The Palace

The boy had never known anything but the palace. If he had had a mother or father, if he had grown like other children, or come into life fully grown, this he could not say or remember, for these things were not in his earliest memories which, like our own, have no beginning but simply fade off into? we know not what.

It was long before he ever thought to leave the palace. For at first, he could not conceive of anything but the palace, which was so vast that a whole city could have filled it. And as well, there was little reason to be dissatisfied with the Palace, which was filled with so many marvels that it would take an entire book to describe them all. There were whole rooms filled with machines that made music when you wound them, rooms full of beautiful plants, some with glass ceilings and others exposed to the outside so that hummingbirds and butterflies would come and drink from the fragrant flowers, rooms full of statues that seemed, perhaps, to be mechanical servants, enough to build a new palace if one only knew how to command them, rooms full of strange alchemical equipment, and library after library full of rare books.

The boy could read, and could have spoken if there was anyone to talk to. How he learned he could never say, in the beginning, it seemed, he lived in another world, more of smells, sounds, and feelings than of real ideas, and it was the books which brought him, bit by bit, into our own.

The books were his only companions, for he was alone in this palace. And he did not seem to miss the company of others, perhaps because he had never known it. The only thing he was frightened of was an armored figure on horseback that sometimes rode through the palace, and when he saw it he would run and hide. But the figure never seemed to notice him, and soon he would forget about it.

He did not wonder about his own existence. Although it was clear, from the books he read, that most people in the world had a mother and father, and lived among others of there kind, there were also stories of people who rose from the sea foam, or from the drops of blood shed by a dying monster, or sprang from their father?s head fully formed, or who were made alchemically inside a crystal egg. Indeed there were a great may books describing the procedures by which this could be accomplished, although the boy certainly could not understand them.

But after reading so much about things outside of the palace, and after he had explored so much of the palace itself, he began to wonder if this world outside was in fact a true place, had began to wish to find and see it. And so he searched throughout the palace, looking for a way into this mysterious ?world? of which he had read so much, and finally came to a locked door, and there he waited and wondered.

When it came to be that time of day (he knew something of day and night from the gardens) when he sometimes saw the terrifying Horseman , that figure came riding up, and the boy, who had already hidden himself, saw him open the door with a key that was around his neck and ride off into the world outside, locking the door behind him.

The boy knew then that he was a prisoner in this marvelous palace, and that the terrifying horseman was his jailer. And for a long time, he wandered the palace, looking for some means of escape, and found none.

But as time passed, he changed, and decided that though the palace was his prison, it also was his home. He would not be content merely to escape from the palace, but knew he must defeat the horseman and take the palace for himself. He did not think of himself as a warrior, and so he knew that to defeat the horseman he would have to be very clever.

The first step would be to find out what his enemy?s weakness was. There were a great many books about creating life from inert matter, and though the more complicated operations, such as creating a living being in one?s own image inside a crystal egg, were quite beyond him, after much hard study and labor he succeeded in making a living bird out of clay.

He commanded the bird to follow his enemy when it rode forth every night, and tell him if there was anything the horseman feared. The bird went out, night after night, and told him that the horseman rode around the whole world every night, and rode without heeding through wars, fire, off of cliffs, through large bodies of water, and there seemed to be nothing on the whole face of the earth that it feared, or that could harm it.

Then the boy began to trace his enemy?s path through the palace, night by night, and discovered that the horseman, though the path he followed seemed random, there was one room he never rode through, and if he ever came to close to it, he would halt and then go another direction. So the boy went into that room. And in the room there was nothing but a single tree.

The boy dug beneath the roots of the tree until he found a box, and in the box he found a heart. And he took the heart and went to the room where his enemy slept during the day, on his throne.

When it saw the heart, his enemy cringed in abject terror, but when the boy opened the heart, and a green mist began to spill forth from it, the figure opened it?s arms joyfully and said;

?My son! I knew that you alone could do it. You have accomplished that for which I created you, and found the one thing I never could, my death!?

And then the mists enveloped him and he fell to the ground. The boy removed the mask, and saw his own face behind it. But so soon, the body began to whither, and crumbled into dust on the floor. It had existed for far, far too long. The boy removed the keys from around the neck of the empty suit of armor. He was now his own master, and the master of his home.

There was a locked door behind the throne room. The boy opened it with one of his keys, and saw there a beautiful woman, with dark black hair, and wearing a magnificent red dress, encased inside a crystal. At the bottom of the heart was a purple dust, and when he sprinkled it on the crystal, it melted.

The woman slowly began to awaken. She was alive, she could think and speak, her flesh was warm, not could like clay, in her veins was true red blood. And though she could think and speak, and knew many things, she knew not how, and of any life she may before have lived, she could not and would never remember.