The Auburn Prince

by Adam Zmarzlinski

  “That’s a bit on the nose, don’t you think?” she said.

  “Often the things that are on the nose are the ones that we rarely see,” he said.

  “I guess you’re right,” she said, pausing for a moment. “It was those boys I thought of before I fell asleep last night. They made me realize that the Other maybe something very different from what I’ve seen of it thus far. My parents tried to study it, I know it, all those notes and books they had on it. They wouldn’t study something that couldn’t be understood. They tried to fathom its essence and in so doing, they chose to make their own destiny, so that no one else would make it for them. Marcus Aurelius may have been wise but he didn’t understand the most important of things: love is infinite and what we do with it is infinite in itself.”

  “You’re too clever, Clementine,” the Soundsmith said. “Be careful when you go down there. The Other is frightening because it shows us exactly what we want to see. We rarely realize that it’s all a trick, a mind game. Remember that it’s not the Other that destroys, it is us who do it and we scapegoat our actions onto it because we’re too afraid to take responsibility.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.

  “Your friends are welcome to stay here until you return. They will be in good hands,” he said and looked at his own hands with deep melancholy. His gaze turned to her then he sighed. Clementine sensed uneasiness in him.

  “How are you so sure I will return?” she asked.

  “Because of what you said about love. Only those who have loved can be relentless. You love and you’re also stubborn, a curious combination that can only yield a positive outcome,” he said and looked back at the sky. “You know, Clementine, I’ve been around for a long time, before there was ever music and notes in the world. I’ve met great women and powerful men; kings, wisemen, writers, gods, dancers and yet none of them held the spirit of resilience with such a firm grip as you do. It is always pleasing to know that the smallest of creatures are the ones who always pursue unfathomable goals.”

  “You praise me too much,” Clementine said, “and with such a deep sadness. Why?”

  He put his large hand on her head and said, “Wash up and get some breakfast. Be safe. There is a great storm coming and it shall flood this valley.”

  “I will,” she said and before going into the bathroom, she thanked him for his company.

  “Why didn’t you answer her?” Talin asked, awake for the latter half of their conversation.

  Smiling, the Soundsmith turned to and looked at the gecko. “You journeyed along her side unaware of the truth that she is the living embodiment of kindness. Such a thing occurs once in a person’s lifetime. This is my first and I’m older then the rocks in these mountains. It’s a shame that I shall only live long enough to experience it but once. I shall not see her again and that is where my melancholy stems from.”

  “Why not help her and go to the valley with her?” Talin asked.

  “When you see storm clouds of such power that no living Man’s ever seen before roll in, when you see lightning and thunder reign supreme, when the rain comes down in sheets and drowns the world, do you go outside or stay in?” the Soundsmith asked.

  “Stay in,” Talin said.

  “Wrong,” the Soundsmith said. “You leave before the clouds reach you; you flee. This storm rolling in, it shall sweep the world. Innocent Men are being born right now simply to drown in its rains. Many horrors are on their way. Thankfully neither you nor I shall be around to be witness to them.”

  With a courteous bow of the head, the Soundsmith left. Mika and Gideon awoke soon after and Claret, the mandolin, arrived a few moments later to escort the lot down to breakfast. She handed Clementine a pair of moccasins. It was the first pair of shoes she wore in a long time, and the soft leather felt cool and soothing upon her battered feet. As they ate cereal and snacked on strawberries and grapes, Talin observed Clementine’s eyes, hands and face. A deep sadness overcame him and if he were not a lizard, he’d shed a stream of tears. Fatherly love burst from his heart.

  “Clementine,” he began. “I know it’s not my place to say, but if you were my daughter, I’d tell you exactly what I tell Mika: you are the most beautiful soul this side of paradise, I am proud of you beyond the limits of the sky and I want you to know that you are important, no matter what anyone tells you. Your father loves you very much.”

  Mika and Gideon looked at one another. “Thank you,” Clementine said. “That’s very kind of you.” After breakfast, Claret directed them to a coral colored door, which led outside.

  “The path ahead,” the mandolin told Clementine, “leads to the Valley of the Other. I understand that your friends will await your return inside the tower. When you do come back, please knock on this door thrice and I shall open it for you. I also understand that your friends want to walk you down the path to say their farewells. Go ahead, I’ll wait here. Good tidings.”

  Clementine nodded and the foursome walked along the path. The bühos were gone, replaced by an eerie silence. The path curved behind a pair of obelisks, coming to an abrupt end only fifty yards later. The Tower stood tall and in sight from where the rout ended.

  “Well Clementine,” the fox began. “Take care of yourself down there.”

  “What do you mean by take care of yourself?” Mika said. “We’re going with her.”

  “No, you’re not,” Clementine said with a forced smile. “Don’t think that I don’t want you to come with, but some things we either face alone or we don’t face them at all.”

  “I’m worried, Clementine,” Mika said.

  “Don’t be. I’ll be back, I promise,” Clementine said, bent down and hugged the beagle.

  “Be careful,” Talin said.

  “I will.”

  “We’ll wait for you,” the fox said, “and after you return, I’ll tend to the business with my step-father.”

  “Always finish what you started,” Clementine said. “Marcus Aurelius, book three.”

  “You need to stop quoting Meditations and just say what you feel,” the fox said. “Your own thoughts are a lot more important than anything written down in some book.”

  “Is that so?” Clementine said.

  “It is. At least what you feel is what you feel. It’s comes from deep inside your heart, it’s color, not black text on a white page.”

  Clementine hugged the fox and turned around to descend the mountainside but before she took the first step, she turned around yet again and pulled Meditations out of her pocket.

  “Here,” she said, placing the book on the ground. “Hold on to this for me.”

  The fox walked up to it and flipped open the cover to where the handkerchief sat. “Don’t forget this,” he said. “It’s much more important than it may seem.” Clementine smiled, took the hanky and spoke, “I almost forgot. Thank you.” The fox grabbed the book and flipped it in such a way that it landed flat on his back. The trio sat still and watched as Clementine descended the mountainside. When she vanished from sight, Mika said, “I hope she comes back. I like her.” Reassuringly, the fox caressed the hound’s whiskers with his nose.

  “Come on,” he said. “We can listen to some music in the tower, maybe eat some sweets.”

  They turned around to begin their walk back but stopped when they saw a figure approaching them from beyond the curve. In a blink, the figure’s shadow stretched and standing before them was the Pale Rider.

  “Hello,” he said with a smile.

  “Hello, indeed old friend,” a voice sounded behind Ecilám just before the Seeing Man’s blade pierced the Rider’s back, erupting through his abdomen.

  The peaks grew so tall that they obscured the sun and an all-encompassing shadow lay before Clementine. Frightened by the lack of light, she inched her way down but after her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she confidently meandered along the mountain. After a quarter of an hour’s descent, the stones lost their geometric and polished texture, and became sharp and
jagged. A musky smell saturated the air and the ground grew wet and slippery resulting in a dangerous fall. “Aw!” she hollered, her palm tearing open on a serrated stone.

  “Great start, Clementine,” she told herself.

  After another half an hour, she reached a great wall. From above, tens of thousands of red büho eyes watched her every step. Thousands of these feathered creatures sat perched on every possible piece of exposed stone. Silently, they watched as she entered the middle of a clearing that stood before the great doorway, which led into the depths of the mountain. Observing the beasts and expecting an attack at any moment, she slowly walked toward the gate, but no attack ever came and she entered the darkness, descending into the mountain.

  With Clementine inside, hundreds of appendages descended from the sky and wrapped themselves around the entrance into the mountain. A whisper of a long forgotten language echoed through the clearing and the bühos soared into the sky like a swarm of locusts, screeching and screaming as they did. The Other grew happy, it finally had company.

  Inside the mountain, the darkness was pitch black and Clementine’s eyes wouldn’t adjust. By feeling the walls, she descended a long, narrow stepped staircase. After tripping on one of these steps, she worried about falling and slowed her descent. A delicate warm light emanating from her jacket pocket, prompted her to take out the handkerchief. Bright, almost invasive, the light covered everything. Happy at being included, the lines swirled about the cloth, forming the infinity symbol with the word be incorporated into it. The line’s excitement awoke a newfound optimism inside her.

  With the light flooding the tunnel in which she stood, two pairs of florescent footprints appeared on the ground. They glimmered faintly, leading downwards, deeper into the shadow. Clementine understood instantaneously and followed them. Like roots of an ancient tree, hundreds of tunnels sprawled out under the mountain.

  “Thank God for these footprints,” she told herself. The tunnel stone was obsidian black and every dozen yards a frightening, pain filled face was carved into it. A handful of times, she turned the corner and a face awaited her, scaring her senseless. Passing a patch of gray stone, she reached a spot where the tunnel narrowed, becoming circular as if dug up by a large drill. The footprints led inside and she followed. The deeper into the tunnel she descended the more numerous the faces became until eventually they covered every inch of stone from ceiling to floor. The footprints faded and she heard a low whisper, “Ita fit aliud.”

  The faces watched her every step, suddenly coming alive. She pointed the handkerchief in their direction and in unison they began mumbling at her in ancient languages. They stared at her in begging, in a hope that she may pull them from the wall and set them free. The tunnel led into an enormous chamber covered in faces. The ceiling was lost in darkness. A thin stone bridge led onto a large circular platform that stood on an obsidian column in the middle of the room. The luminous footprints returned and Clementine followed them across the bridge and onto the platform. She looked over its edge to see nothing but darkness below.

  Using the handkerchief’s light, Clementine followed the footprints until they ended abruptly at a puddle of murky water in the middle of the platform.

  “We’ve come to talk,” her mother’s voice said. “We do not wish for this to end in violence.”

  “We just want to understand you,” her father’s voice said, “and for you to understand us. There is no harm in that, is there?”

  “We can talk,” a hollow voice echoed around the chamber. Then, as if played back on a recorder, the voices sped up. There was a scream, a sound of someone running, a beat of wings, a struggle, a push and a horrid, inhuman growl.

  “We were here to talk peace,” her father’s voice said. “We were here to change things for the better, together.” Silence swallowed the voices and two hyssop flowers sprouted from out of the puddle. Something large fell from the ceiling and into the surrounding pit. Above and below there was movement and slithering and the thousands of faces on the walls began whispering, “Ita fit aliud.” A photograph of Alice, Bell and Clementine taken on a beach floated out of the murky water. A thin appendage descended from the ceiling, reached out into the photograph and touched Clementine.

  “You’ve arrived,” she heard a voice inside her head. “I’m glad.”

  Simultaneously, out of the depths of the pit and the darkness of the ceiling, emerged fourteen enormous shadow arms that resembled dry tree trunks and out from them emerged smaller arms with smaller arms emerging from them still. A sound of heavy slithering sounded above. Suddenly, the arms burst into flames, blinding Clementine. The blast of hot air pushed her back and she fell onto her behind. The handkerchief’s light fades and two shadows walked onto the platform. They stopped before her and began taking shape.

  “Mom, dad?” Clementine said.

  They did not look her way but instead, stared at something in the flames.

  “We want peace,” Bell said. “Let’s talk, understand one another.”

  A shadow flew out from the flames, took on the shape of a canary then circled above Bell and Alice. A loud sound boomed below and a girl made of shadow stepped out of the flames. Her face was ever-changing and thousands of expressions of tens of thousands of Men surged across it.

  “I too want peace,” the girl said. “I fancy no war. I yearn too for understanding, for someone to talk to. It is so lonely here among the crowds, so lonely.”

  “What do you propose we do?” Alice asked.

  “I do not understand how you work,” the girl said.

  “You?” Bell said.

  “People,” the girl said. “Do the things that happened to you on the inside, in your mind and soul, do they manifest themself on the surface?”

  Bell and Alice looked at one another.

  “There is a great fire burning in us, in me,” the girl said, “a great fireplace that we call a heart. We wish to give away this fire freely. We wish to experience what you call love. Yet no one comes here to warm themselves in its glow. People, they look at us and see only horror and smoke, they look down at the ashes of the charred coals of our past and not at the bright fire of our current actions. We, I, wish to be friends. Will you be our friends?”

  “Of course,” Alice said.

  The canary landed on the girl’s shoulder and said, “The best type of peace is the one kept between friends.” Clementine looked at the flames, at her parents, at the girl and the canary and she realized why they came here. “They wanted it to know that it was not hated. It was lonely and they offered it friendship, they offered it love,” she thought.

  “When you and I, we, have peace,” the girl said. “Then I, we, shall stay down here in the mountain and do no harm to anyone for violence is not our intent. The Other simply wishes to be understood, to hold a conversation.”

  “And we too wish to understand you,” Bell said. “You’ve been in this remoteness for far too long. My wife and I, we came here to help you. We know it’s not hate that drives you but loneliness.” The girl smiled and out of her ever-changing eyes, tears of the purest color sprang forth. The Other felt joy. Clementine’s mother walked up to the girl and hugged her.

  “We’re here for you,” Alice said. “We’ve brought—

  “Lies!” a deep voice cut her off and out of the flames emerged a shadow of the Pale Rider. “They wish to imprison us.”

  “It is true, they do,” another voice joined in and Dahlia stepped out of the flame. “They wish to break you, chain you and use you for wars of their own. They crave your power and care not for your pain.”

  “No, Aunt Dahlia,” Clementine said and she understood, tears filling her eyes.

  “They wish to conquer you,” Dahlia said. “I know. I’ve traveled with them from their Earth realm, acting as a needle of goodness in their haystack of deceit. They have nothing but ill intent for you, nothing but hate in their hearts.”

  “What are you talking about Dahlia?” Alice asked.

 
; Another two wisps of shadow emerged from the fire, but unlike the others, they did not take on a form instead remaining slivers of black flame. “They wish to trick us and steal our power,” they spoke simultaneously.

  “What is this, some sort of game?” Bell asked.

  “We are the Other!” the girl said, swatting away Alice and the canary. “We are many. We are the lost shadows. We give each other solace. We are the Other, the Abandoned, the Forgotten. We do not play games. We act.”

  “You don’t understand,” Alice began, “they lie. She lies. We come in peace.”

  “They wish to imprison you,” Dahlia said.

  “Why are you doing this Dahlia?” Bell asked. He tried to grab her but she swatted him away.

  “They wish to harm us,” the wisps of shadow said.

  “Lies,” Bell said. “Ask them for proof? Ask them to show you?”

  “You carry the Arcenciel Chaplet, do you not?” one of the wisps asked and the girl took a step back toward the flames.

  “They spoke of using it to destroy you,” Dahlia said.

  “We came to offer it to you as a token of trust between friends,” Alice said.

  “Token of trust?” the girl repeated.

  “We know that vile men used it in the past to injure you,” Bell said. “We know you fear it and yes, some people want to use it against you, but my wife and I are not amongst them. We want peace.”

  “As a piece of the goddess Xis, a neutral party in this affair,” the canary began, “I second their account. The bracelet is meant a gift to you.”

  “Neutral party?” a shadow whips said. “Did you not fight against us in Brinkstad?” The girl stepped back once more and the three shadow figures placed their hands on her shoulder, whispering, “Tricks do not work on us.”

  “Tricks do not work on us,” the girl repeated and returned into the fire.

  “This is no trick,” Bell said and stepped toward the three shadows. He pulled out the Chaplet from his pocket, placed it on the ground before them and stepped back. “That is for you,” he said. “Do with it as you please.”