The city of Riso was quiet for a day. The air in the city was damp from the tears that slipped down eyes. The streets were bruised with lumps that crawled into the people’s throats. The stones that held up the castle were even too weary to hold up the walls anymore. They had nothing worth holding in. They felt empty like a hollow log sitting at the edge of a murky marsh.
Cecilia was gone. The secrecy of the night would never tell what happened. How could no one have seen? Not the trees, or the moon, or the grasshoppers that seemed to be wide awake at night. Cecilia was gone and she left no trails. She had left no footprints. No notes were lying, waiting on her bed.
When Lucia opened the door, she opened it up to absolute silence. The air was naked of any sounds, revealing the truth of what had happened. The bed was empty. The covers remained disheveled and bare. Lucia could only stare in shock.
Once the entire city found out that their beloved Princess was missing, everyone was in a state of depression and anxiety. Princess Cecilia had a mind lush with thoughts and ways to change the world when she was Queen someday. No one had ever noticed any flaws in her. Her life was the perfect painting of who a princess should be. So it was a shock when she went missing.
Her younger sister Lucia knew she had to find her. After opening the door to her sister’s empty, cold room, she ran to Jude. He was a boy around Cecilia’s age, and one of her best friends. He was a frail boy, and hung tall over the others like a weeping willow tree. His eyes always looked up, though there was melancholy lying deep beneath the pupils. Lucia knew that he could help her find Cecilia. They decided to check her room for any evidence of where she might have gone.
The room lacked any evidence. They searched thoroughly yet they couldn’t find anything – until they looked under the bed.
Hiding underneath the bed was a tiny white weasel with a pink nose and large wondering eyes. It was covered in thinning wisps of hair. The little creature was no bigger than a forearm, yet it seemed to think it was much larger. It looked fragile yet its neck was held high once it caught eyes with Jude. Almost as if he was taunting him.
“Lucia! Look, under the bed!” Jude’s voice trembled as he spoke the words, and his eyes never left the creature. Lucia took one look and instantly froze. She knew this animal. She recognized its fur and its smell and its eyes. The scent of so many years in the past suddenly washed up into her nostrils as if she was drowning in them, her throat began to swell and ache with the need for fresh air.
This creature had died the year before, yet here it was lounging underneath the bed with a smirk. She had remembered seeing it lying cold and lifeless on the stone floor of the castle, the smirk nowhere to be found. The pale white of its skin almost matched the stone floor that day.
“That’s impossible! Drunvalo died last year! I remember the day, and Cecilia’s tears. How could he possibly be alive?” Jude scooped Drunvalo up into his arms and examined his tiny, curving body. Both Jude and Lucia knew what Drunvalo being alive meant, but neither of them dared to say it aloud.
“You know where Jeannette lives, right?” Lucia knew that Jeannette could figure it all out. She knew everything there was to know about magic, the good and bad.
“She lives behind the Forest of Perdita. We’ll have to follow a long winding path, even though it could take a few days.” Jude answered.
“I don’t care if it takes one thousand years! I will find my sister!” Jude looked at Lucia and saw her sister’s eyes. He longed so badly to find Cecilia, and he had faith that they would. He knew that whatever happened to Cecilia, she would be able to find a way out and fight like a soldier fighting his last battle. But he knew something dark was lurking behind the disappearance of Cecilia, and he intended to turn on the light and expel that darkness forever.
