The queen, however, did not. She had enjoyed her time as regent and felt a strange reluctance to give it up. She began to think that perhaps it was best that the crown remained in the family, that the kingdom be run by those wise enough to do it, and what could be a better solution than for the prince to actually marry her?
(“That’s disgusting!” Conor said, still upside-down. “She was his grandmother!”)
(Step-grandmother, corrected the monster. Not related by blood, and to all intents and appearances, a young woman herself.)
(Conor shook his head, his hair dangling. “That’s just wrong.” He paused a moment. “Can you maybe put me down?”)
(The monster lowered him to the ground and continued the story.)
The prince also thought marrying the queen was wrong. He said he would die before doing any such thing. He vowed to run away with the beautiful farmer’s daughter and return on his eighteenth birthday to free his people from the tyranny of the queen. And so one night, the prince and the farmer’s daughter raced away on horseback, stopping only at dawn to sleep in the shade of a giant yew tree.
(“You?” Conor asked.)
(Me, the monster said. But also only part of me. I can take any form of any size, but the yew tree is a shape most comfortable.)
The prince and the farmer’s daughter held each other close in the growing dawn. They had vowed to be chaste until they were able to marry in the next kingdom, but their passions got the better of them, and it was not long before they were asleep and naked in each other’s arms.
They slept through the day in the shadows of my branches and night fell once again. The prince woke. “Arise, my beloved,” he whispered to the farmer’s daughter, “for we ride to the day where we will be man and wife.”
But his beloved did not wake. He shook her, and it was only as she slumped back in the moonlight that he noticed the blood staining the ground.
(“Blood?” Conor said, but the monster kept talking.)
The prince also had blood covering his own hands, and he saw a bloodied knife on the grass beside them, resting against the roots of the tree. Someone had murdered his beloved and done so in a way that made it look like the prince had committed the crime.
“The queen!” cried the prince. “The queen is responsible for this treachery!”
In the distance, he could hear villagers approaching. If they found him, they would see the knife and the blood, and they would call him murderer. They would put him to death for his crime.
(“And the queen would be able to rule unchallenged,” Conor said, making a disgusted sound. “I hope this story ends with you ripping her head off.”)
There was nowhere for the prince to run. His horse had been chased away while he slept. The yew tree was his only shelter.
And also the only place he could turn for help.
Now, the world was younger then. The barrier between things was thinner, easier to pass through. The prince knew this. And he lifted his head to the great yew tree and he spoke.
(The monster paused.)
(“What did he say?” Conor asked.)
(He said enough to bring me walking, the monster said. I know injustice when I see it.)
The prince ran towards the approaching villagers. “The queen has murdered my bride!” he shouted. “The queen must be stopped!”
The rumours of the queen’s witchery had been circulating long enough and the young prince was so beloved of the people that it took very little for them to see the obvious truth. It took even less time when they saw the great Green Man walking behind him, high as the hills, coming for vengeance.
(Conor glanced again at the monster’s massive arms and legs, at its raggedy, toothy mouth, at its overwhelming monstrousness. He imagined what the queen must have thought when she saw it coming.)
(He smiled.)
The subjects stormed the queen’s castle with such fury that the stones of its very walls tumbled. Fortifications fell and ceilings collapsed and when the queen was found in her chambers, the mob seized her and dragged her to the stake right then to burn her alive.
(“Good,” Conor said, smiling. “She deserved it.” He looked up at his bedroom window where his grandmother slept. “I don’t suppose you can help me with her?” he asked. “I mean, I don’t want to burn her alive or anything, but maybe just–”)
The story, said the monster, is not yet finished.
THE REST OF THE FIRST TALE
“It’s not?” Conor asked. “But the queen was overthrown.”
She was, said the monster. But not by me.
Conor hesitated, confused. “You said you made sure she was never seen again.”
And so I did. When the villagers lit the flames on the stake to burn her alive, I reached in and saved her.
“You what?” Conor said.
I took her and carried her far enough away so that the villagers would never find her, far beyond even the kingdom of her birth, to a village by the sea. And there I left her, to live in peace.
Conor got to his feet, his voice rising in disbelief. “But she murdered the farmer’s daughter! How could you possibly save a murderer?” Then his face dropped and he took a step back. “You really are a monster.”
I never said she killed the farmer’s daughter, the monster said. I only said that the prince said it was so.
Conor blinked. Then he crossed his arms. “So who killed her then?”
The monster opened its huge hands in a certain way, and a breeze blew up, bringing a mist with it. Conor’s house was still behind him, but the mist covered his back garden, replacing it with a field with a giant yew in the centre and a man and a woman sleeping at its base.
After their coupling, said the monster, the prince remained awake.
Conor watched as the young prince rose and looked down at the sleeping farmer’s daughter, who even Conor could see was a beauty. The prince watched her for a moment, then wrapped a blanket around himself and went to their horse, tied to one of the yew tree’s branches. The prince retrieved something from the saddlebag, then untied the horse, slapping it hard on the hindquarters to send it running off. The prince held up what he’d taken out of the bag.
A knife, shining in the moonlight.
“No!” Conor said.
The monster closed its hands and the mist descended again as the prince approached the sleeping farmer’s daughter, his knife at the ready.
“You said he was surprised when she didn’t wake up!” Conor said.
After he killed the farmer’s daughter, said the monster, the prince lay down next to her and returned to sleep. When he awoke, he acted out a pantomime should anyone be watching. But also, it may surprise you to learn, for himself. The monster’s branches creaked. Sometimes people need to lie to themselves most of all.
“You said he asked for your help! And that you gave it!”
I only said he told me enough to make me come walking.
Conor looked wide-eyed from the monster to his back garden, which was re-emerging from the dissipating mist. “What did he tell you?” he asked.
He told me that he had done it for the good of the kingdom. That the new queen was in fact a witch, that his grandfather had suspected it to be true when he married her, but that he had overlooked it because of her beauty. The prince couldn’t topple a powerful witch on his own. He needed the fury of the villagers to help him. The death of the farmer’s daughter saw to that. He was sorry to do it, heartbroken, he said, but as his own father had died in defence of the kingdom, so did his fair maiden. Her death was serving to overthrow a great evil. When he said that the queen had murdered his bride, he believed, in his own way, that it was actually true.
“That’s a load of crap!” Conor shouted. “He didn’t need to kill her. The people were behind him. They would have followed him anyway.”
The justifications of men who kill should always be heard with scepticism, said the monster. And so the injustice that I saw, the reason that I came walking, was for the q
ueen, not the prince.
“Did he ever get caught?” Conor said, aghast. “Did they punish him?”
He became a much beloved king, the monster said, who ruled happily until the end of his long days.
Conor looked up to his bedroom window, frowning again. “So the good prince was a murderer and the evil queen wasn’t a witch after all. Is that supposed to be the lesson of all this? That I should be nice to her?”
He heard a strange rumbling, different from before, and it took him a minute to realize the monster was laughing.
You think I tell you stories to teach you lessons? the monster said. You think I have come walking out of time and earth itself to teach you a lesson in niceness?
It laughed louder and louder again, until the ground was shaking and it felt like the sky itself might tumble down.
“Yeah, all right,” Conor said, embarrassed.
No, no, the monster said, finally calming itself. The queen most certainly was a witch and could very well have been on her way to great evil. Who’s to say? She was trying to hold on to power, after all.
“Why did you save her then?”
Because what she was not, was a murderer.
Conor walked around the garden a bit, thinking. Then he did it a bit more. “I don’t understand. Who’s the good guy here?”
There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere inbetween.
Conor shook his head. “That’s a terrible story. And a cheat.”
It is a true story, the monster said. Many things that are true feel like a cheat. Kingdoms get the princes they deserve, farmers’ daughters die for no reason, and sometimes witches merit saving. Quite often, actually. You’d be surprised.
Conor glanced up at his bedroom window again, imagining his grandma sleeping in his bed. “So how is that supposed to save me from her?”
The monster stood to its full height, looking down on Conor from afar.
It is not her you need saving from, it said.
Conor sat up straight on the settee, breathing heavily again.
12.07, read the clock.
“Dammit!” Conor said. “Am I dreaming or not?”
He stood up angrily–
And immediately stubbed his toe.
“What now?” he grumbled, leaning over to flick on a light.
From a knot in a floorboard, a fresh, new and very solid sapling had sprouted, about a foot tall.
Conor stared at it for a while. Then he went to the kitchen to get a knife to saw it out of the floor.
UNDERSTANDING
“I forgive you,” Lily said, catching up with him on the walk to school the following day.
“For what?” Conor asked, not looking at her. He was still irritated at the monster’s story, from the cheating and twisting way it went, none of which was any help at all. He’d spent half an hour sawing the surprisingly tough sapling out of the floor and had felt as though he’d barely fallen asleep again before it was time to get up, something he’d only found out because his grandma had started yelling at him for being late. She wouldn’t even let him say goodbye to his mum, who she said had had a rough night and needed her rest. Which made him feel guilty because if his mum had had a rough night, then he should have been there to help her, not his grandma who had barely let him brush his teeth before shoving an apple in his hand and pushing him out of the door.
“I forgive you for getting me in trouble, stupid,” Lily said, but not too harshly.
“You got yourself in trouble,” Conor said. “You’re the one who pushed Sully over.”
“I forgive you for lying,” Lily said, her poodly curls shoved painfully back into a band.
Conor just kept on walking.
“Aren’t you going to say you’re sorry back?” Lily asked.
“Nope,” Conor said.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not sorry.”
“Conor–”
“I’m not sorry,” Conor said, stopping, “and I don’t forgive you.”
They glared at each other in the cool morning sun, neither wanting to be the first to look away.
“My mum said we need to make allowances for you,” Lily finally said. “Because of what you’re going through.”
And for a moment, the sun seemed to go behind the clouds. For a moment, all Conor could see was sudden thunderstorms on the way, could feel them ready to explode in the sky and through his body and out of his fists. For a moment, he felt as if he could grab hold of the very air and twist it around Lily and rip her right in two–
“Conor?” Lily said, startled.
“Your mum doesn’t know anything,” he said. “And neither do you.”
He walked away from her, fast, leaving her behind.
– • –
It was just over a year ago that Lily had told a few of her friends about Conor’s mum, even though he hadn’t said she could. Those friends told a few more, who told a few more, and before the day was half through, it was like a circle had opened around him, a dead area with Conor at the centre, surrounded by landmines that everyone was afraid to walk through. All of a sudden, the people he’d thought were his friends would stop talking when he came over, not that there were so very many beyond Lily anyway, but still. He’d catch people whispering as he walked by in the corridor or at lunch. Even teachers would get a different look on their faces when he put up his hand in lessons.
So eventually he stopped going over to groups of friends, stopped looking up at the whispers, and even stopped putting up his hand.
Not that anyone seemed to notice. It was like he’d suddenly turned invisible.
He’d never had a harder year of school or been more relieved for a summer holiday to come round than this last one. His mother was deep into her treatments, which she’d said over and over again were rough but “doing the job”, the long schedule of them nearing its end. The plan was that she’d finish them, a new school year would start, and they’d be able to put all this behind them and start afresh.
Except it hadn’t worked out that way. His mum’s treatments had carried on longer than they’d originally thought, first a second round and now a third. The teachers in his new year were even worse because they only knew him in terms of his mum and not who he was before. And the other kids still treated him like he was the one who was ill, especially since Harry and his cronies had singled him out.
And now his grandma was hanging around the house and he was dreaming about trees.
Or maybe it wasn’t a dream. Which would actually be worse.
He walked on angrily to school. He blamed Lily because it was mostly her fault, wasn’t it?
He blamed Lily, because who else was there?
This time, Harry’s fist was in his stomach.
Conor fell to the ground, scraping his knee on the concrete step, tearing a hole in his uniform trousers. The hole was the worst part of it. He was terrible at sewing.
“You’re such a spaz, O’Malley,” Sully said, laughing behind him somewhere. “It’s like you fall every day.”
“You should go to a doctor for that,” he heard Anton say.
“Maybe he’s drunk,” Sully said, and there was more laughter, except for a silent spot between them where Conor knew Harry wasn’t laughing. He knew, without looking back, that Harry was just watching him, waiting to see what he would do.
As he stood, he saw Lily against the school wall. She was with some other girls, heading back inside at the end of break time. She wasn’t talking to them, just looking at Conor as she walked away.
“No help from Super Poodle today,” Sully said, still laughing.
“Lucky for you, Sully,” Harry said, speaking for the first time. Conor still hadn’t turned back to face them, but he could tell Harry wasn’t laughing at Sully’s joke. Conor watched Lily until she was gone.
“Hey, look at us when we’re talking to you,” Sully said, burning from Harry’s comment no doubt and grabbing Conor’s shoulde
r, spinning him around.
“Don’t touch him,” Harry said, calm and low, but so ominously that Sully immediately stepped back. “O’Malley and I have an understanding,” Harry said. “I’m the only one who touches him. Isn’t that right?”
Conor waited for a moment and then slowly nodded. That did seem to be the understanding.
Harry, his face still blank, his eyes still locked on Conor’s, stepped up close to him. Conor didn’t flinch, and they stood, eye-to-eye, while Anton and Sully looked at each other a bit nervously.
Harry cocked his head slightly, as if a question had occurred to him, one he was trying to puzzle out. Conor still didn’t move. The rest of their Year had already gone inside. He could feel the quiet opening up around them, even Anton and Sully falling silent. They would have to go soon. They needed to go now.
But nobody moved.
Harry raised a fist and pulled it back as if to swing it at Conor’s face.
Conor still didn’t flinch. He didn’t even move. He just stared into Harry’s eyes, waiting for the punch to fall.
But it didn’t.
Harry lowered his fist, dropping it slowly down by his side, still staring at Conor. “Yes,” he finally said, quietly, as if he’d worked something out. “That’s what I thought.”
And then, once more, came the voice of doom.
“You boys!” Miss Kwan called, coming across the yard towards them like terror on two legs. “Break was over three minutes ago! What do you think you’re still doing out here?”
“Sorry, Miss,” Harry said, his voice suddenly light. “We were discussing Mrs Marl’s Life Writing homework with Conor and lost track of time.” He slapped a hand on Conor’s shoulder as if they were lifelong friends. “No one knows about stories like Conor here.” He nodded seriously at Miss Kwan. “And talking about it helps get him out of himself.”
“Yes,” Miss Kwan frowned, “that sounds entirely likely. Everyone here is on first warning. One more problem today, and that’s detention for all of you.”