Tide of Shadows and Other Stories (10 page)

The prince was not anxious about his father’s reaction, or that of his citizens, for Fáfnir was right; they would bring glory to the people. Rather, it was his mother whom he most worried about. She so wanted him to find a wife, but he had found a dragon instead. What would she think?

"True love conquers all," he’d tell her, but already, painted on the backs of his eyelids, he could see her frown, see her standing with her hands bunched on her rotund hips. He tried to sleep, but her screeches and howls filled his restless dreams, a draconian horror as terrible as the serpent on whose back he rode.

The blush of a waking sunrise blanketed the castle and met the Prince of Copperkettle Vale and Fáfnir upon their arrival. They settled in a courtyard amidst fountains bubbling, birds chirping, dogs barking, and bells tolling.

Guards surrounded them, crossbows drawn and iron spears raised, but did not shoot for fear of hitting their prince (no matter how they might grumble about him over cups of ale, he
was
their prince). An audience of castle-folk gathered—cooks and men-at-arms, dowagers and chambermaids, scullions and dukes, ladies-in-waiting and make-upped courtiers. The king was summoned, but it was the queen who arrived first.

"Mother," called the prince, still astride his dragon, "Rejoice! I found the love of my life."

Ignoring the dragon (love and social standing being more important than fear of serpents, you see), the queen shouted, "The Princess of Flowerdumpling Peak! Where is she! My new daughter, hurrah!"

"That old louse?" said the prince. "Stuck in a snowbank, I expect! Just where she belongs."

The audience gasped.

"Whatever do you mean?" cried the queen, a shadow of doubt on her plump face.

"I found love, mother! Just as you wanted. And he sits straddled between my legs!"

The audience gasped again—spear points dropped, crossbows unwound, gossipers whispered, children tittered, and maidens swooned. The queen herself fainted, tumbling to the cobblestones like a sack of potatoes.

"But sir!" cried his people. "He's a dragon!"

"But sir! He's a he!"

"But, but, but, but, but!" cried the prince. "Love is what matters, and love shall rule this day!"

The people of the castle eyed their queer prince. He stood strange and proud before them, one hand gripping the mane of his dragon friend, the other held high to the sky.

"Is he pulling wool over our eyes?" whispered one to another.

"Is it some trick?" whispered someone else.

"True love exists?" mumbled a third.

"I was nasty and vile, cranky and crude, miserable and mean," said the prince. "But now I know why. I was lonely and adrift. But in Fáfnir I've found meaning! Together we shall bring Copperkettle Vale to glory! Our good king, my father, shall be the greatest king in all our history! Forever shall bards compose songs and poems of our resplendent deeds!"

The crowd grumbled and guffawed. It must be a joke! A dragon and a prince? Ruling a kingdom with love and an iron fist both? Spears were lifted again, iron points dull in the blood-red light of the sunrise. Crossbows were cocked, cranked tight and deadly.

"What is this!" yelled a new voice. The old King of Copperkettle Vale appeared from a dark hallway, where he had been hidden all along. His hair was all amiss, and a robe wrapped his substantial belly. "A dragon in our courtyard and yet it lives! Kill it, you fools!”

"But, sire, the prince!"

"A traitor and a heathen!" yelled the king. "A consort of sin and debauchery. He is not my son. He is no longer prince!"

A tear welled at the corner of the prince's eye. "Father!" he wailed. "I thought you would be cheered! We are in love, and together we will bring our Kingdom to heights unimaginable! Great glory rides on these wings!"

"I have no son," said the king. His eyes were filled with cold fury. "Knights! Fire at will!"

And so the courtyard was filled with the twang of crossbows and the grunts of spearmen jabbing their pointy weapons.

But Fáfnir's hide was tough and the arrows bounced from him like fruit flies and gnats.
Ping!
The spears found no soft flesh but bent against his scales, tough as tempered steel.

"Fly!" yelled the prince, betrayed by subjects and family alike.

Fáfnir flapped his massive wings, and the crowd in the courtyard stumbled in the great gust that followed. The king alone kept to his feet (short and fat as he was) and shook a meaty fist at his son. Three more beats of his mighty wings and the dragon topped the castle walls.

They let the wind take them where it would—lost, adrift, wanderers without a home.

The days that followed were filled with great adventure and peril, enough to fill a hundred bedtime tales. Those days turned to weeks, the weeks to months, and the months to years—still they did not stop drifting on the wind, from one fairytale to the next. The prince never saw his home of Copperkettle Vale again, and Fáfnir never again lay on his enormous pile of gold and silver, gems and jewels, but together they were happy, two souls freed of their
 
shackles.

And that is how the Prince of Copperkettle Vale lost a kingdom but found true love in its place.

“Of Parnassus and Princes, Damsels and Dragons” (2010)

Story Notes

We’re all familiar with the traditional story of the prince, the princess, and the dragon, right? Sir Knight in Shining Armour goes on a valorous adventure to save Lady Damsel in Distress from the big, bad other. Blood is spilled. The big, bad other is slain. The princess is saved. All is good.

Except not all princesses need saving and not all dragons are bad.

“Of Parnassus and Princes, Damsels and Dragons” began with an idea: what if the knight in shining armour fell in love? Not with the princess, who turns out to be self-sufficient and sort of horrible, but with the dragon, who’s a bit of a softie at heart? With a story like that, I knew I had license to enjoy myself, to have fun with the characters, the setting, and reader expectations. The Kingdom of Copperkettle Vale grew vividly to life in my mind, and as the words started flowing, the love triangle blossomed.

In keeping with the fairy tale tone, I also set myself another challenge: make the Kingdom of Copperkettle Vale as sugary sweet as a game of Candy Land. Puns galore, prose awash with alliteration, snappy dialogue, and big, loud characters all helped to bring the kingdom to life in a way that I hadn’t envisioned when first conceptualizing the story. Being a writer is full of surprises: when you think a story is going to left, it turns right. “Of Parnassus and Princes, Damsels and Dragons” is full of right-hand turns.

This story is so wonderfully over the top that the serious bits come across as that much more impactful. My hope is that readers will find something new if they read through the story multiple times. Each of the characters has a story to tell and it’s up to you to open your ears and listen for the one that speaks loudest to you.

The Colour of the Sky

on the Day the World Ended

Today is my Nini's birthday. She’s turning three hundred and eighty-four years old. That might seem old, especially if you're under a hundred and can't think of how somebody could live that long, but if you met my Nini, you'd believe her.

Her labret flaps against her chin as she speaks, like a fish gasping its last breath in the bottom of a skiff. One day I will wear a labret too. I wonder if mine will ever be so big and beautiful. My sister once said that our Nini's lip disgusts her, and that she'll never be like our Nini. Or Mother. I can still feel the sting of her words. Mother died one the day the ocean rose in anger and swept away the world—the day the sky crashed to earth like heavenly fire—the day the mountain unleashed its fury.

She asks me to bring her a gift. “A treasure to keep me young.”

I leave the village to hunt for my Nini’s treasure. Alaga is with me, a village dog that adopted me as his own. He is white as starlight, so bright it’s sometimes hard to look at him. My family cannot see Alaga. Nini says he’s a spirit dog. She’s the only one who believes, even if she can't see him, either.

Alaga isn't the only mystery in my life. This new world—with its skies like grey stone, sunsets like fire, and chill winds—is full of mysteries. Like my Nini. No one knows where she came from. Bitter men and women of my village call her
bruha
or
mambabarang
, and spit flies from their lips as they say it. "They are the drunk and the lost," my ma used to say. “Scared of kindness. Of difference." My Nini's skin is as black as Alaga is white. She came to our village a long time ago, from lands unknown, and kept my village safe when the world ended. I think Alaga came with her, across the vast oceans on her ship of stone. My Nini is the most beautiful woman in the world.

We follow the trails that my village has used since before time had meaning. Before the sky darkened, before the heavens wept grey, dusty tears. These trails once wound through groves of fruit trees, wild with deer and other animals. The deer are still here, drifting through the grey forest, though most of the trees are just twisted dead things. They look so sad to me. Once free, now lost. Alaga barks at a doe and her fawn. They leap away—high, higher, towards the sun. They disappear into the clouds that never break.

Alaga runs along the trail, paws leaving no mark in the ash. He stops before a tree, healthier-looking than the rest; its dusty boughs are splashed with a scattering of red and green, resilient and boldly alive in all the greyness. It is my Nini's tree—she'd planted it herself, the seed carried with her from her homeland beyond the waves. It's a magic tree, I think. I kneel under it and my knees sink into the drifts. Ash collects under my nails as I dig.

There I find my Nini's treasure, gleaming where it landed after falling from the tree. More of the treasures hang above—shriveled, the colour of the sky the day the world ended, and more buds. A sign, maybe, that the world might return to what it had once been. They are far above the short reach of my arms. But I need only one today.

I race home, clutching the bright treasure tight to my chest. Alaga runs beside me. The gleam of Nini's approval glows in the storm of thought, memory, and imagination that lives behind my eyes. My Nini often says that it’s small things that make life wonderful; but the treasure wrapped in my hands is no small thing. The ghostly sweet taste of persimmon juice tickles my tongue. I know my Nini will share a bite on her birthday.

Because she is love and generosity and all good things.

“The Colour of the Sky on the Day the World Ended” (2013)

Story Notes

Even the smallest stories are whole universes hidden in words.

“The Colour of the Night on the Day the World Ended” is particularly compact. At only a smidge under 700 words, I decided that I wanted to see how much character and world-building I could fit into one piece of flash fiction. Words are cheap. It’s easy to lay out the intricacies of a world when you have a limitless canvas.

If a novel is like taking a cruise liner through a new world, a piece of flash fiction is like looking at that same expansive universe through a pinhole. It’s all there, but you can only see a small, focused bit of it. There’s both a liberty and a sense of challenge that comes from the limitations posed by a miniature word count. It forces a writer to be concise and creative. With waste comes excess—remove that and all that is left behind is pure story.

I wrote “The Colour of the Night on the Day the World Ended” over the course of an evening at a local cafe. I sat down with the nameless protagonist across from me and asked for her story. I thought it was going to be a story about her, the end of the world, and a persimmon. As her story unfolded before me word by word, I realized that this wasn’t her story—it belonged to someone else entirely: her Nini. So many great questions abound about that lovely woman, and this small story only makes the barest scratches on the surface of the answers.