The Poisoned Throne

Chapter 7

Thomas

His heart was beating again, faster than ever, his eyes teary and his chest convulsing. He was reaching, reaching for something that might save him, but there was nothing.

“Please,” William was begging. “Just kill me.”

“I can find help,” Thomas persisted, as he ran through the darkness, reaching around him, grasping for a solution. Please, please, he can’t die…

“There’s no time,” William said, pulling Thomas to stop, sitting him down.

Thomas shook his head and pulled himself free. “I can do it. If only I run fast enough.”

And he was knocked down and fell to lie beside William, whose hand held his tight. “Just kill me. Spare me the pain. You know what’ll happen if you don’t kill me.”

Thomas sat up, shake. “Alright. I’ll do it.”

An expression of unearthly peace fell across William’s face. Pages and pages of his incomplete symphony flew around them, becoming music, so peaceful, so beautiful. It surrounded them, swallowed them whole. And William smiled, and Thomas pressed the knife to his throat.

“Goodbye, Thomas,” William said, taking his hand.

And there was no blood, and everything was clean, everything was music.

Thomas’ eyes flew open. His cheeks were wet with tears, and his sheets with sweat. Sitting up, he dried his face with his hands and peeked out of his tent. The night was dark, and the moon still hung high on the sky. With a sigh, he reached into his bag and pulled out William’s folder before leaving the tent.

In the middle of the camp, the campfire was still burning. He threw some extra logs onto it to make it last before settling down on a rock and pulling out the composition. Thomas knew that William would not have wanted it to go unfinished, so he had been working on completing it.

But before he could begin, Nayeli, the girl who had spoken to him the day William died, approached him. “Thomas?” she said uncertainly.

“Nayeli,” he said, smiling up at her as she sat on a log next to the rock.

“What are you doing?”

He raised the sheets so that she could see. “Music.”

“Oh, wow,” she breathed, leaning towards him to see better. “Did you write all of that?”

He shook his head. “No, most of it was William - my friend, who died.”

“Oh, I… am sorry?”

He nodded. Though she could understand most of what he said, she still had trouble forming her own sentences. “Thank you,” he said. “It’s just… he worked on this for so long, and it’s so good. He would have wanted it to be finished.”

She nodded in understanding and smiled in sympathy. “So you do it?”

“If only I can,” he said. “He was so much better than me.”

“All is better than not finished, right?”

He chuckled. “I suppose. I just don’t want to ruin it all.”

She moved a little further down the log. “Come. I want to see.”

He sat beside her and set the papers in order before handing them to her. “Be careful,” he mumbled.