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One hundred and nineteen years later…

Five dark, chilly days into November and as many since they’d come and burned Feathers, Wesley woke abruptly in the middle of the night to find his deceased pet perched on the windowsill beside his bed, watching him.

He didn’t need the bitter clutch of the icy air to tell him he wasn’t dreaming. The clock had gone seventeen soft ticks past five-eleven in the morning and it was still dark in his tiny room, but the scene was as real as the nightmares that patrolled the streets and as stark as innocence lost.

Wesley hadn’t been able to protect him.

“No animals,” one of the rough men in dark cloaks reminded harshly during the troop’s nightly search of the village. He grabbed Feathers and held him carelessly upside-down by one lean leg, the bird’s distressed squawks jarring in the horrified silence of the kitchen. Wesley opened his mouth to protest, but his mother’s fingers dug into his shoulder. Morgan Wallace was stronger than she looked, the young, pretty face and soft red curls that framed it hiding a woman who did anything necessary to protect her fatherless son.

“We’re very sorry,” she said. “It won’t happen again.”

“If it does,” the man told her dispassionately, “both of you die.” Still gripping the struggling Feathers, he strode outside, tossed the bird carelessly to the ground, and shot off a bolt of green light. Feathers burst into flames.

It wasn’t the ashes scattered by the wet autumn wind that brought stinging tears to Wesley’s cheeks, though. It was hearing his mother thank them for their mercy.

By the time he looked back to the window, his pet had disappeared. Crawling across his bed to peer out over the yard, he saw that Feathers was standing calmly on the same spot where he’d died.

“Feathers?” Wesley whispered. “Is that you?” Somehow, he knew it was, even though his pet looked remarkably different now.

“You’re more like a Fireworks,” Wesley decided, awed. “Do you want me to follow you?”

The bird was looking up at Wesley expectantly, glowing softly amidst the dying leaves that blanketed the ground. Just beyond him, the forest took over, dark and silent, wrapping around the village like a shroud. Weak moonlight filtered down through the trees, but Feathers was the brightest thing in the yard.

Quickly and quietly, Wesley gathered his warm clothing and crept down the stairs towards the door, hoping to avoid any late patrols - being caught out after curfew would be deadly.

It had been over a century ago, his mother said. The Dark King had risen. People had tried to stop him, but he’d only returned, stronger than ever.

Why can’t anybody stop him? Wesley had asked.

Because the magic-workers died. They hid the last of their magic in a wizards’ school, and then they died and the school disappeared, and the only magic left now is the evil kind that the Dark King teaches his supporters.

What if someone found the school and found the magic again?

Perhaps someday someone would. Until then, she said, it was safer to be patient and to accept things the way they were - food rationing, nightly searches, and countless laws to obey on pain of death. It was a crushing, colorless, hopeless life, but it was better than no life at all. And until Feathers, he had accepted that she was right.

Wesley’s boots crunched loudly in the silence of the forest. It was quiet and still, almost unnaturally so, and he followed without speaking for what felt like it should have been an eternity but passed with the bewildering swiftness of a dream. And then, fit to shame the wildest of dreams, the castle appeared.

It was ancient, like a forgotten monument of living memory. Its weathered stones crumbled in magnificent ruin, succumbing to decline with the dignity of a dying king. A dark lake curled beside it, the shore unnaturally silent across a soft carpet of withered grass, and the preternatural stillness of the air made Wesley feel as though he were stepping into another time, the misty dawn of a civilization where the world breathed magic, fairy tales walked the streets, and pagan wizards lifted their arms towards a younger sky. He was looking at the waste of what had been a golden age.

Hesitantly, he approached the great double doors, one of which was smashed and hanging feebly from its hinges. Stepping through, he discovered the wreckage of an enormous entrance hall, ghosts of its former beauty visible in the swooping arches of the distant ceiling and the elegant shreds of drapery fluttering like specters in the silent air. Open doorways gaped like wounds from either side of the hall, and in one corner stood four enormous hourglasses, all smashed open, bright gemstones spilling out to pool together in the dust like lost stars.

Across from the entrance was a majestic marble staircase, rising proudly from the rubble and up into the darkness, as though inviting him to explore the mysteries that lay beyond.

At the top Wesley found a corridor, and Feathers led him down it, lighting the dim pathway and guiding his wide-eyed companion through a series of hallways and rooms, closer and closer to the heart of the castle. Here, the damage was even more severe: doors were torn completely off their hinges and blocks of the surrounding stone lay on the ground as though blasted there. Soot stained the walls like blood, and fragments of statues and burned tapestries littered Wesley’s path.

At last, he found himself standing before the blackened form of a stone gargoyle that leered down at him with eager eyes. Behind it was the outline of a door, the only part of the wall that had remained unmarked by the furious destruction around it, but Wesley could see no handle or hinges. Feathers was perched on the ground now, in front of the gargoyle, and Wesley knelt down to examine the pedestal illuminated by the bird’s glow. The stone was stained dark, but the words etched into it were clear: Within lies the one thing they could not take from us, hope, waiting for the pure of heart. Below it were four short lines.

The secret lies
Within the verse:
A cure for all
A prince’s curse

Whatever the secret was, Wesley realized, Feathers wanted him to find it - the Something hidden in this forgotten castle at the heart of the forest, waiting for the right Somebody to solve the riddle that kept it safe. Feathers seemed to think Wesley was that Somebody, but Wesley wasn’t so sure. To him, the cure for all ills was chocolate, because that was what his mother always said. And the only cursed prince he knew was the frog from the story she’d told him.

“But,” he whispered to Feathers, “what kind of a password is ‘chocolate frog’?”

The gargoyle rumbled aside, and the door opened.