The Heartless
Chapter VIII: in which sometimes we surprise ourselves

After being recognized in my hometown—and tearing through it screaming in the most conspicuous way possible—there was no way I could stay there any longer, so I fled into the northern woods to consider my next course of action. It was only once I was alone with only the trees and creeping undergrowth that I let the tears begin to flow, initially white-hot with anger before sinking into unrestrained grief.

Maybe this was what Bertrand had meant when I said I would only end up getting hurt. But there had been a part of me that was hoping against any kind of rationality that I would return to find my parents alive and well. Even if they had rejected me, being able to chew them out for it would have been far more cathartic than the pain of only reopening a wound that could never be healed. A small part of me may have even been hoping I’d find Basil still here after all these years. But the idyllic notion of even having a home to return to had been a fantasy. Maybe people like me were only ever meant to be transient, like any home we’d ever have could only be temporary unless we built it for ourselves, clawing at the earth trying to create something out of nothing. Maybe this was the natural order of things, like if I tried to fit any sense of permanence or belonging into the caverns of my ribcage it would only ever inevitably be swallowed into dissolution by the empty space.

When I had finally wept myself dry, I reassessed my options. The easy answer would be to head back to Bertrand’s house with my tail between my legs and continue on as if nothing had changed at all. But I had reopened an age-old wound that left a sharp pain in my chest, as if I’d been cut open and left out in the woods to rot until the soil and the trees moved in through the gash that’d been left behind and made a home in the vacant space between my ribs. I concluded, perhaps foolishly, that the only path remaining was forward. No matter the costs, I had to press onward for answers, all the way to the far reaches of the kingdom if that was what it took. I would keep moving, leaving my hometown and the Village of the Heartless in the dust. I vowed that I would not return until I found answers, whatever that ended up meaning; no matter what, I refused to return home empty handed.

In spite of myself, I pulled the portrait from my room out of my bag. I had not seen my parents’ faces since the day I left, but their fading memory came rushing back clear as day as I wiped the dust and decay from the old frame—my father’s stoic kindness, my mother’s impish but steadfast guidance.

When the oppressive feeling returned, I went to put the picture away, but hesitated as I saw the afternoon sun reflect off something clear and shiny at the bottom of my bag. In disbelief, I reached in and pulled it out—three little glass vials of familiar red liquid, tied together with a piece of fraying string. There was a note attached:

Ace,

I have no use for these anymore, but perhaps they may help you on your journey. I do not know if they work, though I suppose you may get desperate.

Please take care, Ace. It is not a kind world out there. Though I suppose you know that better than most.

Bertrand

“Foolish old man,” I muttered to myself bitterly, though I was unable to keep a fond smile from creeping onto my face. Of course Bertrand had sent me with love potions, and nothing of actual use. I figured he must have slipped them into my bag at some point before I left. It was typical of him; ever insistent on his efforts to break the curse, no matter how futile. Nevertheless, I slipped the parcel back into the satchel carefully, followed by the picture frame that had been laying discarded at my side.

With a newfound resolve, I pushed myself to my feet, wiped the dirt from my pants, and began stumbling weary and bleary-eyed eastward.

As I traveled further from home, the quiet pastoral villages blurred into bustling small towns that made me hyper-aware in a hollow sort of way of the few measly coins jingling in my pocket. The evenings sang not with the quiet chatter of families and children’s rhymes, but with raucous laughter and live music that spilled out of taverns and large, ornate homes. The roads were all paved with neatly cut bricks or stones that clacked pleasantly under the dusty worn-out soles of my boots. The streets were always well-lit and well-maintained, lined with diligently trimmed bushes of sickly-sweet smelling flowers set against yellowing foliage. The trees still held a little greenery, as though summer were taking its last breath before giving way to the fall.

The further east I traveled, the more I stuck out like a sore thumb, though people seemed more content to simply brush past me in the streets rather than pay me any mind. I’d heard stories of the eastern towns as a child, tales of opulent mansions six stories tall and streets paved with gold. There, where the rich nobles and all sorts of other important folk lived, the wells never ran dry and the cellars were always overflowing, even in the longest winters. This, of course, had been a fairytale, nothing more than an over-exaggerated pie-in-the-sky dream of a life of wealth and bounty that was always going to be out of reach.

Seated in the shadow of an alley beside a lively tavern, stomach rumbling at the smell of freshly fried meat emanating from the open doors, I reckoned that the myth and the reality may as well have been the same, for all it was worth.

The night was cool, a light autumn breeze pushing the fallen leaves across the dirt floor of the alley. The only light came from the full moon and a flickering oil lamp that hung in the window above my head, casting my quivering shadow against the opposite wall. The sound of drunken laughter and clacking cups reverberated off the bricks, echoing in the empty night air.

The window flew open and I pressed my back as far against the tavern wall as it would go, sucking in a breath and holding it. An arm swung out and tossed a dirty canvas sack out into the alley, and then the window snapped shut again. After a moment of still silence, I exhaled and leaned forward on the balls of my feet to get a closer look at the bag. I pulled back a corner of the fabric; the sack was full of food, what looked to be burnt scraps and almost-rotting produce, the leftovers that paying customers didn’t want. My stomach growled, so loudly I feared it would alert half the town. Desperate, I leaned in closer—it wasn’t stealing if the food was being thrown out, right?

“Hey, get back!”

A figure jumped out from the other side of the building, sending me stumbling backward onto my butt. I clambered to my feet and reached instinctively for my bow, the figure for a knife on their belt. We both froze, squinting in the dim light of the alley.

“Wait a minute,” the figure hissed. “It’s you!”

“Knife Boy?” I blurted.

“Arrow Guy?”

“What?”

“Nothing.” The hand at Knife Boy’s belt moved to rest on his hip, and my eyes were drawn to the glint of moonlight off the dagger’s blade. “Wow, what is with you Heartless and scamming other folks’ food?”

My grip on the bow at my back tightened. “Keep that word out of your mouth before you get me arrested, or this time I won’t hesitate.”

Knife Boy raised his hands in surrender, taking a step backward. “Right, listen, I’m not going to attack you. I’m better than that now, I promise.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What are you doing all the way out east?”

“I could ask the same of you. Pretty risky for you to be traveling this close to the castle, no?”

“I asked you first. Do you live out here?”

Knife Boy stifled a laugh. “Do I look like I live around here?” He gestured down to his clothes, which even in the poor lighting I could tell looked more or less the same as mine. “I’m just here to steal, and you were about to take my loot that I waited hours for.”

I finally released my grip and lowered my hand back to my side. “Wait a minute. If you’re a thief yourself, why did you chase after my friend for stealing food back west?”

“You and I both know that had very little to do with the food,” Knife Boy replied bluntly.

“I—Fair enough.”

The tavern kitchen window opened brusquely, startling me back onto the defensive, and a deep voice bellowed, “Hey! What are you rotten kids doing out there?”

Knife Boy made a hasty dive for the discarded food and shouted, “Let’s get out of here!”

“Why should I trust you?”

He tossed me a burnt roll from the bag and urged, “Let’s go!”

Juggling the offering in my unexpectant hands, I took off after him out of the alley, halfway across town, and into the moonlit woods that lay beyond. Eventually, we reached a small clearing with a clear, bubbling stream. The leaves had been pushed into a pile like a makeshift bed, and a circle of stones and charred wood comprised the remains of a campfire. It looked as though Knife Boy had been camping out here for at least a few nights, perhaps longer.

Panting, Knife Boy dropped down clumsily onto his leaf pile and began rifling through the sack of food, appearing to toss away anything he deemed entirely inedible. I sat down cross-legged a cautious several feet away from him, drawing my cloak tighter around myself and taking bites out of the bread he had thrown me in the alley. The resolve and courage I’d had back there had disappeared into the quiet night, settling into an unfortunately familiar sense of danger and otherness. Seeming satisfied with his inspection of his (our?) loot, Knife Boy passed me a bruised apple and set the bag aside before he began gathering kindling.

“Why are you helping me?” I found the strength to ask, hating the uncertainty in my voice.

Knife Boy did not look up from where he was trying to start a fire. “Do you want the honest answer?”

“I certainly don’t want you to lie.”

“Wonderful, you’re going to make me admit it.” As a spark finally took hold and ignited a small flame, Knife Boy wiped the dirt from his hands and sat back down on his bed of leaves. “To tell you the truth, the way you stood your ground for that girl made me realize maybe I was wrong about you bastards. I didn’t think you could act like that.”

“Like what?” I prodded.

“Like a person.” Knife Boy turned to me and the firelight shone bright against his face. I had never seen him this clearly; he couldn’t have been any older than 15, features still soft around the edges, but there was a glimmer of something in his eyes, something familiar and sad.

“Can I ask you something?” I found myself saying.

“That’s mostly all you’ve done since I ran into you, so I don’t see why not.”

I chose to ignore his pointed comment. “Where are your parents?”

Knife Boy’s expression shifted into something unreadable and he quickly looked away. “They’re dead,” he whispered tersely, picking up a twig and dragging it through the dirt in front of him. “I’ve been traveling mostly on my own for a few years now.”

“Can I ask how they died?”

“You can ask, but I won’t tell you.”

“Right, sorry.” I turned the apple over in my hands, still uneaten. “I don’t know what happened to my parents, but I think it’s safe to assume they’re dead as well, or otherwise rotting in a cell somewhere. Either way, I doubt I’ll ever see them again.”

Knife Boy hummed in acknowledgement. After a moment, he looked back up at me, the unease in his eyes glinting in the firelight. “You knew your parents?”

“Now you’re the one asking questions?”

“It’s only fair,” Knife Boy muttered brusquely. “But you don’t have to answer.”

I shrugged. “It’s fine. I did know my parents, I lived with them for ten years. I had a friend, too, also Heartless, but when he was discovered, he was attacked by the other kids in the neighborhood. My parents sent me away, and that was the last I saw of them or him. I recently returned to my old home, only to find that both my parents and his parents were detained by the royal guard soon after, and nothing was ever heard from them again.”

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I shrugged again, even though Knife Boy was no longer looking.

“So that’s why you’re traveling. What are you hoping to find?”

“I’m not sure anymore,” I admitted. “Answers, I suppose.”

Knife Boy reached across the distance between us to snatch the apple out of my idle hands and took a king-sized bite out of it, and I saw no use in chastising him over it.

“What you want is revenge,” he countered with his mouth full.

“I’m sorry?”

“If you want to get to the bottom of this, then aren’t you headed for the top?”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at the question, earning a puzzled look from Knife Boy. The idea of infiltrating the castle grounds had crossed my mind on several occasions since I left the empty house. There was a voice in the recesses of my mind that said this entire journey was futile, but until the rest of me could accept that possibility, admitting defeat would simply never be an option.

“I have considered that,” I responded. “But I don’t think I’d make it very far.”

Knife Boy nodded and set his gaze somewhere far off beyond the trees that surrounded us as he continued devouring the apple. He said nothing more, leaving only the stream’s gentle gurgling and the crickets’ chirping to fill the void our voices had left behind. As the minutes passed in relative silence, I assumed the conversation had died, as Knife Boy didn’t seem eager to say anything more.

Then he chucked the remains of the apple core far into the woods and offered, not at all helpfully, “On your own.”

“Sorry, what?” I prompted, unable to hide the bewilderment in my voice.

“You wouldn’t make it very far on your own,” Knife Boy clarified in a biting tone, as if saying it out loud were physically painful.

“Are you… saying you want to come with me?”

Knife Boy groaned petulantly. “Ugh, when you say it like that it makes it sound like I actually like you and don’t think you’re weird and gross!” He huffed, not meeting my eyes. “Look, let’s just say that I owe you, okay? For sparing my life, twice now actually. And for showing me that I was wrong about you.”

Admittedly, “weird and gross” was one of the less scathing remarks I’d had directed at me or my kind before, so I let the petty insult wash over me like the rushing water over the rocks in the stream.

“And what do you get out of helping me?” I prodded.

“Let’s make a deal. You stop asking me personal questions, and I’ll help you sneak into the castle to find answers or avenge your formative childhood tragedy, or whatever.” Knife Boy reached his fist out towards me. “How’s that sound?”

With a smile, I returned the gesture; however, Knife Boy pulled back before our fists could make contact.

“Deal.”

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