“In other words, you don’t know.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So, you do know,” she stamped her foot. He simply gazed unwaveringly into her eyes. She sighed. “But you’re not going to tell me.” She withdrew from beneath her blouse, the small, suede pouch she wore around her neck, and slipped the stone inside. And it was a long time before she thought of it again.
Eluned slung her bag over her shoulder and was soon ambling down the road, every step bringing her closer to the mountains in the east. Behind her left shoulder, the sun slowly burned its way toward the horizon hidden from her sight by the castle’s walls. Another mile and the castle and the world she was leaving would disappear from view as she and Jabberwock entered the foothills that rolled in muted tones of brown and gold into the mountains beyond.
“Queen Fuchsia was from the fertile lands beyond the Devastation of Pelf.”
“You mean the Kingdom of Bramble?”“Yes, but that is hard to admit now. Of course, it wasn’t so corrupt back then. Anyway, that is where I met her . . .”
“Am I like her?”
“She is the reason I am here now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let me finish my story. When she reached her eighteenth birthday, she was sent to your great-grandfather’s . . .”
“King Seraph?”
“Yes . . .your great-grandfather’s kingdom to be his bride. I attempted, through cajolery, even bribery, to inveigle her to disappear. I knew that what she was doing was not right for her, that she was marrying the king through a misguided sense of honor and responsibility. I knew, even then, that it would all come to a bad end, that at the very least, it would leave her name tarnished and battered, never to be spoken in her land or any other.
“But she married the king with much pageantry, pomp and fanfare, not to mention a touch of theatrics and more than a little bit of grandeur, glitter and gaudiness.”
“Garish?”
“Definitely so, as if to rub my nose in it all.”
“But you knew her too well.”
“Goes without saying, my dear. By the end of the year, young Fuchsia was expecting her first child . . .”
“King Simeon.”
“Yes,” the Bandersnatch sighed. He would never get accustomed to Eluned’s constant interruptions. “. . . and chomping at the bit the whole while. The child was barely weaned before she was beseeching me to rescue her, to ‘take her away from it all’.”
The Princess laughed, a pleasant sound like the comfortable burbling of a brook, “she didn’t last very long, did she?”
“Fortunately, she did manage to accomplish the one adjunct expected of her—she bore the king an heir, a male heir, which definitely improved her situation.”
“You mean it didn’t matter so much if she took off.”
“It was a great embarrassment to the king, of course, but the onus for the debacle . . . “
“I hate that word!”
“Debacle?”
“Onus. It makes me shudder. Would it bother you if I asked you not to use it again in my presence?”
“What?” He sputtered. Trust Eluned to disrupt a story by objecting to the use of a word, a rather common one at that.
“It’s just that that word gives me the creeps.”
“The creeps?”
“You know very well what I mean. Can’t you use burden instead of onus. Ack, I don’t even like saying it!”
“Perhaps it is too close to sounding like anus.”
“I don’t mind the word anus. I just don’t like, you know, that word I don’t want to say.”
“Then I will rephrase the entire sentence. After all, my dear Princess, I am your servant.”
“My friend. Not my servant. You’d make a lousy servant. You can’t button buttons or bring me breakfast in bed. You can’t even make a bed.”
“A figure of speech, that’s all. What I meant was that your wish is my command, so to speak. Does that make you happy? Don’t take things so literally—it could get you into serious trouble.”
“Anyway, who was the burden on?”
“Fuchsia’s people were blamed for her indiscretion . . .”
“That’s a nice way of putting it!”
“If they hadn’t lived beyond the Devastation, they would have been sent there.”
“Will we pass through The Devastation on our journey?”
“No one passes through The Devastation. You know that.”
“But you can do all kinds of magical things.”
“Limited telepathy and the ability to speak are about the extent of my so-called magical powers.”
“You’re immortal,” she said, and shivered for she had the strangest sense of déjà vu, well not exactly déjà vu, more like prescience. She shook her head as if to clear it of the fog that was creeping through it, hiding thoughts, exposing others.
Jabberwock looked at her, oddly. “That hardly makes me a ledgerdemainist, a thaumaturge, a magus.”
“Great,” sighed Eluned, “I am on the adventure of a lifetime with a four-legged thesaurus.”
“Besides,” the Bandersnatch sniffed, feigning hurt, “The Devastation is to the west, beyond the Plains of Naphtali and the Sea of Blood. We’re currently traveling east. The sun is directly to our backs. You know that.”
Eluned felt the hairs rise at the back of her neck. She had often wheedled her nurse into telling her stories of the Sea of Blood upon whose shores the Aberrations of The Devastation dwelt. Absolutely nothing existed in The Devastation, the former Kingdom of Pelf. Not even the most loathsome, abominable and vile creatures that inhabited the furthest borders between the Sea of Blood and The Devastation. “It’s probably just as well,” she whispered, eyes wide with fear. “I am not sure I want that much adventure.”
“I ventured that way, myself, once, but that’s another story and we’ll have plenty of time for stories but right now I would like to finish the story I began hours ago.”
“It hasn’t been hours. You certainly love to pout!”
“No more than you, my dear.”
“Yes, but I am a princess. It just seems a bit unseemly for a Bandersnatch.”
“And how would you know what is seemly for a Bandersnatch and what is not? I don’t have to remind you that I am the only Bandersnatch in existence. I make my own rules. I determine my own actions.”
“Yeah, yeah, heard it all before.” Eluned laughed and bent down to ruffle his coarse fur, paused to scratch behind his long ears. “You’re absolutely right! So, you and Fuchsia departed the Kingdom of Zion, sneaking out in the dead of night?”
“It was dawn, and I dislike the word, sneak, but yes, that’s what we did.”
“I’m surprised my father let me go with you, then.”
“So am I. I am actually quite amazed that Brother Columcille and I were able to convince him of the necessity of your leaving. Anyway, when we had first arrived in Zion, Fuchsia and I parted ways at the forest.”
“And she’d visit you there during the day?”
“Never as often as you and I met.”
“But she did when she was young, did she not? When you lived in the Wilds of Discord?”
“Yes, that’s true. We’re about three miles from our lodgings.”
“That gives you another hour to finish the story.”
“You’ve made me lose my train of thought,” Jabberwock groused. “All these interruptions.”
“Complain, complain, complain.”
He sighed. “We maintained our relationship through the birth of her son and his weaning, and then began making plans to leave. She wanted to head back toward Bramble, and we eventually arrived in Zapple,” the Bandersnatch paused, sure that Eluned would interrupt. After all, Zapple was notorious; often compared to Sodom and Gomorrah. She disappointed him. “There Fuchsia became quite the star on the Zenon Strip.”
“Star?” The Princess was perplexed. A star? On the Zenon Strip? Did they go to another galaxy?
Jabberwock began to chortle in his wheezy, rasping way.
“What? What?” Eluned was blushing. “All right. I give up. I’ve heard of Zapple but the Zenon Strip? A star? What are you talking about?”
“Basically, Fuchsia became an actress, not unlike the mummers that perform at the castle. The Zenon Strip is the district in Zapple where the actors and actresses perform. When you have a successful career in the theater, you become a star.”
Eluned was horrified at the thought of her great-grandmother sinking so low as to perform for money, but was intrigued by the concept of becoming a star. It sounded so brilliant. “Why is it called a star?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps because they are self-luminous or maybe because they are full of hot air. Or, perhaps, because they are the featured performer and their name was once marked with an asterisk.”
“Maybe it’s because an excellent performance is rewarded with a star,” Eluned mused, “or maybe, it’s because . . .”
“Does it really matter?” It was Jabberwock’s turn to interrupt. “Suffice to say that she did become a star. Not surprising, really, she always had a flair for the dramatic.”
“Did you really save her from a dragon?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“I heard talk. Besides, what about the fairy tale you told me on the first day we met?”
“Gossiping, you mean. It wasn’t an actual dragon. It was an abomination, a nameless monstrosity from the borders of The Devastation, seeking fresh meat. It had wandered too far into the Wilds.”
“She was outside the castle walls?”
“She never obeyed her parents.”
How romantic, Eluned sighed. For years and years she had been longing for similar adventures. Perhaps, at last . . .
“Are we on our way to meet her?” The Princess asked. “I can’t wait!”
“Darling, you’re grasp of geography is dismaying, and I know better. Please use that pretty little head instead of just your emotions!” Then the Bandersnatch added, gently, “Fuchsia died the day I met you.”
Eluned’s face fell, tears once again pricked her eyes. She had already developed a strong bond of feeling, of kinship, even love for this woman, a woman so like herself. “So why are you doing this again?”
“Because when you were born, we both agreed that you would have the same opportunities that she had had, but that you wouldn’t have to make the same mistake that she had made.”
“You mean marrying against her will?”
“She didn’t want you to marry and give birth to a child that you would never see again. You are so much like her, even when you were young. I suppose that is what eventually killed her—not being able to watch her son grow, marry, have his own children and grandchildren. She didn’t want you to have to make the same, horrible choice.”
They hiked on in silence.
“Thank you,” Eluned broke the silence, half an hour and a hundred yards from their lodgings later.
“For what?” Jabberwock’s eyes reflected the serious fjord green of Eluned’s own.
“For rescuing me from the dragon.”
No comments:
Post a Comment