‘Would you like me to take it off?’ the queen asked, looking directly into Crystine’s terrified eyes.
‘Take it off?’Crystine sighed with relief, adding hopefully, ‘You can remove the necklace?’
‘No, no: not the necklace,’ the queen replied with a resigned chuckle. ‘All that will happen in good time: but then, of course, you’ll wish you’d never been parted from it!’
‘So…’ Crystine asked unsurely, ‘what are you going to take off?’
‘My beauty, of course,’ the queen replied mysteriously, using her free hand to indicate her face. ‘Do you really think I’d live amongst the dead if I looked as delicious as you?’
*
At last, with yet another airy wave of her hand, the queen both released the bound fool and granted Crystine permission to pull the edge of a curtain back a little, allowing her to see where they were headed.
The column entered a thick wood, traveling along a track surrounded by towering trees. Gradually, the track was sinking a little into the surrounding ground, as if they were entering the beginnings of a narrow and shallow ravine. They passed, however, into what could have been the mouth of a cave, veiled by a web of trailing ivy that parted for them.
The corridor they entered was bleak and dark, lit only by the odd blazing brazier, illuminating undecorated walls of hardened soil and rocks. It spiralled ever deeper down into the earth, as if the palace had been formed by twisting a monstrous corkscrew deep into the ground.
‘There used to be a lake here,’ the queen explained proudly, ‘but as it drained away into the earth, I used magic to slowly harden the whirlpool of water and mud.’
This was no palace of open courtyards, of musically trickling fountains. It was one of the very earth itself, as dark as the soil. Yet it was a soil whose life-giving attributes had been restrained, for no flowers grew here, with nothing of beauty being allowed to thrive.
The few sparse items of furniture were of unpolished stone, the rare items of wood deliberately dulled rather than varnished to a shine.
Of course, there were no mirrors to be seen.
The carriage quietly drew to a halt by two large doors of dulled wood, these being opened by dourly dressed servants who – unusually for their roles – had neither shiny shoes not glittering buttons.
Once again, the room’s furniture was basic, practical, and bearing no ornamentation of any kind.
A dining table was set out with places for three, as if the queen had been expecting both Crystine and the fool, unless she had somehow managed to get word ahead to prepare the table.
Naturally, the cutlery and tableware had had all their potential to shine painstakingly etched away.
As Crystine accepted the queen’s invitation to take a seat at the table, and as the servants silently dished up a surprisingly normal looking meal of soup and bread, she thought it oddly ironic that she was staring across the stone top at what could be her mirror image.
The queen had only briefly removed her mask within the carriage. It was a mask that she herself had carefully designed, utilising sketches she had made of her dreams as a guide.
She was, of course, delighted that she had so perfectly captured Crystine’s growing beauty.
Behind that mask there lay the face of the woman who gazed out of Crystine’s ruby.
‘I know you wish to know more about your necklace,’ the Hag Queen declared assuredly as they ate, adding with a mischievous chuckle of pure relish, ‘It’s a tale of yet another queen denied a king by the KingFisher; and also of a palace of mirrors – of thousands of mirrors!’
*
Chapter 12
The Queen of The Fall
The leaves of autumn were as brown, as dry, yet as glorious as the gold of the sun’s rays, the amber of solidified honey.
The Queen of The Fall was no less gorgeous, no less in danger of losing her entrancing beauty.
As such, her palace was adorned everywhere with the most towering of mirrors. Mirrors that could, at any moment, reveal to her her most amazing beauty: as well as, at any moment, reveal the fault lines of the fading of that remarkable beauty,
The mirrors glittered like so many innumerable stars, presenting to the universe the most indescribably glorious beauty that was the moon.
A moon, as the observer was fearfully aware, that must at some point wane and fade away to nothing but darkness.
Who was there to tell her that she was still beautiful?
Her courtiers?
They would tell her anything!
Herself?
How could she trust herself to be honest about such a thing?
Besides, she was her harshest critic!
Her love: he would have told her she was beautiful, of course!
He might have lied: he would undoubtedly wish to flatter her.
But he would believe it.
And therefore, it would of course be undeniably true!
The mirrors, they should have told her the truth.
But the interpretation of what she saw in them? – That was down to her and her alone.
And no, she couldn’t be trusted to be in any way fair.
Gradually, she began to darken the rooms in which the mirrors had been placed.
To cut back on the number of candles, the quality of the lamps.
To place thicker curtains at the windows: to draw them a little more closed with the passing of each day.
Until, one day, there was no light allowed into the rooms.
Now the woman who stared back at her from the mirrors could be anybody: yet she sensed that, like the image, it was a woman much much darker in mind than she had previously been.
*
Then one day, a courtier brought a message to her; he had returned!
Despite everything, he still loved her: he couldn’t live without her!
Like a fool, he had wandered the whole world, attempting to forget her – and yet he had failed.
How could he have possibly hoped to forget someone so wonderful, so unique?
On hearing this, the Queen of The Fall was naturally overjoyed: she almost declared, there and then, than he should be allowed to enter immediately.
But then – she paused.
No, no; that would be ludicrously foolhardy!
How much had she changed since he had been gone?
She needed time to prepare – at least a few hours – before she could grant him audience.
Otherwise, he would be shocked to see how different she looked.
He might not even recognise her!
He might even regret returning!
Hah! It wasn’t hours she needed to prepare before she could see him!
She could never see him like this!
Better, rather, that she at least still remained beautiful and desirable within his mind.
*
The poor fool accepted, of course, that his love was too busy running her realm to see him just yet.
She was away, with affairs of state to deal with, he was told, and would return as soon as possible.
The queen had indeed secretly fled her palace.
Not, of course, because she didn’t wish to see her love.
She desired, almost more than anything, to see him once more.
To lie in each other’s arms. To share his kisses.
To hear him tell her how beautiful, how wonderful she was.
But all this could only happen, of course, if by some miracle, some profound magic, her beauty had been somehow returned to her. And if this couldn’t be the case: then she feared that he would no longer desire her.
Yet she had been searching for years for the secret of endless – or of at least restoring – her beauty.
The Corded Tail of the White Unicorn. The Bulb of the Venus Lily. The Kimono of Tulips. The Milk of the Moon
Despite the many men she had sent out wandering the earth to discover the truth behind these secret remedies, so far she had failed to find a magical formul
a, a spell, that restored a fading beauty.
So how could she possibly hope to discover this so far perfectly elusive secret in just a matter of days?
*
Now the world in general is an incredibly curious place. One of strange happenings, of the most inglorious events.
What would any reasonable person make of such a world?
A world of unfairness, of injustice. And yet also a world of hope, of great joy and wonderful things.
It’s mainly a matter of fate that determines which world we find ourselves living in.
Now the Queen of The Fall had been blessed with her own limited powers, one allowing her to take the most everyday objects and transform them into something truly and amazingly majestic.
It had taken her a ridiculously long time, yet she had gathered together the most fabulous collection of feathers, one from the wing of every bird that flew. She had also brought together an equally extensive collection displaying a wing from every from of insect (oh, how unthinkingly cruel we are to insects!).
Utilising her skills to the fullest, she had painstakingly woven all these together, creating a cloak granting its wearer the gift of flight. And it was this cloak that had allowed the queen to so easily flee her palace, with no one seeing her leave, or knowing where she might have gone.
She flew up into the darkness, her cloak indelibly blending her into the night sky, such that she became of the darkness itself.
She soared over her land, heading towards the Mountains That Overlooked the World. And here she asked the Man of the Mountains the way to the Two Towering Ogres. These she asked to direct her towards the Three Giant Women, whom she hoped could show her the way to the cave of the Four Dark Elves; for she had heard of the eleves’ skills in producing the most magical of artefacts, the most gorgeous of jewellery, the most curiously fashioned mechanisms of enchantment.
As she talked to the Three Giant Women, the very first of them reached high into a soaring tree, picking out from its very highest branches an apple that glowed as red as Venus.
The second of the Three Giant Women took this glorious apple from her sister, cautiously handing it down towards the queen. She held it tenderly by a stalk weeping yellow sap where it had been plucked and severed, being careful not to damage the leaves that glowed a sharper greener than any emerald.
The third of the Three Giant Women explained what the queen must do as she drew closer towards the hidden cave of the Four Dark Elves; she must bite into the apple’s soft flesh, whiter than any pearl – and then the cave of the Four Dark Elves would be unveiled to her. Then she must take another ball of flesh, and another, until she was safely within the cave’s own mouth.
And so, as the queen drew closer towards the dark mountainside where the Three Giant Women had told her the cave lay hidden, she did as she had been told – and bit into the pearl-like flesh of the ruby-red apple, with its emerald leaves on an amber tipped stalk.
The entrance to the cave abruptly glowed in the darkness of the mountainside as if, from a distance at least, it were the bloody maw of the Guardian of the Underworld.
It flickered red with the flames of a great forge. It rang with the sounds of metals ferociously hammered into shapes they resented. There was the agonised hiss of hot metals abruptly cooled as they were bent to the will of others.
When the Queen of The Fall swept into the cave, every elf stopped what he was doing. Each stared with great longing; for queen didn't realise it, of course, yet she was still wondrously beautiful.
Caught in the net of these dark stares, the queen feared for her safety, even her sanity in coming here.
Now that she had found them, she didn’t wish to ask any favours of these dark elves.
She wept with fear, wept in despair at her own foolishness. Her tears glistened, briefly sparkling like plummeting stars as they fell, as they splintered upon and scattered aimlessly across the dark earth.
They could have been the collapse of suns, the destruction of the whirling of the cosmos.
The balls of white flesh of apple were briefly caught within her startled throat, her gawping mouth.
The apple’s red skin ruptured beneath her tightly clasped fingers, the slash of her nails. It glistened as richly as fresh blood.
The green leaves glittered all the more as they were splattered with juices. The yellow stalk throbbed delicately as the queen fearfully clutched the apple to her heart.
The four elves descended upon her, dancing about her as demons might dance around dark witches on a night; and on each passing, they each dragged a taloned finger sharply across her neck, her shoulder blades and bones – each touch making the queen shiver with both fear and an unfamiliar, unrecognised thrill.
Then they stood back, as if admiring their creation. And from a boiling cauldron of moon silver, there arose the purest sheet of shining quicksilver, a mirror more fabulous than the queen could ever have imagined existed.
Now the four elves each invited her to step closer, to take a look at herself within the smoothly reflecting surface.
Hesitantly, wondering what trick could be being played upon her, the queen nervously drew closer, closer: and she gasped with delight! From within the mirror, she stared back at herself as the young beauty she had once been, only now dressed in the robes of the Queen of The Fall.
Indeed, there was only one difference in the garb she and this imaginary beauty both wore.
For at last, the queen saw what the elves had been working on: a necklace of such indescribable beauty, its materials could have been dragged down from the heavens themselves. It was of the finest wrought gold and silver, the most resplendent pearls and jewels, all of it laced delicately about her neck as if were a perfectly natural part of her.
She immediately recognised the necklace for what it was: an encapsulation of beauty itself.
She fell in love, in love with the necklace, in love with the beauty she had once been.
She sighed with longing, with lust, raising her hand to caress her own shoulder blades, her own neck: and both she and the tantalising image giggled in the sheerest joy.
She did wear the necklace.
The beauty in the mirror was her!
All about the elves, there was shadow, a shadow of the elves’ own making – and yet from that darkness they had forged a brightness that could have been the evening star, captured as it plummeted to earth.
The elves couldn’t mistake the longing in her gaze, for a similar longing similarly glittered within their own stares.
‘It is yours to wear forever,’ one of the elves said, seductively dangling the necklace out towards the queen. Then he added, as if it were nothing more than an afterthought, ‘For the right price.’
The queen couldn’t bring herself to thank the elves, for she couldn’t mistake the glow of evil in every eye that greedily took her in.
Yet she felt that this necklace should be hers, that it would be hers.
She made due reverence to each elf, yet every offer she made for the necklace was refused with a shake of a head, a knowing grin.
‘Then whatever you want for it,’ she declared in desperation, ‘it will be yours!’
‘Four nights; that is all we ask for,’ came the reply, accompanied with the exchanging of wicked grins between the four of them.
*
It was a miserable price to pay. The wrong price.
And yet the queen’s misery vanished the moment she clasped the necklace about her already delicate, already gorgeous neck.
For it blazed with fire, with every tone of the most glorious rainbow. It was the fruit of the heavens. It was, surprisingly, nature at her rawest and most beautiful, her most frightening yet enchanting.
It was a beauty so rich and infinite that it flowed from the necklace, flooding the queen’s entire being.
‘Now when he sees me,’ the Queen of The Fall told herself proudly, ‘he’ll see me as he remembers me!’
Somehow, however, word had r
eached the fool of how his love had regained her youth and beauty.
Some say the Four Dark Elves had boasted of their conquest to the Three Giant Women, who in turn had told the Two Towering Ogres, both of whom had gossiped to the Man of the Mountains That Overlooked the World.
Hearing of everything that had occurred, the fool believed the price his love had agreed to pay had been far too high.
So when the queen returned – to a palace of once again brightly illuminated halls of mirrors, to courtiers who gasped audibly at her beauty, to women who glared enviously after her – her fool had already left.
*
No one could tell the queen where her fool had wandered off to once more.
He might as well have vanished for all the way in which it seemed he had now so completely disappeared from her life once more.
Naturally, she continued to wear the necklace that had cost her her love.
Now, however, it was said that she only wore it as reminder of her foolhardiness.
As a sign of the wrong she had done.
But I can tell you, they are wrong.
For now, at last, she knew she was beautiful.
*
So why did she need him to tell her this?
Why did her life feel so empty?
Why did she feel so ugly, so deep inside?
*
Chapter 13
The fool had fallen asleep while the Hag Queen related her tale.
‘He’s heard enough of queens, and their fools, I think,’ the Hag Queen observed mischievously as she helped herself to generous sip of wine. ‘And yet he is indeed a fool not to listen: for ultimately it’s a tale of the labyrinthine hall of mirrors we foolishly term the self – a place where we’ve created so many false facades to project onto the world that we can no longer find our true selves amongst it all.’
‘Who is this KingFisher?’ Crystine asked bemusedly. ‘Or do I really have to wait until he wakes up?
‘Hah!’ The queen chuckled as she took another drink. ‘The KingFisher’s of no consequence to me, obviously! Who would marry me? Who would be foolish enough to become my king – even with or without the threat of the KingFisher?’