Twenty-six
I didn't want to let go. It had been so long since I felt the warmth of my grandfather, smelled the scent of his aftershave and rested my head on his shoulder. Here was my white knight once again, the one person who defended me when I had no one else to look to, and I had him back at last. My fiercest protector in the flesh; well, in the flesh in this world I created. Tears were soaking the front of his shirt; but my granddad, enduring as ever, didn't budge. I took every precious moment and committed it to my bruised and aching heart, hanging on for dear life and refusing to be parted from his embrace. Time was stealing away from us, and I was afraid of waking up and losing this moment. Now that I had him I wanted to talk to him, to ask him so many questions. Why was he here? Where was "here" exactly? How in the hell did I manage to survive without him this far?
I stepped back to look at him; he was just the way I remembered him. His blue eyes were warm and welcoming, his smile was comforting. His lips curled in, the way they always did, thanks to years of wearing dentures. I looked over every single detail, putting it to memory so when I was conscious, I wouldn't lose it. "Grandpa, what are you doing here?" I asked, so elated to see him it was the only question I could think to ask.
He put his hand on my cheek; it was calloused from years of hard work, but it was so warm. A tear streamed down my cheek and ran down his finger. He reached over and wiped my face, drying my red and swollen face. "My girl, this is where you put me."
My eyebrow shot up in confusion. "Huh? What do you mean 'I put you here?' I don't understand."
Grandpa put his arm around my shoulders. He led me down a small path that ended at an ancient wooden door, which turned out to be the door to a log cabin. It was his dream home. He used to talk endlessly about retiring to the woods and buying a log cabin when I was little. And now he was living in a log cabin in my mind. "I've been here for quite some time. As a matter of fact, everything you loved and cherished wound up here, so the bad things that took over wouldn't destroy them. It's a safe place for all of your happy memories, for the things you loved most. Nothing can invade here. Nothing can destroy this place. And you're the only one who can open the door."
It made perfect sense. All the memories I treasured, all the moments I wanted to protect from the invading army, my mom and sister's royal clones, I put in a distant place, in a nirvana that was impenetrable. And now I had stumbled upon this piece of protected paradise once again. And I decided that this was the part of Psitharis I would dream about from now on. All the rest of that crap I had left behind me could stay behind me, could turn to rot for all I cared.
As if he read my mind, Grandpa shook his head. "It's not going to be as simple as that, Medora. You know that. Come on, we'll talk inside."
I sat down in a large, comfortable chair near the fireplace. The warmth coming from the embers in the hearth made me feel completely warm and safe, for the first time since I first reentered Psitharis. Grandpa brought two mugs from the kitchen. I took cautious sips of my hot chocolate, but it was the perfect temperature, just like it always was when Grandpa brought me hot chocolate as a child. I relaxed, sitting back and closing my eyes for a moment.
"Medora, you know we need to talk about a few things." I heard my Grandpa say. I opened my eyes and nodded.
"Yeah, you're right. I'm still a little confused as to why I'm back here in the first place, not to mention what you're doing here."
Grandpa chuckled. "I'm here because you love me. You wanted to protect me, protect my memory. So you put me here. The queen and her daughter are incapable of finding this place, much less laying siege to it. And if they or their soldiers ever did wander this far out, they'd stop at the empty field. The Midnight Forest has seen to that. No light, except for the light provided by the beings you created, can light this forest. Several regiments have tried, but they are all afraid to venture any further than that."
"Why is that?" I asked.
Grandpa thought for a moment. "Well, best I can figure is this is where you put everything that is precious to you. Everything you want to protect. Look around you."
I got on my feet and actually looked around the cabin. On the shelves were all of my music boxes, including one I accidentally broke and lost several of the pieces to. In reality it was sitting in that box in my closet, still broken and reduced to half a unicorn and a music box base. Here in my grandpa's cabin it was completely restored. There were drawings I had been particularly proud of over the years that my mother promptly threw away when I was out of the house to "save space." There were stories I had written and pictures of events in my life that had been pleasant, like a trip to an amusement park with my seventh grade class. I had never taken any pictures, but here in this cabin there were pictures of my classmates riding roller coasters and laughing with glee. It was one of the best events that ever occurred to me in the confines of public education. And here were the reminders of that field trip, tacked up on one of the walls. And in the far corner of the cabin...
There was my headboard. The headboard my Grandpa and I had taken home because I had fallen in love with it. The headboard my Grandpa had talked my irate mother into keeping, even though she hated it. It was sitting in a corner near the stairs, well-lit and with wood carving tools littering the floor around it. I knelt on the tarp underneath to inspect it. The knight was as he had always been, riding his trusty steed onward towards the dragon's keep. The dragon's tail was as it had been, pointed in the direction of the approaching knight, but now there was the outline of a castle where before there had been nothing but solid wood. A princess waved a cloth out of a high tower window, signaling the knight to her distress. The head of the dragon curled around the front of the castle, lowering its head in preparation for the big battle. The dragon's body had not been finished, nor had a lot of the detail work been completed in the castle, but the visual of the epic saga I had always envisioned was taking shape. Grandpa had done this. It was the project we had planned to complete together during his lifetime, and he was here finishing it on his own. He had done this for me, or to keep the link he had to me alive. I felt the tears well up in my eyes once again.
"It's beautiful." I whispered.
"Well, thank you, my girl." Grandpa beamed, proud of his work and delighted I loved it so much. "I worked really hard on it. I just knew that one of these days, you'd stop by. I wanted it to be finished when you got here, but somehow I think you and I both need to finish it together."
That sounded like a great idea to me. I reached for a tool and started to eye the perfect spot to start working, but Grandpa stopped me. He took the tool from my hand and laid it on a nearby table.
"There'll be plenty of time for that later." He motioned me to stand. "Right now I have something else I need to show you, before we get too comfortable here in our little cabin. Do you remember how I told you there were precious memories locked in this hideaway? How the things you wanted to protect you placed here?"
I nodded. "Yes, I remember. Why?"
"Well, out back behind my cabin are eight people I think you need to meet. They've been expecting you for so long."
I was bewildered. I didn't really know the residents of this world. I had passed them briefly during my stays here, but I had never gotten to know a one of them. Who would I have saved, other than Roland? Because he was the only one I had ever had real interaction with, and I certainly didn't put him here.
"Perhaps it would be best to head out back. You're going to be a welcome surprise for them. They're pretty smart for their age, I find."
Grandpa led me out the back door of the cabin. We walked down a small path, surrounded by lush berry bushes and brilliantly colorful flowering shrubs. It was a scene right out of a fairy tale. After a short stroll we came upon another cabin, only this one was larger than Grandpa's. In the front yard there was a lady hanging up the laundry of children, a lot of children if I had to wager. And to the side there was a young boy around the age of eight. He looked up and stared at Grandpa and me. He had black hair and wore thick spectacles, and his suspenders showed the age of sixteen years of use. I had never met him before, yet I felt like I had always known him. I eyed Grandpa curiously; he just smiled and led me closer to the boy.
The young man reached out his hand and shook my grandfather's hand. Though the gesture was overly formal for a child his age, it was very obvious they had known each other for a long time, probably since I first placed them here. And Grandpa was the first to speak. "Barathasan my boy, how are you?"
Barathasan, Barathasan..."Barathasan!" I shouted, finally recognizing the boy who stood in front of me. The shock of my exclamation sent him reeling back several feet. "Oh my gosh, Barathasan! You're alive!"
Barathasan looked at me for a moment, and looked at Grandpa for verification of his suspicions. "Is this she?" Grandpa nodded. Barathasan instantly dropped to one knee and lowered his head to me. "Your majesty!" He exclaimed.
"Excuse me?" I responded, incredulous. "What did you call me?"
Barathasan looked up at me, waiting for a sign that he could stand. Realizing what he was waiting for, I awkwardly gestured for him to get to his feet. It felt weird, ordering someone to stand up. We stared at each other for a moment. I guess I stared because I didn't know what else to do. Suddenly I blurted out, "Why did you call me 'your majesty?'"
Barathasan looked as stunned as I felt. He looked to my grandfather, who for the most part looked unfazed by this turn of events. "See? I told you she wouldn't believe you."
Barathasan offered up an explanation. "You are the true monarch of this realm. You created it, created us. So it seems only fitting that you take the role of nobility in Psitharis. The only issue that remains is restoring you to your correct place, on the throne in the Cerulean Palace."
I was dumbfounded. "Hold up a sec. You mean to tell me, that because I created this world when I was a little girl to escape my mom and my rotten and lousy life that I'm automatically queen?" Barathasan nodded. "And I should be up in the palace ruling the world?" Again, he nodded. "Okay, then tell me this. How come everything has gone to crap here? Is it because I neglected it? Because if that's true then I wouldn't want someone like me running the show, would you?"
My little subject laughed a little. "No, I suppose not. But the current state of things, the disrepair and the corruption, well, it isn't all your fault. If you'll wait a moment it can be explained to you. Let me call the others."
"The others?" I asked, getting even more excited. Nodding, Barathasan turned and called the Counsel one by one.
"Frailen, Chylis! Alexa and Dresden! Emyll, Ghias!" They all assembled one or two at a time. Frailen and Ghias, holding hands and nervously approaching, arrived first. They were twins in every single way, from their blonde hair in plaits to their sad brown eyes down to their matching purple aprons covering their discolored white smocks. Emyll appeared next, quickly followed by Dresden. They were two little boys who were very accustomed to getting their hands dirty, and it showed. If it hadn't been for the breaks in dirt in their hair I would never have known that Dresden was blonde and Emyll had ebony hair like Barathasan, only much longer, almost as long as the twins, and flowing freely down his back. Alexa was the oldest, or at least she was the tallest. A head taller than the rest, she was strikingly beautiful with her red, curly hair and her emerald green eyes. She was smiling as she bounded around the corner of the house, and when she saw me her smile only got brighter.
Chylis was last to show up. She was also the smallest. I would have gauged her age to be somewhere around five years old. She looked like Alexa, only a frightened, nervous miniature version of her. No sooner had she appeared than she disappeared once again, hiding behind Alexa and hanging for dear life to her skirt. Her hair was much shorter than her older doppelganger, and I could see the mother role Alexa had taken with Chylis, because she protectively shielded her young charge from my sight. Not in a way that would be considered mean or rude, but like a mother would allow her shy child to duck behind her leg and cower from a stranger. It struck me like a dart to the heart. These poor children had been children throughout their entire existences, cursed to never age or change in any way from the moment of their conception. Just another reason I should never have come back.
Alexa was the one to speak first. "Are you Queen Medora?" She was breathless with excitement. I thought about denying it, telling them I was just an ordinary gal who unintentionally brought an entire universe into being because I was a sad and lonely little girl once upon a time, but why should I? They seemed to already know.
"Yes, I'm Queen Medora." I glanced over at Grandpa and Barathasan for approval. Their smiles wiped away any doubts I had about declaring myself royalty.
Alexa ran toward me, dragging poor little Chylis along as she was clutching the back of her skirt. "Oh, your highness, it's so nice to finally meet you!" She pulled little Chylis away from her skirt and knelt on her knee, holding her tightly. "Chylis, don't be afraid. This is Queen Medora!" Chylis stared at me for a few seconds, sizing me up. The others stood and waited, as if Chylis' reaction would tell them what should happen next. Chylis reached out her hand and extended her open palm up to me. I reached out and took her hand in mine and she smiled. The others rushed over to meet me.
"Wow, you're even more beautiful than I imagined!" Said Frailen or Ghias; it was hard to tell which because they looked so much alike. "My name is Ghias!" Mystery solved.
"And I'm Frailen, the pretty one!" Frailen announced, which started an argument between the twins about which was indeed the prettier of the two.
Emyll held his dirty hand out to me to shake, but Barathasan chided him. "Emyll, she is royalty! You don't present her with a dirty hand to shake!" But I took his hand anyway and shook it. Dresden, encouraged by the result, also offered me his mud-coated hand to shake. Barathasan looked as if he wanted to kick them.
"I do apologize for that." He handed me a handkerchief and offered his arm as my escort. I took it, and we all went past the cabin into a little garden area in the back. The elderly lady who was hanging up clothes followed closely behind her young charges. Flowers grew from trellises all over the back yard. Beneath a beautiful pergola shaded by a particularly hearty creeping vine, we all sat in little chairs that surrounded a large circular table. My chair had to be brought from elsewhere in the garden. There were only nine chairs surrounding the table; seven for the Counsel, one for the lady who cared for them and one for my granddad. Apparently he was a frequent visitor to this house. Emyll and Dresden dragged a beautiful wooden chair over to the table so I could join them. Everyone else moved a little right or left to make room for me. The old lady sat opposite me.
"I still haven't had the pleasure of making your acquaintance." I remarked, looking over at the woman who had remained silent up until this point.
"I am caretaker of this cabin and protector of the Counsel. I have been with the children since before the arrival of the imposter and her evil daughter. I am their mother, they are my children. I have kept them here protected for many years. My job since you put us here has been to care for the children until your return. And I have taken that duty very seriously." She said this with no animosity and with complete calm in her voice, but I could tell she was the type who would tear off someone's head if they ever threatened any of her "children", even though she appeared to be of an advanced age. She would die for the children, and I was immediately in awe of her. "And I was one of the first three people to live on these shores. Do you remember me?"
"No, I'm sorry I don't." I really didn't. I was so small when I created Dream Land I didn't remember much of anything. It seemed to exist the moment I first imagined it.
"Medora, I need you to think back. You created three of us, and in turn we helped you create your world. Can you think of our names?" The old lady was insistent. I reached back into my memories, finding the place where I first stood on the white sand beaches of my new creation and wished for other people to share it with. And the one thing I thought of, the one person I wanted there more than anything else was a small photograph my aunt gave me to hide from my mother, my one piece of the other family I never knew. It was a picture my mother threw in the trash the day after my first ultrasound, and Aunt Charlotte rescued for me. And from the recollection of that photograph I created...
"Jack." I whispered. "It was Jack. He was first. He swore to be the one thing I needed when I needed him most. Then to protect the forests I created – oh, I can't remember her name – Osmen." Osmen's beautiful face and long, flowing hair came rushing back to me. "She helped me create the palace and the park. And to protect the palace I created the warrior. I created...Donla." I looked at the old woman, now stooped and aged and a fair bit shorter than I remembered her, but her beautiful warrior eyes were still as sharp as ever. "Donla, is it you?" "Yes child. I have stayed here all these years protecting those you loved the most, in Osmen's forest. I have been awaiting your return, and finally you are here." She smiled a warm smile, and I ran to her and hugged her the way I used to hug her leg when she was seven feet tall and able to carry me about like a rag doll.
"I didn't know it, but I've missed you so much! But where are the others? And what happened to you? I'm not trying to be mean, but you've aged a lot more than sixteen years."
"I am uncertain of the others' fate." Donla answered. "And now is not the time to search for them. The immediate concern is getting you back into power. As for my age, I think as one of the original beings of this world, my existence is connected wholly to it. When things were good I was strong and capable. And now, now that the world is falling..."
"...you are falling with it." Great. Just another problem I unwittingly caused. My list of sins was getting too long to count.
"What is done is done," Donla stated, "and I do not lament my current state. I have had a good life with the children, here in this place of protection. But it is now time to come out of hiding and take back what was taken from all of us. And you are the key."
I shook my head. It had to be me, I knew that; but all that my pathetic life had managed so far was pain, struggle and betrayal. I was not the person to put in charge of the fate of an entire world, even if it was my creation. "You've got to be joking. Have you seen the outside in the past sixteen years? It's a huge, steaming pile of crap. And that's all my fault. Do you seriously think it's a good idea to entrust the future of Psitharis to such a ridiculous foul-up like me?"
"It has to be you." Donla argued. "You created the world; you control the direction of it. How were you to know what your actions in those eight years of your life would do to this place? But now that the truth is known treat it as your call to action. The past is a series of mistakes we make in order to change the fates. And now that you are aware of your mistakes it is time to make fate turn in a more favorable direction."
"Okay, so how does that happen? What's the first step?"
Donla smiled warmly. "You have already taken the first step. You have come back. You know the suffering of Psitharis, and you want to change it. All you need now is the determination to make things right. You are this world's only hope. Once you realize this the rest will be simple."
We spoke about our actions going forward, tried to come up with solutions that would allow us to change the world without putting any of the villagers in harm's way. No matter what we came up with, all of the ideas culminated with me facing my fears and marching up the mountain to confront the queen. There really was no way around it. I might want to escape my problems, but by running from them I was creating yet more chaos for the people who had gotten me through so many sad and lonely times in my childhood. The solution was clear: for better or worse, no matter how much I wanted to rebel, my path was right back out of this forest and onward to whatever turmoil that mountain held for me.
As I felt my consciousness dragging me back to my bed I walked back to the veil to hug my grandfather and tell him goodbye. Before I went I had to ask him one question. "Grandpa, I have power in this world and I could change things for you. Maybe make you a little younger, a little nimbler. What do you think?" I was halfway joking, because I couldn't imagine my granddad being anyone than who he was.
"Not on your life, my girl. I've earned every one of these wrinkles, and you've given me a life here that isn't painful and I'm quite safe and sound. You worry about them, and how to get their home back." One brief hug and I heard the alarm clock start to buzz. I woke up hugging my pillow, feeling happier than I had felt in a very long time.
