Born, Bound, Blind

Born not to you, nor yours alike, a seldom-seen spirit roams the castle in the dead of night.

Rough, cobblestoned walls and sturdy armored guards did not stop the wild nature of a child and the spirit from wreaking havoc upon the old castle.

The castle’s weary walls laughed at their juvenile antics as its residents watched in confusion, wondering who the young heir was talking to.

Paying no heed to the foolishness and dismissing it as the vast imagination of youth, they let the two be, happy to let the prince have his fun.

The two in question, however, were inseparable and content with their close companionship. They looked up to each other as they formulated plans and found escape routes, playing pirate and guarding treasure.

“I can’t play with you now,” the prince muttered under his breath. He hid behind his book propped upon the table as he scribbled letters on the parchment. “Mr. Grumpy Tutor told me off last time for not finishing my spelling.”

The spirit merely made the sign for treasure hunting, gesturing to the stairway beside him with mischief in his eyes.

His companion’s eyes flitted to the door—the spirit and the stairway promised adventure—then back to the book. They lingered there for a moment, his eyebrows drawing together. He shut his composition book and followed the grinning spirit down the stairs.

The spirit led him down winding stone steps and past suits of armor that seemed to wink in the torchlight. He gestured excitedly toward a loose stone in the wall that the prince had never noticed before.

“But what if someone notices I’m gone?” the prince whispered, though his eyes sparkled with curiosity.

The spirit’s answering grin was all the reassurance he needed. Together they pushed against the stone, revealing a hidden alcove filled with coins from a forgotten age. The young prince swept away the coins littering the ground to reveal twin daggers encrusted with emblems of his house.

“Wow,” he whispered to the spirit, who placed a transparent hand over his as though pretending to grasp one of the blades.

Impish grins spread across both their faces. The prince jumped up, dagger in hand. “En garde!”

Lessons and impending scoldings vanished wholly from his mind.

The bond only grew as the prince did, even as he acquired duties of his own to attend to. After a fruitless training session with the knights or a frustrating night memorizing the important records and mathematics needed by a prince, the spirit would stand beside him, lending his knowledge and helping the otherwise careless prince.

They remained close as the prince developed day by day, until more and more was put on his young shoulders—the spirit was a bystander who watched his friend crumble and rebuild himself into someone entirely different than the prince he had once known.

The spirit often wondered whether it was his own doing that made the prince fall so quickly and rise so coldly. He wondered, if he hadn’t distracted the child while attending dinners with his father, preventing him from seeing what lay ahead, would the prince have turned out more somber and humbled?

“Is this how a future king behaves?” hissed the king.

The prince had let slip his surreptitious laughter and snorted into his pumpkin stew after the spirit characterized a particularly accurate rendition of his father’s stern expression. The expression was now directed at him. He hung his head.

“Should you fail to take your duties more seriously, I fear our great realm, Seren, will fall to ruin at your weak hands.”

When the spirit tried again to catch his eye, the prince kept his gaze fixed upon his meal.

Maybe it was fated so, for kings have only foes and followers, and a prince is but a chrysalis of a king. Maybe the spirit was meant to meld back into the castle’s crumbling walls and remain a hidden joy.

Bound not to you, nor yours alike, a seldom-seen spirit roams the castle in the dead of night.

Seasons passed, and the celebrations once held in summer now came in winter, the moon’s ever-changing schedule defying that of the normal calendar. The prince grew further away from both who he once was and his spirit friend.

“You can’t keep doing this,” the prince hissed, gathering the scattered papers his spirit friend had blown off his desk to get his attention. “Father says I must focus on my studies if I’m to be king someday.”

The spirit’s form flickered, and hurt passed across his translucent features. He reached toward their old sign for treasure hunting, but the prince had already turned back to his work, wearily rubbing his now-stubbled chin.

Now able to victoriously spar with the noble knights and fluidly conform to expectations upon his shoulders, the prince’s priorities changed as quickly as the passing time, and the spirit watched as, like autumn leaves, their bond broke and fell apart from fruitless trees.

It drifted past their old hiding spots—the hollow behind the tapestry, the alcove of treasures, the loose stone in the kitchen wall—but the prince’s footsteps no longer echoed in those spaces. The castle groaned as though mirroring the spirit’s loss.

In the halls when the moon shone brightest, he’d wander to the prince, busy with a scroll. He’d persistently but subtly fly for attention but be met with the same blindness as the rest of the residents in the castle.

He knew the prince knew he was there. He was right there. Yet, his existence remained buried in the noise of the bustle and hustle of reality.

He now witnessed from afar as the prince became king, and like his father and his father’s father before him, he became the persona he had once hated. The spirit only shook his head away from the occasional glance during which their eyes met.

Until the day in the courtroom when the spirit signaled to the king a warning of a nobleman’s ill intent, but his once-friend stood and walked through him.

The king froze for an instant and gave a tiny shake of his head before continuing with the discourse.

And the spirit knew, then, how things now stood.

Blind not to you, nor yours alike, a seldom-seen spirit roams the castle in the dead of night.

Soon, the kingdom grew and prospered, and the once-old castle was remodeled to fit the surge in time and evolution. The spirit’s pride was now tarnished with the sorrow and anger of being left out. He missed old, weary walls that laughed and old, armored statues that saluted his presence and acknowledged him and the wisdom he gave. For all his existence revolved around giving and giving, until one day he could maybe pass on, maybe fulfill his purpose in the wastelands of a once-lush kingdom.

Wrinkles lined the king’s once-smooth face as he stood before the ornate mirror, girding his loins for a battle that would determine the kingdom’s fate. The spirit’s eyes met the king’s, and the king caught a glimpse of his old friend in the reflection—still the youthful visage once so well-known.

“I never realized,” the king said, “How old your eyes looked.”

The spirit laid an immaterial hand upon his shoulder. Together they stood, once more.

And so, as the king went to his last battle, and the spirit smelled death on his former friend’s once-jolly soul, he remained out of sight and turned a blind eye, for he was not one to stop what was to come. And the little princess in a cradle far from the battlefield only watched with wide brown eyes as the spirit circled the infant’s crib before bowing his goodbye to the distance.

He witnessed the king’s spirit leave his human flesh, and he witnessed the ensuing lost denial, anguish, anger, and panic. He also witnessed the acceptance, and he saw how the king had come to see him—only to turn away and meld into the castle's walls, as if no one stood in his former friend’s place.

Born not to you, nor yours alike, a seldom-seen spirit roams the castle in the dead of night.