THADDEUS RAVENSWOOD
“Open the door, I want to meet my mother,” Thaddeus, dressed in his nightclothes of linen white shirt and free flailing pants of the same colour, roared at the towering guard who manned his mother’s chambers. He was huge, the guard was, he was akin to a giant if he wasn’t one, and that was why Thaddeus let his voice rise.
When he had arrived, he took a glance at his own guard and the one of his mother, and saw the difference in armour width and height. He himself was shoulder length to hip length when compared to the guard; he truly felt like a child again and he hated it, his body language did little to hide that.
It was not the first he had seen the guard though, and it was not the first he would roar at him. His roaring was him being on the defensive anytime he saw he retained his miniature position at the hip of the guard. I will knock you down soon, you giant, he would always tell himself, but deep down he felt that the soon he spoke of was no time close.
“The door, giant. The door!” He added again, another roar, one that sounded ferocious but to him alone, to his mother’s guard and his own guard it would have been nothing more than the roar of a lion cub. But he was a prince, a cub or not, he was royalty and the guard had little choice but to heed, and so he turned to announce the prince’s existence to the queen, only from all the loudness, she knew already.
“Let my son in,” Thalia echoed from the other end, before the giant of a guard could let his lips the honour of announcing the little man’s presence.
And with that, he was in. In his mother’s chamber and up on her bed with haste. “I hate him,” he spat. “I hate giants.” He was talking to the dark haired woman, who wore a rose coloured thin nightdress and sat before the table beneath the chamber’s window, while watching him with a smile, her right elbow resting on dark wood and her cheek on her palm. The moonlight that spilled forth, accompanied by little gusts of wind from the opened shutters of the window, was of use, but the lamplight on the table did more of the illuminating job.
“I want him away, Mother.” Thaddeus turned around on the bed and faced where his mother sat. “I want him gone.”
“Why?” She finally spoke. “Olly’s my guard.” She was still smiling, it was as though she enjoyed watching him rant. It wasn’t his first so maybe she had grown used to it already. He was cute when his elfin face wore anger. A cute child.
“I hate him and want him gone.” He rolled around, his arms and legs pattering about and ridding the once neatly laid silver sheets of the bed of its tidiness.
“And if he’s gone, when shall you knock him down like you always say?” The moonlight shone on her mocking grin from above and it mixed in with the lamplight of the room, but somehow Thaddeus seemed to miss it.
He stopped his pattering and sat up on the bed, slumping himself in a few seconds of thought after he heard what his mother said. It was the truth she spoke, he still needed to knock the man-giant down and make him plead on his knees for making him feel so inferior. Yes, if he left he would not be able to do that. “No, let him stay. I will knock him down you'll see. One day,” he told his mother, his words carrying so much certainty that she almost believed him.
But she knew what he didn’t. Thalia giggled beneath her breath, she was the one doing the mocking he always did now, and he sat on the bed clueless. She wanted to tell him that he could never knock him down, it was unlikely, afterall, the guard, her guard Olly, was one of the best fighters in the realm, given to her by her late husband himself, he was only second and third to the Westerling knights, those who were of the Kingsknight… and fourth to another, the one who had left. Her son would have to go through the most immense of training to even stand a little chance, and she knew him all too well, better than anyone, he was too proud a child to let himself be battered viciously all because he wants to wield the sword.
“What were you doing, Mother?” He sat cross-legged now, and his anger seemed to have receided completely.
“I was watching the stars. They are beautiful tonight,” she told him, and turned her eyes through the window and up at the whacking black littered with a million dots, if not more, that burned brightly with white. She gazed at them whenever sleep rejected her, and that was more times than it had accepted. She would always remember the story of the stars her father used to tell her whenever she did. “He told me they are the souls of the men who died in battle, the chosen ones who were called up to Valhalla to feast with the gods,” she said to no one.
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Thaddeus cocked his head at an angle. He was confused, he had always been whenever she talked about these… gods and Valhalla, but she never told him what they meant, whenever he asked she would answer “gods are not real, and Valhalla is merely a myth.” That was all she would say, but he wanted to try again, maybe she would condone him this time. “What are gods and Valhalla?”
Thalia plucked her gaze from the stars and blessed him with both it and a smile, but what came off her mouth wasn’t the reply he wanted but the one he expected, “gods are not real, and Valhalla is merely a myth. Forget I said that, what story do you want to listen to tonight? You could not sleep again, right?”
He was not shocked, he already pryed a lot, but she would never heed him, it was the one thing she would never talk to him about, so what better than to listen to a story she would undoubtedly tell him, and one he enjoyed as well. “I want to listen to the story of the dragon,” he said, neither sulky nor overly joyous… he was just… there.
She stood from the table and crossed the room, in the glitter of the moonlight, to grace the bed with her presence. She sat beside him, her back placed on the bed’s headboard, as Thaddeus took one in hand, one of the two head cushions which were stuffed with feathers, wrapping them between his arms and his breast, while his chin sank into the flat edge of it. He had heard the dragon story so many atimes, but he had never heard its end, he would always sleep before it was completed, and any time he pleaded the ending from his mother, she would tell him, “you shall hear the ending when I finish the story.” But would that day ever come?
Even in the dark of night, he still hated his hair being tousled, so she placed her hands on his shoulders instead as she began to tell the tale, another of the many times he had heard it. “It was for a feast,” she started, “a feast to renew the treaty of peace between kings and kingdoms. Jorunn, son of Harald and king of the southern lands, had travelled north to where the ceremony was to be held. In the grand hall of the north—”
“I don’t want to hear all these,” Thaddeus sliced the story in half, a grimace of annoyance blatant over his face as he glanced at his mother. “I want the dragon, not the feast.”
“The dragon it is then.” Thalia rubbed her son’s shoulders gently as she chose to comply with his request. “You remember the young king Jorunn made a common northerner friend, do you?”
“Yes. Brant was his name, I remember.”
“Good. Now I don’t have to tell you all about how their friendship came to be again.” She cleared her throat then resumed the tale, her gentle hands making sure her son’s shoulders did not ache from all the hugging he gave the head-cushion, which was mashed between his tender arms. “On the third day of the young king’s visit to the north, he and his northern friend snuck from the castle for a hunt. Jorunn had heard of the great beasts that lived in the outskirts of a place north of north, one known to the northern folks as the snowlands, a deadly plain only the greatest fighters of the northerners, the Winterguards, were allowed to rove, but they went nonetheless. Jorunn and Brant.
“They had gone alone, rummaging the vast snowy lands with their feets. No horse could go that far without giving in to the frost, and their journey was something unknown, neither guards nor men did they allow with them, for if it was known, their journey would have become just a mere thought their mind had conjured.
“The cold wind had no mercy on their bodies, and bit them wherever it could find flesh beneath the thick fur they wore for protection. There were no beasts in sight for at least a thousand steps they took, and it was almost evenfall, when Jorunn was beginning to flood with rage, before they found something. A beast, Jorunn and Brant thought that was what they saw, a curled up beast. But it was not, when they got close all they saw was a rock, a brown rock layered with glistening scales. The wind was icy and cold, very cold, no place in the north was as cold as the snowlands, but they did not feel it, at least not anymore. The rock was the height of a youngling, almost the height of Jorunn and Brant, and it oozed heat, one so much it warmed them in the midst of the vast cold. They were—”
Thaddeus’ head fell at an angle to his left on her breast, and a continuous exhaling sound came forth from the holes of his nose, while the tight hug he wrapped the head-cushion with loosened. The queen knew her story had come to an end then, her listener was asleep.
She scoffed heartly, then gently removed his head from her breast, in sweet hopes of not waking him up from his slumber, then she laid him flat on the bed, and pulled the cushion free from his grasp. She lay beside him and watched him with a smile, that she did for a while before it suddenly came, a yawn. Sleep finally accepted her call, and the reason was laid before her, watching her with closed eyes and soft breaths. She yawned again, and before she knew it, she was joined with her son in sleep’s embrace.