The Eyes of a King

by Catherine Banner

  “What else is there to believe in if you don’t believe in that?”

  “But that doesn’t mean it’s true. You are saying you believe in it because you want it to be true?”

  “No—because when people die, they don’t just disappear.”

  “What does that mean?” I demanded.

  “That there is somewhere else. It’s one of those things you were talking about, the things you just know.”

  I sat up straight and looked at her. “That’s where I want to be—somewhere else. Maybe heaven, probably hell. I’ve had enough of this. I want to be somewhere else.” I wanted to be somewhere my heart didn’t hurt like this, like it did now—pain too much to bear, that made the days seem months and the weeks seem years and turned everything bitter. “That’s what I want,” I told her.

  She shook her head. “What I want is more time.”

  “More time?”

  “Yes. If I’m dying now, there’s nothing I can do to change it. I don’t know if I am. But I want to go on for a while at least.”

  “Why?”

  She started telling me about her future, about how she wanted to dance. I told her that my mother used to be a singer and a dancer a long time ago. She started telling me about how fast things change and how fast time passes, as if that would convince me to throw away the gun and go home. But thinking about the future made me the more convinced never to go back. The future to me was nothing anymore. Fifty or sixty more years without Stirling, and then without Grandmother either. And the guilt of what I had done would catch up with me when this strange tiredness lifted from my mind—and then what?

  “There’s too much future,” I told her. “I’m too tired. I can’t live for that many days; I’ll go mad. If I’m not condemned to death or put in prison …”

  “You don’t know what’s going to happen in the future,” she said.

  “I know roughly what’s going to happen in the future. And there’s no possibility that it can be good. I want to start again.”

  “But dying isn’t a new start with this same life; it’s something else.”

  “How do you know what it is?” I was suddenly angry. “And you can’t tell me what to do when you don’t know a damn thing about me.”

  “I’m not telling you what to do. Listen—don’t people need you back at home?”

  I shook my head. No one needed me; I had failed them all. I hadn’t run fast enough from the hills, and I couldn’t bring Stirling back. Grandmother had needed me with her, but I had turned my back and marched to Ositha and left her alone to grow frail and helpless. And I wouldn’t be able to stop the soldiers taking her away.

  “Won’t someone need you in the future?” she said. I didn’t understand what she meant. She must have seen it in my face, because she went on: “There might be someone you’re going to help, or someone who will need you one day years from now, and if you were dead, you wouldn’t be there to do it.”

  “Did you ever wish you were dead like this?” I demanded. “No, I don’t think you did.”

  She didn’t answer. Then she said, “It was a long time ago, and I was only small.”

  “What did you do about it?”

  “I started counting the days to make the time pass.”

  “Right,” I said, without much interest. “And then what?”

  “I don’t remember, but one day I must have stopped counting.”

  “Why did you count the days?”

  “ To teach myself how to survive in normal life, I suppose, when everything was different.”

  “How old were you then?”

  “Five years old.”

  “Five years old and counting the days passing?”

  “It’s not a big tragedy. It’s just my life. Maybe there are reasons why you want to die and you don’t. Maybe there aren’t. I don’t know either way. But I lived ten years more after that and now I’m here talking to you.”

  She still seemed silver and distant in the rising dawn, as if she was not really there at all. I put out my hand to touch her, but I could not reach across the stream. And I didn’t dare to do it anyway. I thought that it might make her vanish. “You are some kind of angel,” I said then. “So please, just tell me what to do.”

  “I’m not an angel. But I’ll tell you what to do.”

  “What?”

  “Put down the gun and go home.” And then she began to fade. “Listen,” she said. “I don’t know if I’m dying or coming back. I don’t have any choice. Maybe I’ll regret all the things I didn’t do, but there’s no way I can change it. Everyone dies in the end. Everyone ends up in the same place, and usually they don’t have a choice about it. Killing yourself is not the same.” She was speaking fast, as though she wanted to tell me these things before she left me forever.

  She went on. “My father was twenty; he was a good man and he’s gone. My Nan was fifty and we all needed her, and we still need her, and there’s nothing we can do about it now. It doesn’t make sense. People die when they could have done so much if they had stayed alive. And for some reason I got more time and they didn’t. Maybe it’s just chance that I was left and they went, or maybe there’s a reason, but you can’t change it either way if you’re the one left to carry on.”

  “You haven’t done what I’ve done,” I told her. “I’m fifteen years old and I shot a man. Now tell me how to carry on.”

  I didn’t say it bitterly. I wanted her to tell me. “Please,” I said. “Tell me how to carry on.”

  And then she was fading. I reached out. “Take hold of my hand,” I told her. “If you take hold of my hand and prove to me that you’re real, then I’ll put down the gun and go home.”

  She was too far away. I got up suddenly. “Don’t leave me yet,” I said desperately. I stepped toward her, into the stream, and for a second I didn’t even feel the water around me.

  And then I was alone in the eastern hills, up to my waist in a cold stream in the dark, with a gun in my hand. The moonlight was gone.

  I began to lift the pistol again. And then I thought about Stirling, eight years old and gone, and all the things he would have done—and all the things he had done already, all the things that made me miss him like this now, like it was too much to bear. And then I thought about Ahira, and the moment when I realized he was dead and it was my fault—and no matter what evil he did, no matter how little his future might have been worth to the world, I had taken it from him and he could never do anything else again. And my heart hurt too badly for me to go on living, and the weight of what I had done was already too much to stand, but suddenly I couldn’t do this either.

  Because some acts were easy to commit and yet could be regretted forever—that was what I realized then. I had shot Ahira and I would pay for it. And killing myself was too great a thing to do. It was the same thing.

  I let go of the gun. The water carried it away, dashed it against a rock, and then pulled it beneath the surface. I felt more despairing than I had in all these past days since Stirling had died. It’s strange how easy it was to pull the trigger of the rifle and shoot Ahira. And how hard it was to get up, turn around, and walk back home.

  Aldebaran brushed the tears from his face as he jogged down the steps of the English hospital. And Anna stirred and looked up into the light. She had been dreaming.

  Ryan ran to her. She saw him drifting in her vision, his head still bandaged, and tried to sit up, then collapsed back down again, out of breath. There were tears on his face. “Why are you crying?” she murmured.

  “I was worried. They said that you were all right, but I was not certain.” He knelt beside the bed and watched her face. “Anna.”

  The surroundings were sharpening in front of her eyes. A bleak white room, with a large window. “Where are we?” she said.

  “In hospital. Do you not remember?”

  Her head was aching and the room still shifted in her vision. The early sunlight through the blind was lying in stripes across the floor. She put her han
d to her face, then started when she felt the stitches in her cheek. “Ryan, what—”

  “They are just scratches, really,” he said. “Gunshot wounds. One in your shoulder, one in your arm, one in your cheek, one in your side. None of those bullets hit you, Anna. They only grazed the surface. How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know. Am I really back here? Ryan, I thought I was gone.”

  She reached for his hand. There was a drip attached to her own, and he took it carefully. “You were unconscious,” he said. “Aldebaran thought it was shock; you passed into Malonia and back again, and it might be too much to do that. And the things that happened—Anna, I am sorry. I should have done something. I did not think they would take you.”

  “It was not your fault. You couldn’t have done anything.”

  He looked as if he was about to speak, then stopped and shook his head.

  Anna put her hand to her neck, out of habit, and found the necklace there. “Aldebaran put it round your neck before the ambulance came,” said Ryan. “He thought you might need it.” He brushed the last tears off his face, but more fell.

  “Don’t cry,” said Anna. “Ryan, I am all right.”

  She tried to sit up again. He propped up the pillows behind her. “What did you tell Monica?” she said. “How did you explain these?” She touched the stitches on her cheek.

  “I said that we got lost out on the hills and fell in the dark. To explain the bruise on my head and your injuries. I don’t think the doctor believes it, but …” He blinked the tears out of his eyes. “What could I have said? How can you tell the truth when no one would believe it?”

  “I didn’t know if I would see you again,” Anna said. “I didn’t think I would wake up. The last thing I remember, I was in the church and I thought I was shot. But I had the strangest dream….” She shook her head. “I can’t remember it now.”

  Then she thought of something. “But Aldebaran was here; I know he was.”

  “Yes, until a few minutes ago. When he knew you were going to be all right, he had to go home.” Ryan glanced toward the window, but Aldebaran had already passed out of sight. “He is going back to my country. Things changed, Anna, last night. They say it is a revolution. Lucien is dead, and the others—Ahira and Darius Southey and half the military leaders. Not Talitha. No one dares to kill a great one. But she is captured, and Aldebaran is no longer an exile.”

  A doctor appeared suddenly at the door, and Monica behind her. Monica stood for a moment and stared at Anna. Then she was running across the room, her heels clattering on the floor. “Thank God, thank God,” she was saying, her own tears falling on Anna’s face. “What the hell were you thinking? You wandered off into the hills without even telling me! Anna, I didn’t dare to phone Michelle! You are all she has; what would I have said? And—”

  The doctor put a hand on Monica’s shoulder to quiet her, then leaned over to speak to Anna. “Do you remember what happened?”

  Anna glanced at Ryan, and he repeated his story. “Is that right?” said the doctor. Anna nodded. The doctor frowned but she did not argue. She examined Anna’s cheek for a moment in silence. Ryan caught Anna’s eyes, then glanced away.

  “Strange,” the doctor said then. “These grazes are all the same. They look almost like—I don’t know. I would have said gunshot wounds.”

  The great Aldebaran, walking over the hills in the early sunlight, looked back for a moment toward the town where the hospital stood. And then he started up through the trees, toward the old stone circle, where once he had opened his eyes to a strange country. As he walked, he stopped hearing the birds singing and the wind that ran through the trees. Ahead he thought he could hear other faint sounds—voices in the air, speaking in an accent that he recognized. And England, like a dream or a nightmare, began to fade around him.

  I sat down on the step outside the door of Maria’s apartment. It was very early in the morning the day after I shot Ahira. The sunlight was slanting through the high window of the stairwell, and I sat and watched it. After a while, the door opened. “Leo!” It was Maria’s voice. I turned slowly. Grandmother was beside her.

  “We were so worried,” Grandmother began, taking my hand. “Were you out in the city, Leo? Did you hear the gunshots?” She hugged me to her briefly; then Maria helped me to my feet. “Things will be better,” said Grandmother. “I will bake a loaf of bread, and you can go down and fetch the water for tea. Things will be better from now on.”

  I knew they would not. But just knowing that left me with a strange kind of calm. It seemed a stupid lie to meekly help her home after what I had done, but I took her arm anyway and we started down the stairs.

  I watch the last lights burning in the city. It is almost dawn now, but the daylight holds off awhile longer. I go to the parapet and stare at the lights, imagining the people in those houses—all the thousands of people—sleeping now, or calling good night to their families, or pouring a last drink and sitting down to talk. Are any of them awake now because their hearts are troubled? Perhaps. I cannot tell. I turn the last pages of the book, but for a moment I cannot read on.

  After I had got that far with the story, I decided not to tell you much more. I was exhausted with telling you this history and remembering these things. What happened in the days after I came back? I cannot remember exactly. Some of it is still clear; other parts I have lost entirely. I know that I tried to act as if things were normal. Real life pulled me back in, and I didn’t know what else to do. I told no one and went back to Grandmother and Maria.

  If I had carried on despairing every minute of each day, it would have been easier to stand than that normality. I was ashamed to live, the same way I would feel ashamed to be one of the people sleeping guiltlessly in those houses, or to have gone down and danced in the bright rooms below. I have no right. It is hard to justify my crime to you. All I can say is that I am paying for it.

  My story goes on—but not yet. I will read about the others first.

  Anna woke suddenly. She was shivering as she had on that dark balcony above the city. The clock on the other side of the lake was chiming two. A breeze caught the curtains and made them rise and fall. She picked up her necklace from the table. She had slept all that day and most of the night, but now she was awake and breathing fast.

  “Anna?” said a voice outside her door then. It was Ryan. “I heard you call out. Are you all right?” She turned on the lamp and got up to unlock the door. Ryan was there in the dark corridor, dressed and with a book in his hand. “My room is across from yours,” he said. “Listen, Monica will be angry if she hears us talking at this time of night. I just wanted to check nothing was wrong.”

  “Come in for a minute.”

  She shut the door behind him. “Thanks,” he said. “She does not even like me staying here; I don’t know what she would say if she thought I was disturbing the paying guests.”

  “You are a paying guest yourself,” said Anna. Aldebaran had insisted that Ryan leave the house while he was gone, in case it was still watched, so he had come to Hillview.

  He sat on the chair beside the bed. Still blinking in the lamplight, she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and went to shut the window. “A storm is getting up out there,” said Ryan. “Was that what woke you?”

  She shook her head. “It was just a nightmare. I didn’t like being in that hospital. It reminded me of …” She shrugged. “Other times. Sorry if I woke you.”

  “I was not asleep. My uncle has left me with enough work for a year. Politics and laws, and I have to know them. He is not too far away to check up on me.”

  She sat back down on the bed. He reached out briefly and took her hand, then let it go again. “Things will be different from now on,” said Anna. “I will practice dancing harder than ever. I could have died, and I didn’t. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I know.” He closed the book in his hands and set it down on the floor, then leaned forward in his chair and watched her.

&
nbsp; “What is it?” she said.

  “Anna, are you all right now? When you were in Malonia—I don’t know—it must have been frightening. Is that what you dream about? Is that what gives you nightmares?”

  She pulled the blanket tighter around her. “Maybe it is that, partly. In the daylight I had almost forgotten. But when I fell to sleep, I could see it again. I could see all their faces as if I was really there. It was more real than a dream.”

  Ryan nodded. “After I was exiled, I used to dream that I was back there. I used to see my mother and father again and think, Just give me five more minutes and it will be real—I will get back home somehow, back to how things used to be. But I never had five minutes more; I always woke.”

  There was a silence. Ryan looked away then. “I was thinking about Talitha today,” he said, in a different tone. “The revolutionaries have captured her and she will be imprisoned for life. One of my duties will be to publicly sentence her, as one of the first criminals convicted during my reign. An old tradition.”

  “You will be responsible for that?” said Anna.

  “I will be responsible for many things. I am scared to think too much about it. I cannot speak judgment on one of the great ones, even her. She is a very famous woman, and she frightens me, in spite of her beautiful face.”

  “She is young,” said Anna. “I thought you said she worked with Aldebaran in the secret service.”

  “No, she is his same age, or a year older. Talitha is very powerful, and the signs of age are easy to prevent if you choose to do it. Even Aldebaran does, I think—not much, but you would not say that he was seventy.”

  Ryan folded his arms and looked out at the moon lying silent over the hills. “Aldebaran thinks that the mistakes of the old government are what we must learn from now. Talitha was not wise enough. Lucien was not admired. And they were too personally involved.” He shook his head. “He has surrounded me with prophecies and myth and set me up as a lonely figure. The opposite of what Lucien was. I hope it will work, but—” He turned to her. “Sometimes I wish I was an English boy. I have been separated from everyone, even here in England. And now I have you, and everything has changed. I don’t want to be a leader. Sometimes I don’t even think I believe in those things. But all I am doing is stepping into a place set up for me. Do you see what I mean?”