The Edge of the Woods

The Princess needed glasses but no one would get her any. “Princesses don’t wear glasses,” the Queen Mother sniffed and the royal Court nodded assent as if they were a single entity. So that was that and the Princess’ bodyguard sighed mightily when the Princess insisted on driving to the edge of the woods by the Raider’s camps. Her plan was to show the Ones Who Lived Across that she, the next leader of the Kingdom, was not afraid. She would plant flowers there, she announced. It would be a gesture of peace. Certainly they would want to gesture back.

Stanislaus contemplated giving her the wrong directions to lead her to some different location, some different edge of the world, fringed by a less dangerous copse of trees. With her sight the way it was, Princess Bianca would never know the difference. But she insisted in taking some of the members of the Court, obsequious bootlickers who pretended to be on her side and would then report every unprincessly gaffe to the Queen. They would surely tell the Princess that they were pointed in the wrong direction.

“Stan, lighten up,” Bianca said, thumping him on the shoulder in a clumsy attempt at camaraderie. He could tell she knew the gesture fell short, because her face flushed almost immediately. She whistled the others into the van like a boy, fingers in her mouth. She exploited the slight gap between her two front teeth to make this prodigious call to arms. He saw the Ladies of the party wince and the Lords smirk. But they all clambered in the van speaking in the low voices that members of the Court perfected. Voices filled with courtesy and plotting. They were no doubt laughing at the Princess’ garb today, velvet breeches and an oversized shirt—a boy’s costume. A peasant boy’s at that. But what could he do? Stan was her bodyguard, not her lady-in-waiting.

Stan winced, but bent dutifully to pick up sacks of sod, deep rich mulch, flower seeds and bulbs. The Princess bent to grab a hoe and nearly stumbled over a pickax. “Your Highness,” he said tiredly, as he cupped her elbow to straighten her. The tone of reproof in his voice arrested her and he nearly felt sorry as he saw her large myopic eyes tear up in embarrassment.

“You shouldn’t do it all yourself,” she murmured.

“It’s my job,” he said, more brusquely than he intended.

“This will be good,” she said, recovering her cheerfulness immediately. “It’s the right symbol. You’ll see. Sometimes gestures are important.”

He wanted to tell her that planting flowers at the edge of OWLA territory might seem a symbol alright, but of a kind she didn’t intend. It would be a symbol of how out of the touch the royal family was. Stan understood what she meant to say—that there were more important things than fighting. That lessons could be learned from flowers, which could survive even on blood-stained ground. No one would get it.

He shook his head and he saw her take in her entourage and take in a deep breath. Doubtless, she was considering how alone she was. She smiled at him then and walked jauntily to the driver’s seat, and he both admired and cursed her foolish bravado. The princess pulled out a pair of wool gloves from her pocket. She wouldn’t wear leather or fur like the other Ladies of her Court, but the fuzzy tassels that dangled from her wrists were a small concession to her own vanity.

“Hi ho,” she said brightly. “Off we go!”

“Right, off we go,” he muttered and clambered into the passenger seat on the right side, equipped subtly with an extra set of brakes and gas pedals in case she veered dangerously into anything and he needed to take control of the vehicle.

“Go to the end of the path and take a right,” he told her. “Then go straight for five miles until you see the burnt down willow tree. Then go right again. It will be another ten miles.” He didn’t tell her the willow tree was burnt down just yesterday when she announced her plans to go on this expedition. He didn’t tell her that her subjects had taken to hanging themselves from this tree.

The van was perhaps one of ten cars left in the kingdom, most of them conscripted by the Royal family, along with whatever precious stores of gasoline remained. They drove out of the park that housed the castle, an old museum that the Royal family had also conscripted in those early days when things had begun to go really wrong.

The Princess hummed softly under breath as she put the van in drive and Stan knew that this was a sign of nervousness. She took them down the straight path that led from the castle, through the arches, and past the the overpass with littered cars. She took a right where he’d told her to, where the end of the path was marked by the crumbling remains of a coffee shop. They drove past the remnants of buildings and the weedy grasslands, where saplings had emerged at last from amidst the burnt stumps. He watched as dogs and wolves, reunited in disaster and rendered fearless by their hunger, scavenged for scraps. He saw a child’s limb in one of the larger wolves’ maw and he knew from the set of the Princess’ jaw that she had seen it too. The Lady’s and Lords clucked and gasped, titillated but not particularly grief-struck.

The van drove past a billboard where the face of the first King, a real estate mogul in pre-disaster days, loomed. Garish words announced that anyone following the King’s teachings could become a millionaire. All it took was a will to succeed. And a bad comb-over apparently. Stan watched grey shadows skitter from under the billboard. A family had camped beneath the sign, fleeing from the sight of the van. Lord Gilbert popped open a window and drew a pistol, lining them in his sights. He fired and missed wildly, grinning as the receding yelps of the family reached the van. His smile faded when he saw Stan’s expression.

“You should save your bullets for when we reach the woods,” Stan growled.

“Lord Gilbert,” the Princess frowned, “those are my subjects you are firing upon. They have troubles enough without being put in fear of the Royals.”

“Yes, my Princess. Of course,” Lord Gilbert said, but Stan saw in the rear view mirror how he rolled his eyes at Lord Morton. Stan contemplated whether he could make him walk home.

But then it was Stan the Princess turned to rebuke. “And we will not be killing today, Stan, this is a peaceful expedition. And those creatures only comes to our side when they have need. We need to stem their violence, not provoke them,” she added. Then she smiled at the rather royal tone she had achieved.

“Right, but when they come across, they scalp people and take slaves back,” Lady Anne commented, twisting the rings on her fingers nervously, one after the other.

“Rumors are the slaves go willingly,” Lord Valiant said.

Rumors were that the Skulls lived in the woods like savages, returning to nature and living off the land, coming into the Kingdom only to steal medical supplies. But forays by the Skulls were always accompanied by more buildings toppled, more of the old vestiges of civilization destroyed. While people spoke wistfully about the better life in the woods, there were also rumors that the Skulls were selective about who joined them. Rejects were returned in wheel barrels, in pieces and in parts.

The van passed the willow tree, its branches charred and crumbling. Stan saw that a piece of twine was still looped around one of the branches. He glanced at the Princess, grateful that she was focusing on the road intently. The road was flat and straight but the Princess still had to concentrate to maneuver the van through the fog of her blurred vision.

“Turn right here,” Stan said. He reached for the steering wheel to turn it and accidentally brushed the Princess’ hand.

“Apologies,” he muttered quickly.

She frowned, tucking her lower lip under her teeth, but she patted his hand back, the way she would an errant child.

“It’s alright,” she said, letting the steering wheel roll in the direction he had guided it and then roll back. They were on a straight road again. At the edge of the road, the Princess saw her people. There were men and women and some children, trudging with axes and other tools like wrenches and hammers.. Their faces were frightened but resolute. Some of the children carried drums that they patted or banged depending on their age.

“Where are they going, Stan?” the Princess asked.

“They’re probably offering themselves to the Skulls. Steel is prized across the woods.”

“This can’t be,” the Princess said. “They can’t go off like that, frightened for their lives. “

“They feel they can’t stay here,” Stan said. “They are desperate. There’s not enough food here. The taxes are too high. The Royals extort…” He bit off his words as he heard rustling and murmurs from the back seats.

“The Royals keep these people safe. They provide services. The taxes are necessary…” Lady Millicent retorted.

“To support the infrastructure,” Lord Morton, said, completing her sentence.

“The infrastructure,” the Princess murmured in assent, shifting up a gear as she accelerated the van.

She overtook the parade at the place where the road stopped, where the woods loomed. At the divide between the old ways and the older ways. The Princess put the van in park and jumped out bravely. Stan shook his head and got out of the van as well. He pushed open the back door of the van and started pulling the gardening supplies out. The Lords and Ladies sat there fanning themselves and grumbling.

Lady Ann extended a timid foot past the doorway and then a hand and nearly landed in a heap as she tripped over her gown. Still, Stan had to give her credit for being the first besides the Princess to step outside.

The Princess beamed, inhaling the fresh woodsy air. She inhaled the pollen too, for she soon started sneezing, wiping her nose indecorously on the gloved back of her hand. Nevertheless, she managed to direct the Lords and Ladies to pick up shovels and bulbs, to scatter seeds. They looked at her skeptically but conceded at last. Stan thought that the Princess looked almost beautiful in her boyish garb, her face flushed, her eyes bright and brave. He could not imagine how this creature was any part of the Queen, that brooding demigoddess who ruled the Kingdom with steel claws and crushed any rebellion mercilessly. He shook his head and grabbed a pickax to clear the rocks. Of all of them, Stan was the only one who knew how to plant a seed so that it took. His father had been a gardener before he had slipped into the dark woods, leaving Stan and his mother to fend for themselves. Back then the woods had meant certain death for children. Stan remembered that his parents had flipped a coin to see who would stay with Stan. His father had tried not to seem too happy when he had won. His mother had sold Stan to the Royals shortly after his father left. Both he and the Princess had nearly grown up together. That is to say, he’d watched her from the servant’s quarters and saw her change from a frolicking toddler to a gangling teenager to…whatever she was now. A fledgling, he thought, something in between what she might be and what history was conspiring to make her.

Striking at the stones with something more than a sense of duty, Stan kept his eye on Bianca. But as he turned to get more water from the van, he saw it. The line of people rippled down the road. Once loyal subjects, men and women carried their axes and tools like walking sticks. Children were flung like sacks over their parents’ shoulders or were toddling along. Their small drums were silent, their gazes skittered nervously from the Royals to the woods and back. Would they be stopped? Would they be slaughtered? And who would do the deed, the Royals or the Skulls? As the line reached the Princess, the mass of men and women and children stood uncertainly, then began to move to the right, as silently as a mob can, to the woods.

“Stop!” the Princess cried out, seeing them at last. She moved in front of the men at the head of the line. “This isn’t right, you can’t go off like this.” Her plaintiff cry arrested them and they stood shuffling and murmuring. They squinted as if they were blinded by the colorful clothing the Lords and Ladies were wearing, the axes and other tools were clenched in hands folded in supplication. For now. Stan could see the Lords moving in incremental steps back to the van.

“We need to make something new here,” the Princess announced. We need to unite as…” Stan could see Bianca struggling, trying to reach for the right words. “As a family,” she said. “We can make something beautiful here.” She gestured at the seedlings expansively, at the clumps of dirt and scattered rocks.

“No food here, miss,” one of the men at the front of the line grunted.

The Princess flushed, looking flustered that the sense of her words had been challenged.

“We need to grow food then,” she said, her eyes glittering.

The men at the front of the line shuffled. One of them eyed the bulbs and seed packets scattered on the ground. He moved his lips as he read the names, “tulip” and “hibiscus.”

“Thems is flowers, miss,” he said finally. “What you’re growing. They’re flowers. Flowers don’t feed us.” He spoke to her as if she was a slow child, as if generations of inbreeding Royals had taken its toll.

The Princess frowned. None of them could see that she was speaking metaphorically. “Of course they don’t feed people. I know that. I was speaking metaphorically.” Two bright spots of red appeared high on her cheeks. “But if you go out there,” she pointed to the woods, greening slightly in the afternoon sunlight, “You’re giving up. That’s the way of cowards!” She smiled, no doubt thinking that her passion could not help but turn them.

As if to punctuate her words, one of the children in the group started crying. Stan could see the men and women looking at each other, and then at the Princess. One of the men raised a finger and made circling motions at his head.

The princess could sense their restlessness. She watched as the gaze of the mob turned to the woods.

“Wait,” she said, knowing she had lost them. “I command you to stay and work out a solution. With us.” She added this last to placate them. To show that the Royals fully intended to work as well. She took up a shovel and tried to plant it in the ground. But the soil was too hard and the shovel fell forward to the ground. It bounced a little.

Stan turned his gaze from the mob to look at the Princess when he heard the shovel fall. He saw then her resemblance to the Queen in the unseeing way she surveyed the line of men and women and children in front of her. He pictured her some years ahead. He imagined her painting her face as the Queen did to convey the image that she was something otherworldly, that her thoughts were above the machinations of mere mortals with families to feed. A white face like a mask with a painted gash of a smile and she would always be smiling thereafter, even as it all burned down around her.

“Let them go, Princess,” Stan said wearily. “If anything, because they outnumber us.”

Bianca turned to him with fury. She took in her Lords and Ladies, tucked against the side of the van, ready to bolt if need be. Stan had the gun he’d taken from Lord Gilbert and his own weapon. If he had to he would die defending her but right now what he really wanted to do was to give her a good shaking.

“You will never return from where you’re going,” the Princess said. She spoke to the mob as if she was cursing them. She might just as well have been talking about herself.

“Suits us,” muttered one of the women and with those words the violent charge to the air suddenly dissipated. The line moved forward and the men, women slipped one by one between the trees The children began to slap at the drums again, providing a beat to their movements until they too disappeared into the woods and all that remained was the echoing pulse that that lingered in the Princess’ ears for some years to come.

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