The Final Days of Springborough

They had left him alone in what appeared to be a storage hut for the village of Fortis. Handmade gardening tools, some extra bags of grain, half-finished wood projects, campfire wood for bonfires where the whole village, probably, gathered together for socialization, and to catch up on the latest gossip of the town.

Thomas guessed at all this because he had never seen such a sight before. The castle never had such clutter. Everything in the castle had a purpose, and if it didn’t have a purpose, it was disposed of without the royals knowledge that it ever existed. Without clutter, the King was able to think clearly. Without clutter, the Queen was able to worry about more important things than the cleanliness of her surroundings. Without clutter, nobody would worry about the mental state of the royals.

Surrounded by clutter, Thomas started to grow anxious. This was obviously a reaction to the filth he was surrounded by, more so than his hands being bound behind him in a chair. That the floor was actually just dirt, and the walls were made of mud and sticks (and in some parts, the mud had caked and fallen to the floor, exposing the sticks and hay inside.) The roofs were thatched. Thomas could hear the rats scurrying about overhead. Rats and winged rats, or birds, trying to hide from the storms by burrowing in the hay above head. Every once in awhile, a piece of the ceiling would drop and Thomas would see a hairless tail, a hard beak, or a small, claw-ish foot, poking through. It was gross, and dirty, and what his captors were used to. He had no doubt in his mind he wanted nothing to do with this.

The door creaked open a bit, and the dirty man from before entered, completely covered in earth, his teeth and the whites of his eyes shining like beacons. Surprisingly, he had a very nice set of teeth, and he had very colorful eyes. The rest of him was the color of mud as if he spent all of his free time crawling on the ground, or in the ground, as Thomas knew some men went below, into caves, to find the royal family’s precious jewels. Was this a man who had found a ruby that might have been placed in his mother’s crown? Didn’t the family pay handsomely for such finds? Do people find joy in crawling in the mud?

“You’re the Prince, ain’tchya?” Dirt said.

Thomas didn’t reply. He had decided that the less they knew the better. Prince’s came with a price.

“Yeah, you’re him. Can tell by your skin.”

“My skin?” Thomas had to almost laugh, considering there wasn’t an inch of this man’s skin that was visible to him.

“Don’t get much sun ‘cause of the castle, eh?” The man smiled to himself, rolling his tongue around in his mouth like he was enjoying the sweetness of a hard candy. “And ye’ got them freckles. Freckles of the Lishens. You’re King Daniel’s boy. The first. Not the Giant.”

Thomas averted his eyes, and looked to the ground, trying not to give the truth away, but realizing that his action of breaking eye contact might have been all the confirmation this man needed. He could “hear” the man smile as he grabbed a chair, and placed it in front of the Prince.

“Yeah, you’re the Prince, all right. What brings you out here? Does your father know where you are?”

Thomas thought quickly, his ideas moving so quickly behind his eyes, it was hard to grab a hold of one, and impossible to figure out which one was the right reply. Yes, my father does know I’m here, and he’s coming, could be one reply. No, I’m not the Prince, no matter what my complexion tells you, could be another.

Dirt stared at Thomas, examining the young boy, probably relishing in the fact he had never been so close to a member of the royal family. Thomas could smell Dirt, who smelled of dirt; dirt and body odor and bad breath. Without looking up, Thomas felt he could see the waves of stench from the man in his peripheral. If there was ever such an opposite to royalty, Thomas thought to himself, this man was it. And to Thomas- royalty represented life, so this citizen of Fortis represented death.

Suddenly, as if knowing he was being insulted in the young boy’s mind, Dirt erupted from his chair, and stood up. He raised his head in the air, sniffed at the ceiling.

“This weather!” he exclaimed, shaking Thomas’ confidence. “Have you ever seen such a thing?” When Thomas didn’t respond still, Dirt kicked out, hitting the Knight in the shins with his toe. “Have ya?”

“N-no,” Thomas stammered.

“They say the storm is man-made.”

Before he could stop himself, Thomas said incredulously, “that’s impossible.”

“Impossible?” Dirt laughed. “Nothing is impossible. Nothing is impossible. I’ve seen trees talk. I’ve seen witches grow young. I’ve seen warlocks float on water. Nothing is impossible.”

“Maybe the storm could be magic-made, but who’s to say it’s man-made? Man can’t make a storm. Man can only weather it.”

Dirt smiled. Not a large enough smile to show teeth, but a small enough one that the mud drying by his eyes cracked in the wrinkles, and fell from his face.

“There’s spirits in the storm. I’ve seen them. Floating about. Malicious spirits. Angry. They’re punishing us for something. They’ve come back for something. No telling what. They don’t speak, really, just scream. Just rumble like the thunder, and strike out with lightening at the wicked and justified alike. They’ve taken out some of our huts already. Taken the roofs off some. Some of us are missing. We found Bobby Whittle in the branches at the tip of a tree. He said he flew up there, but the storm carried him. He didn’t get down gracefully. Broke a lot of bones.”

He didn’t speak for awhile.

Thomas continued to try and figure out a proper response. “But, if they’re spirits, what makes you think the storm is man-made?”

Continuing to look at the ceiling, Dirt just observed the hay. It seemed to Thomas he was listening to the rain drops and the wind, but when Dirt suddenly lashed out with his hand above his head, punching a hole in the roof, and coming down with a rat in his hands- the Prince realized Dirt was actually hunting. The rat squirmed and squealed. It bit Dirt, but the man didn’t react, obviously being bitten by rats was a common occurrence to the villager. Thomas tried to memorize everything about the moment, because he felt Patrick would get such a kick out of this adventure as the two laid in his field. Patrick, for being a fledgeling giant, hated rats, and Thomas could see his brother shudder at the thought that this man actually stood before him with a rat gnawing so deep in his hand that blood was now dripping down to the ground.

“Not man-made, but man created. The storm is coming to right our wrongs, to make us pay for all the bad things we did. And, you know what?”

“What?” Thomas said, watching the rat squirm, empathizing with it, realizing that the rat was sensing the same type of danger he was sensing for himself.

“There is no way that us peasants do as much wrong as the rulers above us. If we have a bad day, we might hurt someone’s feelings; if King Daniel has a bad day, several people find themselves pleading for their lives. If this storm has come to deliver us from our faults, the beacon of light attracting it here is the castle, and all the sinners in it.”

If that was true, Thomas thought, the storm wouldn’t be here at all, for his parents had been gone for weeks. If the storm was punishment for any wrong his father and mother had done, it wouldn’t be focusing on Springborough at all, but rather wherever they were. This man was just speaking crazy, which was worrisome.

“So, maybe we just help the storm out a bit, hmm? If the Lishens are what the storm wants, maybe we just deliver the Lishens to the storm and it will go away. A sacrifice, if you will. How does that sound?”

“I am eleven years old. I spend my time within the castle walls or in the field with my brother. If you think I have done anything to warrant the wrath of dead spirits in a storm, I have to tell you- to me, that’s ridiculous. I haven’t done anything on the scale of bad that even compares with, say, taking a child against his will and tying him to a chair in a storage hut in the middle of the village of Fortis.”

“You think you’re so smart, don’tchya? With that royal education of yours. speaking to me like you’re the adult here-“

The rational one, at least, Thomas wished to say but feared for his safety if he did so.

Dirt brandished a knife, holding up the sharp edge to Thomas’ cheek. The young prince felt the cold steel on his skin, and he strained his eye to look down on it. There was no point to pretend not to be afraid in this situation, and Thomas knew it. Dirt would know the young boy was afraid, and by the smile on the mud-caked man’s face, he was relishing in the fact he had such power over a royal figure. Probably never in his life did he assume that he would be at such a precipice, and the way he was seizing the moment was by being the bad guy.

Above all else, this surprised Thomas the most. In his reluctance to be a knight, to fight people who were threatening the kingdom, he never once took a moment to think there might be people out in the world that were choosing to be bad people. He believed in the good of everyone, and as he feared for the blood in his body, he tried to think of the man that was Dirt, and where he went wrong; where he went bad. There had to be good in him, and Thomas would have to appeal to it.

“You’re afraid,” Thomas said.

“All do respect, your highness, I’m not the one shivering with the tip of a knife under his eye.”

“You’re the one brandishing the weapon,” Thomas said, thinking about the lessons within the strikes and parries of Corson’s technique training.

“Hand to hand battles,” Corson would say, “Man to man, sword to sword, should happen for one reason and one reason only. When diplomacy, when talking, will not settle a dispute or when your life depends on it. That is it. We first and lastly fight with our minds. We second and second-to-lastly fight with our words. And in the middle, sometimes, things get messy with our weapons.”

“You do not have to fear me,” Thomas continued.

“I don’t fear you!” Dirt shouted, spittle flying into Thomas’ face.

“You fear the storm. And as you fear the storm, you want someone to blame for the weather. So, you chose the royals, because that’s easy. It’s easy to blame someone such as us, because we are in the public eye.”

“So, you admit, you’re-“

“I admit nothing, but refuse to deny… You know us, and we just know of you. And while it’s true, our kingdom has seen battles, has punished criminals, has made mistakes here and there, I do not think such a storm would be created to wash away our sins when such kingdoms as Sanbay exist, do you?”

The Kingdom of Sanbay was as West as anyone in Springborough was willing to go. There was one bridge made out of oak that made Sanbay accessible to Springborough, and since the troubles between Springborough and Sanbay a couple years beforehand, that bridge has now been closed. Nobody in Springborough could get to Sanbay, and nobody could get from Sanbay to Springborough. A decree was sent out, letting both Kingdoms know that they were not going to interact anymore, since they never got along and there was always the fear of war. The decree stated that people would have to choose their allegiance, or be stuck in enemy territory. For three months, caravans of people crossed the Oak Bridge, avoiding eye contact with each other, until nobody crossed it anymore. King Daniel planted a cart of dynamite on the bridge, and blew it up into smithereens. Now Sanbay was only talked about like a moment of time never to be revisited.

“Sanbay…” Dirt said to himself thinking, tapping the tip of the knife on Thomas’ cheek. The Prince saw the weapon getting closer to his eye. “I have friends in Sanbay.”

You would, Thomas thought to himself as he saw the expression on Dirt’s face change, and he knew that he was about to feel real, physical pain.

“You don’t know the half of it, child. I am from this Earth. And the trees… they’ve told me things…” The man’s eyes grew foggy, as if his mind had left him, venturing off somewhere, leaving the shell of Dirt behind.

That’s when Thomas heard a thud, and his captor’s body jerked, his hands going up, as if to hold his head, but his eyes rolling up into his skull, and his knees giving out. Dirt fell to the ground, revealing Corson standing behind him, his sword in his hand, the hilt bloody. The teacher of steel looked down at his Prince taken hostage, surveying the damage.

“Your highness,” Corson exclaimed at the sight of Thomas, dirty, sweaty, tied up. Wouldn’t King Daniel be mad at the sight of his son if he was here!

“Corson, knock it off with that your highness talk, and observe how well your lessons have suited me.”

Corson, at first shocked at the Prince’s candor, gave a laugh. “Well, if one might not have misplaced his sword-…”

“Shush, undo my binds. We need to get out of here. This man wasn’t the only one who was keeping me prisoner. The whole village has gone mad. Believing in spirits in the storm. Lunacy.”

“Wait until you see the storm, your highness,” Corson said, taking his sword and cutting away at Thomas’ ropes.