When Summer Dies

There was a ballroom in the castle. Well, there were probably more than one, but Maria hadn’t tried to find them.

Whenever she went to it, to that specific ballroom, it was always empty. She couldn’t remember Cerron saying anything about any big parties, either, so it probably hadn’t been in use for a while.

There wasn’t a trace of dust or muck in there, of course. Cerron had devoted servants, after all.

The ballroom back at home paled in comparison. Maria remembered running through it when she was younger, giggling and screaming as her dad chased after her.

She wondered if anyone had ever ran giggling and screaming through this room. Somehow, she doubted it.

Beautiful, yet simple designs of jade climbed their way across the pale stone walls. Maria could imagine how, in Summer, the large windows would let in the sunlight, reflected in the dark tiles of the floors. As it was, the darkness outside was suffocating, and she had to bring her own candle whenever she went into the room.

There was a large fireplace along one of the shortest walls, but there was no fire crackling within. It hadn’t been any of the other times Maria had visited, either. That spoke volumes about how rarely those rooms were used – at Winter, Cerron had told her, almost every fireplace was kept alive at all times.

Maria was ecstatic the first time she stumbled upon the room. There was a grand piano there, in a corner, dark and alluring in its silence.

She went there to play, sometimes, when she had nothing better to do. Although it had been almost two years since the last time she had played on the piano, her fingers still remembered the chords and the notes. It wasn’t something one could easily forget.

No one had interrupted her while she was playing before.

Until now.

When she played the familiar song for the second time that day, a voice began to sing from somewhere behind her – and it sung in Täk. Maria started, but some part of her recognized the voice – and what it was singing.

“Ermei Ylor tayaler, yalne kerer cerro, vehonne im tale.”

Cerron, Maria’s mind breathed, and she wasn’t surprised when the Demon walked up to her, before bypassing.

“Habn tale ro, doh leytel ontaer leyraykaerer em po ker. Em po ker.”

The song ended with a flourish, and Maria looked up from the tangents. Cerron was facing one of the windows, his hands clasped behind his back while he stared into the darkness.

Maria’s breath hitched in her throat. The atmosphere was strange, somehow airy, as if it didn’t – as if it didn’t really exist. She was afraid to speak. Afraid to break the moment.

Cerron sighed, and turned around to meet Maria’s unsettled gaze. He was frowning, but it was a soft and sad frown, and Maria wasn’t sure if she should be worried or relieved. “My mother’s lullaby,” he muttered, wonder in his voice. “How do you know of it?”

His mother’s lullaby? Maria tugged her hand away from the piano and stood up from the stool. “Your mother’s lullaby?” she whispered, disbelief making her voice shake and quiver. “This… this is the song dad always sung for me.”

Cerron raised his eyebrows. “Really? Ermei Ylor Tayaler is a Demon song. It is not meant for humans to hear.”

“Yet you just sung it to me,” Maria said, and absentmindedly shook her head with a confused frown. “Why?”

“If you knew the melody, you might as well learn the rest,” Cerron shrugged. “How Morris came across it, I do not know.”

Maria frowned, and took another step closer so they could speak without raising their voices. “Dad said my mom used to sing it to him, or herself, when she was in a bad mood,” she pondered.

Cerron hummed. “Peculiar,” he muttered. “Although… I have a faint memory of Mother speaking of Queen Cisena as if they were old friends.”

“Dad never said anything about a relationship between Queen Alyth and mom,” Maria said, and her eyebrow rose in surprise. “But it doesn’t surprise me at all if he’s kept it secret...” Cerron shook his head lightly and turned away again. Maria caught the soft look in his eyes, and she frowned. “When did your mom sing?” she asked, perhaps just to fill the silence with words.

“All the time,” Cerron whispered. “She was a gentle woman. Adventurous, yes… but gentle. She sung often, before she died. Mostly just to me – we would go on walks through the castle halls, and she would sing to encourage me whenever I faced a problem I could not solve.”

Maria stood perfectly still. He was – was he opening up to her? His voice had lost some of the polite distance he usually spoke with.

Oh.

“You remind me of her,” Cerron admitted. “In some ways, you look like her, too.” Something melted inside of Maria, melted and broke and mended together again. “Her death was… hard. By Ünnen, I was ünerro at the universe for tearing her away from me. I thought it had wronged me, somehow,” he muttered, before sighing. “She didn’t deserve to die.”

Ünerro… that was Täk. Maria recognized the words for hate and cold, but she wasn’t sure what the meaning of them together was. She didn’t dare ask.

“I would have been fine,” Cerron continued, and by Nie, wasn’t he done yet? Maria’s chest tightened, and she swallowed thickly. “Had Father not died a year later. He loved my Mother dearly, you see, and when he lost her…”

Tears were welling in her eyes, now. It was stupid, Maria knew, since she’d learned about this before… but then it had just been history.

“In some ways, it was a good thing he died before he went mad,” Cerron muttered.

It hadn’t been the story of someone’s heart.

“It was hard, after that,” Cerron continued, oblivious to the Human fighting tears behind his back. “I had not been prepared to become a King so soon, and therefore my duties were overwhelming.” Then he let out a bark of laughter. “It did not become better when I was thrown and locked out of the castle by the servants.”

Maria’s breath hitched, and she slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from sobbing. They’d thrown him out? Why? How? “What?” she whispered around her palm, voice watery and revealing how completely horrified she was. Had Cerron not been nice to his servants? Hadn’t he been kind to them? And they rewarded him by locking him out?

Cerron started at her voice, and turned around to look at her. He widened his eyes and inhaled sharply, before he hurried over with something akin to pain in his eyes. “Do not cry,” he said softly, removing her hand from her mouth with gentle fingers. “It is in the past,” he murmured, and used his thumb to dry away some of the tears on her left cheek.

“They locked you out,” Maria whispered harshly, twisting the hand he was holding to grasp his fingers. His skin was cool, but not uncomfortably so. Not that Maria would have cared, if they were. She couldn’t care. Not now. “Why did they lock you out?”

Cerron’s eyebrows creased, and the corners of his mouth twisted down in an unhappy frown. “If you react like this to the story of my mother,” he muttered. “Then I do not believe you should know of the time I was locked out.”

Maria hiccupped, and used her free hand to rub at her eyes. “It’s that bad?” she whispered.

“Afraid so,” Cerron murmured. “Come now. Your candle has almost burned down, and I would rather not get lost in the dark on my way out.”

“Will you tell me later?” Maria asked, perhaps a bit clingingly, as she followed Cerron out of the chill ballroom and into the real world.

“Of course. When you are ready,” said Cerron, and smiled softly at her.

Maria said nothing, then, and they rounded seven corners before she found enough courage to ask the question she was wondering about. “What… what does it mean? The song?”

For a moment, she was afraid that Cerron wouldn’t answer, but then he smiled. “The song is called When Summer Dies, and it goes like this,” he said, and began to sing again, this time in Common.

“When Summer dies,

the skies turn dark

the stars they fade out.

The air turns cold,

and love returns

to shower us in gold.”

“Have I really not told you about the greenhouses before?” Cerron asked, for the sixteenth time that afternoon, and Maria laughed.

“No, Cerron,” she said, for the sixteenth time that afternoon. “You have not.”

It had been Summer for nearly three weeks. Maria hadn’t been keeping count of the days, so when she woke up to sunlight caressing her face, she’d gasped and nearly fallen out of bed. She was still getting accustomed to walking outside without the Winter coat – although, after the first time she wore it in Summer, she’d made it a point to wear thinner dresses. While she was accustomed to Spring back at the Human Kingdom, she’d never experienced Summer of the Demon Kingdom before.

“I must apologize,” Cerron said, and he appeared to be more than a little sheepish. “I thought I had.”

Maria laughed again, and tipped her head back to savor in the sun warming her face. Oh, how she had missed it!

She hadn’t realized it before, but during Winter, the Gardens had been eerily quiet. Now there was a gentle breeze ruffling the hedges, a robin was singing somewhere nearby, and the unmistakable buzzing of insects was a constant reminder of which season it was.

And oh, the colors. There was green, of course, and silver flowers, blue lilies, a bush with red leaves, that tree over there had pink flowers, and it just went on, and on, and on.

Maria was so busy enjoying her surroundings and recognizing the different plants, that she nearly walked straight pass the three large greenhouses. Hadn’t it been for Cerron, she probably would have walked straight pass them, too, as he coughed gently to get her attention.

Maria turned around and stared; the sun was making his hair glow, and his eyes were laughing at her. His mouth twisted in a small, fond smile, and he was standing tall and proud like he always was. After Winter, he had started wearing shorter capes, his robes simpler and of lighter colors – and Maria had to say, the look fit him excellently.

“Welcome,” Cerron said, and in that moment his voice could have reached across a thousand seas. He swiped his arm out to indicate the greenhouses, and the small, fond smile turned into a smug grin. “To the greenhouses of Leron.”

Maria giggled, and walked back to where he was standing. “Thank you, your Majesty,” she said, bowing, before pushing open the doors. Inside of the greenhouses was just as warm as the outside, but the air was impossibly thick and damp. It was a very familiar feeling, and Maria gasped softly as she slowly turned around to take in the whole building. It was huge; she could probably fit three of her bedrooms inside of it, and her bedroom was large.

There were plants hanging from the ceiling, and plants climbing up the walls, and plants sprouting from the ground. There were plants in pots, and bags, and cups. There were green plants, and yellow plants, and red plants.

There were empty spots of soil here and there, and in a corner, there was a pile of sacks with dirt. Next to the pile was a cabinet with gardening tools.

“Wow,” she breathed, and smiled widely at Cerron. “It’s marvelous!”

Cerron chuckled, and closed the doors behind him before walking further into the room. “I am glad you like it, my Lady.”

“Like it?” Maria asked, carefully running a finger along the yellow leaf of a plant climbing up the wall. “I love it!” She laughed, again, and wondered briefly if she was drunk on Summer. “Why do you have a greenhouse, anyways?”

“Ah,” Cerron said, and grinned. “The romantic story of how my grandfather, Keron, proposed to my grandmother, Alice.”

“Cerron? Your grandfather’s name was Cerron?” Maria piped in.

“No,” Cerron said, and shook his head. “Keron. Just one ‘R’, and begins with a K. Do you remember your lessons?”

“Of course,” Maria scoffed. “It means the light.”

“Indeed,” Cerron nodded. “So Keron, my grandfather, was hopelessly in love with Alice, my grandmother. The whole Kingdom knew, of course, as they had not been hiding their relationship.”

“Alice loved gardening,” he continued, and walked over to the cabinet. “Just like you. So Keron called for all the best builders and designers in the Kingdom, and told them to build three large greenhouses – every one of them larger than the last.”

“Sap,” Maria coughed, and grinned.

Cerron laughed. “Why yes, Keron was a sap. Well, fortunately, Alice was an even greater sap, as she burst into tears and accepted immediately when he proposed with them.”

Maria smiled. “That’s certainly romantic,” she said. “But it’s not the most romantic one I’ve heard.”

“What could be more romantic than proposing with three large buildings?” Cerron asked, in fake-disbelief.

“Shush, you,” Maria said, and grinned. “You’ve clearly not heard the story of how dad met mom.”

“Oh, this is interesting.”

“Ley,” Maria assured him, slipping into Täk without thinking about it. “Dad was a poor teenager, trying to make enough money to keep the family alive. He was visiting the Marketplace, selling bowls that that my Aunt had made herself, when a girl crashed into him and broke all the clay that Aunt had spent weeks on making.”

Cerron burst out laughing. “Really?” he gasped. “You have a cruel sense of what is romantic!”

“Hush, I’m not done yet,” Maria grinned. “It was mom, obviously. She was running away from her advisors – why, dad never told me -, and instead of just ignoring the peasant in front of her, she started picking up all the pieces of broken bowls and stuffing them into dad’s bag. She then grabbed his hand and ran with him! Dad, utterly baffled, couldn’t do anything but try to keep up.”

“Mom ran into the forest, and the two of them spent the entire day there, walking hand in hand and talking together. When the sun was setting, mom told dad that she wanted to meet him again, before kissing him and running away,” Maria finished the tale with a wide grin. “See? Much more romantic than a building made of glass.”

Cerron made a show of pretending to consider it. “Hmm,” he muttered, tapping his chin and squinting at the roof. “Perhaps.”

Maria shook her head and laughed. “Surely you must see that,” she complained. “It’s just a lot of glass! What’s that compared to walking through the forest and completely ruining your clothes by dragging them through the mud?”

“You have a point,” Cerron admitted. “Now that you mention mud,” he added, and opened the cabinet to retrieve two sets of gardening equipment. “I am ready to learn.”

“Good,” Maria said, and her following smile was terribly sheepish. “I am not ready to teach.”

Some forty minutes later, and Cerron, the mighty Demon King, was on his knees and elbow-deep in dirt. “Apologies, my Lady,” he said, and sat up to sigh heavily. “But gardening is not something I understand.”

Maria huffed, and sat up, too. “Nonsense,” she said. “Gardening is one of the simplest arts you can learn!”

Cerron shot her a dirty look, as she just quoted what he’d told her the first time she’d said that Täk wasn’t an easy language to understand. “That might be,” he said, and pushed some of his hair away from his eyes. It left a stripe of dirt on his forehead, and it took all of Maria’s willpower not to laugh. “But it is still not something I understand.”

“It’s only been half an hour, Cerron,” Maria pointed out, once again quoting what he’d told her during her lessons. “No one understands anything within the first half hour.”

“Oh, thank you,” Cerron muttered. “That is very reassuring.” Nonetheless, he leaned forward again and continued his desperate attempts at saving the rosebush he was trying to plant.

“Of course it is,” Maria huffed. She smiled, and leaned over to correct his grip on the small shovel. It felt great to finally be able to hold something over his head – hopefully, he wasn’t too fast of a learner.

Three times a week, Cerron would take Maria on a walk through the Royal Gardens. Twice a week, Cerron would teach Maria Täk – which she was quickly getting the hang of – and once a week, Maria would teach Cerron gardening – which he seemed to enjoy, but not really understand.

And things were… pretty good.

Maria could cope with living like this until a knight would be able to rescue her, no problem. She was just afraid that she might be enjoying herself a bit too much.