Dura Tree Tales The Quest

Chapter 2 - Queen Maeve is discovered

Rupert's inauguration was cancelled and all whole fairy kingdom was told to keep a look out for the missing Queen. Rupert was very disappointed and angry, as he wasn't allowed to join in the searches but instead he had to mind his siblings every day, while the guards and Jacob were on constant patrol to find her. Why hadn't father agreed to keep the nurse maid for the girls, so Mum wouldn't feel the need to go for walks so much and now had disappeared? In the last years lots of things had gone wrong. First the Elfin Wand had disappeared, then the bees have left and there is no surplus honey, so Hunger, Illness and Death have come to the fairy fort. The landloper Druid his father had taken in was not much help either.

After months Alberich painfully admitted defeat and declared that Rupert's inauguration would finally go ahead. And so Rupert finds himself walking down the long aisle in the great hall towards his father and his anger was swelling up in him again, like a pressure cooker that is about to explode. He didn't acknowledge his cheering two brothers Thomas and Udo, nor did he see the stretched out hands of his sisters and the rest of fairy folk, who wanted to wish him luck. All he saw his father and that he finally would have his revenge on him as soon he was inaugurated with his wings. He would get the Elfin Wand back and with the wand he would then restore balance in the Fairy Fort.

He was about half way down the aisle when Jacob entered the room from behind the king and whispered something in his ear. Alberich's face changed from smiling proudly at him to a shocked grimace and he just turned on his heels to follow Jacob out of the room. Rupert stopped his walk and looked over to his brothers with one question in his eye: "What was going on?" They both shrugged their shoulders like saying: "We have no idea." Rupert once and for all needed to find out why his father's demeanour had changed to suddenly and made him abort the ceremony. So he briskly walked towards the door his father and Jacob has just left the great hall. He followed the corridor and just saw his father disappear through a door to the left. Rupert drew his brows, as that door let to a stair case down to the bridge over to tree Aurora. Why would father go over to tree Aurora now? That's where the servants lived with their families. And they were all busy with the ceremony and banquet that was to follow his inauguration. He slowed his step, opened the door and started climbing down the stairs. He could see his father with Jacob now on the other side of the bridge walking towards the tree lift that would lead down to the roots and burrows. Rupert followed with increasing curiosity now, but took the stairwell around the tree now as he didn't wanted to be seen by his father. When he reached the bottom of the tree he saw a large group of servants and other folk standing around a niche between two roots. He couldn't make out what was going on, all he could see bodies and legs.

He pushed this way through to the front only to find his father kneeling beside a woman laying on a fur bed. She looked like she was asleep, but his father was sobbing. Why would he do that?

Alberich looked up and noticed Rupert standing there with his eyes wide open.

'Come here my son,' he said with a trembling voice and tears still running down his face.

Rupert slowly step closer and knelt beside his father. He looked up at the woman's face and blinked. It couldn't be, no it wasn't possible. He rubbed his eyes like he wanted to remove some shadow casting over his view. The woman laying in front of him looked like his mother.

Rupert looked again more closely. It was her, Queen Maeve, his Mother!

She looked a little older now, but then again it had been months since he had seen her.

But why was she not moving or even talking to him or his father?

He touched her arm to make her aware that he was here. She didn't move.