The Final Days of Springborough

“Murdered?” Brynn asked the royal spirit in the woods, “by whom?”

The Queen looked as if she didn’t hear Brynn. Or the spirit of the Queen didn’t, or couldn’t, hear her. The spirit merely stood there, in the middle of the forest, its ghostly ankles mixing with the low-hanging mist of the forest floor. The Queen stared down at the spectacle, at her lost feet, probably wondering just what, exactly, anchored her to the Earth. That was a question Brynn didn’t have an answer for. This was only the second human spirit she had ever encountered, and the first one that she was able to see.

“Your Grace?” Brynn murmured, trying to remember the social norms for addressing royalty. She knew not to touch the Queen, even if the Queen was touchable. That was the highest of no-nos.

The ghost didn’t look up; didn’t move. Brynn took the opportunity to get closer, to examine the Queen’s characteristics more. The necromancer had only seen Queen Grace Lishen of the Springborough kingdom in oil paintings and sketches. It was rare for anybody who lived in Springborough to venture outside of the guarded walls, and even more rare for somebody of royalty to do so, so the only times one would see the likeness of a royal was through the illustrated decrees posted on the community boards, or the painting of the current ruler that hung in the village court house. It had been years since the family lived in Fortis, and, even then, the portrait was a decade or so old.

Queen Grace aged with the quality of her name, and as her translucent spirit stood before Brynn, the young girl would remark that the Queen looked twenty or thirty years younger than her actual age. Maybe it was the low stress that a life of riches and minimal hard labor did for a person, Brynn wondered. Although, through her reading, she saw some royal members that looked like old, withered rags, so more likely, the Queen just was a beautiful person.

“My Queen?”

Without actual allegiance to a particular state or kingdom, Brynn wondered if this was actually her Queen, or former Queen, or neither. Brynn belonged to the cliffs of Quakenfalls, and as far as she knew- they had no ruler. Perhaps Brynn could sell herself as a Princess of Quakenfalls. But that would come with some politicking, which she had no time for. And socialization, which she had no want for.

“Queen Grace!” Brynn shouted.

The Queen looked at her, and if the whole of the Queen seemed to be weightless, blue, floating, and see-through, the Queen’s eyes were as alive as if she was a full-bodied royal. Brynn looked into the colorful iris which seemed to blend browns, blues, and greens. She saw the deep black of the pupil. The Queen blinked, her eyelids sending her whole self into an ethereal state, but when her eyes shone, they were hard and real again. She used those eyes to stare right into Brynn who felt a shiver up her spine.

“Forgive me, your highness. You said you were murdered?”

“Murdered,” the Queen mumbled, as if reminding herself. “Murdered.”

“Who murdered you?” The question alone seemed to put weight into her bow. She did a quick mental count of how many arrows she had with her. If there was a murderer in the forest, she wanted to be ready for it. If there was a murderer in the forest who had the audacity to murder a Queen? She knew whoever it was would be ready for Brynn, and not have a second thought to killing a girl only her family knew about.

“In my cottage.”

“Where’s your cottage?”

The Queen pointed in a direction Brynn had never been before. If the Queen pointed more to the South, Brynn knew that that would be the direction of Springborough, but as far as Brynn knew, the Northern route the Queen’s ghostly finger now aimed at held nothing but trees, trees, and more trees. Had a royal been living here all that time and Brynn never knew?

“Who murdered you?”

The Queen turned, staring at Brynn.

“Who are you?” the spirit asked, in a hauntingly accusatory tone.

Brynn swallowed. There were a lot of bad answers to give to that good question. The answer that she was a girl of fourteen years, living alone on the land. The fact that her family probably hadn’t paid taxes to the kingdom for a couple years now. The fact that she was a bowmen, hunting the animals of the land without an official license. She was the sister of a boy who could be considered a pirate, the daughter of parents who were who-knows-where. All of these answers were breaking one law or another.

“Brynn of Fortis, your majesty. Currently residing on the cliffs of Quakenfalls…” Brynn thought of what Jimmy the Spirit had said. “Looking for weather. King Daniel and Queen Jenniffer are on a trip. Have us looking out for weather…”

“The wind…” The Queen whispered, so low Brynn didn’t know if she was supposed to hear. But, Queen Grace did look up at the fourteen year old girl. “It was the wind that opened my door. Almost as if the wind had hands. And it…” The Queen motioned with her hand the turning of a crank.

With that, the Queen began to advance on Brynn, stepping slowly, watching her nonexistent feet bend and pull the mist around her disappearing ankles, still trying to figure out just what exactly she had become. Brynn stood her ground, making sure not to falter, but also making sure to not appear as if she was afraid of the Queen; she didn’t want to hurt the recently deceased’s feelings. So, Brynn stood there, waiting for the Queen to transverse the twenty or so yards between them.

With ten yards to go, the spirit of the Queen suddenly vanished like wind swirling up into the air.

Brynn looked around the forest, not seeing where she had gone. One moment she was there, and the next her ghostly frame simply dissipated into mist. Did she finally fully die? Brynn wondered. Did her spirit travel on to the Great Unknown? Logical questions for illogical times.

One thing Brynn knew for sure, the Queen had just been recently murdered in these woods, and Brynn had loosed an arrow into air that she should probably get back as she might need eight arrows instead of seven. So, Brynn went off in the direction of the arrow she shot through the Queen’s ghost heart, which just so happened to be the same direction the Queen had pointed toward her cottage.

About eighty yards deeper into the forest, Brynn found her arrow, the tail end sticking up out of the mist, the arrowhead lodged at a low angle into foliage. She could tell by the distance she got, that she had really let the arrow go with some force. It almost shook Brynn up knowing that when faced with the possibility of being attacked by a human, she had not only gone for the sure kill through the person’s heart, but she didn’t hold back in how fast that arrow was going to get there. With a royal assassin on the loose, it was a good thing. With Brynn being a good person, she had to question the humanity of it. Killing animals was one thing, and sometimes it burdened her conscious. Now she was shaken because she knew she was capable of killing a human.

Maybe she should just be happy that it was a spirit she shot through, and she hadn’t actually killed anyone.

The arrow didn’t look damaged at all in the foliage, so Brynn picked it up, restrung it on her bow, and continued to step carefully through the brush, through the woods, alert for anything. She had to hope the killer had just ventured on, that Queen Grace was his or her only target, and once they had dispatched of the royal woman, they had continued on their plan to escape. The thought of hunting squi-bbi-x right now completely behind her with a mystery to solve, Brynn tracked her way around large tree trunks that the fourteen year old slender blonde girl could easily hide behind.

A wind rustled the branches above, and blew Brynn’s hair into her face. She tucked it back behind her ears, trying to hear any abnormalities in the breeze, any voices, metal clinking, or maybe bow strings being pulled taut themselves. Adrenaline surged in her veins, pulsing in her temple. She urged herself to go forward even though it seemed her own breath in her lungs was holding her back from taking another step. She could feel her muscles slightly shaking from the anticipation of something about to happen. She didn’t know what, but she knew she was stepping into something.

Today wasn’t going to be an ordinary day. Today, Brynn wasn’t going to just wake up, hunt, eat, shower, and go back to sleep.

Up ahead, there seemed to be a clearing, and Brynn could slightly make out what looked to be a wooden structure, or a bunch of trees that were uprooted- she couldn’t tell. She fingered the arrow onto her bow string, pulling back on it lightly, twirling its fate in her grasp. She heard the wood of the shaft click against the bow. Brynn knew she was ready for anything, but it still surprised her when the spirit of Queen Grace appeared right next to her, the spirit’s wide, living eyes fixed right onto Brynn’s.

“Save her!” the Queen shouted.

Brynn didn’t know who. She didn’t know from what. She saw the Queen point toward her cottage, and Brynn took off running without a second thought. Someone was in trouble. Maybe even the Queen herself. Someone needed Brynn, and so Brynn went forth, thinking of how proud her parents would be if they could see how heroic she was.

It wasn’t until she was just about at the clearing that Brynn saw the bear, all twelve feet of it, standing in the air over a blonde girl who had fallen backwards. She raised her bow-and-arrow up to her eyeline, aimed between two trees in front of her, and let the arrow go- sailing for what seemed like forever, the shaft of wood whistling through the air, and sinking down into the brown fur.

It was only then that Brynn mentally reminded herself to breathe.

Not the wind, not the rain, not the bear, not the girl, not her pulse- but her exhale of breath was the only sound she heard.