King of the Rising

by Kacen Callender

  She’s baiting me, but I still answer. “I’m not ruling Hans Lollik Helle.”

  “Oh?” She turns to look at me over her shoulder. She’s become thinner, her cheekbones hollow. “Who is, then? Is it Malthe? Maybe it’s Marieke. Someone must be ruling the island.”

  “No one is ruling the island.” She can see this truth inside of me easily. “We have leaders for the war, but when we’ve won, the people will rule themselves.”

  “As you’ve imagined peaceful islands would exist,” she says, turning away from me again. “How long do you think that will last?”

  Anger simmers in me. She mocks the rebellion. Mocks her own people. “I’ve pitied you.”

  There’s a spark of anger in her. She wants to be consoled, but she feels humiliated that I’ve said this. She thinks I mean to suggest that she’s beneath me. “You can keep your pity.”

  “You’re a victim in a way,” I tell her. Finally she quiets and listens. “You were never taught about our people—our culture. You were never given the chance to properly learn the prayers of the spirits or the ways of the islands.”

  She stands up and faces me. “And you’re here to teach me?”

  “Learning might be the one thing that could save your life.”

  If I didn’t fully have her attention before, I have it now. She narrows her eyes, silently waiting for me to continue.

  “The only way you understand how to live in this world is how you’ve survived the Fjern. They are willing to steal and enslave and kill to fulfill their greed. That’s where we differ. We don’t need to take advantage of others to live. We rely on one another. Everyone is able to live because no one person prospers over another. There is no throne, there is no crown. There’s only our community and our people.”

  “It’s difficult for me to believe that anyone would rely on one another and share willingly without conflict. It’s inevitable that someone will want to have more power than all the others.”

  “It’s only difficult for you to believe because you’ve never witnessed it for yourself.” I try to control the exasperation. I invite her to look inside of me, so that she can see examples for herself. She sees the community that’s already begun to grow here on the royal island in the midst of the war. She sees what I have in my years on Jannik Helle: I wasn’t trusted, but I could still witness the ways our people would come together and help one another, whisper their prayers in the night and at dawn.

  “And you believe I’m capable of joining such a world,” she says, voice soft. There’s a peace inside of her. She thinks of the life she’d wanted for herself, away from the Fjern.

  “I know that you are.”

  She meets my gaze again. Her expression hardens in defense, but she doesn’t look away. “Do you think I could be forgiven?” she asks. When I don’t respond, she says, “Would you be able to forgive me?”

  I’m not sure of the answer to that. I tell her the truth. She takes a deep breath. The wall between us is still down. She sees how I used her kraft to work through the emotions of the guards. Georg’s pain was in my hands. “You aren’t so different from me,” she says. “You also manipulated someone to do your bidding. You controlled that guard’s emotions.”

  “I empathized with him,” I tell her.

  “Empathy,” she says. “Something you’re worried that I’m incapable of feeling.”

  I don’t answer her. She’s already seen the other reason I’ve come, and she says that I should tell Marieke that the food and water isn’t enough, but she assumes she won’t be given more.

  “How long will you keep me here?” she asks.

  “Until the others agree that you can leave.”

  “Until I’ve learned to be a true islander, you mean.” She’s already seen the discussions we’ve had. She realizes that there’s a high possibility that she won’t leave this island alive. “And do you think that I should be able to leave this prison?”

  “There have been worse prisons.”

  “It’s still a prison,” she says with a hard voice. “I want to leave. Let me out. I can’t be any threat on an island where I’m surrounded by enemies.”

  “Malthe disagrees.”

  “What does he think I’ll do? There isn’t any way that I can take control of dozens of islanders. Someone would kill me before I got far.” She walks to the wall, but her back faces the hole that has caved in. She eyes me, curious. She’s always been curious about me.

  “You know this well yourself,” she says. “I’m not surprised. My own kraft changed and evolved as I grew older and as I became more powerful. I wonder if this is the end of your kraft’s changes, or if there’s still more to come. Is it only with me, this kraft? No,” she says, feeling the answer of Geir. “You’ve experienced this with another on the island. But you might be only reading his mind. What of other abilities? Can you take those powers also? It might be a question worth finding the answer to.”

  She falls into silence, letting the idea settle. There’s only one other person on this island that I know of, besides Geir and the young Anke, that has kraft. Patrika Årud is still locked away in the dungeons. Sigourney must have a motivation to send me to the woman. Sigourney doesn’t have the ability that I do, to use a mental block between us and hide her true intentions. I can see that she hopes I will go to Patrika Årud. She hopes that the woman will anger me, and that I’ll have her killed. Patrika Årud and Sigourney Rose are the only remaining kongelig on this island. If Patrika was to be executed, then Sigourney believes her importance as a hostage would rise.

  “Do you really think you have any value to the Fjern?” I ask her.

  “I suppose there’s really no way to know until that question is tested.”

  “It’s a gamble,” I say. “One that could end in your death.”

  “The chances that I won’t make it out of this alive are already quite high,” she says with a small smile. It’s one that might have been considered enigmatic by the Fjern, once upon a time—the sign that she was raised to be a part of the kongelig. The smile is a mask that she uses to hide the fear. I can feel it inside of her, twisting through her body. It clouds her mind. She’s desperate. She doesn’t want to die.

  She turns her back on me once more. “If you aren’t here to kill me, and you aren’t here to release me, then there isn’t a point for you to stay, is there?” Before I leave, she tells me, “I’m not sure I can be the person you want me to be, but I can try.”

  I leave the manor with its white walls that crumble to stone and then to sand. Dusk falls and fruit bats are shadows against the purple sky. I remember the sky as it was in my dreams and in my nightmares: the fire that had been set in the clouds. I’m not sure if this is a fire that was set before the Fjern arrived on these islands, or after they came. A fire set by the hands of my own people, so that we could rise again.

  I’m angry with myself when I stop outside of the doors in the broken courtyard. Even when she can’t control me, Sigourney Rose finds a way to manipulate me. I turn around. I walk down the halls, caped in shadow. Down the stairs and into the leaking dungeons. I’m surprised none of the islanders have formed their mobs to pull Patrika Årud from her cage and hang her by her neck. It’s possible that they’re glad that she suffers alone in her prison. It’s possible they simply could not find a key.

  She does suffer, that much is clear. There is little light here. My eyes take a while to adjust to the shadow. I stumble, hand on the slick wall that sweats in the heat. When my eyes do adjust, I see the three empty cells and her, in the corner of the very last one. She sits, knees pulled to her chest. Her hair is matted and frayed. She is bruised. A mob did not come here to kill her, but someone has visited and given their own punishment.

  When I stop in front of her cell, Patrika looks at me with dread. She doesn’t try to hide it. She is broken and she’s realized she won’t leave this island alive. The anxiety in her eyes, the tightening grip of her arms and hands, the hitch in her breath—I see it a
ll, but it doesn’t bring me the pleasure I’d hoped it would. I see her, and I can only feel the quickening of my own heart and the fear racing through my blood.

  It’s a fear that once made me ashamed. I’d wished I could be braver when I was summoned to her. In the stories my grandmother would whisper to me at night, the heroes were the ones who faced their fears with bravery, no matter the circumstances. Even if they knew they were to die, they stood with their heads high and their backs straight. There was once an angry spirit who’d walked from the bottom of the ocean floor and onto the sand of the bay. The spirit, enraged that his life had been taken from him, demanded the life of a girl child every time he came—until, finally, there were no more girls for the islanders to sacrifice, and a woman volunteered her life instead. She went to the bay, where she knew the spirit would drag her into the sea so that she could drown in its depths. And when she went to the sand, she rolled her shoulders back and stared at the sea with fearlessness. The spirit was used to the cries and screams. He asked, “Why don’t you fear me?” She said, “What do I have to fear? The worst you will do is kill me.” The spirit took her, and she drowned in the sea, but while he had her body, that was all he was able to take.

  I wish I could say I was like the woman from this story. I try to force the courage, the bravery, the strength. This is what’s expected. This is what my mother wants from me whenever she visits me in my dreams. But I’m a coward. There was a time, once, when I told myself that I was fearless. My life wasn’t my own. What did I have to fear? I would test the line between life and death time and again. I would risk the waters of the sea and would spit at a Fjernman’s feet. I would hang from the trees, waiting for death to finally take me. I told myself that I didn’t care if I died, because at least then I would truly be free. But I was always afraid then. I’m even more afraid now. There’s a chance we could win this war against the Fjern. There’s a chance I could know what true freedom would mean, the kongelig dead at my feet. The closer I am to owning my body, the more I want to live. The desire to live vibrates through me, rumbling with the quiet intensity of darkened clouds.

  There isn’t anything Patrika Årud can do to me. I’m not the child I once was. I can stop her kraft. She can’t hurt me anymore. But the memories flood through me still. Memories of standing alone in her room as she examined me. I’d only been a child, but she hadn’t been ashamed of her interests. She treated me as all the Fjern treat my people. I was a game to her, and each night my father sent me to Patrika, she had a goal of discovering how to inflict the most pain on a body. Maybe some of it was experimentation or practice for her kraft. But I also remember the pleasure in her eyes and the twist of her smile. She enjoyed the way I cried and pleaded and screamed.

  Patrika watches me from her cell. She thinks I’ve finally come for revenge. She’s never acknowledged what she did to me so many years ago. She eventually stopped her game as I grew older. Maybe she was tired of me. Maybe she wasn’t interested in my body as I became a man. If Patrika ever met my eye on the island of Hans Lollik Helle, when I was brought here with my brother as his personal guard for the storm season, she would only pretend not to remember me. I’d wondered then if she really could not tell that I was the boy she’d tortured for so many nights, but with Sigourney’s kraft lingering inside of me, I can see how clearly Patrika always knew who I was. She would often look at me and remember with a flint of pleasure the times I’d been brought to her rooms. As an adult, I wasn’t worth the acknowledgment, and she had nothing to fear—not my anger or my retribution.

  She fears me. She’s so afraid that she doesn’t speak. She’s worried that the wrong words will anger me. She’s worried that I’ll kill her no matter what she says.

  I could ask her questions. I could ask her why she tortured me. I could ask her if she realizes how she has affected me. The way I flinch away from touch. The way I’ve never wanted to share another’s bed because I can only remember the way she’d pulled me into hers. How some nights, pain will rack through my body and I’ll jerk awake with the taste of blood in my mouth. I could ask her many questions, but the words won’t leave my throat, and I realize I don’t want to hear her voice.

  I step closer to her cell. She tries to press herself back against the wall, like she hopes she can disappear through it. “Please—” she begins.

  I close my eyes as I reach for her kraft. I can feel the power in her veins like a thread I only have to pull for it to unravel. I tug. She wouldn’t be able to use her kraft on me if she tried. This isn’t why I came. I let the thread unravel inside of me. I can feel her kraft like a snake, cold and unsettling beneath my skin. It coils and tightens. I open my eyes again, and I let the power ricochet from me.

  I reach for Elskerinde Årud, imagining needles piercing her skin. Her eyes widen with surprise and realization, and she releases a breath—then a scream as the needles spear through her flesh and her bones. Her screams echo through the dungeons and fill my ears. I want the noise to stop. I can’t stand the sound of pain, even if it’s from the lips of the woman who caused me so much of my own. I try to imagine withdrawing the needles, slowly, and she bends over, grasping at her skin as she sobs. There’s confusion in her, at the very back of her mind—how did I manage to use her kraft?—but the pain has taken over all sense. Patrika Årud has never felt a pain like that before. She’d wondered sometimes what the pain of her kraft might feel like, and as a child in morbid curiosity had tried to turn the kraft against herself, but it’d never worked. Now, she knows.

  I turn to leave.

  “Wait,” she gasps. I pause. She curses herself, afraid that I might use the power against her again, but she has to ask. “How did you—my kraft,” she says, an unformed sentence that I still understand.

  I don’t owe her any answers. She’s my prisoner, and if anyone is to be interrogated, it’s her. I had only one question when I came here, and it’s been answered. I move again, toward the light at the top of the stairs.

  “Did you steal my kraft?” Patrika Årud asks behind me. “How did you take it?”

  Her words follow me as I walk. She asked her question like I had stolen her power. She still has it. Her abilities are still in her blood. But she thinks I’ve stolen what isn’t rightfully mine in the way the Fjern believe we have stolen our own freedom.

  I walk down the hill and toward the bay. The rocks offer me calmness. Their solid form was here before I was born and will be here after I die. This is a place I can untangle my thoughts and return to a state where I’m not ruled by my rage or hatred or fear. I walk across the sand, and I see that someone is there. A shadow, an outline. They work with a boat. Their kraft is powerful. This is what I immediately feel. Their kraft allows them to hide their ability, as they have hidden it for some time. Because they think they’re alone, there’s no reason to put in such an effort. It’s only when they see me that their kraft spikes.

  I walk down the hill and toward the bay where I often like to stand with my thoughts. The rocks offer me calmness. Their solid form has been here before I was born and they will be here after I die. It’s only as I walk closer that something tugs on my mind. There’s something I’ve forgotten. I can feel the edges of the memory slipping away like the details of a dream I try to grasp after waking, until the realization that there’s something I must remember begins to fade.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It’s almost dark. There’s no moon in the purple sky, and the other islands of Hans Lollik are faded in the dimming light. I can see their outlines on the horizon. I wonder what their names were before the Fjern arrived. I wonder what we had named ourselves. The people who had been here before the Fjern, before their land and sea and flesh were taken—what would they have wanted? Would they have wanted us to save our home? Or would they prefer for us to burn the Fjern, even if it meant burning these islands with them?

  We could start again. This is what I think my mother wants me to see. Burn the islands to ash, bury the bodies of the pale-skinn
ed Fjern beneath the dirt, and start again.

  There’s singing and dancing. The old house that had once belonged to Lothar Niklasson has been filled with islanders. Lothar had a house deep in the brush with many rooms and comfortable beds, softer than the straw and hardwood and dirt floors we’ve been so accustomed to sleeping on. There’s a celebration at the manor almost every night. The food and drink is a waste, and Malthe is angry we celebrate a war that hasn’t been won, but I smile. The laughter I hear, the drunken voices that tell stories of memories not marred by the whip or the machete or the rope—I think this is a sound that would fill the air of all the islands if we’d always had our freedom. It’s a sound that I hope I’ll hear often. There isn’t anything wrong with wanting to experience joy, especially when faced with the fact that in this war we will likely die.

  I don’t join them. The sky turns to black with no light as I walk farther away from the flickering torches, the music and shouts, and into the scratching brush of weeds and branches and thorns. I use my memory and strain my eyes in the dim light to follow the path toward the slaves’ quarters where I spend my nights alone. I love my people, but it’s difficult for me to forget how I was treated as the master’s son. I was angry that they refused to see that I was one of them. I was enraged that they would sit idly by, watching as my father whipped me. We could have all easily overpowered him. We could have overpowered the Fjern a thousand times and taken our freedom. But this was a child’s anger. There was still so much that I didn’t understand. I can’t blame any of them for having looked away. I can’t blame any of them for distrusting me, either. I am an islander, but I’m also a Jannik. I’m not sure I trust myself.

  I hear a whisper. It’s him.

  I pause and turn, expecting to see someone on the dirt path behind me. The brush rustles in the cooling night breeze, then stills as the trade wind dies.

  A whisper, again—but I realize it’s not a whisper I’d hear out loud. It’s too close for that, not in my ear but in my head. Now.