Foretold (12 page)

… none of us has
actually
been arrested, nor have our rights been read to us, and in fact, it’s illegal for you under the Sixth Amendment to continue questioning me after I invoked my right to counsel. Did I forget to mention I’m vice president of Pritchard High School’s Junior Law Institute?

Oh. I can go now? We can
all
go?

Okay. Well, thanks. Nice meeting you.

Is that on? Is it taping? How does my hair look? Does my hair look okay? It does? Okay, good.

Well, the first thing you should know is that my father is the biggest personal injury lawyer in Peachtree County, and I’m going to make sure that he sues Kyle Conrad, his sister Kaleigh, and the entire Conrad family for the emotional and physical duress they’ve put me through. Because by KC’s own admission in her blog, they’ve clearly known for years that dirty, filthy space aliens exist.

But did they ever share that knowledge with the rest of
the community? No, not until it was too late. That’s straight-up negligence.

Also, my friend Taylor’s dad’s Audi A4 was completely
destroyed
when that ship landed on it. If we hadn’t gotten out in time, we would have been crushed to death.

I will probably have post-traumatic stress for the rest of my life, and I’m not just talking about the car, or KC coming at us like a crazy person with that baseball bat. I mean, KC’s always been a weirdo, but that was simply uncalled for.

I mean the fact that Kyle Conrad used to tell all the girls he went out with that that thing on his arm was a gang tattoo, when we all know now what it really is, don’t we? Some kind of camera for those nasty aliens to
spy
on us.

And the fact that the whole time he was dating me—the
whole
time!—everything I did was being recorded … that is also completely actionable. Who knows what Kyle intends to do with those recordings, if they ever figure out a way to get that thing out of his arm? Where is my percentage on what he’s going to make from those recordings if he decides to go to a network with them? Or feature film? That’s what my agent wants to know.

So Kyle and Kaleigh Conrad have to be held accountable, since they endangered not just me and the future of my professional career, but the entire population of Peachtree County, if not the world. I don’t care how often they appear on the cover of
Time
magazine, or that Kyle is going out with that Radha girl now, or that Kaleigh is with Duncan Mulroney, and that they were all named sergeants in the new World Army Against the Extraterrestrial Threat. I refuse to be treated like this.

And all of you guys, with your black sunglasses and helicopters and night-vision goggles? You didn’t exactly help
matters, did you? Kyle and Kaleigh didn’t even get punished. You just
let them go
. And now they’re celebrities because some intergalactic war is coming, and get free airline tickets to Washington, DC, to see the president, and got to go to the Teen Choice Awards? No. That is not right.

So, even though you may be big-time secret agents and all, I’m going to make sure each and every one of you gets sued, too.

That’s pretty much all I have to say. Oh, wait. Is this going to be on CNN? Because if so, I just want to say hi to my friend Taylor and also Justin Bieber, if you’re watching this, oh my God, Justin, I love you! I’m on Facebook, friend me.

Wait … 
what?
That is not true! How dare anyone accuse me.… No one actually
saw
me pee in the Dulles County team’s cooler.

What are you people going to do with this tape? If this ever gets made public, I will make sure my father sues you for every penny you’ve got. I don’t care if you’re the government, I’ll …

Fine. I said
fine
, I’ll drop my lawsuits, if you won’t tell anyone about that thing with the cooler.

God, I hate this planet.

It is never lucky for a child to kill her mother in the course of her own birth. Perhaps for this reason, the soothsayer who attended the naming ceremony for Princess Essylt was not a celebrated one. Haidis had barely finished his own apprenticeship when the summons came. He knew that delivering the prophecy for this princess was a thankless job, because no soothsayer in his right mind would attempt to foretell the life of a girl-child born out of death.

His mentor and former teacher told him to sugarcoat the prophecy as much as possible. “She’s unimportant, in the grand scheme of things,” said Gerlach. “King Radek needs a son; he’ll find a new bride soon enough and the princess will simply be married off when she’s older.” He gave Haidis a sharp glance. “Make sure your prophecy sounds true enough, but remember that the king doesn’t need the truth; he only needs a benediction.”

So Haidis went to the naming ceremony prepared to omit any problematic details from the prophecy he would deliver. He planned to stop by the soothsayers’ temple afterward, to make an offering to the God of Prophecy to counteract whatever bad luck he might acquire from being in such close proximity to the princess.

It was a small ceremony, as Haidis expected, and the king himself seemed a little bored, his mind likely focused on his next journey to the war front rather than the baby held in the arms of the nursemaid nearby. The child wouldn’t stop crying, her voice a thin, angry wail that echoed in the cold, stony throne room. When Haidis approached her with the Water of Prophecy and the Sceptre of Truth, she screamed even louder, her mouth stretched open in a tiny O of frustration, her eyes screwed shut. She had wisps of reddish hair on her scalp, and her cheeks were ruddy. He wondered if she would ever grow into a beauty; her mother, the late Queen Lida, had been known for her inheritance, not her looks.

King Radek barked, “Get on with it before the girl makes us all deaf.”

“Apologies, Your Majesty,” Haidis said. He lifted the pewter bowl containing the Water of Prophecy and dipped his fingers in it, dampening the girl’s forehead and cheeks with the liquid. Her squalls stopped as if she was shocked by his touch, and she opened her eyes. They were a vibrant green, as vivid as springtime in the woods outside the castle, and Haidis was as startled by her as she seemed to be by him. She might not become a beauty, he thought, but those eyes were certainly a marvel.

He picked up the Sceptre of Truth and held it over the princess as he began the incantation that would bring him into the trancelike state required to foretell her future. He didn’t expect to fall deeply into the trance; he was too aware
of the king glaring at him, not to mention the princess’s luminous green eyes. He kept his own eyes half open, so he saw the moment when the girl reached up with her baby fingers and wrapped them around the Sceptre itself.

This was unusual, and Haidis knew it. He knew it because the Sceptre changed into a living thing at the princess’s touch, and he had to hang on to it with all his might to prevent it from flying out of his hand. His eyes widened, but he did not see the nurse’s astonished expression, or the way the king sat up in surprise. He saw, instead, the princess’s future, and this vision would remain with him for the rest of his life, for it was the first time he had seen true, and he could not resist speaking it wholly, without any of his mentor’s suggested sugarcoating.

“The princess shall grow into a young woman strong and pure,” Haidis intoned. “But when she finds her one true love”—the nursemaids standing in the throne room giggled—“she shall be the downfall of the king.”

The attendants and guests erupted into shocked whispers. Haidis’s vision cleared with a snap, and he saw the baby Princess Essylt gazing up at him with what appeared to be a smile on her face. Terror filled him as he realized what he had said. He pulled the Sceptre of Truth away from the princess, and as it left her hands it became ordinary again.

Behind him the king roared, “Take this abomination away! She shall never be the downfall of me! Take her away or I will have her killed,
and she will join her mother in the grave.”

The nursemaid clutched the Princess Essylt to her breast and fled. Haidis swayed on his feet as he wondered if he had sentenced the baby girl to her death with his careless speaking of the truth.

• • •

It was the king’s most trusted advisor who devised a solution to the problem of Princess Essylt’s prophecy. “We shall simply never allow the princess to find her true love,” he told the king, “and so your safety will be assured.” Of course, the advisor had ulterior motives—he believed the princess might one day be useful, politically—but he kept that to himself, and the king consented to his plan.

From that day forward, Princess Essylt was restricted to the castle’s West Tower under the supervision of her nursemaid, Auda, and was not allowed to see any man except for her father. He visited her rarely, for he had little desire to see the cause of his prophesied doom. The few times he did visit, he glared down at the princess and demanded, “Are you being an obedient little girl?”

She shrank away from him at first, running back to Auda, who would turn her around forcefully and whisper in her ear, “This is your father, the king of Anvarra, and you are his daughter, a princess, and you must behave as such.”

As the years passed, Essylt learned to bow to her father, and she came to see him as a sort of duty: one that she had inherited by birth, but not one that she enjoyed. She knew that he did not particularly like her, but she did not know why, for Auda kept the prophecy that had relegated her to the West Tower a secret.

Auda was a skilled and loving nursemaid, and she took her job seriously. She knew that the only way Essylt would be content in the tower was if she thought her life was entirely normal. For several years, Auda was quite successful, for she made the West Tower into everything a little girl could wish for. When Essylt wanted new dolls, Auda ordered them; when she asked for playmates, Auda invited the princess’s young female cousins to visit; when she yearned for a pony, Auda convinced the king to deliver one to the gardens adjacent
to the West Tower. She even arranged for a female riding instructor to teach Essylt how to ride. Whenever Essylt voiced questions about why she couldn’t go through the heavily carved oak door in the hall, Auda said, “We must keep you safe, for you are the princess of Anvarra, and you must be protected.”

The only times Essylt left the West Tower were on the occasions of her father’s weddings, for it was deemed too unseemly for the princess to remain locked away on such an important day. For those events, Essylt was dressed in veils from head to toe so that no one could see her face. The veils also had the unfortunate—or perhaps intentional—side effect of rendering her mostly blind, so she had to hold Auda’s hand the entire time. That meant that Essylt’s experience of the greater castle was confined to careful study of the floor, glimpsed in flashes through the gap at the bottom of the veils.

During Essylt’s childhood, King Radek married several times, for his wives had a troubling tendency to die. Essylt’s mother, of course, had died in childbed, as did the king’s second wife. His third wife bore two stillborn children—sons, the king noted in despair—before succumbing to a fever. After that, several years passed before the king decided to marry again. Some believed he worried that he was cursed, but others noted that he was merely distracted by a new war that had broken out between Anvarra and its eastern neighbor, the kingdom of Drasik. This war went on season after season, and Essylt passed her thirteenth and fourteenth and fifteenth birthdays with her father away at battle, and no new bride on the castle threshold to draw her out of the West Tower.

As Essylt grew older, she became increasingly curious about the court and her father and why he did not return except once or twice a year, and Auda reluctantly began to answer
her questions. In this way, Essylt learned that King Radek had sought an alliance with the island nation of Nawharla’al, which had once been invaded by Drasik but had successfully driven them out through an ingenious use of poison-tipped arrows that spread plague through the Drasik soldiers. In Essylt’s seventeenth year, Anvarra and Nawharla’al fought and won a decisive battle against Drasik. In celebration of victory, the king of Nawharla’al gave his seventeen-year-old daughter Sadiya to King Radek in marriage to further cement their alliance.

Sadiya, like all Nawharla’ali people, had brown skin and black hair, with eyes the color of rich, dark soil. The first time King Radek saw her—in a tent on the side of the road after the last battle—he felt lust stir within him, for he had never seen a girl as beautiful and exotic as she. The king saw the way his attendants looked at her, too, and black jealousy rose within him, even thicker than his lust. He ordered that Sadiya be taken immediately to the West Tower and locked inside until their wedding, which would take place in exactly one fortnight.

Sadiya did not understand what he said, for she had not yet learned the Anvarran language. She only knew that the king’s voice was covetous and greedy, and when he lifted her chin with his hand, she could almost smell the desire on his breath. It took all her years of royal training to not spit in his face, and she prayed to her gods that something would come to deliver her from this marriage.