Dear Reader,
For over three years I have been developing an urban fantasy novel. In October turned in the first 50 pages as my thesis for my master’s degree in creative writing & literature at Harvard University.
I know for certain I have put hundreds of hours into this world, these characters, and plot. By the time I finished polishing the first five chapters, I knew one thing for certain: to do justice to this story, it is going to take a few thousand more hours.
Que the grief: a period of anger, denial, weeping and gnashing of teeth, etc., etc.
However, I want to share a little piece of this world and these characters, with you—my dedicated audience. The short story below takes place 30 years before my novel-in-process begins.
The illustration for this month’s short story is a part of a series of paintings currently in development. The show will go on display this January, in Simsbury CT. More details to follow.
Enjoy,
~The Queen’s Anointing~
MONARCH, Prequel
Rendapolis had been founded hundreds of years ago as a hill town. Now it was a thriving metropolis and the capital, Trinayus, was a pillar of carved stone at the center. It was detailed with flowers, leaves, and intricate geometric patterns that no one from the ground could hope to see, even without the dense cloud cover. But Trinayus wasn’t designed for people bound by two feet to the ground. The details were for the Alvar, those who embraced feathers and wings. Their darting forms broke the mist here, now there. A caw. Neala swooped, cutting through the fog around the tower. The moisture pressed against the white plumage of her underbelly and coated the speckled pattern of her feathers up to her glossy back.
Today was Ulstation Day, the day when all the Alvarian knights received new postings and promotions. It marked the beginning of a week of festivities for them, if not the city at large. A tradition tied to the knighthood, Ulstation day had some sort of foundation in their faith, but which came first – the festivities or the knighting – none knew now.
One of Neala’s many instructors would disagree, no doubt. In fact, she would probably know exactly which came first, and why, and how it was based in their faith, and when it was introduced, if she simply paid attention in her history lessons. Really though, how was she expected to focus on lessons when she could now fly. She had just molted a month ago and at this point, she arguably spent more time in the sky than in her royal chambers. Even on a day like today, when visibility was so poor she couldn’t see the lake dominating the whole eastern front of the city, she’d much rather be out here flying.
Besides, there were her sisters for such tedious duties of state as reading names from a list, bestowing honors, and letting court diplomats and nobles with bad breath kiss up to you. The air was much clearer out here, thank you very much.
But she had promised Zyndell that she wouldn’t be late again, like last year. Neala did one more diving twirl, enjoying the weightless freedom of falling through the fog, as though she were between worlds. She didn’t grow nauseous anymore, thanks to her aviatrix sense of balance, and thus alighted onto the balcony outside the royal apartments. Her falcon form glided back into the young human princess, feathers disappearing into soft skin.
A tedious morning passed with her kitted out in a pearl-encrusted doublet over a ruby floor-length skirt. Freyanna announced the promotion postings of knights all over the city. With the silver sword, Queen Zyndell knighted the squires who had sat vigil in the Estrata Chapel the previous week. Neala stood safely displayed on the side, the spare for the spare to the throne. Not a threat, not to do anything, and not enjoying herself at all.
At least all eyes were on her older sisters. Soon as the throne room was dismissed to begin feasting in the grand hall, Neal scooted into a servant’s corridor, ditched the doublet, traded it for pants and a passable tunic, and shook the pins out of her hair. Funny how nobody noticed a princess on the backbenches, not when there were two regal women of the court sitting at the front table. Zyndell wore the crown like a true queen, which she had been for the last five years since their parents died. Neala, meanwhile, could have been any thirteen-year-old girl.
She kept a watch out for Zedrick, who was always seeing through her schemes and disguises. He had been more fun when he was only a page, and willing to humor her requests for burrow and bark. It was a game among the children of the court, an Alvarian spin-off of hide and seek those ordinary human children played. In burrow and bark, the hiders were the Alvar birds who had to slip the net of the verines, that cruel inhuman bread that lived within the streets of Rendapolis. Stories of verines never bothered her; the monarchy was too well established for that. Zyndell was a strong queen, and there were knights like Zedrick. Once the ‘verine’ caught the ‘bird,’ they had to bark, which always dissolved into giggles until the next ‘verine’ was chosen.
“Torin,” the boy next to her said when she asked his name. His light blue tunic noted him as a page. Even the lowest rank got an hour off here and there, which explained why he was sitting instead of serving. “I’m going to be a squire next year,” he said, catching her eyeing his uniform.
“You’re not from here, are you?” Neala asked. There was a strange accent to his voice.
Torin’s cheeks warmed. Neala watched with fascination. None of the other boys at court were so easy to get a rise out of. That, as much as the accent, gave him away.
“No, I—”
A scream shattered through the assembly. It was hard to hear through the high-pitched merrymaking, but the chill went through her. She knew that voice. The crowd rippled and then gasped and retracted.
“The queen,” Torin said, except it sounded more like ‘quen.’
A ringing in Neala’s ears blotted out the other sounds. She couldn’t see Zyndell through the assembly, which was a problem because Zyndell dominated every room she entered. Freyanna she saw for a flash, white as a sheet, falling to the ground. The throng swallowed them up to shouts of, The queen! The princess!
Neala lunged but a hand clamped on her arm. She yanked.
“No, look!” Torin hissed. Then she saw, rising in the middle of the heaving crowd, a man taller than their tallest knight, straight-backed in a suit, long fingers tapered off to sharpened claws, animal intensity rolling off him.
“Happy Ulstasion Day, my dear Alvar,” he announced.
Verine. Neala lost track of events. One moment she was climbing over the bench, the next a hand was pulling her. The crowd pressed in and she was almost trampled. She was running through darkened halls, servants’ corridors. Someone ran after them, charging, booming at them. A verine, a live verine in the middle of the court. Were her sisters hurt? They ran faster, deeper into the corridors, the labyrinthine maze of the tower’s lower foundation, but their pursuant was fast and he caught them.
Neala was thrown to the ground, her finger hitting dirt and bits of stone. A grasp yanked from her arm, Torin, she now realized. Dim lamps reflected off the sword in Zedrick’s hand as he pinned the younger boy to the wall, lifted off his toes.
“Who are you!” he roared, “Why did you steal the princess?”
Zed thinks Torin is a verine, Neala realized, dazed. Of course, she had been so stupid. Her sisters attacked, and she’d just gone with the first stranger who grabbed her. Zedrick’s sword pressed into the stranger’s chest, and he gasped.
“I’m Torin Gesine—I, I’m from Maness, my father—”
“Do you really expect me to believe you are the delegate from Maness? They weren’t meant to arrive for weeks,” Zedrick growled.
He was like an enraged black bear. Neala had never seen him so frightening, and she felt tears sting her eyes. Zed was going to kill him, she now understood.
“Why would you steal the princess, just after her sisters were attacked?”
“I—I didn’t!” Torin gasped.
“Zedrick, stop! He’s the youngest son from Maness! I saw him arrive last night!” Elda cried, finally catching up to us. Her blond hair was in a long braid, dirt and sweat smudged her face, her sword out. She had just been promoted to knighthood, she must have stayed and fought for Neala’s sisters. Shock locked Neala in place.
Zedrick dropped Torin, who coughed and rubbed his chest, hand coming away with blood.
“I just grabbed the nearest person and ran, she didn’t have a weapon, she—” Torin looked at Neala, realization dawning, “you’re the youngest daughter of the crown.”
They all looked at her, kneeling on the ground in the dirt. She couldn’t catch her breath.
“Elda, my sisters, did you see—are they alright?”
“Zyndell is gone,” Elda whispered. The words floated somewhere above her. “They were fighting for Freyanna when I came after you—”
Elda broke off as the light in the corridor changed, the flickering of dim lanterns overtaken by a glow, radiating like a small sun from the child before them. Neala sat amid the amber, a network of gold at once emanating from her and resting upon her, transforming the dusty dank corridor beneath Larice Trinayus into a chamber far more beautiful than anything of the stained-glass and marble halls above.
When the light smoldered out, the knights Zedrick and Elda, and the young emissary Torin looked down on the girl. Tears streamed from her face, knowing what it meant. Zedrick went to one knee, and after a moment, Elda and Torin followed.
“My queen,” he said.
Zyndell and Freyanna were both dead.