#izuka

I had tried my best to forget all the terrible things that had happened, and the people who had done them. The last twenty years would never truly be forgotten – and how could they be? – but, as much as I could, I pushed them into the back of my mind, tried to bury them under the minutia of now – tending my garden, doing embroidery, quietly helping the poor as I could. I never wanted to look back and see those memories again, and, for the most part, my efforts were successful.

Then this horrid man had to turn up on my doorstep and bring it all back.

Just the sight of him – and remembering all he stood for – made me want to vomit. I nearly slammed the door in his face, but I'd been raised to be civil, no matter what. “I never thought I'd see you again,” I said, fighting the wrinkle that stole over my nose. With his sallow skin, his wicked smile, and his dark hair practically wet with grease, my visitor was even more repulsive than I'd recalled.

“Oh, don't shoo me off just yet, milady,” said Izuka, a strange friendliness in his tone, which I didn't like. “I came to see you, because I've found something. Someone, actually, who you'll be very happy to see, I'll wager!” he added, eagerly rubbing his hands together.

“Who could I possibly want to see?” I laughed, bitterly. My husband was dead – not that I'd want to see him if he weren't. I was estranged from my family. I had no friends. And I certainly didn't want to see anyone who kept company with this wicked madman.

“Your son, perhaps?” said Izuka, licking his thin, dry lips which were curling into a smug smile.

“My son,” I half-laughed. “You haven't found him.”

“Oh but I have!” Izuka cried, puffing out his chest. “He's got that mark on his forehead and everything! He was living on the streets when I found him, but I've cleaned him up a bit now. Thought you might like to educate him in the ways of royalty, before we help him take back the throne that is rightfully his.” He tilted his head expectantly at me, an eager gleam in his one good eye.

Izuka was a lunatic. There was no way he'd just stumbled across my long-lost baby. He'd been taken from me at such a tender age. Who was to say he'd even survived this long? Where could he have gone, with the heritage he had and no mother to protect him?

And yet... if there was but a slight chance... how could I refuse, to at least give this street urchin a passing glance?

“You must be mistaken,” I grunted. “But let's have a look at him.”

Izuka smiled wide, revealing yellowed teeth. “Excellent!” He looked over his shoulder at a shabby carriage that was waiting at the end of my footpath, and waved excitedly. “Come along, then, your highness!” A slender form came out of the carriage and shuffled timidly up the path.

It wasn't my boy, I knew that immediately. Perhaps I'd only known my son as an infant, and only for a very short time, but I would never forget what he looked like. He'd had hair so dark, you'd think it was black at first glance, but it was really green, like mine. This boy had hair like Ashnard's – a deep, handsome blue – and when he got closer, I saw that his eyes were the wrong color too.

What big, sad eyes he had. He stopped at the bottom of the steps, hanging a few feet behind Izuka, looking nervously up at me. “...Mother?” he finally asked, sweetly, softly, as if he hardly dared believe it either.

No, this was not my son... but in a lot of ways, he was just like him. Izuka said he'd lived on the street. He had no family, was apparently an outcast... and I saw it now. He did have a strange marking on his forehead, not quite the same, but very much like my son's. With a marking like that, I had no doubt he'd been an outcast his whole life, persecuted for something that was no fault of his own.

Something made me hurry down the stairs to this boy. I gently rested my hands on his bony young shoulders. “What's your name, child?”

“Pelleas, my lady.”