“I had hoped you weren’t going to say that,” The boy-thing said with a frown.

  “I’m sorry, but I need to do this. I need that sword,” Alexandra responded.

  “Why? It’s only going to hurt you. Then you will want to leave and never come back, just like the others. I would prefer if we did not have to go through that.”

  “My brother is sick. I need to get that sword to help him. I’m more than willing to get hurt if it will save my brother,” Alexandra answered. The boy-thing looked her straight in the eyes.

  “I will lead you there, but you have to stay close to me and try not to stare at anything that is… strange…” The boy-thing said, struggling to find the right word.

  “Okay, but what do you mean by strange?” Alexandra asked.

  “I think you’ll understand when the time comes,” the boy-thing answered in a serious tone. The boy then began to walk towards Alexandra. Alexandra realized that the boy-thing did not cast a shadow when he walked towards the light of her torch.

  “Follow me,” it said. It then began to walk past Alexandra and towards the very same dead end that Alexandra spent what felt like eons staring at. As the boy approached the cave wall, it parted around him as though it was made of living flesh. Alexandra stared at the new passage-way that opened up in front of her in disbelief as the boy-thing began to walk through it.

  “Are you coming?” It asked as it turned around. It’s question pulled Alexandra out of her stupor and she began to put one foot in front of the other.

  “Wuh-what is this place?” She asked. The question was less of an inquiry directed at the boy-thing and more of a spoken thought.

  “We’re not in a place. We’re in a wound where a place should be,” the boy-thing replied without looking back.

  “A wound? A wound in what?” Alexandra asked, though she wasn’t sure if she wanted an answer. The boy-thing struggled to come up with an answer.

  “It is… a wound in what is. Perhaps you can say that it is a wound in the world, though that is probably not the best word,” The boy-thing tried to explain, “I… I think the best way to think about it is like a hut. Imagine a hut or a small cottage in the middle of a dark forest, a dark forest in the dead of winter that is full of bears, wolves, jackals, and lynxes. The inside of the hut is like where wuh… where you came from. Where we are now; it is like a hole in one of the walls of the hut, a hole just big enough for wind and snow to come in.”

  “Okay. Just out of curiosity, if things can come out of this hole in the wall and enter the hut, would it also be possible for things to exit it?” Alexandra asked. The boy-thing immediately stopped and turned around.

  “I wouldn’t recommend it,” It said as it looked Alexandra right in the eyes. Suddenly a cacophony of agonized screams erupted from somewhere in front of the boy-thing. Dark humanoid shapes began to appear on the walls of the cave. Other than their humanoid shape, no two were alike. Male and female, adult and child, thin and bulky; every permutation of humanity was on display.

  “We have to go!” The boy-thing shouted as it grabbed Alexandra’s hand. The boy-thing’s small palm felt cold, more like the hand of a corpse than the hand of a living thing. It pulled Alexandra forward with unexpected strength as they both broke out into a sprint. All around her Alexandra heard wailing and babbling all around her. They cried out in numerous languages. Some Alexandra were languages Alexandra knew, but many were alien to her.

  “Iza! Iza! Where are you?” A man’s voice cried out.

  “Hello? Is there anyone there? I need help!” A Bratiprahan woman yelled out.

  “Gods damn her! Gods damn her!” A man growled in something that sounded like a strange dialect of Strivalian.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Mommy! Mommy, please help me. Don’t leave me here Mommy…” a little girl cried.

  “I’m not supposed to be here. I’m a count. This wasn’t supposed to happen,” an old man muttered in Alemanian.

  The shadows and their voices all seemed to follow Alexandra and the boy-thing like a crowd of beggars. They chased them for what felt like hours until the two of them finally arrived at what looked like a large circular room. Once Alexandra noticed that the shadows had disappeared and the voices had gone silent, she fell to her hands and knees and began to hyperventilate. She took a moment to catch her breath before looking up and into the boy-thing’s pale face.

  “What was that?” She asked, barely able to form the words. The boy-thing took a moment to find a response.

  “Do you remember what I said about the cottage in the dark forest?” He asked. Alexandra nodded her head.

  “Imagine that there was a mouse that went through the hole in the wall and left the cottage,” the boy-thing explained, “What you saw was an echo of the mouse, something that it left behind when it went into the dark forest.”

  “I don’t understand,” Alexandra replied before taking a moment to collect her thoughts and her breath. “Are you saying that those things were ghosts?” She then asked. The boy-thing stared at her for a moment.

  “I don’t think that is the best way to say it, but I guess you can call them that,” he said with a frown. It was at this moment when Alexandra finally took a look around at her surroundings. She was in a circular room, not a circular space within a cave, but a proper room. The floors were tiled with a mixture of white marble and black granite while the walls were lined with stained-glass windows from which a pure-white light entered and lit up the room. Alexandra’s eyes immediately moved towards the stained-glass window directly opposite of the entrance. It depicted a young woman with dark auburn hair and an aquiline nose.

  Alexandra felt a lump grow in her stomach as a wave of emotions hit her. It was first curiosity, followed by fear; the sort of fear that Alexandra felt when Agrippina held her over the edge of her tower, like she was trapped alone with a wild animal.

  Then the fear slowly began to dissipate as it was replaced by suspicion, mistrust, disdain. She felt like she despised the woman in the stained-glass window and that the feeling was mutual. These feelings too began to fade, but much more slowly than before.

  Alexandra then began to feel conflicted, confused, and most, of all, endebited. She felt as though she owed something to the woman, that, despite everything the woman had done something for her and there was a way for them to end their mutual dislike.

  Alexandra then felt safe and happy for what felt like a long time, until she began to feel something bubbling up inside of her that she didn’t want to acknowledge. She wanted to hear the woman in the stained-glass window laugh. She wanted to see the woman in the stained-glass window smile. She wanted to hold the woman’s hand and tell her that she…

  No! She couldn’t do that. Not to the woman in the stained-glass window. She remembered a time when she was a child. She was playing near the kitchen with Alexander, Ekkehardt, and Siegfried when she saw that the palace cooks had made a large, extravagant cake for her sister Agatha’s birthday. At the time, it was the most beautiful, delicious, scrumptious thing she had seen in her life at the time, but, as one of the cooks would tell her, it wasn’t for her. It was for someone else and she had no right to keep it for herself.

  No, it was worse than that. She felt like a filthy pig standing before a pristine field of untouched snow. She wanted to walk through it, but she knew that she was unworthy, that her presence would only marr the field’s sublime beauty. She felt emotionally wounded, like how she did when Crown Prince Francesco broke off her engagement, but worse. This wound was deeper, more pernicious, and more self-inflicted. It was easy for Alexandra to hate Francesco for what he had done to her, but she couldn’t hate the woman in the stained-glass window, because she had done nothing wrong. Her only crime was being something that Alexandra couldn’t have, something that Alexandra shouldn’t have. Alexandra wondered if it was wrong to feel the way she did about the woman, knowing that the woman in the stained-glass window would be horrified if she ever learned of the feeling’s she felt.

  Then, out of nowhere Alexandra felt her heart sink. She felt fear once again, but it was different. It was like when Agrippina stole her cat Mia, placed her in a sack, and threw her into a river. Unlike before, this fear had nothing to do with her safety and everything to do with someone else’s. She felt her heart beat fast and her stomach do summersaults until, just as quickly as the fear had come, it had gone. There was nothing left, but guilt and regret. The world was darker and colder and it was all Alexandra’s fault. Her fault! Her fault! She…

  And then she was back. Alexandra’s mind and body were her own once again. It was as though she had just woken up from a nightmare.

  “Are you alright, ma’am?” The boy-thing asked. Alexandra turned from the stained-glass window to face it.

  “Yes,” She answered. The boy-thing didn’t appear to believe her answer.

  “This is it,” The boy-thing said. It then pointed to an object in the center of the room that had, until now, eluded Alexandra’s attention.

  It was a sword, placed blade-down into a stone pedestal.