The funny thing was, the king thought, that although almost everything else that had loomed so large in his childhood—trees and walls and people—had shrunk as Simon himself grew, the Hayholt actually seemed larger to him now than it had when he was young. Perhaps because I’ve seen so much of what’s underneath. Perhaps because I have more of an idea of the secrets it holds than almost anyone else does. It was hard to feel familiarity and comfort when you knew that the large but familiar house in which you’d grown was built over an entire separate castle, and a Sithi castle at that, unexplored for centuries and haunted by dangerous secrets.
“Aren’t you going to tell us the rules, Grandfather?” demanded Lillia. “Or are you just going to stare at the ground?”
He looked up, a little startled to find himself woolgathering. “Here, now. Don’t be sharp with the king, young lady, or I’ll have you in the dungeon before you know it.”
Lillia and her friends duly pretended to be frightened, which made him smile. His granddaughter had rounded up several playmates, a pair of Rowson girls and two boys close to Lillia’s own age, young relations of Earl Osrics, both in the age between childhood and the serious business of manhood, impatient to be grown. He prayed they could retain their romantic beliefs about manhood for many years to come, that he would not be forced to send them to war.
“Well?”
“Sorry, Princess Lillia the Stern,” he said. “I was thinking about how I will marry you off someday to a fat and bossy prince who will eat all the sweets and leave you none.”
“No, you won’t. Now tell us the rules. Why is this game called ‘Holly King’?”
“Because that was the name of a Hernystiri king who long ago ruled here—ruled most of the north. And he was not an Aedonite, but a pagan!”
“Then why did God let him rule in the Hayholt?”
“Oh, eventually he lost. He’s not the king now, is he? And we’re not Hernystiri, are we? Now, enough questions, child. This is a hiding game, and we pretend we are Aedonite priests.”
“We already know how to play hide and seek, Grandfather.”
“Ah, but this is different. Priests do not betray each other.” And he explained how only one person was to hide at first, while everybody else would look, and if a player found the person who was hiding they had to climb into the hiding place with them. “Then, you see, the last person becomes the Holly King, and then he—yes, Lillia, or she—becomes the first to hide in the next game. Do you understand?”
“But if the last person is the Holly King, why would he be the person who hides? I thought you said the Holly King was trying to catch the priests.”
Simon sighed. “In truth, it is sometimes difficult trying to do things with you, Granddaughter.”
? ? ?
One of Osric’s young relations was the first to hide, and Simon, who knew the castle far better than any of the children, soon found him in the back of one of the residence’s ground-floor storerooms. He whispered to the boy to keep quiet, then sat down beside him to wait for the rest to discover their hiding place. Soon, the darkness and the warmth of close quarters made the king’s eyes begin to feel heavy.
It makes no sense, he thought. When I dreamed, I would sometimes wake up many times in a night, my heart pounding like a war drum, and then I’d find it hard to get back to sleep. Some days I walked around in a fog all day from the sleep I’d missed. But now, when for some reason my dreams have deserted me, I still feel the same way, weary and stupid. Bloody Tree, it really isn’t fair!
It was strange to be playing children’s games once again. His own son John Josua had seldom indulged in such things, remaining apart from the castle’s other children, content to read or sometimes even just to sit by himself and think. Simon could remember him perched in a chair that was too large for him, staring solemnly out at the sky as though the firmament itself were a book and young Johnno could read what it said.
He was startled out of his memories when the older Rowson girl found them and squeezed into the small storage room. She whispered excitedly with the boy, their voices like the murmur of wind in the eaves, but Simon was already floating back to earlier times—earlier, but not always happier times.
What could we have done differently? he wondered, as he had so often over the years. Could Miri and I have protected our son better? But who can stop sickness? Who can beat back fever? The best healers and physicians in the land all did their best, Tiamak and so many more, but it was like standing on the bank and watching him drown just beyond our reach. The remembrance of John Josua’s last days, memories so cold and so sickening they felt like poison, now threatened to overwhelm him. He forced himself back to the present, to the sound of whispering children in the darkened storeroom. The second boy had found them, and was laughing with the other two. Simon shushed them. Didn’t they understand how the game was played? It was important to stay hidden as long as possible, until only one remained, one lone player, wondering where everyone else had gone.
Alone. Now that he remembered the few times he had played, he also remembered that he had never liked the game of Holly King all that much. Because it was so lonely if you were the last to discover where the others were hidden, warm and safe and giggling quietly, secure in the company of others. So lonely . . .
The other Rowson girl found them now, a little one named Elli-something. She was crying a little from having been on her own. In between sniffs and sobs, she asked, “Where’s Lillia?”
Where was Lillia? Simon wondered too. It was hard to believe his confident granddaughter, who strode the castle halls as boldly as any monarch ever had, could actually be the last one to find their hiding place. It reminded him of something Miri had once told him: “You and I were never scared of the same thing. You were always afraid of being found out, but I was always afraid of being overlooked.”
The crowding made the small storeroom even warmer. “Shush, you lot,” he said, “or she’ll find us.” But a part of him wanted Lillia to find them, because he was feeling a little worried about her. “In any case, don’t push. You’ll only make it hotter in here.”
It was getting warm—downright hot, like a summer’s night when covers clung to damp legs and sleep would not come. When his dreams had been so horrible in the months after John Josua’s death, Simon had nearly cried some nights just from weariness, desperate for sleep. Now sleep itself seemed like something dangerous as it pulled at him, as the quiet voices of the children around him mixed and slurred. Where had Lillia gone? He groaned and stretched, but could not free himself from the weariness that was on him. What if he fell asleep here like some old drunkard? Shouldn’t he be out looking for his granddaughter?
Even as he started to nod again he heard new voices. They were distant, barely audible above the children’s whispers, but Simon heard them most clearly, as if they spoke in his own thoughts.
Come to us, they said. It is time. The time is here, for you to have again what you lost so long ago. It seemed almost like singing, like a river of words, flowing endlessly past. It is time to come to us. It is time . . .
Startled, Simon sat bolt upright. That had been no child calling to him, but something else, a voice from out of his lost dreams. It is time . . . What could that mean?
No. It means nothing, he told himself. It is only that I am sleepy and foolish. A warm afternoon, a tired old man.
But he could still hear noise from outside the storeroom, new voices this time, and growing in strength.
“Quiet!” he told the children. “Let me listen!”
“Oh, God save us!” a woman was screaming. “God grant us mercy! The poor princess!”
Sweet Elysia save me, am I awake or dreaming? he wondered, but his heart banging against his ribs felt very, very real. The princess? Who could that be but . . .?
“Lillia!” he cried, shoving the children to either side as he rose and pushed his way through the dark toward the front of the closet. “Lillia! Oh, sweet Elysia, please let nothing have happened to her!” He was suddenly hollow with dread. “Lillia, where are you?”
And then the door swung open and his granddaughter stood there, nothing but a silhouette, a ghost, until his eyes adjusted to the light. Lillia’s face was pale, her eyes wide. “Grandfather! What’s happened?” She burst into tears and rushed to wrap her arms around Simon’s waist. “Why are they shouting that the princess is dead? I’m not dead!”
He could still hear people shouting, even more of them now, cries of horror and shock spreading through the residence.
“Stay with me, all you children.” Something very bad had happened, he knew, and nothing would ever be the same. He held Lillia tightly. “Just stay with me, little ones. I’m the king. I’ll keep you safe.”
Afterword