NOVEMBERLAND: the little shieldmaiden

21

A few days had passed, and I had not seen a lot of Alva after our conversation that evening. I had been training each day now, but it was in the woods to work out in a different way. I was supposed to meet Viorica for some Escan tea. It was quite different from the Caliban tea Eleanor used to give me, it was sweeter and filled with herbs. Esca seemed so enchanting in a way that you learned new things every time someone spoke about it. I wanted to go there, but it was not an easy task. It was rare that a foreigner got to enter the evergreen kingdom. Outsiders had tried to find it for years because they had heard of their treasures and beautiful people, but nobody had ever found it. Viorica told me little about its location, but she said that I would see the place she called home at least once.

"How come nobody knows the location of Esca?" I asked as I had sipped my herbal tea.

"Well, you probably mean the outsiders. It has always been a secret, and it creates a safety barrier for the people," she said with her calm and proper-like voice.

"Have any royal outsiders been there?" I asked. The sun shone through the window and lit up her light hair and her eyes became an oceanlike colour.

"Yes," she said short and looked out the window.'

"Whom?"

"Richard," came out of her mouth with a hesitant tone.

"Why?"

"Well, I guess it is time for you to know," she said and took a sip of the tea. It was just me and her in the room, and a weird feeling started to tingle. "He was married to my sister, Linnaea Adelaide." And it felt like my body dropped, I did not expect that. Her deceased sister had been married to what felt like the cruellest man in Novemberland.

"But you two aren't on good terms," I said under my voice because I was too shocked.

"Not everyone likes their sister's husbands," she said and looked at me. It made me think about Alva having to marry Im Skard. "But I had nothing against Richard in the beginning," she continued and shook her head slightly to make a point. "It is what he did afterwards," she said and looked down at the table.

"What did he do?" I asked and tried to get her to tell me the story, although I knew I would find out soon.

"They got married at age eighteen, and none of them were crowned. But then my parents ended the reign because they were tired and they wanted to see their daughter's coronation. Which is normal sometimes in Esca. Linnaea was nineteen at the time and a young queen. Richard wanted to be crowned king, but Linnaea insisted on waiting till he had gotten his crown. Richard did not like this, but he accepted it. After a few years, his old man still lived, but it was not the same when it came to our parents. They got in an accident whilst on a trip on the boarders of Esca." Viorica stopped, and she took a deep breath. I had not known her story, but here she was, revealing it all to me.

"I was twenty-one at that time. I had gotten married to Carsten the same year that my sister and Richard got married. We married young, we were just seventeen. Serephina, my daughter, was three when my parents passed. She was devastated. And two years after that, Serephina and Carsten were both poisoned. It was the worst thing that could ever happen to me. But then, only a year later my sister got sick with a known family sickness. She always seemed so strong. I always believed that I would get it. But I wasn't," she said as she looked out the window as if she was going through it one more time. I felt so sorry for her.

"Throughout the time that Linnaea was sick, Richard did not care. He managed to flee from Esca, which is easier said than done. Linnaea asked for him on her death bed, but I just said that he had not returned from his hunting trip. She smiled slightly and then she stopped breathing." A tear had fallen down Viorica's cheek. She used one of the table cloths and gently tapped it away. Then she looked up at me, "I will never forgive Richard for leaving, never."