Unmaking Percy

Part I - IV (The Sleeping Castle)

The next day, they left behind the high-walled gorges and forests they had been riding through, and travelled instead over vast plains that draped out before them in emerald green grass. They reminded Percy of the rolls of cloth that he had once found in a forgotten corner of his house, and with which he had amused himself by unfurling them over his bedroom floor. It had earned him a scolding for having so flagrantly displayed a reminder of his father's humble past as a draper – though this he only understood later.

The sun's hand was at their backs, pushing them along with a gentle warmth. He knew they would reach their destination today. It didn't take long for him to spot, beyond all that green fabric, a tidy looking village with white houses and thatched roofs, and a castle balancing on a nearby hill.

"Is that where we're headed?" he asked.

"Yes" Valeria replied. She seemed to have gotten somewhat used to his questions, and was evidently pleased with herself at how patiently she could answer them now.

"So remind me again, what are we meant to be doing there? Putting down evildoers in general?"

"That, and saving the people they did evil onto" she nodded, barely hiding the chuckle that stirred in her features.

Percy looked expectantly at Evans, thinking that interaction would get a smile out of him. But Evans was too intent on the castle ahead of them, and strangely expressionless.

They rode on towards the village, and Percy mucked about in his thoughts to try to keep his mind off the ever-closer castle. He wondered what he might do with his life now, knowing that he no longer was the chosen one – that he had never been. He was incapable of conjuring in his mind a future where he did something else, and he blamed it on what he assumed to be a lack of imagination, or resilience, or flexibility. He lacked – that was all.

He was, at least, educated – he could be a tutor, perhaps. If only he had a taste for it. And going back home increasingly felt like an unnecessary ordeal that he would like to spare himself and others. Perhaps he could stay in this village here. They rode through it now, passing rows of white-painted houses with well-tended flower beds and bushes, all meticulously pruned and standing at attention. There was no one about, and yet the village did not look abandoned: it looked, in fact, ruthlessly well-kept.

"Why is there no one here?" he whispered.

"Maybe the inside of these houses is just so damn good that no one ever feels like going outside" Valeria said flatly. But there was a strain of uneasiness in her voice.

As their horses trotted along the main street, they got a clear view of the castle ahead of them. Percy squinted. Something about it looked odd. He had thought earlier that its walls were made of a dark stone, but the closer he got, the less those walls had the quality of stone at all. There was the faintest, lightest hint of a stirring to them.

They left the houses behind them and rode up the hill. Trying to decipher the outside of the castle was at least a welcome distraction from worrying about what was inside.

"Oh, what the – "

He thought it had been him speaking, for he meant to say exactly the same – but it had been Valeria. Evans choked out a sound of astonishment. They were near the castle's gate, and now they saw what had looked so odd about it. Its walls were covered in fur, feathers and wings that stirred continuously in a gentle murmur. As Percy focused his eyes on the walls, mouth gaping, he saw sparrows and finches, squirrel and mice, dragonflies and butterflies, massed together and covering every inch of stone, sleeping. He could hear the droning purr of their entangled sleep. A violent shiver coursed through him.