by Danbert Nobacon
CHAPTER ONE
“But you can’t! It’s almost the summer holidays. You can’t leave me with … with ….”
And she spat it out with anguish and hurt … “with Lady Muck Batbreath.”
“Now Alex,” the King began. He always said “Now Alex … ” when he was trying to calm the tempest that was sometimes whipping up inside his daughter, even though he knew, as she got older, it was becoming more and more like pissing in the wind.
The King was discovering for what seemed like the zillionth time, that his daughter Princess Alexandra Stormy Wilson could be very like the part of her name that most people called her by. Perhaps it was her age, yes he thought, that was it, for the King was not of the opinion that the snowstorm which had raged during the first moon of deep winter on the night she was born thirteen and a half years before, had any actual bearing on her character.
“No. Bats are too good for her. She is bat vomit, after a decent bat has eaten rotting mosquitos and it’s not just puke, it’s coming out both ends. “
King Walterbald Wilson the Third, of Morainia tried his best to repress a smile, but could not help himself.
“That is the queen you are talking about. Such colourful respect for your elders.”
“Don’t patronize me,” snarled Princess Stormy.
“Oh my. When did my daughter learn to use such big words.”
And now the King did sound patronizing to his only child, but the words had come out wrong, as they sometimes did, when he tried to make a joke, that in his own boyish imagination, might make light of his daughter’s woes. What he was really thinking to himself, inside his brain, was; what a clever girl; such a fertile imagination; and then with a tinge of sadness, so like her mother.
“Dad. You just don’t get it.”
“Now Alex … You’re right. I probably don’t get it, but that doesn’t alter the fact …”
“The fact that you are going off gallivanting around, exploring, adventuring, and having a right royal ball, and leaving me here for three whole months with Snot-for-Brains,” and with that she threw herself upon the bed to hide the tears of anger that were welling up in her brown eyes.
King Walterbald shrugged his shoulders and sighed. “I will be back by the onset of Fall, n plenty of time for Wombinefest.
“But Daaad!!”
“Alex. I ‘er. Well.” Relenting as he, perhaps inevitably, gave way to his daughter’s sheer presence of being. “Well I never said … Well, all I actually said was that you cannot come with me. Not this time. It’s too dangerous. And, well, it was going to be a surprise, but I never said that you had to stay here, er’ period.”
And now Stormy, unusually for her, was the one struggling for words,.
“What? What is it?”
“I’m not giving away any details, suffice to say I have arranged for you to go on a trip of your own, and for some weeks I believe. You could even call it an adventure.”
“A mystery adventure? I love it . When do I go? Who is taking me Geraldo?
“Erm, no. Geraldo will have to stay here to keep an eye on things. Er’ The Fool will sort you out with all you need to know
“The Fool! You’re leaving me, and you’re entrusting The Fool to take me Zuss-knows –where? Dad I don’t believe this? The Fool couldn’t organise a piss up in a potstillery
“Well prepare to be surprised then, ” said the King, and seeing the protest flowering across her face, he went and sat on the edge of her bed.
“Alex darling. It may come as another, not unrelated surprise, but we adults do have an inkling of what might be a challenging and exciting time for someone of your age. We were all young once you know, and you might want to have a little trust in our wisdom and experience, once in a while.”
“But, you’re a boy. I mean you were a boy.”
And I still feel like one much of the time, Walterbald thought to himself, hoping that he could trust his own judgement to allow his daughter to go out into the world where a certain amount of danger was guaranteed.
The King exhaled a deep breath and with heavy heart bent to kiss his daughter on the cheek. “Good night darling. And I know you will not have it all your own way, but I wish you a great summer. I will be gone before breakfast. Sweet dreams. I love you.“
“I love you too, dad,” and she hugged him a hug that lasted eons and she could taste the salt of a stray tear on his cheek as she kissed him.
And then in the midst of her sadness and confusion, as her head sank deep into the pillow Stormy’s mind began to race down multiple avenues, beyond the towns and the lake and into the forest towards the snow-capped mountains and the ocean that she had only ever imagined, that lay beyond.
It was as if a door that she had not known existed had suddenly opened up. She knew that she was probably reading too much into what her father had said, but she couldn’t help it. And now she was now standing on the threshold looking out at a vast new world of possibility, her imagination blooming like a whole mountain-side of balsam root greeting the Spring.
CHAPTER TWO
Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess, named Alexandra Stormy Wilson and she lived in a sort-of-castle on Bald Mountain, with her father the King Walterbald Wilson the Third and her ugly, evil stepmother Queen Gwynmerelda in the territory of Morainia. Oh Sorry! We knew that already, or most of it.
The house on Bald Mountain was a sort-of-castle, because whilst it was certainly spacious, by contemporary standards — for it had to accommodate various members of the King and Queen’s extended families, and had to have a room large enough for large gatherings more than fifty people — it was made almost entirely of wood, and to the honest eye it could reasonably be described as ramshackle.
Notable among its other inhabitants were the widowed Grandma Natasha Godlove, the queen mother. Strangely enough Grandma Godlove, or Gigi as she was affectionately known, and Stormy got on like a house on fire. Then there was Grandma Zilpher and Grandpa Jakerbald Wilson, the king’s parents.
They were a handful to say the least, cantankerous and contrary with each other, and more so with their own children. And if it does not seem to make sense that Jakerbald Wilson was alive and yet Walterbald was king, fretter ye not?
We all know about queen mothers, but the idea of a king father seems strange. Jakerbald was only strange when he played Grand pa-ish tricks, and was actually a very cheery fellow.
“Pull on this Stormy,” and he would say when Strormy could barely stand. And she would of course grab his finger and he would let out a rasping rasperberry and an even louder chortle, to the stereophonic beratements of both the queen and king mothers. He still offered the same old joke to the now teenage princess and she would occasionally oblige when she could supply an aural and nasular assault of her own, much to the joy of Jakerbald and the chagrin of everyone else who saw this as most un-princess-like behaviour. And in keeping with his ornery character when Jakerbald reached his fifty fifth birthday, he took the unusual step of retiring, becoming the first known king father and causing a proper constitutional storm in a water tank.
The considerable bulk of the usually sticklerish Council of Godmatists, overplayed their hand by saying that the whole Wilson family should thus be excluded from the throne. Of course they saw an opportunity to make their own man Rogerly Bishop as the new king. The more pragmatic Council of Town Elders said that in theory any of the men in the village over the age of thirty should be eligible for the throne, and as a result four prospective kingdidates, were put forward including Bishop and Waterbald. In the event, when it was put to a popular vote, and despite the dirty-trickery and shennanigins of the Godmatists, the Morainian people decided that Walterbald should be king after all, and not purely out of a respect for tradition.
As a young man Walterbald had pioneered the developments of the first septic tanks in the town, which had improved the humour and health of all. And then and he had invented a wind powered water pump. The prototype lifted water a distance of three hundred vertical feet from the irrigation ditch right into a water tank in the basement of Bald Mountain Castle. This technology had wider and very popular application of making the watering of the naturally drier benches, above the ditch a hundred times easier, and in so doing expanded the agricultural capacity of Morainia many times over. But enough of politics and pumpery …
Had Walterbald been writing the story, he would have begun it with the words Once upon a World, for time as you and I know it, had not yet been invented in Moriania.
And whilst we know some of the characters who populated this world, what we are only just about to learn is that this world in which they lived, of which Morainia was only a small and fairly isolated part, was, shall we say off-kilter. That is, it was as we might imagine a fairy tale world to be, with sort-of-castles and sort-of-knights riding around on horses, and people in the thrall strange magickery going on, but there was something else about it too. Something we cannot quite put our finger on.
And if we begin to dig, as we shall inevitably have to do as we accompany a thirteen year old princess suddenly let loose, then we shall discover that there was something about this world that was not at all right. King Walterbald knew something of this, and that was why he was going on his expedition. To find out more.
For Walterbald in his quest for knowledge had become aware in recent years that there were certain ideas that people knew and took for granted, which had always seemed to fit with the lore of this fairy tale world, but which increasingly to a logically enquiring mind like his own, seemed all out of whack.
But hark fellow travellers, the cock crows forth already. And there are many early risers in Bald Mountain Castle.
