I killed.
I killed and I maimed and I crippled and I destroyed. Man came with many. I stood with few. These were the facts of that war. I did not pretend, not even to myself. I had no illusions about what waited for me at the end of the long march through my country. I understood it was an ugly task set before me, and yet I was not prepared.
As a prince, I had been given the best tutors in all things. I knew the methods of battle, and the killing arts. My hands knew the motions to make, the force to use, the patterns to trace through bone and flesh, but they cannot teach the smell of death in an arena. There is no way to ready the soul for murder. Each must learn to discard their tender heart or die, but I could never choose to kill you. I shut my ears to the screaming and steeled my mind against the terror. I could do nothing else since I could not die. In your breast my heart grew hard and stony. If you searched it in those early days you would not have found mercy. There was nothing for you to discover in it but the blood. Their blood. Our blood. Mine and yours. And running below the torrent, my lust to spill it. I was drunk on the stench of copper.
Fools, I said as they met me. They slashed with their blades as if they might kill me, stabbed into my skin. Didn't they know my heart was far from the battle? I had hidden it away inside your skin, beneath your bones. They could never reach my heart with their blunt tools and I would never let them find yours. It was your heart that fueled me, your heart that pounded, your heart that drove me forward. Always you.
The days bled into one long day filled with pain, and fear, and dying. In the heat of it I could not remember a time when I did not grip my lance. My day was eternal. Their numbers swarmed against us, endless, washing me away. My rage was cold like the winter, merciless, stony.
Let them come forever. We will kill them forever. I said, I will fight them forever if it will keep them from you. In the night I saw your ivory flesh, your cornsilk hair, your butterfly eyes like monarch wings. You were scattered in my sky like the stars in heaven. You, and you, and you, and you, sparkling light in the darkness. My hair was a curtain across my eyes. It shut out everything but you.
You drove me forward.
They drove us back.
Seventy times seventy perfect soldiers. Seventy times seventy sins marked on my tired heart. Father was against it from the first.
The Goblin King came to him offering the answer to our dilemma. We had not the numbers to defeat the humans. We would not need numbers, the goblin said. Imagine an army that cannot be killed or defeated. Imagine soldiers that feel no pain and take no injury. He said, I offer your salvation. Father said, Build me this army, and it was so.
The relief in our people was so profound there are no words to describe it. The war had gone on too long. There were too many dead. The men were tired. Only I had lasted it with no respite. Only I still labored in these last days as if they were the first. I too was tired, but I did not let up. No weariness showed in me because it was your heart that carried me on, relentless. I took the strength you offered as my anchor against the storm. Though I had grown pale since my days in the castle, my eyes blazed gold. The light of you shining out of me, I thought.
I took the offer of the Goblin King. The Golden Army to save us, and your golden light to arm me. I would become a golden soldier.
I did not consider the price or who would pay it.
Father stood beside me in the slaughter. His eyes were sad and for the first time I could ever remember, he looked his years. I do not think it was that the killing aged him, I think it was that for first time since that war began I could see him past my bloodlust. Pain can help you see clearly, but this time it had made me blind. I asked, Father? My hand came up beneath his elbow offering support. He said, Never again, and with two words he tarnished my victory in a way that could not be undone. His sadness wounded me more deeply than any condemnation ever could have.
What did you feel, sister, when the knife of betrayal pierced me? Did you scream as I was not free to do? Did you thrash in your bed and rend your sheets to vent my anger? When we were younger it was so. If I was angry you might shatter your mirror, or throw your book across the room. If I was sad you would weep as I, a boy, could not. Or was this anger and sadness too much for you as those simpler things were not?
The room is dark, they said, to help the princess mend. That's what they called you, the princess, but I knew it was wrong. Darkness does not heal. You needed sunlight, and growing things, and space to breathe.
You were given none of them, only a dark room and a bed surrounded by curtains.
Your face was wrong. The skin was too white, without golden undertones. The eyes were too large, too dark. There was no light in you.
Did I do that? Did I take from you more than you could give? Did my heart in your breast turn black and bleed into you? It had grown heavy in the decades of war, I knew. It weighed you down. You were too slight to bear my demons up.
Little Sister, Little Bird. Too much to me and not enough. My star, my soul, I tainted you. I'm sorry. Your heart in me was cold.
I think there must have been a time before our birth when we swam like tadpoles in the blood of our mother that I found you. How strange it must have been to discover I was not alone. Even then you were with me. Before our skin grew to cover our insides I reached into you and took your heart. I know I did, for that is what I do: I take. I stole your life away, too much to you and not enough. I'd give it back if I could let you go, but ever since I found you unborn I have been too weak to be alone. You were stronger. You learned to bleed alone and ever since I lived in terror that you would learn to live without me.
When I came to you that day it wasn't just because you needed me. I sensed your fear, and your wretchedness but I also sensed your pain and I was horrified because there was no echo of it in me. I ran the entire way to your room, my chest heaving and the bitter serpent of it writhing in my belly. You wouldn't even look at me. I said you were silly. I murmured reassurance. I do not even remember what and I dismissed your tears, but I was harsh because I wanted to do the same to my fear and I could not. I said those things but I held you to me as much for my comfort as yours. I knew you wanted me to stay but I didn't because I needed to prove I could be without you as you were without me. I went alone as you bled alone, but all I could do was leave. You were living.
Looking at you in that bed behind those curtains, between us not around us, I knew that nothing they could do would help. It was my darkness that cloaked you, me that surrounded you. They were the curtains of my hair that trapped you in your bed. You were too small to hold all of me inside you, for I was not just myself any longer. I was more, or less. Too much of me and not enough. My course was simple. There was only one action I could perform: the only thing to be done for you. Always you, never me.
When you woke up it was to a wasteland. The same one I rode into rose up in you as the sickness fell away behind me. It was barren with only you to give it life. But you could do that. Your tears became the rainfall that brought springtime and you found in yourself a world with light, if not love. I could not surrender your heart, for I could not be anything that was not part of you, not even myself, but I could leave you with a life that did not suffer this hate. I could leave you with a life. I could leave.
It was my gift to you, the only thing I could give. A world all your own with space to breathe.
A world without me.
