My first story on here. Pretty angsty for something spur of the moment. It’s a bit abstract, but I like it. Surprisingly enough, it was inspired by Peter Pan.

------

In a place far away and long ago, a boy sat upon a throne. He was a boy king, set to rule the land under his name—a land of grain and gold. A land of turmoil.

It all began one generation ago when the previous king, and his late father, had married, not a queen, but a girl.

A servant girl.

Oh, how the castle talked! The women of how the conniving little skank had gotten the king wrapped around her finger with a potion, the men of how the king had found himself a lady of his leisure, but no one ever thought it possible that they were actually in love, or the repercussions of their actions once they had been conceived.

------

It was a winter’s day when it had happened. The king, a man in his late twenties with hair like spun silk and a kind smile, had been in his carriage with his queen, a girl of seventeen of pale skin, ruby lips, and auburn hair unlike his blonde. They had been returning from a trip to a neighboring kingdom for peace talks when a loud neigh was heard outside the wooden doors. Their carriage was being attacked.

Everything afterwards seemed to pass slow and fast at the same time. The clashing of metal, the sounds the horses made when they were caught in the crossfire, and the awful, awful screaming, all while the snow gently fell from the skies and blanketed the forest around them.

In the middle of this fray, the queen sat in the snow by the open carriage door, watching as the guards fought with their attackers. From the corner of her eye, she watched something fly through the air, and to her horror, found it to be a human head.

Reaching forward, she moved her hand to study the head more closely, but a shadow cast upon the snow made her stop—made her scramble away as a man fell beside her. Taking in his short brown hair and youthful features, he couldn’t have much older than her.

“My lady!”

And she turned from the fallen man towards the voice to see what the matter was, saw the arrow sailing through the air towards her, and let all thoughts of closing the nameless youth’s eyes and praying for his soul fall from her mind, replaced by a simple thought.

‘I’m going to die…’

She shut her eyes, placing her hands protectively over her head as she waited for the blow to end her life, carefully counting the seconds remaining as the sound of the arrow approaching became louder and louder, drowning out the sudden flourish of screaming in the fray. Suddenly, the sound of the arrow impacting flesh reached their ears, but she felt neither pain nor death. The forest became eerily quiet.

Cracking open a lid of her hazel eyes, she looked around, taking in the stunned faces and the battles frozen in mid-air when a choking sound garnered her attention. She turned her head.

She wished she hadn’t.

“R-Rorek?” she questioned as she hoped in her heart that it wasn’t. That it wasn’t him and she had gotten him mistaken for one of the men fighting. That this wasn’t real and was just a horrible nightmare playing her mind. The bold contrast of red and white told her otherwise.

“Joanna…” the man whispered to her and tears welled in her eyes. How could he smile so kindly just when he was about to die?!

“Rorek?”

A hand reached out to her, quivering in the air as he tried to hang on. She leaned down to meet his hand. “Yes?”

“I…I h-have s-s-somet-t-thing to t-t-tell you…” he began as his blood poured onto the newly-fallen snow. He could feel himself fading away.

“Yes, Rorek?” she questioned, tears in her eyes. It hurt to see her like that.

“I…I…”

And then he stopped, interrupted as his punctured lung tried to breathe, grabbing air that wasn’t there as blood from his heart poured in, dripping along the shaft of the arrow in trickles reminiscent of rain. Horrible gasping sounds escaped his mouth, and all the while, his wife looked on in horror.

“Rorek? Rorek?!” she screamed as his body became wracked with convulsions. Her eyes caught the shaft. The arrow. Remove the arrow, she thought to herself.

Hands gripped the wood, sliding as the snow that clung on the shaft melted beneath her fingertips. Her heart raced in her chest. A loud gasp drew her attention.

“Hang on!” she shouted at her husband, desperate against fate to keep him alive, to keep him with her. Dammit, he couldn’t leave her!

Fingers wrapped around the shaft, tugging crazily as she sought desperately for a breath, a sign, anything to know he would be alright when she felt herself flung back into the snow and looked from his body to her hand in horror. The shaft had broken, but it didn’t matter now. He was dead.

Joanna crawled slowly towards her husband’s form, the arrow shaft left discarded by the carriage wheel as she knelt beside him. Her knees were shoving the white silk of her dress into his blood, staining it red, but she didn’t notice, too distracted by the smoky film over Rorek’s normally blue eyes. Tears blurred her vision.

“Rorek? Rorek?” she asked, gently nudging her king’s shoulder, “wake up. We have to get back to the kingdom. We have to go back. Our people need you. I need you. And what about our son?” she pleaded, tear stains appearing on his clothing. Slowly, she retracted her hands and placed them on her lap, fingers twitching on her knees as she willed herself to stop, as if waiting for something. The attackers gripped their weapons.

“Rorek!!!!” Joanna sobbed, flinging herself over his dead body as her shoulders shook and tears ran down her face. It wasn’t fair. How could this happen? How?!

And in her grief, she did not hear the dropping of weaponry, nor see the sad looks the men around her exchanged. She did not even realize how she had changed in their eyes from a malicious queen that needed to be dealt with, to just a seventeen-year-old girl with a love cursed by tragedy. No, she just wept for her love, the snow drifting ever so steadily all the while.

-------

The funeral was held two days later with the entire kingdom out to mourn their fallen king, among them, the men who attacked the carriage. Apparently, a group of female nobles had paid the men to kill the queen, saying that she had enchanted the king and she was actually a witch in disguise. Since rarely anyone saw the queen, they believed the tale, not sure what else to do for fear of their lives and their home.

But now, as the queen walked through the streets of the kingdom behind the casket, the people began to see her for what she really was. She was pale, with auburn hair, tired hazel eyes, and a crying babe in her arms, and the people realized they were wrong. She was just like them.

--------

After the funeral, it was said the queen had gone mad, haunted by her memories of that night and plagued by the words that died on her husband’s lips before they were given a chance to be spoken.

She was locked in the highest tower of the castle and her son was given the throne by the Parliament at the age of eight, and while in her prison, Joanna prayed for nearly eight years that he would be as good a king as his father was, but it seems her prayers went unheard. Her son had become a tyrant; ruling with an iron fist to make sure what happened to his father did not happen to him. The sun refused to shine after that day.

--------

The boy king sat on his throne, crown slightly askew on his head as he listened to the grievances of a former Parliament member. He rolled his eyes; did the man really expect him to form the Parliament again when he had disbanded it in the first place?

“No,” the boy king said. He would not share his power with anyone. Why wouldn’t they understand that?

“But”—

“I said no!” the twelve-yr-old shouted, watching with satisfaction as the man left when he spotted something red catch the light of the torches lining the walls of the room.

“What do you want, mother?”

And Joanna stepped out of the shadows for her son to see, red dress illuminated by the torches. Her son sneered.

“I see you dyed your hair black.” His mother did not reply, merely walked over to the dining table as her son sat. It was sad to think that this tyrant was her son, even sadder that he was the spitting image of his father.

“What do you want?” he snapped, biting into a chicken leg laid out before him. When she did not reply, he felt his anger boil. He had no time to play games with his mother. He had just gotten word that the rebels were going to try and assassinate him once more. He saw his mother looking at him sadly.

“What? Don’t look at me with such pity in your eyes! I should be pitying you! You’re locked up in a tower all day, doing God-knows-what since you’ve gone off your rocker!” He sighed and ran a hand through his blonde locks.

“Why don’t you answer me? I keep you happy, don’t I? Like a good son? I keep you warm in that tower, I have the servants bring you food, I have the finest dresses given to you—I talk to you every week, so why don’t you ever respond to me when I ask you questions? Answer me that.”

Another stretch of silence. He snapped the bone in his hands.

“Answer me, you wench! Regardless of our familial rankings, I am your king and you will answer when I speak to you!”

And she smiled at him sadly. His blood boiled, but he calmed himself down. No use getting upset since his mother was insane. He reached for his cup of wine, only to have it smacked from his hand, sending wine spilling onto the carpet.

“You bitch! What are you doing?! Guards, I”—

He felt himself careening backwards as the sound of an arrow reached his ears. He closed his eyes.

“Guh!”

And he opened them as he watched blood drip from his mother’s lips to stain his cheek, the faint sound of running echoing off the castle walls reaching his ears, but he didn’t care, too busy staring at the woman he just called a bitch as she smiled at him.

“Mother?” he asked, rearranging them so he knelt on the floor as she stared up at the ceiling from the carpet, eerily reminiscent of a day long ago. A giggle escaped her lips at the irony—she must have realized it as well. Smiling sadly, she traced a finger lovingly over his cheek.

“We were such fools, weren’t we? Going to places we didn’t belong. And look at us now. You’re so stubborn, trying to make everyone believe you were capable of ruling a kingdom all by yourself. You’ve forced yourself to grow up without growing at all, and look at yourself now,” she said with a girlish grin and a light giggle before frowning. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’m fine with dying, but you…you’re afraid of it, afraid of becoming your father,” she said wistfully.

“Mother?” he asked and her lids fluttered. Death was approaching her faster than she expected. She closed her eyes and smiled. With her last breaths, she spoke to her son; her final words like a haunting lullaby.

“We were such fools, Daniel. You were so young, and we were such fools.”