Page 39 of Heir to a Curse

Chapter 15

Idreamt briefly of tea. Could smell the scent of it wafting around me. A soothing breath of something I could almost recognize. It helped me sleep for a while, easing me into a light doze that didn’t dissipate the headache, but allowed me some rest.

Twice I woke to find the little dragon clutched in my fist and thought of putting it back on the nightstand, but it never happened. I drifted again, back into sleep, and a memory of some kind, more than a dream. Faces vague, though small elements trickled through my brain. My father working at an outside market, selling the tea my mother created.

Day after day it was the same. Until there was smoke on the horizon. War, came the mutterings of fear around me. I’d been little more than a half dozen years old, or so I thought. War was something I didn’t understand at all. Not yet.

But a palace was burning. The local official lived there; their servants often bought tea from my parents. The village was in an uproar of dissent. Some calling for looting, which my parents said meant people would take things from the palace of value. Others claimed word would have to be sent to someone. They made that sound very important, though again I didn’t understand.

I followed my father as he picked up a sword and headed toward that sprawling estate. A handful of other men did the same. I wasn’t sure what they expected. The pile of bodies outside the gates spreading ash and the stench of burning corpses was not what I’d expected. My father did not shield me from the sight, instead he bid me to remember it, as this was what happened in war. Death and horror.

He told me rich men killed over material things while poor men bartered for food. Better to be the latter than dead. Pride and honor meant only so much if you were a ghost. If I’d recalled those words later in life, I might have saved myself a lot of trouble.

The inside of the palace was mostly empty. Some rooms already looted of anything of value, others trashed, everything broken and bodies still lying about. I tried not to look. There was so much death. And silence.

An eerie presence seemed to blanket the entire place. Perhaps an effect of the slaughter, or simply the lack of human life, I wasn’t certain. Only that I clung to my father’s side as we searched the rooms. Were they looking for life? If so, there was none to be found. Not a servant or noble of any kind left alive.

The only sound was of our footsteps, our men, going from room to room. This palace wasn’t nearly as large as ones I would experience later in life. But much bigger than the tiny hut I’d begun my life in. We traversed the expanse of it, searched every room, finding nothing but destruction and death. My father said that a warlord had already come and gone, taking everything of value, and destroyed a family of officials and all their servants.

Destroyed. Murdered. I remember him sitting me down in the center garden of the palace to wait, while they dug through rooms full of documents which had been shredded. At least the garden was free of bodies. The blooms around me a peaceful spread of color instead of the dark brown of dried blood and the blackened, burned corpses outside the gate.

I closed my eyes to try to wash away the memories with the sunlight, and heard a faint crying. Not the wail of a ghost as sometimes the children tried to scare each other with, though the place had plenty of reason to be filled with spirits, but something smaller.

I got up and began to follow the sound, wading into a thick stalk of thorned roses, wincing as they sliced into me, but finally finding a shallow path in the leaves. A set of tiny dark eyes stared at me in terror. I blinked at him, covered in soot and blood, curled up in the middle of thorns as though his own pain didn’t matter in that moment. Little more than a baby, I’d thought, a few years old at most. Tiny, as even I had trouble getting into the small hidey-hole. Yet I crawled as closely as I could, held out a hand for him, even offered him a bit of the rice treat I’d tucked away that morning.

Those eyes got huge, and a tiny hand reached for mine, letting me pull him into my arms. A feeling of calm settled over me. Having him in my arms, seeing those wide eyes focused on me, those felt right. Like he was where he was supposed to be.

He ate curled up in my lap, while I rocked him like I had some of the village children when they’d fall and cry over a skinned knee. Covered in cuts and bruises, I worried he would need more care than I could provide. Perhaps my mother could help, she had a thousand teas of healing magic. Everyone proclaimed her blends could save the gods themselves. So when father called for me, I answered, despite the little boy trembling in my arms.

Unexpected, my father had said. Like finding a child alive amidst all the death could only mean something very significant. Yet we did bring him back home with us. Mother cleaned him, fed him, treated his wounds, and we curled up to nap together. He clung to my hand whenever we left the hut, his big, dark eyes following me in earnest. And that was okay, it felt right for him to be there, to sleep curled up beside me, to have him close.

He stayed with us for weeks, a curiosity and an anomaly to the other children since he didn’t know how to play, or seem to much understand us when we spoke. Though that began to change over the weeks as we taught him the joy of running about the village unfettered, and living among rice fields and fat calves. Mother kept his belly filled with milk, rice, and watered-down tea while he healed. She held him when he cried for his mother whom Father said had been killed.

He listened to my mother intensely, studying her as she built her tea blends like he was memorizing them even then. She let him sip a dozen teas that I would never touch for the floral smell of them. He never cringed or pushed it away. Instead he’d pick flowers and bring them, or gather leaves to ask about. And many a day we spent with my mother in giant fields, searching for a particular bloom or leaf. It was a simpler time before the world again erupted into chaos.

Then the soldiers came. Not a rabble like those who had destroyed the palace, but something more organized. Father had gone out to meet them, spoke to them of what they saw and how the village had cared for the bodies of the dead.

Chatter from those listening in, indicated that a new official would be installed in the palace. Did that mean they’d take the boy from our family? My father pointed to us, specifically at the boy who cowered beside me. It had been a few weeks since he’d stopped crying every day, but the fear never seemed to leave him. I put a protective arm around him, not willing to let them rip him away. Had no idea in that moment what that would mean for me, though it seemed to change the wave of my own fate as well.

* * *

Iwoke slightly, enough to sip at tea, the flavor floral and warm on my lips. I sighed, catching a glimpse of the white hair and dark eyes. “I’m dreaming,” I told him. My mystery man helped me sit and held the cup of tea for me. “So many dreams.”

“Of course,” he agreed, accent slight in his soft tone.

“You’re not really here,” I informed him. “Just a figment of my imagination.”

“Sip the tea,” he said, not trying to dissuade me of believing he was real or not.

“You were the little boy,” I thought out loud. “The one we found. I tried to protect you.”

He stiffened, a long breath falling from him like he’d been hit in the gut instead of sitting beside me in the dark of the cabin. “Yes. My curse always follows you.”

“Curse? Why are you cursed? You were a baby.”

“They took you from your parents. Do you remember? Thought to reward your parents with giving you education and status as a soldier. Except you were your parents only child, so it meant the end of their business and the simple, happy life they’d crafted. Instead you were forced to be my companion and guard.” He stroked my face, fingers tugging at my hair for a moment, rubbing my brow. It hurt and felt delightful all at once.

“My head hurts so much,” I said.