Torsten was not left to stew in his own juices for long.  The knight from the Northern Kingdom arrived at twilight the next evening.  Torsten spent the time between receiving the news that he was his kingdom’s sacrifice and the appearance of the knight ranting in his room.  He trashed the place at two in the morning.  That meant, he destroyed four of his best paintings, tore the pages out of seven volumes of very costly books, and turned his bedding into a knotted ladder with which he had some half-contrived idea of escape before he fell asleep in a heap at the foot of his bed.

When he woke up, it was past noon.  He was tucked in his bed, which was made up nice and pretty like his night of material carnage had never happened.  The items he had destroyed had been removed from his bedroom and his sister Vallis was sitting in a chair next to his bed with a tray of food.

“The Queen is a coward,” she said harshly when she saw that Torsten was awake.

He didn’t have the heart to glare at his sister.  He loved his mother and he knew that what was happening was beyond her power.   

“They could have done something to prepare me instead of dropping it all on me like this,” Torsten said, his voice pitched a tone above a growl.  He picked up a cup on the tray and drank the water from it.

Vallis snorted.  “I was prepared for it.”

He spat some of the water out.  “You were prepared?” he asked in disbelief.

“Yes,” she retorted, her nose in the air.  “Father didn’t think the Hollowmen would ask for a man twice in a row.  Didn’t they tell you?  If a green bird arrives, the Hollowmen want a girl.  If a yellow bird arrives, they want a man.  Our parents were expecting a green bird and I was trained to expect to become the sacrifice.  They were hoping they’d have to give me up and not you.”

The look on Torsten’s face soured.  

His sister Vallis was his most beautiful sister.  People were not supposed to think that.  They weren’t supposed to know that one of their siblings had more charm than another.  He had three sisters.  Vallis was the middle one.  She had the most striking coloring, yellow hair, and copper eyes… like Torsten.  She had the most beautiful figure and the prettiest face.  Not only that but she had been trained like him—how to act, how to speak, how to enthrall an audience… 

He glanced at himself in the reflection of the glass of his window.  Did that mean that his parents groomed him for this task because he was the best of his brothers?  Not because he was the youngest? 

He turned to Vallis and said softly, “When you offer a sacrifice, I guess it is no sacrifice at all if you don’t sacrifice your best.”

She grasped his hand as fast as an asp lunging to bite.  “That’s what I think about you.  I was their best daughter and you were their best son.  You mustn’t let the Hollowmen kill you,” she said desperately, her eyes full of brimming tears.  “You must find a way to stay alive, learn all their secrets, and return here.”

He clasped her hand in his two.  “I swear.”

“While you are gone, I will become Queen,” she said fiercely.  

“You will?” he asked, surprised and slightly chilled.  “How will you do that?”

She smiled.  “The ordinary way.”

Torsten chuckled.  “The ordinary way is to kill everyone.  Is that what you’re going to do?”

Vallis shook her head.  “No.  That will be unnecessary.  Come back, and you’ll see what I’ve done.  In the meantime, let’s go down to the library and study the Hollowmen.  There must be something we can learn that will help you.”

He put a piece of ham in his mouth and got out of bed.

He later learned that Vallis had cleaned his room herself without the help of the servants.  Likewise, she had cooked his last breakfast for him.

***

There was nothing.

No mention of the Hollowmen in any of the books.  No maps showing the land northward.  

There was nothing.

At nightfall, the knight from the Northern Kingdom was seen approaching from the watchtowers.  He rode a golden elk so large and with so many branches on its horns that it was unfathomable.  Behind it, he led another elk.  It was red.  

Torsten watched the two animal procession from the north watchtower.  Something was happening.  Tiny lights appeared with each step the animals took.  It was like the flowers were giving up the ghost and for a moment, their spirits could be seen before they vanished.

The knight himself was the most formidable warrior Torsten had ever seen.  Granted, he had never been on the battlefield, but he had seen his kingdom’s knights arrayed in their armor before a fray.  This knight was something else.  Even from a distance, it was clear he was a giant.  His armor gleamed like polished pewter.  

Torsten felt very small, even with his additional head of height.

The custom was for the sacrifice to meet the knight at the castle’s hall, bid goodbye to his parents, allow his wrists to be bound, and for the prince to leave forever.

In the hall, the King was there, looking rough and unhappy.  That was all he could give his son, the knowledge that he didn’t like any of this.  His hands were as tied as Torsten’s would be.  Literal ties and figurative ties might be all the same.

On the throne of the Queen was not his mother.  He wasn’t expecting her.  She was too delicate for the ordeal, but Vallis was there, looking angry, but not helpless.  Earlier, as they scoured the books, she told him what she knew about staying alive.  A lot of her advice had turned his stomach, but she believed he could do more than just be a lamb led to the slaughter.  She believed he could use the skills he had been given to make himself valuable, more valuable than a corpse.

Her look of bravery did a lot for him… Until he was standing in front of the knight.  

Torsten was a tall man, but the knight was not one head taller than him, but two.  It was unnerving.  

No wonder he hadn’t been trained to fight.  He could never have fought this man.  And no small wonder his parents were giving him up as a sacrifice to these people.  The last thing his kingdom needed was an army of these monsters coming down on them.  They were lucky to have this alliance and peace so easily won, just as his father said.

That was what he felt as his hands were bound and he was placed on the back of the red elk.  

He was led through the streets and, though it was Torsten’s last time in his own home, he hoped they would reach the edge of the city soon.  He kept hearing things he didn’t want to hear.

“They say that if the knight lifts his visor, you won’t see anything.  That’s why they’re called ‘The Hollowmen’ because they’re just armor with nothing inside.  You can’t beat an opponent like that.  You’ll stab nothing but air.”

“I heard the prince will be showered in luxury and then killed when he finally thinks they aren’t going to kill him.”

“I heard they’re going to keep him alive as long as they can as they eat his insides and make him watch.”

“You did not hear that!”

“Okay, I made it up.  Aren’t all you guys making up your stories?”

Torsten didn’t hear the end of that rumor mill.  The knight in front of him didn’t say anything—not one word.

Once the city was behind them, Torsten was taken off the road and into a part of the woods he had always been told he should never go.  The leaves of the ferns brushed the bottoms of his boots and the pine needles reached out and touched his cheek.  

He breathed and reminded himself that it would all be over soon.

The Extra Tail in the Fairy Tale

Vallis sat down with a quill and paper and rewrote the kingdom’s laws.  She had been educated in the law and found the work rewarding.  At first, her father did not want to adopt the new law book that Vallis created.  He thought it would give away his power, and in a lot of ways, it did.  Vallis thought there was too much responsibility placed on the King’s shoulders.  The laws had been written a hundred years ago by one of her control-freak ancestors.  

As her father got older, she got him to sign off on the new laws one by one to compensate for his failing health.  Mostly, it meant giving a few of his less important powers to other nobles.

One of the laws she snuck in was that the oldest child still living in the kingdom upon the death of the king would be the new ruler.  

In her position as princess, she had also encouraged her older siblings to make diplomatic alliances, even selling off her oldest brother, Geoffry, to the most threatening of their enemies.  It proved to be a brilliant alliance as he became a person of great power in the kingdom next door.  Though he never became a king himself, he was a highly beloved figure in both kingdoms.

Vallis’ efforts to lighten her father’s load also proved rewarding as she improved his health and kept him alive years longer than anyone thought possible.  

By the time she was crowned Queen, she was beloved by all and if Torsten had walked in on her on her fortieth birthday, he would have found her eating pear tarts in a bubble bath and planning the wedding of her niece.  She was simply in charge of everything.