Prologue the second
Once upon a time there lived a King and a Queen. On their wedding night they hoped to conceive an heir to the throne. Their wish was granted nine months later with the birth of a son, whom they called Gerard. Unfortunately for the royal couple six months before a witch had put a curse upon the child and thus when he was born he had the ears and eyes of a cat.
The king was distraught at what he saw as a veiled threat to his manhood. Openly he blamed his wife for his misfortune and lost himself in the memory-erasers known as alcohol and loose women. Five years after the birth of his deformed son he took on a full time mistress, known to everyone as Madame Undine.
The queen however took one look at her son and was overcome with love for him. She at first pitied her child but decide that pity was of no use in this kind of situation. Along with her son she was locked up in the western most towers where she and her son lived happily, with the King visiting them every Saturday afternoon and spending the night with his wife.
She raised her son on fairy stories, his favourite of which detailed the adventures of a girl with the nose of a pig. She taught him that his ears and eyes which his father found so loathsome were in fact his best features because they showed the good people from the bad.
"Does that mean that Daddy is a bad people?" he asked. The Queen tried to think of a suitable response while trying to grapple with what she thought was an unreasonable dislike for her husband.
"No. Your Daddy's just confused. He doesn't understand that your ears and eyes are gifts. And they are, Gerard. You must always remember that. They are gifts."
She was successfully able to halt his questions for another night.
Because of the King's Saturday evening visits it wasn't long before the Queen gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, twelve years after the birth of her first child. However exactly a week after the girl was born the Queen came down with a mysterious fever and died soon afterwards.
Contrary to what you might think, the King was utterly destroyed by this. To console himself he immediately married Madame Undine. He then drowned himself in booze and her caresses.
The child, named Jessica, meanwhile was given to a succession of nurses who were eventually all fired by Madame Undine, who one night brought the child to her brother in the western most towers. Gerard raised his sister just as his mother had raised him.
Being locked up in a tower with only your baby sister and a succession of maidservants who brought food could be stifling for a teenage boy. But Gerard believed, up until he turned eighteen, that by staying where he was he was somehow fulfilling what his mother wanted for him
An event that happened on his eighteenth birthday would change everything.