Castle

Months go by without any further contact from the outside world, then years, until Lucien finally completes his senior high finals and there's nothing, absolutely nothing holding him back from finding out where that road from the village leads to.

The smelly sports duffel is buried beneath his bed, still reeking of stale sweat and the locker room's air freshener. He stuffs in a couple of hoodies, singlets, and vests. A toothbrush to keep his teeth healthy so that he can continue eating till a ripe old age. Snacks from the hole-in-the-wall convenience store that Lucien has visited every day in his life for as long as he can remember. This includes that one time it hailed.

Lucien goes to bed satisfied with his plan to leave and wakes up having thoroughly forgotten about it. Instead, he spends the hottest days of the summer mucking about the village with Graham and rescuing a fawn from drowning in a lake.

"Careful!" Graham shouts, flinging his art satchel against a mossy log and wading over to join Lucien, who is waist-deep in the water by this point. "You're a piss-poor swimmer, you idiot, I don't want to have to perform CPR on you—"

Lucien chuckles. "And I don't wanna kiss you either, so the feeling's mutual." He ignores Graham's strangled gurgle as he strokes the fawn's head to try and calm it down. "Give me a hand. Poor guy's tangled in the planty…things."

"The hydrilla." Lucien's the one who wants to play hero but Graham's the one with the patience, deftly unknotting the fawn's legs whilst Lucien hoists the tiny, trembling creature higher into his arms. "Looks like they've done a hostile takeover, the water didn't use to be so green."

Lucien looks around. Graham's right. The hydrilla have spread throughout the lake, lush like grass and swaying like they're being tossed about in a phantom breeze. They cover the lakebed in endless rolling plains beneath the eerie mossy light shining through the surface. It gives Lucien the feeling that if he took another two steps deeper, he'd be submerged in a whole, different world.

He's struck, suddenly, by how far out into the lake they have come. The loosestrife, too, seem larger than life. They blanket the entire shore like a purple curtain, hiding the rest of the world from Lucien's eyes. Suddenly, all he can see besides the flowers are the sky and the castle on the hill.

Graham seems to have realised a similar thing.

"Come on," he says uneasily, "let's get back." He tugs on Lucien's arm, sets course for safety. Lucien lets himself get towed along, Graham and the fawn and he making three. When he's back on land, he looks at the hill but the castle is once more sun-baked ruins, no matter how many times Lucien rubs his eyes.

He drags Graham up there anyway, to see the crumbling stones. They're whitewashed by the midday light and stark, so stark that they remind Lucien of bones.

They're cold to touch.

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Robin's house smells like apple blossoms.

She's the only teacher in Lucien's school whose lessons he didn't sleep through. Robin is the sort of historian who understands the power of stories. It is effortless for her to transport her class to ancient battlefields or forgotten palace halls. She makes it interesting enough, hard fact laced with the thrill of a tale well told. Lucien loves her classes so he tries his best to listen, even if sitting still for an entire two hours makes his skin itch something fierce. And when they're not at school, whenever students visit Robin's home, she tells the stories she likes most of all, the ones about princesses called Una, magical islands, and all the merry wanderers of the night.

But Robin knows more than just history and folklore.

"Was the lake ever that deep?" Lucien asks, after he's done describing what he saw to her, all of it, even the castle that was actually a castle for a while. Robin's not like other adults. She may smile and she may giggle but she will always believe him.

"Hmmm. I suppose it was, yes." Robin hesitates. "However, I do find that slightly odd. Weeds don't normally thrive in lakes over four metres in depth."

The scent of apple blossoms grows stronger as she pours the tea into her favourite cups. The porcelain is gold-gilded and painted cobalt blue. Lucien's always iffy of smashing them to bits when he puts them back down on their delicate saucers. They were a present from a dodgy Russian billionaire, Robin's husband once confided, managing somehow to sound both jealous and proud at once. Robin may have kept the gift but she also chose to marry Lucien's rolling stone physics teacher instead.

Lucien swings his legs, heels knocking against the bottom of her tweed settee. The fawn on his lap startles awake.

"Then the castle? Was that real too?"

Robin takes a sip and lets out a languid sigh. Sometimes she gets like this, dreamy as she asks Aunt Daisy to hang a horseshoe on their front door and leave a bowl of milk on the porch every night before going to bed.

"I hope," she says, soft and serious, "that one day you will get the chance to realise just how lucky you are."

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It's no secret that Lucien is very lucky.

He finds four leaf clovers on rambles. Magpies dance around him in pairs. It is, in fact, a rare day he returns home without picking up a penny from the gravel.

His luck manifests in other, stranger ways too. Like how he was the only child in the village that didn't suffer through the measles outbreak. Or how he sat for a maths final that would make or break his grade and discovered, through no hard work of his, that all the right answers just so happened to be his answers. No one called him out for cheating either, which left him very, very baffled indeed.

Or...like how, right now, whilst hiking through the oak forest to see if there are any early acorns for the fawn, he catches a glimpse, through gnarled tree branches, of the castle on the hill.

The acorns tumble forgotten to his sandals.

Lucien keeps his eyes glued onto his target, scarcely daring to blink as he darts through the thicket. Ivy curl creeping tendrils around his ankles but he kicks them off. Twigs snag at the tattered fringes of his summer hat but he pins it down against his head with one arm and breaks into a bold sprint.

Sunset spills over the meadow, bloodied with the sea of poppy blooms. They weren't here before, but then again, maybe they just come as a package deal with the castle, like the freebie pain au chocolat that the baker hands out in the early evenings whenever Lucien splurges on his last batch of croissants.

For a castle, this one's pretty cosy. There isn't a moat or a drawbridge like those in the Saturday afternoon cartoons on the telly. The tall, wooden doors open with the lightest push. Lucien expects them to creak, but they emit no sound. A cold wind blows out, ruffling his hair. It smells like musty books and an odd mishmash of spices.

He can't tell what kind of room he's in because it's stacked to the brim with assorted things, like someone moved to a new house in a rush and piled their belongings up like poorly played Tetris. There are magnificent bookshelves sitting on even more magnificent bookshelves. Too many claw-footed cabinets tiptoe precariously on a dusty grand piano. There's an old-fashioned four-poster bed on the landing of the imperial staircase, framed by heavy drapes.

It may just be his eyes playing tricks on him, but Lucien thinks he sees a plain grey refrigerator give an awkward cough and edge sheepishly behind a much more ornate dresser.

Candelabras in various shapes and sizes swing from the rafters before exploding into pinpricks of candlelight that dot the ceiling like constellations. Lucien startles backwards and nearly trips onto his ass when the carpet beneath his feet undulates in a lazy wave, sending him stumbling into the arms of a plush canopied chair. He just about manages to sit upright before it zooms towards to a roaring hearth. Here is the only part of the room that's uncluttered. There's a merry fire, a round side-table, and a crystal decanter holding a rich golden liquid. He straightens up in his seat and scratches it on the upholstery when it begins to purr low and rumbly like a lazy cat.

Call it a hunch but he thinks that maybe the castle likes him.

The decanter uncorks itself and twirls closer, cooing at him in shy invitation. The scent of bread-and-butter pudding wafts out in all its custardy glory.

"Wait…is this for me?"

The decanter lets out a happy chirrup.

"To…drink?"

Another delighted noise.

"It…smells amazing! Thanks!"

Aunt Daisy would probably have a million things to say about some of Lucien's poorer life choices. Lucien decides that he'll let that bother him if and when she gets around to saying them. Holding out a palm for the decanter to hop onto, he ogles it in surprise when it bounces forward to press its mouth against his.

The candles go out.