Lily of the valley

11

Josie did not speak on the walk back to Katherine and Lily's chambers, they were shaken. The strange palace of jewels kept getting more and more peculiar, the Queen was impossible to work out and it made her terrifying.

"What were you and the Queen smoking Josie?" Lily tried to ask but Josie did not hear it, or did not want to hear it. She just looked straight ahead and marched the women to their room. Josie's eyes were hazy, she looked absent. Katherine and Lily were increasingly uneasy, Josie did not speak one word to them until they had reached their chambers. Josie shut the door behind them, she peered through the peep hole, anxious about having been followed. The corridor was clear.

"I cannot stay long, you must find a way to escape or you'll end up slaves. I was her guest here too once." Josie spoke in hurried whispered tones,

"Why does she scare you so much?" Lily enquired. Josie checked the corridor again, pacing about the room.

"She desires power and wealth and will do anything to get it, she has done awful things."

"What things?" Josie checked the corridor again, it was empty.

"We don't have time now, I will come back tonight." Josie opened the bedroom door a slither and peered down the corridor, listening for any movement. There was only silence.

"What were you smoking?" Lily whispered across the room,

"Tonight!" Josie whispered, shutting herself out of the room and locking the door. Katherine and Lily could hear her half running down the granite hall. Katherine slumped into an armchair beside the window and looked out across the rocky wasteland, there was a gale and a swirling dust cloud on the ground. She put her head in her hands. Lily stood in the centre of the room unmoving, her gaze fixed on the grand door. There was a full silvery moon in the purple sky, it illuminated the dramatic landscape below.

"Lily, I am afraid." Katherine spoke, her hands shaking with nerves. Lily approached the princess and knelt before her, she rested her head in Katherine's lap and Katherine wove her fingers into Lily's hair.

"So am I. We will survive this, I promise." Lily kissed the backs of Katherine's hands.

Across the castle Queen Isolde sat in her chambers, alone, as she always was. Drinking wine and smoking dope. Isolde gazed up at the same moon Katherine looked upon, her mind was full of delectable fog. There was an unexpected and jarring knock at the door, it started her.

"Enter." Isolde called out, keeping her eyes fixed up at the sky. A knight entered the chamber, he removed his helmet to take in the beauty of the strange queen that he had so long served under. The knight threw his sword to the ground, in surrender. The clamour caused the Queen to turn to look at him, she took in the sight of the discarded weaponry and the determined, brave face of the knight.

"I recognise you from somewhere. Tell me your name." Isolde held out a goblet of wine to the man but he did not take it.

"Doesn't matter, I do not fight for you anymore." Isolde raised her eyebrow to him.

"How did you get in here anyway?" The Queen gestured to the armchair beside her, it was so rare that she had engaging company. The knight sat beside her but still would not drink, he wanted to keep his head.

"I am wearing your sigil, the guards let me move about the palace freely." They both sat and looked out over the wasteland, they admired the moon and the stars.

"And, I am curious, how did you know where to find me?"

"Whenever I would be on night watch down in the valley I would look up and watch your silhouette in the turret window, I wanted to see you properly for myself."

"And... am I everything you imagined?" Isolde smirked over her goblet, seductive with her fierce green eyes and red lips.

"Like a vision from a dream your majesty." The Queen rested her hand, very lightly, upon the knight's knee.

"Then why, pray tell, do you wish to leave my army?"

"I have seen your war, I have seen thousands die for you and for what? I am sorry your majesty but I want no further part in it." Isolde pulled her hand away from his knee and leant back in her chair. "What are they fighting for? Is it all for fun? For wealth?" Queen Isolde's face turned stony, she withheld all emotion from her expression. She could not however hide the rage and despair in her eyes.

"You wouldn't understand." The knight placed his hand upon the Queen's and she recoiled.

"I could try to?" Queen Isolde picked up her packed pipe and lit it with a match, she inhaled and her eyes glazed over.

"I am in pain, that's all there is to it really."

"Slaughter does not ease pain." Isolde placed the ornate pipe back upon her side table.

"No... it does not. However, with the right resources killing pain can be as simple as breathing. And war pays for those resources." The knight looked with disdain at the powder pipe.

"It is a sad life, always running from the pain instead of facing it and conquering it." Isolde was not impressed by the knights brash assessment of her.

"Would you like to try some?" The Queen gestured towards her pipe.

"Absolutely not! I desire freedom and happiness, that is quite the opposite." The knight could not take his eyes off the drug contraption, his old addictions sang in his head and in his lungs.

"Do you think I am not free?"

"You could be. If you stopped being a slave to the dragon. You could find happiness." Queen Isolde smiled a wry smile, her eyes were full of a long felt sadness.

"There is no happiness left in this world for me." She swilled the wine in her glass.

"That's what the drug wants you to think."

"The drug doesn't want anything!" Isolde raised her voice, it was not quite a shout, her defensive irritation came out against her control. She calmed herself and continued, "it is just a drug."

"Think what you will your majesty."

"Where will you go? What will you do?" Queen Isolde slid her rings of emerald, ruby and gold from her fingers and placed them in an ornamental crystalline bowl.

"I'll just ride till I find somewhere, maybe I'll buy a house, maybe I'll fall in love. I want to be a good man, and I can't be that here." The Queen hummed to herself.

"That is amiable." They sat together in silence for a while, staring up at the vast purple sky. The Queen saw in the knight something that she had craved for many years, since the day she had lost it. The knight saw in the Queen not darkness or evil but a sadness and he found that he understood her, despite all her cruelties. However he did not feel that her sadness was enough to give her absolution.

"Are you happy here?" Asked the knight, unafraid of pushing Isolde's boundaries. Forgetting how the threatened beast strikes back.

"Content. That's enough." Isolde clenched and unclenched her fists, hidden away in the folds of her velveteen skirts. She worked carefully at keeping a calm and graceful composure, she would allow no one to ever see her crack.

"That is not enough."

"It is enough for me." Isolde spoke through grit teeth, she did not like having her lifestyle questioned, it felt like an attack.

"Leave with me?" The knight rested his hand upon Isolde's knee, she felt the familiar flurry of romance. It had been so long, she had sat in the balcony of her chambers on many a night and dreamt of sweet love.

"Stay the night?" She looked him in the eye for the first time, he had lovely eyes, they were golden and seemed to glow in the candlelight. His mouth was pink and shapely. Looking at him the Queen could feel her heart pounding in her chest, it was a restless, foolish thing. She wanted to fall, head first into his world, she wanted to be consumed by her divine delight. The knight nodded, he leant towards the Queen and pressed his lips against hers, her mouth tasted of wine. They stayed up together all night, talking and drinking and fucking. They swam in all the golden power of fresh love, it bowled them over, they could have swallowed each other whole.