King of the Woods, or Trivial Pursuit

Part 60 - Crab

Trivia had ordered the audience to back away from the grove when Frazer took the Golden Bough. Now they spilled onto the scorched battlefield, surrounding the fallen king.

"That counts as Ray's victory, right?" Wilson asked. "Even if Audubon helped, Frazer used magic first."

"She didn't interfere," Trivia said.

"He wasn't enchanted? He just stood there talking to himself."

"No, to Ray's soul." Audubon stuck her thumbs to her head, making antlers. "Apparently it looks like a deer."

"It does," Trivia said. The creature's beauty exceeded her imagination; so too did the severity of her crime. She stained everything she touched.

Wilson read her pained expression. "You saw him."

"Far too late," Trivia said. "Was that his plan all along, to change Frazer's mind? Why didn't he tell me?"

Wilson placed his mitten on her shoulder. They both knew she would never have allowed Ray to try.

Beetles and salamanders served as Frazer's first pallbearers. They wriggled beneath his body, creating space for larger creatures' beaks and snouts and horns. Red wolves and mountain lions formed up shoulder to shoulder; a charm of hummingbirds with throats adorned by rubies, sapphires, and emeralds lifted Frazer onto the predators' bier. Roosevelt, flanked by Rex and a pair of black bears, led the procession into the forest.

Audubon displayed a metal key stamped with image of a horse. "I'm off to pick up Frazer's car. Roosevelt is taking him to a blind curve. We won't leave anything that ties Ray to the 'accident.'"

Only Ray remained in the grove; even his deer had left him. Blood trickled from a wound in his ear that he had not thought to heal. He sat cross-legged on blackened grass, staring unblinking at his hands.

"There's no need to thank me," Audubon said.

"I have done a terrible thing," Trivia said.

"You fulfilled your purpose and saved hundreds of lives."

Wilson cleared his throat.

"Millions," Audubon corrected herself. "What's one man compared to that?" She flew towards the field unit, where Frazer had parked his Mustang, without waiting for a response. It was just as well, for Trivia had none.

"You could ease his pain," Wilson said.

"I want to," Trivia said. "But we need a King of the Woods."

"To be clear, we meant comfort him not kill him."

Ray walked out of the grove towards the lake. Thankfully, he did not spare her a glance.

She did not follow. "I've already killed him. All I can do now is hurt him more. It's better if I leave him alone."

Wilson sighed. "After everything, he still doesn't get a say in the matter?"

--
Ray rinsed his hands in the still lake. Frazer's blood washed off as easily as his own, and the water soothed the torn skin on his knuckles. But it didn't freeze him or frighten him, and he had a good idea why. He waded in and sat down so the water rose to his chest. Nada. He dunked his head. Still nothing; not an eerie, oblivion-flavored nothing, just nothing, like the lake's magic couldn't penetrate the King of the Wood's protections. His protections.

He had hoped that Frazer would just break his neck. Well, he had hoped he wouldn't have to kill Frazer at all, but he definitely hadn't wanted his brains to splatter out. It hadn't been a neat and tidy brain injury, if those existed; bits of bone and hair and pink, spongey stuff smeared all over the jagged stone. And Frazer kept looking at him, half-scared, half-angry, and his eyelids wouldn't close at a touch like the movies. Ray didn't have any Scotch tape, so he'd nudged Frazer's head with his foot so he'd look in another direction, but then more spongey stuff fell out. This was a guy who'd tried to give him career advice, who didn't want Byron to sexualize his daughter, who had probably bought a convertible because he liked the feel of the wind in his hair, back when he had hair. Back when he had an intact skull.

Ray wanted to puke or cry, because what good people do when they see a dead body, or when they're forced to kill someone. Forced. He was already rationalizing it, and he didn't feel nauseated or even sad, really. He felt like a commercial for an energy drink had sex with a commercial for running shoes. Vigorous, triumphant, all that garbage. He hoped it wasn't him, and he was pretty sure it wasn't; he was tuned into all the folk who'd watched him murder Frazer. They were glad to see the old King die, some vengeful, some relieved. So instead of crying or throwing up, he fought the urge to hum "Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead." Maybe it was an effect of the Golden Bough, and it would wear off, or maybe it was part of being King and he'd never be alone again. That pissed him off more than everything, more than the ass-beatings and the lies and the heartbreak and Frazer's death and soon, presumably, his own; the Green gave him a sense of connection, but it had taken a piece of him in return. Maybe the most important piece.

Sand shuffled beside him. He turned to see a gang of ghost crabs instead of the deer he expected. They scratched words at the water's edge:

The fool ran to the window

and said with steadfast voice

I shan't regret tomorrow

For regret is a choice

The window was a mirror

The mirror was a glass

The fool misthought the future

emptied into the past

The glass was full of water

the water was a lake

The fool drank deep of slaughter,

misery, and mistake

The lake, it was a window,

a teardrop, and a glass

The teardrop was a mirror

that show'd the fool his past

His steadfast voice dejected,

His dining table set,

Said he, "Having reflected,

to choose is to regret."

Across the lake, a candle flickered in one of the shadowy villas' windows. He thought to ask whether the candle was for Frazer or himself, but when he looked back, the crabs and the poem had washed away.