The Award Flyers

I hate traveling through Murkney. The trees never seem to want to open up, until you are in the middle of a mine, and the mines refuse to be where they are supposed to be. There are three valleys in the mountainous kingdom, and I have lived in all three. But today, I am traveling to the three peaks, where the castle sits.

It sits on a low peak, just low enough to where it makes sense for the gardens to thrive, and high enough to where it casts a shadow across the kingdom. It rises high, the towers scraping the sky, raising as high as the tallest mountain.

 I call it quits when I can’t see the sun in the sky anymore, opting instead to sit against a tree and break bread. I refuse to travel through the night, not with how dangerous the forest is.  Gods only know where I would end up stumbling through the dark. I nestle back, stretching my legs out in front of me. I flip my bag open, and paw through the jumbled mess. As I pulled the humble meal from my satchel, I hear a voice.

“Hello?” The voice is thin and reedy, old.

I respond. “Hello, there.”

Out of the dimming forest, limps a small old woman. She leaned heavily on her cane, so many shawls hanging around her that it was impossible to say where the shawls ended, and the woman began. It drove me insane. Sure it was chilly at night, but even three shawls would be oversufficient, and the grandmother had far more than three.

She toddled over to me, lowering herself slowly to sit beside me, against the wide oak. “Hello, child.” She patted my arm, and I flinched slightly. She withdrew her hand, slowly, as if she were afraid that I would disappear. And if it weren't for my mangled leg, I probably would have.

 “Pardon me, my son,” She looked towards me with her face, and I saw it. Her eyes were white, sightless, and opaque. Blind. She was blind. How was she walking though the woods with nothing more than a cane?

 She smiled, and I shivered. “Are you going to ask me questions, or are you going to share a meal with a tired old woman?”

I looked away from her chagrinned. Then I heard what she had said. “How can you tell, I have a meal to share?”

She turned those eyes on me again, and she grinned, her toothless maw gaping like the deepest mine. I feared for my life, the way I never had in my ten years of fighting in the war. Somehow, I felt that this little, blind grandmother could kill me in ways that the enemy had never considered.

“Some see with more than eyes, boy.” She turned to look forward, again. “And I like what I see in you.”

I tore my bread in two. “What do you see?” I handed her half, placing my waterskin between the two of us.

“A soldier. A runaway. A hero. An orphan. A man who observes more than he speaks.” She tore at the bread, gumming the soft inner portion, while crumbling the crispy outer for the birds.

I shook my head at her words. Unnerving. Accurate. Except for one thing. “I’m no hero. I was abandoned when my leg broke, and I was deemed useless. An entire village was murdered while I laid there feeling sorry for myself.” I swatted at my left thigh, remembering when it was encased in fabric and sticks up to my hip.

“Maybe you weren’t meant for that battle.” She picked up the waterskin, squirting water into her mouth. “Maybe you were meant to be an answer to a prayer in another battle.”

A paper drifted to my leg. I don’t know where it came from, but bold words seized my attention. Reward. Marriage to the heir. Half the kingdom. Eldest princess.

“The king is offering his eldest daughter’s hand in marriage to any man that can solve their curse?” I felt so much disgust, that it had to have been written across my face. The girl couldn’t have been more than twenty, and yet her father thought to barter her off like a common broodmare. Disgusting. I shuddered.

The old woman laughed. “Not just any man.” She corrected. “You.” She shoved back some of her shawls, revealing a threadbare bag. She pulled from it, yet another shawl. “With this, you will be able to follow the princesses as they journey through the dark, to their deadly destination.”

“But you can’t just tell me where they go each night?” I frowned, taking the shawl, and turning it over in my hands. “And how will this help?”

"That isn't the way the rules of the game work. And that." She shook her head. “T’is an invisibility cloak, Alessio Laguardia.”

 I jolted when she said my name. “I didn’t tell you my name, witch.”

She rose. “Be careful who you call a witch, Alessio. You might just be right.” She straightened her shawls, tucking them around herself. “I must be off. You have quite the decision ahead of you, and my journey home is long.” She didn't sound as old or brittle as she had when she had first called out.

Terror struck my bones at the meaning behind the youthfulness in the voice of the crone. Magyck. I cringed away from her as she finished adjusting her clothes.

She started walking away, before she flung more words of wisdom over her shoulder. “Make sure you make the right choice, Alessio. Lives are counting on it.”

I didn’t sleep much that night before I continued my journey, moving ahead to my final destination. A new job, guarding the palace from danger. But I started questioning exactly what I would be guarding the palace against. Inner or outer threats? Or would I be protecting magyck users? And just how far would they ask me to push my boundaries? Would I be allowed to keep my boundaries?