Down the Castle Halls

Chapter One

Niall

August 2012.

Stormy nights usually bring peace to the castle. My family usually rests as for I . . . I wait. I wait for the storm to be over and the dark clouds to move so the moons white light can brighten up the dark sky and the grounds of the Kingdom. That night, nothing was calm.

“Everything will be alright,” Mum said. “I know it will.”

Nothing will ever be all right. Not when Father is lying in bed and we were out in the hallway; not being able to help him. I was just about to tell Mum that when the doctor walked in. Our family doctor lives in the castle with us so he is always at an arms reach. He came in handy a lot when I was younger. He probably hated how much Greg and I used to wrestle. He especially cane in handy that morning when Father started to cough up blood continuously.

“Is everything alright?” Mum asked while she stood up from the concrete bench.

She just said that everything was going to all right but as soon as the doctor comes, she is asking what she just tried reassuring me only a few minutes ago. Typical Mum.

The doctor—Dr. Xavier he told us to call him—sighed, which just showed that whatever was going to be said next was not going to be a good thing. I was never in this situation before. Sure, I have been told that I have a broken leg and other stuff but I felt it in my gut that this was much worse.

When Dr. Xavier decided to speak, I did not expect his answer. I knew that it was not going to be good news so I expected that maybe he was going to have a heart attack or just getting really sick. And by sick, I did not mean cancer.

“Bobby has colon cancer,” he said. Father, the strongest person I ever knew and King of Sonas has cancer.

I could not say a thing but Mum was going crazy with questions. “How bad is it? Is he going to make it? Is chemo an option? Money is not a problem, just so you remember. How long does he have?”

They were out of place and she was barely breathing. My arm wrapped around her shoulder and I sat her back down on the bench that was against the hallway in the east wing of the castle.

“Breathe Mum,” I said. “You have the breathe.”

She nodded her head and started to take deep breaths. The doctor was looking at us, sympathetically.

“It seems that Bobby has stage IVB colon cancer, which means that the cancer has spread to possibly more than one organ that is not near the colon. Colon cancer can take years to find and takes years to actually spread, which is probably why we have found it in such a stage. Myself and other doctors never thought of Bobby’s sickness as being cancer.”

“So the cancer has been spreading for a while?” I asked. Dr. Xavier nodded. “How—How long does he have?”

Dr. Xavier did not say that Father was going to die but with the way he described the cancer, I knew that it was going to happen. My father was going to die at some point.

“With the right chemotherapy . . .” He trailed off, probably calculating in his head how long Father had. “He can live for about a year or two. Three at most but that is, as I am sorry to say, not likely.”

Mum sobs into my shoulder and I could feel the tears that were falling from my eyes and into Mum’s hair.

Father was going to die. Bobby Horan; my father, King of Sonas, will eventually lose a battle to cancer and leave me, Mum, Greg, and everyone else in Sonas.

Ω Ω Ω

Sonas is Gaelic for happiness. I know this because it was actually the first word I ever spoke. Sonas is a Kingdom off the coast of Ireland. It takes about an hour or two by boat so no one could really say we are that far out into the Atlantic Ocean either.