EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS is a forthcoming novel about the quest of a dragonslayer banished from his home. But wait! This novel is wrapped around a novella which follows the story of a little princess who has her own problems. This excerpt concerns the birth of Princess Adora.
The story is clear to all who live on Sannan Island.
A palace guard captain bearing the name Yvik stood tall and straight one day after the mid-day meal, checking the correctness of her charges. In a bright yellow uniform, crimson epaulets and trouser stripes, a tall crimson cap with yellow bill atop her head, the woman made a wonderful sight when Queen Dorothea rounded the wide turn in the palace corr
idor, the passage between the Great Hall of Talk and the smaller Hall of Show.
The guard captain Yvik was fair and square, and sporting very yellow hair, her jaw in full alignment with the latitudes of the world. When the queen appeared in the corridor, Yvik had swung her sword up in salute, blunt edge against her shoulder. Her mistake was to allow her lips to part and her gleaming teeth to show, what some might call a grin.
The queen halted, and her procession crashed against themselves behind her in the corridor.
“What is your name?” asked the queen of the captain.
“Your Majesty, I am Yvik, captain second-class, first of the fifth, of the palace guards,” she replied in formal manner, keeping herself tall and rigid.
“I dislike the name yet your face pleases me,” said the queen with a flick of her fan. “You shall arrive at my slumber chamber at the edge of night.”
“Tonight, Your Majesty?” she asked, overwhelmed by duty.
“Did I fall over my words?” the queen retorted. Her staff chuckled for her. She turned to her note taker. “See that she is properly attired. And give her a better name. I won’t be calling my painful delights to the name of Yvik!” Her eyes returned to Yvik. “Oh. And bring your pet.”
“Pet, Your Majesty?”
“You have a pet, don’t you? Most upper level staff have one, I hear. I’d think a guard captain, even being second-class, would be able to afford one. If not, I’ll need to raise your wage.”
“Yes, Your Majesty, I do have a pet.”
“Then bring it!”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
So at the designated evening hour, Yvik arrived—briefly renamed Destina. She arrived dressed in a floor-swishing crimson velvet robe with golden flourishes provided by the queen’s staff and smelling of the spice-laden perfumes and the musk of wild rutting beasts which, the queen’s body maid knew, never failed to excite Her Majesty and made her body quiver, respond in heavenly fashion, and in the end assured that she would achieve success in the ancient ritual.
Destina was let into the chamber, taken to the edge of the slumber seat, and was ceremoniously unrobed. Beside the woman knelt her pet, naked but for a narrow cloth wrapped around the dirty parts.
“There’s my lover!” cried the queen from atop the stack of eight mattresses. She pressed them down to the height of five.
A single golden sheet covered the queen save for her rounded head and coiled hair and the tops of her meaty shoulders. Her chubby hands and rotund arms rose and clapped the air above her chest, the signal to begin the ritual.
Her body maids assisted in maneuvering Destina and her pet into the proper positions, her perfect un-uniformed body aligned over Her Majesty’s great wealth of flesh.
Beside Destina crouched her pet, a short, thin man formerly of the stables, having the name Gup or Gunt, not that it mattered. She had bought him from the stablekeep about a year before, when she dared believe she owed herself a small measure of enjoyment at the end of her duties each day. Fortunately, he had proven worthy of her choice. Now she must give him up. When Her Majesty invites you to visit her slumber seat, you do not arrive without a pet to share.
As everyone assembled in the queen’s slumber chamber knew, it was the time of the great mating, when a woman chooses a pet for her slumber seat. A bow to ancient ritual was all it was. Otherwise, the few men allowed in Sannan worked the fields and the farms and kept to themselves as best they could, awaiting a welcome respite in the service of a mistress. However, twice each year a festival was held and men were let into the city. Much mating occurred during the festival weeks, despite the laws allowing only the officially arranged unions. The remainder of the year, many of the high-born ladies kept a pet for an occasional evening’s dalliance. Her Majesty, however, could not abide such a poor, dirty thing being in the palace anymore than might be absolutely necessary for nature’s briefest call.
Thus, ointments and oils were applied by the queen’s body maids, and after some time a union was made. The pet shrieked and grunted and the wildness of its actions delighted both the queen and Destina, who had never shared her pet with anyone. The queen, too, squealed in something between a cry of pain and a plea for mercy. The strained voice Destina shared with the queen when the peak rolled over her was similarly a combination of animal noises and a strange, annoying whistling. The women shared a gasp.
“What is that?” the queen asked, huffing and puffing.
“My pet has made a noise, Your Majesty. My greatest apologies!”
“It smells so foul!”
“A thousand pardons, Your Majesty!” cried Destina.
“Only a thousand? I would think a million might get you closer to saving your position in the palace guards.” The queen regarded her body maid. “Remove the dirty thing this instant!”
Two beefy women grabbed hold of Destina’s pet, pulling him off the queen’s wide body.
“Then we have finished? It’s done?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Thank the goddesses! I don’t know how much more I could have taken.”
The pet was promptly pulled from the slumber chamber and no one knew or cared what became of it.
Destina was wiped clean, put back into the robe, and dismissed to some new location where she was unknown yet again called Yvik.
The queen’s body maids wiped her prodigious skin, washed her in the inward places, then set about testing the success of the ritual. It was a delicate procedure. After several hours in which the nursing staff pushed a long, thin tube up and inside the queen, measuring the dripping at the top of each hour, listening for just the right gurgle, just the right pop, just the right hiss, the chief nursing maid finally was able to pronounced success.
“Thank the goddesses!” the queen repeated at the bottom of each hour. She hated the testing but knew it was necessary. Better that than the need for a repeat performance. Pets could be so disgusting. Palace guards could be so quirky. If only the goddesses could flick their holy fingers and make a child appear fully formed.
On the fourth day after the ancient ritual, a royal announcement was made, stating for all the people in Sannan that the queen had, in this time of union, achieved royal success. And the word success was the golden prayer all who performed the ancient ritual hoped to speak and dared to hear. Obviously, a great cheer arose throughout the city. At last, their queen would bear a royal heir, already ten years since the passing of her mother, Queen Marvala.
And so, after some time, like in all stories big and small, whatever was required for the goddesses to mix together the perfect specimen of ladyhood, it was Queen Dorothea who opened her mighty thighs and with great effort and pain pushed out the perfect babe.
The fleshy thing was immediately identified as a lady and given straight into the arms of Her Majesty.
“She looks so adorable!” the queen was heard to say. “I shall call her Adora.”
“Hail Princess Adora!” the nursing staff cheered.
[Read the next section here on the Edgewise Words Inn blog, concerning when Princess Adora is nine years old and gains a baby brother.]
An Epic Fantasy* like no other!
Today is the day I’m supposed to write a blog post for Myrddin Publishing. I stare at the blank page, wondering what to blog about. I guess I could talk about writing…just set the fingers on the keyboard and let the words flow… Writing is a way of life for me, one that require the ability to become immersed in the story and….