The Golding

by Sonya Deanna Terry

  Pieter suggested she use the same blanket to smuggle Fripso out of the Grudellan Palace and back to the forest. Eidred had hidden him beneath a cloth in her berry basket, hadn’t she, when believing him to need her protection after the weasel incident? Couldn’t she do this in reverse?

  Eidred threw her hands up in frustration. ‘He insists he won’t leave without you, Pieter. If you could change his mind, I’d be eternally grateful. Even better would be seeing you restored of your magic. Invisibility is far less dangerous than donning a disguising cloak and stepping out of my dressing quarter in full view of the spy lights. And that is only the beginning. The guards on the staircase would seize you within the blink of an eye.’

  Whenever Eidred’s minders invaded her room, most often the three were given a smidgen of warning, heralded by footsteps on stairs, and Eidred would close the doors of the quarter. On the odd occasion that they’d been taken by surprise, Pieter would rush to cover Fripso, who risked becoming frozen with fear and incapable of hiding. The cover, as well as concealing Eidred’s small, long-eared charge, thankfully shielded him from the upsetting sight of those creatures.

  ‘One day, my friend,’ Pieter would soothe every so often. ‘One day I will find our way to freedom.’

  ‘We must trust Eidred,’ Fripso would say, ‘and not abandon her without a goodbye if we find our chance to leave.’

  The elf agreed. ‘Leaving in secret would be horribly impolite. And unless I am wrong about the pterodactyls, we are her only friends.’

  It certainly was a sorry sight each dawn, the pterodactyls screaming at Eidred to begin on her education. Counting, counting, always counting. And weighing. Gold was to be measured, and measured again. One must repeat...and repeat...and repeat...number upon number until one lost all sensitivity to nature, creation, the cosmos and the heart. The minds of palace students became heavy with a concrete-laden and contrary logic that tore at their higher ideals and left them in shreds by the time dusk arrived.

  ‘And now I must sleep,’ she would say in a toneless, passion-robbed voice when returned from her schooling. Her eyes would be dull with a greyed out drowsiness. Of course she never could sleep after running across to ‘her rabbit’. ‘How is my rabbit this evening?’ she would say, and some of the beige-greyness would leave her, prompting more of a blueness and a sparkle.

  After spending time talking, feeding and nurturing her involuntarily immobilised guests, her thirst for stories of the other realms would revive. She loved to hear of Pieter’s journeys to the Dream Sphere where Alcor would send him on a mission, often to help another being’s enlightenment. She knew that at present Pieter had been commanded to observe the life of someone not from their time. Pieter explained that this individual was from the future and, if able to unite with a certain woman, would have a significant influence upon the world.

  ‘He wasn’t very accommodating with you, though, was he, Pieter, when you met him in his dream-state?’

  ‘Quite arrogant,’ agreed Pieter shaking his head. ‘Just as you were, maiden, when first we met.’

  Eidred’s eyes widened. She appeared much taken aback, which made Pieter laugh. ‘Was I indeed? Well, well, Pieter of the Brumlynds, I suppose you expect you are beyond reprieve in the way you spoke to me? I am royal remember!’

  Pieter put further comment aside. Let her think her people superior to his own. It didn’t matter. Over time Eidred had grown. Her increased understanding of devic lore might take others of her family a good several lifetimes to grasp. Considering the meaningless chatter she tolerated daily: prejudiced trivia designed to twist her thinking processes into something steel and mechanical, she still maintained enough resonance with sprites to allow their presence into her consciousness.

  So many more would never, never see. But the time when sprites were to become invisible to all but their good selves and the animals was much further along, and at least their existence was an acknowledgeable one in the time that Pieter lived.

  Grown also, although not so much intellectually, there being no stimulus for new thought in the gold-adorned chamber, was Pieter. He was a tall elf now, having grown older overnight, appearing to be seven-and-ten, one season-cycle older than the princess who was now six-and-ten.

  Fripso was determined to value his time as a palace stowaway. Pieter and Eidred had become his fondest friends. ‘If ever I die,’ he said dreamily one evening when they’d talked about life and the afterlife, ‘I shall return to this world as one of your children.’

  Eidred glanced at Pieter shyly.

  ‘Our children?’ Pieter demanded.

  ‘I mean, as a child of one of you, depending of course on who weds first.’

  Pieter breathed a thankful sigh. He might be growing up, but he hardly thought it right to entertain the idea of having children with a body-king daughter. He would marry someday of course. Someday, long after he and his companions had devised an escape, he would marry a forest faerie probably, or an elf maiden from a faraway clan.

  An escape seemed further away than ever now. Eidred confirmed to him eventually that the Backwards-Winding was indeed the palace travelling to the Elysium of one hundred season-cycles ago.

  ‘And so,’ said Pieter, ‘this construction has been lifted out of our current time, The Century of Ruin and—’

  ‘Incorrect. Our current time is known as The Century of Progress.’

  ‘Only according to gold-skins.’

  ‘Then let us choose to disagree on this, Pieter, but yes, as you say, the Grudellan Palace has relocated to the Elysium of yore.’

  ‘And now we reside in the Pre-Destruction Century.’

  ‘It is actually known as The Pre-Glory Century. Despite your odd terms, elf, you perceive the general concept. It is not just our Norwegian realm affected. Every other empirical palace has joined us here in the past.’ She regarded Pieter with a comforting smile. ‘Try not to concern yourself over this,’ she said. ‘After my eighteenth birthday something will happen to restore us to our proper timeframe.’

  When Pieter asked further, Eidred grew secretive. ‘Only six of us here in Norwegia know of this,’ she said. ‘Although had it not been for my nursery maid confiding in me when I was young, I would be entirely ignorant of the Backwards-Winding.’ She nervously eyed the door of her chamber. ‘I invite danger when speaking of palace confidences.’

  Until the day he was returned to his clan in The Century of Ruin, and until he left his boyhood behind, Pieter would treasure the remainder of his youth. It felt unfair that the Grudellan Palace frequencies had already robbed him of four or five of his season-cycles. A great deal of his magic too. The healings he carried out to clear his mind of the palace’s chaotic thought-forms were now slower to access and milder in their effect.

  Reflecting on Fripso’s comment concerning children, Pieter thought for a moment about the kind of offspring Eidred would have. Her future marriage might have already been arranged. He hoped with all his heart that her firstborn would be a son. As Eidred had said two nights earlier, if a lady of court bore three daughters in succession, the Solen commanded her execution. Eidred was a third daughter, the reason she had never known her mother.

  By Grudellan Palace standards, an absence of sons meant a decline in power. A certain amount of daughters was deemed acceptable. As future incubators, they would ultimately further the genetic line. If they managed to marry into realms more affluent, they were considered to be useful. Other than this, royal women were seen as tiresome inferiors, kept separate from their siblings, goaded by pterodactyl minders and subjected to servitude. Eidred was a launderer. She did not believe the title equated to slave. ‘This is the sort of work royal ladies are expected to do,’ she said indignantly.

  ‘Have you never questioned the way you are treated?’ Pieter asked.

  ‘Whatever do you mean? I am royal. Part of the privilege of being born a princess is to work for the good of the empire.’

  Pieter told Eidred that childbirth was his other
reason for pitying the women of her heritage. As with the faunal realm, gold-skins’ young grew in their mothers’ bellies before birth and echoed both parents’ family lines with genetics that restricted creative capacities.

  Eidred was shocked to hear sprites relied not on incubation. ‘Although I agree that singing a child into existence rather than birthing it would be far less vexing for mothers.’

  ‘Children of sprites arrive in this world directly from the Dream Sphere,’ Pieter told her. ‘Clans sing the sacred song of life in music and dance ceremonies with the intention of inviting a soul to manifest in infant form.’

  ‘And so, if gestation is unnecessary then there must be an absence of marital …’ Eidred lowered her lids. ‘Forgive me, Pieter. ’Tis an inappropriate subject. I should never have mentioned it.’

  Amused at the maiden’s coyness, Pieter told Eidred that sprites were not non-sensual. ‘The physical delights of marriage aren’t exclusive to gold-skins,’ he said, ‘even though they like to think all things pleasurable are of their own invention.’

  Eidred murmured the words, ‘I see,’ then blushed and turned away.

  <><> XXX <><>

  One evening, when Eidred had recovered from her day of relentless sums, she stepped inside the dressing-quarter, sat herself down on the rose-coloured chaise and said, ‘Pieter, I might as well reveal the secret I have kept from you.’

  ‘And what secret is that?’

  ‘The secret that surrounds the Backwards-Winding. You have been whisked away from your timeframe. I fear you are bewildered.’

  ‘It is a strange thing, for sure,’ Pieter said, ‘that this entire palace has been swept up and then moved to a previous century. Although I trust that you are right in what you tell me, about us returning again after your birthday.’ He told Eidred how pleased he was for the sprites of Elysium Glades. ‘With the Grudellan Palace gone from their timeframe, my clan and others will be free to live as they have before. No more enslavement! No more offensive gold coins!’

  Eidred turned away. ‘As I understand it, the sorcerers have replaced our vanished residence with a hologram. The forest-dwellers won’t be terrorised but will continue to fear my family, I’m afraid, because they’ll see the Grudellan Palace’s replica above the thorn thicket.’

  ‘I see. So the forbidden, treeless part of Elysium will remain unchanged.’

  Eidred nodded solemnly. ‘All due to this holographic replica. And not just its exterior. The goings-on within will be a projection of our own lives here.’ Her face brightened. ‘I shall tell you how we are to return to the future, Pieter. As I’ve said earlier, few in the palace are aware of this. I am not supposed to know, but I shall tell you what I learned when young.’

  And so, Eidred related to him a story explaining why the Solen decreed they move the royal residence from one century to another.

  At royal infant naming ceremonies, or ‘crystallings’ as they were known, twelve former faeries, all in hooded cloaks, would be called upon to issue blessings. To enable the blessings, a crystal-crowned wand was given, temporarily, to each of the twelve.

  Eidred’s crystalling was a private affair, since daughters were not to be celebrated, and was attended only by the Solen, four Grudellan minders, Eidred’s nursery maid and an eagle-winged guard whose task it was to allocate a wand to each bewitcher.

  After the bewitchers bestowed small Eidred with proper husband-attracting qualities such as gracefulness and the ability to sing like a nightingale, there came a terrible commotion.

  A wicked faerie magically appeared. She snatched up the twelfth faerie’s wand. Ugly lightning flew from her taloned fingertips and into the wand. She announced that Eidred would pierce her finger on her eighteenth birthday, and that shortly after she would die. The bitter creature then threw the wand to the floor before vanishing in a flash of flame.

  The crystal on the wand she had flung was smashed into two.

  The twelfth former faerie, of course, was yet to give her blessing. To help soothe the sting of this ominous spell, she held her wand aloft—now damaged, yet still crystal-tipped—and decreed that the princess would not die, she would only slumber. ‘All will sleep,’ she had said, ‘for a hundred years, and all will wake refreshed and unchanged by the hands of time.’

  ...‘Thank goodness, Eidred,’ Pieter said gravely. ‘I would hate to think you were doomed. How do you know all this if it is meant to be secret?’

  ‘My nursery maid told me in whispers one day when I asked how she came by the jagged fragment of crystal. She told me it was part of the wand the wicked one broke. She said no-one else of our court was to know of the Backwards-Winding because the wicked one might be an infiltrator, someone in disguise who resides here. If this cruel intender were to hear her spell was partially undone, she might wreak further havoc upon us. I don’t believe she’s an enemy within the palace. My feeling is she would have been a faerie once—drained of her heart powers and thus made into a bewitcher—perhaps one of the fortunate ones who found a way to escape.’

  ‘How does this explain the Solen ordering a removal of your palace, indeed all other palaces across the globe, from their current century?’

  ‘Eee-dred!’

  Eidred jumped. ‘My minders! I fear they have heard me.’ She hurried to the door of her chamber.

  Pieter waited anxiously for Eidred’s return. At last she burst into the room again, flushed but smiling. ‘It was only tables reciting that they wanted,’ she said. ‘They had not heard, Pieter, although their being so near to my room has acted as a warning. I should never have spoken of this. I shall say no more.’

  Pieter’s question, therefore, was not to be answered. He soon concluded that now they were residing in the Pre-Destruction Century, the sleep everyone in the empire was to fall into on Eidred’s birthday would return them to the timeframe in which they began. After one hundred season-cycles, they would wake to The Century of Ruin. This would have been why Eidred had said all would be restored once she was eight-and-ten. He now looked forward to this day.

  The next evening, Pieter woke to see Eidred watching him bashfully through the bars of the dressing-quarter doors. ‘Pieter, regarding those gems you asked me about,’ she began. ‘I’ve thought much of this, and I do believe I have a way of gleaning our family’s history.’

  ‘How?’ said Pieter and Fripso in intrigued unison.

  ‘I shall visit my father’s soothsayer.’

  ‘His soothsayer? It is a type of magician is it not?’

  ‘Yes. An alchemist who is privy to the astrology you talk of, Pieter. I have heard plenty about this soothsayer at court. There is always much gossip amongst the noblewomen, as you know. I have learnt I am entitled to an audience with the soothsayer.’

  ‘Be careful, then, dear Eidred,’ warned Fripso. ‘I daresay someone like that is dark like the rest of them.’

  ‘Oh, I have no doubt of that,’ Eidred assured the rabbit. ‘But ’tis one way I can ask as many questions as I wish without being shouted at, or threatened, or interrupted.’

  ‘As you are during school,’ said Pieter. He gazed at the floor, feeling great compassion for the poor waif having to endure treatment she did not deserve.

  ‘Yes. I may ask the soothsayer as many as three-and-twenty questions. Is that not wonderful?’

  ‘Useful certainly,’ agreed Pieter. ‘But inevitably dangerous as Fripso warns.’

  ‘Still, it is worth the danger. I shall be careful, I promise you, my dears. It is conditional of course, my visit to the soothsayer.’

  ‘Isn’t everything in this godforsaken place?’ grumbled Fripso.

  ‘What condition is it based on, Eidred?’ Pieter asked.

  ‘Oh, the condition it is based on is not unachievable.’

  ‘Whatever is it then?’

  ‘That I marry.’ Eidred’s face had taken on a dreamy expression.

  ‘Marry the soothsayer?’ Fripso was horrified.

  Pieter was equally horrified. Sure
ly she would not go so far as to wed an aged—and quite possibly toothless—magician of darkness!

  ‘You’re quite the jester,’ Eidred said to the rabbit with a sigh. In a manner far more pensive than usual, she sashayed to her bed, blew out the candle and neglected to bid either of them goodnight.

  ‘She must be in love,’ Fripso commented.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Pieter scorned. He thought a moment before adding, ‘With whom?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Fripso said yawning. ‘Probably with a prince from one of those banquets she tells us about. She doesn’t seem too concerned about fulfilling that condition, if you ask me.’

  Very soon, the soft, sleep-induced breathing of the elf’s dwelling mates permeated the silence. It was then that a wide-awake Pieter, in an impulse quite foreign to his normally placid nature, took aim at the nearest wall and gave it a kick.

  <><> <><><> <><>

  After an exhausting workday, Matthew pulled into the garage and leaned against the steering wheel, contemplating staying at home that evening, getting an early night.

  He had to remind himself he wasn’t exactly looking forward to sleep. In going out again, he’d be buying himself a temporary escape, ensuring the slumber he had after a late night was shorter and therefore less dream-filled.

  The Peter Piper kid had bugged Matthew again, hijacking a dream that teetered on the border of wakefulness. An elf and an eagle standing by a dawn-drenched autumn tree. The soft, sweet whistle of a pipe made from reed. That was all he remembered. That was all he ever remembered. The dream had recurred twice.

  This most recent dream was much the same as the first in the series. The second of the series also had the golden-leafed background and bird but differed. The kid, taller now, having a similar appearance to music’s current man-of-the-moment, an American teenage idol whose name Matthew couldn’t recall—had held up a floor mop and a pair of overalls. Was this an indication to Matthew that he should have worked harder? That he should not have written a letter of resignation, which would come into effect in two weeks’ time? That someone planned to dupe him of an investment by ‘taking him to the cleaners’?