There were times when she imagined she was a blade of grass, moved by the wind.
Though short, such thoughts made her happy. In the cold morning air, she found peace. She gave up trying to right her wrongs, to fight for the world that so easily cast her aside. She let her body and mind be moved by the sharp breeze and be led through the unfamiliar path. Such moments of simple happiness always ended abruptly, leaving a bitter taste on her tongue. The blinds were all closed. The room was dark and airless, so Diane had decided to sit on the window stool before the day was born. The forest was the same before and after the sun, she noticed, but the air was more pleasant now that strange creatures weren’t roaming around her mind. Red and rotten.
She had made a choice. It was a simple as that. But, now that she had a way to escape it, she decided that it seemed trivial to the first obstacle she had to face: if she wanted to find out the truth about what had happened five years in the past, she had to survive the land of George’s ancestors.
The door squeaked.
“You’re awake,” George said. “Would you like to have breakfast?”
Diane turned around and refused.
“Let me know if you change your mind.”
The product of the sleepless night was foolproof; a plan so perfectly crafted it only needed to be possible. The worst part was that they all, except Jeremy and possibly George, needed to survive for the perfect future to be realised. Even though she had decided that something was awfully wrong, Diane was still not fully prepared to throw away her life as she knew it. At least not yet.
“I think we should leave as soon as possible,” Diane said before George closed the door.
She didn’t see George smile. “What about the others?”
“Isaac said they would be here by noon. Jeremy also said he would come.”
“And Lila?”
“Busy.”
Three days had passed with Diane barely leaving the house; when she did, she only walked as far as the first line of trees that made up the forest around George’s house. All she thought about, all she ever thought about, was how to come back alive. After sleeping through her last moments of freedom, the day when she would lose her bones had finally come. Diane didn’t know what exactly waited for her on the other side of the door she had to unlock, but it would be red and rotten.
The toast was cold by the time she came downstairs, dressed in her uniform with an uncanny memory in her blood. The tea was too sweet, and the jam… it probably was jam.
“What were you writing the other day?” George asked her. He was sitting across her, where he could look at her. They hadn’t talked much while she stayed there, mainly because George was absent for most of it. Where he was and what he did was beyond Diane’s ability to care about. Though she did find it incredibly strange.
“I was letting Isaac and Jeremy know it’s time to go,” Diane replied.
“And Thomas Hammer?” He spread strawberry jam all over his toast.
“He’s with Isaac.”
“He’s invited?”
“Why not?”
George smiled. “Because he’ll die the moment he steps foot in there.”
Diane put her knife down; it clanked when it met the plate. “You take care of yourself, and leave Thomas Hammer to me.”
George licked the jam off his knife. “And who’ll take care of you? The last time I checked, you were going on about stolen powers and memories.” He bit off half of the toast. “Still haven’t found the cave?” he asked with a smile.
“I will take care of myself, don’t you worry.”
George just chucked, the toast crumbling all over his pants and table. Diane watched him, wondering when exactly he became her enemy.
What?
“George, about your father…” Diane bit her tongue the moment the words left her mouth.
You are rushing things again.
He was startled. “What about him?”
“I just… I just think I remembered something.”
He waited for a second. “Remembered what?”
“Something he said. Do you know if…” Diane scratched her head; there was no way of asking him without risking revealing her intentions. The next second felt endless. “Was he a good guard?”
He waited for a second. “Why?”
Diane lowered her head. “It’s nothing, really. Just forget about it.”
George was still frozen, with his knife pressing a puddle of jam onto another slice of toast. “What did you remember?”
“I said it’s nothing special.”
George’s fingers were turning white. “Why don’t you tell me about it, then?” he insisted.
Diane put her hands on her lap and smiled. “I remembered how he took me to the river one day. It was summer, I think, and we caught some fish. He did it with his bare hands. I was so impressed!”
He continued with spreading. “I have no clue what you’re talking about.” Then he smiled. “But I am sure you had a wonderful time.”
“I am sure I did. If you will excuse me.” Diane had never left a room so quickly and with so clear a resolution. George was in on whatever it was that the Judge was plotting. And his father’s death wasn’t a coincidence.
Diane stormed outside, her quick breath leaving cloud upon a cloud of worry stuck midair. The sun didn’t need her to cast shadows of the trees. It only needed her to obey. But she couldn’t do it anymore, so she just marched anywhere.The trees blocked the sun until the path to the sky cleared and her own shadow covered the mud she would step into. The day was cold. Smoke was in the air, in the eyes and lungs; the kind of smoke that inhabits the pores and lets out bits of its toxin every time the seasons change. The people in the town were scarce, but the voices were loud, banging, boasting, blaming. And she was not there. She was in the castle, in the forest, in the cave; where she had lost her powers, her memories, and her pride. To Him. He took them all away. He cursed her to a life of regret. He made her swear on revenge. On murder.
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That is the only thing I know for sure. I fought someone and lost. But everything else…
In the city center, a monster was destroyed. Diane observed it, circled its ruins, and spent her time thinking of the ways she would make sure it never saw the light of day again. On the map, there was the same monster.
Why couldn’t She just tell me what to do? Why does everything have to be so complicated?
Diane couldn’t listen to her own thoughts anymore. She had to leave. To die. To never fulfill her duty. To be named a sinner for future generations to ridicule. The girl who missed chances. She was knee-deep in mud when she arrived back to George's house. The moon was already up, and the red eyes of the house owner were preserving the shadows the bird of the night had taken away. With such common redness before her, Diane saw Thomas and Isaac sitting in the dining room, with silver spoons and wide smiles.
“Great,” she murmured as the two saw her through the window.
The week they had spent apart worked wonders on their complexions; though slightly frightened, they looked refreshed. “Good day, milady,” Isaac said and bowed when she entered the room. “Your humble servant at your disposal.”
“I am sorry for the delay. I was distracted,” she said and nodded at Jeremy who, for the first time ever, didn’t have anything to add.
The smoke didn’t disappear when she entered the house; it was only replaced by the suffocating smell of vanilla and strawberries. The four companions seemed to have smelled it too, as their faces turned sourer by the second. Their eyes watered from the lack of air and their fingers twitched.
“When are we leaving?” Isaac asked.
No fly could stand the smell; they were all dead on the floor.
“Now.”
“I think we should wait until tomorrow,” George said. “It’s nighttime and they are exhausted.”
Diane looked at the three men, each fascinated by a different corner of the room they had sat in countless times before. She nodded, though she felt she wouldn’t survive until tomorrow. “Very well. It is my fault we missed the timing.”
They didn’t ask any more questions. They probably couldn’t stand revelations. The air was too heavy anyway. They all went to their separate rooms; George’s house was designed to put up guests, it seemed. But Diane had to find a way to talk to Thomas Hammer, or her wandering wouldn’t have made sense. She went into his room not long after he did, without knocking. He would have been surprised had her face not shown monstrous readiness.
“Can I help you with anything?” Thomas asked, pillow in hand. There was a strange coldness that for a moment entered Diane’s pores.
Between the princess and the peasant, there was only space. For the first, and probably the last time, nothing was stopping her. “Would you like to go for a walk?” she asked.
The air had cleared while Diane was inside. Now the sky was very much visible and the stars mocking her reach, but there was still too much smoke in her blood to fly. The ground was still wet, though not as muddy as it had been some half an hour ago.
“It’s nice out, don’t you think?” Thomas asked. It had been a while since they were alone.
Diane replied soullessly as she stepped over the fallen branches and dirtied her boots in the sluggish ground even more. Thomas was filled with plastic eagerness and excitement. There was no liveliness in his words, yet the fast motion of his tired lips made him feel at ease. Diane thought she saw the last speck of the world’s innocence in his eyes. To be young and not to know, to be a child and never a princess meant to be vacuous, foolish, and weak. Princesses never dare to be weak. But they are sometimes blinded by the moon.
She breathed in more smoke. She felt that the time was coming. “I went to see your mother,” Diane told Thomas, her voice running wild.
“Oh,” he sighed. “What for?”
Diane stopped. “To take the map,” she told him, masking fear with confidence. “Your mother is Fionna Roswell.” When he didn’t laugh, she continued: “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”
No one in this world is ever a child; the air is too stuffy for them to survive. Here, princesses believe in destiny and serve their lives on diamond trails, princes dream of lush gardens and curious maids, and royal blood mixes with the peasant, with the demonic, and leaves no room for doubt.
“It seems so,” Thomas replied, no innocence in his eyes. “I also know about your powers.”
There was no more vanilla, only dust, and smoke. And banging against a ribcage.
“How?” Diane asked, composed.
“That much was obvious. There was no way someone as legendary as you couldn’t take care of a few Demons. Then I asked around while you were asleep. There was a similar breach in Painron five years ago but it doesn’t appear in any records. The people outside the capitol have never heard about it, and those inside it are too terrified of the king to say anything. Something happened, didn’t it?”
There was wind and whispers.
“It did. The Demons flooded Painron; there were thousands of them. I don’t know where they came from or what they wanted. I was ordered to stay put, but I just couldn’t bear… being useless, I guess. So, I went against my father’s orders. I fought a Demon and lost. It cost me more than half of my powers and memories. They are now sealed in a cave I can’t find,” Diane replied, this time slightly absent. The wind messed with her hair as she stood, feet below the ground. “I remember very little of that day, only that I fought someone. The rest is what my father told me. I couldn’t even remember my name at first. I occasionally get to see glimpses of my past when I sleep, not very much or very often.”
Thomas felt that every word she spoke was too much. He felt nauseous and suddenly wanted her to stop talking about her past. “So, I was right. I knew there was something off the moment I first saw you.” He took a few deep breaths to try to connect as many dots as he could. Still, he could not see the piece that was missing, the one that connected him to the past.
“How did you know about your mother?” Diane interrupted him.
“I didn’t exactly know, but I felt that my life was not normal. A Crystalian mother and a Flamer son living in perfect harmony in the middle of nowhere with barely any friends and no family?” Thomas replied. “When you showed up, I just… knew that there was something more. I didn’t know what exactly, though. So, what is it that connects us, Your Majesty? Why did my mother steal the map? And, most importantly, why didn’t she tell me anything about it?”
The clock struck midnight and Diane’s every cell shivered under the threat of impermanence. Even if a large portion of her soul refused to submit to a dead woman’s future, at that moment the best she could do was have a little faith.“And if I refuse to tell you?”
Thomas lowered his head. “We both know there is nothing I can do to change your mind. But I hope, no, I trust, that you will not hurt me.”
All he had to do was put up a fight; a small, meaningless one that wouldn’t move her the slightest. Then she would have told him everything. But the Fool was not ready yet to make his choice. Just because she doubted Her, it didn’t mean that she was ready to fully reject a happy future. And to achieve that, to achieve anything at all, she needed Thomas Hammer.
If I tell him everything now, I will scare him away. He has never been desperate before. That is why he cannot see how much of himself he has been missing.
“You are not ready for the truth yet,” Diane replied, chilblained.
Thomas sighed. “I didn’t believe there was anything in this world that could frighten Diane Hunster,” he replied, disappointment eating him from the inside. Not because she didn’t tell him, but because he didn’t want to ask.
Diane wanted to keep moving, but the grass had started growing out of the soil that now covered her legs up to her knees. The only thing she could do was smile. “Rumors are wicked, aren’t they? They give you false wings…I am not that person. You should have figured that out by now. And neither are you, Thomas Hammer.”
In that very moment, surrounded by the invisible smoke, Diane Hunster showed a glimpse of what could have been a weakness; an emotion, it seemed, similar to sadness, terror, and regret. It made Thomas step back and, observing her face tarnished by what could have been tears, he said: “You will not tell me, will you?”
“No. I did intend on telling you everything, but now I see why I was told that that is not my part of the job.” She was certain it wasn’t a tear that now clouded her vision. “Everything has its own time. And ours, obviously, hasn’t come quite yet.”
“You always know what to say, Your Majesty,” Thomas said and walked past her, inside, head lowered in embarrassment and disappointment.
When the grass stopped growing and the smoke had completely disappeared, Diane could clearly see it was never anger that moved his spirit, but desperation. She could feel his presence clearly now. She wondered how she could have denied it at first when it was so out in the open: her destined companion, one in the sea of heads that should be cut for her to become the queen of time.
I will make sure we will come back alive. He will be ready then.