FOUR KINGS: A Novel

by M. D. Elster

  Slowly but surely, the entire room begins to react to our presence. Gasp after gasp, the telltale sounds ripple through the room like dominoes tumbling over until even the idle music stops and everything is silent. There are so many different creatures in the room, my head is reeling; over-stimulated, it would seem, by just trying to take them all in. I can feel them all looking at me.

  “WELCOME!” shouts a surprisingly deep yet giddy voice.

  Mr. Fletcher squeezes my hand and moves in the direction of the greeting. “Not to worry, my dear,” he whispers to me. “Raven is a… large personality, but I’ll keep you safe.”

  “Is that Mr. Fletcher, commoner from the Glade? How did you riddle your way past my guards? Come closer, so I might inspect your guest, fox!”

  We cross the room and draw up to the edge of an elevated, slightly stage-like area, separated by the rest of the hall by five short black marble stairs. There are three of them on stage. The most prominent figure is a glossy black raven seated upon a throne, dressed in a rather Edwardian stage costume — as though he is merely playing at king — complete with cape and dagger at his hip. He wears a silver amulet set with an enormous blood-colored gem. The Raven King looks both bemused and bored, leaning idly with his feathered cheek upon his human hand, his murderously sharp beak tilted at an angle. He does, however, perk up when his gaze turns to me.

  Behind him stand two advisors. On his right is a tall, hawk-headed man dressed in a military uniform. The hawk has a short hooked beak, enormous eyes, and a chest full of medals. On his left is a man with the head of a ringtail. The ringtail has a silvery head, ears that poke out rather adorably from his head, a black snout, and — of course — yellow, solemn eyes ringed with heavy black. His namesake tail, too, is ringed with silver and black. It floats up behind him like a question mark. Like the majority of the creatures in the hall, he is dressed in Victorian-style garments: waistcoat with long tails, a top hat, a silky cravat about his neck.

  “I trust you know my advisors, fox — Lord Faulkner and Lord Rigby?” the king says as he continues to stare at us, cocking his head and examining us with first one eye, then the other. Mr. Fletcher nods in acknowledgment to the two men standing on either side of the king.

  Suddenly the Raven King freezes, and cocks his head this way and that, like a bird listening to something very far away.

  “Is what I’m hearing true, Mr. Fletcher?” the Raven King asks now. “Have you brought a… a human girl to my court?”

  “Indeed I have, Your Majesty,” Mr. Fletcher says. He bows deeply at the waist. “A human girl, in the flesh. And here to make your acquaintance, Sire.”

  “A HUMAN??? A HUMAN GIRL?” The cuckoo-headed man rushes over to get a better look, his giant red eyes bulging. I cannot tell if he is laughing or terrified; he sounds like a madman.

  “Calm yourself, Squire Cook!” the Raven King command. “No reason to live up to reputation of your species.” He turns back to us. “Now. This is most astonishing, fox. How did she come to be in our land?”

  “It is a mystery, Your Majesty,” Mr. Fletcher says. “I stumbled upon her in the woods.” This is, of course, a partial lie. I look at him, uneasy. Mr. Fletcher quickly moves on. “Your Highness, might I introduce Anaïs Reynard, of New Orleans, Louisiana.”

  The Raven King and I stare at each other for the space of a full minute.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” I finally say. I curtsy — just the way my mother taught me, long ago, before the war.

  The Raven King nods. “I do not know of this place you speak of — Nu-ah-luns? Loozyanna?”

  “Oh, that’s in America, sir,” I say, hoping to be helpful. He does not appear any further elucidated, so I add for good measure: “North America?” His expression still does not change. “Um, on Planet Earth?”

  “Hah! I know very well what planet this is!” he snaps, irritated. “Why, what planet did you think we were on, child?”

  I hesitate, unsure how to respond, and look to Mr. Fletcher for help.

  “She did not mean to offend, Your Majesty.”

  “Of course,” the king says to Mr. Fletcher. “But the human should know better than to insult a raven’s intelligence.” He turns to me. “You see, my dear, ravens are superior in this regard! It is precisely the quality that sets me apart from all the other would-be kings: Cleverness. Here in the Eastern Kingdom, cleverness is valued above all else.”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” I say, curtsying for good measure.

  The king cocks his bird head, looking unconvinced by my reverence. “Hmm. And what of your own intelligence, human child? Would you say you are very clever?”

  “I’m fairly ordinary,” I say. “Cleverer than some, I suppose.”

  “Well, that is, in fact, a clever answer.” The Raven King sits up and leans forward, scrutinizing me carefully. Suddenly, he claps his hands. The falcon and the ringtail snap to attention.

  “Do you know what I should like? I should like this human girl to participate in our hunt tonight!” the King exclaims, his beady bird eyes lighting up. “Yes! I should like that very much!”

  “Would that be wise?” Lord Rigby cautions.

  “I would not have suggested it if it wasn’t wise!” the king snaps. “Where is my court favorite? Where is Lady Albin?”

  “Here, Sire,” the swan-headed woman replies from across the echoing hall. She puts her guitar down and crosses the room.

  “Lady Albin, what say you? Don’t you think we ought to include the human girl in tonight’s hunt?”

  Lady Albin looks me over, her head bobbing eerily up and down at the end of her long neck as she scans me. “Certainly, Sire. In fact, I think she would make an excellent guest of honor. She might amuse us.”

  “Yes… yes…” the Raven King says, rubbing his beak thoughtfully. “I don’t know about guest of honor… we’ll see… hmm. Either way, you shall hunt with us, human girl!”

  I get the feeling this is not an invitation I might decline.

  “However, Sire, she’s hardly dressed for the occasion,” Lady Albin adds. “The hunt is a very civilized affair.”

  The king looks over my person with an expression of vague disdain. “Quite right! What are these rags she has on? This will not do! She will need to be dressed for the hunt — Lady Sanford! Lady Prescott! Lady Kittridge! — please see to it that this human girl is fittingly attired.”

  Three ladies with the heads of birds — a swallow, a phoebe, and a kite — come hurrying over at the king’s command.

  “Yes, Your Highness,” they say, bowing and tittering.

  “Show this human to the Silver Room. She shall be our guest. Treat the girl to a hot bath and then dress her in some proper hunting attire.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  The three ladies nod their strangely birdlike heads.

  “Once she has been dressed properly, bring her down to me and we will begin tonight’s sport!” the king decrees. He turns to look again at me with one beady bird eye glistening like a drop of black oil.

  Before I know it, applause and cheers rise up as the three ladies usher me out of the Hall of Chequers to some unknown part of the castle. Before I let them take me, I grab for Mr. Fletcher’s hand. He squeezes it back, but quickly lets go.

  “Don’t worry, Anaïs,” he says. “I did not foresee this, but I will keep you safe. I’ll make certain you’re not elected the guest of honor. Have faith.”

  Unsure why I would want to avoid being the guest of honor, I give him a puzzled look and a slight nod, but before I can ask for an explanation, Lady Kittridge takes a tight grip on my upper arm and steers me away.

  CHAPTER 11.

  Though I am nervous, bathing and dressing for the hunt is surprisingly pleasant. The ladies compel me to soak in a delightful silver bathtub, while they pour in enough bubble bath to make the bubbles stand nearly a foot high. The bathroom is a bit cold but the water is piping hot; it is a luxurious roo
m with a beautiful view through a leaded glass window that gives out onto the snowy woods beyond the castle. I soak with tendrils of steam curling around me, mesmerized by the frost on the windowpane, feeling a strange inkling of yuletide cheer as I gaze upon the wintery forest outside. Lady Sanford, Lady Prescott, and Lady Kittridge flit in and out of the bathroom, bringing fancy soaps and fluffy towels, and intermittently showing me different hunting costumes they’ve picked out. Once my bath is declared complete, I am ushered out of the hot water, toweled off, and powdered with some variety of sparkly talc; although, I can’t say I care much for the strange, animalistic, musky scent of the powder. I can only assume this particular perfume is an acquired taste for a human. After a thorough powdering, the three ladies dress me in riding breeches, a smart shirt, a fitted jacket with leather elbow patches, and slim black boots that come up to my knees.

  “Now,” says Lady Prescott, “Let’s tend to your… what’s that word again? ‘Hair’?”

  “Oh… goodness…” Lady Sanford complains. “I hardly know what we’re meant to do with those wispy little pale yellow feathers of hers.”

  “Well, not exactly yellow,” I say, laughing a bit. “Blonde.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Well, in the human world, we call that shade of hair blonde.”

  “Is ‘blonde’ considered a nice shade, dearie?” Lady Prescott inquires in a curious voice.

  “I suppose it’s all right. It looked very flattering on my mother. But I think nowadays the most fashionable starlets in Hollywood have very dark hair, cut very short. That seems to be de rigueur at present.” A fleeting thought of Colette passes through my brain, but I push it away.

  “Oh! Just like the Young Cwen has!” Lady Prescott says.

  The Young Cwen’s involvement in Mr. Fletcher’s plan is supposed to be a secret so I don’t comment. But it occurs to me: Colette and the Young Cwen do resemble each other.

  “What kind of tree is this ‘Hollywood’? I’ve never heard of that kind of tree before,” Lady Prescott continues. “Is that anything like winterberry holly bushes? We have those here. We have all the evergreen plants, that’s for certain!”

  I smile, slightly amused. Lady Kittridge comes to my side, full of irritation as she picks through my head of hair with her fingers.

  “I’ve never gone on a hunt,” I say.

  “Oh, it can be quite thrilling,” Lady Sanford says. “The Raven King is anything but dull.”

  “Can you tell me? — what will we be hunting?”

  No one answers. They all exchange a glance and then gaze at me with a collective expression of scorn and pity.

  “Oh, I have an idea!” says Lady Prescott, snapping her long, delicate human fingers in the air. She dashes out of the room and returns with a riding hat with a little brim, fashioned out of tweed. “We put her yellow feathers — oh, excuse me, I mean, her blonde hair — up, and then we pin this on her!”

  “Splendid idea,” agrees Lady Kittridge.

  “Yes,” says Lady Sanford, “That’ll do just the trick.”

  Once I am fully dressed in a smart riding costume (complete with hat), the ladies usher me back downstairs, through several long halls and into a cozy library adjacent to the Hall of Chequers. This room, too, commands my awe. It is cavernous and has a high vaulted ceiling — along with a few additional embellishments. The ceiling is painted with a mural of a moody winter sky, and under the great eaves of the banquet hall is an elaborately constructed diorama of different flocks of birds, frozen mid-flight. I squint more closely and see that the figures are in fact real birds, stuffed and wired into place by some unseen taxidermist. Though they are artfully arranged (one flock of birds dives in one direction, while another dives in the opposite direction, creating a braided sculpture of sorts, the overall effect of which I find gives me a small sense of vertigo) I can’t help but be slightly horrified.

  As I am looking up at the diorama with what can only be a frown plastered upon my face, Mr. Fletcher rejoins me.

  “It seems the bath and change of attire have done you some good,” he says, commenting on my chic, refreshed appearance. He drops his voice and leans closer. “Look, Anaïs, I should warn you about the hunt according to Raven’s rules… it won’t be the kind of thing you’re expecting, and it may seem to you very harsh…”

  “Why?” I ask, but before Mr. Fletcher elaborates, a fashionable woman in jodhpurs approaches. It seems her silky white swan head almost arrives a split second before she does.

  “Well, don’t you look you smart?” Lady Albin says. “Are you ready for the hunt?” she asks me.

  I exchange a quick look with Mr. Fletcher.

  “As ready as I can be,” I reply.

  “Delightful,” Lady Albin says. “In that case, come on into the room and make yourself at home. The king always insists on a glass of sharpberry wine before starting the hunt. And besides! — we haven’t even elected our prey for the evening!”

  “Elected our prey?” I ask.

  “Yes! The election is the second-most suspenseful moment of the hunt! Oh, you’ll see!” she laughs. “This is what makes the hunt so much fun! You never know how things will turn out… this way!”

  I give Mr. Fletcher a worried look and we follow Lady Albin to where many of Raven’s courtiers are also dressed in riding clothes and sit lounging about, smoking cigarettes and sipping some kind of black liquid from crystal goblets.

  “Glass of sharpberry wine?” a finch-headed servant holding a tray asks.

  “No, thank you,” I reply.

  “I’m afraid the king insists everyone who is to participate in the hunt have one,” the servant responds, pushing the tray further in my direction.

  “It’s all right, Anaïs,” Mr. Fletcher says, patting me on the shoulder. “It’s not alcohol. Sharpberry wine is an elixir that sharpens the senses.”

  “Like coffee, then?”

  “A bit stronger than that,” he replies. “It heightens your hearing, vision, and smell. You can understand why it would be considered useful on a hunting expedition. It keeps you alert. I think you’d be wise to have a glass, as the king commands.”

  “I see.” I obediently lift a glass from the tray and take a sip. It has a queer taste, very astringent and tart, and slightly metallic. The color and texture — an inky, motor-oil black — is hardly appealing.

  “Oh good,” comes the Raven King’s voice from behind us. “I see you’ve given the human a glass of sharpberry wine! We’ve got to keep her dull human senses at their best.”

  We whirl around to see the king dressed in a black feathered riding costume, a strange spiky ruff about his neck. He looks more birdlike than ever. The only item that remains from his previous outfit is the amulet with the giant blood-red stone. Beside him stands a pot-bellied man with the head of a snowy white owl.

  “Allow me to present Chancellor Overton,” the Raven King says.

  I bow but the owl remains stoic. He is a short, stout individual, with a thick paunch about his middle. His owl-head is both beautiful and ugly at once. Sneaking glances at him, I study his features to see if I can’t account for this curious paradox. Right away, it hits me: his most striking feature is his lack of features, his blankness. For Chancellor Overton’s face is most defined by a round bowl of white, featureless feathers. Somewhere on that vast canvas floats two yellow eyes with giant black pupils, and a miniscule black beak. That is all. His expression, at once terrifying and somehow nearly expression-less, puts me in mind of a row of kabuki masks my stepfather and I once admired in a London museum.

  “And now,” the Raven King says, “since we are all present… let us begin the contest to elect tonight’s guest of honor!”

  “Contest?” I ask, blinking stupidly around the room.

  “Yes,” Lady Albin says, coming over to me and linking her arm through mine. “We always have a little game before the hunt to decide who will be our guest of honor for the night.
We match wits, and the King determines the winner.”

  “So… you elect both the guest of honor and the manner of prey you’re to hunt?” I ask.

  “Something like that,” Lady Albin pats my hand and gives a slightly devilish smile. “For what it’s worth, I’m hoping you’ll be our guest of honor tonight.” She squeezes me arm with delight.

  The Raven King picks up on our conversation. “I have thought it over, Lady Albin,” he booms, for all the room to hear, “and while the human shall be our guest tonight, she shall not be our guest of honor. Otherwise, it might appear as though I am guilty of… impropriety. She is a human, after all.”

  I have no idea what this means, but everyone around me nods solemnly (save Lady Albin, who tsks with disappointment).

  “And now!” the Raven King shouts, getting back on task. “The contest! Is everybody ready?”

  A small round of applause affirms: Yes.

  “I shall ask a question, and everyone will write down his or her answer…”

  We all wait for the question. I sense something profound is about to come from the Raven King’s beak.

  “The question is: What is a king’s favorite number?” he asks in a triumphant voice. Then he sinks into a leather armchair and laces his fingers together in his lap as though very pleased with himself. “Oh, a classic really! Everyone! Write your answers down and submit them to Squire Cook at once! No cheating! No looking at anyone else’s answer!!!”

  The question strikes me as rather odd, and faintly ridiculous. The finch-headed servant who brought me the sharpberry wine makes the rounds, handing out tiny slips of white paper and little pencils. He avoids me, declining to give me a paper or pencil. A small sea of heads bow down, scribbling down answers and crossing them out, then folding the papers into even tinier squares and handing them to the servant, who in turn deposits the entire sum to the cuckoo bird, Squire Cook.