“I mean, how long was I gone? I think it was like a year, winter, spring and then harvest.”
His mother looked at him with affection and concern.
He looked around at his room, and his shoulders sagged. “It was a dream?”
His mother tilted her head. “Ahh, a dream? Of spring and harvest? Sounds like a wonderful dream.”
Alfred smiled and then had a sudden flash of Gorbogal. “No! It was a nightmare!” He shrunk back into his bed, cowering a bit.
His mother grabbed him up again, holding him. “Oh, there there, my boy, my dear Alfred. All is well. You just have a minor fever.”
“So I was never gone? I wasn’t missing or anything? I went to bed last night, long ago, and woke up… this morning?”
“Long ago?” his mother, still cheery, looked sideways at him. “I was here all the time. You were here. Nothing is the matter.” She ran her fingers through his hair and noticed that something was different. She brushed the thought aside.
“Then all that time, all that time was a dream?”
“It’s okay. I’ll stay here with you if you want. You certainly don’t have to go to school today. I'll call them.
“No mom, you can go to work. I’ll stay home and take it easy. I’m okay now. I just woke up kind of weird is all.” Alfred lay back with a dazed look.
His mom stayed next to him and looked at him. Alfred was in deep thought. She hummed something like a song, an ancient song of spring and sun, of life and love, and of a son. She sat looking and humming for a long while. He finally looked back at her and smiled.
“Okay, Alfred, I’ll go now. I’ll be back at lunch and bring some medicine, just in case.”
Alfred held her one last time as she bent to rise. He held her tight again. She was amazed at his strength. She held him and caressed his hair. “I don’t remember your hair being this long and scraggly!”
Alfred sat up suddenly, fully awake. He looked wide eyed at her. Then his eyes slowly turned to one side to see that his hair was indeed longer than his usual buzz cut. He remembered Lady Nihan trimming his hair with scissors.
“You’ll need a haircut soon.”
He nodded. She nodded, kissed his cheek, rose and walked out.
As soon as he heard several doors open and close, he knew she was gone. He leapt from his bed and rushed to the mirror. He looked at himself, at his grown grisly hair, and couldn’t believe it. He then raked his hands through it and had this new sense of strength. He felt his arms and pulled off his shirt to see he had muscles and scars and several large ugly scabs.
“Oh my gosh! I’ve been wounded!” He twirled about trying to see all his sides in the mirror. “It happened. It really happened!”
He danced about doing kung fu kicks and punches. He flexed his bicep and looked for his reflection in anything that would provide it.
He leapt into a hot shower. Ohhh, the feeling! He stayed in there for a long time, just feeling the hot water clean his worn medieval skin. He had really missed taking showers. He had also been missing the toilet and enjoyed flushing it so much. He just sat afterward and flushed again... and again... ohh... the feeling! He smelled the toilet fully. “Oh fresh clean chlorine water!”
After awhile, exhausted and still with a little fever and headache, he laid down on his bed. He rested for a moment, breathing and meditating as best as a kid could do. Then he had a thought and sat up. “Tirnalth? Tirnalth?”
He looked around the room, even under the covers and under the bed, but there was no Tirnalth. He puckered his lips.
“How did I get from here to there? Here, to there? And back again?” He motioned with his hands, totally unsure of how teleportation or any form of trans-dimensional or time travel or inter-planar wormhole travel worked.
“How do I? Tirnalth!?” Alfred had no idea. He paced and searched about his room but found no answers. Before he knew it, his mother had returned at lunchtime and found him upturning his entire room.
“Alfred!? What are you doing?” His mother gazed at the mess.
“Oh, I’m, uh, looking for something,” Alfred said with a shrug.
“What!?”
“Something I lost.” He kept peering about.
“Well what is it? I might know where it is,” his mother asked in her assuring mother tone.
“An inter trans-dimensional time traveling wormhole, I think.”
“Um, worms?” his mother asked concerned.
“No, wormhole.”
“We have worms?” His mother tiptoed into the room over the piles of clothes, books and the like. “You need to keep your clothes...”
“No, no, not worms. I’m looking for a parallel universe or alternate reality or something.” He felt along the corner where Tirnalth, the ghost, first appeared.
“Oh, so no worms? Or holes?”
“No, no worms or holes... a wormhole! It's magical!”
“I’ll heat up the soup, okay? And I have some medicine too,” she nodded, backing out of the room. “And tidy your room.”
“Okay,” Alfred looked intently at the wall for any subtle cracks in time and or space.
Alfred healed quickly and felt great. He would pose in front of the mirror a lot, even in front of his somewhat concerned mother. He walked about with a newfound confidence. Every day, he came home after school and would immediately begin working on homework.
His mother was proud of him. Each night she brought him dinner as he studied. She would then stand over him a moment, caressing his newly cut hair or touching his shoulder. She did not look at what he was doing but at him, as if she was looking through him.
“Mom, that’s creepy,” Alfred would finally say, awakening her from a dream.
“Oh, sorry, I did it again.” His mother retracted her hand and left him to his work.
One day, Alfred was watching TV, relaxing and enjoying himself. He was eating potato chips and sipping on a coke, something his mother would not normally buy. Usually he had to use his small allowance on such indulgences, but this time his mother treated. He was relishing the simple pleasures of this life, not taking them for granted as in times past.
On TV was a crazy wrestler, dancing and prancing about, posing and over acting. Alfred was thoroughly entertained. Two smaller wrestlers would leap on him, and he would roll and tumble and smash each in turn. Alfred sat up. He began to ponder something.
The wrestler stood up and yelled into the camera, “Bring ’em on. All of your little rat fink buddies can’t stop me!”
“That’s it. That’s how we beat them!” Alfred got up, rushed to his desk and began drawing. He drew a knight—only it was an odd looking knight in armour. He had big mauled fists and posed like a wrestler. Then Alfred drew smaller figures surrounding the knight. The smaller figures were obviously ratkins.
“That’s it!” Alfred surmised, looking at his drawing. “We don’t need big heavy swords. Ratkins would easily overtake a knight with a heavy sword, but wrestling and…” Alfred’s tongue stuck out, like a snail peering from its shell, as he drew…“Spikes!” He drew lots of them protruding from the armour. Then he drew a ratkin trying to leap on a fully spiked armoured wrestling knight. He was so pumped. He took his drawing and rushed out to his mother. She was sitting in the main room, repairing warn embroidery on a lavish curtain. She had many curtains to finish.
“Mom, look!” He showed her the crude drawing of a knight adorned with spikes and the ratkins all around him.
It was so crudely drawn that his mother merely glanced at it and then smiled. “That’s nice, Alfred!”
He looked intently at his mother. She smiled warmly and then went back to her work.
“Can’t you tell what it is?”
“Well, no.” She finally put down her work to look more closely.
“It’s a knight! Look, he’s got regular armour on, and I added spikes!”
“Oh yes, I see the spikes,” his mother nodded.
“The spikes are on his armour so he can fight a lot of ratkins
.”
His mother suddenly froze. She slowly looked at him and then at the drawing. “Ratkins?”
“Yah, mom, they’re going to attack the castle. That’s how they took it over last time! They must have overtaken the knights because knights didn’t know how to fight such an overwhelming horde! The ratkins were then able to open the castle gate!”
His mother almost swooned. “Castle? What castle?”
Alfred suddenly stopped. He gulped, realizing he had said too much. “Uh, just a castle—you know, from one of my games.”
His mother gained her composure and then looked up at Alfred and at the drawing of an all too familiar knight. She looked at him with an expression he’d never seen. He quickly retracted the drawing. She looked straight into his eyes and did not stir. Alfred looked away.
She stood as she kept looking at him. “Look at me, Alfred.”
He did, but it was difficult to look into her eyes, especially when her eyes were so piercing.
“What have you done?” his mother said under her breath.
“Nothing, mom,” Alfred said looking away.
His mother’s posture softened. She moved in closer. “How do you know of such things? Of ratkins?”
“I told you, my computer game, Grim Wars.”
“You’re lying!” his mother shrieked. She grabbed his shoulders and with her stare, she put more fear into him than he’d ever known, even from Gorbogal.
“Tell me the truth!” Tears swelled in her angry eyes.
“I don’t know, mom. I don’t know,” he said, looking away, verging on tears himself.
“Did he find you? Or did she?” She faltered, falling back onto the sofa, on her sewing work. She gasped in fear, convulsing with utter torment.
“Mom, who?”
“You know who, don’t you?” Her lips quivered.
“Tirnalth?” Alfred said softly.
She let out a long moan and turned away. Then she stood up and paced about the room. She stared out the window into the night. She was swaying, as if stricken with a delirium. She remained silent, holding in many tears, many emotions and many memories. Alfred watched her for a long time. She would not speak. Each time Alfred approached her, she stopped him with one hand and walked away within the small confines of the room.
Alfred, tiring of her strong feelings, went to his room. He took his drawing and laid it on his bed and then lay down next to it. After a long sigh, he fell into a deep sleep.
Alfred woke up standing in the castle courtyard. “So that is how you return!” He was happy to be back. He looked about and saw that the stone walls were different. They all looked new and fully repaired. There were many banners hanging from the walls, and there were many new wood structures, from wall attachments to tower roofs. He was impressed at all the work. He heard and then saw many well armed and obviously well trained men-at-arms rushing along the walls. They were equipped with bows and swords of human making. They were not the hastily garbed look of the bandits and children with their goblin gear.
Horses rode through the courtyard right at Alfred. He rushed out of the way just in the nick of time. Then he found himself in the company of knights on their horses. He gazed up at the magnificent men in their gleaming armour.
“The goblin army musters along the northern road!” one knight roared. Alfred did not recognize him even though the knight's visor was up. All the faces, young or old, were fresh.
Then he recognized Lord Dunther. How could he not? Dunther was obviously the lead, as all were looking at him on his horse. “The princess is at the monastery! We must protect her!”
Another knight reluctantly answered, “No, Bedenwulf has gone and taken his men.”
Dunther hissed, pulled down his visor and reeled about on his horse.
Sir Gylloth held out his hand to stop him. “Lord Dunther, we need to defend the castle!”
“We need to defend the king and the virtue of his daughter from this traitor! We will seek justice on this renegade! My company of knights will go with me. The other knights will defend the castle.”
“Our duty is to the king and to his castle,” Sir Gylloth responded.
“Your duty is to me!” Lord Dunther yelled as he galloped away. “I will worry about our duty to lord and castle!”
Several knights followed him, including Sir Gorham. Sir Gylloth looked back at the other knights, who looked dismayed at their departure. He then turned to follow Lord Dunther.
Lord Dunther galloped headlong at Alfred, who tried in vain to run out of the way. It seemed that with each scramble, each turn, Lord Dunther turned to ride straight through him. All grew dim as Alfred fell into a kind of darkness. Lord Dunther became shrouded in shadow. Darkened by shadows, the eyes of his horse and his own eyes veiled in his visor glowed with an eerie crimson fire. Steam and mist rose about his darkened visage. His blackened armour seemed to have a crenulated edge of ragged bumps and spikes. Lord Dunther was on Alfred like a malicious evil—not like a knight but like a malevolent spirit spreading, growing larger. He had risen in the shadows of the underworld and was now ready to strike Alfred down.
The evil spirit’s mighty blade suddenly appeared. While swinging at Alfred, it split into three blades resembling talons. Then, suddenly, Alfred saw a small sword being thrust upward. It seemed insignificant but clanged against the descending weapon of the beast, stopping it with a shattering sound and breaking into pieces.
Next Alfred heard a familiar man's voice shouting, “Run!”
Then he saw a knight wearing black armour. It stood between Alfred and the horrible shadow. Its armour shone, revealing leaves and vines of wrought silver, sculpted upon the armour as enchantments or signs of strength and honor. The Black Knight stood with his shattered sword.
Alfred thought he recognized him, but he was not sure. He could see parts of his face under the visor. The face was fare and young, strong and sure. Wooly’s face flashed in his mind. But then he reasoned that it could not be Wooly because he was strange, had a disfigured face and lived a quiet life down the street back home. He fixed things for people, even for Alfred.
Whoever this knight was, he did not fear the great darkness before them, even with a splintered sword. The knight dropped his sword and pulled out a long dagger. “Run, my lady! To the gate! As Tirnalth said, trust him! Run, milady! Now! Or all is lost!”
Alfred did not know who he was speaking to or what was happening. The dark shadow was re-emerging and reforming. Time was of the essence.
“I love you!” a fair young lady’s voice proclaimed from nearby.
The knight paused, as if all the days to come were of gleaming sunrises. “Then go, milady. I have lived a thousand lives in you, and I will always be with you! Now go!”
Alfred seemed to be carried along as she screamed in horror. The shadow was forming itself into a great dragon that encompassed the span of the underworld they were in. Now that it was fully formed, he could see that it was an enormous black creature with glistening scales. Before it stood a small knight. Then fire erupted everywhere, consuming them all. She screamed as she suddenly seemed to float far, far away.
Alfred awoke in the dark again. He was in a hot sweat and truly felt as if he had been consumed by fire. He sat up and pulled off his fully drenched shirt. A glass of water was by his bedside. He drank it down with heavy gulps.
Then he saw her. She was sitting across from him and watching him, his mother. Only she did not seem like his mother, but a shadowy ominous figure.
She was gazing with intent at his chest. At first shy, Alfred looked down at his bare skin. He realized what she saw, the scars. His wounds were nearly healed.
“Do not go back there,” she said.
“I, I, have to mom. They need me.”
“There is only death. There are only the dark shadows. There is only war.”
“We have wars here. There are wars everywhere. There isn’t peace anywhere.”
“This land has a chance for peace. It has a c
hance. Only men are here to choose our fate. There is no choice like that there. Dark magic reigns there.”
“What?” Alfred wondered. For the first time, more than just those few words, she opened up a whole world of mystery to him, even more than what he had experienced.
“Mom, they need you. The people need you.” He knew saying that drove an arrow of sorrow straight to her heart.
Her emotions swelled, weakening her resolve. “I have not the strength to sacrifice anymore. You are all I have left, Alfred. Let them take whatever they want, the land, the people. I will give it all up for what I have lost. I only want you. I only want peace for my son, a chance at peace here in this world.”
She looked down at her hands for what seemed an eternity. “It’s a peace that was given to us by the great sacrifice of… others...”
“We are fighting and winning. We are rebuilding. There are people there, children, and all are full of hope. Tirnalth is there, and Verboden, and Sir Gylloth. He stopped the goblins!” Alfred became excited, sitting up and pulling on a dry shirt.
“Gylloth? He is alive?”
“Well no, not any longer. He fought off the goblins for us.” Alfred bowed his head.
“You see?” His mother’s voice became bitter, heavy with affliction. “The land of the West is no more. The men of that land cannot defeat the Dark One.”
Alfred’s eyes widened.
“That’s right, Alfred. Do you think it is Gorbogal whom you should fear?” She looked at him with such eyes, crazed and glancing about, as if looking not just at Alfred but at some dark scene before her, as if the world of men were before her, as if she were a dark god looking upon a piece of property to do with as she pleased. “Do you think my sister is all that lies before you? Do you think the scattered realms of men can withstand an evil abhorrent witch, who was given her powers by a god, to be unleashed for him?”
“Your sister!?”said Alfred, shuddering. “I must go back!”
“That is a land of magic and powers beyond the ability of man! It is a place where gods still live. Those of light abandoned men, not to their own fate but to that of the dark god that remains! The Deceiver!” His mother spoke as if possessed.
Alfred: The Boy Who Would Be King (Alfred the Boy King Book 1) Page 21