A short story originally written for English class, but it was too long. It needs a lot of work. Help, please?
Would anybody believe her?
"Apaula, stop it," her own mother says now. "It is such a foolish tale to keep telling. Please, dear, grab a dishrag and start washing. The King isn't keeping us around for nothing."
In the dimly-lit room, Apaula can just barely make out her mother's sout figure. Though it's heavily built, it moves almost flawlessly through the room, the rags that she considers clothes flowing around her like a heavenly robe of somesort. Her beautiful golden hair is held up by twigs with bright purple flowers on them, and a few perfectly curly, golden strands fall from her hair and rest above her perfectly bronzed shoulders. Her soft brown eyes are focused on a large, dirty dish, with visible black spots showering it. She picks up her dishrag, which too has spots, and throws one at Apaula.
"Mom, it's no tale!" objects the young girl, trotting up to her mother. Her own curly, gold hair, is not restricted by a hair tie and bounces around her freely. "I swear to the King himself, it's not!"
Immediately her mother's face becomes stern. "I wish to hear no talk of swearing to the King. Listen here, get back to your dish washin'. I ought to paddle you for idleness. Just finish up these dishes and you can go tell little Mith your fantasy." She gives the dish to her daughter and, with a look that says she can't stay here and listen to this nonesense any longer, she leaves the room. On her way out she picks up the basket of dirty laundry by the door, and slips outside, letting the sunlight in for only a milli-second before it's hidden behind the door again.
Only after her mother's gone does Apaula whisper, "Maybe I will tell Mith." She examines the dish her mother gave her, sighs, bends over the warm tub of water her mother provoides for her everytime she washes her dishes, and begins her washing. In her mind, she tries to think of telling Mith. But she knows that he won't believe her.
Wouldn't anyone believe her? Wouldn't anyone care?
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Mith is sitting by the moat, looking into it, as he always does. He's trying to guess what lives deep down in there. He kneels to the water's edge and looks into the inky black water, watching it slowly swirl and move in the cool autumn wind. He shivers as the wind picks up gusto.
Most childern are inside right now, but not him. A little wind wouldn't scare him off. In fact, if there was something he would like to do, nothing could stop him. Not rain, not snow, not sleet--so certainly not a little cool breeze could keep him from simply being outside, could it?
He almost expects he's going to be alone all day, until he hears a little voice calling his name. He freezes, and his frozen stature has nothing to do with the cold air. He looks up slowly.
There, running over to him, is Apaula. Her long, beautiful gold hair flying about her in the autumn wind as it always does, her postively perfect green eyes sparkling as they always do, her slim figure holding itself upright when it looks like it would fall down if someone merely blew on her, as usual. But Mith knows better. Apaula is tough. Like him, she will not let anything stop her from doing what she wants to. This is the only thing to the two friends have in common.
"Mith!" she calls again, in that little clear as a bell voice he loves so well.
"Apaula," he greets, and then realizes his voice is all scratchy. He clears his throat quickly.
"Did the wind dry your words out?" Apaula teases, sitting down next to him.
"Yes," he lies.
"Mith, I have something important to tell you!" Apaula says. Her cheeks are rosy in excitement--or is it from the cold air?--and she bounces around slightly, as if these words are just gonna burst from her.
Mith smiles in his crooked, off-hand way. "Well, go on now, tell me."
Immediately Apaula looks worried. "This is an unbelievable tale, Mith... even my mother refused to believe it..."
Mith laughs. "Remember three years ago, when your mother wouldn't believe that we were friends, when we've been friends since we couldn't speak?"
Apaula smiles. Whenever Mith calls her a 'friend,' it brings a certain comfort to her. "Yes, yes. Alright. Well... last night, in the middle of the night, I heard a noise."
"What kind of noise?"
"I'll tell you in a moment, wait till the end! Okay, so, it sounded like someone was coming in, and..."
"It was a burglar. They stole your stuff, kidnapped your mother, summoned a dragon, and flew to the oceans." Mith's eyes sparkle.
"Stop it!" Apaula says, yet she's grinning.
"Okay, no more interupptions. Continue?"
Apaula waits for a second, to make sure he won't interuppt again, then goes, "Alright, so, of course, I go to see who it is. I step outside, and what I find scares me deeply." She pauses, and then gives Mith a look full of seriousness. "It was an angel, Mith."
Mith can barely speak. "An... angel?"
"Yes, an angel. He called himself 'Gabriel'. He said he had important news. He said that the King and the Queen would go into a war in the next week or so. He said that I had to stop it. I had to talk them out of it. Or else..."
"Or else what?" For probably the first time in his life, Mith gives Apaula a serious look.
"Or else all will be lost. And then he left, Mith. He left me outside. And I know it wasn't a dream, because just to make sure..." She reaches into her pocket and slowly, and carefully, pulls out a bright orange maple tree leaf. "I took this from the ground when our conversation was over, the ground where he was standing, so that when I woke up and saw it on my bedside, I'd know. And it couldn't of been a person, Mith, look. Does this leaf look like someone walked on it?"
Mith tells the honest answer. That answer is, "No." It is perfect, as if the King himself has just constructed it and put it on one of the trees. Mith gaps at Apaula wordlessly. She gaps back.
The silence hangs almost omoniously in the cool autumn air. Apaula waits for Mith to say something, and he waits for her to say something, but finally Apaula is the one who speaks.
"What do I do?" She sounds defeated.
"I guess you should tell the King," Mith says. He mostly says this because he doesn't know what else to say.
"No, no, the King wouldn't believe me," Apaula frets. "He'd get mad at me. We've all always asked the King for help, and sometimes he says, 'Wait,' but this can't wait." Apaula stands up and stares into the moat, her decision made up, and clearly showing on her face. "I'm going to talk to the Queen."
Mith stands up as well. "I'm going with you," he says. He knows it would do no use to try to talk her out of it.
But Apaula looks at him, as if she wants to talk him out of it. Immediately he adds, "I know it's going to be long, hard, difficult, and what-not... but I'm going. And that's final."
Apaula grins. "Alright," she says. "We need to leave tonight if we should travel to the Queen's castle in time. You bring clothes for you, and I'll bring clothes for me and, hopefully, enough food for the both of us." Apaula bites the side of her lip. "I'm working kitchen duty tonight, but I don't know how much baked stuff I can get."
"I'm clearing the plates for the King's bonquet," Mith immediately puts in. "I can take some food off of the plates. You girls always make too much for them to eat." Mith sticks his tongue out at Apaula.
Apaula laughs. "Alright, alright. I'll probably be in my room by the time you start clearing off plates, though, so don't expect seeing me then. How 'bouts you come out here, right in this exact spot, after your shift?"
"Fine by me," Mith says, "I'll take my clothes over to the bonquet and come straight over. How will you get away?"
"There's a window in my room." Apaula winks, and Mith feels his face turn red. "I'll see you soon." She turns and, before Mith can even say goodbye, disappears into the castle.
----
It seems like centeries later, Apaula sits up from her bed. It's late at night, she can tell, because she can't feel the moonlight pressing against her eyes anymore. She slowly eases herself out of her bed and looks out the window.
The chilly night air comes and sweeps her hair back. She takes a deep breath. More suddenly then the cold air hit her, the realization of what she is doing hit her. She is running away from home. She is going to the one person in the entire world she is forbidden to ever go see.
But she still climbs out of her window, with her bag full of food and clothes slung over her shoulder. She glances back at her house, only once, and then walks straight up to the moat to find Mith. The second the two find each other, they begin their adventure.
Mith leads. He somehow seems to know where they're going. When Apaula asks, he simply says, "Oh, there's an old tale that says 'the Queen lies to the east and plans our defeats...' So I'm just hoping that's true."
So the two travel on. The moment Apaula realizes where they're going, she walks next to Mith, but there really isn't much to speak of, so they don't say anything.
They follow a winding road thorugh a long, open valley. The moment the sun rises, the entire valley comes alive. The wind comes and blows the grass, and Apaula and Mith can't walk side-by-side anymore, or Apaula's hair will get in his face. So he leads, and the two share an understood silence.
There comes a time when both is so cold that they wish to stop, but neither want to admit that they're cold to the other. Apaula, though, begins to shake wildly. Not only is she cold, but she has a pecuilar feeling... as if she just lost everything dear to her.
The journey is surprisingly short. Both childern think that the Queen's kindgom is far away, or at least difficult to get to. But it is neither. It gives Apaula a simply terrifying feeling--it was as if the Queen was prowling right by, just getting ready to strike.
Mith stops and points in the distance. "There," he says, speaking the first words in a few hours. "That's the castle."
"Yes." Apaula has already spotted it. The castle itself, too, is surprising to the child.
The castle is a deep, luxirous red. There is no ominious smoke hanging over it, no scary noises drifting to them from the castle. It is not as foretold. It is foretold ugly, scary, disguisting, hopeless. But Apaula finds it's none of those things... in fact, it's pleasing to the eye.
---
As they approach the castle gates, Mith looks back to see Apaula's reaction. She's examining the castle in a crucial way, as she must examine everything. Apaula catches him looking at her and smiles. He looks away.
They walk up to the gates and is shocked to find nobody there. Not a guard, not a townsperson--nobody guarding the gate to the castle. "Hello?" Mith calls. He wraps his fingers around the almost frozen gate. "Hello?!"
As if on que, a beautiful woman walks up to the gate. She is tall, with long, black, glossy hair. Her dark brown eyes are peircing, and she has on bright red lipstick. Her skin almost looks pure white. She is almost deathly skinny.
"Hello, darlings," greets the woman in an unclear voice. She walks up to the gate and, taking keys from her large, red cloak, opens the gate.
"Uh... hi," Mith says warily.
"Who are you?" Apaula hides behind Mith.
"I am the Que-e-en," says she in her dizzy voice. She gestures them in the gate with a quick wave of the hand.
Mith and Apaula share a look. "Shouldn't you be in the castle?" asks Mith, in almost a 'you better get back to the castle now' way.
The Queen gives a terrifyingly beautiful smile, and it sends a shiver up Apaula's spine. "I knew you were coming."
Apaula's heart beats wildly. Mith looks too shocked to move. As the kids stand there, paralyized, the Queen laughs. Her laugh is like her smile--terrifyingly beautiful.
Apaula and Mith both share the same wild urge to turn back and run. But neither do.
"Why are you here?" The Queen brushes her hair off her shoulder, letting the wind catch it for a beautiful moment before letting it fall on her shoulder.
"I... we..." Apaula can't control her words.
"We're here to warn you about a war. It's going to take place soon." That's all Mith says. That's all Mith knows.
The Queen laughs. "I know about the war."
The kids share another look. "You do?"
"Yes, of course." Immediately the Queen waves them over. "Right this way, please."
The two childern follow, as if they have no choice. In reality, it almost feels as if they don't. She leads them through the courtyard, towards a small shed-looking house.
"Where's all the people?" Mith wonders aloud.
"They're away," says she, but even in her uneven voice it sounds as if she doesn't seem to care.
Both Apaula and Mith are postively shocked. So far, nothing had been going the way they thought it would be. And a whole kindgom, abandoning their queen? That was very unlikely, very unlikely indeed.
As they approach the shack, Mith gets a crazy feeling as if he should grab Apaula and run for the hills. His eyes glint around, and he realizes something he hadn't seen before--there are people lurking around the castle. People are there! The thought of them staring at him and Apaula scares him deeply, so deeply he's terrified he's going to shake.
He stops and pulls Apaula close. "We need to go," he announces.
"But you've only just gotten here," says the Queen, in her oddily discordant yet soothing voice.
. Apaula, too, looks shocked. She seems to not have the same feeling as Mith. But as an odd sense of de za vou takes over him, Mith realizes something--if they don't leave soon, this story will not have a happy ending.
"We need to go," he repeats.
"But we were going to finish discussing your little war thing in the shack." The Queen seems disappointed, yet there seems to be a meaning underneath her disapointment.
"We need to go." As Apaula continues to pour her confused look on him, he jolts his heads to the shadows of an oak tree a few miles away. Apaula's eyes go to it, and she squints at it until her eyes widen in realization.
"We need to go," she agrees, and grabs Mith's hand as she turns to run.
But she hasn't even gotten ten feet before the the Queen explodes, "GUARDS!" As if put there for such a command, the people emerge from the shadows and pursue the childern. Apaula screams and stops dead in her footsteps as the guards pile in from all directions. Hundreds, thousands of them. And they were all hiding in the shadows... just waiting to strike.
Mith has an urge to grab Apaula and run through the guards, but the only place that will get him is death. So he stands there, shaking with anger and the pain of trying to accept that he has been defeated. Apaula, though, has no such thought running through her mind yet. At the moment, she is simply terrified.
Mith knows he should be scared, but his fear is shrouded by his anger and terror of being defeated like that. He hadn't even fought, but they won. There was nothing he can do about it. And that, to him, made him more angry than he could deal with.
A few of the guards, distinguished from the others by wearing a large red axe on their armor, step forward. The Queen just merely jolts her head towards the shack, and they obey. They walk up to both the frozen Apaula and the fighting Mith and first takes their bags with their food and clothes in it, then throws them into the shack. This angers Mith even more--even if he hadn't of noticed the guards, he would of been defeated by the Queen for just going in here. Either way, he lost. He can't deal with it.
"Keep a twenty-four seven watch on these," says the Queen, in a very differnet voice then the one she had addressed Mith and Apaula in. This one sounds much more clear, together. "They're from the King. And you know what we do from those of the King."
The guards chuckle, but stop abruptly after the Queen's footsteps die away.
And they the leave the two childern alone in darkness and silence.
---
Apaula paces the length of the room, promising herself she will not cry. She isn't alone. Mith is here. And he's muttering to himself, trying to take his anger out of his mind through his mouth. But the words bounce off the walls and go back into his ears, and right back into his mind. Apaula tries telling him that, but in an action that proves her point entirely, he yells back that he doesn't need anyone telling him what to do. And keeps on muttering.
Apaula, in a way, feels betrayed. She knew the Queen for maybe five awkward moments, but the Queen had neither shown nor suggested harmful or rude actions. Apaula is sure imprisioning two childern under the age of adulthood for no aparent reason was classified as a harmful or rude action. She interuppts Mith to ask him about it.
"Mith, this is illegal. We did nothing wrong."
"Yes, we did," he says, slightly annoyed. "We're from the opposite kindgom and we came to warn her about a war." He tries to mutter again, but she interuppts him.
"Yes, but we didn't do anything wrong against the Queen."
"We're from the opposite side. She could arrest us for trespassing."
"She let us in!"
"Well she's cold, Apaula." His voice tells her he's at the end of his patience. "She's cold, decieteful, evil, fake, rude, retarded, unloving. But does that help the situation we're in at all? No, it does not. Just because she arrested us unfairly, does that mean that the King that we betrayed is going to come save us? No, it does not. It means that we're going to rot in here, in a little tiny shack with nothing to eat but this pile of hay I'm sitting on, and we'll never see our family or our homes or the kingdom we come from ever again! We're never going to have a family, we're never going to hear our parents laugh or see anything for this wretched darkness clouds everything. We'll lose our sight, our hearing, our lives. There! Is that what you wanted to hear?!"
Tears sting Apaula's eyes. She sits on the ground, defeated. She bites her quivering lip, but she doesn't respond.
The silence stretches on.
Neither Apaula or Mith are quite sure how long they spend in silence. Time no longer has any essence. Apaula leans her head back on the cold, hard wall, and closes her eyes. She pictures bright, happy pictures to keep her memory of colors from fading, but even so, the memories begin to fade. She sleeps some, but her dreams torment her. They are all about one thing--her betraying the King. She can't handle thoughts of that.
Neither talks to the other. They feel like they're dieing slowly, alone, in the darkness, but both of them seem to have forgotten how to speak to the other. The days when they spent in the sun, speaking, laughing, is nothing but a memory in a photobook, to be looked upon and smiled at, but then to be locked away and not re-lived. Soon, though, they both forget the other is there. And very soon, they feel nonexistance... as if the existance of their life has always been living in the darkness, with nothing but nightmares to torment them, and never anything else. Soon, Apaula herself forgets about the King, but nightmares still come. They're vague, and she can never remember them, and soon, she isn't even sure what memory is, or if she remembers anything. A lonely, confusing, and not even accurcate existance. But it is still hers, and his.
And yet they live on, without food or water, as if they don't need anything to live. How they do it, they don't know. It doesn't bother them, though. To them, that's the way they've always lived, and the way they will always live. They can't contemplate on it, because for some reason, the silence and darkness ruined their minds.
But everything changes very quickly.
Apaula and Mith are both asleep when the door opens, but they both awake as one would when a stereo was being blasted and all the lights were flipped on. And they can't even move for a few seconds.
The lonely door of the shack is open. Moonlight is pouring in. It's the first light they've seen in forever, and it feels like the light straight from Heaven. There's a man speaking to them, but they don't understand him, because they don't remember anything. They don't even know what a man is. They look at each other, and the realization comes back.
Memories fly back into the mind so quickly it hurts both childern's heads. Within moments, Apaula bursts into tears of recoginition and throws her arms around Mith. He hugs her back, and whispers his, "I'm sorry," for the last outburst. But to Apaula, his apology means more than just the last outburst. Apaula accepts his apology with a tighter squeese.
Whomever opened the door for them doesn't interuppt for only a few seconds, but then says, "Childern, we must make haste if we are to escape alive. Come out here, I have a horse tied to the ground."
The childern jump up, and it takes them a few seconds to remember how to walk again, but the second they do they follow the broad-shouldered man. His brown hair is waving over his head, and he has a short beard of the same brown that both his eyes and hair share. He turns a sharp corner and they find a white horse tied to the ground. He leaps onto it with one quick bound and then extends his hand to Apaula.
Apaula stares up at him, shocked. The rememberence of him came last to her memory, but now that it came...
"Your Majesty," she gushes gracefully, giving a quick curtesy. "It's a, um, honor to meet you... um... here." Apaula's eyes look around.
"Yes, yes," says the King kindly. "But please, make haste, child. We must hurry if we are to get out of here alive."
So she takes his hand, bright red, and lets him help her up on his horse. He helps Mith up too, and then rides off.
Once again, the town is deserted. "Dare I ask where all the people are?" is Mith's first question.
"They're in the war," the King says sadly, as if he feels badly for the people of the opposing side as well.
"The war?" Apaula is shocked, and terrified at the same time.
"Yes, my love," he says softly. "The war started a day after you left. It's been going on for much too long, now."
"Why were they fighting?" Apaula asks softly.
"Well, there was always tension mounted up between the Queen's people and mine," he sighs. "And... then when you two were captured, it kind of put it over the top, you could say. We've been trying to get you back. They wouldn't tell us where you were. But it's alright, because we have you now."
"No, it's not," Apaula refuses. "I'm sorry, your Majesty, but I would like to know more. Why wouldn't they tell you where we were? And because you have us, is the war over?"
"They wouldn't tell us where you were because they wanted someone in return for you, and they didn't want us breaking in and taking you. And no, the war won't end because you two are here. See, the war never really started. The war has always been going on--emotionally, mentally. Since the dawn of time, it's been going on. And until the sun sets for it's last time, it'll be going on."
There was a pause that came from his dramatic answer. But finally, Mith broke the silence: "Who on Earth did they want for us?"
The King takes a deep, shaking breath, and says, "My son."
Apaula looks at him, shocked. "And, did you...?"
"Yes," the King says. "I gave them my son. But do not despair, childern. I did it out of love for you, and knowledge. For the Queen believes that taking away my son will also take away the kindgom." He gives a hearty chuckle. "She is wrong. The Kingdom will never die. It will always truely live on, in the hearts of people who love me, in the lives that they live. The kindgom will live forever. It will reign always."
As the horse disappears into the cloak of night, Apaula looks back, only once. She remembers when she first saw the castle, how it looked pleasing to the eye, how it looked beautiful. And still, it is pleasing to the eye, but she feels utter disguist as she looks at the castle. It had always been there, but the disguist had been covered by curiosity and longing. But now, she truely saw and understood that nothing on the entire world could ever look so ugly. And then, looking at the King's face, she decided that nothing on Earth could ever look so beautiful.
