“I wish,” she said, and he froze as if a great hand had fallen from the heavens and slammed his shoulders, locking him in place. His eyes bulged. His throat worked, but no sound came out of his mouth. A great laugh exploded from the crowd below, watching the performance and unaware of what was happening above.
“I wish,” Hilda said again, her breath on his neck, one of her hands on the small of his back, “you would toss yourself into the waters of Grey Lake, turn into a large and ugly fish, and dwell there until the day all your magic runs out.”
He did not process her words fully until he was down the hill, marching dutifully southward to parts of the village he had not yet seen, magic puppeteering his body on an unfamiliar path. Weeds snagged his legs but did not stop him. His feet avoided dips and holes. He thrashed against the inescapablehold of magic, his heart pounding so hard in his chest it was a wonder no one else heard it. If he could only call out to Evren—but no, he could never speak while the magic was being wrung from him. Past the single cobbled road with its iron lanterns was a smaller path into the forest, down to a fisherman’s hut erected near a small dock at one end of a vast and oily darkness. Clouds coalesced overhead, hiding the stars.
Wind sheared across the lake. He could not see the other side, but he felt that something wandered there in the darkness, an ancient lurking creature waiting to be fed. He strode down the dock, screaming in his mind, praying for someone to see, someone to find him, someone to stop his march. But he was alone.
The prince dove gracefully into the black lake and disappeared.
Six
The morning the caravan was set to leave, Evren dressed slowly, waiting for the prince to tromp back from the tailor’s cottage in victory. Evren ate breakfast, made sure their things were properly packed, and checked on their horses. The prince still did not appear.
On his way back from the stables, Evren was stopped by Hilda, carrying the prince’s mended garments.
“Would you return these to him, please?” she asked, handing the stack over. “I’m sure he won’t want to be bothered if he isn’t awake yet.”
Evren blinked stupidly at her. “He didn’t stay with you last night?”
Hilda cocked her head, looking puzzled. “No, of course not. Is he not here?”
Clutching the prince’s clothes to his chest, Evren rushed inside to ask if the innkeepers had seen the prince. They had not. Nor had any of the caravan members, who were loathto talk to him because of the prince’s outburst against the villagers, or the other villagers, who didn’t particularly like him for the same reason. The last person who had seen the prince was Hilda, when they had walked up the hill during last night’s performance, but Hilda claimed the same thing each time he asked her: “I refused the wish—and him, I suppose—and told him I was returning to the performance. He wanted to take a walk.”
She looked troubled after the fourth time Evren asked the same question, and added, “He might have gone into the forest. I know he doesn’t understand this place, and he doesn’t have the respect for the forest that we do. Death dwells there. If he went into the trees unprepared, he’s gone now.”
Evren, who had been sworn to serve the prince from the day he was born, couldn’t believe he was gone, and vowed to remain in the town until the prince was found.
The caravan left. Evren remained with the prince’s horse and his clothes.
He spent his days searching the village from north to south, walking the line of the forest but never breaching the trees, going so far as the edge of the lake in the south where the craggy fisherman told him only the children came down to the lake.
Evren went out even at night, hoping that something about the darkness might help him trace the prince’s steps or understand what his mindset had been that day. Or, if that didn’t work, maybe he would come upon some unsavory character who might have been out that night with the prince, might have seen him—might have had something to do with the disappearance.
He found no unsavory characters, but he did find Ilyas.
The boy was huddled by the Klein’s pigpen, eating whatever leftovers he could find in the trough, wild-eyed and sickly. He clung to Evren when he realized who Evren was, and after a dunk in the washtub at the inn and a real meal, he explained what had happened.
The night of the performance, his father had taken him into the trees north of the village and told him to wait there while he went back to the caravan. Ilyas had obeyed because he was more scared of his father than the forest. Amidst the trees of the forest, in that timeless eldritch gloom, he waited until the sun came up... but he had eventually panicked and ran, he hoped, in the direction of the caravan. He emerged from the forest and rushed into the village to find the caravan long gone. Alone and terrified, he had hidden himself on the Klein’s farm—he liked the animals, he said—and had been there since.
His voice was so dull that Evren wasn’t sure if he understood what had happened to him, that his father had left him in the forest knowing that the forest would kill him.
“Poor boy,” said the innkeepers, doting on Ilyas, putting him in fresh clothes, setting him to work on easy tasks like sweeping the front walk and praising him softly when he performed well.
There was a moment, fleeting, when Evren wondered if the prince had abandoned him, had forgotten about his horse and his clothing and left because Evren had become too needling about what he used his magic for and why. The longer Evren stayed in Greymist Fair and the more he looked at the forest, the less he believed the prince was coming back.
“We can’t live our lives waiting,” said Hilda one morning, when she caught Evren sitting listlessly outside the inn. Hilda’s young face was lined with worry and something like regret. “I am sorry this happened. I’m sorry you’re in such pain.”
“I only wish I knew what happened to him,” Evren said.
It was early fall when Evren left Greymist Fair. The innkeepers and Hilda both warned him of the difficulty of travel on the road once the heavy winter snows fell. He didn’t want to wait and take his chances with the weather, nor did he want to spendseveral more months in the company of neighbors who either pitied or avoided him.
He mounted his horse and looked down at the two kind old innkeepers and little Ilyas, who was already starting to grow into his new clothes. The boy didn’t like the name Ilyas, wouldn’t let anyone call him by it, and so no one did. “We’ll find him a good new one,” said the old man, clapping the boy on the shoulder. “Won’t we?”
“I hope you do.” Evren gathered his collar tighter around his neck; even now in early fall, the weather was cold. “If the prince... if you ever hear anything, or know what might have become of him, please send word to the address I left. I know it’s not likely, but if he is... I wouldn’t want him to think I had left him.”
“Of course, dear,” said the old woman.
They said quick goodbyes, and then Evren turned down the road, not in the direction the caravan had gone, but back the way they had come. The forest swallowed him quickly. In minutes Greymist Fair disappeared behind him. When he emerged at the forest’s edge, into long misty foothills with the sound of the ocean in the distance, it was as if Greymist Fair had never existed at all.
