Chapter 16 King Eustis Laments the Responsibilities of Parenthood
King Eustis Laments the Responsibilities of Parenthood
Arris had not intended to walk past the Grove of Ancestors, but that was where the path had led him in his attempts to locate Demelza.
It was said that the ancestor trees stretched as far back as Enzo himself and that for those who could reach him, he would still speak.
The idea had captivated him as a child. When they were thirteen years old, Arris and Yvlle had packed a satchel of food and set off, convinced that if they could find Enzo, they might find some way to avoid Arris becoming a tree.
They walked for hours. They walked until the trees stopped speaking and commenting on how tall they’d grown and whether or not so-and-so had kept the sitting room the way they liked it.
Arris and Yvlle trudged past honey oaks, black ash, slippery elm and a dozen sycamores.
They walked past sea pines and silver walnuts, shrieking spruces and a hundred fir trees.
They got as far as their great-great-great-great-grandfather Lyall-the-Large (who had elected to return as a pebble the size of a thumbnail) before they were forced to stop.
The moment Arris and Yvlle turned around, they found themselves once more at the entrance of the Grove, the distance they had covered vanished in a single blink.
“Everyone tries to reach Enzo at least once or twice in their first life,” Eustis had said to them that night.
Yzara had wanted to cover her children in ointments and salves, to give them warm seawater baths and soothe their aching limbs, but Eustis forbade it. It was one of the few times Arris ever remembered his father denying his mother anything.
“Futility is a horrible feeling,” he told his children. “But know it now so that you never waste a moment of your life.”
When Arris first heard this, he was distressed.
What did his father mean by “waste”? Not wasting any moments was in and of itself a waste, for then how did one find the necessary rest to appreciate life to recognize what was worthwhile and what was, well, a waste?
For a few months after this, Arris had gotten so anxious that every moment spent not doing something was a disservice to existing that he had asked Yvlle to make him a draught that would remove the need for sleep.
For a month straight, Arris would run around wide-eyed and talk far too fast about the music of the planets, which one could hear quite clearly just before dawn, and doesn’t sunlight seem to scald anyone else and he had started ten books but finished none of them and, really, he was doing fine and how many hours of one’s life were spent on blinking and maybe Yvlle could find a way to do away with that too …
This was not a good time for the family.
“Each life is an individual scale, Arris,” his father had later told him.
Arris remembered that it was the same day he had woken up after being knocked unconscious and forced to sleep an entire week.
“Only we can determine what holds value in our lives. Sometimes it takes the whole of our lives to figure out what that means. That is not a bad thing. Futility is different. Futility is trying to wring a boulder for milk. It is asking the impossible of a situation rather than opening yourself to other wonders. That is what I meant to impart to you and your sister.”
Arris felt that he understood his father, but his greatest fear was that even now, he could not tell what was futile. This tournament that he had subjected the entire kingdom to … was it all just a last scrabble for wonders?
The evening’s dinner was held in the caverns and Arris had been relieved not to find Demelza seated at the table.
His mother had nodded in understanding when he explained he was too exhausted for conversation and thus excused himself.
And although Arris had been enjoying the contestants’ attentions, he was also relieved to find himself above the ground and beneath the moon.
In the distance, the contestants’ residences gleamed and Arris felt the inexorable press of the days ahead.
“Let this not be futile,” he said, closing his eyes.
He was not sure if he was praying or shoring up his own courage, but whatever it was, he felt lighter. Hopeful that the next step he took would bring him closer to peace.
What he did not expect was that his next step would be followed by a loud, irate grunt that was coming straight from the ground.
“Wrate above!”
Arris jumped and looked down. Beside the cobblestone path, a figure threw off a sylke cloak that appeared to be one of camouflage.
One moment there was nothing beside the moonlit cobblestone pathway but a couple of rocks, wildflowers and dirt.
The next, it was as if someone had peeled back the air. That someone was Eustis.
“Father?” said Arris, frowning. “What are you doing here?”
Eustis blinked and looked around. He always seemed pleasantly surprised by his own surroundings, as if he was just seeing them for the first time.
“The moon is exquisite tonight,” said Eustis. “Good for steeping in clarified thoughts, don’t you agree?”
Those who found Arris flighty and easily distracted had never interacted with his father.
“Shall we steep together?” asked Eustis. He dropped the cloak and sat upon it before patting the space beside him.
“I was actually on my way—”
“Only for a few moments,” said Eustis.
Arris sat down beside him. King Eustis was rarely dressed in anything other than pajamas.
He had a hundred sets, some of which were nothing more than a loose dress.
Others had complicated buttons. He liked to tell his children that it was as much for ease and comfort as it was a reminder that rest was a necessity of life.
“I’m sorry I was not at the first trial,” said Eustis.
“No you’re not,” said Arris. “You hate court functions.”
“True … I shall amend my statement, then. I am only sorry if you had wished me to be there and I had disappointed.”
Arris smiled. “It’s fine, Father. Really.”
Eustis sighed and stared up at the moon. “The truth is that it is too painful to watch, Arris.”
“What is?”
“This,” said Eustis, gesturing around him.
“I was raised knowing that I would not live long and then I did. And then you were born and I told myself that this was simply the continuation of our line … that this was the way things had always been and would always be … my own grief at how short your life might be made me feel selfish for living as long as I have.”
Arris was quiet. For all that he was told how similar he was to his father, they had never quite bonded the way Eustis and Yvlle had. Arris had never doubted his father loved him, but he had never guessed, until now, how painful that love might have been for him.
“I applaud your desire to find love. I admire your wisdom to know and appreciate all the emotions that life may offer,” said Eustis.
“But I suppose part of the reason I wished to find you was to tell you that in the moments when you think you will never love to remember that you are and always have been … deeply, deeply loved … I know I have not been able to express it as well as you might have wanted, but Arris, if I could forfeit my existence to extend yours, please know that I—”
“I know, Father,” said Arris. “I know.”
It was all too much in that moment. Arris wanted to feel appreciative, and he did, but he was ashamed that he also felt …
annoyed. He did not wish to bear the burden of his father’s grief and regrets on top of his own.
And it wasn’t as though that’s what his father was asking, but love is a burden, Arris realized.
He loved Eustis and he did not wish for him to feel this way, but he also wished he didn’t have to go through any of this in the first place.
“What are you thinking about?” asked Eustis.
“The inconvenience of possessing emotions,” said Arris.
Eustis laughed. “Yes, they are quite terrible.”
The air, so stuffy and oppressive the moment before, lightened. Arris looked up at him and grinned. “So you were lurking in the dark all this time to tell me that? You couldn’t have waited until breakfast?”
“This is hardly a breakfast conversation,” said Eustis, huffing. “And I was not lurking, per se. I was waiting for you to emerge from the cavern because I knew you would not stay for the dinner with the contestants—”
“How could you possibly know that?” asked Arris.
“Give me some credit for my powers of observation,” said Eustis.
“Anyway, I figured you would emerge and be lost in your thoughts and hopelessly beleaguered by the days ahead, because that’s how I felt when I went through my own selection of a bride, and then I thought it would look very wise of me to emerge from the shadows at this opportune emotional moment, but you took longer than I thought, so I figured I might as well take a quick nap but then I truly fell asleep.
” Eustis paused to exhale. “And then you stepped on me.”
“Sounds like an exhausting ordeal for you, Father,” said Arris.
Eustis nodded. “I have found parenthood to be a terrible drain on one’s supply of energy. Rewarding, but also awful.”
“… Good?”
“How do you feel after our talk?” asked Eustis.
“Confused,” said Arris.
“Well, it’s better than crushed by despair!” said Eustis. “You’re welcome! Now, up we get. I imagine you have some brooding to do and I wish to return to my book.”
Eustis made a great deal of harrumphing sounds as he hoisted himself up.
Arris paused before he stood. He looked around at the spot where his father had been waiting for him for long enough that he fell asleep.
He could picture Eustis rehearsing what he would say, then getting overwhelmed by the thought of speaking and lying on the hard ground.
Arris was still annoyed, but warmth flickered through his chest regardless.
He may not find the love he sought, but he did not doubt that he had known love all his life.
Perhaps that was the double-edged sword of such a gift.
Such love had given him the strength to imagine that even the impossible could be within reach.
Arris looked up at the mushroom tower that housed the contestants.
It was a towering thing, draped in thick vines of ivy and swirled up and down with hundreds of windows carved in the shape of teardrops.
Arris could not see much, but where all the other windows seemed dark and silent, there was one window near the middle that glowed with candlelight and Arris was certain that inside it, he would find Demelza.
He looked around for a door, but could find none.
A safety measure, he figured. Fortunately, the exterior of the mushroom tower was softly pitted, and it was easy enough for Arris to wedge his foot into one of the hollows while grasping the vines. Step by step, he began to climb until—
“And just where do you think you’re going, Your Majesty?”
Arris yelped. Just below the knoll where his foot sought purchase, the vines pinched together, shifting and rolling until the writhing mass unfurled at Arris’s eye level.
When he blinked, the plants appeared to have arranged themselves into the face of a nosy-looking old uncle.
The vines had managed to pick up a twig, which resembled a downturned mouth, and were complete with narrowed leafy eyes.
“Angling for some alone time with the contestants, are we? Hmmm?” demanded the vines. “A marriage bed is a sacred thing, boy, not something to be sampled with—”
“I am not sampling anything!” said Arris. “I have an arrangement with the contestant—”
“Oh is that what the young folk call it these days!”
“I am not attempting anything untoward with her,” said Arris. “I need to speak with her.”
“You can’t do that within public view? You have to go to her bedroom, where the door, I might add, is already shut?”
“Yes—wait. How do you know that? Are you spying on the contestants?”
“I am guarding them from the concupiscent urges of lordlings such as yourself!” said the vines, before adding smugly: “The queen herself summoned my spirit from the forests to serve as security for the future regent of the Isle.”
“You must be very good at your job, then,” said Arris.
The vines relaxed. A few of the leaves arched and Arris suspected that the roots were judging him.
“I am,” it allowed.
“If you allow me to continue on my way then you shall see for yourself that I am no threat to anyone’s virtue,” said Arris.
“Hmpf,” said the vines. “Any manner of carnal mischief will be immediately disrupted. I … shall … be … watching. I shall raise the alarm. Do you understand?”
“I can assure you that I am alarmed,” said Arris. “And a bit disturbed too.”
This answer seemed to satisfy the vines, who pulled back—though not before poking Arris’s hand with one of its thorns—and allowed Arris to scale the rest of his way to Demelza’s window.
Arris did not wish to be rude, but had the vines seen Demelza? The girl was covered—literally—in a fine scrim of dirt. She had charming eyes, which stood out all the more in her grubby face, but there was nothing short of bodily force that would induce Arris to be above—or below—that girl.
Arris opened her window and was immediately met with bodily force.
Within moments, he found himself pinned beneath Demelza.
Not that he immediately recognized this.
The Demelza he had encountered was grubby-faced and soot-streaked.
Arris wasn’t sure he’d properly seen her face until this very moment.
Her skin was pale and luminous, like the inside of a pearl.
And her eyes, which had earlier stood out, were not charming but arresting.
The color of leaves upon still ponds. She sniffled when she saw him and he realized that her tears had dislodged some of the mud that had been stuck to her face.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”