The Helm of Seven (Part 3)

A Story for Children

Read Part 1 and Part 2 here.

And so, even as the Stars did speak their decree against the King, they sent a trusted messenger to his house. His name was Houndface of the Four Hands, who would appear to us as a small, dwarfish man-creature with the head of a dog. He walked the world in a cloak and staff, with two secret arms hidden within his garment. Many secret and hidden things he knew, for though small and unnoticed, he had served the Stars from the Beginning of Ages and aged but slowly. 

By night he came to the Royal Palace and entered unseen, unheard to the bedside of the Queen, who had given birth to twins. The King had not come to the birth of his children, so bent were all his thoughts and cares to mastering the helmet. To the Queen Houndface delivered the warning of her husband’s doom. And she, wearied by labor and full of sadness, gave him her newborn children, a boy and girl. Houndface took them within the secret arms beneath his cloak and kept them safe in an enchanted sleep as he set off to two different worlds far apart. Each child he left there to be found by strangers who raised them as their own, knowing not from whence they came. There they lived, they grew, they married, and bore children of their own. And their descendants multiplied and endured across the ages under the watchful eye of Houndface, awaiting the day when the Stars would call a new King to the throne.

TO BE CONTINUED