A Cup of Normal (9 page)
Authors: Devon Monk
Tags: #Fantasy, #fiction, #Short Stories (Single Author), #General
“Perhaps he would have,” Rynell said, “but I do not understand why you would want such a thing.”
“For my lands. For my people. For peace.”
“What of my mother?”
“She shall rule these lands in peace with you until her days end.”
“And you?”
“I will find my own peace. I have seen enough death.”
Rynell nodded. With the brisk formality of a captain, of a queen, she withdrew a sheet of parchment and picked up a quill.
“Let us put to ink that you and I wish peace between our lands.”
“And then?” Thera asked.
The girl looked up with a grim smile. “Then we will ask my mother to agree.”
Thera had met the Mother Queen only once, when Thera was being married to Vannel. She remembered the Mother Queen to be a stern, mid-aged woman whose scowl worsened the longer the marriage celebration continued.
Thera followed Rynell to the large tent at the east of the encampment. The moon had long gone down and false dawn caught indigo on the horizon. They strode past the Mother Queen’s guards and ducked through the wide tent flaps. The Mother Queen was a dried up husk of a woman reduced to muscle and bone, her hands like bird claws upon the arms of her padded throne. Her dress and the heavy blanket across her lap were the color of dried blood. Her eyes were iron gray, her face narrow. Prominent cheekbones stuck out like blade edges, though they lent her remarkable beauty as a younger woman.
Her voice was jagged with age, but still strong. “Who is this, Rynell?”
Thera pushed back her hood. “I am Queen Thera Gui of the Midland Kingdom.”
“She has come with an offer of peace,” Rynell said.
“Peace?” The Mother Queen’s face hardened and her voice was like steel. “King Vannel made it clear he would not negotiate with our lands, on any matter.”
“Vannel is no longer king,” Thera said. “The lands are mine, the decisions mine. Let us make decisions queens alone can make. I am willing to step down if your daughter will rule the land as her father would have wished her to.”
“Her father, Lord Frederick,” the Mother Queen said, “died just after her birth. He had no interest in your lands.”
Thera gave the Mother Queen a stony gaze. “We both know the matter of which I speak, do we not?”
The silence between them was charged with anger. Thera wanted to strike her, hurt her for her part in Vannel’s betrayal. Instead, she waited.
Finally, the Mother Queen spoke. “Did he tell you?”
“No,” Thera said honestly. She felt suddenly tired. She had spent her life on a lie, and now there seemed little reason to continue it.
“Did you love him?” Thera asked.
The Mother Queen kept her gaze steady, but Thera could see pain, such familiar pain, in her eyes.
“I loved him, too,” Thera said.
And there between them was the shared knowledge of a man, of love given, of love lost. With that pain, Thera felt something else, a weary kinship with a woman she did not know, and for all accounts, should hate.
“I am an old woman,” the Mother Queen said. “And ill. There are few days left to me.”
“Mother.”
“Quiet now, Rynell. Let me speak.”
The girl nodded, but cast a worried look at Thera.
“I never asked anything of him,” the Mother Queen said. “Not even after Frederick died. But before my death, I will see my daughter’s future secured.”
“Then let Rynell become Queen of the Midlands in my place. I have no children to give the throne to.” Her voice, thankfully, did not waver. “I would give the throne to Vannel’s child so long as she rules with me for one year. Passage up the Kilscree River shall be evenly given to both lands, as, too, the share in profit from that source.”
“And in return for this?” the Mother Queen asked.
“You will not invade the Midlands, nor spill the blood of my people. Your lands will be joined to mine, co-ruled by Rynell, and your forces and allies will help us end the border skirmishes to our north. Lastly, you shall agree to abolish the slave trade.”
“And you, Queen Thera Gui, where will you reside?”
“On the western shore. A small manor I can tend on my own. I will expect a stipend to repay my years of rulership and see me through to my grave.”
Thera was shaking. Here, in her enemy’s tent, she bargained away all that her mother had expected of her, all that Vannel had given her. Lands Vannel had died for. A peace he did not want, into the hands of a woman who had loved him, and the child she had borne.
The Mother Queen looked at Rynell. “Do you want this? Two lands will be a heavy burden.”
Thera felt a pang of envy. No one had ever asked her if she wanted the life she had lived, they only expected that she would.
“I want peace,” Rynell whispered. “Yes, I will rule both lands.”
The Mother Queen nodded and her whole body lost its strength. She leaned back against her chair and Thera wondered at the will and determination it had taken for her to appear so fierce. The Mother Queen looked over at Thera and Thera saw it was not determination that gave her strength, it was endurance.
“I will call my scribes,” the Mother Queen said in a much smaller voice.
“We’ve begun the treaty already.” Rynell handed the parchment to her mother who tipped it to better catch the light.
“Two guards and my advisor came with me,” Thera said. “I ask that my advisor also see the contract.”
“Yes, then.” The Mother Queen handed the parchment back to her daughter and Thera had no doubt she had read it all. “While our advisors finish the papers, perhaps you would care for a cup of tea?”
“Tea would be fine,” Thera said.
“I’ll see to it.” Rynell pulled a plain wooden chair Thera had not noticed from the corner of the tent and brought it over for her. Thera sank down onto the chair, her entire body trembling. When she placed her hands on the arms of the chair, the smooth wood was cool, but slowly warmed beneath her palms.
Thera tucked another piece of wood into the stove’s firebox and checked the loaf of bread baking in the oven. The gold and silver rings on her right hand flashed as she pulled out the loaf with a large wooden spatula. She had added two rings to her right hand, a gold to replace Vannel’s crown she no longer wore and, given to her as a parting gift, a silver ring with a green stone that represented Rynell — her daughter of heart, if not of flesh.
Satisfied that the bread was rising, but not yet brown, she pushed it back into the oven and turned from her small kitchen. She stepped out into the living room where she had left her shutters open to the cool autumn breeze that carried the salty tang of the nearby ocean.
It had been a year and three months since Rynell took over the rulership of the Midlands. So far, the girl had proven to be a quick learner and a compassionate soul. The Mother Queen had been true to her word, sending their forces to secure the northern border. And Rynell stood firm on the agreement of abolishing the slave trade.
Thera had journeyed to this small manor on the edge of autumn’s rainy season, and did not regret one day of her solitude.
She walked to the window that looked over the grass and stone hill to the ocean below. Waves caught in blue and gray beneath the cloudy sky. Dark clouds crowded the horizon. Rain would reach land within the hour, and by the bite in the wind, winter would be early this year. She’d need more wood cut before the snow set in, and might need to restock her larder.
The sound of horse hoofs echoed off the fir trees that lined the path to her manor. Thera took the stairs to the foyer and opened the door.
Three horses were approaching her yard. The riders all wore plain green cloaks, hoods drawn up. But a hood could not disguise the man who rode in front. She lifted her hand in greeting and Johnathon raised his in reply.
The riders stopped at her split log fence, swung down off their horses and strode up to her. Johnathon pushed his hood back, revealing gray and brown hair and warm brown eyes.
“Johnathon. I hadn’t expected you,” Thera said.
He nodded. “We bring news.” The wind gusted cold, shook rain out of fir boughs, and plucked at their cloaks and the skirt of her dress.
“May we come in?”
She looked over his shoulder and smiled at the two familiar guards. “Tarin, Beir. Welcome all of you. Of course you can come in.”
“We’ll stable the horses and tend to the tack first,” Tarin said.
“Majesty,” Beir added with a bow.
“Not here, Beir. Not ever, now,” she said with a smile.
“Still and always,” Beir replied, but there was nothing in his voice to indicate he planned to forsake his duties to the new queen.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” she said. “Come, Jonathon, warm yourself.” Thera walked back into her home. Once the door was shut behind him she asked: “What news brings you out during the rain?”
“The Mother Queen died three days ago,” Johnathon said.
“Ah,” Thera said. “She is done then.” She was surprised at the compassion in her voice.
“Yes. The burial will be at the new moon, three weeks away.”
“How is Rynell?” Thera led Johnathon up to her living room, then to her kitchen where the warm, yeasty smell of bread filled the air.
Johnathon sighed. “She took it much like you did, though I’m sure she grieves. Her mother has been sick for so long, longer even than Rynell had known. Her suffering was great.”
Thera pulled the kettle over the firebox of the iron stove and fished clay mugs out of the cupboard.
“I will try to come to her burial. Will it be held in Harthing?”
“Yes, at the royal crypts there.”
“So, now Rynell will truly be the Queen of both lands.” Thera handed him a cup. “I’m glad you have stayed on as her advisor, Johnathon.”
“Hmm. Well, about that . . .”
Thera raised her eyebrow. “What have you done?”
“I retired.”
“What?”
“There are other, younger men who can advise her as well as I, Thera.”
“I doubt that,” Thera said. “What happened to your vow to serve the throne and anyone who sat upon it?”
Johnathon held her gaze. “She had the throne burned.”
“What?” Thera said again.
“She said it made her cold and had a throne carved of heartwood instead. It’s padded. Tapestried. Beads and tassels. Quite a grand thing, actually. Vannel would have hated it.”
Thera laughed for the first time in a long time.
Johnathon’s smile led to a warm chuckle. “I’m glad you see the humor in all this, but I am, after all, without a job. Unless perhaps you have need of an old advisor?”
Thera’s heart skipped a beat then drummed faster. “Is that why you came, Johnathon? Are you asking if I need your advice?”
“If you want it. Ah,” he added, warm brown eyes resigned at her expression, “perhaps not.”
Thera tipped her head to one side, considering him, considering her own heart. “I don’t need advice today,” she said, “but I could use a hand chopping wood if you’d like.”
“I would like that,” he said.
“It might take awhile,” she said.
Johnathon nodded. “I hope so.”
Thera held her hand out for him. He took it in his own, and together, they stood before the window to watch the rain rush upon the shore.
Having visited the Oregon Vortex House of Mystery, I got to thinking what it might be like if there were more places like that, perhaps even entire neighborhoods built in unexplainable scientific phenomenon. And from there, this fun little story was born.
A CUP OF NORMAL
Libby and Fabritus Plum planned to change the world
. Actually, they planned to unchange the world, which was in all practicality, a much more difficult task.
Ever since the scientific pokes through quantum space and time had left the world with swaths of neighborhoods subjected to laws of reality that were so haywire no one could live in those spaces, Libby and Fabritus had been busy working on a solution.
Vortex houses — the accidental targets of technology’s exploration of quantum reality — were left standing empty and unlivable in their uncomfortable quantum space and time. These regions were dubbed “vortextual” with as much fondness as regions were once dubbed: “shanties” or “slums.”
That is until Libby and Fabritus decided to do something about it. Land, good clean land, wasn’t easy to come by. And the vortexual homes — whole neighborhoods of them — were sturdy and well-built. Habitable.
Or they would be as soon as Libby and Fabritus secured the money for production of the quantum gyros they had invented.
Today was the day. Fabritus was already picking up the money investor from the airport. They would show the investor around the home, explain the technology, and secure the money. As long as there were no surprises, their dream of unchanging the world would come true.
Libby strode toward the bedroom, the clanging of the alarm clock rattling through the air. Fabritus was a stickler for details and had set the clock to go off exactly fifteen minutes before he and the investor were due to arrive.
In the logical time and space beyond the walls of their house, Libby wouldn’t have minded Fabritus’s reminder. But their home being what it was, and the gyros that held it steady in the vortexual landscape still being a prototype, getting to that alarm took Libby five minutes. She had to walk up and down the sloped hallway to the bedroom then climb a set of old stone stairs that tapered off to Timbuktu, Belize, or maybe Rome before they slid away so smoothly her next step fell seamlessly on the bedroom carpet.
If they had more money, they could fine-tune the gyro so that it corrected to the normal space and time much more quickly and made these little reality-overlays less frequent.
Everything was riding on this meeting. Everything was riding on being able to prove that she and Fabritus had found a way to unchange the world.
She surveyed the bedroom and groaned. Bedcovers she had straightened with a lazer-guided level still looked crooked, and the scorched wedding picture of her and Fabritus hanging on the wall above the bed tilted horribly. She’d propped the picture on the floor once. But when that windstorm knocked out power to the gyro, the picture had slid uphill and wedged against the baseboard heater.
They’d put out the flame and installed a stronger backup battery in the gyro. Even with precautions, the house would never be exactly normal.
Still, it wasn’t hard to put up with the crookedness, the mess, and the oddness of the place if one had a little patience and a sense of humor. At least it was never boring.
The alarm clock clanged away on the bedside table that was bolted to the floor. Libby tucked her dusting cloth and bottle of spray cleaner under her arm and took hold of the alarm.
Yes, meeting with the investor today would make or break their dream, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have a little fun.
She walked to the bedroom window and opened it. Then she heaved the alarm clock out the window as hard as she could. The clanging faded as the clock caught the centrifugal force, arced suddenly to the right, then winked out of existence.
When the clock reappeared somewhere in the house, maybe the fireplace, the flower pots, or the bathtub, it would startle the pants off of Fabritus. Libby grinned.
Fabritus was always surprised at her little hocus-pocus vortex tricks. Getting an unexpected smile out of him delighted her to no end.
She checked her watch. Shoot! Ten minutes left to make the house, herself, and her life look normal and investment-worthy.
She hurried out of the room.
A loud knock at the front door stopped her in her tracks. No one knocked on the front door. The only way to reach the door was by a careful circular approach from the boundary of the vortex, heading toward the center, spiraling in ever closer. Exactly one neighbor had tried it. She started at the wrong place and had ended up stuck against the bathroom wall with her lime gelatin mold for hours until they could pry her loose.
So, yes, there were still a few bugs to work out with vortextual living. If they had the money, she was sure they could get the gyro running at a hundred percent.
The knock rapped out again. It couldn’t be Fabritus — he was still ten minutes out.
Libby hurried past a sparkling fireworks display the size of a plant stand on the wall next to her and skirted miniature people in the distance running a Chinese dragon across a street in a city lost to fog. She crossed the living room and opened the door.
A man in goggles and breathing gear with gyro-tabs glinting down the front of his three-piece suit stood on the doorstep. He clutched a leather briefcase in one hand. The pack on his back bristled with metal, plastic handles, and price tags.
There was something altogether futuristic about his look, but Libby knew exactly what he was: the most adaptable creature in the universe.
A salesman.
“I don’t need any.” She pushed the door.
The man was quick. He took one step backward, his arm up and out to his side. The vortex’s energy caught, then rubber-banded him through the door and into the living room in front of her.
Adaptable nothing. He handled the vortex like a pro.
“Good afternoon, Miss.” His bright white smile was muffled a bit by his mask. “I’m Gary Gooding, of Anything For You and I am in your delightful neighborhood today to offer you a free gift.”
“I don’t need —” Libby started.
“You do, you do. If you’ll hear me out for just five minutes, I can give you the one thing that will make everything in your life easier.”
“Uh, huh.” Libby stuck her hands on her hips and scanned the gear he carried. None of it was standard, but she didn’t recognize the maker. Interesting. Someone out there was making a product that could guide salesmen through vortextual neighborhoods. She wished she’d thought of that. The quantum gyro would be perfect for that application.
“My husband will be here any minute for a very important meeting,” she said. “The house is a mess and I’m a mess. What I need —”
“Flower arrangements, clean china, roofing tile, fresh paint?”
“— is for you to go,” Libby said. “Now would be dandy.”
Gary Gooding nodded. “I see, so the meeting is a matter of importance is it? Perhaps even something that will make or break your future?”
“As a matter of fact, it is.”
“Good. Then I’ve come just in time. And I happen to have brought a little something that will solve your biggest problem.”
“Salesman repellant?”
He paused, his grin growing wider. “Almost as good.”
Libby liked the gleam in his eye. He had the clever edge of mischief and ambition that suited his job and the neighborhood. If the funding went through, maybe she’d try to find a way to track him down and hire him. They’d need someone like him to sell the houses once the gyros went to mass production.
“How about a cup of real, 100%, genuine Normal?” he asked.
“Oh, now,” Libby drawled, “just a cup?”
Gary Gooding pulled a plain brown cereal box out of his briefcase. “A cup of Normal should be plenty for a smart woman like you. More than enough, I’d say.” He produced a glass measuring cup from the pack on his shoulders and opened the metal spout on the box.
Libby was about to warn him that he’d have to step away from this part of the vortex if he expected anything to pour downward into that cup. But she glimpsed a flash of blue through the living room window and heard the growl of an engine nearing, then fading. Fabritus was back and circling in toward the house.
“Quick, they’re here!” Libby tugged Gary through the living room, skirting the haze in the dining room through which a bustling street in Paris flashed into existence, then out, and onward into the laundry room where a waterfall roared upward from the floor and concealed the quantum gyroscope.
“Waterfall,” Gary said. “Clever.”
“Shhh. I don’t want them to think I couldn’t get rid of one annoying salesman.” Libby closed the door.
Gary chuckled. “No, we wouldn’t want that.”
Libby put her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry, I mean, I know it’s your job, but you couldn’t have come at a worse time.”
“Or perhaps the best time?”
“Pretty sure it’s the worst.”
“Let’s see, shall we?”
The growl of the car engine making another round toward the house rumbled past the room.
“Let me leave you with a sample of the product.” He tipped the box and a stream of brown dirt sifted into the measuring cup.
“That’s dirt.”
Gary smiled. “Not dirt. This is Normal. A cup of this and your visitors won’t be able to find a single fault with anything it touches.”
“Right. I pour it all over the house and they’ll magically believe a coating of dirt is a good thing.”
“No, but sometimes strange solutions pave the way for discovery and advancement,” he said. “Solutions like your quantum gyro have changed the world.”
“
Will
change the world,” Libby corrected. “We’re not even on the market yet.” There was something funny about this man and his cup of dirt. Something funnier about his casual knowledge of their nearly-secret gyro. “What company did you say you represented?”
“Anything For You.”
“And where is that located?” she asked.
“That’s a long story, actually.”
Outside, a car door slammed. They were coming!
“No time,” Libby said. “Give me the Normal. What do I owe you?”
“This is a free gift. If you like it, promise to buy the box when I come back this way next week.”
“How much is the box?”
“A thousand bucks.”
Libby raised one eyebrow. “This better be nothing less than miraculous.”
“You wouldn’t expect anything less from this company, Libby.”
Something was odd about that sentence too — had she told him her name? She heard the living room door open.
She was officially out of time to puzzle out the puzzling salesman.
“Libby,” Fabritus called, “we’re back.”
A woman’s sharp tone carried to the laundry room. “Oh, my. This is so . . .”
Libby winced.
“. . . so lived in.”
“Real charmer,” Gary nodded toward the living room. “Good luck with that. I mean it.”
“Just sprinkle the um . . . Normal on everything?” Libby asked, eyeing the cup doubtfully.
“Put it where it will do the most good. On the counters, the rugs, the corners. Be careful. It’s concentrated.”
“Libby?” Fabritus called again.
Libby peeked out the laundry room door, but couldn’t see anything through the tropical rainforest where there kitchen should be. The gryo seemed to be acting up even more than usual today. Probably some scientist somewhere poking a new hole through space or time.
“Remember, a little Normal goes a long way,” he said.
“Got it. Thanks.” Libby took the cup. She shook his hand and he slipped a card into her palm. Smooth move.
“There’s a door around here somewhere,” said as she tucked his card into her pocket and waved at the wall where the waterfall roared. “Should be just left of the waterfall.”
Gary pulled his mask down over his face. “Not my first day at the rodeo. Good luck, and I hope to see you next week.” He popped a snorkel breathing piece into his mouth and headed for the waterfall.
Libby watched him disappear into the spray, then held the cup up to her nose. It didn’t smell like dirt at all; more lemony with a pinch of something warm and minty — menthol — no, eucalyptus, added to it. It was a pleasant scent.
“I don’t know where she is,” Fabritus said.
“Perhaps she’s trying to locate a broom. Or an excuse.” The woman’s voice dripped with venom.
Libby ground her teeth. She’d show her a broom. She sprinkled a tiny bit of Normal on the floor, and the room instantly brightened and whitened. Baskets of unfolded towels were replaced by the illusion of neatly stacked terrycloth.
Nice trick.
Libby bent and touched the folded towels. She gasped. There was no illusion — the towels really were folded and clean.
What was in this stuff? She stared at the light dusting of Normal on her fingertips and wished she had a microscope.
“Libby?” Fabritus sounded worried.
Whoever that woman was, she was doing a good job of ruffling his feathers.
Just keep her in the living room for a few minutes more,
she thought as she headed for the kitchen.
She spread Normal through the kitchen, the dining room, hall, bathroom and bedrooms. Fabritus kept the woman, whose voice was familiar, in the living room, explaining to her that the house really wasn’t tilted, the floor really was carpet, and all the rest of the mumbo-jumbo behind the actual properties of the vortex, overlay realities, and the gyro they’d built to stabilize it all.
Libby dashed madly around the house, tossing lemon-scented dirt everywhere. Pictures that had never been level evened out, curtains swung straight, carpet nap stood up and dust disappeared from corners. Libby chuckled, giddy with the power of Normal. She stopped in front of the bathroom mirror and sprinkled a little dirt on herself. Her hair smoothed, her shirt and jeans unwrinkled and she felt just a little more amiable about the world. She looked put together, calm, perfect.
Looking good, Lib,
she thought.
Gary wasn’t kidding: this stuff was concentrated. A little Normal had taken care of the entire house and there was still a tablespoon at the bottom of the cup. Enough to handle the living room.