Monarch

I woke up in the middle of a flowery field. Standing over me were dozens of faces, all somewhat sympathetic, and dressed in beige and brown hats and shaggy heads of hair. And hovering over them, like one big halo glistening above their heads in the beaming afternoon sun, there was a ring of fluttering wings holding dewy, brown-skinned beings. The winged beings encircled me with big, kind eyes. In the center of the halo of floating beings, one with grandiose wings, narrowed eyes, and an endeared smirk on her face flew gracefully.

Bewildered, I snapped my eyes shut, and the crowd around me gasped. One of the flying people asked if I'd hit my head, and a child in a brown hat suggested the strongest villager take me by the foot and drag me to the Pocket, against my will or otherwise.

Just as a row about how we would get me to “the Pocket” arose in the crowd, a soft laugh cut through their argument, and a tingle ran up through my body. I opened my eyes as the smiling being cut through the parted crowd. The grass stretched to meet her nimble feet and she outstretched her hand to me. Before I knew what I was doing, I was standing up with one of her warm hands in my mine and the other wrapped securely around my back.

My head and back were wet, but she took her hand from mine for a moment to wave it over my head, and the water steamed off me. She retook my hand and began to guide me.

A blur of colors and beating wings whipped across my face and broke my spell of staring into the smiling woman’s face. Above us, a swarm of butterflies had gathered, and as my eyes drifted back down to refocus on the woman guiding me from the field, the butterflies flew down to land on her head, crowning her as she walked.

A woman in beige in the crowd was bursting with excitement about the event. As the woman guiding me walked past her, the woman in beige exclaimed, “She really will save us from A—”

The winged woman guiding me stopped as the crowd hushed the beige woman in a frantic fashion, several children going as far as to put their fingers to her mouth. The woman covered her mouth and turned to slink away from the crowd.

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Zamai, the smiling, winged woman, had a lovely place I could've stayed at “until I got my bearings”. It was one of the little cottages surrounding the Pocket where all the flying Flitters lived, and out there she had a modest grape farm, two moody sheep named Dina and Paula, and a girl who lived with her named Tiara.

A grandiose, bejeweled palace stood near Zamai’s house that glittered in the hot sun. Outside the palace stood a readied, armored soldier with a large sword reaching skyward.

I thought Zamai's house adorable, and Tiara thought me perfect. She’d taught me how to make honeycomb that could mend broken bones, figure out which flowers in a garden were the flowerhead moles and dig them up, and sing so that the birds carried our grape baskets back to Zamai’s house for us all by noon. But Zamai insisted that (in that narrow-eyed, small-smiled way of hers that I always listened to so adamantly) I go down the hill into the grassy, circular valley to stay with one of the Pocket-dwellers named Min.

Tiara seemed sadder to see me go, and she gave me nearly seventy kisses before she finally left Min’s little house. But Zamai squeezed my hand so hard, I felt the warmth of her gentle hand hit my bones, and she placed one, smiley kiss on my forehead before she left me in the Pocket with Min.

She was an older woman, who actually only had one, six-year-old child named Monday, but from the way a baby named Norman clung to her, you would’ve believed Norman was hers. The rest of the young villagers Min taught were also extremely fond of her, and they stayed at her small home near the center of the Pocket for hours after their schooling was over, playing in the blistering heat.

They all also seemed to think, in addition to the playground Min had behind her school/home, that I was a new playtime amenity. I always had at least three children trying to attach to me in one way or another.

It was hours later the first day I stayed with Min when all the kids had finally left, so late that Monday and I had to bathe and head straight to bed.

I hauled him on my back to bed, and he tried to tell his mother “Goodnight!” before we went to back into the room, but Min had fallen, mouth-open, eye-flickering asleep in the rocking chair where she sat and read to the kids.

“Ah well,” Monday shrugged, “I’ll tell her goodnight the morning.”

I dumped Monday off my back on his bed, and he scooted into the crack where the wall met the bed. There was still plenty of space in the bed between me and him, and he reached his hand out to hold mine, as if he hadn’t got his fill of me when he was tied around my leg all day.

He closed his eyes and told me sleepily, “My mommy sleeps here, the one night a week she doesn’t fall asleep in the chair.”

I took his hand and looked above me at his headboard, which was covered in a bright green moss like nearly everything else in the house. Munching on the moss, there were aerofish, suspended and swimming in the air with scaly, shimmery moss scales falling down their backs as they floated. On the ceiling, light bugs flew and gently illuminated the dark, pitched roof.

In the darkness, I regretfully started my investigation, knowing that this was the most privacy I would get in the coming days.

“Who used to sleep in this big bed?” I asked Monday.

“My dad…” he began, and his eyes snapped back open. He almost stopped himself from saying, “I miss him...a lot…”

“What happened to him?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. After a pause, he finally said “He didn’t get chosen—”

It seemed like he wanted to go on, but he shivered as the wind picked up, and the howling breeze seemed to shush us both.

He was shivering alone on the other side of the bed, and I scooted closer to him and cradled his head, rustling his tightly curled hair as I hugged him to my chest and closed my eyes.

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“Mini Me…MINI ME!”

I startled awake to see Tiara flying overhead at the window in Monday’s room, waving and beaming at me from outside. Her blond locs jumped around on her head as she bounced under the gleaming moonlight and waited for me to get out of the bed.

She had taken to calling me “Mini Me” even though I looked nothing like her. She had blond locs and very light skin, and her eyes were an almond shape. My eyes were very round, my hair in tight black curls like Monday’s, and my skin was much browner. I looked more like Zamai than Tiara, but Zamai had dozens of names for me that Tiara didn’t agree with (Water Baby, Gill, and several others that, admittedly, made me itch…), so Tiara took to naming me after herself.

I stood up under the window and rubbed my eye, “Hi Tiara, did Zamai say I could—”

She didn’t let me finish, waving her hand at me and blowing a raspberry, “Blah, blah, blah, I say you can come home. And home is with me, Mini Me.”

She knocked on the window one good time with her elbow, and the latch fell off. She opened the window and waved her hand over the moss that had grown inside the windowsill. The moss began to expand rapidly as she waved her hand in circles, humming along, and when it reached the floor of the bedroom, I began to climb it. Before I could climb out of the window, Tiara picked me up upside down. We both tried to quiet our giggles as we flew over the Pocket, and as she hauled me back to the outskirts where the Flitters lived, I saw a section of the Pocket that had intrigued me when Tiara and Zamai had delivered me to Min on foot.

There was an area of the Pocket that was still humming with life, even while the rest of the Pocket slept. It was a ruined area, destroyed and brown whereas the rest of the Pocket was covered with shrubs and greenery. The area was a separated by a large fence and Pocket-dwellers were constructing within the area, building homes that mirrored the rest in the Pocket.

“What’s going on over there?” I stopped giggling to ask.

Tiara pretended not to hear me.

“Tiara.”

She grumbled, “They’re just getting ready for an event. It’s some Pocket-dweller thing, we Flitters don’t get in their way.”

This didn’t satisfy me at all, “Who am I, Tiara? Why do I not know anything about myself? Why do I not have parents in the Pocket? Why was I drenched when I woke up?”

She didn’t answer.

When we got back to Zamai’s house, I played and laughed along. I frolicked with her. But I knew I had to get to that burned area.

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Tiara snuck me back into Min’s house before the morning came, and when Min got Monday dressed and told me to stay in the house because they were just going out for a couple errands, I nodded and beamed at her, as if I was actually going to stay.

When I tried to sneak out, I’d found that she’d locked all the doors, and the only way out was the moss rope, which I’d made sure to throw up onto the roof before Min saw it. I sung out to the birds outside the house, and two birds came and lowered the moss gently down to me.

When I got on the roof, the whole Pocket had awoken, and the trail they were walking in the oppressive heat led directly to the burned area. I followed them, hiding behind benches and the statue of some winged woman in the center of the Pocket, making sure Monday and Min wouldn’t see me. After a half-hour, they reached the fence that lined the area, a man in robes came out from the fence, where the construction workers were still pounding away, with a thermometer and a big, black book in hand.

It was dead silent.

He cleared his throat, and announced the number on the thermometer, “Fifty-one degrees Celsius.” He put the device away under his robes, and there was a cry from the crowd. “Three days until His return.”

Chaos broke out.

People began to weep and faint. Some began to sprint back to their homes

The man closed his black book and announced, “As always, all with a green note on their front door will live. May God be with you.”

Min grabbed Monday’s arm and the two sprinted home. I followed them, pleading with Min to tell me what was going to happen.

When we got to the doorstep and saw the red note on Min’s moss-covered door, Min fell to her knees and tears poured down her cheeks.

She spent the entire day, in her rocking chair, eyes wide and stoic, drinking. I stayed and caressed her hand. Every now and again she would mutter things incoherently.

“But I had a child…a young child…and He was just here…less than a decade ago…this can’t be…what will She do…?”

People came from the big, bejeweled palace to collect people from homes with green notes, and those in the green-note homes wept even harder when they were not taken as well.

Tiara did not come for me.

So I went for her.

I marched out from the weeping Pocket up to the outskirts and into the dining hall where the Flitters were gathered for dinner. They were still joyous as they always were, but not as much as they had been yesterday when I’d spent time with them.

When I threw the doors of the hall open, they went silent.

“Who is He?” I asked them, and they kept looking down. Tiara’s were the only sad eyes who met mine, “And who is She?”

They all began to mutter about how it was just some Pocket-dweller thing, and I shouldn’t be concerned about it. They continued to avert my gaze.

“He is Azurus, and She is the Queen.”

My head snapped to the voice. It was Zamai, and she was not smiling. She had on long robes, much like the ones the man at the burned area was wearing, except hers were light pink.

“I’ve tried…just like you did…to reason with her…” Zamai trailed on, and started again when she realized she was not making sense. “I did this to you. It is my fault you are here, without your memories, and without your wings. A long time ago…I had the chance to be queen. I was next in line, but I gave the throne to your mother, because I was scared of the responsibility, so I passed it on to her. But I was foolish. Amira is callous, and I thought that was necessary to be a ruler. But she is heartless. She will never stand up to Azurus because she can keep them in line that way, the Pocket-dwellers. She knows that they fear Azurus and he will always return, so they try to stay in her good graces to avoid his hunger, his…feast upon the Pocket. But he is coming back more frequently now. Your mother knew months ago he was returning again in the same decade, she wanted you to chose who lived. You wanted her to fight, to protect them. But…she saw your bravery as insurrection. She thought you a coward, for not having the resolution to harness complete power. She tried to hire Tiara, any of us, to rid you of your memory and set you down the river sleeping and lost...banish you to another land far away. But I could not let Tiara do it. So I volunteered. But Amira became obsessed. She began sending someone every day to look for you, to make sure you were safely drifting away. Amira loves only you. She allowed me to find you and bring you back. She told me to put you with a family, she didn’t want to know with who, and you would understand the pressure and the sacrifice of a ruler. Power comes with sacrifice.” She was looking down, still without a smile.

As I left the dinning hall, I put my hand on hers, and I went off toward the Pocket.

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I slept at Min’s house, and she did not get out of be to dress Monday.

The guards at the palace did not stop me when I stormed up the palace steps into the big room where my mother was standing, holding one small child in her arms as the rest of the children she’d “saved” from the Pocket stood clinging to her robes. They were all very young and fearful.

She had a sharp face, and her robes were a deep red color that matched the red tint on her delicate wings. Her crown was made of the deep black braids on her head that were intertwined with diamonds and bejeweled chains.

“You are a villain,” I told her.

She sighed deeply and refused to look at me, staring out the enormous window of the palace and looking down at the Pocket. Ash had begun to rain over the village.

“I understand power. I understand that ultimate power cannot be gained by standing in a palace and wearing a crown. Fear is the best source of power.”

“And what will you do with your power when you have no more people?”

Now she turned and grimaced at me, “I will take the rest of the Flitters and find more people, more people who have no idea how to survive, and I will have them build me another, better palace, while they work, and eat because they worked.” She turned away from me again, “You misunderstand, Adina. The Pocket-dwellers have food and knowledge because they work. Besides, Azurus must eat and he will always come. You would never speak to me in such a disrespectful tone if you had witnessed the horrific dragon that he is.”

“…You will never understand power and sacrifice…because you are too scared to have anything to lose.”

I left the palace. I took the big sword from the empty suit of armor outside the palace, and I walked down to the center of the Pocket. The sky burned hotter as I stood there, under my mother’s statue, waiting.

After a while, Pocket-dwellers gathered. They stood beside me, looking at the sky. Flitters came down from the outskirts, and they stood with me. Tiara squeezed my hand as a roar sounded in the distance.

I felt intense heat flow through my body, and my wings erupted from my back as the enormous blade of the sword was coated in flames in my hand. The first fireball rained down from the sky.