A Queen

Oh hai guys!! It has been sooooooo long since I blogged! But here I am, back again, hoping that someone will be interested in reading some of my writing.

What I have for you today is a piece that I started during my final MEMS tutorial (it was yesterday!) and then thought about overnight and began to fine-tune and rework this morning. I consider it an experiment in frame narratives, although I realise that technically it's not a true frame narrative because the story alternates between the story and the interjections of the teller & listener of the story. I almost want to consider it an intrusive frame narrative but I think that implies that the frame narrative characters would interact with the story characters, and that's not really what happens either. Either way, the "frame narrative" is inspired by the Princess Bride - I'm sure fans will pick up on the similarities.

It's probably necessary to include an Author's Note, as well: to anyone who read my year 11 story (Worth Fighting For) - you might pick up on some pretty major parallels between some of the characters in this story and that one. None of the characters here are intended to be the character in that story, okay? But I'm definitely using the same magic system. There's a bunch of fire sorcerers and the evil person is total an earth sorcerer. Yes? Okay. Anyway, this is written waaaaaaay better.

Okay, here it is, enjoy! (Comments always appreciated!)

I tucked in the blankets around my nine year old daughter and kissed her forehead.

“Good night sweetheart,” I said, reaching over her to turn off the touch lamp on her bedside table.

I had nearly exited the room when I heard her call back to me, “hey mum? Can I have a story before I go to sleep?”

I shook my head. “You should have asked before I tucked you in.”

“Please?”

With a sigh, I walked back into the room. She sat up in bed like a shot and tapped on her lamp to light the room. I perched on the edge of the bed.

“All right, which story would you like?”

“One about a queen? A magical queen!”

“Please?” I prompted.

“Please mum?”

“Okay. Lay back down and I’ll tell you the story.”

When she was settled again, I began to recite the familiar tale.

Once upon a time, there was a city that lay in ruins after a colossal battle had taken place there. Where there had once been cobbled paths there was now treacherous rocky outcrop. The once-beautiful buildings smoked and crackled as they burnt to the ground. The city square used to be paved with coloured tiles, but now there was a crater in the centre and fallen statues formed a wall around the edge. This was a place now empty of people - except for one. In the middle of the street stood a woman who was tall and aloof. She wore a long, black coat over her regal dress, and her red hair whirled around her face in the harsh wind. On the top of her head sat a gold coronet, beset with diamonds and rubies.

I stopped reciting the story when my daughter sat up in bed again.

“She was a princess, wasn’t she mum?”

“Once she was, yes. But she’s a queen now.”

“I knew that.”

I smiled. “I know you did. Now lay back down and I’ll continue.” She did as she was told, and I did as I had promised.

She took a deep breath and began to walk down the street, her elegant face twisted with anger. As she directed her pointed gaze towards an overturned cart by the side of the street, the wood of the cart burst into ferocious flames. This woman was not just any woman and not just any queen: she was a sorceress. Striding through the wreckage of the city street, her black coat swooshed around her calves with every step she took. Through the flames and smoke she was barely visible, a powerful, devastating figure as good as alone in the heat and rubble of a city now lost. If only someone had been able to approach her: they would have seen the silver trails of tears that lay on her pale face. Alone, always alone now, her confident walk took her to the city square. She stepped gracefully over a fallen statue.

“Show yourself!” Her voice boomed out through the square and all around the burning city.

A grey mouse scurried across the square, ducking and dashing beneath the fallen statues. Anyone else would have dismissed it as nothing more than a scared rodent, but the queen knew better. The stretched out a regal finger towards the animal. Unable to resist her power, it was stopped in its tracks and dragged, against its will, across the square. It levitated into the air to hang before the magic-user who controlled it.

“Was the mouse flying?”

“No, it didn’t want to be in the air. The queen was using her magic to make a float.”

“Okay.” She fell silent again, waiting for me to continue.

“I said,” she told it, her voice still loud, “show yourself.”

Her hand dropped to her side, releasing the little mouse from her power and allowing it to drop like a stone toward the ground. What should have followed was the sound of a mouse hitting the pavement and maybe the sound of its skeleton crunching as it broke. That sound never came. Instead came the sound of two feet stepping onto pavement as the mouse morphed into a man.

“How dare you try to hide from me?”

The man cowered. His behaviour was still mouse-like as the morphing spell slowly faded. “S-sorry, your highness.”

“That’s your majesty, to you. Have you forgotten who I am?”

“N-no, your majesty, not at all, I’m so s-sorry.” He twitched a little and then stood up straighter, seeming more man-like and less mouse-like with every passing moment.

“Because the mouse spell was wearing off?”

“Yes, exactly. He was just a normal man underneath the spell.”

The queen took a step closer to the man. The expression on his face was one of pure terror, but he did not move away.

“She will meet me here. She will come now, right now, I will not wait. And we will finish this. Do you understand?”

“I do, your majesty.”

“And if you do not do as I ask...”

“I will die, your majesty, I understand.”

The queen bowed her head to show that he was correct. Luckily for him, he did not wait to be told to depart. In the blink of an eye he disappeared, leaving little puffs of mouse hair floating in the air where he had stood just before.

“He teleported,” I said, before my daughter could ask. “He used magic to go to another place instantly.”

“Where did he go?”

“You’ll find out, just keep listening.”

The queen waited. She stood in the deep crater in the middle of the city square and she waited. It seemed to her like a very long time was passing and she began to get frustrated. In anger and impatience, she directed her powerful gaze at nearby houses, at market stalls, at trees and used her magic to set them all on fire until the square was bright and blazing.

“Stop that at once!” commanded a voice from behind the queen. This new voice sounded just as regal as she herself was. “I have come, what do you want?”

“So the mouse-man did his job? Maybe I will spare him, after all.”

“Don’t threaten my servants.” There was a clear warning in her voice. “For what reason did you call me back here? I assumed we were finished here when you exploded the town hall.”

The queen turned around to face the woman the man had fetched for her. The fires that her magic had started flared up around them and the queen spoke. She spoke in anger, but her words were soaked with a pain she could not hide.

“You killed my father. You killed my mother. You killed my aunt and my uncle and my cousin. You killed my brothers.”

“Yes, I do recall doing something like that,” interrupted the other woman.

Ignoring the interruption, the queen continued, “you killed my husband, an illogical move, even for you.”

“It had to be done, my friend.”

“It did not have to be done! You could have left us. You could have spared him.”

“Well really now, if I couldn’t have him then I certainly wasn’t going to leave him for you, was I?”

“You killed my children,” the queen said, her eyes filling with tears.

My daughter tugged at the sleeve of my dressing gown.

“Mum, why did the other lady kill everyone?”

“Because she was in love with the queen’s husband. She was punishing the queen for marrying him.”

“But then why did she kill him too?”

“Were you listening? She explained that.”

“She didn’t want the queen to be married to him if she couldn’t be?”

“That’s right. Shall I finish the story?” My daughter nodded, snuggled down into her warm bed and prepared to listen to the exciting climax.

The queen stood tall among the rubble in the destroyed city. Around her, every object that could possibly catch alight was burning and blazing. The air rippled with the heat of the fire and of the queen’s anger.

“I watched you murder my eldest, the heir to my family’s royal legacy. You murdered my middle child, my son of just eight years. You murdered my youngest, my only daughter. You killed them!” she screeched her final words and threw at her nemesis, with all her might, her firepower. Flames billowed from her outstretched palms, a wave of red and gold flowing towards the other woman.

“You, my dear,” said the woman, stepping neatly out of the path of the fire, “are extremely temperamental.”

“Don’t patronise me!” screamed the queen, “you killed my family, you killed everyone I love. You will not survive this.”

“We’ll see about that,” chuckled the woman.

“Are they going to fight?” my daughter asked, and when I looked I saw her eyes were wide with fear.

“Keep listening.” I smiled.

The queen gestured, opening her hand out as if to catch a falling star. Lightning flashed through the sky and a hot bolt of electricity shot down to the earth, narrowly missing the woman. In return the woman held out her arms and brought her hands together in a loud clap. As her palm collided, the entire earth shook beneath their feet. The woman rose up into the air, away from the destruction that she had caused by summoning that earthquake. In response the queen also rose into the sky, raising her arms and bringing hot streams of magma up from inside the earth.

“No!” cried the woman, as the hem of her dress caught fire and a wet-hot stream of heat burnt her skin.

The queen smiled and called lightning down from the sky again, but the crackling bolt missed its target again.

In retaliation the woman beckoned to a nearby tree, which grew up and up into the sky until its top was level with the flying witches. She sent vines and branches shooting out from the tree to grab and claw at the queen’s legs. The queen simply smiled and watched the vines that held her ankles burst into hot flames.

“Enough of this,” said the woman. She raised her arms to the heavens.

There was a deafening crack. The ground, far below them, shattered into pieces. The resulting chunks rose up into the air, twisting and turning and fashioning themselves into rock missiles. The woman threw her arms forward, and the rocks hurtled through the air toward the queen.

Moving agilely in the air, she dodged the sharpened mountains that flew in her direction. But there were too many and she was not fast enough. One particularly sharp chunk of rock struck her stomach, piercing her skin and pushing all the way through her body.

“Mum, what’s happening?” My daughter was distressed.

“Keep listening.”

In pain she lost control of her magic and felt herself falling quickly to the ground. She was powerless to stop it. When she final hit the earth, she landed at an awkward angle on one of the statues surrounding the city square.

“I did warn you,” said the woman, landing gently on the ground nearby and striding over to speak to the queen.

“How could you? We were friends!”

“We were, yes. If you’d left well enough alone then we might still be. I’d have the man and you would be free to rule your kingdom in peace.”

The queen spat at the woman, using up the last drop of moisture in her mouth. For the first time in her life she was truly feeling the heat.

“At least you have no children left to mourn you.” An evil smile accompanied the woman’s words. “How about I let you die alone, as you deserve?”

“But she doesn’t deserve to die!” yelled my daughter, sitting up in bed again. “Mum you can’t kill the queen, take it back, say a different ending!”

“You asked for this story. Just listen to the end.”

The woman disappeared, teleporting away from the ruined city. She left behind nothing but a flutter of leaves and a pile of dirt. The queen coughed. She could feel her life-blood quickly draining, the very essence of her magic ebbing, never to return. She was the last of a powerful line of royalty, of fire magic, and she had failed her ancestors by losing this battle. A final tear ran down her cheek as she thought of all she had lost. And then she died, alone and damaged in an equally damaged city.

I paused. There was more to the story, but the pause here was obligatory.

“Mum?”

“And that’s the end of her story.”

“What? No, that’s not fair! It has to have a happy ever after.”

“It does. Would you like to hear the end?”

“Yes!”

“What’s the magic word?”

“The witches in the story didn’t need magic words.” She was tired and getting grumpy. I gave her a withering look, the sort that my mother used to give me. “Please mum?”

What the queen did not know, however, was that not all of her ancestors had perished at the hand of the other witch. She had watched her eldest son die, but had not been present when her other children were killed. Unbeknownst to her, the woman had spared the life of her little daughter, choosing not to kill the child but to raise her as if she were a normal little girl and not a princess. She never suspected that the woman who cared for her was the murderer of her mother. It was only later, much later, that she learned the truth - the secret of her royal heritage was uncovered and, with that, the secret of her magical heritage.

“Did she become a princess?”

The queen’s daughter chose to forsake her claim to the throne. Instead, she turned her attention to magical studies, learning everything she could about the witch her mother had been and the powerful fire magic that flowed in her veins. Eventually her power overtook that of her surrogate mother and she took her revenge.

“And then was it happy ever after?” my daughter asked, impatiently.

“Yes. After that she lived happily ever after.”

“That’s good.” She smiled sleepily.

I tucked her back in and gave her another kiss goodnight. “Sweet dreams, my little princess.”

By the time I had reached over her to tap off her touch lamp and tiptoed to the doorway, my daughter was almost asleep.

As silently as I could, I left the room and pulled the door ajar. I leant against the wall and sighed, then headed down the hall to see if my husband had thought to put the kettle on.

In the darkness of the hallway, I held out my hand. With a puff! a ball of flame sprung to life, cool and tickling against my skin. I smiled as I remembered my mother telling me the story. She had heard it from her mother who had heard it from her mother; it was a pattern that continued far back into our ancestry, right back to where it had started: when a woman told her daughter the tragic story of her mother, a queen.

♥Nancy♬