It was strange to be playing children’s games once again. His own son John Josua had seldom indulged in such things, remaining apart from the castle’s other children, content to read or sometimes even just to sit by himself and think. Simon could remember him perched in a chair that was too large for him, staring solemnly out at the sky as though the firmament itself were a book and young Johnno could read what it said.

He was startled out of his memories when the older Rowson girl found them and squeezed into the small storage room. She whispered excitedly with the boy, their voices like the murmur of wind in the eaves, but Simon was already floating back to earlier times—earlier, but not always happier times.

What could we have done differently? he wondered, as he had so often over the years. Could Miri and I have protected our son better? But who can stop sickness? Who can beat back fever? The best healers and physicians in the land all did their best, Tiamak and so many more, but it was like standing on the bank and watching him drown just beyond our reach. The remembrance of John Josua’s last days, memories so cold and so sickening they felt like poison, now threatened to overwhelm him. He forced himself back to the present, to the sound of whispering children in the darkened storeroom. The second boy had found them, and was laughing with the other two. Simon shushed them. Didn’t they understand how the game was played? It was important to stay hidden as long as possible, until only one remained, one lone player, wondering where everyone else had gone.

Alone. Now that he remembered the few times he had played, he also remembered that he had never liked the game of Holly King all that much. Because it was so lonely if you were the last to discover where the others were hidden, warm and safe and giggling quietly, secure in the company of others. So lonely . . .

The other Rowson girl found them now, a little one named Elli-something. She was crying a little from having been on her own. In between sniffs and sobs, she asked, “Where’s Lillia?”

Where was Lillia? Simon wondered too. It was hard to believe his confident granddaughter, who strode the castle halls as boldly as any monarch ever had, could actually be the last one to find their hiding place. It reminded him of something Miri had once told him: “You and I were never scared of the same thing. You were always afraid of being found out, but I was always afraid of being overlooked.”

The crowding made the small storeroom even warmer. “Shush, you lot,” he said, “or she’ll find us.” But a part of him wanted Lillia to find them, because he was feeling a little worried about her. “In any case, don’t push. You’ll only make it hotter in here.”

It was getting warm—downright hot, like a summer’s night when covers clung to damp legs and sleep would not come. When his dreams had been so horrible in the months after John Josua’s death, Simon had nearly cried some nights just from weariness, desperate for sleep. Now sleep itself seemed like something dangerous as it pulled at him, as the quiet voices of the children around him mixed and slurred. Where had Lillia gone? He groaned and stretched, but could not free himself from the weariness that was on him. What if he fell asleep here like some old drunkard? Shouldn’t he be out looking for his granddaughter?

Even as he started to nod again he heard new voices. They were distant, barely audible above the children’s whispers, but Simon heard them most clearly, as if they spoke in his own thoughts.

Come to us, they said. It is time. The time is here, for you to have again what you lost so long ago. It seemed almost like singing, like a river of words, flowing endlessly past. It is time to come to us. It is time . . .

Startled, Simon sat bolt upright. That had been no child calling to him, but something else, a voice from out of his lost dreams. It is time . . . What could that mean?

No. It means nothing, he told himself. It is only that I am sleepy and foolish. A warm afternoon, a tired old man.

But he could still hear noise from outside the storeroom, new voices this time, and growing in strength.

“Quiet!” he told the children. “Let me listen!”

“Oh, God save us!” a woman was screaming. “God grant us mercy! The poor princess!”

Sweet Elysia save me, am I awake or dreaming? he wondered, but his heart banging against his ribs felt very, very real. The princess? Who could that be but . . .?

“Lillia!” he cried, shoving the children to either side as he rose and pushed his way through the dark toward the front of the closet. “Lillia! Oh, sweet Elysia, please let nothing have happened to her!” He was suddenly hollow with dread. “Lillia, where are you?”

And then the door swung open and his granddaughter stood there, nothing but a silhouette, a ghost, until his eyes adjusted to the light. Lillia’s face was pale, her eyes wide. “Grandfather! What’s happened?” She burst into tears and rushed to wrap her arms around Simon’s waist. “Why are they shouting that the princess is dead? I’m not dead!”

He could still hear people shouting, even more of them now, cries of horror and shock spreading through the residence.

“Stay with me, all you children.” Something very bad had happened, he knew, and nothing would ever be the same. He held Lillia tightly. “Just stay with me, little ones. I’m the king. I’ll keep you safe.”

Afterword

She had found it again somehow, against all odds, and now she clasped the witchwood egg close to her breast and tried to fight her way through the chaos. She had stood outside this roiling madness once, she thought, had been able to consider her situation with something like detachment, but if that had ever been true, it had been a long time ago. Now the sky itself had turned to hot gray slush, and muddy hands reached up again and again from the bubbling muck that surrounded her, catching at her limbs and hair, trying always to pull her downward. Even the branches of the sacred willows seemed to reach out to entangle her, to force her back into the endless, all-devouring lake of steaming mud. Every step was a nightmare struggle.

Why am I even fighting? Always now this treacherous voice spoke in her thoughts, urging surrender. The heat will only be for a little while, it told her. Then everything will turn cool again, cool as running water, cool as early spring grass, cool as stones deep in the ground. The fight will be over. You will rest.

But despite her breathless weariness and her muddled thoughts, Tanahaya knew that voice was not telling the whole truth. It was the sleep of death to which she was being invited, the cool of life finally departing her body. And so she fought on.

Faces came to her as she struggled, her family, her loved ones. But instead of urging resistance they joined the treacherous inner voice, begging her to give up.

You have fought well, said ancient Himano, her clan lord. There is no disgrace in surrender, child. No disgrace.

It was not disgrace she feared, but obliteration. Tanahaya was neck deep in bubbling hot mud, tangled in roots, but knew she dared not give up. Her people were so few now. They could not surrender, did not surrender, would never surrender, no matter how terrible the odds.