Swan Kingdom (Incipit)

Monument to Prince Albert of Prussia, Berlin — 658 km from Neuschwanstein Castle

On Thursday morning at 10 o’clock, Guillaume and Juliette finally found peace.

At least, that is what they believed. But two minutes after walking out of the Abguss-Sammlung Antiker Plastik, the threat of regret began to loom over the teenagers. Shaking off the promise of the longest detention in the history of detentions, Juliette grabbed Guillaume’s hand and hailed a taxi. A beige car stopped in front of them and the pair jumped inside.

With her seatbelt fastened and her skirt adjusted, Juliette turned to Guillaume and raised her eyebrows. “Where to, Sal Paradise?”

“Erm, I— uh, I don’t know,” Guillaume stammered some semblance of an answer but Juliette found it less than satisfactory.

“You don’t know? Where were you gonna go without a plan?” Despite the severity of her tone, Juliette’s lips remained curled into a smile, her eyes glancing back and forth between the taxi driver and her freshly minted partner-in-crime. She poked Guillaume’s side and continued her interrogation: “Where should we go?”

“Munich,” he blurted out to the driver, who could only guffaw at the boy’s ridiculous request.

“I can drive you to the airport,” he answered after his laughter had subsided.

“No! Bus station,” Juliette quickly corrected.

Guillaume adjusted his glasses and looked outside the window, refusing to engage in any conversation with Juliette Lavalanche. In the years they had spent breathing the same air, she had never once deigned to express to him more than three words at a time. And so he could not fathom the reason why, when she saw him walk out of the museum, she chose to follow him.

He would occasionally steal glances her way, always catching her doing something different. One minute, she was pulling her blonde hair into a ponytail. The next, she was reapplying her cherry chapstick. She seemed unable to sit still, her fidgeting legs betraying her deep-seated nerves. Guillaume was glad to see he was not the only one terrified out of his mind.

A few minutes later, the driver announced their arrival.

“Already? We could have walked.” She turned to Guillaume to continue her admonishment. “This is why you always plan ahead of time.”

Guillaume merely rolled his eyes at her nagging and quickly tapped the driver’s shoulder as they turned the corner. “Stop here, please.”

Perplexed but entertained by the unusually young pair, the taxi driver pulled over. Guillaume handed him a few bills and slammed the door on his way out of the vehicle. Juliette had no choice but to do the same, and she watched as the beige car pulled away, never to be seen again.

“There uselessly go 5 euros,” Guillaume mused.

Juliette groaned. “How was I supposed to know you wanted to go to Munich?”

“Well, maybe if you hadn’t pulled me into the first taxi you spotted, I could have had the chance to tell you!”

“Either way, it’s not like you knew the bus station was right there.”

Guillaume did not respond, but Juliette did not have time to take note of her victory as the boy pulled her to the side of the building.

“What are we doing?” she whispered, confused.

“We’re avoiding the security cameras so we don’t get found too quickly.”

“There are also cameras inside and near the platforms, genius. If they don’t catch us entering the station, they will surely see us buying a ticket and hopping on a bus. Let’s just go.” She pulled Guillaume toward the main entrance, ignoring his protests which were weakening by the second.

Feigning the confidence of seasoned travelers, they approached the ticket center with assured strides. But the mask quickly faltered.

“Two tickets to Munich, please,” Guillaume said to the woman behind the counter, flashing a lopsided grin that utterly failed to charm her. He awkwardly rested an elbow on the counter, but the nonchalance of his lanky frame was no match for the hesitance that marred his face. Juliette turned away and snickered. “You owe me 15 euros,” he hissed as he handed her a ticket.

She nodded and raised the piece of paper to the ceiling like one would verify the authenticity of a 100-euro bill. “Well, Guillaume, this is it. The adventure begins,” Juliette declared, her tone laden with excitement.

He remained silent, his eyes trained on the screen until he found the number corresponding with their destination. As he began to make his way toward the platform, Juliette stopped him. She could see from afar that the parking space stood empty and motioned for the two to sit nearby. “The bus won’t be here for another hour. Let’s wait here.”

She sat on a bright orange seat, hugging her backpack against her chest. The white button-up peeking under her sweater vest wrinkled under the weight, but she made no move to fix it. Guillaume adjusted the straps of his bag before following closely behind. He nestled into the seat next to her and pulled out a book.

Juliette let out an exaggerated sigh, though Guillaume remained unfazed. She cleared her throat before speaking, fighting hard not to lose her composure. “Do you honestly think now is the time to shut me out?”

Guillaume tore his eyes from the page and blinked twice. “What?”

“It’s time to ‘fess up. Why the hell did you leave the museum and why do you want to go to Munich so badly?”

He closed his book to show her the cover: Ludwig II of Bavaria: A Biography. But Juliette’s deadpan eyes told him that he would need to elaborate on his answer. “I don’t want to go to Munich, I want to go find him.” He pointed at the decorated man with the absent gaze and the goatee.

“Shouldn’t he be dead by now?”

He shook his head and shoved the book back in his bag. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Oh no, I—”

“It doesn’t matter.” He was unsure if he had made the right decision by telling Juliette part of the story and wished he could take everything back. She hadn’t even heard the half of it but was already amused by the strange boy sitting next to her. The last thing he wanted was for her to make fun of him like she used to do.

Juliette decided not to press the matter further and produced a book of her own: Madame Bovary. She flipped to the bookmarked page and lost herself in the words inked across.

A green bus pulled into the parking space moments later, its doors opening with a hiss.

Guillaume checked the windshield window multiple times to ensure it was the right one, while Juliette glanced at the vehicle once before jumping aboard. She found a seat near the back, humming a tune to the rhythm of the engine rumbling beneath her feet. But before Guillaume could follow, his head snapped at the loudening sound of police sirens. He popped his head inside to alert Juliette, who had heard it as well and was already on her way out.

The pair ran across the bus station, exiting on the street beyond the platforms. The sirens’ whaling only intensified, making their hearts pound so hard that they would fall out of their chests.

“What do we do?” Juliette asked, panicked.

“Erm, I think, uh—” Guillaume’s stammering returned, which only served to unnerve Juliette further.

“Come on, this isn’t the time for you to freeze!” She looked around her like a madwoman and her panting progressively turned into stifled sobs. Her knees bent until she had crouched down on the asphalt road, her mind completely lost in thought.

“Juliette!” Guillaume exclaimed when he spotted a car speeding her way. Entranced, she did not compute the looming danger until he had scooped her into his arms and pulled her behind the trees across the street. “Breathe, just breathe.” He repeated until the girl had calmed down. “It’s not too late for you to go back, you know.”

Juliette furrowed her brows but was unable to reply.

“You could say you went out to look for me but couldn’t find me,” he continued as if he had rehearsed the speech in his head. But the more words he spoke, the more hurt Juliette became. “No one will look for me, not without you,” he resumed. “You got your adventure, a story you can tell Maxime. You got what you wanted.”

“Guillaume,” she said as she pushed him away, “I can’t leave you.”

He nodded once, realizing that the sirens had stopped.

Juliette noticed the same thing, and she began to laugh. “We really thought we were the main characters, didn’t we?” She swiveled on her heels and sauntered back toward the bus station with Guillaume in tow, eager to forget how quickly she had crumbled and how a boy she didn’t really know had witnessed it all.

But when the pair returned to the platform, the bus was gone.