Lives of Kings

by Lucy Leiderman

  Garrison sat. “All right,” he said. “Tell us the story.”

  I was skeptical, but a hunch was better than nothing, and I felt us approaching another standstill in our progress in defeating the Godelan. Kian took a deep breath as if he was about to share a secret.

  “Goram and Eila lived in the Otherworld with all the other gods. They were a tribe, much like our people,” he began, “but they were not allowed to be together because they were both promised to someone else. So they found a new world to run away to. It became the world of mortals.”

  He was right. I had heard this story a hundred times. We all had. Still, we listened intently, drawing as much of our past memories from it as possible.

  “When Eila’s father found their secret world,” Kian continued, “he suspected why his daughter had escaped there and he began to watch it, waiting for her and Goram to appear. But Eila was much more clever than her father and knew about his plan. When she would want to be with Goram, they would disguise themselves and change into various animal forms so that they could enjoy the world they created.”

  Here, Kian flipped to another page with strange animal symbols that also looked vaguely familiar.

  “That’s why our language was often written in the shapes of animals. Each curve had a meaning to honour them,” he said. “Eila’s father grew more and more suspicious. One day, as she and Goram flew over their land, her father struck him down. When Goram fell to earth, he was broken into a million pieces, and that became our land. Eila’s father then banished her to our world and never let her return home. Which was just as well, since she was so grief-stricken, she could never leave Goram. She stayed by his side and gave birth to the first people.”

  “I remember the story,” I told him, “but what does that have to do with how we defeat the Godelan?”

  Kian smiled. He’d been waiting for this question. This was his big reveal. “The man you call Third Magician, the man I called Magician, once told me that in fact we are all made from earth,” Kian said. “We are earth before we are born and we are earth after we die. What binds us to our human selves during life is our human name.”

  Seth sat up quickly, as if having realized something. “Their names,” he said. “We need to find out their names.”

  Kian broke into an even wider grin. “Exactly. Magician told me that the right person could control someone by his or her name. I figured out the right person is the High King. As their ruler, the king of kings and of our people, you can find a way to make them obedient to you as our father once did.”

  “They disobeyed our father,” Seth reminded him.

  “Because being king isn’t all-binding,” Kian said. “Magician once hinted that I may have power with the names, but without magic, I cannot bind them. Our father didn’t have magic either. But you are the rightful High King now, and you could do it.”

  The magic was familiar, and somehow, though it would sound crazy to anyone else, it made perfect sense to me.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before,” Kian said. “Though you do need magic to truly wield that power. Father couldn’t keep them obedient, and neither can I.”

  “One problem,” I said. “How do we find out their names?”

  “I haven’t thought of that,” Kian admitted. “But this is their weakness. If you find the names, you can undo them.”

  Chapter Ten

  We stayed in Dublin for another few days researching what the libraries had to offer and cleaning up our hotel room as best we could. I dreaded finding out how much they would charge us for the damage.

  Two days into our search for information on name magic, a librarian told us a library in Oxford had another text that could be useful. She warned us, however, that no one had succeeded in reading it. The strange animal symbols didn’t mean anything to anyone. Hopeful that perhaps being near it or touching it would give us something, anything, to go on, we decided to give it a shot.

  While Garrison was enjoying what he called time off, and Moira disappeared for hours, Seth and Kian finally got to spend time together. They were becoming brothers again, and I liked watching them becoming more reconciled with whatever mistakes had torn them apart in the past.

  The downside of this was that I had a lot of alone time in huge libraries with their dusty books, reading gory myths and wondering what the Godelan had in store for us if they did happen to find us first. After all, they had tried to kill us by wiping a whole island off the map.

  We weren’t getting any closer to finding the other three people of our kind, and the fruitless search for the Godels’ real names soon became frustrating.

  I got back to the hotel after midnight the night before we were setting off for London. Our flight was the next afternoon, and I just wanted to bury my head under a pillow until we were due to leave. Finding no information about the Godelan or our own tribe, the Riada, felt like I was moving backward every day.

  My head ached from straining to read old, confusing books, and my eyes were so heavy I could feel my eyelids. My feet hurt from walking down dozens of aisles of shelves and sifting through hundreds of books. I knew it was my own fault — I had thrown myself into the work. No one forced me. But I craved doing something, even if that something was, apparently, redundant.

  I dropped my coat and bag on a chair in the dark and headed to my room.

  “Hey!”

  As my foot hit something solid, I flew forward onto my knees, nearly missing smacking my head on the coffee table. I scuffled with the thing on the floor for a few seconds until Kian turned on the light. He winced, holding his side.

  “What were you doing on the floor?” I whispered angrily.

  Really, I was mad at myself. I felt like my hurting him accidentally could eventually be misconstrued as bottled-up anger. Which, I was nearly sure, it wasn’t.

  Kian had been lying on the floor between the couch, chair, and coffee table. He had actually chosen the only part of the living room that wasn’t even carpeted. The floor must have been cold and hard.

  “It’s more comfortable,” he said quietly, still rubbing his ribs. I knew he was lying.

  Things had changed since we were together the previous year. I felt more grown up — like we were equals. Now that I knew how clueless he was as a teenager brought to this world, his mystique was gone, dissolved into a kid who had been saddled with too much responsibility and tragedy and had made a mistake.

  “I don’t believe you,” I said. “I’ve seen you sleep in a lot of soft beds. Why are you on the floor?”

  “It reminds me of home,” he said. But he phrased it more like a question.

  “Nope,” I said. “Try again.”

  Kian sighed. “I like this sometimes. I started sleeping on the floor when Magician brought me here.”

  “Why?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

  Kian shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do,” I told him. “You’re punishing yourself.”

  “Because I failed,” he admitted. “I got too comfortable with this life — with you. I forgot how much I hated them, and I did exactly as they asked. The situation is being repaired slowly. But I can’t let myself forget again.”

  Maybe it was because it was late and I was exhausted, or because my fruitless searches had brought up nothing and my sadness mixed with his was too much to bear, but I stepped forward until I stood directly in front of him.

  It was all I could bring myself to do. I stood and waited. Slowly, hesitantly, Kian wrapped his arms around me and rested his head on top of mine. I breathed in, trying to take in this moment and make it a part of me.

  “You’re not going to do it again,” I said into his neck. “You’ll never forget who you are, and you won’t give up on us. After all, we need you.”

  I felt him take a deep breath and nod.

  “How long have you been sleeping on the ground?”

  Kian, still hugging me, shrugged. “Since I left you,” he whispered.


  “Come on,” I said, pulling away.

  I took his hand and headed to my room. In hindsight, exhaustion made me braver than I ever could be during a reasonable hour.

  I was surprised he didn’t ask questions, protest, or do anything to stop me. We seemed to understand each other. Having lost his shell-like exterior that he’d worn on and off since I met him, Kian was human and vulnerable.

  He followed me into the room. I was too tired to do anything but kick off my shoes and climb under the covers. Kian stood over the bed for a moment.

  “What?” I asked him sleepily.

  “This is more than I deserve,” he said.

  “You don’t know what you deserve. Everyone’s done bad things in the past, myself and your brother included.” Seth had only told him the full story a few days ago. “Dishonourable things. Cowardly things. But you move on and try not to repeat them. That’s what separates us from the Godelan.”

  In the darkness I could only see his shape, considering. Finally, he climbed under the covers and lay next to me, staring up at the ceiling.

  “How is it?” I asked. “Being in bed?”

  He turned to me and I saw a small smile. “I like the company,” he said. “Reminds me of New York, when I could reach out and hold your hand while you slept.”

  That caught me off guard. “Did you?”

  “Sometimes,” he admitted. “You’d be turning in your sleep. Mumbling. Sometimes you’d cry. Your nightmares woke me up, and I held your hand.”

  I propped myself up on one elbow to look at him. “Why didn’t you ever tell me that?”

  I felt Kian shrug. “I guess there’s never been the right moment.”

  I lay back down but got closer and rested my head on his chest. While this was a bolder move than I had ever taken, tiredness and comfort pushed all other thoughts away. Kian’s silence and warmth lulled me to sleep almost immediately.

  Wind whipped by me, but I didn’t mind. This was summer wind, and I rejoiced in it. I felt light and free — like magic itself. I was not past Gwen. I was not anyone. I was a wisp in time and I let my soul soar, looking out to a vast sea that was the richest shade of dark blue I had ever seen. My heart felt freer and more hopeful than I had ever experienced in any of my memories.

  I surveyed the horizon. Suddenly, something was wrong. The dream went from being pleasant to terrifying as a deep-rooted fear took over. A row of ships sailed toward me. These ships were new to me, the kind that could bring many men over large bodies of water. But now they approached. Something glinted in the sunlight. A reflection. They had metal. They had weapons.

  I ran to the village. As I struggled for breath but urged myself forward, my vision blurred. Life sped until I had used all of my energy, and it was still not enough. The Riada dressed for battle. I tried to scream at them to stop, to wait, to learn whom they were dealing with, but they couldn’t hear me. The ships landed. We went to meet them, ready for war.

  Suddenly, I stood in front of only the burned-out shells of ships. The invading people were gone. They had set their own ships on fire and trespassed on our land. How would we know them now from our own?

  I awoke with a gasp.

  The movement of the train had seemed unnatural at first, as if my whole world was moving. I was still tired from the delay at the Dublin airport and had fallen asleep on our way from London to Oxford. Kian sat next to me and took my hand reassuringly. He smiled, but there was worry in his eyes. He put a hand to my forehead.

  “You’re sweating in January,” he told me with a frown. “Are you okay? Did you have that dream again?”

  I nodded.

  The dream had visited me in my sleep last night, forcing me to get up early in the morning, leaving Kian in my bed. When my friends awoke and found me in the kitchen while he still slept, I avoided answering any questions by making myself busy packing my things. The others had so far not commented on the new sleeping arrangements, though I watched Seth carefully for any sign that he minded. So far, nothing.

  I found the dream exhausting. This time I had known what was going to happen, but still I felt confused, scared, and desperate, just like I had the first time. It wasn’t a memory, like my other strange dreams — this was something more, and I felt blind for missing the meaning in it.

  Rain hammered the window of the carriage. The delay of our flight had been due to extremely bad weather. While it seemed typical of England, even locals shook their heads at how much rain had fallen.

  At the same time as people ditched their soaked and turned-out umbrellas in the aisles, a screen in front of me played terrifying images of a drought in Africa. Apparently it was the worst in years, and a ring of experts argued about who was responsible for global warming. I could have told them. The Godelan wanted the world — their own version of it.

  “I’m going to go find Seth and Garrison,” Kian said, getting up. They had left to get lunch.

  I nodded, but as soon as he was gone, I met Moira’s cold gaze.

  “What?” I asked, taken aback.

  “I know what you’re doing,” she said.

  There was anger behind her look that I hadn’t seen before. She hadn’t been herself in the last week, but when I thought more about it, I realized that I didn’t know what “herself” actually was anymore. If the Moira we met in England was gone, who was left?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes you do,” she fired back.

  I thought about how I could possibly have offended her.

  “I didn’t tell anyone about what happened at the airport,” I said defensively.

  I was mad at myself for being so apologetic when I had done nothing wrong, but I was tired, the weather was miserable, and I didn’t feel like a confrontation.

  “I know you didn’t,” she said. “You don’t need to get rid of me by turning the others against me; you already have.”

  I was at a loss for words. “What?” I fumbled for something to say. “I haven’t turned anyone against you!”

  Moira’s gaze softened. Her mouth opened slightly in surprise, as if she hadn’t expected her own behaviour. “It’s not your fault, Gwen. I know that,” she said earnestly, the animosity gone.

  I was confused and worried. Her behaviour was catapulting between angry and whatever the alternative was. I never got to ask her what she meant because Kian came back with Seth and Garrison in tow, and Moira shone a smile in their direction then went directly back to reading her magazine.

  “What’s the matter?” Kian asked me, sitting down. “You look stunned.”

  I continued to stare at Moira but she wouldn’t meet my gaze.

  “Nothing,” I said, not wanting to drag anyone else into this.

  She had had problems with me from the start, and considering our histories, I didn’t blame her. What worried me was if she had her magic back, she was powerful and wanted revenge. She was obviously of two minds. I just had to watch out for which one would win.

  Oxford was probably a lovely city. Certainly, judging by the postcards, I would have loved to look around. But we didn’t get to see any of that. As the train pulled into the station, we piled into an old-fashioned taxi and went directly to the student residences. Since the new winter semester had just begun, it was our only option.

  We pulled up to the building after taking so many twists and turns down narrow, cobblestoned streets that I lost track. The college we were staying at was named after some saint, or something else religious that I forgot as soon as it was told to me. It certainly looked old and Gothic, with tall spires and impressive panel windows.

  The taxi driver practically threw our bags at us, wanting to get out of the terrible weather as quickly as possible. After an elderly man showed us to our room — all the while sticking his nose up as if it was beneath him to help us — I was beginning to regret coming here.

  The room itself was nothing fancy, with three bunk beds and some night tables. There was a common living r
oom area that made me feel like I was in some movie about college kids or a reality TV show.

  Surprisingly, no one was around.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked the man.

  He looked down his nose at me for the hundredth time, as if I was bothering him.

  “Supper,” he said loudly. “If you follow the hall and go down the stairs, you’ll come to the main hall. The dining hall is beyond that.” He enunciated every word as if we didn’t speak English.

  As soon as he left, Garrison burst out laughing. “I think your American offended him.”

  I rolled my eyes, deciding everywhere that looked this fancy came with a price. And a rag-tag group of teenagers with one misfit adult really stood out.

  Hungry, since all Seth and Garrison had managed to get on the train were chocolate bars and potato chips, we followed his directions.

  The college was bigger than it appeared from the outside, with intricate carvings everywhere and stained-glass windows. Through a large set of heavy wooden double doors, we followed voices into the dining hall.

  Just like in a movie, everyone sat along long benches in dark robes at tables that ran the length of the room. Portraits of fancy-looking men hung all over the walls. A few people turned their heads when we entered, but the looks that lasted were mostly girls eyeing my friends. Garrison smiled stupidly while Seth and Kian simultaneously took a step back as if each gaze was a shove.

  Finding some seats in the middle of one of the tables by ourselves, we were served our meals by unhappy-looking students. They moved around the room practically invisible to the others. When I thanked one for bringing me water, she didn’t even reply.

  “This place is weird,” Seth said, digging into a mixture of mashed potatoes and French onion soup.

  “Everyone in robes,” Kian shook his head. “It makes me nervous.”

  “And they all talk and look down at you as if they have big boats,” Garrison added.

  Moira rolled her eyes at them. “That’s what Oxford is,” she said as if it was obvious. “Everyone knows. You grow up with an awe of the place, as if it’s a fortress.”