When Mother was pregnant everybody wanted it to be a boy, although very few said so in my presence; but I knew it anyway. I didn't really mind, so much; there wasn't anything I or anybody else could do about it, either, so I saw no pint in fretting about it. However, I will say this: Father took me aside one day, near the end, and promised (in a very quiet voice) that, no matter what the future might hold, he would set aside for me a stretch of land with one of the houses that had been passed down through his family, so that I would always have a place I knew I would be welcome. For this I was glad.
Within a week or two of said conversation, it came time for the baby. Father, along with all other men, was expelled from Mother's rooms – the whole side of the house, really. I was allowed to be present as long as I sat quietly on a stool against the wall and carried linens back and forth when needed. During this ordeal my respect for my mother and women in general increased several times over. It seemed to me a hard birth, but it was my first one and the women assured me later that it was no harder than usual, although it was no easier, either. I saw – albeit from a distance – my mother's sweat and tears and scarlet blood, but the distance did nothing to soften her cries. However, I carried out my tasks dutifully, and watched from the side of the basin as one of my mother's closest handmaids washed the child. And I verified with my own eyes, before anybody outside the room was notified, that it was, indeed, a boy.
The women wrapped him loosely in a blanket and laid him in the crook of Mother's arm as I stood beside the bed, looking on with as much dignity as I could muster. Mother smiled up at me, radiant and tired. "Go ahead," she said. "Hold him. Take him out to your father."
I never questioned the selflessness that allowed her to give up such an honor: showing a proud father his first son. Instead, I reached down and picked up the tiny sleeping weight, only allowing my excitement to show in my smile and in my eyes, and made a slow two-person procession out of her rooms and down the hall. My brother and I, for the first time.
Father was waiting anxiously, and behind him other men of the household: advisors, servants, a diplomat or two, Jason and his father. I beamed with pride as I presented the bundle to my father. "Your son," I said, and I swear there were tears in his eyes as he took the baby from me with something approaching reverence.
From that time onward things changed around our small court, but the changes were subtle. I was allowed slightly more freedom; or, one or two of the excuses I gave were accepted more readily than they would have been, had my brother not been born. I was treated with no less deference, per say, but even at that age I could detect the change in the air as my father's advisors spoke to me, the change that comes when one realizes one's plans will not depend on the questionable abilities of another. I did not particularly mind. My days were pleasant and my worries bearable. My brother grew, and I often acted as his nursemaid; my only other companions were children of the servants, and they were often busy.
Once or twice I took little Gary behind the grounds and through the gate out into the meadow behind our castle. On the other side of the meadow was a farm; from a distance, Gary was fascinated by the two cows standing outside the barn. He laughed and clapped his hands. We lay in the grass, because I knew in my heart that he must grow up to have some memories of such things; he would have scant time once his tutors began to whisk him away. So I made it my mission to give him as many such memories as I could. It bothered me not that, at the time, he was only two and would not remember that afternoon.
Of course, we could not lose all dignity, because one of the servants, an ex-soldier, sat on the low wall of the castle to watch over us, but we compensated. I ticked him with a blade of grass, and with my hair; he giggled. I couldn't understand why anyone would give up opportunities like these; but then, I was young.
He trundled off, though I stayed where I was, content to watch his whereabouts. He looked at me over his shoulder for a moment and giggled to himself, then ran as fast as his stubby legs could take him towards the farm. I unfolded myself from the ground and set off after him, thinking he would come to no real harm. I caught up and grabbed his shoulder mere feet from where one of the cows stood watching him. It blinked lazily. Gary struggled with all his baby strength to pull free, but I held firm.
Just then the barn door opened and a boy my age walked out. He stopped as soon as he saw us and then nodded his head uncertainly. "G'day," he said.
"G'day," I responded awkwardly. "Gary here just ran off and – I'm sorry, we'll be leaving now." I turned to go, propelling Gary in front of me.
"It's okay," he assured me quickly, reaching out on impulse to touch my shoulder. "I can show him the cow." He leaned forward and took Gary's hand. "Look," he said. "Her name is Bessie."
As soon as the boy's hand closed over Gary's, a sharp voice cut in behind us. "Hands off him, please," the servant who had followed us said, throwing in the 'please' only for appearance's sake. The boy and I flinched as if struck; I had not realized we had been followed.
"Sorry," he mumbled, backing away. The servant barely even glanced at him as he gestured that I pick my brother up. "We'll be going now," he said. I nodded, abashed, and followed him, giving the boy one last fleeting glance. I'm sure that my expression matched his.
It did not fully occur to me until years later that the servant had said nothing when the boy touched my shoulder. By that time I had learned to feel sour upon the realization.
It hardly affected Gary, though. He smiled and clapped his hands together over my shoulder. "Moo," he said. "Moo." His first word.
Now, I do not know what I would have done without Gary in those following months. It began slowly enough, and innocently: the men that I determined were spies – by process of elimination, as I could tell what they were not – began to trickle into Harpryre. My father spent hours locked away in a room talking with them and his advisors, and their foreheads were creased when they came out. I knew, for Mother told me, and the gaps that she purposefully left out were filled by Jason, that the spies brought stories of a man who wished to overthrow my father and take the throne.
Jason was of the opinion that he would never succeed. "Your family is too tenacious. The only way he could gain the throne would be to kill you all, which wouldn't happen, and even if it did, you would have cousins and second cousins revolting all over the place… and the people would be on our side, definitely." He trailed off at the end, almost raising it as a question, but not quite.
"Unless?" I prompted.
He hesitated. "There are – other stories, less official, but reported all the same, that he possesses some odd sort of power that is… not normal."
"What kind of power?"
Again he hesitated. "I'm not quite sure. Little things, which could be viewed as mere coincidence, but it's always bad, for us, and it's always near him…"
"Could it be the Fair Folk?" They were the only nonhuman kind that I knew.
He frowned. "Fair Folk – even allowing for exaggeration in the tales – were more powerful, and… couldn't resist grandeur and drama… theatrics, maybe. They weren't quite as subtle – not this way. But I don't know…"
"What else," I finished for him. "Well, I hope he is easily killed." The prospect of was unsettled me, in spite of or because I had no experience with anything like it. I was incredibly sheltered, here at Harpryre – I still am, but some of life has sought me our and found me here.
"Yes." He paused, pensive. "Unhuman does not mean immortal, necessarily – and if he were immortal, I would think he'd be a bit more bold – but it requires certain measures of precaution."
"Which father won't do unless someone else convinces him, because he detests the thought of the supernatural."
"Well," he said. "Perhaps."