Journey of a Girl

Ajo: Chapter Fourteen

Hatred consumed Ajo.

It was a fire burning him from the inside, licking his bones and heating his skin to an uncomfortable degree.

He wanted to destroy the world but settled for an area in the woods. The time he spent tearing down trees could not be measured, and when he finally turned homeward he found an empty, joyless castle. The torches were dimmed, casting shadows in every corner where light once danced. Servants were ordered to keep their distance and remain unseen.

The Queen was on her throne, alone and miserable. Gone were the wedding guests and the court who awaited their new king. Gloom had taken their place, like an uninvited guest moving into the castle, determined to stay.

When Ajo appeared before his mother they said nothing to each other, not even a greeting, but shared a difficult look.

All was lost, they silently agreed.

The coronation had not ended, for it had never begun.

Ajo's humiliation was no doubt being gossiped about throughout the kingdom. He was not certain what would happen now, or if he would ever take the throne. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he did not care. His sole concern was that Galeia and her human never walked the woods again. He prowled through the trees day and night to make sure they obeyed his command. If he could not devote his days to love, he would devote them to hate.

And when Galeia died, he would spend them in mourning.

An abysmal future. Ajo could not see it proceeding down any other path.

Galeia must have taken his threat seriously, for he had not sensed a trace of her presence in the woods since their wedding day, some three weeks ago. More and more he stayed away from the castle and began to sleep under the trees, waking with the first peek of light on the horizon to resume his task of guarding the forest against Galeia's intrusion. On the rare occasion he did return home, the Queen met him with the same awful silence and the same dejected nod.

During the fourth week of this wretched routine, something changed.

Ajo pulled himself from the woods at the approach of dusk and locked himself inside the castle library. The idea had struck him during his hunt, that there might be a way to break the effect of the Soul Bind. He questioned his mother once about it but was met with a sad dismissal of that reality ever being possible. As the one who created the spell, the Queen assured him there was no way to dissolve it.

And she would not aid Ajo in what she believed was a fruitless quest.

Ajo rejected the notion.

Perhaps the magic was not as efficient when used on weak mortal lives.

Perhaps, if Galeia joined another part of her soul with his, she could become strong enough to withstand a severing from the human.

These ideas, at first dismissed as ludicrous, began to sound more plausible as his desperation grew. He became convinced that somehow the man had enchanted Galeia to love him. He might even be keeping her as a prisoner against her will. 

Ajo sought the counsel of the Knight of the Wood and asked if he had seen the courtship between Galeia and the human. The Knight had little information other than an instance where Galeia briefly questioned him on the wooing of humans, under the guise of being curious about the race.

"What did you tell her?" Ajo asked.

"Same as I told ye once," the Knight said. "Love will not be forced."

After many long days and nights a conclusion was reached, that the human had used Galeia as a means to lengthen his own life. Time was a human's greatest enemy, so he must have sought a way to avoid its grasp a little longer.