The River Castle

Charlie grabbed two large stones from under the maple tree. He rolled them like dices between his fingers and threw them again at Alicia's window.

"Charlie?"

Her mother's face popped out of the first floor window.

"Sorry Mrs W., I didn't want to wake you up."

"Who's that?" her husband grunted from inside the room.

"Charlie, Mrs R.'s son."

"Who?"

"The teacher's son. Licia's tutor, I told you at least five times he gives her classes on Mondays and Thursdays. "

"Licia takes extra classes?"

Mrs W. rolled her eyes and pushed her night mask further up her glossy hair as she looked back at Charlie.

"It's urgent Mrs W. I... I wanted to make sure Alicia is okay."

"She's in her bed, asleep, how about you," her husband grunted.

"Shh, will you?" Alicia's mother said to her husband over her shoulder. "Charlie, how about you go to bed too? I'll tell her you came, okay? She'll see you tomorrow after class."

The window glass shook as she closed it and drew the curtains leaving Charlie alone in the silence of their garden with his last stone.

He had to try again.

As he approached her window, the entrance door opened and, on the dark porch, Alicia appeared in her rabbit pyjama. Her eyes puffy and red.

"Alicia!" he said running in her direction. "I found your drawing at the library - "

She welcomed him with a defiant look.

"You know I'm not allowed to go to the library anymore."

She fetched the drawing and ripped it into pieces. Charlie sighed.

"It's not a punishment, Licia, it's just... Give it some time and you'll -"

"The teacher says my stories are just stories. Do you think it's true?"

"Stories? Of course not! The singing lilies, the flying boats in the sky, the dancing vampires. Of course it's all true."

He gave her a smile.

"Then why do I get in trouble each time I mention them?"

"Well. There are some things that... How can I say that... Imagination is -"

"Why do you now say it's imagination?"

"It's not imagination, it's -"

"You think I'm crazy?"

"No, of course you're not crazy. You're a bright seven-year-old with a wild, sorry, creative... hm... perceptive -"

"I swear I saw a castle in the river," Alicia said.

"I know, I know. And it's a precious secret you should keep to yourself. You know, for other kids, it's... they can't handle reality just like you do. They get nightmares, they ..."

"Can you handle reality?"

"Me?"

"You're eleven."

"I'm eleven."

"You're not from my school."

"I'm not from your school".

"You don't get nightmares when you hear my stories."

"I don't."

"You can handle reality."

He should have seen it coming.

Alicia lowered her voice and came closer to him, "You need to see the castle, it's magical, I promise. But you have to be cautious. It's scary. Pshiuuuu."

She pretended to cast a spell on him with her tiny hand and Charlie controlled himself not to reply she should improve her grades instead of wasting everybody's time with non-sense.

"I have to study tomorrow evening, Licia."

She frowned and tilted her head to the side, putting her finger on her mouth to feign skepticism.

"Aren't you supposed to help me with my homework tomorrow?"

Touché.

"I know but I -"

"So we can go to the river?"

Charlie sighed. She had been banned from the school library anyway.

*

The sky was grey on that summer end of day but that was not enough to deter Alicia from visiting the castle buried in the heart of the river.

She walked, determined in her purple short overalls, through the high dry grass that clang onto the hill like straw. Her cap tied to her wrist and two bunches of hair bouncing at the top of her head, she spoke and spoke.

About the castle, the water dragons and the other hideous creatures that crawled in its sticky moats where they used a sophisticated language she still struggled to decipher.

She mentioned their feasts of goose meat, dried fruit and flowing elderflower. The crowns of roses that adorned their heads to conceal the hideosity of their character and their natural inclination towards betrayal and lure.

Never believe anything they say, never take anything they give you.

Enjoy their feast and run.

Through their glass menagerie full of majestic fake animals, through the rose corridors that flesh and dehydrate, through the round entrance, that will confuse you.

Run. And never look back.

Charlie listened with a frown as he didn't know what to reply.

He hardly ever knew what to reply to Alicia and it had always been so, since the first time he had met her on that Monday evening in his mother's classroom, four month ago. Before his biweekly football training, he always studied in his mother's classroom so that she could drive him to the pitch.

But on that evening, he was surprised to encounter a tiny creature in front of the usually empty blackboard of the classroom. Licia stayed after the class to write a hundred times that she would not "tale more scairy storys too other pewpols."

Her mannerisms first amused him but it soon faded as he realised it was not a game she was playing. He observed her as she pushed through the lines with more mistakes, despite her care.

On Thursday, that same week, she still stood on her tiny stool, writing a variant of that same sentence. Charlie took a green chalk, for he thought she might already be overwhelmed with red corrections.

He rectified the sentence and she watched attentively, as if surprised someone had taken the time to show her how to write. Charlie knew his mother's teaching style and knew it was not for everybody. But it had never occurred to him that someone may wrestle with it to that extent. Each week, he wrote in green, each week she copied in white. The more they wrote, the more she trusted him.

But only lately had he started to understand the roots of her lack of attention, and her confusion. Only lately had he noticed how it impacted her dynamics with other people at school. Children and adults alike.

"There, it's right there!" she said pointing her finger at the river down the yellowish hill.

"Let's go!" he replied with a beam.

She screamed with excitement as they raced down the hill together, with their arms open and their caps flapping against their bodies. She giggled, triumphant, as he let her win the race.

*

"The magic gate is right here," Alicia said leading Charlie by the hand towards a spot where grey smoke arose from the river with a smell of rust. "It's the entrance of the river castle."

She kneeled down and bent towards the bubbles that popped on the surface of the river. He imitated her and, although he didn't believe in her castle story, he wondered where the smoke and the rusty smell stemmed from.

"... that's where their feast starts!" she said forming a crown with her short arms and looked up at the sky as if a firework had cracked wild above their heads.

Charlie gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder.

"Talking of what, we should eat Licia," he said standing back up to light a campfire for their marshmallows. "Your brain needs sugar to tackle additions."

Charlie had brought her homework with them, but he didn't mind enjoying the river for a while before diving into them. In fact, it might help her focus on her exercises later on.

As he gathered wood and stones, he could hear her speak to the river and run with open arms, as if she were a plane, or rather a water dragon from the castle moat. He still wondered why she cared only about those stories and so little about normal things, such as friends, makeup or pop songs like "Moi... Lolita". The more she jumped and shouted alone, the lesser hope he had to instigate focus and discipline in her little being.

He dug a hole in the ground and rolled a wooden stick between his palms to ignite a spark. He bent close and lit up the campfire carefully with a soft blow. Smoke arose and he smiled to himself as the fire came to life.

"Licia, look at that!" he said turning around with pride. "Alicia?"

Only silence.

He stood up.

And he shouted with his hands around his mouth.

His heart beat faster.

"Alicia!"

Nothing.

Save for the steady sound of the bubbles growing and popping in the water where the rusty smoke arose. Charlie approached it - not only had the smoke grown purple, just like Licia's overalls, but it now also smelt of strawberry. Just like her.

Had she fallen into the river?

Charlie stretched his shaking arm towards the smoke and a magnetic force grabbed his wrist, pulling him down into the river.

*

The cold water pressured his lungs and bones. As his eyes got used to the dirt and dark of the river bottom, he collected himself and started to look around for Alicia.

He swam, to the right, to the left, circling back to his initial spot a couple of times, in vain. In vain, until he noticed a circular hole that sucked in algae and bubbles.

Had that hole swallowed his friend?

Charlie swam towards the black cavity and let the tunnel suck him in. As the tunnel narrowed down and the darkness intensified, Charlie realised he might never be able to go back. But it was now too late.

The tunnel wound from side to side, following the curves of the river.

Surprisingly, Charlie could breath under the water and, from where he was, he could hear a symphony. Triangles, harps and oboes sang as the heart of the tunnel pulled him deep and deeper, towards a round piece of wood. Large and consistent.

Charlie pushed the cover with his legs and he landed in a circular room, with a polished parquet that soothed his feet and blinding chandeliers that floated against a silvery wall paper. At the centre of the room, flames wriggled in a lonely chimney that displayed a scent of a flower he failed to identify.

As Charlie's distorted face reflected in the marble mantelpiece of the chimney, three signs with arrows appeared on it. They all hinted at different directions in the circular room, and indicated three different venues: the feast room, the rose arch and the glass menagerie.

"Chose one," a voice whispered and Charlie froze.

"Only one!" another specified.

Whose voices were these?

Before he could identify their origins, three doors appeared in the walls.

Charlie vaguely remembered Alicia's words about a feast, a rose corridor and majestic animals.

Would she have taken one of those doors?

If so, which one?

She said she didn't trust the hideous creatures but she also said she would attend their feasts. Charlie and Alicia both feared spiders and, thus, neither of them would pick the glass menagerie, that was too risky. The wisest seemed to be the rose corridor.

Without much conviction, Charlie pushed the door towards the rose arch and felt his body spin upside down a couple of times before he landed on a char soil where dreary trees stood, isolated and tired.

Amidst the grey lines of trees throned, sparkling, an arch of intertwining pink and creme roses.

As Charlie progressed through the arch, the symphony from the tunnel resumed with each rose playing a different note and each layer of the rose net a different instrument. The air grew more sophisticated with each step he took and it resonated at the back of his skull, threatening to split it into two at any time.

The arch wound up and down, right and left, and, as Charlie walked, his throat dried up as if the roses absorbed the water in his body. He had to pause every two steps, panting, to be able to push forward.

And the more he pushed, the more blurred his vision.

The roses slowly faded into amorphous balls and the arch into a vulgar line. Charlie's knees shook and he collapsed, unable to hold onto the remains of the arch.

"Are you lost my dear?" a soft voice asked and Charlie recognised the eyes of the librarian - the one who had banned Licia out of the library because her imagination was too wild. They were levitating in front of him.

He tried to answer but no sound came out so he nodded his head. He felt a cup reach his lips and a liquid run through his limbs and cheeks.

"There, there. Good boy."

"I'm ... my... friend... lost."

He could barely articulate between the words and, with his hand, he indicated Licia's height.

The levitating eyes frowned.

"You should stop feeding her crazy ideas."

"I don't feed... I ... friend..."

"You have better things to do."

"Everybody... mock... her." His hands sought for the cup and she handed it to him, he drank more of the liquid that now tasted of honey. "She... alone. She... little."

"Why would you care?"

"I... friend...."

She laughed.

"You friend? Or you guilty?"

What?

"Doesn't she remind you of someone? Someone you mocked?"

"I don't... mock... I... good friend."

"You have a short memory, young boy."

She touched the back of his skull and a face appeared in his mind. He wore glasses and stood on a stall, as short as Alicia.

What was his name?

Did he even have a name?

The little boy was standing in front of a blackboard and the class shouted and laughed. But Charlie couldn't remember more. He saw that face again on a pitch. With a ball heading straight into his direction. Had he thrown it?

"I never laughed ... at him..."

"You never helped him."

Charlie tried to reply but he felt something tickling in his throat, something thin and sharp that climbed and reached his glottis. He coughed and coughed as the thing pursued its journey tranquilly through his mouth and to his lips, forcing it open.

"I... "

As his mouth open, spiders and spiders poured out onto the char soil like a stream.

Charlie watched petrified the ocean of creatures, unable to scream for help, morph into glass balls. As they hit the ground they shattered into particles that covered the remaining of the path under the rose corridor.

The path that he thought would take him out of the castle was now forbidden to him.

He looked up at the eyes only to meet their stern dart.

Had he ever hurt that little boy ? Why did he have to go through this? He had never harmed anyone.

As Charlie recalled his anonymous face and Alicia, who he might never see again, tears started to fall down his cheeks. Salty and big. They fell down like a torrent of water that he couldn't control as he sobbed and shook.

The torrent grew and grew, filling up the space, just like a tide that comes and goes only to further inflate. It rose, pumped by the unidentifiable feeling of guilt inside of him and it swept the particles of glass off the char soil, as if dissolving them. The tide kept rising up, towards the top of the trees, towards the invisible sky that covered the castle. It lifted Charlie's huddled body, centimetre by centimetre, slowly, slowly, as it carried it forward.

*

"Wow! Did you see the castle?" Licia's voice shouted as she ran towards him.

Charlie rose up from the river, coughing and shaking. His lungs full yet dry. He laid on the bank facing the grey sky, water dripping down his face and chilled body.

Near his ears, the bubbles still grew and popped, surging up from the depths of the river. From that concealed castle. His heart pounded in his chest, its rhythm resonating in his back against the hard soil.

If only he could remember the name of that little boy.

"Are you okay?" Licia said squatting down next to him with her two bunches of hair peeking up towards the sky.

Charlie looked up at her without saying a word and Licia rubbed his arm with her little hand.

She shook her head with a grave pout.

"Told you, Charlie, that castle is full of monsters."