Mist & Whispers

by C. M. Lucas

  As the story went on, Marcellus’ parents got their wish, and the Queen of Cameera gave birth to a daughter the very next year. They called her Cellastar, and a contract was drawn up between the two families, entwining the children’s futures together as husband and wife. As the children grew, both Kingdoms looked forward to the union, as did young Cellastar, but Marcellus felt as if he was doomed.

  One afternoon, whilst riding through the forest, Marcellus’s horse was struck by a falling tree branch, and both he and the horse fell, tumbling into a nearby river. The Prince collided with a rock, knocking him unconscious and, as the rough waters dragged his body downstream, his untimely end looked certain. But something saved him, for the next thing he knew he was on the river bank, wincing at the sunlight as it tore through the trees.

  It was then he saw something that would change his life forever. A girl leaned over him, a girl so beautiful, the sorrows of his soul fell silent. In that moment his heart pounded faster than his breath could keep up with, for he realised that love at first sight was not just for fairytales.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Anais,’ she answered.

  For months, Marcellus and Anais tried to fight their feelings, knowing he was betrothed to another, but the fates seemed to always bring them together. Eventually, true love won out, and Marcellus devised a plan to run away with Anais.

  However, Cellastar became suspicious of their feelings after catching them talking together one afternoon at the palace gates. She followed the Prince the next day and watched as her fiancé found love in the arms of another. Raging with a broken heart, Cellastar ran to the shore where she sought out the mermaids. She had heard stories about them using their magic to dabble with the hearts of men. She met a mermaid named Allura, and told her this girl had stolen her love. Together they hatched a wicked scheme to get rid of Anais and help Cellastar seduce the Prince using a love potion.

  Allura gave the Princess a magic shell, wrapped in a blanket of woven seaweed. It would transport any who touched it back to the mermaid.

  ‘I don’t want her dead, Mermaid. I want her to see Marcellus extremely happy with me. I want her to feel the pain I felt when I saw him with her. I want her to live the rest of her days with that pain.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Princess. I will not let her die. Only the living suffer, the dead are at peace. She will be haunted by her thievery for the rest of her sorry life.’

  That night as the Kingdom slept, Cellastar snuck into Anais’s bedroom and took her hand. As Anais woke, she saw the Princess place both their hands on the uncovered shell and together they disappeared into the night.

  Next morning, Prince Marcellus was getting ready to make his escape when Cellastar arrived, holding a glass of what appeared to be whiskey.

  ‘I know of your betrayal, Marcellus,’ the Princess said, an evil simper penetrating her mask of innocence. ‘But your fun and games are now over, for the poor girl is gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ the Prince cried in a panic. He seized her arm and demanded, ‘What have you done to her?’

  ‘Me? I have done nothing. It was her. She couldn’t take the guilt of you both carrying on behind my back, so she went out to the sea this morning and drowned herself. I’ve brought you a drink; no doubt you could use one after the bad news.’ She held out the glass to him, her eyes wide with excitement, for she knew that it was full of the mermaid’s love potion. ‘Such a pity,’ she added.

  Numb with shock, the Prince took the glass and raised it to his lips. Then a look of fury swept his face.

  ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘This cannot be! She cannot be dead!’ He threw the glass to the floor and raced out of the castle, leaving Cellastar beside herself, the plan to capture his heart shattered.

  The sound of his steed thundered through the Kingdom as he rode out to the sea, desperate to find his love. Sand erupted about his horse’s hooves as they pounded the beach, right to where the waves were rolling in.

  The Prince jumped down into the sea. ‘ANAIS!’ he cried out across the ocean, but his love was nowhere to be seen. He fell to his knees and sobbed.

  ‘You’re too late, Your Highness,’ came Allura’s voice from out of the water. ‘The one your heart truly belongs to is dead. I saw it myself.’ She swam closer to the weeping Prince and whispered in his ear. ‘And it was I that took her life. Lesson learned, rat! Never betray a woman whose heart is offered to you on a platter, for they leave it there whilst seeking out their vengeance.’ She cackled with venomous delight and turned to swim away.

  Overcome with rage, Marcellus leapt into the sea, taking hold of the mermaid in one hand and unsheathing his sword with the other. He sank the blade into her chest.

  ‘Lesson learned, Sea-Witch! Take my love from me, and I will take my vengeance on you. Destroy my heart and I will obliterate yours.’

  He watched the light disappear from her eyes then withdrew his sword, leaving Allura to sink to her death bed. The water surrounding him turned scarlet and he staggered back to dry land.

  Lying there, completely broken, time ceased. It may have been hours later, it may have only been moments, but eventually, he heard the rustling sound of tiny feet on the sand. He turned his head and saw a peacock, brilliant white with tail feathers so long they rivalled the train of any Princess’s wedding dress. When it reached him, the bird lay its head softly on Marcellus’s chest, as if to comfort him. The Prince was stunned, and felt as if he knew the peacock somehow, as if their souls were joined in some way. Then, he noticed the green of its eyes, the exact same green of the eyes his heart would love beyond eternity.

  ‘Anais?’

  The bird lifted its head and gently nodded.

  Tears streamed from the Prince, glad she was alive but despaired by what she had become.

  ‘Did she do this to you, the Sea-Witch?’

  Again, the bird nodded, a tear rolling down her cheek.

  The Prince marched back to the crashing red shore and cried out across the ocean once more.

  ‘Issyk! Issyk! Rise from the depths of your murky Kingdom and put right the wrongs of your kind! ISSYK!’

  Not a moment later, a tidal wave came over the horizon at top speed and crashed at his feet, bringing with it the King of the Merfolk and his great, glass trident. In an instant, the sea was calm again.

  ‘You summoned me, boy?’ King Issyk said, looking down at the Prince.

  ‘I am Prince Marcellus of Fora and you would do well to address me so.’

  King Issyk rolled his eyes. ‘What do you want, Prince of Fora? I haven’t all day.’

  ‘One of your Sea-Witches has cast a spell upon my love,’ he pointed over to where Anais was standing on the beach, still a breathtaking white peacock. ‘I want you to return her to her natural form.’

  Issyk looked at the girl for a moment then sighed. ‘I cannot change her back, and it seems you have killed the only Mer that could.’

  ‘Don’t take me for a fool, Issyk! I know all your kind can perform magic, my father has told me all about Merfolk.’

  The King shook his head, and looked upon Marcellus with regret-filled eyes. ‘It’s easy for folk who do not possess the gift of magical art to assume that one can just do anything. Bend the very laws of nature. What you need to understand is that magic has its own boundaries, limits that no one can cross. Your love has been cursed.’

  The Prince blinked at the King, failing to comprehend.

  ‘Curses must be cast with hate to produce the desired effect, and hate, in the case of magic, is like venom. Remorse is the only antidote to hate, and remorse can only come from the one who cast the curse. I’m sorry, but you killed her one and only chance of becoming human again.’

  Anger took a hold of Marcellus and he ordered Issyk to change her, threatening to rage a war like no other against all the seas if he didn’t. Issyk could see that Marcellus truly loved the girl, so out of understanding, he tried everything he could to change her back to her original self. Each attempt yielded a d
ifferent result until finally, whilst her upper body was human but her lower body was still that of a peacock, she cried out to the Prince.

  ‘Please, Marcellus!’ she pleaded. ‘Please stop, I can’t take it anymore.’ Her face was pained and her eyes full of sorrow. The Prince ran to her, and they shared a loving embrace.

  ‘I do not care what you look like, my sweet Anais, you shall be my Princess just as you are.’

  But the sorrow didn’t leave her eyes. ‘How can I? Our people will never accept me like this. We will be thrown out of the Kingdom as outcasts, you know in your heart we will. And I won’t let you give up your life for me like this, I love you too much.’

  ‘Issyk,’ he called back to the King. ‘Is your magic powerful enough to curse every man, woman and child in our Kingdom to look like Anais does now?’

  ‘Half human, half peacock you mean?’

  Marcellus nodded, and the King thought upon it for a moment.

  ‘Could you live with yourself if you do this, young Prince? You must think it through.’

  ‘I couldn’t live with myself if I allowed her to be cast into the world alone as a mutant. At least if we are all the same, we can live as together as one. Work your magic please, Issyk.’

  The King searched his soul and invoked all the hate it possessed. Then, he lifted his trident, holding it to the skies, and as he brought it back down into the water, Marcellus became half-human, half-peacock, just as he’d wished.

  Then, in a dark twist of character, Marcellus reached out his hand to thank Issyk, but plunged his sword straight through his heart and watched as the King of the Merfolk fell back, void of life, into the ocean.

  ‘Now no one can change us back, and you shall be my Princess forevermore.’

  And so Prince Marcellus returned to his Kingdom, married his true love and was handed the throne on their wedding day (as was the traditional wedding gift to the heir of Fora). He declared the Kingdom a new, and from that day fourth, as a tribute to his new bride, it was known as Annafora.

  ‘HE KILLED HIM,’ Anya said once Michael had finished reading out loud. ‘I liked the Prince before that.’

  ‘Don’t you think it was romantic?’ Steph wondered, her head lolling on Tim’s shoulder, her whole body turned to mush right before them.

  ‘No,’ Anya said, frowning. ‘I think it was cold and cowardly.’

  ‘That’s what I liked about it,’ Michael said, closing the book and stuffing it back in his bag. ‘It didn’t end how you’d expect, the fairytale ending came at a price. If the Weaver’s stories are all that imaginative, it’s no wonder they are selling the way they are back home.’ He jumped down from his hammock and began searching through his clothes – his usual chinos, shirt and jumper, and the tunic, leathers and dragon-hide armour Barlem had found for him.

  Barlem had been busy since the Four’s arrival. When he discovered that both Anya and Michael were sleeping on the floor, he took it upon himself to erect two hammocks for them, grumbling the whole time that Anya was supposed to be sleeping in the big, tree-trunk bed. He’d also fetched them outfits for training, though due to her tiny frame, Anya was stuck in her little tartan skirt and skull-print t-shirt with only an oversized breast plate and pair of ill-fitting greaves for protection.

  It was effectively morning in the camp, but none of the natives ever used that word. Nor day, nor night. With no notable difference between the two, they’d stopped counting days and simply counted sleeps.

  Morning was referred to as rising, and each hour that passed was noted as one after rising, two after rising, and so on until midday, or noontide as the Virtfirthians called it. Then, the cycle would repeat – One after noontide, two after noontide – until the late hours drew upon them. No one seemed to ever say anything higher than seven after noontide, and the hours that followed were known as two before sleep and one before sleep. A gong would sound to mark the waking hours, the first at rising.

  Anya was curious as to how closely the Virtfirthian time zone followed their own, but all their watches had stopped working the moment the sunrise had taken them from Burrow Mump.

  The Four had been in Virtfirth for thirteen sleeps now, and had woken early to finish the final chapter of The Princess and the Peacock before rising.

  ‘I can’t wait to read the others! Weaver’s books are just totes amazeballs,’ Steph said, unthreading the belt from her dress. She wrapped it tight around the baggy waist of her camp-issue tunic. Femininity reinstated, she shifted her hips from side to side. ‘There; super cute once again!’

  Michael groaned. For the last few sleeps, he’d been rolling his eyes or shaking his head at almost everything Steph had to say, and this time, he cracked. ‘Do you really have to talk like that?’

  The atmosphere turned in an instant. Steph bit her lip, and though Tim didn’t say a word, Anya could hear his teeth grinding. He picked up Steph’s bag, took her hand and ushered her out of the hut.

  Anya shook her head, stuffing her greaves in her bag.

  ‘What?’ Michael huffed.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t be able to keep the Mr-Nice-act up for long.’

  ‘Oh, come on Anya, she sounds ridiculous and you’d be lying if you said otherwise. For the manager of a bookshop, she puts the English language to shame.’

  She stormed past him. It took all her effort not to turn round and lamp him one. Douche.

  THE FOUR HAD got to know the camp pretty well. Their hut was situated in the far south-west corner, right next to the drinking well, and flanked by two-story barracks on either side – the second story above them in the trees. To the east, Lorcan was still locked up in the cells, and in the heart of the camp, the main fire burned brightly. It was there that each meal was served, sometimes by Theone but mostly by Joliver, the camp’s contagiously happy cook.

  Joliver’s slight lisp and untameable dirty blonde hair were as endearing as his puppy-like enthusiasm. But as wonderful a person as Joliver was, his food was, in every sense of the word, bleak.

  The dread of eating another bowl of mushroom or root broth tugged hard at Anya’s hunger pains as she caught up with Steph and Tim by the fire. ‘Sorry about Michael. He’s an idiot. Don’t listen to him, yeah?’

  ‘It’s ok, Anya. It’s not your fault, Steph knows that,’ Tim said, one arm blanketing his girlfriend.

  A welcomed fragrance enveloped them. ‘Mmm, what is that smell?’

  Joliver was busy over a stone fire pit, the likes of which Anya had never seen before. The excited whispers of the soldiers rapidly gathered momentum, and soon every man in the camp appeared by the fire, hungrily awaiting what promised to be a delicious alternative to stewed fungus.

  Barlem, who had been waiting on the Four hand and foot despite their efforts to stop him, was first to be served and directly he made his way to Anya, Steph and Tim. It promised to be a real treat, as he practically ran to their little table.

  ‘Good risin’, Miss,’ he said, bowing to Anya.

  A simple piece of flatbread lay in each bowl, steam seductively dancing up around their awed faces. Stuffing the bread in her mouth ravenously, Anya asked Barlem, ‘Where – how – sooooo good – how?’

  ‘The Stragglers. They came back last night from Thule wi’a giant sack o’wheat berry, Miss. Can’t believe they found it, after all these years!’

  Every answer given by a Virtfirthian usually resulted in more questions, and Barlem’s was no different.

  ‘What’s a Straggler?’ Anya asked, in unison with Tim’s question, ‘Where’s Thule?’ and Stephanie’s ‘What’s a wheat berry?’

  Barlem remained silent whilst he chewed his flatbread, relinquishing none of his manners as they had. Then, after he’d swallowed, he looked at Anya and said, ‘The Stragglers are a pack o’soldiers – don’t care for rules much. They go off every s’often lookin’ for supplies in the Big City. Don’t care much for danger, neev-ah.’ Then he turned to Tim and said, ‘Thule is the Big City; ‘mazing place before the Darkness changed
it.’ Finally he looked at Steph and said, ‘wheat berries are what make the flour – grind ‘em up, cook it up, fill their bellies.’

  Anya thought back to when she and Harrion watched for the castle up on the Great Hill. It was hard to imagine an actual city once thrived behind those walls. The camp was so... so hand-made, and the villages barren. A real city seemed like a faraway dream. There was nothing anywhere, only a few lifeless buildings; corpses on a forgotten waste land, left to decay until only their ghosts remained.

  THOUGHTS OF THE Big City stayed with Anya all through training. It became a mystery she desperately wanted to solve, another part of the riddle. It was only a collision with a tree that finally jolted her imagination away from Thule.

  She’d collided with the ground during training so many times that her and it had become good friends. The tree, however, was a new acquaintance.

  General Faust, in charge of the Four’s training, sighed perhaps his heaviest sigh since taking on the role. ‘I’m beginning to doubt the fate of Virtfirth, knowing it rests in your clumsy hands.’

  Faust was a tall, square man, with one solid black eyebrow that made him look like he’d been assaulted with a permanent marker. His fighting skills were second to none, but when it came to personality, Anya wasn’t keen on him. He seemed to lack any compassion or understanding, and his judge of character was poor – Michael being his favourite of the Four. Anya assumed she ranked in somewhere between mushroom broth and the creepy skeletal beasts that lurked the forest.

  Glowering at the General, she rubbed her hurt face, brushing away the specks of bark embedded in her cheek and picked up her sword.

  Only a moment earlier Michael had knocked it out of her hand in a single blow. Sparring between the two of them had become an endless battle of smugness versus awkward technique, smugness claiming victory every time.