Do not misunderstand me. By no means would I ever want to be … an ordinary. I merely want to live among them.
To do so, I must act like them.
Tonight is two moons before the full one. Superstitions still cling to the villagers, despite the wolf-head encased in a glass box outside the church. Priest Peter is as Grandmother told me once. Theatrical.
Theatrics or not, the village shuts down on these few nights a month. The ordinaries think the woods free of the wolf. Fear of more coming still lingers.
I close the shop before dusk falls upon us and check on the garden.
Behind my own private garden, I keep a piece of my old home. The loose wooden boards in the walls. Dante will come through the slats once he is satisfied with his roam through the woods.
Upstairs, I find Grandmother on her favourite armchair by the fireplace. The flames are low, almost drowned to embers. When she is at her weakest, she often forgets to tend to the fire. It only assures me that I made the right decision in bringing her to the village with me.
After I build a strong fire that floods the apartment with warmth, I boil water in the kettle and unwrap one of my rarer soaps.
Grandmother’s gaze traces my every move, rather reminding me of a wild animal sedated. It isn’t until I am pouring the hot kettle-water into a washbowl that she protests with a cough.
“You must be washed.” My voice is firm and my gaze harder still. “I won’t quarrel the matter.”
As Grandmother cared for me when I was a vulnerable child, I care for her in her old, brittle state. It is the law of nature. It is what I owe her, and—most of all—it is what I need to do out of my love for her.
She stirs in the armchair.
Perched on the table opposite her, I notice a small smear of blood at the corner of her parched lips. “Have you been drinking water, Grandmother?”
Grandmother mutters choked words that I do not hear. Though, I understand her clearly. A proud woman, a fierce witch, turned an ailing cripple who must be cared for by her own child. And that is what I am, is it not?
As much as I am her Granddaughter, I am her daughter.
She is my mother.
I carry the warm water to her and rest it on the table beside the armchair. With the black soap bar (made from goat’s milk, almond oil, and charcoal), I wet a cloth and rub it until soap suds run down my wrist.
Predictable woman. She fights me at first, but relents only after I have washed her arm. Her pride loathes the circumstance, yet she knows well enough to enjoy clean skin.
After her wash, which leaves her smelling of fresh almonds, I feed her.
Tonight, she hardly finishes her small meal of pulverised potatoes and soft lamb strips, stewed to the ultimate tenderness. Grandmother leaves more in the bowl than she ate. Each passing day, her dwindling appetite wounds me more and more.
“Here.” Grandmother’s voice is a whispered croak, rife with soreness. She hands me her small pocketbook. “I am in the mood for history.”
I take the book and kneel at Grandmother’s feet. From the light of the fire, I see the scrawled words of which Hemlock women have jotted down from time to time.
This is not the book, but it is a book of our people.
I read her the story of her first daughter. Sometime during, Dante’s wolf-howl can be heard from afar. An echo of him, deep into the woods. Far enough that those in the village who hear it, will think it little more than an ordinary wolf.
I move on to the next story she favours—Her own.
When it comes to the part where I am introduced, her hand reaches down and touches my cheek. The smile on my face cannot be helped. With that one touch to the horrid, twisted scar on my face, she tells me she loves me—she tells me that I am still beautiful to her.
She is wrong of course.
The scar tugs my skin and warps it in a jagged line from the corner of my eye to above my jawline. It does not bother me, Grandmother thinks it is a scar of my history that I should wear proudly (to overcome a true witch), and Dante…Well, he cares the least about the scar. I rather think he is fond of it at times.
A foolish wolf under a spell.
†††
Dawn seeps through the dusty windows and wakes me.
I must have forgotten to close the shutters. My neck is stiff, my spine aches, and I realise—I had fallen asleep at Grandmother’s knees last night.
I draw away and roll my shoulders. A satisfying pop comes from the left, and then I crane my neck in hopes of the same relief. A night’s sleep at the foot of an armchair does harm to my muscles, but a night’s sleep in an armchair will do worse to Grandmother.
Wiping at the crust on my eyes, I squint up at her.
Soundly, she sleeps. Still, silent, and calm.
I shake her shoulders. “Grandmother, it is time to wake.”
She sinks further into the armchair, heavy and limp.
“Grandmother?” I shake her again, harder. “Wake up. It is dawn.”
Grandmother shakes. She moves with me, but not on her own. Her eyes don’t open, she doesn’t pull away from me.
I freeze and study her motionless face; her motionless neck where her vein should pulse and push against her skin.
My hands shake. I touch my fingers to her neck.
I draw back to the floor.
My gaze doesn’t leave her peaceful face. For a long while, I kneel at her feet and stare at her. Soon, her face distorts as though fog has settled over it—for the first time in my life, I shed tears and they warp her in my sight.
Salt droplets roll down my cheeks. Not many, mere trickles, but inside my heart weeps. Grandmother is gone. It doesn’t sink in. It doesn’t settle in my brain, it refuses to become a truth.
I am so entrenched in the moment that I can’t bring myself to look away. Not even when the floorboard creaks behind me. Dante, naked, in my home and searching for his clothes.
Still, I kneel at Grandmother’s feet, eyes on her slack features.
Dante comes closer to me. He slips into the tension with ease and crouches behind me on the floor. His hands find my arms, where they rest a long while.
I stay at Grandmother’s feet.
Dante does not leave.
28.
Epilogue
Grandmother’s death has not gotten easier for me.
Three weeks later, and I still make to speak to her as I brew concoctions and stir soup. Sometimes, I turn to the armchair as though I expect to see her sitting there, reading from a book, or knitting herself a pair of stockings.
Three weeks, and each time I expect her to be there, she never is.
I had a weak moment. In the book—The Book—there is a ritual… A ritual so dark that, if Grandmother was alive still and caught me looking at it, she would beat me with the book. I almost brought her back.
Of course, it would not have been her. I know this. Her energy has passed, moved beyond this word and through the veil. But I want her back here on this side of the veil with me. Until Grandmother abandoned my soul, I never truly realised how alone I am.
There is Dante. In a sense, I have him. But he is no Grandmother. He is not family. He is a wolf, spellbound.
Dante helped me bury Grandmother under her favourite flowers in the garden (dog-roses). Since that night, the roses have grown lusher than ever before. She must have had a little magic in her before her last breath.
I am in the garden now as dawn kisses the horizon. My fingers run over the soil that embrace Grandmother for eternity. But I am interrupted when the wood panels opposite slide to the side.
I look up; the wolf-in-human-skin slips through the gap and drags something behind him. An animal, hunted and killed.
Dante gives me a wolfish grin and heaves the animal behind him into my garden. Then he shuts the panels and secures them.
My gaze runs over the carcass. “A red stag,” I say and wipe my hands on my blue skirt. “You impress me.”
As nude as the day he was b
orn, Dante stretches out his muscles and flexes his joints. After his turns, his body aches all over. He brings me prizes—today, the red stag—and I tend to his pain.
He crouches beside me and touches a fleeting kiss to my temple. “My lady asked for antlers, so antlers she will have.”
“Your lady?” I push to my feet and arch my brow at him. “I am not your wife, Dante. I am your … companion.”
“So be my wife,” he says with a wink. “And let us squabble within marriage.”
I do what I always do when he proposes marriage; “Name the day, and we’ll wed.”
Dante never names the day. We will never wed.
To hide from the truth that dares slip into our time together, Dante kisses me on the lips, as softly as he can manage after a turn. I swat him away.
“You have horrid breath and smell most wretched. Have you rolled in a dung patch of late?”
“Less complaining, more bathing me,” he demands.
I roll my eyes and lead him up to my home. In his human body, he has more trouble heaving the stag up the wooden stairs, but he manages. And as he always does, he dumps the prize in my herb room to be butchered later.
I boil water for his bath; the oils are already laid out on a tray to be massaged into him afterwards. Dante comes up behind me at the fireplace and wraps his arms around me. Together, we watch the flames lick up the base of the pot and wait for the water to bubble.
Today is not a day for my brews, concoctions or remedies. I do not open my shop on the days of full moons, and I cook enough to prepare for how demanding Dante is.
This time of month, his needs burn stronger than ever.
We have our agreement.
The full moon comes closer, and this is when his want to be around me heightens. After the moon, he will return to his home and there will be a fortnight in which we do not speak or touch.
Tonight, we touch and speak.
There will never be another future ahead of us.
Our lies are all we have and we need to live within that deadly comfort … two weeks out of every month.
The End.
THE
PRINCE’S PRISONER
BOOK TWO
FEARED FABLES
The Prince’s Prisoner, Book 2 of the Feared Fables Series.
Copyright © 2019 by Klarissa King
All rights reserved.
SECOND EDITION.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission—this includes scanning and/or unauthorised distribution—except in case of brief quotations used in reviews and/or academic articles, in which case quotations are permitted.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, whether alive or dead, is purely coincidental. Names, characters, incidents, and places are all products of the author’s imagination.
Imprint: Independently published.
The
Prince’s Prisoner
.
A Cautionary Tale
Second Edition
The Prince’s Prisoner
∞Part One∞
1
Callie rammed her arms into the sleeves of her jumper.
This wasn’t the way she wanted to spend her time in Scotland. She wanted to be outside, sightseeing in the constant cold, not cooped up in some rundown tavern waiting for her friend to return from a longgggg date—a small village date that apparently meant only one thing; an all-night party in the woods.
But Meghan hadn’t returned to the inn.
Callie checked the bathroom, the corridor, went down to the tavern, and checked the street. There was no sign of her.
Meghan was supposed to be back at the room already—she was late by a night and a morning. Callie was sick of waiting.
As the late-morning sun streamed through the blinds, Callie dressed for the gruelling, lone trek in the woods. Her boots were zipped up, leggings warmed her beneath her black jeans, and a white jumper hugged her upper body. She tied a jacket around her waist for the glacial chill uphill.
She grabbed her bag and swept out of the musty room.
The inn she was staying at was just like every other one she’d spent nights in during her travels. They were all slathered in too much floral print, littered with creaky beds that Callie was sure had been half-eaten by termites, and had a stale stench to them that clung to the old carpets.
But Meghan and Callie were travelling on a budget. Inns and hostels were all they could afford.
As she stomped down the carpeted stairs at the local inn, Callie hugged her arms around herself and huffed.
Downstairs, the tavern was open to the locals, even at this hour.
Two patrons sat at the bar throwing back beers before noon, and another sat alone at a wooden table, reading a book.
From across the bar, the owner shot her a look, one that simmered with worries and warnings.
“I’ll be back in a few hours,” said Callie.
Magda, the owner, only gave her a tight smile in response. It bulged her cheeks. It was a smile that said, No, you won’t.
Callie didn’t think anything of it. Already, she’d been fed stories of the fae who lurk in the woods by at least four villagers. Small towns and their folklore…
The air outside was frosty.
Her cheeks prickled and turned pink.
Callie pulled out the map and checked it one final time before leaving. Then she rammed it into her backpack, plugged her earphones into her ears, and set off down the road to the mouth of Mermaid Path.
The farther she went into the woods, the weaker her phone signal got, until the reception dropped out completely. Far sooner than she expected.
Callie had been walking for two hours when she reached the mermaid tail, which according to the map marked the halfway point of the trail.
It was a wooden sculpture that erected from a patch of flattened dirt beside a curve of trees.
A small, wiry-haired dog was peeing on the side of it. He belonged to an elderly couple walking down the path toward Callie.
As the old couple slowed to a stop in front of her, the dog pranced over to them. The woman spared a small smile to Callie and her lips moved—Callie imagined she was saying ‘hello’.
She pulled out her earphones. “Hi,” she said. “Sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for my friend. This is her.”
The couple frowned as she showed them her phone, a picture of Callie and Meghan beaming up at them from the screen.
Callie added, “She was with a guy—he had dyed pink hair. Have you seen them around here by any chance?”
The couple looked at each other before they shook their heads in perfect unison.
“No, I’m afraid not,” said the woman. “You’re the first person we’ve seen out here this morning. Not too many people come this far in unless they live in the woods.”
The man looked over his shoulder and waved his hand at the thinning trees to her left. “We have a cottage up that way,” he said, looking back at Callie.
Callie deflated.
Her aching thigh muscles burned her in protest at the thought of more hiking, and her shoulders slumped.
Her hand reached into her bag and pulled out the map.
“I know that she was at a party up this way,” she said, unfurling the crinkled map. “She was meant come back to the village last night, but she never made it. My phone doesn’t work this far in the woods eithers, so I’m guessing hers doesn’t—I can’t get a hold of her.”
The couple leaned closer to get a look at the map.
Their eyes only touched the map for a second before they straightened and shared another look with each other.
Callie swung her gaze between the pair of them. The woman sighed—a gentle sound, like the one Callie’s grandma made whenever Callie was upset and threw a tantrum.
“A few more miles up that way,” said the man. He gestured to the sloping path behind him. “When you reach the crooked tree plot, y
ou’re there.”
Callie checked the map. There was no note about where the crooked trees were in the forest.
The woman looked as though she wanted to say something. Her already wrinkled, white eyebrows furrowed and met just above the bridge of her nose. And her greying eyes, like cloudy marbles, bore into Callie’s own eyes.
Callie licked her chapped lips—stripped dry by the fierce cold—and stuck out the map again.
“Are you sure that’s where I’ll find her?” she asked the old woman.
The woman glanced down at the dog, who sat patiently at their feet, and breathed another sigh. Though, this one was almost too quiet for Callie to hear over the whistle of the wind.
“Please,” pressed Callie. “I need to find her. If you know anything that might help, tell me.”
The woman touched her gaze back to Callie. The man glanced around at the whispering trees, as if afraid they were being listened to.
“This friend,” said the woman, her voice a softer whisper than the breeze. “You said she went to a party up here?”
“Yes.”
“The boy who took her, he had pink hair?”
Callie nodded.
“What was the party called?”
Callie thought for a beat, then, wearing a dubious frown, said, “Forest frolic.”
The man didn’t take his wary, sweeping gaze off the trees.
“They say,” the old woman whispered, “that those parties have been held in these woods every year since the day the trees first sprouted from the earth.” Callie tried not to show her impatience. “But,” added the woman, “we can’t know if those parties are real, because those who have seen them never return.”
Feared Fables Box Set: Dark and Twisted Fairy Tale Retellings, (Feared Fables Box Sets Book 1) Page 12