The Heartless

The northern edge of the royal grounds was flanked by the forest, cut off from the hustle and bustle of the kingdom at large. It was there that Knife Boy and I perched in a tree by nightfall and considered our best plan of attack. It would likely prove suspicious for us to seek entrance so late at night, particularly given our previous encounter with the royal guard in the woods. We would have to find another way in.

An outer wall surrounded the perimeter of the grounds, heavily guarded at all times by both a series of small outer towers and a ground patrol. Our current position was in the blind spot between the two nearest towers, and if we were careful, we could use it to our advantage in order to sneak through the north gates during the guard change. When I asked Knife Boy how he knew all of this, he unsurprisingly told me to shut up. For the remainder of the night, we sat in silence as we waited for an opening. Neither of us slept a wink.

By morning, the sky grew dark and angry, clouds hanging ominously low overhead. That afternoon, the heavens split open, and the rain descended like a curtain all at once. We were soaked before we even had a spare moment to realize it was pouring, and Knife Boy flew into a panic.

“No, no, no, the maps!” he hissed, scrambling to shield his bag from the rain, cover it with his shirt, wrap himself around it as if it were a child. It was ultimately for nothing—but I quite literally didn’t have the heart to tell him so.

Instead, I merely pointed out that the rain would provide a good cover, and that we should get going. We hit the ground running and crept up alongside the outer wall. The downpour had reduced visibility to nearly zero, rendering us largely undetectable. We moved silently along the perimeter, barely breathing. When the gates opened for the shift change, we made a break for it, slipping inside the grounds the moment the guards’ backs were turned and running clumsily to duck behind some decorative bushes.

Then, Knife Boy said, “Well, this is where I leave you. The king’s probably in his dining chamber. Second floor.”

My stomach dropped.

“Wait, you’re not coming?” I asked in disbelief. “Why?”

“There’s a library,” he admitted. “In the basement.”

“What are you talking about?” I shouted through the pounding rain.

Knife Boy fell silent and stared at me with a guilty expression, still clutching his bag to his chest in a futile attempt to keep his precious maps dry. Raindrops dripped from his hair, tracing rivulets of water from the top of his forehead to the tip of his chin.

His shoulders drooped, and then he asked me, “Do you want to know how my parents died?”

I leaned forward, thinking I may have heard him wrong.

“What?”

“My parents,” Knife Boy reiterated, a bit louder. “The royal guard killed them too. They were studying the kingdom’s history—they got too close to something important, something big. So they were murdered.”

Ah, I thought. So that’s it, then.

“You came along because you want to figure out what they knew,” I charged.

“There’s something off about this kingdom, and you and I both know it,” Knife Boy contended. “We both have a score to settle. This is mine.”

“So I was just useful to you?” I couldn’t hide the hurt in my voice.

Knife Boy shook his head somberly.

“I still meant what I said before, about owing you for saving my life. I wouldn’t have come all this way with you if I didn’t want to. But now I have to go.” He put out his hand and smiled at me. “Maybe we’ll see each other again on the other side?”

“Maybe.” I clasped his hand in mine and shook on it. “If there is one.”

Knife Boy nodded once before he turned and disappeared around the corner in search of the basement entrance.

That left me to find my way inside on my own. A quick glance out of the bushes told me that there was a guard stationed at the northern palace door. There was no way I could get through the door without him seeing me, which left me with very few options short of murder (which I wasn’t too keen on). With a shudder, I opted to fire an arrow into his leg, immobilizing him long enough for me to sprint to the entrance and slip inside, hoping he’d be unable to follow me.

Once inside and finally out of the weather, I stopped to gather my senses. My ears were still ringing from the thundering rain, and I could feel rivulets of water dripping from my fingers onto the immaculate floor. It was eerily quiet inside, devoid of all signs of life. I began to tiptoe down the hall, remembering the entirely non-specific directions that Knife Boy had given me. My footsteps seemed to echo through the rafters, reverberating off of the walls lined with portraits of past rulers set in ostentatious gold frames. I turned a corner and reached a grand staircase, dressed in blood red velvet. I took great pleasure in trekking up the stairs in my wet, muddy boots, tracking filth across the expensive carpeting, but stopped short when I reached the top and took the next turn.

There were royal guards, five of them, at the far end of the hall. Before I could make the decision to run, one of them turned and spotted me.

“Hey!” he shouted, garnering the attention of the other four.

In a matter of seconds as they started to get closer, I processed my options. Running would get me killed. I only had three arrows left, not enough to take them all down, if I was even fast enough. That only left me with one course of action.

I dug into the bottom of my sopping wet satchel, hands trembling, and pulled out the set of red vials from Bertrand. I must be going crazy, I thought, if I’m really counting on these to work on anybody but me. With a silent appeal to whatever higher powers may be, I wound up and threw the vials down the hall. They crashed to the floor and shattered, the liquid immediately vaporizing upon contact with the air. The guards stopped running, spellbound, and that was enough for me.

Thank you, Bertrand, I thought to myself as I turned heel and raced the other way down the hall. When I turned the next corner, I reached a set of large oak doors, the scent of freshly roasted meat wafting out from underneath.

With my back pressed up against the wall outside the dining chamber, I attempted to steady my breathing. I was out of love potions to use as distractions, so I was going to have to tread carefully. As I stepped in front of the doors, drawing my bow, a small part of me screamed out this is a mistake—but I had long ago resigned myself to seeing this mission through to the end, even if it killed me. The pain of never knowing would quite possibly be a worse fate than death.

But there was no time to contemplate my own mortality, and no use in trying to make sense of it anyway. With another deep breath, I nocked an arrow and kicked open the heavy wooden doors to the dining chamber.

“King Brutus, I request an audience!” I bellowed, inwardly cringing at how pathetic it sounded out loud—it had seemed much cooler in my head.

There was a guard stationed on either side of the room. When the doors opened to reveal me standing there, fully armed, they had begun to rush toward me, swords drawn—but King Brutus held up a hand to stop them, and they relented.

King Brutus was a large, somewhat stout man, decked out in opulent robes and a golden crown glimmering with gemstones I had never seen before and could not possibly have named if you held a knife to my throat. He was the stereotypical image of a self-serving monarch, seated in his fancy upholstered chair at the head of a long table that seemed to overflow with personally catered meats, cheeses, fruits and wines meant only for him. This was the fabled never-emptied cup, the bountiful road paved with gold that I had chalked up to nothing but an idealistic fairytale—but kings and queens had always been the stars of fairytales, hadn’t they?

“If you’re interrupting my meal, this had better be good,” King Brutus warned, but he seemed oddly amused, and not at all alarmed at having an arrow pointed directly at him.

“Please,” I begged, tightening my grip. “I just have some questions. Just a few questions, and then you can do whatever you want with me. I don’t care anymore.”

King Brutus took a long, greedy gulp out of his silver chalice and said, “Ask away.”

“First, you should know that I’m Heartless. About seven years ago, in Swallow’s Point, there were two sets of parents who disappeared after the royal guard came through.” I took a deep breath. “What happened to them?”

“Swallow’s Point, hm?” Recognition lit up the king’s face. “Ah! You must be referring to the town where that Heartless boy was discovered. I did not know there were two of you.”

My blood began to buzz beneath my skin, but I held my ground. “Answer the question, please. The parents, what happened to them?”

“The boy’s parents, I had arrested and killed. I was told that another couple attempted to interfere; they met the same fate. That must have been your parents.”

They tried to protect each other, I thought. They must have known.

“And the boy?”

Infuriatingly, King Brutus shrugged, as if I were asking him about the weather.

I tried to stop my hands from shaking, intimately aware of the fact that I was staring down death’s door.

“I just have one more question for you.” Another deep breath, pulling the arrow back. “Was there ever even a curse at all?”

A beat passed, and then King Brutus laughed.

“You Heartless dregs are so gullible!” he crowed, bits of food flying from his mouth. “I am going to ask you a question, now! Do you, foolish boy, actually believe that you were born from some great evil?”

I could not speak. I felt like I was choking. The blood was rushing to my ears.

“Answer me!” the king boomed.

“I-I don’t know,” I admitted.

“But you do know!” King Brutus stood abruptly, ornate chair screeching against the lustrous tile floor. “It would be easier if you were cursed, wouldn’t it? You choose to believe it, because you want to believe you can be fixed. But there is no fixing you, boy! You were born broken, not even human, and that’s all you will ever be!”

I do not know when I fired the arrow or when the blade entered my chest, but within a matter of seconds my bow was clattering to the ground, King Brutus was dead, and I found myself wishing the sword had hit more than just empty space.

I knew that had I been born with a heart, the blade would have killed me instantly. Rather, the empty space between my ribs now gave me the time to think. I had always imagined that when I died, I would simply disappear; how can that which is not made of flesh ever return to dust? Instead, my blood seeped bright red from the gaping hole in my chest and returned to the soil. I had lived a life on the fringe of humanity, barely warm enough to be considered alive, but I would die in the most human way possible: alone and full of regret.

In my last moments of consciousness, I saw a blurry figure loom over me—an apparition, perhaps? I had never been the religious type, but I wondered not for the first time if maybe there really was an angel to save me. There was a glimmer of hope somewhere within me that maybe even someone like me was worthy of saving; it was a fragile, feathery sort of thing that fluttered through my brain just before I lost the ability to think entirely, gone again just as quickly as it came.

Before the last light faded from my vision, I felt myself being lifted from the dirt. For some inexplicable reason, I felt like I was home.