The world tilted sideways. I felt a hand pull me in, curling fingers gripping my waist and tugging me back onto the foot path.
The horse thundered past, the rider barely glancing in my direction.
I looked around, trying to see who had saved me. Frowning, I turned around to see no one.
No one.
The pebbled path was bustling with people. Loaded carts trundled past, people carrying stacks of grain hoisted upon their shoulders. But no one on the path before, or beside me. I swung around in a circle as though I was batting away a wasp. 14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn0YpKAZNUc
Nothing.
My mother hurried closer, a cloth at the ready as she knelt and wiped away the dirt kicked up by the horse’s hooves. She fussed, eyes alight with amazement.
“Y-you should’ve been trampled, Josiah!” she exclaimed, a slight shiver running through her words, “You never look where you’re going! I swear you will send me to an early grave!”
I nodded distantly, looking above her head as she crouched before me.
“Always looking for fairies,” she clucked, grabbing my chin, “please, Josiah,” she pleaded, “the world will squash you without a second thought!”
My sister skipped up to us, the ribbons in her hair twirling with each jump, “he’s probably a changeling, mama!” She giggled, “Papa will regret making him his heir. He’ll never make it to knighthood!”
My mother chased Clara away, batting her with her fan as she walked. I felt a jolt as my mother pulled me along behind her, as though I was a kite still flying in the wind behind her.
But it kept happening.
Broken tiles missed my head by inches as a hand pushed me forward. A shove stopped me from falling into an animal trap in the forest. An arrow flew past me, embedding itself in a striking snake – the arrow remaining one of my treasured possessions.
I became a squire and it continued. I made very few friends. My clumsy body and tongue earned me more beatings than the rugs at spring cleaning. I was never saved from those, forcing me to consider that perhaps I really was alone. But I was stopped from eating rotten apples planted by a particularly mean bully. The apples turned slowly on its side, almost as though a hand had tapped them to roll.
I began to thank the help out loud, earning more isolation as I became clumsy and mad. “The mad knight” became a whispered title of scorn rather than fear. Better I thank a spirit or god than fear the tumbling gossip. Isolation beat a steady rhythm through my years. The beating of a single drum.
Until the day I entered battle.
Screams. Loud and piercing. Glassy eyes. Fervent praying. The ground was littered in broken arrows, bodies and a range of fluids I had no business identifying.
We were winning. But the cost was great. I dismounted, not wishing to risk my horse on the broken battlefield.
Enemies swarmed the dismounted mad knight. My sword and shield carved through them. Clumsy I may be, but skill could be drilled in. Sweat slicked through my armor, but I remained standing. At one point I ducked, a battle axe swinging through the air above my head.
A man’s insides became outsides as I lunged my sword, twisting it through the padded hole that some other fool had left for me. Death reeked of sweat and grime and bitter regret.
I slipped on the blood of a man beneath me.
It was almost comical how my own feet would derail my survival. A predestined end halted momentarily by an invisible hand.
A figure stood over my body, draped in robes of lilac and red. They were small. And scared. I could see them shaking as they looked up at my foe.
No. Not fear.
Rage.
The girl screamed up at the knight hovering over us, brandishing a pointed stick at his head. Her unruly hair was plaited down her back, tufts sticking out of the braid.
She was out of breath as she screamed, hands on her hips, “I have not spent TEN years stopping this noodle man from dying for a clanker to lop his head off! Honestly, I had this amazing entry planned and you ruined it!”
The knight laughed, looking down at her. She twisted around to glare at me, her gaze driving me to my feet.
“So, it was you?” I asked, bewildered. “I’m… I’m not crazy?”
Memories clicked into place. I was never alone. I was someone’s consideration.
A warm, bubbly feeling rose out of me.
She looked at me, her brilliant green eyes looking me over as though I was a prized horse. “No. But you’ve been excellent magic practice. Honestly, how many concussions are we on now? Fifty?”
I shrugged and she slapped her forehead, “Sir Josiah, mad knight of Glodin. You truly are an idiot.”
“At least I’m not mad.” I shrugged, ducking down to pick up my sword. “And you are…?”
She grinned then, flicking a finger and sending the enemy knight flying into his charging comrades, “the reason you’re still alive. Glenda witch at your service.”
“No, my lady,” I said, feeling my loneliness be washed away by emotional flash flooding. “I will forever be at yours.”
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