Chapter 1: Power Gained
Chapter Text
Maleficent sat poised in a wicker peacock chair in the corner of the large castle bathroom. The sing-song noise of water filling the copper bathtub, (which she’d had retrofitted with indoor plumbing a century prior), harmonized with the pitter patter of the gentle rain shower against the huge stained glass window. Despite the rain, warm light streamed in through the stained glass providing colorful natural light while maintaining bathers' privacy. Although the window was the main source of light in the room, several large candles burned in their sconces on the opposite wall, where the Victorian-style wallpaper had curled and peeled in reaction to the heat of the candles over time. The castle was a cacophony of decorating styles from different eras, always being renovated, never being finished.
Maleficent watched her human child undress for his bath with a sense of pride, observing how tall he was now. He'd lost all the curves and dimples of a toddler, but still had some baby fat filling out his form.
“Come here, let me put your hair up,” she said.
Riku came to stand in front of her, turning his back to her automatically as he’d become accustomed to doing when she beckoned him. As she performed the task she admired his shoulder-length silver hair that would forever signify his bond with her. Riku hadn’t been born with silver hair, it was only after Maleficent blessed him with her dark magic that it had lost its melanin.
Riku was more than old enough to take baths by himself, but this wasn’t a regular bath, this bath was special. Today he would be learning ice magic.
Maleficent had already let Riku have some limited magical abilities, like the power over shadows, which he mostly used to entertain himself and play practical jokes on the castle servants. She’d also taught him a few minor spells to use in order to clean up after himself. “Places, everyone!” Riku took great pleasure in commanding his toys, and then watching them whisk themselves promptly to their assigned spots.
But recently he’d been leaving his toys out more frequently, and when reprimanded he would begrudgingly cast the spell with just enough oomph to get the toys limply floating themselves back into order.
Maleficent could sense that her little human was restless.
Riku wasn’t the first human child Maleficent had raised, but she was still surprised by the hunger that burned within some of them. Although many of her children had lived out their mortal lives content to serve as her pets, others had become greedy for power and left home in order to strike-out on their own. She reminisced on the times she’d been forced to discipline certain overly rebellious children and, on occasion, kill them.
Riku was at a point in his life that Maleficent had learned to cherish in her children, for it was always so short and fleeting. Standing on the edge of innocence, ready to leap into the void beyond with equal parts ignorance and eagerness. Before becoming jaded, when all their creeping suspicions about the world would be confirmed in moments of horrifying lucidity that they would carry as scars for the rest of their lives.
But Riku still (mostly) did as he was told, he still (occasionally) asked to be read to at night, and most importantly, he still trusted her. It was with a heart full of twisted glee that she awaited the moment when he would jump from that precipice.
“Just look at you,” Maleficent mused as she finished putting his hair in a high ponytail, and spun him around so as to look deeply into his turquoise eyes (which he had, in fact, been born with). His eyes were full of determination.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
“Yes!” Riku answered with an enthusiastic bob of his head.
Maleficent’s golden eyes narrowed and her thin lips twitched into a smile. She gave an affirming squeeze to his hands before letting go of him to turn her attention to the bathtub, which was now full. After adjusting the valves to stop the flow of water, she held back the drape of her long sleeve with one hand while she leaned and touched the surface of the water with her spider-like fingers.
It was cold, but not nearly cold enough. “Freeze,” she commanded.
Riku quickly climbed up onto the wooden stool that sat next to the large tub so he could watch the magic happen. He gripped the edge of the tub, leaning in with rapt attention as veins of ice crystals fanned out from where Maleficent had touched the surface of the water. Although he had witnessed his mother perform magic on many occasions, it was still novel enough that he liked to get a front row seat whenever possible. Giddiness filled him at the realization that soon he would be able to do ice magic, just like his mom!
The thin layer of ice raced across the water until it reached the far edge of the tub where frost continued to crawl up the side of the tub. Maleficent chuckled when Riku withdrew his hands from the copper and looked at them as if he’d been burned.
“Cold and heat can feel the same,” Maleficent explained, interpreting her son’s reaction to what he’d just felt.
“But, they’re opposites!” Riku asserted.
“Opposites can have a great deal in common,” she said with a mysterious smile.
Although his brow was furrowed, Riku nodded. His gaze slid to the frozen surface where the sheet of ice glinted, reflecting specks of color from the stained glass window. The rain was picking up, dimming the natural light in the bathroom.
Maleficent retrieved her staff from where it leaned next to her chair, and held it so that the golden sphere on top was hovering just above the frozen expanse of the bathtub. Using the heavy implement she tapped the surface with a ‘thwack’ and the ice shattered so that the tub was full of floating shards. Riku stared at the fragments undulating on the surface, still drifting in formation along the fault lines where they had been fractured.
“Well, go on child, get in,” Maleficent prompted.
Riku stuffed his hesitation down as hard and as far as he could and swung his leg up and over the edge. He winced when the cold copper came in contact with his inner thigh, but forced himself to plunge the lower half of his leg into the bath– and immediately yanked it back out. His head whipped around to look at Maleficent with wide surprised eyes. He’d never thought of ice water as something that would be able to hurt like that!
Maleficent didn’t react but for a faint expression of sympathy wrinkling her forehead. “Did you know that your sword master Shan Yu takes ice baths after he trains?” she asked as she casually started to tie the pointed sleeves of her long black robes into two large knots.
“He does?” Riku asked suspiciously.
“Yes,” Maleficent nodded in confirmation as she rolled the fabric of her sleeves over the knots, pushing them back so that her pale forearms were exposed. “If you do well, I’ll tell him how grown up you are and maybe he’ll finally let you have that sword you want so much.”
Riku’s eyes lit up. Oh, how he’d dreamed of having a real sword! A sword with a blade that could cut and stab, not that stupid wooden toy that was obviously for babies. He imagined showing his shiny new sword to Sora and Kairi the following summer, and pictured their twin expressions of reverence as he strutted around and expertly swung the weapon. “Don’t worry,” he would tell them, “I know how to use it.”
Sensing Riku’s resolve hardening, Maleficent stood to help him into the tub. “Come on, I’ll help you just in case you get cold feet again,” she said with a smirk, taking his elbow in order to help him step safely from the stool over the edge of the tub.
Her joke was completely lost on Riku who gasped at the sensation of the ice water, which felt like sharp glass cutting him everywhere that it touched. He immediately began to shiver as his mother eased him in, and he scrambled for purchase against the slick copper to try and keep his upper body elevated above the surface of the water. Maleficent gripped him by the shoulders in order to keep him from propelling himself back out of the tub.
“It’s too cold!” came Riku’s panicked cry. He grabbed for the side of the tub to try and pull himself out, but Maleficent held him in place with a vice-like grip.
“Don’t be cowardly!” she reprimanded sharply.
The pain from the ice water was so strange and new that Maleficent’s nails digging into his skin went unnoticed as Riku struggled. He imagined it must be similar to how being skinned alive would feel; his flesh was being shredded like a lemon being raked over a zester.
Riku’s entire world narrowed to a singular overpowering need to escape.
“It hurts!” he cried, sending water sloshing out of the tub as he thrashed in the icy flames. His howls were accompanied by the sounds of chunks of ice smashing and skidding across the tile floor. Riku wailed as it felt like fire was consuming him layer by layer, burning through his flesh and eating through his muscles and nerves.
“Be still, child!” Maleficent bellowed. Her voice echoed off the stone walls of the bathroom. She could easily overpower the struggling boy with her robust strength, although she rarely had to exert it when she was not in her dragon form.
A thunderclap rang out, rattling the stained glass window and startling Riku who’s fit came to a sudden halt. The rain that had been building into a storm all morning had finally announced itself. As the clap of thunder faded into a rumble Riku felt more clear headed. Although still shivering uncontrollably he released his white knuckle grip on the edge of the tub and surrendered himself to the bath.
“That’s better,” Maleficent murmured, gently but firmly guiding Riku to lay back until he was fully immersed in the water except for his head.
All he could hear were the now-heavy sheets of rain pelting the window, his own half-strangled crying, and the hollow clanking of broken ice that had been tossed asunder in the wake of his tantrum as they floated around him like tiny icebergs. It felt like impossibly long thin needles were piercing through every part of him, but the fat hot tears rolling down his face felt good. He tried to direct his choked sobbing into some semblance of deep breathing.
“Good,” Maleficent praised. “Now, repeat the spell exactly as you were taught.”
At first Riku wasn’t sure he was going to be able to speak at all, even if he could remember the spell he’d been practicing all week. As he concentrated, his mouth began to form the words that were rising up from the back of his mind, but he was so tense that he could barely squeeze them out from his tight jaw and spasming throat.
“Accept the cold,” Maleficent whispered, lightly running her finger nails along his scalp and through his ponytail, a gesture which she’d used to soothe him since he was a baby. “Let it become you.”
Riku tried to relax as much as possible, even though he couldn’t stop himself from continuing to violently shiver as alternating waves of ice and fire washed over him. If he squirmed too much Maleficent would still him with a solid grip on the base of his ponytail, reminding him to be calm as she continued to run her nails along his scalp with her other hand.
“Keep repeating the spell. It will get easier,” she promised.
He repeated the spell over and over, punctuated by pained moans, desperate to ease the ache that was so much deeper and all consuming than anything he’d ever felt before.
Slowly but surely the sharpness mellowed into a static of pinpricks, cocooning him in something akin to numbness. As the pain in his extremities began to dull Riku was grateful, even though they felt like they had been replaced with wool-stuffed tubes that were sewn to his torso. Wondering if he was through the worst of it, Riku started to feel strangely relaxed.
I’m gonna make it, he thought distantly.
He tried to imagine what Master Shan Yu’s face would look like when his mother reported on her son’s good behavior. Will he be proud of me? Riku wondered. He pictured his sword master presenting him with a Chinese dao. It was so clear he could almost feel the perfectly balanced weight of it in his hand. It was flat and thick, widening instead of tapering as it curved upwards ever so slightly towards the tip. In his imagination Sora and Kairi were there watching and cheering him on as he received it. His mother stood tall next to him, smiling with a warmth that he’d never seen on her face in real life.
The spell was filling his mind so clearly it was as if he could feel the words as tangible objects. Not only could he see the words themselves, but somehow he could see the meaning behind the words too. “Seal this moment in your heart,” came Maleficent’s voice from somewhere far away and all around him.
In a flash of clarity that he would not be able to explain or reproduce thereafter, everything crystallized into a perfect logical harmony. If his eyes hadn’t been so tightly shut Riku would have noticed the eerie green light that now lit him from below, as if the bottom of the bathtub was a portal to another dimension.
Riku screamed when it felt like hot knives were carving into his bones. His insides felt like they had been replaced with a frozen latticework that was tightening and cinching down on his chest. It felt like hundreds of needles so tightly packed around his heart that although they pressed in sharply on all sides, no single point had yet pierced through.
The pressure got stronger, and hotter, and harder, until it felt like his heart was going to explode. He almost wished it would explode just to alleviate the awful pressure. When the points finally pierced his heart all at once, white hot pain filled his entire consciousness.
Then it was dark.
The dark felt good.
He wasn’t shivering anymore, his heart didn’t hurt anymore, he wasn’t fighting for air anymore. In fact, he didn’t feel winded at all! He was floating down a gentle river, more buoyant than if he'd been in regular water. It was like floating in syrup, or fudge, or cotton candy.
A candy river, Riku thought. He’d have to tell Sora about this one.
—
Sora was laughing wildly while running up and down the beach pretending the surf was made of hot lava. He would tear away as it rushed up towards him, staying just far enough ahead of it so that it would almost caress his heels, only to turn and chase it as it was sucked back out again. Whenever he was too slow and the 'lava' touched him he would squeal and leap from one foot to the other in a frantic hopping dance as if he'd been burned. All the while he would keep looking over at Riku to see if he was making him laugh where he sat further up the beach working on the sand castle that they had started together.
Riku was laughing even though he was kind of annoyed because he had ended up building it mostly by himself after Sora had gotten distracted by the rising tide. “Come help with the castle!” Riku called to him.
"It's just gonna get knocked over by the tide soon anyway!" Sora responded.
"So what?!" Riku yelled back.
Sora turned and trotted back towards Riku, the tide crashing over the breakers of his tan legs as the lava was forgotten about. “All our hard work will be ruined!" Sora whined, plopping down in the sand next to him while panting from exertion.
"Don't you mean all MY hard work will be ruined?" Riku retorted.
"Aw c'mon," was all Sora said while he began to examine the progress Riku had made while he’d been away. He started collecting wet sand and packing it in clumps around the far side of the sand castle.
“Are you building a moat?” Riku asked.
"I’m building a wall," Sora said.
Riku joined him in constructing a low wall to stand between the ocean and the castle. After they finished they stood back and brushed the sand off their hands, admiring their work as if their 1/2 ft wide by 3 ft tall sand wall wouldn't crumble at the first moderate wave that touched it.
All the time they’d been working the tide had been creeping closer and closer. Sora screeched, this time in genuine surprise, when the cold water rushed over his feet. "Nooo!" he cried as the tide made quick work of their retaining wall before moving on to hollow out the entire western wing of the castle.
A wild feeling came over Riku and he brutally kicked the other side of the castle wall down. Sora stared at him in shock before he broke into a grin and swung his arm in a half-punch-half-slap to knock down the remaining battlement. Soon the two of them were laughing and stomping through the remains of the castle, whooping and slinging underhanded handfuls of wet sand at each other.
"It's kinda fun to knock it down," Sora admitted through huffed breaths as their game came to an end.
"See?” Riku said matter of factly.
"I guess we'll just have to build another one!" Sora said cheerfully.
Riku smiled and nodded, taking one last look out at the endless, glittering ocean before they made their way further back up the beach to where they’d left their sandals and towels to keep them safe from the surf.
The hot sun was quickly drying them while they gathered their plastic buckets and shovels and shook the sand out of their towels.
“I’m hungry,” Sora remarked as they plodded through the loose hot sand towards the two wooden stakes that marked the edge of the trail leading back towards the beach houses.
Now that Sora mentioned it, Riku noticed that he was also hungry and asked if Sora wanted to go make sandwiches at his mom’s house to which Sora enthusiastically agreed.
Riku was excited to eat so that they could go back out and play some more. Maybe after that Sora could stay over, since Maleficent’s house was closer to the beachfront than Sora’s parents. Then they could go out with flashlights to chase the small crabs that came out in droves at night, scuttling along while the two boys shrieked and giggled and tried to catch them in their buckets (without hurting them of course, otherwise Sora would get upset).
Riku had just reached for his best friend's hand when Maleficent restarted his heart.
—
He wouldn’t remember being lifted out of the bath or being pulled into Maleficent’s lap. He wouldn’t remember the dream he’d just had, or was it a memory? All he would remember was being slammed into his body as all the pain he’d just experienced came washing back over him in an instant. His cry of shock came out only as a wheezing gasp while he convulsed in his mother’s strong arms. He clumsily fisted numb hands into her black robes as she held him to her breast.
“Shhh, you’re okay,” Maleficent told the shivering boy, rocking him with a gentle, even rhythm. She whispered soothing reassurances and stroked strands of cold wet hair off his forehead, tucking them behind his ears. His skin looked and felt like porcelain that was about to shatter.
Riku liked being held by his mother, even though he was several years past the age where she’d stopped picking him up. He remembered the betrayal he’d felt the day she told him he was too big for that anymore. He felt safe cradled in the folds of her garment.
“Do you know why you have silver hair, unlike other children?” Maleficent asked in a sweet dreamy voice. A voice she’d only really used with him as a baby, but would still very occasionally use to pacify him.
His teeth were chattering so hard that it was all he could do to shake his head ‘no’ in response.
“Because you’re special,” she said, tilting her head ever so slightly to place a kiss on the object of her affection as she continued to rock him. “Do you know why you’re so special?”
All of Riku’s remaining energy was being spent on holding his eyelids apart, gaze fixed on her pale face which, through his blurred vision, had become a smear of red lips and dark eyebrows.
“Why?” Riku managed to squeeze out.
“Because you’re mine,” she said softly, as if it were the most natural, simple fact in the world.
—
After tucking Riku into the warm bed that had been prepared for him, Maleficent left the castle servants to attend to him for the rest of the day. She could perform little healing magic to speak of and she did not like whining children. She knew that suffering had to run its course and when Riku was on the other side of it he would be that much stronger and more resilient. Someday he would thank her. Congratulating herself on her child rearing abilities, she went to the cellar to retrieve a bottle of wine before making her way to her private master suite where she intended to take the rest of the afternoon off.
Riku mostly slept while the servants warmed his blankets in rotation by spreading them on the stone hearth by the fireplace in the main living room. He felt so very tired that even sitting up to sip the hot cup of lemon water repeatedly offered to him was a task.
When he finally awoke for a little while in the evening there was warm milk with honey on his nightstand, which he drank gingerly despite being hungry. He still felt weak and nauseated but was clear-headed enough to want to get out of bed and try his new magic as soon as possible. Despite his eagerness, after getting up to use the bathroom he discovered that putting any weight on his legs ached terribly. He was so wobbly on them that he had to sit down to pee once he finally made it to the toilet.
After making it back to bed he took his frustrations out on the servants who watched over him. “Don’t be cross, young Lord,” the one with the pig-like nose told him. “Mistress expects you to make a full recovery by morning.”
The simple eating and drinking and going to the toilet one more time wore Riku out completely, and after that he quickly fell into a hard, deep, dreamless sleep for the rest of the night.
In the morning he did feel better, so much so that he forgot for a moment about the previous day's events. He made his way down to the great hall where there was usually the most activity and Riku could usually find someone to cook him some eggs. Maleficent was there barking orders on how she wanted the tables arranged and the hall decorated for the banquet she would be hosting tomorrow, of which she’d repeatedly reminded him.
“I know!” He said irritably, feeling more than a little resentful that she’d scarcely greeted him with a “good morning” and a warning to stay out of the helps way before she left for the day.
Riku spent all day outside, finding puddles that had been left over from the rain and freezing them.
As he practiced he quickly discovered the limits of his new magic abilities. Smaller puddles were much easier to freeze than larger ones, and even then, a lot of times it just ended up as slush rather than solid ice. He recalled the way the ice had raced across the surface of the bathtub from Maleficent’s freeze spell, realizing with dismay that performing a spell like that was still far outside of his capability.
The idea of being as good at magic as his mom seemed unimaginable, but the thought drove him to keep practicing.
—
The long shadows of twilight obscured where Maleficent stood just on the edge of the forest where the trees opened up to a small public park that, by the looks of it, the city had built during a time of affluence but had struggled to maintain over the years.
When Maleficent had arrived, there were still quite a few people enjoying the park even though the warm yellows and oranges from the setting sun were turning to deep reds and purples. A jogger, a couple with a dog, and a lone woman pushing a baby pram as she walked laps around the cement path that skirted the perimeter of the park.
Maleficent’s piercing yellow eyes were fixed on the woman with the baby carriage, who had now stopped to rest on a bench, turning the pram to face her as she gently rolled it forwards and back in a rocking motion. Maleficent’s enhanced hearing could clearly make out the woman’s soft hummed song as she soothed the baby contained within.
But the baby was not hers. It had been replaced with a fae. A fairy child who would look and sound just like her real baby.
Her real baby was fast asleep in Maleficent’s arms. She had cast a light sleeping spell on it to keep it silent and calm as she’d whisked it away with a little help from magic. As she fled, Maleficent paused on the edge of the forest, finding herself drawn to observe its mother for just a few moments longer. There was something about the way she gazed so lovingly into the cradle of the pram.
The shadows hid the sinister smile that bent Maleficent’s thin crimson lips as she looked down at the sleeping baby in her arms. It was soft and fragile, full of warm blood and innocence. Deep inside Maleficent something stirred as she remembered taking Riku from his mother in much the same way.
—
Back at the castle, Riku sat quietly in one of his favorite spots. Maleficent called it her winter home or her family estate, but to Riku it would always be the castle he grew up in. Over the years he’d found many spots where he could sit and observe the goings on around the castle while still remaining relatively unobserved. This spot was a blue velvet upholstered chair that was the lone decoration at the end of one of the long hallways that spider-webbed out from the grand entryway.
One of Riku’s earliest memories is of sitting in this exact chair while watching his mother light the candles in the wall sconces that lined these hallways. It was also the first time he could recall seeing her perform magic. Through the curious eyes of a toddler, the way the candles flared to life all at once in a hot blaze was frightening but marvelous at the same time.
For a while they had made it a nightly ritual for Maleficent to place Riku in the chair where he liked to watch his mother bring the candles alive each night. Since then, the chair had become one of his favorite perches where he took comfort in the warm glow brightening the chilly stone hallway, even if Maleficent and he hadn’t done this ritual together in several years.
She now left it to her underlings to light the candles one by one while she attended to more important things.
Riku sat perched in the chair with his knees drawn up to his chest, absently rubbing his bare feet on the velvet upholstery while pondering the unfairness of childhood.
He wasn’t as happy as he thought he’d be now that he could do ice magic. It was cool and all (haha) but now that he could do it he hadn’t found it to come much in handy. He was looking forward to his next lesson with Master Shan Yu, who would surely show him how to incorporate it into fighting, because he couldn’t see much other use for it outside of chilling a drink or making pipes explode.
Shan Yu would be one of the guests arriving for the banquet, but he didn’t know exactly when. Maleficent had hosted several other events that Riku could remember, and guests would sometimes begin arriving the night preceding the event. Even though it was getting late into the evening guests could start arriving any time now.
He perked up when one side of the large front double doors creaked open, but slumped when he recognized that it was just his mother’s silhouette slipping through the door.
Riku almost greeted her out loud, but the words froze in his throat as she turned and he could see that she was cradling something in her arms. Riku held very still while watching Maleficent quietly ease the heavy door shut behind her and, without a single glance at Riku, walked briskly in the direction of her private chambers.
A dozen thoughts flashed through Riku’s mind. Was she adopting a new baby? Why hadn’t she told him about it? Was it human? He fought against the feeling of hurt cinching down on his heart. He had to get a better look at whatever it was.
Not wanting to follow Maleficent directly, Riku made his way to the staircase where he was still small enough to squeeze through a spot in the railings half-way up. From there he could climb out onto a large wooden beam that stretched across the length of the ceiling, allowing him to quickly get from one hallway to another by circumventing the walls completely. Up here he could see all the way down the hall to where Maleficent’s bedroom suite was located. He crouched on the beam straining to hear any sound from behind the closed bedroom doors that might indicate the presence of a baby. When Maleficent finally emerged Riku held as still as possible, barely daring to breathe as he waited for the sharp ‘clack clack’ of her heels to round the corner.
He shimmied along the beam until he could align himself with the top edge of one of the marble statues lining the hallway. Stretching out one leg that had started to cramp from crouching for so long he was barely able to reach the top of its head to use as a foothold.
As he felt the statue wobble dangerously under him he half-jumped-half-fell the last few feet to the stone floor where he flailed but managed to stick his landing. He was getting better at sticking his landings during sessions with Master Shan Yu, when his teacher would pick him up and throw him a short distance in order to practice being thrown during a fight. The first time his Master had tossed him into a pile of leaves he’d emerged laughing and begging to be thrown again, but he’d quickly learned never to giggle in the presence of Master Shan Yu. It was one of the many unspoken rules that Riku had filed away on a long list of weird things that made adults upset.
Riku turned the large tarnished metal handle with a ‘click’ and leaned his body weight into the heavy door which gave with a ‘creak’. His heart leapt. It was open!
Pushing it ajar just wide enough to slip inside, he then leaned against it with his back to shut it quietly behind him. He’d snuck into Maleficent’s room only once before, and that was to see if he could find the stash of Halloween candy she’d taken from him after the first time he’d ever been allowed to go trick-or-treating on the islands with Sora.
Maleficent’s room was a suite made up of several different rooms divided by archways. It had the appearance of a space well lived in. Clothes draped over the furniture along with crumpled throw blankets, used cups and plates teetered precariously on the edges of the furniture. The large table in the corner was crammed with books, stacks of paper, writing quills, and trinkets. Bundles of dried plants hung along one wall while along another hung a variety of animal skins and some things that Riku didn’t want to inspect any closer. The shelves lining the other walls contained rows of glass vials, jars, and tins of every shape and size.
A soft noise from around the corner to the next room made him jump even though he knew it was probably the baby. He carefully stepped through the mess to make his way to the baby cradle he knew had to be somewhere. He knew it would be there because it had once been his cradle. If he concentrated very hard, he could imagine the feeling of gliding back and forth, nestled safely in the bedding of soft blankets that felt like clouds tucked around him.
Riku held his breath as he approached, following another quiet murmur from the infant. As he drew near to the edge of the tall cradle, he could feel the guilt of what he was doing coming off of him in waves, as if the baby would know that he wasn’t supposed to be there. Slowly Riku stood on his tip toes and peeked over the edge of the polished wooden frame of the cradle.
There lay the baby, still asleep, long delicate eyelashes gracing what looked like the pinkest, softest skin Riku had ever seen. It certainly looks human, he thought. He stood entranced, watching as its tiny body rose and fell with gentle breaths. Maleficent had said he was special, so why did she want another human child?
When the baby let out a gurgling coo and began to squirm, Riku startled and drew back. But after a few moments it didn’t open its eyes, and Riku let out the breath he’d been holding in a huffed laugh at his own jumpiness.
As Riku gazed at the baby a sense of calm started to come over him. It occurred to him that maybe Maleficent hadn’t told him about the new baby because she was keeping it as a surprise to reveal to him along with all the other guests at the banquet. Although he felt a pang of hurt at the idea that his mother hadn’t trusted him enough to keep it a secret, he knew that’s just how grown-ups were.
Riku supposed he wouldn’t mind having a sibling to keep him company, after all it could get very lonely here. He imagined teaching sword fighting to a little brother, or gardening alongside a little sister. In his fantasy the faces of his friends Sora and Kairi took the place of his future sibling.
Surely it wouldn’t hurt to just take a quick peek at what was under the baby blanket to find out if it was a boy or a girl…
Standing all the way up on his tippy toes Riku reached over the edge of the cradle and grasped the edge of the blanket, his eyes continuously flicking up to the baby’s sleeping face as he cautiously pulled it back.
Suddenly his body weight caused the cradle to lurch to one side, swinging on its hinges. Riku yanked his arm back, reeling as a wail arose from the baby. He bolted from the room, only pausing for a second to assure the bedroom door didn’t slam so loudly as to signal his presence to anyone nearby. In a split second decision he made a run for it down the main hallway.
He skidded around a corner near the kitchen and hid himself at the sound of Maleficent’s voice. Surely she’d heard him! He gulped in air as quietly as possible as he strained to hear what she was saying. He ascertained that she was talking to her head chef, no doubt about arrangements for the banquet.
“...And I want the suckling served on a bed of roasted fruit and herbs,” came Maleficent’s resounding voice.
“As you wish, we shall begin preparations post haste!” the chef responded, voice high and cracking with deference.
“Everything must be perfect!” Maleficent said.
“Yes, of course, Mistress!” the chef affirmed.
Riku’s racing heart finally slowed down once he could tell Maleficent didn’t seem to be aware that anything was amiss.
He walked back to his room as quickly as possible without breaking into a run. There he spent the rest of the night wrestling with his feelings as they swung between jealousy and excitement, bitterness and optimism before exhausting himself and falling asleep.
Chapter 2: Innocence Lost
Summary:
Riku tries to get his mom to tell him about the secret infant he knows she’s hiding in her bedroom, but is frustrated in his attempts. He doesn’t have much time to dwell on his woes however, because guests have started arriving for the banquet being hosted at the castle that evening. As various Disney villains arrive Riku ends up babysitting the Tremaine sisters while the adults attend a dark magic ceremony. Finally it’s time for the banquet where Riku believes his mother has been waiting to reveal a new member of their family. When the banquet commences a secret is indeed revealed, but not how Riku had anticipated. Instead of celebrating along with everyone else Riku finds himself hiding in the castle rafters to contemplate the horrifying discovery that’s come to light.
Notes:
I also drew some fanart to go with one of the more fun parts of this chapter --
Direct link: https://i.postimg.cc/52z1MLpG/IMG-1496.jpg
Chapter Text
The next morning Riku didn’t have much time to be distracted by thoughts of his mysterious new sibling. He awoke early to the roaring sound of a ship’s engines and jumped out of bed to run to the window in time to see a vessel landing in the distance. The open fields that were part of the many acres of land behind the castle served as landing pads for guests' private spaceships. He recognized the ship currently landing as Shan Yu’s.
He couldn't wait to tell his sword master about his newly acquired ice powers, and hoped that he would get some time to train with him, even though he knew that wasn’t the purpose of this visit. He’d proven that he could wield ice magic, and Maleficent had promised to talk to Shan Yu about getting Riku a sword. He felt that his need to be stronger was even more pressing now that there was a new member of his family in the castle. What if it fell to Riku to protect the infant? He couldn’t very well do that with his wooden sword and limited magical abilities. He imagined a scenario in which thieves snuck into the castle and he distracted them with shadow play and then knocked them over the head with his sword. At the very least while they were stunned he could freeze their eyeballs and that would slow them down. He shuddered at the thought but was also proud of his own resourcefulness.
As eagerly as he was anticipating talking to Shan Yu, he was equally so for Maleficent to reveal the adoption of the new baby. He felt genuinely excited now that he was sure that his mother had invited all of her friends so that she could introduce them to the new member of their family.
Maleficent liked to choose Riku’s clothes for him when her friends came over, so he wasn’t surprised to find clothes laid out for him, but groaned when he saw that the centerpiece of the outfit was the silk vest he’d received last Christmas from Lady Tremaine. The presence of the vest confirmed that Lady Tremaine would be attending the banquet, most likely with her daughters Anastasia and Drizella, whom Riku found terribly annoying. Maleficent didn’t usually celebrate human holidays, but had forced Riku to write a thank you note anyway.
The silk vest featured a large print filigree in royal blue that was accented with delicate silver embroidery. To go under it was a button down shirt around the collar of which hung a pale silk bow for his neck. He begrudgingly pulled on the knee-high wool socks even though they were itchy, and stepped into the knickerbockers that ballooned out in a bell shape around his knees and then buttoned at his shins with two silver buttons, and finally the shiny leather shoes which he wasn’t supposed to play outside in.
He started to go downstairs but paused when he walked past the mirror. His hair was messy from restless sleep, and he’d left the bow around his neck untied. He looked like a little kid that didn’t know how to brush his hair or tie a bow. But, he thought, I do know how to do all those things.
Before he left his room that morning he stood in front of the mirror for a long time, fixing his hair and tying and retying his bow. It occurred to him that soon, he would be teaching a younger sibling how to do all these things, and the thought filled him with a feeling of pride.
Downstairs all the castle staff had been told to be present and available in order to help greet guests and tend to their needs as they arrived. The goblin-like creatures scurried to and fro as they tried to fulfill the directions they’d been given, and Maleficent had even transformed her raven Diablo into his human form in order to help. Diablo acknowledged Riku with a nod, he didn’t talk much in this form but he certainly looked dignified with his thick black hair slicked back and a butler uniform that included a silk vest similar to Riku’s.
“There you are, come here,” Maleficent said, waving Riku over and bending to adjust the ribbon on his neck and straighten out his vest with a few firm tugs.
“Good morning,” Riku said. He still felt guilty for knowing something that he wasn’t supposed to, but he was hopeful that his mom was going to come clean with him about the baby before she told everyone else.
“Did you sleep well?” Maleficent asked.
“Good, thank you Mother,” Riku answered, trying not to cringe as she licked her thumb and smoothed down some of the stray hairs around his temples. “And you?”
“Like a baby,” Maleficent said.
Riku stiffened, wondering if she was about to spill everything, but she merely stood and proceeded to remind him for the umpteenth time to make himself available but to not be a nuisance. The moment for her to tell him the truth was quickly passing and Riku was getting increasingly agitated.
“Good thing there aren’t more children to get in the way,” Riku mumbled crossly before he could stop himself.
Maleficent’s eyes narrowed and for a moment Riku’s breath caught, afraid he’d given himself away, but then his mother’s attention was redirected by the sound of breaking glass. Two of the goblins were struggling under the weight of a long wooden table they were moving into the main dining hall.
“Be careful you imbeciles!” Maleficent yelled, making her way over to them while barking directions.
Riku’s tummy grumbled and he was suddenly aware of the delicious scent of food preparation already well underway for the evening’s banquet. He made his way to the kitchen from where the sound of many voices and clanking dishes greeted him as he rounded the corner and almost ran head-first into the head chef.
“Out!” he said, as he resumed his trajectory towards the marble countertops where he set the crust he was holding to cool along with about a half dozen others, no doubt ready to be filled with various sweet and savory fillings.
“But I’m hungry,” Riku complained, continuing to linger in the doorway.
Riku’s stomach longed for pastries and spiced meats that he knew were being prepared there, and the thought of having to wait until dinnertime sounded like torture.
“There’ll be food with afternoon tea,” the chef said, shooing Riku away.
When Riku got back to the main entryway Diablo was bowing and gesturing to Shan Yu in welcome. Whenever Shan Yu visited he spent most of his time using the outlying sparsely wooded hills as makeshift training grounds, which often left the area looking like a small battle had taken place there.
His teacher was intimidating to say the least. If Riku stood toe to toe with the man he’d only come up to his waist, and if he looked up he could barely see his teacher's face over the man’s mountainous pecs. Riku was giddy with the very real possibility that he might finally get a sword, (even more so than he had been about getting ice magic), but he knew better than to go annoying the war lord immediately upon his arrival. He made sure to greet Shan Yu with a deep bow, but was disappointed when his teacher merely returned it with a grunt and a slight inclination of his head.
Next to arrive was a loquacious man with a blue flame that floated on top of his head like a toupe with a life of its own. Catching Riku staring at him, the man’s eyes narrowed. “Whaddya lookin at?” he asked sharply.
“I…uh,” Riku stuttered.
“This is my son, Riku,” Maleficent said, gesturing to Riku, as if that summed him up completely.
“Ah, so you’re the one who’s been keeping my old friend from visiting the underworld this past decade. The name’s Hades,” he said, leaning down to shake Riku’s hand who tried not to recoil at the feeling of Hades’s cold gray skin.
“Nice to meet you,” Riku managed to say, remembering the practiced greeting for which Maleficent rewarded him with a satisfied nod of her head before she took Hades by the elbow and turned them both to walk towards the grand stairway.
Soon the castle was buzzing with activity as more guests arrived. A tall serious man in a turban and carrying a staff with a rather noisy parrot perched on it. A large jovial figure wearing a burlap sack that Riku could’ve sworn he saw a spider crawl out of. A talking lion followed by a small pack of hyenas who’s shrill laughter bounced around unsettlingly in the large stone hallways. A woman who reminded Riku of his mother arrived wearing dark robes, a crown, and a severe glower.
Diablo studiously greeted each of them and, with his limited vocabulary, invited them to make themselves at home.
Throughout the day Riku continued trying to get Maleficent’s attention, and to somehow get her and Shan Yu in the same room at the same time. But she was kept busy by a constant stream of guests who wanted to converse with her.
At this rate they’re never going to talk, Riku thought irritably.
He grew increasingly gloomy as it became clear that his mom was not going to tell him about the baby, (at least not before she told everyone at dinner), and that her talking to Shan Yu on his behalf didn’t even seem to be on her radar. He tried to be patient by telling himself that everything would be resolved at dinner when she presented his new sibling. After that they would all naturally see the wisdom in giving Riku his sword and finally he wouldn’t be the baby anymore.
As the morning turned to early afternoon Lady Tremaine and her daughters Drizella and Anastasia arrived, along with more suitcases than they could possibly need for one night. Each of the sisters curtsied to Riku and he bowed in return, evoking a swell of tittering from the adults.
“It’s soooo nice to see you again Riku,” said Anastasia, the younger of the sisters. She held out her hand clearly expecting Riku to kiss it. When he did not she withdrew it with a ‘hmph’ earning a snicker from Drizella, the elder sister.
“She would not shut up about you the whole trip,” said Drizella.
“Drizella!” Anastasia protested giving her sister a shove.
“My girls aren’t shy about what they want,” commented Lady Tremaine.
“He’s not always so coy,” said Maleficent with a chuckle, placing a slender hand on Riku’s shoulder. “My little Casanova likes to play hard to get.”
Riku shot his mom a glare, flushing at the implication even though he didn’t fully understand the reference.
“Girls! Remember your manners!” Lady Tremaine reprimanded her daughters, after Anastasia and Drizella started to argue about who would ‘get Riku’ first.
“How nice it’ll be to have children your age to play with,” Maleficent said in a tone of voice that Riku could tell was more of an order than an observation.
“Yes, Mother,” he agreed through gritted teeth, willing himself to show the restraint he knew adults valued as a sign of maturity.
The servants began taking the Tremaine family’s luggage to their room, and Anastasia and Drizella turned to follow the parade of suitcases up the grand staircase while bustles of their long dresses bounced enthusiastically behind them. They continued to whisper and giggle while sneaking glances back at Riku, who quickly whipped his head forward, outright scowling at the thought of being forced to “play” with them. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with them, but no matter what game they chose he knew it would entail them being bossy and loud.
As the sun finally started to set Maleficent gathered everyone in the main hallway.
Maleficent called for attention and addressed them in a deep, serious voice. “As the sun draws near the earth so shall we prepare for evening mass,” Maleficent began. “I shall lead us in a procession to the chapel. Following mass there will be a great feast in celebration of our renewed vows, and we shall reflect on our past and future triumphs–”
Maleficent’s speech was cut short by the sound of loud roaring motors coming from outside, making the walls rumble and the windows shake. Everyone rushed to the row of windows along the wall to look where a spaceship was landing, just barely missing the wooden trellis that marked the edge of the castle gardens and smashing flat a section of the blackberry brambles growing there.
“The fool!” Maleficent said, exasperated as she grabbed her staff and made for the door. The other guests trailing close behind her, everyone wanting to see who was arriving so audaciously.
Riku circumvented the bottleneck of bodies on the staircase by sliding down one of the polished-slick hand railings where he landed next to his mother who glared at him out of the corner of her eye but continued to walk full speed towards the front doors.
The ship landed in a spectacular display of multicolored lights that were extra bright in the light of the setting sun, giving the castle garden the feeling of an amusement park at twilight. The vessel doors opened to reveal a man standing dramatically backlit by the lights inside the ship. All Riku could tell from his silhouette was that he was wearing a top hat and a tailcoat.
The guests gasped and shielded their eyes as two bright spotlights mounted on the ship suddenly came on. Riku turned around to see that the ship's spotlights were acting as a projector against the castle wall, which served as a giant movie screen. The crowd ‘oohed and aahed’ at the images of monstrous faces that bounced around on the wall like a living pattern as they mean-mugged and grinned menacingly.
As the man descended the short ramp that had extended from his vessel, Riku could see that he wore a burgundy tailcoat accented by a bright red cumberbundt that matched the ribbon tied around his top hat, which was embroidered with a skull and crossbones. The guests cheered and applauded as the man took a low bow.
“That was so cool,” Riku said.
Maleficent scoffed. “It’s not real magic, he just talks to ghosts.”
“Ghosts?!” Riku replied louder than he’d meant to.
“Yes, and the rest is all shadow play,” she added. Despite her dismissiveness a smile hung from the corner of her upturned lip.
Having noticed the pair standing there, the man approached Riku and Maleficent. He removed his hat in order to bow deeply to Maleficent who offered him her hand which he took, grazing her knuckles with a polite kiss. “Thank you for your hospitality m’lady,” he said.
“Fashionably late as usual, Dr. Facilier,” Maleficent returned coolly.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said, ignoring her verbal jab.
Turning to Riku he saw the boy was standing there slack-jawed, still in awe of the light display. He’d never thought of using shadow’s in such a way before.
“Hey little man,” Dr. Facilier said in an easy going voice as he extended a warm hand to give Riku’s a solid shake.
“Did you enjoy the show?” Dr. Facilier asked.
“Yeah,” Riku said, nodding.
Dr. Facilier chuckled and tipped his top hat, but then with a quick flick of the wrist he rolled it off his head and down his arm, then reversed it so it rolled back up to his head again. He winked at Riku, who was delighted at the playful sleight of hand.
“Hey, watch this,” Riku said, wanting to show the doctor that he could do shadow magic too.
Looking around Riku considered the available shadow’s being cast by the now dimmed lights from the spaceship. Just like with his ice magic he could only perform tricks with smaller shadows, and it took him a moment to locate an accessible one.
He pantomimed closing his hand around it and once he felt the cool whisper of it against his palm he yanked it out of the air. He flung it as hard as he could so it whipped around the garden in a circle, causing a strobe light effect as if they were at a disco.
A few of the guests murmured and clapped politely and Dr. Facilier gave an impressed whistle.
“Looks like you’re on your way to being the next shadow man,” he said with a grin, which Riku enthusiastically returned.
Lady Tremaine approached and introduced herself to the newcomer, followed by her daughters who had seen Riku’s shadow display and he tried to ignore the fact that they were clearly whispering to each other about him.
“We shall resume our procession from here to the chapel,” Maleficent announced and then turned to Riku. “You are to take the Tremaine sisters and remain upstairs during mass. Then you will join us for dinner,” Maleficent instructed.
“That's not fair,” both Anastasia and Drizella whined.
“Don’t make a scene,” Lady Tremaine scolded. “Anyway you’d both be bored to death, you can barely sit through your own piano recitals,” she added condescendingly.
“But–” Riku started to protest too, but was cut short by a sharp glare from his mother.
“It’s because you're so mature now that I’m leaving you in charge,” she reassured him.
Riku reluctantly bid Anastasia and Drizella to follow him back upstairs where the servants were still cleaning up from afternoon tea.
The three children seated themselves at one of the small circular tables that were scattered across the rather large room.
“Would the Young Master and his lady friends like a cup of tea?” a servant asked.
Riku agreed just because it would give them something to do.
“Young Maaaster,” Drizella mimicked in a sing-song voice as the servant disappeared to fulfill Riku’s request.
“May I get you and your lady friends something to drink?” Anastasia said “lady friends” in her best high pitched snotty voice while flaring her nostrils before breaking character in order to laugh at her own hijinks.
Riku’s face flushed as the two girls burst into laughter.
“What?” He said angry at being mocked. “Don’t you have servants?”
“Of course we do,” Anastasia said, “but last year mother had to let most of the help go because–Ouch!”
Anastasia exclaimed as her sister kicked her under the table and shushed her very noticeably. “It’s just temporary,” Anastasia amended with a pout, but seemed chastised nonetheless.
The servant quickly returned with a tray holding three freshly brewed cups of hot water and a selection of tea along with sugar and cream. Riku took an inordinately long time to inspect the different teas before choosing one, and placed it in his hot water with much more focus and care than necessary in an attempt to avoid the awkward silence.
Anastasia huffed. “I’m bored,” she complained. “Let’s play house!”
Drizella rolled her eyes at her younger sister and reached across the table to drag the bowl of sugar towards herself.
“Whaaat?” Anastasia whined at her sister’s response.
“Playing house is for dumb little kids,” Drizella chastised.
“You’re a dumb little kid!”
“Not as dumb as you!”
“Actually, it’s fine,” Riku interrupted suddenly, surprising himself but successfully putting a stop to the argument.
“See?” Anastasia said, sticking out her tongue at her sister and jumping up out of her chair. "Let's pretend we’re all going out to a fancy dinner tonight!”
“We are going to a fancy dinner tonight, stupid.” Drizella said with her head propped on her hand while she heaped sugar into her tea.
“I know that!” Anastasia snapped, “but this one is different. We’re going to a ball being held by the prince at his castle! He’s looking for the most beautiful and eligible bride in the kingdom.”
“Let me guess, Riku will be the prince so you can pretend to marry him,” Drizella said flatly.
Anastasia’s face reddened and she shot daggers at her sister.
“I knew it,” Drizella said haughtily. "But guess what? Mother said he’s gonna marry me because I’m older.”
“Nuh uh,” Anastasia said. “He doesn’t wanna marry an ugly old hag!”
“I’m only one year older than you!” Drizella responded, wacking her sister on the arm.
“I’m not marrying either of you!” Riku spoke up loudly and firmly enough to cause the girls to fall silent if only for a moment. Riku crossed his arms and nodded firmly. Even though he'd been getting increasingly self conscious with the turn this conversation had taken, he was kind of enjoying being the center of their attention. He would never have admitted it, but it was nice to have company for once.
“Or, maaaybe,” Drizella teased, “he wants the prince for himself.” Drizella waggled her eyebrows and both girls burst into laughter. But Riku didn’t respond except for a deepening in the furrow of his brow and a reddening of his cheeks.
Observing Riku’s reaction, Drizella interrupted her own laugh with an exclamation, "OH!” Her eyes widened. “I think you DO want to marry a prince.”
She looked between Riku and her younger sister as a grin crept over her face before the two girls burst into a fresh wave of venomous laughter.
“Shut up!” Riku yelled, getting the attention of the servant who, after giving them their tea, was across the room tending to something or another. “I do not…” Riku added in a much quieter and entirely unconvincing voice.
“Oookay then,” Anastasia said, still smirking after a few moments of Riku seeming to have rendered himself speechless. “All three of us will go together. Me and Drizella will help you get ready!”
“I don’t think–” Riku was cut off as Anastasia rounded the small table, reaching for his hair and ignoring his attempts to dodge her with surprising agility. Anastasia attached herself to Riku’s hair as if taking a bull by the horns, and began separating it into three sections to braid while humming loudly and off-tune to herself.
“Be glad you don’t have a little sister,” Drizella said to Riku, rolling her eyes. Riku momentarily froze, wondering if there was any way she could possibly know about the baby, but after a few moments of Anastasia unceremoniously raking her sweat-dampened fingers through his hair, he decided she couldn't possibly. Yet, the comment had somehow made him want to see if he could put up with having a little sister. He’d started to see the whole ordeal as a kind of challenge. After all, he knew that girls loved to do this kind of thing.
Riku thought back to last summer when he’d accompanied Sora to Kairi’s house. Her father was a friendly, outspoken man, and had graciously welcomed Riku into their home which was filled with various art objects that reflected the history and culture of the Destiny Archipelago. Kairi’s bedroom was all pink ruffles, stuffed animals, and more dolls than Riku had ever seen in his life– all with their hair in various states of being brushed and styled. Sora had immediately picked up a doll and Riku watched as the two of them fell effortlessly into a play session that was clearly familiar and practiced. At the time Riku had teased Sora for playing with Kairi’s dolls, but now he realized that Sora was actually acting with more maturity than himself. He felt self-conscious regret as he now saw his being made to play with the Tremaine sisters a kind of penance for his transgression.
By the time their parents had returned from mass, the sisters had each ended up braiding one side of Riku’s hair so that his hair was in two lopsided pigtails. Maleficent didn’t even seem to notice as she invited everyone to meet her in the dining hall.
The banquet hall was decorated with glowing green orbs that hung in every tall corner. Candles hung along every wall in enchanted sconces made of mist, while iridescent spider webs covered in dew drops dramatically reflected their glow. The triple tiered chandelier that hung in the center of the room added the main source of warmth and light to the eerie room.
The children were made to sit at their own table that was located off to the side of the one long table that seemed to exactly accommodate the number of guests. He swallowed his pride as even Jafar’s parrot sat on his master’s shoulder at the adult’s table which was set with the china that Riku wasn’t even allowed to touch. He wondered if having a younger sibling would mean he’d get promoted to the grown-up’s table, or if it meant he'd have to keep sitting at the kids table forever.
Servants began wheeling out carts of food, circling the main tables first and heaping servings of vegetables, breads, and other side dishes. The children’s plates were prepared by a servant without asking what or how much of anything they wanted.
Once everyone was settled with their plates full Maleficent raised her jeweled goblet in the air and called for attention.
“Thank you for joining me on this most sacred night. We have renewed our devotion in spirit, and now we shall seal the pact we made in the darkness with the flesh of the innocent,” Maleficent said, lifting her glass in a salute and then taking a deep drink.
The rest of the guests raised their glasses in return, loudly agreeing and drinking to her toast. As if on cue they all turned their attention to the head chef who was entering from the kitchen with another wheeled cart on top of which was perched a large silver domed tray obviously containing an eagerly anticipated main course.
“Our most honored guest,” the chef said, lifting the lid of the huge silver platter with a flourish.
Something about the roast looked unusual. The torso seemed too long to be a turkey, but too short to be a pig. Its limbs were crossed over its decapitated body, held in place with twine
“I’ll take a leg,” Hades said as the chef began clipping the twine with a pair of kitchen shears before using a small meat saw to begin carving up the roast based on the requests of each guest.
“You can’t have a whole leg to yourself!” protested Oogie Boogie.
“We’ll take the organ meat,” cackled the hyenas. All their voices were blurring into an indistinct kaleidoscope of sound as plates were passed around and the chef fulfilled the guests' requests.
Scar, who’d been perched in his chair throughout the meal with a rather dignified air, (despite using his massive jaws to eat straight off the plate), suddenly let out a roar and lunged for the roast. The chef wasn’t intimidated though, and immediately threw himself over the roast, holding onto it as he engaged the lion in a tug of war. The lion ripped free a large juicy hunk before falling back into his chair, sending the chef and the roast reeling backwards in the opposite direction with equal force. As the chef fell back he wrapped his arms around the roast, cradling it like a baby and successfully preventing it from hitting the floor, but not without one of the now severed limbs being flung high into the air from the force of it. The limb spun around and around until landing with a hefty thud on the children’s table directly in front of Riku.
All the children jumped and stared at the hunk of meat. It was the shape of a very small but human arm, and at the end of it he was able to make out five charred but distinct chubby fingers. All the blood drained from his face. “The baby…” he said, voice barely a whisper.
“What?” Anastasia squawked over the noisy room.
Riku didn’t remember getting up from the table but he was already on his feet. “That’s a baby!” He cried pointing at the limb on the table. “You’re all eating a baby!!” He yelled to the rest of the room.
Anastasia gawked at him with her mouth of half-chewed food hanging slack. The guests had all gotten quiet and were staring at him. He backed away, the backs of his knees bumping into the chair behind him. A loud cackling laugh rose from one of the hyenas, breaking the silence. Riku bolted for the door.
His first thought was to run away, but where would he go? The surrounding land might as well have been a moat, since he knew he couldn’t truly escape there. Instead he did the second thing he thought of and headed for one of his most secret hiding spots. He just needed time to think, to make some kind of a plan!
Heart pounding wildly, he took the stairs two at a time, slipping through the right spot in the railings onto the rafter. Climbing frantically from one rafter to another he went higher and higher, cursing when he got a splinter as he shimmied along one of the wooden beams as he’d almost reached his destination.
He flung himself into the concave knot located in a joint in one of the highest rafters that ran along the underside of a triangular gable. From there he could conceal himself and also see out a small window with a view of the castle’s front gates. He was too big to be completely concealed by the bowl shaped nest anymore, but he curled into it as best he could as he desperately tried to catch his breath and not sneeze due to all the dust he’d just stirred up.
He finally inspected the splinter wedged in the heel of his palm, wincing at its size more than the pain. At least there was a piece sticking out that he pinched carefully between the fingernails of the thumb and forefinger of his other hand. He pulled it straight backwards but his hand shook when he yanked it causing the tip to break off in his hand. He bit back a cry of pain and frustration and flung the portion he’d managed to pull free over the edge of the rafters. Too late it occurred to him that he ought not throw things over the edge of his hiding place lest he draw attention to himself. The braids in his hair had fallen out and his hair stuck to his sweat soaked skin uncomfortably. He fumbled open the buttons of his vest and untucked his undershirt to cool his sweaty torso before he could decide what to do next.
As he lay there the image of the baby’s scorched body returned to him, mixing with his recollection of its sleeping face, dark eyelashes gently fluttering against soft pink cheeks. Had the baby been asleep when they killed it? Did it feel any pain? It felt like the chain of a heavy anvil was wrapped around his heart, pulling him down deeper and deeper into an abyss with no bottom.
He lay there until the sound of Maleficent calling his name caused his heart to leap into his throat. From the way it echoed he guessed that she was standing in front of the door to his bedroom located on the second floor. He held his breath even though he thought it would be impossible for her to hear him from all the way down there. Much to his relief she seemed to give up after a few moments and returned to the party. As he continued to listen he didn’t hear anything that indicated further searching for him was taking place.
His hand was starting to throb from the splinter still left in it and he was getting very uncomfortable in the cramped fetal position. He dared to let himself stretch out his limbs and rest his legs along the beam, crossing them at the ankles. He figured anyone below would have to be looking very closely at this exact spot on the ceiling to see him, and anyway he’d be able to hear if anyone was coming and pull his legs back in. All he heard were the sounds of the party winding down and the staff beginning to clean up.
He watched out the window as Maleficent bid farewell to a few of the guests. Riku didn’t sense any discomposure from Maleficent’s body language, which allowed him to relax just a little bit. Perhaps he wasn’t in as much trouble as he feared after all. He lay there for a long time in a daze, not sure what to do but only knowing that he needed to be alone.
When he came to this spot he liked to imagine that he was in a crows nest high above a huge ship that was the rest of the castle. He could see the twinkling stars through the blurry window pane while imagining he was gently rocking on the waves of the ocean as a warm salty breeze carried the ship along.
Finally Riku began to cry quietly. It didn’t relieve the ache in his heart, but it made him tired enough to doze off for a while.
As the night wore on he got colder and hungrier and the wound in his hand hurt enough to be troublesome. The castle had been quiet for what seemed like hours, and soon the thought occurred to him that he might sneak down and try to acquire some rations. The desire for food and warmth slowly overpowered any misgivings as he tediously made his way back downstairs.
He crept towards the kitchen and cursed his own heart for leaping at every creak and moan that could all be explained as regular noises the castle made at night. It suddenly occurred to him that there might still be some part of the corpse left in the kitchen. A half eaten piece of meat, or picked over bone still sitting in a pile of dirty dishes in the sink? The thought made him nauseated. He formed a plan to go straight to the ice box without looking at the sink. There he would drink as much milk as he could while grabbing any cheese that was there, then swing by the bread box which he would pass on the way out where he could get some bread and a knife that he could use to whittle the remains of the splinter out of his hand. He would take the long way back to his hiding spot through one of the sitting rooms and get a blanket which he could use to tie up his rations in a bundle for ease of carrying it along the rafters. The plan, along with his now freshly pumping adrenaline, propelled him the rest of the way to the kitchen.
Without the lights on Riku could see that there were indeed dirty dishes in the sink silhouetted by the small amount of moonlight that came through the window behind them. The stale soapy smell of the tepid water that they soaked in made bile rise in his throat as he passed it. He tried not to inhale too deeply as he crept towards the ice box that was kept cool with magic instead of electricity. He popped the cap off the glass milk bottle and held it with both hands as he hungrily drank from it, letting the cap fall to the floor with a faint clatter.
It was enough to wake up Diablo who had apparently been transformed back into his avian form and was perched not far from where Riku was standing. He let out a gurgling croak and Riku jumped, dropping the glass bottle which shattered, spraying milk everywhere.
“Shhhh!” Riku hissed at him, putting his finger to his lips, but Diablo only got louder using his talented vocal chords to say Riku’s name.
“Riku! Riku!” He repeated, flapping his wings.
Riku grabbed blindly for what appeared to be a large hunk of cheese, and dashed for the bread box determined to get the supplies he’d planned on.
He slammed open the lid to the breadbox and grabbed the loaf of bread within so hard that his fingers broke through the soft crust forming deep craters in the loaf. Then he fumbled in the dark for the knife he knew was next to the bread box, managing to get ahold of the handle without cutting himself. He spun on his heel ready to bolt for the exit and ran smack into Maleficent.
The cold adrenaline of being caught washed over him and he gasped, “Mother!” He dropped the loaf of bread which bounced on the floor with a soft thud.
“There you are,” Maleficent said, reaching for him.
He threw himself sideways, successfully slipping through her grasp as his training kicked in automatically. His quick reflexes surprised Maleficent long enough that he was able to dart around her and run for the door. But just as he was about to cross the threshold Maleficent captured the collar of his shirt and yanked him backwards so hard he choked when it flattened his windpipe. Almost before he realized what he was doing, Riku had swung the knife in an arc and sliced Maleficent squarely across her forearm. She let out a shriek and Riku dropped the knife, surprised at what he’d just done. She began to walk swiftly from the kitchen, pulling him close beside her with an iron grip on his collar.
She half pulled half carried him all the way up to the second floor and then down the hall to his bedroom. Once they were inside she closed the door firmly behind her but somehow in her anger managed not to slam it, which made Riku think that there must still be a few guests trying to sleep in the guest rooms on the same floor.
Riku sat on his bed, panting and holding his throat where his shirt collar had choked him. As Maleficent whirled to face him the first thing Riku noticed was that her yellow eyes looked like they were glowing and the pupils had turned to narrow slits.The veins around her forehead bulged to the point of looking like they would burst, yet they didn’t because her skin had taken on a thick, leathery texture.
“You snuck into my room,” Maleficent said, and when she spoke it sounded like two voices merging together creating a terrifyingly inhuman resonance between them.
“You disrupted the banquet, and now THIS?” She roared, holding up her bleeding arm which was oozing dark blood. But what made Riku gasp was the way the flesh around the wound pulsated and morphed unnaturally, as if something within were trying to break free.
Riku’s mouth was so dry that even if he had known what to say his tongue would have stuck to the roof of it.
“Do you deny it?” she roared.
He quickly shook his head ‘no’, unable to get his vocal chords to work.
“I know all that happens in my castle!” she roared, spreading her cloak as if it were wings, and behind her on the wall Riku could’ve sworn he did see the shadow of wings so big that they stretched across the entire length of his bedroom.
Riku frantically scooted back on his bed until his back hit the wall where he cowered, making himself as small as possible.
The creature that used to be his mother seemed to be elongating as she loomed over him. He squeezed his eyes shut tight, sure he was going to die. When nothing happened his eyes flew back open only to find that Maleficent was sitting on the edge of the bed looking mostly normal again.
She patted the edge of the bed beckoning him to come sit beside her. When he only trembled and recoiled further she reached out to him and he flinched. Aghast, he saw that the wound where he had cut her was sealing itself back closed. Looking into Riku’s wide frightened eyes, Maleficent considered that perhaps she’d lost her temper just a bit too much, even if she hadn’t gone full dragon.
“Are you going to eat me?” Riku asked hoarsely.
Maleficent laughed a soft, almost regretful laugh, “No darling, you’re far too old.”
“I know what you saw must be…surprising,” she started.
Riku stared into the middle distance in front of him. He wasn’t sure if she was talking about his dead sibling or that he’d just seen her turn into a monster.
“You already know that you are human and I am not, and human rules and laws do not apply to me.” Maleficent finally said matter of factly.
“But you are like a son to me, and I would never hurt you on a whim,” she added with sincerity. “Do you understand?”
Riku nodded, not wanting to meet her eyes or move from where he sat in the far corner of his mattress. He was relieved when she didn’t push him to answer verbally before she stood and began to walk towards the door before she turned around, suddenly remembering one more thing.
“Your punishment will begin tomorrow first thing. Until then you will stay in your room,” Maleficent said before closing the door behind her.
Riku was so overtired that he just wanted this night to end one way or another, and if he wasn’t going to die he wanted to go to bed. When he heard her key in the lock he gave up on his chances of getting anything to eat before tomorrow morning, but at least there was still some water in the pitcher that sat on his dresser to drink from, and then use as a chamber pot.
Riku slowly got undressed and put on his pajamas in a daze before crawling in under his blanket and turning off his bedside lamp automatically. As soon as the light was off the image of the baby’s corpse returned unbidden to his mind's eye, and he quickly turned the lamp back on.
He stared at the patterns on the wallpaper and desperately tried to block out the memory as he shivered under the cold sheets. But the patterns kept turning into the shapes of the little charred fingers. He grabbed for his book that was sitting on the nightstand hoping to distract himself. He tried reading until he felt warmer, but his mind was too overwhelmed to focus and he found himself reading the same sentence over and over without comprehending it.
He could no longer think of Maleficent as his mother. She had turned into something frightening and twisted. All these revelations were organizing themselves into a brand new feeling he’d never felt towards Maleficent before, one that he could not identify yet: contempt.
Despite how tired he was, his anxiety and stomach acid mixed together into a painful brew as he tossed and turned all night with the light on.
Chapter 3: Lesson Learned
Summary:
Riku endures his unpleasant punishment, which ends up having a more serious unintended outcome. As Riku is recovering from the ordeal he receives an unexpected gift, which gives him hope for the future.
Notes:
This chapter includes descriptions of shit and an infection. It's kind of a gross chapter, but it's not meant to just be disgusting; it's all in the service of showing Maleficent's cruelty and Riku's suffering. Unlike the previous two chapters I tried to end it on a hopeful note. Thank you for reading!
When I asked my partner for advice on a drawing to accompany the chapter he suggested I try to make it look like a movie poster. Did I succeed?
Direct image link: https://postimg.cc/BtdNqPZH
Chapter Text
When Riku heard the key in the lock the next morning he sat bolt upright, still tense from a long night of restless sleep. As Maleficent entered he half expected to see her in her full dragon form, but she looked mostly normal again.
“Drink this and then dress in your overalls and boots,” she instructed, handing him a glass of cold water. “Then present yourself downstairs,” she added before leaving again without locking the door.
As he moved to follow her instructions a sharp pain through the palm of his hand reminded him about the splinter he gotten while climbing in the rafters the previous night. Upon inspecting the area it looked a little red and the skin around the place the splinter had entered was dry and slightly peeling back. He couldn’t tell for sure if the piece of splinter that had broken off was still in his palm. He remembered when Sora had shown him the place on his leg where he said some pencil lead had broken off and healed inside. Riku remembered poking at the blurry gray dot while Sora reassured him that it didn’t hurt at all. Maybe something like that would happen with the splinter, he mused, then he’d have a trophy of his own to show off next time he saw Sora.
Riku thirstily drank the water which hit his empty stomach like knives. He felt sluggish as he rummaged through his closet and dresser drawers to find the correct clothing items, but despite the dull ache in his head and the nauseated feeling in his stomach Maleficent’s instructions actually made him feel somewhat relieved; it seemed like his punishment was going to be doing castle chores.
I can handle chores, no problem, Riku thought.
Thinking maybe he wasn’t in as much trouble as he feared, Riku started to feel better as he pulled on the stiff overalls, which he paired with a thick but breathable lace-up shirt. He especially liked to work outside in the garden, and he hoped that’s what his ‘punishment’ was going to be, so he also dug out a pair of leather work gloves and tucked them into his pocket. Over the past several weeks Maleficent had been casually mentioning wanting to clear the blackberry bramble that was threatening to take over the garden. He enjoyed the process of digging up the weeds and watching the garden grow anew.
At that moment it struck him that raising a human like himself must be like this to Maleficent. Her, a being that had lived for longer than Riku could comprehend, and he, just a passing fancy, a bud or a weed that she could cultivate or terminate. The thought chilled him. He knew he would feel better as soon as he got some breakfast, and the smell of frying oil tempted him to ride the railing downstairs, but he opted to take the steps instead. Better not push it, he thought.
When he started to head towards the kitchen, Maleficent stopped him just outside the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Riku paused mid-stride. “To get breakfast.”
“You will eat once your task is completed,” Maleficent said sharply.
Riku turned to argue. “But–” he started, but a sharp look from Maleficent made the protest die on his tongue.
“You are spoiled, ungrateful, and rebellious,” Maleficent began, “and you have no appreciation of your status as my son. If you choose to act like a regular human you shall learn what it would mean to be a regular human in my castle.”
Riku’s mind was racing, it certainly didn’t sound like she was going to assign him to any of his usual chores.
“Today Gork will be instructing you on how to clean out the castle latrines.” Maleficent gestured to a goblin servant who Riku only just then noticed had been standing by. Gork saluted when his Mistress addressed him.
“What?!” Riku exclaimed. He’d always been told to stay away from ‘the pit’ as it was known, the place where all the castle waste collected. I’m gonna have to clean out a pool full of–?
“Perhaps shoveling shit will give you time to reflect on the comforts I provide to you,” was all Maleficent said before leaving Riku alone with Gork.
Gork was short, like most of the goblins that served Maleficent, and his face so twisted Riku wasn’t sure if he was smiling or grimacing when he greeted Riku with a gruff "Hello."
Riku realized he didn’t even know the goblin’s names that worked as servants at the castle. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to him that they even had names considering that Maleficent usually referred to them as ‘idiots’ ‘fools’ and a number of other insults.
“C’mon then, daylight’s wasting,” said Gork, turning to lead Riku towards the servants exit when they were interrupted.
“Good morning Riku,” came the twin sing-song voices of Anastasia and Drizella.
Damnit! he thought. He’d hoped that he wouldn't run into any of the guests still lingering at the castle, but wasn’t surprised to see them.
“Morning,” Riku greeted, trying not to make too much eye contact with them.
“Won’t you join us for breakfast, Riku?” Anastasia asked sweetly.
“I…” Riku started. Do they know I’m in trouble? he wondered, glancing back at Gork, who stood waiting with his thick arms crossed.
“Don’t worry, we promise not to eat you,” Drizella teased, emphasizing her point with a little gnash of her teeth. Both girls giggled shrilly as Riku struggled to maintain his composure.
He opened and closed his mouth, stunned that they were joking and laughing about what had happened. The Tremaine sisters were also human, and yet they seemed unbothered by what they’d all witnessed last night. Deep down inside he knew he had a normal reaction to what happened, and he was sure Sora and Kairi would’ve felt the same way.
Yet, he couldn’t help doubting himself, and he felt his cheeks flushing with embarrassment.
“I have to do my chores,” he answered stiffly.
At that moment Lady Tremaine beckoned her daughters from down the hallway, and Riku wasn’t sure if he was relieved to see them go or disappointed there was nothing left to distract him from his impending punishment.
“See? He has to do chores too!” came Anastasia’s overheard whisper as they walked away.
Gork went over all the instructions for shoveling and canning the waste as they made their way across the castle grounds until they came to a heavy metal door in the ground that was half covered by grass and weeds. The two of them heaved it open together and Gork sat down on the ground, sighing and wiping his brow.
“You’ll have to go first, you’re too scrawny to lower the cover behind you,” Gork told him, handing over the magically-powered lantern that he’d been carrying.
Riku reluctantly took the lantern, which was heavy enough that he needed to hold it with both hands in order to peer over the edge of the hole in the ground. A metal ladder ran along one side but he couldn’t see the bottom, and faint but distinctly unpleasant fumes wafted up from below.
“Don’t worry, it’s not as deep as it looks, and I’ll be right behind ya,” Gork reassured him when Riku looked back at him warily.
Riku set the lantern aside and put on his gloves before swinging one leg over the edge and then the other. His flexible leather boots easily found purchase on the metal rungs, but he had to mind his grip or else pain would lance through his palm where the splinter fragment was. Once Riku was secure in his footing Gork passed down the lantern and the weight was almost enough to set him off balance.
He hooked the elbow of his injured hand around the rungs so he could hold on while still managing the full weight of the lantern in his un-injured hand. He climbed by using his bent arm as a kind of grappling hook by wedging it between two rungs without having to put pressure on his palm.
His good arm was already beginning to ache with the weight of the lantern, but he was grateful for its light as he descended. He knew it was going to smell bad, but he was not prepared for just how bad it would be when he was hit with the strong, sharp smell of excrement. The sheer power of it surprised him as he tried to take shallow breaths through his mouth to keep from gagging.
How am I going to do this? Riku wondered, panic gripping him like he gripped the rungs of the ladder. He looked up at the opening above him which was becoming a smaller and smaller circle of light and no sign of Gork. He imagined going back up the ladder and imploring Maleficent to give him a different punishment, but the image of her hulking shadow warping into the form of a dragon flashed into his mind.
“Gork!” he yelled, and then again louder and more desperately after a moment of silence. He was about ready to climb back up when Gork’s silhouette filled the bright circle of the opening above like an eclipse.
“I have to take care of something,” Gork called down to him. “Go ahead and start without me!”
“What?” Riku yelled back in alarm.
“You’ll be okay for a little while, right?” Gork called back down to him. Then, without waiting for an answer he disappeared only to be replaced by a shadow that Riku realized was the door closing above him.
“No!!” Riku yelled. Dread grabbed his heart and twisted, and he clung to the ladder as the darkness enveloped him.
His heart raced and he almost began to hyperventilate except that he continued to choke on the putrid air.
“Come back!!!” came Riku’s breathless cry, but there was nothing except the muffled echo of his own voice in return.
He knew he wouldn’t be able to lift the door from the inside and his arms and legs were beginning to tremble on the ladder. He was forced to continue his descent. His heart leaped into his throat when he felt himself slipping more than once. If Gork had been telling the truth there was at least one other way to get out of the cesspit, and that was through the venting tunnel that was supposed to be somewhere down below.
“Don’t be cowardly,” he whispered to himself.
Finally he saw the stone floor below and jumped down the last few feet, almost stumbling off the edge of what he now saw was not a floor per se, but only a raised stone platform next to the cesspit.
By the lantern’s light he could see that the ceiling was actually quite tall, held in place by stone arches that looked ancient and frankly not very stable. Holes in the wall deposited the waste carried from various rooms in the castle down a long system of chutes into the pit which looked shallow, but took up most of the wide floor.
It was a rather large area all in all, but it made Riku feel claustrophobic nonetheless. He was relieved to see the entrance to the walkable ventilation tunnel that ended out past the hills that lay behind the castle, where the fumes could vent with minimal blowback. Sitting in the mouth of the tunnel he spotted the cart Gork told him would be waiting with half a dozen empty metal barrels which he was to fill. A shovel leaned against the cart, but it was practically as tall as Riku, and he realized it would be impossible for him to scoop the waste into the barrels without help.
Heat and stink radiated from the pit and Riku tried to shield his nose with the fabric of his shirt to no avail. His nostrils and eyes burned and he choked as his lungs screamed for more oxygen but simultaneously fought against inhaling the repugnant air. He tried to breathe through his mouth as he repeatedly gagged on the bile rising up in his throat before heaving up a frothy mixture of whatever water and acid remained in his stomach. Resentfully he saw the wisdom in Maleficent having forbidden him from eating that morning.
After throwing up, Riku stayed on his hands and knees for a long time. His face was damp with sweat and tears that were both from vomiting and the frustration of being tricked by Gork. He wondered what Sora and Kairi would think if they saw him like this.
“Stupid idiot,” he muttered, not completely sure if he was referring to Gork or himself.
He could still get out of here through the tunnel, but what would he say to Maleficent? Would she think up a different, even worse punishment for him? What if she made him live with the servants and stopped teaching him magic?
Magic– that’s it! He thought excitedly.
Maybe he could freeze the waste in order to get rid of the smell, and then at least he’d be able to think more clearly about what to do next.
Taking off the glove of his uninjured hand, he knelt down next to the edge of the pit and reluctantly reached out a finger towards the disgusting slop. “Freeze,” he commanded, swiftly withdrawing his finger which he then wiped off on the leg of his overalls.
It froze the lumpy sludge closest to him, but didn't go much beyond. From closer up he could see that the pit had the capacity to contain a lot more waste than what was in here at the moment, but he figured it was still more than usual considering the number of guests that had been at the party. He thought of Anastasia and Drizella, and tried not to linger on the implications of that thought.
"Freeze!" he said again, louder and more firmly, along with a push from the core of his being. The place deep inside that he’d started to identify as the place his magic came from. The icy crystals extended much further this time, but not far enough.
He concentrated on the prickling sensation of magic in his chest. It felt like hundreds of tiny threads that tugged on his heart. He could feel the push and pull of them, but it wasn’t painful. It was more like the way he thought a cat's whiskers might feel when brushing against their surroundings. He imagined flinging the threads out across the expanse of shit like a net, and this time when he commanded it to freeze ice crystals raced out from where he touched, fanning out and over the pit just as he had visualized.
“Yes!” Riku cried, almost laughing out loud.
Freezing the pit instantly cut down on the smell, but despite the successful freeze spell his task still seemed impossibly daunting.
Pulling a barrel off the cart he rolled it over to the edge of the pit where he laid it down on its side. He was able to break off chunks of the slowly thawing mass with the shovel and then scoot-scoop them into the barrel. Riku quickly felt the effects of not having eaten the previous night as his muscles grew tired. He felt dizzy if he bent down and stood up too fast, and he was so hungry it felt like his stomach was crawling up his throat.
As his exhaustion forced him to sit down for a break it occurred to him to try the spell he used to clean up his toys. After several botched attempts he managed to get the frozen chunks floating themselves into the barrels at his command of “places everyone!”
The row of obediently floating gems sparkling in the lantern’s light were a strange sight, and Riku thought it could’ve looked beautiful if he hadn’t known what they were made out of. He wondered what Sora and Kairi would think if they knew that he could do this, but Maleficent had strictly forbidden him from performing or even talking about magic in front of “the Island People,” as she called them. Magic, along with swordplay, was among the many things that apparently were not taught in public school.
It felt like hours until all the waste barrels were finally full. He wouldn’t be able to lift the full containers back onto the cart by himself, but at least he could say that he completed his task, and hopefully be spared any further punishment. Picking up the lantern he started to make his way towards the dark path that would lead him out the venting tunnel.
Just then he heard a strange sound echo from within the darkness. Lifting his lantern higher, Riku wondered if one of the animals from the pastures had wandered in by accident.
“Hello?” Riku called out.
“Hello!” came Gork’s voice, followed by the silhouette of his squat figure leading a donkey on a harness behind him.
“You left me!” Riku cried angrily as Gork and the donkey approached.
“My apologies lad! I swear I never meant to take this long. Looks like you didn’t need me though,” he added, eyeing the full barrels with what might have passed for an impressed expression.
Riku was so tired he could barely muster up enough energy to glare at the goblin-man as they loaded the heavy barrels back onto the cart together. After that Gork hooked the donkey to the cart and began to lead them both back out towards the mouth of the tunnel.
The trek to the end of the tunnel felt like forever as Riku trudged behind the cart.
He kept moving through the bone-deep exhaustion by imagining what it would feel like to bathe and eat and finally get into his cool bed sheets. His muscles had been worn through so thoroughly that he could almost see the appeal of an ice bath, but a warm bath sounded a thousand times better. The creaking wheels of the cart combined with the donkey’s slow ‘clop clop’ was hypnotizing, and Riku began to wonder how much time had passed. Was there still daylight outside? Like a zombie he kept his eyes fixed on the beacon of light from the lantern that Gork carried out ahead of them with one sturdy arm held high.
When a tiny pinprick of light finally appeared at the end of the tunnel, Riku thought it might’ve been a hallucination.
The exit steadily grew into a bright oval until finally, upon crossing the threshold, the light gave way to the blessed sight of rolling hills, which were haloed by the golden rays of the setting sun. Riku used his final reserve of energy to propel himself forward only to collapse into the first patch of soft grass he came to, unable to walk another step. He lay there as Gork unhooked the cart containing the full barrels to leave at the tunnel’s exit where they would be picked up later by professional gong farmers.
The stars were just starting to show through the red-purple sky as Riku found himself riding the donkey where Gork had mercifully placed him to sit for the final stretch of their journey back to the castle. Riku had never felt so grateful just to breathe the fresh air. As they traveled he looked around, trying to orient himself towards where the castle was. The fact that he couldn’t see it anywhere drove home how truly vast the land was that surrounded the castle, and how easy it would be to get lost out here.
“How’d you do it anyway?” Gork’s gruff voice broke the silence.
“Do what?” Riku asked, almost having forgotten that the goblin was walking alongside him while leading the donkey.
“Fill all the barrels by yourself.”
“Magic,” Riku answered, thinking it seemed like a rather stupid question. How else would he have done it?
Gork only responded with a chuckle.
After riding a while longer it was Riku’s turn to break the silence.
“Did she tell you to do that?” he asked.
“Do what?”
“Leave me alone down there.”
The way Gork awkwardly rubbed at the back of his neck and shifted the donkey’s reins to his other hand was answer enough.
“She doesn't treat all of ‘em as good as you,” he finally said. “You ought to be grateful.”
Riku silently reflected on the implications of this revelation. He knew that Gork had served Maleficent for a long time, but he really had no idea how long. He wondered how many other children had Gork seen come and go before him. How had they fared, and what had become of them? He suddenly urgently wanted to know. It seemed strange to him that these questions had not bothered him until now.
As they approached the magical castle barrier, Riku watched his home slowly come into view like a shimmering heat mirage. It felt both familiar and strange to approach head on, like he was arriving there for the first time. He didn’t usually get this view since he and Maleficent had taken her private ship whenever they traveled.
He had the fleeting thought that it was his last chance to escape, but how?
Even if he somehow managed to get the donkey away from Gork and make it run, he’d have to travel for miles before reaching the nearest town. With no adult to accompany him and no money he didn’t know how to get food or a place to sleep. Inevitably he’d be found and be punished even more severely.
A whack to the donkey’s thigh from Gork shook Riku out of his thoughts; a reminder that this donkey wasn’t going anywhere fast. He chastised himself for even considering running away. He was already so hungry and exhausted and it would be so much easier to just go back.
Upon his return the servants took pity on Riku, running him a hot bath and setting out warm towels for him. As he stripped off his clothes he threw them into the hallway, trying to get as far away from the smell as possible.
When he pulled off his gloves he winced. The splinter wound appeared to have burst, and the bloody pus it ejected had mixed into a brownish paste smeared across the wrinkly sweat-soaked skin of his palm. It stung badly when he immersed it in the water, but he did his best to wash it anyway, and it looked a lot better after he’d rinsed it clean. Plus, compared to all the aches and pains in the rest of his body it seemed like a minor detail.
In the bath he washed himself vigorously and repeatedly, lathering himself up and rinsing himself off, and requesting fresh hot water be brought to him in order to rinse off the last of the soapy bathwater.
“Thank you,” he said to the servant who brought the buckets of fresh hot water.
After having had a small taste of what it would be like to live as one of them, Riku decided he would treat them with more respect from now on. Following his bath they brought food to Riku’s room, which was only ever permitted on special occasions or if he was sick. He graciously ate what was surely leftovers from the banquet, but he avoided the meat. He was reasonably sure that it couldn’t be the child, because of the way all the guests had been clamoring for it he doubted there was any left over. Still, the thought of eating any kind of flesh made his skin crawl.
—
Riku was awoken in the night by an intense throbbing in his hand. Making his way to the bathroom and lighting the candles there, he gasped when he finally got a good look at the wound. The injury was red and inflamed, skin stretching angrily over the engorged area.
Gingerly he poked at the lump, wincing at how tender it was. He was pretty sure that he was supposed to drain it and clean it, but he’d never done anything like this on himself before. He tried squeezing it between the thumb and forefinger of his opposite hand, hissing at the intensity of the pain that shot all the way up his arm when he squeezed.
Setting his jaw he pressed and squeezed again, but still nothing would come out. It seemed like it had sealed over, despite the feeling of pressure that desperately itched for release.
The thought that he should go and get help crossed his mind, but he quickly rejected it. There’s no way he wanted to go knocking on Maleficent’s door with everything that had just happened, and the thought of making her angry again was worse than the pain. He would just have to try to deal with it by himself. He was going to have to learn to take care of himself anyway, so he might as well start now, he reasoned.
Retrieving the knife he’d cut Maleficent with the previous night he returned to the bathroom and held the blade over the flame of a candle to try and disinfect it. After wiping the black ash from it he held the point against the swollen bump. Even the slightest pressure sent sharp spikes of pain shooting out from the area.
He tried counting to three while taking deep breaths in rapid succession, but he couldn't bring himself to pierce the skin. After losing his nerve to several false starts he slammed the knife down on the counter in frustration. Angry at himself for not being able to go through with it, he settled on washing his hands thoroughly with soap.
After getting back in bed he lay there for what felt like hours, overwhelmed by the feeling of his hand throbbing in time with his heartbeat. Flashbacks of the events of the past 24 hours assailed him unrelentingly like he was watching everything happen all over again, only this time from the outside. The baby in the cradle cut to the memory of the charred hunk of flesh on the table in front of him. His mother rocking him gently in her lap warped into that shadowy form hulking over him– only this time the figure swooped down on him with a shriek and tore him to shreds.
Feverish, he threw the blankets off and went to the window to open it, only to immediately begin shivering when the chilly air hit his sweat-soaked skin. He drank all of the rest of the water in his pitcher, only to become nauseated as the water churned in his stomach.
Anxiety bubbled inside him, keeping him trapped in the half-awake-half-asleep state where logic is at its weakest and demons are at their strongest. The night stretched on and on, and more than once he was sure he was going to perish before seeing the light of the next day, and he began to feel that death would be a relief from this never ending night.
Next thing he knew Maleficent was knocking loudly at his door and letting herself in before he could answer. Riku moaned and squinted when she opened the curtains and light streamed in. He really wished that she wouldn’t do that.
“It’s almost noon,” she announced in a loud, accusatory voice.
When Riku sat up he felt dizzy and he was alarmed to see that the swelling in his hand had doubled in size. When he finally showed it to Maleficent she reacted with no sympathy.
“Troublesome child,” she scolded before sweeping back out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
Riku was too exhausted to feel anxious that he’d inevitably managed to upset her again.
She had herbal tea and biscuits sent to his room which were laced with a generous dash of sleeping powder. After he’d warmed and pacified his stomach he slipped easily into a deep sleep.
When he woke up again Dr. Facilier was by his bedside.
“You’re still here,” Riku mumbled blearily. He’d thought surely all the guests from the banquet would’ve left by now.
“Someone had to get you patched up,” Dr. Facilier said with a smile. “I’m not that kind of doctor, but I was the only human left in the castle yesterday afternoon.”
“Yesterday? How long have I been asleep?”
“We had to put you to sleep to treat your hand…”
Riku held up his hand to see that it was wrapped in bandages.
“...and you’re gonna need antibiotics. Your mom will be back with them soon.”
“She’s not my mom,” Riku said, averting his gaze to scowl at the wall.
Dr. Facilier looked surprised, but then his face fell into a sympathetic smile.
“I was like you once, I remember being young and restless. I didn’t like being bossed around either. I couldn’t wait to get out on my own!”
Riku blushed at having his feelings examined, but at the same time it felt good to have them recognized.
“Take me with you!” Riku blurted out. Before the thought even fully had a chance to process it had come out of his mouth.
Dr. Facilier’s eyebrows raised in surprise, clearly taken aback by the question before he let out a rumble of loud uncomfortable laughter.
“Oh, I can’t do that,” the doctor said with a shake of his head. “Wish I could, but there’s only room for one shadow master on my ship,”
Riku’s face fell.
“I’m not a master, but I could learn,” Riku pushed back. He snuck a hopeful look back up at the doctor who was looking at him with an expression Riku recognized by now as pity.
“I’m sorry,” said the doctor firmly but with genuine sincerity.
Riku hung his head, his cheeks burned at the embarrassment of having laid his desperation bare, only to be rejected.
“I hate it here,” he said quietly.
“Nothing lasts forever, you’ll see. Trust me, one day you’re gonna look back on all this and laugh.”
“I’ll probably die before that ever happens,” Riku said bitterly.
Dr. Facilier’s warm laughter surprised him.
“She isn’t gonna kill you. At least not over this,” he said, gesturing to Riku’s injured hand.
“I guess not,” Riku meekly agreed.
“I’ll tell you what–” said the Doctor, “I already had a feeling you’re about ready to blow this pop stand, and I guess I was right. I’ve got something here that I think you’re going to be able to make good use of.”
“What?” Riku’s eyes brightened as he watched the doctor feeling around in his waistcoat for something.
Dr. Facilier pulled a slim booklet from his pocket and handed it to Riku, who eagerly took it between his limp bandaged hand and his still functional one.
Quickstart Guide to DIY Black Magic it read in bold typeface on the cover.
“Wow!” Riku exclaimed, looking back up at the doctor in excited disbelief. “Really?”
The doctor reassured him with a nod. “I’ve memorized every detail of every spell between those covers. I suppose I’m only really carrying it around for sentimental reasons.”
Riku enthusiastically began flipping through the pages. They were worn, and they looked like they’d been photocopied, folded, and stapled together. The content had originally been created via a combination of typed text, collaged pictures, and hand written and drawn images.
“That book’s come in handy more times than I can count.”
“Did you use it to…run away from home?” Riku asked curiously.
The doctor didn’t take offense, but he was quiet for a few moments while leaning back in his chair.
“I’d gotten in deep with some real bad trouble,” he started, “but this time… Sometimes we gotta do things, hard things…” he trailed off.
The man’s eyes had become unfocused as he gazed somewhere far away that only he could see.
Riku held his breath as he waited for Dr. Facilier to elaborate.
“What do you mean?” he asked, growing agitated with the lack of specifics.
His question snapped Dr. Facilier out of whatever memory he’d been revisiting because he sat up, returning to reality where he was met by Riku’s intense gaze.
“I kept my eyes and ears open. When the right opportunity came, not only did I recognize it, I was ready to take it. Listen kid, pay attention and you learn everything you can from your mo– from Maleficent. One day before you know it your chance will come. And this,” he gestured to the book, “is gonna give you a little head start.”
Riku opened his mouth with the want of asking a million questions, but the doctor raised a finger in a shushing motion. As the sound of footsteps approached Riku quickly tucked the book under his pillow.
Maleficent arrived with the antibiotics and watched as Riku swallowed the first dose.
“Thank you for looking after my little one,” she said to Dr. Facilier. Her voice was falsely high and sweet as she reached out to stroke back some hair that was clinging to Riku’s sweaty forehead.
He wanted to jerk away, but Dr. Facilier was right. What good would it do him to act out? Better to keep his true intentions hidden and let her think everything is back to normal. Then when the opportunity finally came he would be ready, and she would be caught off guard.
“He’s a good kid,” Dr. Facilier said to Maleficent, but he was looking at Riku who’s sparkling teal eyes glimmered with the kind of hope that only a shared secret could bring.
“Allow me to escort you to your ship,” Maleficent said, and Riku’s heart clenched at the idea of having to see the Doctor leave so soon.
“Goodbye little shadow man,” Dr. Facilier said, tipping his hat and shooting Riku a sly smile before holding out his elbow for Maleficent to take.
“But you’d better be good so you’re not the main course next time I come to visit!”
Riku quickly glanced at Maleficent in fear of her reaction to the joke, but she was only rolling her eyes as she tugged the doctor towards the door.
Finally Riku cracked a small smile. Somehow, hearing someone else say it out loud relieved a little bit of the pressure on his heart.
“I’ll try,” Riku said, now determined to be on high alert for the moment it was finally time to ‘blow this pop stand’.
Chapter 4: Respite
Summary:
While Riku is recovering from his infection he studies the book Dr. Facilier gave him, which leads to an exciting discovery. On top of that, and much to his delight, he receives a letter from Sora inviting him to come stay with his family during summer vacation. Finally Riku gets to visit his two best friends and enjoy a much needed respite.
Notes:
This chapter got quite long! Over the past several months I ended up going back in and adding a lot more details that I hope will help bring Riku's inner and outer worlds to life. It was also a fun challenge to write the interactions between Riku and Sora and Kairi and develop their friend dynamic. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy this chapter where Riku finally gets a little bit of a break!
Direct link to the fanart: https://i.postimg.cc/cCC22zGd/IMG-1927-1-Copy.jpg
Chapter Text
Despite his newfound resolve, Riku was still sick from the infection. Over the next few days he felt sluggish, only leaving his room when compelled to do so in order to eat or bathe.
When he’d first removed the dressing from the wound on his hand it looked bad. The bandage was covered in browning blood ringed by dried yellowish liquid. Maleficent told him they’d had to cut it open to clean it out, and so they’d given him several stitches, which looked a little crude and itched terribly.
The servants helped him change the bandage and clean the wound regularly; smearing the area with a honey and sugar mixture. Thanks to that, in conjunction with the antibiotics, the wound soon started to heal rapidly, and Riku was secretly disappointed when he could see no trace of the leftover splinter inside that he’d hoped would remain for him to show off to Sora next time he visited the Destiny Islands. It only left a patch of bumpy pinkish skin on his palm.
Maleficent had put his homeschooling lessons on hold until he recovered, and she only visited him in his room to make sure he swallowed each dose of his medicine. She brought him a stack of books to read in bed, but they were all terribly boring and put him straight to sleep, (spell memorization tips, the basics of ancient runes), which was honestly fine with Riku because he found that he wanted to sleep most of the time anyway.
The only book that he did read cover-to-cover repeatedly was the one that Dr. Facilier had given him. It contained everything from ingredients to make a basic powdered poison, to the best food and beverages to offer up when attempting to communicate with spirits.
The part that piqued his interest the most was a section about something called dark corridors and how to access them. It explained that the corridors could be accessed via dark portals, and he was thrilled to see that the book included a reproduction of the sigil that could be used to summon a portal. It warned that demons lurked within the corridors, which was accompanied by several sketches of different types that one might encounter there. It also detailed the experience of traveling in the corridors, which was described as similar to traveling in outer space. Therefore it stated that “precautions” should be taken, but frustratingly did not give any clue as to what these precautions should be.
It did, however, have a footnote citing a book called Fundamentals of Demonick Passage for further reading on this subject, and it occurred to Riku that it seemed like the kind of thing Maleficent might have a copy of in her private library.
Maleficent’s private library was located at the end of the longest, dustiest hallway on the top floor, behind a thick locked wooden door that was carved with captivating botanical patterns that seemed to morph and twist if he stared at them too long. The last time Maleficent had caught him standing in front of the enigmatic wooden door she’d reminded him emphatically that the library was forbidden and he was, under no circumstances, to go inside.
Riku decided that he would look for a chance to sneak in as soon as possible, but in the meantime he set about trying to prepare the sigil that would summon a dark portal on his bedroom floor.
Maleficent had taught him how to draw a few very basic sigils– a simple design reproduced on a flat chunk of rock had the effect of creating a low-temperature hot plate, which so far he’d only used to reheat his tea or pretend to mix potions when he was playing alone outside.
First he needed a compass to find out which way to orient each point of the sigil. Secondly he decided that he should use chalk, so that if something went wrong he could quickly wipe away the lines and break the spell. The drawings of the demons did look rather scary after all.
Even once he’d acquired the needed materials it turned out to be a lot harder than Riku had anticipated to actually draw the thing. It was complex enough that he had to draw it quite large in order to accurately copy it, and it kept coming out lopsided. He had to erase it multiple times before he figured out that he could use the lines of the slats of the wooden floor to help him measure the distances between the overlapping geometric shapes and make it even. Then he had to inscribe the intricate symbols at the correct points around the shapes.
As the work stretched over multiple days in a row, he started to feel a lot better; he almost wished he’d stay sick just a little bit longer so that he could have more time to perfect the sigil before homeschooling started again.
When he wasn’t working on it he covered it with an ornate throw rug that had been in his bedroom for as long as he could remember. As he pulled the rug aside he reflected on how almost everything in this entire castle was much, much older than him– the rugs, the furniture, even the servants– all slowly wasting away year after year, forgotten. He didn’t want to become just another object in Maleficent's collection. Or alternatively he considered the possibility that he’d be married off to one of the Tremaine sisters. They had seemed pretty serious about it…
Riku shuddered as he contemplated these potential fates, letting it drive him as he worked.
Finally he was ready to draw the last rune and complete the circle. His heart was pounding and his hand shook with anticipation as he put the finishing touches on the final symbol. Even if he couldn’t enter the portal yet, he wanted to at least test it, just to see if it worked.
He held his breath as he drew the last line…and nothing happened.
For the next hour he checked and rechecked that every circle was closed and every line was unbroken but to no avail.
“Damnit!” Riku cried, throwing the chalk down so hard that it broke when it struck the floor.
After that he tossed the rug back over the sigil and flung himself onto his bed where he repeatedly yelled into his pillow until he ran out of breath. He lay on the bed feeling discouraged while trying to mentally talk himself down.
Sure, of course it didn’t work right away, he reasoned. There was probably some kind of incantation he had to say, or maybe it wouldn’t work until he’d taken whatever ‘precautions’ were being referred to in the book. He vowed to himself that he would keep trying, that he’d find a way to sneak into the library, that he’d do whatever it took!
That night Riku dreamed that he was at the bottom of a dark narrow pit surrounded by dirt on all sides. If he squinted he could see a light far far above him, but if he tried to climb out the dirt crumbled in his hands and he slipped back down to the bottom. He called out for help but the dirt muffled the sounds of his cries, swallowing them up completely– swallowing him up completely.
He awoke in a cold sweat with a headache. Turning on his lamp he decided he might as well stay up and study the secret magic book until the sun came up.
The next morning Maleficent strode into his room with purpose. Riku stuffed the DIY magic book back under his pillow and swiftly pulled the covers up to his chin, pretending that he was just waking up as she entered.
She came to sit by his bedside and rest a cool, slightly scaly hand on his forehead, trying to gauge his temperature. She'd stopped masking her dragon form as much as usual, and over the past week he'd seen her in multiple states of partial transformation. He found it unnerving, but at the same time he wanted to see her for who she really was. With every passing day it seemed like she opened up to him more, while he increasingly closed himself off to her, focusing all his energy on his goal of opening a dark portal.
“How are you feeling?” she asked. Her voice had a resonance that it didn’t when she was in her more human form.
“I've been better…” Riku answered without even a hint of sarcasm.
Maleficent sighed at her son’s malaise. She considered that she’d been a little harsh with him, but from experience she knew she had to nip this kind of rebellious behavior in the bud before it got out of hand. He seemed chastised enough, and even though she was sure he didn’t have a fever anymore, he was still rather subdued. She hoped that he’d fully learned his lesson so they could move on from this whole ordeal.
“I know all this,” she waved her hand vaguely around as if to gesture to everything and nothing, “has been hard on you, but I have something here that I know is going to make you feel better.”
She pulled out an envelope and handed it to him. Upon taking the envelope he instantly recognized Sora's handwriting.
"When did this come?" he asked, almost shooting up in bed, but then remembering he was still supposed to be sick and leaning back against the headboard.
"Not long ago." Her pointed teeth glinted in the morning sunlight as she answered.
His heartbeat picked up as he quickly but carefully tore open the envelope.
He hesitated after pulling out the letter holding it to his chest. He looked up at Maleficent, hoping that she would leave him to read the letter in private, but she only watched him expectantly, the yellow slits of her eyes blinking sideways. Riku dropped his eyes back to the letter without saying anything.
The first thing he noticed was that the margins were completely filled with a crayon rendering of an island scene. A paopu tree bearing its star shaped fruit was in the foreground, and behind it a cloud drifted across a clear blue sky with a rainbow coming out of one corner landing in the ocean below. Riku thought it was a surprisingly good drawing for crayon.
Dear Riku,
Hi, how are you? I’m doing good!
How is your homeschooling going? I can’t believe that we’re almost done with elementary school!
I asked Aerith if you can come stay with us this summer and she said YES!
Now you just have to ask your mom too. I’m keeping my fingers and toes crossed that she says YES. Tell her I said “pretty please?”
Papa Cloud planted a bunch of new coconut trees since you were here last, and I’ve been helping Papa Leon run the produce stand in town on my days off from school. I can’t wait to show you the new chickens when you come!
Me and Kairi miss you and we think about you all the time.
See you soon (I HOPE!!!)
~Sora
After Riku finished reading it Maleficent took it and read it too. He knew there was nothing to hide in the letter, but his privacy still felt violated. Why should she get to read his letters when they were addressed to him and not her?
“Isn’t that sweet,” Maleficent said somewhat flatly after quickly reading the short letter.
“Can I? Please?” Riku asked, unable to keep the desperate strain out of his voice.
“Well, I was of course planning our usual summer visit to the beach house…” she began thoughtfully, and Riku’s heart leaped but then stuttered when she continued, “but we can’t stay there the whole summer, that’s out of the question,” she said, starting to stand up.
Riku grabbed her pointed sleeve. “But it says I can stay at Sora’s!”
“I don’t know. That’s a long time for you to be alone with those people,” she said, gently extracting her sleeve from his grasp.
“But, aren't I old enough to go by myself?” he asked, his mind grasping for anything to convince her.
“Oh darling, it’s not you, it’s them,” she explained.
“I’ll do extra homework!” he said in a flash of inspiration.
“Do you really want to go that badly?” she asked, a smile creeping onto the corner of her red lips gave Riku hope that she might be swayed.
Riku nodded while looking at her pleadingly, he didn’t think he’d ever wanted something more badly in his entire life. Staying the whole summer with Sora would be like a dream come true!
“I’ll consider it,” she finally said.
Riku wanted to jump out of bed and hug her, but stopped when his newly forged revulsion for her surged like a wave, overtaking the impulse. He remained still, trying to keep his expression neutral. He knew that she could still say no, and that he would have to be extra well behaved for the next several months.
“Thank you, Mother,” he said with as much politeness as he could muster.
—
After Maleficent left Riku immediately set about writing Sora a letter back to tell him the good news. Then, he taped the letter from Sora on the wall next to his bed where he could look at it and remind himself of what he was working towards. Staring at the crayon drawing he could almost see the breeze rustle the leaves of the paopu tree. He imagined the sun and the salty smell, letting it take him back to when he and Sora first met.
It had been 5 years ago, before Riku had even learned his first magic spell...
Maleficent had taken preschool age Riku to a late summer harvest festival at the Island fairgrounds. She knew humans of his age needed to be socialized with each other, and she’d been keeping an eye out for opportunities to do so. It seemed meant to be when she found a flier advertising hay rides for small children and other ‘family friendly’ activities.
At first Riku wouldn’t get on the back of the truck stacked high with bales of hay and other kids, but then a cheerful boy about his age approached him and introduced himself.
“I’ve done it hundreds of times!” Sora said.
“Hundreds?” Riku asked skeptically.
“Yeah, my dad has a booth at the festival, so I come every year! Don’t worry, new kids are always scared at first.”
“I’m not scared.” Riku insisted, following Sora onto the ride.
The truck drove slowly enough that the parents could basically walk at a reasonable distance behind, and the whole time Sora talked and gestured and showed Riku how much fun it could be so that by the time the ride was over Riku asked to go again.
Upon finding out Maleficent was planning to homeschool her son, Sora’s dad, who Riku came to know as Papa Leon, insisted they make a playdate for the two boys.
After that Riku looked forward to going every summer. As much as he loved being with Sora he equally enjoyed being with Sora's family who lived on a small farm that had been in their family for multiple generations.
Being at Sora's house was completely different than what he’d experienced growing up at the castle. They didn't have chefs or servants; they made dinner and all cleaned up together afterwards. They were always laughing and joking. Even though Sora would whine and complain sometimes, no one ever really seemed to get angry about it.
Sora had three parents, a mom and two dads. If anyone gave him a hard time about it being unusual, Sora would just laugh and say, “More love for me!” It seemed like he was used to having to explain his family situation to new friends.
Although he’d never spent much time with anyone else's family, to Riku it seemed completely natural that these people who clearly loved each other should all be together. All of them were kind and relaxed in a way that Riku did not know grown ups could be.
Their farm hadn’t been how Riku had imagined based on his picture books– with rows of crops and barns with cows and horses. There were no barns, and the only real crop Riku could determine to actually be growing there was the coconut grove that took up the far end of the property.
The family's main source of income was from the produce delivery service Papa Leon ran on the main island, where he delivered produce mostly grown by other farmers. They also sold eggs from the half a dozen chickens that lived in a coop off to the side of the main house that always seemed to be in need of repair. The chickens would often freely wander the property since the islands were virtually absent of predators.
The main house was bright and always full of people ready to warmly welcome whomever was so fortunate to arrive there.
Riku’s favorite thing was when the family would build a bonfire and everyone on the farm plus more people from across the islands would attend. There were always children of all ages, the teens watching over the younger ones as they played, while the adults sat around the fire drinking. He always felt special when it was time to go back to the main house with Sora, while all the other children had to go home. In some ways, over the years, Sora’s attic bedroom came to feel more like home than Riku's own.
It was at one of these bonfires where Riku and Sora met Kairi for the first time with her father who was the mayor of Destiny Islands.
Riku thought she seemed sweet and a little dreamy, but he learned just how practical she could be when the three of them decided to build a raft that summer. Kairi had ended up overseeing the whole operation as she directed the boys to collect the materials they would need, which they had turned into a little competition. Much to their dismay they had never gotten to test it out because that night a storm came through and wrecked it completely.
Sometimes he fantasized that the three of them had actually run away together that summer, and what it would’ve been like to travel around that wide ocean world on their raft.
Riku couldn’t wait to feel the warmth of the island’s sun again, and to be cooled by the ocean breeze. As he pictured Sora’s goofy smile the corner of his own mouth twitched as he tried to reassure himself that the next three and a half months would go by fast; still, it felt like way too long to wait.
—
Between Sora’s letter and learning about the existence of dark corridors, Riku’s interest in life piqued back up. If it was really possible to travel anywhere simply by opening a portal in space he would truly be free. He imagined showing up at Sora’s house whenever he wanted, and not having to wait until the short time each summer that he got to see his friends.
Still, he decided to put his research into dark corridors on hold until after his summer vacation. If Maleficent caught him breaking into her library she'd definitely not let him go on the trip.
When she started his homeschooling lessons again Maleficent was pleased to see that Riku not only seemed back to normal, but was putting in extra effort.
“You can subtly control the strength of your freeze magic,” Maleficent was explaining during an early morning lesson.
They were out in the garden, which was still damp with dew from the morning mist that had blanketed the castle grounds during the night. Maleficent’s pointed ears swiveled towards a sound in the grass and quick as lightning her hand shot out to retrieve a newt from under a pile of leaves.
She held the hapless creature in her half-transformed hands, pinning it between fingers that were more claw than nail. The newt struggled wildly at first and then its movements slowed as Maleficent explained that she was lowering its body temperature very gradually, instead of implementing the kind of instant freeze she’d demonstrated when she’d frozen the bath. Soon the newt was in a deeply subdued state, but still alive.
“At this point the creature can still be resuscitated, but it is like a zombie, unable to act and suspended in a state of semi-consciousness. It could be kept alive for days like this if needed,” she said.
Riku waited, wondering if she was going to show him a spell for warming the poor thing back up again.
Maleficent knelt next to him, holding the newt up so it was at eye level with both of them. Instead of warming it back up Riku watched in horror as delicate ice crystals slowly began to creep over its soft wet little body until finally it went rigid and still.
Swallowing back hard on a sound he felt rising in his throat, Riku fought to keep his expression dispassionate. He’d wanted to learn how to use his freeze magic in combat, but now he felt that the newt hadn’t deserved to die in the service of his lesson. He nodded and forced himself to accept the newt’s tiny frozen body in his hands when she passed it to him. He couldn’t belie any weakness or else she might doubt his intentions and withhold information from him. He held onto the thought that if he could just learn enough, if he could just get strong enough… then he would be ready, just like Dr. Facilier had told him.
As Riku stood there trying to keep his hands from shaking and dropping the newt Maleficent continued to lecture as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
“You have to account for different quantities of moisture within any given object, and the chemical makeup of the moisture is going to produce different results. Salt water, for example—”
Maleficent’s lesson was cut short when Diablo summoned her back to the castle with a loud squawk.
“Keep practicing, much of magic is intuition,” she instructed as she took her leave.
After she was gone Riku knelt in the garden and placed the newt gently on the dirt, putting some leaves over the dead body and moving to a different area of the garden. He began to gather blackberries to practice on, eating a few as he puzzled over Maleficent’s somewhat contradictory instructions. He figured the berries would simulate similar conditions to the newt’s body without him actually having to kill anything.
When he saw Shan Yu’s ship landing out in the open fields he was grateful to have a distraction and made his way over the shallow hills to greet him. He hadn’t seen his sword master since the night of the banquet, and even though it had only been a few weeks since then, it felt like much longer ago.
After stiffly bowing to his sword master he told him about his acquisition of ice magic, and even demonstrated some of the techniques he’d learned from Maleficent and from his own experimentation so far. The man watched but didn’t seem terribly impressed.
“If you’re done with your magic tricks, let's begin your lesson,” Shan Yu said.
Shan Yu pulled out a small sword and tossed it on the ground in front of Riku. The short single-edged blade grew thicker and curved towards the tip, and the cord wrapped handle also arced in a slight curve. Riku stared at the Chinese Dao, momentarily overcome by a feeling of intense deja vu as he gazed at it’s silver metal glinting in the afternoon sun.
Before reaching for it he looked up at Shan Yu, who nodded in confirmation. Upon picking it up Riku found the sword wasn’t nearly as small as it looked when Shan Yu was holding it, but it still was small enough so as not to be unwieldy. He gave it a few swings and found it to be perfectly sized to his still petite but quickly developing body frame.
“Thank you, Master,” Riku said bowing deeply.
He’d all but forgotten about his desire for a sword. Where it had seemed so very pressingly important before, now learning swordsmanship almost felt like just another hurdle he was going to have to jump before summer vacation.
Shan Yu assumed his fighting stance and reached for the hilt of his own sword. The weapon was the length of an average sword, but the blade was wavy like a dagger. Indeed, held in the man’s giant hands it gave the illusion of being the size of a bread knife.
“Come at me,” Shan Yu commanded, raising the sword and assuming his fighting stance, extending his hand and beckoning Riku forward.
Riku hesitated. He’d never fought Shan Yu with a real sword before, and Riku imagined being impaled by that curvy blade and shuddered.
Before Riku could act he found himself narrowly avoiding it as it sliced the air next to his head with a ‘whoosh’. He leaped to the side, tripping and stumbling over a molehill, but managed to keep himself from falling.
“You must learn to attack and defend at the same time,” Shan Yu said.
Riku nodded at his master’s oft repeated instruction and took his stance.
“Again,” Shan Yu commanded, and once again attacked without hesitation. Riku lurched to one side, tucking into a roll while simultaneously taking a swipe at his master’s shins, but Shan Yu easily parried the attempt with his large leather boot. Riku’s sword barely even dented the thick leather as it made contact.
Of course the sword wasn’t sharp! He thought. In his moment of realization Shan Yu’s other boot slammed into his ribs, forcing out a yelp and sending him sprawling across the patchy dirt and grass, gravel digging into his knees where he somehow managed to stick his landing in a half lunge.
Riku gulped in air as he pushed himself up off the ground using his sword as leverage, his free arm coming around to protect his injured ribs. Shan Yu was usually rough with him, but this seemed a little beyond what he normally expected.
“Don’t hesitate,” Shan Yu instructed. “Attack!”
Riku had to forget about the pain in his ribs as his master came at him again. He leaped out of the way, this time jumping high in the air for a downward slash. Shan Yu knocked him aside with the hilt of his sword crashing into Riku’s jaw with a ‘crack’.
Riku’s vision blurred with tears and he tasted blood.
“Again!” Shan Yu demanded before Riku had barely hit the ground, this time landing fully on his ass.
Riku somehow got to his feet and as Shan Yu came at him Riku threw himself right back at him with all his strength, holding his sword over his head in a clumsy two handed grip, all pretense of correct form completely forgotten. He swung the sword down, but before it made contact with anything Shan Yu’s knee slammed into his solar plexus, knocking the air out of him so hard that he couldn’t make much more than a wheezing ‘oof’.
“Your mother told me to train you like one of my soldiers, but you would be a disgrace to my army,” Shan Yu informed him.
That night Riku drew himself a bath and chilled it using a much weaker version of the same spell he’d watched Maleficent do when he first acquired ice magic. It wasn’t nearly as cold, and he only stayed in for a short time, but it was still enough to make his teeth chatter. As he sat in the bath he remembered how excited he’d been to learn ice magic, and it felt like so long ago, almost like it had happened to a different version of himself.
–
Over the following months Shan Yu started showing up several times a week for training. During his sword lessons, Riku followed Shan Yu’s instructions with a detached sense of resolve as the man constantly berated him. If his stance wasn’t wrong, his grip was, and keeping the correct posture seemed impossible to maintain at all times. By the time they neared the end of their lessons Riku’s arms would be shaking just from the effort of continuing to hold up the sword.
“Pain is progress, weakness is the enemy,” Shan Yu would tell him whenever he caught him struggling.
Training with his sword master was brutal, but he was at least grateful for how the exhaustion helped him sleep better, functionally keeping at bay the anxieties that now regularly came to plague him at night.
For the rest of spring he attended his previously most disliked subjects with just as much discipline as his magic lessons and sword training. None of it seemed either as boring or as exciting as it used to, but it kept his mind and body occupied as he counted down the days towards summer vacation. His excitement at the impending trip to Destiny Islands burned like a flame feeding his larger all consuming desire for ultimate freedom and independence.
Each day that passed seemed to last longer than the last. Indeed the sun came up earlier and set later everyday as summer drew nearer.
—
When Maleficent came across him packing his duffel bag a week in advance of the trip she decided it was time to give him the talk about humans and magic that she gave him every year.
“Never perform magic in front of the humans!” she spoke decidedly from her spot across from him at the breakfast table the next morning. “Especially the island people, they would probably burn you at the stake! That’s what they do to witches there, you know.”
She had repeatedly warned him about the ‘backwards’ island people and how badly they would react if they knew what Riku was capable of.
But he wasn’t convinced.
Although he didn’t know any humans that could do magic (other than himself and now Dr. Facilier), he was sure they had to exist. From the little time he had gotten to spend with other humans he’d seen that they often talked about magic like it was real. He wondered if any human was theoretically capable of doing magic, or was it just certain ‘special’ ones? He didn’t understand why, even if most of them couldn’t do magic, that they shouldn’t be able to at least learn a little bit about it.
“I think they already know about magic,” Riku said through a mouthful of his breakfast that morning.
Maleficent shot him a warning look over her monocle, which she was using to read a newspaper she’d acquired from Destiny Islands in preparation for their upcoming trip. She liked to get news from the Islands prior to their annual visit so she could catch up on local politics and track the value of her beachfront property.
“They show it on TV,” Riku pushed, taking a gulp of juice.
Maleficent scoffed. “TV is the last place you should be learning about humans.”
“Sora and Kairi believe–”
“Humans are foolish,” Maleficent snapped. “They don’t know what they believe."
“But I’m a human,” Riku couldn’t help pointing out, even though he knew he was supposed to pretend he wasn’t.
Maleficent placed her paper on the table and removed her monocle in order to give Riku her full attention. Her expression betrayed her frustration even as she spoke with forced patience. “Now darling, don’t be contrary. You know you’re completely different.”
Riku wanted to argue, even though it used to make him happy when she said he was better than other humans. “I’m not that different,” he mumbled into his juice glass, half hoping she wouldn’t hear. The memory of being sent to clean the cesspit to ‘remind him’ of what it would be like to be ‘treated as a human’ was not something he wanted to relive any time soon.
“Oh? Then perhaps it's a mistake allowing you to spend so much time with those island people,” Maleficent reproved.
“No!” Riku quickly protested. “I promise I won’t tell them, okay?”
Maleficent only narrowed her eyes, waiting for him to say something, to push her to make good on her threat. Riku swallowed hard.
“That’s right you won’t,” Maleficent said firmly, picking up her newspaper and popping it back open with a flourish. Lifting her monocle to her eye she scanned the pages as Riku slumped in his chair and pushed his eggs around on his plate. He badly wanted to argue with her, but he knew that if he said one more word she would cancel the trip for sure.
He willed himself to keep his mouth shut, to keep a lid on his frustration, to bite back the words that badly wanted to come out.
You won’t get to tell me what to do for much longer, he thought as he kept his gaze lowered to his plate. He didn’t trust himself not to look at Maleficent without openly glaring at her. He couldn’t wait to say goodbye to her as he left for summer vacation, and someday soon he was sure he’d be leaving for good.
—
At last they arrived at Maleficent’s beach house, and Riku didn’t even bother to unpack his bags. He instead immediately called Sora’s house. Most of the people on the island still had landlines due to poor cell reception, and he would know Sora’s family’s number by heart for the rest of his life.
Now that Riku knew that Maleficent was capable of killing children he did not want Sora coming over to their beach house at all anymore. He just wanted to immerse himself in the joy that was Sora’s family farm and get lost in the timeless days until everything that had happened at the castle was a distant memory.
Riku’s heartbeat sped up with every muffled ring as he waited for someone to answer. He conjured the imagined sound of Sora’s cheerful voice saying hello as if he could make it happen with magic.
When Papa Leon answered the phone Riku was a little disappointed, but still relieved when he greeted Riku warmly (at least for Leon anyway) and said how much Sora had been anticipating his arrival.
“He’s over at Kairi’s, you know her dad’s number right?”
“Yeah, thanks,” Riku affirmed before hanging up.
Kairi’s dad was one of the few people on the island who did have a cell phone, and he offered to come over and pick up Riku so the three friends could see each other right away. Riku figured it worked out better this way anyway because Maleficent always seemed to be more amiable when Kairi’s father was in the picture. Whenever he came over she put on a little extra lipstick and talked with an extra sweetness that as of late Riku had learned to regard with suspicion.
He waited impatiently near the door with his duffle bag and backpack, and as soon as the car pulled up he ran outside, hoping to avoid the possibility of Maleficent getting into a long conversation with the mayor.
“Riku!!” came Sora and Kairi’s joyful squeals as they came tumbling out of the large sedan.
“Guys!” he cried, as their twin hugs almost knocked him over except the force of each of them hitting him from both sides at once balanced him back out.
Riku grinned and returned their hugs at the same time as best he could.
“Good to see you, welcome back!” greeted Kairi’s dad, taking Riku’s duffle bag and popping the trunk to deposit it inside. He opened the door to the passenger side for Riku, but Sora and Kairi were tugging on him.
“No, sit in the back with us!!” they insisted.
“What am I? Your chauffeur?” the mayor teased.
“Sorry..!” Riku laughed awkwardly as Sora and Kairi effectively stuffed him into the back seat.
The mayor laughed along with them. “I live to serve Princess Kairi,” he added with a playful wink, and then closed the door behind them.
As soon as Riku slid into the middle seat behind Kairi she was holding up a white kitten sporting a big pink bow around its neck and a smaller one placed delicately atop the tuft of fur on its head.
“This is Marie,” Kairi said excitedly.
“A kitten?” Riku reached out to touch her but the kitten ducked out of the way.
“She’s just a little shy at first,” Sora reassured him from where he sat on Riku’s opposite side.
Everything was happening so fast that Riku could hardly process the reality that he was finally here, squished in between his two best friends.
“Kairi just adopted Marie last month,” Sora said while Kairi primped and adjusted the bows decorating the kitten, who was quite tolerant of it all and even seemed to be enjoying it.
“Daddy found her wandering alone one night and brought her home,” she explained.
“We looked everywhere, but we couldn’t find any more kittens,” Sora said.
“So it’s a mystery where she came from,” Kairi finished.
“Just like you Kairi,” Sora added, grinning at her across Riku.
Sora and Kairi had a way of finishing each other's sentences that sometimes made it seem like they were one person talking in stereo. He smiled along with them as they both excitedly talked to him at the same time.
Maleficent had followed Riku outside and was hovering close behind to talk with the Mayor while Riku made himself comfortable in the backseat with his friends. When they went to the beach she usually wore what was styled like a beach-ready version of her normal robes– a black spiderweb sarong and a drapey loose blouse over a one piece black bathing suit.
Riku rolled his eyes when he saw that she must’ve changed her clothes with magic or else she wouldn’t have been able to follow him outside so quickly. He was mildly disturbed at the idea that she was trying to look ‘hot’ for Kairi’s dad.
The mayor held out his hand, but instead of shaking it Maleficent perched her hand on top of his.
“It is so kind of you to go out of your way to pick up my son, he was so very excited to see his little friends,” Maleficent said, leaning in close to the mayor’s face.
The mayor politely but decidedly removed his hand from hers before replying, “He’s a good kid. They could hardly wait for him to get here.” When Maleficent continued to stand there he added, “I can tell he was raised by a… strong woman.”
“It comes with being single parents, wouldn't you say?” Maleficent said.
“Yes ma’am,” the mayor affirmed, while managing to get the driver’s side door open and slip inside.
Maleficent leaned an arm casually on the edge of the rolled down window, bending low to continue her conversation.
“It takes a remarkable man to run an island and raise a little one. Now all you need is a strong woman to rule beside you.”
The mayor laughed. “That’s the last thing I need,” he joked. “I don’t think I could handle a princess and a queen.”
At that he caught the eye of the children in the rearview mirror, making Kairi and Sora giggle, while Riku felt like he might die of embarrassment.
Maleficent laughed a genuine laugh. “Indeed,” she conceded “I too have many duties that demand my attention, which is why I’ll only be staying on the islands for a few days before returning to the castle,” she concluded before moving to say goodbye to Riku through the back window. “Now give your mother a nice goodbye kiss,” she said.
The look Riku gave her could have killed.
“Come now darling, I won’t get to see you all summer!” she insisted, her tone dripping with that false sweetness that turned Riku’s stomach.
“Fine.” When she leaned in he leaned to the side but she still landed a solid waxy kiss on the corner of his mouth.
“Remember, mommy’s always watching over you,” she said softly next to his cheek– a threat that only Riku could hear. The chills that crawled up and down his spine were almost lost in the buzzing of excitement reverberating through his body for him to ignore them.
The mayor had gotten back in the front seat and he glanced around the car to make sure the kids were settled. “All aboard?” he called before giving Maleficent a final salute and putting the car in gear.
Riku aggressively wiped the side of his mouth with the corner of his sleeve as soon as the car started to move.
“Your mom sure is something,” the Mayor said, glancing at Riku.
“Yeah,” Riku muttered in agreement.
The mayor opened his mouth to say something more, but before he could speak his cell phone began to buzz. He swiftly answered the call without taking his eyes off the road.
Sora and Kairi took the opportunity to begin talking to Riku at the same time again.
“You’re really gonna get to stay the whole summer?” Kairi asked.
“Yep!”
“I could hardly believe it when I read your letter!” Sora said. “I was afraid your mom wouldn’t let you!”
“Me too! I had to do extra homework just to convince her.”
“Yeah, but your homework is like sword fighting and stuff!” Sora said.
“Hey, I have to do math too, you know!”
“Speaking of which, you brought your wooden sword right?”
“No,” Riku said, with a subtly mischievous smile.
“Aw, but I wanted to spar!” Sora whined.
“I brought something better,” Riku said, “a real one.”
“No way!” Sora cried.
Kairi made a shushing gesture while glancing at her dad who was still absorbed in his phone conversation and none the wiser. She gave Riku a look of playful reprehension that silently told him ‘you’re lucky my dad didn’t hear that!’
—
After arriving at Kairi’s house the three immediately decided to go biking, as it was one of Riku’s favorite things to do on the islands. The mayor kept several extra bicycles of various sizes which he lent out freely to visitors. The low car traffic and the many bike friendly routes that crisscrossed the islands made them an ideal place to ride.
Just to be on the safe side Riku chose a bike with a rear basket so he could bring his duffle bag. It would be annoying to bike while carrying his things, but he didn’t want to risk leaving his stuff at Kairi’s house where snooping adults might happen to look in his bag and find his sword. He’d sort of forgotten about how normal kids weren't really supposed to go around carrying weapons.
Riku practiced balancing himself on his borrowed bike while Kairi wrapped a baby blanket around Marie.
“I want her to be able to come with me everywhere,” Kairi explained as she tucked the burrito style wrapped kitten into the handbasket of her bicycle.
“Gee Kairi, do you think they’ll let you take her to school too?” Sora asked from where he perched on his bike seat, somehow both stable and precarious at the same time.
“Maybe, especially if she is so quiet and well behaved that they don’t notice,” said Kairi, taking out a small bag of treats and feeding a few of them to Marie.
“She’s already trained so well,” Riku observed.
“Kairi’s been working with her a lot,” Sora said, standing on the pedals of his bike and rocking back and forth on them. Teetering but never falling over, completely at one with his bicycle. Even though he knew Sora had a lot more practice than him, Riku still felt he was somehow supposed to be just as good if not better at it. He felt that way about a lot of things his friends could do.
According to his birthday he was the same age as Sora and Kairi, but he seemed to outgrow them faster and faster each summer. The adults always said it was a “growth spurt,” but now Riku was questioning if the day that Maleficent said was his birthday really was.
Sora often praised Riku, saying how he wished he could live in a castle and learn sword fighting too. Sora’s accolades usually made him feel like he was a bigger and better version of himself, and yet, he still felt an ugly feeling well up inside when he saw how at ease his friends were in their lives– a feeling that he wouldn’t be able to make sense of for a long time.
Being the kind, empathetic, and intuitive friends that they were, Sora and Kairi could usually tell when Riku was being weird about something. He had told them a very little bit about Maleficent (whom they all agreed was “the ‘b’ word”), but it was nearly impossible to fully explain his home situation without telling them more than he was allowed to.
Even if he hadn’t been afraid of getting in trouble for saying too much, going into detail about what had recently transpired between him and Maleficent seemed too difficult, too scary, too close.
When his friends asked him about his life at the castle it caused him to lapse into an uncomfortable self-consciousness that made him glance away from his friends' concerned eyes and change the subject. That coupled with the fear that the truth would only put distance between them, when all he craved was to be with them and forget everything that had happened in his other life.
Which is why he was grateful that Sora and Kairi didn’t ever push him about it. They were perfectly happy to focus all their energy on having fun together.
“C’mon Riku,” came Sora’s voice.
Kairi and Sora were looking back at him expectantly, both poised with one foot on their raised petals.
“Let’s go!” Riku cried, and pushed off hard, trying to cover for his momentary lapse in attention.
He swerved and almost lost his balance, but his friend’s shrieks quickly turned into laughter when he managed to regain control of his bike. They all headed off at top speed towards the bike path which wound around the island, racing through cool tunnels of trees that shaded them from the tropical sun.
After stopping at their favorite convenience store to buy snacks which Kairi purchased with her allowance, as always. They walked their bikes to the nearest beach access point past the sand dunes.
They found a bench to sit on up near the treeline but still with a good view of the water. Kairi passed Riku his paopu soda and bag of dried paopu fruit. He always liked to go a little nuts on the paopu when he first got there.Then she neatly ripped open her bag of popcorn and tossed a handful into her mouth before feeding one of the puffs to Marie, who ate it happily.
“I think your mom has a thing for my dad,” Kairi casually remarked.
Riku almost shot his first swig of soda out his nose, making Kairi and Sora laugh.
“Ug, I know,” said Riku, regaining his composure. “Sorry she’s so weird,”
“It’s not really that weird,” Kairi said. “A lot of people want to date him.”
“Really?” Riku asked.
“Yeah, I think it’s mostly because he’s the mayor. A few people even proposed to him, but he always says ‘no’ because he’s too busy with work,” she said.
“Do you think you’d be happy if he got married?” Sora asked.
“I don’t know, maybe,” Kairi answered. “I guess it would depend on the person.”
“True,” Sora nodded, “you don’t wanna get stuck with an evil-stepparent, like Riku’s mom” Sora said only half-jokingly.
Riku almost snorted out his soda for the second time.
“She’s not my mom,” Riku said. The secret just came out, as if it had been waiting right there, spring-loaded at the back of his tongue and ready to pop out at the first opportunity.
Sora and Kairi looked at him in surprise.
He hadn’t planned to reveal this particular secret, and it surprised him almost as much as it had his friends.
“Huh…” Sora said
“You’re adopted too?” Kairi asked.
“Yes,” he confirmed, “but I’m not supposed to talk about it,” he added, keeping his gaze directed at the ocean in front of them. He squirmed under the intensity of both sets of wide blue eyes that were fixed on him, nervous to see what emotions they contained.
“That’s weird. My dad’s really open about being an adoptive parent,” Kairi mused, “he’s proud of it.”
Riku shrugged. “She doesn’t like people to know stuff,” was the only answer he could offer.
“Riku..” Sora started. When Riku met his eyes they were full of such sincere concern that Riku flushed self-consciously and squinted back out at the ocean.
“Then, do you know where–?” Sora asked slowly.
Riku shook his head, anticipating Sora’s question. “She said I just showed up on the castle doorstep.”
“Just like you, Kairi,”
“Mm-hm,” Kairi said, nodding.
“Do you remember anything from before?” Riku asked.
“Nope, nothing at all,” Kairi confirmed. “Do you?”
Riku shook his head ‘no’ in response.
The three fell silent while they ate their snacks and Kairi allowed Marie to wander while still keeping a close eye on her. She walked back and forth across their laps, stopping here and there to play with a loose hoodie-string.
Riku’s eyes fell on a group of three young adults who were playing volleyball down by the water’s edge. One of them kept switching sides to make up for their uneven number. They were giggling and shouting as if they were children instead of grownups. It gave Riku the sudden strange feeling that he and his friends were the adults watching the children play, instead of the other way around.
Marie had crawled onto Riku’s knees, and he absently petted her while watching the game.
“See? She likes you already, Riku!” Kairi said.
“Of course she does,” Sora agreed.
She was still small but her claws were sharp and they half-tickled half-hurt as she used them to anchor herself to the front of his shirt and pull herself up his torso. He couldn't help laughing as she crawled up to his shoulder where she perched. It tickled terribly but he tried to hold still while she nuzzled the crook of his neck.
“Look, they match!” Sora laughed, pointing at the white ball of fluff that blended in with Riku’s hair, and Kairi responded with a sound of delight.
Riku cuddled her with his cheek, in awe of the delicate softness of her fur, and how her moist velvety nose felt so perfect against his ear. There was something about all baby animals that smelled like milk and warmth. The last time he’d smelled it was when he snuck into Maleficent’s bedroom in search of the infant he found asleep in his old cradle. Tangible hollowness surged in his chest as he recalled the soft little human being who he’d imagined a future with; who he might have loved.
“Does it ever bother you?” he asked, suddenly turning to Kairi. “Not knowing who your real parents are?”
Kairi looked a little surprised but she hummed thoughtfully. “No, not really. I’m happy here.”
“Isn’t it possible you would’ve been happy somewhere else too?” Sora asked, taking a bite of his ice cream bar.
“Maybe,” Kairi said, “but if I were somewhere else I never would have gotten to be friends with you Sora!”
“Hmmm, that’s true,” Sora said with a frown.
“But you know,” Kairi mused, “I wouldn’t mind visiting sometime…”
“Me too!” Sora agreed. “Riku’s seen other worlds, right Riku?”
“What? Not really, this is pretty much the only place I’ve been outside of the castle,” said Riku
“Well, at least you aren’t stuck on a tiny island,” said Sora.
“Trust me, I’d rather be stuck here.” When he said it outloud it was obvious to everyone how badly he wanted it to be true. “Besides, a castle is even smaller than an island!”
“Maybe it’s smaller but it’s waaay cooler,” Sora insisted. “I wish we could at least visit once, I really want to see a real-life ancient castle!”
“No!” Riku said more sharply than he’d meant to. “She would never allow it,” he added more quietly, “and besides, it's just a dusty old castle, there’s really nothing to see there.”
Sora opened his mouth to keep arguing but Kairi cut him off.
“It seems like no matter where you grow up you get used to it, and it’s not as fun as visiting somewhere new,” she said.
“Yeah, maybe,” Riku agreed.
“Then it’s settled,” Sora said. “We’ll go find where you and Kairi are from, and then we’ll travel to all the other worlds together!” Sora said decidedly.
“It's a promise,” giggled Kairi, and Riku nodded in agreement.
As the three chatted with each other clouds had started to gather overhead. They all stopped talking and listened when they heard a distant roll of thunder. When another, more insistent rumble sounded, the children started packing up their things.
“Just keep the bike for now Riku! I’m sure dad will be fine with it!” Kairi insisted as she used the baby blanket to try and shield Marie from the large droplets of rain that were starting to hit them.
Sora and Riku waved goodbye and then set off in the opposite direction towards the docks.
As they rode Riku had a distant sense that he shouldn’t have told Sora and Kairi the truth about Maleficent, and that there would probably be consequences, but his other life was already taking on an unreal quality. It almost felt like just maybe Maleficent would forget about him and never come back to pick him up at the end of the summer.
Riku’s clothes were soaked through completely by the rain, and he knew the things in his backpack and duffle bag were getting wet too, but he didn’t care.
In fact it felt amazingly refreshing as it ran over him like a baptism, washing away all the bad memories from that dismal place that was his home. Speeding through the storm on his bicycle made him feel invincible.
“Hey Riku,” Sora called over the rain.
“What?” Riku called back, wobbling slightly.
Sora steered his bike so they were riding closely side by side, but he still had to yell to be heard over the rain. “Do you think you’re gonna break your record in crab hunting this year?”
Delight swelled inside Riku at the challenge. “I think I’ll break it and beat yours too!” He yelled back boldly.
“Yeah right,” Sora shot back with a sarcastic grin. “In your dreams!”
Riku glanced at his rain-soaked best friend, thinking that Sora seemed perfectly suited to this warm ocean world. As the docks came into view in the distance he saw that all three of Sora’s parents had come to greet him, and he smiled and waved at them.
“Race you,” Sora yelled, and took off before waiting for an answer.
Riku had a feeling that it was going to be the best summer yet.
Chapter 5: Reprise
Summary:
Riku is beyond thrilled to get to spend the next month with his friends on Destiny Islands, but their fun-filled summer days are soon troubled by unexpected adventures. When an adventure goes too far Riku is forced to break the one rule Maleficent laid out for him.
Notes:
Thanks for waiting so long for this update! I worked on this chapter a lot, and I think it was the most challenging to write because I tried to do a lot of character building while also writing action that felt believable. I learned a lot in the process and I hope it came across!
Chapter art
Chapter Text
Week 1
Waking up to the smell of crisp salty air made Riku’s heart surge when he remembered where he was. Every morning he would lay in bed listening to the sound of the seabirds drift through the open window, and the soft breathing of his best friend sleeping-in next to him.
And boy, could Sora sleep-in! Riku might be up for hours, already having gotten dressed and gone downstairs to be doted on and fed breakfast by Sora’s parents before being sent back up to wake their son.
Yet somehow, despite being such a heavy sleeper, Sora was never grumpy. How Sora could smile first thing in the morning was a mystery to Riku. Even Maleficent had once told him he was “scary” first thing in the morning.
Then again, they were both on summer vacation, and when there wasn’t anything they had to do it somehow seemed all the more exciting to get up and do everything. Their days were filled to the brim with whatever chance brought them– meeting up with Kairi to go biking, trying all the local snacks that Riku couldn’t get back at home, checking out different beach access points. Playing on the beach now involved less sand castles and more body surfing, but they would still always end up sandy and exhausted.
At night they’d already had a few good crab hunts on the beach, but like always they would catch and release. The point wasn’t really to catch crabs so much as the excitement of running around on the beach in the dark with flashlights. There was something both exciting and frightening about the inky black ocean at night that both frightened and intrigued Riku.
Once they stayed up all night to watch some sea turtles hatch, and he watched mystified as they emerged from their nests and made their way down to that dark sea that could be deadly to a human, but to these tiny little beings it was home.
Bright fresh mornings faded into hot afternoons that were saved by thunder showers which occurred like clockwork by early evening. Riku loved the rain storms. He loved the anticipation that would grip him at the first smell of ozone, followed by a tingling electricity that was palpable in the air as the thunder crept closer and closer. He loved listening to the heavy droplets as they pummeled the roof of Sora’s attic bedroom so loudly that they had to stop mid conversation until the storm passed.
If they were on the beach they could sometimes see the sheet of rain moving across the water towards the island like a wall. One time Riku and Sora had outridden the wall of water on their bikes for at least two blocks before it enveloped the shrieking laughing boys.
During one particularly rainy afternoon they were stuck inside at home while Sora’s parents were out. The first week of his visit had been such a whirlwind that they were only just now getting around to playing with Riku’s sword.
“En garde!” Sora cried, brandishing the sword and giggling menacingly.
“It’s dull but be careful,” Riku said.
“Yeah, of course!” Sora quickly affirmed.
When Riku first discovered Shan Yu had given him a dull blade he’d been mad, but now he was glad for it. He knew that even if Sora managed to land a hit or two, at least no one would be losing any limbs. Despite reassuring himself, he still stepped back when Sora gave a few test swings. Quickly he regained his poise and assumed his favorite offensive position.
“Bring it on!” Riku challenged, raising the wooden sword he'd borrowed from Sora and cocking it so it was pointing at his best friend like an arrow.
The rain got louder on the roof, like a crowd that’d suddenly been whipped up into a frenzy of cheering.
Grinning, Sora thrust his sword towards Riku who easily knocked it to the side. Wood hit metal with a satisfying thunk, like driftwood against the side of a boat. The ease with which Riku had blocked his first move served to emboldened Sora, and he swung again with more confidence.
They immediately fell into the patterns they’d practiced in previous summers as they fought their way across Sora’s messy bedroom floor, stumbling over toys, pillows, and books. Riku was a little surprised to discover that he had to hold back substantially, as he seemed to have improved significantly more than Sora had over the past year. He was pleased to see how the previous several month’s worth of grueling training with Shan Yu had paid off.
Sparring with his best friend made a lost spark of joy reignite inside him. It was a feeling he’d forgotten, but now felt as familiar as slipping into a well-worn pair of shoes. There was something so unequivocally right about being here with Sora like this, and it filled him to the brim with warmth and joy in abundance.
Their tempo increased as the fight spilled into the hallway where they had more room to play.
Sora’s house was set up so that his bedroom was the only room on the top floor, which was really more like an attic, positioned at the end of a hallway that led to the staircase. The second floor contained the parent’s bedrooms and bathroom, and the bottom floor had all the common areas with one long staircase that could be taken all the way down.
Despite Sora’s scrawny arms, he was landing heavy hits, fighting with his whole weight thrown behind each swing. Riku soon found himself on the defensive when his back hit the bannister at the top of the stairs.
He rolled to one side to avoid a swing, and then swiftly rolled back the other to dodge again as the blade whizzed past his head and bounced off the railing next to him. Riku eyed the gash that’d been left behind in the wood and the image of Sora’s parents came to mind.
Would they be mad? He wondered.
Sora didn't seem to notice or care as he threw one leg over the banister on the opposite side of the staircase and promptly slid down backwards.
“Hey! You can't get away that easily!” Riku called after him,taking the stairs two at a time and jumping over the last few, while arcing his weapon in a powerful downward swing towards his opponent who stood smirking at the bottom of the staircase. Sora quickly brought his sword up to block, bracing for impact with both hands. The strength of Riku’s blow split the wooden blade on the steel one, sinking halfway in where it stuck.
“Whoa!!!” Sora exclaimed.
“Guess it’s not so dull after all!” Riku added.
They both pulled, trying to extricate the weapons from each other, but they wouldn’t budge.
“I gotta brace against something,” Sora said, moving so that he could push against the bottom step with one foot and lean back, using gravity and his body weight to help him pull.
“Here, hang on,” Riku readjusted, holding the wooden sword by both ends while Sora braced and pulled upwards.
What happened next almost anyone watching might have seen coming, but the two were so high on adrenaline that foresight was not so easily accessible.
When they broke free the sword was flung backwards with so much force that it flew from Sora’s hands, spinning hilt over blade until– ‘CRACK’! It lodged itself squarely and firmly in the family’s television.
Both of them stood momentarily stunned, staring dumbly at the hilt sticking out of the TV.
“Shit!” Sora exclaimed.
Riku glanced at him, a little surprised to hear him curse in the same chipper voice that was usually proclaiming things like ‘wow’ or ‘cool’.
Before they could process what’d happened any further the sound of keys in the front lock made both boys jump. They shared twin looks of deers-in-headlights as the sound of voices came from just around the corner.
“We’re home!” came Aerith’s melodious greeting, followed by Cloud’s mildly grumpy, “Finally! That rain is not letting up!”
“We sure are going to have a tasty—” Leon stopped mid sentence as the three of them rounded the corner that separated the entryway from the den.
All eyes fell on the sight of the impaled TV and the children who stood looking like dogs who’d just been caught digging in the flowerbed.
“What the–” said Leon.
“Our TV!” Aerith exclaimed.
“How did–?” Cloud started.
“We were playing and, um, I broke the TV!” Sora winced after he blurted out the confession.
“Well, we can see that much!” Leon said, his voice flat.
“It was an accident…” Sora offered sheepishly, rubbing at the back of his hair.
Riku opened his mouth to try to give some further explanation, but he didn’t know what to say and promptly closed it again. He watched the grown-ups out of the corner of his vision, feeling too nervous to look them in the eye. Were they mad? He couldn’t tell. They weren’t yelling, but then again he couldn’t recall ever having seen them yell.
Leon’s shoes crunched on the shards as he approached the scene of the crime. He pulled the sword free with one firm tug, and a few more pieces of the screen tumbled to the floor, but he seemed more interested in the sword than the TV at the moment. Inspecting it, he slowly turned it over and looked it up and down before letting out a low whistle.
“This is a pretty serious number,” he remarked with an impressed quirk of his eyebrow. “Where did you get this?”
“Riku, um, I mean–” Sora started to explain but then stopped himself, not wanting to implicate his friend.
Nonetheless, three sets of grown-up eyes turned to Riku, and the disappointment in them made Riku regret everything. The thought they might send him home arose in his mind and suddenly he wished he’d never brought that stupid sword! He’d been so excited to show it off that he hadn’t stopped to think about the potential consequences.
As Sora continued to stammer, Riku spoke up with as much maturity as he could muster, “It’s my sword so I’ll take the punishment!”
Better to not make excuses, he reasoned. He knew that adults were more likely to forgive a repentant child than a whiny brat. But what if they punished him by sending him home? His mind churned with the possibility.
“Just…please don't send me home yet,” his voice only trembled a little.
The parents watched him with curious expressions that Riku couldn’t interpret, which made him even more nervous.
“Punishment…” Cloud echoed, frowning.
“Riku,” Sora said, stepping around to face him. “It’s not your fault I accidentally stabbed the TV. Besides, my parents don’t punish me…”
“We're not going to make you leave sweetheart,” Aerith said.
Her brown eyes were full of that thing that Riku recognized as pity, and that brought him back from the edge of his panic-tinged thoughts. A pang of self-conscious embarrassment shot through him when he realized he’d made a rather big assumption.
“We’re not in trouble?” Riku asked, looking to Sora and then the adults for reassurance.
“Oh no, you’re definitely in trouble,” Leon said, only half-jokingly. “But Sora’s right, we’ll think of something you can do to make it up to us, and a way to earn back the money it’ll cost to replace the TV.”
“That’s right,” Cloud nodded, and Aerith added, “But does this mean we're gonna have to keep a closer eye on you two from now on?”
“No! We won’t do it again, I promise!” Sora assured her, shaking his head emphatically.
Riku nodded earnestly in agreement.
Leon looked them over skeptically and then towards Cloud who crossed his arms, the two sharing looks of tentative capitulation. “Okay, first things first. Let’s get this mess cleaned up,” he said, gesturing to the broken TV.
Sora sighed. “Looks like we won’t be having any movie nights for a while…” he remarked, looking genuinely put out.
When Aerith laughed a gentle, genuine laugh and everyone else joined in, it seemed like everything was going to be okay.
As they all worked together to clean up, they brainstormed ideas for things Sora and Riku could do to make up for their mistake. Riku felt a little lingering embarrassment, but mostly he was just relieved that things were back to normal.
“We could work extra hours at the produce stand, and help with the coconut harvest and—oh!” Sora’s finger shot into the air indicating an incoming idea. “We could make coconut popsicles to sell to get money for a new TV!”
“That’s a great idea,” Aerith said, “and it’ll be the perfect time to have extra help with harvesting. Even though we don’t process them at the farm, we always keep some for ourselves to eat and make stuff with. Last year I made coconut bread to sell at the markets.”
“It’ll be good to have your help first thing in the morning,” Cloud said to the two boys.
Sora groaned. “First thing in the morning?!”
“Time is of the essence during the harvest, you know that,” Leon retorted.
“Riku’s been up earlier than you every day, it’ll be good for you to get up earlier too,” Aerith gently scolded.
“I’m used to getting up early,” Riku couldn’t help bragging (even though he hated it), as he finished sweeping the last of the broken fragments into the dustpan being held by Sora.
“Looks like you're going to have to set an example for Sora then,” said Leon. He and Cloud had worked together to double bag the broken TV, and he tied it up resolutely.
“But I’ve barely gotten to sleep in at all since school ended,” Sora continued to complain.
“Welp, you should have thought of that before you killed our TV,” said Leon, then winked at Riku, who couldn't help laughing even as Sora scowled. He felt like he was being allowed into a kind of inner circle; it was comforting and warm, blanketing over all the wounds of the past few months at the castle.
“Good work,” Cloud said, lifting the bag with the remains of the TV inside.
“I bet you’ll make back the money in no time,” Aerith said, opening the door for Cloud to take the bag outside.
“Still, I’ll hang on to this for now,” Leon said, also turning to go, and Riku stared after him as he left the room with his sword.
“Don’t worry, he’ll give it back,” said Sora, “...eventually.”
—
Week 2
Working early in the morning helped to avoid the heat, and so Aerith woke them at dawn and fed them a small but hearty breakfast. Then, with Cloud and Leon they hiked the short distance to the coconut grove that covered the far half of the farm. A gentle fog had rolled in during the night that still lingered, but was quickly being burned away. The morning light was sharp and its warmth could be felt as soon as the crust of the sun began to break over the endless horizon.
Leon and Cloud expertly wielded long scythes to cut the bunches free from the coconut laden branches. The two boys followed behind, pulling a cart to collect the fallen bounty.
Riku found the whole unprocessed coconuts to be rather heavier than he’d expected, and he was soon feeling the effects of the work. Although there was a certain kind of satisfaction gained from overcoming the challenge of a difficult task, after an hour had passed his arms ached and he was badly wishing that he could use a levitation spell. Still, he was in good spirits.
Leon finally called a break and he and Cloud put down their harvesting tools, passing around a canteen full of pleasantly cool water.
“I don’t think so,” Cloud chided when Sora started to reach for one of the scythes that had been laid on the ground.
“No pointy things for you for a while,” said Cloud.
“Not until we get you some lessons,” said Leon.
“Sword fighting lessons? Really?!” Sora exclaimed excitedly.
“Mmhmm,” Cloud confirmed while taking a long drink from the canteen.
“Just like you Riku!” Sora said, turning to his best friend. “You’d better look out, I’m gonna be way better by next summer!”
“But Sora,” Leon mused, “why didn’t you just tell us that you wanted to learn? We know a thing or two about sword fighting, right Cloud?”
“That’s right,” Cloud nodded.
Sora screwed up his face in a moment of thought and shrugged, “I dunno, I wanted Riku to teach me,” he said, his face breaking into a foolish grin.
Riku met Cloud and Leon’s silently questioning gazes with just as much of a question in his.
Had Sora been waiting all this time just to learn from him specifically?
Riku felt a little self-conscious at his friend's declaration, but it made him hold his chin a little higher throughout the rest of the morning’s work.
—
Once Kairi found out what had happened she offered to help make and sell the popsicles.
They set up an assembly line where Riku stabbed two holes in the top of the coconut with a screwdriver, then passed it to Kairi who emptied the water into a container, and then passed it to Sora who cracked it open with a hammer on a cement block.
“I knew you guys would get into trouble with that sword somehow, I just didn’t think it would happen so soon!” Kairi remarked.
“Sora couldn’t wait to get his hands on it!” Riku said.
“We probably should’ve gone outside, but it was raining,” Sora mused regretfully and then brought the hammer down on the coconut with enough force to send a few pieces flying.
“Careful, you’re wasting it!” Kairi chastised.
“He doesn't know his own strength, that’s how we ended up in this mess in the first place,” Riku quipped.
“Hey Riku, you think I got stronger since last year?” asked Sora.
“A little,” said Riku after a moment.
“Only a little?” Sora said, offended. “You just can’t tell because you got twice as strong!”
“True,” said Riku flippantly.
Kairi rolled her eyes. “Seriously, is that all you guys care about?”
“Yes,” they both answered at the same time, and then met each other's eyes before breaking into laughter.
Kairi rolled her eyes again but couldn’t help joining in. Whenever two out of the three of them got going it was impossible for the third not to catch their contagion.
“Seriously though,” Riku continued once their laughter subsided. “You’re going to have to train a lot harder if you want to be able to sword fight for real.”
“I will,” Sora said matter of factly, thwacking another coconut. Then he made a show of splitting it the rest of the way open with his hands like he was ripping open his enemy’s skull while letting out a guttural roar, and sending the other two into another round of laughter.
They spent the rest of the day processing the coconuts and making the popsicles.
“They should be done freezing just in time for the market tomorrow!” Sora said as he carefully slid the last tray into the freezer.
Riku felt a surge of pride at seeing their hard work so clearly exemplified in the finished product. He was sure they were going to sell out.
—
The next morning they packed a cooler full of ice and their carefully crafted popsicles.
Sora volunteered to pull the cooler with their precious cargo in a cart, which he hooked to the back of his bike.
Today’s market was on one of the smallest islands in the Destiny archipelago, which was forbidden to motor vehicles and only accessible by boat or by one long bridge.
Kairi brought her new kitten Marie, with her everywhere. She’d gotten completely comfortable riding in Kairi’s handbasket and would jump into it of her own volition whenever she sensed they were going somewhere. Riku was sure it seemed like Marie had grown bigger already.
Seed pods from the tropical trees crunched under the wheels of their bikes as they approached the bridge, which Riku was disappointed to see was relatively empty.
“Not many people here yet,” he remarked.
“Don’t worry,” Sora reassured him, “it’s still early!”
“It’s 11 AM,” Kairi corrected.
“Yeah, like I said,” Sora agreed with an impish grin.
The market was on one of the smaller islands, but the presence of multiple beautiful waterfalls around this particular island made it a popular tourist destination. The children were hopeful that they would have a steady trickle of foot traffic at the small booth they'd reserved near one of the more impressive waterfalls.
They stopped while crossing the bridge to admire the view below.
Looking over the edge of the bridge they watched the river running underneath and culminating in the main waterfall not far away, which dropped sharply before continuing onward below.
Sora picked up three of the spiky seed pods that had been tracked onto the bridge.
“Let’s have a race!” he said, as he passed them out to Kairi and Riku.
“Yeah!” Riku agreed, taking his pod and holding it out over the edge of the railing, ready to drop it when given the word. Sora and Kairi lined up next to him, mirroring his stance and holding their racers at the ready.
“Get ready,” Kairi started, “get set, GO!”
They all dropped their payloads.
The pods plunged into the frothy water in quick succession and were swept away. Riku immediately lost track of which pod had belonged to whom.
“Go, go, go!” Sora cheered, regardless.
The seed pods bobbed up and down in the rapids as they were briskly ushered down the river, towards the precipice of the waterfall where they teetered for a split second before they were sucked over the edge of the waterfall and disappeared.
“Yes! I won!” Kairi declared.
Neither boy had the desire to argue with her.
For a few moments they leaned against the edge of the railing watching the seed pods re-appear further down the river which continued off into the distance. Somewhere around a bend and out of sight, they would eventually meet with the ocean.
They walked their bikes the rest of the way to their booth, checking out the other people setting up shop. Some had their own tent, table, and chairs, but a lot of them were selling their wares on makeshift booths made of crates, or on blankets spread on the ground.
The friends set up shop on the far side of the market where there was a cluster of prefabricated wooden booths. Their stand wasn’t much more than a few boards and planks holding up a platform covered by a roof overhang that would protect them from the sun, but probably not from rain. At present they were the only vendors nearby, and Riku noticed that it seemed like they’d been relegated to the distant corner of the market, but Sora reassured him again.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “by the time people get to our booth they’ll be tired and hot and ready for a popsicle!”
They quickly set up their cooler and the sign they’d made the previous night.
Fresh Handmade Coconut Popsicles it read, and then below Kairi had added, Made with love!
Marie sat on the counter next to the cooler, rubbing her face on the edge.
“Does that feel nice and cool?” Kairi asked, scratching her behind the ear.
“She can be our mascot,” Sora said. “I bet with her here we’ll get lots of customers!”
Sure enough, as soon as they were settled they spotted a figure making their way towards the stand. The three held their breath in eager anticipation of their first customer
“Hey farm boy!” A voice called out as the figure came clearly into view.
They all let out their held breaths in a huff.
“It’s just Seifer” Sora said, annoyed.
“Oh great,” Kairi grumbled.
Riku recognized him as the jerk who he was sure only beat him at the struggle the previous summer by cheating, although he couldn’t prove it. Seifer had kept calling him “witch boy” because of his hair, and saying “abracadabra!” whenever he landed a hit.
Seifer was just a little older than the trio, but as far as they were concerned he might as well have been an alien. Teenagers represented that strange yet immediately imminent future that was both alluring and terrifying. It seemed impossible that in just a few years time they would be like this large awkward person who might as well have been a grown up but still acted like a child.
“Long time no see!” Seifer swaggered as he closed the distance.
“Hey, Seifer,” Sora said with a scowl.
Seifer turned to Kairi, unphased. “And the mayor’s distinguished daughter! I thought your dad wanted you to stop hanging around this guy,” he said, jerking his thumb towards Sora.
“That’s not true at all!” Kairi countered.
Seifer ignored her and turned back to Sora, smirking. “You really think you have a chance with island royalty?”
Sora glared daggers at him. “We’re just friends,” he protested, but by then Seifer’s attention had fallen on Marie. The feline could sense the tension created by the newcomer and sought safety next to Kairi.
“Hey, is that a cat? Here kitty kitty...” Seifer started to reach out to pet her but Marie ducked out of his reach.
“Just like your owner aren’t you?” He muttered, glaring at her.
When he finally fixed his glare on Riku it melted into a look of recognition.
“Hey, it's witch boy!” He said it almost like he was happy to see him. “I kicked your ass at the Struggle tournament last summer, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember,” Riku said flatly, crossing his arms and frowning at the nickname.
“We had a pretty close fight! Hey, how about a rematch?”
Riku shook his head. “No thanks, I don’t fight cheaters.”
“Cheater?! Who, me?” Seifer put his hand to his chest, feigning offence. “You’re probably just afraid you’ll lose again.” he sneered.
“No way Riku would lose to you again!” Sora broke in. “He’s gotten a lot better since he got his sword!” Sora threatened.
“You have a sword?” Seifer said, this time with genuine interest.
“Yeah,” Riku confirmed, puffing out his chest a bit.
“I gotta see this! You got it on you?” Seifer said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.
“It’s–” Riku started.
“My dad took it,” Sora cut in again. “We, uh, we broke the TV and so that’s why we’re selling popsicles to make back the money for a new one.” He stumbled on the over-explanation.
Seifer burst into laughter that was equal parts delighted and condescending.
“That’s little kid stuff,” Seifer said, wiping away the mirthful tears that had sprung to his eyes. “Listen, go get your sword. The rest of my gang are around here somewhere and we’ll have some real fun…”
“Sorry, we’re on the clock right now,” Sora said impatiently.
“Who cares? It’s not like you’re doing any business,” Seifer pushed.
“That’s because you’re blocking our stand,” Kairi said.
“If you’re not going to get anything then you need to move,” Sora informed him.
“Okay then, I want a popsicle,” Seifer said.
Sora’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “It’s 5 munny,” he said.
“What? C’mon I thought we were friends,” Seifer whined insincerely.
Sora started to argue but Kairi interrupted. “Okay,” she said, “if we give you a popsicle will you please leave us alone?”
“Yeah okay, sure, you guys are boring me anyway,” Seifer said, holding out his hand and flexing his fingers impatiently.
Kairi reluctantly opened the ice chest, withdrawing one of the milky white frozen gems. It glittered like a frosty opal in the sunlight.
Seifer snatched it and dramatically took a bite, then his face twisted up in over-exaggerated disgust.
“Yuck!” he sputtered. “It’s just frozen coconut!”
“Of course it is!” Kairi cried.
“They’re coconut, popsicles!!!” Sora added, exasperated.
“Yeah, but popsicles are supposed to be sweet!” Seifer said. “I can’t eat this!” He tossed the popsicle to the side.
The trio watched it bounce once and then lay still in the sandy dirt. It lay there ruined, its previously bright surface now marred with flecks of dirt and dry grass.
“You’re just a bully!” Kairi angrily exclaimed, and then continued. “Just because you’re dad’s mean to you doesn’t mean you can take it out on everyone else!!”
Riku and Sora looked almost as stunned by Kairi’s outburst as Seifer, whose face flushed and his previously sardonic expression distorted into anger.
He fixed his hate-filled glare on Kairi. “Not all of us have a daddy like you, little-miss-spoiled-bitch!”
“Hey, you can’t talk to her like that,” Sora piped in immediately.
Seifer placed his hands on the top of their booth and leaned forward into Sora’s face. His eyes narrowed and a vein strained on his temple. “Oh yeah? And just what are you gonna do about it?”
Sora wavered but stood his ground, and Riku could see the gears turning in his head as he searched for a comeback.
“At least I’m not the son of a slut who has two dads!” Spit literally flew out of Seifer’s mouth and Sora grimaced, falling back a step.
“That’s going too far!” Riku broke in, leaning in beside Sora to get in Seifer’s face.
“Oh, so now you wanna fight me? I thought you couldn’t because Sora’s gay daddies took your widdle sword.” He was leaning in so far over the top of the booth that it creaked under the weight of his hands.
Riku stood with his arms crossed, refusing to move even when he could smell the coconut on Seifer’s breath.
“Why are you so obsessed with Sora's dads anyway? It’s like you can’t stop talking about them,” Kairi taunted from behind.
The glare Seifer shot her could’ve cut the air itself.
“I couldn't care less about his stupid dads,” he spit, “but at least mine teaches me to fight like a man!”
To punctuate his point he slammed both his fists on the wooden plank that served as the top of their stand. The plank collapsed under his weight, having not been nailed down but only resting across a few other boards.
The cooler toppled heavily to the ground where it fell open, spilling its contents. The popsicles scattered, riding the wave of ice across the ground and then coming to rest like a pile of beached seals in the hot sun.
The commotion caused Marie to spring out of Kairi’s arms and bolt for the bicycle handbasket that she’d learned was her ‘safe spot’.
Even Seifer looked surprised as they all stared at the mess.
“You’re gonna be sorry you did that!” Riku said, being the first to recover from the shock. The sight of all their hard work ruined made his blood boil.
“No, you’re the one who’s gonna be sorry,” Seifer said, raising his fists and preparing to fight.
“You’ve been trying to pick a fight this whole time!” Sora said with equal frustration and exasperation.
“And now he’s gonna get it,” Riku said. There was no way he was going to let Seifer get away with this.
Even though he didn’t really know how to fist fight, Riku mirrored Seifer’s stance. Throwing punches hadn’t been something Shan Yu covered much during their training, but he knew how to take a hit, and to fall properly without hurting himself, and he knew how to use the enemy’s weight and inertia against them.
“Gimme your best shot then,” Seifer taunted.
With the boy’s attention fully on each other they’d forgotten about Kairi until she spoke up from behind again.
“You guys wanna fight so bad? Well then here’s my best shot!”
Darting around them, Kairi swung her leg as if punting a soccer ball and landed a kick squarely between Seifer’s legs.
Seifer fell backwards, his ass hitting the ground hard as he let out a cry that was equal parts pain and surprise.
“What the hell is wrong with you?!” Came his breathless squeal.
Kairi only huffed and turned her nose up.
Sora and Riku had both stopped to stare at Kairi, equally surprised.
“That’s no fair getting your girlfriend to fight dirty!” Seifer half-whined at them.
At that Riku started to laugh. He couldn’t help it at the sight of Seifer having gotten what he deserved, and Kairi being the one to deliver it made it all the better!
“No fair, huh? How’s that for a taste of your own medicine?” he jeered.
“Now scram!” Sora barked.
Seifer’s eyes skipped quickly between Kairi, Sora, and Riku, clearly outgunned.
“At least I don’t let little girls do my fighting for me!” Seifer spat as he backed away.
As he turned to flee his eyes fell on Kairi’s bicycle where it was parked not far away. Marie was crouched in the handbasket, eyes wide as she watched the scene play out from safety.
Realizing he had one more chance for mischief Seifer ran towards the bike.
When Marie saw him coming she crouched deeper into the basket, but it didn’t protect her this time. Seifer swung his leg to straddle the bike, grabbing Marie by the scruff of her neck when she tried to escape, shoving her back down roughly.
“Don’t touch her!” Kairi yelled, horrified.
But Seifer was already pedaling away hovering a little awkwardly above the small seat due to the lingering pain from Kairi’s kick.
“Marie!” Kairi called desperately.
“I don’t think so!” Riku yelled, heart pounding as he leapt onto his own bike and made chase.
Getting a head start on Sora, who was still fumbling to unhook the cart from his bike, Riku violently peddled after Seifer.
By the time they reached the bridge Riku had almost caught up with him, and he thought Seifer must be giving up because he suddenly stopped halfway across.
Instead of surrendering he held Marie by the scruff of her neck and extended his arm over the railing. “Stop right there or she takes a swim!” he yelled.
Riku’s blood turned to ice. Throwing on his breaks he came to a screeching halt just as the wheels of his bike hit the wooden slats of the bridge.
Marie dangled limp but still fighting, twisting awkwardly in Seifer’s cruel grip as the updraft from the powerful river below ruffled her fur.
“Put her down!” Riku choked out breathlessly, but as soon as it came out of his mouth he knew it was the wrong thing to have said.
“You didn’t say the magic word witch boy,” Seifer said, his face twisting into a malicious grin. “But if you insist…”
He released the helpless kitten, who dropped like a rock.
Riku’s mind flew forward to an imagined future; to a cold and still little ball of wet fur being fished out of the water down river. Or worse, she would be swept away and they would never find her body.
“Stop!” he gasped desperately, throwing one arm out as if he could catch her even though he was much too far away.
His magic flew down his extended arm like a lightning rod, shooting out his palm like he was deploying a net from a rocket launcher.
He felt the weight of her body as if he had caught her with his own hand. It took a few milliseconds for his mind to catch up with what he’d just done as he quickly fought for conscious control over the magic, wrapping it around Marie, cushioning her with as much gentleness as he could.
His mind and body strained with desperation, silently promising that if he could just save this one little creature he would give anything. As if this moment could make up for everything that had happened. The baby human he hadn’t been able to save.
The tip of Marie’s tail grazed the top of the water that rushed just underneath her, spitting up droplets of spray that dampened her fur. With all his might Riku held onto the sensation that his magic was an extension of his arm, and ever so slowly he began to lift her back up.
Seifer, who had been getting back on the stolen bike in order to flee, saw the levitating kitten and shrieked with the power of a genuine jump-scare.
“What the–!” Seifer’s foot missed the petal and he tripped over the bike, sending it clattering to the ground once more. He stared at Riku in awe as he stumbled and backed away. “You really ARE a witch!” he yelled, and as he turned to run away added, “and everyone’s gonna know it!”
Riku ignored him as best he could, focusing all his attention on bringing Marie gently to a landing. Once he had her resting safely in his arms he felt such an immense relief that he thought he might cry because of it.
“You’re safe,” he whispered against her moistened fur, letting his lips linger there, in awe of how soft and perfect she was. Marie clung to him, as if she could understand that he was the one who’d saved her, and what it had meant to him.
When he looked up again Sora had caught up with him and was staring at him with an absolutely dazzled expression.
“Riku!” He cried, “Did you–!?”
“Shhh,” Riku sharply gestured for him to stay silent, and as the reality of what he’d just done dawned on him he glanced around in a panic to check if anyone else had seen. There were some people much further down the river past the waterfall, and they appeared to be looking in the direction of the bridge.
“Quick, let’s go!” He ordered Sora, who obeyed, but not before retrieving Kairi’s bike and somehow managing to hang on to it at the same time as he rode his own.
“I’ll explain later!” Riku added hastily as Sora continued to stare at him with his mouth hanging open.
On the way back, Kairi caught up with them, panting from having sprinted all the way across the fairgrounds after them.
“Marie!” she cried as Riku surrendered the kitten to her and she peppered kisses all over her beloved pet.
“Thank you guys!” She said as she pulled the two boys in for an awkward group hug with Marie at the center. The kitten was still damp but seemed to have mostly recovered already as they crowded in around her.
“Riku saved her–” Sora started to explain excitedly, but Riku cut him off with a glare, imploring him with his eyes not to tell. Kairi hadn’t indicated that she’d seen anything out of the ordinary, and he wanted to keep it that way, at least for now.
Sora frowned but didn’t say anything.
As they walked their bikes back to clean up the mess at their booth Riku gave them the official version of the story.
“Seifer dropped Marie, then got scared and ran. I guess he was a coward after all,” he explained.
He felt a little guilty for lying, especially right in front of Sora, but he needed time to think. Besides, it wasn’t so much of a lie as it was a half-truth. He’d become rather good at telling these kinds of half-truths around Maleficent over the past several months. He hoped there might be a way to navigate the current situation by giving some explanation that would satisfy Sora without revealing everything.
Besides, Kairi didn’t really seem interested in the details as she doted on Marie.
“It’s true,” she said. “Only a coward would pick on a sweet little marshmallow like this,” she said, baby talking as she continued to caress Marie.
“So,” What’s up with his dad anyway?” Riku asked, eager to steer the conversation in any direction away from the rescue.
“My dad said he’s an alcoholic,” Kairi said.
“Once I saw him yelling at Seifer after school,” Sora recalled. “The next day he had a black eye. He said it was from a Struggle match, but I think his dad did it.”
“He probably deserved it,” Riku said. He wasn’t about to feel bad for that jerk after what he’d done.
“Riku!” Kairi laughed a little uneasily and continued. “He shouldn’t have tried to hurt Marie, but still, don’t you think it’s kind of sad.”
“Yeah,” Sora agreed. “No one should be treated like that by their own parents.”
Riku pretended not to notice when Sora looked at him as he said it.
“Well anyway,” Riku said uncomfortably, “I don’t think he’s gonna mess with us again.”
“At least not until next summer,” Riku added.
“Ugh,” Kairi huffed, “I’d be fine if we never had to see that asshole again!”
Riku looked at her a little surprised, and then looked to Sora, who shrugged.
“Apparently Sora isn’t the only one who learned how to curse over the past year,” Riku said, and Kairi and Sora grinned at each other and then at him.
Even when they didn’t mean to, his friends always managed to make him smile.
—
They decided not to tell on Seifer because “his dad will just be mean to him and make things worse.” They’d still have to make another batch of popsicles, but they were sure that Seifer wouldn’t bother them again.
Riku was relieved that he and Sora seemed to have reached the understanding that they weren’t going to talk about what really happened until they were away from everyone else. By the time they got to the coconut grove where they could talk privately, they were both bursting with the need of unspoken words. As soon as they were alone Riku started to hurriedly offer the lame excuses he’d come up with on the way there.
“I think an updraft caught her,” he said, unable to even meet Sora’s eyes as he said it.
Sora only looked at him flatly. “C’mon Riku, I know what I saw.”
Sora didn’t call him a liar, but Riku could tell he wanted to.
Sighing in defeat Riku finally acquiesced. “Okay look,” he started. “I’ll show you something, but first you have to promise to keep it a secret.”
“I promise!” Sora affirmed eagerly.
Riku picked up a fallen coconut frond with water pooled in its curves. He held it up between them so that Sora could get a good view, and slowly tipped it forward so that the water began dripping off the spout-like tip.
After a moment he whispered “freeze”.
Sora gasped as frost snaked down the leaf until it reached the tip, where the drop poised there hardened into a smooth clear pebble, clinging to the leaf by a delicate structure of ice crystals. Riku handed the leaf to him.
“Cool,” Sora marveled as he ran his fingers over it, then broke off the drop of ice which quickly dissolved in his warm hand.
“Are you… scared?” asked Riku. He remembered all the things that Maleficent had said to him about humans being afraid of magic.
“No, of course not!” he said, smiling and shaking his head. “I knew it!”
Riku blinked. “Knew what?”
“I knew you were magic!” Sora said, eyes gleaming with excitement.
A faint blush crept over Riku’s cheeks. “I wanted to tell you but–”
“Your mom, I know. I know how she is.” Sora interrupted.
Riku nodded and sighed. He felt a tentative but deep relief from having finally unloaded his secret.
“You can’t tell anyone,” Riku reasserted.
“Okay,” Sora said, “but under one condition.”
Riku raised an eyebrow. “What?” he asked slowly.
“You have to teach me!” Sora declared, eyes sparkling.
“I can’t.” Riku said, pained. “You have no idea how much trouble I could get in just for showing you that.”
Sora’s expression of eager expectation only slightly wavered. “But Riku–” he started.
“Maleficent will actually kill me!” Riku interrupted.
Sora’s smile dropped. Riku had already told them that Maleficent wasn’t his mom, but to hear him call her by her name was still a little bit jarring. He knew she was a touchy subject, but this was magic, real magic, there’s no way he could just let it go.
“Riku, what if something like what happened today happens when you’re not here? Marie could’ve been seriously hurt!”
“I know!” Riku said more harshly than he’d meant to, but Sora didn’t back down.
“I solemnly swear that I won’t tell,” Sora said in the most serious, sincere voice that he could muster while holding up his hand in a scouts honor pledge. “And,” he continued, “if Maleficent tries to kill you I’ll just have to get good enough to fight her off!”
This drew a fit of nervous laughter from Riku. He couldn’t imagine Sora trying to fight Maleficent, and in fact the idea was ridiculous. Yet, Sora looked so sincere and so confident that Riku could almost believe in him.
“Fine,” he said, giving in. He was actually really curious and excited to see if Sora could learn. Now that he knew the truth there wasn’t much point in trying to withhold it from him. Besides, he didn’t really believe Maleficent when she’d said that other humans couldn’t do magic, and he wanted to see if Sora had it in him.
“Yes!!!” Sora cheered, jumping for joy.
“But,” Riku continued, crossing his arms and sticking out his chest, “if I’m going to be your teacher you have to do what I say!”
“Yeah of course,” Sora said without missing a beat.
They were both grinning.
—
Week 3
Over the next few days Riku jumped every time the phone rang, half expecting it to be Seifer’s dad calling to rat him out; and when there was a knock on the door he couldn’t help thinking that it might be the angry mob that Maleficent had warned him about here to ‘burn him at the stake’.
As the days went by and nothing happened he felt a little silly for having been worried about it at all. Who would believe Seifer anyway? After all, it seemed like everyone knew he liked to make trouble. Besides, he was too caught up in magic lessons to worry about it too much.
During their lessons Riku saw the enjoyment in strutting around and lecturing Sora much in the same way that Maleficent did when she lectured him, but if Riku got too serious their sessions would soon break down into goofing off. Sora was so focused on learning magic that he wasn’t even interested in sparring anymore, and Riku’s confiscated sword was all but forgotten.
Yet despite their enthusiasm they weren't making very much progress. Riku could tell Sora was feeling pretty discouraged since he still hadn’t been able to complete anything even close to a successful magic spell.
Sora wasn’t very good at memorizing or pronouncing the spells, and after many failed attempts at a levitation spell, Sora asked if he could try and learn the ‘freeze magic’ Riku had shown him.
Riku wasn’t sure how to recreate the conditions under which he’d learned from Maleficent, or that he’d even want to. When he thought about his own ice bath initiation it still made him shiver.
They took some ice cube trays from the kitchen and brought them to the grove with them only to discover that it was much more difficult to freeze sea water than fresh water. On top of that, even if he could make enough ice cubes there really wasn’t any way to completely immerse Sora in them without a bathtub. Sora came up with the idea that he would wear his swim trunks and they would rub the ice cubes on him as a compromise, but he could barely keep from squealing and flinching away from the ice wherever it touched his skin.
After several more unsuccessful attempts, Sora was shivering and looking quite miserable.
“Well, my hands are definitely cold, but I also missed lunch,” he said, flexing his fingers.
“You do have to get really cold for this to work,” Riku reaffirmed.
When Sora only stood there shivering, Riku sighed. Maybe they were taking the wrong approach.
“Let’s take a break. Maybe it’ll help if you eat,” Riku said.
—
They sat in Sora’s bedroom eating sandwiches while Sora got warm again.
“Let’s try something with shadows,” Riku suggested between bites.
“Shadows?” Sora inquired curiously.
“It was one of the first things that I learned how to do, so maybe it will be easier for you too.”
Riku got up to close the only window in the bedroom and drew the curtains tight. There was still a little bit of light leaking in, but it had greatly darkened the room.
Setting up a flashlight on a stack of books he pointed it at the opposite wall so it acted as a projector. He held up his hand in front of the beam and made a shadow puppet of an oversimplified rabbit.
“Of course I can do that!” Sora exclaimed, mimicking Riku’s bunny with his own.
Riku smiled slyly. “Yeah, of course you can. But watch, can you do this?”
The shadows of his index and middle fingers which made-up the ears of the rabbit began to elongate. The face, which had previously been formed by an ‘o’ shape made by his thumb and ring fingers, rounded and softened into a more natural snout. Soon it looked like there was a fully formed silhouette of a real rabbit on the wall.
Sora made a sound of delight as it detached itself from the shadow of Riku’s arm, like a puff of smoke from a chimney, and started to hop around the circle of light that contained it like a wall.
“It's almost like I can feel the shadows,” Riku began, trying to deconstruct what he was doing enough to be able to explain it.
“When I first was learning,” he continued, “I would think about what the shadows made me feel. Once I understood that the rest came easier.”
Sora continued to watch him in silent anticipation, so Riku cleared his throat and clarified.
“Well, I kind of used to be scared of shadows,” he admitted slowly, “and so I would concentrate on that feeling.”
“They can be kind of scary,” Sora agreed.
Especially when you’re a little kid,” Riku amended.
Sora nodded thoughtfully. “So I’m supposed to feel scared?”
“Well, maybe. Do you think you could try?”
Sora closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Riku couldn’t help but smirk a little at the expression of intense concentration on his friend’s face.
After just a few seconds his eyes snapped open again. “It’s hard to feel scared on command,” he remarked.
“Boo!” said Riku, lunging at him.
Sora’s shriek immediately turned into laughter. This obviously wasn’t going to work.
“Okay,” Riku said, changing his game plan, “hold your hand in front of the light.”
Sora obeyed and his teacher continued. “Just tell me what’s the first thing you think of when you think of shadows.”
Sora closed his eyes again.
“Well, I remember a few summers back at one of our family bonfires…all the kids from the islands were there. You were there too, and we were all playing hide and seek in the shadows around the edge of the forest. A lot of the kids were scared and they were messing around and jumping out at each other and stuff. But I wasn’t scared. In the shadows it felt safe, kinda like they were protecting me or giving me a big hug.”
As he spoke a serene look had come over his face, and Riku stared at his friend momentarily stunned at the gentle sincerity of his answer.
All of his past magic initiations had been…well…harder than this. When he’d learned shadowplay he hadn’t been able to sleep for weeks because the monsters his child-mind had conjured continued to haunt him. When he learned levitation Maleficent had made him lay on a bed of nails until he could levitate himself off of them. And during his ice-magic initiation, pretty much all he could remember was that it hurt so bad he thought he might die.
Each of his powers were gained with pain or fear as the guiding force behind them.
Would something like this really work?
“Well, what should I do now?” Sora asked. He had opened his eyes and was watching Riku expectantly.
Riku tried to refocus. It’s worth a try, he reasoned.
“Concentrate on the feeling of, um, being hugged by the shadows. Then let that feeling take over your whole body and mind.”
Sora closed his eyes again and was quiet for a few moments. When he opened them again his gaze was soft, looking past Riku into the distance of his memory.
“Now try to touch my hand,” Riku instructed in a whisper, afraid to break the spell as he lifted his hand so that its shadow hovered in the circle of light on the wall.
Sora moved to reach for Riku’s hand but Riku stopped him. “No, only use your shadow hand,” he corrected.
Sora huffed and quickly recentered himself. Slowly he extended his hand so that only their shadow-fingers overlapped and they both jumped. Sora yelped, jerking his hand back out of surprise and then quickly reaching back out again.
“You did it,” Riku said, stunned.
The two of them quickly repositioned the shadows of their hands adjacent to one another, but this time when they touched no one jerked away.
Sora’s eyes sparkled as he grinned at Riku, whose smile was almost as wide. Watching his best friend do magic for the first time was like learning it for the first time again himself– no this was even better!
“Riku,” Sora murmured, “this feels amazing…” as their shadow-fingers interlaced.
The way Sora said it made the excitement in Riku’s chest liquify, melting into something even more intoxicating.
They sat there for a long time marveling at the feeling of touching without touching, letting the shadows of their fingers interlace and explore. It was a feeling that held such profoundness that it nearly knocked the breath out of him.
Riku didn’t know it yet, but chasing after this feeling would shape the direction of his life for a long time to come.
—
Week 4
Between magic lessons and their popsicle making project to keep them busy they had hardly even been going to the beach. They’d streamlined their popsicle recipe over the next few batches and added a little sugar (Seifer had a point about that), and ended up being a hit at the markets. Riku was almost disappointed when Leon declared that they’d made back the money to buy a new TV and that he was “calling it even.” They were free from their debt, and Cloud gave back Riku’s sword.
About halfway through dinner Aerith turned to Riku. “It’s been so wonderful having you here, I hope you know that you’re always welcome.”
Suddenly Riku realized that they had just one more week! The epiphany was accompanied by a hard lump immediately manifesting itself in his chest.
“Thank you,” he said, remembering his manners.
“Do you think you’ll be able to join us again next summer?” she asked.
“Yeah, definitely,” Riku responded with a strained smile. He had to believe he would.
Aerith only smiled back and reached for the bowl of farm-fresh roasted vegetables. “More?” she asked, offering to spoon some onto Riku’s plate.
“I’m really going to miss your cooking,” he said, but after that he found he wasn’t very hungry anymore due to the lump having transformed into a heavy rock, which was now resting in the pit of his stomach.
—
That night Riku lay awake in Sora’s attic bedroom. The thought of returning to the castle seemed beyond unbearable. The lump hadn’t really gone away, but only moved into different parts of his body and was currently lodged in his throat. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes.
No, don’t cry, he scolded himself silently.
“Hey Riku,” came Sora’s whisper out of the darkness.
“What?” Riku answered, jolting a little. He’d been hoping Sora was already asleep.
“Are you asleep?” Sora asked.
“No,” Riku said, and then added snarkily, “How could I answer you if I was asleep?”
Sora let out an amused huff, “I can’t sleep.”
“Me neither,” Riku agreed.
There was a long pause and the sounds of a few sighs before Riku spoke again.
“It might take some time, but I’m working on making a portal,” he said.
“A portal? What’d you mean?”
Riku felt Sora’s weight shift next to him and he knew he’d propped himself up on one elbow with his attention piqued.
“Yeah,” Riku continued. “It would let me come and go from the castle whenever I wanted. Once I get it working I can come back and give you magic lessons during the rest of the year.”
“And me and Kairi can come to the castle!” Sora said excitedly.
“Well,” Riku hesitated, “yeah maybe.”
“We’re gonna have to tell Kairi eventually you know,” Sora said after a moment.
“Not yet though, you promised,” Riku reminded him.
“Not yet,” Sora agreed, and then flopped back on his pillow. “You, me, and Kairi are really gonna get to travel around the universe together after all,” he mused.
Riku lay silently trying to catch some of Sora’s excitement, but with it came an equal heaping of anxiety, and it churned inside him uncomfortably.
After a few moments he heard Sora’s breathing shift to the pattern he recognized as his friend falling asleep. He would always be amazed at how fast Sora could conk out sometimes. He still felt uneasy, but the sound of Sora’s soft snoring combined with the steady chirping of the tree frogs still managed to sing him to sleep.
—
Riku found it impossible to pretend any longer that the pattern of life he’d gotten used to on the islands would last forever. The lump wouldn’t go away, it just moved around to poke and squeeze at his insides, sometimes making it hard to breathe, sometimes cramping his bowels, and sometimes simply situating itself like a vice around his heart. His happy days of bikes, beaches, and secret magic lessons were quickly drawing to a close, and the oxygen was being sucked out of the air itself.
The morning of the day Riku was to be picked up by Maleficent it felt like an anvil was hanging on his heart. He lay tangled in the covers next to Sora, wishing he knew a spell to stop time. Watching the dust motes adrift in the rays of sunlight coming through the slats in the blinds he knew that once he moved, it was all over. Once he got up time would continue its relentless march forward, and before long he would be back at the castle. The thought of returning to his life there felt like he was falling back into that dark, dirt filled abyss from his nightmares.
A knock at the door made Riku jump, and Sora sat up with a moan. “Come in!” Sora mumbled through a yawn as he stretched his arms over his head dramatically.
Kairi let herself in with a pleasant “good morning!” and started to pick her way across the room to the window which she threw open, causing both boys to wince and groan at the bright sunlight that streamed into the room.
“You guys are smelly!” she said matter of factly, holding no real malice.
Riku and Sora started to protest but Kairi interrupted them.
“Hurry and get up, we’re going to the play island,” she said.
She made her way over to sit on Sora’s bed with a bounce and leaned over to whisper in his ear. As she talked Sora’s eyes brightened and his mouth curved into a broad smile.
“Hey, what are you–” Riku started.
“I have a present for you,” Kairi said, “and I want to give it to you in the secret spot.”
“But she’s gonna be here soon,” Riku practically wailed.
Sora and Kairi nodded at each other before they each grabbed one of his hands and started to pull him up from the bed.
“Don’t worry we’ll be quick and come right back,” Sora reassured him.
Riku protested, but only a little.
As they made their way to the beach and piled into one of the row boats Riku was so successfully distracted by his friends that he managed to temporarily put his imminent return out of his mind.
That was, until they heard the distant sound of a motor back at the farm. It was a motor boat pulling up to the farm’s dock. They all squinted at the far-away figures climbing out of the boat– one of them was the unmistakable silhouette of Maleficent.
It felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over him. Riku’s heart dropped into his stomach and began to pound painfully, making his whole torso thump with its frantic rhythm, and his ears began to ring with the sudden jump in blood pressure.
She hadn't seen them yet.
There’s still time, Riku thought hysterically as he watched her figure making its way towards the main farmhouse.
He tried to stay calm and sit still. Surely Sora’s parents could distract her for a few minutes while Kairi gave him his present. To his horror and frustration he felt tears jump to his eyes. He tried to push them back down but he was already breathing so erratically that one panicked breath came out close to sounding like a sob. He hated crying, but crying in front of his friends was infinitely worse, humiliating him on top of everything else.
Their boat was close enough to the play island that Riku could jump out into the shallow water, which he did, and it dragged on his legs as he ran the rest of the way.
“Wait!” Sora and Kairi called as he stumbled ashore, freeing himself from the pull of the surf as he ran.
“Quick, pull up the boat!” Kairi was instructing Sora as they both jumped out, and Sora grabbed onto the rope to drag it ashore.
As they approached the cave they could hear the unmistakable sound of crying from inside. Riku was sitting in a dark corner, where he was taking deep breaths and trying to make it stop.
He felt the concerned gazes of his friends above him, silently questioning.
“I don’t want to go,” was all he could say while pressing balled fists to his eyes to try and stop the tears that kept stubbornly leaking out.
He kept his eyes squeezed shut until he felt cool damp hands on his, pulling them gently down and away from his face.
“Kairi…” he said, looking up at her. Her eyes were full of warmth and love, which was mirrored by Sora’s who stood next to her looking down at him.
Kairi interlaced her fingers with one of Riku’s hands, and then passed his other hand to Sora, who took it earnestly.
“We don’t want you to go either!” Sora said.
“We always miss you when you’re gone,” Kairi said.
“That’s why we came up with a plan,” Sora said eagerly.
Riku turned his still wet, red eyes to look first at Sora and then back at Kairi.
“A plan?” he asked hesitantly.
Sora nodded enthusiastically. “Yep, student exchange program,” he said, as if that explained everything.
Riku sniffed back the rest of his tears. “What’s that?”
“You’re gonna come to high school with me and Kairi here on Destiny Islands!”
“High school?” Riku only continued to stare at Sora inquisitively.
Kairi piped up to clarify. “It’s a special program that Destiny High does every year. Students from the Islands get to go abroad, and families here host students from other high schools.”
“That’s– that would be–but why?” Riku asked, trying to wrap his head around what she was telling him.
“To see other worlds and broaden your horizons!” Sora said in his best TV commercial voice, which made Kairi break into a fit of giggles, followed by Riku who finally gave in and laughed along with them. He wiped his nose and eyes on the sleeve of his shirt and smiled at his friends.
“My dad said he’d talk to your mom about it,” Kairi said.
Sora and Kairi both smiled and squeezed his hands, clearly proud of their cleverness.
Riku felt a flutter of hope. If anyone could talk Maleficent into it, surely it would be the mayor, especially considering the way Maleficent had been flirting with him when she’d first dropped him off. The ever present lump slightly loosened its grip on his heart.
“Thank you guys,” he managed to say as tears threatened to well up again. “I’d better get back before she gets annoyed.”
“Wait, I haven’t given out your presents yet!” Kairi exclaimed.
“That wasn’t the present?” Riku asked, and Kairi smiled slyly as she pulled a loosely wrapped cloth bundle out of her mini-backpack.
Unwrapping the cloth she revealed three brightly colored shells, each decorated with beads of a different color scheme to match the shell. There was a neatly drilled hole at the base for the braided twine, and each was adorned with a unique silver charm.
She handed Riku the one with the star charm.
“I picked the star for you because you’re from the stars, like me,” she said.
Sora was given the one with the paopu, “because you’re the one that ties us all together.”
She kept the one with the heart charm for herself, “because you’re both always in my heart,” she said, blushing a little.
Riku and Sora both mumbled thank you’s as Kairi hugged each of them in turn. She held onto Riku just a little longer, and as he submitted to her embrace he realized that he’d gotten just a little taller during the past month.
“These will keep us connected until you can come for high school,” Kairi explained as the boys inspected their charms up-close.
“That’s still so long from now,” Riku said, directing the statement more to the universe at large than to his friends.
“Yeah…” Sora agreed, looking somber.
“But you’ll be back every summer before then, right?” Kairi said, trying to keep the positivity flowing.
“That’s true…” Riku agreed, but even a year still felt like forever.
“I’ll write you lots of letters,” Sora said in an attempt to reassure his friend.
“And we’ll always be thinking about you,” Kairi added.
As his best friends held his hands Riku still didn’t want to leave, but he felt a little braver.
—
After Riku left, Sora and Kairi sat in the cave together talking and sketching on the walls.
Sora felt that Riku’s departure signaled the end of summer, the end of elementary school, the end of a part of his life. He knew his house was going to feel a lot lonelier without his friend there, but he was determined to spend the next year practicing the few spells that Riku had written down for him to memorize. Besides, maybe Riku would get that portal that he was talking about working.
“I’ve never seen Riku cry before,” said Kairi, pausing with her chalk mid-stroke.
“Me either, at least not like that,” Sora agreed, also pausing in his sketch. Their eyes met, full of mutual concern for their friend.
“I just wish we’d had time for Riku to draw himself too,” he sighed and brushed the chalk off his palms, stepping back to admire the drawing he’d done on the cave wall. It was rough and childish looking, but he thought it was a pretty recognizable representation of himself in profile. Across from his drawing was the one that Kairi had drawn of herself, similarly crude but with a few extra details.
Kairi nodded, “He’ll get to do it next summer.” she said.
“Or maybe sooner, if he can figure out how…” Sora trailed off, having spoken without thinking.
When Kairi looked at him questioningly he quickly covered his mouth.
Kairi tilted her head and put a hand on her hip, eyeing Sora suspiciously. “Oh? What are you guys up to anyway?”
“Well I promised I wouldn’t tell…” Sora looked around sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head.
“Tell me what?” Kairi pushed.
“Riku’s trying to–” Sora started. When he’d promised Riku not to tell he’d said “yet” which implied that he could tell her later, and now it was later…right? And besides, Kairi was their other best friend, after all. He chewed his lip as he came up with the meandering exoneration. What would be the difference between telling her now or in a few months?
“Kairi, Riku can do magic.” Sora said with a kind of solemnity that really didn’t suit him, and then his expression quickly changed into puzzlement when Kairi only crossed her arms and looked at him with an unsurprised expression.
“Duh,” she said, “It’s not like we didn’t already know anyways, right?” Kairi reminded him.
“That’s what I told him,” Sora said, relieved at finally having gotten that out in the open.
“I bet he would have told us eventually,” he added, in an unasked-for defense of Riku.
Kairi shrugged. “Maybe, but he’s a lot better at keeping secrets than you,” she teased.
Sora only pouted for a moment before he broke into a half-guilty grin.
It felt a lot better having told Kairi, but he still wanted to practice some more before showing her what he could do. He was nervous to try and practice on his own, and a little bit worried that it wouldn’t work at all without Riku there. With him gone it felt kind of like all the magic on the islands had gone away with him.
But Sora wasn’t about to let self-doubt rattle him. He was going to prove that he could protect his friends from Seifer, Maleficent, and anyone else who ever tried to mess with them again. It was that drive that would keep him training as hard as he could in anticipation of the next time he’d get to see Riku.
He was sure that their most exciting adventures still lay ahead.
And he could hardly wait.
Chapter 6: Childhood's End
Summary:
When Riku breaks into Maleficent's private library to try and steal a book that holds the key to escaping from his sheltered life at the castle, she punishes him by forcing him to read while sitting on a chair of nails. Riku suffers through Maleficent's punishment while he desperately searches for the forbidden knowledge that will allow him to open a dark corridor and see his friends again. During his search however, he ends up with much more than he bargained for.
Notes:
I wrote a version of this chapter a long time ago before I had most of the other chapters written, but since then the story changed and I had to rewrite a lot of it! Originally this was going to be the end of book 1, but I think it really needs one more chapter to feel complete.
Chapter Text
As the green fire of Maleficent’s teleportation spell dissipated Riku coughed from under his hoodie. She was cranky and he'd ended up getting a little extra singed during transport.
“You burnt me,” Riku complained, sticking his injured finger in his mouth.
“I came all the way to get you, and you weren’t even ready! You could at least be a little grateful,” she griped.
“I already said sorry,” Riku huffed, shifting his duffle bag to the other shoulder as he followed her through the castle doors and into the foyer.
“You’re covered in soot, go wash up,” Maleficent instructed, then abruptly turned away from him to begin giving orders to the goblin servant unfortunate enough to be standing the closest.
“A message for you, Mistress,” announced another goblin with a gruff, nasal voice. He bowed so low his tusks scraped the ground.
“Hurry up, I’m already behind schedule,” she snapped, holding out her hand as he jumped to give her the rolled up parchment.
Maleficent unrolled the letter as she started to stride from the foyer.
Riku couldn’t help feeling a little hurt that she hadn’t even asked about his trip yet, and at this rate how was he ever going to get to tell her about the student exchange program?
He called after her. “Wait!”
“Oh, you’re still here?” She said turning back to him and holding up the letter. “I’ve been invited to be the grand marshal at Hell’s Annual Soul Reaping Parade!”
“Okay, but-” he tried again.
“Sorry dear, no mortals allowed.”
“Listen!” he finally yelled.
She stopped and stared at him like he’d just sprouted horns.
Riku took a deep breath. “Sora and Kairi told me about this thing where students from off-world can go to high school there. It’s called a student exchange program and–”
“What are you going on about? I’ve had about enough of your puerile behavior!”
“I want to go to high school on Destiny Islands!” he said firmly. Better to cut right to the chase.
Maleficent raised her chin to sneer down the tip of her nose at him. “What utter nonsense!” she proclaimed. “Haven’t you had enough of that place already?”
“It’s still three years from now,” Riku defended.
Maleficent blew him off with a wave of her hand. “You probably won’t even want to go anymore by then.”
“Kairi’s dad was supposed to talk to you about it,” Riku pushed.
“I didn’t see him,” she snapped. “I came straight to pick you up because I’m in a hurry!” She rolled the parchment back up and tucked it into her robes, moving to leave the room again.
“Wait!” He continued, insisting on making his case. “They teach all the basic subjects in school there, and they have extracurricular activities.”
“Are you not satisfied with the subjects covered in your homeschooling?” Maleficent bristled, turning back and giving him her full attention.
“It’s not that—” he decided to try a different approach. “I could also get a part-time job!”
“Like a commoner? Doing what exactly?” Her voice dripped with condescension.
“I don’t know, maybe at a convenience store or–” Honestly he hadn’t thought that part through yet.
Maleficent’s laughter caught him off guard. “Or you could stand on the side of the road and do magic tricks for tips!”
The track Riku’s mind was flying down hit a brick wall.
“Or you could give sword fighting lessons to the local children. Or perhaps you could collect people’s garbage with your levitation spells,” she continued while snickering at her own jokes.
“Don’t be ridiculous, you’d never fit in,” she concluded.
“I would too!” Riku argued, offended.
Maleficent put her hands on her hips and fixed him with a patronizing scowl that Riku knew meant he was about to get a lecture.
“Humans are pathetic weaklings crawling blindly through the universe until it consumes them. I’ve given you what other humans can only dream of, yet now you want to go live like one of them?”
“It’d just be for a little while,” Riku defended meekly.
“Oh no, you can’t have it both ways,” she said, voice rising. “I thought you always wanted to become a powerful wizard, but now I’m starting to think you’ve been brainwashed by those islanders.”
“No!” Riku protested, “I just– I want to see other worlds and broaden my horizons!” He repeated the phrase that had made them all laugh when Sora and Kairi first told him about the exchange program, but Maleficent didn’t even crack a smile.
“You want to pretend to be a normal boy so badly? Then perhaps we should stop your magic training right now. Maybe you’d appreciate the gifts I’ve so generously given you if you knew what it was like to be a regular magicless human.”
“But normal humans can do magic!” Riku argued.
“Oh, can they now?” Maleficent said, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.
Riku quickly realized he’d misspoke and shrugged, trying to play it off. “Well, it’s just that they’ve never had a chance to learn right?”
“And you’re going to be the one to teach them?”
“No,” Riku couldn’t keep the stammer out of his voice with Maleficent’s gaze piercing straight through him.
“I bet you’ve already done it.” The accusation was delivered softly, but the danger was clear. “I knew something was off from the moment I picked you up. You’ve been teaching those children magic, haven’t you?”
“No! I swear–!” Riku still tried to defend himself even though he knew in his heart that he was caught.
“Liar!” Maleficent yelled.
“No, you’re the liar!” Riku yelled back as the heat of anger ripped through him. “Why are you the only one who gets to decide who can and can’t do magic anyway?”
“Foolish child, you’ve no idea what you’ve done. Human hearts and bodies are far too fragile to withstand training without the proper guidance.”
“That’s not true!” Riku countered. “Sora really did do magic and it was fine!”
“Ridiculous!” Maleficent insisted. “It probably had everything to do with you, and nothing to do with him.”
“No,” Riku shook his head. “You’re wrong and I can prove it!”
Maleficent's eyes were wide with fury. “I think not! You'll never be returning to the islands again!”
Riku blinked at her and she nodded firmly.
“But the beach house–” he started with what seemed the first reasonable argument that came to mind.
“I’ll be selling the beach house,” she said promptly. “According to the newspapers, it’s a seller’s market right now anyway. There’s plenty of other worlds with far more charming beaches.”
Cold panic trickled over the back of Riku’s neck.
“But my friends–”
Maleficent shook her head. “I’ll take responsibility for that,” she said, voice softening a bit. “I never should have let you get tangled up with those meddlesome children in the first place. Trust me darling, you’ll soon forget them, and don’t worry I’ll find more suitable playmates for you.”
“I could never forget them!” Riku practically hissed.
Maleficent only chuckled. “Children’s hearts are fickle. In a few years they’ll be as far from your mind as–”
“No! I won't let that happen!” Riku cried.
“That is my final decision,” Maleficent said with a cold finality that pierced Riku’s heart like an icicle.
“You can’t do this!” he yelled desperately.
“I can do whatever I please!” Maleficent boomed, her voice roughening as it swung towards its dragon side. “As of now you are grounded, and you are forbidden from performing any magic until you learn to respect it.”
“But–”
“YOUR ROOM!”
Riku had never felt so wildly angry as he took the stairs two at a time and then ran down the hallway to his room.
“I hate you!” he yelled as he slammed the door.
—
Riku endured the rest of the day grounded in his room in a state of frantic despair. He fretted until he was drained, but panic still coated him like a thin layer of sticky webbing. The only upside was that he found he didn’t even care anymore about the possibility that Maleficent might kill him. Nothing she could do would be worse than what she already had.
He took Sora’s crayon drawing off the wall and put it under some papers in his desk, then pushed Kairi’s charm all the way to the back corner. He told himself it was to hide them from Maleficent, but the truth was that he needed to put his feelings aside for now. At least for a little while. Just to get through this.
If only he could get the dark portal working!
The sigil he’d drawn on his floor was still there, seemingly undisturbed while safely concealed under his carpet during his vacation.
He’d double and triple checked every detail of his chalk drawing against the one in the book Dr. Facilier had given him, but it just wouldn’t work! He was sure he could find the answer if he could get his hands on a copy of Fundamentals of Demonick Passage, the book that had been mentioned under “further reading” for information on opening a portal to the dark corridors.
By the time evening fell, Riku had come up with a plan to acquire some tools that he could use to pick the lock to Maleficent’s private library. By midnight he was standing in front of the enchanted door with an assortment of hex keys, some wire, and the determination not to leave until he’d gotten what he came for.
Almost as an afterthought he tried turning the door knob and jumped when it clicked open. Feeling a little silly, he put the tools in his pockets and pushed open the heavy door.
The inside of the library was a lot bigger than he’d thought it would be, considering that from the outside of the castle it didn’t look like much more than one of the many extensions and towers that had been built up like layers over the centuries. It must be enchanted, he thought.
Jagged mazes of bookcases lined shadowy corridors that he couldn’t see the ends of. He imagined that from above the layout would look like a maze. Presumably Maleficent came here to get the books she supplied him with for his homeschooling, but it looked like no one had been here for centuries.
On one side of the room the ceiling slanted dramatically upwards, and at the top of the wall several long windows funneled moonlight into the huge room. The open space below featured a reading area with several ancient-looking desks, chairs, and tables. Bathed in the moonlight it gave off a foreboding aura, but he thought that it had the potential to be a bright, beautiful room for lounging and reading during the day.
But wait, upon approaching he discovered that some of the furniture was very strange indeed. A few of the chairs sported leather straps attached to the arms and legs, and some were covered in small holes across the seats and seatbacks. Several of the desks were fitted with what looked like a kind of lever-and-pully system. He reached out to touch one of the chairs when he noticed dark stains running along the sides of the carved wood in a way that looked way too much like dried blood.
Recoiling in disgust he yanked his hand back and turned away. He didn’t have time to stop and ponder the furniture at the moment anyway.
I have to focus, he told himself as he took in the seemingly endless isles of books. Under other circumstances he would have been happy to see so many books, but how was he ever going to find the one he was looking for? It made his head swim.
He picked a stack at random and started down it. His strategy would be to follow the shelf on his left as far as he could down the aisle and then back again while trying to get an overview of the different subjects.
The books were of all shapes and sizes– covered in leather, cloth, or hard bound. Some were thick with dust and cobwebs, while others looked like they might have been taken off the shelf more recently. On the spines were text and images that moved, and others emitted light from the cracks in their bindings. One even had a vine growing out of it! He couldn’t help reaching out to touch it.
It was going to be hard to leave the library with just one book, but he kept the impulse in check by reminding himself of his singular goal. There was one book that he needed to find. That he had to find. The book that might make it possible to get out of this place– to get away from her.
After what felt like an hour he was becoming increasingly anxious that Maleficent or one of the servants would discover him. Although, he thought, the goblins probably wouldn’t rat him out. He’d come to realize that they didn’t like Maleficent either, and the only thing that actually seemed to be keeping them loyal to her was their fear. Maybe they’d been just like him once, trying to please a mistress that wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than complete submission.
That’s not going to happen to me, he thought resolutely, and continued his search.
But the walls of books morphed and twisted, and much to his frustration the subjects didn’t seem to be organized in any cohesive way at all!
As the night ticked on his search became increasingly frantic. Focusing his intention he called on his magic to guide him, a higher power, anything!
He jumped when there was a muffled thump behind him. Turning around he saw that a book had fallen on the floor. He looked at the nearby shelves to see where it had fallen from, but there weren’t any obvious empty slots.
Picking it up he turned it over in his hands. It was a medium-sized volume, bound in modestly worn brown leather, and held closed by a tarnished metal clasp. The cover was embossed with flaking gold leaf filigree which framed the Latin title.
Unhooking the clasp he opened the cover and leafed through the pages. He was disappointed to find that the entire book was in Latin, but he knew enough to get some clue as to the contents. Upon a cursory glance it seemed like there might actually be some information relevant to his search. He hadn’t found Fundamentals of Demonick Passage, but this one seemed like a good place to start. He would have to take it back to his room to translate with his Latin textbook next to him.
“What kind of a fool do you take me for?” came Maleficent’s low, sharp voice.
Riku slammed the book shut and whirled around to see Maleficent’s tall silhouette filling the exit to the aisle. Her long shadow was already morphing and bubbling, unable to contain the dragon inside her.
It wasn’t a question. He didn’t answer.
“What is it you're hoping to accomplish by sneaking in here?” Maleficent seemed to float as she entered the room.
“I wanted to learn something useful for once!” Riku said defensively.
“Did you forget that I forbade you from studying magic?” She took long, slow strides as she moved towards him.
“No,” he said, his voice dripping with hatred, “but you don’t get to tell me what to do anymore.”
“You are mine,” Maleficent countered, “and I will do what’s best for you, whether you like it or not.”
Riku began to back away while looking for an escape. The bookshelves stretched to the ceiling on either side of him, and the aisle faded into the darkness of the labyrinthine library behind him.
“I don’t belong to you!” he hissed angrily.
Maleficent sensed his intention to run and with a flick of her staff the library doors slammed closed with a thunderous bang.
Riku backpedaled and clutched the book as if he could use it as a shield or maybe a bludgeon against her. He glanced back down the aisle, but he knew that wouldn't be an escape. Not really. He was forced to turn and face her as her body began to swell and her neck lengthened.
“You have rebelled for the last time,” she said with a quietude that sent chills down Riku’s spine.
He could only watch helplessly as her shadow spread out its wings, and tendrils of darkness raced across the floor towards him.
—
Riku awoke lolling to one side in the chair where he found himself seated. His body ached and his mind raced to catch up. Through blurry vision and a throbbing head he could see that they were still in the reading area of the library. He was sitting in one of the desks he’d seen earlier– one with a system of pulleys and levers attached to it. Maleficent was sitting at a desk nearby with Diablo on her shoulder and a pile of books in front of her, flipping through one of them while idly scratching her familiar under his chin.
He tried to move but his legs were stuck, and pain shot through the entire back of his thighs, buttocks, and back.
“Ah, you’re awake,” Maleficent said, looking up from her reading when she heard him cry out.
Riku looked down to find that his pants had been removed and there was a heavy wooden bar across his legs. When he placed his hand on the seat next to him sharp spikes pressed into his palm. As Riku quickly regained his wits, the meaning of the holes on the chairs and bloodstains all came together in a moment of horrifying clarity. He was sitting on a bed of nails. And he was trapped.
“Let me go,” Riku’s speech was still slurred from the sleeping spell.
“I always forget how fast humans grow up,” Maleficent mused, completely ignoring his plea.
“You’re a young man now, and it’s only natural for you to want more. Since you want to learn advanced magic so badly I’ve decided to allow it. Of course I’ll expect a full write-up of what you learn.”
Riku stopped his squirming to stare at her. Was she serious right now?
“I don’t want this,” he protested, gesturing towards the chair he was locked into.
“Is that so? If you’ve learned anything you should already know that working with pain is an essential part of working with magic. If you want to learn to control magic, you must be unafraid to experience pain.” She paused to look at him pointedly.
“What do you mean?” Riku was getting more frantic the more awake he became as he strained to see if there was any way to free himself. The device resembled an ancient lecture-hall desk, with the chair and desk being one whole, and the lap bar locked firmly across his legs like that of a rollercoaster safety bar.
“I took the liberty of pulling some of the books you’ve been browsing.” Maleficent began gathering up the collection of books she had on the desk in front of her, including the one she'd caught him with.
Maleficent spoke calmly, even pleasantly as she approached him with the armfull of books. “The chair is a scale; it will deliver pain equal to the knowledge you are seeking. You will read these books in the order I choose. Afterall, they contain some very mature subject matter.”
She began placing the books on the wooden tray hanging from the pulley system attached to his desk as she continued.
“As you progress, a number of nails will retract,” she explained further as she circled behind him to fiddle with something on the back of the chair. “The chair uses your body weight to ensure that in the beginning, the nails will not puncture your skin… if you take care not to squirm.”
Nausea washed over him as he fully understood how this machine worked. It didn’t hurt as much at first because there were so many nails that his body weight was distributed evenly across them. With enough nails it would practically be like sitting on a regular flat surface. But as the number of nails decreased and more of his body weight was being supported by each nail, the remaining nails would dig deeper into his flesh.
Pulling a lever with a finality that made Riku shudder, Maleficent stepped back to admire her handiwork. Riku stared straight ahead with a detached sense of resolve, the only thing betraying his fear was his tightly clenched hands folded on the desk in front of him.
Maleficent came to stand next to him, reaching out to caress his hair and comb her fingernails over his scalp, a gesture she’d done to soothe him ever since he could remember. But he barely felt it. He was too distracted by the novel sensations spreading across his entire backside.
Maleficent began scooping his hair back into a ponytail as she spoke. “I’ve done everything I could for you, but sometimes you have to learn the hard way,” her grip around his ponytail tightened, “even though it will pain me to see you suffer.”
She finished tying his hair back with a tug, feeling a trill of excitement in anticipation of the good show she was sure Riku was about to put on for her.
“Now lets see, I suppose you’ll need some light to read by,” she said with a wave of her staff.
Riku looked up to see softly glowing orbs drifting in circles above them, illuminating the room with a bluish light that complimented the small amount of moonlight that the high windows already provided.
“Diablo will be keeping an eye on you for me, so don’t try to cheat,” she said almost playfully, and turned to leave.
Riku gaped after her. The bird is going to babysit me?
As she disappeared out of view he suddenly wished she would come back.
“Wait!” He called out, but there was no answer other than the sound of Diablo’s soft croak from where he had perched nearby. He eyed the raven suspiciously, knowing that Maleficent was going to be watching him through her familiar’s eyes.
Riku squirmed, testing out the limits of his bonds. It might be possible to squeeze his legs out from between the heavy bar and the bed of nails, but not without tearing up the backs of his legs significantly. The nails on the seat back prevented him from leaning back and getting any leverage that way either.
He forced himself to focus on breathing deeply and evenly, eying the stack of books on the scale next to him. Riku steeled himself, clinging to the hope that in one of them might be a key to getting out of this place for good.
The pressure from the nails tingled and prickled, reminding him to hurry up.
Maleficent had indeed organized the books in order of increasing difficulty as far as the material contained within. The book on top was the gardening book he’d first seen the vines peeking out of. Although it had looked interesting at the time, he now wished mournfully that he’d never touched it. Gingerly he reached for it so as not to poke himself unnecessarily and lifted it from the scale. The creaking of gears startled him and he fumbled, almost dropping the book on the floor. He managed to cling to it with one hand while the other gripped at the edge of the desk, gasping as he felt the pressure of the lap bar increase. Simultaneously the pressure on the backs of his thighs and ass sharpened as the first set of nails retracted into the chair with a loud click.
The new sensation was a lot closer to what he thought sitting on nails should feel like. He wanted to scream, but the thought that Maleficent was watching him through Diablo made him choke it back. He wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of watching him suffer if he could help it.
Forcing his chin up he opened the first book.
All I have to do is read enough to bullshit the write up later, he reminded himself.
Riku skimmed the magical gardening book as fast as he could. He was relieved to discover that much of its girth was due to the thick, knobby covers, and surely Maleficent wouldn’t expect him to memorize all these details about moon cycles and planting charts! Hopefully he’d be able to do a sufficient write-up based on an overview of the general ideas.
This isn’t so bad, he thought as the pain dulled to a thrumming. He even learned a few things he thought he’d like to try out in the garden if he was still here by spring.
Which I won’t be, he thought, reaching for the second book.
The second book sat on the top of the stack, looking annoyingly thick. Riku drew in a breath and reached for it, this time prepared for the jolting sound of the chair’s mechanisms in the quiet library.
He cursed as he was treated to a wave of fresh pain that accompanied the next set of nails retracting into their holes. Fingertips gripped uselessly at the surface of the desk as he was pressed harder into what felt like a hundred razors. Sweat jumped to the surface of his skin as his muscles tensed, only making the nails dig in harder.
Diablo landed on a flag post sticking out of the wall above him, tilting its head to aim an eye at him. Riku glared at the raven before stiffly opening the second book.
It was an extremely detailed and torturously boring treatise speculating on multiple complicated and overlapping factors that led up to the great magic wars of 400 years ago. By the time he finished skimming, he was shivering from the sweat that had covered his body during the initial onslaught of pain and then cooled. Once again the pain had subsided somewhat as his body seemed to absorb and buffer it over the course of reading the book. Still, by the time Riku neared the end he desperately needed to pee while simultaneously dying for a glass of water. The dawning realization that he was going to have to piss himself sent a fresh wave of humiliation crashing over him. He closed the book and slumped back in the chair, letting out a yelp when the forgotten nails on the seat back poked into him, forcing him to stay in an upright position. His muscles ached with the effort of holding up his body. He thought of Maleficent with a renewed hatred, sure she was watching him and laughing right now.
He eyed the next book resentfully. It was the one that he’d only picked up because it had fallen off the shelf, but looked like it might contain some useful information on sigils. Riku’s Latin was rusty at best, and he didn’t know how much he’d be able to glean from it without a dictionary, but he supposed he’d just have to do his best to fumble through.
Almost there, he thought.
As he lifted it, the chair’s mechanisms sprang to life once more, and he couldn’t stop the anguished cry that tore out of his mouth as fire ripped through the lower half of his body.
“FUCK!!!” he yelled, pounding his fist on the top of the desk to try and cope with it.
Diablo had startled at the noise and was circling the room squawking. “That’s enough!” the raven croaked, imitating the voice of its mistress.
“Fuck you!” Riku yelled, glaring at the bird as it alighted on a bookshelf and returned his glare.
“That’s enough!” Diablo repeated with robotic-like accuracy.
Riku grabbed one of the books he’d already finished and hurled it at the bird with all his strength. With surprising precision the book sailed towards its target as the raven clumsily dodged and took off, squawking as it retreated towards the front entrance.
It felt like his legs were being crushed in the jaws of a wild animal. Looking down at his lap he was sure he had to be bleeding, but it was impossible to tell exactly what was happening to his underside. Was the wetness he felt sweat, urine, or blood? Was he in unbearable pain or were his legs completely numb? Was he sitting on a block of ice or being raked across hot coals?
Fresh sweat jumped to the surface of his already clammy skin and his stomach lurched.
When he threw up he tried to aim off to the side, but some still landed on the wooden bar and splattered onto his legs. It was disgusting, but the burst of euphoric chemicals that came afterward was enough to calm his shivering and gave him the energy to wipe his face and blow his nose into his shirt.
With shaking hands but solid resolve he opened the third book.
His head swam as he struggled to focus, but despite the text being in Latin, he was surprised to discover that he could actually glean quite a bit from it. The information was also accompanied by stylized etchings that illustrated each topic. Some of them were graphic depictions of sex and violence that would have made Riku squirm under other circumstances. Another chapter had examples of rather frightening looking demons that one might encounter when casting various summoning spells.
The text explained that all magic was based on two principles:
Pleasure & Pain
In the deepest suffering there is found the purest pleasure, and in the purest pleasure there is always pain. One cannot exist without the other, and together they create the foundation on which all magic is based.
The words pulsated in time with his throbbing head. Is that what this is all supposed to be about?
He’d noticed that as he read the pain seemed to dissipate, and by the time he finished each book he’d gained some of his strength back. It made sense with what he already knew about magic, considering how highly unpleasant all of his magic initiations had been, although this one really took the cake.
There was something he still hadn’t been able to puzzle out though. When Sora learned the shadow spell, it had been different. He’d thought shadow magic was about learning to control his fear, but Sora had done it without fear. Was he somehow conjuring shadows without using dark magic? Maleficent had told him that light magic users were so rare and powerful, that only one was born on any given world each century. Thinking back to Sora mumbling through the failed spells that Riku had tried to teach him was almost comical. There’s no way Sora was using light magic… was there?
Riku closed his eyes and thought about his friend. The memory still felt so close, like he might just walk out of the castle gates and be on the islands again. He could practically feel the warm sand sinking between his toes (and the fact that his feet had currently gone completely numb made it even easier to visualize). The way his heart ached when he thought about it almost outweighed the physical pain.
Now that he was sure Maleficent couldn’t see him anymore he slumped forward, letting his forehead land on the open book with a smack.
The first sob came out as a strangled moan. The next few were only silent spasms that shook his body like a long neglected motor choking on its own fumes. After sucking in a gulp of air he finally let out a wail that rivaled those of the wild animals often heard in the dark woods that surrounded the castle for miles.
Then, he lay there crying, finally feeling free to let it out.
After a few minutes he heard something that could’ve been the buzzing in his own head, but then quickly realized that it was actually coming from the book under his head.
Sitting up quickly he ran the back of his hand and arm across his face and stared down at the cover of the book. He turned over his sleeve and tried to wipe some of the snot and tears off when a waterfall of deep red light spilled from the pages. He barely felt it when his back hit the nails.
Slowly the light dimmed to a steady glow and Riku could see that it had fallen open to a spread covered entirely by a magic sigil from which the light emerged. Riku stared at it, completely forgetting about all his pain.
A low, clear voice rang out.
“Boy,” it said.
Riku’s breath froze in his lungs and his heart leapt into a frantic rhythm.
“Hello?” he croaked, leaning back and away from it as much as he could while still craning his neck to try and look at it.
“Fear not, for I mean you no harm. I was drawn to your heartache,” as the voice spoke, the air around the sigil warped and glimmered in mirage-like waves.
“Who are you?” Riku asked, growing more bold with curiosity.
“My name is Ansem. I am but a humble servant of the darkness.”
“Ansem,” Riku repeated. “Then it was you that made the book fall off the shelf?”
“You’re clever,” said Ansem.
“A servant of the darkness,” Riku considered. “Does that mean you’re… a demon?”
“Some might call me that.” Ansem paused and Riku swallowed hard. “Does it frighten you?”
“No,” Riku quickly answered.
“And you’re brave. I could tell from the moment you summoned me,”
“I– summoned you?”
“Your call echoed through the library like a clap of thunder. What is it that troubles you so?”
Riku glanced away, embarrassed at having his feelings laid so bare, but Ansem’s voice held a genuine curiosity that compelled him to search within himself for an honest answer.
The fact that being stuck in the castle for another day sounds worse than being strapped to this freaky torture chair.
“I want to be free,” he finally answered.
“I understand,” said Ansem. “You see, much like yourself, I’m a prisoner.”
Riku hadn’t always felt like a prisoner here. He remembered a time when he felt at home in the castle, even longed for it. But now he felt like a trapped animal clawing at its cage.
“What happened to you?” Riku asked.
“I was betrayed by someone who I’d thought to be an ally. My mortal form was destroyed, and what was left of me was sealed in the darkness. Since then I’ve existed in an in-between space within the dark corridors.”
“You’re in the dark corridors?” Riku leaned in closer, gritting his teeth against the pain it caused when he moved. “I’ve been trying to open a portal to the dark corridors! But–” he paused upon reflection, “if you’re in the corridors, can’t you go anywhere you want?”
“Unfortunately it’s not that simple. I can’t move freely within them, but rather it’s as if I’m in a prison, cut off from the rest of the passages. I’ve waited a long time for a wizard powerful enough to break the spell that keeps me trapped here, but no one worthy has come into the library until now,” there was a hidden smile behind his words.
“Me?” Riku blinked.
“You are a wizard aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am!” Riku affirmed, just now realizing it for himself. “Well, a beginner wizard.” He amended.
Now that he stopped to think about it Riku had always thought he wouldn’t be able to call himself a wizard until there was some sort of official stamp of approval by Maleficent, but surely he was already good enough with magic to be one. Besides, he even had an apprentice!
“You hold more power than you realize.” Ansem said. “It flows through you, just under the surface...but you’re being held back.”
“Maleficent,” Riku spat. “I want to get away from this castle and away from her!”
“That is well within your abilities,” Ansem said.
“Yeah, right,” Riku’s face fell into a resentful grimace. “I’m completely worthless against her.”
“Perhaps that is true,” Ansem conceded, “but with the right support you could easily outpace her in time.”
“How? I can’t even get out of this stupid chair by myself!” Riku cried.
“Although the chair is an instrument of pain, it is the very thing that may save you. With that extra boost of power you were able to open the portal located within this book. That alone tells me that you hold great potential.”
“I– opened the portal?” Riku asked, a little dumbfounded.
“That is correct, but I’m not strong enough to step through on my own.” Ansem’s statement hung in the air with the unspoken implication clear.
“Then… you need my help?” Riku asked slowly.
“Do you offer it?” The question was delivered with the lightness of a breeze carrying a lead balloon.
“If I do, can you get me out of here?”
“Yes,” Ansem answered simply.
The possibility of freedom burst over Riku like a damn. He was certainly desperate enough to make a deal with a demon, but how could he be sure that Ansem would hold up his end of the bargain?
He hesitated, but the choice was obvious. Anything was better than staying here to see what kind of sick punishments Maleficent would come up with next.
“Okay,” said Riku, drawing in a deep breath and clenching his jaw. “Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it!”
His heart leapt in anticipation as the light emanating from the sigil began to flicker and spark.
Suddenly white hot pain shot up his spine with the sharpness of a sword. Unbearable heat swept over his entire body. It felt like a fist hit him in the gut, knocking the breath out of him, while another closed around his heart and squeezed. He couldn’t make a sound as he clung to the book with both hands as if it could stop the room from tilting around him.
“You already have,” said Ansem with a rumble of laughter.
It was a rich, deep sound, but Riku didn’t hear it because he had already lost consciousness.
PetraBraveheart on Chapter 1 Mon 29 Jan 2024 04:27AM UTC
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Riku_Mouse on Chapter 1 Tue 30 Jan 2024 08:32PM UTC
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Riku_Mouse on Chapter 2 Fri 16 Feb 2024 07:27PM UTC
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Hexyah on Chapter 2 Mon 12 Feb 2024 09:02PM UTC
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Riku_Mouse on Chapter 2 Fri 16 Feb 2024 07:35PM UTC
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Mood_coded on Chapter 2 Wed 21 Feb 2024 04:05AM UTC
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Riku_Mouse on Chapter 2 Mon 26 Feb 2024 08:31PM UTC
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Funtime_29_nm on Chapter 2 Tue 24 Dec 2024 06:58PM UTC
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Riku_Mouse on Chapter 2 Tue 07 Jan 2025 05:47PM UTC
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Hexyah on Chapter 3 Fri 22 Mar 2024 04:31PM UTC
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Riku_Mouse on Chapter 3 Wed 17 Apr 2024 02:44AM UTC
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Mood_coded on Chapter 3 Sun 24 Mar 2024 02:26AM UTC
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Riku_Mouse on Chapter 3 Wed 17 Apr 2024 02:55AM UTC
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Hexyah on Chapter 4 Wed 28 Aug 2024 04:43AM UTC
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Riku_Mouse on Chapter 4 Sun 17 Nov 2024 04:05AM UTC
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Warrior_Assassin on Chapter 4 Sun 01 Sep 2024 04:58AM UTC
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Riku_Mouse on Chapter 4 Sun 17 Nov 2024 04:11AM UTC
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Mood_coded on Chapter 4 Fri 06 Sep 2024 08:42PM UTC
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Riku_Mouse on Chapter 4 Sun 17 Nov 2024 04:16AM UTC
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Hexyah on Chapter 6 Tue 09 Sep 2025 04:27PM UTC
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Riku_Mouse on Chapter 6 Sat 13 Sep 2025 01:35AM UTC
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