The Kingdom Romance: Episode 1 Read online

THE KINGDOM ROMANCE

  EPISODE ONE

  MICHAEL BASHAM

  COPYRIGHT 2014, MICHAEL BASHAM

  "To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."

  –G.K. Chesterton

  Chapter 1 What Is Eleneth

  Closing a thick leather bound book with a sigh, Annette looked up for the first time in hours. She glanced around her to see if anyone else was in the library. The sun was shining brightly through the stained glass windows, making reading there a sheer delight. She tried guessing the time judging from the sunlight’s reflection through the stained glass, which always deposited a lovely barrage of color all around the library. As it was was her custom to sit in that exact spot of cushioned seats underneath the beautiful Elizabethan paintings, she had learned where certain colors shone where and at what time. She was almost to the point of naming certain hours and times after their appropriate colors based on the refractions of the stained glass on different locations of the oak desks and cherry wood book cases, ‘but now that would be a little too nerdy’ she thought. If she started saying "I’ll be need to get out of here by Turquoise O’Clock and not a minute before Violet!" —that just would not lend a helping hand to her recent resolve to become more sociable.

  Confident that there was no one around, she stood up, stretching her back and neck, reaching her slender arms up towards the ceiling and then down to her feet, shaking some of the gold dust off her dark red dress (not that these two colors didn’t go well together) as the dust from many gold-leafed classic and ancient bound literature tended to find its way into every corner of the library. As she gathered her things, she reminisced on the events that had led to her moving in to this town. They all seemed far too dramatic to be real.

  All she had wanted was a quiet life: to simply learn a variety of things, have a simple love of life maybe find a nice boyfriend and eventually settle down, perhaps find a nice job teaching literature somewhere. Or, rather, at the very least this is what she thought she had wanted as it was seemingly the most natural course of action for someone in her position– a daughter of two professors from Cambridge University whose parents were also teachers, also teaching the same sort of subjects (mostly Math and the Sciences), and their parents also, and on it went down the family tree. Actually it was downright uncanny to think that for nearly 6 generations her ancestors had all been teachers, and almost all the subjects were related in some way. During her 18 years of existence, despite this legacy running through her blood, she really didn’t feel any smarter for it. She had for some reason developed a deep thirst for researching and enjoying the Classics and so had somewhat rebelled from her family’s tradition.

  For the first time in her life, she was away from all the people she knew. This was by her own choice, too. ‘I will now carve my own path!’ She had thought, choosing to break the vicious cycle of endless education, teaching, and studying. And now look where she had ended up! The past 6 months had been spent with every free moment hardly anywhere else but inside this beautiful library. Still, this was completely understandable if you considered the exceptionally rare collection that had been kept here. The biggest shame of this whole town was seeing how little the rest of the town folk seemed to appreciate their own wealth of knowledge stored up here, which could hardly be found anywhere else. She had taken upon herself to love up these unloved works of art and beauty which had obviously been sitting here for years and years untouched. At least it seemed like the rest of the townsfolk rarely read anything along these lines, considering the absolute riveting nature of the contents of most of the books! Most of the townsfolk seemed more often than not preoccupied with the enjoyment of Relationship-Related Revelries (the three R’s, as Annette had personally dubbed this silly past time). In other words, the majority of people who could have otherwise been spending glorious hours, like Annette, reading in this beautiful library were all out busy socializing and focusing mostly on relationship-type stuff.

  Walking up and down the aisles, lightly, almost dancingly, she enjoyed the sound of her shoes on the wooden floors echoing around everywhere. Her mind was hardly able to breathe a thought outside the story she had been presently so engrossed in: A great catastrophe had been averted by a simple song of a woman, singing longingly for her distant lover. The titanic struggle and massiveness of the armies striving against each other were at a climax when one lone voice, it is said, brought them to peace.

  Finally she stepped outside to the gentle air of an approaching Malacandrian evening. Far away mountains that were impossibly high stretched up, up, up and disappeared behind clouds. Birds sang songs she had not heard back home. The tunes and melodies these birds sang almost carried with them actual themes, which, of course was impossible! But if you spent enough time listening, you’d swear they were not only singing actual self-created songs, but they were also composing new ones and learning even how to harmonize when one bird’s voice sang over another’s. This added a lot to the effect the actual scenery had on your eyes to begin with: Everything about this place just made you want to stop and paint pictures, even if you weren’t an artist.

  Annette enjoyed these solitary moments, since the beauty encompassing one everywhere around here made her feel so warm and loved. It was as though the world itself embraced you wherever you went.

  She stopped for a few minutes and it was just the birds, the wind passing through the mountains, and her own breathing. She wasn’t hungry, but she realized she had an appointment for dinner and was already running late if she didn’t hurry.

  The librarian greeted her, coming up the stairs from the market place which was situated at the foot of this steep hill, on top of which sat the library itself. The look in his eyes seemed to manifest the fact that he had obviously been a little bit forgetful in his duties that day while getting lunch. Crime was nonexistent here, so why bother with security in a place like a library?

  “Taking your time out and about again today Mr. Faulkner? Don’t worry! Your secret is safe with me! Hope you enjoyed lunch. . . and dinner!” Annette said with no small amount of spunk in her voice.

  “Ah you had better not tell anyone!" replied Mr. Faulkner, who was always full of wit and entertaining retorts. "By the way, young lady, you’ve been going non-stop today, haven’t you? Your rose colored dress goes majestically with that gold dust! I am sure no one will guess where that’s from. Ah– look, it’s getting to be orange-blossom-thirty, which is the time I usually write a poem about a beautiful girl. You’re my victim this evening, I’m afraid. I really had better get back to the library now, and write that poem!” And before Annette could answer, Mr. Faulkner hurried off, but after he was some distance away, just as she’d predicted, he pulled out his pipe and leisurely strolled around the gardens surrounding the hill on which the library was built. She felt warmed even by the actions of the townspeople here, who seemed at once both industrious and able to relax and enjoy themselves. She was learning little by little, but she still felt it would take her some time to achieve THAT level of lazy productivity!

  Eleneth was a relatively small town, built artistically into a valley with a large river separating it into two halves. The deepness of the valley made you feel as if you were in a self-contained bubbled reality. You felt miles away from the typical hustling bustling big crazy world with so much insanity all pressed in upon itself. Such was life in London, where she had spent the last few years. Even a quiet moment was usual
ly spent checking your iPhone’s Facebook updates or listening to some new Lady Gaga or Miley Cyrus song. Here though, Annette had strangely lost all taste in what used to occupy most of her life.

  Just what exactly was it about Eleneth? The architecture was a mix of high-tech Modern buildings and 18th Century European styled inns and homes. One had to admit they had very lovingly preserved the culture of this place when modernizing, as everything seemed incredibly new, no matter how old. These structures were built alongside cozily narrow patterned stone roads and alleyways which weaved in delightful and unpredictable turns every which way. You could walk for hours just admiring the lovely bakeries and shops and happy homes passing underneath beautiful bridges and then going into tunnels and through hills into the suburbs. These roads all comfortably wound in and out and overlapped, but almost never dead ended.

  You had the feeling that Eleneth was extremely over developed, in its own quaint and humble way. The architects of this city had planned it almost too well, too, as though they expected modernization to take place many generations after they had designed the layout– and indeed it felt thousands of years old when you looked at some of the ancient monolithic structures and mysterious and crazy looking palaces that were still used as mansions for the wealthy. It was a place full of contradictions and oddities which Annette had resolved to discover when she got around to it. However this was always a mission being put off.

  Annette was constantly getting involved with the curiously shy families of Eleneth, who would go to great lengths trying to get their sons to court with her. This is was something that Annette decided was quite amusing but distracting at the same time. The issue of having incessant attention from the opposite sex was almost becoming routine at this point, and took a lot of her time, but truly she didn’t mind. It helped keep her thoughts off of being away from home, which was nice.

  However, she truly did want to go out and see for herself the vast and incredible landscapes that surrounded the town, especially after a full day’s reading at the Library– like today. Since she had recently flung herself into the engrossing and dramatic world of war and love in her latest reading endeavor, she had a particular whetted appetite tonight for something new. She now particularly lusted after those impossibly high mountains (not that she would ever be able to climb them) and longed and yearned for the mysterious looking forests beyond (not that forests were safe for pretty girls to go walking in alone), which seemed composed of unearthly shaped trees– but she couldn’t tell from this distance. Hence the reason for longing to go and explore them!

  Tonight Annette was yet again going to another family’s humorous and silly, somewhat forcefully arranged courtship with their son. So, her plans of adventure were most likely going to be thwarted for the thousandth time. But something about tonight was different. There was an electric feeling in the air, though she couldn’t put her finger exactly on what it was. Her most recent stalker was a young man named Richy Donner, and she had obligingly agreed to a meal with his family on the opposite side of the river. This was most likely set up by her benefactors in the city, who were none other than the Mayor (who went by the name of Ransom) and his wife. Annette had had enough of political niceties and having to be proper in these fancy dinners they were constantly arranging for her, even if this one was meant to lead to something other than just a new friendship (as some of her friends had mentioned to her earlier about tonight’s prospect).

  Usually these lavish dinners and the stalkers they seemed to breed into Annette’s life shortly afterwards served to accomplish little more than just distract her from her love of reading and exploring new realms through literature. Annette realized she was a little bit like a Hobbit in this sense, and this conflicted with the fact that she was also a very beautiful woman, “alarmingly so,” as her aunts and uncles had put it when she had come of age. She also had no small amount of charm that just came naturally. This could have been used for self-popularization should she have so desired, but she had not taken any steps in this direction. She liked dressing well and took good care of herself. She had an ability to make herself look attractive without looking like she was making a lot of effort to do so, and carried herself with confidence. Her posture, manners, and a high adorableness-level were in-bred. All this put together gave her a non-priggish professional ladylike appearance. This also gave her a lot of favor with people who had lots of money and influence.

  She was still a human being though, and as a girl she couldn’t help but be flattered by all the attention given to her in Eleneth. Perhaps she did stand out a little bit from all the other girls, not being plagued by some of the cultural formalities that most of the daughters of Eleneth’s families (despite their being also equally charming and beautiful in Annette’s eyes). Sometimes Annette felt as though she had stepped into a romance novel enthusiast’s dream. This was a beautiful country town with very little standing in the way of allowing young men and ladies getting to engage in many fun, enjoyable, and even often lavishly opulent activities that usually led to actual traditional courtship. It made Annette blush whenever she gave it any serious amount of thought. Despite the conservatism everywhere there was still at once an unrestrained focus on promoting and enhancing the whole experience of building a relationship from square one. But it certainly was extremely odd for this modern day and age! Wasn’t it the year 2014?’

  Once while visiting one of the homes of the families here, she entered into a long conversation with the lady of the house on the whole subject and the peculiarity of the dating arrangements here as compared to the rest of the world. She was given a book that had been written hundreds of years before, but which was apparently still taught in their local middle school on the details and manners which young gentlemen and ladies should interact, and how they could better understand each other in order to better enjoy the whole process of love and courtship… Annette was astounded. She hadn’t been very big on clubbing back at home in the U.K., but she had accepted the world as being a place that generally didn’t have this sort of thing anymore. Annette wasn’t particularly thirsty for this kind of experience, as she was bred in a very professional and intellectual environment that put money and learning above such silly things as dating. . . but even if it was only on an intellectually stimulating level, she was definitely. . . intrigued would be the right word. Or maybe just amused.