The Word Changers

by Ashlee Willis

  “Do you think he approves?” she murmured, half to herself.

  “Mm?” Kyran’s groggy voice came to her in the semi-dark, and she realized he had almost been asleep.

  “Oh,” she shrugged, “I was just thinking of the Author, and what he must think of us changing his tale.”

  Posy felt Kyran’s body shift next to her as he sat upright. “I have pondered that myself,” he admitted quietly. “But I have no answer. The Author is like a faraway fairytale, not truly real.” The irony of this statement only faintly touched Posy. “We have never seen him or heard him. There are only stories.”

  “But the centaurs,” Posy began. “They know he is real. They speak of him as if they know him.”

  “Yes,” Kyran nodded slowly. “But they are different than we are. They no longer live in the Kingdom. They no longer have to answer to my father.”

  “Whether the characters answer to the king or not makes no difference in the Author’s existence,” Posy said carefully, wishing she could see Kyran’s features better in the darkness.

  Kyran gave no answer for several moments. “If the Author is real, and if he has created this story and our world,” he finally answered slowly, “then he cannot approve of my father as king. Perhaps it is the Author’s plan that we change this story—for it is truly in need of changing, Posy. We have to trust that what we do is for the best, some part of a mysterious and complicated purpose of which we can’t see the whole.” His voice was calm and reassuring, and Posy sighed, relaxing her head against his shoulder. It was the first time she had heard Kyran speak of his father without anger and bitterness in his voice.

  Not truly real, Kyran had said. A faraway fairytale, he had said. But Posy wondered, suspected, began to believe, that sometimes reality was too solid and too hard, and that perhaps sometimes the clearest and straightest way to truth was through a fairytale.

  * * *

  A million stars studded the night sky, miles above and away beyond where Posy and Kyran slept. A cliff towered above the water, and the sea crashed below, thundering waves colliding against sheer rock. Across the water, winged creatures flew silently by, like noiseless shadows against a moon wreathed in gray clouds. Owls, a dozen of them, swept down to an almost invisible crack in the side of the cliff, their wings giving a hushed sigh before slowing and disappearing into the face of the rock.

  The entrance gave way to an enormous cave, a ceiling disappearing into unfathomable black, and an irregular stone floor, deep with water-filled gashes. The walls dripped with frigid water, the air tingled with chilling secrecy.

  “Fellow councilors,” Falak said, his steady voice echoing through the chamber. All the other owls settled down from their various perches on jutting shelves of rock, and the rustle of their feathers grew silent. Eleven pairs of large and gleaming eyes stared at Falak, his gray feathers reflecting the moonlight that filtered through the cracks in the wall.

  “We have come here to speak of the Kingdom tonight, and to decide what our course of action will be now that war is inevitable. We’ve no time for formalities, for we must return to the castle before sunrise, or we will be missed by the king.” Falak’s wide eyes searched the faces of his fellow creatures. “Who has a report to give me?”

  Egbert cleared his throat. He inched forward from where he perched, his dark feathers melding with his surroundings. “The glade was attacked successfully, Chief Councilor.”

  “Ah, yes.” Falak’s voice held pleasure. “Details, please.”

  “The ipotanes failed, as you know, but the centaurs were attacked again that same night, by a quickly gathered army of the ipotane deserters, together with soldiers of the Kingdom. It was a success.” Egbert’s eyes gleamed maliciously.

  “So all the centaurs were killed or taken captive?” Falak’s voice was sharp.

  “Well,” Egbert faltered. “Many were killed, yes, and we took their leader captive, as well as his mate. He calls her his wife, but they are animals. What do they know of such things?” Egbert laughed derisively.

  “I suppose animals should never rise above themselves, and forget the mindless creatures they are,” Falak said smoothly.

  “Yes—er—that is ...” Egbert’s eyes widened as he realized his mistake. “Not all animals, Chief,” he ended weakly.

  “Hmm,” Falak eyed him briefly, then turned his attention to the rest of the gathering. His eyes turned to a small, sharp-eyed owl, with night-black feathers and yellow glinting eyes. “Quintus.” Falak's voice struck the walls of the cave. “You have been following the prince and the imposter princess. Where are they?”

  “Oh, that is no problem,” sniveled the owl with a small smile. “They make it very easy on me, indeed they do. They were last seen in the centaur encampment, just before it was attacked.”

  “What did you say?” Falak’s voice had become deathly quiet.

  Quintus jerked his head sideways nervously and blinked once. “Yes, they were there. I even spotted them during the attack. Running through the forest with one of those filthy centaurs.”

  “Running away from the battle, then? Where did they go?” Falak questioned him sharply.

  “They ran into the glade, Chief, near the opening of the Glooming. I can only think they entered it, although I do not know how.”

  “You didn’t see them enter the Glooming?”

  “I—the battle was—there were many fighting around them. I cannot be sure, although I will say I am almost positive ...”

  Falak gave a slow sigh and made a tsking noise. “Quintus, Quintus, what are we to do with you? Our best scout, or so I thought, and you cannot even tell me the whereabouts of two children? Battle or no, they could not have disappeared into thin air.”

  “But that is exactly what they seemed to do, Chief!” burst out Quintus with a tinge of indignation. “I am the best scout you have, and you know it. I would not question something unless it was truly a mystery. And this is a mystery. No one knows for certain where the Glooming is, or in what manner you get there. No one but the centaurs. How can we know what truly happened? No,” he shook his head, “the most we can do is assume they are in the Glooming now. And even I could not follow them there.”

  “No,” Falak agreed. “You could not. But you can wait for their return. For return they must. If they find the princess Evanthe within the Glooming, and they bring her safely back into the Kingdom, our plans are overthrown. You, Quintus, will be the first to taste my anger if such a thing happens.” Quintus’ dark eyes stared emptily into Falak’s face. “Station guards at every known opening to the Glooming. Do whatever it takes to stop them from reaching the Kingdom alive—all of them.” Falak spoke now almost as if to himself. “They must die outside the Borders of the Kingdom.”

  A quiet voice spoke up then, barely audible above the hooting and murmuring of the owls as they spoke to each other. “But must we kill them, Chief Councilor?”

  Falak turned to look at Nocturne, a white owl with gray-tipped wings, his eyes black as the night.

  Nocturne continued. “If they were merely driven into the Wild Land, or even beyond, into the Unknown Land, would that not be enough? Can it be wise to begin your reign with murder?”

  The owls in the chamber had grown silent with anticipation and awe. Their leader and his decisions were not to be questioned.

  “Perhaps,” answered Falak after a long silence. His eyes glinted for a moment before he smiled amiably at Nocturne. “You are young yet. You have much to learn. Perhaps you would like to keep watch outside of the cave until our meeting has ended?” He asked, but it was a command. Nocturne bowed his head briefly, spread his wings and flew from the chamber. With a glance from Falak, two large owls followed swiftly behind him.

  Falak turned, smiling, to the others. “Anyone else with questions for me?”

  But he was met with silence.

  “We know that things that pass for treason and murder in the Author’s world are merely actions that must be taken to ensure safety fo
r all characters of the Plot, do we not?” Falak’s statement was met with murmuring hoots of agreement. “We know that in order to overthrow the king and control the government of the Plot, we must do things that, to weaker creatures, might seem unpalatable. But we know,” he stood taller on his perch of shadowed rock, chest thrust forward, “that what we do is strong, and right—indeed, it is good! The age of the owls has begun! So I say, down with the humans, and up with the owls! Death to the king!”

  His words were met with thunderous shouts and hoots, beating and flapping of wings, and cries of “Up with the owls, up with the owls!”

  “Death to the king, who has no one’s interest at heart but his own!” continued Falak in a booming voice. “And death to the Author, who only lives in the feeble minds of those weak enough to believe in him at all!”

  At these last words, there was a faltering of the cheers that rang through the chamber as if something unspeakable, unthought of, had been spoken. But one look at their Chief and leader, and the flinty intensity of his fiery eyes, and the owls took up their cheer once again, louder than before.

  “Up with the owls! Down with the humans! Death to the king and the Author!”

  * * *

  Outside the cave, on the shore by the crashing sea far below, Nocturne groaned, lying helplessly on his side. A broken wing and a smash to the head had been his reward for questioning his leader. His body ached with the beating, and his heart ached with the treachery of which he now wanted no part. Get away, get away, he told himself over and over, before they return and finish the job. For he knew Falak would kill him in a heartbeat.

  He began painfully dragging himself with his one good wing along the sand and toward the overhang of a cliff beyond. His sharp ears could hear the cheering above, and it made his insides roil with anger. Halfhearted as his participation had been to begin with, he now knew there was no turning back. Not now. Not after this. Therefore, he gritted his teeth and tried not to cry out in pain as he gave one last push that sent him under the slab of rock protruding above the sand. He did not stop there; he kept going, deeper and deeper into the rock until he could barely discern sunlight, barely hear the crash of waves on the shore. Just until they are gone, he told himself wearily. Then I must go—I must find a way, somehow, to warn the prince, warn the king, find the Author .... The thought wavered in his mind, then faded as darkness more profound than that of the cave came over him, and he was lost to all conscious thought.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Love and Hate

  Posy started awake, remnants of a dream clinging to her mind like a cobweb. It seemed she could still hear echoed hoots of derision and angry flapping of wings as she shook her head to clear it.

  “Bad dream?” Kyran was awake already, seated across the small space they shared and gazing at her in the weak light.

  “Yes—no ... I can hardly remember,” she answered uncertainly. It was unsettling to wake in darkness, after what seemed like a night’s sleep, and not be sure of the time of day. She felt she yearned for the sun already, and they had been in this underground labyrinth barely two days; at least, she thought they had. Perhaps it had been shorter ... or longer.

  “This place is full of bad dreams, I’d say. They climb the walls here,” Kyran said, his dark eyes roving around the chamber, lingering at the top of the staircase they soon must descend.

  “It wasn’t a dream so much as a feeling. A terrible feeling.” Posy realized her voice was shaking. Kyran quickly moved to her side and placed a tentative arm around her shoulder. She wasn’t sure if it was the darkness of the place they were in, or the lingering dream. Perhaps it was that she finally saw their situation as reality, here in this black place, with a yawning unknown before them, and she found she had lost the feeling that everything would inevitably be all right. They were in a book, she told herself repeatedly, but it was no good. The other world—the one she had come from—now seemed the unbelievable story. Kyran, saving the princess and the Kingdom—these were the things that mattered now. Tears slid silently down her cheeks, and she turned her face to Kyran’s shoulder.

  “There, there, my darling,” Kyran whispered softly against her hair. “I swear nothing will happen to you. I am here for you as you have been here for me.” He took Posy gently by the shoulders and turned her so that she stood looking straight up into his face. “As sharp as you are, I’d have thought you would have noticed by now, but I suppose I will have to tell you straight out.” Now Kyran’s voice shook. “But I love you.” He leaned down and kissed her. It wasn’t the hard, impassioned kiss they had shared the first time. This was soft and unhurried. It gave Posy plenty of time to think about the sweetness of Kyran’s mouth on hers, and the tenderness with which he held the back of her head—and best of all, the words he had just spoken to her, words she had only dreamed to hear from him. Warmth started from her head and spread throughout her body. She was drinking magic ... swimming in it. She was feeling it seep into her bones.

  “Kyran,” she breathed, but seemed unable to say more. Her thoughts seemed to swirl, then come sharply into focus. Long before she had fallen into this story, she had longed for such a security to wrap herself within, the surety of knowing beyond a doubt that she was loved. Here, it stared at her out of Kyran’s dark eyes, and what she felt was ... fear. Oh, joy as well, bliss, exhilaration. But fear was there, lurking. A deep instinct within her told Posy that the most wonderful things in life would never come without this dread of losing them. But in this moment, it didn’t seem to matter. She pushed the thought away, a mere flicker across her mind. She reached up to cup her hand around his ear, then ran her fingers down his jaw, rough with the beginnings of a youthful beard. She couldn’t think what to say to him. What would possibly be sufficient to tell him what she felt?

  In the end, she whispered, “I love you,” in return, just before reaching up to kiss him again. And it was enough.

  * * *

  King Melanthius burst through the doors to his bedchamber with a furious growl. Queen Valanor lifted her eyes calmly from the needlework she held in her long white fingers, and raised an elegant eyebrow. She had no need to spend her breath asking him what was wrong; she need only wait until he told her. The look on his face told her it was inevitable.

  “I have had enough of stalling and politics!” he shouted. “That blasted bird had better show me some results soon, or he will be banned along with the centaurs!”

  “I’ve no need to ask who ‘that blasted bird’ is, for you only call the creature a ‘bird’ when he is in the greatest disfavor. What has he done, Majesty?” Valanor’s pale gray eyes lowered once again to the work in her hands. Melanthius moved from where he had stopped indignantly in the middle of the room. He stood near her in front of the large fireplace. His eyes were shining dangerously, and Valanor wondered fleetingly if he was truly as angry as that, or if perhaps he had taken a bit too much wine at supper. She sighed and put her work down, focusing her attention on him. He placed his hands on his hips, his face like thunder, resembling an overgrown spoiled child more than a king.

  “He does not respect his king as he should, that’s what,” he said. “I told him days ago to bring my children back to the Kingdom, whatever the cost, and it has not been done.”

  “But, Majesty, you told me that Falak explained the reasons—”

  “Not good enough! The reasons, I see now, were most likely stalling tactics because he knew he would be incapable of bringing them back here. Now I shall have to send someone else after them, and that blasted usurper, Pruny—”

  “Posy,” inserted the queen.

  “Yes—that’s what I said. And we’ve lost two more precious days in the meantime!”

  “Falak did win the battle against the centaurs and won you the glade of the Glooming,” Valanor reminded her husband.

  “Yes, well, he might have, but from reports I received, my own son could very well have been killed in that battle. It was only sheer good fortune that he escaped a
s he did.”

  “Good fortune?” Valanor stood from her chair now, knitting her delicate brows together. “Good fortune that Kyran escaped? I thought you wanted him captured? How can he now be considered an ally with the Kingdom? Melanthius, if you succeed in capturing him, you will have no other choice than to imprison him, at least for a time. He cannot be allowed to cause more uprisings and trouble.”

  The king grumbled something under his breath, his eyes fixed to the floor.

  “Majesty,” Valanor said, her voice becoming stern. “You understand this, do you not? You understand there is no other choice? Just as there was no other choice for Evanthe’s role in the Plot?”

  “Yes,” the king conceded. The anger had drained from his face, and in its place was an odd uncertainty. Valanor was quick to see this; her first urge was to cringe from such weakness. Instead, she smiled sweetly at her husband and placed her long cool fingers on his arm. “If we don’t have the Plot, we have nothing,” she said softly. “If we don’t have readers, what good is the Plot? The characters must be taught to obey. They must do things as you decree—no one else. You are the king—you. Not Falak. Not your son. They too must obey you, and if they do not, they must be punished accordingly.”

  Melanthius nodded, his expression muted, the red flush on his face draining slowly. “I do wish ...” he started falteringly, then stopped, shaking his head. He strode across the chamber once again as if to leave. As he put his hand to the door, he turned to look at his wife across the length of the room. “I wish at times it was not necessary to take many of these measures. The Plot is important—it is the most important thing—but I have been king for so long, Valanor. It is a long time to uphold something alone ... to see my own children turn against me because of it.”

  Valanor shook her head and raised one hand to stop him. “No. They do not turn against you. You are the king and their father. They are misguided, as are many of the characters in the Plot. It is your lot to lead them—it is what you must do. We must not have the characters turning to the ancient myths of the Author. They will lose their faith and obedience to you if this is allowed.” She fixed the king with her gaze and said slowly, “You must be ruthless if you love them—merciless if you wish to save them.” Then she turned from him.