Queen Lila

The trip to King Arthur Park was a yearly treat for the fourth graders of St. Olga Elementary. Lila had been looking forward to it since her brother had gone two years before. Two years felt like a long time for someone so young. It had felt like a long time to her family too, as they had to hear her excited rambling more often than anyone else.

It wasn’t often that the kids got to go on field trips. The school district didn’t have a lot of money to spend on things like that, and all of the money they managed to raise usually went to building repairs or basic supplies. But the park was the one treat that they refused to take away from the children.

Lila was eagerly awaiting her chance to enjoy some fresh air. She was tired of the classroom. She was tired of hearing about history and politics while she watched the paint on the walls peel in front of her. Her parents had taught her that the government was supposed to fund the school. How was Lila supposed to sit and learn about how great they were when they failed the one job that she knew they had? 

Lila hated how powerless she felt. She was just a child, after all. She had to sit and watch as the adults around her seemed to fail again and again. She knew they were trying their best, but they just couldn’t seem to effectively get things done. But she couldn’t do anything either. Who would listen to her? She hadn’t even finished fourth grade. She didn’t even really understand taxes or how a car worked. Of course she didn’t have any power in the world.

Her classroom only seemed to remind her of that fact more. That was part of the reason that she was excited for the change in environment. Perhaps the park would feel better.

It was a beautiful park. The trees were large, so large that Lila couldn’t even imagine how old they were. The flowers that grew at the edges of the paths were well tended and in the middle of the most beautiful bloom. The bright greens, reds, and purples were nothing like the dull off-white that the classroom walls were painted. It felt new and wonderful. The way that the brand new picture books Lila had gotten for Christmas a few years ago had felt. 

The statues in the park were her favorite. They seemed to call to her as her teachers lectured about food chains and water cycles. The old, cracking stone felt familiar to her in a way that she couldn’t begin to understand. The moss that grew across them seemed far more interesting than the carefully cultivated flowers around her. She wanted to run her fingers across the cracks in the stone, but she knew better than to wander off when she was supposed to be paying attention to her teacher. 

By the time lunch came around, she had decided on a statue that interested her more than any of the others. It was the hilt of a sword, sticking out of a raw, uncarved chunk of stone. It looked so detailed that she might have almost thought it was real, if only it hadn’t been carved out of the same stone that it was resting in. She understood why it was there, of course. She had heard the story of King Arthur and the sword in the stone. It was fitting that a statue like that would be in the park named after that mythological king. 

But something about that statue drew her in. She could have sworn she saw something glimmer where it looked like there was supposed to be a gem. She wanted to get a closer look. She knew she wasn’t supposed to touch the statues, but she also knew that her teachers weren’t going to be paying very close attention during the lunch break. They had their own lunches to eat. And there just weren’t enough of them to effectively keep an eye on all of the children. 

She grabbed her lunch from the cooler that her teacher had brought. It was a brown bag with a sandwich and an off-brand juice box. She had wanted to put more snacks in that morning, but her mother had forgotten to buy any of the ones that Lila actually liked. She could never really remember what Lila liked. It bothered Lila to no end that her mother barely listened to her, but there wasn’t much that she could do. She wasn’t even tall enough to reach where her parents kept the grocery list. 

She wasn’t going to eat lunch anyway. She was too fixated on the statue to remember to eat. It was far enough from where the teachers were sitting that she was sure they wouldn’t notice what she was doing. That was what she was hoping when she set her lunch bag down, at least. That and that she wouldn’t scrape her knees too badly as she climbed up the stone. 

The air around her felt like it was buzzing as she began to climb. The stone under her fingers felt warmer than she had expected it too. Not hot enough that it hurt, but warmer than that the stone path that she had been sitting on earlier in the day. 

She was surprised when she was actually able to reach the hilt. She thought she would be too short, but it felt as though the sword was the perfect height for her. Her hand started drifting towards it before she even thought about it. She didn’t care to stop herself, though. In fact, everything about what she was doing felt right. 

When her palm met with the stone of the hilt, the illusion started falling away. The sword was real. It was shining metal and gorgeous gems. The black leather wrapping the hilt looked nearly brand new. And everything about it felt like it was exactly for her. 

She pulled the sword out without much effort. The sword was supposed to be heavy, she knew that. It looked heavy. However, it felt like it weighed almost nothing. No more than a pencil, at least. 

She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she knew she had power now. She didn’t know what kind or what she could actually do with it, but she could feel the power in every fiber of her being. And she knew what she wanted to do with it. She knew all of the things that she wanted to fix. And she knew that she wasn’t going to fail.