T
hese walls are all he has ever known. The entire span of his life has been lived between the brick and mortar; playing hide and seek in the gardens; praying before Vespera; running through the too-tight alleyways between shops in the market, or the city square. Of course, he has adventured past them—into the forests and the fields, to the cliffs by the sea. Youth, inexperience, nativity—these are all things he wears in the smile that sometimes falters, and in the gold-to-red glow of the tattoos not written into his skin, but inherited. (Then, of course, he dreams: he dreams of the same black sand beach and the same white stallion. He remembers, this morning, the conversation. “I have lived a hundred lives,” the white stallion tells Aeneas. “And I live yours now.”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” says Aeneas.
Then, he wakes up).
He wakes up to Hilde and breakfast in the dining hall. He wakes up to a day with a sweet cinnamon pastry, and his mother reminding him he is to go with Elena, the Champion of Community, to pick tulips for the hospital. He wakes up to a life of youth, a life where the largest injustice he has suffered thus far is his father’s abandonment.
Aeneas’s nerves manifest in the too-quick way he descends the stairs and meets Elena before the estate. Aeneas wants to remark on how alike Elena looks to Elliana—but decides against it, out of shyness. Aeneas, it is a pleasure to finally meet you. He smiles, a princely kind of smile, the kind of smile he believes is suited for an encounter that is borderline political. But then Elena mentions Elliana, and the smile breaks wider, boyishly, to meet his eyes. “She hasn’t?” Aeneas asks, perhaps too excitedly. He realizes too late he forgot to reply to the flowers and amends, “I am very excited. I have never visited the hospital, and this seems like a good way to do it.” Another polite smile, one that appears abashed.
“I do know Elli!” Aeneas says, as they walk toward the fields of tulips. “We are pretty good friends.” He cannot help but think of how she painted him; how she showed him the secret field of butterflies. It feels, suddenly, as if he has not done enough for her. “Does she like gifts, Lady Elena?” Aeneas asks before he can think better of it and then, attempting to not discuss only Elli, adds as an afterthought: “Were the tulips your idea?”
The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves.
