Quen Nim
Quen Nim Copyright copyright 2011 by Steve Shilstone
Quen Nim
by
Steve Shilstone
Wild Child Publishing.com
Culver City, California
Quen Nim Copyright copyright 2011 by Steve Shilstone
Cover illustration by Wild Child Publishing copyright 2013
For information on the cover art, please contact Taria Reed.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Editor: Jackelynn Woolley
ISBN: 978-1-61798-109-8
If you are interested in purchasing more works of this nature, please stop by www.wildchildpublishing.com.
Wild Child Publishing.com
P.O. Box 4897
Culver City, CA 90231-4897
Printed in The United States of America
Introduction
Whether or not I am a worthy chronicler will now be truly tested. Such is so. By my own choice I am determined to write in this strange language from the world down the well a Gwer drollek story from a time one thousand bar years gone. Gwer drollek are the best stories, the most important and beloved told by the bendo dreen, the bramble dwarves. I myself was once so such a bendo dreen. Now I am Harick, Bekka Ja, lavender witch. In addition, too, I remain Chronicler of the Boad, All Fidd and Leee Combined. As so such, I have written many of my own adventures. Those neat stacks of oat parchment pages are safely tucked in my spearmint cupboard across the room from where I sit here in my edible cottage. Now I choose to relate a tale from a thousand bar year distance in the ago that I myself had no part in. How could I? I was yet an eon from existence. Well, truth, I could have. I traveled through time once to perform a needed task. Had I not performed it, the story I am about to tell would not have happened. That is truly so. But the very only one special occasion of my journey back in time landed me two generations before the story I am about to tell if and when I can stop this rambling babble my quill keeps scratching out in purple ink across the page. Let me step aside and allow to be revealed how Nimble Missst, Princess of Cloud Castle City, became Quen Nim of the Boad, All Fidd and Leee Combined. I submit now to the test, a story containing no trace of me.
Bekka Ja Harick
Third Chronicler of the Boad,
All Fidd and Leee Combined
Chapter One
At O'Tan Falls
“Ridiculous,” said Nimble Missst. She stood on the ledge part way down the cliff and close by the cascading O'Tan Falls. “Ridiculous times three.”
She shook her head of flame orange curls, which truth grew green at the roots. She shook a smoke ash green fist. Her startling violet eyes flashed in frustration. She stamped a web-toed foot. She opened her powder blue wings and flung herself into the falls. She fluttered for a satisfying drench. She misted green and twined in foggy spires through and around and up the falls. She jelled solid at the top of the cliff and swam fiercely against the racing river's current, slamming the water with her wide-spread webbed fingers and toes. She bobbed up, flew to the shore, settled. She misted again and hovered there, a shimmering green cloud. She jelled in red vest and pantaloons, arms folded, startling violet eyes smoldering with anger.
“Ridiculous,” she repeated. It was her favorite word. Such was so. She was Nimble Missst, a Princess true of Cloud Castle City. She was famous for her snapjaw mind. As a solver of puzzles and riddles she reigned unchallenged. As a youngling with scant ten bar years of life, hadn't she solved the rebus of the Lemonlime Dragon? She had. Such was a truth known from the Swump of Greedge in Clover to Fan Wa's Island in the Wide Great Sea, from Skrabble to the Chack Tree Forest, from the Woeful Wanderers' Wasteland to the Woods Beyond the Wood. She was that well known and respected for her snapjaw mind.
Now possessed with fifteen bar years of life, her snapjaw mind snapped sharper than ever. Sharp and snap were words that fit her. She took so such her prickly outward manner from her mother. Her mother was Rindle Mer, the unsmiling watery woodlock. Nimble Missst's hidden soft heart she took from her grandfather, Dabber of the West, and from her grandmother, Lady May of Orrun, and, truth also lastly, from her father, Jay Dot of Orrun.
“Ridiculous, but if it is to be so, it will be done my way,” Nimble Missst promised herself.
She lifted from the riverbank and flew in thoughtful leisure back over the cliff and down to the ledge. On landing, she walked to a crevice in the cliff face at the back of the ledge and reached her arm into it up to the elbow. She felt the soft shimmery material with the webs and fingers of her smoke ash green hand. She clutched and brought out her grampa's silver cape with the gold clasp. It was the cape he'd been wrapped in when he'd found himself flying to the ledge next to O'Tan Falls. His first memory. Nothing before. Such was so. Nimble Missst had heard the tale countless times at her insistence from her grampa. Special bonded tight and strong was the link between Nimble Missst and her grampa, Dabber of the West. The cape belonged now to Nimble, and so too did the ledge. The ledge where Dabber of the West lived his younglinghood was now Nimble Missst's personal retreat. She spent half the year there, truth to be told, playing in and around the falls and thinking. That is the why that it was ever so such easy to find her whenever she was needed.
“That's why it's so easy to find me,” she muttered to herself, clasping the cape around her shoulders. “I should find other hidden retreats. Ridiculous. I'm supposed to have a snapjaw mind. There are plenty of other places. Thousands! But they aren't here. They aren't Grampa's ledge and the Falls. Treat it like a puzzle, Nim. A puzzle stands no chance against the likes of ye.”
She chuckled at her latest thought and nodded with a frown. She misted, cape and all, floated as a sparkling green cloud into the sky. She drifted, dawdling and plotting, toward Orrun Mountain.
Chapter Two
To Cloud Castle City
Pofftikkle! thought Nimble Missst. Ridiculous. suppose they'll all be gathered around Gramma's throne. They'll gape at me when I fly through the skylight opening. I should seep in the back way and creep up the stairs. They'll be expecting me through the skylight. Why should I do what they expect? Aren't I doing enough as it is? Queen of the Boad, All Fidd and Leee Combined. Ridiculous. And wed to Zootch, Prince of Blossom! Utterly ridiculous! Fabulously! Pofftikkle! Why is Kinng Forr retiring? I'll tell ye why, Nim. One word. Zilp. She's the one who's sick of it. Sick of being Queeeeeeeeeeeeeeen. Ridiculous. Queen with fifteen âe's. Seven or eight weren't enough for her. No, her Blossom snobbery demanded fifteen. And I must wed her nephew Zootch! What a name! Ridiculous! It sounds like slipping on ice. And what a timid lackwit he is. He's not completely ugly, but I don't believe I've ever heard him speak a word. Well, hard to blame him, stuck as he always is in the company of his arrogant haughty clutch of a mother, the Quing. Always spouting about rudeness, she is. She INVENTED rudeness! The Quang's not so bad when you get him away from the Quing, but he folds up timid just like his son when she appears. They say she never allows Zootch to be pried from her side. Hmmmmm. Well, I have a snapjaw mind. When he's wed to me, he'll be pried from her side and from mine, too! I have my little plan. Ho, what there, my favorite tricklestream!
The sparkling green cloud of Nimble Missst sank low to a mountainside meadow divided by a tumbling tricklestream. She settled on the stream and rode it down the grassy hillside to where it joined a slow-moving brook. In wisps she fluttered back to the top of the meadow and rode the stream again. Dozens of times she did so such. Finally, seemingly exhausted, she jelled to red vest, red pantaloon, silver cape Nimble Missst and sat resting in the long cool grass.
“Ye are no tricklestream,” she said, plucking one long single lash of grass and brushing it across her smoke ash green cheek. “Ye are a tickle stream! None better than ye between O'Tan Falls and Orrun Mountain. Ah, enough of fun. Now for business. Snapjaw mind, tune up well. Soon I will need ye.”
So saying, Nimble Missst tossed the lash of grass into the tricklestream, misted and rose to drift toward Orrun Mountain, which, truth, loomed before her.
I'll cloud until I top the rim, she thought, and then I'll jell and swoop on wing. I won't sneak. That would be ridiculous. Why sneak? I have a plan. Partially. It's forming. Queen of the Boad, All Fidd and Leee Combined. Ridiculous, true, but maybe when I manipulate one thing over and another thing under, something worthwhile may be achieved. Something ⦠Ho! Yes! Not Queen! QUEN! One âE'! I'll decree it!
The rising green cloud jelled to Nimble Missst speeding on wing over the rim of Orrun Mountain Hollow. Below her, Cloud Castle City sat snug in its scoop under Orrun Mountain Crag. Flanking the single ribbon of green cobbled road, the orchards of everblooming sarajando trees spread white and pink across the floor of the Hollow. Nimble Missst dove for the jeweled turrets and spires rising above the obsidian streets of Cloud Castle City.
Chapter Three
In the Throne Room
A bustling group of Nimble Missst's relatives had gathered in the High Throne Room of the tallest marble tower in Cloud Castle City. Her mother, Rindle Mer, in badly stitched tunic, arms folded, leaned against one of the colorful historical tapestries hanging on the walls all around the room. Nimble Missst's grandmother, Lady May of Orrun, flew in wild excitement here to there, there to here, up to her ornate black obsidian throne perched on the top of the tall gold pillar in the center of the room, down to the frosted blue carpet covering the floor, to the walls, to the throne, to the carpet, never at rest for more than the shortest span. Dabber of the West, beloved grandfather of the princess with the snapjaw mind, paced the frosted blue carpet, pausing from time to time to stroke his long green streaked with white wispy beard, shaking his head and frowning. His son, Nimble Missst's father, Jay Dot of Orrun, looked anxiously through the wide open skylight of the truth to tell roofless High Throne Room.
“Be ye certain that ye told her today?” asked Rindle Mer, fixing her husband with her harsh orange-eyed gaze.
“Why, yes, today, certainly, of course, today,” replied Jay Dot, never shifting his not harsh but hopeful gaze from the blue of the sky. “Like as I said before, I arrived there at dawn. I woke her. I told her today. She told me today doesn't end until midnight. I told her very sternly no later than sunsink. She gave me a glare. I left.”
Secretly pleased, Rindle Mer smiled on the inside. Rarely, if ever, did she smile on the outside. She was proud of her independent daughter with the snapjaw mind. She was proud and jealous at the same time together of her daughter's abilities to mist as cloud and to fly with wings. Rindle Mer herself could not mist and she had no wings. She was secretly satisfied yet however that she was without argument a better swimmer than Nimble Missst. She felt confident her daughter's snapjaw mind would do something or something other about this Royal wedding and Sovereign of the Boad, All Fidd and Leee Combined kafuffle.
“Is this really and truly necessary? I mean is it? Really and truly? Necessary? Ow!” posed Dabber of the West, tugging a little too hard on his long wispy beard.