the room was still dark behind the woven iron curtains. Becoming nocturnal over the last several months had not been easy for her. She did not know how the King had survived it for so long.

She sighed as she returned to her feet and climbed back into the plush upholstered chair by the side of his bed. Most royals had such chairs by their bedsides for a servant to sit in should their master need something in the night, but no servant dared sit beside their king at this hour. Whatever servant had watched him sleep through the day had already left in preparation for the hour of transition. She might as well take their chair. It was late enough in the day that she didn’t want to bother going back to her quarters. The King would awaken soon and she would have to assess his health again.

His strange ailment puzzled her, as she knew that every other ailment did not translate from one form into the other. He should be perfectly healthy upon waking as a man, but he was not. She had given him a small cut in his arm experimentally, and while it had taken two transitions to fully heal, it had in fact healed. The sickness that weighed on the King without abating in either form distressed her. The only explanation she could think of was that it was not a hibernation sickness at all, nor a sickness of the body in any way.

It was possible that the sickness was inside his mind. The intense heaviness of spirit and constant tiredness was not due to some affliction of the body, but of his soul…a sort of depression. She feared greatly that he was descending into madness. She did not know how to cure a mad king. She wouldn’t even know where to begin. She was not a healer. Her magic was in seeing the future and avoiding the consequences of the visions. She had seen the curse lifted, but she had not seen an end to the suffering of the King. A life as trying as his, and as tragic, had significant consequences for the mind.

Fairlight was at a bit of a loss. If she cured his curse it was possible that it would relieve his burden, but it might very well not. She was also having difficulty with the idea of doing what was necessary in order to cure him of his curse. If someone had to die, she would be far more willing to sacrifice her father than the young girl. Unfortunately the King would not allow this, and she depended on his approval. She could not return to her mountain village, and after what had happened there, she needed the protection of a King.

Fairlight shuddered. That was another echo she did not wish to endure this night. She’d already almost suffocated. She did not need to burn.

Gilda was doing her best to ignore the scratchy feeling of the woolen dress on her skin. She wished that they had had the opportunity to replace her underskirt since the incident, but they had only passed one town so far in the weeks that had occurred since Freyr’s near death. They both knew that if Lord Phillip had survived to make it to a town, this would be the one he was in. They had passed it without even discussing entering it. Gilda knew better than to suggest something so stupid, just for mere comfort.

It was worse for Freyr, he had his cloak, but his shirt was bloodstained and had a bullet hole in it. It made Gilda shiver every time she looked at him. She couldn’t stand the sight of the dried blood…there was so much of it. The bullet hole was even worse. Every time it caught her eye it reminded her of the hole that had been in Freyr’s chest. It had been frothy with the disturbing mix of air and blood. Blood dripping from the wound every time it made a horrifying sucking noise as air went where it wasn’t supposed to go. Gilda dropped the reins of her horse to put her hands over her eyes. That was silly, it wouldn’t make the pictures in her mind go away!

“We should stop here. It’s barely light enough to see.” Freyr said grasping the reins she had dropped and pulling the horse up to a halt. Gilda nodded. She had not liked stopping for the night for the past few weeks. She was having a harder and harder time justifying keeping Freyr at arm’s length. She had a variety of reasons, almost all of them not ones she could explain. She knew it was irrational, but she felt like after a massive injury, it was her duty to prevent him from exerting himself. The sight of his naked chest had no power to arouse her anymore. She could only see him wounded and bleeding in her mind. He did not understand her reticence, and it was getting increasingly awkward for her to keep avoiding it. She’d had the excuse of every woman for a few days, but Freyr barely tolerated that excuse as it was. The small matter of blood did not dampen the lust of an animal the way it did human men. She had lost that excuse two days prior and was unsure how to continue keeping him at bay. But how could she let him lie with her, when he had died just three weeks ago? Not almost died…actually died in her arms? It seemed unnatural and wrong to feel desire for him. She felt like she should feel austere love, and gratitude at having his life restored…not something as crude and as physical need.

“Watch your step.” Freyr said as he took her hand to help her over a small fissure in the earth. Gilda looked down quizzically. She had never seen anything like it. The ground here was bare of snow. A fact the horse was exceedingly grateful for. Freyr had tied it to a mossy tree and it was eating every green thing within reach of the long tether he had given it. The earth beneath their feet was mostly moss and stone. Small cracks appeared here and there in it, which steamed in clouds of occasional white vapor. The landscape was utterly alien and wondrous.

“What is this?” Gilda asked as a rush of warm wet air gushed up at her. It felt heavenly. Freyr smiled.

“This is the edge of Gyllene. Well, the part that used to be Gyl. The southern half of Gyllene is what was once Gyl and was known as the Summerlands.” He had an odd note of pride in his voice, something she’d never heard before. Strange that he would feel pride over a place he had left as a child.

“We are almost to your home? We will reach the palace soon?” Gilda asked. She had thought they had more than a month or two of travel left…The thought of arriving was intensely painful, she did not want to lose him again so soon, and this time it would be by her own death. Freyr shook his head.

“Unfortunately no. Although both original kingdoms were small, the terrain of the northern portion is mountainous and extremely difficult to traverse. What was once Eillene, and is now the northern part of Gyllene, is a harsh land. While the mountains that surround the southern portion trap the heat from the fissures in the earth, the heat does not rise to them. It only increases the windswept and barren nature of the northern lands. They are very cold from early fall until the end of spring, and were once known as the Winterlands. It is really no wonder that they tried to conquer Gyl all those years ago. It is quite miserable there.” Freyr answered. Gilda was still confused. Surely the palace would be in the southern portion? Why would a King not wish to live in the superior portion of his Kingdom?

“You did not live in the south? Your palace is in the northern part of the country? Why?” Gilda asked. It made no sense…wouldn’t the royals have the best their land could offer? Wouldn’t the original King have wanted to return home to his own castle? Freyr shook his head as he began preparing their camp, next to, but not directly over any of the strange cracks in the ground.

“The southern half of Gyllene is much more populated than the northern half. Had my grandfather not been cursed, I’m sure he would have returned to his original castle and ruled both lands from there….but he was cursed. It is easier to hide a Demon King in a castle keep hewn into the side of a mountain, in a cold and desolate place. It would be almost impossible to hide one in a lush and verdant land with fields and peasants outside of every window. How could he have kept his child from going outside and being seen? Nocturnal court and strange behavior would be noticed immediately in a more populous region. As it is now, these people never see their King, they get their rulings brought to them by Lords and Squires, and consequently they do not care what hours he keeps.” It made sense, but it was a pity. The northern lands were rich in both gold and ore, but they were not pleasant to inhabit.

They hadn’t even lit a fire, but Gilda was quite warm sitting on the bearskin next to one of the fissures. She put her hand out onto the bare rock. It was warm to the touch. Slightly damp, but completely warm…which she had not been in some time. Especially not after sleeping alone the past several weeks.

“Incredible. Is the whole land like this?” She asked. Freyr shook his head.

“No. There are many pockets like this, but they would be impossible to build on. The towns and the fields are usually near areas like this, but ones that are framed by the mountains. This is the very edge. It will still take us quite a while to reach the Keep. Although, if we were exceedingly careful we might be able to get some supplies at the old one. The Duke who maintains it knows my family’s secret. At least the one who ruled it when I was young.” Freyr said softy, as if remembering.

“My family made one journey there, so that my father could show us the land that had been the home of our line of Kings before the curse. It was a dangerous journey then, and it will be now, but we should get a fresh horse, and get you a bath.” Freyr teased her. Gilda smiled. She didn’t care if he was joking. If they stopped at a castle where actual servants would be obligated to draw her one, she would not hesitate to request it. She’d had to scrub the dried blood off of herself with snow and her dress was still crunchy with it.

“We can actually stop at the castle? The original castle? The one my Gran…the one Clothilde lived in with your Grandfather? Before the war?” She asked. He nodded.

“If we are careful how we travel…we may have to do a fair amount of it at night. But unless we do, we will not be able to afford to get you the clothes that you will need in order to make the rest of the journey. What you are wearing will never be warm enough. We will be crossing the mountains in the height of Winter and it will be cold enough to freeze your eyelashes to your face.” Freyr leaned in to kiss her eyelid gently. He slid his hand into her hair. Gilda kissed his palm. Then she stood up abruptly.

“I’ll get the cup and the stone. It would be best if we made dinner quickly, and then got some extra sleep. If what you say is true, it is going to be difficult for us to find a safe place to sleep for some time after this.” She crossed over to the mare who was voraciously consuming every speck of green she could reach, and retrieved the instruments from the saddle bag. She hoped Freyr didn’t try again. Her guilt over what she planned to do made her want to push him away now, in order to spare his feelings later. She sat back down with the fire starters.

“Could you get a few larger pieces of dry wood? Even though it is warm here, we’ll need the fire to cook the food, and to boil the water for drinking.” Gilda looked down at the flint she was striking, and not at him. Freyr sighed and got to his feet. He set his hand on top of her bent head gently.

“Gilda. Do we need to talk about something?” He asked in his ‘quiet-even’ voice. Gilda shook her head firmly. The last thing she wanted to do was to explain herself. He sighed.

“Right. Then I will go get some wood for the fire.” He strode away on his long legs toward a stand of trees a stone’s throw from where they had set up their camp. Gilda’s eyes began attempting to convince her to cry, which would not be conducive to starting a fire. They itched and burned with tears that she was not allowing. She wiped her eyes and started with the flint and steel again. She wanted to go back to the way things had been…but she couldn’t. Him dying had destroyed her. Now she planned to do the same to him. Her entire chest felt heavy with intense and unrelenting sadness. There was no room for any other feeling. He was grateful to be alive and together, but she was filled with the deepest sadness she had ever known. Every demonstration of his affection was like a knife wound reminding her how very wrong what she planned to do was.

Freyr returned and set down the wood in a pyramid shape around the smoldering pile of dry moss and twigs she had made. Gilda leaned in and blew on it. The outer wood began to smoke and eventually to catch. It was actually warm enough that she could take off her cloak. It felt amazing. She scratched her leg. Even the woolen dress was almost too warm.

“We will stop at the next town. Once we are inside Gyllene, you will be safer. I can have Lord Phillip arrested on sight if we come across him in a public area. Provided that anyone believes I am their Prince.” He gave a slight smile. His smile abruptly faded. It would be difficult for anyone to imagine that he was a Prince. He looked like a murderer, or someone who ought to be dead. How was he going to do this?

“Are you terribly uncomfortable?” He asked touching only the hem of her dress. Gilda forced a tight smile.

“Less than you must be I imagine.” She glanced at his shirt for a tenth of a second before averting her eyes. He looked down at his blood stained shirt and breeches, then at Gilda’s blood stained dress and cloak. How were they going to go into town? His shirt alone was a testament to his other-ness.

“We’re not going to be able to go into town are we?” Gilda asked sadly, reading his mind as she poured water from her waterskin into the little cup and set it over the fire. It didn’t need fire to boil…it did that instantly, but putting it over fire made the magic less obvious. Now, more than ever they realized that someone might be watching.

He drew his legs up towards himself and rested his arms on his knees, putting his forehead into his hands. His long dark hair spilled over his face as he raked his fingers back through his hair. He wanted to reassure Gilda that he could take care of her in every single way. But he couldn’t even seem to keep her clothed! Since becoming his she had had each of her garments systematically destroyed, usually by blood. What sort of man couldn’t even keep his woman from being continuously soaked in blood? He moaned out loud accidentally.

“We’ll figure out a way. We can’t show up at the Duke’s castle like this! Even with your ring, in these clothes we’ll look like we murdered the real prince to get at it. We won’t even get past the guards to see the Duke. In his case, I can prove my identity at sunset, but to do that I have to get inside.” His voice dripped with intense dissatisfaction. Damn that stupid Lordling and his fancy little decorative pistol! How was it possible for one worthless man to ruin so much?

He couldn’t keep his own wife clothed because of it, and she wouldn’t even let him touch her. He didn’t understand why. Shouldn’t she be relieved that he was alive? When he had thought he would never see Gilda again, and then found her returned to him…he’d felt as though he couldn’t get enough of her. He’d wished that he could have kept a hand on her at all times so that she couldn’t melt away. He still felt that way…especially now that he had been reminded of how short their time together could be. He wanted to spend every possible moment inhaling the sweetness of her hair, tasting the buttery softness of her golden skin…But she was avoiding even the most innocent of touches. Had the injury emasculated him in her eyes? Did she see him as less of man and more a patient? He had failed to keep her safe, and died like a wretch in her arms.

He understood the mechanics of the strange miracle. His heart would have had to stop momentarily in order for the tears to heal it. His lungs would have to stop breathing for a moment so that the tissue could knit itself together before filling with air again. But he had been conscious. He could feel the little rivers of blood inside him connecting again, he could feel his lungs becoming whole…he had known that he was not dying. She had not. Once she saw he was dead…for the merest moment, she had immediately tried to leave. Where would she have gone? All this time she had spoken so few words to him. He raised his head to look at her. She was braiding her hair into a long plait that reached the ground when she was sitting. She never braided her hair. Her skirt was tucked up off her legs as high as her knees. Ordinarily the sight of her legs so displayed…all the way up to knee would entice him beyond his ability to control himself, but her shins were covered in tiny red rashes. Apparently even perfect skin could become irritated by wearing a blood soaked woolen dress with nothing underneath for weeks on end.

“Why are you braiding your hair? I’ve never seen you wear it that way.” Freyr asked, in what he thought was merely a curious way. Gilda blushed to the roots of her hair. Then a thought occurred to her as she tied off the end of the braid which now swung down her back like a tail.

“DAMN IT!” She yelled as she put head in her hands. Freyr raised an eyebrow. Before he could ask her what she meant by her strange outburst, a rabbit ran straight through their camp. He deftly caught the cottontail with one hand. A swift crack and it could wait until later. The cup must be boiling. Poor rabbit had been convinced to sacrifice itself by the spell.

He put his hand to his forehead in surprise. Out of season tree nuts had begun to pelt them as they flew on an unseen wind from the grove of what he now realized had been butternut trees. The strange sticky green pods, now yellowed, were still hard not to recognize. He pulled the second bear skin over them until it stopped. The sound of pods pelting them was almost humorous, if he were not concerned about her strange behavior.

“I assume you didn’t braid it because you knew we were about to be pelted with sticky husked nuts?” He asked. His question about her hair seemed to have genuinely distressed her. He could feel the motion of her shaking her head under the bear skin more than he could see it in the dark. He didn’t hear anymore nuts flying around, so he lifted the skin again and helped Gilda up.

“I braided it…because my Gran told me that I looked terrible with braided hair…like a horse or like a girl with a yellow rope on her head. She said girls with golden hair shouldn’t wear braids…an opportunistic person might sneak up behind you and cut it off to sell to a wig maker.” Gilda shook her head in irritation. “She just wanted me to leave it down, because she knew you were always watching me from the woods. She must have wanted me to look my best. She always said ‘you never know who’s watching’…I thought she meant judges for Queen of the Faire.” Gilda covered her perfect painted angel face with her hands. “So you must not like braids? That’s why she told me I looked ugly with them? You mentioned me doing it before I even finished making it.” She said, feeling like she had babbled about nothing for a very long time. It hurt horribly to think of how little Gran must of have thought of her as a person, that she had emphasized her appearance so much. She had nothing else to offer Freyr, and so what she did have had to be amplified beyond all sense. Freyr turned his head to the side. It did remind him of Freya more than anything else. Gilda looked like an angel in every permutation, but a braid made her seem familial.

“So you mean to tell me, that you braided your hair specifically in order to look your worst?” He asked. Gilda nodded slightly. She looked petulant.

“Yes. But then it reminded me of all the ways that Gran altered me and manipulated me to make me…into something else. Maybe this is my favorite way to wear my hair…how would I know? She knew who was watching me, I didn’t. I don’t know anything about myself because everything about me is designed to keep me ready for you. All Gran ever prepared me for was to bear your child.” Gilda scratched at the angry red marks on her legs. Freyr grasped her hand.

“Don’t scratch…you may cut yourself.” He was going to say that she might bleed on the dress, but that ship had sailed. Gilda couldn’t help it, the warm air was only making it worse. She stopped shelling the nuts from the sticky pods in order to scratch her leg again. This time it tore the rash slightly and blood trickled down her shin. She didn’t even notice, as the level of pain and irritation in her skin was already so great that it couldn’t be amplified. Freyr growled.

“Just take it off for the night. You’ll be warm enough without it.” He attempted to undo the dress himself. He couldn’t watch her suffer anymore. Gilda leapt backwards and almost into the fire in her haste to escape his fingers.

“That’s alright! I’m fine, I’d really rather not skin a rabbit in the nude anyway.” She picked up the crumpled animal and walked back to the horse to get her knife from the saddle bag. Freyr growled in his throat as she quickly finished prepping the sorry creature with her quick little knife and setting it up over the fire. The effect of an angel faced girl skinning a rabbit was an odd one, but admittedly one he had watched hundreds of times over the past few years.

“Are you going to explain to me why I cannot come near you? If I intend nothing other than to be close to you, would I be permitted?” Freyr asked. Gilda swallowed.

“I’m sorry Freyr.” Gilda turned the spit she had made, with the rabbit on it, over the fire. She couldn’t tell Freyr that part of reason she wanted to distance herself from him, was to spare his feelings when she died. Trying to prevent her fated death had killed Freyr once. Luckily he had been saved, at the last minute…but how likely was it that she could save him a second time? If she tried to avoid her own death again, it could easily cause Freyr’s all over…maybe this time irreparably. He would never let her die willingly. If he knew about it, he would try to prevent it, and it could get him killed. She had always marveled at the idiocy of the heroes and heroines in operas or poems who didn’t tell each other the truth. Naturally they caused all sorts of tragedies…generally unnecessary deaths with their failure to communicate. The absurdities that their inability to talk to one another caused were so frustrating it almost made a person want to give up reading altogether. In her case, she was committing the very same sin, but with the intention of her failure to communicate being preserving a life. Gilda had made the mistake of telling Freyr about the danger once. She wasn’t about to do it again. Mistakes were only forgivable if you learned from them.

Freyr came within an arms-length of her again. Hovering, but not touching her. “Are you afraid that I am not returned to my strength? Are you afraid that you will over tax me if you let my affection take its natural course?” He asked, wrapping the end of her braid around his wrist, so that she could not slip away. She nodded slightly.

“A little.” She admitted. He rolled his wrist a second time around the braid, bringing her closer to him, so that he could whisper close to her ear.

“I’ve been healed by your magic, and transitioned several times since then – I am completely cured. I am fully returned to my strength.” She could feel his breath against her cheek as he twisted his arm again, using her braid to pull her firmly against him. “Let me show you how much.” He traced his lips along her jaw.

“Freyr please stop.” Gilda protested as she attempted to disentangle her hair from where it was wound firmly around his wrist. He dropped it willingly. He sighed and ran his finger down the long plait against her back.

“Will you at least tell me what is wrong? Or even let me be near you? I would never be so archaic as to claim any sort of ‘spousal rights’ with you.” He growled as Gilda rapidly slithered away from him toward their camp. He might wish to be so very barbaric, but he would never intentionally force her to do anything. Gilda took the roasted rabbit off the spit and divided the flaming hot animal unequally between them, along with the toasted nuts. A bear required a significantly larger portion than a rather petite girl.

“As I understand it Freyr, those ‘rights’ are put into law in order to ensure a man’s ability to produce heirs. As you never intend to have any-I don’t think it applies.” Gilda replied in as cold and steady a voice as possible. It would be easier for him to think that she was angry about his rule against progeny. It was as good an excuse as any, and it was the one that would convince him they were ill-suited for each other. If he had already given up on their relationship when she died, it would be easier for him to move on afterward. He was crown prince. He would be expected to do so. A small flame of anger burned in her chest. It was surprising. Until this moment she hadn’t realized that she minded the notion of never having children. She’d thought that all she wanted was Freyr, but it wasn’t true.

Freyr looked at her in surprise. She could not have chosen words to wound him more deeply. He looked as if he had been hit in the face. He inhaled and composed his expression almost instantly. Every facet of his face that could have betrayed emotion was now part of a stony mask that revealed nothing. He nodded slowly and spoke in his usual calm voice.

“Of course, you are correct.” His voice was cold and even, no emotion leaking through the words. He left her side and unrolled the other bearskin a ways off from hers. “Our relationship is not natural and follows no pre-conceived laws. What possible ordinance could govern the marriage of a young woman foolish enough to wed an animal?” He wrapped himself in it away from her. Gilda lay down on her bearskin by the fire. The night was growing colder despite the thermal heat and she wished she could have Freyr beside her. Instead, she said the cruelest thing she could possibly think of. Anything to wound him now, and galvanize him against what was coming.

“As I recall it, our getting married was an accident.” Gilda spoke softly, but she knew he could hear her. She closed her eyes and bit her lip. She hated herself, so hopefully Freyr did too.