They found the sanctuary, the boy and his war horse.
Even before he saw the town - a mere dot on the map of teeming humanity - he sensed the magic. It emanated from the people and creatures of power that lived within its boundaries, and his spirit was lifted by the promise of kindred souls among them. He contemplated announcing himself with his usual pomp and bravado, but it was evening when he arrived, weary from flying, and the streets were empty.
At the edge of the town, he hesitated.
He was about to choose a prison of a different kind, one that did not discriminate between royalty and commoner, only the magic that flowed in their veins. This - this small village in the heart of obscurity - would be his forever, his hell. He laughed then - a bitter sneer - understanding that no one cared to stop him, that there was no just-in-time counteroffer, that his next step would change no one's life, not even his own.
It hit him then - how alone he truly was.
He squeezed his fist around the unicorn and walked through the barrier.
He had no name in this haven.
From day to day, he drifted, marking time only by the turning of the seasons and the transient niches he called home. He did best living wild in the trees and shadows, for he was a creature of the greenwood, familiar with the spirits of nature and all growing things. His magic kept him safe and protected from the elements, but his hunger possessed him and made him vulnerable and needy. When the earth was warm and alive, he found food in the ground and between the leaves, but in the colder months, he would emerge from hiding and forage in the places where people lived: a kitchen window, a vegetable garden, a farm, a dumpster. In the beginning, he felt sick at the irony - a prince and heir to a kingdom, stealing scraps and hunting vermin - but his will to survive changed him, drove him to choose and want things he would never have imagined when he'd lived in luxury and excess. He stayed in one place for as long as it sustained him, careful for his pilfering to be blamed on foxes or other predators, and then, like a locust in a swarm leaving behind barren pickings, he moved to the next eden of plenty. In that way, he kept himself alive.
Still, all the food in the world could not fill his soul. Raised in a palace in the company of hundreds, he now could hardly bear the silence, the absence of others who, by their words and actions - no matter kind or cruel - had made him real. Now, he would live for no one, share his thoughts with no one, be missed by no one, love no one.
One morning, after a particularly successful raid on an outlying ranch, he sat in an oak tree, rubbing his full belly and gazing at the rising sun.
I need a fellow soldier, he reflected; missions and quests and wars are not meant to be braved - or celebrated - alone.
When he was a prince, his brother had been his wingman, his cover, the Bonnie to his Clyde. But their bond had been sundered, thanks to his father, and now he must elect another. But who?
The unicorn would have to do. It was all he had, anyway.
That, and his imagination. It was a weapon like no other; with it, a child could build fortresses, create civilizations, fill worlds.
So he touched his finger to its tiny horn, feeling the magic ignite, and the creature swelled until it was the size of a large cat.
He stared at its glass eyes and sighed.
You're not as big as the legend you are named for, he told it solemnly, but neither am I. We will be children together, then, but braver and freer than any that have ever lived. We will no longer slay villains or rescue princesses. You are my war horse and, together, we will conquer the world.
Then, because he was lord of tricks and bitter satire, he named it Kraven - not for the color of its heart but for the fear it would instill in their enemies. And they took an oath, with his hand on its head and its hoof on his thigh, to leave mayhem and madness in their wake.
So by day, they invented mischief, and vexed the townspeople. But at night, he slept with his arm around its neck, his body against its flank and the jeweled tip of its horn guarding his heart.
For six and a half years, he embraced the destiny his mother had laid on him.
In the seventh year of his exile, destiny intervened.
He had been living in the woods behind an old house, where there had been a veritable bounty of berries and root vegetables growing wild in the late summer sun. He feasted and frolicked, and sparred with his war horse in make-believe wars over blood and land and honor. He was careful to keep themselves hidden - sometimes they even made a game of it - but he hadn't realized whose backyard it was that he'd chosen as his battleground. The inhabitants of the house noticed the comings-and-goings among the trees and watched until they spied him.
"Who is he talking to?" The old lady wondered aloud.
"I believe. . . it is his toy horse," her companion replied.
The old lady's heart pinched inside her chest. "Jacob had a lion when he was little," she recalled fondly. "It kept him safe from monsters. And they were always going on adventures."
"Comfort objects," the old man affirmed.
"Yes," said she.
"I suppose, if he's been alone all this time . . ."
"He is just a boy, Canis."
"Indeed."
"We must help him."
"If he wants to be helped."
"He must at least eat."
"True."
So they hunted him down.
"Where is your family?" They asked.
"I have none."
They were the first words he'd spoken to another living being since arriving in the town. The old woman looked upon his ragged frame and saw the sons she had lost.
She held out her hand to him.
He rejected them in the beginning, thinking them old and frail and beneath him.
But they continued to tempt him with food and soft words, and he condescended to take the bread and cheese and the occasional cut of meat. And, slowly, he began to feel as if he mattered.
He wouldn't talk about his family, so she told him about hers.
He learned that she had once been a mother and a wife.
And that her husband had been killed by a monster.
He must have been an unskilled fool, he remarked.
He died saving his son, she corrected.
And he knew, right then, that she was not to be trusted.
You are a liar, he snarled, jumping to his feet and hurling away the loaf he'd been savoring only seconds earlier. No father would ever do that for a son.
Then he leaped back into the darkness, and she feared that she had lost him, just when she'd finally found him.
That night, he buried his face in the neck of his war horse and wept tears of fury at the cosmos. And he did not care that no one might have heard.
Winter was unforgiving that year.
The old woman told her companion that she needed to try to reach the boy once more. She couldn't explain it, she said, but he was important to her. So they went out with a bundle of clothes and food, and called to him from the edge of the wood.
He stood among the trees, and the old man frowned when he saw that the boy was even more ragged than before.
The old woman opened her home to him, but he would have none of it.
"Then at least visit once in a while, whenever you're hungry," she pleaded. "If not for yourself, perhaps . . . for the welfare of your war horse?"
They left the bundle on the ground, an offering to the gods of reason as much as to him.
Four days later, in the middle of a blizzard, there was a knock on the door. When she opened it, she found him standing outside, dressed in new jeans and a green sweatshirt, its hood over his shaggy head, buried in frigid white. Under his arm was a unicorn.
"I am a fairy," he informed her with dignity, "and I have lived centuries in sun and snow. I am not weakened by the cold."
"Of course not," she agreed in all seriousness.
"But my war horse needs shelter. And oats. Just for the night."
"Our invitation extends to any of your court," she assured him, as she set them both on the couch under blankets, and watched as his shivering ceased and he inhaled three meals' worth of food. Minutes later, he was asleep, curled into himself, the forsaken boy who had found his way into her house and her heart.
He had no family, he'd said.
Then, she decided, we shall be his.
Time was golden then.
The long nights gave birth to the happy carefree days of spring and summer, and as the trees once more came alive, the boy flourished. He watched and listened and, casting aside the elegant tongue and formal bearing of the court he'd left behind, learned the speech and demeanor of the common man. He confounded the townsfolk with his pranks and trickery, honing his skill to an art, and continued to live off the land at their expense. But they no longer met him with mistrust; they knew him now - The One Relda Grimm Had Taken In - and if any had an inkling of the circumstance that had brought him to them, they did not speak of it, nor hold it against him.
Word of his ingenuity spread near and far and earned him the attention of the pixies in the greenwood, who thought him a kindred soul in merrymaking and devilry. They gave him their allegiance, and he fashioned a sword from a tree branch and became their master. Together, they descended upon gullible humanity - the boy general and his war horse, leading a rogue army into the playing field fate had designed for its own wicked amusement. He reveled in his newfound infamy and his heart knit itself whole on the praises of his minions and the lamentations of their fallen. He found himself again, rewrote his part in the cosmos, and redefined what it meant to be free.
His father had meant to crush him under the weight of tradition and forge him into fortune's hero, but he had not been broken.
Behold, he bellowed with fierce joy, hurling his gauntlet into the vapid face of Fate, I am a villain of the worst kind.
Then Fate answered, and dispatched a princess to save him.
A/N: This story has been harder to write than I'd initially thought it'd be. I was surprised. Largely, it's because it's so different than the ones I've written so far - for one, it has so little dialogue,* which would've been an easy way to drive any plot. For another, it is a retelling of the book's course of events, and not really a new story per se. And of course, all the chapters are much shorter than my usual rubbishy-going-on-and-on-forever ones. It takes concentration to NOT write thousands and thousands of words. And I still think I wrote too much. Some day I will return and more objectively edit these chapters, and cut them down so they can say more in less. Anyway, I hope you still enjoy it as is now, and have a wonderful weekend - spring is almost upon us (in this part of the world, anyway)!
* This chapter actually has the most dialogue of all four.
