“I have an idea,” I went on now. “I’m older than the Lady Pamina, so I must go to bed much later than she does. What if I come every night, just at bedtime? The nightingale will follow me and sing the baby to sleep, Then all will be well.”
“Ah!” exclaimed die Königin der Nacht, and her gaze shifted away from me to my mother and father. “I begin to see why your son has called to him the most beautiful song on earth. He has a generous heart. What is your name, boy?”
“I am called Lapin, Madam,” I answered.
The Queen of the Nights dark eyebrows flew straight up. “Your name means rabbit, yet you call down birds from the sky?”
“It’s a long story,” I replied. “But, if you please, I really do prefer Lapin. Not everybody knows that it means rabbit. Not everyone around here, anyhow.”
The Queen of the Night nodded, and I could have sworn I saw a twinkle in her eye.
“Very well. I understand. I thank you for your generous offer, Lapin, but I’m afraid it is impossible. You can’t travel back and forth from your home to mine. The distance is simply too great, even on a swift horse. If your parents and grandparents were willing to consider such a thing, however, there might be another option. You all could come and live with me.”
“No,” my mother said at once. “Not that we aren’t grateful for the honor you bestow upon us, Lady, but we belong here.” She reached for my father’s hand, and he moved to clasp hers. “This is the life that we have chosen.”
“You have chosen it, and chosen well,” replied die Königin der Nacht. “But surely your son has a life of his own. Will you deny him? In my house he will have greater scope to discover what his heart holds. And what, in time, it may call to him.”
“No,” my mother said again. “He is just a boy.”
“Please, Mutter” I said, surprising everyone present, myself most of all. “Let me at least try. I want to go.”
And, as I said this, I realized how much it was so.
“Oh, Lapin,” my mother said.
“Do not grieve,” said the Queen of the Night. “For I will send him back to visit you when the days are shortest, and his coming will brighten your lives when the dark is long. And this I promise, now and forever: Neither I nor any who belong to me will ever hold your son against his will. Are you content?”
“No,” my mother answered honestly. “But it is fair, and I will learn to live with it.”
And that is how I came to be a servant of die Königin der Nacht and went to live in her great house which lies inside a mountain.
Though I missed my parents, I never regretted my choice. Die Königin let me do as I pleased, as long as the nightingale and I were there to sing the Lady Mina to sleep each night. I played the bells in every corner of her great house until the mountain itself rang with birdsong. I watched the Lady Mina grow to be a beautiful young woman. And, from a distance, I did what I could to keep my eye on my mistress’s husband, the Lord Sarastro.
What he made of me, I never knew, for we never actually spoke. But it was impossible to live in my mistress’s house and not be aware of his presence. Most people think it is the dark that lurks, sly and treacherous. But I tell you that I think it is the light. For it is always hovering, just over the edge of the horizon, waiting to leap out and strike you blind.
And so, the years passed, moving inexorably toward the moment when the Lady Mina would turn sixteen and leave behind the only life that she had known.
“What is it like, Lapin?” she said to me one night in the year in which she was fifteen years old. We were doing a thing we often did, gazing out the window of her mother’s observatory. A full moon gazed back down. As always in the evening, the nightingale was with us, though the bird now preferred the Lady Minas shoulder to my own.
“Is it hard to leave behind all that you have known?”
“What’s hard is never having an evening free from questions,” I said. For the Lady Mina always had at least one up her sleeve. At my reply, she smiled. “I left what I knew of my own free will,” I said, “though I was just a boy at the time.”
“And I may not. Because my departure is a bargain already made, one in which I had no part. That’s what you mean, is it not?” the Lady Mina both pronounced and asked at once.
I hope her father loves her, I found myself wishing fervently. But more than that, I hope he appreciates her, especially her quicksilver mind.
“That is what I mean,” I acknowledged.
She fiddled with the hem of one long sleeve, worrying it between her fingers.
“He’ll probably marry me off to some sunburned oaf.”
“Definitely a possibility,” I said. “Allow me to suggest you take along a hat when you go.”
She chuckled, and left the sleeve alone. “It’s a great pity I can’t stay here and marry you instead.”
At this, I took up my stone hammer and played a soft tune upon the bells. Nothing in particular, just whatever came to mind. To mind, but not to heart.
“Do you think that we belong together, then?” I asked. “That my heart calls to yours?”
The Lady Mina sighed. “No, Lapin. I think as I believe you do. That our hearts do not call to one another, though we love each other well. But it doesn’t stop me from wishing that I need not marry a stranger.”
“Then don’t,” I said, and I struck a brave sound upon the bells. “Don’t be docile about all this. Be stubborn. Insist that you be allowed to marry the choice of your heart and no other.”
“Easy for you to say,” the Lady Mina said.
I ran the hammer along the bells, from high note to low, from top to bottom. The sound it made was jumbled and not at all harmonious.
“You think so?” I asked. For, though I was eight years older than Mina was, no song I had ever been able to play had brought me anything other than another set of wings.
“Of course not,” the Lady Mina said at once. “I’m sorry. I’m out of sorts and taking it out on you. Pay no attention to me.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I almost never do, you know.”
This won a chuckle from her, as I had hoped. “Oh, Lapin,” she said impulsively. “What would I do without you?”
“That is a thing you will never need to know.”
She turned her head and looked with both her eyes into both of mine. I’m one of the few people who will meet her eyes, for a reason I will let her tell you herself at the proper time.
“Is that a promise?” she asked softly.
“It is a promise,” I replied.
“I will hold you to it. You know that, don’t you?”
“Of course I know that,” I said. “Why else do you think I said it? Unless you doubt me.”
“No, Lapin,” the Lady Mina said. “I would never doubt you. Now let’s both stop talking, shall we? Let me hear some music instead.”
And so I sat and played the bells until the moon went down.
A week later, the Lord Sarastro took her away. A thief in the night, he stole her from her mother before the proper time. I saw it all, but could do nothing to prevent it. Even with my aid, die Königin, her daughter, and I would have been but three against many. Easily overcome.
Never will I forget the look upon my mistress’s face as the louts with their blazing torches departed, bearing away the daughter whom she loved. Always its image will stay with me, even if I live until the end of time.
“Do you see, Lapin?” she cried when the lights had gone, when she could shake back her cloak and I could leave my hiding place, for all was dark once more. Tears as hard and clear as diamonds streamed down her pale cheeks. She was weeping a fortune, and why shouldn’t she? Had she not just been deprived of the first treasure of her heart?
“Do you see what he has done?”
“I see,” I said. “Now what shall we do?”
At this, she laughed, and the sound was wild, matching the sound of the wind as it rose. The second the Lady Mina had stepped away from her mother it had s
tarted, answering the call of the storm in my mistress’s heart.
“Lapin,” die Königin der Nacht said. “The name which means rabbit.”
“It does,” I said. “But that does not mean I have the brains of one. I’ve understood for many years now the real reason you brought me here. It was because you feared this day would come.”
“Then you know what I would have you do,” she said.
“I do,” I answered. “But I warn you, I don’t think this has ever been done. I cannot truly control what I may call. Furthermore, once I have begun, you cannot intervene on your daughter’s behalf. It must be that which I summon, or nothing.”
“I know these things,” die Königin der Nacht said impatiently. “Why do you waste time telling me what I already know?”
“I just want us to be sure,” I said. “There’s always the chance that what I call will end up being even worse than what her father has in mind.”
“Impossible,” die Königin der Nacht proclaimed. “For I think you see my daughter truly, and I know you love her well. Both those things, I fear, are more than I can say for the Lord Sarastro. Bring my daughter the one who will set her free, as you brought the one who lulled her to sleep so long ago.
“Do it, Lapin. Play the bells.”
What Luapin’s Bells Summoned
What would have happened if there’d never been a storm?
If there’d never been a storm, I might never have heard the bells. And if I’d never heard the bells, I would never have entered Mina’s life, an event that changed the lives of all
I wonder about these things sometimes.
Foolishness, of course. If something is meant to happen, then it will. That’s just the way the world works. There’s no use trying to stop it or get around it. You probably know this for yourself. Fortunately, not everything that happens carries the same weight as everything else. Was I meant to hear the bells and enter Mina’s story when I did? Absolutely.
Was I meant to eat the last piece of royal chocolate birthday cake before my younger brother, Arthur, could get to it, when I was ten and he was seven-and-a-half? Probably not. All that was required for that to happen was a willingness to get out of bed and creep down cold stone stairs in the middle of the night.
I can hear Mina’s voice laughing in my ear. Chiding me. How can they follow your portion of this tale when you haven’t even told them who you are? And so I suppose I’d better get that out of the way. Things are no doubt confusing enough with so many different people telling you what happened.
I am a prince, and my name is Tern.
A tern is a seabird, something like a gull. Not even my parents have a good explanation for why this is the name I was given the day I was born. Neither of them had ever seen the sea before. The land my father governs lies many miles from any coast. Rivers we have in plenty. Also lakes, streams, swamps, and ponds. But you could ride for days on end on the swiftest horse in my father’s stables and still not catch a glimpse of the sea. Yet a seabird is what I was named for.
If you decide to seriously press my mother, tell her you refuse to eat your broccoli until you get an explanation, she’ll tell you that she named me Tern because she liked the sound. There’s a problem with this. You can probably recognize it right off. All sorts of words may make lovely sounds when you speak them aloud: aubergine, tamarind, minaret, crevasse.
But the fact that they produce nice sounds doesn’t mean they make good names. Who wants to be named after some great gaping hole in the ground? A name needs to fit, to have some meaning. At the very least it ought not to get in the way of the person on whom it’s been bestowed. A name ought to help a person fulfill his destiny, help make it clear, not make it more complicated than it already is. Destiny is tricky enough, after all.
In the end this is precisely what my strange name did. It made my destiny clear. It simply took its own sweet time about it.
As I think I said earlier, my part in this story begins with the storm. A storm like no other any person in our kingdom had ever seen. A storm that made it seem as if the very night itself was in a rage, a fury of lust for revenge which would be spent only with the rising of the sun.
Stars shot across the heavens like stones from a thousand catapults. The wind screamed in fury and howled with pain all at the same time. Its strength caused slate to fly from the roofs of houses in the village which had stood, untouched, for centuries. Trees let go of their hold on the earth and flew into the air and out of sight.
The land trembled, and a great roaring came from everywhere at once, so that it seemed as if any homeland itself had been yanked from the earth as easily as the trees, and was even now being carried miles away to be deposited beside the sea.
Just when it seemed as if there could be no other outcome than that the world would tear itself apart, a single bolt of lightning, sharp and jagged as a javelin, shot straight down from the sky. It landed in the very center of the forest near my father’s castle. The King’s Wood, our people called it.
Then, with a final shriek of anguish, the wind went still. There was a moment of absolute silence. For no reason I could name, my heart began to beat in hard, quick strokes, as if I were more frightened now than I had been at the height of the storm. Something has happened, I thought. Something important But I did not know yet what it was.
Then, from the castle courtyard below, I heard my father’s voice calling for the lighting of torches. Quickly, for I knew I would be needed, I threw on a cloak and went down. The people of the village were just beginning to creep from their homes. Like one cat under the hostile eyes of another, they moved carefully and cautiously, as if they expected to be pounced upon.
“Ah, Tern,” my father said when he saw me. “Good, there you are. Stay by me a moment, will you?”
He paused to watch my mother and her ladies-in-waiting set off to see if there were any wounded or ill who needed tending. My younger brother, Arthur, who is very good at such things, went to see if there was any rescuing to be done. Finally my father turned back to me.
“Tern,” he said, his dark eyes sober in the torchlight. “Take these two”—he gestured to his two most faithful retainers—“and find out what has happened in the wood. Send them back to me when you know.”
“Father, I will,” I promised.
For, suddenly, I knew what the important thing that had happened was, or at least what my father feared it might be. I knew exactly what my father wanted me to look for. Exactly where to go. And so it was that half an hour later, my father’s most faithful retainers and I discovered where the lightning had struck. We saw what it had done, and undone.
In the center of the Kings Wood there stands—there stood—a great oak tree, the only one of its kind. It was so old no one could remember when it had been any smaller, let alone when it had been young. It was called the Kings Oak. According to the legends of my land, it had been planted on the day our very first queen had borne her lord his very first son.
Over the years, the tales about the tree had grown even as the tree had, until it was almost as important a symbol to our people as the king himself. A change in the oak would mean a change in the kingdom, or so the people said, and they believed it. If it should be struck down, so should we all.
The bolt of lightning had split the Kings Oak in two, straight down the middle, one side falling to the left, and one side to the right. In the light of our torches, my father’s men and I could see that, on both halves, the heart of the tree had been exposed. It was still strong and hearty. Save for the lightning, the King’s Oak could have stood another number of untold years.
This was the good news, I suppose. But the bad news was that my father’s fear had turned out to be well-founded. The lightning had struck the King’s Oak. Clearly some great change was in store for our land. The only question was, what kind?
I pulled in a breath, turned my back on the tree and my face to my father’s retainers.
“Return to my father the king and t
ell him this,” I instructed. “The King’s Oak lies in two pieces, yet even parted, it is strong. Say that I would have him return with you to see this for himself, so that he may decide what it means, and further, what should be done.”
The retainers bowed and left me without a word, though I knew what they were thinking. They were afraid. Even by the light of their flickering torches, I could see it in their eyes.
It didn’t take long for my father to return. Most of the village came with him, or so it seemed at the time. Soon the clearing around the King’s Oak was as bright as day, filled with the light of many torches. Their flames were the only thing in the clearing that moved, save for my father himself and the eyes of his subjects as they watched him walk around the cloven tree once, twice, three times.
It was so quiet you could have heard a single leaf drop to the ground, had there been any left to fall. There were not. All had been swept down by the storm.
Finally my father halted and turned to face his subjects. At this, the eyes of the people halted, too, and so did their breath. I think even their hearts stopped beating as they waited for my father to speak, to say what he thought the future held in store.
“My son, Prince Tern, has spoken truly,” said my father. “The King’s Oak lies split in two, yet, in both halves, the heart is strong. So does the strength of our kingdom hold true, for do I not have two sons, and are not their hearts strong?”
At this, a great sigh went through the clearing as all the people expelled their breath at once. My father had not pronounced the cleaving of the oak to be a disaster. This was the good news. Yet even a small child could see that we still had a problem.
“I believe we have been given a sign this night,” my father continued, “and that it concerns my two sons. Both are strong and fit to rule when I am dead, yet the crown can pass to only one. Tradition would dictate that it must pass to my firstborn. But all of you know well what is spoken of the King’s Oak: that, if it changes, our kingdom shall change, also.
Sunlight and Shadow Page 4
