Laurent told his first lie at three years old, when Auguste asked where the bug had come from, and Laurent pointed at the window.
He was not supposed to leave the nursery, for some reason or other. But his minder had her attention caught elsewhere, and it was a brilliant day, and… well… Laurent was not, yet, the most obedient of children, for anyone but his mother. Or Auguste.
Auguste, who was staring at the window Laurent indicated. It was large and ornate, with a latch that would take two grown men to maneuver. It was also currently closed. Laurent’s boots had left a mud-trail of little prints from the garden door all the way to the sofa.
“I see,” Auguste said with a smile. If Laurent was three, he must have been fifteen; instead of berating him for the world’s-most-obvious-lie, he picked Laurent up in his arms and laughed.
“It’s a very interesting bug,” he said.
Laurent nodded. Wisely he added, “Blue.”
“Yes, quite blue, with funny little eyes. It doesn’t have wings, by the way.”
Not seeing how that was relevant for anything, Laurent said, “An antenna.”
“Hmm, you’re right. Do you suppose it used the antenna to fly in?”
Laurent squinted, bemused, having already forgotten what he said, but alert enough to know he had made a mistake. Perhaps… oh, right, the going-outside when he wasn’t-supposed-to.
He said, “Bugs have six legs.”
Auguste looked up in amusement. “Is that so?”
“Did you read that in your little book?”
His Little Book was the largest tome on the shelf and a running joke for Auguste, for it was, obviously, too big and too heavy for Laurent to even hold, let alone read. Not that he hasn’t tried. Several times.
“No. That one.” Jerking his chin in possibly the right direction of the bookcase. “Down, bug!”
“Yes, Your Highness,” Auguste laughed, and ruffled his hair as he put him back on the floor. “This humble brother-bug will forever obey the young prince.”
Laurent waved a dismissing hand, already attuned back to his miniature conquest. “Auguste is not a bug,” he said still, out of a sense he could not yet name.
A pest, sitting there with his legs crossed, innocent and brilliant as though he didn’t have his tutor pulling hair out in clumps. Laurent huffed. “Horse,” he said with some confidence.
“Horse?” he was shouting, laughing so hard. “Your Royal Brother, a horse?”
“Mm,” Laurent said, satisfied. The bug was blue, and interesting, but he looked up to Auguste’s face with a grin. “Big horse.”
The grin was returned. “Which would make you the small horse?”
Laurent gave it some thought, then nodded heavily. “Pony,” he corrected.
“Of course. The horse and the pony.”
“Fast,” Laurent nodded, back to his bug. Perhaps Auguste will take him to the stables again, and he could meet his new foal, only recently born. Laurent was assured they will, in the future, become the best of friends.
Of course, he already had a best friend, and a bug, but a pony would be nice.
“The fastest,” said Auguste, about something. “Will we go a-galloping down the fields?”
“And trot up the mountainsides?”
Laurent squinted, feeling somewhat toyed with, but he still said, “Yes.”
“And… canter… to the seaside?”
“Yes!” rising to his feet, excited, “Seaside!” he meant to convey something about whales, an animal new and mystical he met the previous night in his book, but fell short on the vocabulary.
Auguste didn’t seem to mind. “Very well,” he said, smiling, “to the seaside it is. We shall go soon. Perhaps once the Kemtpian ambassador finally leaves.”
“Yuck,” Laurent agreed, nose scrunched. The ambassador was a prince-cousin of theirs, much, much older than Auguste, meaning ancient, portly and overly-familiar, with the tendency of spitting as he spoke. He had constantly-sticky hands; Laurent looked back to the bug, forgetting already. His head was small at three years old.
“Is there anywhere else you would like to ride, brother?”
He considered the question, then said, quite reasonably, “Moon.”
The moon, he had been informed, was made entirely out of cheese, and Auguste loved cheese above all other foods. It would be a good trip there, faraway enough from sticky cousins. Perhaps they could take Mother too. She liked cheese, Laurent thought, frowning to himself. Didn’t she?
Auguste, on his side of the sofa, was expiring: red-faced and shaking, his lips tightly clenched, eyes shining. After a long moment of the seizure he said, “Moon?”
“Moon,” Laurent confirmed.
“We will—ride—to the moon?”
“With forks,” Laurent said, continuing the plan faintly-hatched in his mind without having to explain. Auguste will understand, of that he was certain. If he will survive whatever was currently killing him.
“Forks,” Auguste nodded, hand on his chest, for some reason panting for breath. “Yes, of course, all the forks in the kitchens.”
“And a basket,” Laurent added thoughtfully. If Mother was too unwell to come, they could bring back some cheese for her.
He was—oh, laughing again. Auguste was too easy to laugh. Laurent would take offence if he wasn’t very used to this.
“Basket,” he said, conveying that this was a serious matter with his brows, “for Mother.”
The look on Auguste’s face now was not something Laurent could name. He said, “All right,” softly, still chuckling helplessly to himself, then slid down to sit next to Laurent, to run fingers through his hair. “A basket for Mother.”
Pleased to be understood, Laurent left preparations to him, and turned back to play with his new acquaintance. Only, when he looked down, the bug had already crawled halfway through the room, as if to run away.
“Oh,” Laurent said, immediately upset. “The—”
“It’s all right,” Auguste said. “Our friend the bug has someplace else to be.”
Reasonable. Hurtful still. Laurent asked, “It will come back?”
Something was thumping in his ear. Perhaps his heart, rattled and suddenly scared. Or perhaps Laurent was not three anymore, and he knew, all too well, that this memory had an end.
Child-him was in tears, unaware, probably, of why he was so agitated. Auguste said, somewhere distant and very nearby, “But wasn’t it good? To play with it for a little while.”
“Y-yes,” said Laurent, because he was an obedient-enough child when Auguste was involved, and because, at his core, he was not a liar. It was, good. To play for a little while. It did nothing to console him, though, and so he kept blinking away frustrated tears.
“Perhaps,” Auguste said, whispering conspiratorially in his ear, “another bug-friend will come through the window, if we opened it.”
Logical and very resourceful; even in his tantrum Laurent saw the merit in such a plan. That Auguste was referring to his first, pathetic lie, didn’t even occur to him, having all but forgotten it. He didn’t know, then, that this moment was crucial.
Auguste took his hand, and together they trotted to the window. The latch was too heavy for them alone, and so a servant had been summoned to assist, and with Auguste they managed to open it. The air outside was summer-bright, smelling faintly of lavender and orchids, of grass and of peaches, of Auguste’s leather jacket and the sweets in his pocket. They looked outside.
“How about that fly?” Auguste asked, trying for conciliatory, still probably giggling. Laurent wasn’t happy with the substitute, but the fresh air had its effect on him too, and the garden was endlessly interesting. He began pointing at things, asking Auguste every manner of question he could think; quickly enough they forgot to look for a bug.
It was an impossibly pleasant afternoon. Auguste should have been taking his lessons. Laurent was supposed to—do something, probably, but his minder had been dismissed by the Crown Prince and did not dare interrupt, and in his nursery wing they had their own, separate world.
They ended up back on the sofa, with Auguste reading out from the Little Book, something Laurent very seriously tried to follow. Failed spectacularly. It did not seem to matter. Neither brother noticed the little blue bug flying serenely out the window, but even if they did, it would not have changed a thing.
Crucial, but not for the lie. Even for a little while—it was so, so good.
