#mariaandthekelpie kelpie stars space fantasy fiction story chapter4

[collectorofstarstuff-blog]

Maria and the Kelpie [Sleeve and Starling]

The beast was watching Maria and the King was watching the beast.

No one wanted to carry a squirming baby but Levi, who offered to carry the princess home. The King insisted on carrying his daughter himself, while the guards carried the Queen’s body and watched after their new prisoners. After ensuring Maria breathed and swaddling her tightly into the sheet Leanna had brought, Leopold set his eyes on the beast again. The golden bridle seemed to do nothing. The animal was already transfixed with the bundle in his arms and it walked behind him as if in a trance. The two hunters he arrested came quietly. They seemed only concerned with the Ancient and insisted nobody but themselves touch it. Something about “special gloves” and “if you value your life.” The King allowed them to lead it into his sleeping Kingdom.

Leopold had awoken to a stupid thing. The damned sheet was missing. Why? Who would nick a sheet from a royal’s bedchamber? But that stupid thing had saved his daughter’s life. He was too slow to save his wife’s.

As per carefully crafted decree, when the suns of the royal family return to waking, the people must go to sleep. The paradox of the common folk being entirely too excited to sleep since the royals should not have woken for several hours made the grainy sleeping pills necessary. Leopold lamented this rule; he never liked sleep, and missed the days when he did not need it. Enormous star, enormous waste of energy. He was exhausted already. So, though he didn’t dwell on it too much right now, Leopold  felt badly that the order was issued to everyone to take their pills as soon as they got up, but it couldn’t be helped. His wife and daughter were missing. Not that he missed his wife.

He barely remembered handing Maria off to a very irritated astronomer and lowering himself into his throne to hear the pleas of the hunters. He looked over their heads as they spoke, or rather as the shorter one spoke.

“Sire, we did not know the Queen was near the lake. We have known its location for some time, but considered it no threat to your kingdom because of how deep into the woods it was. It is still young, Your Brilliance. An infant maybe two or three weeks old, we did not think it capable of leaving the lake.”

“How is that possible?” the King said dreamily, still not meeting anyone’s eyes. Levi, standing on one side of the throne with his captain, looked at his King. The astronomer hushed a fussy baby. The hunters exchanged a glance.

“How is what possible, my lord?”

Leopold seemed not to know that he had spoken. “Carry on.”

“Yes. Well, we were setting out to capture it when all of this happened. We came to the clearing after the time your Queen was already dead, I swear it on my pitiful star.”

Leo held out his arms as though expected to be handed something. For a moment, nobody understood then, hesitantly, the astronomer came forward and put Maria in his arms. He touched the baby’s forehead, utterly confused.

“Dead,” he repeated. Leanna was dead. He had longed for this day so many times yet now, how could he not feel guilty it had actually happened? He would not shed a tear over someone he so loathed, but he did feel terrible, almost as though wishing for it had made it come to pass. “What’s wrong with my daughter?” he demanded after such a long silence that the bigger hunter jumped.

“Sire?”

“Something’s wrong with her.” He lifted Maria up and stared hard into her little face. She gurgled. Her father’s face was the one that made her smile. He cared for her more than Leanna had ever touched her. Through his exhaustion, he couldn’t quite tell but something was odd. “She’s heavier.” The astronomer looked puzzled. “Bigger. My god, is she…? She’s bigger! She’s older!” Before the night’s events, she had been barely able to lift her head. But now Maria was wide awake. Alert. Maybe the potency of a child one year old, even her cheeks a little fuller. But she’d only been born two months back.

The hunters were unable to explain. Levi hadn’t noticed. Neither had the astronomer. She was just a baby after all, and there were other things that consumed their attention.

Leo’s confusion and exhaustion and sorrow did not equip him for all that had happened. He handed Maria off again and sat down again, trembling. “We will discuss this tomorrow.” He pointed at the hunters. “Go. Guest rooms.” He had never in his life ordered anyone to a dungeon and he wouldn’t start now. “Put the beast in the stables. Guard it.” The guards ushered all of them out, giving the strange animal a wide berth. It turned slowly and followed the hunters’ command after one long look at Maria again. Its uncoordinated tail knocked over and broke a vase on its way out. Nobody bothered to clean it up.

“Estelle.” The astronomer stepped forward and bowed as low as she could with a baby in her arms. Leopold brushed the gesture off. “Please, I know you must be tired, but look into this. The Ancient. I want to know everything you can about it. Contact your friends. Anything they know. And Mariana’s star. The black hole.” He was gesturing lazily as though she knew what he could mean by these random statements. Better than he did, at least. “Just please figure it out.”

Estelle nodded and gave the princess to Levi, who followed the King down the hall and to his room. Once inside, Leo took Maria and put her in her cradle, then turned to Levi, the lines of his face standing out as though it had been ten years.

“I have seen the Ancient before.”

“Sire?”

“Don’t call me that. And I’m not crazy.” He sank into his bed and put the crown he hated on the table beside it. “I didn’t just see an Ancient that looked like that one. I saw exactly the same one. Only it was dead. I touched it. That’s how I got my star in the first place. It was never this big.” He said all of it very slowly and in short sentences, as if Levi couldn’t possibly understand. And it was just as well, because Levi didn’t. But he just nodded and kept listening. “I don’t know what’s happening,” Leopold confessed by burying his head in his hands. He was still trembling.

“You just lost the Queen, your wife,” Levi started, intending to console him. But the King laughed in an entirely joyless way and turned soured eyes on his friend.

“I know you can’t possibly think that bothers me.”

Levi hesitated. He knew. But this Leopold, this Leo always scared him. The one that didn’t care about losing his wife. Nobody liked Leanna as a princess and they had hated her all the more as a Queen. But he would be lying if he said he wished her to die. He hadn’t wanted to watch her die. But he knew he had to protect the princess. It sounded as though the King had killed her himself and didn’t feel a thing while in the act.

It wasn’t true of course. Leopold felt responsible for Leanna’s death entirely, even felt some sorrow; even knowing that she had tried to kill his only daughter. But his mind was on the creature. Had it come back for him? He hadn’t killed it. It was already dying when he touched it. A two-decade memory was resurfacing so clearly, he felt the ten-year-old fear again. Why was it so fixated on his Mariana? Was it here for revenge? Why hadn’t it killed her?

Leopold got to his feet and forced them to the window. Maria’s star was gone. In the stables below, he knew the source of the black hole was standing. But there was no black hole. It was as if the creature and Maria fit together and created something only they could see. Levi waited for Leopold to ask him to stay, as the King did so often when in need of comfort. But he didn’t ask, so Levi left. Leopold checked one more time on his daughter and lay back on his silken sheets, very afraid. But within ten minutes, he was asleep, his star quieting down to nothing just like Maria’s.

Sleeve and Starling were waiting for the sun to disappear before they acted. They knew from reports and research of their own that Leopold was a fair and just King. And they knew that if the King knew what they were planning to do, he would have them locked up for life. So they chose to keep their plans secret, of course, until a better time might come. The fact that Leopold had given them adequately comfortable guest chambers with the closest guards being down the hallway showed them just how fragile a state the King occupied. WIth his wife murdered and his daughter altered, this was the time to act. They had to get out now before he woke up and understood the reality of the situation.

The Gliphen was backwards enough to have a whole farm dedicated to the breeding and sale of Ancient beasts. But no one knew about it, certainly not the King. It was a business not quite off the ground yet, what with all the occupational hazards. And they had a record list of zero customers and already one bad incident. Starling had put hard work and too much money into the project to give up for that reason.

Starling was not a cruel man. He did not treat the Ancients poorly and sought to take care of them well. They were precious merchandise, after all. But to hold an ancient is not only illegal by law, but chaos by nature.

Ancients take care of their own and they’re very hateful of people. If they knew that Starling had gotten a hold of any of them, they would send out an army of hooves and teeth and tails to destroy the farm and all its human inhabitants. Starling knew that only too well, having studied Ancient beasts for almost thirty years, which was why he was clever enough to stalk them and take in those who had been cast out of their pack. Namely, pregnant beasts or their infants.

He’d come to learn that being pregnant is a curse for Ancients even more than it is for humans. It happened very rarely, and only by some strange accident. There was no mother and father, only the parent and the child. But even these labels seemed inappropriate; Starling had observed that not only does the infant rip itself from the parent’s body, it also tries to kill the injured parent. Usually, the younger, stronger beast wins. On occasion, the parent is able to overcome and kill off the child, thus finding its way back into the herd. Starling rejected the idea of this cycle as ‘cruel’ almost on principle.

“Fascinating creatures. No love within the bloodline, but within the pack?” Starling shook his head and glanced around a corner. “They’re inseparable.” Sleeve had heard this all a dozen times, so he just nodded once.

Most of the guards were asleep, given the King’s order that everyone take a double sleep shift. He hadn’t even had any guards awake to guard the entrance to their rooms, at least not directly. But it was weird, the King was asleep as well, meaning that his sun was gone. They were sleeping through the night, when they were normally up and working. That was bound to throw off many schedules. Given recent events, a few oversights like this would not be unusual, but they could certainly be problematic.

Mind elsewhere, Sleeve nearly ran into his smaller companion. “Sorry, chief.” Sleeve wasn’t a total idiot, but he was very simple. He was strong and calm, and this earned him a certain respect among the few Ancients under their combined care. They responded better to him than to Starling, a fact that made the smarter man incredibly jealous, as he knew more about them than anyone. Sleeve was just more sensitive. He had been the one to insist on a larger pasture for the Kirin who liked to roam, and to demand heated coal for when they were able to stumble upon a pregnant dragon. It had not yet happened, understandably. Dragons were near impossibly rare. But what they were after now was something never heard of or seen by human eyes until twenty years ago, when the King watched one die.

They had just found their way into the grand entranceway when they saw their charge making its very slow and confused way into the palace. Starling threw out his arm and caught Sleeve in the middle, regretting it instantly because of his partner’s hardened body. They watched as the Ancient picked its way, carefully, cautiously, as though crossing a swamp. Starling was not at all surprised the beast had managed to get free of its pen considering its observed power, but he couldn’t understand why it had decided to come into the palace of all places, rather than returning to the lake.

He slipped on special hide gloves and motioned for Sleeve to do the same. They crept down the stairs into the entranceway and began to follow the creature. It soon became obvious they didn’t have to keep their voices down at all, or even tiptoe. Everyone was asleep and the Ancient paid absolutely no attention to them. But the palace was silent, so they went silent anyway.

The grand entranceway to the palace of Gliphen was the oldest part of the palace and the oldest building in all the country’s long history. The entire country was forested and rivered. It was a beautiful, wild place away from the big cities that were now being built closer to the ancient desert in the middle of the continent. And so, of course, the perfect place for a temple, for the emotional recluse, for the green-friendly priests and priestesses to study the Ancients and nature and the stars.

And that’s where they were now, Sleeve, Starling, and the Ancient. The ceiling was easily five or six times as tall as Sleeve and just as wide too. Since its original plan, many doorways had been added to the lower floor to access the many new hallways of the palace, but the main arch was still intact. A great, elaborate stone thing carved by those who did little else but sit and pour their lives into tiny patterns that made up a much larger portrait. It was the ideal arch. The oldest arch. Even crumbling, it looked just as ornate and symmetrical as the day it was made. Hinges had been attached to it in the last century to add in an oaken door that fit into it, but when it was a temple, all the arches and windows opened to the outside, letting the moonlight pour in. There was no sun in the Gliphen at that time, the priests made sure of that. All was night and quiet and peace.

But now it was all shut in and protected from the outside. It was now a fortress. Some of the building had taken place when Leanna’s mother Etienne took over the castle and shut down the city to refuse the return of her husband from war. As the King at that time had half of his force, she needed many renovations to keep her and her daughter safe. The temple was not a place of openness and worship, but a place shielded against any outside force, including moonlight and the sky; two of the priests’ biggest deities.

It was once a haven of the Ursa of the Nightplains, the ancient peoples that humans, whether fondly or aggressively, called dogs. Their priests would have wept if they could see their great temple now. The remains of their life’s work lay forever carved in the walls, but their works were forbidden from them now. Estelle, being a priestess herself, had a great deal of fascination with the stories they told in pictures, but very little time to actually study them. She had since deduced, as could almost any laymen, that the reason the country got its name must stem from “glyph” or carving.

But Leanna had cared little for etymology or the Ancients. She was planning to destroy the writings, sand them down and imprint her own story. Estelle would be bitterly glad her ambitions would never be realized now.

Every pawstep made a sort of clinking sound on the marble, like a teacup on a glass table. Sleeve and Starling worried that it was because the Ancient had its claws out. Was it planning to attack? If they were responsible for a second royal death, they could be sure they’d be sentenced to death. But it picked its way carefully over the bodies of sleeping soldiers, not intending, at least, to harm any of them. The whole room was filled with the sounds of slow breathing, which grew louder as Sleeve and Starling approached the ground floor from what Estelle called the observatory. Really, it was just part of the room. Two staircases on either side of the arch extended up to a loft part of the same grand temple room. It had obviously used to house a window that encompassed the entire upstairs wall, but was filled in with guest rooms, which was where the hunters descended from. The Ancient had come through the arch from the outside, but how it had managed to get in, they had no idea. The huge door was still closed and bolted.

As they came down, Sleeve accidentally trod on the face of a guard on the floor, and the poor man grunted, lashes fluttering in possible waking. But Sleeve took immediate action and swung his water-filled metal canteen at the soldier’s lifted head. He was asleep again in an instant. Starling wanted to throttle his partner, but he decided to save it for later. Their main priority was getting away, going through an identical arch underneath the loft which once led to a beautiful plateau overlooking an endless forest, but now went to the throne room and branched off into other royal chambers.

The beast was being surprisingly careful, given its very young age and regular clumsiness. And yet, in its eyes, they could see that it didn’t seem to be paying attention. It was only looking forward, seeming to feel with a different sense when it needed to step over something. The hunters stayed a few yards back, knowing the animal’s lengthy tail could lash out at any moment and effectively kill them. It didn’t seem in the killing mood, however, its tail, about the length of its body, was traveling side to side aimlessly behind it, very alert. In the relaxed state that its eyes showed, the tail should be trailing the ground over the bodies of a dozen snoozing men. This worried Starling immensely. Its entire body was awake, but it appeared to be following some otherwordly force none of them could sense.

But it was coming up on the arch’s door. Surely that would slow it at least. Sleeve prepared his gloved hands to grapple it to the ground. But at that moment, the hair on the Ancient’s back and the scales on its front shimmered in the almost nonexistent light of the torches. For the second time, Starling held Sleeve back, both men mesmerized as the animal collapsed into nothing but water. Then, as though wind were pushing it, the puddle seeped under the locked door, leaving them both woefully behind.

Sleeve produced a lockpick from the crux of his sleeve. “Let us hope no one wakes to see us breaking into the King’s domain.”

The animal rematerialized on the other side of the arch. The event had not escaped Starling’s notice; how easily it had dissolved! Not two days before, they had observed it struggling to learn the powers of its birth. But now, so quickly, its concentration had intensified.

But the hunters were behind it now. The beast lifted its long, damp muzzle to sniff at the stilled air. Then, its eyes lit in life once more. It pranced side to side like a crab, claws scratching the marble. It was lost, confused, and between walls. Not natural for a wild beast. What’s more, it was unable to get a firm grip on the floor with its claws. It scrabbled, helpless, for a perch before it was able to half retract its weapons and use the padding of its paws.

As if on cue, the scent of a human entered its large nostrils; a particular human. Two particular humans. Its eyes clouded again, tail whipping about in case someone followed. It lowered its great head and trembled in excitement. It didn’t ask why it felt that way. Animals, especially Ancients, go by the road of instinct, and don’t gather on the philosophy of it. It merely carried on down the long, embellished hall.

Sleeve and Starling were having an understandably difficult time with the royal door. It would be a long time before they could catch up with the creature.

Levi had left his post only for a moment. It wasn’t even technically his post. No one had ordered him to stand by the King’s door. By all rights, he could’ve have induced sleep and gone back to his own bed. But he was uneasy, and knew sleep would not soothe him. He wanted to wake the King; he knew it would be difficult to manage the schedule after both the commoners and the King slept. It might take weeks to sort out a favorable solution. Or perhaps Leopold would sleep two shifts. But on such a large star, on the sun… two star-dampeners, one after the other, might make him fatally ill. But more than that, he wanted to wake the King because he was lonely. He didn’t know how many guards were awake, probably no one but Levi and those playing cards in the hallway where the hunters supposedly slept. It was foolish of Leopold to let that happen, but the King was unused to conflict. No one was interested in such a country kingdom these days, not enough to fight for it or over it.

For that reason, Levi stayed. No one else was awake. No one except the astronomer.

He looked around when he heard footsteps and there she was. She looked like she didn’t belong there, like she was a dream in the hallway. But she was grounded now, real, by the trouble in her face.

“My Lady?”

“Something is coming,” Estelle whispered, ushering Levi away from the door and peering inside at the sleeping King. “But it’s obviously not here yet.” She looked at Maria. The girl was sleeping too.

“You’ve seen something?” Levi felt that all his fears would come to pass.

“No. But don’t you hear it?”

Levi had been listening for the last two or three hours, and had heard nothing. But now, as he strained to hear what she heard, he felt something more than heard it. The soft pushing of air as something moved back and forth towards them, side to side. Something making gentle contact with the floor. Vibrations of water. Water. Levi felt water coming from the other end of the hall. Without waiting for an explanation from Estelle (not that she had one), he drew his sword as silently as he could and followed it around the bend and away from the King’s room. The astronomer followed him, entranced by the feel and with more than a little concern touching her brain. Why was there water in the palace?

They would never be sure why they felt the vibrations coming from the other side of the hall. Perhaps the beast had planned it. But when it arrived around the opposite side, and saw the King’s room open and unguarded, it knew there would be no fight. The animal paused, lifting its paw delicately as if about to dip into cold water. It sniffed. The same scent was coming through the open door. It nosed it open, didn’t hear the moaning hinges, and was inside. Because it had been moving through the castle so slowly, Sleeve and Starling whipped around the corner in time to see the shimmering tuft of its tail disappear into the King’s room. Of course they didn’t know whose room it was, but they could only assume it wasn’t empty and now knowing the Ancient’s power, feared for whoever slept there.

It took an unusually long time for the beast to find the one it smelled. It was a strong odor, not of baby powder or even dirt from the bottom of the lake. But she smelled like the animal. The Ancient’s powers of scent overcame its eyesight easily, and it felt as though it were seeing itself in a pool’s calm reflection. Only sleeping, and small. Behind it were furious whispers of how to trap the beast without waking the man in the bed and the baby; it didn’t seem to hear. It only moved close to the cradle and peered inside, not expecting to see anything important.

Maria slept on after that tiring evening, worrying of nothing. She didn’t know her mother was gone or that she was in danger. She was unable to sense a beast looming overhead, leaning forward to touch its wet nose to her forehead. It snorted, confused. It was as if something had touched its own forehead with a wet nose. The beast was sharing her senses.

Sleeve had withdrawn the golden bridle, a last resort they’d hoped not to use, but before he could step forward, a thin sword scratched his throat and he was forced not to move. His first thought was to retaliate, but when he saw who held the blade, he remained still.

Leopold was there, in all his protective, fatherly glory. Even in his nightgown, he was formidable, but Sleeve couldn’t say why. He wasn’t an intimidating man at all normally. He was light; light hair, light skin, light eyes, light frame. But the color of his eyes didn’t mask the utter hatred he had for Sleeve, a man he barely knew. He thought he sensed some intent to threaten his baby girl, and reacted. But he didn’t seem to notice the beast at all, who was already at her side, standing alert and still, staring down at Maria as though she might attack him. He had only seen the intruding hunters.

“Your Brilliance,” Starling began in a whisper of his own defense. “We were-”

But Maria coughed, and it startled everyone present—none so much as the Ancient. It reared up on its hind legs, roaring as an answer to her innocent challenge and Leopold abruptly turned to come to her rescue. Sleeve was faster, however. He took the moment of confusion to dodge around the sword and into the range of the beast’s tail. Sensing danger from behind, the tail lashed out and caught Sleeve hard on the shoulder. If the gaping wound caused him any pain, no one could be sure by looking because he ignored it, wrestling to get the golden bridle over the beast’s head. It was a losing battle. Starling raced forward to help and Leopold dropped his sword and snatched Maria from the cradle and ran to the bed, the safest place in the room from the whirling tail and searching fangs.

There was no way the hunters or Leopold would have survived if not for the action waking the Princess. She screamed, not understanding the noises of the fight, even though her father’s arms were enclosed around her. Leopold’s stomach rose to his lungs then plummeted to his knees as the beast whirled on him. His sword was on the floor, far away. He clutched her tighter and she screamed louder. But Leopold looked into the animal’s eyes. He couldn’t believe that it was the same beast he had watched die beside the lake when he was a child.

But it had to be. And the Ancient seemed to know. Its eyes reflected the same human it saw before it had died. The ancient eyes weakened, then gave up. A shudder went through the floor as it dropped back onto its paws. There was no more fighting. The golden bridle slipped over its head, flattening its ears and they stayed there, relaxed. It looked away from the King as though ashamed it had given up so easily. Even when Levi burst in with Estelle, it didn’t look away from the floor.

There was a tense minute of anger from Levi. After the roaring beast had woken all the guards on the same floor, they quickly surrounded the hunters, weapons inches from their faces. Levi was breathing hard in restraint of himself; he had more than half a mind to kill both of them and the beast. Estelle used her binoculars to check on the sky, but there was no black hole. No princess star. They seemed to have eclipsed each other as they had at the lake, as Levi had described to her. The King’s sun had been pulsing in fear, but now it slowed, both he and his daughter unharmed and the beast subdued.

Levi was just hinting strongly to the King that both Sleeve and Starling should be executed, and the hunters were protesting their innocence when Leopold, who hadn’t been listening to any of them, spoke.

“What is it?” He was ready to listen. He pushed through the guards and waved away their weapons with a weak hand. He looked from Sleeve to Starling fiercely. Sleeve let the smarter of them speak.

“Your Brilliance, this is an Ancient we have been tracking for quite some time.” He seemed to think that was sufficient, but the King eyed him sharply. Estelle was taken aback by this crude behavior. Leopold was a sweet man and not all that prepared to be a ruler. Yet know there was command in him.

“Go on!” Every shout was louder.

“W-well it’s quite young, still an infant, sire, even though its been alive for years. It’s an Ancient.” He didn’t know what the King wanted to know. “It’s sort of a water beast.” As if to emphasize this point, the beast’s shimmering fur began dripping, almost weeping. The King looked astonished. “I call it a Kelpie, sire. There are old writings that suggest… Well, they’re not very known. I think Sleeve and me are the only ones to get one.”

“Get one.”

Starling shrank. “Yes, sire.”

“You mean keep one.”

Starling was smart but seized under threat. Sleeve took over more assertively. “Your Brilliance, I don’t know how much you know about Ancients, but when they get pregnant, they’re left behind by the pack. Starling and I take them in. We have a sort of… farm.”

Leopold practically shoved Maria into one of the guards’ arms. The guard handed her off to Estelle, uninterested. Within minutes of the excitement, Maria was asleep again. “You have a farm for pregnant animals?”

“Just Ancients,” Sleeve began as Starling said “They die otherwise.”

Leo waved his hand frantically in Sleeve’s face in the same way he used to get his wife to stop talking and stared at Starling. “They die when they are left by their herd?”

Starling reached into his pocket and, all alert, there were six swords pointed at his neck. He swallowed and slowly produced a thick book, which could only be used as a weapon if thrown very hard. Leopold wondered how such a volume could fit in his little pocket. He ordered the guards to sheathe their swords and took it, curious. Estelle stepped forward, eyes alight. If Starling had information on the Ancients, she wanted it. There was nothing like knowledge of what should be a mystery to excite them both.

Leopold opened it to sketches of Dragons and Kirin and Kelpies, all bordered thickly by scribbled notes. He started to read fast, take it in, then realized what he should be most concerned about. He closed it calmly, though his hands shook badly. “Come down to the dining hall. Bring the Ancient. I want to hear everything that you know.”

“My King,” Levi spoke quietly. “I must protest.”

“Must you?”

“Sire, do you think it is at all wise to keep the animal in the building?” Estelle stepped closer, still eyeing the book. “As curious as I am to know about the beast’s origins and the farm and all the information they’ve gathered, it seems to be fixated on the princess. And given all that has happened tonight, maybe you should be worried about that.”

“Yes,” Leopold faltered, brushing his hand over the leather cover. “I don’t want it here.” He couldn’t guess what it wanted with the princess, other than to swallow her star. But it had eclipsed the black hole, and the hole eclipsed it. He was worried that was some sort of sign of what might happen if they stayed together. But he faltered because he was interested to know everything he could about this Kelpie. He took it in and saw what Levi couldn’t. How intriguing, how regal. Even now, its old eyes were peaceful on Maria as though it had known her all of its life; her constant companion, it would never leave her side. He almost felt a kinship with it. Any protector of Maria had his love.

And two decades ago, he had no daughter to fret over. He knew it shouldn’t be here. But he wished he didn’t know that. He wished he had nothing but his own life to risk. Perhaps he had misjudged the situation.

But then he glimpsed the fangs that curved over its lip and the claws, half-peeking under strange, damp skin, and the open, bleeding gash on Sleeve’s shoulder. The King wasn’t the King. He was a father. He was terrified. When he was beside that lake all those years ago, he had been only fascinated. That was before he had a daughter. Now he feared the Ancient’s obsession with her.

“Yes,” he finally decided. “Call the healer here, Levi. No, Estelle, please stay. I want you to observe Mariana’s star and the Kelpie’s as they depart. Record absolutely everything. Even the uninteresting details. Here, give me Mariana. You two… sorry, I don’t know your names… sit over here and wait for the healer. And keep hold of the Ancient; the Kelpie. Guards, you may go back to your rooms and rest.” He was in command mode. It didn’t often happen. Normally, Leanna held the city down with a forceful hand and Leopold either studied with Estelle or went ‘traveling.’ He was often the peaceful and rational diplomat representing their small country whenever he went to the big cities. And he only went because he was tired of Leanna, not because he was called. He loved his country otherwise.

Not that it mattered now. He was in charge, and he never hated it more.

Leopold bade Estelle perform a star-dampener on him so she could get a better view of the skies without his sun brightening everything. It made him sway, but he was wholly undamaged. He had survived four years of his youth on a constant star-dampener. Every six hours, he had to have it done. He was used to the feeling, though it had been months since he last used it, and only then to leave the country. He left his astronomer to the window and her telescope and approached Starling, who held the golden bridle close to him, the Kelpie lying with its paws under it, eyes half-closed like a sleepy doe. But Leopold could see it still looked at Maria.

“I want to visit this farm,” he said, staring down at the book in his hands, turning it over as though checking to see if it was real. When Starling nodded very stiffly, the King continued, “I won’t arrest you or shut it down. I want to learn about the Ancients.” The healer, who seemed very anxious around the animal, dabbed at Sleeve’s arm and did not look up. But not an unear was unturned to this conversation. “This belongs to you,” Leopold gestured at the book. Even his hand seemed to disagree with his word, since he didn’t offer it  back. “But I’d like to make a copy.”

Starling ducked his chin again. “Keep it, my lord. It’s only some of my notes.” He paused. “And I am sorry about your Queen.”

Leopold felt the surgings of guilt, which was then tackled to the ground by hatred. “She died trying to murder my daughter. It was never your fault. But tell me.” He put the book on the bench and sat beside the hunter. “You said it was an infant. Only two or three weeks old. But I’ve met the Kelpie before. By the same lake. Over twenty years ago.”

Sleeve answered him without surprise, completely ignoring the healer who touched him. “Ancients are immortal in a way. I’ve never seen one truly die, but they live a lot longer than we do.”

“I know that much,” Leopold nodded. At her telescope, Estelle was straining for information, both from the eye of her telescope and the ear turned towards her King.

“The old books say that when the Ancients were free and the first people watched them, they moved slow.” Starling mimicked this with his hand, moving one side to side rapidly and the other slowly. “But when they got closer, the Ancients were so fast they couldn’t catch them.”

“What do you think that means?” Leopold was already formulating a theory of his own, as he was wont to do.

“Ancients,” Starling began as if speaking to a classroom now instead of the country’s solitary Sun. “Are no more immortal than you or me. They live on a different time stream. This one,” he jerked the bridle lightly. The Kelpie glanced at him, but didn’t care enough not to look back at Maria. “This one’s young. Just born. But you might’ve seen the same one. Because twenty years ago to you, was probably around the time he was born.” Starling let go of the Ancient, which gave Leopold every anxiety that a parent could experience, and gestured wildly with his hands. “Which means this here’s a baby! We’ve never had a baby before.”

Estelle moved closer, examining the uninterested animal, forgetting her orders as Starling went on, “We estimate each of their weeks is about ten years for us.”

The King’s tired brain was too cluttered now with activity to ask why, if in their perspective the beast escaped twenty years ago, had they only begun looking for it now.

Leopold watched them go. Sleeve and Starling thanked him for not arresting or executing them. Leopold thanked them for trying to save Maria’s life and for the book. The Kelpie, still sedated by the bridle, would occasionally turn its big head and look back at them. The King was still in his nightgown, holding onto his daughter under the beautiful arch in the old temple. Levi stood by him quietly, refusing to leave his side for the remainder of the night. The King wished more than anything at that moment that they could stay, but the guard was all too happy to see the beast go. And he was right to be.

As soon as they got a certain distance away, the black hole appeared explosively and silently, Maria’s tiny light pulled away from it. Somehow, this must have released the star-dampener, because Leopold’s sun burst forth, nearly blinding them. Levi caught the King’s arm as he suddenly collapsed, the darkness reaching into his star again.

Levi made to draw his sword, but didn’t have time. Maria almost tumbled out of Leopold’s arms, only Levi managed to catch her before he hit the ground, supporting the King’s near-dead weight with one hand. As he looked up at the retreating Ancient, he could see it stopped, ignoring the hunters’ efforts to pull it away, then as if confused, shook its head and let the sun go, bringing the King back to life.

“Levi,” the King coughed, asking for Maria with weak arms. “I’m promoting you to captain.” Then he collapsed and the light of his sun went out. But Estelle had seen it all from her telescope and the healer was already on his way.