Edgar stared at his pendant for a long time before tucking it down the front of his tunic once more. Yep. These things didn't just transport their wearers to different locations. They let their wearers talk to each other as if they were standing face to face, no matter how far apart they truly were. Edgar wondered what else the pendants could do. They certainly possessed some powerful magic, and Edgar wondered how his mother had come across it. Then again, he had never found out where that magic statuette of hers had come from either, let alone how the pompous, effeminate canine ruler of Falderal had managed to steal it from her.
But that was all irrelevant speculation. He had a destination now. The Oracle had instructed him to go to Tamir. Why did it want him to go there? Edgar doubted that questioning the word of a genuine Oracle was a wise course of action, so he had no choice but to go to Tamir.
That place was such a tangle of emotions for him, though. It was the land where he had lived nearly all of his life, it was where he had first met Rosella, it was where his parents had found him and informed him that he was the prince of Etheria…Tamir reminded him of so many things, some good, some not so good.
Lolotte's castle had been – and probably still was – nestled in the craggy peaks of the Impossible Mountains. As a child, there wasn't much for Edgar to do in such a bleak place except read books and run through the halls of the castle, begging the servants to play with him. Lolotte had disciplined him harshly on several occasions, but from Edgar's perspective, she had never been the stereotypical evil stepmother. However, she had never treated Edgar with the affection that a mother would have shown towards her son, the affection that his true mother had shown him when she and his father found him. It was no wonder that in his youth, Edgar suspected that he wasn't Lolotte's child. Even his shape – green and distorted, almost like a frog, with a steeply hunched back and short black hair – somehow hadn't felt like his own.
He had often gazed out the window of his room, looking down at the soft, fertile Tamirian lowlands. He wondered what sort of people and animals lived in those thick forests and grassy meadows, often creating his own imaginary entities to populate the land which was always so close, yet so distant.
His memories of his life in Lolotte's castle hadn't been the best…not until Rosella appeared. Even in a peasant's garb, she was more beautiful than any of the maidens he had read about in his books…and brave as well. When Lolotte accused her of being a spy and ordered her to be sent to the prison cell, Rosella didn't grow hysterical and begin pleading for her life. She didn't even cry as his stepmother's henchmen escorted her from the throne room.
When Edgar had asked Lolotte what she intended to do with Rosella, his stepmother nonchalantly remarked that she would probably leave Rosella in her cell until she rotted. Upon hearing this, a deep sadness filled Edgar's heart, which quickly gave way to a burning hatred towards his stepmother. It was the first time he had truly hated her and seen her evil side in all its dark glory, and it was oddly ironic that his talking Lolotte into sparing Rosella's life set a chain of events into motion that ended in his stepmother's death.
While Rosella had been running around collecting the magical items that Lolotte had instructed her to retrieve, Edgar had gazed down at Tamir from his window, wondering how that girl could possibly obtain such things. After she had returned in triumph with the unicorn, however, Edgar was convinced that she could do anything Lolotte demanded of her…not that he reveled in knowing that she was risking her life to fulfill his stepmother's selfish desires. He had watched the lowlands for hours on end, sometimes thinking that he caught a glimpse of her bright red dress once or twice. When night had fallen, he couldn't sleep a wink, thinking about that poor, beautiful, brave maiden making her way through the dark, dangerous Tamirian forests with only the moon and the stars lighting her way.
After that beautiful girl had brought Pandora's Box to Lolotte, Lolotte had asked her name, and the girl had provided her with it: Rosella. Hearing it spoken made Edgar's heart skip several beats. It seemed like the most beautiful sound in the world to him at the time. However, his heart nearly stopped beating when his stepmother announced that Rosella was to marry him the following day. Marry him? Edgar was just as flabbergasted as Rosella appeared. Yes, he didn't deny that he loved her, but marriage? It was too much too soon. Besides, he was a little green hunchback, she was a human girl…how could someone as ugly as him marry someone so lovely, so perfect?
Then Lolotte instructed her henchmen to take her to Edgar's room, forcing him to sleep in one of the servants' quarters, which made Edgar hate his stepmother even more. He was determined to find a way to rescue Rosella, for even though he had saved her life, he felt as if she had saved his. She had awakened such strong feelings of love and hope that had been so shriveled and miniscule during his many years as Lolotte's stepson.
Everything had become so clear to him then, and he quickly formulated a way to help Rosella. It was easy as pie to take the key to his room from his stepmother's bedside table, but he had dragged out the simple task for almost an hour as he tried desperately to come up with some way to express his love towards Rosella. He had been too afraid to speak to her when she had appeared in Lolotte's throne room, and he was afraid that speaking to her through the door would attract his stepmother's henchmen. In the end, he had snuck into the castle's tiny garden and picked a single red rose, tying the key to its stem. He had slipped this token of his affection under his bedroom door with a pounding heart, praying that Rosella would understand it.
As dawn was about to break, he had heard the death cry of his stepmother resound through the castle in a strident tone almost high enough to shatter glass. He had raced up the stairs to her room to find Lolotte lying dead in her ironically tomblike bed, with Rosella standing beside her. Even though Lolotte was the only parent Edgar had ever had, he felt no grief upon seeing her devoid of life. He had started to speak to Rosella, but suddenly found his throat dry, his mind empty and his face crimson. Ashamed, he had turned and trudged down the stairs, feeling more like an ugly little frog than ever before.
He had one of the biggest shocks of his life later that morning when he suddenly found himself standing on a bright beach beside two women, one of whom had a large pair of wings like a butterfly.
The second was all too familiar to him, but her clothes! She was no longer dressed in peasant's rags, but an elegant, long gown that had to be that of a princess. Before he knew what was happening, he was suddenly standing up straight for the first time in his memory, looking down at a pair of hands that weren't green, but a light tan. He was…he was himself. That feeling about not having the right body that he had had all his life was gone completely. The woman with the wings – who later introduced herself as Genesta, his stepmother's former enemy – had changed his form. He was no longer a little green hunchback. He was a man. A normal, human (so he had thought then) man…
His proposal to Rosella was a rash move on his part. The emotion of the moment in which he had realized that he was no longer a deformed creature, but a person – a person, just like Rosella – had gripped his heart, and he had been able to say, "Rosella, I love you. Will you marry me?" without even stammering.
It wasn't much, but it was the truth and it was what he had desired at that moment. Genesta's description of the princess's ailing father afterwards made the reason why she rejected him much clearer. Rosella's casual suggestion that they would possibly meet again one day was the one thing which made his lonely stay on Genesta's island, trying to grow accustomed to life in this new body (which did require some getting used to) a little bit happier.
He didn't remember feeling anything other than absolute bewilderment when his parents had arrived on Genesta's island in that huge, gliding wooden bird that he later learned was a swanship and told him the truth about his past. He learned how he had been kidnapped as an infant, how his parents had searched everywhere for him, and how they had almost given him up for dead. The shock upon learning that he was not only not a human, but was also the crown prince to a kingdom in another realm was so great, that he felt he still hadn't recovered from it completely.
Yes, a lot had happened to him in Tamir. He was looking forward to, yet at the same time fearing, returning there. But the Oracle had told him to go there, and who was he to argue with such a powerful entity? Perhaps he would find this Sheldrake (or whatever that man was named) that that dark haired woman (What was her name? Cassima. Right.) was pursuing. So he took one last look at the peaceful land of Llewdor, shut his eyes, and began remembering the land that he had so often stared at from his window in Lolotte's castle. The beautiful meadows dappled with flowers, the thick forests, the crystalline river rushing through them, the nearly white sand lining the beaches, and the beautiful blue sea to the west.
Edgar suddenly felt the air grow cooler and saltier. He opened his eyes to see that he had reappeared on a narrow beach, looking out at a glittering ocean. Edgar turned and looked behind him, where he saw the flowering meadows, the great forests, the clear river, and beyond all of that, the towering, gray, gloomy, ominous mountains, which, for most of his life, had been home sweet home for him.
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