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Melody reeled back from the memories, stumbling, or sinking, or falling into the technicolor sea. She writhed away, twisting, sprinting, trying to find a safe place, but memories were everywhere. The garden trampled by looters who had held them at the end of a sword while they took everything. In every bubbles flickering images, her brother pale and lifeless while they lowered him into the ground, her sister married to a man twice her age on the simple promise she lived at the capital, safe from the borders. A baby sister lost to illness, easily curable if the trade routes were not plagued by bandits. Everywhere a tragedy, as real as life, the stepping stones of a life marked by escapes in the night, empty promises of safety and fearful eyes on the horizon.
Melody span and found a bubble at eye level. It popped in her face, washing her with memory.
“What’s a king?” She asked, picking up a piece of firewood.
Her father grunted, axe coming down hard, splitting another log. “A king is the man in charge of a country.”
She was thirteen, with all the confidence that it entailed. “Could I be the king?”
Her dad snorted, the closest he ever got to laughter. “You’d do a better job than the emperor. But you’d be a queen.”
“Am I still in charge?”
Another grunt, another log reduced to firewood. “Sure. Haven’t had a queen since the witch queen of old though.”
“Would we have to move all the time if I was a witch queen?”
“I assume not. Probably all live in the capital. Falling behind on the firewood Mel.”
She scurried to gather and stack the pieces. “Was she a good queen?”
Her father shrugged as he set another log into place. “Long time ago songbird. She was a real queen though, five hundred years of peace. There wasn’t a man alive who dared invade while she held the throne.”
“I want to be a witch queen.”
Her father snorted again. “And I want to finish the firewood before dark. Keep moving songbird.”
