The Twelve Kingdoms

Rotten Memories

/// Hansel & Gretel

Healing Kingdom ///

Everything was still, a hush settled over the air. No breeze, no birds chirping. He no longer heard her humming voice in the wind that haunted him for many years.

He was laying on his back in the lush grass, feet dangling off the edge of the world. He lifted his hand up in the air, bleak sunlight filtering through his fingers. His other hand came up as well, holding a shard of glass.

Searing pain across the flesh of his palm, releasing a small river of red. Drops trickled down the wrist, and he stared listlessly.

After a while, he stretched his bleeding hand over his head to reach through the fence. Nobody's powers work beyond the fence, on the side of the edge of the world. He pulled his hand back after a minute, completely healed by then.

He stared out into the colorless nothingness before him. The sun was setting, turning gray as it settled lower and lower. It would be up and glowing tomorrow on the other side over the Frost Kingdom.

It was inviting, the nothingness over the edge. He wanted to jump into it, to drown in it. It was too bad the magnetic field wouldn't allow it.

The quietness wasn't enough because eventually her voice was here, too, faintly whispering melodies in his ear like she used to do when they were kids.

Closing his eyes, he remembered like he did every day.

***

When they were barely twelve, him and Ada, one of the palace guards taking them out on a "walk" to the forests of the Earth Kingdom. At some point he disappeared and they were left wandering the woods, alone and scared and hungry.

That's what they deserved, he supposed, for being the children of a concubine, one from the Earth Kingdom no less, the Healing Kingdom's biggest enemy. Of course the king would want to get rid of them.

(It was odd because the Healing Kingdom seemed like the most peaceful out of the twelve when it was one of the most manipulative and cruel ones.)

After wandering around for a few days, somehow they stumbled upon a fence. The edge of the world. And Mell, who was sitting beyond the fence, his startled face turned toward them. They became friends with the scared looking boy like that; he would sneak them food and showed them to an old abandoned fey house.

.

That was almost eighty years ago. It was times like these when he wished he was a human with a short lifespan. But he was fey and he still had hundreds more years to live in torture.

Everything around him was covered in a golden glow, signaling the end of the day. He hated sunsets. It was when time was most obvious.

If only time was reversible. But each day it taunted him; with each setting of the sun it reminded him that it only goes forward.

His fingers twisted the grass absentmindedly, pulling it by the roots. They stopped when someone stepped through the hole in the rusted fence. Ash twisted his neck to give Mell a small smile as the latter sat down next to him.

Mell hadn't really changed much. He still looked twelve with his large marble-like eyes. Although this time there was something sinister about those eyes.

"Let's kill him," he said after a stretch of silence. "Let's break him down piece by piece, take away everyone he loves one by one until he wishes for death. And then let's kill him in the cruelest way we can."

Ash sat up and looked over at his friend. Jaw set in determination, Mell was staring straight ahead.

"Yeah," he replied softly. "Let's do it."

***

There was a time, when they were fifteen, and Mell brought them to the Earth Kingdom's palace. Everything was in dark velvet shades of brown and green and the tallest towers were no higher than a few stories. It was a great contrast with the Healing Kingdom's white and silver, where every building was at least three stories with spiraled rooftops.

(But there was something similar, and that something was the rotten smell of corruption.)

Mell's older brother, Terra, was so sickeningly kind to them, especially to Ada. And a year later, Ada was dead, buried ten feet in the ground, bound by vines and tree roots.

And from then on Terra was just sickening, no longer kind. Ash wanted him dead, dead, dead.

.

Mell turned to him, a sweet innocent smile on his face. "I've perfected the revenge plan, Ash. We can start the hell now."

Ash didn't smile back as they squeezed their way through the fence into the forest.

And here the light breeze moved the branches of the trees. The leaves were whispering her name. He could see the dimple in her right cheek as she smiled in the fading light. (He had a matching one on his left cheek, but it hasn't showed for the past 80 years.)

Mell walked in front of him on the forest path, looking back occasionally to make sure Ash was still there. A bird chirped shrilly somewhere up in the deep green canopy. Mell stopped.

"It sounds like her laugh," he said, so quietly that Ash barely heard him.

And the look in his eyes was of that desperate empty sadness. His once dear friend was a broken toy. They were both like that, ripped off plastic limbs, painted plastic smiles, and an emptiness in their chests.

And in that moment he hated her. Hated how she never left him alone.