He knew, on some level, that he was young, and idealistic, and hopelessly love-struck. But knowing that didn’t make the feelings go away. He couldn’t make himself believe, no matter how hard he tried, that his love for Petra was childish. Or silly. Or merely a passing fancy.
He suspected—he knew—that even if she vanished away into Morgan’s dimension, leaving his world forever, he would still live his entire life thinking of her daily, missing her, pining for her silently and affectionately through the years.
The tragedy, he began to understand, was not in missing her every day for the rest of his life once she was gone. The tragedy was in denying his love for her while she was still, if briefly, walking the same world as him.
He was not, as Judith had assumed, “over” Petra.
He never would be.
He drew a deep, aching sigh, filling his lungs in the frozen stillness of the manor house, and let it out slowly. He knew once again what he had to do. He’d told himself it would be easier at some later date. But of course that later date was likely never to come.
He’d done extremely difficult things in his life. He had faced demons and horrors, confronted monstrous forces and villainous powers.
But now he felt that he would gladly face them all over again if only he could avoid the one task that now lay before him: breaking up with Millicent Vandergriff.
“After the holiday,” he said to himself with a firm nod, his voice small in the tall, empty library. “No excuses, Potter. Make it happen.”
He nodded again, resolved, and fisted his right hand on his knee.
Shortly, fortunately, he heard the sweep of the opening front door, felt a push of cold air that swayed the curtains slightly, as if they were sighing with relief at the family’s return. Boots knocked on the hall floor, voices echoed loudly, cheerfully, and James jumped up to join them, sheepish at having missed the shopping trip, but grateful to no longer be alone with his troubled, worrying thoughts.
He and Millie whiled away the midday practicing parts with the younger children, Ariadne, Nigel, and Edmund, for their presentation of the Triumvirate the following evening. As it turned out, Nigel was to play Donovan the villain, Edmund took the role of Treus the hero, and Ariadne, after some argument, filled the parts of the Marsh Hag, the Page Boy (“Page Girl,” she amended gravely) and various other roles, mostly to avoid having to play a romantic lead alongside her own brother—a conundrum that James, having a sister himself, could well understand. Millie accepted the role of Princess Astra, calling upon every ounce of her Hufflepuppet Pals histrionics to give the part the melodramatics it deserved. And James took on whatever parts were left as each scene demanded, sometimes acting as the King, other times as various soldiers, villagers, sailors, a ship’s captain, and even the raging sea monsters of the dreaded Dagger Peninsula.
“You’re not doing it properly,” Edmund complained, breaking character as James hulked over him, his hands raised into hooked claws.
“You’re not scary in the least. You have to be scary or else Treus won’t overcome his fatal flaw.”
James frowned, still hunched in monster form over Treus’ boat (an upholstered ottoman on a huge blue rug). “What’s Treus’ fatal flaw?”
Edmund rolled his eyes, but it was Nigel who spoke up, observing from the backstage of a nearby sofa. “Everyone in a tragedy has a fatal flaw. Treus’ flaw is his naiveté. You should know all this, shouldn’t you?”
James slouched and looked helplessly at Millie, who sat forward on a nearby chair attempting to rework one of her old dresses into a Marsh Hag costume for Ariadne. She glanced aside at him and shrugged. “I don’t know how you missed that, either. It was on our Wiz Lit final last year.”
Ariadne gave James an indulgently patient look and crossed her arms. “Treus has the fatal flaw of being na?ve. He knows that Donovan, the King’s advisor, has plans to marry Princess Astra so that he can become viceroy when the king dies. Treus also knows that Donovan has already used dark magic to trick the king into decreeing their marriage, against Astra’s wishes. And yet, when Donovan sends Treus, his only rival, off on some trumped up sea voyage, it never occurs to him that, hmm, this is probably a ruse to get me alone on the ocean so that Donovan and the Marsh Hag can send a magical storm to sink my ship and kill me.” She cocked her head at him and raised her eyebrows.
“Na?ve.”
“I know all that,” James said, glaring up at the ceiling and raising both hands, palms up.
“Then you know that, by sailing through the horrors of the Dagger Peninsula to cut around the Marsh Hag’s magical storm, he is also sailing through his own journey of growth into true manhood,”
Nigel prompted in his squeaky voice, as if reading from a cue card.
“Of course,” James said, trying to give the words a patiently weary lilt. “Can we just get on with this? We have to get changed for the actual play soon.”
“And that’s why the Marsh Hag’s storm follows Treus all the way back to the castle of Seventide,” Ariadne finished, eyeing James critically. “It’s a representation of Treus’ noble foolishness, a lesson learned too late to save him. Or his love, the Princess Astra.”
Without looking up from her costume project, Millie said, “So what’s Princess Astra’s fatal flaw?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Edmund said smugly, still looking at James from his perch on the ottoman. “Princess Astra’s flaw is that she’s impulsive. She falls in love with Treus, who’s just some random soldier.
Not a bad thing, but an impulsive thing. Then she tries to attack Donovan with her own letter opener when she learns he’s arranged to have Treus killed out on the high seas. Donovan nearly cuts her with her own knife as a result. Then, after Treus gets back to the castle and kills Donovan to save her, and the Hag’s storm unleashes itself on the castle to kill Treus, she stays with him instead of escaping! Totally impulsive.”
“But that’s what makes it so romantic!” Ariadne interjected, sighing solemnly.
“Your off your onion. Getting crushed under falling walls during your first kiss isn’t romantic,” Nigel shook his head dismissively.
“It’s daft as a drunken doxy. Escape and find yourself a new soldier, if you ask me. One without any stupid ‘fatal flaws’.”
“How did you three learn all this?” James asked, plopping to the ottoman next to Edmund.
“Old Mrs. Birtwistle, our tutor,” Ariadne sniffed. “Three hours of lessons every day. Who was your tutor?”
James blinked. “Um. My mum, I guess?”
“I’d sack her, if I was you,” Ariadne shrugged dismissively.