A crack in the cream. A crevice of cruelty.

The boy turned, his face hard. “I want to go,” he said. He glared at his mother, at the roundness of her dress.

Even with no waters whispering, Alba the girl understood that terrible stare. You can’t! she wanted to cry. You mustn’t! She tried to reach through the fog—how desperately she wanted to stop the future deed she saw unfolding. You can’t harm the babe! Alba the girl tried to shout, but no words would come.

“He will,” hissed the waters.

“I want to go now,” the boy repeated, still glaring.

The men came to attention. “Right away. Of course. Right away.” The chamber echoed with steps making way. Even the bulbous brow nodded in assent. The boy’s eyes widened in surprise.

“And I want some cooked cream,” he added as they began to ascend.

“Cook is preparing the turtle—”

“Cooked cream! No turtle soup. Now! I want it!” The boy’s words came bouncing back into the chamber. “Cooked cream with plum passum! I will have it for dinner!”

In the dark silence that followed, Alba the girl, at last returned to her body, collapsed on the floor. “What have I done? Oh, Oracle, what have I done?”

“There, there.” The old woman stroked the girl’s hair, damp with vapor and stress. “There, there, Apprentice. You did what you must.”

VI

LIKE THE LEAPING OF FROGS

In the months that followed, the boy, now the king, eleventh-now-first, tried his best to push aside the oracle’s terrible prophecy. But despite the ceremonies and feasts filling his days, he could not free himself of her words. Joyless, echoed the streets as he arrived at the palace. Unloved and abhorred, thundered the applause as the crown was placed on his head. No one will mourn, whispered the walls as he lay alone in the dark on his new bed.

The crack in the boy’s cheek and brow was not so deep… not so deep that some comfort might not have healed it, if any had sought to comfort him. But Cook and Governor were busy with tasks… and Mother—after tsk-ing and wrinkling her nose at the halls, after pronouncing the palace not fine at all—had shut herself in her chambers, so she could not comfort. And the boy himself did not notice the change, did not notice how he had fractured, did not notice the coldness seeping in.

The palace was cold. This he felt. Especially after the celebrations came to an end, he felt the vast coldness of the chambers and halls. No hornbeams, no frogs, no humid evenings behind linen-wrapped windows. His throne, even, was cold and uncomfortable—though sit there he must.

“Yes, you must sit there,” Governor said. No, not Governor. He was meant to call him Advisor now. “It is your duty now you are king.”

All day, every day, sitting on the chair. The boy detested it. The people who came one after another, peasant after peasant, asking for an audience, pleading for aid. The drought has caused hunger. The rain has flooded our homes. Disease has ravaged our village. And then others, not peasants, more advisors, who came with reports, endless reports, reports about water, reports about roads, reports about conquests, reports about trade, reports about ships, reports about tariffs, reports about peoples too far away to ever be seen! Hour after hour, the boy sat, while the peasants and people droned on. And on. And on. After a time, all the boy heard was rmrrmrm, rmrrmrm… a murmuring that sounded much like abhorred, abhorred, abhorred.