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The King of Dogwarts is not dead, not if Martyn has anything to say about it.
Word of the kingdom’s fall spreads faster than even the fire which consumed its inner walls. A kingdom erased in the dead of night. Fires high enough to burn even the stars out of the sky. So much blood that even a month of rain couldn’t clear the muddy red from the streets. It had been a massacre, and no one had survived.
It’s a miracle, really, when a few months later, the King walks again.
Rumors are so easy to sensationalize the further they spread from their source, his Hand says, addressing the crowd as his King stands outside the door.
Don’t mention it to the King, he warns. It’s not something he likes to dwell on.
The King is a proud man, but his ordeal does not leave him unchanged. He stands tall as always, spine straight, towering above most of the others he meets. This regal posture simply reveals the large scar drawn in red across his throat. It’s hard to look at much else about him, when that vicious mark meets the eye.
A few wonder if that’s why he wears a new crown, now. Something taller, thicker, glistening with red gems. For how unwieldy the thing must be, he is never seen without it. It’s eye-catching, or it should be. Gives them somewhere else to look.
His Hand rarely leaves his side.
Movement returns to the streets of Dogwarts gradually. The citizens, thought to be dead, return in groups. Four, five, six at a time, families who fled in the night. One by one, the King’s court returns, Knights taking their seats back at his table.
Or that’s what trickles through the grapevine, at least. Few of the returned residents have been seen; The people of Dogwarts rarely leave their home anymore. Those who have been seen have come back… strange. Concerned friends mention pale skin, as though residents have stopped going outside. A great many have scars they won’t address, torn clothes they won’t change. The most outlandish rumors speak of strange sprouts growing from the heads of the kingdom’s residents, but rumors are so easy to sensationalize.
But Dogwarts is resilient.
Like a weed, the Hand says.
The King of Dogwarts is dead, not that he remembers it.
Ren wakes up in the dirt. Well, not in the dirt. “Ren wakes up on the ground,” would probably be more accurate. He doesn’t know where, exactly, it is that he’s woken up, but he knows it isn’t his bed, and that it’s damp, and that he’s not under any blankets.
Ren’s hand closes around a bundle of soil and he groans, weary even after resting, and then there’s a hand on his shoulder and another on his back, easing him into sitting up.
“Easy, Ren,” says a familiar voice laced with an unfamiliar worry. Ren opens his eyes to the sight of his Hand.
It should be a relief, Ren thinks, but Martyn doesn’t look… well. His skin is a sickly, washed-out white, and he’s lost the muscle and fat that used to fill out his bones. His eyes are rimmed with red, sunken and hollow. Even his hair seems almost as though he’s bleached it, dandelion blond turned from vibrant yellow to pale. Martyn, his sure and dependable Martyn, looks one wrong move from blowing away.
There are lilies in his hair that day, white and yellow and red, bursting out from below his headband like a crown.
Martyn has always grown flowers, an effect of the magic of Spring in his blood. They sprout from his hair, from his arms… Ren recalls one particularly noteworthy incident in which a number of little blooms had grown from his mouth, leaving him spitting petals for almost an hour. They usually disappear just as suddenly as they come, and Ren takes a quiet pleasure in learning what each one means, in reading the things his Hand doesn’t say.
Ren is not quite awake enough yet to remember what lilies mean, or to think of if he’s ever seen them on Martyn before. Ren is distracted, however, before he can come to an answer.
The flower on Martyn’s shoulder that day is new.
It’s an unsettling thing, that flower, strange and alive and knowing. Ren glances from Martyn to the flower, but Martyn doesn't pay the thing any special mind. It sways back and forth, humming off-key to a rhythm Ren doesn’t understand. Its voice is high, but muffled, as if it has something in its mouth. It smiles incessently, lips stretched wide but mouth always closed.
“Her name,” Martyn explains, when he sees Ren staring, “is Lily.” He takes both of Ren’s hands in his own, and his hands are clammy, but warm. “She saved our lives.”
That's all Martyn sees fit to explain. He releases Ren's hands, snaking his arms around Ren's back and crushing himself against Ren's chest, an ear to Ren’s heart. One hand moves to the back of Ren’s head, fingers twisting up in Ren’s hair. Ren wraps two arms back around Martyn’s shoulders, resting his chin on top of Martyn’s head.
Lilies, Ren remembers idly, are toxic to dogs.
The Lily Carnation is her full… title, or name, or genus—Ren isn’t sure. Ren isn’t sure about a lot of things.
The lilies don’t go away. The flowers seem to be a permanent fixture behind Martyn’s ear, pure white petals the only thing highlighting the fact some shade of yellow still exists in Martyn’s hair at all. They drown out all the other flowers Ren has come to love in his Hand, robbing him of color and expression.
(Ren used to be allergic, but they don’t bother him now. He thinks it must be because they’re Martyn’s, but he doesn’t test it.)
Martyn doesn’t go anywhere without her, the strange flower perching always on his shoulder, humming her tune. Ren hasn’t seen Martyn without a shirt since she appeared, but he shudders when he imagines the roots of the thing crawling down his Hand’s shoulder, gnarled things rippling below his skin.
(He wraps a hand around Martyn’s back one night, sitting together in front of the fire, just to be sure he doesn’t feel anything out of the ordinary by the shoulder blades. Martyn doesn’t react, but she does—Ren feels smooth, unbroken skin through the fabric of Martyn’s shirt, and she watches him, and she smiles.)
There’s a sprout in Ren’s hair. It’s rather large, a stubby stem attached to two flat leaves, each the size of Ren’s forearm. Ren makes a conscious effort not to picture roots when he sees it, but he feels closely the skin around its base for any odd lumps. Smooth, unbroken skin, just like Martyn. It’s not reassuring here, either.
Skizz and Etho and BigB have them, too, when they return. It takes them a while to turn up at Dogwarts, trickling back into the throne room one at a time.
Skizz, only as tall as Ren’s chest, boasts bright leaves right at Ren’s eye. He returns first, loud and bright in a silent castle.
BigB’s remind Ren of his own ears, pointing up out of his head. He returns next, and Martyn smiles easier with him around.
Etho’s droop, one leaf falling over the left side of his face. He returns last, and the court is complete at last.
(Skizz’s suit is torn in the front, jagged at the edges much like the ruins of his sleeves. BigB’s sweater has a new patch, a familiar flag stitched lopsided over his heart. Etho’s leaves and mask obscure a burn that Ren doesn’t know the shape or source of.)
More of Dogwarts’s citizens return. A couple, a family, half a neighborhood, until the city is full again with familiar faces.
(No one can tell Ren where they’ve been. Days, weeks, months of absence, and no one can tell him where they’ve gone. All anyone can remember is a steady hand on their shoulder, easing them up off the ground.)
Some days, Ren forgets the leaves are there. Others, he forgets he never had them. Ren’s head is a strange place to be, of late.
There’s a spot in Ren’s memory he can’t seem to make himself look at. He knows the city was attacked, but trying to pin down any one detail of that night feels like trying to catch smoke. Dwelling too long makes him feel… slower, somehow. His brain feels sluggish. His shoulders shudder. His spine wilts.
Martyn, his ever-present shadow, always seems to know when he’s thinking about it. With a smile, a scheme, a joke, Martyn redirects Ren’s murky mind, and the smoke and haze clear. Ren trusts him, always—Ren is sure, at least, of this.
Martyn calls her Lily. Ren… doesn’t think about her, or he tries not to. There are a lot of things Ren doesn’t think about.
The King of Dogwarts is not dead, and the world is never short on people in need of a miracle.
People visit. They seek audiences with the King. They ask for miracles.
Ren is not a miracle worker, but he offers what he can. Sometimes it’s things he can grant—tools and armor, enhanced with magic.
Most visitors don’t need trinkets, though. They ask for miracles.
Bring back my son and I want to see my wife again and They died too soon and Just one more day andI’ll pay anything and I miss my mom and He was my best friend and I need them and I loved him and I love her and Please.
But Ren is not a miracle worker. He doesn’t understand why so many people think he is. He looks to Martyn, guilty and apologetic and pleading, and Martyn leads them away.
Dandelions may be known as pests, but they have a meaning like any other flower. They are flowers of resilience, of sprouting in cracked concrete, of finding warmth at the end of a long winter. Dandelions are best known for their magic; When their seeds are blown away, dandelions are said to grant wishes.
Martyn takes the desperate and desolate away when Ren starts to squirm. It’s the only time he leaves his King’s side.
Outside the throne room, where Ren cannot hear him, a sympathetic hand finds a grieving shoulder. Martyn smiles, but more than anything else, it is hungry.
“Would you like to see her?” Martyn asks, “My miracle?”
(No dandelion survives making a wish.)
The kingdom of Dogwarts is dead, erased in the dead of night. Fires high enough to burn even the stars out of the sky. So much blood that even a month of rain couldn’t clear the muddy red from the streets.
The knights had fallen, to an arrow and a sword and a blazing fire. The head of the king had rolled across his throne room’s floor, his red carpets stained vibrant. The people had fought, and their fight had been noble, but it had been a massacre, and no one had survived.
No one except one lonely Hand, severed from his heart.
It had been a tragedy, really. Anyone who had met the King had met his Hand, and anyone who had met the Hand had known his loyalty, his dedication. It’s a difficult thing, to be so alone in the world, to be so completely robbed of purpose.
The white lily is known to symbolize purity, innocence. It is also a symbol of mourning, a popular choice to decorate the casket at a funeral. This is due to their beauty, yes, as well as the fact their smell can cover up the scent of a decaying body.
The Lily Carnation is a special flower, with very particular conditions in which she blooms. Her soil is watered only with blood. She sprouts only in the earth of graves. She can take root only in the heart of true despair.
She grants miracles, but her cost is steep. A life for a life is a bargain, after all—Lily grants a life in exchange for feeding an incessant hunger; a life for life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life after life.
But Martyn would do anything for Ren. Pay any price, carry any burden, do any terrible, terrible thing.
The King of Dogwarts is not dead, not if Martyn has anything to say about it.