Leapfrog

The fool wept. Unhindered by the burden of shame, fat tears rolled down his cheeks as he wailed at the sky, knuckling at his skull with clenched fists. The world was ending. The sky was crashing. All was at an end. All would die. 

        The hand rubbed round on his back. To sooth. To quail. For naught. For naught, it was all at an end. The tears dropped into the dust. Plop. Plop. Plop. Small clouds kicked up, dusting the breeches of the prince. He hated to get dirty, yet was distracted greatly by the wailing. He patted. Pat. Pat. Plop. 

        —Fear not Jingel, the prince said, his voice a-hitch in his throat, not yet boned by manhood. —we shall meet again.

        —Nay, cried the fool. —we shall not, —this is the end. —The end.

        —Cliffsview is not so very far away. said the Prince, still circling his hand. —I shall be back for the harvest ball.

        The fool wailed harder still. Plop. Plop. Plop. Sob. Plop. He fisted his eyes to block out the world. The lad’s hand stopped. It rested warm against the patches. —Come, said he. —let us play a game.

        The fool peeked from between a fence of flesh and bone. —A game? he asked. —Pray, what game?

        The prince smiled, a cavern in the white shone black. Still room to grow. No doubt. A lad to be man. —Leapfrog said he, with a look of triumph washing across his visage. 

        The fool dropped his hands to the dust, hot broken tears now forgotten. —Leapfrog? he asked. —Yet that shall lead to soiled breeches.

        The prince nodded. —A price which must be paid. he said. —A last game of leapfrog before I sail.

        The wailing began anew.  

Through the Æther

Gaze deeply through the æther, through space both real and imagined, through the deepest reaches of time. In the vastness of the Dark, see a glimmering blue world warmed by a golden star. Look deeper. See the massive gnarled oak tree sitting atop a green hill, its branches clawing at the low flat grey cloudcover. 

Look deeper. 

Inside the massive tree, hollowed out, squated a child drawing shapes in the ashes of the hearth. The child is thin with copper hair which stood up like frozen fire. The child’s fingers were bone white with ash. A gnarled old hand spattered with age spots, dry and warm, set itself on top of the child’s. The twisted hand was encrusted with jeweled rings. The jewels twinkled in the red light of the fire. The hand belonged to Zazi. The child looked up into Zazi’s face, gold hoops pierced eyebrows and nostrils, the face framed by long wild grey hair, the tips brushed lightly through the ashes of the hearth.

‘Take care with symbols writ, Willa.’ Zazi said. ‘They hold power.’

The child knew Willa meant her. This was her earliest memory.

Dire Portents

 Moons before chaos reigned across the land, the omens were legion. Monstrous births were recorded in all of the shires; babes with tails, horns, double faces or even heads, cloven feet,  talons for hands, scales, fur, fangs, forked tongues; it was said that a heifer in the shire of Bloodfield gave birth to a human child with a full set of teeth; in the shire of Inkensky a gazing pool in a garden dedicated to the goddess Hadrene turned to blood; a shagfoal the size of a warhorse was spotted galloping across the moors of Scarvale for the first time in over four hundred years; a statue of the mother Hadrene which had been torn down by the new Hierophant and cast into the River Smote washed up against a small island and became lodged, where hundreds witnessed it weeping openly at the act of sacrilege; yet most grievous of all the portents was the massive rat king discovered in the bowels of the cellar of the royal palace, the tails of over fifty rats twisted and intertwined together, their flesh torn asunder in desperate attempt to flee from one another.