The Crowns’ Mourning: A Tale from the Ashes

My brother Jasper was the first of us to start a family. We all thought it would be Elise, after all she was by far the most popular out of the four of us. But then Jasper met Emilia during one of his disguised visits into the city outside the castle. The day he met her, he came bursting into my room, his face almost as red as his hair and his eyes completely dazed. He was in love, and even though he talked to her for a while, he forgot to ask her if she was single.

Out of pity for Jasper’s incompetence, I visited her. She was a florist, with a small shop in the city’s market district. The moment I saw her I knew why Jasper had fallen for her so quickly; when she greeted me she had one of those rare smiles—one of those genuine ones that reached her eyes and lit up the room. I sparked a conversation, asking her if she had any suggestions for my older brother, who needed flowers to woo a woman he had fallen for. She suggested white and purple lilacs, for a budding love and innocence.

“So,” I began, “if my helpless brother, a certain tall, handsome, redhead who may have been here yesterday, were to come again tomorrow, lilacs in hand, would you care to receive them?”

She smiled again. She would love to, she said. She was disappointed yesterday, when Jasper left without asking if she was available.

I sent Jasper back to her later that day, and the two dates for almost a year before he proposed. He waited months to tell her who he really was, surprising her with a visit to the castle, where she met our sisters, Elena and Elise.

They married the spring following Jasper’s proposal. Just over a year later, in the dead of winter, Emilia gave birth to triplets. Garnet, Hanna, and Julian. Garnet and Hanna had both inherited their father’s red hair, while Julian had inherited Emilia’s pale brown curls.

I was designated the royal babysitter of my niece and nephews; I think my brother and sisters often forgot I wore the same ashen crown as they did, but I guess that came with being the youngest. I was a proud uncle, and even when they weren’t dumped on me, I often spent much of my time with them.

Emilia was unaffected by the Curse that struck over a decade ago, and for a while, we thought the triplets were too. We were wrong. Along with his red hair, Garnet and Hanna also inherited Jasper’s fire, a discovery I made when they were five. Hanna had been in the midst of a temper tantrum after losing a round of hide and seek when the flames slid down her arms onto the carpet beneath her. Garnet, who had found her, stood still as the flames nipped his toes, unburned just as my siblings were when they released the fire from their skin. Julian, on the other hand, screamed in panic and pain. I picked him up as fast as I could, calling for the servants nearby to bring water as I did. When the fire was put out I rushed Garnet and Hanna back to Jasper; I was not inclined to play games with children who couldn’t control their flames.

When the flames sparked, something changed in Hanna. Her childish innocence was replaced by a troubling darkness. I wish we had recognized it for what it was then, maybe Emilia’s and Hanna’s fates would have been different.

But nothing changes where my siblings and I are right now, each standing in a corner of the execution platform. After all, murder carries the death penalty. Normally, murderers are burned by my brother and sisters—by executing the murderer, we take responsibility, something the previous monarchy thought was below them—but Hanna doesn’t burn. Still, we stood at the platform as we always did, only this time there was another executioner on the platform, just behind my seventeen-year-old niece. This isn’t how she wanted to die; she wanted to be drowned, so she could die painfully like her mother, but Jasper couldn’t let her, and I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of leaving how she wanted to. Not after what she did.

I noticed she liked to watch things burn. I thought nothing of it at first, since it seemed to me that my siblings liked to as well. It must have been a trait they all share, I thought. I figured it harmless when little Hanna was found every now and again gathering bundles of wood and plastic and paper to burn. I didn’t think it was strange how she stared at the flames she created, mesmerized by the way materials burned differently. Until she burned Julian’s puppy alive when she was eleven. After that, Julian refused to be anywhere near her, especially if Garnet wasn’t around, and even Garnet was on edge around her.

She was sent to a boarding school after that, where she was not allowed to have or be near anything flammable. In all the years she was away, the castle never received word of a fire-related incident. It was a phase, we all said, relieved that her pyromaniac tendencies had passed.

Then she returned home.

Julian, who remembered all too well what she was like when they were children, made it a point to be seen around her, but remained cautious in her presence. He didn’t want her to know how she still terrified him even after six years. Garnet, like Julian, was guarded towards their sister and fiercely protective of Julian, to the point that made one wonder if she had tried to hurt him at some point before her departure. Because Julian made it a point to be with Hanna, Garnet seemed to make it a point to always be between them.

But whatever happened between them when they were children, this time, Julian was not who Hanna was after.

Emilia was always so quick to forgive and love again, being a mother, I think, only increased her virtue—and naivety. At Hanna’s insistence, she and Emilia went into town for a mother-daughter day. Julian, Garnet, and I begged Emilia to refuse, but she would not deny her daughter. Just after dark, Hanna returned to the castle, alone. She was questioned, again and again, but said nothing. Elise thought it wise to place a curfew on the city, so we could search for Emilia without obstructions. Elise, Garnet, Julian and I set off immediately to search for Emilia, while Elena, usually the fiercest of us, lingered behind to console her twin, whose soul was breaking before our eyes. She must have pulled him together, at least somewhat, because they joined to search not too long after.

We found her body a week later in the center of the city’s garden hedge maze, charred past recognition. None of us wanted to believe it was her, but DNA from the remains confirmed our nightmares.

I steal another glance towards Jasper. Whether it’s the pain of a king, a husband, or a father, pain is all that can be felt emanating from him. As my older brother, he’s always protected me, but now, I want nothing more than to wrap my arms around him—to tell him to close his eyes and cover his ears; to tell him he doesn’t have to be the one to signal the execution. But I can’t, and it has to be him, not just because he is a king, but because he is a father, and he must take responsibility for Hanna, and for all the things he failed to notice.

“I, King Jasper of the Ashen Crowns, condemn this murderer to death.” The words are strong and steady, a worthy precursor to the thunder sounding Hanna’s death.

After her body was buried and everyone has gone to their separate corners to mourn and assign blame to themselves, I begin my search the castle for my nephews. I find Garnet first; he’s got a habit of holing himself up in the library whenever anything even slightly bothersome has happened. He doesn’t want to leave the fort of books he’s made, but no one makes me ask for the same thing twice. Julian, though, is more difficult to locate. I find him, though, in the training yard, sword in mid swing towards his sparring partner. I call out his name and the sparring partner immediately freezes in place. Julian, probably frustrated I’m interrupting his match, turns to face me. “Come,” I say before I resume walking.

I take them to the castle garden, Emilia’s favorite place and where my brother is no doubt mourning. I tell them not to let their father all apart; I tell Julian, who’s always favored his mother, to make his father look at him, and to tell my brother that it is okay to cry. “Remind him of his humanity,” I instruct before sending them to into the garden their mother created.