Geek Fantasy Novel
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C. of CHESHIRE: Yes, that’s exactly it.
SUMPERSON: I hate to play the cynic, but it’s hard to overlook the fact that Chessie had a more selfish reason, as well.
CHEVALLY: Do continue.
SUMPERSON: Well, we can’t forget the Kelling Provision in Article 4.
CHEVALLY: Would you be so good as to reeducate the Board?
SUMPERSON: We haven’t had an occasion to use it for years, so the Board’s ignorance is excusable. But it states that a royal who grows to adulthood without having been granted a wish can still have that wish granted, if and only if she grants three wishes to her family members. It was originally devised as an emergency stopgap measure to provide a rapid resurgence in guild usage, were the ritual of wish-granting ever to decline to dangerously low levels.
CHEVALLY: So you’re implying that Chessie granted wishes to the Battersby children in order to have a wish of her own granted?
SUMPERSON: Yes. And to receive her royalties once the wish was transcribed into story and sold.
CHEVALLY: Please respond, Duchess.
C. of CHESHIRE: I didn’t do it for the money.
MARY : Let me bring her a tissue, please.
C. of CHESHIRE: Thank you. [Blows nose] I make plenty of money already, thank you. But yes, I did it for the wish. I wanted my own wish granted.
MARY : Before we go any further, I’d like to declare that I think any motivation, even the most self-interested, is acceptable if it means a wish gets granted.
RALPH : What? Since when?
MARY : Since I saw the new Ralph.
CHEVALLY: We have noted your opinion, Mary, but the Board cannot overlook the rule that self-serving wish-granting is forbidden.
C. of CHESHIRE: I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
MARY : It’s okay, Chessie. Personally I think all wish-granting is self-serving. That’s just the way it is; it doesn’t make it any less important.
SUMPERSON: Enough! What transpired here has been a debacle, the most poorly executed series of wishes in centuries. Commenced with no prep time, handled by a narrator who hadn’t the experience necessary to enact them. Need I list the grievances? There was a Choose Your Own Adventure section. Mentions of “poo.” An evident libidinal attraction by the narrator for at least one of the Misses Battersby, possibly both. And need I add that Maurice took one of our guild’s most revered tales, my own Snow Queen, and cut out the first three-quarters? I had to override him and insert a special storytelling bear to keep Ralph on course. The offenses are innumerable — there is no debating that his immediate disbarment is the only possible resolution.
CHEVALLY: No one here doubts that this has been a grave embarrassment for the Guild.
C. of CHESHIRE: Might I try to explain myself further?
CHEVALLY: That sounds like a smashing idea.
C. of CHESHIRE: I want to set this straight: My wish wasn’t that selfish at all. I granted the Battersby wishes in order to get my son back. I hereby wish for my son to return to me.
MARY : (quickly) And I grant your wish.
RALPH : Mom!
SUMPERSON: What? A wish-granting within a Board meeting? This is preposterous. I demand we adjourn immediately. And none of this sentimental rubbish she’s trotting out alters the fact that the Duchess of Cheshire, who has proven a craven businesswoman, stands to make thousands of pounds sterling off the sales of these wish stories.
MARY : Sir, I was granting my sister’s wish only symbolically. It’s a redundant wish, for she’s already had her son returned.
C. of CHESHIRE: I’m sorry? What was that?
MARY :Would you consider calling him to the stand, Dame Chevally?
CHEVALLY: I suppose it is time. Lord Feverel, please bring in Master Maurice of Cheshire.
C. of CHESHIRE: !
M. of CHESHIRE: Hi, Mum.
C. of CHESHIRE: !
CHEVALLY: If the young master will remove himself from his mother’s embrace.
C. of CHESHIRE: But … how are you alive?
CHEVALLY: Transcriber, let the record reflect that the narrator mentioned previously throughout this transcript is properly named Maurice of Cheshire, son of Duchess Chessimyn of Cheshire.
C. of PARNASSUS: Noted.
C. of CHESHIRE: Oh. Oh my, of course.
MICKLETHWAIT: What did your son wish for?
C. of CHESHIRE: Infinity. To be infinite. I almost didn’t grant it, it was so abstract … and now I see he got it.
M. of CHESHIRE: I would have done anything to tell you, Mum. But you know guild rules: Once you become a narrator, no communicating to non-narrators.
SUMPERSON: A rule you recently broke, I might add.
C. of CHESHIRE: You’re alive. You’re alive … forever!
M. of CHESHIRE: They were going to give the Battersby wishes to Maarty Sumperson to narrate, but I insisted. I begged J. J. Mucklebackit to duck out of performing, so that you would have to step in. It was my only chance to be near you again.
SUMPERSON: None of this changes the fact that you are no longer an accredited narrator. I’m sorry, the rules are very clear.
M. of CHESHIRE: Dame Chair, is there no appeal?
CHEVALLY: I’m afraid not. Once you’ve lost control of a story and are unable to steer it back on course, you lose your license. Our charter is very clear on the matter.
M. of CHESHIRE: Well, I guess that’s it, then.
RALPH : Doesn’t Chessie still get her wish?
CHEVALLY: No, sadly. She made it already. Even though it was redundant, it still counts.
RALPH muh: Well … I haven’t received my wish yet.
CHEVALLY: I’m sorry?
RALPH : Chessie said I could have a wish after all of the Battersby children got theirs. We never got around to it before I wound up in the attic.
B. BATTERSBY: Ralph, don’t. Your wish should be for you.
M. of CHESHIRE: What are you saying? That you’ll wish for me to be reinstated as a narrator?
RALPH : You tried. You struck just the wrong tone on every occasion, and messed up tons of it, but you tried.
M. of CHESHIRE: You’d do that? For me?
RALPH : I wish for Maurice to finish his job and publish all of this adventure, not just the wishes themselves but my time in New Jersey before, and even this meeting. And maybe he’d consider granting me the opportunity to use it for —
MARY : Okay. I do solemnly grant —
SUMPERSON: Someone stop her!
M. of CHESHIRE: I’ll miss you, Mother.
C. of CHESHIRE: I love you.
MARY : I do solemnly grant thee thy wish, dreaming, in accordance with the fine tradition of Royal wish-granting, that you find thy greatest desire, and in so doing come to know thyself.
[Whereupon, the meeting was frantically concluded]
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END: Royal Narratological Guild Log Volume MMCMXCIX, Record Locator: MofC20 Pages: 310. File Under: Mishap
(* denotes a certified member of the RNG) Some names/details blackened to protect identities
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by Eliot Schrefer
Cover art & design © 2011 by Phil Falco
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