Lies of Golden Straw

by E. L. Tenenbaum

  I thought again of that peasant man and his spindle.

  I had been like him in many ways, when the entirety of my life had been a flourmill and the passage of time from when one farmer came to us and the next. It had been a few words that had opened the world for me, turned a Millie into an Emalyn, and there was no reason I couldn’t do the same for someone else. Cloaking the truth for a moment of wonder.

  Was it worth it? Would I do it?

  Absolutely.

  Truth About Magic

  And so the decision was made to establish a bi-annual national day of blessing from the queen. Twice a year, before the planting and harvest seasons, representatives from each village were welcomed at the palace to petition the queen’s good wishes on behalf of their folk. Sir Grigory may have conceded to my plan, but he stamped those days with his sharp efficiency wherever he could.

  After about the third year such days were instituted, word was received that we were to expect visitors from our southern allies.

  “King Arlando comes from a very strong maritime kingdom,” Rainn lectured me the night before, trying to hide his pedantry under the guise of reviewing the reception we had prepared. “Maridonia isn’t exceptionally large, but it’s wealthy and powerful enough. Strategically located, too.”

  “I remember,” I assured him.

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to suffer a lot of seafood while he’s here,” Rainn added.

  “It’s for the good of the kingdom.”

  I offered a warm smile and tried to take his hand, if only to calm the nerves he wasn’t showing. He finally let me catch it and I tugged on it until he was forced to sit beside me on the couch. I didn’t let up then, pulling our conjoined hands around my neck so his arm encircled my shoulders. I leaned against him, melting into the now familiar curves of his body. His foot tapped staccato on the carpet.

  “It’ll be all right,” I assured him.

  The tapping ceased a moment, and the king let out a soft sigh.

  “He’s got quite a brood of children,” he finally said. “The servants will do their best to hide what’s most easily broken, but there’s sure to always be a mess somewhere.”

  His voice seemed almost distant, which was enough to lessen the sense of disappointment I knew he felt because there hadn’t been any hint of an heir in the over five years we’d been married. I bit down on my lip, grateful he couldn’t see my face, grateful he couldn’t hear the twang of guilt reverberating in my empty belly.

  “It’ll be all right,” I said again, even though I wasn’t really sure why or for whom.

  Rainn rubbed my shoulder and kissed my forehead. “Yes it will,” he agreed.

  His voice seemed better then, and I knew my reassurances, my unworried confidence gave him some glimmer of hope. However, like the blessings for the village people, the hope was rather fragile. For it too was founded on a lie.

  “Brood of children” was a delicate description for the royal family that came tumbling into our palace the next day. I stood next to the king at the top of the stairs leading to the palace entrance as our ally’s carriage, drawn by eight sturdy horses, rolled to a stop in the courtyard. First out was the handsome King Arlando, whose dark curls were as boyish and charming as his still-youthful face. Without help from footmen, who instead turned to take care of the family’s luggage, he began to one by one hand out the members of his brood. For a moment they stood neatly arranged like steps of a staircase with each only slightly taller than the next. There were four in all, though it seemed that was only for the present. Last to step out was Queen Ariel, whose tottering frame and gentle handling by her husband announced another member of the brood was on the way.

  I may not have known much about royalty, but I can say with confidence that most queens didn’t want five children. Not only did it seem the happy couple wanted as many, not only had they ridden all this way in the same carriage as their rambunctious offspring, but they glowed as if the child the queen now carried was their first. I had no doubt this one would also be raised with all the love afforded an only child.

  I wasn’t jealous, I reassured myself, but something inside me reacted unpleasantly to that realization.

  Within seconds, the children overtook the courtyard, and though I would not say they were wild, they were certainly energetic. Having grown up without a sibling and only one friend, I admit it was rather nice to see them with each other.

  I don’t know if my parents would have had more children had my mother not died, and the closest I ever got to being part of a large family was when I visited Merlin at home. Though in his house the noise and antics of his siblings seemed less welcome than they did in this family. Thinking of Merlin, however, sharpened the ache around my heart, and I realized then how much I missed him. He hadn’t just been my best friend; he was the brother I never had.

  If he was here, I could only imagine the magical tricks and gimmicks he would delight the children with. If he was here, I could only imagine how much he would love to race and cause trouble with them. If he was here, I could tell him why the royal children here were not my own, why I could never have children of my own.

  But I hadn’t seen Merlin in five long years, and I knew very well that he was avoiding me. The pang in my heart grew stronger before I succeeded in pushing it back down again.

  “Thank you so much for having us.”

  Queen Ariel’s pleasant voice brought me out of my reverie.

  I gave her my best smile in return. “It’s an honor and a pleasure.”

  She smiled back agreeably, then suddenly gripped my arm. I looked at her in concern, unsure of what was happening within her widened sea-blue with a faint amethyst reflection eyes. Was she about to have her baby on our very steps? Her grip loosened, though she didn’t take her hand away just yet.

  “Forgive me,” she said sweetly, “it seems the baby didn’t enjoy the journey as much as we did.”

  I stood awkwardly, allowing her to lean on my arm though not entirely sure how to offer my support. I’d rarely been around pregnant women, and, considering my circumstances, closeness to her and the life growing inside her made me feel rather uncomfortable. My eyes grazed the courtyard seeking a servant who could help.

  King Arlando was beside her in an instant, supporting the arm that wasn’t grasping mine. “Some rest?” He looked questioningly to me.

  I couldn’t very well unload her on a servant now.

  “I-I-I’ll sh-show you t-to y-your rooms,” I offered.

  “Thank you,” King Arlando said earnestly.

  Their kindness, their honest sincerity was more than I could bear. I turned quickly toward the palace entrance.

  Rainn stayed back to lead the children inside, a task I wasn’t sad to miss because of how happy he was to be with them. With the queen balanced between Arlando and myself, we helped Ariel up to their rooms, where her maidservants finally took over. I left the room quickly, rubbing the spot on my sleeve where Ariel’s hand had been, wondering what would become of me if I spent too much time in the company of a woman who readily offered so much love to her ever-growing brood of children.

  As it would turn out, I wasn’t so foolish to have been afraid.

  The king, queen, and brood stayed for almost two weeks. Although it was a quite a task to look after them, to keep the floors clean of muddy little footprints, to keep the younger ones from curiously wandering into the streams flowing through the palace, to make it through a meal without too much food ending up where it shouldn’t, the time passed rather quickly. I’d also like to think that enough affairs of state were discussed and some good was accomplished for both kingdoms from the visit.

  Rainn and Arlando weren’t just allies, but good friends and similar thinkers in many ways. It was Rainn who’d some time ago helped Arlando finalize the technique for the unique Castarrean glass his kingdom was known for which had a way of capturing light and fracturing it into prisms that both astounded and illuminated. Volumes could be compiled from
their correspondence on any range of topics, from the irrigation of waterless inland villages to the cultivation of fresh fruits and vegetables on long ocean journeys to the presumed existence of certain magicals more spoken of than seen. Like mermaids. Arlando insisted they were real. Rainn countered they couldn’t be humanoid even if they were, and deferred further conclusions until he’d actually seen one. The first time I’d accidentally stumbled upon one of their exchanges, I was thoroughly confused, then pleased to know how much more there was to Rainn’s incredible mind. In truth, I wasn’t interested enough to follow their back and forth, but I usually delighted in their conclusions.

  However, for this particular visit, the kings spent most of their time attending to the important matters of the children, helping with their horses, building wooden block castles to storm, and chasing them about the gardens. Neither man could resist their delighted calls of “More!”

  Although Rainn was over a decade older than me, I had never considered him to be particularly old. However, around the children, he suddenly became so young it yanked my heartstrings to see how thrilled he was with them, how ready he was to abandon all pretenses and give in to their games of fantasy and merriment.

  For the most part, I maintained a warm demeanor and a safe distance. King Arlando was notably handsome, Queen Ariel was merely pretty, and their children’s looks ranged so much between them that I can’t say any one innocent face particularly melted my heart. I was more worried about what would happen if I allowed myself to enjoy the children’s company as much as my husband did, if it would lead me to forget the bloodapple when he came for a night, if it would lead to the return of a little man I was quite content to forget had ever been in my life. It was a risk I didn’t think worth taking.

  So I held myself back, though I wasn’t always able to escape the children’s charms completely.

  One day, Queen Ariel and I watched over the younger two as our husbands took the older boys out for a ride. Although she had nursemaids and servants aplenty, Ariel was from an odd breed of nobility who actually enjoyed spending extra time with her offspring. I wouldn’t say she loved them more than any other mother loved her children, but there was something about her children that seemed to give Ariel life even more than the air she breathed. Another oddity of hers was that she frequently kicked off her shoes and walked around barefoot, not hesitating once at her lack of decorum in roaming about without anything on her feet.

  I only sat with her that day because I couldn’t very well do otherwise. We chatted pleasantly for a while, but our conversation was cut short when the youngest boy began bickering with his sister.

  “Mine, mine, mine!”

  “Give. It. Back!”

  “Mine!”

  “Children, children, please!”

  Or something similar.

  The boy started bawling, which set the girl to crying, and Queen Ariel was beside herself because the fifth child she was carrying was being too active to enable her to tend to the others. Seeing no other recourse, I settled myself on the floor and pulled the girl onto my lap with my right hand and held the little boy to me with my left.

  “All right, all right,” I said softly, rocking them until the cries, if not the tears themselves, abated. Not being very experienced in the art of amusing children, I turned to the one thing I did know very well. “Who would like to hear a story?” I asked.

  I felt the little boy nod against my arm.

  “You would?” I asked. “Okay, what story shall we tell?”

  “Something sad,” the girl said.

  I looked at her in surprise. “Something sad? Whatever for?”

  “Because I’m sad now,” she said simply.

  “Which is why we should tell a happy story,” I recommended.

  The little girl shook her head. “We all the time hear happy stories,” she insisted. “I want something sad.”

  I glanced at her mother, who shrugged and shook her head. “She’s our little philosopher,” was all she said.

  “Okay, then, a sad story,” I agreed.

  I dug into the treasure trove of my father’s stories as the children quieted down. I quickly discovered that I didn’t have a tale from him appropriate enough to tell. Surely, I thought, my father had at least once told a story where not everything was set to rights, but I realized then that most of his stories held him at the center as the heroic victor. I dug into my own trove of memories from the life I lived before and searched for something I could build upon. What I found, which shouldn’t have surprised me, was a singularly happy and untainted day when the world first opened before me.

  “Once upon a time,” I began, speaking slowly, lowering my voice so each syllable glided off my tongue, “there was a beautiful eagle who loved to soar in the blue, blue sky. Everyone knows that eagles can fly much higher than other birds, and this eagle loved to fly highest of them all.”

  “Bird!” the boy interrupted me, pointing at the sky.

  “Oh, have you seen one before?” I asked, trying not to lose the thread of the story.

  The little boy nodded solemnly.

  “Well, that’s very nice,” I said. I cleared my throat and continued, “This eagle loved flying so much, that every morning when he awoke, he’d shoot up into the air and head straight for the clouds. There, he would duck and dive and surf upon their fluffy whiteness. He’d only come down at nightfall when he would rejoin his siblings in their nest and boast about how high he flew, how close he’d come to touching the sun.”

  “Can eagles touch the sun?” the girl asked into the pause I didn’t mean to leave.

  I blinked at her, the dust of the tale I was kicking up with my sailor boots beginning to settle before its time. “I don’t think so,” I admitted.

  “Let’s let Queen Emalyn finish her story,” Ariel called over, and the children settled down again.

  “Now, this eagle was quite a handsome eagle,” I went on, “and he knew it quite well. Often, when he wasn’t playing in the clouds, he would dip all the way down to the earth and coast alongside a river just so he could admire his reflection. Sometimes, he would pluck loose feathers from his belly and shower them down for all the creatures on land he thought would want to have them.

  “So it went, and so it was, as the eagle grew bigger, his pride and vanity grew with him. One day, he was skimming along a river, caught up in a reflection of a most handsome bird he couldn’t quite look away from, when he heard a sudden whoosh.”

  I punctuated with a sweeping dive of my right hand. The children ducked their heads and giggled. “Only when it passed him did the eagle realize the sound had come from an arrow aimed straight at him.

  “‘Why would someone want to bring me down?’ he foolishly thought.

  “The only answer he received was another whoosh, this one very narrowly missing his wing.

  “Recognizing he wasn’t safe, the eagle tilted his head toward the sky and tried to speed his body along when a third whoosh ended abruptly with a bitter pain in his side. Something warm leaked across his belly, and the eagle looked down to see that an arrow had pierced him, dealing him a deadly blow.

  “In the next instant, the eagle realized he was no longer flying, but tumbling very quickly to the ground. The eagle turned onto his back and thusly saw clearly the arrow that brought about his fall. He saw the long wooden shaft and the soft tips of a feather at its end, waving above him like a bristled victory flag.

  “‘That looks familiar,’ the eagle mused, and with a jolt he realized why. The feather the hunter had used to guide his arrow straight and true had come from the eagle’s own body.”

  “We often give our enemy the means to our own destruction,” a low murmur concluded behind us.

  I turned sharply to find my husband standing in the doorway with King Arlando and his two older boys. They were tired and muddied from their romp outdoors, but I didn’t have the presence of mind then to scold them for once more tracking dirt through the palace halls. Rather, I
was wholly occupied with the way my husband’s warm gaze embraced me and the scene before him, his wife entertaining a gaggle of children.

  I tried not to stand up too quickly, and when I went to greet him, he didn’t say anything. Rather, he pulled me in against his side and held me so I could gaze upon the room with him, which he assumed I wanted to do.

  I did not.

  “Rainn,” I whispered. “Rainn.”

  “Hm?”

  “You’re getting my dress dirty.”

  “So?”

  “So I like this dress.”

  “Hm?”

  “Rainn, I need to see after the arrangements for dinner,” I said more firmly.

  Reluctantly, he let me go, and I forced myself to linger a moment, before turning down the hall, fleeing from that room and the warmth it brought even to a man standing at the threshold. There was no way to describe to him, no way to tell him, that though I was not conscious of what story I would pick, my mind how somehow gotten hold of and commandeered the telling. I wasn’t just spinning a story for children, wasn’t just sharing a moral, or a warning for the rest of their lives.

  Beneath all those parts, I had told my story, the story of a little man who promised to save my life if I would promise him the only thing that was ever within my power to give the king. I never would, but if I did, it would surely bring about my end, just as surely as it would expose the falsehood that had brought me here to begin with. However competent a ruler, however talented a dreamer, I didn’t trust my husband, his captain, or his army enough to think they could reclaim any child given over to the little man. Even if I could convince them it had been a kidnapping, they didn’t stand a chance against the stolen magic wielded by that mischievous imp. Hadn’t I seen what he could do to a powerful mage brandishing a sword with the might of seven more? And he’d only grown stronger since.

  No, there was no way I could explain to my husband that the story I told the children was the truest of them all. After all, how could I lie to the faces of innocent children when my own could lead to my very destruction?