The Strings
a fairy tale
by Mithrigil Galtirglin
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"If you really want to serve your country, young man," the General said to the scrawny youth kneeling at his feet, "then go and be the mother to my son, he doesn't have one and I—"
Gremio looked up as soon as the General's voice cracked, wind-sharp and hollow. Absently, the boy wiped the soot from his cheek and used the gesture as an excuse to avert his eyes again.
"I can't be with him right now, but I need to," the General went on, softer, and Gremio watched the man's massive boots click uneasily together. "And I'm sick of seeing boys die in place of men."
-
It was to a land that would not be a kingdom for much longer that the General brought the fair-haired boy. The General's house was built beside a fountain carved in the likeness of a dead queen and a living witch, and far too big since the General's wife was dead. So the General told this fair-haired boy, who he had found among his ranks pretending to be a man grown, that this house by the fountain would be his battleground, and his orders to mind and protect the General's young son. The General's son was a serious and dutiful toddler, with black hair and black eyes just like his father. And because he had no greater love than to be of use, and in truth, he was not ready to be a proper soldier, the fair-haired boy became the shadow of the General's son, and the keeper of the House by the Fountain.
It was, as the General described, a battlefield, and the fair-haired boy soon found his days filled with task upon task. The House by the Fountain was large, and largely empty during the war years, with only the General's son, his old arms-master and tutor, and a few groundskeepers. Without tasks, the fair-haired boy knew he would tire and grow bored, and so he would even create work where there was none. And in this whirl of his new life as a servant, he forgot that the country was at war, and not all soldiers are as honorable as others.
The fair-haired boy was at work in the cellar when the enemy came, four, six, ten men overwhelming the old arms-master as he taught staff-drills to the General's son, then making off with the child. They left a clatter and a shout and a note that the fair-haired boy did not read before charging after their tracks, dragging an axe and cursing himself for his negligence. He tracked them with upended barrels and urgent words, through a sunset and a secret door in an abandoned carriage house, which he kicked off its hinges with a single thrust, he was so angry. He slaughtered the bandits to a man.
Hours later, when the General's son was asleep, the fair-haired boy (quite sure now that he was still a boy and not a man, as the arms-master was asserting) lay with his arms wrapped around the small child, burying his nose in the little boy's mess of black hair and trying to keep from sobbing. He knew he could not stop the tears, but at the very least he could be courteous, and not trouble the General's son further.
-
"…Sonya?"
"I believe he resents me," Sonya repeated, lifting her chin and muffled lips from Teo's shoulder.
Teo's sigh was deep and rumbling, and he closed his eyes again, heavily. "Not you. He…he would resent anyone in your position."
-
Years passed, and the kingdom was still a kingdom yet, but the fair-haired boy had grown into a man at last and the General's son was as old as the fair-haired one had been when he tried, unsuccessfully, to become a man himself. The war was long resolved, and so the House by the Fountain was not so lonely anymore, with only the General himself absent with any regularity. The General's son did not lack for company, and the ten or so year's difference between him and the fair-haired young man had prompted him to make friends who appeared closer to his age, and first among these friends was a boy who always wore gloves. The boy with gloves and the General's son shared nearly everything, trained beside each other (the boy with gloves on the short-bow, and the General's son with a staff one hand too long and one stone too heavy), and the fair-haired young man always made sure to have an extra setting for the table clean, just in case the boy with gloves invited himself over for dinner, which he often did.
But the boy with gloves, unbeknownst to all but the witch in the Fountain, was actually a powerful wizard, centuries old and cursed. And he, sensibly, kept this a secret from the General's son as well, until it was too late.
The General's son joined the Emperor's army, though the country was not at war anymore, and the wizard-boy followed him and his servants on the errands of the kingdom. And so the wizard-boy protected his friend, but in doing so caught the attention of the witch whose visage crowned the Fountain, and the entourage soon found its steps hounded.
And mere minutes before the witch came for him, the wizard-boy cried, and passed his curse onto the General's son.
-
"I will not forgive myself for doing this to you," the burns on the back of the boy's hand whispered.
The boy covered the Rune with his ungloved palm, and embraced one hand with the other. The brand stopped laughing, and its ache dulled.
-
War became him, and he could serve the kingdom and its cruel administration no longer. He soon found others of like mind, or they found him, and in the months to follow, many others would die and be consumed by the curse, wrapping around the General's son until they had made themselves a part of him. His friend; his leader; the General himself; naught that the boy held dear was spared. And worst of all these, before his father, the golden-haired young man, his servant, his truest companion these many years, laid down his life that the General's son may live.
But it was not the young man's death than shattered the heart of the General's son; the curse upon his hand wrenched the golden-haired young man's soul through the cold stone walls, and consumed him, and laughed in a barrage of quills through the General's son's skin. And for weeks, though he forgave, though he always forgave, the shade of the golden-haired young man begged to be absolved. Every nightmare, every cold morning, the General's son's eyes were colder, and his flesh harder, and his shoulders set further back. Though he did not grow in girth, he began to look a man, if only in his still and hollow black eyes.
And as a man, he killed his father; and as a man, saw his country reformed; and as a man, avenged the deaths of all who haunted his nights and crawled beneath his skin. They were as greedy as he was hardy, and they clung to him and bound him, and soon directed him; first his eyes, from without; and then his limbs, as a puppet acquires strings.
Among those others who resisted the machinations of the witch in the Fountain and the kingdom she held in her thrall was a knight in the garb of a land long forgotten, with a dark ram-horned helm and a sword that could never be cleaned. He could see the tethers and the threads around the cursed boy's elbows and knees; he said nothing.
The war would soon be at its end, and a hundred and six men of note had entwined themselves around the boy and his cause, and the boy himself made their number a hundred and seven. A tablet proclaimed this for them, but one name had been dulled and filled in; that of the golden-haired young man, the servant, who had no greater love than to be of use.
In exchange for one year each from their own lives, their number was returned to a hundred and eight.
-
Almost before his eyes had focused, the boy was rushing across the War Room, tripping on the hem of the mended cape and clattering to his knees, embracing the bewildered Gremio's legs the way he had when they were young. Gremio gasped, his chest heaving, as if he'd never expected to have air fill his lungs again.
"Young master—" he choked, and staggered, nearly topping over the boy where he knelt, hands clenching on the boy's shivering shoulders. It occurred to him that he was not dead.
-
Of course, has happens in the stories of heroes, the cursed-boy defeated the witch of the Fountain, and the King she served, and soon the kingdom was a kingdom no longer. However, as happens less often in these stories, the boy did not break his curse, nor could he pass it on to another. And so he fled, and the golden-haired young man with him, and abandoned the fledgling state to its own, new devices.
A hundred and seven years had been given them, and soon they forgot the number for their journeys. Ever in the dark places, and ever without names, and ever with gloves, the cursed boy and the servant lent their arms to struggles great and small. But the boy remained a boy, and the servant past first his prime, and then his second childhood, and then his second infancy.
-
The boy's face was gaunt and hollow-cheeked, old before its time, or perhaps not. The moonlight could not wash away the gentle scars and ruddy, caked dirt that he grew so accustomed to in his years. His expressions were a coterie of contours, variegate and almost automatic, facilitated by ages of silence. His eyes, not-quite-black on not-quite-black-anymore, were perpetually narrowed, sullen and weary, always weary, and angry besides.
He watched as Gremio, withered beyond recognition and recumbent on the grass before him, crumbled to dust. The old man's hair, white as the stars, ran through the boy's fingers until it, too, was nothing.
-
His tears, if they had fallen, would have been dust. They were not given license to fall, for moments later, when the scent of the old dead servant was still hanging in the air, a presence surfaced at the boy's side and stifled the malicious laughter of the curse.
The boy turned, and a comrade from years past stood behind him; the knight with the ram-horned helm.
Now, in the boy's century, he had learned much, and he knew that this knight in black could be called a Demon. But then, the boy had likewise learned, so could he.
And the Demon told him of many things, or none at all; but the sum of his offer was peace. Silence, in the place of cruel laughter; rest, in the place of running; the forgiving arms of sleep; all these the Demon presented to the boy. The Demon's eyes, when the boy beheld them, were placid and gentle, one silver, one red.
In a heartbeat, the boy declined.
A hundred years or more, and the boy had many more adventures, as is the wont of those who cannot abide silence and stasis. He wandered, and fought, and soon wrapped strings of his own around the arms and eyes of others. Where there was a war, the boy chose the winner, and aided him; where there was a dragon, the boy healed those who would slay it. His name was still sung, and sometimes whispered, but the golden-haired man who had been his shadow those hundred and thirty-four years was forgotten.
-
In silence, the boy sank to his knees. Laughter, resigned laughter, spidered up his arm from the brand, and flooded his veins. The grass beneath his knees broke and bled, but its scent could not reach him.
He called for the Demon. The Demon came.
-
The boy regarded the Demon with such pleading in his eyes—one was almost grey now, the other brightening from black to red—that a moment was too long for it to last; shame overtook him, and he hung his head and turned away. But that one silent glance was enough for the Demon, and he offered his right hand to the boy. Stillness, for a moment, then prodding, then the boy noticed and took it with his left. The cursed brand flickered like the last drops of oil as the boy was pulled to his feet, struggling half-heartedly as if through a crowd too dense to ever really navigate. The Demon gathered the boy into his arms, choking the grey glow of his left hand and bowing, tilting his forehead forward like a drawbridge and his hair, blacker than the boy's, cradled them both. In the darkness, resigned tears gathered at the corners of the boy's eyes, and he closed them, and never opened them again. He fell forward woodenly.
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