Eighteen

Chapter 1

    The sun bears down on him despite the early hour. It seeps through his dark blue tunic and warms his skin in a not so pleasant way. Besides him, the horse nickers, head bobbing in agitation. He shushes it, voice soothing as he leads the ornery beasts down the beaten dirt path and towards the pasture.

    “Easy, Sable,” he coos, hands tight on the lead even as he knows that he’d be powerless against him. If Sable decides he’d rather go elsewhere, his best option is to let the horse go.

    Sable is a big horse, born and bred strong and huge. Sable towers over him even though he’s not short for his age. And the black beast knows it. Uses it to his advantage as he continues to bob his head until he has no choice but to release the lead or get dragged after Sable.

    “Alright, alright,” he concedes, unhooking the lead from the harness and rolling it up. “But you are to go directly to the pasture, you hear me? No wandering.”

    The horse takes off like a bullet, hoofed feet pounding the dirt trail and sending clumps of mud in all directions.

    “Sable got away from you again, I see,” a voice calls to his left and he turns to find a woman leaning against a big oak tree. She’s a tall thing with cropped, blonde hair, lean, long limbs, and a thin frame hidden under layers of leather. But she’s strong. He’s seen her hold her own in battle often enough to be sure.

    “Wil,” he greets, bowing politely, eyes glued to the sword that dangles from her hip. “Isn’t it a little too early to be so alert?”

    “One must be aware of one’s surrounding at all times,” Will replies, lips pulling up into the smirk. She stays in her spot, shielded by the shade of the tree. The sun’s rays can’t get to her there. Cover in layers of leather and armor as she is, the heat must be unbearable. “Lest they suddenly find themselves with a knife firmly embedded into their back.”

    He almost makes the mistake of pitying her.

    Almost.

    Wil is not someone to be pitied. He knows this and, as he watches her push off the tree with something akin to trepidation on her face, he says, “Just make sure the sure that back is not your own.”

    She chortles as she leaves him without a proper goodbye. Knowing that Wil’s never has actually been one for propriety, he doesn’t let it bother him as he watches her walk away. All swaying hips and deadly grace, never faltering even while under the onslaught of the sun’s punishing rays and this horrid heat. 

    But it’s the number that holds his gaze. A transparent, black, sprawling thing. Like wet ink threatening to drip onto her head. But it never does. It hovers over Wil, planted firmly onto the spot over her head where it has always been and where it will always be.

    Thirty-five.

    The number is so low. Too low to be normal but, given her occupation, he’s not as surprised as he should be.

    A guard hardly ever makes it into their later years. Hardly ever dies a death that isn’t soaked in red and riddled in pain.

    He knows this. Everyone knows this.

    A guard lives, breathes, and fights for the king and the kingdom. A death in the name of the king is the only honorable death for those as devotes in serving the king as them. But knowing that guards die young in theory and seeing the evidence laid out before him are two different things.

    ‘Wil will die at thirty-five,’ he tells himself in a sloppy attempt to comfort himself. Tearing his eyes away from the number, he starts the trek back home. Politely keeping his eyes firmly planted on the ground and watching his own two feet instead of gazing at the transparent numbers hovering over the heads of others. ‘Just as Queen Rosalind will pass at fifty-five.’

                                    ~oOo~

    He wakes with a start, heart beating against his ribs as he shoots up in bed. Clutching at the white sheets, he desperately tries to remember where he is.

    ‘Home, I’m home,’ he tells himself as his eyes catch sight of familiar sky, blue walls and pale wooden furniture.

    But the words continue to linger like a nursery rhyme. Circling in his head in a sing-song voice as it drags him back to that dream. To dirt roads and wide green plains and that big oak tree.

    ‘Wil will die at thirty-five, just like Queen Rosalind will pass at fifty-five.”

    He can’t shake off the words. The stay in his mind like some bad pop song even as he settles back in for bed. It’s no surprise that sleep eludes him.

    It’s slipped from his grasp and stays that way long after the sunlight has managed to brighten his room. It shines bright and clear despite the early hours and a deep chill settles on his spine as he realizes it.

    Like in his dream.

    ‘Stop, you’re being irrational,’ he tells himself as he finally throws the covers back. Crawling from the warmth of his bed, he readies himself to face another day. ‘No one is going to die.’

    It’s early. No later than eight on a Saturday morning but that doesn’t stop him from jumping into the shower. With no hope for sleep on the horizon, he showers and pulls on a fresh change of clothes.

    ‘At least not yet,’ he amends when he spots his reflection in the mirror. His eyes go to the number instantly. The same inky black thing as in his dream. Except, the number over his head is different.

    And the only one he’s ever seen aside from his dreams.

    He turns away harshly, a deep bitterness setting over him as he grabs the black sketchbook off his desk and jams it into his backpack. Throwing it over his shoulder, he exits the room and makes his way to the kitchen. Tossing the backpack onto a nearby chair as he goes.

    His breakfast is light. A simple bowl of cereal that’s more empty than full. But it’s still more than he can stomach. The chills from his dream still haven’t left him. It's an omen. A sign of things to come. He's had dreams like that before. Dreams of a faraway land with a black stallion and guards in leather and kings ruling over kingdoms.

    'And I never like what comes after those dreams,' he reminds himself as he washes his bowl.  Shaking his head in frustration, he places his wet bowl on the rack. Wiping his hands, he scrawls a message on the refrigerator's chalkboard before making his way out of his home.

'Going to the zoo, be back later.'

    His day at the zoo is spent drawing. He passes the day sketching the animals into his book, though a few visitors make it into it as well. A little girl with a balloon, a man with a child on his shoulders, the zoo employee handing an ice cream cone to a toddler.

    It eases his mind to etch his surroundings onto paper. Grounds him enough that the words finally leave his mind. They disappear, allowing him to forget his dread as he spends the morning and most of the afternoon touring the zoo and sketching its many animals.

    Until his phone rings.

    It cuts off the music pouring from his headphones. Not abruptly, but slowly. The words and beat fade away mid-song, cluing him into the incoming call well before the phone begins to ring. And in those few seconds, the dread comes back full force.

    “You need to come home.”

    No hello, no pleasantries. Just a soft voice on the other side of the phone. There’s no anger in the tone, only a weariness that does nothing to ease the dread that just continues to build as the seconds tick by.

    “Okay,” he says, not fighting the command as he shoves his sketchbook and pencil into his backpack. The firmness of the voice is enough to have him packing up without complaint. He’s on his feet, heading toward the exit before he even promises to make his way home. “I’ll be there soon, Mom.”

    “I’ll see you in a bit, then.”

    The call clicks off with those words. Surprising him so much that he can do nothing but stare at his phone. Usually, his mother has more tact than this. She sticks to her manners. Hardly ever allowing herself to forget them. The fact that she just has, not once but twice, leaves a bad taste in his mouth and a heavyweight in his gut.

    One that doesn’t lessen on the bus ride home. The one hour trip seems to last hours. When he steps off the bus, only a few blocks from home, crawling out of bed that morning seems like a lifetime ago. The dream doesn’t though.

    It torments his waking thoughts as he makes his way home under the afternoon sun. It sits hot and heavy in the sky, heating the world to almost unbearable levels. He’s tempted to consider it unseasonably hot but this is California.

    Sunny, southern California where most people forget that sun three hundred sixty-five days of the year usually means the temperature can get pretty high up there even in the colder months. And this September day is turning out like most others, hot and stuffy and even grossly humid.  

    It makes for an uncomfortable walk home. Where the bus saved him from the most of it, the short ten-minute walk home is pure torture. It’s usually why he stays at the Zoo until closing time, hiding under its many trees to escape the heat, until the day has cooled off enough that the trip home won’t be utter hell. 

    Of course, today is different. His mom has called him home for reason she hasn’t made clear but it must be serious. So much so that he doesn’t mutter a complaint about having to walk in such heat. In fact, when he reaches the gate to the apartment complex that houses his home, he’s tempted to keep walking.

    ‘If I just keep walking, it won’t affect me,’ he tells himself even as he pushes the gate open. It creaks the whole way, loud and irritating. He ignores it as he shuts the gate behind him and makes his way towards his apartment. ‘Running from it won’t make it non-existent.’

    He knows this, but he still hesitates at his door. Fighting to keep from turning around and walking right back out of the apartment complex, he lets his fingers linger on the knob. His grip is tight but he doesn’t open the door. He can’t bring himself too, because he knows, on the other side of it lies bad news.

    ‘Wil will die at thirty-five, just like Queen Rosalind will past at fifty-five.’

    But she’s not thirty-five yet. No, Wil Heidi Stidolph, his tough, short-haired aunt, is only in her late twenties. He can’t recall an exact number. The last birthday party he’d been to for her or any other Stidolph had been years ago.

    When his father was still around.

    It’s the thought of his father that does it. It pushes him into action. Causes him to turn the knob and enter the unnervingly quiet house. Tossing his backpack onto the couch, he makes his way to the kitchen.

    His mother is there, just like he figured. She sits at their small, four-person dining table, hands clutched together on it and a blank look on her face. Seeing her like that, serious and lost in thought, does nothing to ease the weight in his stomach.

    As he catches sight of the frown on her lips and the crease in her brow, the dread only increases.

    “Mom,” he calls, pulling her from her thoughts as he stands next to the table. When that fails to catch her attention, he knocks on the table. “Is everything alright?”

    “Daniel,” she finally says, voice just as tired as her eyes as she turns them his way. Moss green eyes watch him. Size him up as she tries to figure out the right way to deliver the blow. And it will be a blow. A non-physical wound. The set of her shoulders and the stiffness in them points to it. “Your father called.”

    He tenses up instantly. Fist clenching while his mind screams at him to run. To get out of there before she can say anything else.

    ‘If I don’t hear about it, it won’t be true,’ he thinks before the words really hit him. He closes his eyes then. Clenches them shut and breathes deeply through clench teeth as the anger washes over him. It’s violent waves that threaten to consume him as he thinks, ‘Now he calls.’

    It’s been years since he last heard from him. Two to be specific. Three since he last saw him and six since he was still a part of their family. It’s been six years since he walked out the door and never came through it again.

    Though that would imply that he left them the house. But he hadn’t. No, he’d kicked them out. Tossed them out the door and left them scrambling to find a new place live.   

    ‘You can’t really blame him for winning the house in the divorce,’ the rational part of his brain reminds him. ‘He offered to let you guys keep it.’

    But his mother’s pride had kept her from accepting the offer. Just like it made her sign the prenup. The very same prenup that would leave her penniless and with nowhere to go. His mother is a prideful being and, while he understands the need for pride, he can’t help but wish that things would have been different.

    At least that way she wouldn’t be working two jobs and scraping to get by. She wouldn’t be working herself to the bone to keep the roof over their head and food on the table. While he doesn’t quite miss the lavish lifestyle of his father’s money—having been too young to understand just how well off they had been—he hates to see his mother so worn out.

    The years have not been good to her, and it shows in the little ways. The shadows under her eyes. Dark, purple things that would worry him if he wasn’t so used to seeing them. Her hair, once done up so nice and elegant, is pulled into a bun. A messy thing with more than a few strands of strawberry blonde hair left loose.

    “Your grandmother died,” she says, pulling him from his musing. His eyes snap open, locking onto hers as she says, “You should call him.”

    It’s the last thing he wants to do. The one thing on this world he would only do at gunpoint and possibly not even then. She knows this so she fixes him with a pointed stare. One that makes the green in her eyes burn.

    “You will call him,” she says, pushing a phone across the table. Her phone because he would never use his own. His resentment goes too deep for him to even consider letting his number be known. “And you will offer your condolences.”

    He drops onto a chair at her words. Mouth set in a deep frown as he does. He’s tempted to cross his arms over his chest in defiance but he knows it won’t get him anything. Except maybe a scolding and he isn’t quite willing to face his mother’s anger over this.

    “How old was she?” he asks as nonchalant as he can as he lifts the phone. The dread comes back to him as he does. Settling in the pit of his stomach as if it never left in the first place. As if his anger hadn’t chased it out.

    “Fifty-five,” his mother says as she stands from the table, unaware of how he tenses at her answer. “At least I think Rosalind was fifty-five. Why?”

‘…Queen Rosalind will pass at fifty-five.’

    “No reason,” he chokes out as he pulls up her contacts and dials the one marked ‘Felix’. “No reason at all,” he says as smoothly as he can as he pulls the phone to his ear. It must come out smooth enough because she doesn’t question him again.

    Instead, she makes her way to the stove, the skirt of her work uniform flaring out around her as she turns to it.

    “What would you like for dinner?”

    “Anything’s fine,” he answers as he waits for the line to connect. Once it does, he counts every ring and prays that his father doesn’t answer. But, as is his luck, he does.

    “Corrine.”

    The voice on the other line is blank, stiff. An acknowledgment. It offers no pleasantries or hints at any excitement to speak to his mother. It’s just the deep voice of a man who expects nothing good to come from this call. And everything in him wants to fulfill those expectations.  

    “Uh, actually, it’s me,” he says voice harder than it probably has any right to be. Not that he can actually bring himself to care but his mother is still within earshot. It would no doubt upset her to hear him talk to his father like that so he tries to soften his voice as he says, “Mom said you needed to talk to me?”

    “Daniel,” Felix says, the words more of an inhale of surprise than anything else. Yet there’s a tone to it that he would be hard-pressed to call fond. He doesn’t though, he forces the thought far from his mind. “Your Grandmother passed away today.”

    “Oh really,” he mumbles for a lack of anything better to say. Two years without speaking to him and that’s the best he can come up with. Behind him, his mother snorts at his half-baked reply. Unless she would prefer hysterical screaming and livid shouting, that’s the best Felix is going to get.

    “Yeah. Guess the virus finally got to her, huh, Danny boy?”

    For all of five seconds, he has to keep himself from pointing out that he hadn’t even known she’d been sick to begin with. Not that you can blame him. Getting cut off from half your family tends to do that to a person.

    “Yeah, listen…dad,” he says, the word getting stuck in his throat as he all but spits it out. He hears the wobble in Felix's voice. Can practically see the tears in his crystal blue eyes but even that doesn’t scrounge up an ounce of sympathy for the man on the other side of the call. “I have to call you back. I have some homework I haven’t gotten to yet.”

    “You’ll come to the funeral won’t you, Daniel?” he asks, voice hopeful through the tears and it stuns him. Throws him for a loop that he would even be invited to a Stidolph event, let alone the funeral for the matriarch of the family.

    Never mind that she had never liked him to begin with. Rosalind had hated him and his mother. She’d all but chased them out of the family. It’s no secret that the driving force behind his parents’ divorce had been Rosalind. She had pushed for it, claiming his mother had been no more than a gold-digging hussy. That fact that his mother had signed the prenup had mattered very little to Rosalind.

    Just the thought of being able to spite Rosalind one more time has him agreeing.

    “Of course.”           

    Because she wouldn’t have wanted him to be there if she had a say.