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From Your Sight,

Yxonomei Ayauhteotl

Prince in a Rose Bower

There are thirty-six steps winding upwards between walls of pink marble covered in heart's blood red roses. Every sixth step there is a window, arched on top, flat on the bottom. Sometimes the view is of undulating fields of long, verdant grass beneath a honey-gold sun; other times a wind-torn ocean slamming itself against outcroppings of glistering black stone. Today the sight is of star speckled sky of indigo twilight stretching above the swells of silvery dunes. This is new. The change is disquieting, disconcerting.

And the roses, ah me!

Brittle brown branches cling to the walls like love-starved children. Dead leaves crackle beneath my feet. The air is filled with the sickly-sweet perfume of long decayed rose petals.

My pace quickens as does the sluggish blood pumping through my fragile veins. The state of the roses does not bode well. The Prince has not allowed them the requisite feast. They starve with want for his purity, his innocence.

The Prince, once again our savior, is in another one of his moods. The child.

Well, he is a child, so I suppose I can forgive him these tantrums. However, everything depends upon him and the roses, a string of small deaths waiting to happen. Everything will always depend upon this child, this creature born to be martyred for the frivolity of others—mine most especially.

At the top of those serpentine stairs is a door of pale, white wood. Complicated whorls of rose vines and bursts of the flowers themselves are engraved upon the door. A knob of warm gold beckons me to enter. It begs to be touched, to be used and thus fulfill its purpose. Even the doorknob has taken upon itself to match the décor of the rest of this place; it is in the shape of a partially bloomed rose.

The door opens silently. A flurry of dead leaves and petals swirl about me as I enter the Prince's room. Waxing death fills the space contained by circular walls. The Prince has been very naughty of late.

Whites and pale peaches flow throughout the airy room. Everything seems organic. Everything seems pale with the whisper of death and the loss of time. I can feel the passage of time, ripples of other people's memories, swelling within these cool walls. The bed is a vague idea of sheets, blankets and swollen pillows. There are bookcases of ghost-pale wood filled with toppled books. A glass table supports a large silver bowl of wax fruits. Delicate wicker chairs drown under mounds of discarded clothing and more sheets.

The Rose Prince leans against the railings of the small balcony overlooking the new scenery. The roses reach for him longingly, but he ignores their reaching tendrils. Messy black hair obscures his pale face. He is an idol of marble and obsidian with emeralds for eyes.

"You have not bled for them in quite some time."

The roses seem to hiss in confirmation. Several brittle, brown tendrils snake out to hover before the boy's impassive face.

"Fuck off."

Always fiery, this one. His spirit is too much for this wretched world, and for this reason he shall always be the sacrificial lamb. However, as much I enjoy his temper, I cannot allow him to shirk his responsibilities.

He is the only one bound to the roses, Charon's Roses, and they to him: his death for theirs, their death for his. All the world depends upon this child and his strength of heart, pure, twisted heart. Dear heart. More than the wet organ beating rhythmically in his thin chest.

"Prince."

He turns and glares balefully at me. Old enmity rises in his green-green eyes and then sinks back down.

"I don't want to do this anymore. I just…"

"Feed them. You have to."

"This is so…"

"I know."

He raises glistening eyes to the tangle of rose vines shifting oh-so-subtly above his head. A few hungry strands twist lower to stop inches from his upturned face. Languidly he lifts his arm to the eagerly waiting roses. A whispered cheer runs through the thorny branches. Some branches are as thick around as my arm with thorns as long as my middle finger. Some only the width of a hair with thorns that are nothing more than a slight prickling texture.

The Prince gasps softly as vines tenderly encircle his offered wrist and pierce his tender flesh. A line of red wells up, and I lick my lips. One by one, more vines slide down to wrap greedily about his slender arm. He closes his eyes and moans, even as rivulets of deepest crimson trail down to drip onto the floor. The roses entwining the balcony railings creep towards his bare feet and the unguarded arm by his side. They pause, shivering in almost human anticipation, and then strike.

He cries out and his young body tenses with pain. A fluttering shudder rolls down his back, bowing his spine. So beautiful, the Prince. Savior.

"It…hurts."

It would. They are starving.

"T-Tom."

Large, frightened eyes turn to me as Charon's Roses lovingly embrace him in sinuous arms and kiss him with sharp teeth. My breath hitches and a line of tension runs through me. Blood runs freely down his bare chest twined with thorny branches. He is a tapestry of crimsons and whites cut through by brittle brown.

Blood and roses.

I want to lick him, feel the sensual bite of the roses' caress as I taste him.

With ruthless love, the roses jerk the child off of his feet. He cries out, head lolling back, eyes dazed by pain and blood loss. The roses draw him up into their undulating tangle. He screams once, twice and vanishes amid the vines and thorns.

I move to stand below the place where the child was consumed. Heavy, warm droplets spatter my upturned face. His blood is a delicious rain, a benediction in carmine tears.

Poor Prince. Sweet lamb.

Once again our fates lie intertwined like mating vipers. I am the origin of all his earthly troubles and burdens. I am the begetter, the progenitor.

I thought—we all thought—magic was a never-ending resource. So we used and used, took and took, until there was no more to be used or taken. Sweet Mother Earth had no more bounty to bestow.

We foolishly never thought to give back.

Until now.

The sweet Prince, Rose Prince, had a name once, a true name. It was revered as though God Himself had bestowed it upon the hapless child. However, he had to forsake it, his existence, in order to become the Fount, our Prince.

He is a vessel in which the force of his pure soul spins out the replenishment of magic. The conditionally immortal Charon's Roses drink his magic and disperse it across this wretched world with roots deeper than Yggdrasil's.

He will live as long as the carnivorous roses, and they will live as long as he does. And neither shall die till their task is complete.

Or if he refuses to sate them.

Then together shall they fall and liter the ground with their dry husks.

And I, bound to him long through my own rash actions, shall fall into eternal sleep by their side. But it shall be centuries before that happens. I choke upon the bitter irony of my situation. I craved, in my feckless youth, immortality, and now I have it but can do nothing. I cannot burn through the annals of history. I cannot feel the unmitigated ecstasy of breaking the world to my will.

All I can do is posses his sweet, ageless body and make sure he does not end our mutual existence prematurely.

I do not fear death. I fear being forgotten. How many nameless, uncared for graves deface the living earth? How many people have ceased to exist because there is no one to remember? Only alive can one make sure that he is not forgotten.

With a sigh of satiation, green leaves and blood-red roses burst forth among the slowly reviving vines. Gently they part and lower the Prince into my waiting arms. He is light as a feather, it seems. Gently I lick the bleeding pinpricks upon his delicate face. Pale lids flutter and then sooty lashes lift to reveal the emerald of his eyes.

"If you would only feed them regularly."

"It wouldn't hurt so much, right?"

"Correct."

He sighs as he bleeds sluggishly from a hundred small wounds. He will not die from the trauma inflicted upon his pale form. The roses sustain him even as they consume him.

Holding him close, I carry the Prince back into his room and to the vague suggestion of a bed. Amid the white softness that overflows and spreads out in fans of soft linen, he is pale and brilliant with little jewels of drying blood. I lean in and kiss faintly blue lips, feel how cool they have become, and draw back. He blinks owlishly at me and almost smiles; it is the brief conception of a small bit of cynicism.

I capture his lips in a languid, stroking exploration of mouths and tongues. He is not exactly reciprocating, but he does not deny me. I touch the myriad of small punctures with gentle hands. He flinches when even light contact proves discomforting. Soft, sweet lamb, be still.

He allows me to despoil him, his temple of flesh and bone, but he refuses to participate—until I draw out his latent passions with unwavering delicacy. Soft nips, harder bites, gentling brushes of lips and fingertips, I assault him with an arsenal of carnality. And he whimpers so sweetly when I play him about the razor edge of orgasm. He thrashes weakly, still fatigued from blood loss.

So good. Yes. Sweet lamb, delicious Prince.

His mewling scream licks across my straining control. Sweat trickles down my back, muscles strain with exquisite agony, and I refuse all motion. Inside his clasping passage there is a haven for my sins. Everything now is slow, honeyed. There is no rush. Time does not move here. We have stepped outside of it, him and I, and so we have been erased from it.

Body rigid with the slowly approaching pinnacle of this activity, the child keens loudly like a thing mortally wounded. The back of his head presses against my shoulder as his spine bows and he bucks against me. I whisper glorifications into his ears in a delirium of pleasure. The wet evidence of his tired rapture spills across my pumping hand. With a strangled moan I capitulate and let the rush of completion blaze through my body.

I clean us off with a handy sheet—there really are a superfluous amount of them—and gather him close. Above our heads Charon's Roses exult with their borrowed vitality. They twine, serpentine, amongst themselves and display proud blooms like maidens with new dresses. Such vain creations of no one.

The sweet Prince dreams in my arms. He dreams of friends gone and the magic he will never again control. And sometimes he dreams of me, his killer-turned-guardian.

I guard the Rose Prince for the love of life—mine.

There are thirty-six stairs winding down between walls of pink marbles ornamented by possessive roses. At the bottom of those stairs is a door of dark wood engraved with dying roses. Beyond the door lays the world. I have walked there, we both have, but he will never leave this cursed tower and none, save me, can enter.

He hates me for I can taste, but never partake of, the elusive pleasure of 'out there'. He yields to me because he craves humanity in whatever form it is offered. Yet, the freedom of leaving is only a fragmented illusion.

In the outside world I am nothing. There is no fearsome magic, no loyal followers. Out there is humanity, stripped of all that was once fantastic and…magical. I am a man there.

I want to be God.

I want to be remembered out there.

No one remembers the Prince now, and I have been forgotten alongside him.

Down thirty-six stairs and out a dark door I am a ghost no one can see, a man one step behind time's inexorable flow. I can affect nothing beyond that damnable door.

And so I always return, return to my forgotten Prince. And together we find proof of our continued existence, our descent into madness.

I managed to stay away for a month this time. Maybe next time I will find the strength to be a ghost amid the world of men for a longer stretch. Maybe in that interim the Prince will starve the roses, and the three of us shall perish and the world will never again know magic.

Maybe.

Green eyes watch me with knowing indifference. Their owner is the only one who remembers me, and I him. When we die there will be no mourning period. No one will know.

Will I risk it?

Thirty-six stairs await my decision.