by Jon Jacks
An enthralled Crystine grinned hugely.
‘I said it could be you,’ the queen pointed out, gracefully dipping her own hand into the gently rippling waters.
This time, the baby rapidly became a child, became a beautiful girl, became a woman; became the Fisher Queen, but with the face of Crystine’s own mother.
*
Crystine gasped in a mix of shock and horror.
She whirled around in the boat, glaring at the Fisher Queen with mingling bewilderment and fear.
The queen nonchalantly pulled aside her face veil.
Of course, Crystine wasn’t looking into the face of her mother.
For it was her own smiling face looking back at her.
*
‘This just gets crazier!’ Crystine sighed with only a tiny sense of relief.
The queen had withdrawn her dangling hand from the lively waters.
The foetus, first growing then fading to nothing, had returned.
‘What’s so hard to understand?’ the Fisher Queen replied. ‘I’m you as you could be; and I’m also your mother as she could have been – just as the other queens are you if you stick to the script written for you, if you fail to remember what has passed between us if you return.’
‘If I return?’ Crystine repeated fearfully.
‘There is a way to ensure my connection with the world is reborn,’ the queen said, ‘but it would probably be asking far more of you than anybody should be expected to sacrifice.’
‘I’ve learnt so much about me here: I’m a stronger, better person that I ever believed I could be.’
The queen nodded in agreement.
‘And yet the world you come from offers so many seductive distractions, things we tell ourselves it would be foolish to give up.’
The queen glanced down at the child.
‘There would be no you at all if your mother hadn’t failed to recognise my presence; but now, if you wish, she could call on me – and stop seeing herself as a gift to be packaged up for the pleasure of others.’
She briefly dipped her hand into the waters once more; and once more the Fisher Queen briefly appeared there instead of the child.
‘You’re saying I don’t have to be conceived?’ Crystine asked uncertainly. ‘And that’s my choice?’
The Fisher Queen nodded, her wan smile an indicator that she realised Crystine was being given a difficult choice.
‘I’m saying,’ she said quietly, ‘that you could break the circle.’
*
Chapter 43
As she always did whenever her mum was out, Crystine was reading.
As she did, in fact, whenever mum was home.
Because then they’d both be absorbed in reading; absorbed in their own little worlds of imagination rather than the far more uncontrollable, far more frightening world actually surrounding them.
Like mother, like daughter; isn’t that what they said?
God forbid, Crystine thought, that included her.
She’d leave home, as soon as she were able, rather than that!
She wasn’t ready to do that just now, of course.
Not just yet.
She couldn’t leave her friends. Her schoolwork.
She wasn’t quite sure how to look after herself anyway.
Besides, her mother needed her, didn’t she?
Crystine was finding it difficult to concentrate,
She was waiting for a phone call.
Hoping for a call.
From a certain boy she’d had her eye on for quite a while now.
He’d forgotten her, obviously.
Forgotten he’d promised to call.
The phone rang.
Crystine jumped up from her makeshift seat, letting the opened book in her lap slip aside.
She picked up the receiver.
‘Hello?’ she said into the mouthpiece nervously.
‘Hi.’
It was him.
She recognised his voice, even in nothing more than the slow, confident ‘Hi.’
She had to apologise; that was the first thing to bring up she realised.
She needed to let him know how ashamed she’d been at falling asleep in class.
How she didn’t want that to make him feel any less about her.
‘I don’t mind,’ he replied happily, adding jokily, ‘It was nice just seeing you smiling so contentedly as you slept.’
‘I do love you…I mean; please, you won’t forget me will you?’ she pleaded resignedly.
‘Of course I won’t forget you,’ he chuckled curiously. ‘How could you even think of something as crazy as that?’
His reply made Crystine giggle with delight.
Then she paused.
Yes; How could she even think of something as crazy as that?
End
If you enjoyed reading this book, you might also enjoy (or you may know someone else who might enjoy) these other books by Jon Jacks.
The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly
The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale
A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)
The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator
Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll’s Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666
P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers – Gorgesque
Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)
Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent
Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak
Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife
Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches – Lady of the Wasteland
The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – We Three Queens – Cygnet Czarinas
Memesis