The Boy and The Man by Offer R (list of ebook readers .txt) 📕

'Is this the man that didn't return my love?' She thought, and inside her a turmoil of wonderful and terrible feelings raged. This exchange of feelings, silent but fraught with emotion more profound than The Boy had ever received from his lover, brought tears to The Boy's eyes. They were tears of pain and regret, but also tears of correction and repentance. When they poured down to his lips, first in a thin trickle and eventually in an unstoppable gush, they seemed to wash away the hoard of lies the little lips had told.

"Don't cry, my love!" Aphrodite cried, wiping the tears from his cheeks and wondering what in this earth could possibly be atrocious enough to draw tears from those courageous eyes that she'd until then never seen blink once too many. "Whatever you've done, I forgive you. You are too good to regret anything."

But the tears had already melted away the cowardly husk that had covered our dear boy from the pains of reality. "No, my love. In fact I have been far too bad to deserve your forgiveness."

Whereupon, with great suffering but also a liberating release, he related to them the entire, unabridged truth for all its ugliness. He hadn't realized before how heavy the weight of deception had been bearing down upon him, but he felt it now as it made way to another kind of weight- that of hurting his loved ones. He told them at length and in great detail about his attempt to gain wealth, about his visit to the church, about his finding the purse and his self-persuasion that it was a gift from above, about having hidden the purse so as not to arouse suspicion, about his business at the trade area.

At this point The Boy was so disgusted by his own actions that he felt any further vilification of himself would be held as a virtue. And so he confessed all of his lies regarding his swordsmanship skills. For good measure he pointed out that by so doing he'd almost brought about a crushing defeat to the Capitals, and only thanks to the prince's undeserved trust in him they'd been saved. He went on to confess his lies to Aphrodite and her father regarding her past, and didn't mention that he'd done it in the name of his love for her so as not to provoke any kind of sympathy from his witnesses.

Several times throughout his account Aphrodite was on the verge of collapsing and required the prince's support to stay in audience. As for our prince, he was strong as a stone in the face of The Boy's words yet soft as a lover in Aphrodite's moments of weakness. One could sense that while one friendship and one bond of love, both built upon faulty foundations, were being broken, a new love was being born.

When The Boy's account came to its end, a gloomy silence settled upon the room. Aphrodite was trying to repair her broken heart. The prince tried to contain his disappointment in his brother and search for some logical reason to justify or at least explain the gruesome turn of events. Both attempts attained very little success, but should nevertheless credit our new protagonists with additional appreciation for their fortitude.

Our poor boy, poorer now than he'd ever been, wasn't looking for forgiveness. He knew he wasn't worthy of their sympathy- if he couldn't win his own sympathy, how could he deserve theirs?

'These two have kind hearts, and they might offer me more than I deserve in way of forgiveness', he thought painfully. 'Even though I have confessed not mere isolated acts of iniquity but an entire shared history of betrayal, they would find forgiveness in their hearts. It is quite simple: to forgive is divine, and these two are divine. But I won't give them the chance. I will tell them my last secret, the one that will raise their spirits and fill their hearts with joy they've never known before, after I've gone. I shouldn't take credit for a truth I've kept from them for my own interests.' Indeed, hearts far less generous than those of Aphrodite and the prince would've taken pity on The Boy, who within less than an hour's time had lost love, friendship, glory, rank, and material wealth and had only his shattered pride and deep remorse as his companions.

But no- he hadn't lost them just now. In truth, he'd never possessed them at all. He'd achieved them all on false grounds. Every one of his acts of sharp wit had been accompanied by unscrupulous deception. His persistence had always gone hand in hand with callousness of heart. And his loyalty and commitment- they had all been part of a greedy quest to satisfy his selfish desires.

'My love wasn't love, my friendship wasn't friendship. And I was certainly no Lieutenant', he conceded to himself, and was more than willing to declare it at the top of the bell tower before the entire kingdom. But now was no time for self-deprecation. It was time to make amends and fix what little could still be fixed.

"I will now surrender myself to the Chief Investigator and repeat what I've just told you", he said shamefully. "With your permission, Your Royal Highness."

The prince replied with harsh words but in the soft tone of a caring brother: "It would be pointless to tell him everything, as only a small part of your story is a violation of our kingdom's laws."

"Yes, you're right of course", The Boy mumbled. The only crime he'd committed was the theft of the purse at church, and even for it he would be treated with leniency in case he relayed his winnings from the loans to Mrs. Parthons. The rest of his confessions would find a deaf ear in the Chief Investigator.

"Then perhaps I will tell him only what he wants to know", he corrected. But as he turned his back to the principal victims of his many ruses, there was a different thought going through his mind.

'By turning myself in I would accept punishment for but a small part of the pain I've caused. And I would force my loved ones to find their own painful way of dealing with me. It would be a final addition to my pile of wrongdoings. No, I will cause no more pain. I will help them move on without guilt and will pay the full cost of my sins', he determined as he made his way to the door.

"Wait!" The sweet voice of the girl he loved, which if there was justice in the world he should never be allowed to hear again, called out to him. "Why did you do it? I want to know why."

The Boy turned and looked at her for what he believed to be the last time. "I'm just a poor boy", he said quite miserably. And he hated himself for hurting such a treasure as her. Before he turned back and left his eyes fleeted over the prince's blank face.

'I'm already causing terrible pain. Let this be the end of it', he thought decisively, and then he burst out the door with his face buried in his hands.

The next day the prince called on The Boy with no set intention in his heart. More than anything he wanted to check on him, considering he seemed to have been in far greater an emotional turbulence that the prince. But no sooner had he stood at the door to The Boy's quarters that it opened and The Boy's main servant appeared.

"I've come to call on him", the prince declared and prepared to enter. But the servant blocked the way and said:

"But there is no one to visit, Your Highness. Here, he left this." And from the inside of his livery jacket he fished out a small note and gave it to the astonished prince. It was so short! He counted the words even before reading them: one, two, three. And here is what it read, neat letters in black ink on white parchment:

She loves you.

Who would've imagined that three simple words could transform a fairly miserable prince to the happiest man in the kingdom!

The prince stared at the parchment for at least two minutes, reading the message left for him perhaps fifty times and then staring at them absentmindedly. By the look on his face one might think he'd received news of a terrible tragedy, but in fact he was only trying to contain his joy so as not to do something unbecoming of a prince. Finally he snapped out of his jubilant reverie and spoke:

"He left?"

"Yes, sir. Yesterday, with the fall of dusk."

"Did he say when he plans to return?"

"He said to tell you to forget about him."

The prince left at once, and on his way to his quarters he pondered his reaction. He knew he was going to shut himself in his bedroom and cry, but he was yet undecided on whether he should cry for joy or for sorrow.

Chapter 12

It was a grand day in our fair little kingdom. After all, it's not every day that a future queen is made and that the greatest leader opens his heart to his people. In fact the people were so jolly that in the previous week there had been twice as many generous acts between them as thrifty or unkind ones.

The ceremony was to be completely open to the public and to take place at the courtyard. By a special ordinance issued by the King all shops and businesses were to remain closed as fit for a holiday, so the workers could attend the ceremony and partake of the general euphoria. Special scaffoldings had been erected all around the courtyard in order to accommodate the masses. Hundreds had volunteered to assist the Royal Decorators in setting up decorations of a thousand glittery colors. Dozens spent the night around the monument of The Men of Steel, where a beautiful altar had been erected. Festivity was thick in the air, and it traveled to the farthest corners of the kingdom so that even the woods were steeped with it.

In light of this thorough joy that blanketed our kingdom, one shouldn't be surprised to learn that our prince was in the seventh heaven. Without detracting from his usual graceful conduct, he was caught in a swirl of rapture that any man should consider himself lucky to experience if only once in a lifetime. There was no one happier than the prince in those days but one: his future wife.

In her worst days Aphrodite was a feast for the eyes for any man and an object of bitter jealousy for any of our kingdom's women. One can only imagine, then, to what heights of beauty she rose on her wedding day. And don't be fooled to attribute this new standard of beauty the white satin, diamond-lined bride's dress that had been tailor-made to drape her little fragile body. No, the glitter of the diamonds caught only the greediest, most ravenous eyes in the audience. The core of her beauty, on the other hand, lay in her pure, overjoyed features. When all the love and happiness in the world glint in a pair of brilliant green eyes, such mundane things as clothes or diamonds are relegated to their true function as mere adornments.

If we were to travel into the hearts of the two lovers, we would find an ocean of bliss obstructed by a single island of concern. It'd been three years since The Boy had confessed to them, and the same amount of time since they'd last seen him or heard any news of him. He