The young queen lies on her bed and an attendant comes and bathes her. She’s dressed and readied for the day. Her hair done, her face made up. Her nails clipped and filed since they’d been getting just a tad too long.

Once it's all done her limp form is placed in a wheelchair and quietly rolled over to the throne. Then another attendant lifts her and places her on the throne.

And through all of this she never says a word, she never moves a muscles, she simply lies there. Her eyes closed, her small chest slowly moving up and down. For more than a decade she has dreamt the same dream, and even now dream remains unbroken.

*****

There was once a queen, by now its already long forgotten whether the ones who sired her were demon or fae, what couldn’t be forgotten was just how powerful she was.  Even her name has been lost, some say its Persephone, other say it was Elizabeth.

She was born with a voice and a will that made that world love her. The winds gathered at her call. The earth paved itself just so she could tread on it. Rivers, lakes and seas would become as solid as ice should she ever want to cross them.

If she wanted sunlight the heavens would part. And if she wanted rain so many clouds would gather that it’d be enough to drown the whole world. The beasts and the spirits of Monde obeyed her as a master and a beloved niece. Answering and her whims and needs wholeheartedly and with complete earnestness. In essence the world was all but hers.

Thus in the time when all the kingdoms and powers of Argus were waging war on each other and the Great Kingdoms were being founded it was almost a given that the one that she ruled would be amongst them.

The real question was whether she’d go a step beyond that and be the one to bring forth the next great empire of Monde.

Unfortunately calamity hit, as they say the best laid plans are just jokes before the heavens and no matter how great a man or woman might be, they are nothing before the gods. One year the queen found herself facing her greatest foe.

A witch of the hoary north who was allied to both the dragons and the giants. A foe that the queen could neither charm nor sway nor dominate. What’s more the queen had a weakness, and from that first weakness came a second.

The queen had a lover and that lover had lords and to save him and the child they bore together from the grasp of her greatest foe she exhausted all her powers. And as she lay dying before her loves and lords she told them a secret that perhaps should have stayed secret.

That her will would continue protect the kingdom till the child came of age and awoke to their power. And if the child did not inherit then her will would continue living on, protecting the kingdom and assuring its safety so long as her bloodline still held the throne.

This was how  the great queen ensured the lives of her lover and her daughter. And for a time it was good, her last ditch effort bought her lover and her child two decades of peace.

However that was all it bought them. The princess was just a princess and her father was no great noble, one of those born with scheming in their blood.

He was just a simple man, a former baker, whether he was honest or good, is now irrelevant, all that is known is he died shortly before the princess’ twenty-first birthday.

Men are clever things, and its cleverness that makes them dangerous. They were also vicious things remembering grudges and envy. Prioritizing their interests over all else, whether it was their fellow man, or the simple tenets of decency and morality. The old queen’s power would protect the kingdom till her heir awoke to take the reins.

It didn’t take long for someone to wonder what would happen if no heir ever woke  to that power.

The queen’s consort and regent died and a new regent took his place and soon the princess fell ill as well. Falling under a pall, a cruel sickness that would close her eyes for good. Thus Garland’s lords and ladies got their first puppet queen.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

It was a council of lords that crowned her. It was one of those lords that bedded her and when the resulting child was ready she too was crowned and bedded with the old queen being disposed of once she was no longer of worth.

Allowed to waste away, forgotten and forsaken in the catacombs of the castle. Endlessly dreaming, even as she starved to death. And this would continue for thousands of years and countless generations.

*****

The young queen dreamt the same dream again, a bright and colorful nonsense that confused the senses and rotted the mind. She was wandering through a maze but because she’d never walked before her legs could hang beneath her limply while her toes drifted above the ground.

She’s gone through this maze before and never found her way out and this day too, promises to be more of the same…

And yet there’s something, something calling her. Something reaching out with her name not queen, not your highness, or your majesty,  her name.

Something is calling her by name and for the simple reason that that’s never happened before, she finds herself drawn to it. Going deeper and deeper into the maze as if compelled. Her excitement become something akin to obsession, something uncannily like desperation. The drive to find what was calling her, growing as the hours wore on.

Eventually she found what she was looking for, it, he sat in one of the dead end corners of the maze, a splash of dull gray against the blinding color. It’s appearance seeming to bring relief to her overly strained mind’s eye.

“Who are you?” said the young queen.

“A friend.” said the stranger.

The young girl knew nothing, or at least next to nothing about the waking world, but having said that even she found something odd about the beings words. She frowned cocking her head.

“I don’t have any friends.”

The gray man smiled, his look both gentle and disarming.

“Well, would you like to make one?”

*****

Isodel woke up, groaning a little, flexing her toes because her feet had fallen asleep, she looks up and see a family figure sitting at a writing desk. She and  he are sitting in den, while he does...something...she’s not sure what. All she knows is dreadfully boring.

“Are you done yet?” asks the girl.

Billy answers  but doesn’t look up.

“Soon.”

“Mhm...okay…” she says dragging out the last word and swing her legs out .

“You know if you’re tired you should just sleep.” says Billy.

Isodel frowns.

“You know you promised I wouldn’t ever have to sleep.”

Billy sighed.

“The procedure I gave you makes it so that you won’t have to sleep once you’ve properly grown. You’re still a child so you still need at least two to three hours of sleep per week.” said Billy.

The  girl pouted and then it became a look of uncertainty, a look born from fears that were fading but still very present.

“Really? There’s no other bit of sorcery you can do?.” she says, speaking in a small voice.

Billy just smiles again, it’s that same patient gentle smile he wore when they first met.

“Sleep, I’ll wake you up in few minutes and you’ll be right as rain for the next few days..”

“....Promise?

Billy nods, his look distracted but serious and sincere.

“I promise.”

The child looks at him, expression skeptical. After escaping her jail of dreams the young queen would rather die than be returned to it. And yet her body still betrays her, demanding that she closes her eyes. Making everything heavy and making time run slow.

She looks at the man weighing whether to trust him or not. On the one hand, she’s not entirely sure what to make of him. On the other hand he is the one who freed her from the endless dream.

She closes her eyes and reluctantly sleeps, grateful to find that unconsciousness brings naught but oblivion.

Almost as soon as she closes her eyes, She wakes up again, feeling refreshed. She can tell that some time has passed because the stack of paperwork and drawings that the man was working on is now neatly stacked up on a shelf and the fire that was going on in the fireplace has gone low.

Billy was doing something with her toybox, tinkering with it, like he generally did for all their gear, likely adding in some new feature or enchantment. He wound the little hand crank at its side and then turned the box over to fiddle with the screws at its base. Without even really looking at her, he nudged her with the velvet tip of his tail.

“Hey kiddo, you can  sleep longer if you want to but since you asked.”

Isodel sat up, rubbing her eyes.

“No, that’s fine... thanks.” she says.

Billy nodded and then he handed her the toybox.

“Here.”

“Oh...okay. Where are you going?” said Isodel, her thoughts quickly sorting themselves out as she awoke.

“Out.” said Billy.

“Out where?” asked Isodel.

Billy snapped his fingers and suddenly he was wearing a coat.

“Out on errands.”

“Mind if I come with?” asked Isodel.

Billy paused, his brows raises, he gives the girl a thoughtful look and then shrugs.

“They’re mostly boring errands.”

“....I don’t mind.”said Isodel. As someone who’d spent most of her life asleep, she didn’t have quite same standards for boring that others would have.

Billy shrugged  a second time.

“Nh...well...then suit yourself, I guess.”