Trying at Telling at Stories
My cold hadn't gotten any better. The same sniffle and headache. Sometimes I get sick, and nothing changes for a long time. I can lie there on my mattress for weeks, sweating through a fever. Not having the attention to follow whatever video is playing on my phone. The same thoughts that tell me I have never been good enough. That nothing ever changes. Listening to them all week. Well, I had had enough. I got up and went and had a shower. It was the first time I cleaned myself all week. Afterwards, I made some Vegemite on toast and a cup of tea for breakfast. Earl Grey. My throat was strained, and it hurt to eat and drink.
My grandma rang me and said she was going to visit and spend the night caring for me. I tried telling her not to worry about it and that I had managed to get up, wash, and eat something that morning. But she told me that I was acting like a baby and needed to be treated like one. She came over that evening and got the wood heater I had in the lounge room burning as hot as it could burn before breaking. I sat on the couch whilst she kept feeding it firewood. Occasionally, she would go out the back door, and I would hear the sound of her swinging an axe. She told me that she needed to cut the bits of wood into small pieces if she wanted to fit them all into the fireplace.
In between her doing this and bringing me Berrocas, my Grandma sat on a stool next to the fireplace holding a book in one hand, reading the same story she liked reading to anyone when they were sick. If I had asked her, she would have said it was her favourite story, although there were many good ones out there. But I would never ask her anything like that because she would have told me to be quiet and listen to what she was reading. It was the kind of story, or perhaps she was the kind of woman, that demanded I listen with everything I had. My grandma’s voice was dry as she recited it to me. The same ideas that most of our family had rattling inside our heads.
There was once a kingdom filled with farms and quarries. The King and the Queen that ruled the Kingdom had originally been blessed with ten children, but one after the other, nine of them died, some from accidents involving wagons and falls from castle keeps, others from sickness, war, and broken hearts, and others still just in that simple way that people die. They stop waking up. In the end, this left only their youngest daughter, the Princess, as heir to the crown. As most parents do, the king and queen loved their daughter absolutely. Their Princess was not a smart lady or a dumb one, but instead rather consistent with her studies and fascinations. She was, however, beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, and in such an unnatural way, that nearly all who met her could never forget her. That even long after her story had been told, the people who had come across her in life would be overcome, remembering suddenly how that lady they had once met held herself when she entered a room. And how it felt when she would talk to them. The orange circling the pupils in her eyes. Such hauntings could make anyone sick -- but there was always peace to be found by the inflicted if not in her beauty itself but in remembering it.
My grandma would occasionally stop reading to make sure I was lying down and could feel the heater. The couch I was on was a green-plush one I had found at Fantastic Furniture. It was a little expensive when I bought it, but I had the money and didn’t know what else to spend it on beyond a comfy couch. The firewood grandma was burning was the pine that had fallen down last autumn. We had spent all weekend cleaning it up where it had broken over the road. It smelled different from the eucalyptus sticks I would pick up from the ground and burn when I got home from my short walks. My grandma told me the tannins in the pine smoke would be good for my chest. She would never stop for long before continuing to read aloud.
Given that the Princess was the only heir to the kingdom, her parents, the King and the Queen, became strangely concerned with her security. The kingdom wasn’t a particularly dangerous place by any means, aside from the robbers and rebels who lived throughout the forests as they do in most kingdoms. But still, the King and the Queen, prone to making strange decisions, thought it best to send the princess away, hiding her in the many farms and quarries that could be found throughout the land so that no fanatic obsessed with destroying the royal family could find her. The princess spent all of her youth and much of her early adult life disguised as a peasant girl, hopping from radish farm to shepherd to basalt quarry, and learned almost all there is to practically know about the industries. She learned how to calm the calves when they were separated from the milk and where to place the chisel in the rock face. How to arm the small explosives when the ground was too hard to scratch at with shovels and picks. When ignited, the explosions would smell like earth and pepper. Everyone would stand right back, and she would feel that no one was taking any notice of her. The shake from the explosives were more beautiful than any one person could be.
When she was first sent to live away from home dressed in the old smock of the castle's carpenter, she was uncertain at the world she had found herself living in. But as the years moved on she quickly grew to prefer spending time labouring rather than in the royal keep, trying the pastry chef's new inventions and chatting to the handmaidens about at what point when friends are kissing do they stop being friends. The King's and Queen's daughter would much prefer to be double-checking that the end of the diamond wire saw was properly attached or making sure that the shepherd's dog was well fed and loyal to its masters. Her favourite quarries were the marble ones, where each day she could see the stacks of glossy bricks that she and her workmates had won from the earth. Her long hair was forever swept in the movement of hard work and the admiration of those around her. Such a beautiful person, all her workmates understood, demanded reverence. Yet, for whatever reason, perhaps the good faith in good-natured people, no one ever suspected her of being someone as noble as a Princess. And still, this was not performed in any dramatic way where veneration must be dictated and a representation of God, but honest shock. The shock of not knowing how to behave around someone placed on a pedestal.
This, as you might imagine, contributed to an isolated and rather idiosyncratic existence for the princess. My grandma always stopped to explain to me during this part that for whatever reason, there are some people, alive or dead, that will always struggle to make and hold connections. She would tell me this every time I heard the story, as if I could forget it easily if I were not careful. I had always thought my grandma believed in too many moral lessons, and she missed the point of the story she loved to tell.
The princess found the best company in the many dogs that would occupy the farms and paddocks she frequented. Her favourite dogs were the disloyal ones, who would no matter how hard you called would run further and further away from you. The wind and the dew sitting on the top of the morning grass whisked through their fur as they sprinted away, turning up laneways and darting across hills. These dogs would return when they felt like it. Only to be scolded by the farm boys whose job it was to train them. She was known to protest when it was decided that an apathetic pup needed to be put down. There was too much work to be done and not enough food to keep every dog housed and fed. The princess, although devastated when such things occurred, was a practical woman. But still in the evening, she dreamed of taking all the sentenced dogs and starting a chicken farm. Somewhere towards the edge of the kingdom, where people would not bother her or her unruly pack. She thought about how she could roast the chickens on Sunday and see if the dogs preferred the taste when they were cooked and glazed with honey.
Eventually, as you might imagine is common in places like kingdoms, as it is common everywhere there are people with hopes and aspirations, both the King and the Queen became very sick and started dying. The princess was called upon to leave her life of hiding and rejoin the royal court, where she will soon succeed her parents in the command of the region. She rode her horse for two days, only stopping to drink the water from a few nearby streams when she grew too exhausted to ignore the dryness in her stomach. When she got to her dying parents, her father had already passed away, leaving only her mother on the royal deathbed. When the princess entered the room, the curtains were open wide as it was soon becoming morning. The Queen had decided she wanted to see the sunrise.
Do you believe in reincarnation, my dear? Her mother asked her. The usual richness in her voice had become shallow. The letters the princess had spent most of her life writing to her parents were sitting on the bedside table. Outside, great flocks of birds squawked incessantly as the sun rose. I want it so that when I leave, the Queen said. I can know what it is I have been missing out on all this time. I would like something peaceful. Not something defined by my failures and good deeds. If I could only get to choose. What do you think, darling? The queen asked her daughter. That maybe I could become like one of those dogs you care so much for. Brought back to life not as myself -- because who would really want to be that anyway. But as some disobedient dog running further away the more it is called for. Chasing the native hens that live next to the swamps and streams we have criss-crossing this land that we supposedly rule. Sitting peacefully on top of slopes where the sun lands all day and the wind brings smells of bakeries and butchers. The warmth of my fur. And the packs of us. The cuddles we could have together when it got cold. Only ever returning to our masters for one final pat before they put a bullet in the back of our heads. And we never run again. Passing to the next moment. The next animal. But maybe not if you do what you talk about in your letters. Maybe we can find some sort of home out there. I would hate for you to follow in my footsteps. I don’t want you to end up like me. That’s how I think you should live. Try not to live in a way that leads you to this.
The Queen’s daughter sat for a moment by herself before the steward approached her with a document explaining the proceedings that would follow. A draft moved through the room. She let it in. Perhaps it had something to do with her mother. The inner life could be more beautiful than anything material. What else could compare to the imprint of the people you have loved?