The Auburn Prince Read online

  “This is that book you always carry around,” Ila said. “Meditations,” she read its title, leafed through its pages, and mockingly began reading, “Concentrate every minute on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from other distractions. Do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life. Stop being aimless.”

  Ila laughed at Clementine. “This is so lame,” the Queen Bee said. “Do you even know what any of it means?”

  “Give it back,” Clementine relented as she stood up.

  “Or what?” Ila said, smiling. “Who gave this to you, your loose mom or your weak dad?”

  Clementine stepped toward Ila, who stepped back.

  “It was the dad,” Ila said. “Did he give it to you just before he left? ‘Here is a book my freak daughter. I hope it raises you so I don’t have to.’ How pitiful.”

  “Give me back the book, Ila!” Clementine said.

  “Here,” Ila said, holding it out toward Clementine. “You can have it.”

  Clementine reached for it, falling for Ila’s trap once again. The Queen Bee jumped back and with all her strength, threw the book into the woods.

  “Fetch freak,” Ila said and the buzz squad giggled. Their laughter echoed in Clementine’s head. She stood frozen, her gaze transfixed on the forest as the Queen and her entourage walked off. It took Clementine a long moment to compose herself. Silently, she picked up the torn pieces of Watership Down, grabbed her bag and went into the woods to look for Meditations. Stepping over branches and looking under bushes, she searched tirelessly. Hours passed. Finally, she sat down under an oak and began sobbing.

  “How cliché,” a voice sounded.

  Clementine quickly sat up and yelled, “Leave me alone, Ila!”

  To her surprise, a pale gaunt man, dressed in a fine, shiny suit, stood before her. A small rabbit-shaped birthmark sat below his right eye while a wide grin—stretching from cheek to cheek—took up most of his face.

  “I’m sorry Sir,” Clementine said. “I thought you were someone else.”

  “Of course you did,” the man said. “You wouldn’t be rude to a stranger. Most people are too shy to treat strangers with contempt; they save their anger for those they know. An odd, yet quite common quality of people.”

  “I guess,” said Clementine.

  “Do you?” said the stranger. “How can you guess at something that wasn’t asked of you, but told to you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But I do,” the man said. “Oh, how typical.”

  “I don’t quite…”

  “A hero, in this case a heroine. A reluctant heroine. Orphaned, misunderstood, abused by her peers, introverted, with a horrible relative that treats her badly. Often, she weeps alone in the woods. Something unexpected happens and voilà, she goes on a journey during which she undergoes a metamorphosis, she changes and sees the world in a new light. A typical, often overdone, cliché, mundane storyline. Disgusting, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I…”

  “Why did they pick on you? Huh? Those girls, especially that Ila?” the man asked.

  “How do you…”

  “Fun fact, there is a bully in everyone, a weakness presenting itself as strength. I’m sure those girls are nice. I’m sure their parents, even strangers, consider them good people. No one is born vile, or so that saying goes, so, tell me, why did they pick on you?”

  “Because that’s just the way people are,” Clementine said, revealing her annoyance.

  “Wise words for a young girl,” the man said, taking a few steps toward her, “but wrong. No one is the way he is. No, no, no. We’re not allowed to be the way we are. Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Of course not,” he said and then silently, awkwardly, observed her for a moment. “We all play our part in the infinite play of life. Most of us are miscast in parts we were never meant to play. Ila was not meant to be a bully. Your parents were not meant to disappear. Your aunt was not meant to be cruel and you were not meant to meet me. And yet, here we are!”

  “How do you…”

  “Less talking, more listening; those are the qualities of a heroine and seeing as you’re currently satisfying that tenure, you need to listen very, very carefully to everything anyone who you encounter says. Each of them will hint at your future. I believe it’s called foreshadowing. And what we’re doing here, well some fella or gal will read it and say, ‘That’s so meta.’ Fools who, like you, are always following red herrings, oblivious to the strings that their cosmic puppeteers are pulling. Let’s hope that your future is a template for new clichés. It won’t be, but let’s hope. Trust me, this world deserves at least that much.”

  Mistrust toward the stranger seeped into Clementine.

  The man sensed her suspicion, smiled and asked, “Do you know the story of Moses?”

  Clementine nodded.

  “He was meant to be King,” the stranger began. “Turned out to be a prophet. Most idiots say that he was destined for it. How convenient. Seems people are only destined for something after the fact. He was destined for that. She was destined for it. They had it written in the stars.”

  “I don’t quite understand why you’re telling me this, Sir,” Clementine said.

  “You will in due time. Adulthood will force it upon you, and what childhood remains will be squashed out by routine. They, whoever they may be, say a creative adult is a child who survived. There might be some truth to that, but I think it’s all up to will power. You see, we’re all children, you know: the weak forget and become adults, the strong act out their dreams and remain children. Which one will you be?”

  Clementine stared at the stranger. His smile quickly disappeared, replaced by a vile glare. “Here,” he said, handing her Meditations. “I believe, rather, I know, you were looking for this.”

  Clementine took it. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Don’t habitually thank strangers. You never know if they are nice to you because they wish to aid you or because they wish to use you,” the stranger said. “Good luck, Miss Aurelius.”

  The man tipped his head and walked away. Clementine looked down at the book and noticing something was sticking out from its pages, she flipped it open to find a white handkerchief decorated with moving, crisscrossing black lines. Mesmerized, she touched the cloth. As if frightened, the lines recoiled, escaping toward and bunching at the edges and corners of the handkerchief. Clementine tried touching them several more times but they stubbornly eluded her. Annoyed, she closed the book. The sun set.

  “Aunt Dahlia is going to be furious,” Clementine said to herself and sprinted home. The lights were off when she reached the house. Carefully and silently, she opened and closed the door. After taking off her sneakers, she took slow, measured steps toward the staircase, her eyes adjusting to the darkness. Upon reaching the first stair, the kitchen lights flared up. A skeletal silhouette draped Clementine in its shadow.

  “Do you know what time it is?” the silhouette asked.

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Dahlia,” Clementine said.

  Dahlia stepped up and slapped her across the face. “Here I am,” she began, “worried sick, and all you have to say is that you’re sorry!” A deep silence echoed through the house before Dahlia continued, “You’re a horrid vermin. I don’t understand how your parents put up with you. You never listen! You make your own rules…”

  “I said, I’m sorry,” Clementine interrupted. Dahlia slapped her immediately.

  “You always have to have the last word, don’t you? It’s no wonder your parents left. You were always just a bother, an accident that ruined their perfect lives. They were so happy before you came along. Always smiling and willing to help others.”

  “They were like that when I was around,” Clementine said. Dahlia slapped her so hard that the girl fell back against the staircase banister.

  “Your mother always complained ab
out you,” Dahlia said. “Clementine did not listen. Clementine drew on the wall. Clementine talked back,’ she’d tell me over the phone. I’d leave you too, if it wasn’t for my gentle soul and kind demeanor.”

  A piercing silence hung in the air.

  “Go upstairs,” Dahlia said, pointing. “No supper today, a lesson that will teach you to act a drifter and meander through the streets like some alley rat.”

  Clementine knew that there was no point in arguing as she climbed the stairs.

  “What do we say before we go to sleep, vermin?” Dahlia barked.

  “Goodnight, Aunt Dahlia,” Clementine said.

  “No manners at all,” Dahlia snapped back. “I can’t believe that we’re related.”

  Clementine looked at her feet and, leaving her aunt at the base of the stairs, went into her room. Closing the door behind her, she placed her bag on the desk and turned on the lamp next to the bed. The light bounced off her face, illuminating streams of sadness that ran down the gentle slopes of her cheeks. She lay down on the bed and stared up at the blank ceiling.

  “I said, ‘I’m sorry,’ what else does she want?” Clementine whispered. She turned to her side and gazed at the night outside the window.

  “To work with my own hands and mind my own business, to be deaf to malicious gossip, that’s what I have to do, just like Marcus Aurelius wrote,” she counseled herself yet more tears surged out from the green pools of her eyes. After a long silence, she suddenly sat up, grabbed Meditations from her bag, and took out the handkerchief to examine it. The black lines floated about it like fish: slowly bobbing up and down.

  “I feel so alone,” she whispered as if it were a secret. “Why does loneliness hurt so much? This dullness, this emptiness in my stomach, when will it go away? Why does Ila get to be happy while I suffer?”

  She gazed out at the night, again. A tear slid off her cheek, landing onto the handkerchief. The lines stopped bobbing and began to spiral around the teardrop. Clementine did not notice. Instead, she pondered the memories and emotions she felt after her parents left her. The silence that ran amok through the house. The faces of the foster families who took her in out of pity. The quiet nights during which she lay in bed reading Meditations under a flashlight. The many pictures that she drew of herself and her parents smiling on a hill with a blue house standing in the background; those azure skies, that yellow sun, those warm smiles. She recalled staring into those drawings, and a distant echo of joy reverberated through her.

  While Clementine’s mind meandered through the dark places of her past, the black lines swirled around the tear drop on the handkerchief until it turned red. It gained in shape and mass becoming a rowan fruit. Without Clementine noticing, the berry slid down and across the floor, until it struck the wall, where it burst into a puff of bright scarlet.

  Consumed by self-pity, Clementine’s heart felt only the heaviness of loneliness. The solitary nights at the foster homes passed by and darkness outside thrust her back into a surreal reality. All the while, her soul yearned for a hug, for someone to tell her, “It will be all right.” For now, she only had herself and the accompanied chorus of echoes that lulled her to sleep with their most popular tune, “Why did they leave?”

  Chapter Three

  Midnight Wanderings

  “Follow us,” a distant whisper echoed through the haze, growing louder and louder still, until a beat of wings silenced it. A sound of running water replaced the whisper, it too, grew louder and louder, until a beat of wings silenced it as well. “Follow us!” a multitude of voices said. A naying of a horse, men shouting, and that familiar beat of wings: louder, closer.

  Sprawled across the bed, Clementine opened her eyes. Meditations rested beside her, while the bedside lamp lay overturned on its side, illuminating half of the room. Yawning, Clementine sat up. She lapped her tongue, hoping to get rid of that post-sleep dry mouth. Wearing yesterday’s clothing, jacket and all, she stretched. Her stomach gave off a demanding growl.

  After adjusting the lamp, slipping on some slippers, and grabbing Meditations, she walked over to the door and carefully opened it. The darkness in the hallway greeted her with serene silence. Cautiously, she peeked out into the hallway, looking both ways before making her way down the hall. The potential of being caught grew with each step and her heartbeat quickened. Reaching the summit of the stairs, she came upon a view of a moonlit entrance gallery. She looked through the massive front windows to see the treetops dancing slowly along to the tempo of the wind sonata unwinding outside. The blushing moon and her star-littered lover, the sky, silently observed the performance.

  About to descend the steps, Clementine saw something quickly flutter through the moonlight. Thinking it her aunt, she moved back against the wall, hiding in the shadow. It whisked through the gallery and upwards toward the ceiling. Illuminated by the moonlight, it turned out to be a white canary with pied feet. It flew past Clementine’s ear, sped down the hallway, and vanished behind the corner.

  Clementine gave quiet chase after the feathered intruder until, somewhere beyond the corner, she heard the sound of creaking floorboards. The screech reverberated throughout the house. Clementine stopped, simultaneously, focusing on the hallway corner and her bedroom doorway. She advanced slowly understanding that the potential consequence of her midnight stroll might result in yet another beating.

  There was a sound of movement beyond and she froze. A gust of wind swept past her as the floorboards creaked yet again. After a sigh of relief, Clementine turned the corner. She heard a beat of wings and saw the door into her father’s study stood slightly ajar.

  “You’re supposed to be locked,” she thought and after scanning the hall once more, she opened the door slightly and slid through, closing it behind her. The study stood in long disuse; cobwebs hanging from the ceiling. Moonlight shined through the window, illuminating the dancing dust particles in the air. Strange maps and ancient drawings littered the walls. Books, scrolls and binders covered the two worktables, while sheets of notes consumed the writing desk.

  Slowly, as if taking it in for the very first time, Clementine made her way into the large room. She walked up to the writing desk and turned the banker’s lamp on. After flickering thrice and momentarily blinding Clementine, a bright yellow light filled the room.

  “Wow,” she gasped, investigating the content of the tabletop where, alongside a framed photo of her parents, sat dozens of old scrolls and hundreds of copied or loose pages from ancient books. Piles of black and white illustrations of shadows with eyes or slender, demonic-looking hands caressing distorted figures lay in the corner. Amazed and curious, Clementine put Meditations down beside a charred scroll.

  “An attempt at the shattering of the sky, also known as The Burning of Bösh (4/7717), occurred during the Age of the Vi Rübor Empire, also known as the Age of Wealth. The name of the heroes of that time is lost to legend, but the name of the Dragon of Foresight, Cyballius…”

  A black page with elaborate white penmanship caught Clementine’s eye. “The Deep Shadow,” she read, an etching in which hundreds of eyes peeked out from the darkness, watching a lonely altar surrounded by a moat of mist. “The Long Arm,” she read on another etching: a man knelt before a melting cross while shadow arms pulled and tore at him. Clementine scrutinized the image’s detail and realized that the arms were extending from the man himself.

  “The Other,” a black page with two large eyes.

  “The Other,” a black whirlwind with a hundred gray arms.

  “The Other,” a shapeless, tentacle filled mass in the sky with jagged, lightning-like appendages that extended down upon the forested landscape. Silhouettes of what looked like birds circled around its talons.

  The other pages were untitled. Among one of them was a terrifying image of a large famished wolf with a skeletal head. The annotation on the bottom of the page read: “Fenrir, the Great Wolf, goes by hundreds of different names: Skoll, Hati, Garm, Garmr, Snorri, Mange, Ember Eye, Bla
ck Tail and Charred Tooth are some of the most common.” Clementine flipped through ancient drawings and smeared etchings, all depicting shadows or valley filled landscapes. Underneath all this horror, she came upon a leather-bound notebook. “Dad’s journal,” she said and instantly began leafing through its pages, stopping on one depicting a beautiful drawing of a chaplet.

  “The Arcenciel Chaplet,” Clementine read, “is composed of rowan fruit, frozen tears, and lotus flowers. Capable of cleansing body and soul, it is the most powerful purification artifact in all Orbheim. Hundreds of different religions and civilizations mention its appearance and powers. Unfortunately, it’s been lost since the crusades.”

  Clementine leafed on. Her father dedicated several more pages to the Chaplet’s description and history. She skimmed through the information, stopping a few times to study maps of a land called Mundialis and a place called Vivéret, and reading description of various places she had never heard of, such as Mirgoza, Bösh, F’Quaree, and a dozen creatures, such as Namean the Lion, Avvatar the Dragon, or Cymus the Time Scavenger. She understood none of it, taking most of it as stories or legends that her father had worked on for his history books.

  As she flipped to the next page, a yellow sheet of paper fell out and gently slid onto the floor. Clementine picked it up, unfolded it several times and seeing her father’s familiar handwriting, she read,

  There exists a little flower,

  Very tiny, very sweet;

  A home without it

  Feels empty, incomplete.

  With its white or violet color,

  No man’s heart can feel true squalor.

  Like a dancer’s grace and wit,

  Its petals twirl and sway

  To the music of the winds and waves

  Off the coasts of distant bays.

  In its homeland, far away,

  Through the jungle, mountain, plain,

  People call it Flor de May.

  Although spring is when it blooms,