Fiddlis woke up early the next morning with a prickly feeling that something was very wrong. She reached out for her comb and tugged it through her sandy tangles. Then she slipped out of her warm bed, flung a blanket about herself and walked barefoot into the kitchen. Fiddlis peered around, wishing she could see. The fire had burnt itself out, for a cold wind curled around her bare knees, and when she groped her way through the blackness, wondering for the hundredth time what the sunrise looked like creeping over the highland hills, she felt for the door and it was hanging wide open.

“Auntie?” she called out, her voice sounding small and insignificant in the eerie calm that had smothered her village. Fiddlis cocked her head but heard no children laughing, no tromping boots of farmers headed for their fields, no chattering women. A nasty smell hung in the air, making the little girl wrinkle her nose. She puckered her pink lips and whistled for her puppy. She let some time pass before whistling again; Puppy often wandered the moors, he was probably too far away for his silken ears to hear. Yet after five whole minutes, in which Fiddlis shifted her weight from one foot to another, chewed her nails and cursed her blindness, Puppy still had not come. “Auntie?” she called again. Her voice, even to herself, sounded like a mournful wail. Fiddlis waited but heard nothing. Hot tears sprang to her eyes and she savagely wiped them away. “I will not cry. Perhaps Auntie took Puppy out for a walk.” Fiddlis secretly doubted this, and wished that she had named her puppy before he disappeared like this. Feeling very alone and trying not to let the bubbling fear grow stronger within her, the young girl walked out into the dusty road, kicking up several smooth pebbles as she felt them touch her bare foot. Usually there was always a teasing boy running up to pull at her hair or a kindly girl who pressed a cookie into her hand, but today there was no one. There came to Fiddlis’s finely-tuned ears not a sound, not even a bird singing on the highlands. No goats cried out, no kittens rubbed around their doorposts with their loud purring noises. Fiddlis shivered and realized a darkness had covered the sun. What manner of evil was this?

Fiddlis walked on through her silent village as the stinking wind played with her sandy hair and blew into her blank eyes. Slowly, ever so slowly from amongst the shadows of a furze bush, their arose a twisty grotesque figure. It looked like a tree, huge and hulking and knobbly, with a great lush tangle of leaves for hair and a face etched with rough bark. It carefully moved through the furze bushes, rustling them ever so slightly with his great spindly arms of bark-like flesh. Fiddlis froze in her tracks and wondered to herself what that crunching noise behind her was.

“Auntie?” she inquired hopefully. The crunching, which now sounded like the footsteps of something heavy, halted for one moment and then resumed, coming nearer and nearer to the little trembling figure before him. Fiddlis’s breath came faster and she desperately wished for her little dirk. A hot stinking breath was blown into her face, making her wince. “Auntie?!” she yelled as there came a crash and a whoosh of wind right before her. She heard a low snarl and gasped. Fiddlis whirled around on her heel and began running through her blackness as heavy hulking footsteps crushed the earth behind her.

“My king!”

Wenceslas was jolted from a deep sleep as his advisor Melchior strode into his private chambers, silver cape billowing out behind him. His bright blue eyes pierced into Wenceslas’s sleep-blurred sterling ones. “What…what is it, Melchior?” He had apparently fallen asleep lying across his bed, and he hurriedly attempted to regain some of his dignity as he faced his tall thin advisor.

“How can you sleep at a time like this?” Melchior snapped. His hawk nose was turned up disdainfully. Wenceslas cocked an eyebrow. His old advisor was the only one whom he would ever allow to speak thus about him. “Have you not seen the black sickness that is gripping Crescent and Warwick by her throat? Have you not heeded the angry bulbous clouds that poison the sky?” Melchior tramped to the window and pulled back the heavy blue curtains. Instead of being stricken by bright morning light, Wenceslas looked out into a darkness nearly black as night. The king stood up quickly, hissing through his teeth. “Northumbrio!” he rasped. “He must be working his evils again.”

“No doubt he is,” Melchior quipped dryly. “Never has there been such a faminous plague to kill off all the vegetation. Stroll through your fields, oh king, there is nothing left alive in the way of food.” Wenceslas heard hinted bitterness in Melchior’s words.

“And what of my people?” he demanded. “Are they safe?”

Melchior turned slowly to look at his king. He rose to his full height and slowly walked around the bed, rubbing his wrinkled hands and looking beadily at the man sitting confused on his bed.

“What do you care of your people?” he suddenly cried out. “I know who you really are, Wenceslas; you are merely playing the part until my plans are fulfilled, which will be sooner than you think.” There was a mutinous expression flaming in his eyes. “We have known each other for many a great long year, boy. I know who you are hiding behind that kingly exterior.” Wenceslas’s breath came fast and his face grew taut.

“I will not be insulted like this, Melchior. You are to keep these things to yourself.”

The two men stared defiantly at one another and finally Melchior sighed and looked away.

“Your people are fine…as of yet. My men have dealt with them, they will not be a hindrance to the furthering of…of what we seek to gain.”

“Good.” Wenceslas spit out the word and it fell to the floor like a piece of iron. He got up and paced restlessly, a wild glint suddenly appearing in his eye. “Alert our…your men that things are being put together like so many pieces to a puzzle. My people will soon know who I am.” This was said with a sneer.

Melchior bowed. “Very good, your majesty.” He swept from the room, leaving a cold hard sensation behind him.

A gray shadow moved like water through a fresh pine glen. The lithe figure stopped in front of an elaborately carven pine trunk and reached out a calloused hand to stroke the sacred symbols. When would their Redeemer come?

Rhody laughed merrily and stroked the soft red fabric. “Will this make a fine cloak, brother?”

Skerry looked up from his whittling and grinned. “Where did you get that beautiful stuff?” Skerry and his sister were sitting inside their cozy tree house, feeding the fire and mending cloth. The rotten stench outside, rising hot from the heaths, had no power against the smoky essence inside, and no cold winds blew around the deerskin doorway nailed to the opening Skerry had cut. It was a happy, peaceful feeling, the feeling that Rhody felt as she let Skerry feel the rich red cloth with strong fingers.

“I was able to get it in the marketplace at Warwick.”

Skerry suddenly looked up. “Warwick?” he said in a low voice. “Warwick is ruled by the king, Rhody.”

Rhody hugged the unfinished cloak to her chest and stared right back at her brother. “Skerry, the king rules, yes, but his people are all individual. I know you have seen terrible things at the king’s hand; so have I. Yet we cannot let our hearts burn for a fire that will be stomped out one day.” Skerry leaned back, his whittling forgotten, and eyed Rhody’s strong brown face. “Explain further, I do not understand,” he said. Rhody stroked the cloak like she would a kitten as she spoke, her brow wrinkled as she tried to convince herself of the wild rumors.

“One day, if it be so the will of fate, a Redeemer might come and banish all thoughts of fear and hatred from our hearts. We will not need to hate the king or scorn his people, as they have scorned us in the past. We must look ahead, brother, to what life could be instead of what it is now.” Skerry’s lips curled up in a slight smile. He loved his sister.

“So you truly think this Redeemer will assuredly come to help the Crescentfolk?”

Rhody straightened her jaw. “I think the Redeemer will come to help everyone, not just those who dwell in our old village. If he ever does come.” These last words were said with hesitation.

Skerry opened his mouth to say something when they heard a horse’s hooves pounding the ground and stop with a whinny outside their tree. Skerry’s vibrant green eyes glittered when he heard an accented voice say, “Come out in the name of our good and loyal king Wenceslas the Second.” Rhody gracefully got up, looking more like an elf than ever, and pushed the deerskin flap aside.

“How can we help you?” she said once Skerry had stepped out behind her and stood, tall and broad-shouldered, ready to fight if there was any trouble.

The soldier on the frothing horse unrolled a scroll and said, “By proclamation of the King, whosoever once dwelled in the good town of Crescent must come at once to be counted there, and likewise in Warwick. The King further states that any and every able-bodied young man must be recruited in his army.” Skerry and Rhody turned to stare at each other, open-mouthed.

“That means you, boy,” said the soldier sarcastically before spurring his horse and thundering down the dirty road.

Rhody sighed and took her brother’s hand in hers.

“What shall we do now?” she asked, resisting the urge to begin sobbing upon her brother’s shoulder.

Skerry tightened his features and shook his head.

“The very man I have sworn to hate until I die…we cannot do it, sister. I cannot. I could never in my lifetime, thought I might live to be a hundred, bring myself to forgive that hypocrite for what…for what he did you our parents, what he did to your life-”

Rhody interrupted with a broken sob. “Skerry, please, do not bring up those memories for me again. I wish never, ever to relive those things. I want to forgive!”

“That may be impossible, sister. You may not be able to forgive Wenceslas.”