PROLOGUE
The small boy sat on a bench at party. He was four and a half and he and his mother had come to meet the rest of the family on this occasion.
It was a happy and joyous situation until there was a sudden urgency to which all the adults rushed leaving the young boy with his mother’s younger sister, a twelve-year-old girl with a dark glint in her eyes.
“Hello,” she smiled.
“Hello,” he replied happily.
“You’re my nephew, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “I believe so.”
“Well. I have a game we can play, nephew. It’s called ‘To Conquer a Kingdom’…”
“Yes?”
“The goal of the game is not to let anything or anyone get in your way to the top and if they do, you eliminate them from play completely. There will be a champion and one obstacle for the champion to get over. It is a long game and can take a long time to play out, but in the end there is only one winner. Shall we begin the game?”
The boy looked at her suspiciously, but even more suspiciously did he look at where her arms were. They had been behind her back all this time and were holding something, although he could not guess from what he could see, what it was.
“Well, we’re starting play! I’m the champion, you’re the obstacle and currently…” she pulled out a long, jagged dagger from behind her back, “…you’re in my way.”
Now. The little boy did the normal thing that most four years old would do. He ran.
The aunt ran after him with the dagger shouting, “It’s a play-pretty! It’s not real!”
Oh! But the boy knew what he saw. He knew a dagger when he saw one and that was a dagger. No toy would have such a glisten of the blade or such engravings on the hilt. No such toy would have such dried blood on the blade or be cutting through objects as she ran. He was not convinced and continued to run.
She followed him until he ran into a wet patch of land where the plants around his feet smelled like the type of herbs he had seen put into medicines. His feet were wet and his shoes were filled with mud and water, but all he really noticed was that his aunt had stopped chasing him.
“I told you! It’s not real!” she shouted.
He stayed. The fumes around him got stronger, but he didn’t care.
His aunt on the outside began to sneeze and someone eventually took her away from the place. She dropped the dagger and the boy started out. He picked up the dagger and examined it. He threw it at a nearby tree and his mother came and took him away from the place to go home.
As they left the dagger hit the tree and dug itself in.
