16 | Psychopomp Magazine
Many of us felt that a child who came to us from a grave was a sign. Or that he would eventually be a problem.
The twelfth prince was the last. We didn’t believe it for a while; we kept waiting for another to appear. We found ourselves looking under a sleeping goat or sifting through a haystack before jabbing it with a pitchfork. We double-checked the wagons. We began to feel relieved, though still wary.
There were just too many princes. We had difficulty keeping track of who was who. Of the royal order of succession. Eventually we moved the pen into Yellow Woods. We hid them away. We fed them goat’s milk and cantaloupe. But we tended them.
Then they started disappearing.
part II: subtraction and the throne
In order to ease our burden, we made a schedule for the feeding and coddling of the twelve princes, and we put the older children in charge.
The king was our supreme spiritual authority. But when the princes began disappearing, we did not report it since we had not reported their appearance. We found ourselves in a bind.
One omission begat another. They grew into toddlers. The pen became a cage. We watched carefully, according to our schedule, but each week the cage contained fewer princes. We stationed more children and an adult whenever we could spare someone, but we could not neglect our work.
Finally, one of the older children made her report. She had seen a prince disappear.