Chapter 30: Frederico – How Nice to Want Things so Grand
In the streets of Beloú there were gold and glittering gems.
‘Look at your own eyes in mirrors from Gorgath,’ a merchant said to the children that laughed. They came, they saw their own eyes, they ran away shrieking.
There were dolls, gadgets, and liquor.
‘Come try,’ said an old man in blue. ‘Come taste. Don’t sneeze on my spice!’
A donkey brayed, a mare shook its mane. A warhorse tried to bite a merchant on the shoulder. The merchant didn’t see it and kept on mumbling and grumbling while arranging cages with all sorts of cheerful birds inside.
There was a parrot.
‘Come quick,’ said the parrot. ‘Come and see. We have everything that you need.’
The parrot lied. The caravan could offer nothing but dreams, a glimpse of a world the people of Patire couldn’t reach, then emptiness and silence when the caravan left Beloú. But Rimbaud and his caravan were merchants. Their role was to give to the people what they wanted, not what they needed. That was the role of kings.
From the gates of Beloú came a joyful shout and the sound of a sword beating a shield. It was a soldier making that noise, and he smiled. Other soldiers followed his lead and Rimbaud’s merchants had to cover their ears. Prince Frederico was back from one of his mysterious journeys. No one knew where he went, but today he returned with a pretty girl by his side.
‘Welcome back, Prince! Where did you go this time?’ asked a soldier.
‘In miserable desolation,’ answered Frederico.
‘Isn’t that where you went last time?’
‘You’re wrong, soldier. Last time I was in desolate misery.’
Frederico studied those smiles that looked like grimaces. Some faces he knew had disappeared and been replaced by new faces that also grimaced. Frederico finally found someone he knew and called:
‘Anton!’
A tall man with red hair, red beard, and red eyelashes came to his side.
‘This is Líran,’ Frederico said. ‘Show her Beloú and the fair.’ He then turned to Líran. ‘This is Rimbaud’s Caravan. Anton will be your guide. I’ll come search for you later.’ He’d rather stay with her now, but Frederico needed to see his brother alone.
Anton scratched his red head, not knowing what to do. What a pretty woman, this Líran. She smelled of fresh air. Anton didn’t ask any questions about who she was and where she came from. He was a soldier of Patire and soldiers of Patire never asked anything, they obeyed.
Líran’s eyes roamed the city, taking in all the details of that colorful chaos. She also noticed, behind the caravan colors, brown Beloú, like a city of clay.
‘How old is the war now?’ she asked.
Anton shrugged and twisted his lips in an inverted smile.
‘Older than I. Wait,’ he said, ‘Prince Frederico said something about it once. He tells us many things. He said the war began some four hundred years ago.’ To Anton four hundred years and forty years were the same. He was only twenty and the war had been there from the moment he was born. ‘Why?’ He asked and the question surprised him. He was trained to speak only when asked to and then only to say ‘Yes, sir’, never to ask anything.
‘Because I think it is about to change direction.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Don’t you feel it?’
‘Feel what?’
‘We’re in the brick of a story.’
Anton was lost. That woman awakened in him a thirst that was not of water or anything as simple as merely surviving, but he couldn’t explain what it was. All he knew was that suddenly Beloú, the war, Patire — none of that was enough anymore. The feeling was as vague as the purple sparkle in Líran’s brown eyes.
She pointed to the sky. ‘Did you see it?’
‘See what?’ Anton looked up, not knowing what he was looking for.
‘An eagle.’
Frederico had once shown the soldiers an old book with pictures of Franária from before the war. The map on the book had no scars, no cracks. It was whole and above it was an eagle in flight.
Many soldiers greeted Prince Frederico, who kept on glancing over his shoulder until he lost sight of Líran. The enthusiastic soldiers either slapped Frederico’s back — something they’d never do in front of Faust — or waved from afar, greeting him with noise and smiles. All soldiers loved him.
Maybe not all. There was a young man, who had been recently adopted by the army. He was black like a true Satironese, and scornfully showed his red gums to Frederico’s back when the prince walked by. A greying soldier saw it and smacked the young man on the back of his head.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ said the older man. ‘Show our prince some respect.’
‘Why? He isn’t a warrior, he doesn’t even carry a sword. He doesn’t deserve to be Prince Faust’s brother.’
The exchange called the attention of a group of soldiers nearby. They surrounded the young man.
‘What’s your name?’ asked the greying soldier.
‘Leon.’ He raised his chin in challenge.
‘Leon, you are young and only know Prince Faust, brother of Frederico,’ said a mulatto who wore one of those pointy Anjarian helmets. ‘But we know a differente Faust, son of Fulbert and Margot of Patire. These,’ he raised his left hand, which was missing two fingers, ‘were not lost in the Mouth of War.’
‘Nor this,’ said a tall soldier, turning his head so Leon could see the scar where the ear used to be.
Leon was surrounded by veterans, each with a different story of torture and punishment. Other soldiers approached; younger soldiers who had just been transfered to Beloú.
‘The Mouth of War is better than the Halls of Snow,’ one of them said. ‘Here we can name the danger. Neville’s black arrow can be deadly, but Fulbert’s shadow devours you by chunks.’
As time went by, Frederico learned to be afraid of the Royal Mansion of Beloú. There was a time when he explored the place, picturing the inconverted fireplaces lighting up with sorcery, the lamps spreading light and warmth. What color were the lights of Sátiron? He had read a sorcerer’s diary brought by Menior from Eslarina (Eslarians liked diaries and biographies), in which the sorcerer described his training. The first object a sorcerer received was a plain ring with very little magic in it. Enough to make it almost safe. Frederico often put a normal ring on his finger and pretended it was a training ring. He motioned to the lamps and pretended they would alight and drew away the grey presence that fed his nightmare.
But the lights never turned on, magic never happened, and the nightmare became more solid every night he spent in Beloú. In the gap between the cobblestones, in the dry fountain’s basin, in the shadow of the broken stone eagle, crawling up the walls like rats.
Frederico moved here seven years ago. Seven years! He still felt like a boy of fourteen, afraid of his parents, afraid of becoming like them. Seven years were gone and, with them, the Old Woman. Everything went away, everything died, only the nightmare remained.
Faust must have seen his brother through the window, because he came out of the door to meet his brother at the steps. Faust looked older, though his brown hair remained untouched by grey. He still had power and authority about him in spite of the shadows at the corners of his eyes and mouth. His hug was, as usual, tight and breathless, but Frederico returned it in like.
‘There you are.’ Faust’s voice was smothered by Frederico’s shoulder. ‘I thought you would miss the caravan. Of course you could have gone to the Halls of Snow if you missed Rimbaud here.’
‘You know I won’t go to the Halls. Not while those two live there.’
‘It’s been ten years,’ said Faust.
‘Seven.’
‘Don’t you think it’s time to forget?’
‘Faust, those aren’t my parents. You can say I disinherited myself. I don’t care for them. My only fear is to come to Beloú one day and find you gone.’
‘Don’t worry, little brother, I have no intention of dying. What’s in there?’ He pointed at Frederico’s backpack.
‘Books.’
Faust made a face as though the bag was full of horse dung. ‘Why so many this time? It’s a lot more than you usually have.’
Frederico didn’t answer immediately. He had never told Faust about the Old Woman. Faust had never asked. Frederico arrived with books, Faust made a face but pretended the books didn’t exist. They both needed Frederico’s absence, the younger brother to keep his sanity, the older brother to... well, keep his sanity. Faust would have disapproved of Frederico’s education. Like Fulbert, Faust didn’t know how to read, therefore he despised the written word. Maybe the Old Woman would have been able to change that in him, but the Old Woman was dead.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Frederico said. ‘They’ve lost their meaning.’
Faust put an arm around his brother’s shoulders and guided him inside the mansion, ordering beer, bread, cheese, plums, and honey to be brought to his room.
Frederico didn’t make sense: an unarmed man, a soldier trained by Faust himself, the best warrior in Patire, but a man who had never wielded a weapon outside of training. Frederico was quiet, distant. Not that forever distant look that refused to focus here and now, always seeking an alternative reality full of trains (Faust had opened a few of Frederico’s books and seen the schematics, the trains). Today, Frederico’s silence had a different taste to it. His eyes were low, red and swollen, but focused, just like the day Frederico left the Halls of Snow to never see his parents again. There was no horror this time, but the despair was there — a placid sadness that reminded Faust of the grey breath of the Mouth of War.
Faust tried to make conversation. He fought against his brother’s silence — because everything in life was a fight — by talking more effusively and laughing louder than normal. He poured and drank wine, but Frederico didn’t touch his glass. He remained quiet, his focus stranded in a dark corner of the room.
Faust changed his tactics. He studied the backpack at Frederico’s feet. Damnable books full of written things. He pressed his lips together. He was the son of Fulbert of Patire, he could not be afraid of a mere pile of black little letters.
‘These stories you always tell the soldiers,’ he said. ‘Do they come from those books?’
‘Most of them, yes.’
‘Why do you spread these old women’s tales?’ asked Faust.
‘They are the truth.’
‘Nonsense. To talk of Franária like you do, like it used to be an eagle in flight, makes our father look like an impostor.’
‘Fulbert is an impostor and so is Margot.’
‘Our parents are strong rulers.’
‘Torturers, dictators, despots clutching a crumble of a kingdom called Patire,’ said Frederico.
‘You have to be strict to keep order. It’s the most efficient way to rule.’
Frederico always caught fire when Faust spoke like that. He then wielded words like he had never wielded a sword. Not this time. Frederico turned away, anchoring his eyes once again in that dusty corner. Faust cleared his throat.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘stop telling the soldiers those stories. They start to sigh like young women in love.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Frederico said. ‘They’ve lost their meaning.’
‘The soldiers?’
‘The books. The soldiers never had any meaning.’
Faust clutched the arms of his chair with so much strength that his knuckes turned white. He stood up and grabbed Frederico by the arm.
‘Let’s go to the fair.’
Frederico didn’t want to go anywhere. Trains without fuel couldn’t move. But what was that anxiety in Faust’s eyes? That tense neck, the hands that looked like claws. Faust didn’t deserve to suffer for the death of an old woman he didn’t even know.
‘Very well,’ said Frederico.
They walked side by side in silence. Neither brother noticed the group of soldiers outide the mansion’s gates. The youngest of them, a black man called Leon, followed them with confused eyes. An hour ago he was sure of who was Faust and who was Frederico. Now he didn’t know who to admire, who to despise, or fear. One hour ago he had a hero, now he only had doubts.
A white sheet put out to dry swelled with a gentle wave of wind. A mended curtain stretched out of a window on the same wave. Inside, dirty dishes on the table. On the sidewalk, beside a once blue door, there was an empty chair. Faust didn’t mind the silence as long as they were doing something. They were walking, and walking was action. As long as there was action, everything would be fine.
‘Why is it so quiet?’ asked Frederico. ‘Where are the people?’
They were a few blocks away from where Rimbaud’s tents were up with colors, songs, and merchandise. Where were the barefoot children? The merchants’ voices, why couldn’t Frederico hear them? Around the corner was the carnival, but Faust and Frederico were met by an intense silence of voices and of movements.
The merchants and the people of Beloú, the soldiers, the children and the parrot, they were all gathered at the feet of a stone fountain that had been dry for many years. The basin was large, the fountain was beautiful even if dry, with the statue of an eagle with her wings open.
Standing on the basin’s edge, one hand on the eagle’s wings, Líran pointed with her other hand beyond Beloú, like a sailor shouting ‘Land!’ Over the tides of people at the fountain’s feet, Líran’s voice poured, now vibrant like thunder, now silky like sea foam. With ample gestures of her hands, which now opened with possibilities then closed in fists of resolution, Líran told stories.
The dry fountain overflowed with legends, and the poeple from Patore, Gorgath, Anjário, and Eslarina, drank every word. A few soldiers had asked her to tell stories of Franária. They liked those stories because of Frederico, who spread them tirelessly for seven years. When they asked Líran to tell those stories, they expected exactly that: the old legends they had become used to, the taste of unreachable dreams, impossible feats, an escape from reality, from the Mouth of War.
But that was not what they got. The same stories, yes, Líran told them. But not with the nuance of unattainable feats, of realities they’d never see. Líran spoke of the Empire and the end of the Dark Age; she spoke of Franária, prosperous and beautiful, with kings at times generous, at times strict, always obedient to the laws of Sátiron, and all that she told, not as one who imagined it, but as one who had seen it. Líran’s stories were testimonies. Her knowledge came from experience, not books, and her eyes didn’t turn away, trying to imagine the things she was telling. She didn’t have to imagine. She knew. So she stared into the crowd and guided them through each legend, each name, emotion, mystery.
In Líran’s voice, Franária was not just a dream, but a reality in which even the Old Woman still lived. The stone eagle’s feathers ruffled.
‘And the three kings of today, of Patire, Baynard, and Deran, are the descendants of the descendants of the children of the children of the grandchildren of the three cousins who fought for the crown when the last King of Franária died without leaving an heir,’ Líran finished.
Faust’s legs became weak. That woman’s voice covered Beloú with a reality that was similar but essentially different from the one where Fulbert was king. There was color.
Faust hated those old stories of mysteries and of Franária, of that eagle’s majestic wings. In Frederico’s voice those tales filled the people’s chests with sighs. In that woman’s voice, the people’s chests were filled with explosions. Implosions, in Faust’s case. The merchantes — they weren’t even Franish — were standing at there stands, knotted faces like warriors ready for battle. The soldier right in front of Faust held his spear so tightly that his skin nearly ripped apart. A girl stood up on her father’s shoulders. The storyteller’s voice had already silenced, but her violet eyes still spoke of mysteries under the stone eagle’s wings.
That storyteller was a threat, but Faust didn’t know what he feared. Like a cornered animal, all he wanted was to get away from there. He trimmed away threats like his father did: two fingers here, an ear there, sometimes a left arm, maybe a head. Thus lived Patire.
Frederico stepped forward. He stood tall, defiant like a warrior. Only one step ahead and Frederico was already in that strange, purple world that didn’t exist but was somehow more real than Faust’s world.
‘Brother,’ called Faust.
‘Yes,’ Frederico said. ‘Yes.’
Frederico’s heart jumped inside his chest. He saw Franária clearly, like on the day the Old Woman drew it for him inside the Eliana.
‘This is your country,’ the Old Woman said. ‘This is the real Franária. No cracks, no Mouth of War.’
Not Patire, not Deran, not Baynard. Franária needed to be whole. But how, by the wolves of Sátiron, could anyone reunify Franária? How nice to want things so grand to happen. Who was Frederico to put anything in motion? The unarmed prince. Frederico the Weak.
But there was another prince. Frederico turned slowly. There was Faust the Brave.
Faust’s heels slid back an inch. The storyteller didn’t speak of Franária anymore. The fountain was now flowing with stories of mysteries. As she spoke of the wolves of Sátiron, of Yukari Nakamura and Sáeril Quepentorne, her skin changed color. She became darker, until her skin was as black as Sátiron’s first empress, but Frederico didn’t see it. He was looking at his brother.
Frederico finally understood what the Old Woman was trying to do, but she had indeed chosen the wrong prince. Faust was the answer. He had the strength that Frederico lacked. However, Faust had always been there and Franária remained broken. There was a war between them and the eagle.
‘Sometimes the unexpected crosses the river into Franish land,’ Líran said, ‘but the people who live at the Blood’s banks know how to deal with nightmares from beyond the river.’
Frederico turned to the crowd by the fountain. An old woman pressed her hands against her chest, a boy hid his face in a woman’s skirt, and a couple held each other closer.
‘The Frontier,’ said Líran, but Frederico stopped paying attention to her. The crowd was what he saw.
The Frontier and the crowd was terrified. The Frontier and Franária closed her wings to listen.
‘Frederico, let’s go home.’ Faust took Frederico by the arm and dragged him back to the mansion.
The arrhythmic beat of their heels on cobblestone echoed like a mantra in Frederico’s ears:
The Frontier the Frontier the Frontier
The sun had already set when a man came looking for Líran. Her skin was still black, her eyes were still purple. The man had small ears and a grey beard trimmed like the point of a spear. All around there were the remains of music and dance. The lights went off one by one in the Tent of Performers, while the last Belourians went reluctantly home.
‘My name is Rimbaud.’ The man shook Líran’s hand. ‘I am the master of this caravan. Would you like to join us? It is not an easy life and there are dangers, but we have the company of seasoned warriors, which discourages most attackers. We are nomads. If you come with us you will see different peoples and get to know exotic customs. And they will come, all those poeple, to hear your stories.’
Part of Líran heard what he said. Part found it strange that her skin had changed color. As far as she knew, human skin didn’t change like that. Part of Líran felt mortal, the other part screamed to be released from this human finitude.
‘Think about it,’ said Rimbaud. ‘Join us if you wish.’
The caravan stayed in Beloú another three days. At the sunset of the last day, the silks were put away and the tents, dismounted. Beloú watched, already nostalgic for the colors the trunks swallowed away. The square became empty and the wind swept away the vibrant parrot’s feathers.
‘Goodbye,’ said the parrot. ‘Goodbye.’
The afternoon died away, the sun went away, the fair was over.
It was a moonless night but full of stars, as though all the eyes in the sky were watching Beloú. A thin mist turned the streets into velvet, lending the city a texture from dreams. Líran crossed the empty square, her feet barely disturbing the mist. She met Frederico in front of the fountain. He was studying the eagle of stone. The starlight and the mist made the eagle look like a ghost.
‘I can’t sleep,’ he said.
Neither could she. Her feet and legs hurt from standing up for so long. She had hit her arm against the edge of a wagon and it hurt. Líran didn’t know that pain penetrated. She had always thought that it stayed on the skin, where the nerves were, but pain had a way of rooting itself and it scared Líran. She wondered what else rooted inside a mortal body.
Líran felt blind, small, breakable. But wasn’t that the reason she had become human? To live mortal things, including fear? She had watched mortal creatures, all of them and there was no story, as simple as it may be, that happened without anyone being afraid. Not even the most common of lives, the ones that had no stories, not even those were free from fear. Sometimes there was a lack of courage, but never of fear. Líran wanted to live an adventure and there was a story here in Franária. She would chase that story. She would join Rimbaud and she would find the source of that story.
‘Who are you?’ Frederico asked. ‘You have planted ideas in my head and they keep me more awake than the nightmare.’
‘It is not in my power to plant ideas. I just pass and they grow on their own.’
‘I think I know how to end this war,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid of my ideas, even more than I am of my nightmare. The nightmare is already gone, I have already failed there. But this,’ he made a gesture toward the stone eagle. ‘These inspirations, even aspirations that people my mind today, they are possible. I can’t change the nightmare, it’s in the past, but this is the future of Franária. And I can fail it.’
‘Change is always possible and it can always fail. Frederico, there is a story here wanting to happen. When a story is born, we have the power to reshape the future. This is when heroes are born.’
‘I’m not a hero.’
‘Not yet. You have to earn it.’
He tried to take her hand, but she was already moving away. She left him alone with those words. In the morning, she left Beloú. A few days later the winter snow bleached the brown streets of Beloú, now empty of colors, dried of dreams.
