“H-How did you do that?” Odger asked, a little panicked. “N-Nothing can breach the barrier. A-Are you a ghost?”
Her face pinched and she rolled up her sleeve, revealing the geometric spiral branded on her wrist.
“A Stonemaster’s seal,” Odger whispered. “Where did you get it?”
“Where did I get it?” Athel echoed. “You burnt it into me, you little twig!”
“Oh, I would never do that,” Odger assured, shaking his head back and forth. “Placing a brand on a foreigner would be considered treason. I would be executed on the spot.”
She rolled her eyes and pulled out a small blanket and laid it on the cobblestone floor before her. Kneeling on it, she set down the basket she was carrying and looked around. The core was filled with thousands of glittering gemstones spinning precisely in the air, shimmering from gold to ruby, then back again, a golden thread leading from each one to the center of the room where the keystone hung in its place like a giant diamond. Yet, all the physical beauty of it seemed to give her no comfort. Instead, she wrapped her arms around herself, as if threatened.
“Are you really here?” Odger asked, suspiciously.
“Unfortunately, I am,” she answered, looking a little sick to her stomach.
“But why are you here?” Odger asked, bringing himself up into a sitting position. Of all the hallucinations he had witnessed of late, this one was certainly the most pleasant.
She pulled a bottle of grape juice and some plates out from the basket. “Don’t you remember? I promised to have breakfast with you.”
He got the strangest look on his face as she pulled her red hair back into a simple pony tail, revealing her cute pointed ears. Ignoring him, she began setting up their picnic before him. A plate of delicious food was placed in his hands, and he eyed it doubtfully. “Why does reality hate me?” he mused. “I have ways rejected reality in such an intentionally friendly manner.”
“This is Alder’s four-egg omelet recipe,” she explained proudly. “I don’t know how he did it, but he found four different kinds of eggs that just mix together so perfectly...” She took a bite and put it in her mouth. “...There’s just something that happens, you put it between your lips and it sends a little message up to your brain that makes you go awwwww, that’s good,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Four is nothing,” he boasted. “I ate a twelve- egg omelet once. I regretted it almost immediately.”
He put a bite in his mouth, and he perked up a little bit.
“See, I told you, didn’t I?” she goaded.
He closed his eyes hard, counted to ten, then opened them up again. She was still there, as well as the food. He sighed heavily. “Well, if I am going to have this hallucination, I might as well enjoy it.”
“That’s the spirit,” she said, slapping him on the back, kicking up a plume of dust and dandruff.
He placed another bite in his mouth. “Oh, I made a friend today...”
“Oh, how nice,” she said, coughing and wiping her hand on the ground.
“...out of clay.”
“Oh.”
“I made him to get rid of the ghost that is haunting me. Every time I go back to my quarters I can tell that all the pictures on my wall have gone askew! I straighten them out, only to find them crooked again the next day!”
He noticed Athel looking at him strangely as she peeled an orange. “You don’t believe in the supernatural?” he asked.
“Supernatural or not, it’s just not a very impressive curse if you have to use a level and a plumb-bob before you can even notice that anything has changed,” she opined.
He shrugged and took a drink of grape juice. “A ghost that doesn’t believe in ghosts, that’s a new one for me.”
“I’m not a ghost, dummy!”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he replied, waving his hand. “You got any dessert in that basket?”
She pulled out two dessert plates with a selection of hand-dipped chocolates placed on them. He sniffed them dubiously, while she clapped her hands together happily and tossed one into her mouth.
“That is soooo good,” Athel praised as she leaned back against the cobblestone wall, her eyes half closed. “Did you know, Odger, that chocolate is evidence that The Goddess Milia loves us and wants us to be happy?”
“Milia doesn’t want you to be happy,” Odger snorted.
“What makes you say that?” she asked, looking at him sideways.
“Milia could have made Aetria a world where only good things existed. Instead she made a world full of greed, hate, and violence. She made a world designed to hurt you because she wants you to be hurt.” He leaned forward and sucked one of the morsels into his mouth.
“Well, first of all, Milia didn’t make Aetria all by herself; all the gods worked together, at least at first. When they couldn’t agree, they each went off to make their own people.”
“So which god invented pain, eh? Which one made hate?”
“I dunno,” Athel said, popping another chocolate into her mouth. “If I had to venture a guess, I’d say it was probably your god, the rock-licker with the quarry tools.”
“Ishi.”
“Yeah, that’s the guy,” Athel teased.
“No, it couldn’t have been Ishi,” Odger defended, flicking his purple tongue back and forth over a chocolate. “Ishi was crippled a long time ago by his father.”
“Well, maybe he was being punished for introducing mosquitoes into the world,” she chuckled.
Odger turned and stared at Athel, wide-eyed. After a moment, it began to make her visibly uncomfortable.
“You are very funny,” he said, a strange look on his face. It took her a moment to realize he was smiling. “And you are very kind, too.”
“You only think that because you are a terrible judge of character,” she chided.
He placed the last chocolate into his mouth. “This has been a most pleasant hallucination. I only wish I could show my gratitude somehow.”
Athel let down her hair and leaned forward, allowing it to drape over one shoulder sensually. “Actually, there is something you can do for me...”
Chapter Four
Being so close to these strange Wysterian trees made Admiral Miguel Roapes feel decidedly uncomfortable. They were aberrant. He felt like they were looking at him somehow. Since being placed in charge of the entire theater of operations, he had been given countless documents detailing Wysterian history, leadership, military capabilities, magical capacities, and such, but they had all gone unread. The most important aspect of command was instinct, and Admiral Roapes did not want to cloud his instinct with facts.
“A man can conquer the world if he has no facts to cloud his vision,” The Admiral mused thoughtfully. “As a member of the military elite, I must be an example to others at all times of control, honor, and dignity.”
The sultry Rachael gently massaged his shoulders from behind, while Jessica teased her hair and refilled the admiral’s wine glass. One of the perks of the rank of admiral was the privilege of choosing one’s own command staff, and Admiral Roapes made sure that the women on his staff all had perfect qualifications for the job.
White flags flapped lazily in the breeze above them as their longboat slowly approached the branch of one of the larger trees. It was as big as a city, with houses dotting the trunk and branches. The houses were not so much built onto the tree, but rather the living wood itself had somehow been coaxed to grow into house shapes.
Several white flags had been tied to one branch in particular, and standing there was a pair of women. Queen Forsythia was pristine and sublime. Her hair was braided elaborately, decorated with flowers, the edges adorned with pearls. Her white dress was beautiful, as if it were woven together from flawless white petals. She looked as delicate as glass. A great cape of flowers draped down behind her. She gave off an air of extreme value, like a work of art no one is allowed to touch, but only admire from afar.
“Wow, I think that is their Quee
n,” Nicole marveled. With one hand she held her spyglass, and with the other she tugged at the extremely short skirt that was part of the command staff’s special uniforms.
“She’s really pretty,” Rachael complained, pouting.
“There is more to beauty than appearances, Rachael,” the Admiral coddled. “You have qualities she will never possess.”
“Aww, thank you, Miguelito,” Rachael said, bouncing up and down and pressing her absurdly curvy body against him as she kissed him on top of the head.
“Why would they waste our time sending out the queen? I was told we'd be speaking with their ruler,” he complained, draining the wine from his glass.
Nicole dropped her face into her hand. “The Queen is their ruler. It’s all in the files I gave you to read.”
“Naturally,” the Admiral said, waiting patiently for Jessica to refill his glass. “Why do you think I selected you for my personal staff, Nikki?”
“My name is Nicole,” she corrected.
“Flawless marks at the academy,” he continued, uninterrupted. “Impressive military family lineage, specialized leadership training.”
He opened his mouth expectantly and Rachael giggled, placing a chocolate daintily into his mouth with her overly-manicured fingers.
In reality, Admiral Roapes had known none of those things about Nicole when he selected her. One look at her headshot and measurements and he had put in a request for her transfer. Since then, Nicole’s requests to be transferred off of his staff were filed and rejected on an almost daily basis.
“All I can hear is how lucky we are to help out our beloved Miguelito,” Jessica gushed, applying an extra layer of lip gloss.
“All I can hear is the sound of my career flushing down the gutter,” Nicole grumbled.
“Nikki?”
“Nothing sir.”
“No, I mean Nikki, please fill my glass. Jessica is busy with her makeup.”
Jessica looked up from her hand-mirror. “Wha’?”
“Yes, sir,” Nicole sighed, grabbing the bottle and pouring.
The longboat came up alongside the branch and the mooring lines were quickly secured by the sailors.
“My name is Admiral Miguel Roapes. I represent the highest ideal of The League and my people,” Admiral Roapes said without the slightest hint of irony as he stepped out onto the branch. “This is my personal attaché, Nikki,” he continued gently stroking his gray goatee.
“I am Queen Hazel Forsythia. May I introduce my eldest daughter, Solanum?” Queen Forsythia said formally, taking her daughter by the hand and presenting her. Solanum looked very much like her mother. Long, slender limbs, a swan-like neck. She moved with a natural grace and poise so effortless that one could only assume that she was simply born that way.
The only thing that spoiled the symmetry was her smile. Solanum had a kind of crooked smile that made one feel uneasy around her in a way that was hard to define. Unlike her mother, who walked barefoot upon the wood, Solanum wore thick white leather boots and carried no staff.
“I can see that your daughter is just as beautiful as her mother is,” Admiral Roapes said, his eyes flicking hungrily over her body.
“I wish to thank you for agreeing to meet me today,” The Queen replied graciously. “There are not many in these days who still respect the old ways.”
“To be honest, I think this whole thing is in terrible taste,” he said bluntly. “Do you have any idea how busy I am?”
Nicole held her breath. Admiral Roapes was being blatantly disrespectful. If Queen Forsythia was offended, she showed no sign of it in her countenance.
“T-The Admiral meant that as a joke, your Highness,” Nicole said, stepping forward. “This is the first real work he has done all week.”
Queen Forsythia turned to Nicole, and her face seemed to relax a little. No matter how many times she had been forced to do it, speaking to a man in authority never felt natural to Hazel. “I trust your attaché brought the maps I asked for?”
“Yes, I have everything you requested,” Nicole said smartly. She had never met The Queen before, but she found that she liked her instantly. Her reasoned way of speaking, her careful approach. She was everything Nicole thought a leader should be. Miguelito, on the other hand...
Nicole produced the first record crystal and snapped it in half. Glowing symbols flowed from its inner surface and spun in the air around them, gradually settling into a three-dimensional image of an island, seen from above.
“This is your homeland of Timmeron, is it not, Admiral?”
“Indeed it is,” Admiral Roapes mused, taking a sip of wine. “That right there is the Sweetwater River where I used to play as a child.”
“Oh, I have a picture of him here,” Rachael gushed, pulling out a tiny portrait of a dusty-haired child missing one front tooth.
“He was adorable,” Jessica purred.
Solanum began to giggle, but her mother squeezed her hand gently and she regained her composure.
“The image you see before you is from your own archives,” The Queen explained smoothly. “This is how your island appeared thirty years ago. Do you have the current survey as well?”
“Of course, Queen Forsythia,” Nicole said, taking out another crystal and snapping it open. Again, the energy released swirled into the form of Timmeron, floating side by side with the first image. At first glance they appeared identical, but upon closer inspection the current island was clearly smaller, as if the edges had been nibbled away. It was most pronounced in the southern lowlands, where the Sweetwater River was far shorter, flowing into the ocean just shy of the capital.
“As you can see, the two are not the same,” the Queen illustrated.
“Have the sea levels risen?” Nicole asked aloud, studying the images carefully.
“No, the shores have been eroded,” the Queen pronounced icily.
“Clearly she has altered these images to deceive us,” Admiral Roapes insisted, draining his wine glass.
“How could she have?” Nicole countered. “These are our records.”
“I requested that you bring your own because I suspected you might not trust me,” the Queen elucidated. “Do you not trust your own eyes, Admiral?”
“Of course I do!”
Solanum burst out laughing. A single, solitary blast, like a ‘HA’ that startled everyone present. Queen Forsythia squeezed her daughter’s hand tightly, and for a moment Solanum stood there frozen, mouth agape, before she slowly closed her mouth and returned to a state of quiet dignity.
“Do you have the records from Artice?” The Queen requested. “Of course,” Nicole said, this time breaking both the old and new surveys at the same time. Again, the result was the same; the island was getting smaller.
Metrion, Cocimbas, Iso, Schillotaum, Falmar, even Stretis, the result each time was the same. The Queen watched coldly, displaying no emotion as the evidence presented became greater and greater.
“What does all this mean” Nicole asked at last, looking quite disturbed.
The Queen raised her hands. Her voice was now different, loud and commanding in tone, yet retaining an undeniable femininity. “A thousand years ago, the Stonemasters of Boeth attempted to invoke a spell that would give them dominion of the seas. My people agreed to join The League of Kingdoms on the condition that this spell would be abandoned. As you can see, not only have the Stonemasters betrayed their oath to us, the spell itself has begun to spiral out of their control, and is consuming all dry land. Since the conditions for our entry into The League have been betrayed, we are completely within our rights to separate ourselves from it. I do this to call attention to the greater problem that faces us all. If we do not oppose the Stonemasters, all of our islands will be swallowed by the seas. All of our peoples will share the same fate, the same demise.”
Nicole took a step back. Her eyes were wide; her hands were shaking. It was plain to see that her whole world had been shattered. She looked to Admiral Roapes, who calmly sipped his wi
ne, as if he had not a care in the world.
“No island kingdom has authority to separate itself from The League,” Admiral Roapes explained steadily. “The Stone Council has set a deadline. You have seven days to rejoin The League, reopen your ports, and proclaim a public apology, followed by reparations to the total sum of one-half your kingdoms’ gross increase for the next twenty years. If you do not yield to these demands, I am empowered by the Council to make war upon your island, remove you from the throne, and carry them out myself in your stead.”
Nicole recognized the Admiral’s words. He had just quoted the communiqué from Boeth nearly verbatim.
“May I ask what that would accomplish?” The Queen asked dispassionately. The question obviously struck Admiral Roapes as a little odd. It took a moment and a healthy gulp of wine to regain his composure.
“What would it accomplish? My orders would be fulfilled, my duty complete. Surely even Wysterians are familiar with these concepts.”
“Even if you conquer my homeland, remove me from the throne, enslave my people, and force them to meet your demands, what will happen then?” the Queen went on. “Our islands will still continue to be eroded by the wild seas until there is nothing left. Our lands and people will still be doomed.”
“What would you have me do?” He countered, shooing away Rachael when she tried to feed him a cherry. “Would you have me return to my superiors and tell them that I refuse to follow their commands? Betray my oath to the Federal Navy? Cast my honor aside as if it were nothing?”
“At least show them the evidence we have seen today,” Nicole insisted, forgetting all decorum. “Make them know what kind of danger everyone is in.”
“Your oath was to protect people from harm,” the Queen declared icily. “Your loyalty is to defend the innocent. No one can take your honor away when you do what is right.”
“I would be stripped of everything!” he snarled. “My lands seized, my family imprisoned. My reputation destroyed. In the end, they would simply replace me with another and the end result would be the same.”
“You would trade a few years of comfort in your position for the lives of an entire world?” the Queen asked coldly.
Isle of Wysteria: The Reluctant Queen Page 4
