Brown grass crunched beneath his feet as they rounded a dying tree. Preoccupied and oblivious, Sol stopped when the tree’s long, winding branch poked his hairless head. He set down an old, leather bag beside him and ran his hand over the tree’s bark. Pieces broke free and fell into his hand where he ground them with sturdy fingers to produce ash. He set down his other leather bag, more worn and weathered than the first, and resting upon one knee, he rummaged through its contents.
“Are you mad? The Queen’s summons is most urgent.”
Sol lifted an ampoule from his bag and held it eye level so that the sun shone through the sliver of viscous, yellow-brown liquid within.
“Not even a full drop,” Sol muttered. “Will this spell death once more?”
Sol then glared at the towering, brutish escorts.
“The Lymur sap’s healing powers are well documented, but the few such trees that remain are nigh unto death and yield no sap. Your Queen shall be much pleased that I’ve the mind to collect what I can.”
“Our Queen,” the escort scowled.
“I’ve not seen her,” Sol said. “Nevertheless, grant me a moment to bottle the ash. The sap is superior, but this may prove useful yet.”
When at last they arrived at the castle, a short, hairy mass of a man cloaked in fine, flowing garments greeted Sol with a face that had never known a smile. He pointed and ordered two servants, each with horns winding from their ears and two extra arms born from their ribs, to search the bags. Sol set them down and stepped away, but his escorts placed hands upon his back so he could move no further. From a small pocket in his tattered, wool vest, he produced a single foil-wrapped morsel. Trembling fingers peeled back the foil and plucked the chocolate piece within. He brought it to his nose and inhaled deeply, then wiped the beaded sweat from his upper lip with a knuckle and placed the chocolate on his tongue.
“Your nerves will do you no favors,” the hairy man said.
“Nor will I seek any,” Sol replied. “It has been three years since I’ve last brewed. With this unpracticed hand, I need not favors; I need miracles.”
“Well, I have found,” the hairy man said. “One can do anything if one’s life depends on it.”
The half-melted chocolate piece slipped down Sol’s tongue and into his throat, and he welcomed the ensuing coughing fit as an excuse to divert his eyes.
“Master Pi,” one servant said and extended a small, flat package.
“And this?” Master Pi asked Sol with masterful condescension, and he gripped the package between thumb and forefinger as though it were diseased.
“A gift for my daughter,” Sol replied. “I took it with me for fear either curiosity or boredom might lead her to it in my absence.”
At great risk, Sol seized the package, much to the apparent displeasure of Master Pi, for the wrinkles that framed his frown hardened. Master Pi turned and started up an enormous staircase, and Sol, requiring no further coaxing from his escorts, took up the bags and scurried after him.
“Our Queen is ill,” Master Pi began. “We’ve called upon the best sorcerers, herbalists and healers in the land, but to no avail. Her condition remains a mystery, and as it worsens, so too does our land. Your talents intrigue us advisors, but we are a skeptical breed and fail to see how mere chocolate can triumph where the most potent magic betrays. It is rumored, however, you conjure remedies for all ails — or, rather, nearly all. Regardless, I fear your,” here he paused, “craftsmanship is her only and final hope.”
At the staircase’s summit, sunlight burst through towering windows and bathed the lush, vertical flowerbed that adorned the Queen’s bedroom doors. Sol mused that the whole of the Byre outside the castle’s walls lay slowly dying, and so too the Queen within, but somehow the garden upon this door thrived. Then the door opened a crack.
“She invites you inside,” Master Pi whispered. “Rare indeed. Enter, but keep safe distance. She will not reveal herself. Work quickly and retire.”
Sol slipped through the crack and into the darkness. He looked back at Master Pi with frightened eyes that glistened blue in the sun’s rays.
“How does one work in utter darkness? And I must physically contact the patient to treat her. It is impossible otherwise.”
“None have seen her in years —“
“Pi,” her voice came from the shadows. “Must I trust you with nothing?”
Master Pi’s stocky frame shook violently: “My Queen?”
A leather bag fell hard from Sol’s hand and from it his daughter’s present ascended and unwrapped itself. A small hand mirror — its handle and frame woven of bronze threads with a small ceramic butterfly perched atop — spun magically before Sol’s eyes. Master Pi wobbled toward it with outstretched arms and worried eyes, but some pugnacious force ejected him from the room and the door slammed shut behind him. The mirror’s glass shattered and fell lifelessly to the floor.
“Begin,” said the Queen, and there was no compromise in her tone.
“But I…”
Sol clung to what little light fought through the door cracks and window coverings as he unpacked his bags and set his implements upon a large table.
“I shall certainly require a candle. Without heat, there shall be no chocolate.”
A candle sprouted from the table and a flame danced upon it. Sol took up a handful of cocoa beans from a tin container and dropped them into the stone mortar. He fumbled through his many vials and found one that held the finely chopped Twerpen leaf, but his hand trembled as he uncorked it and some of the leaf leapt to the floor.
“Why should a mirror have pleased your daughter?”
The Queen’s voice came gentle to Sol’s ear, and his shoulders relaxed and he remembered now to breathe. He pictured his daughter’s smile — the rare treat it had become — an exact replica of the smile he had once loved more than all else.
“Astoria’s fourteenth year has proven difficult,” he said as he ground several ingredients with the pestle. “She believes beauty has been unfair to her, and I want her to see how truly beautiful she is.”
“With a mirror, she will only see what she feels.”
“Then how can I change what she feels?”
The room became cold and quiet, and Sol huddled nearer the candle. His hands warmed and instinct took command. He moved fluidly through his cache and withdrew precise amounts of rare herbs: Burmant, mildly toasted; Vym juice, a drop thereof; Jomfrey root, peeled and dried. He called upon some most rare ingredients with origins outside the Byre itself, such as the Bospire grain, and he delighted in a dab of the Lymur ash. The Queen, quite impressed with his work, trusted a closer peek: a curious eye, warm in the candlelight, eased for a moment from the safety of the folding screen that divided the room in two, and then it retreated.
“Someone will come to your daughter one day — someone she trusts as unbiased — and make her feel beautiful. Those that fawn over us cannot be trusted so.”
“Ah,” Sol said with a thoughtful smile. “That explains my ineffectual attempts.” He selected a brush with long, soft bristles and dabbed it in a vial of light oil and then into the mortar containing his brew. “I must test the blend — please present your wrist.”
Many tales, believed mostly to be legend, built the Queen’s fury into monsters and demons, and also, rumor had it that illness had enfeebled her darkest magic. Sol thought, after he was knocked flat from her explosive outcry, that if he should ever make it back home, he should set the record straight once and for all: the rage demon lived.
“Infidel! You dare address me as anything but ‘My Queen’? Do you not acknowledge the throne?”
Sol lifted himself to his knees and crawled to the table that lay upon its side, his implements sprawled across the floor. The mortar had toppled and its powdery contents emptied. Defeated and breathless, Sol fell onto his bottom.
“I believe only what I see,” Sol said. Then he thought of the mirror and his daughter. After a quiet moment, magic spawned a new candle that floated beside Sol.
“Sometimes, life grants but one final bid.”
The Queen said this and then presented her wrist. He scrambled for the brush, which still had the oily compound upon its bristles. He crawled toward the screen and the candle followed. He reached for her wrist, just hardly extended beyond the screen’s safety, and she retracted slightly.
“I deserved not this wretched skin cloaked in red plague. It is the curse of an enemy unseen, though one I’ve sworn to avenge. You’ve seen too much of my hideousness. If you cannot cure me, you will not live.”
He placed his quivering hand beneath hers, and painted a single, jittery brushstroke upon the soft underside of her wrist.
“What is your expectation?” she asked firmly.
“I am no sorcerer, but if my work is true, I will see just a bit of magic,” he said.
He put his eyes close to her skin. He studied the brushstroke, but the glitter for which he waited never came. Fearing his fate, he held his breath and imagined his daughter looking upon his casket. He wondered would she mourn him as she had her mother, and he wished to hold her once more. His eyes welled with tears, and when he blinked them free, he saw more clearly her skin. He smiled.
“And here I’ve seen the magic!” he said. “Though I require one final ingredient that I regret to say is not in my bags. Please send for my daughter. Have the escorts ask her to retrieve from my workspace a pouch of fresh Prysm berry. You will take it with the chocolate.”
The Queen issued swift orders and with efficient magic had restored Sol’s workspace. He returned to his pestle and mortar to grind a new batch of chocolate. His hands moved fast and sure, but froze when the Queen spoke.
“No magic could have saved your wife,” she said. “You must stay confident in your craft. You are skilled.”
“I nearly lost my way when I lost her, but chocolate — pure and unaffected — saved me. I make the chocolate, and the chocolate heals me.”
Before long, Sol had finished work on the special chocolate piece. Then the door opened a crack and the Queen asked him to retrieve his daughter, for she had arrived.
“The Prysm berry must remain in sunlight,” Sol said. “Exposure to darkness will destroy its magic. I’d ask that you step just beyond your door where the sun is plentiful.”
“And without the Prysm berry?” she asked fearfully.
“Naught,” Sol said.
A swift gust snuffed out the candle and a dark chill gripped the room. A silhouette, tall and lean, emerged from the folding screen. Sol scurried from the room and into the sun. Then came the Queen. Her hand gripped the lush door and her tender fingers brushed the Tressel vines’ delicate flowers. When her face peeked round rosy pink flowers, there was a collective gasp. Red, wavy hair framed her heart-shaped face. Her eyes, big and green, sparkled in the sun when she smiled. She studied the creamy-white skin on her arm with her fingertips.
“The curse,” she whispered. “It’s been lifted.”
She stepped forward and ran a gentle finger down Astoria’s blushing cheek.
“My beautiful child,” she said. “You’ve my Prysm berry?”
Astoria, teary-eyed, supplied the berry. The Queen then turned to Sol.
“And you, my healer, you’ve the chocolate to save me?”
“Yes,” Sol said, and from the small pocket in his tattered wool vest he produced a plain, foil-wrapped chocolate. “My Queen.”
THE END
The Queen’s Curse was written as a Round 2 submission to the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge 2016. The assignment: write a 2,000 word story in three days. The prompts: fantasy (genre), chocolatier (character), and body dysmorphic disorder (subject).
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