Demian's Kall

Homecoming

©Jenny Bertel

At fourteen I was living the perfect childhood fantasy. It was an age of royal rule and I was a princess in a castle, I had horses and fancy dresses and anything else my young heart desired. Servants of my own and more jewelry then I would ever wear. From time to time I gave things away to the young servant girls, so they wouldn't feel lowly. Though I had always been berated for going barefoot, wearing my cheapest clothes and running the grounds like one of the servants. I liked my hair loose and hated all the layers and tight corsets other women seemed to think were so important. Besides when I did decide to escape the castle grounds and go off into town I would blend in with a couple of our girls and no one knew who I was, usually. It was fun. I had a great life.

Then my father King Reynard Agnarias, went away to do battle for our kingdom. My mother and I were left behind, our hearts weighed heavy with despair.

For months we wandered about the halls of our quiet stone monstrosity, wondering what would kill him first. The enemy or the creatures that lived in the hills and forests. We received letters from father telling us things were going well but soon men from our army began to return home, too injured and bedraggled to continue fighting any longer. A year went by and the war raged on.

There was a small army who lived right alongside us here at the castle grounds, my father's guards and best. The men he wanted around him all the time. I knew many of them like family. Eleven soldiers came home one day, all missing at least one eye the majority missing both. They brought with them a carved wooden casket, to be buried in the great garden.

Alderon lay in the casket, a soldier in my father's army, I had grown up with him. He had only been four years older then I, brought to live with us in the castle after his parents had been killed in great service to the kingdom. My father and mother had raised him themselves as well as fostering two other children, whose parents had also been killed in service to the king.

My other foster brother was so far still alive and my foster sister was in a nearby province visiting with her aunts and cousins for a little while. I went down to the garden after the hole had been dug. Everything was set and they were ready to proceed.

"Open the casket." I ordered the two servants standing nearby. Golden leaves fell softly to lay on the carved wooden box.

"No!" Barked out one of my father's majors, stepping forward.

"Narwin I am old enough to order you around now, so don't make me act unladylike!" I snapped. Looking up at him defiantly.

"My Lady, I was just trying to spare you. Alderon is nothing like what you have ever seen before. Would it not be best for you to remember him as he was instead of how he might be now?" He replied, trying to sound reasonable and protective at the same time. He managed to pull it off very well but I wasn't in the mood to put up with his over protectiveness.

Something must have shown itself upon my face for in the next moment his jaw hardened and his eyes were as cold as the grey skies they so closely resembled. He turned his attention to the soldiers standing near the casket, nodding his head once. He then briefly turned those eyes of his back to me before lowering his gaze and stepping back, armor clinking softly. "As my lady wishes."

Alderon was a little far gone, his skin was dark and swollen and you could no longer see the expressive facial features that had made him who he was. The smell that rolled out of the casket in waves made my head spin and my stomach lurch, I had to swallow convulsively in order to keep my stomach from emptying itself all over the time worn paving stones.

I would not run, I wanted to feel this pain, the hurt of seeing a loved one like this. Maybe when it was my father I would be able to handle it and face it like a future queen. I choked back the wave of nausea that was threatening to engulf me and touched the only thing that still looked like Alderon. His shining auburn hair, still clean on one side. Hair that was a vibrant polished cherry wood color, almost as long as my own light brown ringlets. The other side was dark and matted with old dried blood and other things to thick to be blood.