worst of her fears of the last two months had come to pass. She began to kick and throw herself against it, feeling inadequately strong for such a feat but too frenzied to stop. Finally, the simple privacy-knob lock gave way and she fell through the doorway.
Scrambling to her feet, she looked at the bed. It was empty.
Looking around frantically, she saw the room was empty. Her mother was nowhere in sight. The window was closed and locked, not that Shauna seriously thought her mother had jumped through the window.
As she examined the clothes-strewn room, feeling quite bewildered, she noticed one thing that looked out of place even amongst the mess. On the dresser, in front of the mirror, was an open box made of ornately scorched birch bark.
Shauna had seen this box every day of her life. It had been the only thing in her mother’s room that had not been replaced or updated. It had been part of the inheritance her mother had received before Shauna was born. It was not until this moment that she had ever seen the box open.
With slow steps, she approached the anomaly, transfixed upon it. It took only a few steps for her to be looking directly down into the container. At the bottom sat a gold pendant inlaid with a shell cameo with the same profile as her mother. The chain was lying delicately over the edge of the box as if the necklace had fallen or been placed hastily.
Reaching in, Shauna’s fingers, still shaking slightly from adrenaline, encircled the pendant. The moment her skin touched the surprisingly warm metal, she felt as though she were being enveloped by a gentle undulation of warm water. The sensation was pleasant and comforting, making her feel as though she could let go of all her worries and fears and have someone else cradle them for her. Instinctively, she closed her eyes.
When the warmth continued to undulate and pull past her, it left behind a peculiarly cold breeze. Opening her eyes, Shauna was shocked to see that she was no longer in her mother’s room. Looking down at her clenched hand, which now felt clammy, she was further surprised to see that she was not holding the pendant. Awkwardly, she lowered her hand to her side and stared at her strange surroundings.
She was standing upon the high point of a dirt path that twisted and wound its way down through fields of dead grass. Piles of crispy brown and yellow leaves covered the roots of leafless and black tress that peppered the landscape. The path ended at the large open drawbridge of an enormous castle on the edge of a lake. Along the perimeter of the distant water were snow-peaked mountains. As Shauna stared open-mouthed at the castle, memories of reading about Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty came back to her.
Standing in this bizarre place, she felt those stories were far more fictional. They were stories of beautiful palaces and happy endings. The dead landscape surrounding this large structure of many towers and turrets, felt eerie and wrong. The air, far from smelling fresh and crisp as autumn often did, smelled stale and musty despite its chill.
Without knowing where she was, what to do, or how to get home, Shauna began walking to the castle. She would have been hopeful to find her mother there but the strangeness of what had just happened and where she now was kept her hope firmly contained within a cement block that had formed within her stomach. The weight of it now pulled down on her making the walk more strenuous than seemed right.
No one watched from the walls as she approached. No one stopped or greeted her as she crossed the drawbridge and walked beneath the raised portcullis. A collapsed, empty suit of armor lay sprawled near the door to the gatehouse. It looked tarnished and dull in the shadows of the castle walls.
Though Shauna continued to walk, she found herself hunching and progressing more and more slowly. Her steps became quieter and quieter. By the time she reached the steps leading into the main hall of the castle, she was moving silently. Two more empty and collapsed suits of armor lay at either side of the large doors. Only one door was open and through it the ramblings of speech could be heard .
With her insecurities at their height, Shauna crept to hide behind the closed door so that she could listen.
“You expect me to give you sympathy after everything that you have done?” said a high and scratchy voice. “It was your selfishness that got us into this mess in the first place.” Shauna could not tell if the voice was male or female but it sounded old and slightly shaky.
The reply most definitely came from a woman. “If I wanted to be yelled at, I would have stayed in the kitchen with my daughter. I came here to escape all of that.”
The recognition of the voice forced Shauna’s breath to cease. She did not lose her breath. It stayed firmly where it had been the moment she heard her mother’s voice. It began to thump and bang at her lungs, begging for escape. As the other voice rang through the hall once more, she forced an exhale to restart the natural processes of her body.
“You should have had someone yell at you years ago,” said the scratchy voice. “Maybe then you would have regained your sense before making us all sacrifice our lives just for some human boy’s pleasure.”
“That is enough!” boomed Shauna’s mother. “Be silent for once in your life.”
Though the reply was much quieter, the speaker’s words dripped with sarcasm and spite. “Forgive me majesty. I am here only to serve and to trust in you to make the best choices for our people. I should have remembered my place. Please forgive me. The lack of a proper heir has made me lose my wisdom.”
Shauna’s mother scoffed. “You were like this even with my mother. I remember you fighting with her when I was a little girl. Don’t pretend it is my fault you are an asshole.”
There was a low growl, which Shauna’s mother seemed content to ignore, for she continued speaking.
“You could be nicer to me in our good-byes,” she said. “I really did come here for comfort, to see the kingdom one last time. I don’t think I could bear sitting in that kitchen, pretending this isn’t happening here.”
“Why don’t you tell her?” asked the voice.
“I do not want to go through this again!” Shauna’s mother replied. “She is better off not having all of this to complicate an already difficult situation. A few more hours and it won’t matter. She will never know and she will be happier for it.”
Though they had not named her, Shauna knew it was she they were discussing. She could have remained hidden, hoping to hear more about what she should not know but her presence alone was evidence the secrets were coming to an end so these words called to her to move from her hiding place. Slowly, she stepped around the door to stand in the opening in full view of her mother.
As the light shone through the large door, it illuminated her mother brilliantly. Still emaciated and wearing her hideous scarf, she would have looked no different except for the elaborate and elegant gown of red and gold adorned with diamonds that sparkled in the light. Her shadow alerted the pair to her presence. Hesitantly, as if not wanting to acknowledge the reality, her mother looked into her eyes. Both women stood still, unknowing of how to proceed. Their silence quickly turned into an invisible yet tangible gel that held them in place.
Their paralyzed moment was broken by a short, thin person walking into the light. It looked like a tiny tree with thick dark-brown bark. Its legs looked like roots. Thin branches at its middle imitated arms and hands while the branches coming out of its head looked dead and motionless. A dried leaf still clung to one of the sharp ends. Just above the arms was a semblance of a face, the most prominent feature of which was an overly large nose. Two tiny black eyes stared at her.
It opened a horizontal slit in the bark just below the large proboscis and spoke with the same scratchy and high voice Shauna had heard from her hiding place.
“Welcome to our home,” it said far more kindly than it had spoken to her mother. “I am Firnak. It is long past time we met.”
Though the tiny tree had spoken in greeting, Shauna felt anything but reciprocal pleasantness. For several moments, she simply blinked at the oddity.
“The grace and manners of y
our mother, I see,” it replied tartly to her silence.
“Be quiet,” her mother ordered, which she reinforced with a log, venomous glare. The richness of authority in her tone was not one Shauna had been privy to prior to this moment. Vaguely, she wondered if it was her mother.
Hesitantly, her mother turned back to her. Shauna suspected the pause had been out of reluctance to face her rather than any effort to emphasize her authority further. The two women, who had shared the darkest of nights awaiting horrible news in hospitals and who had never had need to keep secrets – or so Shauna had thought – seemed incapable of restarting this particular conversation. There was simply too much shock; too much shattered trust with this insane revelation.
Finally, Shauna faced down the confusion and pain to croak out a why. Though she doubted the answer to this question was much different from what had already been swirling in her mother’s head, the simple question seemed enough to focus her mother’s thoughts. She stood a little straighter as she breathed deeply, though her jewel encrusted gown was stiff enough to have kept her shoulders from slumping very much.
“Because I wanted you to know me only as your mother,” she said. There was no elaboration.
In shock at the wholly inadequate reply, Shauna could not help but look at Firnak with some