Happy Ever After

by Selena Kitt

  Prying her hands from the post, he turned her to face him. “Hold no shame for what we feel. For the child we made.” He returned the ring to her finger. “We will see your father, then marry. If you’ll forgive me for all I’ve brought on you.”

  “I never thought ill of you, Samuel. My love is deeper than pettiness.”

  He kissed the palm of her hand and drew her against his chest. “My love,” he whispered.

  About Bekki Lynn

  Bekki Lynn is a multi-book published author who resides in the Midwest surrounded by her family, friends and small petting zoo. Included in this mix are the characters writes, lives and breathes. They keep her on her toes while taking her on a roller coaster ride of emotions. She’d have it no other way.

  When she’s not glued to her laptop-is there a time when she’s not? There is, but we won’t go into much detail there. She loves to shop period—music, movies, the works, go to baseball games and to dinner with her husband of more than thirty years.

  Bekki listens to music and watches sitcoms, movies and sports as writes. She needs the noise after raising four sons and being used to their sounds. The quiet frightens her.

  To learn more about Bekki Lynn feel free to visit her website:

  http://home.mchsi.com/~bekkilynn

  RE-WRITE

  By Marshall Ian Key

  I had always assumed that it was a rule of hackdom that we did not receive invitations to the Palace. It was nothing formal, of course. Nobody said anything at the monthly meetings, but nobody ever mentioned getting an invitation, either.

  When I was thirteen, I had dreamed of going to the Palace. The Queen had invited me, because she was young and gorgeous and soft and sexy, and I was young and manly and virile and quite full of myself. There was no way that the King, who was none of those things, could possibly satisfy her. Just look at him, for crying out loud: short, jug-eared, bug-eyed, and with a nose that preceded him like Diogenes's lantern. So she invited me. I was more than willing to pitch in, of course, for the overall happily-ever-afterness of the kingdom. There were thousands of other thirteen-year-old boys who would have been equally willing.

  I was forty now, the Queen an elegant sixty. She had grown older gracefully, given birth to a single child, Prince Christian, when I was fifteen. He appeared to have inherited nothing from his mother—proof, in my mind, that she had washed her hands of the whole thing. She appeared content. If not actually satisfied.

  I had grown older somewhat more clumsily, having finally settled into a career as a hack. When I graduated university, some fifteen years or so ago, I had dreams of becoming a novelist. A famous, best-selling novelist was what I had in mind, but any sort of novelist would have done. I had no sooner entered the “real world,” though, when I realized I was completely bereft of ideas. I had no story to tell, not even a short one, let alone a entire novel's worth. I wrote some magazine articles and a few primers on gardening. I still wanted to tell stories. I just didn't have any.

  Fortunately, other people had stories. So I took to telling them. The name Joe Boston started appearing on plenty of books, always preceded by “as told to.” Britney: A Nightingale's Story, as told to Joe Boston. The Shaq Attack, as told to Joe Boston. I had made decent money over the last few decades. It was a living.

  It just wasn't a living I ever expected would bring me to the Palace. When my agent called to forward the invitation, I accused him of a prank. Up until the moment they opened the gate to let me in, I was ready to laugh the whole thing off when my friends popped up to let me in on the joke.

  I parked on one of the streets that surrounded the courtyard that surrounded the moat that surrounded the palace.

  The guard at the gate raised an eyebrow at my approach.

  “I have an appointment?” I suggested.

  The eyebrow went further up.

  “Seriously, pal. I was told to come.”

  “Name?”

  “Joe Boston.”

  He retreated into his guardroom, eyeing me all the while. He returned with an ornate skeleton key.

  “Most of the visitors use the car entrance,” he said, nodding further west toward a larger gate.

  “I'm fine,” I said. “I got two hours on the meter.”

  He shrugged and unlocked the gate. I passed through and made the long trudge to the Palace entrance. One of the reasons their other visitors no doubt used the car entrance was the half-mile or so between the gate and the Palace proper. It was a nice day for a walk.

  I was greeted by an equerry, the sort of guy who would have been tending horses a hundred years ago and whose job managed to survive both the introduction of the automobile and the elimination of the King's Royal Stables. He appeared to be more of a doorman now. I followed him down a long corridor that echoed with the sounds of our footsteps. Paintings of former kings and queens filled the walls on both sides.

  By this point, I had rejected my first idea—that some disgruntled courtier wanted to tell a salacious story about the King and Queen or, even better, at least from a sales viewpoint, about Prince Christian and Princess Valerie. The idea had never been more than half-baked anyway. For one thing, wouldn't he or she have wanted to meet in some out-of-the way tavern? “Excuse me, your Majesty, can I use one of the meeting rooms to spill the beans about your son and daughter?” For another thing, it was a fairly gruntled staff. Everyone always had the same smiles on their faces. Like they'd managed the happily-ever-after thing despite the lack of my sexual participation. Still, it was the best idea I had come up with.

  The doorman silently showed me into a room, his expression making it quite clear that I was to wait and touch nothing. I had seen pictures, of course, but I was still unprepared for the garish opulence—the gilt chairs, the lush tapestries, the ancient books lining the shelves, the ocean of silver occupying the tables.

  “Would you like some tea?”

  I had been so wrapped up in the furnishings, I hadn't heard the door. I turned and froze. Princess Valerie was far more stunning in person than in the papers or even on TV. The change over the past five years, when the prince had first introduced her to the kingdom, was astonishing. The waif of that time, the girl who appeared to have spent the previous year wandering the forest eating roots and berries, was completely gone. Now—her bosom full, her skin a beautiful pink, her eyes a flashing, happy blue, her brown hair brushing her shoulders—the woman who had taken her place was as perfect as a flower in full bloom.

  “Your—your Highness,” I stammered after a pause that threatened to last into winter.

  “Mr. Boston,” she said with a delightful smile. “Tea?”

  “Thank you, your Highness. I would love some.”

  She opened the door, said something and then closed it before walking toward me with her hand extended. I took it and, with no idea what to do with it, bowed deeply.

  She laughed, a hearty rumble of sound that seemed wholly disconnected from her regal bearing. “Mr. Boston, if we are going to be working together, you will have to learn to treat me with a little less deference. Pray take a seat.”

  “Work together, Highness?” I asked as I parked my butt on a plush red couch. “You want to work with me?”

  “I do, Joe. May I call you Joe?”

  “Certainly.” I shrugged. She could call me anything she wanted.

  “And you shall call me Valerie.”

  I thought that very unlikely. I gave her a half-smile.

  “I must confess to being somewhat still overbowled by your suggestion that we work together on anything at all, your...eh...Valerie...ness. I am a common writer. A mere amanuensis as of late. Well, and as of early as well. Pretty much as of all my life, really. I earn my living by writing other people's stories.”

  “Precisely,” Valerie said. “And I should like very much if you would agree to do the same for me.”

  “Tell your Highness's story?”

  “Yes.”

  “The palace, the parties, the footmen, the whol
e thing?”

  Another hearty laugh. “God, no, Joe. I can't imagine anything more boring.”

  “Than your Highness's life?”

  “Than reading about my Highness's life—the parties, the clothes, yada yada yada. It's boring enough living it sometimes. Even I couldn't stand reading about it. No, I'm talking about my previous life. From before all this.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Why do you ask like that, Joe?”

  “Well, I mean the gossip about your past has finally died down. Why do you want to bring it all up again?”

  Her eyes flashed. “What was it?”

  “What was what?”

  “The gossip! I'm shut up here in this palace and I can't get any of the really good magazines—Star, National Enquirer. All we get here is National Geographic. So what did they say?”

  I hemmed and hawed but eventually it all came out. She was a whore. She was a hippie. She was raised by wolves. Or sheep. Or wolves and sheep, taking turns. She worked as a maid for her ugly stepmother and equally ugly stepsisters.

  “And then I was transformed into a princess by my fairy godmother?” she said, clapping her hands in delight.

  “Something like that. That was the one for the kids. But now, everybody loves you. You have higher favorables than the prince, higher than the King and Queen.”

  She leaned forward, her silk brocade gown offering a tantalizing glimpse of what Penthouse had offered ten million dollars for a better view of. I stared, unblinking, into her eyes.

  “Can you keep a secret, Joe?”

  “Certainly.”

  “You won't tell a soul?”

  “Nobody,” I said, crossing my heart. I promised with the full knowledge that if I failed to keep my word, I would be drafted into the army and posted to the disease-ridden swamps of the south.

  “I'm pregnant, Joe. With twins.”

  It was delightful news. The entire country was waiting for their Royal Highnesses to start producing little Highnesses. Although there were thousands of thirteen-year-old boys who would be crushed.

  “Congratulations,” I said.

  “Well, between us, Joe, it was my pleasure.” She added a wink that rendered me speechless once again. Was she talking about Prince Christian? A man as short, jug-eared, bug-eyed and nasally challenged as his father? I was saved by the arrival of the tea. As we sipped from the delicate china, she explained that she wanted her children to know all about her life.

  “I was very impressed with your bear book.”

  Ah, yes. The Blond in the Baby Bear's Bed, as told to Joe Boston. My first and only foray into children's literature.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “So when I decided on this project,” she continued. “I decided to ask you to help. Are you in?”

  “Of...of course,” I said.

  “All the proceeds will be yours, of course.”

  “All of them?”

  She laughed again. “I have little need of the money, Joe. I've done quite well here, particularly considering where I started.”

  “Perhaps,” I suggested, “we could donate your half to some sort of charity. The Princess's Trust for...”

  Tears welled up in her eyes. “I knew I had the right man. Orphans, then. The Princess's Trust for Orphans. I'll have the lawyers draw one up. How fitting.”

  “Your Highness was an orphan?” I asked.

  She glared at me.

  “You were an orphan?” I rephrased it. “Er, Valerie?”

  She smiled again.

  “As good as,” she said with a sigh. “Let us say it was an unusual childhood. As my name indicates.”

  “Your name?”

  “Valerianella Locasta.”

  “It's lovely.”

  “It's a plant, Joe. They named me after a plant.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Anyway, what with doctor's appointments and royal appointments, I'm not sure I can block off a big amount of time for this. It's going to kind of be a couple hours here, then a week off, then a couple hours there. Is that a problem?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “Maybe the best thing to do would be for me to take notes when we can get together, and then write up what I have before I come back. We can spend some time going over what I've written and then move on. How does that sound to your...you, Valerie?

  “My Valerieness approves,” she said with yet another laugh. I loved this woman. I pulled a notebook and pen from my jacket pocket.

  * * * *

  Hezekiah and Rebekkah Stonewort were among the least ordinary people in the kingdom. Hezekiah scratched out a living making chalk drawings in the park, while Rebekkah gave lessons in yoga and meditation on a schedule that was apparent to her alone. As a result of their lack of business sense, they lived in a neighborhood described as “transitional” by local authorities and as “edgy” by those who lived nearby. Many of the houses were old and in need of repair; the trees were even older, their gnarled branches casting strange shadows in the moonlight.

  Their neighbors were equally strange. On the one side was a witch, or at least a woman who was widely rumored to be a witch, and on the other side, two young women who appeared to have foresworn the company of men and whose arguments and reconciliations filled the area with all sorts of interesting sounds.

  Five years into their love-filled marriage, Rebekkah became pregnant, and it was during the course of that pregnancy that she developed a craving for field salad. It was unfortunate, perhaps, that the only place it grew was right next door, in the garden of Mrs. Stranglemeister, the putative witch. Rebekkah was expert at sneaking in and out, at cutting just so much that it went unnoticed during the first seven months. It was at that point, however, that her physician, or more properly her herbalist, put her on a strict regimen of bed rest. It fell to Hezekiah to obtain the plant.

  He succeeded, for a while. But on the two-hundred and sixty-seventh day, as Rebekkah lay in her bed, awaiting his return, the phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Stonewort?” Mrs. Stranglemeister's voice was both silky soft and brittle hard.

  Rebekkah felt a cold chill run up her spine. “Yes?”

  “I found your darling husband stealing my field salad, and he confessed the two of you have been doing so for the last nine months.”

  “I have no idea what you're talking about,” Rebekkah said. It was always better to deny everything.

  “Then I shall deal with your husband,” the witch said, a cackle in her voice suggesting she was not using “deal” in its ordinary sense.

  “No, wait. Oh, shit.”

  “Your pains are beginning. No doubt you would like your husband at your side.”

  “Please. Let him go.”

  “I shall be happy to, let us say, exchange him, my dear.”

  “Exchange? For what?”

  “You have no idea what a constant diet of field salad will do to an as yet unborn infant, do you?”

  “Oh my god, what?”

  “Let us say she will be a special infant, and will need special care. The sort of care you will be unable to give her.”

  “You want my daughter?” Rebekka asked in a horrified tone.

  “And you want your husband. You have my number, my dear. Pray call me back when you have decided.”

  “Oh, shit,” Rebekkah cried again as she hung up the phone.

  In the end, faced with a cruel choice, Rebekkah knew she could not leave her darling Hezekiah in the witch’s hands. There would be other children to raise. Her hands trembling, she called Mrs. Stranglemeister and agreed to the deal. Her husband would be freed immediately; the babe was to be delivered no later than one day after her birth. The witch warned her that any attempt to flee with the baby would result in the couple's demise.

  The girl to whom Rebekkah gave birth nine hours of painful labor later was a child of unimaginable beauty. Her golden, almost platinum hair framed a face whose deep blue eyes bespoke not so much intelligence as a remarkabl
e capacity for trust, a naïve faith that everything in the world was good.

  Her parents spent a sleepless night, wondering whether they should test the witch's threat by running away with the child or stand and make a fight. In the end, their fear made the decision for them. They bundled up the girl and prepared to take her next door. As they stepped onto the front porch, however, Hezekiah had a thought.

  “We cannot leave this block with the babe in our arms, and it will break our hearts to turn her over to the witch.”

  “Very true, my love. But I see no other choice.”

  “There is but one that I see. Suppose we step off the porch and turn not to the left but to the right?”

  “Then we shall be going the wrong direction,” Rebekkah said, “for Mrs. Stranglemeister lives to the left.”

  “Very true, my love. But suppose that we leave this beautiful girl not in the care of that horrible witch, but with our other neighbors? And in the meantime, we will flee to avoid the witch's wrath.”

  “Ingrid and Susan? But they are...lesbians, my darling.”

  “You would rather give her to a witch?”

  “I guess when you put it that way, no.”

  And so the child, hastily named for the plant that had been the source of so much trouble, was abandoned to the care of Susan Prosser and Ingrid Fleckham.

  * * * *

  “Abandoned seems kind of harsh, doesn't it?” Princess Valerie asked. It was two weeks since our first talk. I had pretended to sip at my tea while she read the first chapter of what would one day be On the Road to Ever After, as told to Joe Boston. “I mean, you make them sound heartless. They were scared, Joe.”

  “Of a witch?” I responded, my tone of voice suggesting witches belonged to that category of objects the fear of which should be tempered by their non-existence.

  “Yes. And yes, I know there are no witches. But can't you find another word?”