Elwin left the house and followed the fairy along the streets that were just waking up. People opened front doors to let out pets, empty chamber pots, and other assorted chores. The very beginnings of a new day.
Not that he needed to follow the little bug since he knew exactly where they were going.
The air was crisp and cool, but not unpleasant. He wasn’t sure it ever got any colder than that on this little island in this part of the sea.
Elwin shivered anyway, as he approached Mama Kris’s establishment.
It was very quiet, most of the nights business having been thoroughly concluded and the employees asleep or salvaging what little bits of their own lives they were permitted to have. Just for a while.
A jovial old drunk was being escorted outside by a lady in a dapper black suit, maybe a bartender. She had her arm around him and was making his exit as gentle and friendly as possible.
Elwin skirted around them, trying not to be conspicuous as he followed the little flying thing around to the back courtyard of the building.
He resisted the urge to run.
As he approached Aster’s little shack, normally a place of fond associations, something was immediately off. At first it looked like the door was just slightly ajar, the early morning shadows hiding the fact that it was actually broken until you were right upon it. The frame was splintered at the lock, as though something had burst either in or out of it.
What were the odds Aster had just lost her key? Yeah, not likely.
Elwin knocked lightly on the door. He didn’t want to walk into something that he wouldn’t want to see. He had a flash of gallows humor as he thought, I will but it won’t be what I was thinking. Elwin immediately felt guilt for his stray thought.
He was stalling.
Elwin pushed the door slowly inward, and it moved with a complaining creak.
He wasn’t sure which of his senses was blasted first, his nose with that familiar, all too familiar smell, the metallic soup and worse, the barnyard undertones. Or, his eyes, the everywhere red like a child’s finger painting gone amuck.
Elwin closed the door behind himself. His first instinct was to put something heavy in front of it, to conceal the scene with him inside. But before he could even decide if that were a logical move or one driven only by fear of discovery, he became distracted trying to parse the details of what he was looking at.
There was broken furniture, a pile of jagged pieces that may have been a chair, the vanity knocked diagonally against a wall and its precious bottles and creams fallen to the floor in a jumble. Prin was draped across the foot of the bed, his legs dangling off. At his feet a partially eaten corpse of what looked like a largish man. So not Aster then, at least there was that.
Although there was an oddly placed dress under Prin. And Aster, not the type of person to just leave one of her elaborate dresses out on the bed.
Elwin went to Prin and quickly checked his breathing and leaned his head against his chest, feeling that comforting heartbeat. He figured as much but had to be sure.
He kissed the side of Prin’s bloody face. “Prin, Prin, wake up.” Elwin picked him up by the shoulder’s and jostled him. “Wake up. I love you.” He didn’t know why he had said that just then, but he was already tense with apprehension at the fear and confusion Prin would be feeling when he awoke, and just wanted to do whatever he could to soften the blow.
The prince didn’t wake, as heavy and unwieldy as a sack of potatoes. “Priiin.” Elwin begged. He looked over his shoulder at the door anxiously. Might someone come in at any time? Or were they safe for a while. Aster would be coming back soon in any case, right? Elwin had a bad feeling. A sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Aster would be coming back, right?
He shook Prin a little harder.
Finally Prin moved in his arms, letting out a soft moan. He opened his pale sapphire eyes excruciatingly slow, as though his eyelids weighed a ton each and it took all his strength just to raise them. “El?”
“Yes. It’s me. Don’t panic but we can’t stay here. We’ve got to go.” He looked around the room in growing despair at the state of it. There wasn’t anything much not soaked or splattered that he could cover Prin’s own bloody appearance with to get him hustled out the door. There was always the clothes in the wardrobe but it didn’t seem like frilly dresses made for someone five foot tall, if that, were going to do them much good.
Prin smacked his mouth open and shut, contending with the drying stickiness. “Wha—” His eyes shot open wider and he sat up. “Was it a dream?”
“Doubtful.” Elwin said dryly. “I mean, what?” There was the water bucket by the vanity, which didn’t seem to be knocked over. At least he could get Prin’s face and hands clean with that.
Stolen story; please report.
Before Prin could answer, Elwin was abruptly reminded of who had led him here, by the fairy-bug flying once again at his face. He had completely forgotten its existence.
“What now? I’m here aren’t I?” He asked it, irritated and anxious to pay attention to the only thing that mattered, Prin.
Prin put his hand to his head. “I think a lot of things have happened but . . . its all in a jumble.” He put his hand back down again and it landed squarely on the ruffles and lace of Aster’s dress. “Oh, oh no. Aster. Where’s Aster? We have to find her! She might have run off to get someone to arrest me and I wouldn’t blame her a bit. After what I did. What did I do?”
Elwin waved the fairy out of his way. “Aster was here and saw, this?” He gestured vaguely at the bloody corpse. Would Aster turn Prin in? He really had no idea, and thought on one hand it wasn’t likely but then again . . . these are not exactly normal “my friend did a crime” circumstances. So he couldn’t be sure. “We have to get out of here right now. Before anyone comes.” He reached down and took Prin’s hand in his, pulling him up to a standing position.
The fairy continued to buzz around him annoyingly.
“I don’t know what happened . . . or rather how much of it is real . . .” Prin said. He swayed on his feet, looking like a wave of dizziness had threatened to overtake him. “That. Her. She. Sprayed me with something.” He pointed at the fairy. “And maybe that’s why . . . Freya too!”
Elwin wasn’t sure if he was hallucinating, half remembering, or dreaming out loud, but he had to get them out of here and they could sort out the rest later.
“Prinny, please, concentrate on just standing up and walking. Don’t fall over now!” Elwin guided him toward the door. “Wait just a second.” Just as he thought of getting a wet rag and making him more presentable, if only a little, there was a soft knock and a scratching sound at the door.
Elwin froze, he knew he should have put something in front of it, but it was too late now. He left Prin where he was standing and hurried to the door, planting himself firmly against it to act as his own human barrier. An act of desperation that surely wouldn’t hold up against a battering ram of even the weakest magnitude. But it was better then nothing.
“Meow.” A voice said, a human female voice, not a cat’s. “It’s just a little kitty cat, let me in. Meow.” The woman scratched again and tried to push on the door. “Some of the girls, Osage and Cindy, and them, are having a little breakfast wine party. You should come hang out. They would like you if they got to know the REAL you. . . Everything is sooo much more fun if you’re there. The old man gave me some blue silk ribbons I’m not doing anything with if you’re interested. French blue.” She emphasized the word French, rolling the r on her tongue in an enticing manner, like it was a fancy chocolate she was savoring. After waiting a moment and getting no answer, she continued. “Oh fine, be that way. I’ll just stick ‘em up my arse then. This is why you don’t have any friends and no one will ever love you! Stupid Aster Rose.”
Welp, that had taken a turn. Elwin could hear her flounce away through the dirt courtyard.
“I think some of the people who work here are not quite right.” Elwin commented dryly, when he could be sure she was well away. “Come on, let’s hurry.” He started toward Prin, then looked around the room again. “No, wait.” He had to try and come up with something to cover Prin’s bloody clothes, there may be too many people around to go unnoticed in his state.
There was a knitted shawl around the shoulders of the dress makers mannequin and he wondered if he could use it. Elwin went to grab it, and that was when he saw something curled up in the corner of the room behind the mannequin, with the fairy hovering protectively nearby.
It looked like a bundle of white and red cloth at first. Only it was topped with bright red hair.
“Oh Prin, what have you done.” Elwin said it all at once in an exhale, he didn’t mean for it to come out but it did.
Prin lifted his tired head, eyes wide, and shuffled toward Elwin dragging his feet but at the same time almost falling over himself to get there. “What’s there?” He asked, anguished, as though already knowing.
Elwin knelt down, partly to see better himself, and partly to block Prin’s view. Was there any way to backpedal? Act like there was nothing there at all? They could leave here quickly, never knowing what was here in this corner. A horror left unseen. A friend who disappeared, but who they wouldn’t have likely ever seen again anyway after running away from the island in a hurry.
“Nothing.” He said. It didn’t sound convincing, even to himself.
Aster’s back was to him, and her limbs were curled up close to her body. There was nothing to indicate whether there would even be a face there at all if he turned her toward them. The image flashed in his mind of the first girl Prin killed, and thoroughly ate. Red bones.
If he looked it would be an image he could never unsee. Someone who had shared whatever she had with them when they came here with practically nothing, someone he had laughed and danced with.
Elwin was sure she was dead.
Prin got to him and put his hand on Elwin’s shoulder to steady himself. “It’s Aster isn’t it.” He said, voice dry as ashes, drained of will to live.
Elwin had to look. “Back up, Prin, let me see, let me handle this. Go sit on the bed for a minute, honey, please.”
Prin sat down on the wooden floor beside him, ignoring his pleas. “Tell me Aster is sleeping.”
Elwin reached out and touched her shoulder, sticky with the blood that was trying to dry. He rolled her towards them. She was not stiff, instead, pliant and floppy as a rag doll. But then, it was probably too early for rigor mortis. He prayed to all the gods she still had a face. Since that hair made her identity impossible to deny either way.
Dirty and bloody, but it was there. Elwin allowed himself a sigh of relief.
Aster’s eyes were closed and mouth slightly parted, almost like she really was asleep, but the chalk like pallor and stillness didn’t bode well.
“Aster!” The sound from Prin’s mouth was like an injured animal, all primal pain. “Noo-oo.” He pulled her onto his lap without hesitation and held her close to his chest. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“Shhh, shhh. We have to be quiet.” Elwin’s eyes felt hot and he blinked hard to avoid crying. He couldn’t give up because too much was at stake. Prin’s life. It was all that really mattered to him. Now, in a moment like this when everything was distilled into one thing. The most important thing.
Prin looked at him with wild eyes. “I can’t live with this. It’s over. I’m done.”
“No, don’t say that. Don’t say it.” Elwin lost the battle and felt tears go down his face. “I need you to stay strong. I need you.”
It took a moment to crack through the shell of despair, but it eventually registered that Aster’s arm was bleeding. The arm that fell away from her body as Prin rocked her in his arms. Actively bleeding.
Something that couldn’t happen if you were dead.