The Auburn Prince

by Adam Zmarzlinski

  “Where to?’ the gecko asked.

  “Upstairs,” Clementine said.

  Upon seeing the fox free, Ecilám acted: he cracked the bow in two and simultaneously, lodged each half of it into the poacher’s throats. Reaching the stairs, the fox stopped, turned and looked into the Rider’s empty black eyes.

  “Do you hate me?” the Rider asked, flames consuming everything around him, even his clothes singed in the heat.

  “I…” the fox began. An image of the vixen’s limp body flashed in his mind.

  “Hate me,” Ecilám said. “Hate shall set you free. It set us free.”

  “Why did you kill her?” the fox asked.

  “Why does the moon set? Why do the waves crash against the shore? Why do mountains meander among the cloud tops? They just do what they know best,” Ecilám said and gave a horrid smile. His teeth were missing, his mouth a black maw.

  The fox grew enraged, barred his teeth and began slowly growing in size.

  Clementine unlocked the chest and took out her book and handkerchief. She turned toward the staircase. “Come on, Mr. Fox!” she yelled through the sound of crackling flames.

  The Pale Rider’s head elongated and the shadows, once subservient to the flame, began flowing into him. His fingers became insectile and his shoulders and back arched. The fox stood in awe, his gaze transfixed on the enemy as anger rose in him and he readied himself to strike. “I will get my vengeance,” he thought. “I will kill this thing.” A loud crack boomed around the room and the ceiling above Ecilám gave out, caving in, coming down upon and burying him so that he fell sideways, covered in debris up to the neck. The fox grew excited at the thought of his enemy’s neck exposed, defenseless to a killing bite.

  “Come on!” Clementine screamed. “This place is going to collapse.”

  The fox’s eyes grew dark and he became awash with a victory.

  “Fox!” Clementine screamed.

  “I need to make sure that he’s dead,” the fox said, barring his teeth. He took a step forward, his eyes focused on the Rider’s neck. Saliva dripped from his exposed tongue. He could taste his enemy’s blood. The fox readied for a bite when Clementine scooped him up and carried him to the stairs. “Book six,” she began “the best revenge is to be unlike your enemy.” The fox’s gaze remained fixed on the Rider until he disappeared behind the corner of the stairs.

  Up on the second floor, smoke poured in from below. “Here,” Mika said, seeing Clementine and the fox. “I found a window.” Clementine put down her auburn friend, and pulled at the latch but the window remained stubborn and locked, until Clementine threw an old wooden chair right through it.

  “That’s one way of doing things,” Nir said. The floor behind them collapsed, replaced with ferocious flames. Clementine put her animal friends outside on the low roof but just as she was about to go through, an explosion shook the mill. Fire shot up from below. Clementine’s green jacket caught flame and she quickly took it off, pulled Meditations out from its pocket and leapt outside onto the roof. As explosions continued rocking the mill, Clementine, with the fox on her shoulders, jumped down onto the gray grass. After putting the fox down, she encouraged Mika and her father to follow suit, catching them as they fell.

  “He’s still in there,” the fox said, walking toward the flames.

  “And he’ll remain there,” Clementine said. “Come on, we have to go.” The fox stopped and watched as the flames rose higher and when the mill collapsed onto itself, the fire burst out in a blaze of colors.

  “I think that’s our cue to get out of here before someone else shows up,” Clementine said. She grabbed the fox, slung him over her shoulder and walked off into the woods. Mika, with Nir atop her head, followed. The fox watched the flames until the woods hid them away.

  After a couple of hours, all that remained was a heap of ash. Only the moon saw what happened next: white with large black eyes, a featureless humanesque figure emerged from the rubble. Great black tears flowed down its cheeks and fell upon the grass. The white of its body slowly warped and twisted. Ecilám’s face, distorted and grotesque, began to emerge. Without as much as a glance at the simmering mess of wood and flame, it silently walked into the thicket.

  Where its tears fell, the grass frizzled and withered away.

  Silently, a family of stars watched in horror as a traveling snail touched one of these tears and, like a match head, erupted into vivid flames. Its body burned. Its shell burst.

  The moon too cried that night.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Town of Tears

  The night was long.

  The awakening of the handkerchief in the mill angered the Other. For the first time in years, the creature, slumbering away in the mountains, felt true color in its realm. To show its displeasure, it punished all of Mundialis by covering the sky in darkness. Clementine and her companions traveled under this blanket of oppressive dimness. Silently, and with a sense of melancholy, they crossed a stream. When the landscape became jagged and populated with barren V-shaped ravines, they trekked under vine-clad fallen trees. The trees themselves grew sinister and gaunt in appearance, but as they crossed a massive chasm via a deteriorating stone bridge, the trees grew sparse, replaced with weather worn stone columns.

  “This is enough,” Clementine said. “I’ve carried you for far too long. You need to get a hold of yourself.”

  “I never asked to be carried,” the fox replied.

  “Well I wasn’t going to leave you,” Clementine retorted.

  “I wouldn’t allow it,” Mika chimed in, their eyes meeting.

  “We need to find shelter,” Nir suggested. “Tonight’s events tired me immensely and we all need rest. Especially you, Clementine. Your feet are bloody and ravaged.”

  Clementine looked down at her feet. Blisters grew between her toes, her ankles swelled, and mud, mixed with blood and pieces of dry leaves, covered the rest. “I agree,” she said. “We haven’t eaten in a while either.” After passing through another gorge, they found themselves among ruins. Fragile and charred, everything sat under a film of soot. Foliage ensnared ancient stone buildings and massive boulders, shattered walls and collapsed towers lay littered on the streets. Cautiously, they walked deeper into the ruined town. Moonlight illuminated large pits—former homes—that ran along the empty streets. At the end of one of these streets, nestled between three stone columns sat a small cobblestone building with its roof not completely torn off.

  “I think this might be the best place to rest among such ruin,” Nir said. Clementine agreed with a nod. They walked up to the entrance and she pushed at the stone door but it sat unmoved, stubborn. Mustering all her strength, she tried again, this time moving the door slightly to create an opening big enough for them to pass through. Dirt and grime covered the inside and below a large hole in the roof sat the remains of a gable. Creating aisles, withered wooden benches ran along the main hall. Pinning fallen and decaying cloth banners to the floor, large rusted candleholders lay overturned at the edge of the room.

  Clementine examined the stubborn door from the inside. A large chunk of stone, once support for the indoor balcony above, impeded the door’s hinges. “I see,” she said, closed the door and, with the fox’s aid, slightly pushed the chunk of stone enough to block the door completely.

  “Good idea,” the fox said, scouting around. “There doesn’t seem to be another entrance.”

  “It’s cold in here,” Mika said.

  “No worries,” Clementine said. “I’ll make a fire. At least we’ll fall asleep warm.”

  Clementine, with Nir on her shoulder, gathered the shattered bench pieces for firewood.

  “How’s your head?” Mika asked the fox.

  “It’s better,” he said. “And you? How’s your paw?”

  “It burns still,” she said looking down at it. The fox observed her face for a moment then took her paw in his, smelled it and gently licked it.

  “That tickles,” Mika said withdrawi
ng her paw.

  “I think it’s fine,” the fox said. “It doesn’t smell or taste infected.”

  Mika gave a gentle smile. Her gaze fell from his eyes down to his muzzle and onto the floor. “It was brave what you did,” the fox began, “grabbing the cage key like that, fire burning and blades flashing. You could’ve been hurt.”

  Mika wagged her tail and looked into his green eyes. “I—,” she began when Clementine dropped a pile of wood next to them. “Let’s get this fire started,” Clementine said and began building a tinder bundle. Mika and the fox gave her a scolding glare, which she did not notice. Focusing on kindling a blaze, she flicked two stones against one another, and after a few attempts came the sparks and the flame. Mika and the fox looked away from the fire and into one another’s eyes. Somewhere underneath that thick fur, they were both blushing.

  The gecko observed them from atop Clementine’s shoulder and smiled.

  With the fox’s aid, Clementine tore the fallen tapestry into pieces and added it to the fire. The blaze in full bloom, Clementine pulled a few of the more preserved benches closer to the flames, turning them into makeshift beds. Mika and the fox were quick to hop onto them. After lighting and placing some of the fallen candles around the benches, she sat beside the fire, feeding it further. The gecko curled upon atop her shoulder and watched the pirouetting flames.

  “That man in white,” Clementine began. “I’ve seen him before. He chased after me a few days back. I stared into those black eyes of his then and they frightened me. It’s odd to think that you can be afraid of someone simply because of the way they look. But him, there was malice to him, a vileness I’ve never felt…”

  “I felt it too,” the gecko said. “I’ve got this odd feeling that in the recesses of my mind, hidden by the haze of this curse, there lays a memory of him from long ago. I’m worried, Clementine.”

  “Why?”

  “These past few days, I’ve been thinking more like a lizard than a man. Instincts to climb up high, to eat insects, or to call out for my territory have become more important to me than finding the Soundsmith. The lack of sunlight in Mundialis tires me and the once warm blood that ran through my veins is slowly turning cold. If not for these flames or your body heat, I would’ve fallen into a deep sleep long ago. I worry if I slumber too deep, I will wake up a gecko and recognize neither my daughter nor myself. I worry we will never reach the Soundsmith.”

  “We’ve traveled far and long,” Clementine said. “We must be getting closer to him, no?”

  “Perhaps,” Nir said. “We’ve entered Inner Mundialis. The mountains draw near and that’s where the Soundsmith’s Tower lies. I reckon we should reach it in the next few days.”

  “If we don’t encounter any more problems,” Clementine said. “There were other men with the Pale Rider when I first saw him. They’ll come looking for him.”

  “We’ll worry about them when we have to,” Nir said. “It’s unhealthy to worry about things that have yet to happen. Worry about now, Clementine. About the road ahead and the goal at hand. Too often our mind wanders and too often we’re forced to give up everything we feel to save a sliver of who we are. We enjoy none of the now, always rowing toward tomorrow or fishing in yesterday. There is a poem I still recall from my youth; it’s called The Other Kingfisher and it goes like this:

  Far away

  From sea or stream

  From rivers deep and shallow lakes,

  There

  Between the ivy, amongst the brittle leaves,

  There

  Atop the ancient granite slab, among the many hunched stone sepulchers,

  Sat a Kingfisher.

  Its colors shined in the bleak shade.

  Stretching before it

  Sat silent the vastness of a thousand years:

  From the Abbots to the Zephyrs

  From the Zimmers to the Aarons.

  Shattered their homes, rotting their dreams.

  Among the empty field they lie now,

  To sometimes,

  If the wind wills it,

  Get a whiff of pine from a distant wood.

  And what memory there remains of them,

  That lone bird,

  Who sat upon the ancient granite slab, among the many hunched stone sepulchers,

  Remembers but only for a short forever.

  With each blink,

  A Man’s life flashes before it,

  And with each blink it ends.

  There sits upon a granite slab a Kingfisher, a reaper garbed in a vibrant robe.

  “What does it mean?” Clementine asked.

  “No matter your standing in society,” began Nir, “no matter your reputation, beauty or valor, we are all bound by nature and in nature we expire. We must live in the now because the past is a ghost, alive only in your mind while the future is alive only in your imagination. But the now is a mound of clay, concrete yet malleable, alive in you. Be in the moment. Be in the present.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Clementine said. “Thank you for that.”

  “Anytime,” the gecko said. “I try to provide as much knowledge as I can so that others may mold it into wisdom for themselves.”

  Clementine smiled. “I’m glad,” she said. “It’s rare for people to try and teach others something, nowadays everyone just wants to prove how much they already know. If I can’t have a meaningful conversation with someone I don’t want to meet them.”

  “You are far too wise for your years, Clementine,” the gecko said. “When our journey is over, I suggest that you go and play, act your age, you won’t get another chance to do it.”

  “My dad used to say something like that,” she said. “Go out and play. The books can wait.”

  “He wasn’t wrong,” Nir said.

  “I learned a lot from him, you know,” Clementine said. “My dad taught me compassion. Unwavering adherence to decisions, once he’d reach them. Indifference to superficial honors. Hard work and persistence. Listening to anyone that could contribute to the public good. His dogged determination to treat people as they deserved. A sense of when to push and when to pull. Self-reliance, always. And cheerfulness.”

  “Marcus Aurelius?”

  Clementine nodded and showed Nir the book. He examined the cover: its whiteness stained by constant use. The gecko looked up at her, the fire reflected in her eyes. They were silent for a long time. The wind howled through the hole in the roof.

  Clementine stared into the flames then she looked over to the bench opposite her. “Didn’t they lie down on opposite sides?” she asked.

  “They did,” Nir said and smiled at the sight of the fox and the hound cuddled up to one another in the middle of the bench. “Some things are hurrying to come into being, others are hurrying to be gone, and part of that which is being born is already extinguished and all of it is happening forever, eternally. Marcus Aurelius wrote that.”

  “In book six,” Clementine said. The fox stirred and curled his tail so that it blanketed Mika, keeping her warm. The simple act made Clementine smile.

  Three men, two women and a child—local scavengers—rummaged through the remnants of the simmering mill. Hearing the blast and seeing a great wall of flame from their makeshift hut upon the near hill, they crossed the river in their crude canoe. Their curiosity paid off. They were able to find a set of undamaged steel pots, a rusted scythe and, hidden underneath an iron sheet, a couple bags of flour. It was the child though—a girl of seven—that made the most important discovery: a tiny vial of the color red. The five adults gathered around her, their eyes full of awe at the bright shimmer of the color’s vibrancy.

  Always awake before the sky turned from black to gray, the six spent most of their exhausting days going through the remnants of the nearest abandoned city and its suburbs. Always traveling in pairs, they made sure to hide in the shadows—away from the Other, the bühos and other Men—always looking out for that which is most important: each other. While the men acted as the carriers
of loot, the women were explorers, with the girl being the best of them. Due to her small size, she could find the most useful treasures hidden away in narrow nooks: canned food, a knife, copper wire, fresh water or matches. She was their most precious gift, and it is for her sake, for the hope of getting her outside this horrid gray, that they continued their daily grind. Rummaging through piles of debris and garbage, rarely they came across as much loot as they did that day at the burning mill, always hoping to find that rare treasure, that ticket out: color.

  “It’s beautiful,” one of the men said.

  “Can we taste it?” another asked.

  “Let’s save it,” a woman broke in. “Maybe add a drop to our food, later. Think how warm we’ll feel.”

  “And the rest?” the girl asked.

  “The rest we’ll sell to some color craving nobleman and use the wealth to get you out of Mundialis, set you on a path toward a better life,” said the other woman. They all nodded in agreement.

  “What happened here?” a voice sounded behind them. They turned to see the Seeing Man sitting atop his steed. For a moment, everyone stood silent and still. The scavengers have seen plenty of strange creatures in Mundialis, but none such as this man with a hundred eyes, overflowing with color.

  “I asked, what happened here?” the Seeing Man repeated.

  “There was a fire,” the girl said. “The mill burned down.”

  “Are you the owners?” the Seeing Man asked. The scavengers looked at one another.

  “Don’t lie to me,” the Seeing Man said. “And none of you will die, not one.”

  “A trio of color poachers lived here,” the girl said. “Vile men. They’re not here now.”

  The Seeing Man turned toward the simmering mill. The eyes moved under his hood until one of them separated from the rest. It floated in front of him for a moment, its many flagella moving in the air, before diving into the rubble. The scavengers and the horseman stood silently staring at each other until the floating eye returned to its owner.