As the two minutes ticked past, miss Borka shut her eyes and leaned against the cart. Her brow was crumpled up in concentration and Bosomella could see her eyes moving back and forth beneath their lids. Bosomella lit softly on her shoulder and the lady’s eyes flew open. She held out her hand and Bosomella walked down her arm and sat in her palm, arms snugged up around her knees staring up into the face of her mistress.

Miss Borka raised her voice to address the monks, but her eyes never left the small fairy in her hand.

“No one likes to be caged. Moreover besides the refusal of your queenly offer I hereby pronounce my hold upon this fairy moot. For she has completed her task and honored me with her toil and heart these many long months. I will not die with her bound to another.”

“And so it has come.” The big monk rose to his full height, drew a crooked blade from his waist band and stood over Miss Borka meeting eyes with the crowd. “Your prince has refused his place, your queen has begged an execution, and no one has stood to take the weight of your crown. We shall rule you as it please us, only one thing remains. Then the monk shut his eyes and the whole of the valley was silent.

By breath and blood and blackened stone

Is there a breast where truth has grown

A beating heart where self has flown

A soul to come, it’s life disown

The monk laughed into the silence and knelt before Miss Borka. And since there is no one to redeem you…” He raised the blade and shrugged, as though some embarrassing social fopah had occurred and he were attempting to ease over the awkwardness with some inane jest. It was then that Bosomella zipped in front of his face and fluttered there in a tiny seething mass of fury that made even that great and terrible monk scoot backward to escape.

“I redeem her. My life I pledge to the floating monks. And therefore I and I alone take up the power to declare our queen free to live and reign and step away from the web you have set for her and all who would follow in her line.”

The monk snatched her up into his hand, staring and silent. He started to say something, but simply shook his head and flung the small fairy to the ground.

The other monks followed his lead, packing up their battering ram and loading swords into the cart along side it. Finally as the silent procession creaked past the puddle where Bosomella sat in stunned silence, their leader grumbled something audible.

“One cannot use a soul such as this. Twill not be molded and moved for fright or gain. You have saved her little fairy, for I daren’t touch you. You have saved them all.”

He yanked on the lead of the cart horse and slowly slowly the floating monks quit the castle and then the town, all the way back to the stone walls from whence they came.

And it was that very day that prince Andrej proposed and the wedding was held that night after ten maids whirled about tirelessly to beautify Miss Borka to perfection. Bosomella’s false limbs were retrieved from the palace dog and her mistress did indeed dance at her wedding, but everyone agreed that the prince would not have cared either way. He was thoroughly smitten for the interest that he had initially shown the lady had solidified into something of permanence as they had faced the terrible monks together.

And although she was free to fly when and where she chose, Bosomella stayed with the royal couple. For a good undergarment fairy is hard to find and a queen is always in need of a brazier to die for.

The End

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The prince raised his arms and the battering ram slowly stilled. Every face turned to him, trying to read the future in his pale face and the icy glint in his eyes.
“Take it back. I will not pledge the life of another, for the stolen privileges of power.”

They all stared at him for a moment longer and then the company of monks turned as one. They circled about the ancient cart until Bosomella’s mistress was kneeling in their center. The tallest monk stepped forward his cowl veiling face and form.

“And so it comes to you, my Queen. Your life we hold already. Thrown away when you stepped across our wall. But now we must decide upon the future. Pledge to us your firstborn, a vassal from birth, and we shall allow you to live and breathe and rule. I give you two minutes to decide. Think on them well, for they shall change our world.”

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The monk closest to her turned aside and suddenly the twine went slack about her wrist. Bosomella did not require time to contemplate, she simply zipped away. Past her pale mistress and up to the balcony beyond.

The prince pushed his fingers through his no longer immaculate head of hair. “So I’m not actually of royal blood.”

“We’re royal enough. Our family has ruled for five generations and from what I hear of the kings before us the whole kingdom had been in desperate need of a good coup for years.”

The prince’s stare didn’t falter. “So you pledged me to them, rather than lose the crown.”

“Andrej, you have to realize that was years before you were even born. It is hard for a man to imagine family and love before it comes to him.”

“And the monks have attacked the castle…why?”

“I couldn’t tell you. I mean…and we missed the deadline. You were to take up the oath a year back and, well here they are.”

The prince only stared. And when he finally spoke his words were whispered and somehow stale. “And what precisly are my choices?”

“Oh.” The king looked away, tracing his hand along the fringe of the rich red tapestry that adorned the balcony wall. “The monks made that easy for us. You must pledge your firstborn son as their vassal for life, or return the crown that they helped us aquire. It would go back to the first royal line.”

And then prince Andrej stood and strode to the balcony. But he didn’t look down at the seige below. His eyes brushed the land. From the distant blue-black of the Roirksrag peaks in the west to the soft golden blush of barley in the east. And he closed his eyes, his knuckles white where they gripped the stone parapet, hiding a carving of the gods laughing down upon the deeds of men.

Read previous installments by clicking the Writing Pilates button on the right of the blog.

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After an hour of pounding the great battering ram against the castle gates, the king appeared upon the main balcony.

The largest monk rose to address their elderly monarch: “You have failed to bring your son before us as you so promised in your youth. You know that we remain bound by blood to the oaths between us. Bring him now that he may choose. His crown or his pledge. His royal position or his first born son.” 

The old king’s face suddenly seemed like powdered chalk and he staggered back against the wall. But then his son was beside him. Steadying his arm and staring down at the cowled figures below.

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The monk did not speak or push back his dark cowl. He simply took Bosomella’s mistress in his arms and carried her to the cart. Two looped twines hung down from the side and he slid the lady’s slim wrist into one, pulling until it snugged tight. Miss Borka laughed at her feeble bonds, until she went to snap the twine and fell screaming to the cobbles. Bosomella flitted about her head completely ignored by the floating monks and completely helpless to aid her mistress in her plight.

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Past the hunting hound gnawing Miss Borka’s leg amidst a pile of shortcake in the main hall, down two twisty corridors and one long flight of stairs, and into the Prince’s solar, where he sat staring at the bobby pens that Miss Borka had left behind in her flight. Why did it have to be bobby pins, they could fit any number of girls, at least Cinderella had had the decency of leaving a slipper. But Bosomella knew that her mistress would snatch her back with a word at any moment and so rather than going with a calm respectful bow and dialogue, she flew into the solar screeching at the top of her little lungs. “The Monks are at the gate! Aaaaaaaaaah! Did you hear me the monks, floating monks, gate, SWORDS, SHINY SHINY THING UNDER TARP, AT THE GATE!

And then Miss Borka must have called upon her rights as the little fairy’s owner for Bosomella felt a sickening tug deep in her gut, like a twine tangled in her innards had suddenly been yanked hard, and she snapped out of the room backwards, bumping against walls, up stairs, under tables, over shortcake, through the dogs legs, up over the discarded leg, around a bend, out onto the balcony, and into Miss Borka’s white shaking palm.

But instead of the look of fury that she had expected an expression of abject horror graced her mistresses lovely face. For it was sunset and the floating monks had begun to rise. And Miss Borka, bound to them through the terrible magic that had snatched her legs, was being slowly slowly tugged across the tiled floor, fingernails catching at each stone. They had not come simply for the castle and the royalty that lay within. But for all who had dared to defy them. And the slim girl scrabbling at the stone floor was inked in bold upon that terrible scroll.

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“By all that is Holy!” She shouted straight toward the princes horrified face. “Look at that superb craftsmanship. This girl’s leg is a work of art.”

Then she wrestled her way out of her Mistresses hair do and lept into flight, zipping around corners, through the doors of the great hall, and directly through a stack of artfully arranged shortcakes that shuddered and tipped as the princes’ dog plopped the leg onto the closest refreshment table and proceeded to gnaw.

Just as Bosomella had procured an ornately glazed ham with which to bludgeon the beast, Miss Borka hopped into the room, one hand on the wall to steady herself and one wildly waving Bosomella to her side. The fairy gave their hairy friend a couple of passing bops and tossed the ham aside to flit to her lady’s aid. Miss Borka snatched her up and bounced wildly out the hall doors and onto a thickly curtained balcony.

“Can you lower me if I jump?”

“Are you kidding? You’re probably 75 times my body weight.”

“He can’t see me like this. I’ll sleep here until daybreak tomorrow if I have to, But nothing in the entire sordid history of husband enchantment has ever been as mortifying as this.”

It was a good plan, as far as cowardly retreats go, but was simply not destined for success. For when Bosomella looked down over the castle walls to the thick green sludge of the moat below, she saw a small collection of hooded farmers urging two sick oxen forward as they pulled a lumpy wagon toward the castle walls. And glinting out from beneath the crusty brown sacking that covered their load Bosomella saw a glint of metal and the gentle shine of a polished blade.

The prince should know about this. But one look at her humiliated mistress told the small undergarment fairy that this was one job that would take every last mote of her considerable diplomatic talent. And then the men below slowly so slowly began to chant.

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The legs were working marvelously, and as long as her mistress took it slowly and no one stepped on one of the artificial toes they should continue to move her with lilting grace across the cold castle floors and into the prince’s arms. Miss Borka took a sip of honeyed ale and raised her eyes to find the prince himself eyeing the undeniable perfection of her loveliness. Bosomella knotted her fists into her mistresses hair and focused on looking fake and decorative, for prince Andrej and his prized hunting hound Snorf were most assuredly coming their way.

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