April Queen, May Fool

by Jon Jacks

  When?

  He had said it, Crystine felt sure of that.

  Well, no; only sort of sure, to be honest.

  She had every right to just forget everything, to let the queens themselves work out–

  No, she didn’t have that right!

  She pulled herself free of the fool’s arms.

  ‘You said you felt all this was meant to happen?’ she blurted out.

  ‘You felt that too?’ he grinned foolishly.

  ‘Yes…I mean no!’ she hastily corrected herself as the fool moved to draw her closer once more. ‘Not the way you mean, at least!’

  ‘What other meaning could it have?’ the fool asked.

  ‘I mean – don’t you see? – you’re caught in the circle too! You’re part of it. You’re supposed to fall in love with me!’

  The fool grinned stupidly once more, tried to pull her closer once more.

  She held him back once more.

  ‘And to complete the circle, I’m supposed to fall in love with you too!’

  The fool smiled blissfully.

  Crystine had to stop him from drawing closer, from slipping his arms about her.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry; but we have to work out what’s going on here! We’re being…well, sort of being played here: like the KingFisher’s just shifting us all around; like we’re nothing more than his cards!’

  ‘We’re hardly cards!’ the fool chuckled. ‘I don’t know of any card that can say it’s not going to do what you want it to do!’

  Crystine briefly paused, considering this.

  ‘But what if the card…what if it…’

  She couldn’t think of a way of refuting the fool’s argument.

  If what she was saying was right, why hadn’t any of the queens recognised that they were subserviently following a revolving storyline, one set out for them by the KingFisher?

  Why hadn’t the April Queen, when she’d woken up minus her necklace yet surrounded by apple pieces, connected it to the story of the Queen of The Fall?

  She must have known the story of the Queen of The Fall, surely?

  Crystine grabbed the fool’s hand, instantly regretting it when he beamed happily.

  ‘Your dream of the April Queen and the vanishing necklace,’ she said urgently, ‘did you see – or did you hear of – whatever happened when she woke up and found her shoulders draped with pieces of apple?’

  ‘Ah, well,’ the fool began hesitantly, a little ashamedly, ‘she didn’t actually wake up with apple pieces around her.’

  ‘Go on,’ Crystine said.

  ‘Obviously, I couldn’t let her wake up looking such a mess: so I removed them.’

  ‘Removed them? In a dream?’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know: maybe it wasn’t a dream, after all!’

  The fool threw his arms up in exasperation.

  ‘I can’t remember!’ he admitted, flustered. ‘It just all seems so…I don’t know – hard to remember everything right!’

  He glanced about him, taking in the darkness of the room, the lack of light making it seem dusk like, a time for rest, for sleep.

  ‘Thinking about it now, I’m not even sure it was a bedroom; yes, yes – it was more like this room! It was dark, dim – she wasn’t in her bed.’

  He looked down at her.

  ‘She was in my arms: yes, I remember that now!’

  Crystine also glanced everywhere about herself, taking in the room, touching her necklace.

  ‘That’s exactly what’s supposed to happen again!’ she said confidently. ‘We don’t realise we’re just going through the same motions as long as just certain pieces of our memories – like the pieces of apple – are removed.’

  ‘So, if it’s all supposed to happen, and it feels right…’ the fool began doubtfully, reaching out for Crystine yet again, but far more tentatively this time.

  ‘No, not this time!’

  Crystine saw the hurt in the fool’s eyes, but realised she had to press on.

  ‘Something’s different this time!’

  ‘What? What do you mean? What could be different?’ the fool asked.

  Crystine paused again.

  Yes; what did she mean?

  ‘The doctor!’ she blurted out.

  ‘You’re in love with the doctor?’ The fool was aghast and wounded.

  ‘No, no: of course not!’

  Crystine was aghast that he could even contemplate such a ridiculous thing.

  But she had more urgent things to think about than the fool’s idiotic misinterpretation of her words.

  ‘I mean, the doctor is the thing that’s different this time; I’m just about sure of it!’

  *

  Chapter 34

  ‘I’ll marry you!’ the fool announced. ‘That’s what will make you different from all the other queens; you’ll have a king by your side!’

  Inwardly, Crystine sighed.

  Why had she been chosen for all this?

  She wasn’t even from this world!

  Then again, perhaps that was the reason why she’d been chosen.

  Who would be more confused than someone taken from a completely different world?

  A girl who’d grown up here might have learnt enough about it to suspect something wasn’t right about all this.

  Besides, she’d have a stock of memories firmly rooted in this world.

  Whereas Crystine, of course, had originally had no idea this place had even existed, the contact between the two worlds having come to an end centuries ago; perhaps deliberately so, ensuring the KingFisher had free rein when it came to manipulating the memories of the princesses and queens’.

  ‘The KingFisher would kill you,’ Crystine assuredly warned the fool. ‘Don’t you see that he’d have to? With no one to reassure them that they’re loved, the queens set too much importance on their own beauty, obediently following what they believe are helpful rules; rules devised by the KingFisher.’

  ‘So, will you one day be following his instructions?’ the fool asked, perhaps with a hint of bitterness. ‘Like the April Queen, will you one day be going off to stay with the Four Dark Elves?’

  Crystine gasped with excitement.

  ‘Yes! Of course! She is going to see the elves, isn’t she?’

  And without another word, she rushed towards the nearest mirror and began to tear down its covering veil.

  *

  ‘What are you doing?’

  The fool stared at Crystine in complete bemusement as she struggled to pull the huge veils aside from the looming mirror.

  ‘As you just said, she’s going to see the elves,’ Crystine replied.

  ‘That’s what the Queen of The Fall told us: that she’d heard the April Queen had gone to see the elves.’

  Crystine rushed past him, crossing the room to pull down the veil covering another mirror.

  ‘But how could the Queen of The Fall have heard that? The April Queen’s servant seemed to think she was still in her palace, and we only left moments ago! The Queen of The Fall only thinks she’s heard this, because she knows that’s what’s supposed to happen next!’

  Grabbing the fool’s hand, she pulled him into the space lying between the two partially unveiled mirrors.

  ‘If we get back to your love before she goes, I can give her the necklace: and we break the circle!’

  ‘But they’re different mirrors,’ the fool wailed, even as they both began to be shuffled through their multiple identities.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So it’s a different time; we’ll be too late anyway!’

  *

  Chapter 35

  When they stopped moving, it seemed for a brief moment to Crystine that they hadn’t moved at all.

  They still appeared to be standing together in the very same room she’d intended to leave, with its huge table, its veiled, looming mirrors.

  No, of course; here the veils were green, not brown.

  As she might have suspected, if she’d thought
about it, the veils had been pulled down from the mirrors to either side of them

  The rooms were connected, after all.

  The doors towards the end of the room opened, the doors through which the Queen of The Fall had exited.

  The April Queen entered, her veils of the same green as those covering the mirrors.

  She halted, her stance one of complete shock.

  ‘We were in time!’ the fool gasped in relief, happily rushing towards her.

  They blissfully collapsed into each other’s arms.

  ‘I…I can’t let you see me like this!’ the queen pleaded, backing away ashamedly from the fool once the first exuberant displays of love were over, the movement of her head a clear indication that she had noticed Crystine.

  ‘There’s no need to visit the elves,’ Crystine began to joyfully explain.

  Now the queen’s stance and moves were ones of confusion.

  ‘But…I’ve already been to see them!’

  *

  Chapter 36

  The fool’s whole body slumped in disappointment.

  The queen reached out a veiled hand to touch him tenderly.

  ‘Please, it’s not what you think.’

  The fool took her hand in his, if a little unsurely.

  ‘Yes, I went there hoping for some miracle to restore my beauty,’ the queen confessed, ‘but at the entrance to the cave, I almost choked on the apple given to me by the Three Giant Women.’

  The fool expressed an anguished sigh; this, after all, was how the story always played out.

  ‘What I saw made me weep!’ the queen continued innocently, unaware of the adverse effect it was having on the fool.

  ‘The elves were torturing some poor man, telling him he had to return the crystal!’

  ‘The doctor!’ Crystine exclaimed in surprise. ‘It has to be!’

  ‘Doctor? I’m not sure who he was,’ the queen said, ‘but he tried to buy them off with a purse of pearls; until one of the elves said they’d already taken it, and it had nothing but sticky May blossom in it.’

  The fool gave Crystine a fleeting, shameful glance before at last responding to the queen’s urgent, tender touches with a concerned query.

  ‘Did the elves see you? How did you get away?’

  ‘They were too busy with this man to see or stop me; they were furious. They said the crystal had made fools of them, and had got them into trouble with their master!’

  ‘The crystal had caused them trouble?’ Crystine repeated curiously. ‘So why did they want it back? Did they get it back?’

  ‘They said it hadn’t been from their master, like they’d thought. I…left before I saw…’

  The fool wrapped her arms around her once more, gently bringing her close.

  ‘Good,’ he said assuredly. ‘You don’t need any necklace.’

  He reached for her face veil to pull it aside; but the queen stopped him.

  ‘I’m hideous, I know,’ she whispered ashamedly, even as she made the decision to reveal herself to him after all.

  ‘Please forgive me,’ she murmured.

  The fool smiled.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ he said truthfully, ‘as beautiful as ever.’

  ‘And as you’re beautiful,’ Crystine declared with a mix of relief and sadness, ‘then that means I have to find the elves and this crystal on my own.’

  ‘No, don't go!’ the queen exclaimed, turning away from the fool to concernedly look Crystine’s way, ‘I’ve seen enough of these elves to know they’d–’

  ‘Rip your blooming head off!’ one of the four elves snarled, as they all appeared in the room between the two sparkling mirrors.

  *

  The maliciously scowling elf was holding the blue crystal in a raised hand.

  With his other hand, he pointed accusingly at Crystine.

  ‘This is something to do to with you, we believe!’

  As the fool bravely rushed towards the elves, one of them cast a cloud of dust over him, freezing him in the action of half leaping across the floor.

  The queen anxiously dashed towards the motionless fool, her pleading for him to be released ignored by every elf.

  ‘Me?’ Crystine was mystified by this accusation, but also no less intrigued and excited by it.

  ‘Yes, you, little missy,’ the elf wearing the hat growled irately, stepping forward to probe angrily at Crystine with a hard, stumpy finger. ‘We were told you were going to be a boy: but you never were! It was all just a lie!’

  ‘But not me,’ Crystine insisted. ‘I didn’t lie – obviously!’

  ‘If not you, it was one of you lot then!’ a fourth elf snapped, pointing threateningly at the stupefied queen.

  ‘I’ve never seen it before!’

  ‘Well one of you somehow made out you were our master!’ the first elf exasperatedly declared. ‘Telling us lies!’

  In the corner of Crystine’s eye, she caught the remarkable sight in one of the mirrors of what appeared to be a crowded room stretching on to infinity. And yet it was more crowded than she’d expected, with what could be suits of armour mingled amongst them, armour that was stealthily moving.

  How many of them there really were, it was impossible to say; but two of the soldiers stepped into the room, closely followed by another two.

  Also noticing this, the elves began to vanish one by one with a frustrated shriek.

  The last one to notice was the one who been holding the crystal.

  As he too prepared to disappear, Crystine leapt towards him, making a grasp for the hand holding the crystal.

  She grasped the hand; but it was too late.

  The elf, along with the crystal, had gone

  *

  Chapter 37

  The soldiers trooping into the room bore the colours of The Fall. The queen followed on behind them, explaining that she had sensed the presence of the Four Dark Elves in the mirrors and rushed to help a fellow queen.

  The fool was thankfully moving once again, completely unaware of the predicament he had been in. He believed instead that he had heroically fought off the elves long before the arrival of the soldiers.

  It should all of been a cause for celebration; but Crystine sighed miserably.

  She had been so close to obtaining the crystal, only for it to literally slip from her grasp.

  Then – she felt something cold in her hand.

  She raised her hand, opening it slowly, hoping…hoping…hoping.

  Damn!

  It wasn’t the crystal; it was just a few broken links of the chain it had been suspended from.

  It snaked in her hand as if alive, a motion granted it, she assumed, by the slight moving of her palm.

  ‘Well, if only the Hag Queen were here, then that would mean all the queens were finally together as one!’ the fool cheerfully pointed out.

  ‘We’d still be missing the Fisher Queen,’ Crystine corrected him glumly as she rose to her feet once more.

  ‘The Fisher Queen?’ the Queen of The Fall chuckled good-naturedly. ‘You’ve been listening to too many tales, I’m afraid.’

  ‘It’s a wonderful story,’ the April Queen agreed, ‘but only one for children; to give them a sense of hope for the world.’

  There was a vibrating buzz in the air, the throb of the wings of a swiftly passing insect.

  It was the sound of an airborne beetle, almost invisibly winging its way around them all, perhaps looking for the best place to alight: having made its way through the tiniest gap, its minute size enabling it to enter even a locked, even the most carefully guarded, room.

  *

  ‘The KingFisher?’ someone said warily.

  No one was quite sure who had spoken, the attention of everybody being on trying to ascertain the beetle’s whereabouts within the room.

  ‘There, is that it?’ a soldier asked, pointing towards what could be an emerald coloured beetle upon the April Queen’s dress.

  ‘No, there it is!’ the fool announced confidently, in
dicating a jet decoration gracing the Queen of The Fall’s veiled gown.

  ‘What colour would he be?’ the April Queen asked, glancing everywhere about her, confusing first a sapphire and then a ruby for the beetle.

  Within the multiple reflections of the mirrors, the beetle could be any one of an uncountable number of glittering jewels (for the April Queen hadn't yet removed such sparkling objects of beauty, as the Hag Queen had done, and the Queen of The Fall had started to do).

  ‘Catch him, if you see him, catch him!’ the Queen of The Fall commanded, striking out at an amethyst she had falsely believed to be him.

  Naturally, it was a chaotic scene as everyone wildly reached out for a creature who not only moved and flew so rapidly fast, but who would also only fleetingly land before rising swiftly into the air once more.

  ‘Where is he?’ an exhausted fool eventually sighed in frustration, having already grasped at nothing more than sparkling reflections a number of times.

  ‘He’s here,’ a voice said: a woman’s voice.

  It came from a beetle glistening like the brightest amber amongst a glorious display of May blossom.

  It launched itself into the air, where it shivered, dissolved; and became in an instant the Hag Queen, wearing a fabulous cloak of feathers.

  *

  Chapter 38

  ‘Where’s the KingFisher?’ a bewildered fool asked, noting the long cloak the Hag Queen was wearing. ‘Did you defeat him?’

  ‘Why would I pit myself against someone who has brought so much benefit to me?’ the Hag Queen retorted scathingly.

  ‘You’ve been helping each other?’ The April Queen was astonished.

  ‘Well haven’t you all always blamed me for betraying you all anyway, when I traded your precious necklace with him – and all in a foolish quest to regain my beauty?’

  ‘You should have realised he’d only trick you!’ the Queen of The Fall scoffed.

  ‘You should have realised that it’s impossible to regain beauty!’ the April Queen agreed.

  ‘To regain, yes; that’s impossible!’ the Hag Queen said, drawing closer towards Crystine, tenderly, even longingly, stroking the perfectly clear flesh of a cheek. ‘But to relive; that’s entirely achievable. Again and again and again!’

  ‘You didn’t help each other…’ Crystine began a little doubtfully, adding even more unsurely, ‘you’re the same person? You are the KingFisher?’