Blue in the Face

by Gerry Swallow

  When the king reached his chair, Georgie quickly slid the throne back from the table. Before taking his place upon it, the king faced the table at the opposite side of the room, stretched his arms out to their full span, and said, in a smooth and commanding voice, “Let the feast begin!”

  Cheering and applause filled the hall, and the door from the kitchen burst open. In filed servants, one after the other, carrying platter upon platter of all the foods that had contributed to that wonderful smell Elspeth noticed when she first arrived at the castle.

  As four women pushed a squeaky-wheeled table carrying the everyberry pie toward the center of the room, the king turned to his guest of honor and said, “Ms. Pule, welcome to my home.”

  “Thank you,” she said, parting her lips just enough to let the words out.

  The king offered his hand, and Elspeth reached out to shake it. Instead the king took her hand in his, leaned forward, and touched it gently to his lips, pulpy and perfectly shaped. “Please, sit down.” Then he flashed those flawless teeth and Elspeth returned the smile with lips pinched tightly together.

  Sitting in the VIP section had its perks, not the least of which was first crack at the food. No sooner had Elspeth sat down than one of the servants placed a plate before her, loaded with enough food to make Thanksgiving dinner look like a bedtime snack. And though the plate did contain several vegetables (braised carrots, brussels sprouts, and mashed potatoes), it also featured things that Elspeth considered far more edible—things like honey-glazed ham and roasted rack of lamb, which made Elspeth think of Bo-Peep, but only for a moment and not in any way that would suggest empathy.

  “You must try the ham,” said the king, taking a bite.

  “It looks delicious,” said Elspeth.

  “Let’s just say it’s a good thing this little piggy went to market,” said the king. Georgie, sitting to his right, offered a courtesy chuckle while Elspeth went to work on the enormous plate of food.

  Even on the best of occasions her table manners were no better than her manners in general. And now, with her stomach clamoring for food, she nearly forgot them entirely, stuffing her face with one forkful after another.

  “Yes, you must be hungry after your long journey,” said the king as he watched Elspeth with mild shock. Elspeth offered a grunt of affirmation while continuing to gulp down food with minimal chewing. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but my physical therapy session went longer than expected. You see, I wrenched my back on the golf course today while trying to get out of a sand trap. It’s not easy being king, but somebody’s got to do it.”

  Georgie gave out another courtesy laugh, which the king once more failed to acknowledge.

  “Make sure you save room for the cheese course,” the king said to Elspeth. “It’s one of my many culinary weaknesses, I must admit. Époisses, Saint Agur, Beemster. I love it all.”

  “I like grilled cheese sandwiches,” Elspeth responded.

  “Hmm,” said the king, seemingly unimpressed. “If you’re not into fine cheeses, you must save room for dessert. It’s everyberry pie. My personal favorite. Contains every berry there is.”

  Elspeth fought back a smirk. “Don’t be so sure,” she thought of saying until she noticed Georgie leaning back and staring daggers at her. So instead, she said, “My mother doesn’t bake pie. It’s not her thing.”

  “Ah yes, your mother,” said the king as if he and Mrs. Pule had gone to high school together or something. “I’m sure you’re anxious to see her again after all this time.”

  “It hasn’t been that long,” said Elspeth. “But yeah, I guess I would like to see her again.”

  “You needn’t worry, because that’s going to happen much sooner than you know. I promise you that.”

  “Thanks,” said Elspeth. “I knew you’d help me out.”

  “So then,” said Krool. “Tell me about your journey. How was it?”

  “Not great,” Elspeth admitted. “Met a bunch of kooks. Almost got killed by something called a torcano.”

  “Yes,” said the king. “It’s the season. For torcanos, that is. Not kooks, as you call them. You’ll find plenty of those year-round, I’m afraid. Not anywhere near here, mind you. One of my very first proclamations as king, I’m proud to say, was to banish all of the pathetic, whiny little losers to the outskirts where they belong.”

  Elspeth took this as a compliment. At school, with her gapped teeth and pudgy face and arms, she often felt both unattractive and, as a result, banished from the legions of the handsome and the popular. And now here she was, for the first time in her life, invited to be part of the fashionable crowd.

  “So tell me,” the king said, leaning closer to Elspeth. “What do they say about me? These kooks you met.”

  “Hmm,” said Elspeth, giving careful consideration to her answer. “Well, they say you have your own bowling alley.”

  “Do you enjoy bowling?” the king asked.

  “Oh yes,” said Elspeth. “Very much.” She hoped an enthusiastic response would lead to an invitation to play.

  “I’m sure they say a great deal more about me than that,” said the king.

  “I guess,” said Elspeth.

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, you know. The usual. About all the great stuff you’ve done.”

  “No insults or threats?”

  “Oh no,” Elspeth lied, for she saw no reason to mention all the horrible stories Dumpty and his friends had told her about the king. “After all, what could they possibly say?”

  The king smiled contentedly. “Good. Then all is in order, it seems.” He then turned to Georgie and said, “The time has come.”

  The king stood and raised his own glass to eye level.

  “I would like to propose a toast,” he began. “To our esteemed guest, Ms. Elspeth Pule.” Elspeth was now aware that everyone in the room was staring at her (and at the same time she was completely unaware that her left cheek was smudged with gravy). Quickly, she cast her eyes downward and stopped chewing for a moment. Even though she was feeling, for the first time in her life, quite attractive, dressed in a beautiful silk gown with her hair done up in curls, Elspeth did not like being stared at, and she hoped this toast would not be a long-winded one like the kind her father sometimes made when he’d had more than one glass of wine.

  “She is a remarkably resilient young lady,” the king continued. “And she has shown great courage, incredible intelligence, and extraordinary wisdom in choosing to make the very long and very dangerous journey from her home to the castle in order to be with us this evening to turn herself in. Hear, hear!”

  “Hear, hear!” the crowd repeated while Elspeth nearly choked on her food before spitting the entire mouthful onto her plate. The king took his seat and resumed eating as if he’d just announced the time of day and nothing more.

  “Excuse me, Your Highness,” Elspeth said while tugging at the king’s sleeve. “I’m sorry, but what did you mean by that? That I came here to turn myself in?”

  “That is why you’re here, isn’t it?” the king answered with a warm, almost fatherly smile. “To turn yourself in?”

  “To turn myself into what?”

  “Not into what. In to whom. In to my authority, to face the consequences for your crimes.”

  “Crimes? Hey, that sign told me to take the tart without paying for it.”

  “You stole a tart as well?” said the king. And then, just like that, his once kind and handsome face changed. His eyes narrowed, and his lips and eyebrows turned sharply downward as if gravity had suddenly taken a special interest in them. “I will consider that a full confession, and I will be sure to add it to the list of charges.”

  “What list? I haven’t done anything,” Elspeth protested. As much as she despised having to take responsibility for things she’d actually done, being forced to own up to things she hadn’t done made her absolutely livid.

  “Haven’t done anything?” the king repeated, sounding almost insulted by El
speth’s denial. “You and your family have been plotting my demise for years. And now you will finally pay the price.”

  “My family? Okay, now this is getting weird,” said Elspeth, without stopping to think about how ridiculous a statement that was, being that things had been “getting weird” for the better part of a day now. “My family knows nothing about this place. Everyone here has obviously mistaken me for someone else.”

  “I think not!” sneered the king. The murmur of conversation throughout the room and the scraping of flatware on china ceased. The king pushed his face toward Elspeth, and she scooted back to the far edge of her chair. “It is without a doubt that you are the one about whom it is written.”

  “Okay, here we go again with all this ‘it is written’ stuff,” said Elspeth. “What? What is written?”

  “The foretelling of your treasonous and seditious acts,” replied the king.

  “All right, I don’t know what ‘seditious’ means,” said Elspeth, “but I do know what treason is. It’s betraying your country, which I could not possibly do because this is not my country. I’ve never been here before.”

  “Haven’t you?” said the king with a smile that was no longer warm in any way.

  “No, I haven’t,” Elspeth answered quite emphatically. “I only came to the castle to find the way out of this miserable country of yours.”

  Elspeth pushed her chair back and stood up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going home. With or without your help.”

  “Silly girl,” said the king with a laugh and a shake of his head. “I said that I would see to it that you and your mother were soon reunited. I never said I’d help you find your way home. That’s because you are home.”

  “You’re crazy,” said Elspeth. “You’re all crazy. This whole place. Now, I need to speak with Jack and Jill immediately, so if somebody could show me to the dungeon . . .”

  “Don’t worry,” the king responded. “Someone will be more than happy to show you to the dungeon.” Then he turned to the four bearded men standing behind him and said, “Take her to the dungeon to await trial on charges of treason, sedition, and grand theft tart.”

  Almost immediately, Elspeth found herself in the clutches of two of the men, while the other two opened the nearest door.

  “Hey!” she screamed. “Take your hands off me!”

  Not only did the men not remove their hands from her chubby arms, they began dragging her toward the open door. “You can’t do this to me,” she said, kicking her legs and stomping her feet. “I’m an American citizen! I know my rights! I demand to speak with a lawyer!”

  She managed to crane her neck far enough to find Georgie, who looked a bit traumatized by the whole ordeal.

  “You!” she shouted. “You led me to believe this was a feast in my honor.”

  “I’m sorry,” Georgie mumbled. “I had no idea.”

  “Quiet!” the king shouted. “You’re apologizing to a known enemy of the Crown.” To the beefy guards, who seemed to be having far too much trouble subduing an eleven-year-old girl, he said, “Now get her out of my sight!”

  When the four men hauled her through the door and just before they slammed it shut, Elspeth hollered, “Dumpty was right! You’re a horrible person! And another thing: that pie has no loganberries!”

  Old King Krool was a nasty old fool,

  And a nasty old fool was he.

  He called for his pipe,

  And he called for his bowl,

  And he called for the cancellation of all federal holidays,

  Including Christmas, Easter, and St. Crispin’s Day,

  And the execution of all enemies of the Crown,

  Both foreign and domestic, including,

  But not limited to, his fiddlers three.

  Chapter 13

  While stone is an excellent building material, it’s downright lousy for acoustics. Elspeth’s high-pitched screams ricocheted off the walls of the dark and narrow stairway to the dungeon, causing the guards much discomfort.

  “You’ll pay for this, all of you!” she wailed. “My father has sold hearing aids to some very important people!”

  The guards had no idea what a hearing aid was, but by the time they’d wrestled Elspeth into the tiny cell, slammed the iron door, and bolted the lock, they might have needed one.

  “Get back here,” she hollered through the bars, rough and rusted. But the guards hurried down the hall just as fast as their pudgy legs could take them.

  It was only when the four men had turned the corner and taken their shadows with them that Elspeth finally realized all the yelling was in vain. She took a deep breath and had a quick look around at her new environment. She quickly noted that, though there may be two kinds of castles, the fortress type and the fairy princess type, a dungeon was a dungeon: dark and cold, the air filled with moisture and hopelessness.

  Just then she heard a soft whimpering to her left. She turned and peered into the adjoining cell, the single torch on the dungeon wall lighting it just to the point that she could make out the silhouette of a hulking, two-headed creature.

  “Stay away from me,” she ordered, backing away as far as the iron bars at the other end of her cell would allow. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  The beast did not respond. And, as her eyes slowly adjusted to the poor lighting, Elspeth soon realized it was not some double-headed monster at all, but rather two people huddled closely together. The woman was sobbing lightly while the man wrapped his arms about her shoulders.

  “Look at her,” the woman said with a whispery sniff. “She’s beautiful. So strong and beautiful.” The smile on the woman’s lips suggested that the salty drops running down her cheeks were, in fact, tears of joy, though what one could possibly have to be joyous about in a place like this Elspeth could not fathom.

  “Yes, she is,” agreed the man. “She is indeed.”

  Elspeth just stared at the two. The woman was small but sturdy, with a Prince Valiant haircut that framed her gaunt face in sharp right angles. The man was mostly unremarkable, with the traditional trappings of middle age: an expanding midsection and a hairline in retreat.

  “Let me guess,” said Elspeth. “Jack and Jill.”

  “Yes,” said the man, with a smile that revealed a small gap between his two front teeth.

  The woman left her husband’s comforting embrace and moved toward Elspeth until the bars stopped her progress. She pushed her face through the space between as far as it would go. “I can’t believe it,” she said, still sniffling. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

  “Yeah, I’m not sure what to believe myself anymore,” said Elspeth, studying the floors, the walls, and the ceiling for any quick and easy way out that she might have missed at first glance. “All I wanted to do was to find that stupid well and go home, and instead I’m stuck in this terrible dungeon. This has been the worst day of my entire life.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Jill. “Everything will be all right.” The woman’s very demeanor was soft and soothing, but Elspeth had been fooled by such things before.

  “It’ll be all right?” Elspeth replied. “I’m sorry, lady, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. Krool’s putting me on trial for treason. Maybe you aren’t up to date on crime and punishment, but most people convicted of treason don’t end up with community service, raking leaves, or painting over graffiti. They end up in front of a firing squad or whatever they do around here to execute people. By the way, how do they execute people around here?”

  “Beheading,” said the man. Jill spun around and shot him a very stern look.

  “Jack,” she scolded. “There’s no need to tell her that. What’s wrong with you, anyway?”

  “Just being honest,” replied Jack. “She did ask.”

  “Seriously,” said Jill. “When are you going to learn to keep your mouth shut?”

  “There must be a way out of here,” said Elspeth, doing her best to ignore the bickering couple. She gave the door a good sh
ake, but it moved only enough to make a small rattling. “Somehow we’ve got to escape from here so you can show me the way to the well before Krool decides to chop my head off.”

  “He won’t kill you,” said Jack. He joined his wife at the bars, and Elspeth noticed that he walked with a very pronounced limp, greatly favoring his left leg.

  “Really? What makes you so sure?” she answered.

  “Because he failed once before.”

  “Jack, no,” Jill snapped. “We shouldn’t. Not yet.”

  “Shouldn’t what?” asked Elspeth. “What do you mean, he failed once before?”

  Jack spoke to Elspeth, but his eyes were locked on Jill’s searing glare. “Nothing,” he said. “I just meant that . . . nothing.”

  “No,” Elspeth persisted. “It wasn’t nothing. What did you mean?”

  Jack looked at Elspeth then back to his wife’s rigid face. He opened his mouth to speak, but before words could find their way out, the door to the dungeon squeaked open once more and the four guards marched in with Georgie firmly in their grasp.

  “This is absurd,” pleaded the king’s former personal valet. “Everyone knows that loganberries are very hard to find this time of year. It was an oversight, a mistake anyone could’ve made.”

  Without a word, the man with the Van Dyke unlocked the empty cell next to Elspeth’s and shoved Georgie in hard enough that he didn’t stop until he hit the back wall and tumbled to the ground in a heap. “Please,” he begged, crawling on his hands and knees to the front of the cell as the guards turned and made for the exit. “If I could just have a word with His Highness, I’m sure I could convince him that this is all just a terrible mistake.”

  The door to the dungeon slammed shut, and once the echo had faded, the room was silent for a brief moment before Georgie began sobbing. “No,” he wailed. “I’m too young to die.” He stopped blubbering when he heard the clearing of a throat and looked over to see Elspeth staring down at him.

  “You’re too young to die?” she said. “I’m eleven. If you’re too young to die then what am I?”