The Final Days of Springborough

Dare she say, the sword almost felt right in her hands?

Princess Kyrstin twisted the handle between her soft, feminine grip, and could feel the blade almost as an extension of herself. She didn’t even have to look at the sword to know that it was there. The princess didn’t have to look to see where it ended to know how high it raised into the air above her head. Her pupils didn’t have to focus on the edge to know how sharp the blade actually was. Kyrstin didn’t hold it out from her body so that whoever might be around a corner would know that she had it, she held it out so that she could focus on more important things that she felt she had to think about. More specifically, the blood splatter about the main room of the Queen’s cottage.

In her mind, she said a silent prayer for her Grandma, hoping the Queen’s own life wasn’t what was cut short in this room. Kyrstin prayed that, if it was the Ex-Queen who had met a violent end, her spirit now was at peace. She prayed that whoever watched over such events took care of Queen Grace in this moment. She also prayed for her own protection, and she prayed that her heartbeat would calm down so that it would stop be a deafening sound in her ears. She could almost hear her blood rushing through the veins of her head.

“What happened here?” she wondered out loud, breathing out the question into the world, hoping the world would respond with an answer.

She knew her brother Thomas would have less patience than her. He’d immediately vilify the world, immediately start to tear things apart, and anything living in close proximity would be his number one suspect, be it a fox, a bear, or a squirrel- whatever bit or clawed in nature found around the cabin would be his prime target. Kyrstin, with her age and brain, would have to be the calm rational one between them, and she would have to be the one, as first responder, to collect the most evidence. Perhaps she’d be the one to solve the mystery. Maybe this was what all of her schooling was for. Maybe this was where she proved her worth as a princess, and elevated herself above the usual nomenclature of “a girl of fourteen years of age.”

The mystery of the Queen’s disappearance from a room full of blood.

“Come on, Kyrstin, even you know what the probable outcome was here.”

Yes, based on initial reaction, it probably was apparent that the Queen was dead. That Queen Grace of the Kingdom of Springborough had been murdered by a tool that drew an insane amount of blood. This wasn’t a blunt object rendering the Queen unconscious, but more like a blade. A sword, perhaps? A tool for farming? The Court of Springborough would want a murder weapon when they tried the case if Kyrstin could ever also locate a suspect..

“What if it’s not a murder?” Kyrstin posed.

Yes! Kyrstin thought to herself. Father would be proud as he was always telling the young Princess to consider every problem from every angle, that it was easy to judge someone or something based on her upbringing. The challenge was to walk a mile in their shoes, and see the world from their viewpoint, and figure out why it seemed “right to them.” Well, that would work with this situation too, it seems. As she was looking at the Queen’s cabin, the scene obviously appeared to be a murder scene. Maybe it was just her civilized upbringing that made it look that way? Perhaps it was an animal attack? In Kyrstin’s world, she had never seen such a mess. Perhaps wild animals and deranged murderers would create the same gore.

Grandma didn’t keep any pets, but the forest sure held a bevy of different beasts. From bears to wolves to long-toothed cats, any one of those animals would not have had a hard time dismantling the aged Queen. But why would she let them in? That was the first question, wasn’t it? Why was the door open, and who opened it? The door was the queen’s number one system of defense, so why had it failed her?

Kyrstin went over to the device that would open and close the door. A device that her father, the King, had built for his mother, Kyrstin’s grandmother. Nothing seemed off about the small patch of wood which held the gears of the door in place. None of the pulley ropes of the door had been cut, which would make the door fall to the Earth, permanently open. So, the Queen had opened the door herself, but why? She must have trusted whatever it was outside, and that would not have been a wild animal. Her grandmother had a good heart, but nobody opened the door to a wolf, would they?

She continued to scrutinize the inside of the room. She went to check the bedroom and opened the door to find that nothing seemed to be disturbed in there. Everything was tidy, the bed was made and all the make-up was put away on the make-up stand. It wasn’t until Kyrstin was opening the door to the Queen’s lavatory that the princess was realizing that the lack of Queen’s body in the whole royal cottage was also something peculiar.

She went back out to the main room, and looked closer at the blood stains and splatter. They were mostly low on the walls, and table legs, and floor, making it seem like most of the carnage would have happened close to the ground. Kyrstin used the tip of the sword to gently raise the rug, letting the red, oozing liquid drip down to the wooden planks of the cottage floor. Still, nothing of consequence there either. The Queen’s abode was either tidiness or gore, nothing in between.

The more she looked, the more questions she had about what had happened, and if the first thought she had upon seeing the carnage was to run back to the village to scream her lungs out to whoever would listen about the murder of her grandmother, her new thought was about not being able to comprehend what had happened at all. It could not be determined murder if she had no body. Perhaps a cottage full of blood and her grandma not in it had nothing to do with each other. Maybe her grandma was out for a walk, and two animals got into her cottage and attacked each other. Then it would seem silly for the princess to rile up the kingdom.

In order to be sure, Kyrstin would have to search the area for the missing queen.

Ignoring the fact she now felt that her grandmother was probably attacked by a wild beast in the woods that she herself was about to venture into, Kyrstin walked down the large plank door to the wilderness. She squinted in the weaning sunlight filtering through the branches. Clouds had begun to form in the sky, periodically blocking out the purest of light sources, hindering the process of Kyrstin looking for any bit of color that didn’t match the earth tones of the foliage around her. She looked for her grandmother’s freckle-kissed skin, or maybe one of her brilliantly bright green gowns that she typically wore. Maybe one of her grandma’s royal gems would catch the light just right, acting as a beacon for Kyrstin. Or, maybe, if she called, her grandmother would come around the bend, head held high, smiling at her granddaughter with a garden trowel in her hands, talking about a lamb she herself had slaughtered for supper in her main room “leaving a bloody mess” she would say with a laugh. This is what the princess hoped.

Before calling out, Kyrstin wiped the sweat from her palms on her clothes, and re-gripped her sword. She would be ready for anything.

“Queen Grace!?” Kyrstin called. “Grandma? Are you out there?”

No response came as none would. Kyrstin moved to the other side of the cabin, thinking that she would complete a full circle around, and then grab her wicker basket of goodies that she had left at the door, and make her way back, double-fast, to the kingdom to report on what she had seen. She’d let her brother Thomas lead the guards back here, let them cut down the forest around the area to search for what happened. Kyrstin would stay back in the castle and rule, and all three of the Lishens’ children would silently pray that their parents would make it back quicker and that their grandmother was all right.

On the other side of the cabin, Kyrstin saw more blood. The only blood other than the blood in the main room, and it was a dark red splotch in the dirt, directly behind the Queen’s home. Nothing around it. No animal tracks, nothing. Just a red stain big enough for Kyrstin to stand in, if she dared.

So, something had attacked the Queen again behind the cabin and… dragged her into the forest? That had to be it, Kyrstin thought. Although there were no drag marks. She strained her eyes to try and peer into the great unknown, but couldn’t see anything. She knew she couldn’t investigate any further, or the very real possibility that two royals would be lost today would come true. She gave one last effort:

“Grandma?!”

But, as was the case nowadays, Grandma Grace did not respond to her granddaughter, the Princess. Kyrstin felt her eyes shrink-wrapping in tears, she could feel them start to float as the water collected under them. She felt the coolness of her tears run down her cheeks, and suddenly the sword became too heavy to hold high, and it fell to the dirt in front of her. Kyrstin didn’t have the strength anymore.

She simply dragged the sword back to the front of the cabin to collect her basket to head home. Her poor grandma, she thought to herself. Her poor grandma… If only Kyrstin had come sooner, she might have been able to help her. Instead, she would go tell her brother what happened.

The sounds of grunting snapped Kyrstin alert as the sword she dragged behind her cut a trail into the dirt. Something in front of her was large and guttural. She was all out of adrenaline as a real fear chilled her spine, listening to the sounds confirming that she is not alone. It wasn’t until she came to her wicker basket that she focused on her current problem. A large brown bear had its head stuck in the basket, devouring her bread and berries.

Kyrstin sucked in a breath between her teeth, trying not to make a sound. But the bear sensed her, and looked up, locking eyes with her. She stayed still hoping the bear would go back to his eating, ignoring her, allowing her to move past it and run down the trail.

Instead, the bear reared up on its hind legs, standing twice as high as Kyrstin, and looked down at the little Princess, who still dragged the sword behind her. The bear roared, almost making her faint. She wondered if this was what her Grandma’s last moments were like.

She prayed they were not.