Page 137 of Carousel

My tutor quizzes me. How would he like to be addressed by me, when we meet?

By his first name only, I answer.

What does he believe will make a good ruler?

Power, I reply. And the ability to wield it.

What are his fears?

The dark, currently. And this, failing.

The image ends.

I move on through the maze.

There I am, around the same age, staring at a prisoner through the bars of his cell. My mother and the Queen are behind me. They want me to make him feel pain. I am trying to summon something, anything, from my mind. But I can’t. The man laughs at me through missing teeth.

My mother and the Queen look disappointed. I will be going to bed without dinner.

“I want to get out,” I say. And I realise it’s not the girl in the dungeon saying it, but me, back in the room with Meg.

“It’s too soon,” Meg says. “We have years left to recover. Keep walking.”

“I want to get out,” I repeat, with force.

I stand in front of a hedge. Push it, like it’s Meg I’m pushing against.

But the hedge shoves me back and I hit the cold, damp ground.

I want to lie here. Refuse to move any further. See any more.

Then, slowly, I smell incense.

I’ve always loved the scent. It makes me feel at peace. It reminds me of –

“Old Mother?” I yell, following it.

And there she is, on the other side of another hedge. She’s in her room, in her huge armchair by the fire. She has her arm around a younger version of me – but I’m the oldest I’ve seen myself. This can’t have been long before the war.

“Old Mother,” I shout, through the gap.

It was a stupid thing to do. She can’t hear me, because that’s not what I’m saying to her, in that moment.

What I’m actually saying in that room, is, “I never asked for this. I hate it.”

She strokes my back with her bony fingers. With her other she lifts a single card from the tiny table at her feet. She’d laid out a deck of cards for us, something she’d been doing a lot more recently, because of the concern that war might finally break out.

Back when Hevalla was a monarchy, it actually had a good trading relationship with Rhavna, and the Sea of the Sisters regularly saw travel between the two countries. That all changed about two hundred years ago, when Hevalla’s last king was executed and the country became a republic, which in many ways weakened it, and it began to resent Rhavna’s magic and wealth. It threatened us regularly with war, which it claimed would be an act of mercy to free the oppressed.

Those threats had never materialised on account of Hevalla’s general impoverishment. But my country’s relationship with our old ally Lartos had recently soured for reasons unknown to me and the Palace believes a new alliance between Lartos and Hevalla has been forming, with Lartos supplying its tech to the country. If Hevalla now has Lartos’ support, it’s not good news for us.

The card Old Mother is showing the younger me is the Card of The Soulmates. I’d seen it many times in my life. The image of the man and woman in their finery, their hands entwined, haunted my dreams.

“I know,” the younger me in her arms says, weakly. “A fairy-tale ruined my life.”

I read the gestures Old Mother’s hands make. Superstition is rooted in truth. The old stories are⁠—

“Prophecies,” the younger me replies, looking at the fire crackling in the fireplace. “You know I don’t believe that. There is no such thing as soulmates.”