A Fever Dream

CHAPTER 10. Still Garden

The Neversnow was a prosy name for the capital of the land of eternal summer. There were so many more beautiful, lyrical names. But sometime someone from our world, who suffered from a lack of imagination, came up with it and it stuck like gum to the sole of a shoe.

It was strange all the more because there was a place in the midst of the Neversnow where it actually always snowed.

Tucked between inner walls of the August Estate, ancestral home to the elder prince and his father and mother and those who came before them stood a garden, where bare trees bent their crooked bodies under the weight of snow, and life-sized sculptures of ice never melted. Due to some unknown magic spell, that originated thousands of years ago, the night never changed into a day in the Still Garden, and the sun never rose, unless you stepped through a threshold and out of the gates.

There, in the shadows of sleeping trees prince Elliot was to be put to rest till the end of times.

The ceremony was secret and fast. A handful of courtiers and servants shuffled along the sidewalks and garden paths, as the snowflakes melted on their sharp noses and cheeks. All kinds of magical folk – short and sturdy, tall and fairy-like, with skin blue and white and gold and ears pointy and straight, some more familiar to me than the others. In a couple of hours the news would be announced how the elder prince released a demon upon the Summer itself, but it felt like it was unnecessary - no one cried either way.

A clockwork orchestra made of ice bent and moved their bows, and shook their heads, as the snow fell on their glass-like faces. Cranberries and mountain-ash gleamed in the trees, littering the snow where they fell from the branches. They were almost the exact shade of Alex's hair, I noted, as he lowered on one knee before the crystal glass tomb.

"Brother," he uttered. "Blood of my blood."

He murmured ceremonial farewells, somber and poetic. 

Elliot's face was bloodless and serious.

Graceful, no longer fragile. 

The speeches for a royal offspring that met noone's expectations took a while but then they were over.

We set up the beacons on the marble podiums, and sent lanterns into the night, scaring the ravens that took off from the treetops in a rising tide. And everything was so white and the snow never stopped. I imagined we were all in a snow globe on a mantel of the fireplace at some house, and it was Christmas, and family in the kitchen made jolly noises and someone was about to call me for dinner.

I hid my face in the collar of my coat, wrapping my hands in fists deep inside my pockets. And when it was my turn to come up to the pedestal, I didn't know what to say. For a moment I thought that there has been a flickering smile on Elliot's pale lips.

Cry, I willed myself, looking at his hands, fingers laced.

I dug my nails into my palms till I drew blood.

Why don't you cry? Don't you feel sad?

Such a beautiful creature, meant to exist for ages. An enigmatic youth, witty and clever, demolished by your very hand.

Cry - or regret forever.

But I couldn't.

I just stood there and stared grimly at him, and the walls of the castle, at the beautiful faces of Summer-dwellers, none of whom held any kind of remorse– and why would they? And I didn't too.

"Come," Alex touched my arm. He was wearing a red frock coat, almost sacrilegiously stark in all of this whiteness.

"In a moment," I edged away from his touch.

"You did what had to be done. Don't freeze."

And then everyone left.

And Elliot was still there.

It's not that I expected him to get up, fix his shirt, and leave with us, no.

But as I threw one last look at him over my shoulder it finally dawned on me: come what may, he would still be here.

Tucked away in a lonely garden, in the midst of boisterous life and eternal summer.

Times would change, but he never would.

And for a second, I was unable to breathe as if a hand squeezed my heart.

I stumbled over the snow path and to leaned into the brick wall, easing the knot of my scarf.

The garden was empty now. High towers of the manor loomed over the tress, gloomy and grey like the gothic cathedral's. I didn't know much about this part of the family or what lay inside of the manor. From what I heard and read in the official records when the Summer Queen was wed to the King she already had two daughters – one of them bright as the sun, and another beautiful like a moonlight. He took them as his own, and they were brought up to be proud and kind heirs to the crown. One daughter, Annabelle, was married to a respectable summer lord and gave birth to a son, who was nothing but joy. Elliot's mother, however, fell in love and her choice was nothing they all expected. The man was handsome and rich, but there was a problem – the rumor said his ancestors made a deal with the evil, and every once in a while a child in the line would be born without a soul but with an affinity to darkness.

I wondered, sometimes, what it must be like to fall for someone you knew was no good for you. To step over the good graces and to defile the expectations of your family. I, myself, could never do it. I ran away, instead.

But, as the years passed something strange happened and one day both of them just disappeared. As if the Summer itself just whisked them away. Or maybe it was the evil, tired of being toyed with. Elliot was taken back into the Narjar castle, and provided with everything a prince might expect. He, however, behaved like he was nothing but.

Now, in the cold, empty manor looked ominous. The frost lined the walls of it like veins, or the frozen traces of tears shed long ago. I wondered what it would be like to walk through the hollow corridors and light candles in the rooms, which haven't seen light for years. The picture made me shudder.

A crow landed on my shoulder.

"Hey you," I murmured, patting its feathers. It didn't scare him.

It didn't answer too, or maybe it did, but I knew for sure that at the moment both of us terribly, hauntingly missed the winter.