A/N: A four-parter! Can I first tell you how all this started? I've had the absolute delight of being in the company of a little girl with a BFF stuffed toy which she's brought to life in her imagination. Probably you've all known kids like that, who've created an entire world in which their comfort animal is the star, right? It's so wonderful to watch, and to look at the world through the eyes of a child. Which made me remember one of my favorite comics - Calvin and Hobbes. Who doesn't love Hobbes? And who hasn't felt their heart break, reading between the lines of Calvin's dialog with Hobbes? It is at once charming and poignantly sad, simultaneously a celebration of childhood (and its unparalleled creativity) and the impending loss of innocence.
Calvin reminds me in so many ways of Puck, one of which is his love-hate relationship with his schoolmate and neighbor Susie. It's like Puckabrina for preschoolers! If you haven't read Calvin and Hobbes, I gently recommend it to you - it's so funny and sweet. And wrenching.
Anyway, it all made me want to write a(nother) story of Puck, whose entire existence in the books is about Leaving Things Behind - his childhood, his carefree responsibility-less life, his family, his prejudices, his roguish defences, his fears . . . We first meet him in Book 1 as an exiled boy-prince, with a fantastic backstory that would have Flynn Ryder's eating his dust, but which we only find out about 3 books later. This is my take* on those years before, and after, and of the imaginary friend who kept him from falling apart.
* The take is mine, but the actors are Buckley's.
The banishment had been instantaneous.
Or, at least, it had seemed that way. It was hard to place all the details - one minute he was the crown prince of Faerie, strutting about the halls of the palace; the next, he was alone in the twilight of Central Park, surrounded by shadows, a nobody.
He'd had a vague recollection of his mother rising from her chair, a protest dying on her lips as she'd lowered her eyes in acquiescence to his father's authority. His brother - co-conspirator and fellow battle-strategist - had been outside in the corridor, still gathering the small nursery toys they'd been using to stage an epic war.
The war he'd been about to win by sending his intrepid knight into the fortress to save the princess.
Before his father had walked right through the battleground on his way to the throne room, scattering game pieces left and right in his impatience and disregard.
The Crown Prince had shouted out in indignation, a small war horse in his fist, devastated that the past hour of careful scheming had come to naught.
The King had turned and called him a child for playing with toys. It was no wonder, he'd said, disappointment percolating beneath his sneer, that his kingdom was in ruins.
The Crown Prince hadn't missed the double meaning in his words. After all, he'd heard it so many times, phrased in so many ways, so as to keep the wound fresh with each cruel thrust. He'd told himself it was what fathers said to sons to turn them into men. He'd tried to let it be noise in the background, had tried to let it drift harmlessly away, but it had nonetheless lodged itself in the tender places of his soul.
You are a child.
And he'd believed it, swallowing it like a bitter pill, defenseless as it hardened him from the inside out, until his body itself had surrendered the will to change, to become something more, to prove his father wrong.
No longer.
His brother, sensing the storm, had laid a warning hand on his arm -
- too late.
The heir to the throne of Faerie straightened from his crouch and challenged the King. I am not a child.
Then prove it. The King had faced him, disdainful. Marry the princess and be a man.
He'd clenched his jaw; it made no sense, his father's command. There was no connection between the two; it was not even an alliance between kingdoms, not if the princess was really only the Queen's own handmaid. The betrothal had been a farce from the beginning, and he'd even felt sorry for the girl who'd stared longingly at him from his mother's side, so buoyed by fantasies of glory and intimacy that she hadn't realized he'd never let it happen. Because he'd known - everyone had - that it was merely his father's whim to belittle him, to imply that he had nothing to contribute, a way to prove that either by accepting or refusing, he was still only - and exactly - a child.
No.
On the ground behind him, his brother had stifled a gasp.
Father and son had then entered the room where the Queen waited, the courtiers standing at attention.
Before the court, without even a sidelong glance, the King had turned his dare into an ultimatum.
Marry the princess or be banished.
The boy had stood his ground, battling the will of his father.
Never. I will never choose the princess to gain a kingdom.
The King's face had borne no expression.
You are a child. But you are not my son.
Yet another permutation of his shame and utter unworthiness, the words had nonetheless ripped him apart. And he'd lost both the battle and the war.
For hours, he wandered aimlessly down the paths of the park, an immortal boy in a human landscape, with nowhere to go. Fueled by shock and anger, he kept walking, trying to get as far away as possible from the trod that joined this world to his. But close to midnight, he collapsed against one of the granite formations, huddled away from the streetlight. He'd taken nothing from the palace - no food, no clothes, not even a farewell, so quickly had the soldiers carried out his father's sentence.
Not quite nothing. There was something in his hand, an artifact from the surreal moments before his life fell apart.
He relaxed his fist, uncurling his fingers -
- the war horse.
No, not a horse. It was a unicorn, made of fabric and meticulously hand-stitched. He remembered now - his knight had been gifted it by the wise sage in the cave, to storm through the ranks of demons and ogres and save the princess. He would've delivered her to her father unharmed, and the Demon Lord, bereft of its hostage bride, would have relinquished its hold on the realm. He would have saved the kingdom. He would have been a hero.
And he would not have asked for her hand in marriage, nor taken it had it been offered.
He imploded.
Around him, unseen eyes beheld his grief.
When dawn spread golden fingers over the horizon, he made himself get up and move on. The humans would soon come in droves and there was no longer the darkness to shelter him. He'd been alive for centuries and he knew, had witnessed firsthand, what they would do to his kind. He still had his magic and his power, but what good were they among fools who could not see him for what he was, let alone cower before him?
He remembered his mother's gift to him the day she had crowned him king. Cut down once again by his father's words, he'd come to her, shattered, and she'd mended him with promises of justice and - one day, when his father would not be expecting it - the throne. Until then, she'd murmured as she'd held him, he would be the emperor of mischief, the ruler of an empire of his own choosing.
So he'd grown into his name, going from realm to realm and leaving his mark wherever he deigned to dupe the unsuspecting and dally with the innocent. And as he'd returned, triumphant, to his court, he'd basked in the homage they'd paid him: Hail,Trickster King.
But this - this was their world; they were the kings here, not he.
He gazed down at his clothes, resplendent in the brightening daylight, a mockery of who he no longer was. Bitter and afraid, he threw himself into a pool of mud underfoot to hide their opulence; he was of earth now, common and fragile, and he did not want to remember, did not want them to see.
For three days he lived in the park, tucked away in trees and hollows, watching the mortal world go by while time stood still in his. With one hand, he stole food from the carts and picnic blankets, blinking at the precious babies and the beloved children nestled in the arms of their parents who, by simply being, cut him.
With the other, he held fast to the unicorn - the only thing he could call his - and hid.
After a month, the dryads found him.
Weak from hunger and the constant vigilance of the hunted, he'd been curled up in a hole in the ground when they'd emerged from the shadows and clustered around his body, whispering to each other in the sibilant rustle of leaves.
We daren't come earlier, they said. We would've sheltered you, but we were afraid of the King.
Even exiled, his father was still taking away from him.
In a murmur, he told them to let him die. No one would care, he assured them, because he belonged to no one. And because he had nothing.
Their voices grew agitated as they conferred.
He must leave, the oldest among them finally announced. He must go where he would no longer be in his father's shadow, haunted by the specters of his past. They told him the name of a place where he could be safe, where there were others like him, where he wouldn't be alone.
But there was a barrier, they warned him, an ancient stronghold. Once he'd entered, he could never leave, could never come back.
After they'd departed, leaving behind an offering of roots and berries, he stared out into the darkness, balanced on the scales of delusion and despair.
He let another week go by before he felt hope.
And yet another before he found strength.
He looked at the unicorn in his hand.
We have nothing to come back to, my trusty steed. Shall we then take this adventure set before us?