Evander and the Strangler's Quest

by Wells, L. G.

  “What are you doing up here, child?” Anguis asked. He had a soft, raspy voice, not at all like the thundering ones of his men. It was almost pleasant, even now, and had certainly been throughout the years that he had been the king's adviser rather than the king himself. He claimed he never needed to raise his voice, as his connection with the gods was so great that they could hear him even when he whispered. Perhaps it was true, Evander sometimes thought. After all, all of Anguis' prayers had come true, and none of Evander's had.

  “I … I just finished my chores,” Evander said. His arm slipped down by his side, and the hand that had waved at his mother curled into a tight ball.

  “And you came up here because you had nothing else to do?” Anguis said.

  “I … yes.”

  Anguis smiled at him. It wasn't a friendly smile, though it might have looked quite like one: it was the smile of a wolf preparing to eat its cub.

  “Talley,” he said to one of his men, “give this poor child something to do.”

  …

  They put him to work in the storage rooms in the cellar, which had completely frozen over on the inside with ice and needed to be thawed out. Evander carried buckets of scalding water down the narrow staircase and dumped them onto the floors, then scrubbed at the ice with hot towels to melt the ice off one layer at a time. By the time one patch of stone floor was visible, his hands were raw and throbbing from the extreme temperatures.

  He kept himself busy by imagining the Festival of the Eyes. When he had still be considered a prince, the festival had been the most delightful event of the year – except, perhaps, the celebration day for his birth. The Temple of the Seven Gods was filled with boughs and lights that made it look as though stars had been captured from the sky and set within the bushes to glow brightly down upon them, and fruits were candied and sugared to hang as ornaments that the children could pick down and eat at will. They had not had fruit in many years now because of the endless winter, but last year they had decorated with boiled goose eggs that the children smashed open and spooned out like pudding into their mouths.

  Perhaps the greatest of the decorations wasn't a decoration at all: it was the Deathless Flame, which sat in the center of the altar, overlooked by the statues of the seven gods, and burned in seven different colors depending on which god was tending to it. No amount of wind could blow the flame out, and when a storm blew through and knocked the windows clear out of the temple, the heavy rainfall that flooded the place did not extinguish the flame, either. Evander remembered watching his father wade through the deep water towards it, and though the flame was completely submerged in water, it burned on.

  When they had walked back to the palace, the heavy winds were still blowing, and Evander and Arthfael could barely stay upright. Even their father had to clutch onto Anguis' arm to keep from falling to the ground.

  “When you think of how easily the wind blows you over, boys,” Anguis told them, “remember how the Deathless Flame took all of this and more without so much as flickering. Be humbled by its power, and by your own mortality.”

  Arthfael, after pulling Evander up from the ground, had looked back at where Anguis and their father stood.

  “Why aren't you having any trouble, then?” he asked, unable to keep the indignity from his tone.

  “Anguis is more than a man,” their father bellowed through the howl of the wind. “Never forget that, son.”

  Tap, tap, tap, tap.

  Evander shook himself from his thoughts at the sound and glanced over at the door. He half-hoped that his mother had sneaked down to check on him, and half-feared that one of the Noble Guards had come to see how much progress he had made. But when he looked at the doorway, it was quite empty.

  Tap, tap, tap, tap.

  Evander frowned. The noise was certainly a knock, not the dripping of icicles outside or a rickety piece of flooring. He turned his head all the way to the right and looked up at the small cellar window. Surely enough, someone – or something – was knocking. It was the Ermine Effer, asking him to let her in.

  Evander yanked a box that was half-frozen to the floor up and carried it over to the window. Standing atop it, he reached up to unlatch the window, and the ermine slipped inside. Just as he was about to close it, though, he noticed a beautiful bird that was perched right outside, and given the way it stared at him with her bright yellow eyes, he felt quite certain that it wasn't really a bird at all.

  “Is that you, Vee?” he asked.

  The owl hopped forward and ducked her head inside the window, then swooped down to perch upon a frozen chair.

  “Where's Scence?”

  “She won't come,” the ermine Effer said.

  “She can't come,” the owl Vee replied. “It's not safe.”

  “Why not?”

  “She can't come so close to other humans in her usual form,” Vee said, her words interspersed with the clicks of her beak.

  “Can't she come as an animal, like you two?”

  “No. It's rather impossible, given the circumstances.”

  “What circumstances?” Evander asked. “Can't she transform into an animal?”

  “Of course she can,” Vee said. “There's nothing wrong with her magic.”

  “I just wondered why ...”

  He trailed off, seeing that the sprites were not going to answer him. He imagined that Scence was either an animal so large that she would attract too much attention coming near the palace, or else that she had simply not wanted to see him. She didn't seem to like him very much.

  “What are you two doing here?” Evander asked instead.

  “Effer said you were frightened of The Strangler. We had to make sure you were still going to see him tomorrow night.”

  “You do still want to go, don't you, Prince Evander?” Effer asked. “I'd like to see The Strangler up close. I've only seen him from a distance before.”

  “It's not a question of whether or not he wants to go,” Vee said. “He wants to find his brother, after all. The question is, at what cost?”

  Evander's head went from left to right as he watched the ermine and the owl speak to one another in human voices. It was only after a long moment that he realized they were staring at him as they awaited his response. He swallowed.

  “So I just have to go to The Strangler and ask him for his help?” he said.

  “You go and offer to make him a deal,” Vee said. “He won't just give you anything you ask for. He'll want something in return.”

  “What if I don't have anything he wants?”

  “He's not after gold, if that's what you're asking: he's got plenty of that.”

  “Plenty of gold and possessions and company and time,” Effer chimed in. “What he doesn't have is … fun.”

  “Why would he have fun with me?”

  “Not with you,” Effer said. “More like ...”

  “At your expense,” Vee finished.

  “But what exactly is he going to make me do –?”

  But before the question had fully left his mouth, the creak of the storage room door opening sounded behind him, and Vee took flight from her perch on the chair and dove out the window. Her strong wings caught the pane and sent the window slamming shut again, though, and as Effer scurried up the rock wall to go after her, she was left scratching at the leaded glass, pleading to get out. Evander rushed over and seized her, but not before –

  “And what might be going on in here?”

  Evander clasped the ermine in his hands and pressed her into his stomach to shield her as he turned to face Anguis. The unrightful king's face was unreadable except for one dark raised eyebrow. He stared down at Evander as he waited for the answer.

  “I was just … just trying to get the ice to melt, and ...” Evander hesitated and looked down at Effer. He was frightened that if he claimed she was a feral animal, Anguis would let his men chop her up with their thin, sharp daggers for sport. “And I found this animal, and I … I was going to keep it. As a pet.”<
br />
  Anguis came further into the room. Despite the thick ice on the floor, he had no trouble walking. The ice cracked beneath the soles of his boots as he stepped.

  “A pet?” he repeated.

  Evander nodded. His throat had gone too tight to speak.

  “And were you … talking to this pet?” Anguis asked.

  “I … I might've been … been talking out loud ...”

  “Speaking to animals is unnatural, Evander. They converse in different tongues that only demons understand. Surely you know that?”

  “I wasn't … it's not like that ...”

  “Do you know what happens to people who speak the unnatural language?” Anguis stepped closer to him. Evander grasped the ermine more firmly, now considering that the Noble Guards might have a different idea in mind for how to make use of their daggers.

  Evander swallowed.

  “I was just lonely,” he breathed. “I was talking out loud to fill the silence.”

  “Were you?” the king pondered. He reached out a hand towards the ermine and slowly stroked her face with his finger. “You're certain that you weren't talking to your … pet?”

  “I know that it's not allowed.”

  “It's unearthly, Evander,” Anguis corrected. “These aren't just rules put into place for means of rigidity, they're to protect you – and the kingdom. Conversing with the unearthly will bring destruction on us all.”

  Effer squirmed in Evander's hands, but he held her tighter as his fear grew more intense. Anguis held out his hand.

  “Give the creature to me, Evander. I'll take care of it for you, and right any wrongs you may have committed.”

  Evander slowly looked down at Effer, unwilling to give her up but not daring to go against Anguis' request, when –

  “Ahh!”

  He shouted in fright as an intense pain shot through his finger and dropped the ermine to the floor. It scurried between his legs and whipped behind the storage shelves, weaving into cracks until it had disappeared from sight. Evander clutched his finger in his uninjured hand. Hot blood warmed his cold skin. She had bitten him.

  Anguis stared at where the ermine had disappeared, then turned back to Evander.

  “You see what happens when you try to keep feral creatures as pets?” he asked.

  Evander nodded.

  “I thought … it looked like a young one. I thought it would be safe.”

  “You still have to worry about them when they're young, because even then they're old enough to act like adults, and they can be more viscous and ruthless than you can imagine.” He smiled down at Evander. “Best to get them out of your way as quickly as possible.”

  He turned from Evander and stepped back towards the door.

  “And I think, to be on the safe side, you should not step foot in the Temple for seven weeks. I fear it would be an insult to the gods.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  After the encounter with Anguis, Evander laid awake all night wondering what it would feel like to lose his tongue. By the time he got up from the pile of blankets he kept by the hearth on the kitchen floor the next morning, though, he began to wonder instead what it would feel like to lose his life.

  He was quite certain that he would prefer to know neither of the sensations, at least, in the latter's case, for a very long time.

  He didn't see the sprites until late that afternoon. He was outside heaving a large log from the wood pile inside to put on the fire when Vee soared down to a nearby tree and cocked her head at him. He dropped the log and, with a glance over his shoulder to make sure that he was alone, called up to her.

  “Is Effer all right?”

  Vee didn't respond. She twisted her head around to indicate that he should follow her, then soared further into the trees. Evander followed her on the ground, zigzagging through trunks and ducking under branches while looking up to ensure he didn't lose her. When they had ventured half a mile into the forest, she finally swooped down and returned to her sprite form.

  “She's fine; and the least of your worries.”

  Two bright patches of air caught his eye on either of his sides, and he looked from left to right as Effer and Scence joined them.

  “Ooo, Prince Evander is going to meet The Strangler,” Effer said happily, sounding far too pleased for Evander's liking. “This will be so much fun!”

  “He's not doing it for fun,” Scence chided. “He's doing it because he needs to find his brother and restore the kingdom. It's the right thing to do.”

  Though Evander agreed with the blue sprite, it didn't make him any less anxious about going to find The Strangler. He had never been brave like Arthfael had been, nor had he had any reason to be. He wasn't as strong, wasn't as authoritative, and wasn't as skilled as his brother had been in all the ways that made him the rightful heir to the throne, and the only thing that was pushing Evander onward was the thought that if he could find his brother and return him to the kingdom, then Evander and his mother could rest peacefully under his reign for years to come.

  Evander wondered briefly if The Strangler could possibly be as intimidating or dangerous as Anguis was, but before he could form any type of reasoning as to how that would be possible in his head, another thought slipped into his mind. If Anguis had been upset when he overheard Evander speaking to an animal, his anger would be tenfold if found out that Evander had called upon The Strangler. He could feel the sweat dripping down his fingers from his palms despite the frigid air all around him, and his breathing hastened several white breaths a minute.

  “Ooo, Prince Evander wants to run back home,” Effer said happily, once again taking delight in his misery. “Run, run, Princey, before The Strangler gets you!”

  “Cut it out, Effer,” Scence snapped. “It doesn't matter what he wants to do: he needs to go.”

  “He doesn't need to go,” Vee said, placing herself between the green sprite and the blue one. “He wants to go. He wants to find his brother and help his kingdom.”

  She looked at Evander with small but piercing eyes.

  “The only question,” she continued, “is whether he wants it more than he wants to run away.”

  “Of course I do!” Evander said indignantly. He was tired of them speaking about him as though he wasn't there, and their constant chattering made him feel much younger than his twelve years. What was more, they made it sound so simple: as though he could just walk up to The Strangler's residence and knock upon his door, and he'd be treated to warm cocoa and bread, and then Arthfael would simply walk out and the two brothers would return home together. They were treating the whole thing like a joke, or a game, and Evander, though he could admit that he was very young, did not feel like playing any games any more.

  He straightened up so that he was as tall as possible and looked directly at Scence.

  “Take me to The Strangler.”

  …

  The walk took nearly an hour, and by the time that Evander had reached the clearing in the center of the woods where the trees stood blackened by unnatural deaths, his chest felt heavy but empty all at once. He leaned his hand against the bark of one of the trees to take a deep gulp of air, but then pulled it back almost immediately.

  It was a Tarrow Tree, and the bark had burned through his flesh and turned it black. Evander swallowed hard and swayed, thinking that he might be sick.

  Effer swooped down to stare at it.

  “Ooo, Prince Evander's going to lose his hand!” she exclaimed happily, and Evander clamped his mouth shut as the urge to vomit came over him more forcefully.

  “On a positive note, it's only your left one,” Vee said.

  “It's not positive at all,” Scence said. “The left hand is the magic hand. How will he call upon The Strangler if he loses it?”

  “He's not going to lose it,” Vee said. “Not yet at least. It takes a while for the poison to eat the whole thing away.”

  “What's the cure?” Evander asked weakly, staring at his hand.

  The sprites loo
ked at him. Their thread-thin eyebrows raised simultaneously.

  “The berries can be made into a paste,” Scence said. “Only ...”

  Evander clutched his hand to his stomach, cradling it as it continued to sting.

  “Only there're no berries in wintertime,” he said.

  “Best not to touch anything else,” Vee advised. “Wrap it up.”

  “And then what?” he said. “Wait for it to fall off?”

  “Forget your hand,” Scence said. “You have more important things to be thinking about.”

  She zipped around so that she was fluttering over his right shoulder. The beating of her wings tickled his skin and created a tiny breeze in his ear.

  “That's where The Strangler lives.”

  Evander stared at the spot in the not too distant scenery where she pointed. The base of an old oak tree nearly six feet in width sat rotting on the ground, its bark soft and peeling away like a wide, gaping mouth that had opened on the face of the earth. It rose thirty or so feet in the air before it was snapped off, leaving it without branches or any sort of covering. It simply stood like a huge pillar among trees, or a statue among gravestones. A large crack ran down its center. Evander tore one foot from the ground and took a step forward. The sprites didn't join him.

  He just had to ask for his brother, he told himself as he trudged up to the tree. That was all. There was nothing frightening about asking a question. The Strangler could simply say no if he didn't want to help, or ask him to leave, or berate him for trespassing onto his land, or strangle him and drag him down into the pit of the tree trunk and leave him to rot like the tree bark …

  Evander halted a foot from the tree and looked up. He focused on a patch of black wood and envisioned how his brother's face would look when he was safely restored home, and then, clearing his throat, he called to The Strangler.

  “Strangler,” he began, “I ask you – I implore you – to help me find my brother and lead him home.”