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Liar - Based on Everyone's True Story

By Bernadette Botz

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His sisters tried to warn him about Liar’s treachery, but Prince was too young. He didn’t see it coming.

As the summer sun drilled down on the farm, it succumbed to its long, scorching days. The garden produced bulging, red tomatoes, and full, orbed squash. Giant, round pumpkins lay pregnant and panting in the heat. And as if disciplining a child, the sun reached down with its finger-like rays to pull the corn up by its ears. The earth cried, “Fertile! Fertile!” while the branches of the fruit trees dragged the ground with the weight of the coming harvest. Life was everywhere, but Prince—long legged and lean—was only seven years old. He didn’t see it coming.

A wooden wheelbarrow, grayed with time and filled with split wood, sat under a spreading oak. Having just loaded the wheelbarrow, Prince sat with his two older sisters to enjoy some refreshment. The girls spread a small lunch of bread and jam on the green. Chatting lightly about dresses they didn’t have and books they could only borrow, they cut homemade cheese into small chunks.

“Here, WillaBell!” Prince had a habit of joining Willah and Mirabell’s names together when he was addressing them. “I found it last night at The Blessing.”
He pulled a heart-shaped rock from the pocket of his trousers and handed it to Willah.

“Prince, how do you always find them?” Willah, the oldest at eleven, turned the smooth stone over in her hand. She was studious and quiet, reserved and observant. She experienced the world around her with her heart. She felt everything. She felt everyone. Willah loved books, painting, and music. Her wild imagination pulled Prince into a world he could never have known without her.
Willah handed the stone to Mirabell, and she too, admired its cool smoothness.

“How is it I can never find them?” She cocked her head to one side, a younger version of Willah by just two years. Though nearly twins in appearance—long, spiraling curls hung down their thin backs like rods of dripping honeycomb—Mirabell was Willah’s opposite. Curious and brimming with a lively mind, she asked endless questions of the world. She was quick with a joke and loved to tease Prince. While her health prevented her from being truly naughty, Mirabell was mischievous, and the desire to discover life in her own way often tested her parents. “It’s exquisite, Prince. See how the light shines through this line of emerald here?” She held the stone up to the sun. “This is your best find yet.”

“It’s for your window box, WillaBell!” Prince smiled at his sisters, delighted they were pleased with his gift. “I’m trying to fill it up for you!” Father had built a window box outside the girls’ bedroom window, but it had never been planted with flowers. In it instead were the heart-shaped rocks that Prince seemed always to be finding for them.

“Prince?” asked Willah. Though he had been born under a different name, the girls had changed it, and it had never been changed back again. “Do you know you are my favorite boy in all of Struggle?” Ruffling his dark hair, she grinned. “I don’t care what anyone says, you are a royal prince to me.” The edges of her lips were blue, and her breathing came in small, strained gasps because disease had stolen big, satisfying breaths years ago.

Prince’s mouth was full of bread and a smidge of jam lay on his bottom lip. Small bits of crust sprayed from his mouth as he muffled, “I like finding them for you.” He had worked hard chopping and stacking wood, and he stuffed the rest of the slice in his mouth. Mirabell took her thumb and wiped the jam from his lip. She licked it herself saying, “Prince, Mother has her tiny baby, and though we love Jonathan, you are our little boy, aye? You are our very own little boy.” She sighed with effort and gave him the rest of her bread. Mirabell wasn’t hungry. Prince nodded again, but the sun glinting on his sisters’ hair reminded him of honey, and he thought how much he would prefer honey to jam on his bread.

“Because of our illness, Madame Nina, the teacher at the king’s court, has pitied us by giving us an education.” Willah picked a small twig from the ground and broke it in two. “It is a privilege for us to learn how to read, Prince—not even Father and Mother can. We have learned all manner of things from her already, but above all, she has told us how a young prince ought to behave.”
“For of course, we asked her,” interrupted Mirabell. “Though we are never to be admitted to court, we are determined you should have kingly manners just the same.”

The girls never stopped teaching him, and Willah cupped his olive chin in her small hand. “The first lesson is never to burp in a lady’s presence. However, if you must, you are to turn your face away and cover your mouth, like this.” Willah pulled a small handkerchief from the pocket of her thin dress and made a burping sound into it as she turned her face away. Her long, dark eyelashes closed over pale cheeks, and Prince thought Willah the most beautiful girl in all the world. She was even prettier than Mother.

“You must listen carefully whenever a woman speaks.” Mirabell took one of the broken twigs from Willah’s hand and drew a picture in the dirt of a man with an open mouth. She poked the man’s lips with her stick and grinned at her brother.

“Don’t be a big mouth, Prince.”

Prince opened his mouth as wide as he could, revealing the remaining breadcrumbs. “I would never do that!”

Mirabell smiled and gently pinched his soft cheek. Prince grabbed her hand and held it. He held her gaze as well.

“You are never to touch a lady who is not your relation, and you must always live by the kingly code of conduct. Do you understand how important this is, little man?” Willah leaned over to him. She reached out for his earlobe and gave it an affectionate tug. She had done this since he was a baby, and it meant he ought to listen. “Hmmm? Understand?”

Prince nodded. His two sisters were wise, and Prince felt they were the oldest people he knew. Even older than Mother and Father.

Mirabell gave her brother a cold sip of water from a wine skin. The water was like The Blessing, cooling him and giving him comfort from the weighted heat.
Mirabell smiled with pride. Though her brother was young, he had learned everything she could teach him about mathematics and the constellations. Easily grasping everything she and Willah were learning from Madame Nina, Prince read almost as well as them both. Mirabell loved teaching him.

“The most important thing is that you become a good man!” She kissed Prince impulsively three times on the cheek. “Become a kingly man, Prince. Become the best, kingly man in all the world and do so for love!” Mirabell’s voice sounded strained, far away. Emotion was drowning her like the fluid in her lungs.
Willah’s voice cracked when she spoke. Her gaze darted from Prince’s face to Mirabell’s eyes and back again. The disease she and her sister shared took everything.

“You must promise never to forget us. You must try very hard to remember all that we have taught you.” She pulled once more on his ear lobe, not at all gently this time. “Aye?” Willah spoke almost in a whisper now.
Prince saw the strain in her face. Why should they think he would ever forget them?

Mirabell blurted, “You must never go near the Liar, Prince. Will you promise me? Never ever go near Liar!” Mirabell flopped against the tree trunk, wilting with heat and hopelessness.

“Mirabell is right, Prince. The Liar will try to steal your soul. He will do all in his power to take our love away from you, and you must promise us never to go near him!” Willah sighed, suddenly exhausted. “You will need The Blessing more than anything, Prince. You’ve got to make it to The Blessing, or you will never survive. You must listen for the voice of Yeshua The Magnificent, and you must obey him. Are you understanding me? That is the only way to be a kingly man for the sake of love.” Willah too, sank under the heat of the summer sun.

Prince’s face crumpled with confusion. “Who is Yeshua The Magnificent?” He sensed something, but he could not put words to the right question. What was being spoken was not what was being said, and it was unlike his sisters to be mysterious. “Is something wrong, WillaBell?” Prince searched their faces. “Am I in trouble? Is everything alright?”

The girls looked at each other over the top of their brother’s brown head. They changed the subject, for they knew he was too young to understand. They had already said too much. Mirabell diverted him, returning to the lessons, and trying to lighten her tone. “You are never to let your eyes wander, Prince. You know you have a habit of letting your eyes wander.” She put her small hands on her hips and shook her head in mock disgust. Her long curls bounced at the small of her back causing the sunlight to slide on them. Mirabell’s eyes were a deeper shade of blue than Willah’s, and her blond hair reached to her waist.

His question forgotten and always seeking for a way to make his sisters laugh, Prince exaggerated his wandering eyes by rolling them dramatically in complete, slow circles before crossing them at the end of his nose. Reaching out to pull on their long curls, Prince patted the sleeves of their dresses, and spoke with mischief in his voice. “Never touch a lady who is not your relation. Not even her clothing.” Neither turning his face away nor covering his mouth, Prince let out the biggest burp he could manage.

Willah and Mirabell squealed with delight and pulled him into their thin arms. “Oh darling, you really are just a very young Prince after all.” They kissed his face, took hold of his hands and walked toward the wooden hut where they could hear Mother singing.

As he and WillaBell went inside, Prince dropped the heart-shaped rock into their window box. He didn’t notice that it broke as it fell. The heart shaped stone...broke clean in half.

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