#story: complete

[bookshelf-in-progress]

A Wise Pair of Fools: A Retelling of “The Farmer’s Clever Daughter”

For the Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge at @inklings-challenge.

Faith

I wish you could have known my husband when he was a young man. How you would have laughed at him! He was so wonderfully pompous—oh, you’d have no idea unless you’d seen him then. He’s weathered beautifully, but back then, his beauty was bright and new, all bronze and ebony. He tried to pretend he didn’t care for personal appearances, but you could tell he felt his beauty. How could a man not be proud when he looked like one of creation’s freshly polished masterpieces every time he stepped out among his dirty, sweaty peasantry?

But his pride in his face was nothing compared to the pride he felt over his mind. He was clever, even then, and he knew it. He’d grown up with an army of nursemaids to exclaim, “What a clever boy!” over every mildly witty observation he made. He’d been tutored by some of the greatest scholars on the continent, attended the great universities, traveled further than most people think the world extends. He could converse like a native in fifteen living languages and at least three dead ones.

And books! Never a man like him for reading! His library was nothing to what it is now, of course, but he was making a heroic start. Always a book in his hand, written by some dusty old man who never said in plain language what he could dress up in words that brought four times the work to some lucky printer. Every second breath he took came out as a quotation. It fairly baffled his poor servants—I’m certain to this day some of them assume Plato and Socrates were college friends of his.

Well, at any rate, take a man like that—beautiful and over-educated—and make him king over an entire nation—however small—before he turns twenty-five, and you’ve united all earthly blessings into one impossibly arrogant being.

Unfortunately, Alistair’s pomposity didn’t keep him properly aloof in his palace. He’d picked up an idea from one of his old books that he should be like one of the judge-kings of old, walking out among his people to pass judgment on their problems, giving the inferior masses the benefit of all his twenty-four years of wisdom. It’s all right to have a royal patron, but he was so patronizing. Just as if we were all children and he was our benevolent father. It wasn’t strange to see him walking through the markets or looking over the fields—he always managed to look like he floated a step or two above the common ground the rest of us walked on—and we heard stories upon stories of his judgments. He was decisive, opinionated. Always thought he had a better way of doing things. Was always thinking two and ten and twelve steps ahead until a poor man’s head would be spinning from all the ways the king found to see through him. Half the time, I wasn’t sure whether to fear the man or laugh at him. I usually laughed.

So then you can see how the story of the mortar—what do you mean you’ve never heard it? You could hear it ten times a night in any tavern in the country. I tell it myself at least once a week! Everyone in the palace is sick to death of it!

Oh, this is going to be a treat! Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a fresh audience?

It happened like this. It was spring of the year I turned twenty-one. Father plowed up a field that had lain fallow for some years, with some new-fangled deep-cutting plow that our book-learned king had inflicted upon a peasantry that was baffled by his scientific talk. Father was plowing near a river when he uncovered a mortar made of solid gold. You know, a mortar—the thing with the pestle, for grinding things up. Don’t ask me why on earth a goldsmith would make such a thing—the world’s full of men with too much money and not enough sense, and housefuls of servants willing to take too-valuable trinkets off their hands. Someone decades ago had swiped this one and apparently found my father’s farm so good a hiding place that they forgot to come back for it.

Anyhow, my father, like the good tenant he was, understood that as he’d found a treasure on the king’s land, the right thing to do was to give it to the king. He was all aglow with his noble purpose, ready to rush to the palace at first light to do his duty by his liege lord.

I hope you can see the flaw in his plan. A man like Alistair, certain of his own cleverness, careful never to be outwitted by his peasantry? Come to a man like that with a solid gold mortar, and his first question’s going to be…?

That’s right. “Where’s the pestle?”

I tried to tell Father as much, but he—dear, sweet, innocent man—saw only his simple duty and went forth to fulfill it. He trotted into the king’s throne room—it was his public day—all smiles and eagerness.

Alistair took one look at him and saw a peasant tickled to death that he was pulling a fast one on the king—giving up half the king’s rightful treasure in the hopes of keeping the other half and getting a fat reward besides.

Alistair tore into my father—his tongue was much sharper then—taking his argument to pieces until Father half-believed he had hidden away the pestle somewhere, probably after stealing both pieces himself. In his confusion, Father looked even guiltier, and Alistair ordered his guard to drag Father off to the dungeons until they could arrange a proper hearing—and, inevitably, a hanging.

As they dragged him to his doom, my father had the good sense to say one coherent phrase, loud enough for the entire palace to hear. “If only I had listened to my daughter!”

Alistair, for all his brains, hadn’t expected him to say something like that. He had Father brought before him, and questioned him until he learned the whole story of how I’d urged Father to bury the mortar again and not say a word about it, so as to prevent this very scene from occurring.

About five minutes after that, I knocked over a butter churn when four soldiers burst into my father’s farmhouse and demanded I go with them to the castle. I made them clean up the mess, then put on my best dress and did up my hair—in those days, it was thick and golden, and fell to my ankles when unbound—and after traveling to the castle, I went, trembling, up the aisle of the throne room.

Alistair had made an effort that morning to look extra handsome and extra kingly. He still has robes like those, all purple and gold, but the way they set off his black hair and sharp cheekbones that day—I’ve never seen anything like it. He looked half-divine, the spirit of judgment in human form. At the moment, I didn’t feel like laughing at him.

Looming on his throne, he asked me, “Is it true that you advised this man to hide the king’s rightful property from him?” (Alistair hates it when I imitate his voice—but isn’t it a good impression?)

I said yes, it was true, and Alistair asked me why I’d done such a thing, and I said I had known this disaster would result, and he asked how I knew, and I said (and I think it’s quite good), that this is what happens when you have a king who’s too clever to be anything but stupid.

Naturally, Alistair didn’t like that answer a bit, but I’d gotten on a roll, and it was my turn to give him a good tongue-lashing. What kind of king did he think he was, who could look at a man as sweet and honest as my father and suspect him of a crime? Alistair was so busy trying to see hidden lies that he couldn’t see the truth in front of his face. So determined not to be made a fool of that he was making himself into one. If he persisted in suspecting everyone who tried to do him a good turn, no one would be willing to do much of anything for him. And so on and so forth.

You might be surprised at my boldness, but I had come into that room not expecting to leave it without a rope around my neck, so I intended to speak my mind while I had the chance. The strangest thing was that Alistair listened, and as he listened, he lost some of that righteous arrogance until he looked almost human. And the end of it all was that he apologized to me!

Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather at that! I didn’t faint, but I came darn close. That arrogant, determined young king, admitting to a simple farmer’s daughter that he’d been wrong?

He did more than admit it—he made amends. He let Father keep the mortar, and then bought it from him at its full value. Then he gifted Father the farm where we lived, making us outright landowners. After the close of the day’s hearings, he even invited us to supper with him, and I found that King Alistair wasn’t a half-bad conversational partner. Some of those books he read sounded almost interesting.

For a year after that, Alistair kept finding excuses to come by the farm. He would check on Father’s progress and baffle him with advice. We ran into each other in the street so often that I began to expect it wasn’t mere chance. We’d talk books, and farming, and sharpen our wits on each other. We’d do wordplay, puzzles, tongue-twisters. A game, but somehow, I always thought, some strange sort of test.

Would you believe, even his proposal was a riddle? Yes, an actual riddle! One spring morning, I came across Alistair on a corner of my father's land, and he got down on one knee, confessed his love for me, and set me a riddle. He had the audacity to look into the face of the woman he loved—me!—and tell me that if I wanted to accept his proposal, I would come to him at his palace, not walking and not riding, not naked and not dressed, not on the road and not off it.

Do you know, I think he actually intended to stump me with it? For all his claim to love me, he looked forward to baffling me! He looked so sure of himself—as if all his book-learning couldn’t be beat by just a bit of common sense.

If I’d really been smart, I suppose I’d have run in the other direction, but, oh, I wanted to beat him so badly. I spent about half a minute solving the riddle and then went off to make my preparations.

The next morning, I came to the castle just like he asked. Neither walking nor riding—I tied myself to the old farm mule and let him half-drag me. Neither on the road nor off it—only one foot dragging in a wheel rut at the end. Neither naked nor dressed—merely wrapped in a fishing net. Oh, don’t look so shocked! There was so much rope around me that you could see less skin than I’m showing now.

If I’d hoped to disappoint Alistair, well, I was disappointed. He radiated joy. I’d never seen him truly smile before that moment—it was incandescent delight. He swept me in his arms, gave me a kiss without a hint of calculation in it, then had me taken off to be properly dressed, and we were married within a week.

It was a wonderful marriage. We got along beautifully—at least until the next time I outwitted him. But I won’t bore you with that story again—

You don’t know that one either? Where have you been hiding yourself?

Oh, I couldn’t possibly tell you that one. Not if it’s your first time. It’s much better the way Alistair tells it.

What time is it?

Perfect! He’s in his library just now. Go there and ask him to tell you the whole thing.

Yes, right now! What are you waiting for?

Alistair

Faith told you all that, did she? And sent you to me for the rest? That woman! It’s just like her! She thinks I have nothing better to do than sit around all day and gossip about our courtship!

Where are you going? I never said I wouldn’t tell the story! Honestly, does no one have brains these days? Sit down!

Yes, yes, anywhere you like. One chair’s as good as another—I built this room for comfort. Do you take tea? I can ring for a tray—the story tends to run long.

Well, I’ll ring for the usual, and you can help yourself to whatever you like.

I’m sure Faith has given you a colorful picture of what I was like as a young man, and she’s not totally inaccurate. I’d had wealth and power and too much education thrown on me far too young, and I thought my blessings made me better than other men. My own father had been the type of man who could be fooled by every silver-tongued charlatan in the land, so I was sensitive and suspicious, determined to never let another man outwit me.

When Faith came to her father’s defense, it was like my entire self came crumbling down. Suddenly, I wasn’t the wise king; I was a cruel and foolish boy—but Faith made me want to be better. That day was the start of my fascination with her, and my courtship started in earnest not long after.

The riddle? Yes, I can see how that would be confusing. Faith tends to skip over the explanations there. A riddle’s an odd proposal, but I thought it was brilliant at the time, and I still think it wasn’t totally wrong-headed. I wasn’t just finding a wife, you see, but a queen. Riddles have a long history in royal courtships. I spent weeks laboring over mine. I had some idea of a symbolic proposal—each element indicating how she’d straddle two worlds to be with me. But more than that, I wanted to see if Faith could move beyond binary thinking—look beyond two opposites to see the third option between. Kings and queens have to do that more often than you’d think…

No, I’m sorry, it is a bit dull, isn’t it? I guess there’s a reason Faith skips over the explanations.

So to return to the point: no matter what Faith tells you, I always intended for her to solve the riddle. I wouldn’t have married her if she hadn’t—but I wouldn’t have asked if I’d had the least doubt she’d succeed. The moment she came up that road was the most ridiculous spectacle you’d ever hope to see, but I had never known such ecstasy. She’d solved every piece of my riddle, in just the way I’d intended. She understood my mind and gained my heart. Oh, it was glorious.

Those first weeks of marriage were glorious, too. You’d think it’d be an adjustment, turning a farmer’s daughter into a queen, but it was like Faith had been born to the role. Manners are just a set of rules, and Faith has a sharp mind for memorization, and it’s not as though we’re a large kingdom or a very formal court. She had a good mind for politics, and was always willing to listen and learn. I was immensely proud of myself for finding and catching the perfect wife.

You’re smarter than I was—you can see where I was going wrong. But back then, I didn’t see a cloud in the sky of our perfect happiness until the storm struck.

It seemed like such a small thing at the time. I was looking over the fields of some nearby villages—farming innovations were my chief interest at the time. There were so many fascinating developments in those days. I’ve an entire shelf full of texts if you’re interested—

The story, yes. My apologies. The offer still stands.

Anyway, I was out in the fields, and it was well past the midday hour. I was starving, and more than a little overheated, so we were on our way to a local inn for a bit of food and rest. Just as I was at my most irritable, these farmers’ wives show up, shrilly demanding judgment in a case of theirs. I’d become known for making those on-the-spot decisions. I’d thought it was an efficient use of government resources—as long as I was out with the people, I could save them the trouble of complicated procedures with the courts—but I’d never regretted taking up the practice as heartily as I did in this moment.

The case was like this: one farmer’s horse had recently given birth, and the foal had wandered away from its mother and onto the neighbor’s property, where it laid down underneath an ox that was at pasture, and the second farmer thought this gave him a right to keep it. There were questions of fences and boundaries and who-owed-who for different trades going back at least a couple of decades—those women were determined to bring every past grievance to light in settling this case.

Well, it didn’t take long for me to lose what little patience I had. I snapped at both women and told them that my decision was that the foal could very well stay where it was.

Not my most reasoned decision, but it wasn’t totally baseless. I had common law going back centuries that supported such a ruling. Possession is nine-tenths of the law and all. It wasn't as though a single foal was worth so much fuss. I went off to my meal and thought that was the end of it.

I’d forgotten all about it by the time I returned to the same village the next week. My man and I were crossing the bridge leading into the town when we found the road covered by a fishing net. An old man sat by the side of the road, shaking and casting the net just as if he were laying it out for a catch.

“What do you think you’re doing, obstructing a public road like this?” I asked him.

The man smiled genially at me and replied, “Fishing, majesty.”

I thought perhaps the man had a touch of sunstroke, so I was really rather kind when I explained to him how impossible it was to catch fish in the roadway.

The man just replied, “It’s no more impossible than an ox giving birth to a foal, majesty.”

He said it like he’d been coached, and it didn’t take long for me to learn that my wife was behind it all. The farmer’s wife who’d lost the foal had come to Faith for help, and my wife had advised the farmer to make the scene I’d described.

Oh, was I livid! Instead of coming to me in private to discuss her concerns about the ruling, Faith had made a public spectacle of me. She encouraged my own subjects to mock me! This was what came of making a farm girl into a queen! She’d live in my house and wear my jewels, and all the time she was laughing up her sleeve at me while she incited my citizens to insurrection! Before long, none of my subjects would respect me. I’d lose my crown, and the kingdom would fall to pieces—

I worked myself into a fine frenzy, thinking such things. At the time, I thought myself perfectly reasonable. I had identified a threat to the kingdom’s stability, and I would deal with it. The moment I came home, I found Faith and declared that the marriage was dissolved. “If you prefer to side with the farmers against your own husband,” I told her, “you can go back to your father’s house and live with them!”

It was quite the tantrum. I’m proud to say I’ve never done anything so shameful since.

To my surprise, Faith took it all silently. None of the fire that she showed in defending her father against me. Faith had this way, back then, where she could look at a man and make him feel like an utter fool. At that moment, she made me feel like a monster. I was already beginning to regret what I was doing, but it was buried under so much anger that I barely realized it, and my pride wouldn’t allow me to back down so easily from another decision.

After I said my piece, Faith quietly asked if she was to leave the palace with nothing.

I couldn’t reverse what I’d decided, but I could soften it a bit.

“You may take one keepsake,” I told her. “Take the one thing you love best from our chambers.”

I thought I was clever to make the stipulation. Knowing Faith, she’d have found some way to move the entire palace and count it as a single item. I had no doubt she’d take the most expensive and inconvenient thing she could, but there was nothing in that set of rooms I couldn’t afford to lose.

Or so I thought. No doubt you’re beginning to see that Faith always gets the upper hand in a battle of wits.

I kept my distance that evening—let myself stew in resentment so I couldn’t regret what I’d done. I kept to my library—not this one, the little one upstairs in our suite—trying to distract myself with all manner of books, and getting frustrated when I found I wanted to share pieces of them with Faith. I was downright relieved when a maid came by with a tea tray. I drank my usual three cups so quickly I barely tasted them—and I passed out atop my desk five minutes later.

Yes, Faith had arranged for the tea—and she’d drugged me!

I came to in the pink light of early dawn, my head feeling like it had been run over by a military caravan. My wits were never as slow as they were that morning. I laid stupidly for what felt like hours, wondering why my bed was so narrow and lumpy, and why the walls of the room were so rough and bare, and why those infernal birds were screaming half an inch from my open window.

By the time I had enough strength to sit up, I could see that I was in the bedroom of a farmer’s cottage. Faith was standing by the window, looking out at the sunrise, wearing the dress she’d worn the first day I met her. Her hair was unbound, tumbling in golden waves all the way to her ankles. My heart leapt at the sight—her hair was one of the wonders of the world in those days, and I was so glad to see her when I felt so ill—until I remembered the events of the previous day, and was too confused and ashamed to have room for any other thoughts or feelings.

“Faith?” I asked. “Why are you here? Where am I?”

“My father’s home,” Faith replied, her eyes downcast—I think it’s the only time in her life she was ever bashful. “You told me I could take the one thing I loved best.”

Can I explain to you how my heart leapt at those words? There had never been a mind or a heart like my wife’s! It was like the moment she’d come to save her father—she made me feel a fool and feel glad for the reminder. I’d made the same mistake both times—let my head get in the way of my heart. She never made that mistake, thank heaven, and it saved us both.

Do you have something you want to add, Faith, darling? Don’t pretend I can’t see you lurking in the stacks and laughing at me! I’ll get as sappy as I like! If you think you can do it better, come out in the open and finish this story properly!

Faith

You tell it so beautifully, my darling fool boy, but if you insist—

I was forever grateful Dinah took that tea to Alistair. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen the loophole in his words—I was so afraid he’d see my ploy coming and stop me. But his wits were so blessedly dull that day. It was like outwitting a child.

When at last he came to, I was terrified. He had cast me out because I’d outwitted him, and now here I was again, thinking another clever trick would make everything well.

Fortunately, Alistair was marvelous—saw my meaning in an instant. Sometimes he can be almost clever.

After that, what’s there to tell? We made up our quarrel, and then some. Alistair brought me back to the palace in high honors—it was wonderful, the way he praised me and took so much blame on himself.

(You were really rather too hard on yourself, darling—I’d done more than enough to make any man rightfully angry. Taking you to Father’s house was my chance to apologize.)

Alistair paid the farmer for the loss of his foal, paid for the mending of the fence that had led to the trouble in the first place, and straightened out the legal tangles that had the neighbors at each others’ throats.

After that, things returned much to the way they’d been before, except that Alistair was careful never to think himself into such troubles again. We’ve gotten older, and I hope wiser, and between our quarrels and our reconciliations, we’ve grown into quite the wise pair of lovestruck fools. Take heed from it, whenever you marry—it’s good to have a clever spouse, but make sure you have one who’s willing to be the fool every once in a while.

Trust me. It works out for the best.

#the bookshelf progresses #fairy tale retellings #inklingschallenge #four loves fairy tale challenge #four loves fairy tale challenge 2024 #the farmer's clever daughter #theme: eros #story: complete #this one was *so much fun* #i was grinning throughout the brainstorming process #faith and alistair just *loved* telling me their story #and especially in the first scenes i kept stopping just because i was having so much fun with the lines #maybe it's horribly boring to read but as a writing exercise it was fantastic #i love these two so much #i haven't had this much fun since writing last year's epistolary story

[queenlucythevaliant]

Tell Your Dad You Love Him

A retelling of "Meat Loves Salt"/"Cap O'Rushes" for the @inklings-challenge Four Loves event

An old king had three daughters. When his health began to fail, he summoned them, and they came.

Gordonia and Rowan were already waiting in the hallway when Coriander arrived. They were leaned up against the wall opposite the king’s office with an air of affected casualness. “I wonder what the old war horse wants today?” Rowan was saying. “More about next year’s political appointments, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“The older he gets, the more he micromanages,” Gordonia groused fondly. “A thousand dollars says this meeting could’ve been an email.”

They filed in single-file like they’d so often done as children: Gordonia first, then Rowan, and Coriander last of all. The king had placed three chairs in front of his desk all in a row. His daughters murmured their greetings, and one by one they sat down. 

“I have divided everything I have in three,” the king said. “I am old now, and it’s time. Today, I will pass my kingdom on to you, my daughters.”

A short gasp came from Gordonia. None of them could have imagined that their father would give up running his kingdom while he still lived. 

The king went on. “I know you will deal wisely with that which I leave in your care. But before we begin, I have one request.”

“Yes father?” said Rowan.

“Tell me how much you love me.”

An awkward silence fell. Although there was no shortage of love between the king and his daughters, theirs was not a family which spoke of such things. They were rich and blue-blooded: a soldier and the daughters of a soldier, a king and his three court-reared princesses. The royal family had always shown their affection through double meanings and hot cups of coffee.

Gordonia recovered herself first. She leaned forward over the desk and clasped her father’s hands in her own. “Father,” she said, “I love you more than I can say.” A pause. “I don’t think there’s ever been a family so happy in love as we have been. You’re a good dad.”

The old king smiled and patted her hand. “Thank you, Gordonia. We have been very happy, haven’t we? Here is your inheritance. Cherish it, as I cherish you.”

Rowan spoke next; the words came tumbling out.  “Father! There’s not a thing in my life which you didn’t give me, and all the joy in the world beside. Come now, Gordonia, there’s no need to understate the matter. I love you more than—why, more than life itself!”

The king laughed, and rose to embrace his second daughter. “How you delight me, Rowan. All of this will be yours.”

Only Coriander remained. As her sisters had spoken, she’d wrung her hands in her lap, unsure of what to say. Did her father really mean for flattery to be the price of her inheritance? That just wasn’t like him. For all that he was a politician, he’d been a soldier first. He liked it when people told the truth.

When the king’s eyes came to rest on her, Coriander raised her own to meet them. “Do you really want to hear what you already know?” 

“I do.”

She searched for a metaphor that could carry the weight of her love without unnecessary adornment. At last she found one, and nodded, satisfied. “Dad, you’re like—like salt in my food.”

“Like salt?”

“Well—yes.”

The king’s broad shoulders seemed to droop. For a moment, Coriander almost took back her words. Her father was the strongest man in the world, even now, at eighty. She’d watched him argue with foreign rulers and wage wars all her life. Nothing could hurt him. Could he really be upset? 

But no. Coriander held her father’s gaze. She had spoken true. What harm could be in that?

“I don’t know why you’re even here, Cor,” her father said.

Now, Coriander shifted slightly in her seat, unnerved. “What? Father—”

“It would be best if—you should go,” said the old king.

“Father, you can’t really mean–”

“Leave us, Coriander.”

So she left the king’s court that very hour.

 .

It had been a long time since she’d gone anywhere without a chauffeur to drive her, but Coriander’s thoughts were flying apart too fast for her to be afraid. She didn’t know where she would go, but she would make do, and maybe someday her father would puzzle out her metaphor and call her home to him. Coriander had to hope for that, at least. The loss of her inheritance didn’t feel real yet, but her father—how could he not know that she loved him? She’d said it every day.

She’d played in the hall outside that same office as a child. She’d told him her secrets and her fears and sent him pictures on random Tuesdays when they were in different cities just because. She had watched him triumph in conference rooms and on the battlefield and she’d wanted so badly to be like him. 

If her father doubted her love, then maybe he’d never noticed any of it. Maybe the love had been an unnoticed phantasm, a shadow, a song sung to a deaf man. Maybe all that love had been nothing at all.  

A storm was on the horizon, and it reached her just as she made it onto the highway. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled. Rain poured down and flooded the road. Before long, Coriander was hydroplaning. Frantically, she tried to remember what you were supposed to do when that happened. Pump the brakes? She tried. No use. Wasn’t there something different you did if the car had antilock brakes? Or was that for snow? What else, what else–

With a sickening crunch, her car hit the guardrail. No matter. Coriander’s thoughts were all frenzied and distant. She climbed out of the car and just started walking.

Coriander wandered beneath an angry sky on the great white plains of her father’s kingdom. The rain beat down hard, and within seconds she was soaked to the skin. The storm buffeted her long hair around her head. It tangled together into long, matted cords that hung limp down her back. Mud soiled her fine dress and splattered onto her face and hands. There was water in her lungs and it hurt to breathe. Oh, let me die here, Coriander thought. There’s nothing left for me, nothing at all. She kept walking.

 .

When she opened her eyes, Coriander found herself in a dank gray loft. She was lying on a strange feather mattress.

She remained there a while, looking up at the rafters and wondering where she could be. She thought and felt, as it seemed, through a heavy and impenetrable mist; she was aware only of hunger and weakness and a dreadful chill (though she was all wrapped in blankets). She knew that a long time must have passed since she was fully aware, though she had a confused memory of wandering beside the highway in a thunderstorm, slowly going mad because—because— oh, there’d been something terrible in her dreams. Her father, shoulders drooping at his desk, and her sisters happily come into their inheritance, and she cast into exile—

She shuddered and sat up dizzily. “Oh, mercy,” she murmured. She hadn’t been dreaming.

She stumbled out of the loft down a narrow flight of stairs and came into a strange little room with a single window and a few shabby chairs. Still clinging to the rail, she heard a ruckus from nearby and then footsteps. A plump woman came running to her from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron and softly clucking at the state of her guest’s matted, tangled hair.

“Dear, dear,” said the woman. “Here’s my hand, if you’re still unsteady. That’s good, good. Don’t be afraid, child. I’m Katherine, and my husband is Folke. He found you collapsed by the goose-pond night before last. I’m she who dressed you—your fine gown was ruined, I’m afraid. Would you like some breakfast? There’s coffee on the counter, and we’ll have porridge in a minute if you’re patient.”

“Thank you,” Coriander rasped.

“Will you tell me your name, my dear?”

“I have no name. There’s nothing to tell.”

Katherine clicked her tongue. “That’s alright, no need to worry. Folke and I’ve been calling you Rush on account of your poor hair. I don’t know if you’ve seen yourself, but it looks a lot like river rushes. No, don’t get up. Here’s your breakfast, dear.”

There was indeed porridge, as Katherine had promised, served with cream and berries from the garden. Coriander ate hungrily and tasted very little. Then, when she was finished, the goodwife ushered her over to a sofa by the window and put a pillow beneath her head. Coriander thanked her, and promptly fell asleep.

 .

She woke again around noon, with the pounding in her head much subsided. She woke feeling herself again, to visions of her father inches away and the sound of his voice cracking across her name.

Katherine was outside in the garden; Coriander could see her through the clouded window above her. She rose and, upon finding herself still in a borrowed nightgown, wrapped herself in a blanket to venture outside.

“Feeling better?” Katherine was kneeling in a patch of lavender, but she half rose when she heard the cottage door open.

“Much. Thank you, ma’am.

“No thanks necessary. Folke and I are ministers, of a kind. We keep this cottage for lost and wandering souls. You’re free to remain here with us for as long as you need.”

“Oh,” was all Coriander could think to say. 

“You’ve been through a tempest, haven’t you? Are you well enough to tell me where you came from?”

Coriander shifted uncomfortably. “I’m from nowhere,” she said. “I have nothing.”

“You don’t owe me your story, child. I should like to hear it, but it will keep till you’re ready. Now, why don’t you put on some proper clothes and come help me with this weeding.”

 .

Coriander remained at the cottage with Katherine and her husband Folke for a week, then a fortnight. She slept in the loft and rose with the sun to help Folke herd the geese to the pond. After, Coriander would return and see what needed doing around the cottage. She liked helping Katherine in the garden.

The grass turned gold and the geese’s thick winter down began to come in. Coriander’s river-rush hair proved itself unsalvageable. She spent hours trying to untangle it, first with a hairbrush, then with a fine-tooth comb and a bottle of conditioner, and eventually even with honey and olive oil (a home remedy that Folke said his mother used to use). So, at last, Coriander surrendered to the inevitable and gave Katherine permission to cut it off. One night, by the yellow light of the bare bulb that hung over the kitchen table, Katherine draped a towel over Coriander’s shoulders and tufts of gold went falling to the floor all round her.

“I’m here because I failed at love,” she managed to tell the couple at last, when her sorrows began to feel more distant. “I loved my father, and he knew it not.”

Folke and Katherine still called her Rush. She didn’t correct them. Coriander was the name her parents gave her. It was the name her father had called her when she was six and racing down the stairs to meet him when he came home from Europe, and at ten when she showed him the new song she’d learned to play on the harp. She’d been Cor when she brought her first boyfriend home and Cori the first time she shadowed him at court. Coriander, Coriander, when she came home from college the first time and he’d hugged her with bruising strength. Her strong, powerful father.

As she seasoned a pot of soup for supper, she wondered if he understood yet what she’d meant when she called him salt in her food. 

 .

Coriander had been living with Katherine and Folke for two years, and it was a morning just like any other. She was in the kitchen brewing a pot of coffee when Folke tossed the newspaper on the table and started rummaging in the fridge for his orange juice. “Looks like the old king’s sick again,” he commented casually. Coriander froze.

She raced to the table and seized hold of the paper. There, above the fold, big black letters said, KING ADMITTED TO HOSPITAL FOR EMERGENCY TREATMENT. There was a picture of her father, looking older than she’d ever seen him. Her knees went wobbly and then suddenly the room was sideways.

Strong arms caught her and hauled her upright. “What’s wrong, Rush?”

“What if he dies,” she choked out. “What if he dies and I never got to tell him?”

She looked up into Folke’s puzzled face, and then the whole sorry story came tumbling out.

When she was through, Katherine (who had come downstairs sometime between salt and the storm) took hold of her hand and kissed it. “Bless you, dear,” she said. “I never would have guessed. Maybe it’s best that you’ve both had some time to think things over.”

Katherine shook her head. “But don’t you think…?”

“Yes?”

“Well, don’t you think he should have known that I loved him? I shouldn’t have needed to say it. He’s my father. He’s the king.”

Katherine replied briskly, as though the answer should have been obvious. “He’s only human, child, for all that he might wear a crown; he’s not omniscient. Why didn’t you tell your father what he wanted to hear?”

“I didn’t want to flatter him,” said Coriander. “That was all. I wanted to be right in what I said.”

The goodwife clucked softly. “Oh dear. Don’t you know that sometimes, it’s more important to be kind than to be right?”

.

In her leave-taking, Coriander tried to tell Katherine and Folke how grateful she was to them, but they wouldn’t let her. They bought her a bus ticket and sent her on her way towards King’s City with plenty of provisions. Two days later, Coriander stood on the back steps of one of the palace outbuildings with her little carpetbag clutched in her hands. 

Stuffing down the fear of being recognized, Coriander squared her shoulders and hoped they looked as strong as her father’s. She rapped on the door, and presently a maid came and opened it. The maid glanced Coriander up and down, but after a moment it was clear that her disguise held. With all her long hair shorn off, she must have looked like any other girl come in off the street.

“I’m here about a job,” said Coriander. “My name’s Rush.”

 .

The king's chambers were half-lit when Coriander brought him his supper, dressed in her servants’ apparel. He grunted when she knocked and gestured with a cane towards his bedside table. His hair was snow-white and he was sitting in bed with his work spread across a lap-desk. His motions were very slow.

Coriander wanted to cry, seeing her father like that. Yet somehow, she managed to school her face. Like he would, she kept telling herself. Stoically, she put down the supper tray, then stepped back out into the hallway. 

It was several minutes more before the king was ready to eat. Coriander heard papers being shuffled, probably filed in those same manilla folders her father had always used. In the hall, Coriander felt the seconds lengthen. She steeled herself for the moment she knew was coming, when the king would call out in irritation, “Girl! What's the matter with my food? Why hasn’t it got any taste?”

When that moment came, all would be made right. Coriander would go into the room and taste his food. “Why,” she would say, with a look of complete innocence, “It seems the kitchen forgot to salt it!” She imagined how her father’s face would change when he finally understood. My daughter always loved me, he would say. 

Soon, soon. It would happen soon. Any second now. 

The moment never came. Instead, the floor creaked, followed by the rough sound of a cane striking the floor. The door opened, and then the king was there, his mighty shoulders shaking. “Coriander,” he whispered. 

“Dad. You know me?”

“Of course.”

“Then you understand now?”

The king’s wrinkled brow knit. “Understand about the salt? Of course, I do. It wasn't such a clever riddle. There was surely no need to ruin my supper with a demonstration.”

Coriander gaped at him. She'd expected questions, explanations, maybe apologies for sending her away. She'd never imagined this.

She wanted very badly to seize her father and demand answers, but then she looked, really looked, at the way he was leaning on his cane. The king was barely upright; his white head was bent low. Her questions would hold until she'd helped her father back into his room. 

“If you knew what I meant–by saying you were like salt in my food– then why did you tell me to go?” she asked once they were situated back in the royal quarters. 

Idly, the king picked at his unseasoned food. “I shouldn’t have done that. Forgive me, Coriander. My anger and hurt got the better of me, and it has brought me much grief. I never expected you to stay away for so long.”

Coriander nodded slowly. Her father's words had always carried such fierce authority. She'd never thought to question if he really meant what he’d said to her. 

“As for the salt,” continued the king, "Is it so wrong that an old man should want to hear his daughters say ‘I love you' before he dies?” 

Coriander rolled the words around in her head, trying to make sense of them. Then, with a sudden mewling sound from her throat, she managed to say, “That's really all you wanted?”  

“That's all. I am old, Cor, and we've spoken too little of love in our house.” He took another bite of his unsalted supper. His hand shook. “That was my failing, I suppose. Perhaps if I’d said it, you girls would have thought to say it back.”

“But father!” gasped Coriander, “That’s not right. We've always known we loved one another! We've shown it a thousand ways. Why, I've spent the last year cataloging them in my head, and I've still not even scratched the surface!”

The king sighed. “Perhaps you will understand when your time comes. I knew, and yet I didn't. What can you really call a thing you’ve never named? How do you know it exists? Perhaps all the love I thought I knew was only a figment.”

“But that’s what I’ve been afraid of all this time,” Coriander bit back. “How could you doubt? If it was real at all– how could you doubt?”

The king’s weathered face grew still. His eyes fell shut and he squeezed them. “Death is close to me, child. A small measure of reassurance is not so very much to ask.”

.

Coriander slept in her old rooms that night. None of it had changed. When she woke the next morning, for a moment she remembered nothing of the last two years. 

She breakfasted in the garden with her father, who came down the steps in a chair-lift. “Coriander,” he murmured. “I half-thought I dreamed you last night.”

“I’m here, Dad,” she replied. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Slowly, the king reached out with one withered hand and caressed Coriander's cheek. Then, his fingers drifted up to what remained of her hair. He ruffled it, then gently tugged on a tuft the way he'd used to playfully tug her long braid when she was a girl. 

“I love you,” he said.

“That was always an I love you, wasn’t it?” replied Coriander. “My hair.”

The king nodded. “Yes, I think it was.”

So Coriander reached out and gently tugged the white hairs of his beard. “You too,” she whispered.

.

“Why salt?” The king was sitting by the fire in his rooms wrapped in two blankets. Coriander was with him, enduring the sweltering heat of the room without complaint. 

She frowned. “You like honesty. We have that in common. I was trying to be honest–accurate–to avoid false flattery.”

The king tugged at the outer blanket, saying nothing. His lips thinned and his eyes dropped to his lap. Coriander wished they wouldn’t. She wished they would hold to hers, steely and ready for combat as they always used to be.

“Would it really have been false?” the king said at last. “Was there no other honest way to say it? Only salt?”

Coriander wanted to deny it, to give speech to the depth and breadth of her love, but once again words failed her. “It was my fault,” she said. “I didn’t know how to heave my heart into my throat.” She still didn’t, for all she wanted to. 

.

When the doctor left, the king was almost too tired to talk. His words came slowly, slurred at the edges and disconnected, like drops of water from a leaky faucet. 

Still, Coriander could tell that he had something to say. She waited patiently as his lips and tongue struggled to form the words. “Love you… so… much… You… and… your sisters… Don’t… worry… if you… can’t…say…how…much. I… know.” 

It was all effort. The king sat back when he was finished. Something was still spasming in his throat, and Coriander wanted to cry.

“I’m glad you know,” she said. “I’m glad. But I still want to tell you.”

Love was effort. If her father wanted words, she would give him words. True words. Kind words. She would try… 

“I love you like salt in my food. You're desperately important to me, and you've always been there, and I don't know what I'll do without you. I don’t want to lose you. And I love you like the soil in a garden. Like rain in the spring. Like a hero. You have the strongest shoulders of anyone I know, and all I ever wanted was to be like you…”

A warm smile spread across the old king’s face. His eyes drifted shut.

#inklingschallenge #theme: storge #story: complete #inklings challenge #leah stories #OKAY. SO #i spend so much time thinking about king lear. i think i've said before that it's my favorite shakespeare play. it is not close #and one of the hills i will die on is that cordelia was not in the right when she refused to flatter her dad #like. obviously he's definitely not in the right either. the love test was a screwed up way to make sure his kids loved him #he shouldn't have tied their inheritances into it. he DEFINITELY shouldn't have kicked cordelia out when she refused to play #but like. Cordelia. there is no good reason not to tell your elderly dad how much you love him #and okay obviously lear is my starting point but the same applies to the meat loves salt princess #your dad wants you to tell him you love him. there is no good reason to turn it into a riddle. you had other options #and honestly it kinda bothers me when people read cordelia/the princess as though she's perfectly virtuous #she's very human and definitely beats out the cruel sisters but she's definitely not aspirational. she's not to be emulated #at the end of the day both the fairytale and the play are about failures in storge #at happens when it's there and you can't tell. when it's not and you think it is. when you think you know someone's heart and you just don' #hey! that's a thing that happens all the time between parents and children. especially loving past each other and speaking different langua #so the challenge i set myself with this story was: can i retell the fairytale in such a way that the princess is unambiguously in the wrong #and in service of that the king has to get softened so his errors don't overshadow hers #anyway. thank you for coming to my TED talk #i've been thinking about this story since the challenge was announced but i wrote the whole thing last night after the super bowl #got it in under the wire! yay! #also! the whole 'modern setting that conflicts with the fairytale language' is supposed to be in the style of modern shakespeare adaptation #no idea if it worked but i had a lot of fun with it #pontifications and creations

[griseldabanks]

Maybelle and the Beast

My contribution to the @inklings-challenge Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge. This was my back-up idea for last year, so I was excited to have an excuse to finally write it out! Beauty and the Beast is my favorite fairy tale, and I have a feeling I may revisit this particular version again in the future, because I could definitely turn this into a novel ;) I'll admit to taking a lot of inspiration from Robin McKinley's retellings of this fairy tale.

Maybelle stared at the tall, imposing mahogany door. She felt just as reluctant to open it as if it had been the barred portal to a dungeon—like the cold stone chamber she'd explored early on in her stay here, which she expected had been a dungeon once but was now a wine cellar.

More to stall for time than anything else, Maybelle brushed off her rust red skirt and straightened her collar. It was a nervous habit, but in a way it also served to remind her of why she was here, because of who had given her these clothes. Days, weeks, months in this huge, empty mansion, alone except for one companion. The companion who had slammed this very door not half an hour ago.

Taking a deep breath, Maybelle knocked firmly on the door.

“Go 'way,” a muffled voice growled out to her.

Letting out her breath again in an impatient huff, Maybelle crossed her arms. “Are you still sulking, Agnes?”

“I am not sulking,” the voice insisted sulkily.

“Right. You're lying in bed at three in the afternoon, glaring a hole in the ceiling, for your health.”

After a heavy silence, a loud click told her the key had turned in the hole. Taking that as an invitation, Maybelle opened the door and stepped inside.

The heavy drapes had been pulled closed, leaving the bedroom in a stuffy half-light. The only illumination came from the embers of the fire dying in the fireplace. She could barely even make out the silhouette of a large bulk lying in the huge four-poster. It was like stepping into a sickroom.

Rolling her eyes at the drama of it all, Maybelle closed the door with a snap and made a beeline for the window closest to the fireplace. She pulled the curtains aside, letting a band of lazy afternoon sunlight stretch across the carpet, revealing the twisting patterns of vines and roses. After a moment's consideration, Maybelle decided not to open the curtains of the other window nearest the bed. Best not to annoy Agnes any further with a sunbeam in her eyes. She would probably just wave her hand and make the curtains close, then stick together so Maybelle couldn't open them again. Instead, Maybelle contented herself with throwing the window open and letting in the delicious scents of flowers and the buzzing of bees from the gardens.

“There,” she said, drawing in a deep breath of the fresh smell of spring. “Much better.”

With a grunt, the huge lump on the bed rolled over.

Maybelle walked up to the foot of the bed and stood there with her hands on her hips, just waiting. How strange, to remember how frightened she had been the first time she'd ventured into this room. Or how her knees had nearly given out the first time she'd dared to meet the gaze of the terrible Beast who was to be her captor.

It had been months since she'd ceased to be the Beast, and became instead...simply Agnes.

“Well?” Maybelle said, when it became clear Agnes wasn't about to break the silence. “Aren't we going to at least talk about this?”

The long tail lying on top of the blue bedspread flicked irritably, like a huge cat's. “What's to talk about?” Agnes retorted, her voice grumbling like a motorcar in her massive chest. “Clearly, you don't care what happens to me, as long as you get to go have fun without me.”

Closing her eyes for a moment, Maybelle sent up a silent prayer for patience. “Well, for starters,” she said, her voice coming out more sharply than she'd intended, “you called me an awful lot of horrid names, and I thought perhaps you might want to apologize.”

A long, pregnant pause. Finally, with a long-suffering groan from the bed, Agnes rolled over onto her back, her arms tucked up against her chest almost like a dog waiting for a belly rub. The long, black skirt did little to hide her bowed legs ending in sharp claws, and from this angle, her long saber teeth and curled goat-like horns were no longer hidden in her mountain of pillows.

Agnes sighed in resignation. “Sorry for calling you a selfish, bird-brained floozy.”

Maybelle nodded. “Apology accepted. And...I'm sorry too. For calling you a heartless, hairy pig.”

Their eyes met across the room. Agnes let out a snort, followed by a loud guffaw, and suddenly Maybelle found herself laughing as well. The tight coil of anger and bitterness loosened in her chest as she tipped her head back and let her higher-pitched laughter harmonize with Agnes' deep, hefty chuckles.

Still giggling, Maybelle crossed over and flopped onto the huge bed beside Agnes. She felt so tiny in this bed, like a doll. And yet, even though she was sure Agnes could snap her like a twig if she so desired, Maybelle didn't feel a shred of fear to lie a mere foot away from her.

For a couple minutes, they merely lay there, staring up into the canopy over the four-poster. Maybelle had just realized the stars embroidered there formed constellations and was looking for Orion when Agnes broke the silence.

“You were right, you know.” Her voice was a low, sad rumble like a locomotive rushing past in the night. “I am a pig.”

“Oh, no!” Maybelle raised herself on one elbow, looking over in alarm. “Please, forget those awful things I said. It was very wrong of me to call you that.”

Agnes turned her head aside, but Maybelle thought she caught the sight of a tear glistening in one eye. “You were only speaking the truth. Like you always do. I am heartless. Because I care more about not being alone than I do about you getting a chance to see your family. Even when all you ask is to go to your sister's wedding...I'm too selfish to let you go.”

Slowly, Maybelle lowered herself to her pillow again. She wasn't quite sure what to say, so she spoke slowly, picking her words carefully. “I wasn't thinking of you either. I'm sorry, Agnes. I know...I mean, I can imagine how lonely it must get here, in this huge mansion all alone. But it would only be for the weekend. Just enough to meet Edward and see Adeline off. I'd be back before you could miss me too much.”

“You...would come back?”

Agnes' voice sounded so hesitant and tremulous, Maybelle looked over in surprise, but she couldn't make out her friend's expression past the horn and the unruly mane of hair. “Of course I'll come back. That's part of the deal.”

The silence seemed to congeal between them. Neither of them had mentioned the deal Agnes and Maybelle's father had worked out, not since...Maybelle couldn't even remember. During the past several months, it had become easy to forget how all of this began. When Maybelle had first arrived at the mansion, she'd shut thoughts of home out of her mind as much as possible, to make her dreadful fate a little more bearable. If she weren't constantly thinking of the little cottage or trying to imagine what her father and sisters were up to, perhaps she could carve a small measure of contentment out of her exile. It was a small price to pay for her father's life, after all.

But it had been months since Maybelle had seriously believed that Agnes would have eaten her father. Not after she'd seen the delicate way Agnes handled the gardening tools when she tended to her enchanted rose bushes. Not after the way she'd cradled that finch's body in her enormous hands, huge tears rolling down her hairy face as she muttered spell after spell that fizzled out, unable to bring the tiny animal back to life.

Not after scores upon scores of cozy evenings by the fire, laughing together as Maybelle tried to teach Agnes how to knit with two iron pokers, or taking turns reading from one of the books in the huge library.

For the first time, Maybelle tried to imagine what life must have been like for Agnes in all the years before her father had shown up on the doorstep. Sitting alone in front of a guttering fire. Pacing the dark, dusty hallways, with nothing to hear but the echoes of her own footsteps. Wandering the grounds, able to turn the seasons at a word and the weather at a glance, but with nothing but the birds and bees to listen to her words. A library that magically seemed to provide exactly the book she wanted to read, but all the stories of friendship and adventure only serving to mock her solitude.

“I promise I'll come back,” Maybelle said firmly. “Deal or no deal. I won't leave you alone forever.”

A strange, strangled sound escaped Agnes, quickly disguised in a clearing of her throat. “Well,” she said gruffly, “good. But if you don't come back in three days, I'll die.”

Maybelle rolled her eyes. Always so dramatic.

-----

It was raining when Maybelle returned to the mansion. Since it was midsummer out in the rest of the world, she hadn't thought to pack a coat, so she just ducked her head and hurried up the gravel walk to the great front doors. This wasn't a summer rain, either; the chilly breeze cut right through the thin sleeves of the flower-patterned dress Violette had made for her.

The front doors seemed heavier than usual. Normally, they swung open at the first touch of her hand, but this time Maybelle had to throw her shoulder against one to open it. Perhaps Agnes had left a window open somewhere and there was a draft. Though that seemed strange; surely Agnes would have either closed the window or shifted the weather instead of letting all this cold rain blow in.

Maybelle turned back to glance out the door. It looked like Agnes had fully committed to a dreary late November today. The bare branches of the trees clacked together while the wind howled through them, cold raindrops splashing in puddles that turned the walkways to mud. It made her wonder if the rain had kept up the whole time she'd been away.

Shivering, Maybelle heaved the front door closed again, picked up her bag, and started towards the stairs. “Agnes!” she called, her voice echoing around the huge entryway. “I'm home!”

She was halfway up the stairs, struggling with her free hand to unpin her hair and wring out some of the water, when she realized the lamps were dark. Her feet slowed to a stop in the lush carpeting, and she frowned up at the huge chandelier that hung over the open space. Every time she'd set foot in this hall—or anywhere else in the house, for that matter—candles lit themselves and lamps burst to life. At first, she'd found it frightening, especially when she would walk down a long, straight corridor with the candles flaring up in front of her and winking out behind her, leaving her in a bubble of illumination.

But after all these months, she'd grown used to such things. Doors opening at a touch, lamps lighting on their own, plates of food and cups of tea appearing on tables right when she wanted them, a bath drawn and waiting for her without even the hint of a servant in sight. It was all part of the magic of this place. Agnes' magic.

In the cold darkness and silence, Maybelle suddenly remembered what Agnes had said before her trip. If you don't come back in three days, I'll die.

A chill ran down her spine that had nothing to do with her soaked dress. Surely Agnes had just been exaggerating, the way she so often did. Like that time she'd said she felt like she'd been alone in this mansion for a hundred years. Or when she said she lived under a curse.

But still...where was she? After all the fuss she'd made when Maybelle had first asked to leave, why wasn't she waiting for her? Was she sulking in her room again?

“Agnes!” Maybelle called again, slowly climbing the rest of the stairs. “I'm back! Where are you?”

Nothing but silence to welcome her.

Her footsteps slowed as she reached the top of the stairs and turned to the right, heading for her room. The corridor was wide enough that there wasn't much danger of bumping into things, but it was all so eerie without candles lighting her way. She paused at the corner, where a tall window offered a bit of cold illumination.

Shivering, Maybelle looked out at the darkening grounds, still lashed by the driving rain. The rosebushes looked like they were taking a beating, magic or no magic. Even as she watched, the wind stripped leaves off the branches, and most of the brightly-colored petals were already gone. What on earth was Agnes thinking? Even in her most fickle moods, she would usually relent if she realized it would endanger her precious roses....

Maybelle frowned. What was that dark lump in the middle of the path? She hadn't noticed it as she rushed up the front drive, but from this higher vantage point, she could see it clearly. Was it a tarp caught under a wheelbarrow, knocked onto its side in all this wind?

No. Those weren't the handles of a wheelbarrow. They were horns. Two horns, curled like a goat's, rising from a big hairy head lying in the mud....

Dropping everything, Maybelle grabbed her dripping skirts and raced back down the corridor. She hopped up onto the banister as she'd done so many times before and slid expertly to the bottom. Laughing as Agnes tried to imitate her and toppled over the side in a heap.

She ran to the front door and heaved it open, letting go as the howling wind gusted in and slammed it back against the wall. “Last one inside's a rotten egg!”

The rain almost seemed to be falling horizontally, the wind was so strong. Holding up an arm to shield her face, Maybelle splashed along the muddy path as fast as she could. Walking along the path, crunching through the snow, leaving behind a neat row of shoe prints and paw prints side-by-side.

“Agnes!” Maybelle screamed, the wind stealing her voice, as she turned down an aisle between the rosebushes. “You were wrong when you said there was nothing beautiful about you, Agnes. Just look at your roses!”

There she lay, like a mound of dirt, one arm flung around a rosebush as if to protect it, the other curled tight against her chest. She wasn't moving.

“Agnes?” Maybelle dropped to her knees in a puddle by Agnes' side. Throwing her weight against Agnes' huge shoulder, she managed to roll her onto her back. But how would she ever drag her up into the house?

A weak groan escaped Agnes' lips, and her eyelids fluttered, then slid open. “May...belle?”

Hot tears stung Maybelle's eyes. “Thank goodness!” she cried, grasping Agnes' hand in both of hers. “I thought you were....”

Agnes slowly opened her hand, and Maybelle saw that it was cupped around a small, bedraggled red rose. Most of the petals were gone, and those that remained looked wilted.

“Last one,” Agnes grunted. “Not much...time now.”

“It's all right,” Maybelle said, trying to give her an encouraging smile. “We can replant. Once you're feeling a little stronger, maybe you can turn the weather back to spring and—“

“No.” A shudder ran through Agnes' whole body, and her face twisted in a horrible grimace of pain. “No starting over. No...No use.”

“What are you talking about?” Maybelle patted her friend's hand. “Of course we can start over. We can always start over.”

“But...we sh-shouldn't.” Agnes' voice grew fainter by the minute, and Maybelle had to lean closer to hear. “Just...go back home...Maybelle.”

Icy fingers of dread closed around Maybelle's heart. “What? No! I made a promise, remember? I'm to stay here in my father's place—“

“I release you.” Her big amber eyes rolled to meet Maybelle's, bloodshot and exhausted, but crystal clear. “It was...wrong. I...was wrong. To make you stay...against your will. So...I...re...lease...you....”

With that final whisper, her eyes slid closed, and her head lolled back onto the ground. A shiver, like a tiny electric pulse, ran through Maybelle's whole body, and she knew that some sort of spell had just ended.

“No, Agnes!” Frantically, Maybelle chafed Agnes' hands, patted her cheeks, loosened her collar. “Agnes, you don't understand! I'm not here against my will! We're friends, Agnes! I want to be here!”

The huge beast didn't move. This wasn't like the times Agnes sulked and refused to talk to Maybelle. She couldn't even tell if Agnes was breathing anymore.

Desperate to do something, Maybelle tried to heave Agnes into her arms, but the most she could manage was to cradle Agnes' head in her lap. Tears mingled with rainwater on her furry cheeks.

What if she were dead already? What would Maybelle do then? Go back to her family? But there would be no more strolling through the gardens in the evening, no more reading by firelight, no more long conversations or teaching each other games or trying to braid each other's hair or teaching Agnes how to dance or listening to her wonderful singing voice or laughing at each other's silly jokes or....

“Don't be stupid, Agnes!” Maybelle sobbed. “You're my best friend. The best friend I've ever had. No one knows me like you do. No one cares like you do. If I knew this would happen to you, I never would have gone away.”

Maybelle rested her cheek against Agnes' forehead, in between the horns, and rocked back and forth, holding her best friend close. “I'm sorry, Agnes...I'm sorry.... I never wanted to lose you. I just...I just wanted to keep being your friend. Always. Forever.” A painful sob ripped out of her chest as her best friend's body lay cold and still in her arms. “I love you, Agnes.”

Faintly, Maybelle was aware that the wind had died down, and raindrops no longer pounded down on her head and shoulders. The realization of what that meant only made her cry harder. Her fingers tangled in Agnes' mane of hair as she mumbled over and over again, “I love you, Agnes...I love you....”

“Love you too.”

Maybelle looked up at those gruff words, then gave a great start as she realized she held a complete stranger in her arms.

The woman she held was large, with broad shoulders and a squarish jaw. She was no great beauty, especially not with disheveled brown hair straggling all over the place or her body swimming in Agnes' oversized dress, but there was something comfortable and familiar about....

Wait. “Ag...nes?”

Moving stiffly, the woman held her own hands up in front of her face and turned them around, as if she'd never seen them before. Slowly, a wondering smile crossed her face, and Maybelle noticed this woman's front teeth protruded slightly.

Not too unlike the huge fangs that had curved from Agnes' lips.

Then she raised her eyes to meet Maybelle's, and there was no doubt. Those were the amber-brown eyes of her best friend.

“Agnes!”

They threw their arms around each other, and they were crying, but they were also laughing, and Agnes was trying to tell her something about a fairy and a flower and a curse, but Maybelle was too distracted by how small Agnes was in her arms. How high Agnes' voice was.

“How?” she gulped, pulling back and holding Agnes at arms' length. “How did this happen?”

“It's all you, silly!” Agnes laughed, swiping her sleeve over Maybelle's cheeks to dry her tears. She still moved carefully, as if afraid of accidentally swiping Maybelle with nonexistent claws. “True love breaks any curse, don't you know that?”

“True love?” Maybelle sniffled.

Tears spilled out of Agnes' beautiful amber eyes and rolled down her round, rosy cheeks. “What love could be truer than this?” she said with a shaky laugh. “That you'd still want to be friends with someone as beastly as me?”

“Oh, you're not as bad as all that.”

Agnes raised her eyebrows. “Really? Even after all those nasty things I said to scare you on your first night here? Or when I threw a chair at you and screamed when you went exploring in the west wing?”

“Well....” Maybelle didn't know how to deny it without completely lying, so she hastily changed the subject. “I don't regret anything, though. I don't regret coming here. I don't regret deciding to be your friend.”

With a watery chuckle, Agnes rested their foreheads together. “I don't regret it either.”

#inklingschallenge #four loves fairy tale challenge #theme: philia #story: complete #beauty and the beast #fairy tales #set in vaguely-victorian era #maybelle #agnes

[confetti-cat]

Twelve, Thirteen, and One

Words: 6k

Rating: G

Themes: Friendship, Self-Giving Love

(Written for the Four Loves Fairytale Retelling Challenge over at the @inklings-challenge! A Cinderella retelling feat. curious critters and a lot of friendship.)

When the clock chimes midnight on that third evening, thirteen creatures look to the girl who showed them all kindness.

—

It’s hours after dark, again, and the human girl still sleeps in the ashes.

The mice notice this—though it happens so often that they’ve ceased to pay attention to her. She smells like everything else in the hearth: ashy and overworked, tinged with the faint smell of herbs from the kitchen.

When she moves or shifts in her sleep (uncomfortable sleep—even they can sense the exhaustion in her posture as she sits slumped against the wall, more willing to seep up warmth from the stone than lie cold elsewhere this time of year), they simply scurry around her and continue combing for crumbs and seeds. They’d found a feast of lentils scattered about once, and many other times, the girl had beckoned them softly to her hand, where she’d held a little chunk of brown bread.

Tonight, she has nothing. They don’t mind—though three of them still come to sniff her limp hand where it lies drooped against the side of her tattered dress.

A fourth one places a little clawed hand on the side of her finger, leaning over it to investigate her palm for any sign of food.

When she stirs, it’s to the sensation of a furry brown mouse sitting in her palm.

It can feel the flickering of her muscles as she wakes—feeling slowly returning to her body. To her credit, she cracks her eyes open and merely observes it.

They’re all but tame by now. The Harsh-Mistress and the Shrieking-Girl and the Angry-Girl are to be avoided like the plague never was, but this girl—the Cinder-Girl, they think of her—is gentle and kind.

Even as she shifts a bit and they hear the dull crack of her joints, they’re too busy to mind. Some finding a few buried peas (there were always some peas or lentils still hidden here, if they looked carefully), some giving themselves an impromptu bath to wash off the dust. The one sitting on her hand is doing the latter, fur fluffed up as it scratches one ear and then scrubs tirelessly over its face with both paws.

One looks up from where it’s discovered a stray pea to check her expression.

A warm little smile has crept up her face, weary and dirty and sore as she seems to be. She stays very still in her awkward half-curl against stone, watching the mouse in her hand groom itself. The tender look about her far overwhelms—melts, even—the traces of tension in her tired limbs.

Very slowly, so much so that they really aren’t bothered by it, she raises her spare hand and begins lightly smearing the soot away from her eyes with the back of her wrist.

The mouse in her palm gives her an odd look for the movement, but has discovered her skin is warmer than the cold stone floor or the ash around the dying fire. It pads around in a circle once, then nudges its nose against her calloused skin, settling down for a moment.

The Cinder-Girl has closed her eyes again, and drops her other hand into her lap, slumping further against the wall. Her smile has grown even warmer, if sadder.

They decide she’s quite safe. Very friendly.

—

The old rat makes his rounds at the usual times of night, shuffling through a passage that leads from the ground all the way up to the attic.

When both gold sticks on the clocks’ moonlike faces point upward, there’s a faint chime from the tower-clock downstairs. He used to worry that the sound would rouse the humans. Now, he ignores it and goes about his business.

There’s a great treasury of old straw in the attic. It’s inside a large sack—and while this one doesn’t have corn or wheat like the ones near the kitchen sometimes do, he knows how to chew it open all the same.

The girl sleeps on this sack of straw, though she doesn’t seem to mind what he takes from it. There’s enough more of it to fill a hundred rat’s nests, so he supposes she doesn’t feel the difference.

Tonight, though—perhaps he’s a bit too loud in his chewing and tearing. The girl sits up slowly in bed, and he stiffens, teeth still sunk into a bit of the fabric.

“Oh.” says the girl. She smiles—and though the expression should seem threatening, all pulled mouth-corners and teeth, he feels the gentleness in her posture and wonders at novel thoughts of differing body languages. “Hello again. Do you need more straw?”

He isn’t sure what the sounds mean, but they remind him of the soft whuffles and squeaks of his siblings when they were small. Inquisitive, unafraid. Not direct or confrontational.

She’s seemed safe enough so far—almost like the woman in white and silver-gold he’s seen here sometimes, marveling at his own confidence in her safeness—so he does what signals not-afraid the best to his kind. He glances her over, twitches his whiskers briefly, and goes back to what he was doing.

Some of the straw is too big and rough, some too small and fine. He scratches a bundle out into a pile so he can shuffle through it. It’s true he doesn’t need much, but the chill of winter hasn’t left the world yet.

The girl laughs. The sound is soft and small. It reminds him again of young, friendly, peaceable.

“Take as much as you need,” she whispers. Her movements are unassuming when she reaches for something on the old wooden crate she uses as a bedside table. With something in hand, she leans against the wall her bed is a tunnel’s-width from, and offers him what she holds. “Would you like this?”

He peers at it in the dark, whiskers twitching. His eyesight isn’t the best, so he finds himself drawing closer to sniff at what she has.

It’s a feather. White and curled a bit, like the goose-down he’d once pulled out the corner of a spare pillow long ago. Soft and long, fluffy and warm.

He touches his nose to it—then, with a glance upward at her softly-smiling face, takes it in his teeth.

It makes him look like he has a mustache, and is a bit too big to fit through his hole easily. The girl giggles behind him as he leaves.

—

There’s a human out in the gardens again. Which is strange—this is a place for lizards, maybe birds and certainly bugs. Not for people, in his opinion. She’s not dressed in venomous bright colors like the other humans often are, but neither does she stay to the manicured garden path the way they do.

She doesn’t smell like unnatural rotten roses, either. A welcome change from having to dart for cover at not just the motions, but the stenches that accompany the others that appear from time to time.

This human is behind the border-shubs, beating an ornate rug that hangs over the fence with a home-tied broom. Huge clouds of dust shake from it with each hit, settling in a thin film on the leaves and grass around her.

She stops for a moment to press her palm to her forehead, then turns over her shoulder and coughs into her arm.

When she begins again, it’s with a sharp WHOP.

He jumps a bit, but only on instinct. However—

A few feet from where he settles back atop the sunning-rock, there’s a scuffle and a sharp splash. Then thrashing—waster swashing about with little churns and splishes.

It’s not the way of lizards to think of doing anything when one falls into the water. There were several basins for fish and to catch water off the roof for the garden—they simply had to not fall into them, not drown. There was little recourse for if they did. What could another lizard do, really? Fall in after them? Best to let them try to climb out if they could.

The girl hears the splashing. She stares at the water pot for a moment.

Then, she places her broom carefully on the ground and comes closer.

Closer. His heart speeds up. He skitters to the safety of a plant with low-hanging leaves—

—and then watches as she walks past his hiding place, peers into the basin, and reaches in.

Her hand comes up dripping wet, a very startled lizard still as a statue clinging to her fingers.

“Are you the same one I always find here?” she asks with a chiding little smile. “Or do all of you enjoy swimming?”

When she places her hand on the soft spring grass, the lizard darts off of it and into the underbrush. It doesn’t go as far as it could, though—something about this girl makes both of them want to stand still and wait for what she’ll do next.

The girl just watches it go. She lets out a strange sound—a weary laugh, perhaps—and turns back to her peculiar chore.

—

A song trails through the old house—under the floorboards—through the walls—into the garden, beneath the undergrowth—and lures them out of hiding.

It isn’t an audible song, not like that of the birds in the summer trees or the ashen-girl murmuring beautiful sounds to herself in the lonely hours. This one was silent. Yet, it reached deep down into their souls and said come out, please—the one who helped you needs your help.

It didn’t require any thought, no more than eat or sleep or run did.

In chains of silver and grey, all the mice who hear it converge, twenty-four tiny feet pattering along the wood in the walls. The rat joins them, but they are not afraid.

When they emerge from a hole out into the open air, the soft slip-slap of more feet surround them. Six lizards scurry from the bushes, some gleaming wet as if they’d just escaped the water trough or run through the birdbath themselves.

As a strange little hoard, they approach the kind girl. Beside her is a tall woman wearing white and silver and gold.

The girl—holding a large, round pumpkin—looks surprised to see them here. The woman is smiling.

“Set the pumpkin on the drive,” the woman says, a soft gleam in her eye. “The rest of you, line up, please.”

Bemused, but with a heartbeat fast enough for them to notice, the girl gingerly places the pumpkin on the stone of the drive. It’s natural for them, somehow, to follow—the mice line in pairs in front of it, the rat hops on top of it, and the lizards all stand beside.

“What are they doing?” asks the girl—and there’s curiosity and gingerness in her tone, like she doesn’t believe such a sight is wrong, but is worried it might be.

The older woman laughs kindly, and a feeling like blinking hard comes over the world.

It’s then—then, in that flash of darkness that turns to dazzling light, that something about them changes.

“Oh!” exclaims the girl, and they open their eyes. “Oh! They’re—“

They’re different.

The mice aren’t mice at all—and suddenly they wonder if they ever were, or if it was an odd dream.

They’re horses, steel grey and sleek-haired with with silky brown manes and tails. Their harnesses are ornate and stylish, their hooves polished and dark.

Instead of a rat, there’s a stout man in fine livery, with whiskers dark and smart as ever. He wears a fine cap with a familiar white feather, and the gleam in his eye is surprised.

“Well,” he says, examining his hands and the cuffs of his sleeves, “I suppose I won’t be wanting for adventure now.”

Instead of six lizards, six footmen stand at attention, their ivory jackets shining in the late afternoon sun.

The girl herself is different, though she’s still human—her hair is done up beautifully in the latest fashion, and instead of tattered grey she wears a shimmering dress of lovely pale green, inlaid with a design that only on close inspection is flowers.

“They are under your charge, now,” says the woman in white, stepping back and folding her hands together. “It is your responsibility to return before the clock strikes midnight—when that happens, the magic will be undone. Understood?”

“Yes,” says the girl breathlessly. She stares at them as if she’s been given the most priceless gift in all the world. “Oh, thank you.”

—

The castle is decorated brilliantly. Flowery garlands hang from every parapet, beautiful vines sprawling against walls and over archways as they climb. Dozens of picturesque lanterns hang from the walls, ready to be lit once the sky grows dark.

“It’s been so long since I’ve seen the castle,” the girl says, standing one step out of the carriage and looking so awed she seems happy not to go any further. “Father and I used to drive by it sometimes. But it never looked so lovely as this.”

“Shall we accompany you in, milady?” asks one of the footmen. They’re all nearly identical, though this one has freckles where he once had dark flecks in his scales.

She hesitates for only a moment, looking up at the pinnacles of the castle towers. Then, she shakes her head, and turns to look at them all with a smile like the sun.

“I think I’ll go in myself,” she says. “I’m not sure what is custom. But thank you—thank you so very much.”

And so they watch her go—stepping carefully in her radiant dress that looked lovelier than any queen’s.

Though she was not royal, it seemed there was no doubt in anyone’s minds that she was. The guards posted at the door opened it for her without question.

With a last smile over her shoulder, she stepped inside.

—

He's straightening the horses' trappings for the fifth time when the doors to the castle open, and out hurries a figure. It takes him a moment to recognize her, garbed in rich fabrics and cloaked in shadows, but it's the girl, rushing out to the gilded carriage. A footman steps forward and offers her a hand, which she accepts gratefully as she steps up into the seat.

“Enjoyable evening, milady?” asks the coachman. His whiskers are raised above the corners of his mouth, and his twinkling eyes crinkle at the edges.

“Yes, quite, thank you!” she breathes in a single huff. She smooths her dress the best she can before looking at him with some urgency. “The clock just struck quarter till—will you be able to get us home?”

The gentle woman in white had said they only would remain in such states until midnight. How long was it until the middle of night? What was a quarter? Surely darkness would last for far more hours than it had already—it couldn’t be close. Yet it seemed as though it must be; the princesslike girl in the carriage sounded worried it would catch them at any moment.

“I will do all I can,” he promises, and with a sharp rap of the reins, they’re off at a swift pace.

They arrive with minutes to spare. He knows this because after she helps him down from the carriage (...wait. That should have been the other way around! He makes mental note for next time: it should be him helping her down. If he can manage it. She’s fast), she takes one of those minutes to show him how his new pocketwatch works.

He’s fascinated already. There’s a part of him that wonders if he’ll remember how to tell time when he’s a rat again—or will this, all of this, be forgotten?

The woman in white is there beside the drive, and she’s already smiling. A knowing gleam lights her eye.

“Well, how was the ball?” she asks, as Cinder-Girl turns to face her with the most elated expression. “I hear the prince is looking for fair maidens. Did he speak with you?”

The girl rushes to grasp the woman’s hands in hers, clasping them gratefully and beaming up at her.

“It was lovely! I’ve never seen anything so lovely,” she all but gushes, her smile brighter and broader than they’d ever seen it. “The castle is beautiful; it feels so alive and warm. And yes, I met the Prince—although hush, he certainly isn’t looking for me—he’s so kind. I very much enjoyed speaking with him. He asked me to dance, too; I had as wonderful a time as he seemed to. Thank you! Thank you dearly.”

The woman laughs gently. It isn’t a laugh one would describe as warm, but neither is it cold in the sense some laughs can be—it's soft and beautiful, almost crystalline.

“That’s wonderful. Now, up to bed! You’ve made it before midnight, but your sisters will be returning soon.”

“Yes! Of course,” she replies eagerly—turning to smile gratefully at coachman and stroke the nearest horses on their noses and shoulders, then curtsy to the footmen. “Thank you all, very much. I could not ask for a more lovely company.”

It’s a strange moment when all of their new hearts swell with warmth and affection for this girl—and then the world darkens and lightens so quickly they feel as though they’ve fallen asleep and woken up.

They’re them again—six mice, six lizards, a rat, and a pumpkin. And a tattered gray dress.

“Please, would you let me go again tomorrow? The ball will last three days. I had such a wonderful time.”

“Come,” the woman said simply, “and place the pumpkin beneath the bushes.”

The woman in white led the way back to the house, followed by an air-footed girl and a train of tiny critters. There was another silent song in the air, and they thought perhaps the girl could hear it too: one that said yes—but get to bed!

—

The second evening, when the door of the house thuds shut and the hoofsteps of the family’s carriage fade out of hearing, the rat peeks out of a hole in the kitchen corner to see the Cinder-Girl leap to her feet.

She leans close to the window and watched for more minutes than he quite understands—or maybe he does; it was good to be sure all cats had left before coming out into the open—and then runs with a spring in her step to the back door near the kitchen.

Ever so faintly, like music, the woman’s laughter echoes faintly from outside. Drawn to it like he had been drawn to the silent song, the rat scurries back through the labyrinth of the walls.

When he hurries out onto the lawn, the mice and lizards are already there, looking up at the two humans expectantly. This time, the Cinder-Girl looks at them and smiles broadly.

“Hello, all. So—how do you do it?” she asks the woman. Her eyes shine with eager curiosity. “I had no idea you could do such a thing. How does it work?”

The woman fixes her with a look of fond mock-sternness. “If I were to explain to you the details of how, I’d have to tell you why and whom, and you’d be here long enough to miss the royal ball.” She waves her hands she speaks. “And then you’d be very much in trouble for knowing far more than you ought.”

The rat misses the girl’s response, because the world blinks again—and now all of them once again are different. Limbs are long and slender, paws are hooves with silver shoes or feet in polished boots.

The mouse-horses mouth at their bits as they glance back at the carriage and the assortment of humans now standing by it. The footmen are dressed in deep navy this time, and the girl wears a dress as blue as the summer sky, adorned with brilliant silver stars.

“Remember—“ says the woman, watching fondly as the Cinder-Girl steps into the carriage in a whorl of beautiful silk. “Return before midnight, before the magic disappears.”

“Yes, Godmother,” she calls, voice even more joyful than the previous night. “Thank you!”

—

The castle is just as glorious as before—and the crowd within it has grown. Noblemen and women, royals and servants, and the prince himself all mill about in the grand ballroom.

He’s unsure of the etiquette, but it seems best for her not to enter alone. Once he escorts her in, the coachman bows and watches for a moment—the crowd is hushed again, taken by her beauty and how important they think her to be—and then returns to the carriage outside.

He isn’t required in the ballroom for much of the night—but he tends to the horses and checks his pocketwatch studiously, everything in him wishing to be the best coachman that ever once was a rat.

Perhaps that wouldn’t be hard. He’d raise the bar, then. The best coachman that ever drove for a princess.

Because that was what she was—or, that was what he heard dozens of hushed whispers about once she’d entered the ball. Every noble and royal and servant saw her and deemed her a grand princess nobody knew from a land far away. The prince himself stared at her in a marveling way that indicated he thought no differently.

It was a thing more wondrous than he had practice thinking. If a mouse could become a horse or a rat could become a coachman, couldn’t a kitchen-girl become a princess?

The answer was yes, it seemed—perhaps in more ways than one.

She had rushed out with surprising grace just before midnight. They took off quickly, and she kept looking back toward the castle door, as if worried—but she was smiling.

“Did you know the Prince is very nice?” she asks once they’re safely home, and she’s stepped down (drat) without help again. The woman in white stands on her same place beside the drive, and when Cinder-Girl sees her, she waves with dainty grace that clearly holds a vibrant energy and sheer thankfulness behind it. “I’ve never known what it felt like to be understood. He thinks like I do.”

“How is that?” asks the woman, quirking an amused brow. “And if I might ask, how do you know?”

“Because he mentions things first.” The girl tries to smother some of the wideness of her smile, but can’t quite do so. “And I've shared his thoughts for a long time. That he loves his father, and thinks oranges and citrons are nice for festivities especially, and that he’s always wanted to go out someday and do something new.”

—

The third evening, the clouds were dense and a few droplets of rain splattered the carriage as they arrived.

“Looks like rain, milady,” said the coachman as she disembarked to stand on water-spotted stone. “If it doesn’t blow by, we’ll come for ye at the steps, if it pleases you.”

“Certainly—thank you,” she replies, all gleaming eyes and barely-smothered smiles. How her excitement to come can increase is beyond them—but she seems more so with each night that passes.

She has hardly turned to head for the door when a smattering of rain drizzles heavily on them all. She flinches slightly, already running her palms over the skirt of her dress to rub out the spots of water.

Her golden dress glisters even in the cloudy light, and doesn’t seem to show the spots much. Still, it’s hardy an ideal thing.

“One of you hold the parasol—quick about it, now—and escort her inside,” the coachman says quickly. The nearest footman jumps into action, hop-reaching into the carriage and falling back down with the umbrella in hand, unfolding it as he lands. “Wait about in case she needs anything.”

The parasol is small and not meant for this sort of weather, but it's enough for the moment. The pair of them dash for the door, the horses chomping and stamping behind them until they’re driven beneath the bows of a huge tree.

The footman knows his duty the way a lizard knows to run from danger. He achieves it the same way—by slipping off to become invisible, melting into the many people who stood against the golden walls.

From there, he watches.

It’s so strange to see the way the prince and their princess gravitate to each other. The prince’s attention seems impossible to drag away from her, though not for many’s lack of trying.

Likewise—more so than he would have thought, though perhaps he’s a bit slow in noticing—her focus is wholly on the prince for long minutes at a time.

Her attention is always divided a bit whenever she admires the interior of the castle, the many people and glamorous dresses in the crowd, the vibrant tables of food. It’s all very new to her, and he’s not certain it doesn’t show. But the Prince seems enamored by her delight in everything—if he thinks it odd, he certainly doesn’t let on.

They talk and laugh and sample fine foods and talk to other guests together, then they turn their heads toward where the musicians are starting up and smile softly when they meet each other’s eyes. The Prince offers a hand, which is accepted and clasped gleefully.

Then, they dance.

Their motions are so smooth and light-footed that many of the crowd forgo dancing, because admiring them is more enjoyable. They’re in-sync, back and forth like slow ripples on a pond. They sometimes look around them—but not often, especially compared to how long they gaze at each other with poorly-veiled, elated smiles.

The night whirls on in flares of gold tulle and maroon velvet, ivory, carnelian, and emerald silks, the crowd a nonstop blur of color.

(Color. New to him, that. Improved vision was wonderful.)

The clock strikes eleven, but there’s still time, and he’s fairly certain he won’t be able to convince the girl to leave anytime before midnight draws near.

He was a lizard until very recently. He’s not the best at judging time, yet. Midnight does draw near, but he’s not sure he understands how near.

The clock doesn’t quite say up-up. So he still has time. When the rain drums ceaselessly outside, he darts out and runs in a well-practiced way to find their carriage.

—

Another of the footmen comes in quickly, having been sent in a rush by the coachman, who had tried to keep his pocketwatch dry just a bit too long. He’s soaking wet from the downpour when he steps close enough to get her attention.

She sees him, notices this, and—with a glimmer of recognition and amusement in her eyes—laughs softly into her hand.

ONE—TWO— the clock starts. His heart speeds up terribly, and his skin feels cold. He suddenly craves a sunny rock.

“Um,” he begins awkwardly. Lizards didn’t have much in the way of a vocal language. He bows quickly, and water drips off his face and hat and onto the floor. “The chimes, milady.”

THREE—FOUR—

Perhaps she thought it was only eleven. Her face pales. “Oh.”

FIVE—SIX—

Like a deer, she leaps from the prince���s side and only manages a stumbling, backward stride as she curtsies in an attempt at a polite goodbye.

“Thank you, I must go—“ she says, and then she’s racing alongside the footman as fast as they both can go. The crowd parts for them just enough, amidst loud murmurs of surprise.

SEVEN—EIGHT—

“Wait!” calls the prince, but they don’t. Which hopefully isn’t grounds for arrest, the footman idly thinks.

They burst through the door and out into the open air.

NINE—TEN—

It has been storming. The rain is crashing down in torrents—the walkways and steps are flooded with a firm rush of water.

She steps in a crevice she couldn’t see, the water washes over her feet, and she stumbles, slipping right out of one shoe. There’s noise at the door behind them, so she doesn’t stop or even hesitate. She runs at a hobble and all but dives through the open carriage door. The awaiting footman quickly closes it, and they’re all grasping quickly to their riding-places at the corners of the vehicle.

ELEVEN—

A flash of lightning coats the horses in white, despite the dark water that’s soaked into their coats, and with a crack of the rains and thunder they take off at a swift run.

There’s shouting behind them—the prince—as people run out and call to the departing princess.

TWELVE.

Mist swallows them up, so thick they can’t hear or see the castle, but the horses know the way.

The castle’s clock tower must have been ever-so-slightly fast. (Does magic tell truer time?) Their escape works for a few thundering strides down the invisible, cloud-drenched road—until true midnight strikes a few moments later.

—

She walks home in the rain and fog, following a white pinprick of light she can guess the source of—all the while carrying a hollow pumpkin full of lizards, with an apron pocket full of mice and a rat perched on her shoulder.

It’s quite the walk.

—

The prince makes a declaration so grand that the mice do not understand it. The rat—a bit different now—tells them most things are that way to mice, but he’s glad to explain.

The prince wants to find the girl who wore the golden slipper left on the steps, he relates. He doesn’t want to ask any other to marry him, he loved her company so.

The mice think that’s a bit silly. Concerning, even. What if he does find her? There won’t be anyone to secretly leave seeds in the ashes or sneak them bread crusts when no humans are looking.

The rat thinks they’re being silly and that they’ve become too dependent on handouts. Back in his day, rodents worked for their food. Chewing open a bag of seed was an honest day’s work for its wages.

Besides, he confides, as he looks again out the peep-hole they’ve discovered in the floor trim of the parlor. You’re being self-interested, if you ask me. Don’t you want our princess to find a good mate, and live somewhere spacious and comfortable, free of human-cats, where she’d finally have plenty to eat?

It’s hard to make a mouse look appropriately chastised, but that question comes close. They shuffle back a bit to let him look out at the strange proceedings in the parlor again.

There are many humans there. The Harsh-Mistress stands tall and rigid at the back of one of the parlor chairs, exchanging curt words with a strange man in fine clothes with a funny hat. Shrieking-Girl and Angry-Girl stand close, scoffing and laughing, looking appalled.

Cinder-Girl sits on the chair that’s been pulled to the middle of the room. She extends her foot toward a strange golden object on a large cushion.

The shoe, the rat notes so the mice can follow. They can’t quite see it from here—poor eyesight and all.

Of course, the girl’s foot fits perfectly well into her own shoe. They all saw that coming.

Evidently, the humans did not. There’s absolute uproar.

“There is no possible way she’s the princess you’re looking for!” declares Harsh-Mistress, her voice full of rage. “She’s a kitchen maid. Nothing royal about her.”

“How dare you!” Angry-Girl rages. “Why does it fit you? Why not us?”

“You sneak!” shrieks none other than Shrieking-Girl. “Mother, she snuck to the ball! She must have used magic, somehow! Princes won’t marry sneaks, will they?”

“I think they might,” says a calm voice from the doorway, and the uproar stops immediately.

The Prince steps in. He stares at Cinder-Girl.

She stares back. Her face is still smudged with soot, and her dress is her old one, gray and tattered. The golden slipper gleams on her foot, having fit as only something molded or magic could.

A blush colors her face beneath the ash and she leaps up to do courtesy. “Your Highness.”

The Prince glances at the messenger-man with the slipper-pillow and the funny hat. The man nods seriously.

The Prince blinks at this, as if he wasn’t really asking anything with his look—it’s already clear he recognizes her—and meets Cinder-Girl’s gaze with a smile. It’s the same half-nervous, half-attemptingly-charming smile as he kept giving her at the ball.

He bows to her and offers a hand. (The rat has to push three mice out of the way to maintain his view.)

“It’s my honor,” he assures her. “Would you do me the great honor of accompanying me to the castle? I’d had a question in mind, but it seems there are—“ he glances at Harsh-Mistress, who looks like a very upset rat in a mousetrap. “—situations we might discuss remedying. You’d be a most welcome guest in my father’s house, if you’d be amenable to it?”

It’s all so much more strange and unusual than anything the creatures of the house are used to seeing. They almost don’t hear it, at first—that silent song.

It grows stronger, though, and they turn their heads toward it with an odd hope in their hearts.

—

The ride to the castle is almost as strange as that prior walk back. The reasons for this are such:

One—their princess is riding in their golden carriage alongside the prince, and their chatter and awkward laughter fills the surrounding spring air. They have a good feeling about the prince, now, if they didn’t already. He can certainly take things in stride, and he is no respecter of persons. He seems just as elated to be by her side as he was at the ball, even with the added surprise of where she'd come from.

Two—they have been transformed again, and the woman in white has asked them a single question: Would you choose to stay this way?

The coachman said yes without a second thought. He’d always wanted life to be more fulfilling, he confided—and this seemed a certain path to achieving that.

The footmen might not have said yes, but there was something to be said for recently-acquired cognition. It seemed—strange, to be human, but the thought of turning back into lizards had the odd feeling of being a poor choice. Baffled by this new instinct, they said yes.

The horses, of course, said things like whuff and nyiiiehuhum, grumph. The woman seemed to understand, though. She touched one horse on the nose and told it it would be the castle’s happiest mouse once the carriage reached its destination. The others, it seemed, enjoyed their new stature.

And three—they are heading toward a castle, where they have all been offered a fine place to live. The Prince explains that he doesn’t wish for such a kind girl to live in such conditions anymore. There’s no talk of anyone marrying—just discussions of rooms and favorite foods and of course, you’ll have the finest chicken pie anytime you’d like and I can’t have others make it for me! Lend me the kitchens and I’ll make some for you; I have a very dear recipe. Perhaps you can help. (Followed in short order by a ...Certainly, but I’d—um, I’d embarrass myself trying to cook. You would teach me? and a gentle laugh that brightened the souls of all who could hear it.)

“If you’d be amenable to it,” she replies—and in clear, if surprised, agreement, the Prince truly, warmly laughs.

“Milady,” the coachman calls down to them. “Your Highness. We’re here.”

The castle stands shining amber-gold in the light of the setting sun. It will be the fourth night they’ve come here—the thirteen of them and the one of her—but midnight, they realize, will not break the spell ever again.

One by one, they disembark from the carriage. If it will stay as it is or turn back into a pumpkin, they hadn't thought to ask. There’s so much warmth swelling in their hearts that they don’t think it matters.

The girl, their princess, smiles—a dear, true smile, tentative in the face of a brand new world, but bright with hope—and suddenly, they’re all smiling too.

She steps forward, and they follow. The prince falls into step with her and offers an arm, and their glances at each other are brimming with light as she accepts.

With her arm in the arm of the prince, a small crowd of footmen and the coachman trailing behind, and a single grey mouse on her shoulder, the once-Cinder-Girl walks once again toward the palace door.

#Well this wasn't my first Cinderella retelling idea that I was excited about BUT - #since that one was turning into a tangle of Too Much Going On (though it's currently at 5k and maybe 70% done; I still plan to finish it) #I tried this one instead! #pros: I think I actually wrote myself out of writer's block? Which is AWESOME #And I feel like I'm starting to notice what needs fixed and mended about my writing; which is very helpful! #cons: due to having the additional pro of a very socially growth-filled few weeks IRL; I did not do much about that fact #please excuse the general lack of editing thus far #I have also learned that I may want to be at least a Level 5 Fairy Tale Reteller #before I tackle stories with hundreds of years of popular retellings and versions? #Although this one came much more easily than my first idea; it still felt more difficult to write than my Nix Nought Nothing story. #So another pro - I learned that I enjoy writing about lesser-known tales the most! Next time I might try a fun obscure one. #All in all this was a ton of fun!! Thanks for running the challenge! Apologies for being nearly late - I had a wonderful time! #I hope you all enjoy! <3 #inklingschallenge #four loves fairy tale retelling challenge #love: philia #love: agape #Cinderella #story: complete #basil writes #salt and light

[leng-m]

Let the Sun Set, Let the Day End

Paolo's parents rarely ever talked about the Catindig family, but when they did, it was always with a touch of soft pity. He could detect it in the, "Of course we must be kind to them," and the "Your grandfather never forgave himself for what happened to Edgar Catindig."

There was also an undercurrent of wry humour in the ways Paolo's parents whispered of sumpa. It meant curse or oath, if one used the ratty old Tagalog-English dictionary they brought along from Caloocan five years ago, but from his parents' tone he was sure it wasn't the latter. And while it was a word one could freely ponder in the streets of the Philippines, even among crowds in front of San Roque Cathedral, it wasn't a concept that sat comfortably in his mind as his family rode down the neat, disciplined streets of North York, Ontario.

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#inklingschallenge #team chesterton #genre: intrusive fantasy #theme: bury the dead #story: complete

[clari-writes]

The Prince

[ A Cinderella Retelling | Wordcount: 4006 Words | Estimated Reading Time: 20 minutes ]

A sovereign ruler must be, above all, a man of duty and reason. Prince Dominic knows this, and lives heart and soul by the edict. Grasps full well the consequences of what could happen if he didn’t.

So why is it that when he asks the Captain of the Guard if they found her, his voice catches with hope?

“No, Your Majesty,” Captain Bernard says. “We managed to track her as far as the Bridge of the Diwata, but after that, it was as if her carriage turned into thin air. We can only suspect it was magic.”

There is a warning laced into the word magic, both in the captain’s tone and Dominic’s own instinctive understanding. The fae folk were unruly; unpredictable; dangerous. While they had marked themselves as enemies only to nation’s former colonizers, the Spanish, Dominic knew better, as the heir to the Islands’ third-generation monarchy, to count on them as friends. He should feel relieved that the lady cloaked in their torrid enchantments vanished without a trace.

Better, he tells himself and his sinking heart, in the long run.

He clears his throat. “Thank you, Captain. Is that all?”

“Well,” Captain Bernard says, and then hesitates.

Prince Dominic barely restrains himself from pouncing on the man. “What is it?” he asks with deep patience.

“We found what we believe is something of hers, Your Majesty. A slipper.”

“A slipper?”

“Made of glass.” The captain nods at one of his men, and a guard liveried in green and gold moves forward to place a glimmering object in front of the prince. “It was at the base of the bridge. We cannot know for sure it was hers, but-“

“It’s hers,” says Prince Dominic hollowly. He remembers now, in one of the more lively dances of the ball, when the lady kicked her feet in the air he’d noticed in an instant how they sparkled.

Do you have jewels encrusted on your toes? he’d teased.

She’d replied with a dazzling smile. Something like that.

 “If you forgive me, Your Majesty,” Captain Bernard says. “May I inquire as to the urgency of finding this girl?”

“Pardon?”

“If she’d stolen something significant, perhaps, during the hours you were alone,” the captain prompts. Dominic flushes, even though there is no rebuke in the captain’s words. “If so, I’ll organize a search party straight away.”

Do it, Dominic’s heart sings. The prince bites his tongue. Takes another deep breath.

“That won’t be necessary,” he says. “She isn’t important.”

_ _ _

So why is he paying a visit to the royal glassmaker, shoe in hand?

“No doubt about it, Your Majesty,” Doña Rosaline says, after taking a close look at the slipper through her famed magnificent magnifying glass. She places the pristine object in front of him with a mixture of awe and fear. “That’s the fae’s work. No human hands could have produced something as fine as this.”

“Is it cursed?” he asks. He’s half convinced himself it’s so.

“Gifted, more like,” she replies, stopping his errant wonderings in their tracks.

“What do you mean?”

“Your lady seems to have won the favor of a fairy,” the artisan replies.

“I’ve never heard of-“

“Neither have I, Your Grace, but the proof is right here in front of us.” She gestures to the slipper. “You cannot force the fae to create. You have heard of the case of Count Floribel-“

“I have,” Dominic says with the wince. It was years ago, back when the Islands’ revolution still consisted of whispers in the dark. Count Floribel, their appointed ruler, had actually managed to capture a fairy – rumor has it, with a desperate native’s help, after the noble promised to curb his family’s debt – and he had demanded of the creature to provide the secrets of the yet-unconquered mountainfolk’s intricately woven designs.

In response, the fairy blew themself up. There is still a crater where the count’s mansion had been.

“Well, there you go. We’d have to rule that out. The other option, then, is to strike a deal with the fae, and of course there are records of that, such as the royal crown. But, Your Majesty,” Doña Rosaline says with the shake of her head, “I cannot imagine what your lady could have traded for a fairy to craft something so unique, it would only find its fit and perfection in her wearing it.”

“How could that be so?”

“The glass,” Doña Rosaline says, “Is not still. Not when you look at it closely enough. It ripples and bends at one’s touch—it is truly quite remarkable. I can only imagine what it would look like on the feet of the one it was meant for. And if rumors are to believed,” she continues, “the shoes’ beauty weren’t even the most marvelous aspect of the lady herself.”

Dominic can’t help himself. He smiles. “I can confirm that.”

“Oh?” Doña Rosaline voice takes on a teasing lilt. “And how would you describe the young lady, dear prince?”

“She was kind,” he says, almost unthinkingly. There are many things he could have said of her, but her kindness is what lingers in his mind the most, is what made her beauty more revelation than ornamentation. His first breathtaking sight of the lady was her descent down the staircase in all her gorgeous glory. His second was her approaching him with a platter of food and not a whit of guile in her eyes, saying shyly that he looked like he was hungry. She’d been right; he hadn’t had a bite to eat all day out of nervousness.

“Will you look for her?”

“What?” he says, snapping out of his reverie.

“I assumed that was why you were asking,” Doña Rosaline says. She is grinning. “I wasn’t at the ball myself, Your Grace, but I’ve heard what others are saying of you, and I’m glad, if you forgive the presumption. After everything that happened with your sister, I am truly happy that you’ve found-“

“I think you misunderstand, Doña,” he says, holding up his hand. “I was concerned about her, is all.”

“Concerned?”

“When it occurred to me that the fae might have had her in their thrall,” he says. 

There were other things, as well. Little things, like how she flinched at the chamberlain’s loud voice, how she startled when he first raised his hand to lead her through a dance, as if she expected to be struck instead. Like how she recognized his hunger because she was clearly starving just the same.

“But that’s no matter,” he says. “The lady must be fine, if she has a fairy looking after her.” That ought to quell his persistent little anxieties over whether she is eating enough.

“Perhaps,” Doña Rosaline says, but she looks doubtful.

“You disagree?”

“If the fairy isn’t tricking her,” Doña Rosaline says, “then they are gifting her something that she needs.”

“She needs little, then, if all that they gave her was access to a party all noble families are invited to,” he points out.

“Perhaps,” she says again.

“She did not ask for help,” Prince Dominic says.

“Did you offer?” she asks pointedly.

“Of course.”

The old artisan raises her eyebrows. “And she refused?”

“In a manner of speaking,” he says. He is fairly certain that running away counted as refusal. “Aside from that, she had every opportunity to ask for assistance and she did not. Coupled with what you’ve told me, I can only conclude that there is no imminent threat that looms over her.”

“Danger can take many forms, Your Grace.”

“I know.” Oh, how he knew. He can feel the judging eyes of the Spanish from beyond the seas, staring greedily at him and his kingdom. “Yet I cannot drop everything to save one damsel, Doña. Not if she didn’t ask for it.”

“True enough, young prince,” Doña Rosaline allows. “But aren’t there other reasons why you would wish to look for her?”

The way she made him laugh uproariously, while remaining utterly unmoved by his puns. The warmth her presence and conversation brought him. The hours they spent, the first time he could remember he felt truly carefree since his parents died and his relationship with his sister turned sour.

“None that matter, Doña,” he says finally.

_ _ _

So why is it that, three weeks after the ball, she is all that he can think about?

He refused to let it show, of course. He had councils to attend—ambassadors to welcome—marriage contracts to assess. He needed an alliance with a country large enough to keep Spain at bay – a grand task, considering the few countries who were willing to even recognize the Islands as a nation, rather than a land full of savagery and witchcraft – and his hand in marriage is the simplest way to ensure the fidelity of that alliance without putting his kingdom in danger of another invasion.

Though who is he fooling—they are always in danger of another invasion. Which is why you must redouble your efforts in finding allies, he tells himself.

Which is why he cannot shirk his responsibilities, cannot lose one of the most precious cards he has to play in the game of politics, even for the beautiful, kind, fae-favored girl.

He is trapped.

“Brother?”

He starts, sending the papers he’d been staring at scattering across the floor. If he was not Crown Prince, he thinks he would have liked to swear like a sailor.

Instead, he inhales deep through his nose and stands up, all decorum. “Sister Regine,” he says. He makes sure his tone is firmly under control. “Why were you not announced by my chamberlain?”

“I was. You were the one still gaping at your papers like an idiot,” she replies bluntly.

Not for the first time, Prince Dominic wonders how the sisters of Saint Sofia – an order that was known to prioritize gentleness, peace, and humility – deal with his sharp-tongued older sibling. He supposes there are a lot of prayers for patience involved. He sighs, rifling a hand through his long hair. “The papers…”

“I’ll help you organize them,” she says, already stooping to the ground.

“You’re not supposed to be able to read them anymore,” he says tiredly.

“Or what? You’ll clap me in a tower again?” She smirks. “I guarantee that would be more comfortable than my room at the priory.”

“Only because you could convince Captain Bernard to bring you anything you wanted.”

“He always had a sweet spot for me,” she preens.

It is more than that, both of them knew. There is no etiquette in how to deal with a queen turned prisoner turned novitiate, especially since she is still technically the queen until she takes her final vows.

But they do not talk about that.

Her long habit makes a pool of coarse blue cloth around her as she bundles papers into her arms. “Anyway, Your Majesty,” she says, all razor-sharp exaggeration at the honorific, “That is not why I am here.”

“You didn’t just want to see me?” His hurt is not entirely feigned. He grabs a receipt that has somehow lodged itself between Pinuno: From Datu to Constitutional Monarchy and 1670: La Revolución de Las Islas.

“Heavens, no. Do you understand how hard it is to get here?”

“I had taken pains to ensure you always have access to me,” he says. Despite everything.

She shoots him a look. “You are not the problem, brother. The prioress loathes having me leave the grounds—for good reason, I suppose. No matter.”

“Yes, matter,” he says. He is fighting to keep his breath even. “You’re supposed to be able to-“

“Not the reason I’m here,” she sings.

“Fine,” he says. “Fine. Why are you here, Regine?”

“Haven’t you heard, dear brother?” she asks. “My sisters are a-buzz with the rumors, and you must know how difficult it is to get them to gossip—which means the entire kingdom must be talking it. Apparently, our very own honorable, practical, darling Prince Dominic is in-“

“I am not in love!” he snaps.

Regine pauses, her jaw slackening. Then a truly evil grin spreads across her mouth. “I was going to say,” she says, “in search for a mystery girl. But that works, too.”

Prince Dominic’s cheeks burn. “I am not in love,” he enunciates carefully, though he knows it’s hopeless. As far as Regine is concerned, he has already dug his grave. “And I am not looking for her.”

“Why not?” she asks airily.

He splutters. “Why not?” he repeats. “Why not?”

When it comes to duty, they have always been so many worlds apart.

“You still haven’t grown out of babbling when you’re confused, hm?”

“Because I am required to marry a princess!” he yells. He stands up, papers forgotten, even breathing be damned. “Because I am the de facto ruler of this kingdom and whether I like it or not, whether I want to or not, every aspect of my life must be devoted to ensuring its security! Because I am the only one left,” he says, and his voice breaks, “and if I don’t do it, no one else will.”

Then he sobs outright, a hand covering his eyes.

_ _ _

The first and last time he’d spoken this truth that he had long buried in his heart was the night of the ball.

He hadn’t meant to unbridle his tongue. It hadn’t been his parents’ fault that they’d died, after all, and his sister—well, it was hard on her, turning from the blithe heir to the burdened head of the family overnight. It had been understandable, that she hadn’t wanted to face it. He had been the one who had chosen to act. He had taken the responsibility, and so consequently had to face it forever alone.

So why did he find himself spilling his guts to this beautiful stranger?

It was unseemly. It was embarrassing.

But she was so very easy to talk to; and when he began to apologize for his impropriety, she stoppered his flow of words with a gaze full of understanding. “I know what it’s like,” she said, “to be the one left behind and alone.” Her eyes lowered, her cheeks pink. “To be angry about it, sometimes.”

They were out on the balcony—far from the prying eyes and ears of the court, though he knew there would be whispers once they noticed his absence. For once, he hadn’t a care about that. Just as he hadn’t a care or thought about anything when he took the lady’s hand. “Not alone anymore, I hope.”

“Not right now, at least.” She twined their fingers together.

“Not ever again!” he declared recklessly, though he knew he wasn’t in any position to make promises like that. “Tell me about yourself now, lady stranger. We’ve spent so long in each other’s company and you’ve refused to tell me a thing. Though to be fair, I suppose I’ve barely asked.” He shook his head at himself. “What kind of prince am I?”

He’d expected a bump of his shoulder, a roll of her eyes. Instead, the lady’s smile faded. “Prince?”

“Yes?”

“You’re the prince?”

“Yes, of course—you didn’t know?” She had arrived late and had missed the proclamation, and they had dispensed with calling each other by any name as a game, but he hadn’t believed she didn’t know who he was that entire time. Hadn’t known she was getting to know him as Dominic, rather than the prince. He was flabbergasted.

And she looked devastated. She pulled her hand away from his. “If you were just a noble, maybe,” she murmured to herself. “But a prince…”

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

She forced a smile on her face. “Nothing, Your Majesty.”

“Don’t give me that,” he begged her. “Something’s wrong. Please tell me what’s wrong.”

“I-I just…I had hoped to see you again.”

“Whyever not?” He made to take her hand once more, but restrained himself at the last second. “I would very much like that as well.”

“I don’t think you would, Your Majesty. Not if you knew who I really was.”

“I know who you are.” In the weeks to come, he would doubt this; he’d put it down to his chronic sleep deprivation, the heady night air, enchantment. But in that moment, he felt as close to her as someone he’d known all the days of his life.

“You do?” She sounded afraid.

“Yes. You, my dear lady stranger,” he says, “are the funniest person I’ve ever met.” This, finally, got the fond eyeroll. “Really, you are hilarious. Yet you’re honest enough to tell me when I’m not.”

“It was only the puns,” she protested.

“You are determined,” he continued. “You said you would finish the platter of stuffed pan de sal and by God, I have never seen anyone eat so much so fast. That’s a compliment, by the way,” he said to her reddening cheeks. “It was a marvel.”

“You had it right the first time, Your Majesty. For a prince, your manners are deplorable.”

“You’re also extremely kind,” he added.

“Deplorable!” she exclaimed.

“Really.” He stretched out his hand, giving her the choice, and after a beat she laced her fingers with his again. “When you see someone requires assistance, no matter who they are, whether or not they themselves know it, you take action. Even when you clearly need help yourself.”

“I don’t-“

“You have not told me much of your family, my lady, but from what I’ve gathered you are in a rather unhappy situation. Please,” he said, “let me help you. I promise to stand by you no matter what happens, wherever you come from, whatever your name is. Just say the word.”

The lady seemed torn. In the bright, pale moonlight, away from the glitter and ornaments of the ballroom, her masterpiece of a dress seemed to be just a shade more quotidian, her elfin features less otherworldly and more tremendously human as she bit her lip and decided. It made him fall for her all the more. “I,” she said, and stopped herself. She cleared her throat. “My name is…I mean. I-I’m-“

“It’s alright,” he said gently.

She squeezed his hand, as if asking for courage. He squeezed back. “My name is-“

Then the clock struck midnight.

_ _ _

“She’s a commoner, isn’t she?” Regine asks.

For a moment, Prince Dominic did not answer, lost for a time in the way his sister stroked his hair soothingly. She had strode across the room and insisted he sit down on the plush couch, and then laid his head on her lap, just as she did when the doctors gave them the news that their parents died of the plague. When he finally found his voice, he says dully, “Yes.”

It is the logical conclusion. Why had it been such a miracle for her to go to a party? Why did she need a member of the fae to magic her improbable glass shoes, and perhaps the rest of her lovely attire?

Why was she so afraid to let him know who she was?

It would take another miracle to see her again, let alone to offer her what he wished. “So why am I still hoping?” he whispers. Then he curses himself, realizing that he spoke out loud.

But Regine does not tease. She gives a soft, almost resigned sigh. “Because, dear brother,” she says, “you are a person who loves deeply and truly. You are that, as well as a good and kind king.”

He snorts.

“It’s true,” she says, rueful. “You’re a much better ruler than I ever could have been. You knew from the start that being a leader was more burden than privilege, and I—I never completely grasped that. Not until I was called by God and realized how selfish I’d been.” She ruffles his hair again. “You were right to stage that coup against me.”

“Sister,” he says, but she shakes her head.

“But even if I was selfish,” she says, her eyes bright, “I still know enough about statecraft to comprehend the state of our kingdom, both when I ruled and even more so after the stability you brought to the Islands. And what I know is that we are not in peril.” She looks at him. “You do not need to give your hand out of desperation, brother.”

“But Spain is still watching us-“

“They will always be watching us,” she says disdainfully. “Their precious former colony that rose up against them, foolish and still in need of their oh-so-enlightened help and guidance. Whatever we do, they will always be looking for a chance to snatch us up again.”

“So what do we do?” he asks. His voice sounds small.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “And, selfishly, I am glad that burden is no longer on my shoulders.”

“Thanks, Regine,” he mutters.

She flicks his nose.

“Huy!”

“I have not abandoned you,” she says. “I will not abandon you. I am here beside you, Dominic, and from now on I promise to give you whatever advice you need.”

“And what advice is that, dear sister?”

“That you remember we cannot, as a nation or as people, live on fear alone. And that you must remember you are a leader as well as a ruler, Dom. Your kingdom is watching how you make your choice, and will be led by how you make it.”

“What choice?”

“What to do,” she says, “when love beckons you.”

_ _ _

He goes with them, of course. It would have been out of the question to get a significant portion of the guard to go through this wild goose chase without him at the helm, albeit in plain soldier’s clothes so as to obscure his identity. To begin with, they were to fit the glass slipper on every maiden within each invited household.

He felt like sinking into the floor when he made this proposal in the council room, even with his sister by his side. And indeed, they had all looked at him as if he’d gone mad.

None of them protested, though. Even when he told them of his intentions.

Some of them even looked—excited. As if they were genuinely thrilled their future queen was going to be chosen in this way.

“It’s because they trust you,” Regine said after the meeting. “And they want you to be happy.”

“If you say so,” he said, still bemused.

And so they went.

Household after household, family after family, maiden after maiden until Dominic had seen more than enough feet he had ever wanted to encounter in his lifetime.

Then they get to the capital city's outskirts.

The two young ladies residing in the last mansion before the gates try and fail. Their mother, of grand bearing and clad in even grander skirts, glares at them as if it is their fault. He and the company of guard bow, take their leave, when—

“Wait.”

Prince Dominic turns.

And there she is. Clad in dirty old rags, hair in disarray, fists clenched and bare feet looking half-ready to bolt any minute. But her voice is steady, calm and familiar, when she says, “I would like to try the slipper on.”

The lady of the house hisses, “You are nothing but a scullery maid! What right do you-“

“Every right,” Prince Dominic says, stepping forward. “The prince proclaimed every maiden in each invited household.”

When he turns his gaze at the lady, she has paled. She recognizes him, too.

She glances at the door. He swallows at the lump in his throat, knowing that if she runs, he must take the rejection for what it is.

But she does not run. Instead, she gives him a short, polite curtsy, walks forward, and seats herself delicately on the coach. She is taking long, calming breaths.

He kneels down. “It’s alright,” he tells her again, even more gently than before.

“It’s you,” she whispers. Her eyes are bright with tears.

He smiles at her. “What’s your name?”

Her mouth twists a little. “Cinderella.”

He notices the spray of ashes on her cheeks. Remembers how she never did like puns.

“My stepmother was right,” she says in a sudden rush. “I am nothing but a scullery maid—worse than that, really. I have no status in life, no claim to anything or anyone. I have nothing worthwhile to offer you.”

“Alright,” he says.

“Alright?” she repeats with an incredulous laugh. She lowers her voice. “You are known to be a wise ruler, you know. They say you never make a decision without considering it twice, thrice, and once more for good measure.”

“I don’t think I’m as hesitant as that,” Dominic protests lightly. “But yes. I do like being sure of my choices.”

“So why, my dear, famously pragmatic Prince Dominic, are you here?”

He slides the slipper onto her foot. It’s a perfect fit.

“Cinderella.” He says her name with so much soft reverence she cannot help but blush. He offers her his hand. “I think you know.”

/ / /

A/N: Written for the @inklings-challenge's Four Loves Fairytale Challenge! I'd love to know what you think of the story, if you have time to comment/tag. Either way, I hope you enjoyed, and I look forward to reading everyone's entries!

Also: Because I didn't outright say it in the story (and because it's very important to me), this story is set in an alternate history/fantasy Philippines <3

#The Prince #inklingschallenge #theme: agape #theme: eros #theme: storge #Cinderella #Cinderella retelling #story: complete

[lydiahosek]

Godmother

[My story for the @inklings-challenge Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge. Thank you very much for hosting!]

Once upon a time, a woman lay on her deathbed in despair. She had hope of eternal life but still was sad to leave the world. She was sad to leave her beloved and loving husband without a wife. Most of all, she was sad to leave her little daughter without a mother. With her last breaths, she whispered, “Watch over her…let her be happy.”

Little did she know a fairy was among those who heard.

Fairies commonly kept watch over human affairs in those days. Being immortal, births and deaths especially fascinated them. They were forbidden to interfere or make themselves known – doing so had led to disaster in the past. Even so, every once in a while a fairy would take an interest (either mischievous or benevolent) in a human and pursue it. They worked in little ways – leading game to a hungry hunter or hiding a favorite necklace from a vain lady. This sort of thing was generally understood and overlooked. Those who took it too far, though, were never seen again.

This fairy, whose name was Avellana, was invisible to the family gathered in the little room, but she heard the desperation in the mother’s voice and saw the tears on the daughter’s face. She had marveled at the love between parent and child more than anything over all her years of observation. She saw now an opportunity to honor it.

The little girl, whose name was Marielle, mourned alongside her father. Avellana let them be for the first weeks – the trifles she could provide would do little to lift them out of it. One afternoon, though, again concealed from sight, she returned to the house to find Marielle listlessly gathering the hazelnuts that had fallen from the tree in the backyard. She was kneeling on the ground and did not get back up even after all of the nuts had been collected. Avellana thought about other little girls she had seen and what sort of things made them happy. Glancing at the nearby wood, she had an inspiration.

In the blink of an eye she was fifty paces deep into the wood in a thick cluster of trees. In the middle of these trees was a warren. She crouched down to it and found what she sought – a family of rabbits. She beckoned and the largest one hopped out. She led it through the trees, out of the wood, straight to the edge of the yard where Marielle still knelt. Then she bid it wait there until the girl noticed her visitor.

Marielle looked up and gasped as she met the rabbit’s eyes. She was gentle by nature and had been taught to be gentle with nature, so she kept very still, much as she would have loved to rise and stroke the rabbit’s soft gray fur. And when Avellana let the rabbit do as it pleased, it actually hopped closer to the girl, sniffing at the grass and tiny wildflowers, before returning to its home.

Marielle stared after it and Avellana stared at Marielle. Perhaps she had expected too much – she had never done anything like this before – but she couldn’t tell if the encounter had made any difference at all.

Marielle’s father called her inside for supper. Avellana followed and watched the pair eat in silence for some time. Then Marielle spoke up: “I saw a rabbit outside.”

Marielle’s father smiled faintly. “Oh? There haven’t been any around in a few years. Well, except for…” He nodded his head toward the ceiling.

Marielle nodded back. She wondered aloud whether it would return and they began discussing ways to make it and its family feel welcome.

Puzzled, Avellana looked up at the ceiling, then guessed that Marielle’s father had been indicating something on the second floor of the house. In the blink of an eye she was in the room exactly above where they still sat - a bedroom. On the bed sat a rabbit made of cloth with shiny button eyes. I’ll give my left wing if Marielle’s mother didn’t make that for her, she thought. Satisfied, she returned to the fairy world.

*

Things went on in that way for a few years. Avellana continued to visit other human households with other fairies, but every few weeks she would check in on Marielle by herself. The girl and her father had decided to plant a garden, and while that same rabbit never called on her again, it attracted countless other creatures – bees and butterflies drank nectar from the flowers, mice and hedgehogs hid among (and sampled from) the berry bushes and the vegetable patch. They even dug a small pond at the far end of the yard, where human and animal travelers alike could stop to drink. Marielle stayed outside to watch the activity whenever she could.

Avellana always left a gift of some kind. She persuaded the berries to grow larger and sweeter just as Marielle made ready to pick them. She showed the birds what a lovely place for a nest the hazel tree would make. She mended a tear in Marielle’s dress before it was even noticed. She was pleased with herself – the girl was kindhearted and hardworking and it was a delight to bring such little niceties into her life now and again.

One day Avellana’s friends urged her to join them – they were on their way to see a human wedding. Avellana was surprised to see that it happened to be in Marielle’s village. She was even more surprised to see that it was Marielle’s father getting married! Marielle stood at his side at the front of the church. Next to his new bride stood two girls about Marielle’s age. Well, Avellana thought, Marielle will have a new mother, and two sisters besides! Now she understood – her role had been to watch over the girl until someone else arrived to take her place. It would be bittersweet – she had enjoyed her visits to the house – but such was the difference between the fairy and human worlds, the one constant and the other ever-changing. She supposed that was one reason it was discouraged for the two to cross paths.

But while she no longer considered herself needed by her, eventually Avellana simply missed Marielle. She had never followed one human’s life so closely for so long, and others, despite their novelty, didn’t seem as interesting. She wanted to know how Marielle fared. She wanted to know how the garden fared. Most of all, she wanted to know how her father’s new wife fared as Marielle’s stepmother. She decided that it wouldn’t hurt to drop by one evening and take a look.

When she arrived, the house was quiet and the family was eating supper – well, most of them were. Marielle’s stepmother sat at the head of the table, with one of her daughters on either side of her. Marielle sat at the other end, and Avellana couldn’t be sure, but it looked like her portion of food was smaller than the others’. But where was her father? In the blink of an eye Avellana was in the next room, then the next, until she reached the master bedroom. There she saw him lying in bed, asleep but trembling, a thin sheen of sweat upon his brow. A horrible foreboding settled in Avellana’s heart. She pulled the blankets tighter around him. It seemed to help, but, she reflected, what did she really know about this sort of thing? Worried, she returned to the fairy world.

*

All too soon, her premonition was realized. She stood invisible in the back of the room as Marielle’s father breathed his last. Great as the girl’s sorrow had been for the death of her mother, the Marielle of that night would have looked cold compared to this one. She sobbed, clutching her father’s hands and begging him not to go long after he had. Above them both stood her stepmother, who would have looked cold compared to a block of ice. She told Marielle to shut her trap before she woke her stepsisters, who were asleep in their own bedroom down the hall.

So Marielle mourned her father alone. This time, Avellana could barely stand to wait a week before returning to the house, and once there she felt it had not been soon enough. She found Marielle stirring a large pot of porridge while her stepfamily sat at the table, waiting. She watched the girl fill three bowls and set them down on the table, then stand to the side anxiously. She heard one stepsister complain that there was not enough sugar, the other that there were too many lumps. The stepmother had only to give Marielle a look and she was scrambling back to the kitchen to start the recipe over.

Avellana began visiting the house more and more often, for the stepfamily’s cruelty to Marielle grew greater and greater. She had been made into a servant in her own home. Her stepmother bid her cook every meal, clean every room, mend every piece of clothing. Her own daughters did no work and paid no attention to Marielle except to occasionally amuse themselves by teasing her or blaming her for minor calamities like a crack in a teacup. Her stepmother believed every word they said and then some, and not a day passed but she scolded Marielle for something or other. If Marielle washed the windows quickly, she was told she was being sloppy. If she took her time to work carefully, she was called lazy. Such offenses always carried harsh punishments, too. Denial of food was a favorite. Another was the immediate undoing of whatever chore Marielle had just completed, so that it had to be redone – a bowl of soup emptied onto a freshly-polished floor, for example.

One particularly awful night, in response to some perceived slight, her stepmother snatched her cloth rabbit from her bed, brought it downstairs, and threw it into the fire. Marielle tried to rescue the keepsake, but it was too late. She stayed curled at the fireside weeping until she fell asleep. Restoring the rabbit or even bringing the sleeping girl upstairs would have raised too much suspicion, but Avellana at least coaxed the fire to stay lit and keep the girl warm until sunrise. When she woke, however, she found that one of her stepsisters had claimed her bedroom for herself. “You were obviously perfectly comfortable by the fire,” her stepmother said. “There’s no sense in my daughters continuing to share a room when another one is available. Is there?”

Rather than be denied breakfast for being senseless, Marielle answered quietly, “No, ma’am.”

The fireplace, then, became Marielle’s place in the same way a cupboard is a broom’s. She slept there every night and sat there every day to eat her meager meals. When there was nothing else to be done around the house, her stepmother bid her clean it, a job that was never truly finished and the residue of which never fully left Marielle’s skin or hair or clothes. “Look at her,” the stepsisters said, “Soon she’ll be nothing but one big cinder.” The three left off even using her name, referring to her instead as “Cinder-girl”.

Things went on in that way for several years. Avellana visited practically every day, but now she had to be doubly careful – not to give herself away, and not to accidentally make things even worse for Marielle. She sent cool breezes through the house when Marielle was bent over steaming tubs of laundry. She caused the floorboards to creak so that Marielle would look down just before she would have stepped on a stray pin. She told the birds to fly to the window nearest the fireplace and sing – and this she had to do only once, for Marielle smiled and laid crumbs from her own plate on the sill to say thank you. They were regular visitors from then on. Inspired, Marielle then took to leaving tiny scraps at the doorway and so made friends with the mice from the garden as well.

Marielle was Avellana’s new greatest marvel of humanity. She had seen others give ill treatment back for far less than what Marielle had endured, or for nothing at all. Marielle shrank in her stepmother’s presence and scurried at the sound of her voice, but otherwise took any opportunity to smile, to share, to receive of or contribute to the beauty of the world. Avellana would give her any opportunity she could.

One day, though, back in the fairy world, a friend of Avellana’s pulled her aside. “This must not continue,” she said. “Do not fool yourself into believing nobody has noticed.”

Avellana saw no harm in playing innocent. “Noticed what?”

“Your fixation on the little cinder-girl that lives on the edge of the wood.”

“Don’t call her th-"

“You see?”

Avellana was silent.

“They live such short lives. One way or another her suffering will end,” she said in a way that chilled Avellana’s heart. “In the meantime, you are endangering yourself. You are endangering all of us. Sooner or later she will realize she is being favored and wonder why and by whom. When they learn of our power, they want it for themselves. When they cannot have it, they seek to control us or destroy us, and in their efforts they destroy themselves. You see? You are endangering even her.”

Avellana’s wings bristled with indignation, but she managed to keep her voice steady. “That is not her way. And I have kept the both of us safe for more than half her life.”

“Look at how you started and see how it has grown. Do you believe things will never worsen for her again? They will. And when they do you will not be satisfied with berries and breezes. You will do something irreversible, something she cannot attribute to a caprice of nature or her own forgetfulness. And when you do, rather than risk their discovery of us, you will be forced to pay the price.” She placed her hands on Avellana’s shoulders and looked into her eyes. “You see? I fear for you.”

Avellana saw, and she saw this was not a fear of the unknown. “What – "

“You will be cast out of our world. You will lose your power. You will live as a human, grow old, and one day, you will die.”

Every word was a blow, but the last was a dagger. Death – foreign to fairies and feared above all else by humans. What misery it caused them, as Avellana and her friends had witnessed time and again. What misery it had wrought in Marielle’s life, and she was not even the one who had died. And what of those who did? No more to work in and move through and partake of the world, no more to be with the ones they loved. Avellana’s entire body trembled.

“You see? Better to end it now, before you are lost completely.” And with that, she left.

*

It was weeks before Avellana made another trip to the human world, and then only to other villages. Her friends were glad that she had apparently seen reason, but she herself knew no peace, plagued by the thought of Marielle abandoned. Eventually, she could bear it no longer and returned to the house. She told herself that she would do nothing but look in on her, for both of their sakes. After all, she would be no good at all to Marielle if she died, would she? And surely she didn’t have to give her up entirely. She told herself that from now on she would only visit as often as she had when Marielle was a little girl, and only leave gifts in extreme circumstances (ignoring the extreme circumstances that made up Marielle’s everyday life). She was a young woman now, and a strong one at that. She would persevere.

In that case, though, why was she returning at all?

She arrived at early evening - the same time as, of all things, a royal carriage. A herald in a blue uniform and holding a scroll leapt out, marched to the front door, and knocked. Marielle, of course, was the one to answer and accept the message. She brought it to the parlor, where her stepmother was sitting with a cup of tea.

She turned to Marielle. “Well?’ she said sharply, but her eyes widened when she saw the royal seal on the scroll. She snatched it from Marielle’s hands and tore it open. Skimming its contents, she called her daughters to the room to hear the news: The king, queen, and prince were to host a ball at the royal palace. Every member of the kingdom was invited, and every maiden of marriageable age was especially encouraged to attend. The stepsisters began squealing and chattering in excitement. Their mother quieted them just long enough to announce, “Tomorrow we go to town.” Turning to Marielle, with a thin smile, she added, “I will be ordering three new dresses from the tailor’s shop.” Marielle’s smile put the setting sun to shame.

Oh, what could be more perfect! Avellana thought. A ball! Even Marielle’s stepmother, it appeared, could not ignore a royal proclamation and would not deprive her of her right to go. A night of festivity for her, at last! A new dress for her, at last! (Marielle had had no new clothes since her father died – she simply added more and more patches to her childhood things as she grew or wore them out.) And once there, she could meet new people – perhaps a business owner to whom she could apprentice herself? Perhaps a young man to whom she could endear herself? Bah – she could even hide in some corridor until morning and then pass herself off as a palace servant. It would still be a better life than this. Yes, the ball would be not only her respite but her rescue. She would be happy, Avellana could rest easy, and all would be well.

Avellana did not visit again until the night of the ball. There was no doubt in her mind that she would see Marielle off into her new life, whatever form it took. She even considered granting her one last gift, a sort of farewell, and giddily wondered what it would be. When the time came, she would know what was right.

A hired coach sat in the road and the bustle of last-minute preparations filled the house. The front door opened and the two stepsisters sauntered to the coach in their new finery. But then Avellana heard the stepmother’s voice coldly say “Goodnight” before she followed them out. Of course – the third new gown had been for her! She had never intended to bring Marielle to the ball at all but pretended to simply to mock her! Avellana could have ripped both her wings off for not realizing it before. She wondered how long Marielle had known.

Not very, it appeared, or perhaps their departure simply reopened the wound, for as soon as the coach was out of sight, the back door burst open and Marielle ran from the house to the hazel tree, where she collapsed in tears. In the blink of an eye Avellana was standing over her, and it was all she could do not to wrap her arms around the shuddering figure.

This…this was too much. Or rather, it had been too much from the beginning, and Avellana only now understood. The stepmother would never change. This must not continue...Her friend’s words of warning rang in her head, but Marielle’s cries were louder.

Avellana took a step back and thought. If she had her way she would transform the house into a palace of Marielle’s own, with full wardrobes and feather beds and gardens and menageries and banquets every night, and with the stepfamily forbidden to enter. If the fairy world had its way she would do nothing at all. There had to be something in between.

Marielle was still huddled against the tree, sniffling, by the time Avellana decided. So as not to frighten her, she stood about ten paces away. She summoned a rabbit from the wood to the base of the tree and waited for Marielle to notice it.

“Hello there,” she said, wiping her eyes and trying to smile. “A little late for you to be out, isn’t it?’ Avellana called the rabbit back in her direction and Marielle’s eyes followed it. Just before they reached her, Avellana removed her layer of invisibility.

What she hadn’t expected about allowing herself to be seen was how differently she would see. The moon and stars were covered by clouds this night, but even so - it was as if she had always looked at the human world through a veil, and now the veil was lifted. Perhaps in making herself visible she had already sealed her fate, but perhaps not. She was here not to do anything permanent, only to restore things to how they should have been in the first place. And Marielle deserved to know that it was due not to luck or chance, but because there was someone who chose it. Avellana’s heart leapt as Marielle’s eyes met hers for the first time.

“Oh, my dear girl.” The words were out before Avellana could stop them.

Marielle remained frozen in place, her eyes wide and jaw slack. “Who are you?”

Avellana had wondered about how to explain herself, but then she remembered a human word she had heard often over the years. She now only hoped she was not completely unworthy of it. “I’m your godmother.”

*

“I…have a fairy for a godmother?”

Avellana could see the questions multiplying in her head and knew she had to stave them off. “We haven’t much time.” She moved toward her slowly. “Do you still wish to go to the ball?”

This broke her out of her awe. She looked down, almost embarrassed, then up, close to crying again. “More than anything.”

“Well, then that is what you shall do!”

Marielle rose to her feet with caution, not taking her eyes from Avellana. “I have nothing to bargain w-“

“No bargain. A gift.” She couldn’t help but grin as Marielle blinked in confusion. “But I cannot create out of nothing. Now...” She surveyed the yard. The largest thing in it was a pumpkin from the vegetable patch. “Roll that into the road for me, will you please?”

Marielle instantly obeyed, and Avellana chided herself for giving her yet another task. But the less she did herself the better, and she still had plenty to do. In the blink of an eye she was in the branches of the hazel tree. She woke one of the birds and sent it to sit on top of the pumpkin. Then she was in the garden and sent four mice and two hedgehogs to the road as well.

She joined Marielle and the odd assembly in the road and advised her to stand back. Then she commanded the pumpkin to grow and change. Its rind became gold, its vines curled into wheels, and it was soon a carriage grander than the one Marielle’s stepfamily had ridden away in. In the same way she turned the mice into horses to draw it, the bird into a human to drive it, and the hedgehogs into humans to serve as footmen.

Marielle was still gaping at this when Avellana said “Now you.” With a strong gust of wind she whisked every last bit of ash and grime from Marielle’s body and arranged her hair in a flattering style. Then she spoke to the threadbare clothing and bid it become a gold and silver gown that would be the finest at any fairy ball, let alone a human one. And the shoes – the shoes were her masterpiece. Marielle’s had deteriorated to thin straps of leather held in place by frayed strings. Avellana turned them into slippers made of glass and trimmed with gold, sparkling with every movement.

“It’s just a shame they’ll be hidden beneath the skirts,” Marielle said with admiration. She twirled about, poked one foot out from under the hem, twirled about again.

“A far greater beauty has been kept hidden and unappreciated…Marielle,” Avellana added, for when was the last time she had heard herself called by her name? She stopped mid-twirl and blushed, smiling shyly.

Avellana began shepherding her toward the carriage. One of the former-hedgehog footmen opened the door with a pleasant if vacant expression. “Now, there is one more thing, very important. As the day begins anew so must everything else. At the twelfth stroke of midnight, all will return to its former state.” This was a common trick among fairies who liked toying with humans. The recipient of such a gift would go to sleep drunk on his good fortune and wake to find his pocketful of jewels (re)turned to pebbles. “You must be out of sight when this happens.” This would still give Marielle hours at the ball, which she would surely put to good use. The evidence of Avellana’s involvement would be destroyed, and there would be no witnesses (besides Marielle) of its destruction. Avellana started to feel hopeful. What grounds would there be to punish her?

Marielle nodded as the other foothog helped her into the carriage. “I promise…and thank you…but…why?” And Avellana knew she was not asking about the direction she had just been given.

Oh, of all the questions to slip out, this was the most difficult to answer! Avellana hesitated, then simply leaned through the carriage window and kissed her on the forehead. The two beamed at each other for a long moment, then Avellana whispered “Go.”

The bird-turned-driver heard her and the carriage glided off into the night. Avellana hid herself from sight once more – her own vision slightly clouded once more – and followed it all the way to the palace, every now and again looking in to see Marielle watch the village rush past her or soothe her happy nerves by smoothing imaginary wrinkles from her dress. By the time they arrived everyone else was inside and had been for some time. Marielle stayed in the carriage to take a few deep breaths, then burst out and strode up the palace steps with joyful determination.

The grand ballroom was full to the brim, with only just enough empty space in the center for dancing. Avellana noticed several fairies along the back walls and in corners and tried to carry herself as blithely as any of them. Marielle moved through the crowd, leaving a trail of turned heads and whispers in her wake. Nobody recognized the beautiful latecomer in the stunning dress, but she greeted everyone who met her eyes – “Hello!” “Beautiful night, isn’t it?” “What a lovely cravat!” – as she made her way to the buffet.

She stood at the table sampling every dish, swaying to the music and taking in the grandeur of the room and its occupants. As she reached for the last pastry on one of the trays, her hand collided with another. She looked up to see a young man on the other side of the table, looking at her. For a moment they both completely forgot about the food.

“…Oh! –"

“Pardon me, I –"

Each insisted the other have the pastry until Marielle took it and tore it down the middle, a thread of chocolate cream stretching between the two halves. She offered one to him and he took it, laughing. When both halves were eaten, he asked if she would care to dance.

They were inseparable the rest of the night. They were partners for the next dozen dances, until he noticed more than a few envious pairs of eyes on them. Then he offered to show her the palace gardens. On the way he asked a servant to notify his mother and father that he had stepped out for air. The servant answered “Yes, Your Highness”, which was how Marielle learned that she had caught the eye of the prince.

Avellana was exultant. Marielle deserved nothing less, and she looked happier than Avellana had ever seen her. She kept watch over the pair as they strolled past lush flowerbeds and navigated the hedge maze. They remained hand-in-hand even after sitting to rest beneath a statue of one or another of his ancestors.

None of them realized how much time was passing until the palace clock tower began the first of twelve chimes signaling midnight.

Marielle sprang up, stammered out a few apologetic words, and took off running for the main entrance. The prince sat stunned and confused for a few seconds, then tried to follow, but Marielle had a head start and the gap between them only widened.

Tears of panic and regret were already glinting in her eyes. The clock tower was the oldest structure in the kingdom and it would be almost a minute before its bells sounded twelve times, which helped, but not by much. Her dress, her carriage – everything was going to dissolve into nothing and leave her a stranded cinder-girl once more. She could only hope the kindest, most charming man she had ever met didn’t see it happen. As she sped down the palace steps she felt herself lose one of her shoes but simply continued, now lopsided, until she reached the golden carriage. It was rolling away before the prince even reached the top of the steps.

Oh! – bless her obedient little heart!! Avellana thought in anxious frustration. Marielle was going right back to that house, right back to that life, and it would weigh on her all the more now that she had tasted something different. The prince didn’t know where to find her, and even if he did, the night was so dim and she was so changed – would he even recognize her? And yet it was all Avellana’s fault anyway - what else would she have had Marielle do? The clock was already on its tenth chime, and there was no telling what would have come from the dress returning to rags in front of the prince and the entire assembly. As it was, she would have to make sure he didn’t notice the lost shoe on the stairs transforming back into scraps of leather.

Unless…

The clock struck eleven.

Unless it didn’t.

Yes. The slipper was the answer. No one else in the kingdom had its like. No one else had left the ball so early. He would see it and know it had been lost by the lady he had lost. He would organize a search. Once the shoe found its partner, so would the wearer.

The stroke of midnight rang out. With all her might the fairy ordered both slippers to never return to leather, to never become lost or stolen from Marielle or the prince, and to never, never break.

*

In the blink of an eye and a flash of light, Avellana felt her connection to the fairy world severed forever, the veil not only lifted again but torn to shreds.

Well.

…She could attend to that later. But had she done it for nothing? Or had the prince found the slipper? She waited for the light to fade so she could look.

When it didn’t, she realized with mounting horror that it was the sun, which meant it was noon, which meant she was on the other side of the world. As her (human!) eyes adjusted, she saw that she was at a bustling marketplace, filled with people wearing clothes she had never seen before and speaking in a language she didn’t understand. She had been dropped at its edge, where busy shoppers and vendors didn’t notice her sudden appearance.

She half-sat, half-collapsed onto the ground. She could see the logic of it. Remove her from the place where she had already done so much meddling. Give the humans no sign, no explanation, no reward if they tried to investigate. Let them give up and forget. Remain safely undetected. Let her serve as a warning to other fairies be more careful than she had.

The marketplace was near a river. She crawled to its bank, already feeling faint beneath the sun. As she drank she caught her reflection. She was surprised to see that she still looked like herself, and yet her self looked ridiculous in this place. Her robes were already staining with dirt and sweat and the flowers in her hair were already wilting. And her wings, her beautiful wings were gone completely! She drew back to the scant shade of the nearest tree and stayed there until dusk, until nightfall, until the next morning.

Not knowing where else to go, Avellana stayed at the marketplace for weeks. Occasionally a passerby would give her a bit of food or a few coins. Eventually she had picked up enough of the language to earn more by performing small chores for the various vendors – making deliveries and such. Some were kind, others were harsh, but none were even close to Marielle’s stepmother. A merchant who was the stepmother’s opposite in practically every way brought Avellana to his house to join a team of servants. Slowly she learned to cook and wash and mend. She thought of Marielle every day, wondering if she was doing these same tasks or if she escaped her stepfamily. If she was happy.

Avellana preferred the time she spent minding the children. She even assisted with the birth of the youngest, an experience which made every birth she had witnessed as a fairy feel like a barely-remembered dream. The other women told stories to the children and each other as they worked, stories of hapless heroes and cruel tyrants and supernatural creatures, invented on the spot and repeated if they were well-liked. In this way, Avellana felt it safe to share tales from her former life. Everyone’s favorite, though, was the one about the kind and beautiful young woman forced to work as a cinder-girl, who was ultimately rescued and married a prince. Though Avellana knew her words no longer held that kind of power, she would lie down at night, waiting to fall asleep, begging the story to be true.

Things went on in that way for many years. The merchant’s children grew and founded households of their own. Just as Avellana thought she was accustomed to life as a human, she found herself becoming weary more easily and ill more often. She had a store of coins she had saved over the years, in hope of what she now decided she would finally have to try. She ventured to the town library and pored over its collection of maps. She bid farewell to the merchant’s family. She followed the river for months, her coins dwindling as she stopped for food and lodging. At last she reached a port. She asked carefully for every ship’s destination, found what she sought, and secured a place in the galley on a vessel bound for Marielle’s kingdom.

The voyage was long and the work was rough. When she stumbled onto land at its end she nearly wept for joy at the sight of the palace far in the distance. It was still the work of some days to walk there, but something deep within her urged her forward. On a fair, mild day she arrived just as the clock tower was striking noon, which turned out to be not a moment too soon or too late. There, among the dozens of people moving through the grounds, was Marielle, with the man who she met as the prince but who now wore the crest and the crown of a king. They walked hand-in-hand, just as they had done in the gardens all those years ago. Surrounding them were children, many nearly grown. This…this was enough.

Avellana turned to go, she knew or cared not where, but she was only a few steps from the palace gates when she felt her strength spent and fell to the ground.

She heard commotion behind her but could not even turn her head to look. She heard a man’s voice commanding that the gates be opened, she heard two sets of footsteps rapidly approaching, she heard another man say something about “just a beggar” and she heard her Marielle’s voice bidding him be silent. A pair of hands turned Avellana onto her back and there she was, staring down in concern. Changed as they both were by the years and so much else, the concern in her eyes turned to astonishment and recognition. “You!”

She told her husband to bring the children inside. She also told a guard to fetch the physician, but as she looked back down at Avellana she seemed to lose confidence in the idea. Gently as she could, Marielle helped Avellana to sit slightly up, her head resting in her lap.

“Thank you,” Avellana said, her voice crackling like a dwindling fire.

Marielle shook her head, tears filling her eyes. “Thank you…I –“

“Shhh.” Avellana gave a smile. She caught sight of Marielle returning it just as her eyes were starting to flutter closed.

Marielle kissed the old woman on the forehead, looked up to the heavens, and whispered, “Watch over her…let her be happy.”

I have hope that she was heard.

#inklingschallenge #cinderella #death #grief #abuse #homelessness? #classism? #theme: agape #story: complete #long post #this completely got away from me im sorry #my writing

[rowenabean]

At the corner of time and space, there is an inn.

Well, sometimes. If you go there today you can find an inn. Tomorrow it might be a ruined and empty husk, and on Thursday you might find the workmen just starting to lay the foundations. If you’re lucky, you can walk a few steps in the right direction and come out on Tuesday to a bustling taproom. If you’re lucky.

There are many stories that grow up around a place like this. This is the innkeeper’s story.

***

The first thing you have to know is that you don’t end up at the inn by chance. Sure, it might seem like it; it seems like just another wayside inn, another step towards your destination, wherever that might be. It’s not.

When Aleia arrived at the Inn, it was a winter’s day, and the rain was blustering around her, threatening to turn to ice. The inn’s windows were warm and inviting, and the fires inside cozy. It was late when the conversation petered out and the various patrons started moving towards their beds. Had Aleia looked out the window on her way, she would have seen autumn leaves blowing under a silver wash of moonlight; so perhaps it is good that she did not.

But wait; let’s backtrack a bit.

Let’s start on the fateful day when Aleia left home.

It was winter. She had a backpack and boots, and very little else, other than what her not-too-large backpack could fit and her shoulders could carry. She left into the bitter rain, turning her head in a vain hope that she would keep her face dry, but it was only a hundred metres in that she gave up and shook her hood off. Let her get wet. It was nothing compared to the alternative, compared to what she’d been living for far too long now.

Her hands were white, her feet soft, her hair bedraggled. Only her chest was dry, and the warmth of her coat barely enough to keep her from freezing, but each step she took warmed her a little, even as it drove her further into the rain.

The first place she came to had no rooms. The second was too expensive. The third, they let her stay in exchange for help in the kitchens, room and board paid for out of her meagre salary. She lasted almost two weeks before she was kicked out onto the street for daring to make a complaint.

The fourth place was a ditch under a hedge.

She left town with the taste of rejection on her tongue; spat out the town with the taste. She’d show them, she thought, although she was vague on what she would show them, or how. Certainly if she ever had the power, no one from that town would be finding shelter under her roof. She spat on the road in symbolism. That night was the first night she slept in a ditch, but not the last. The first was dry, but windy; the second she slept on a bed of pine needles hastily gathered; the third in a heap of heather. On the fourth night it rained. She sought shelter under a thick-leaved conifer, but fat drops plopped through the trees to land on her back, and in any case the ground was riddled with tree roots.

It was that evening that she came to the Inn.

A day earlier, she would have said that she couldn’t afford to stay there. A day earlier again, she would have said she didn’t need one, anyway, she was fine. Today, she stared at it in longing and pulled out her meagre purse, wrapping her coat tighter against the driving rain.

The coins topped into the palm of her hand. Thirteen days’ wages, less room and board. It didn’t add up to much. She counted and recounted, and said fuck it, and walked in. The barmaid looked curiously familiar, but Aleia couldn’t place her, and very shortly gave up trying. Instead, she ordered her meal, and turned her back on the room, crept into the corner, and sat.

***

Aleia put down her mugs and ducked into the kitchen, an inscrutable expression on her face. “Jay, would you spell me for a minute?” she asked, and he threw a mock salute and walked out front. Aleia took over his position stirring onions on the stove, but Raina, who was cook today, had to jolt her more than once as they charred rather than caramelised. The third time it happened, Raina took over the onions herself with a pained look.

“Might be your house, but doesn’t mean you can ruin my food,” she said. “What’s got into you?”

Aleia nodded out the door. “Did you know it would be today? I look so skinny! I wasn’t prepared for this! What am I supposed to do now?”

Raina looked up with sudden interest. “Is that you out there? Oh man! I gotta see baby Aleia!” She was halfway across the room when she remembered the onions. “Don’t you dare stop stirring,” she said.

Aleia called back. “Can you... oh I don’t know. Wait? Give me some time to process this before you go out there? I don’t know what to do!”

Raina came back to the stove. “I’ll give you tonight. But I’m sure as hell seeing her before she leaves. Don’t you remember this?”

Aleia grunted. She wasn’t sure she did, or rather, wasn’t sure her memories were reliable, filtered as they were through who she had been back then. She shied away from the memories that did rise up. It wasn’t a person she particularly wanted to remember, either.

Well. Looked like she had no choice in the matter.

Had she known, back then? She couldn’t really remember when she’d realised, that the House was what it was, the Housekeeper herself. It had mattered – she was sure it had mattered – but it was so long ago. Not yet, she thought, and that was enough for today.

“Come on,” Raina said. “Have your existential crisis and then send me my kitchenhand back. Since you’re doing such a hot shot of it.”

Aleia ran her hands through her hair, then over her whole body since that didn’t seem to be enough. She shook out her clothes, and took off her apron since the stains didn’t seem to be shaking it out, replacing it with another from the stack. She walked resolutely over to the door, but stopped three paces from it and walked equally resolutely towards the back door of the kitchen. Raina grabbed her, spun her around, and said “Enough!”

Aleia let herself be shepherded to the door, only stopping for long enough to take a draught of her long-abandoned cup of tea. She wanted to say that the rest of the evening passed in a blur – she wished it did – but the truth was that everything was a blur, except the single figure at the back of the room. Every interaction, every time she approached that table was fixed permanently in her memory, no matter how much she wished it wasn’t.

“It’s just...” she started, sharing a drink with Jay and Raina after the last of the patrons had gone up to bed. “I just don’t really like her. You know, I don’t think I saw her smile once while I was out there? And she barely acknowledged me when I was serving her, just grunted. I felt like I wasn’t there.”

Jay and Raina exchanged a look, and Jay lost. “Because you were so chatty yourself,” he said. “Every time I came out you were glaring.”

Aleia hadn’t even noticed.

“Look, she’s here now,” Jay continued. “This is our first time living it, but it’s not yours. Just be nice to her, ok?”

***

Aleia woke to a crisp morning. As she walked to the window, an observer watching the outside would have seen the scene changing rapidly; the sun shone on summer-dry grass, spring flowers came and went, and driving rain beat the ground for less than half a second. This was all lost on Aleia, however, who threw open the blinds just as it settled into a winter’s day, an improbably thick blanketing of snow.

The taproom was almost empty when she came down. She had hoped for a bright and early start in the morning, but the snow was at least knee deep, and she shuddered at the thought of heading out into that.

All right. One more day.

***

“I’m a dick!” Aleia said.

Raina went to correct her, but Aleia just kept talking. “I really am, you’re not out there serving me, are you. Believe me when I say you don’t want to. Because I’m a dick.”

She stalked off before Raina could reply.

***

“I can’t believe it’s still winter,” Jay said looking outside. “The house never stays still this long.”

Raina looked up. “Feels like a different winter,” she said. “Not sure which one. I think it’s older, though.”

Jay grunted. “You’ve been here longer than me.”

Aleia walked into the kitchen with a huff. “I can’t do it any more,” she said. “How on earth am I supposed to watch my own face just – smirking like that?”

***

“Another day,” said Shae again, this time to an elderly gentleman who had been stuck there when the snow started to fall.

“Another day,” he replied as he dealt the cards. Both Aleias watched the game, the one from her corner at the back of the room, the other from the bar.

An interval of intense concentration, then they returned to the conversation as the gentleman shuffled the cards to deal a new game.

“Your house doesn’t usually do this.”

Shae nodded. “I think it’s trying to make a point.”

A pause. Then the older Aleia stalked over and took a seat.

“Deal me in?” she said, and gestured to the fireplace. “You joining us?”

***

Another day of snow. Aleia woke up and looked out.

She pulled out her purse again, in the vain hope that it migght have filled up overnight, but it was just as empty as it had been when she lay down to sleep.

Time to head out.

The snow was laying two feet thick when she opened the front door. She shivered, and pulled her coat as closely around herself as she ever could. Shaking her head, she slammed the door behind herself to force herself out. Step by uneven step, she walked out into the storm.

***

“And you’re just gonna let yourself go?” Raina demanded. “As if there’s no connection?”

“I did let myself go!” Aleia protested.

“Hark at yourself! She replied. “You’ve lived here long enough to know it’s not as fixed as that! Go on, make a decision for yourself this time.”

“And what if I decide that I want to let her go?” Aleia demanded.

“As if. Come on, it’s your turn to play your hand.”

***

Aleia walked out into the storm.

***

Aleia walked out into the storm, and found a body in a ditch under a hedge.

***

Aleia walked into the storm, and Aleia walked inside into the warm inn, and Aleia walked in again behind her.

***

At the corner of time and space there is a house.

You can find it, sometimes, if you’re lucky. It might not be there next Tuesday.

If you enter the room and say the right name, a woman will come out, the same woman although today she is young and tomorrow she is old, and sometimes the two will stand there side by side. She will welcome you in, and ask your story. There are many stories that grow up around an inn like this. If you ask for hers, this is what she will tell.

@inklings-challenge

#inklingschallenge #story: complete #theme: shelter #genre: time travel #team tolkien #consider this a complete draft i think #i plan to revise it but for now i'm going to go see my friends

[physicsgoblin]

2024 Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge: Here is my Tam Lin retelling for the @inklings challenge.

Part 1: There once was a very rich merchant by the name of Hake who lived in a beautiful city with his wife and many children.     Life there was busy and good, even though the streets were crooked and the smells terrible and the smog blocked out the sun. The merchant Hake dealt in spices of the orient: tiger pelts, peacock feathers, golden fangs for a rich lady’s neck, pearls like mermaids eyes, and all sorts of every delicious thing. But one day Mr. Hake was sent word that his ships, every last one, had been caught in storm off the Grecian coast and were sunk. All his wares were lost.     At this the merchant and his family were most grieved and said prayers for the lost sailors that had drowned in the waves, and paid what they could to the mens’ families. But after that all the coffers ran dry of their silver. The merchant Hake began to sell off his family’s treasures: A necklace of a single tear drop of pearl that had belonged to his mother, his silver watch engraved with his marriage anniversary, and even Jeanette, his eldest daughter, offered up her pianoforte, upon which she played most beautifully.     But such sacrifice, and much more, was not enough.     The merchant was forced to sell his family’s home to pay off his debts, and to search for a new home where he could live more humbly. He found a job as an accountant for a very old and respectable estate, far off in the countryside, near a small village and on the edge of wilderness. The Lord of the Lynn estate was himself old and respectable and having never married or fathered children wrote that he was very happy to take on Mr. Hake and his family—even though the merchant had no experience as as an accountant of so large a residence.     Lord Lynn sent his own private coach to the village when the Hake family arrived to take them straight to his grounds, as it was someways outside the village. The wheels rolled along the muddy road, the trees grew thick, heavy with dew, the leaves flashing green and gold in the early autumn sun. Jeanette listened to the scraping of the branches against the side of the coach and the chattering of her little siblings but she raised her head with alertness, leaning out of the window. Was that a voice she heard on the wind? Or was it just that this place was so much quieter than the city and the silence itself had a voice?        

#inklingschallenge #theme: eros #Tam Lin #story: complete

[bookshelf-in-progress]

Marks of Loyalty: A Retelling of Maid Maleen

For the Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge at @inklings-challenge

Seven years, the high king declared.

Seven years’ imprisonment because a lowly handmaiden pledged her love to the crown prince and refused to release him when his father wished him to marry a foreign princess.

Never mind that Maleen’s blood was just as noble as that of the lady she served. Never mind that Jarroth had been only a fourth prince when he and Maleen courted and pledged their love without a word of protest from the crown. Never mind that they loved each other with a fierce devotion that could outlast the world’s end. A handmaid to the sister of the grand duke of Taina could never be an acceptable bride for the crown prince of all Montrane now that Jarroth was his father’s only heir.

“Seven years to break your rebellious spirit,” the king said as he stood in the grand duke’s study. “More than enough time for my son to forget this ridiculous infatuation.”

“This is ridiculous!” Lady Rilla laughed. “Imprison a lady of Taina for falling in love? If you imprison her, you must imprison me on the same charges. I promoted their courtship and witnessed their betrothal. I object to its ending. I am Maleen’s mistress, and you can not punish her actions without punishing me for permitting such impudence.”

Rilla believed that her rank would save her. That the high king would not dare to enrage Taina by imprisoning their grand duke’s sister. She believed her brother would protest, that the high king would relent rather than risk internal war when the Oprien emperor posed such a danger from without. She believed her words would rescue Maleen from her fate.

Rilla had been wrong. The high king ordered Rilla imprisoned with her handmaiden, and the grand duke did not so much as whisper in protest.

Lady Rilla had always treated Maleen as an equal, calling her a friend rather than a servant, but Maleen had never dreamed that friendship could prompt such a display of loyalty. She begged Rilla to repent of her words to the king rather than suffer punishment for Maleen’s crimes.

Rilla only laughed. “How could I survive without my handmaid? If I am to retain your services, I must go where you go.”

On the final morning of their freedom, they stood before the tower that was to serve as their prison and home, a building as as dark, solid, and impenetrable as the towering mountains that surrounded it. In the purple sunrise that was to be the last they would see for seven years, Maleen tearfully begged her mistress to save herself. Maleen was small, dark, quiet, hardy—she could endure seven years in a dark and lonely tower. Lively, laughing Rilla, with her red hair and bright eyes, was made for sunshine, not shadows. She loved company and revels and the finer things of life—seven years of imprisonment would crush her vibrant spirit, and Maleen could not bear to be the cause of it.

“Could you abandon Jarroth?” Rilla asked.

In the customs of the Taina people, tattoos around the neck symbolized one’s history and family bonds, marked near the veins that coursed with one’s lifeblood. Maleen had marked her betrothal to Jarroth by adding the pink blossoms of the mountain campion to the traditional black spots and swirls. Color indicated a chosen life-bond, and the flowers symbolized the mountain landscape where they had fallen in love and pledged their lives to each other.

“Jarroth has become part of my self,” Maleen said. “I could as soon abandon him as cut out my own heart.”

With uncharacteristic solemnity, Rilla said, “Neither could I abandon you.” She rolled up her sleeves far to reveal the tattoos that marked friendship, traditionally marked on the wrist—veins just as vital, and capable of reaching out to the world. The ring of blue and black circles matched the one on Maleen’s wrist, symbolizing a bond, not between mistress and servant, but between lifelong friends. “I do not leave my friends to suffer alone.”

When the king’s soldiers came, Maleen and Rilla entered the tower without fear.

*

Seven years, they stayed in the tower.

There was darkness and despair, but also laughter and joy.

Maleen was glad to have a friend.

*

The seven years were over, and still no one came. Their tower was isolated, but the high king could not have forgotten about them.

The food was running low.

It was Rilla’s idea to break through weak spots in the mortar, but Maleen had the patience to sit, day after day, chipping at it with their dull flatware until at last they saw their first ray of sun.

They bathed in the light, smiling as they’d not smiled in years, awash in peace and joy and hope. Then they worked with a will, attacking every brick and mortared edge until at last they made a hole just large enough to crawl through.

Maleen gazed upon the world and felt like a babe newborn. She and Rilla helped each other to name what they saw—sky, mountain, grass, clouds, tree. There was wind and sun, birds and bugs and flowers and life, life, life—unthinkable riches after seven years of darkness. They rolled in the grass like children, laughing and crying and thanking God for their release.

Then they saw the smoke. Across a dozen mountains, fields and forests had been burnt to ashes. Whole villages had disappeared. Far off to the south, where they should have been able to make out the flags and towers of the grand duke’s palace, there was nothing.

“What happened?” Maleen whispered.

“War,” Rilla replied.

Before the tower, Maleen had known the Opriens were a threat. Their emperor was a warmonger, greedy for land, disdainful of those who followed traditions other than Oprien ways. But war had always been a distant fear, something years in the distance, if it ever came at all.

Years had passed. War had come.

What of the world had survived?

*

Left to herself, Maleen might have stayed in the safe darkness of the tower, but Maleen was not alone. She had Rilla, who hungered for knowledge and conversation and food that was not their hard travel bread. She had Jarroth, somewhere out there—was he even alive?

Had he fallen in battle against the Oprien forces? Perished as their prisoner? Burned to death in one of their awful blazes? Had he wed another?

Rilla—who had developed a practical strain during their time in the tower—oversaw the selection of their supplies. They needed dresses—warm and cool. They needed cloaks and stockings and underclothes. They needed all the food they could salvage from their storeroom, and all the edible greens Maleen could find on the mountain. They needed kindling, flint, candles, blankets, bedrolls.

On their last night before leaving the tower, Maleen and Rilla slept in their usual beds, but could not sleep. The tower had seemed a place of torment seven years ago. Who would have thought it would become the safest place in the world?

“What do you think we’ll find out there?” Maleen asked Rilla.

“I don’t know,” Rilla said. “Whatever it is, we’ll face it together.”

*

It was worse than Maleen could have imagined.

Not only was Taina devastated by war and living under Oprien rule.

Taina was being wiped out.

The Taina were an independent people, proud of their traditions, which they had clung to fiercely as they were conquered and annexed into other kingdoms a dozen times across the centuries. Relations between the Taina and the high king of Montane had been strained, but friendly. Some might rebel, but most were content to live under the high king so long as he tolerated their culture.

The Oprien emperor did not believe in tolerance.

Taina knew that under Oprien rule, Taina life would die, so they had fought fiercely, cruelly, mercilessly, against the invasion, until at last they were conquered. The emperor, enraged by their resistance, ordered that the Taina be wiped from the face of the earth. Any Taina found living were to be killed like dogs.

Maleen and Rilla quickly learned that the tattoos on their necks and arms—the proud symbols of their heritage—now marked them for death. They wore long sleeves and high collars and thick cloaks. They avoided speaking lest their voices give them away. They dared not even think in the Taina tongue.

One night as they camped in a ruined church, Maleen trusted in their isolation enough to ask, “If I had given up Jarroth—let him marry his foreign princess—do you think Taina would have been saved?”

Rilla, ever wise about politics, only laughed. “If only it had been so easy. I would have told you to give him up myself. No, Oprien wanted war, and no alliance could have stopped them. No alliance did. For all we know, Jarroth did marry a foreign princess, and this was the result.”

Maleen got no sleep that night.

*

Jarroth had not married.

Jarroth was the king of Montane.

*

The wind had the first chill of autumn when Maleen and Rilla entered Montane City—a city of soaring gray spires and beautiful bridges, with precious stones in its pavements and mountain views that rivaled any in Taina.

Though its territories had been conquered, Montane itself had retained its independence—on precarious terms. Montane was surrounded by Oprien land, and even its mountains could not protect it if the emperor’s anger was sufficiently roused. Maleen and Rilla could not be sure of safety even here—the emperor had thousands of eyes upon his unconquered prize—but they could not survive a winter in the countryside, and Montane City was safer than any other.

“We must find work,” Maleen said, “if anyone will have us.” She now trusted in their disguises to keep their markings covered and their voices free of any taint of Taina.

“The king is looking for workers,” Rilla said with a smile.

Even now, Rilla championed their romance, but Maleen had grown wiser in seven years. Jarroth’s father was no longer alive to object, but a king—especially one surrounded by enemies—had even less freedom to marry than a crown prince did. Any hopes Maleen had were distant, wild hopes, less real than their pressing needs for food and shelter and new shoes.

But those wild hopes brought her and Rilla at last to the king’s gate, and then to his housekeeper, who was willing to hire even these ragged strangers to work in the king’s kitchen. The kitchen was so crowded with workers that Maleen and Rilla found they barely had room to breathe.

“It’s not usually like this,” a fellow scullery maid told them. “Most of these new hands will be gone after the wedding.”

Maleen felt a foreboding that she hadn’t felt since the moment the high king had pronounced her fate. Only this time, the words the scullery maid spoke crushed her last, wild hope.

In two weeks’ time, Jarroth would marry another.

*

As Maleen gathered herbs in the kitchen garden—the cook had noticed her knowledge of plants—she caught sight of Jarroth, walking briskly from the castle to a waiting carriage. He had aged more than seven years—his dark hair, thick as ever, had premature patches of gray. His shoulders were broader, and his jaw had a thick white scar. There was majesty in his bearing, but sorrow in his face that was only matched by the sorrow in Maleen’s heart—time had been unkind to both of them.

She longed to race to him and throw her arms around him, reassure him that she yet lived and loved him. A glimpse of one of her markings peeking out from beneath a sleeve reminded Maleen of the truth—she was a woman the king’s enemy wanted dead. She could not ask him to endanger all Montane by acknowledging her love.

Sensible as such thoughts were, Maleen might still have run to him, had Jarroth not reached the carriage first. When he opened the door, Maleen saw the arms of a foreign crown—the fish and crossed swords of Eshor. The woman who emerged was swathed in purple veils, customary in that nation for soon-to-be brides.

Jarroth bowed to his betrothed, then disappeared back into the palace with his soon-to-be wife on his arm.

Maleen sank into a patch of parsley and wept.

*

Rilla was helping Maleen to water the herb gardens when the purple-veiled princess of Eshor wandered into view.

“Is that the vixen?” Rilla asked.

Maleen shushed and scolded her.

“Don’t shush me,” Rilla said. “Now that I’m a servant, I’m allowed the joy of despising my betters.”

“You don’t need to despise her.” She was a princess doing her duty, as Jarroth was doing his. Jarroth thought Maleen dead with the rest of her nation.

“I will despise who I like,” Rilla said. “If I correctly recall, the king of Eshor has only one daughter, and she’s a sharp-tongued, spiteful thing.” She tore up a handful of weeds. “May she plague his unfaithful heart.”

Since Maleen could not bear to hear Jarroth disparaged, she did not argue, and she and Rilla fell into silence.

The princess remained in the background, watching.

When their heads were bent together over a patch of thyme, Rilla murmured, “Will she never leave?”

“She often comes to the gardens,” Maleen said. “She has a right to go where she pleases.”

“But not to stare as if we each have two heads.”

Out of habit, they glanced at each others’ collars, cuffs, and skirts. No sign of their markings showed.

“We have nothing to fear from her,” Maleen said. “In two days, the worst will be over.”

*

A maid came to the kitchen with a message from the princess, asking that the “pretty dark-haired maid in the herb garden” bring her breakfast tray. Cook grumbled, but could not object.

Maleen tried not to stare as she laid out the tray. The princess sprawled across the bed, her feet up on pillows, her face unveiled. Her height and build were similar to Maleen’s, but her hair was a sandy brown, and her face had been pockmarked by plague. Even then, her eyes—a striking blue, deep as a mountain lake—might have been pretty had there not been a cunning cruelty to the way they glared at her.

“You are uncommonly handsome for a kitchen maid,” the princess said. “You have not always been a servant, I think.”

Maleen tried not to quake. There was something terrifying in her all-knowing tone. “I do not wish to contradict your highness,” Maleen said, “but you are mistaken. I have been in service since my twelfth year.”

“Then you have been a servant of a higher class. Your hands are nearly as soft as mine, and you carry yourself like a princess.”

“Your highness is kind.” Maleen nodded her head in a quick, subservient bow, then scurried toward the door.

“I did not dismiss you!” the princess snapped.

Maleen stood at attention, her eyes upon her demurely clasped hands. “Forgive me, your highness. What else do you require?”

“I require assistance that no one else can give—a service that would be invaluable to our two kingdoms. I sprained my ankle on the stairs this morning and will be unable to walk. Since I cannot bear the thought of delaying the wedding that will bind our two nations in this hour of need, I need a woman to take my place.”

A voice that sounded much like Rilla’s whispered suspicions through Maleen’s mind. The princess was proud and her illness was recent. She would not like to show her ravaged face to foreign crowds, and by Montane tradition, she could not go veiled to and from the church.

Knowing—or suspecting—the truth behind the request didn’t ease any of Maleen’s terror. “No!” she gasped. “No, no, no! I could never…!”

“You will!” the princess snapped, sounding as imperious and immovable as the high king on that long ago day. “You are the right build—you will fit my gowns. You have a face that will not shame Eshor. You are quiet and demure—you will be discreet.”

“I will not do it! It is not right!” To marry the man she loved in the name of another woman, to show her face to the man who thought her long dead, to endanger his kingdom and her life by showing him a Taina had survived and entered his domain, it was—all of it—impossible.

“It is perfectly legal. Marriage by proxy is a long-standing tradition. I will reward you handsomely for your trouble.”

As she had defied the high king, so Maleen defied this princess. With her proudest bearing, Maleen looked the princess in the eye. “I will not do it. You have no right to command me. You will find another.”

“If I do,” the princess said, “there is an agent of the Oprien empire in the marketplace who will be glad to know the king of Montane harbors a fugitive from Taina.”

Maleen’s blood ran cold.

The princess smirked—a cat with a mouse in its claws. “If you serve me in this, no one ever need know of your heritage. I will even spare your red-haired friend. Do we have a bargain?”

Maleen bowed her head and rasped, “I am your servant, your highness.”

*

That night in their shared quarters, Rilla kept Maleen from bolting.

“We must flee!” Maleen said. “She knows the truth! If we are gone before dawn—“

“She will alert the emperor’s agent and give our descriptions,” Rilla said. “Nowhere will be safe.”

“If Jarroth sees me!”

“Either he will recognize you, and you’ll have your long-awaited reunion, or he won’t, and you’ll be well rid of him.”

“He could hand me over to the emperor himself. He is king and has a duty—“

If you think him capable of that, you’re a fool for ever loving him.”

Maleen sank onto her cot, breathing heavily. Tears sprang from her eyes. “I can’t do it. I’m too afraid.”

“You’ve lived in fear for seven years. I should think you well-practiced in it by now.”

“Will you be quiet, Rilla?” Maleen snapped.

Rilla grinned.

But she sank down on the cot next to Maleen and took Maleen’s hands in hers. With surprising sincerity, she said, “We can’t control what will happen. That’s when we trust. Trust me. Trust heaven. Trust yourself. Trust Jarroth. All will be well, and if it’s not, we’ll face it as we’ve faced our other troubles. You survived seven years in a tower. You can face a single day.”

What choice did she have? What choice had she ever had? She loved Jarroth and would be there on his wedding day, dressed as his bride. What came next was up to him.

Maleen embraced Rilla. “What would I do without you?”

“Nothing very sensible, I’m sure.”

*

The bride’s gown was all white, silk and lace, with a high collar, full sleeves, and skirts that hid even her shoes. Eshoran fashions were well-suited for a Taina bride.

When she met Jarroth on the road to the church, he gasped at the sight of her. “My…”

“Yes?” Maleen asked, heart racing.

He shook his head. “Impossible.” Meeting her eyes, he said, “You remind me of a girl I once knew. Long dead, now.”

The resemblance was not great. Seven years had changed Maleen. She was thinner, paler, ravaged by near-starvation and hard living. She had matured so much she sometimes wondered if her soul was the same as the girl’s he’d known. Yet the way her heart raced at the sight of him suggested some deep part of her hadn’t changed at all.

Jarroth took her hand and they began the long walk to the church, flanked on both sides by crowds of his subjects. So many eyes. Maleen longed to hide.

She glanced at her sleeve, which moved every time Jarroth’s hand swung with hers. “Don’t show my markings,” she murmured desperately.

Jarroth glanced over in surprise. “Pardon?”

Maleen looked away. “Nothing.”

At the bridge before the cathedral—the city’s grandest, flanked by statues of mythical heroes—the winds over the river swirled Maleen’s skirts as she stepped onto the arched walkway.

“Please, oh please,” she prayed in a whisper, “don’t let the markings on my ankles show.”

At the door to the church, she and Jarroth ducked their heads beneath a bower of flowers. She felt the fabric of her collar move, and placed a hand desperately to her throat. “Please,” she prayed, “don’t let the flowers show.”

“Did you say something?” Jarroth asked.

Maleen rushed into the church.

She sat beside him through the wedding service—the day she’d dreamed of since she’d met him nearly ten years ago—crying, not for joy, but in terror and dismay. He had seen her face and did not know her. He believed her long dead. She was so changed he did not suspect the truth, and she didn’t dare to tell him. Now she wed him as a stranger, in another woman’s name.

When the priest declared them man and wife, Maleen dissolved into tears. He took her to the waiting carriage and brought her to the palace as his bride. Maleen could not bear it. She claimed fatigue and dashed in the princess’ chambers as quickly as she could.

She threw the gown, the jewels, the petticoats on the floor beside the bed of the smiling princess. “It is done,” she said. “I owe you no more.”

“You have done well,” the princess said. “But don’t go far. I may have need of you tonight.”

*

That evening, Rilla wanted every detail of the wedding—the service, the flowers, the gown, and most of all, Jarroth’s reaction.

“You mean you didn’t tell him?” she scolded. “After he suspected?”

“How could I? In front of those crowds?”

“You’ll just leave him to that woman?”

“He chose that woman, Rilla.”

“But he married you.”

He had. It should have been the happiest moment of her life. But it was the end of all her hopes.

After dark, a maid summoned Maleen to a dressing room in the princess’ suite. The princess—queen now, Maleen realized—sat before a mirror, adjusting her customary purple veils. “You will remain here, in case I have need of you.”

The hatred Maleen felt in that moment rivaled anything Rilla had ever expressed. Not only did this woman force her to marry her beloved in her place—now she had to play witness to their wedding night.

The princess stepped into the dim bedchamber—her ankle as strong as anyone’s—leaving Maleen alone in the dark. It felt like the tower all over again—only without Rilla for support.

What a fool the princess was! She couldn’t wear the veil forever—Jarroth would see her face eventually.

There were murmurs in the outer room—Maleen recognized Jarroth’s deep tones.

A moment later, the princess scurried back into the dressing room. She hissed in Maleen’s ear, “What did you say on the path to the church?”

On the path?

Her stomach sank at the memory. She could say only the truth—but the princess wouldn’t like it. “My sleeve was moving. I prayed my markings wouldn’t show.”

Another moment alone in the dark. Another murmur from without, then another question from the princess. “What did you say at the bridge?”

“I prayed the markings on my ankle wouldn’t show.”

The princess cursed and returned to the bedchamber.

When she came back a moment later, Maleen swore the woman’s eyes sparked angrily in the dark. “What did you say at the church door?”

“I prayed the flowers on my neck wouldn’t show.”

The princess promised a million retributions, then returned to the bedroom.

The next time the door opened, Jarroth loomed in the threshold, a lantern in his hand. His eyes were wild—with anger or terror or wild hope, Maleen couldn’t begin to guess.

He held the lantern before her face. “Show me your wrists.”

Maleen rolled up her sleeves and showed the dots and dashes that marked the friendships of her life.

“Show me your ankles.”

She lifted her skirts to reveal the swirling patterns that marked her coming-of-age.

“Show me,” he said, his eyes blazing with undeniable hope, “the markings around your neck.”

She unbuttoned the collar to show the pink flowers of their betrothal.

The lantern clattered to the floor. Jarroth gathered her in his arms and pressed kisses on her brow. “My Maleen! I thought you dead!”

“I live,” Maleen said, laughing and crying with joy.

“And Rilla?” he asked.

“Downstairs.”

He put his head out the door and called for a maid to bring Rilla to the chambers. Then he called for guards to make sure his furious foreign bride did not leave the room.

Then he and Maleen began to share their stories of seven lost years.

*

The pockmarked princess glared at Jarroth and Maleen in the sunlit bedchamber. “You are sending me back to Eshor?”

“I have already wed a bride,” Jarroth said. “I have no need of another.”

The princess spat, “The emperor will be furious when he knows the king of Montane has wed a Taina bride.”

“Let him hear of it,” Jarroth said. “Let him go to war if he dares it. The people of Taina are always welcome in my realm.”

Jarroth played politics better than Rilla could. A threat had no power over one who did not fear it, and Eshor risked losing valuable trade if Montane fell to war with Oprien. The princess never spoke a word.

*

Maleen wandered the kitchen gardens with Rilla and Jarroth, luxuriating in the fragrance of the herbs and the safety of their love and friendship.

“Is this wise?” Maleen asked. “To put all the people at risk over me?”

“Over all the people of Taina,” Jarroth said. “My father was monstrous to tolerate it.”

“We will have to tread carefully,” Rilla said. “No need to provoke the emperor. No need to reveal his bride's heritage too soon."

"We can be discreet," Jarroth said. "But what shall we do with you, Lady Rilla?”

Rilla bowed her head in the subservient stance she’d learned as a kitchen maid—but there was a sparkle of mirth in her eyes. “If it pleases your majesties, I will remain near the queen, who I am bound by friendship to serve.”

Maleen took her friend’s hand and said, “I would have you nowhere else.”

#the bookshelf progresses #fairy tale retellings #maid maleen #four loves fairy tale challenge #four loves fairy tale challenge 2024 #theme: philia #theme: eros #story: complete #i set myself the challenge of writing this today and it got out of hand #no time for revising #you can probably pinpoint the spot where i started running out of time #so be it

[queenlucythevaliant]

Clad in Justice and Worth

Written for the Inklings Challenge 2023 (@inklings-challenge). Inspired by the lives of Jeanne d'Albret and Marguerite de Navarre, although numerous liberties have been taken with the history in the name of introducing fantastical elements and telling a good story. The anglicization of names (Jeanne to Joan and Marguerite to Margaret) is meant to reflect the fictionalization of these figures.

The heat was unbearable, and it would grow only hotter as they descended into the lowlands. It was fortunate, Joan decided, that Navarre was a mountain country. It was temperate, even cold there in September. It would be sweltering by the sea.

The greater issue ought to have been the presence of Monluc, who would cut Joan’s party off at the Garonne River most like. The soldiers with whom she traveled were fierce, but Monluc had an entire division at the Garrone. Joan would be a prisoner of war if Providence did not see her through. Henry, perhaps, might suffer worse. He might be married to a Catholic princess.

Yet Joan was accustomed to peril. She had cut her teeth on it. Her first act as queen, some twenty years ago, had been to orchestrate the defense of her kingdom, and she was accustomed to slipping through nets and past assassins. The same could not be said of the infernal heat, which assaulted her without respite. Joan wore sensible travel clothing, but the layers of her skirts were always heavy with sweat. A perpetual tightness sat in her chest, the remnant of an old bout with consumption, and however much she coughed it would not leave.

All the same, it would not do to seem less than strong, so she hid the coughing whenever she could. The hovering of her aides was an irritant and she often wished she could just dismiss them all.

“How fare you in the heat, Majesty?”

“I have war in my gut, Clemont,” Joan snapped. “Worry not for me. If you must pester someone, pester Henry.”

He nodded, chastened. “A messenger is here from Navarre. Sent, I suspect, to induce you to return hence.”

“I would not listen to his birdcalls.”

“Young Henry said much the same.”

Joan stuffed down her irritation that Clemont had gone to Henry before he’d come to her. She was still queen, even if her son was rapidly nearing his majority. “Tell him that if the Huguenot leaders are to be plucked, I think it better that we all go together. Tell him that I would rather my son and I stand with our brothers than await soldiers and assassins in our little kingdom.”

Her aide gave a stiff nod. “At once, your Majesty.”

She would breathe easier when they reached the host at La Rochelle. Yet then, there would be more and greater work to do. There would be war, and Joan would be at the head of it.

*

When she awoke in the night, Joan knew at once that something was awry. It was cool. Gone was the blistering heat that had plagued them all day. Perhaps one of the kidnapping plots had finally succeeded.

Certainly, it seemed that way. She was in a cell, cool and dank and no more than six paces square. And yet—how strange! —the door was open.

Rising unsteadily to her feet, Joan crept towards the shaft of moonlight that fell through it. She glanced about for guards, but saw only a single prisoner in dirty clothes standing just beyond the threshold. He was blinking rapidly, as though the very existence of light bewildered him. Then, as Joan watched, he crept forward towards the gate of the jailhouse and out into the free air beyond. Joan listened for a long moment, trying to hear if there was any commotion at the prisoner’s emergence. When she could perceive none, she followed him out into the cool night air.

A lantern blazed. “Come quickly,” a voice hissed. “Our friend the Princess is waiting.”

The prisoner answered in a voice too quiet for Joan to hear. Then, quite suddenly, she heard his companion say, “Who is it that there behind you?”

The prisoner turned round, and Joan’s fingers itched towards her hidden knife. But much to her astonishment, he exclaimed, “Why, it is the lady herself! Margaret!”

But Joan had no opportunity to reply. Voices sounded outside her pavilion and she awoke to the oppressive heat of the day before. Coughing hard, Joan rolled ungracefully from her bed and tried to put away the grasping tendrils of her dream.

“The river is dry, Majesty” her attendant informed her as soon as she emerged from her pavilion, arrayed once again in sensible riding clothes. “The heat has devoured it. We can bypass Monluc without trouble, I deem.”

“Well then,” Joan replied, stifling another cough. “Glory to God for the heat.”

*

They did indeed pass Monluc the next day, within three fingers of his nose. Joan celebrated with Henry and the rest, yet all the while her mind was half taken up with her dream from the night before. Never, in all her life, had her mind conjured so vivid a sensory illusion. It had really felt cool in that jail cell, and the moonlight beyond it had been silver and true. Stranger still, the prisoner and his accomplice had called Joan by her mother’s name.

Joan had known her mother only a little. At the age of five, she had been detained at the French court while her mother returned to Navarre. This was largely on account of her mother’s religious convictions. Margaret of Angoulême had meddled too closely with Protestantism, so her brother the king had seen fit to deprive her of her daughter and raise her a Catholic princess.

His successor had likewise stolen Henry from Joan, for despite the king’s best efforts she was as Protestant as her mother. Yet unlike Margaret, Joan had gone back for her child. Two years ago, she had secretly swept Henry away from Paris on horseback. She’d galloped the horses nearly to death, but she’d gotten him to the armed force waiting at the border, and then at last home to Navarre. Sometimes, Joan wondered why her own mother had not gone to such lengths to rescue her. But Margaret’s best weapons had been tears, it was said, and tears could not do the work of sharp swords.

The Navarre party arrived at La Rochelle just before dusk on the twenty-eighth of September. The heat had faltered a little, to everyone’s great relief, but the air by the sea was still heavy with moisture. The tightness in Joan’s chest persisted.

“There will be much celebration now that you have come, Your Majesty,” said the boy seeing to her accommodations. “There’s talk of giving you the key to the city, and more besides.”

Sure enough, Joan was greeted with applause when she entered the Huguenot council. “I and my son are here to promote the success of our great cause or to share in its disaster,” she said when the council quieted. “I have been reproached for leaving my lands open to invasion by Spain, but I put my confidence in God who will not suffer a hair of our heads to perish. How could I stay while my fellow believers were being massacred? To let a man drown is to commit murder.”

*

Sometimes it seemed that the men only played at war. The Duke of Conde, who led the Huguenot forces, treated it as a game of chivalry between gentlemen. Others, like Monluc, regarded it as a business; the mercenaries he hired robbed and raped and brutalized, and though be bemoaned the cruelty he did nothing to curtail it.

There were sixty-thousand refugees pouring into the city. Joan was not playing at war. When she rose in the mornings, she put poultices on her chest, then went to her office after breaking her fast. There was much to do. She administered the city, attended councils of war, and advised the synod. In addition, she was still queen of Navarre, and was required to govern her own kingdom from afar.

In the afternoons, she often met with Beza to discuss matters of the church, or else with Conde, to discuss military matters. Joan worked on the city’s fortifications, and in the evenings she would ride out to observe them. Henry often joined her on these rides; he was learning the art of war, and he seemed to have a knack for it.

“A knack is not sufficient,” Joan told him. “Anyone can learn to fortify a port. I have learned, and I am a woman.”

“I know it is not sufficient,” the boy replied. “I must commit myself entirely to the cause of our people, and of Our Lord. Is that not what you were going to tell me?”   

“Ah, Henry, you know me too well. I am glad of it. I am glad to see you bear with strength the great and terrible charge which sits upon your shoulders.”

“How can I help being strong? I have you for a mother.”

At night, Joan fell into bed too exhausted for dreams.

*

Yet one night, she woke once again to find her chest loose and her breathing comfortable. She stood in a hallway which she recognized at once. She was at the Château de Fontainebleau, the place of her birth, just beyond the door to the king’s private chambers.

“Oh please, Francis, please. You cannot really mean to send him to the stake!” The voice on the other side of the door was female, and it did not belong to the queen.

A heavy sigh answered it. “I mean to do just that, ma mignonne. He is a damned heretic, and a rabble-rouser besides. Now, sister, don’t cry. If there’s one thing I cannot bear, it is your weeping.”

At those words, a surge of giddiness, like lightning, came over Joan’s whole body. It was her own mother speaking to the king. She was but a few steps away and they were separated only by a single wooden door.

“He is my friend, Francis. Do you say I should not weep for my friends?”

A loud harumph. “A strange thing, Margaret. Your own companions told me that you have never met the man.”

“Does such a triviality preclude friendship? He is my brother in Our Lord.”  

“And I am your true brother, and your king besides.”

“And as you are my brother—” here, Margaret’s voice cracked with overburdening emotion. She was crying again, Joan was certain. “As you are my brother, you must grant me this boon. Do not harm those I love, Francis.”

The king did not respond, so Joan drew nearer to the door. A minute later, she leapt backwards when it opened. There stood her mother, not old and sick as Joan had last seen her twenty years before, but younger even than Joan herself.

“If you’ve time to stand about listening at doors, then you are not otherwise employed,” Margaret said, wiping her tears from her face with the back of her hand. “I am going to visit a friend. You shall accompany me.”

Looking down at herself, Joan realized that her mother must have mistaken her for one of Fountainbleu’s many ladies-in-waiting. She was in her night clothes, which was really a simple day dress such as a woman might wear to a provincial market. Joan did not sleep in anything which would hinder her from acting immediately, should the city be attacked in the middle of the night. 

“As you wish, Majesty,” Joan replied with a curtsey. Margaret raised an eyebrow, and instantly Joan corrected herself: “Your Highness.”

Margaret stopped at her own rooms to wrap herself in a plain, hooded cloak. “What is your name?” she asked.

“Joan, your Highness.”

“Well, Joan. As penance for eavesdropping, you shall keep your own counsel with regards to our errand. Is that clear?”

“Yes, your Highness,” Joan replied stiffly. Any fool could see what friend Margaret intended to visit, and Joan wished she could think of a way to cut through the pretense.

When Margaret arrived at the jail with Joan in tow, the warden greeted her almost like a friend. “You are here to see the heretic, Princess? Shall I fetch you a chair?”

“Yes, Phillip. And a lantern, if you would.”

The cell was nearly identical to the one which Joan had dreamed on the road to La Rochelle. Inside sat a man with sparse gray hair covering his chin. Margaret’s chair was placed just outside the cell, but she brushed past it. She handed the lantern to Joan and knelt down in the cell beside the prisoner.

“I was told that I had a secret friend in the court,” he said. “I see now that she is an angel.”

“No angel, monsieur Faber. I am Margaret, and this is my lady, Joan. I have come to see to your welfare, as best I am able.”

Now, Margaret’s hood fell back, and all at once she looked every inch the Princess of France. Yet her voice was small and choked when she said, “Will you do me the honor of praying with me?”

Margaret was already on her knees, but she lowered herself further. She rested one hand lightly on Faber’s knee, and after a moment, he took it. Her eyes fluttered closed. In the dim light, Joan thought she saw tears starting down her mother’s cheek.

When she woke in the morning, Joan could still remember her mother’s face. There were tears in her hazelnut eyes, and a weeping quiver in her voice.

*

Winter came, and Joan’s coughing grew worse. There was blood in it now, and occasionally bits of feathery flesh that got caught in her throat and made her gag. She hid it in her handkerchief.

“Winter battles are ugly,” Conde remarked one morning as Christmas was drawing near. “If the enemy is anything like gentlemen, they will not attack until spring. And yet, I think, we must stand at readiness.”

“By all means,” Joan replied. “Anything less than readiness would be negligence.”

Conde chuckled, not unkindly. “For all your strength and skill, madame, it is obvious that you were not bred for command. No force can be always at readiness. It would kill the men as surely as the sword. ‘Tis not negligence to celebrate the birth of Our Lord, for instance.”

Joan nodded curtly, but did not reply.

As the new year began, the city was increasingly on edge. There was frequent unrest among the refugees, and the soldiers Joan met when she rode the fortifications nearly always remarked that an attack would come soon.

Then, as February melted into March, word came from Admiral Coligny that his position along the Guirlande Stream had been compromised. The Catholic vanguard was swift approaching, and more Huguenot forces were needed. By the time word reached Joan in the form of a breathless young page outside her office, Conde was already assembling the cavalry. Joan made for the Navarre quarter at once, as fast as her lungs and her skirts would let her.

The battle was an unmitigated disaster. The Huguenots arrived late, and in insufficient numbers. Their horses were scattered and their infantry routed, and the bulk of their force was forced back to Cognac to regroup. As wounded came pouring in, Joan went to the surgical tents to make herself useful.

The commander La Noue’s left arm had been shattered and required amputation. Steeling herself, Joan thought of Margaret’s tearstained cheeks as she knelt beside Faber. “Commander La Noue,” she murmured, “Would it comfort you if I held your other hand?”

“That it would, Your Majesty,” the commander replied. So, as the surgeon brandished his saw, Joan gripped the commander’s hand tight and began to pray. She let go only once, to cover her mouth as she hacked blood into her palm. It blended in easily with the carnage of the field hospital.

Yet it was not till after the battle was over that Joan learned the worst of it. “His Grace, General Conde is dead,” her captain told her in her tent that evening. “He was unseated in the battle. They took him captive, and then they shot him. Unarmed and under guard! Why, as I speak these words, they are parading his corpse through the streets of Jarnac.”

“So much for chivalry,” murmured Joan, trying to ignore the memories of Conde’s pleasant face chuckling, calling her skilled and strong.

“We will need to find another Prince of the Blood to champion our cause,” her captain continued. “Else the army will crumble. If there’s to be any hope for Protestantism in France, we had better produce one with haste. Admiral Coligny will not serve. He’s tried to rally the men, to no avail. In fact, he has bid me request that you make an attempt on the morn.”

“Henry will lead.”

“Henry? Why, he’s only a boy!”

Joan shook her head. “He is nearly a man, Captain, and he’s a keen knack for military matters. He trained with Conde himself, and he saw to the fortification of La Rochelle at my side. He is strong, which matters most of all. If it’s a Prince of the Blood the army requires, Henry will serve.”

“As you say, Majesty,” said her captain with a bow. “But it’s not me you will have to convince.”

*

Joan settled in for a sleepless night. Her captain was correct that she would need to persuade the Huguenot forces well, if they were to swear themselves to Henry. So, she would speak. Joan would rally their courage, and then she would present them with her son and see if they would follow him.

Page after page she wrote, none of it any good. Eloquence alone would not suffice; Joan’s words had to burn in men’s chests. She needed such words as she had never spoken before, and she needed them by morning.  

By three o’clock, Joan’s pages were painted with blood. Her lungs were tearing themselves to shreds in her chest, and the proof was there on the paper beside all her insufficient words. She almost hated herself then. Now, when circumstance required of her greater strength than ever before, all Joan’s frame was weakness and frailty.

An hour later, she fell asleep.

When Joan’s eyes fluttered open, she knew at once where she was. Why, these were her own rooms at home in Navarre! Sunlight flooded through her own open windows and drew ladders of light across Joan’s very own floor. Her bed sat in the corner, curtains open. Her dressing room and closet were just there, and her own writing desk—

There was a figure at Joan’s writing desk. Margaret. She looked up.

“My Joan,” she said. It started as a sigh, but it turned into a sob by the end. “My very own Joan, all grown up. How tired you look.” 

The words seemed larger than themselves somehow. They were Truth and Beauty in capital letters, illuminated red and gold. Something in Joan’s chest seized; something other than her lungs. 

“How do you know me, mother?”

“How could I not? I have been parted from you of late, yet your face is more precious to me than all the kingdoms of the earth.”

“Oh.” And then, because she could not think of anything else to say, Joan asked, “What were you writing, before I came in?”’

“Poetry.” Joan made a noise in her throat. “You disapprove?” asked her mother.

“No, not at all. Would that I had time for such sweet pursuits. I have worn myself out this night writing a war speech. It cannot be poetry, mother. It must be wine. It must–” then, without preamble, Joan collapsed into a fit of coughing. At once, her mother was on her feet, handkerchief in hand. She pressed it to Joan’s mouth, all the while rubbing circles on her back as she coughed and gagged. When the handkerchief came away at last, it was stained red.

“What a courageous woman you are,” Margaret whispered into her hair. “Words like wine for the soldiers, and yourself spitting blood. Will you wear pearls or armor when you address them?”

“I will address them on horseback in the field,” answered Joan with a rasp. “I would have them see my strength.”

Her mother’s dark eyes flickered then. Margaret looked at her daughter, come miraculously home to her against the will of the king and the very flow of time itself. She was not a large woman, but she held herself well. She stood brave and tall, though no one had asked it of her. 

Her own dear daughter did not have time for poetry. Margaret regretted that small fact so much that it came welling up in her eyes.  “And what of your weakness, child? Will you let anyone see that?”

Joan reached out and caught her mother’s tears. Her fingertips were harder than Margaret’s were. They scratched across the sensitive skin below her eyes.

“Did I not meet you like this once before? You are the same Joan who came with me to the jail in Paris once. I did not know you then. I had not yet borne you.”

“Yes, the very same. We visited a Monsieur Faber, I believe. What became of that poor man?”

Margaret sighed. She crossed back over to the desk to fall back into her seat, and in a smaller voice she said, “My brother released him, for a time. And then, when I was next absent from Paris, he was arrested again and sent to the stake before I could return.”

“I saw you save another man, once. I do not know his name. How many prisoners did you save, mother?”

“Many. Not near enough. Not as many as those with whom I wept by lantern light.”

“Did the weeping do any good, I wonder.”

“Those who lived were saved by weeping. Those who died may have been comforted by it. It was the only thing I could give them, and so I must believe that Our Lord made good use of it.”

Joan shook her head. She almost wanted to cry too, then. The feeling surprised her. Joan detested crying.

“All those men freed from prison, yet you never came for me. Why?”

“Francis was determined. A choice between following Christ and keeping you near was no choice at all, though it broke my heart to make it.” 

If Joan shut her eyes, she could still remember the terror of the night she had rescued Henry. “You could have come with soldiers. You could have stolen me away in the night.” 

Margaret did not answer. The tears came faster now and her fair, queenly skin blossomed red. So many years would pass between the dear little girl she’d left in Paris and the stalwart woman now before her. She did not have time for poetry, but if Margaret had been allowed to keep her that would have been different. Joan should have had every poem under the sun. 

“Will you read it?” she asked, taking the parchment from her desk and pressing it into her daughter’s hands. “Will you grant me that boon?”

Slowly, almost numbly, Joan nodded. To Margaret’s surprise, she read aloud. 

“God has predestined His own

That they should be sons and heirs.

Drawn by gentle constraint

A zeal consuming is theirs.

They shall inherit the earth

Clad in justice and worth.”

“Clad in justice and worth,” she repeated, handing back the parchment. “It’s a good poem.”

“It isn’t finished,” replied her mother.

Joan laughed. “Neither is my speech. It must be almost morning now.”

As loving arms closed around her again, Joan wished to God that she could remain in Navarre with her mother. She knew that she and Margaret did not share a heart: her mother was tender like Joan could never be. Yet all the same, she wanted to believe that they had been forged by the same Christian hope and conviction. She wanted to believe that she, Joan, could free the prisoners too. 

She shut her eyes against her mother’s shoulder. When she opened them, she was back in her tent, with morning sun streaming in. 

*

She came before the army mounted on a horse with Henry beside her. Her words were like wine when she spoke. 

“When I, the queen, hope still, is it for you to fear? Because Conde is dead, is all therefore lost? Does our cause cease to be just and holy? No; God, who has already rescued you from perils innumerable, has raised up brothers-in-arms to succeed Conde.

Soldiers, I offer you everything in my power to bestow–my dominions, my treasures, my life, and that which is dearer to me than all, my son. I make here a solemn oath before you all, and you know me too well to doubt my word: I swear to defend to my last sigh the holy cause which now unites us, which is that of honor and truth.”

When she finished speaking, Joan coughed red into her hands. There was quiet for a long moment, and then a loud hurrah! went up along the lines. Joan looked out at the soldiers, and from the front she saw her mother standing there, with tears in her eyes. 

#inklingschallenge #inklings challenge #team tolkien #genre: time travel #theme: visiting the imprisoned #with a tiny little hint of #theme: visiting the sick #story: complete #so i like to read about the reformation in october when i can #when the teams were announced i was burning through a book on the women of the reformation and these two really reached out and grabbed me #Jeanne in particular. i was like 'it is so insane that this person is not more widely known.' #Protestantism has its very own badass Jeanne/Joan. as far as i'm concerned she should be as famous as Joan of Arc #so that was the basis for this story #somewhere along the line it evolved into a study on different kinds of feminine power #and also illness worked itself in there. go me #anyway. hopefully my catholic friends will give me a shot here in spite of the protestantism inherant in the premise #i didn't necessarily mean to go with something this strongly protestant as a result of the Catholic works of mercy themes #but i'm rather tickled that it worked out that way #on the other hand i know that i have people following me that know way more about the French Wars of Religion and the Huguenots than i do #hopefully there's enough verisimilitude here that it won't irritate you when i inevitably get things wrong #i think that covers all my bases #i am still not 100% content with how this turned out but i am at least happy enough to post it #and get in right under the wire. it's a couple hours before midnight still in my time zone #pontifications and creations #leah stories #i enjoy being a girl #the unquenchable fire

[gailyinthedark]

@inklings-challenge this is very late and extremely silly, but I wanted to poke fun at my life and also give a thank you to @siena-sevenwits and @gerbiloftriumph for boosting my mood during my own jello-related tribulations!

Translation

Humans were absurdly large. Hulking, even. No creature needed to take up so much space. They spread out, too, limbs and digits all over the place, not folded close to the body for efficiency in creeping.

This one didn’t look so well, even for a human. It lay limply on the bed (five goblins could fit in a bed that size, but humans were disinclined to sleep piled up) and by the smoky light of the oil lantern its face was an unappealing shade of beige-grey, its hair greasy. (Why have nerveless filaments on one’s head instead of a nice set of floppy ears, sensitive to sound and temperature and the shapes of underground spaces? It made no sense.)

“Hungry?” asked Borf, indicating the covered tray in his hands.

“Is it that orange stuff?” asked the human, as if its hunger or lack thereof depended on the answer. Which was ridiculous, but Borf decided to humour it. He pulled off the cloth with a flourish. The contents of the tray glowed amber in the oil-light, transparent and jiggling slightly.

The human looked iller.

“I think I’ll wait,” it murmured.

“It’s the same for supper,” said Borf helpfully. “And breakfast.”

“Blast,” said the human. Its voice was slightly higher in pitch than Borf’s own, which meant it was likely a she. “I hate that stuff.”

“They wouldn’t let me bring you the fermented fishtail soup,” said Borf. “Sorry.”

“That’s all right,” said the human, and sniffed loudly.

There was a chart of human sounds and their meanings in the refectory cavern. Borf reviewed it in his head. The sniffing sound meant either the human’s nasal passages were irritated or they were experiencing sorrow.

“Is it rhinitis?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t be in the hospital for that.”

“Right,” muttered Borf. It was hard to keep track of the different races and what might kill or merely inconvenience a given one, and he was only a porter, not a medic.

“You’re sad then,” he stated tentatively, checking his mental chart again.

“I'm fine," said the human. “Sorry. You can put the tray here if you like.”

She shoved at the pillows until she was sitting up. The goblin maneuvered the tray to rest on her lap. She poked at the blob and sniffed again. Borf turned to go, thinking of one occasion when, as a little goblet, he’d been caught out of the caverns overnight and had to sleep under a tree without the usual heap of other goblin-children to keep him company. His ears had been fairly purple with sorrow.

“Ah,” he said suddenly, turning back to see the human surveying a spoonful of orange goo with a disconsolate expression.

“What?” she asked, seeming glad of the distraction.

“Human ears are useless,” said Borf, and hopped back into the room and clambered up on the foot of the absurdly enormous bed. “So inexpressive. They should do something about it.”

“I’ll let them know,” said the human in question. “When I get out of here. It smells like parsley. Is it meant to do that?”

“They could try earrings in appropriate colours. Try not to think about the smell.”

She grimaced again, but the sniffing seemed to have stopped, which Borf guessed to be a good sign. He settled in, toes splayed on the blanket, elbows near his ankles, floppy ears resting comfortably on his knees.

“Tell me,” he said, as the human bravely swallowed a bite, “what is the evolutionary purpose of hair?”

#inklingschallenge #team tolkien #theme: visit the sick #theme: food #theme: goblins #theme: hospitals #story: complete #genre: secondary world

[lemonduckisnowawake]

Living Before the Edge

Okay wow. I did not expect to actually do the @inklings-challenge but I somehow did! This was so fun, as well, so many thanks to the organizers who created this! I was on Team Lewis and decided to take the more sci-fi-ish prompt (though I fear it's more fantastical regardless). I shouldn't have to give and content warnings but please let me know if you think I do!

_

“Are you lost—”

“meluAAAAAAAAAN!”

A sigh.

“Are you—”

“Meluan, where are you, you little brat?”

The voice is close.

“Are you lost in the—”

The door burst open, interrupting Meluan’s third attempt to record her advertisement. She swiveled on her chair to see a very irate Wynan standing at the entrance, one hand on the door to keep it open.

Meluan considered jumping out of the window into the deep expanse of space, but she was pretty certain that Meryan had installed safety locks to avoid that happening…again. Eh, she’d get past them like always, but Meryan’s inventions were getting a lot harder to reverse engineer these—

A smack on the head and the door creaking shut reminded her that she currently had company.

“Ach, what do you want? What do you want?!” Meluan complained, shaking her head and rolling back, her chair crashing against the desk and jostling all the equipment on top of it.

Wynan was still glaring, her deep violet-black eyes boring into Meluan’s displeased form.

“You’re such an idiot,” Wynan stated, as if it was a fact rather than an opinion, her gaze settling back into something more neutral and relieved. “Meryan and I have been calling and texting your phone for the last half-hour. Relani even went outside to look for you, thinking you’d thrown yourself out again.”

Meluan grumbled, rubbing her head where Wynan had smacked it and using her other hand to dig through her pockets to fish out the phone she’d put on mute. “I was fine. I left you guys a note in the kitchen…”

Her words trailed off as she fished out both a phone and a sticky note attached to the back that said, ‘Will be in the silent room. Get me in an hour if I don’t establish contact within then.’

She stared at the yellow piece of paper with black ink stains.

“Oh…whoops.” Her eyes flickered to Wynan, who rolled her eyes. “Hey!” Meluan protested the action. “I was fine! I was planning on leaving a note, see?” She waved her phone with the note still on it at her sister.

“Key word being planning, actual fact being that you worried the three of us sick by disappearing during the morning,” Wynan sighed, settling down on the other chair and taking out her own phone. “Anyway, what were you doing?” she asked conversationally, texting the Meryan and Relani that Meluan had been safely located.

“I was just recording an advertisement for our station,” Meluan explained, pocketing her phone and the note once again and gesturing to the recording equipment on the table. She tapped the mic, sending an echo bouncing within the silent room. “But why were you guys looking for me? I’m not usually up in what we’ve established as the morning.”

Wynan raised an eyebrow at the first statement but didn’t comment, instead choosing to answer, “We have a new guest.”

Oh.

Meluan hopped out of her chair, remembering to switch off the mic. “Right, sorry…” she winced, fetching her jacket. “Lead the way.”

And lead the way Wynan did, going through the hallway of their space station, dramatically nicknamed the Abode Before the Void, then the A-Void, thanks to Meluan. It was a rather small station—not really a station at all, actually.

A-Void was a three-story house, to put it simply. It had a few extra features, such as a rocket engine and some additional parts that made it more…rocketish/stationish. But when one lost in the deep abyss of space would find it, their first comment would likely be and astonished, “Well, what’s a house doing floating at the edge of space?” When going inside A-Void, the same person would probably continue to be astonished on how it looked like a completely ordinary home with completely ordinary rooms, save for two, inhabited by completely ordinary-looking women.

When Wynan and Meluan found their way to the living room, they indeed found one such astonished person sitting on the sofa, blanket around them and steaming mug of one of Meryan’s concoctions on the coffee table in front.

“Welcome to the place you should A-Void!” Meluan exclaimed by way of greeting, sliding down the banister and bouncing up to land lightly on the coffee table.

While the figure in front of her did jump at her sudden entrance, the drink amazingly did not.

“Off the table, Meluan,” a new voice spoke up.

Both the figure wrapped in the blanket and Melun looked up to see a smiling woman with round glasses coming from the door. She carried a tray full of biscuits and cakes, which she promptly set on the table once Meluan had jumped off it.

“Sorry, Meryan,” Meluan muttered, not sounding sorry at all as she grinned impishly at their guest.

The figure swallowed, their eyes flitting from Meluan and Meryan.

“So sorry to keep you waiting,” Wynan spoke up, settling behind the sofa. When the figure flinched at her voice, jolting to look at her, Wynan added more carefully, “…would you care to give us a name?”

The figure swallowed, opening their mouth before closing it, hanging their head.

Meluan and Wynan exchanged a glance.

“Ah, can’t speak?” Meluan guessed, staring at the person, trying to get a better read when they nodded, confirming Meluan’s guess.

At first glance, the figure seemed to be a rather short and scrawny man, with dark brown hair closely cropped and sharp almond-shaped eyes. Their skin was about a shade darker than Relani’s but lighter than Wynan’s, and though their hunched posture was not very impressive, the knives they had strapped in multiple places and the muscles carefully hidden under their concerningly sheer sleeves—almost covered by the blanket—were not missed. Also not to be missed, Meluan noted, were their prominent tapered ears decorated with rather intricate earrings.

“Uh, don’t hate me for this but are you a man?” Meluan decided on blathering, sensing their discomfort at her staring.

Their guest blinked and rather guiltily nodded before grimacing at Meluan’s nonjudgmental gaze and quickly shook their head.

“…woman?”

A pause before they nodded, not really meeting Meluan’s eyes.

“Do you want to write down your story? Would you rather sign? Meryan here knows all the languages in the multi—er, world,” Meluan continued easily, taking a seat on the coffee table and smiling at their guest.

Their guest hesitated before slowly taking out her arms. “…who…are you? All of you.”

Fortunately, the sign language was one all three present knew. Given that, Meryan and Wynan stayed silent, letting Meluan do all the talking.

“Us? Uh…well, that’s difficult. You could say we’re sisters—we have another one but she’s currently outside,” Meluan answered, leaning back and looking up to the ceiling. Thinking about it some more, she returned her gaze to their guest. “I mean, our living situation is odd but we’re not anyone you should know, you know? But what about you? Do you have a name?”

The guest hesitated before signing the symbols for “solar eclipse.”

Wynan and Meluan both glanced at Meryan, unable to parse the language from the signs. For her part, Meryan took a seat on the rocking chair, frowning.

“Your name is…Sinnelia?” she tried and received an eager nod. Meryan smiled. “That’s a lovely name.”

The beam Sinnelia gave back to Meryan transformed her hesitant and somewhat pinched features into something softer, rather…adorable, too, despite her height. Actually…

“One moment, Sinnelia. You don’t have to answer this if it makes you uncomfortable,” Meluan broke in, tilting her head in suspicious curiosity. “But you’re…not a man or woman, are you? You’re a child, a girl.”

Sinnelia froze, whipping her head at Meluan, her brown eyes widening in fear.

“Woah, no need to look so afraid of us,” Meluan soothed, tapping the table. “We’re at the edge of the universe. And there’s no reason for us to send you back to wherever you came from. You’re a guest here, and you can run away from here at any time, too…though, uh, please at least steal some provisions from us first. And preferably a space suit.”

While Meluan’s words managed to take the edge of Sinnelia’s skittishness, she still looked tense. And also confused.

Wynan sighed. “Ignore her, Sinnelia. She doesn’t know what she’s saying half the time.”

“Well, it’s true,” Meluan protested, making a face at Wynan before her expression morphed back into something friendlier for the wide-eyed Sinnelia. “Don’t listen to her either, dear. Wynan’s just cranky because I caused some trouble.”

“If I was cranky every time you caused trouble, I’d be perpetually in a bad mood.”

“Are you not?”

A loud sigh from the stairway leading to the living room interrupted their argument. “Children, don’t fight,” Relani’s quiet soprano voice chided them.

Sinnelia jumped at the new voice, turning to see the other women’s dark-haired “oldest” sister in a space suit. When Relani caught Sinnelia’s gaze, she gave her a kind smile. “Welcome to our humble home.”

“And that’s Relani, our oldest sister,” Meluan explained to Sinnelia, handing her the still-steaming drink before the child could huddle back into the blanket.

Sinnelia took it, gratefully sipping the warm liquid and blinking at the pleasant taste. That was Meryan’s specific kind of magic for you.

“And our guest is called Sinnelia,” Meluan introduced. “Happy to see you back, Relani! How was space?”

The flat look Relani gave Meluan was response enough, and Meluan took that as permission to focus on their guest again. “Sooo…Sinnelia. Again, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. But what brings you to the edge of the universe?”

Sinnelia stopped drinking, the mug still in her mouth before she set it down and looked down at her lap, her hands tightly clasped together there.

“You don’t want to tell us? That’s fine,” Meluan waved off, nodding with a look that one would call smug if it wasn’t so full of mischief.

When Sinnelia looked up at her, she laughed. “I’m serious.” Meluan gestured at the other women and herself. “Again, we have no reason to probe about your life story, though you’re welcome to probe us about us! We love talking.”

“You love talking,” Wynan corrected while Meryan and Relani laughed. But her expression softened somewhat when Sinnelia stared at her. “But she’s not wrong. You must be feeling overwhelmed, after all, lost in space and now suddenly having four people be loud around you. We’re always happy to answer any more questions you have.”

Slowly unfurling her fingers from their tight grip, Sinnelia looked up, blinking at Wynan and Relani behind her before her eyes traced the line between Meryan and Meluan, settling at the last woman.

Lifting her fingers, she carefully asked, “What…is this place? I thought…there was nothing at the edge of the universe.”

Meluan laughed, throwing her arms out and almost hitting Meryan. “This place? This is the Abode Before the Void—”

“That’s the best name we have so far,” Wynan supplied.

“—it’s a…resting stop, if you want,” Meluan continued as if uninterrupted, tapping her fingers against the wood again. “It can also be a place to resupply, a place to talk, a place for…anything, really. Because you’re right that there’s nothing at the edge of universe, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something before it.” Her sparkling dark eyes softened as she met Sinnelia’s brown ones. “And, you know…it can also be a home.”

Sinnelia blinked. “Is it…your home?”

All four residents of said home nodded as Meluan chirped, “Yep! It used to just be Meryan’s home here, then Wynan’s, then Relani’s, and finally mine. We weren’t always sisters but…the relationship kind of built from there.”

Meryan’s eyebrows went up at the comment. “Uh huh…don’t listen to her, Sinnelia. It was actually Meluan here first.”

Meluan glanced sideways at her sister. “Well, perhaps, but I said it was your home first. It was never my home until all three of you were here.”

At those words, Meryan and Relani’s eyes almost instantly teared up, and even Wynan looked away.

“Meluan…” Relani sniffed, skirting around the sofa to crush said woman in a hug.

“Argh, get off, Relaniiiii! What did I do this time?!” Meluan protested, startled at the sudden display of emotion from the other ladies. “Sorry, sorry, Sinnelia!” she sputtered, looking over Relani’s shoulder at the girl. “They’re all so sensitive, honestly, and I always make them cry—ouch! Too tight, Relani…”

“Sorry,” Relani unrepentantly apologized, letting the shorter woman go, turning to smile at Sinnelia. “Do you want a hug as well?”

Sinnelia startled and shook her head, blushing at the offer. “I see that you’re all very close…” she quickly commented. There was something almost longing in her gaze, a story untold before she shook it off, adding, “But I still don’t understand this place.”

Still behind her, Wynan crossed her arms over the sofa’s backrest, humming in thought. “Well, I’m not sure how to explain this,” she pondered. “It’s like Meluan said. It’s an abode at the edge of the universe…and anyone who finds this place can do whatever they want. Stay, leave, rest, even attempt to destroy it.”

There was a knowing smile exchanged between all four women at the last words that seemed to bewilder the poor child.

“Preferably don’t destroy it. I’m rather fond of this place, not that it can be easily destroyed,” Meryan added, grinning mischievously as she took a biscuit from the plate. She broke half of it and offered it to Sinnelia, who took it after some hesitation.

“Just know,” Meryan continued between bites of the bready pastry, “we’re very serious in telling you that you’re welcome to stay here as long as you need. Or want.”

Setting her treat back on the plate, Sinnelia stared at Meryan, her hand gestures small and tense as she asked, “I’m not…intruding?”

“Of course not. This house is always open to anyone who needs a home for the time being,” the bespectacled woman assured. Her eyes falling on Meluan, who was stacking the cookies while Relani was carefully rescuing them from breaking, she added, “And to anyone who ever needs to come back.”

“You couldn’t intrude on us if you tried,” Relani agreed. “Besides, didn’t Wynan and Meryan bring you here?”

They had, in fact, and while neither Relani nor Meluan had been present, they could guess that they had saved the poor child from the emptiness of space. The somewhat healthier state they saw Sinnelia in right now was probably due to Meryan’s particular touch on the drinks. After Wynan used her own touch to give the girl a restful sleep, and Relani whipped up some of her special food, she’d likely be in tiptop health.

But the child didn’t know any of that.

She merely nodded at Relani’s observation, her shoulders relaxing from the tension they’d been locked in. And looking back at Wynan, Sinnelia signed clearly to her, “Thank you for helping me when I was going to die…I suppose…I didn’t really want to die, given how grateful I am to be alive.”

“And thank goodness that you’re alive,” Meryan quietly muttered, rocking back and forth quietly. “I hope you don’t ever feel so burned and trapped that you believe you must flee to the cold edge of the universe to find healing.”

“Mhmm,” Wynan agreed, smiling when Sinnelia’s head jerked back forwards to gape at Meryan. “I’m just glad we found you when we did.”

Tears began to form in Sinnelia’s eyes.

Clearly, they had touched a sensitive area.

“Oh, woah! Ladies, keep the sappiness down a bit!” Meluan stammered, back on her feet. “There, there, Sinnelia, don’t cry. Or, no…just let it out. You’re all right to cry here.”

And she did…crying silent tears, head lowered and one arm covering her face. Wynan rubbed the girl’s back soothingly while Relani went to the kitchen to fetch some of her more savory treats and warm up more of Meryan’s drinks.

When Sinnelia had collected herself, however, she looked up at them all, eyes rimmed with red and looking more and more like the child Meluan had earlier noted she was. “I’m sorry,” she managed shakily. “I just…am scared that this is a dream.”

“No, no…dreaming is for sleeping—oof,” Meluan sputtered when Wynan threw a pillow at her face.

“There’s no real way to tell if this is a dream, true, except for our assurances that this is very real,” Wynan offered the girl. “But there’s nothing to be scared of here.”

That only set off more tears, though they seemed tears of relief.

“Unless you want to be scared! But again, if you want to run, at least steal some of our stuff before heading back out—ach, Meryan!” Meluan gagged when the other woman unexpectedly grabbed her in a chokehold.

Meryan chuckled. “Enough, Meluan, you’re confusing the poor girl, and she seems confused enough already.”

Tentatively, Sinnelia wiped her eyes as she offered the two of them a smile. “I’m…all right. And…if it’s all right, can I stay? Just for a little bit. I know I’m asking a lot when you don’t know me but I…want to stay.”

“Of course,” Relani laughed, offering the girl one of the more savory cold pastries. “I wish we could explain better what this place is, but for now, if you know that you’re allowed to stay here at this Abode Before the Void and rest, that’s enough.”

And after another drink from the mug, Sinnelia took the pastry, watery eyes shining.

…………

“Are you lost at the edge of the universe? Have you reached the final frontier and realized you want to go beyond? Well, my friends traversing this cold emptiness, my fellow lost ones who have wondered if going beyond to the void and emptiness is better than wandering this eternal frost…before you decide to take that step across the edge of your universe, won’t you consider sharing a meal with four rather bored personages? Our company may be wanting but our home and food should hopefully be enough to make up for it. And you won’t even have to look for us either. We’re more than happy to find you if you so wish. And anyway…”

A merry little laugh interrupts the cheerfully dramatic monologue.

“Our home is always right there before the edge of the universe. Feel free to come in.”

#inklingschallenge #team lewis #genre: space travel #theme: shelter #i suppose food and drink and a touch of visiting the sick as well? #story: complete #for the words! #lemon duck quacks #i hope i got the story posting format right for tumblr.... #anyway christian themes in spaaaace! woohoo! #lemon duck tales

[lover-of-the-starkindler]

Look to the Birds of the Air

Inklings Challenge 2023 Team Chesterton: Intrusive Fantasy

A quiet day for mother and son may be more than it seems

Look to the Birds of the Air @inklings-challenge

by Meltintalle

It was a quiet day. A cloudy day, with the world muffled in a soft gray cloak, and tiny bits of moisture flecking the grass. Thousands of worlds were reflected in miniature, each alike and yet unique. Mary brushed a branch on her way back from the mailbox, scattering the droplets to reform anew elsewhere. Her son skipped at her side carrying the nature magazine he'd been watching for since the arrival of the previous one but his eye was caught by a wave of migratory birds shifting positions on a nearby maple tree. Their soft chatter was kin to waves in the shore, an everswelling roll of sound.

Mary lingered in the doorway a moment, caught by the mood of the slow fog, then closed the door and returned to her world of bills to pay and phone calls to make. She caught herself looking out the window and wondering if there was a world somewhere where she would be doing some heroic deed instead.

A clatter from the kitchen shattered her daydream.

"What are you doing?" she asked, finding her son chasing a spoon across the floor. His magazine was open on the table and surrounded by a motley selection of ingredients.

"I have to feed the troops," he explained, emerging triumphant from behind the table leg.

Peanut butter, crackers, and sunflower seeds would have to multiply in an unnatural fashion, and besides…

"What troops?"

He pointed out the kitchen window toward the maple tree where the birds were tucked together for warmth. "Don't you see them? They patrolled here all summer and now they're on to their next posting."

"An army, is it?" asked Mary.

"Oh, yes. We don't even know half their missions–they're top secret."

"I see." Mary looked down at the magazine with a bemused smile. She saw the connection between the project on the glossy spread and the peanut butter, but the army of birds was less easily explained.

"Did you know they migrated?" asked her son, round face serious and concentrated on his task.

"Every year."

"It's amazing. All those miles. I couldn't do it." 

True enough. Some days he could barely sit through the ride to his grandmother's house. "Maybe if you were part of a troop–like the birds?"

His eyes gleamed with the new idea as he dropped generous dollops of peanut butter to be mixed with the other ingredients. "Maybe."

Satisfied no further silverware would be dropped, Mary returned to her to-do list. In the other world perhaps feeding the birds was an important endeavor, but here it was a few seeds and a picture.

It was twilight when the bird food was ready, and Mary helped her son carry the tray outside. The cloud cover had torn, scattering glowing pewter across the horizon. Wet grass clung to her feet and Mary watched a wave of birds rise and spiral across the sunset.

Maybe it was more than a few seeds. Maybe it was a child, happily occupied for a few hours.

We don't even know half their missions–they're top secret.

Maybe, she told herself. Maybe it was true.

#inklingschallenge #inklingschallenge2023 #team chesterton #theme: food #genre: intrusive fantasy #story: complete

[sashakielman]

Between Justice and Mercy

My very belated short story for this year's @inklings-challenge! Thank you so much to the mods for a lovely event and the opportunity to get my brain back in gear for writing!

The Imperator’s dungeons were mostly emptied ahead of his attempt at war. Though a cruel man, he was also practical. Selenara’s population was small, and most had never left its borders, by the Imperator’s decree. Political prisoners and the few who had actually committed crimes would serve for his war effort as another form of punishment. 

One prisoner yet remained, however, with whom Kazmera needed to discuss her grandfather’s twisted governance. This prisoner was too old to fight, and even if he were in the prime of his life, the Imperator would not have allowed him to go free. 

And so Selenara’s newly crowned queen made her way into the depths of the dungeons, where no trace of the weak sunlight penetrated. It was cold as winter, damp, and rumored to be haunted by the ghosts of those who died there. Kazmera repressed a shudder and walked quickly, grateful for her heavy, fur lined cloak.

It was not hard to find the prisoner she sought; he was the only one remaining on that level. It was so quiet Kazmera could hear her own heart beating as she approached his cell. 

“My lord?” she asked as she stepped forward. Her torch cast shadows into the small cell, with only enough room for a rough cot, table for eating and a candle, and a toilet in the corner. The lord sat on his cot, hunched over, the shadows making his profile appear even more aged. She placed the torch into a holder next to the cell. 

“My queen,” he said, looking up at her. “The guards warned me you might pay me a visit.”

“I am glad they did,” she replied. “So you know why I have come?”

“I can imagine,” he answered. “You want to know the truth of my crimes against your grandfather.”

“Yes,” she said quietly, and waited for him to go on. 

“It is true, my lady. I was a leader in your father’s rebellion against him.”

“That, I did not doubt,” she replied. “Did you plan to assassinate my grandfather in the midst of the coup?”

“Would your opinion of the rebellion change if I had?” For a moment, there was fire in his eyes, and Kazmera could understand why her grandfather feared this man even from his prison cell, feared his leadership skills and passion for his cause.

She paused for a moment to say a prayer for her parents’ memory. “My opinion of my father’s rebellion would not change, no. I am still grateful he tried to give us all a better life, even if my parents were murdered as a result.”  

She swallowed. “But my opinion of you would change, my lord. My father did not intend to kill his own father, of that I am certain.” She took a breath before asking her next question. “And is it true we are blood relations, my lord?” 

He did not look back up at her, his earlier defiance lost to the shadows of the past. He merely held up his left arm, and a cloud of inky black darkness appeared in his hand, contrasted even with the cell’s gloom. “Is my magic enough answer for you, dear cousin?”

“It is,” she replied. “I would honor that relationship, lord cousin, and welcome you back to my family’s table.”

“Would you?” he replied, looking back up at her this time. “I never answered your question, Queen Kazmera.”

She met his gaze. “I was merely curious. The answer, I find, matters not to my heart. My grandfather slaughtered most of our family, including my parents. I grew up alone with him. I knew his heart, and there was no kindness within it.”

She attempted to swallow the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat. “I think there is still kindness left in your heart, my lord. My grandfather and his enablers may have tried to destroy it, and you with it, but I do not believe they succeeded.”

He nodded stiffly. “Your father was a good man, despite your grandfather. He would have been a good king. And if you’re half the good person he was, Selenara is in good hands for the future.”

“Thank you,” she replied. 

“Don’t thank me,” he answered. “Have you shown mercy to your grandfather’s other prisoners?”

“Yes,” she answered. “As I will show mercy to you.” 

She drew a set of keys out of her pocket--a set of keys which had been difficult to obtain, and caused more bloodshed in the palace. She unlocked the door, and gestured for him to come forward.    

“What may I call you?” she asked, offering him her arm as they began their journey back upward into the light.

“Your father called me Uncle Feliks,” he replied, still gruffly but a measure less than before. 

“It suits you, Uncle,” Kazmera replied with a small smile. “Come, I’ll show you to your rooms, and we can become acquainted after you have a hot meal.” 

“Very well,” he replied. “I hope the food’s better, at least.”

She laughed. 

Each cell they passed on their way back to the palace was empty.

#inklingschallenge #inklings challenge 2023 #my writing #original works #women writers #team tolkien #genre: secondary world #theme: visiting the imprisoned #story: complete

[on-noon]

@inklings-challenge

Adreif recited a poem she did not understand at the graves of people she had not met. The sole human alive on the island, she felt obliged to deliver the send-off they couldn't give each other.

Adreif left the freshly dug graves to the isle of ash and shut herself into her box of a time machine. The sides pressed against Adreif's shoulders and vibrated as the box traveled perpendicular to time and space.

The vibrations stopped and the door latch fell. Adreif walked out into a thick, familiar forest. She walk through the sticks, unburdened by the leaves, as those lined the ground.

Adreif approached town cautiously.

A child called out, "Adreif is here!"

Adreif smiled, waved, and strolled into town. She greeted all the people in town. She knew half of the names. The people recognized her. To the small town of Calsand, she was "The Traveler," although she never told any of her travels.

Adreif stayed with Therin, in her small, cozy house. Besides the time machine, that house was the place she had spent the most of her time in.

Adreif stayed in Calsand a week. In that time, she attended a wedding and a coming of age ceremony. She played many games of dice. When Adreif left, the town came to see her off.

Back in her box, Adreif felt she could not stay– she needed to be an outsider to Calsand, otherwise she would not be able to hide the secret of the time machine. But she was glad the town welcomed her and knew her.

Adreif's time machine dropped her in a field after a war. Frozen corpses littered the ground.

Unable to dig into the frozen earth, she looked around for wood to build a pyre.

She could only find a log, weakened by years of rot. Adreif walked back to the field.

"Make sure to collect any metal as well," a uniformed Time Agent called to their partner.

Adreif froze. She wasn't a registered time traveler. There was no place to hide in the field. A terrible site for a battle.

Neither agent had noticed her or her time machine, although they would not recognize the box as capable of travel through time.

Adreif watched the Time Agents. Both knelt down to inspect a corpse. Adreif ran to her time machine, and traveled away.

While outside of time, she said the death poem she learned when watching her mother's funeral.

Adreif landed in a time with no sign of people. She spent some time there, eating the food she could forage. But once she ran through the easily available food, she left and found herself in a bustling city. Adreif wandered around for the day, watching the hustle-bustle of people strangers to one another.

Adreif left the time, as she was hungry and had no currency to buy food.

She arrived in the forest by Calsand. Her feet sunk into the the mud.

Once the forest thinned enough to catch a glimpse of Calsand, Adreif gasped. The town had been destroyed.

Every building had a mark, a broken door or window, timber from the wall missing, or a broken roof. Some houses had only a single corner left.

Adreif made her way to the center of town, investigating the damage.

She didn't see anyone until the field behind the church, which usually grew food for anyone whose harvest failed that year, or who couldn't work a farm.

Although it was spring, the people working in the field were not planting crops but burying bodies.

Therin greeted Adreif, "Hello, I'm sorry I don't have much to greet you with, my house needs repairs."

Therin leaned against her shovel, no longer as spry with the passing of the years.

"I'll help you with that work," Adreif said.

"It's no work for a guest."

"You've welcomed me into your town. Let me help."

Adreif joined in with the ten people from the town, digging graves and filling them.

Adreif said the mourning poem over every grave they dug. She stood by as the others mourned their friends, children, parents.

She stayed around for the entire ceremony, and left as it finished.

Epilogue:

As Adreif grew older, she was more selective of which times she remained in. She didn't want to forage for food when she wasn't sure if she'd find anything.

She traveled through time after time, not feeling anywhere right to settle down, but tired of her constant traveling.

Once she arrived at Calsand, she stayed. She thought of the town as her home, they welcomed her in again. As she lived there, she wondered why the town had never questioned the strange manner in which they must see her age.

When Adreif was younger, she had been careful, trying to only come to Calsand within a few years span, so they couldn't tell she hadn't aged. But after she buried half the town, she cared less.

Adreif died in Calsand. Therin buried her, years before Adreif would help Therin bury her daughter.

#inklings challenge #team tolkien #theme: burial #genre: time travel #story: complete