He woke up screaming and crying, still able to feel the immobilising sting of a burning arrow piercing his eye, reaching straight to his brain, the seat of his spirit, his sperm, and perhaps the stone of madness that had led him to challenge his nephew's reign.

But like a bolt of lightning, the pain disappeared. His eyes were still crying, but they were fresh tears, as if he were standing on top of a hill and the breeze was kissing his face; nothing like the tears he had cried in those agonising seconds when he realised he was a complete idiot and that nothing he had done had been necessary. Wouldn't it have been better, perhaps, to swallow his pride and let someone else rule? Didn't he already have land and servants? He was offered multiple alternatives to war, but he rejected them all in favour of his own pride. He never considered the number of people in the common folk who loved his nephew, even though he did not have the same surname as the rest of the dynasty.

He blinked with the eye that could blink, but in the other he felt his eyelid colliding grotesquely with the wooden stick that pierced it. As he tried to get up from the muddy ground, he discovered, to his horror, that the soldiers had stuck a spear in his buttock, an action that would ensure that, even in death, the humiliation of his person could continue.

'They hated me so' he thought.

He reasoned that, if he was not dead, it might be better to stay on the grass and let the beasts devour him.

He closed the eye that could be closed and rested his face back in the mud, letting the stupid spear sticking out of his buttock sway in the wind. He thought he saw the shadow of a banner hanging from it, waving mockingly as it pointed to him. 'Here lies Ailill, pretender to the throne, favourite of his father Ailill II and his mother Aoife. We wanted to stick the spear in his arse, but we're just stupid villagers, and we don't know where it is.'

His fists clenched, trying to grab hold of the earth. He was murdered by a bunch of stupid villagers. Not even his nephew's army, his own villagers whom he himself had recruited from his own lands. 'Here lies Ailill III, loved only by his father and mother, who luckily died before him.'

He lay there for a while, feeling no pain, not dying, feeling the banner swaying from side to side. He wondered how it stayed in place when it was suddenly torn away by a gust of wind and carried several metres forward. That was how he confirmed his suspicion that the banner bore the coat of arms of his nephew, the child king, with its unmistakable golden sun on an emerald green field.

tackish and simple,' he had thought when he first saw it, and he had not changed his opinion.

He realised then that he was much stronger, and that without the banner, it would be easier to get up. He stood up, leaning on his opposite leg, expecting a twinge of pain in his buttock wound, but felt absolutely nothing. He was alive, and he was perfectly fine, praise be to Brigid.

Spiritually, however, the feeling of floating in the grey mist persisted, his soul detached from his body, like a puppet watching the puppeteer sleep. He sat in a foetal position, the arrow still protruding grotesquely from his head, partially devoured by the flames.

'Don't move too much, the brain takes longer to heal,' said a voice coming from the side of his bad eye.

Turning his head, he saw a boy with short hair and an outfit that made no sense to him: a kind of light coat over a doublet that clung to his body and revealed... that for a boy, he had large breasts.

Ailill blinked several times as he tried to focus on the strange girl. In any other context, he would have identified her as a jester, with her strange appearance and overly short trousers, surely meant to provoke laughter. But given the circumstances, he preferred to give her other names:

'Brigid? Or perhaps Morrigan?'

The girl looked at him with compassion, as if he were a lamb about to be sacrificed for dinner.

'Harper.'

He raised his eyebrows, trying to identify that name among the pantheon of gods he knew.

They stared at each other in silence for a while. He with his mutilated, half-burnt head, she holding a half-eaten piece of bread, which she occasionally brought to her mouth to take a bite. The wind was the only sound.

A crow tried to land on Ailill's head, but Harper stepped forward and shooed it away with her hand.

'Shoo... SHOO! Oh my God, damn stupid birds, they're everywhere!'

The open field where the sadly short battle had taken place was devoid of corpses; it seemed that he was the only one who had died. Surely because no one in his entourage had bothered to defend him. The thought brought tears to his eyes, thinking of all the historic battles where great kings had fallen in mud covered with the blood of their followers, places where families of ignorant villagers still brought flowers. No one would bring flowers to this field, they didn't even mark his grave... they didn't even bother to dig one. They stuck the spear in him and left him there to be swallowed by the grass and shat on by sheep, without any remorse. His memory erased from history forever.

Harper saw his sobs and offered him some of his bread.

'Here, don't cry, it's a sandwich, with 170 calories. Do you know what that is? Do you have these in your culture?'

Ailill raised his head and saw her uncomfortable expression.

'Why are you torturing me, goddess of death? Just take me to the afterlife already!' he sobbed.

The girl shifted her weight from one leg to the other, uncomfortable with the situation.

'I'm sorry, look, I'm not the goddess of death. You're the first person I've ever...' She raised her arms in a sign of defeat. "I was once in your situation," she managed to say, before taking another bite of bread, as if looking for an excuse to close her mouth.

The prince looked at her once more, with his good eye, covered in mist, mud and tears. She wasn't very tall, and could have passed for a Roman girl, but she spoke his language quite fluently. 'Were you ever killed by your own people? Abandoned in the grass to rot without being able to enjoy your own birthright?'

Harper shrugged. 'I meant that I was dead too. Not as elegant as your case, no.' She pointed to the arrow in his skull. 'Nor as brutal. I just slipped and fell down the stairs.'

Ailill listened impatiently. 'That's... nothing compared to what happened to me, you stupid wench.

She raised her hands once more, throwing her head back and taking several steps backwards. 'Wow, you're just like in the legends, maybe a little worse.' She strode back towards him and pointed at him rudely with her finger, for she had the manners of a beast.

'That's the kind of comment that makes your people stick spears up your ass!', she continued.

In any other context, the proud Ailill would have stood up, shouted at her, shaken her by the shoulders and thrown her into the mud, but he merely turned his head away and sobbed. It was true.

'Oh, stop it! Stop it! You're still luckier than they are...'

Harper closed the distance between them, grabbing the arrow and pulling hard, an effort that made it slip in the mud. Ailill moved away from her, annoyed.

'It's still stuck. How's your brain?' the girl managed to say.

Lucid! But not thanks to you, wild girl!' He touched his face delicately; the tugging had caused him brief discomfort, but no pain. However, the sadness and confusion had left his body, as if the anger, as it grew, had left no room for them. He jumped up and kicked mud at the woman who had spoken to him so insolently.

'Who dares to treat me with such familiarity?' he snapped. 'Do you know who I am? Do you know what house I belong to?'

Harper struggled to her feet and faced him. Just as he suspected, she was much

smaller in stature, walking unsteadily, with mud dripping down her body, causing her baggy clothes to cling to her figure.

She stood right in front of him, her fists clenched, as if she were ready to send him to the world of the dead for the second time, but instead she took a deep breath and said loudly:

'Lord Ailill III of Cernyw, son of Ailill II and his first wife, anonymous. Deceased in the year 510 AD, from the Calypso timeline...'

She extended her arms, which made him instinctively shrink back, and hugged him.

'I see your pain at the loss of your life, and the frustration you must feel at having been so despised by your people. I don't know your suffering, but I feel it.'

With that, she stroked his back as one would stroke a dog one hates.

Ailill stared at her with his mouth agape, understanding less than half of what she had said. He tried to find the right words. He would have expected a woman of lower rank than himself to prostrate herself and apologise, or perhaps cry, or attack him if she were of his own rank. To tell the truth, Harper's strange affection made him feel more uncomfortable than any of the aforementioned options.

The prince placed his hand on her head and pushed her back slightly so he could look her in the eyes, and uttered a few hesitant words:

'My mother's name was Aoife,' he punctuated this with an uncomfortable smile.

'Eefa?'

'No, no, dear, Aoife.' He laughed awkwardly.

'Good to know, her name didn't make it into the historical records. We could get a bonus if we pass that information on.'

The prince nodded happily. 'Praise the gods, a bonus!'

Harper mimicked his gesture for a few seconds, at least until his smile slowly turned into a frown that would have made children cry. The girl got the message and quickly moved away from him.

'I understand you must have many questions,' he began. Ailill smiled at her for a second and then frowned again, as if to tell her to go ahead and give him the answers.

'You have been recruited by AEONALIZE, a transnational and trans-temporal company dedicated to... well... basically, we travel through time and look for something good to sell in the future.' Harper had summarised a rehearsed speech, which was obviously longer, judging by the expression on her audience's face. She bit her lip as she searched her mind for a way to explain it to a man from Kernow 510 AD, which was not yet called 'Kernow' proper.

'Let's say that some people, when they die...' She clasped her hands together as if in prayer. 'They go to the other world, with their gods. Others, like you, we recruit for our... let's say tribe.'

Ailill seemed to understand the concept much better, or at least his face looked less angry. Harper continued, 'Think of it as a second life. You may not be king, but you'll go places and see things that others can only imagine.'

She seemed satisfied with that little ending.

The prince squeezed his good eyelid, but opened his fists and sighed. 'You want me to give up my titles and claims, as well as my subjects?'

Harper shrugged: 'I'd say they already gave you up.'

As she spoke, the arrow piercing Ailill's head lost its balance and fell to the ground. He could have sworn it was at least a fist's width inside his eye socket from the way it didn't shake too much when he turned his head. The sight of the arrow on the ground made him forget the beating he wanted to give Harper for those last words.