The Orphanage of Miracles (The Kingdom Wars Book 1)

by Amy Neftzger

  “Why did you disguise yourself?”

  “It’s something I learned from a writer named William Shakespeare,” the king explained. “He wrote a play about another king who walked in disguise to learn what his soldiers really thought about everything. He knew that the soldiers had the habit of telling him what they thought he wanted to hear, so he put on a disguise. Since they didn’t know who he was, the soldiers talked to him as if he was one of them. As if he was just another soldier with the same problems and no power to change anything. I thought it was a wonderful idea. Brilliant, in fact.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair.” Kelsey studied his face. He appeared trustworthy, but she was still confused. She had been traveling with royalty for weeks and had no idea at all. In fact, she had hated him at times. It now seemed wrong to have hated a king, even if she didn’t know it was he. She glanced at the forest they had just crossed and noticed that all the branches were barren of leaves.

  “What’s unfair is how people won’t speak honestly in front of me when they know who I am. It’s easier to find the truth when people aren’t acting out of fear or greed, the two most common responses to the presence of power.”

  “And do you find the truth? Does the disguise really work?” she asked. “Or does it only work in plays?”

  “Most of the time it does work,” he answered in a serious tone. Kelsey appreciated his honesty. “But the desires of the people still follow me. They’re always chasing me no matter what form I take. I constantly have to separate what people want from what they need. Most of them don’t know the difference because their wants are so strong. Those desires eat up the truth so that people think that their wants are necessary. They think they can’t live without them. The want never disappears and often grows, but the disguise helps me to meet the people’s true needs and to avoid the desires that consume.” Kelsey remembered back to the first time she had heard the sound and how it reminded her of a crowd at a sporting event, as if there were thousands of voices screaming different things.

  “I could hear it. I thought it was chasing me, and I had nightmares about it because it sounded so scary.” Kelsey looked up at him. He was taller than she had expected. He carried himself well, also. No wonder he wasn’t afraid of those noises. He was a much bigger person on the inside than the one she saw as the little boy.

  “Unbridled want is a scary thing. It can eat up entire countries. It’s quite destructive,” he said. “Not that it’s wrong to want things, but the sorcerer has created the illusion that we should always get what we want. Because this idea is so strong, people have allowed their desires to grow into a monster that now thrives.”

  “If it’s become a monster, then we should kill it!” Kelsey exclaimed impulsively.

  “That’s my hunter!” he responded with enthusiasm, and Kelsey could hear the affection in his voice. “That’s what I love about you, Kelsey. You have so many good qualities, but this one is my favorite because it’s the core of who you really are.” Kelsey blushed at the compliment and then she felt guilty. She realized that he had always thought kindly about her, even when she was annoyed with him.

  “I should have treated you better,” she said with remorse.

  “Absolutely not!” he exclaimed with laughter. “You were a great companion, and your behavior told me everything I needed to know.”

  “And what was that?”

  “That you’re the type of soldier I need,” he explained. “I need people like you to help me in the war. I want you to work with me to defeat the sorcerer.” Kelsey thought about the offer. It sounded wonderful to be in the king’s army, but she had been on this quest for a reason. She had other people she needed to help.

  “I have my family,” she said aloud. “I need to take care of them first.”

  “Your family has already learned to move on,” the king explained. “They were staying in that town for you, because your parents thought you wanted to grow up in the same way that they did. They knew how they were raised, and they wanted to do for you what their parents had done for them. It was the only way they knew how to live. It’s like Roland told you: People fear change. Especially big change. But once you left, things were already different. They saw that they needed to move on. There was no reason for them to remain. They’ve gone to a more prosperous area of the country, and they’ll be fine.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve stayed in contact with messengers,” he explained. “I keep track of everything.” Kelsey still looked doubtful. She knew that she should trust him, but it seemed too easy to believe that her parents had figured out how to survive without her. He smiled again and continued, “Just because I’m in disguise doesn’t mean that I’ve lost touch with my responsibilities. I know what goes on in the kingdom. I may not be able to fix everything, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t care or that I’m not upset about the way people suffer. That’s why I walk among the people. The more I understand about their real needs, the more I can help.”

  “I feel like I’ve lost track of mine,” Kelsey replied after she thought back over their long journey. The only thing she had thought about for months was getting the miracle that her parents needed to restore their situation to what it was before the poverty arrived in her town. Knowing that her parents had solved their problems without her made Kelsey feel like a failure. “I thought I was doing something good by leaving. I didn’t really help at all.”

  “You did help. If you hadn’t left, your parents wouldn’t have moved on,” the king explained. “Sometimes we don’t understand the good that we’re doing at the time that we do it. Things don’t always turn out the way we expect, but that doesn’t mean that you did the wrong thing. You acted out of love, a self-sacrificing love. The sorcerer can distort reality and change situations, but he’s powerless over that kind of motivation. So hold onto that. It will help you to see clearly when everything else fails.”

  “But they solved the problem without me. They didn’t need a miracle.”

  “They didn’t. But you did. That’s why one was sent to you.”

  “To me?”

  “In your pocket. You thought it was a shooting star, but miracles have a way of finding those who need them. This one found you because you decided to help someone else in need. That’s what drew it to you.” Kelsey pulled the stone out of her pocket and stared at it. It was beautiful and full of shining flecks that sparkled, but she didn’t understand how the stone could be powerful. She had been searching for a miracle and had no idea that she was carrying one in her pocket for nearly the whole time. It made her think that she really didn’t know what she needed if she couldn’t recognize a miracle when she was searching for one.

  “Everything is so confusing,” Kelsey exclaimed as she sat down.

  “That’s why we need to defeat the sorcerer. The survival of the kingdom depends upon it. I’ll do it with or without you, but I’d rather have you on my side.” He smiled a grin that had a bit of mischief in it. “Besides,” he continued, “You’ve got that wonderful knife to help you!”

  “You knew what it was when you saw it, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “And when I asked you where you got the money, you pointed to the ground. I thought you found it.”

  “It came from the kingdom. I was pointing at the land.” He walked up to her and extended his hand. “The money came from a land and a kingdom that I want to save. One that I can’t save alone. I need you.”

  “Of course I’ll help you,” Kelsey agreed as she took his hand and stood up.

  “Wonderful!” he exclaimed as he slapped her on the shoulder firmly. Kelsey liked the way he didn’t treat her as if she was fragile, the way men usually treated women. He respected her. He understood her. “You’ll need to be trained, of course. You have a lot of skills, but you’ll need more.”

  “What sort of things will I be learning?”

  “General education and warrior training. I have some excellent teachers
who are experts in all types of combat. They’re hunters like you, but they use different weapons and strategies. I think you’ll enjoy learning from them.”

  Kelsey thought about the opportunity. She loved hunting. She enjoyed using a knife, and it was a natural ability that she’d always had. She wondered if she would easily acquire the other skills that were needed to be a good warrior.

  “I’ve already learned one thing,” she said aloud to the king. “I know that you should never talk down to children because you never know how old they really are on the inside.”

  “You’re a good learner,” he replied with that kind smile of his and a sparkle in his green eyes. “I know you’ll learn quickly.”

  “Is that why you came here? Did you travel all the way here with me to get me to join your army?”

  “No,” he admitted. “You were a lucky find, I suppose. I was already on my way here when I spotted you. I have other business.”

  “It looks like that business is coming to greet us,” Kelsey remarked as she pointed to the small group of people running towards them. “But I’m not sure that the greeting is a friendly one.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Meeting

  “What are you doing here?” Mr. Pontiff demanded when he had gotten close enough for the visitors to hear him clearly. His garments and hair were flowing rapidly behind him like white flames as he briskly walked. He came to a stop when he reached the newcomers just inside the edge of the forest. “You’ve broken some powerful enchantments!”

  “This is the king!” Kelsey shouted back as she drew her knife. She was ready to fight anyone who was hostile toward them and Mr. Pontiff appeared to fit that description. Kelsey didn’t like his attitude or the way he had greeted them, so she was on the defensive. She quickly looked over the group that had followed Mr. Pontiff from the orphanage and examined the potential for threats. Most of them were children and appeared harmless, but she didn’t trust the adults.

  “He could be an impostor,” Mr. Pontiff announced. He waved his hand for dramatic emphasis as he spoke. “If he’s the king, he can prove who he is.” Mr. Pontiff’s expression was smug as he folded his arms and looked over both Kelsey and the king. Kelsey was suddenly conscious of her disheveled state after her fall onto the orphanage grounds, but she refused to back down.

  “The king doesn’t need to prove himself,” Kelsey responded in an aggressive tone.

  “Anyone who can break those enchantments must be powerful. Like the sorcerer,” Mr. Pontiff continued. “Or someone working for the sorcerer.” He clearly wasn’t going to take anyone’s word for anything. He had become so distrusting of everyone outside the orphanage and it had been so long since they had had visitors that even if he had seen his own reflection in a mirror he would have asked for proof that the image he saw was really his own. Almost no one looked familiar to him anymore. He wasn’t even sure that he recognized the children inside the orphanage at times, but then, he had never really looked at them.

  The king stared carefully into Mr. Pontiff’s eyes. He waited patiently for recognition, but there was none. Mr. Pontiff suddenly glanced away uncomfortably and proceeded to study the barren branches of a nearby oak tree.

  “In order to come here, I had to arrive as a child. Your enchantments have kept everyone out - including me, “ the king said quietly. “Don’t I look even a little familiar to you, Galvin?” At the mention of his first name, Mr. Pontiff looked back at the king. “I gave you this job. I put you in charge here, and then over time you changed everything so that I wasn’t welcome in my own house.”

  “This is your house?” Nicholas asked with undisguised surprise. Then he quickly added, “Sire?” so that he sounded more respectful. The king nodded.

  “This was one of my homes. I wanted it to become a place where children could grow and learn. But there’s been little growth in the way that I wanted. Needless to say, I’m quite disappointed in the status of things.”

  “Who are you to judge?” demanded Mr. Pontiff. “We have no proof that you are who you say you are. As far as I’m concerned, the disappointments of a vagrant are irrelevant to the work we do here.”

  “Enough, Galvin,” the king said firmly. “I’m not an agent of the sorcerer. I’m your king, and I think that deep down you know it, but you’re having trouble recognizing me because I haven’t been here in a very long time. However, the birds in my service have kept me informed of what goes on here and I’m very displeased with the situation. You created such strong enchantments to protect yourself that not even the seasons could enter this place and you’ve been stuck in perpetual autumn.”

  “The never-ending autumn was beautiful, Sire,” Maggie interjected before she realized that she had interrupted an important discussion. The king smiled at her. His expression was warm, and his eyes had a tender look that disappeared when he was speaking to the Pontiffs.

  “The autumn is beautiful,” he agreed. “But do you know what makes the leaves fall?”

  “The cold?” Maggie guessed. She suddenly felt ignorant and wished that they had been given at least a little schooling in the orphanage.

  “It’s the tiny buds of new growth. The new things push out the old leaves and then stay within the stems until the spring. That’s when they reach out and grow to their full potential.”

  “I don’t remember spring,” Maggie confessed. “I’m not sure if I’ll like it.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the king continued. “Life is meant to change. Part of what makes some things beautiful is that fact that they don’t last forever. Things change and seasons last for the moment. If you don’t like the spring, then remember that you’re only required to endure it for a while. And when the autumn departs, as it is now doing, remember that it will come again and that you should cherish it while you have it to enjoy.”

  “I never got tired of the colors,” Maggie insisted.

  Rather than telling her that she missed the point, the king simply changed the way he was explaining it to her so that she could understand. “The goal of life isn’t to experience only what we enjoy, but rather to appreciate what we enjoy while we have it.”

  “What season is this, then?” she asked. “This one we’re entering now where there are no leaves on the trees.”

  “Winter.”

  “I think I might like winter, also,” she replied. “It seems very peaceful. I like the cold, wet, white stuff. It looks beautiful when it drops from the sky.”

  “That’s snow,” the king answered. He turned to Mr. Pontiff and continued, “These children don’t even know about the seasons, and those are a normal part of everyday life.” He paused as he walked around the group of people gathered on the dormant grass. Everyone watched him as he patiently strolled, but no one interrupted. He finally started to speak again to the Pontiffs in a determined voice.

  “This was my house. But in your desire for safety, you kept out everything that could help these children to grow including me. They’ve never known the seasons or the natural order of things. They don’t understand that life has cycles and that change is always present and that we need to prepare ourselves for these things.”

  “I didn’t keep everything out.” Mr. Pontiff replied defensively. “I did what I thought was needed to make the orphanage successful.”

  “You did your best to keep out the truth. You traded it for safety and convenience. I built this place for a purpose, but in your efforts to reach that purpose by your own means, you’ve locked me out.” The king paused his speaking while he took a few steps towards the orphanage on the frozen ground. It was becoming more and more firm as the temperature became colder and the grass made a crackling noise as he stepped. He surveyed the building before turning back to face the Pontiffs. He glanced up the turrets and over the large wooden doors at the front of the building. “Now I think it’s time that I locked you out.”

  “What are you saying?” Mrs. Pontiff asked with alarm in her voice. “We’ve done our best
here.” As she spoke with such a chill in her voice, the vapors from her breath became visible as faint clouds of white that matched her garments and hair.

  “I’m saying things are about to change. Some of you will be leaving with me, some of you will just leave, and others will be staying here in different roles. But nothing will be the same as it was before today.” The king looked each person in the eye before turning to Mr. Pontiff and continuing. “I’m also saying that leaders who are afraid of questions make poor leaders. And those who learn to ask the right questions, and encourage others to do the same, make better leaders. You, Mr. and Mrs. Pontiff, have feared the questions that could have saved you. You’ve avoided answering the inquiries that might help the children in this orphanage to grow. You’ve neglected your core duties as the guardians of this institution and, therefore, you are relieved of them.”

  “Are we fired?” Mr. Pontiff asked in disbelief. “Is that what you’re telling me? That we’re fired after serving you for years? After we created the most sophisticated enchantments to protect this place? After we’ve worked tirelessly to keep this place safe? You’re firing us?” His expression was confused and angry at the same time.

  “Yes,” the king nodded. “You’re not only fired, you’re forbidden to remain at this orphanage for any reason. In 20 minutes I will expect you to be gone.”

  “Where will we go?”

  “Wherever you like.”

  “And we can never come back?”

  “First you’ll need to find your way back,” the king said. “That will be the first step, and I think it’s going to be very difficult once you step away from the grounds. I don’t believe that even you could get through your own enchantments. However, if you do happen to make your way back, it will be as a servant. That’s what you should have been in the first place, anyway. Until you understand and accept that, I will consider you as unfit for any position of authority.”