The Boy Who Could Not Live

Once upon a time there was a boy who could not live. It had been foretold that he would kill an Evil Man, but in doing so his soul would die, for he was not the kind of person made for murder. If he did not kill the man, the man would kill him and his body would die, and the world would fall into the Dark.

There were no other choices.

The boy knew this and became quietly resigned to it. From an early age, people had regarded him as a hero. He knew without anyone telling him that not all heroes lived until the end of the story.

So he got up in the morning and went to his classes and spent time with his friends and stayed up nights thinking about his own mortality.

People told him that he needed to be prepared for his eventual confrontation with the Enemy. Based on past experience, the boy had found that whenever he was most ready to face his Enemy, his Enemy was nowhere to be found. Just when he was feeling at his most helpless, the Enemy would appear and he would be utterly unprepared. Deciding to compromise after a fashion, the boy began reading books about heroes.

Most of the stories involved a quest (be it literal or metaphorical), and a captive imprisoned (literally or metaphorically) in the highest room of the tallest tower of the location to which the quest was being made. The hero rescued the captive and they lived happily ever after. The boy wondered why the captive just didn't walk out of their prison; if it was relatively simple for the hero to get in, what could be impeding escape?

The boy was pondering just this question in class one day, when a classmate of his fell from his chair and lay twitching in the center aisle of the room. His classmate's voice was harsh and guttural, like one of the creatures that menaced the hero in the stories. Still, the boy couldn't help wondering if his classmate wasn't a creature at all, but rather a captive who needed rescuing. His classmate opened his silver eyes and looked at the boy. The boy nodded inside; a captive.

Before he could speak to him, however, the boy found that his classmate had been whisked away; to his home, people said, but the boy knew it was really to the highest room in the tallest tower.

Time passed. Without noticing it, he changed from boy to hero. Just like in the stories, he marched forward on his quest, drawn closer and closer to his Enemy. But, also like the stories, obstacles rose to block his path. The Enemy seemed to know things before they happened. People whispered about a captive he kept who could See everything. For the first time in many months, the hero thought about his classmate and remembered how the words the silver-eyed boy had spoken came to pass.

At last, his quest led him to his Enemy's lair. There, on a knoll with a dark house looming behind, he fought the Evil Man and killed him, and he felt something inside him cry out in pain. Other warriors came to congratulate him, but the hero saw only a light on in a high room in a tall tower of the dark house.

He climbed flights of stairs and wound his way through balconies and fought the minions of the Evil Man as they leapt at him from shadowed rooms. Higher and higher he climbed until he reached one final landing. On it, there stood a woman in a white dress with hair as pale as moonlight and a smile that was forever sad and cruel and pitiable and full of strange love. For a moment, the hero thought this was the captive, but something in his heart told him no. She was no captive; she was the final trial.

"Why have you come, hero?" she asked him.

"I have come to free the captive," he said.

"Ah," she murmured, eyes glittering. "Do those behind you come to free him?"

The hero heard the voices of the warriors on the stairs he had climbed and the balconies he had passed. He shook his head. "They follow me, but they are not mine. Yet I will free the captive all the same, for he has been here too long."

"Do you care not what you may find beyond the door? Do you care not what he looks like?"

"I care only that he is free."

The woman drew herself straighter. "Would you slay the dragon, if I asked you to?"

The hero hesitated, knowing that even the battle on the knoll did not carry as much weight as that one question. "I will slay no dragon," said the hero. "I will do only what the captive asks of me."

"Ah," said the woman. "Then enter, hero, and finish your quest."

The hero stepped past the woman and opened the door. The captive sat up in bed, face turned expectantly towards the door. The warriors gathered in the hall gasped and muttered.

The captive had no eyes.

The hero crossed the chasm of the bedroom floor and sat beside the captive. The captive remained dangerously still and the hero wondered if something was still holding him prisoner. In an effort to break the spell, he spoke the captive's name. Something changed slightly in the captive's face, but the voices of the warriors around the door were distracting him. The hero said the name again, slightly louder this time.

The captive's lips parted. "What color are your eyes?"
The hero's breath caught and he replied that they were green.

The captive smiled and touched the hero's cheek. The hero began to cry.

And so they were no longer a captive and a hero, but rather only boys who could see and could not live, yet were forced to keep their eyes closed and find reasons to wake up in the morning.

It was not happily ever after, but it was never going to be.