I – A CURSE ON THE KINGDOM

Carmen waited eagerly. As she did on many other nights, she awaited a secret visit, a long expected encounter with a being from the Magic Kingdom with whom she was hopelessly in love. That night Carmen would fulfill Arnold’s most cherished ambition: to conceive a child as beautiful as a human or even more so.

Carmen lived in the territory that today we know as the United Kingdom, some five thousand years ago. She was endowed with singular beauty: her shiny hair accentuated the pale tone of her delicate skin; her green eyes were like two emeralds willing to let themselves be stolen along with her innocence.

Arnold “belonged to” the elementals, a species on the verge of extinction in the Magic Kingdom. He felt a strange mixture of fascination and admiration for humans, whom he considered the most interesting species in the Animal Kingdom. With all the resources available to him, he had wooed Carmen ever since she was a child.

Although the Magic Kingdom was populated by an endless variety of creatures of unequalled beauty, beings like Arnold were distinguished by their particularly unpleasant appearance, resembling humans but short in stature, with different skin colors, including silver, golden, and copper. Arnold belonged to the copper skinned variety.

Arnold took Carmen into the fields and forests to see fairies, gnomes, elves, unicorns, and many other creatures. However, he struck fear into her to ensure that she would not get close to any other being in the Magic Kingdom. He deceived her by telling her that some fairies (the most beautiful of the Magic Kingdom’s inhabitants) had killed their only brother, and explained in detail how to kill an elemental being. Not long before, blinded by envy, he had murdered his own brother who, unlike him and most other elementals, was gifted with uncommon beauty.

Arnold filled Carmen’s head with stories about the Magic Kingdom, which in those times was visible to humans. He even told her the only three ways to be born in the Magic Kingdom: to be born there, to have died in the Animal Kingdom to be reborn in the Magic Kingdom, and to have died in the Animal Kingdom after killing a magical being.

For Arnold it was a simple matter to steal the baby, because her pregnancy never showed. Her fellow humans never knew that for three days she carried in her womb the fruit of a union between an elemental and a human.

Carmen and Arnold’s baby was unique. He was born on the third day, with the dawn’s first light, also different from the elementals, who were born only three to five minutes after they were conceived.