He woke up screaming and crying, still able to feel the immobilising sting of a burning arrow piercing his eye, reaching straight to his brain, the seat of his spirit, his sperm, and perhaps the stone of madness that had led him to challenge his nephew's reign.

  But like a bolt of lightning, the pain disappeared. His eyes were still crying, but they were fresh tears, as if he were standing on top of a hill and the breeze was kissing his face; nothing like the tears he had cried in those agonising seconds when he realised he was a complete idiot and that nothing he had done had been necessary. Wouldn't it have been better, perhaps, to swallow his pride and let someone else rule? Didn't he already have land and servants? He was offered multiple alternatives to war, but he rejected them all in favour of his own pride. He never considered the number of people in the common folk who loved his nephew, even though he did not have the same surname as the rest of the dynasty.

  He blinked with the eye that could blink, but in the other he felt his eyelid colliding grotesquely with the wooden stick that pierced it. As he tried to get up from the muddy ground, he discovered, to his horror, that the soldiers had stuck a spear in his buttock, an action that would ensure that, even in death, the humiliation of his person could continue.

  'They hated me so' he thought.

  He reasoned that, if he was not dead, it might be better to stay on the grass and let the beasts devour him.

  He closed the eye that could be closed and rested his face back in the mud, letting the stupid spear sticking out of his buttock sway in the wind. He thought he saw the shadow of a banner hanging from it, waving mockingly as it pointed to him. 'Here lies Ailill, pretender to the throne, favourite of his father Ailill II and his mother Aoife. We wanted to stick the spear in his arse, but we're just stupid villagers, and we don't know where it is.'

  His fists clenched, trying to grab hold of the earth. He was murdered by a bunch of stupid villagers. Not even his nephew's army, his own villagers whom he himself had recruited from his own lands. 'Here lies Ailill III, loved only by his father and mother, who luckily died before him.'

  He lay there for a while, feeling no pain, not dying, feeling the banner swaying from side to side. He wondered how it stayed in place when it was suddenly torn away by a gust of wind and carried several metres forward. That was how he confirmed his suspicion that the banner bore the coat of arms of his nephew, the child king, with its unmistakable golden sun on an emerald green field.

  tackish and simple,' he had thought when he first saw it, and he had not changed his opinion.

  He realised then that he was much stronger, and that without the banner, it would be easier to get up. He stood up, leaning on his opposite leg, expecting a twinge of pain in his buttock wound, but felt absolutely nothing. He was alive, and he was perfectly fine, praise be to Brigid.

  Spiritually, however, the feeling of floating in the grey mist persisted, his soul detached from his body, like a puppet watching the puppeteer sleep. He sat in a foetal position, the arrow still protruding grotesquely from his head, partially devoured by the flames.

  'Don't move too much, the brain takes longer to heal,' said a voice coming from the side of his bad eye.

  Turning his head, he saw a boy with short hair and an outfit that made no sense to him: a kind of light coat over a doublet that clung to his body and revealed... that for a boy, he had large breasts.

  Ailill blinked several times as he tried to focus on the strange girl. In any other context, he would have identified her as a jester, with her strange appearance and overly short trousers, surely meant to provoke laughter. But given the circumstances, he preferred to give her other names:

  'Brigid? Or perhaps Morrigan?'

  The girl looked at him with compassion, as if he were a lamb about to be sacrificed for dinner.

  'Harper.'

  He raised his eyebrows, trying to identify that name among the pantheon of gods he knew.

  They stared at each other in silence for a while. He with his mutilated, half-burnt head, she holding a half-eaten piece of bread, which she occasionally brought to her mouth to take a bite. The wind was the only sound.

  A crow tried to land on Ailill's head, but Harper stepped forward and shooed it away with her hand.

  'Shoo... SHOO! Oh my God, damn stupid birds, they're everywhere!'

  The open field where the sadly short battle had taken place was devoid of corpses; it seemed that he was the only one who had died. Surely because no one in his entourage had bothered to defend him. The thought brought tears to his eyes, thinking of all the historic battles where great kings had fallen in mud covered with the blood of their followers, places where families of ignorant villagers still brought flowers. No one would bring flowers to this field, they didn't even mark his grave... they didn't even bother to dig one. They stuck the spear in him and left him there to be swallowed by the grass and shat on by sheep, without any remorse. His memory erased from history forever.

  Harper saw his sobs and offered him some of his bread.

  'Here, don't cry, it's a sandwich, with 170 calories. Do you know what that is? Do you have these in your culture?'

  Ailill raised his head and saw her uncomfortable expression.

  'Why are you torturing me, goddess of death? Just take me to the afterlife already!' he sobbed.

  The girl shifted her weight from one leg to the other, uncomfortable with the situation.

  'I'm sorry, look, I'm not the goddess of death. You're the first person I've ever...' She raised her arms in a sign of defeat. "I was once in your situation," she managed to say, before taking another bite of bread, as if looking for an excuse to close her mouth.

  The prince looked at her once more, with his good eye, covered in mist, mud and tears. She wasn't very tall, and could have passed for a Roman girl, but she spoke his language quite fluently. 'Were you ever killed by your own people? Abandoned in the grass to rot without being able to enjoy your own birthright?'

  Harper shrugged. 'I meant that I was dead too. Not as elegant as your case, no.' She pointed to the arrow in his skull. 'Nor as brutal. I just slipped and fell down the stairs.'

  Ailill listened impatiently. 'That's... nothing compared to what happened to me, you stupid wench.

  She raised her hands once more, throwing her head back and taking several steps backwards. 'Wow, you're just like in the legends, maybe a little worse.' She strode back towards him and pointed at him rudely with her finger, for she had the manners of a beast.

  'That's the kind of comment that makes your people stick spears up your ass!', she continued.

  In any other context, the proud Ailill would have stood up, shouted at her, shaken her by the shoulders and thrown her into the mud, but he merely turned his head away and sobbed. It was true.

  'Oh, stop it! Stop it! You're still luckier than they are...'

  Harper closed the distance between them, grabbing the arrow and pulling hard, an effort that made it slip in the mud. Ailill moved away from her, annoyed.

  'It's still stuck. How's your brain?' the girl managed to say.

  Lucid! But not thanks to you, wild girl!' He touched his face delicately; the tugging had caused him brief discomfort, but no pain. However, the sadness and confusion had left his body, as if the anger, as it grew, had left no room for them. He jumped up and kicked mud at the woman who had spoken to him so insolently.

  'Who dares to treat me with such familiarity?' he snapped. 'Do you know who I am? Do you know what house I belong to?'

  Harper struggled to her feet and faced him. Just as he suspected, she was much

  smaller in stature, walking unsteadily, with mud dripping down her body, causing her baggy clothes to cling to her figure.

  She stood right in front of him, her fists clenched, as if she were ready to send him to the world of the dead for the second time, but instead she took a deep breath and said loudly:

  'Lord Ailill III of Cernyw, son of Ailill II and his first wife, anonymous. Deceased in the year 510 AD, from the Calypso timeline...'

  She extended her arms, which made him instinctively shrink back, and hugged him.

  'I see your pain at the loss of your life, and the frustration you must feel at having been so despised by your people. I don't know your suffering, but I feel it.'

  With that, she stroked his back as one would stroke a dog one hates.

  Ailill stared at her with his mouth agape, understanding less than half of what she had said. He tried to find the right words. He would have expected a woman of lower rank than himself to prostrate herself and apologise, or perhaps cry, or attack him if she were of his own rank. To tell the truth, Harper's strange affection made him feel more uncomfortable than any of the aforementioned options.

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  The prince placed his hand on her head and pushed her back slightly so he could look her in the eyes, and uttered a few hesitant words:

  'My mother's name was Aoife,' he punctuated this with an uncomfortable smile.

  'Eefa?'

  'No, no, dear, Aoife.' He laughed awkwardly.

  'Good to know, her name didn't make it into the historical records. We could get a bonus if we pass that information on.'

  The prince nodded happily. 'Praise the gods, a bonus!'

  Harper mimicked his gesture for a few seconds, at least until his smile slowly turned into a frown that would have made children cry. The girl got the message and quickly moved away from him.

  'I understand you must have many questions,' he began. Ailill smiled at her for a second and then frowned again, as if to tell her to go ahead and give him the answers.

  'You have been recruited by AEONALIZE, a transnational and trans-temporal company dedicated to... well... basically, we travel through time and look for something good to sell in the future.' Harper had summarised a rehearsed speech, which was obviously longer, judging by the expression on her audience's face. She bit her lip as she searched her mind for a way to explain it to a man from Kernow 510 AD, which was not yet called 'Kernow' proper.

  'Let's say that some people, when they die...' She clasped her hands together as if in prayer. 'They go to the other world, with their gods. Others, like you, we recruit for our... let's say tribe.'

  Ailill seemed to understand the concept much better, or at least his face looked less angry. Harper continued, 'Think of it as a second life. You may not be king, but you'll go places and see things that others can only imagine.'

  She seemed satisfied with that little ending.

  The prince squeezed his good eyelid, but opened his fists and sighed. 'You want me to give up my titles and claims, as well as my subjects?'

  Harper shrugged: 'I'd say they already gave you up.'

  As she spoke, the arrow piercing Ailill's head lost its balance and fell to the ground. He could have sworn it was at least a fist's width inside his eye socket from the way it didn't shake too much when he turned his head. The sight of the arrow on the ground made him forget the beating he wanted to give Harper for those last words.

  The girl seemed to guess his thoughts: 'When I found your body, I injected you with one of our products based on stem... magic. Right now there are hundreds of millions of tiny creatures running through your body, reviving you. Do you understand that, Ailill? Soon AEONALIZE will give you back what your subjects took from you.'

  She emphasised this with a tight-lipped smile, while the prince brought his hand to his head and tore off the burns like a scab, still trying to understand what was happening to his body. Harper grimaced in disgust. 'You can just throw that away.'

  The maid led him to their camp, which seemed to be decorated to blend in with the landscape, with horrible green and brown stains. From a brightly coloured chest, she took out a kind of white banner, which she soon mounted on a circular screen. She tied it with ropes to a barrel-like object, which she then tied to a dark-coloured box that made a horrible sound.

  Hideous creatures flew above the area, as if several wasps had merged in groups of four, flapping their wings noisily to express their pain. 'They're drones,' Harper told him. 'They're like little servants, don't pay any attention to them.'

  Ailill was sitting on a rock, covered by a blanket of hideous colours that she had given him. The girl told him not to worry about getting the blanket muddy, as it was washable. Ailill told her that the blanket was so ugly that muddying it was actually a favour, to which, to his surprise, Harper replied with a laugh. 'It's a promotional blanket from AEONALIZE. They make them like that so you'll remember the brand. Think of it as a war banner, but no one cares if you disrespect it.'

  He alternated between looking at the drones with disgust and watching the maid work on her little project. Her ridiculous blue trousers revealed too much of her legs, which distracted him. Harper had clearly belonged to some kind of savage tribe from the future.

  'Your people...' the prince began, 'do they all dress like you?'

  The girl shook her head. AEONALIZE headquarters is home to a large number of time travellers, and almost all of them prefer to wear clothes from their own eras. Initially, it was a problem to procure so many different styles, but the fashion industry adapted, and now there are several brands that cater to this need, as many civilians discovered that they also liked clothes from other eras, even if they weren't time travellers. Ailill didn't understand a single word of that answer and decided to change the subject.

  'What are you building, young lady?' he asked, pointing towards the circular curtain with a wave of his hand. 'Another banner?'

  'It's a portable shower. You can bathe here.' He looked her up and down, then looked at his own muddy clothes, already less warm than the prince's, and thought for a moment. 'Do you mind if I go first?' she pointed to the curtain with her thumb.

  Ailill blinked. 'I mind greatly.'

  Harper narrowed her eyes, as if trying to gauge whether the man was serious. 'I'll go first,' she said to the prince. 'Ladies always go first.'

  'You're not a lady. You're a low-born servant girl,' he replied indignantly. 'And nobles always go before low-born servant girls.'

  The low-born girl looked at him with arched eyebrows. 'Technically, you lost your titles when you died. Now you're a low-born boy, property of AEONALIZE.'

  Ailill stood up abruptly, dropping the blanket. His face was pale, his good eye was wide open, and his bad eye blinked wildly. 'How dare you talk to me like that?!' he screamed. 'I am no one's property! You are my property, you are on my land!' He strode towards her, causing her to step back slightly, but she did not move from her place next to the shower.

  The prince was about to lay his hands on her when a sharp pain, like a transparent sword, entered his shoulder and ran down his neck, throwing him to the ground.

  His muscles contracted and it was as if a million tiny hands were holding his limbs to his torso while pulling his head back. The torture must have lasted at least five or six minutes, after which he was as weak as a piece of bread dipped in soup. Harper, meanwhile, was breathing deeply, still standing in front of him with one hand on her chest.

  'That's what you get.' Then she turned halfway around, pulled back the curtain of the portable shower, stepped into the small circular space, and closed the curtain.

  Ailill was screaming on the floor, the pain gone, but the whole thing reminded him too much of his own death. 'I'M DYING! A WITCH IS KILLING ME!'

  Harper half-opened the curtain to answer him, revealing only her wet head. 'I'm so glad!' Then she shut herself back inside the small tent.

  Barely a few minutes later, the girl emerged from the portable shower, wrapped in another horrible blanket, and walked towards her ghastly tent while the prince continued to scream. When she emerged, she was wearing warmer, albeit masculine, clothing.

  She looked at the prince for a moment before crouching down next to him. 'I'm not going to apologise for the electric shock, even though I feel guilty. Drones do that when they detect aggression, they paralyse you... you're not going to die. Come on, it's your turn to use the shower...'

  The prince continued to hug his knees and rock back and forth on the floor, not turning to look at her, although he guessed she must have a guilty expression on her face.

  Harper gently brushed a strand of hair from Ailill's face, as there was still quite a lot on that side of his head. On the other side, it was already growing back. The prince only turned his eye towards her, now more indignant than anything else.

  The girl stood up and walked over to another chest. 'Look, I have a gift for you. You've never tried this before, and it doesn't exist in this region yet. You'll be the first of your people to try it.' She took out a small plate, the same colour as her hair, contained in a kind of crystal bag, and brought it close to Ailill's face.

  The prince was no longer swaying, admitting to himself that he was intrigued. In his childhood, he had always wanted to be the first to try the things that travellers brought as gifts to his father, as it gave him a certain satisfaction to go before the others. Although he was not the strongest or the most intelligent, at least he was first in line. These were usually exotic fruits from the continent that did not grow in the lands of Cernyw, and so he could show off by saying he was the first to try a new flavour. He followed the small brown tablet with his eyes as Harper rocked it in front of him.

  She detected the change in his behaviour and hurried to take the object out of the bag, breaking off a corner and putting the piece in her mouth. Ailill's eyes regained some of their sparkle when he saw that it was a sweet. Harper exaggerated an expression of satisfaction. 'Among my people, they say this is like sex. Although it's very high in calories. If you stop crying and wash up, I can give you the whole piece.'

  Life returned-metaphorically this time-to the prince's body, for even his own father would not have dared to give him the whole sweet on its own, especially one with such wonderful properties. He rose slowly, glancing sideways at the drones.

  'They won't hurt you as long as you don't get aggressive, and what's more, if a stranger tries to attack you, they'll defend you,' said the maid, guessing his thoughts again. Pointing to the shower with her head, she continued, 'Come on, I'll show you how to use it.'

  'You'll have to help me undress, maid. The chain mail doesn't come off by itself.' He snatched the sweet from Harper's hand and examined it, sliding his fingers over the smooth surface on the back and bringing it to his face to smell it.

  She, on the other hand, examined him, incredulous that such a simple trick would work so well. The few chronicles she had found about the prince had commented on his lack of intelligence and his fixation with luxury, but she assumed they were mere slander on the part of his nephew's people, which was very common in medieval chronicles. She helped him remove his tunic and untangle his long black hair from his chain mail.

  'Stop crying, okay? You look weird with red eyes,' she said without thinking too much.

  Ailill turned to look at her with a frown, the whites of his eyes still pink, surrounding his misty grey pupils. He raised his hand to slap her insolent face, but it seemed to him that the drones were staring at him, like owls stalking their prey, and he reluctantly refrained. 'I haven't cried at all.'

  While the insolent Harper continued to try to peel the muddy hair from his armour, Ailill kept his eyes on the drones. The girl had said that those terrible devices would protect him too if necessary, and his mind wandered to the possibility of using them against the idiots who had previously humiliated him. The idea of his enemies writhing on the ground made him smile.

  'I think that's it, try to take it off.' Harper snapped him out of his reverie. 'It wouldn't be so hard if your hair wasn't so long.'

  The prince tried to remove the chain mail as if it were a simple shirt, but found himself stuck again, and when Harper tried to help him by pulling on the metal garment, it slipped again.

  'Be careful what you're doing, damn it!' he shouted as he found himself sitting on the floor, now free of his armour and on the verge of sobbing again.

  'It's not my fault you don't know how to take it off yourself! Aren't you supposed to be a great warrior?' The maid threw the garment on the floor in exasperation.

  The prince's face paled once more. This was the first time he had ever worn armour of any kind, except for the wooden breastplate he had once donned for his first and only training session as a child.

  'I always had a squire to do it for me,' he lied, now removing his tunic.

  Harper looked at him for a moment, blinking. 'And what was your squire's name?'

  'You say water comes out of this?' Ailill pointed to the sprinkler, walking towards it. He pulled a lever out of curiosity and a jet of water hit his hand like a small torrential rain. He opened his palm, fascinated by the way the mud slowly peeled away from his skin. He turned his head towards the girl and smiled.

  Harper seemed to want to ask again about his supposed squire, but decided to let it go for the moment. The pretender to the throne had already suffered enough humiliations for one day.