The Final Days of Springborough

So, this is how commoners live…

Kyrstin thought to herself as she looked around the bow hunter’s hut. Brynn had taken her back to a place that was so bare it could never be messy. Both of the girls were soaked to the bone. Kyrstin in her Princess-rendezvous attire and Brynn in her casual hunting gear. They both wrung out their hair, and wrapped themselves in the blankets from Brynn’s bed. There was no other place to sit but the bed, so Brynn thought it courteous to let the Princess sit there by herself.

“How long have you been living here?” Kyrstin asked.

“Not long. Not living, really. Just staying. It’s more like a watchtower.”

“What are you watching for?”

The bowhunter chose her next words carefully, Kyrstin could see.

“Everything. Weather, people… the future…”

Princess Kyrstin was having a crisis of character at the moment because she was finally in a place that she so longed to be when she was in the kingdom, a commoner dwelling with a girl her age, and now all she wanted was to be back in her family’s castle; in dry clothes, by a large fire, playing silly games, or even studying one of the many books only she seemed to have to study. If this was how the other people in the village lived, she felt that they could have it, and she would never curse being a royal again. But the Princess was still envious of this Brynn, because as she sat shivering under a blanket on the bed, practically in tears for a nice cup of hot tea, Brynn stood stationary at the door, not letting being drenched affect her, as she stared out into the world.

Perhaps this girl should someday rule the land, Kyrstin thought. She seemed less scared of life than me.

“Where’s your family?” Kyrstin asked.

“Where’s yours?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You are a princess, are you not? The Princess of Springborough. I doubt very much they let your kind wander in the woods unattended.”

“My kind? Let? Let me tell you something, girlie. Nobody has to “let” a royal do anything!”

“So, royals walk this Earth, amongst the people, and nobody knows?”

“Could if they wanted.”

“But, they don’t. Only you. You must be a different kind of royal, huh?”

Yes, one that didn’t want to be one, Kyrstin thought. She hugged the blanket closer, feeling the fabric getting more soaked. She wondered what Brynn would sleep under tonight if she was sopping up her sheets. She wondered if Brynn slept at night. For all she knew, Brynn was like an owl, keeping her night time hours for when she wanted to be the most productive. Sometimes Kyrstin would stay up at night, look out her bedroom window at the kingdom below, see torches lit well into the night hours, hear laughter of the villagers telling stories, and mother’s singing their children to sleep. It seemed only a requirement in the castle for people to turn in at a certain time.

Kyrstin looked to her side where she rested her brother’s sword on the bed. She felt safe from Brynn in the fact that the only time Brynn had touched her was when she was trying to get the princess away from the bear. Other than that, Brynn had kept her distance, and never looked at Kyrstin. The bowhunting forest dweller seemed to barely pay attention to the royal girl, not studying her moves, or analyzing her wounds. If Brynn wanted to harm Kyrstin, she was not doing a very good job of gauging the time to strike. This still didn’t qualm Kyrstin’s nerves about her grandmother’s spirit talking to Brynn.

“You saw my grandmother’s spirit?”

Brynn thought about her answer, and slowly nodded.

“You see spirits?”

Again, a nod.

“Are you a witch?”

A shrug.

“You don’t know if you’re a witch or not?’

“I don’t practice being one if that’s what you mean.”

I don’t know what I mean. For the first time in her life that she could remember, Kyrstin felt herself choosing her words, and biting her tongue. Usually she let whatever she felt fly, knowing full well the castle staff was forced to forgive any transgression she uttered. Brynn didn’t seem like she would apologize whether she wanted to or not. She didn’t seem like the kind of girl who gave a hoot-nanny about the social class system. She also didn’t seem too insulted by Kyrstin calling her “girlie”, even though Kyrstin only called her it because if the Princess was called it, it would have enraged her, and Kyrstin was trying to get under her new acquaintance’s skin.

“What did my grandmother say?”

“She said the wind opened her door.”

Kyrstin tilted her head at this, not knowing how to take it. Such a strong door, such a heavy door, such a door that no ordinary wind could move it.

“She said she was murdered. Murdered, and she said to save you. And the wind opened her door. That was it. That was all she said.”

“The man with the most answers has the most questions.” King Daniel would tell his daughter on the nights Kyrstin would go to bed with rarely a word. The King would regularly try and get his oldest daughter to talk, to discuss her day, but sometimes she would just tuck in for the night. King Daniel would tell her this line, and she’d roll her eyes (in her head, though, never in front of her father) and mutter “so?”, but she never quite understood until now. Brynn had given her an answer that led to countless more questions. So many, that Kyrstin’s head hurt. And her stomach, for she was starved.

“It’s curious,” Brynn said, mostly to herself, as she seemed to watch and listen to the storm.

“What is?”

“There was a spirit here. His name was Jimmy. But… I don’t hear him now. I don’t feel his presence.”

“Maybe he blew away with the storm.”

“No. It’s not like that, I don’t think. Spirits have beings, just like you and me. They’re not puffs of smoke or mist. They can’t blow away with the wind.”

“You know this to be true?”

“I believe it to be.”

Kyrstin thought about it all, trying to make sense of it, trying to make it seem less crazy, trying to make it a part of her reality. She struggled really hard with it, but couldn’t quite bridge the gap between real and make-believe. Spirits? Dead people talking with the living? How many of her history books that she is forced to study would change with the ability to get first person narratives? How many science books would have to be altered with the knowledge that we have inner-selves that don’t need our bodies to survive? And if she had stumbled upon somebody who could commune with the dead, what questions would Kyrstin want answered?

What did her grandma know that Kyrstin would need to know?

What did she have that a murderous thief might want?

Where was her ring?

“Can you call the dead? Like, when you want to talk with them? Can you have them come to you?”

“No. It’s not like that. Jimmy told me he has to be around his bones. Wherever his bones lie.”

“So, when you saw my grandmother, you were around where her body was?”

“Yes. She said she was killed in her cottage.”

“But, her body wasn’t in the cottage. I looked.”

Brynn shrugged, not being able to help the Princess there. Kyrstin thought about it. The empty main room, empty bedroom, empty bathroom- her grandmother’s body, the Ex-Queen of Springborough, was not resting in her secret cottage in the woods, Kyrstin was sure. But, where could she be? In old fairy tales, people were eaten by animals, and then cut out of the animals’ stomachs. Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother was gutted from the Big Bad Wolf’s stomach, was she not? By the lumberjack? Without a scratch?

That’s impossible, Kyrstin thought to herself.

As impossible as spirits? Kyrstin asked herself.

Yes. Kyrstin answered. More so.

And thus concluded another conversation Princess Kyrstin would have with herself, because she never had a friend to speak with like this here Brynn.

But, still, maybe the bear was the key to it all. Maybe if they found the bear, they could cut it open, and retrieve remnants of her grandma within the bear’s digestive tract. How disgusting, Kyrstin thought, staring at her sword, knowing it would be a good tool for the job that she was reluctant to even think about. But, she needed to find her grandmother’s ring. That was a certainty.

Kyrstin shirked off the towel from around her shoulders and grabbed the handle of her brother’s sword.

“Where are you going?” Brynn asked from the doorway.

“I have to find that bear,” Kyrstin answered.

“In this storm?”

“I have to find that bear. It might have something of my grandmother’s that I need. Life is too short to wait for the storms to pass.”

Brynn stepped forward, maybe to help the Princess to her feet, maybe too stop her, but just as she was about to reach out for Kyrstin, she stopped, frozen in place, and then put her hand down to her side. In a moment, Brynn went from animated to statuesque. She went from looking to stop the royal girl to letting whatever that had to happen- happen.

“I’d come-… but-…”

Brynn choked out, and Kyrstin could see the girl was frightened. Of the weather? Kyrstin thought to herself, how funny. A girl who’d stand up to a bear was scared of the rain.

Kyrstin looked down at herself, still sopping wet. The blanket Brynn provided did very little against the cold. It just seemed to sop up the water like a towel. The princess knew going back out into the world under these conditions would be even colder, and she prepped herself for the journey. She told her blood to pump faster, to warm herself up inside before battling the elements outside. She breathed the frigid air through her nose, hoping the longer path to her lungs would warm it up some before it got there. Goose pimples covered her flesh.

As she looked down at herself, she found a small silver anklet twinkling at her feet. A gift she received from her grandfather, who knew she did not want to publicize her money when so many had so little. So her grandfather, when she turned eleven, gave her an anklet of beauty and wealth that she could hide under her long skirts, or within her high socks, for whenever she went out with Thomas to greet the people of Springborough. She would then not shake the hands of the poor with jewels on his fingers. The princess knelt down to unclasp it from her ankle. She held it out to Brynn who looked at it with mild interest.

“What is this?” Brynn asked, as if jewelry was foreign currency that the hut dweller had no idea how to use.

“An anklet. For saving my life from the bear. I do appreciate your efforts, but I have to go now. I’m on a royal quest.”

“I don’t need your jewelry, your highness. I have no need for such things. You keep it.”

“I don’t think an anklet will make your life better, but it’s all I have to give right now. Take it, as a token. And when the weather clears, and your family returns, bring it back to me at the castle, and we’ll figure out something that you do need that I can provide.”

Whether it was the thought of her family or the graciousness of the gift, Kyrstin believed she saw Brynn’s face give way to a sad emotion as she reached out her hand for the anklet, which Kyrstin dropped into the bowhunters palm. With that gesture, the two parted. Princess Kyrstin in her green hood, out into the lightening and the thunder and the rain of the storm, and Brynn the bowhunter, wrapped in a blanket, looking out the doorway of her hand-built hut.