The Auburn Prince

by Adam Zmarzlinski

  Still determined, Clementine reached into the plume of shadow, pulled out Meditations from within it and swatted at the arms but as they drank in her color, the appendages grew larger while she, colorless and weak, become so fatigued that she could no longer swat away the withered arms. Stumbling, she dropped the book. The handkerchief slid out of it and like a leaf spiraled down onto the ground. A piercing scream shattered the teasing and laughter. The white cloth absorbed, along with the surrounding darkness, most of the withered arms. Clementine’s color began to return and her mind grew at ease.

  “Worry not whatever anyone does or says. I must be an emerald and keep my own color,” Clementine said.

  The remaining appendages retreated into the dim light high above and Clementine regained all her color. She quickly picked up Meditations and the handkerchief. The darkness that surrounded her faded and she found herself standing in a colorless wood with a monochrome fox. Upon seeing her, his face lit up in a smile and auburns of all shades rushed back into him. The color of his fur bloomed and his whiskers glimmered in hue.

  “Where did you go to?” he asked. “One moment you were here and the next—

  “I was in total shadow,” she said. “There were horrid voices and sobbing and tears and teasing, and these withered arms with burned hands slithered down from the sky…”

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she began, “but for a moment, I wasn’t. I saw things I didn’t want to see and felt things no one should feel.”

  “That was the Other. It knows we’re here,” the fox said, walking up to her, his eyes overflowing with curiosity. “It showed you to me, Clementine. It fears you. It will try to take you, slay you even. Tell me, who are you?”

  “I’m just me,” she said, an image from the fable of the goshawk and the fox flashing in her mind.

  “How refreshing,” the fox said. “We rarely have time to be ourselves.”

  The two of them stared at one another for a moment. The fox blinked, turned and walked into the gray woods. Clementine followed. Behind them stood a gray wall of shadow. It swirled, gurgled and an impression of a demented face and hands attempted to break through its liquid surface. There was a faint scream, like a whisper, and the impression faded. The wall stood still.

  Chapter Ten

  Arguments and Reconciliations

  At midafternoon, Clementine and the fox reached the edge of a massive precipice. The sky lay overcast, letting through faint rays of light from somewhere beyond the thick clouds. Clementine walked up to the cliff’s edge; vast woods expanded before her while far off stood tall and colorless mountains whose peaks vanished into what seemed like veiny black clouds peppered with hundreds of great skeletal wings. Meanwhile, the appendages from Clementine’s vision descended from the clouds to caress the mountainsides.

  “That’s the Other,” the fox said. “Beside those living clouds, no one’s seen how the creature really looks. No one even knows where it came from.”

  “Living clouds?” Clementine said. “You mean that thing is alive, like you and I?”

  “No one really knows that either,” the fox said. “That’s just what people call them from beyond Mundialis. Some say it’s evil given form. Others that it’s all an illusion, a sort of smoke show made of shadow and light. Scholars say it’s the embodiment of our misunderstanding of what it means to misunderstand. While those who pity it, say it’s part of a misunderstood creature, a being that lost its ability to feel, a being infinitely wallowing in self-pity. Sages say that the Other is who we are not, somebody that we will never become: someone else… “Philosophers speak of it as a candle’s wick, its purpose is always to burn and keep us aware of who we are, until there is nothing left to be aware of, until the candle melts. To poets, the Other is the love we never show, the love we hide. It is depression wrapped in a cloak of hope.”

  “And what do the people of Mundialis say of it?” Clementine asked.

  The fox glanced at Clementine, “I don’t know. No one leaves Mundialis.”

  Clementine watched the flapping of the creature’s skeletal wings.

  “The legend goes that the Other was once a man who fell in love with a woman,” the fox began. “He loved this woman with all his being but the woman didn’t believe that their love was real. You see, in the past other men told and promised her sweet things too, and yet, they all ended up hurting her. So, when this man appeared, when he showed her true love, true kindness, she knew not how to react. Instead, she chose not to love him. Partly out of fear of not being able to have him, and partly out of fear that her expectations of him would shatter with time. He felt the worst of pains: unrequited love. What goodness and gentleness dwelled in him died, replaced with resentment and self-doubt. He grew wild and horrid, until all feeling, all emotion dried up in him and he became cold, calculating reason.”

  Clementine frowned, watching the withered arms snake around lone trees and jagged stones.

  “You see those thin arms?” the fox asked. “They are known as viello utore, the beautiful touch. Sometimes, be it by luck or force, they slither beyond the border of Mundialis. The unfortunate individuals who stumble upon them fall ill with the long arm, a vile sickness that turns one mad. It makes you forget that you are you. It makes you become someone else, the Other.” The fox paused. A forgotten memory forced itself back into his mind: a sickly woman with dark eyes crawling on the walls. The fox swallowed, cleared his throat and concluded, “When the depths of your thoughts, the beautiful essence of who you are turns against itself, that’s when you know that you’re ill with the long arm.”

  With a sideways glance, Clementine looked at the fox, who diminished in size, and noticing his moist eyes, she changed the subject by asking, “Why do we still have color?”

  “I don’t know,” the fox said. “This is a strange land in a much stranger world, governed by its own set of rules. If I must be honest Clementine, I don’t know much about it beside that it’s a dangerous place, filled with people who’ve lost faith. Hope is a limited commodity here.”

  “If things are so bad, why not change it, act to make it better?” Clementine said.

  “They’ve become used to it,” the fox replied. “A little misery seeps in and like a cuckoo, it lays its eggs in the nests of their mind. With time, the eggs of despair hatch to grow into anguish, indifference and lethargy, and people think that this is how things must be. ‘Can they be any different?’ they ask themselves but seek no answers. They grow weary and begin to worry too much about things that do not matter: about objects, about having more of this or more of that. They thank less and fall away into thought. They think too much and feel too little. They forget about people, about their smiles and their convictions. And in this despair, they blame the Other, and it feeds on their inaction, on their scapegoating.”

  Clementine gazed at the fox. “Who told you all of this?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” the fox said, looking down at the woods below. “I guess I just feel it, this despair and…”

  “And?”

  The fox remained silent for a moment before saying, “The most important person you will ever talk with is yourself,’ someone once told me. I agree with that sentiment. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to make sense of the world. Sometimes we feel that something’s wrong and yet remain silent, indifferent to that feeling. We pretend it doesn’t exist. By remaining silent, by not speaking with ourselves, we give false reassurance to the belief that all is well. I think that’s what’s happened here, in Mundialis: people stopped conversing with their feelings.”

  Clementine looked back at the darkness in the distance. “Where to now?” she asked.

  “There,” the fox said and pointed at the living clouds with his nose. They made their way along the cliff’s edge until it turned into a hillside. Although the hill gently angled downward, it took them a while to descend due to the copious amount of nettle growing about.

  “I’ve yet to see any
one go on an adventure barefoot,” the fox said after Clementine yelped for the fifth time as nettle nipped her ankle.

  “Then you’ve never read Lord of the Rings,” she said to herself.

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  While she rubbed her ankle, the fox continued his descent. There was a rustle of nettle in the near distance. Clementine looked up to see—at about twenty yards away—a turquoise thing with white stripes—that can only be described as resembling a tiger—run down the hill and disappear behind some trees. Without another thought, Clementine ran down after her companion.

  “What is it?” the fox asked as she ran up beside him.

  “I saw something,” she said and pointed.

  The fox looked around. “I don’t see anything.”

  “It was big and turquoise and…big,” she said.

  The fox gave her an inquisitive glance and scanned the woods again. “Turquoise?” he said. “You saw something turquoise, here, in Mundialis?”

  She nodded vigorously. The fox frowned. “Stay here,” he said and ran off. She watched as he disappeared into the gray florae, following his movement by the quivering of nettle leaves. After climbing up the hill, descending and circling around her, he returned.

  “There’s nothing here,” he said.

  “But I saw it.”

  “I’m a fox,” he said. “You see these?” he pointed at his nose and ears. “These make it impossible for anything to sneak up on us and do you know why?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Because I can smell a mouse from fifty yards away and hear it squeak from over a hundred. Nothing’s sneaking up on us. Nothing,” he said and ran up ahead.

  After scanning the woods once more, Clementine sighed and followed the fox. The nearest nettle stalk shook and Clementine screamed. The fox spun sideways and saw a hare emerge from the leaves. “That’s our dinner,” the fox said. The hare darted off and the fox followed. The hunter and its prey corkscrewed through the shrubbery for a while until they reached a grove of trees. The hare turned and faced the fox who stopped and observed his prey’s movement. Surprising the fox, the hare grinned maliciously. It moved its ears and they split into four. Sensing danger, the fox took a step back. A metallic smell of blood poured into his nostrils. “Clementine,” the fox said. He turned around and ran off, leaving the grinning hare behind.

  Walking, Clementine surveyed the woods, searching for a glimpse of auburn. There was a sound of movement behind her. She turned and walking around a great oak said, “There you are.” A filthy colorless man with a bushy beard and hollow eyes thrusting a makeshift spear into a heap of rags, hair and meat came into view. Clementine froze and the man stopped what he was doing. He ogled her. His hands and clothes were drenched in colorless blood. Clementine took a step back and the man smiled. “It’s like a buffet here today,” he said, stepping over an arm.

  Clementine darted behind the oak and ran. She no longer felt the nettle sting her feet. Escape was the only thing that mattered. The man gave chase and followed the girl down a hillside before jumping on and unnaturally scurrying up the nearest tree. Clementine continued sprinting until she reached a thick patch of trees. She turned south and after checking behind her, she hid behind a thick birch. After a couple of breaths, she peeked around. “He’s gone,” she thought.

  A filthy hand clasped over her mouth and she felt an arm grip her torso while her feet lifted off the ground. Upside down and clinging to the tree with his feet, the man brought the squirming Clementine up to himself. He put his face in her hair and smelled her. “Y-you smell nice,” he said and licked her cheek. “And taste good, too.” She screamed into his palm. “The color y-you have will feed me for y-years,” he said and took another whiff of her hair. She grabbed at his face and finding his eye, she jammed her fingers into it with all her might. He gave off a chilling screech and let her go. The moment her feet hit the ground, she ran.

  The man quickly hopped off the tree, took the spear off his back and aimed. Clementine grew smaller in the distance. “Fly, fly little fly,” the man said and threw the spear. It sailed through the air; its target drawing ever closer. Mere inches before impact, the fox jumped out of the nettle and struck the shaft with his shoulder. The spear wobbled and the heavy wood whipped sideways to strike Clementine in the back. She fell hard.

  Before she could get up, the hunter scurried up to her, curved knife in hand. He pinned her with one hand and readied the other for an overhead strike. The fox soared into the air and bit into the knife hand’s wrist. The man hollered and he let go of Clementine, who quickly got up and ran into a narrow ravine. The man got up and looked around for the fox, but he too was gone. The hunter made his way after the girl.

  The stones in the ravine were slippery, and Clementine had to be careful not to fall. For the most part, she balanced herself expertly until stepping on a particularly wet stone. She fell backwards and struck the ground hard. “Agh,” she grunted and felt surging pain climb up her back. Murmuring, she stood up only to feel a hand grip her shoulder. “Enough,” the man said, and he pushed her. Clementine tumbled down the rocky slope banging her arm on a boulder that stuck out of the earth. She was battered and bruised but not lacking courage and will. She stood right up, but the man was right behind. He grabbed her by the back of the neck. “Y-you are a tiresome little thing,” he said as she thrashed around.

  Clementine pulled forward making the hunter take a step toward her. His foot slid sideways between two large rocks. Clementine grasped the hunter’s wrist and dug her fingers into his flesh. He pushed her again, but this time she caught herself on side of the ravine. Steading her footing, she looked back to see the man struggle to get his foot free. Something flashed above and Clementine saw the fox fifteen yards above her at the edge of the ravine. He ran at full speed, jumped and rammed right into the man. There was a loud snap followed by a louder cry. The man lay sideways on the ground, his tibia peeking out from under his right leg.

  The fox, as large as a St. Bernard, ran up to Clementine and helped her along down the ravine. At the bottom, they disappeared into the woods. They walked on for several minutes in silence, before stopping beside a tree. “Are you all right?” the fox asked. Clementine sat down. “Yes, I’m okay. Thank you,” she said. “And you?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, slowly returning to his normal size. “I’m sorry I ran off like that.”

  “It’s fine,” she said. “You were going after dinner.”

  “We have to be careful now,” he said. “This place is dangerous. That man, there are many more like him out here.”

  “Thank you,” Clementine said. “I thought he’s gonna kill me.”

  The fox stared at her. “We have to go,” he said. “We don’t know who else heard the ruckus.” Clementine nodded, stood up and they walked on.

  The turquoise thing observed them from the canopy.

  “How many people live here in this country?” Clementine asked to take her mind off what just happened.

  “I don’t know,” the fox said.

  “So, is there no one here to govern the people, you know like a president or a king? Someone to show them that there is more to life than just despair?”

  An image of a man and two women dressed in regal attire flashed before the fox’s eyes. Dazed, he stopped and stared at Clementine. Sounds of barking and yelping flooded his ears. His senses heightened: he smelled the salty odor of her armpits, felt the brittle dirt below his paws, heard the distant drumming of some far off heart and saw the tiny nearly invisible hair of Clementine’s cheeks. A primeval instinct to attack awoke in him. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out, only a low gasp of air. He shrunk in size.

  Unseen by either of them, Clementine’s bag gave off black sparks.

  “Are you all right?” Clementine asked.

  The fox blinked a few times—as if swatting the confusion away—and said, “I’m fine… I think there’s a king
or a prince, or someone, in the nearby kingdom.”

  “So why don’t they help?” Clementine said.

  “It doesn’t concern them,” the fox said. “They have other things to worry about.”

  It all flowed before his eyes as one image: the chase, the fallen tree, the vixen, the arrow, the arrow! The Pale Rider. That villain! That scum!

  “Like wha—

  “Vengeance!” the fox roared, growing in mass. “There is blood to be spilled for the horrid actions of vile men. The Prince must not wait for the universe to deliver justice. He must act. He must bring justice upon the unjust. He must grab the villain by the neck and squeeze. Squeeze until there is nothing left in the man’s eyes but death! Crimes must be avenged. Actions punished. Payment must be made in suffering and blood. Memories… memories must be kept alive but vengeance… vengeance must be delivered.”

  The more he spoke, the more his words became intermixed with growls and barks and predatory animal noises. He growled at the nettle and the trees and Clementine, and she watched as he yelled at no one in particular. In fact, she was so focused on him that she did not notice a movement in her bag.

  “Marcus Aurelius wrote that you should leave other’s wrongs where they lie and never make them your own,” she said in between his mutterings.

  The fox’s eyes lit up in rage. He grew to match Clementine’s height. The dying vixen flashed in his mind and an earlier memory: a gentle caress of muzzles, a kiss on the cheek, a face of a beautiful woman. The arrow! The Pale Rider! Her eyes! Her deep brown eyes flickered and a sea of rage poured out of him.

  “What do you know of suffering,” he snapped, barring his teeth. “Action is the only remedy for pain! And vengeance is that action.”

  “Revenge breeds a deep sorrow,” Clementine began, words coming to her unexpectedly. “A sorrow that no army can keep at bay, no genie wish can away and it shall gnaw at you, eternally, until you decay.”