Stoneheart

The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished, just as the blind girl said it would. When the King looked back on the events, he would see that she had foretold it all with perfect clarity and wonder how different things would have been if they had listened. As wind whipped around the castle, howling like an enraged beast, and the skies darkened, however, he lacked such clarity.

"Heavy is the head..." he muttered the words, almost to himself, eyes pinned to a crack in the large flagstone beneath his feet. The castle was in uproar, which was to be expected, but the wailing from the maids he could do without.

"Sire?" Morton winced, he was always wincing. A perpetually sweaty, pale man with a dramatic widows peak and the shifty eyes of an albino rat he was, to say the least, unfortunate to look at. A fact made all the more evident when he stood next to his wife who adored him for reasons understood only by the Gods.

"Nothing, Mort." Christian shook his head.

"We have have searched the castle and the grounds," Mort said and then cleared his throat, "we found no sign that she was... ah, taken."

"Surely her absence is enough of a sign that she was taken," Christian pinched the bridge of his nose,

"What I mean, Your Grace, is that there is no indication she was forcibly removed from the castle," Morton said, worrying at his lip with those troublesome front teeth, "it looks, while I am sure this is not the case, as if she left of her own will."

"I see." The crack was deeper than it had been when he last looked at it. Was it growing? He looked up at the high, vaulted ceiling, every stone laid in the time of his great grandfather. A bastard of a man, truly, but inherently practical and effective. Apparently there was a mason walled in somewhere around the kitchen. Punished for stealing materials.

"Of course, not a soul believes this to be true," Morton hurried to add, "but it does indicate that whoever took her must be clever, careful, and well informed."

"Which means someone informed them..." Christian drew in a deep breath, "bring the girl from her room."

"Surely you don't think she was-"

"Get her." Morton bowed and hurried away without another word. She was eight if she was a day and blind as stone; of course she wasn't the one responsible. But she knew it would happen, she told them all. She had told them all so many things, most of them inexplicable, but this one was concrete. She may not have planned it, but she had heard something. She trailed behind Morton without turning her face one was or the other, despite the cacophany all around. Her marble grey eyes were focussed ahead, pinned on some unseen point in another world.

"Remind me of your name, girl," Christian said, snapping his fingers at a maid, pointing to his empty glass,

"Cassandra," she said in a soft, clear voice that cut through the noise.

"Cassandra, Your Grace," Morton said stiffly,

"Oh shut up, Mort," Christian snapped, "step forward Cassandra, there is a small cushion by the throne... sit so we may talk." She complied without any sign of discomfort or hesitation. When she was seated at his feet like a doll, he drew in a breath,

"You told us the Queen would go missing," he said, "and that the river would run against its own stream."

"I told you the queen would leave," she tilted her head as if listening to something quiet in the distance, "I told you many things... Your Grace."

"How did you know?"

"The forest told me," she said and turned her face to him, her sightless eyes seeming to drill into his mind. Nonsense, of course. He frowned and mulled over the implications. Bandits in the woods? No, not clever enough. A clandestine meeting, most likely.

"What were you doing in the forest?" He asked,

"I live there, sire, with my mother." Cassandra's face was bland and smooth. A shiver of unease rippled through him.

"And she let you walk all the way here alone?" He tilted his head so their faces were parallel. The girl blinked, but other than that she did not move. She might as well have been dead. There were some things even a King could be certain of, and Christian was quite sure that a general lack of blind eight year old witches or undead apparitions in the world was one of them... but she was making his skin crawl, to be frank.

"She understood I had to come," Cassandra said after some time, "she wanted you to know. There's still time."

"Time?"

"To stop it." She reached out, her soft, smooth hand finding his without trouble. "The birds are lost, the forest is quiet now, and the cattle are sick. The Queen is gone, and the river has turned itself around... but the crops haven't died yet. The castle is still standing. It doesn't have to come to pass."

The hair on his neck rose; it was as if an older woman was nestled in her body, speaking through her. Those were not the words of a child. Yet they were not a threat; she said them with sad inevitability.

"If you don't act, the wind will tear this castle apart stone by stone. The crops will fail, the people will die. The dogs will run wild in the streets. Your line will end with a whimper."

With a sudden flash of terrified madness, he could see himself gripping her tiny head in his hands and dashing it against the flagstones. He could see the blood seeping into that growing crack.

"And what do I have to do to avoid such a terrible fatge, little Cassandra?" He asked with forced cheer. Though the servants were still hurrying to and fro, the throne room seemed deathly silent. Cassandra laughed, a grave keepers chuckle, before she spoke in that too old voice once more,

"You already know."

"Do I?" His hand crept to the dagger on his hip,

"Return what you stole, Christian," she said, her small nails digging into the flesh of his hand until firey lines of pain formed under their edges.