Beta'd by…can you guess? Since she's done all my stories for the past few years?
Disclaimer: I admit to making up most of these characters out of my own head—except the most important, of course, the king who does not know he is a king.
A/N: To clear up any confusion at the beginning, I wish to state that the main character in this story is Edmund.
It was black and he was falling. He felt air rushing around his head, chilling his cheeks, flowing through his fingers, but he couldn't hear it. He could only hear that one word, that cry.
"NOOOOOoooooo!"
It got farther away as he fell, but he could still hear it, still feel it, still drown in the longing to go and fix it—falling, falling, where was he?
He opened his eyes to find himself in a small round room filled with light. It had stone walls and dark blue curtains, which were drawn to the sides of all four large windows. There were wooden chairs between each window, and one at his bedside.
He blinked.
The wind stirred the curtains, the bottoms billowing inward, and the middle seeming to catch the light in small lights and sparks.
The young man—barely more than a boy—blinked again, and looked more closely at the curtains. They were embroidered with gold, each curtain stitched in the same symbol: the outline of an anchor halfway submerged in waves, while the outline of a bird with outspread wings clutched the top of the anchor in its claws.
It was not at all familiar to the boy in the bed. In fact, nothing in the room was.
He looked down at the covers—white, soft, and with an intricate golden pattern of triangles embroidered on the top—and pushed them off his shoulders. He raised himself up just as the door opened and a very large man appeared.
The man was not overly tall, but his waist was wide enough to fill the doorframe. His beard was pepper grey, his hair dark and receding from a large, sunburnt red forehead, and his hands were immense. His clothing was a dark purple that made his forehead and hands look even redder, and he wore gold lace around his protruding stomach like an ineffectual belt. He was not looking into the boy's room, but at whomever he was speaking to outside it. He was talking quite loudly, and the boy, without knowing quite why, decided he did not like him.
"...said they must wait. I am a Duke, and he is a mere baron. I do not care if the fishing is interru—hey, Karissa, what's this? I told you to inform me immediately if he was up!" The Duke, seeing the occupant sitting up, came forward immediately, his hand outstretched.
"Edwin! Edwin, my boy, it's good to see you awake. Gave us quite the scare, you did!" His large hand patted the boy's shoulder heavily. "Next time let's avoid the cliff edge, eh? If you hadn't hit the ledge on the way down, the water would have killed you! Most unsuitable for the marquess* of a sea-faring nation; we're meant to be born and bred on the water, what? I say, if you're up, you should be with Pell. He's been missing you these past few days." He looked back towards the door and roared, "Pell! Pell, get in here!"
The boy meant to ask who the man was—in fact, who he himself was, for he found with growing alarm that he did not remember—even the name Edwin did not quite seem to fit—but the question got lost on the way to his mouth, for what came out instead was, "My older brother?"
The Duke frowned, leaning closer and squinting as he studied Edwin's face. "No, your cousin. You don't have an older brother."
"I don't?" The boy paused, searching his memory, trying to think—to remember. Did he have a brother? A family?
Apparently he had a cousin. But he didn't remember. He didn't remember anything but that cry, that heart-rending sound of pain and loss.
"Do you have an older brother?" asked the Duke.
The boy couldn't remember; it felt like he did—like he had several older siblings, enough for an army—but there were no faces, no names, no memories. So he shook his head.
"Well enough, well enough! If you did then he would inherit the title of Marquess of Galma. But I was never quite sure with your father—that is, he might have had—eh—well, a surprise heir, as it were. Not that we want one! No, we're quite content with you. Aren't we, Pell?" he asked, squinting as someone appeared in the doorway. The young man looked only a year or two older than Edwin. He had light grey eyes that looked once at the two men and then stayed shyly on the ground, and freckles spread generously over a small nose. His fair hair fell a bit too long and seemed permanently brushed back from his forehead, while his long neck that currently cocked the head to one side.
"Sorry, Father?"
"We'd be most sorry to lose young Edwin here as marquess, wouldn't we?"
"Are we losing him? I—I think he looks better."
"Of course he does, of course he does! No, I just meant—oh bother, you never catch on to things quickly anyway. Come in and give greetings to your cousin."
"It's good to see you awake," Pell said politely.
"I truly don't mean to be rude," the boy in the bed said, looking from the boy still hovering in the doorway to the greying man at his bedside, "but who are you?"
"Ah, that's right, that's right," the man said, clapping the invalid on the shoulder once more. "Touch your head. Feel the bandage, eh? Not too hard, not too hard, there! You hit your head in the fall. They said you didn't know anyone when you woke up these past few times. Not even yourself. But we'll set you right again, no worries. No worries! The healer said you're not to be worrying about a thing. You're Edwin, and I, the Duke Pranav of Galma, am your uncle. You're good friends with my son, Prince of Galma, Pell, here. You're our family, and we're yours, all you have left, that is, and we mean to keep you and help you get better."
*According to what I looked up, the ranks of nobility go Duke/Duchess, Marquess/Marchioness, Earl/Countess, Viscount/Viscountess, and Baron/Baroness. So Ed would be descended from the rank directly under the Duke. If the Duke were telling the truth.
A/N: Kudos to you if you caught the various nods to "squints, and has freckles."
A/N2: Yes, yes, I know it's a terrible idea to have two stories going at once. But I'm about two months ahead on The Walker, and this one pretty much writes itself; I'm hoping to finish it this week, it should have sixteen to twenty chapters. I should update it every Monday and Friday, except possibly this Friday, as I'm traveling and won't have my computer. I don't know if I'll be able to borrow one.