Re-Covered, by Kiyomi Appleton Gaines

The king had stood naked and vulnerable before his people. The only person who acknowledged the exposure was a small child, and he was quickly hushed. There were rumors that to directly look upon a member of the noble family would render one a fool, or blind, or unfit for service; it would cause one's deepest shame to be revealed, would cost one's inheritance, or render one sterile and heirless. He exposed himself to them all.

The experiment in vulnerability was not considered a success. He wanted to convey that these rumors were not true, were unfounded, yet only prevailed in terrorizing his entire kingdom. He was only a man like any other, he wanted to say. But no, his wise sister insisted, he was not like any other man. He was a ruler, and thus, he must rule. The people did not want to serve and follow a man like themselves; in fact it would be dangerous folly to do so. Common men were built for common matters, equipped for planting and harvesting, for managing crops and animals, or buying and selling and crafting goods. A king had to be above all of that, in order to oversee all of that.

"He is only a man," the child cried out in the middle of the procession, and the king had smiled at that, expecting the people to slowly acknowledge and accept this. He was a man. A man of privilege, who bore great responsibility. A man who would do everything that a man could do for them, and would uphold his duty. But a man, not a god, not one who could heal and guarantee peace and good crop yields and fertility and prosperity. He didn't control all that.

"You must learn to," his sister advised him. "If you can't, they will kill you."

That was what he was trying to avoid. Revolution had come to the next kingdom, and the entire noble house had lost their heads. Their economy had faltered, followed by a drought, and it required kingsblood to remedy. They didn't say so - the executions were secular matters of state nowadays - yet the formula held. The old ways demanded that the gods be given kingsblood when things got bad, and in return, things would get good again. After the executions, the rains had returned to the neighboring kingdom. It was hard to argue with results like that.

So the king devised a plan. He would show himself to be a mortal, frail and limited and human, just like they were. His sister advised against it. But he was king, and surely that meant something, so he did what he had decided.  

The reports trickled in over the following days. Reports of people struck blind and falling into madness. Reports of secrets revealed and the peoples' justice being meted out for social infractions, mobs descending on homes and shops.

What had he unleashed?

He sent his soldiers out to quell the riots. Even their numbers seemed diminished over the past few days, he noticed.

He called for his sister. "It can't be undone," she said.

"How do I move forward?" he asked.

She told him, "I have a robe crafted by the three spinners of old, made of golden thread, and stitched by our wisest seamstresses. It will let you pass unseen. We can go into exile and return after this has all settled down."

"Leaving won't help our people."

"Let the people help themselves. They aren't yours anymore. They don't want you except as an offering to their own fears."

There was a shift in the demeanor of his household guard as the days went by. They still watched over him, followed him as he moved from place to place, stood guard at doors and windows. Now, rather than a protective presence, he began to feel they were keeping him in.

In the council room, as he passed by, he heard the accent of the neighboring kingdom. "The time to act is now," the voice said. "The wealth of this land has been bled away, and it becomes more wasted with every day that passes. It is time for the common man to take his place before god and destiny, to be the true master of his own -"

One of his guards stepped in front of him, blocking the council chamber, and pulled the door closed. "My lord, we should continue on." The king was ushered into his audience chamber, as he was each morning. No one had come to seek audience with him since the procession.

He called for his sister again. A servant was dispatched, but she never came. He waited, he felt he was patient, and then he stopped a maid in the hall. She ducked her head, but he saw her stealing glances at his face. Her cheeks were flushed. Did she still think she shouldn't look on him? "Where is my sister?"

"My lord, she can't be found," the young woman answered. She looked over his shoulder at the guard, and then hurried along her way.

His sister must have made good on her escape, he thought. He should have gone with her when he had the chance. He needed to get some air, to sort out what all of this meant. He knew exactly what it meant, of course, but he couldn't bring himself to accept it, to even acknowledge it. At the doorway, the man guarding the door looked to the man guarding the king. They shared a wordless exchange, nodded, and then the guard at the door stepped aside, and the king stepped out into his walled garden. His sister had always loved this space, and he felt calmer here, as though he might gain the benefit of her advice simply from being in the place she had passed so many hours.

What to do? What to do? He paced and kicked a pebble along before him as he went. He had made a gamble, he had trusted in his people, and he had lost. He stretched, looked up, and over the wall he saw the upright planks of a scaffold being built. His stomach turned.  "What's being built over there?" he asked his guard.

The guard looked for a long moment, then shrugged. "We should go back inside."

The king was not allowed to return to the garden.

Walking up and down the halls of the palace made him feel caged, and so he began to take meals in his rooms. He watched out the window as the scaffold went up and when it was completed, his fears were confirmed.

The morning came when the house seemed alive with a strange new kind of energy. People walked with quickened steps. His breakfast was pushed in with a hurried lack of ceremony, and his dresser never followed. He heard the crowd gathering outside, beyond the garden walls. He could see the tops of the peoples heads and saw his ministers seated on chairs along the platform. There were also strangers there, in places of honor. One of the ministers was speaking, but he couldn't hear the words. And then a woman was led up onto the platform. The minister's voice raised. The people cheered. His sister's face was pale as the executioner lowered the noose around her neck. He saw her speak, heard her voice, but he couldn't make out the words. Then a black cloth was lowered over her face, and the trapdoor opened, and she fell. The people cheered. Though every other sound came to him muffled and distorted, he clearly heard the crack when the rope reached its limit.

A day and a night passed. No one came. He barely noticed. He couldn't tell if the pain in his gut was hunger or loss or fear. Finally someone came and cleared away the remains of his breakfast from that terrible morning. His guard came soon after that, stood just inside the door, silent.

"My sister?" the king asked.

"Gone," the guard said. He already knew the answer, he wanted to hear it though, to gauge some reaction in these people who had until so recently been his people.

"What did she say?" he asked.

"My lord..." The guard hesitated. "I don't remember..."

"Please. What did she say?"

At last the guard spoke, quietly, slowly. "I die guilty only of the name I was born to. May these gods my life is given to appease bring justice on this land. And..."  He hesitated. "And, long live the king."

The king bowed his head.

"She asked that you be given this." The guard set a bundle on the edge of the dressing table.  

"How long do I have?" the king asked.

"Tomorrow. Mid-morning," the guard answered, and stepped out of the room.

The king opened the bundle and unwrapped a finely woven cloak.

Kiyomi Appleton Gaines loves folklore and fairy tales for what they teach us about what it means to be human. This is her second story in Enchanted Conversation. She lives in New Orleans with her husband and pet fish.

Art by: Amanda Bergloff

An Illusion, by Deborah L.E. Beauchamp

She was a stunningly beautiful girl

dripping in gold and pearls

and clothing from the finest collections;

her name on everything, like an infection.

When she spoke, they gathered around,

listening to every word, to every sound,

What she says must be true,

what she wants we must do.

She had everything that they sought-after,

so they copied every move, even her laughter.

How she talked,

how she walked,

how she dressed,

how she obsessed

but they weren't any happier

perhaps less.

Nothing had changed

it was all just a game.

So be happy about who 'you' are,

it may be tragic

but that's the only magic.

Deborah L.E. Beauchamp is well past the age of a ‘new’ writer but her experience plays an integral role in her work, shaping her thoughts that she paints on the paper. Deborah writes poetry, children’s books and is a photographer.

Art by: Amanda Bergloff

Nude is the New Black, by Erin Wyble Newcomb

The Emperor is always in fashion

Because he tells us what’s new, what’s now.

This season, skin is in.

We’re naked as the day we were born, but

That’s not a simile.

It’s a statement

About where we stand between the lines

The spring and fall collections.

The Emperor is always fashioning

A new collection of lines. What’s new now?

This season’s skin is so last season,

So next season we’ll all be stripped bare, which

Is just another metaphor,

A statement regarding transparency

And reading between the lines.

Each collection embodies a new line.

Spring and fall, the Emperor is fashion,

Because he tells us so. The new and the now

Make way for next season.

We’ve got skin in this game.

That’s just a colloquialism,

A statement piece to remind us of the dangers

Springing and falling

For another collection of lines.

The Emperor fashions himself an emperor.

He’s what’s new and now and next

Because seasons are cyclical.

We always circle back to naked, which

Sounds dirty,

Except for the existential dread about the

Line between vintage and avant-garde,

Past and future, life and death.

The Emperor’s fashion is cutting edge.

It’s not new to be cloaked in power, but it’s now.

Fashion is frivolous, but—no—

Clothes make the man.

That’s an expression,

A lesson about men with cutting edges

Slicing up the lines

That clothe our fallen bodies.

The Emperor didn’t spring up out of nowhere.

He’s now. He’s next. He’s not new.

He’s a made man in a parade of sycophants.

He makes fashion, but we made the man.

That’s a warning,

Echoing through the ages about

What lines we’ll cross

Between truth and lies.

The Emperor fashions the lines because

He tells us and we listen and we want to believe

Nude is the new black.

Whose nude? And who’s nude? There is no neutral.

The naked truth is not the truth.

It’s a collection of questions.

When we will spring up? How will we fall down?

Where will we draw the line?

Erin Wyble Newcomb reads, writes, and teaches in the Hudson Valley, and she records her adventures in homeschooling at https://phdmama.com/; you can follow her on Twitter @ErinWyble. She is pleased for her work to appear again in Enchanted Conversation.

Art by: Amanda Bergloff

"But he is naked," the child chanted, by Rebecca Buchanan

Glamour shredded,

unwoven,

he stood exposed,

pale in his vanity,

feet bare and bloodied on the stones.

Sated, satisfied, 

the tailors slipped into fae,

to the sharp smile of their queen,

needle bright

as she sewed her tattered heart 

whole again.

Rebecca Buchanan is the editor of the Pagan literary ezine, Eternal Haunted Summer. When she is not writing, she likes to sit on her front porch and listen to the mad rantings of ravens.

Art by: Amanda Bergloff

The Empire's New Emperor, by Sarah Deeming

Father’s body lies in the crypt, observing the traditional three days wait to ensure he is dead and not in an enchanted sleep. He isn’t. I was there when he keeled head first into his turnip soup. I watched him for a long time just in case he needed saving, but there were no air bubbles.

So, there is no need to wait before his interment, but it doesn’t hurt me to observe this tradition, nor the one about the amount of incense that should be burnt to mask the smell of decay. Also, it gives me time to think while the capital holds its breath to see what sort of emperor I will be.

I’m not sure, if I’m honest. Father expected me to rule as he did. A change of management, not management style. He had been a stern emperor, formidable, cold, heartless. I believe it wasn’t always so, but then The Event happened, and everything changed.

Father was the only person who openly spoke of The Event. He told me he was young and foolish, listened to other people too often, and allowed them to influence his behavior too many times. Two men tried to take advantage of the situation, but Father turned their trick on them, went along with it to show that his advisers were shiftless sycophants only interested in advancing themselves.

I have my doubts. Father was not the sort of man to suffer fools. He was more likely to send them for re-education in the dungeons than parade naked through the street. Plus, no one else can speak about The Event. If anyone does, particularly in the capital, Father’s soldiers round them up. Any man, woman or child who even mentions The Event in any way other than a cunning plan by my father is re-educated in the dungeons. Except those who talk about the size of his . . . ahem, empire. They’re never seen again.

"It was a damned cold day, my boy. Takes a real man to do what I did. A real man," he would say.

My brother always agrees, nodding like his head’s loose. I don’t, but then my brother was taught to lead an army based on the emperor’s orders. I had other lessons.

A good ruler never listens to lesser men. They give petty advice because they have only petty concerns. They cannot think beyond their own gain to the good of the empire.

A good ruler has a strong army. Without a loyal armed force, a ruler is a puppet at the mercy of his court.

Do not waste time or finances on frivolous purchases. Fine clothes and good food are for weak men.

No one slanders the Emperor. To do so is to undermine the foundation of authority the empire is built on and punishable by re-education.

All small children are banned from public events.

Those were the lessons I have received since birth. My younger brother learned warfare, re-education, and to say “yes" to the emperor a lot, which is sycophantic behavior according to Father. Expressing that opinion almost got me sent for re-education. I learned to think for myself within reason. I still needed to agree with Father which is hard when you’re taught to think for yourself. I often worry that Father was more successful with my brother than me. He was never threatened with re-education.

I fidget with the stiff collar of my shirt. Father is in his armor. He never took it off except to go to bed and then he wore mail. His skin was rust-red. I have no idea how he produced children. My brother wants a continuation of Father’s style of rule because he can’t see another way. Perhaps he is the only person who doesn’t hope I will be different to Father. Father tried hard to make me another version of himself, but I don’t think I am.

Will I be sort of ruler who bans my subjects from public events because they are not afraid to speak the truth?

Am I so insecure that I torture people so they “forget” my questionable decisions?

Will I hide behind soldiers because I feel impotent in front of my own subjects?

Is there a place somewhere between taking everyone’s advice and no one’s that I should strive for?

When I was little, I crept into the forbidden room in the tallest tower. It was full of clothes, the finest I have ever seen, made of materials so soft I thought I was touching heaven. So soft, so luxurious. There are only two types of clothing in the capital, soldiers in their armor and civilians in suits like mine, black high-collared jacket and formal trousers with white shirt or blouse. There is one design for men and another for women. Don’t come here if you want a job in tailoring.

I asked my nanny about them. She said they belonged to Father. That was all. I didn’t see her again. I am sorry I never knew the man who wore those clothes, that I only knew the man who banished a woman from saying they belonged to him. I hope she was only banished.

I didn’t understand Father’s single-minded desire to rewrite history then, but I do now. He never got over the shame of being fooled into walking around the capital naked, or the realization that he meant so little to his people, they valued their jobs over his dignity. I understand why he didn’t want to be The Naked Emperor but from what I’ve seen, The Armored Emperor is no better.

I undo my top button and take the deepest breath of my life. Strange, I never realized how suffocated I was until this moment. With the weight of an empire settling on my shoulders, I feel free. There is no more fear. No heavy expectations of an iron-fisted rule. No one looking over my shoulder. Whatever I do now will be compared against a tyrant. I can’t fail.

The impulse grips me to remove all my clothes and run through the palace, screaming. I throw off my black jacket and fumble with the buttons to my shirt. I throw my shirt, and it flies like a bird. I laugh as it lands on Father’s face. Next, I grab my belt buckle. Even in our rooms, nakedness was permitted only for the briefest time while we changed into our bed clothes. I am emperor now and can do whatever I want.

In the wildness of freedom and the urge to rebel against a lifetime of oppression and repression, a voice warns me against overreacting. Doing whatever he wanted and not keeping his trousers on is what led Father to wear armor until he died. There is danger in ultimate freedom. Father learned that the hard way. I don’t want to become him, either side of him. There must be a line in the middle where respect and fear are separate, and laughter doesn’t send people to torture chambers.  

I retrieve my shirt and my jacket, fold them, and leave them covering Father’s clasped hands on his chest.

"I cannot be the emperor you wanted me to be, but I will try to be the emperor you wanted to be," I say.

I leave the crypt and find my brother outside, dressed in armor, ready to obey me. He raises an eyebrow at my state of underdress, but says nothing. Behind him, one-time advisers stare at me. I run my fingers through my hair, freeing my natural curls from the gloop used to matt them down.

"The day of Father’s interment, there will be a parade," I say. "Take the clothes from the tower and all the unused black material in the capital, and turn them into bunting, alternating color and black. I want children front and center so they can see their history. Empty the dungeons, there is no further need for re-education of my subjects. The past is the past. And someone fetch me a tailor. This suit has many qualities but I want to make a few changes. Black just isn’t my color."

My advisers are running to obey before I’ve finished speaking. Only my brother remains. This will be hardest on him.

"Go on," I say smiling, "fetch me a tailor."

Sarah Deeming is a fantasy writer who has recently been published in Timeless Tales: Arthurian Legend edition and Three Drops a Cauldron. She has loved stories since she was old enough to pick up a book and has been writing them since she could hold a pen. Follow her on Twitter @SarahLDeeming.

Art by: Amanda Bergloff

Where Did the Weavers Go, by Amelia Gorman

The Jacquard loom rode us out of cottages.

Warp gave us weapons, their eyes were sharp.

Weft urged us on in rows; we went

to war on a many stringed horse.

They took us prisoner in bright cities

with birch bars holding us in.

Our labor’s fruit, once familiar

was taken from our bodies too soon.

The air loom drove us out of our minds.

Warp whispered to us in the dark.

Weft pushed us into the sunset, word

is there are still some places without

street lights, where a weaver can still

find work. Where an emperor asks

for clothes worthy of his shine.

We’ll work our bones back up to fingers.

You asked us for the impossible wove possible.

You gave us only enough gold to twine the yards.

What would be left for us after we cover you?

We can’t feed our children nothing.

We can’t spend nothing.

Just enjoy the sun on your skin.

Just go forth in nothing

while we walk away glittering.

Amelia Gorman writes stories, poems, and code in Minnesota. You can read more of her work in Liminality Magazine, Eternal Haunted Summer, and Star*Line and find her on Twitter at @gorman_ghast.

Art by: Amanda Bergloff

A Tale Spun of Whole Cloth, by Nancy Brewka-Clark

In a valley between the wooded hills of an isle closer to the snowy glaciers of the Arctic than the warm blue waters of the Adriatic, twin sons were born to a shepherd and his wife. The babies’ noses were snubbed, their big toes were slightly shorter than the second toe on each foot, their eyes were a bright brown, and black curls covered their scalps. They both bore a black beauty mark in the shape of a crescent moon on their shoulders. Niles bore his on his right shoulder, while Giles bore his on the left, reminding their poetically inclined mother of the pages of a book pressed together to create mirror images.

Coming into the world in the wild, stormy days of early spring, when the trees had yet to unfurl a single bud but the grass was already greening, the infants were wrapped in the softest of wool blankets spun by their loving mother. She, who had never feared a blast of icy wind or drift of late snow in her life, now fretted constantly that her precious children would catch a cold and die. The shepherd, who often treated her cruelly, scorned such tender gestures, claiming that coddling would weaken his sons.

One day, against her tearful protestations, he tore the babies from the soft cocoons of their blankets, stripped them of their swaddling clothes and laid them out naked on a large sheepskin he’d spread on the grass. It was a fairly balmy day for these northern parts, but the children’s mother felt a chill.  A cloud, puffy as a gamboling lamb, glided across the sun. It cast a shadow on the infants, who were kicking their chubby legs, sucking their plump fists, and gurgling with  joy. “Behold, this is how to raise sons who are sound in mind, body and spirit,” the shepherd said to his wife.

Before she could reply, a huge black ram came charging around the corner of the old stone cottage. When it saw them it stopped short, pawing the ground ominously.

“Why, ‘tis our sooty runt,” the shepherd’s wife marveled.

“Aye,” the shepherd growled, “grown into a hideous beast.”

Born with one flaming red eye and one blazing blue and a double-cloven hoof on its rear left foot, the lamb had vanished from the fold three years ago. This caused the shepherd’s wife great grief, for, lacking infants of her own at the time, she’d nursed the weakling with a woolen cloth soaked in milk after its own mother refused to do so. Instead of hunting for it as he would any of the other lambs, the shepherd had told his wife, “The Devil take it, ‘tis a cursed thing.” And although she begged him to find it before a fox devoured it, he remained steadfast in his refusal.

With a snort like a clap of thunder, the ram lowered its massive head and scooped up the twins, Niles in the curvature of the left horn, Giles in the right. In little more than the twinkling of an eye, it was galloping off toward the forest. The infants’ mother let out a shriek of anguish and set out in pursuit. Dashing into the cottage, the shepherd snatched up a flaying knife, which was as sharp as a razor and as long as his forearm, and ran after her, bellowing, “Make way, woman. This is man’s work.”

When they reached the edge of the forest, there was no trace of the ram. No branches quivered. No ferns were snapped or broken. No hoof prints marked the carpet of leaves. It was as if the ram had vanished beneath the silent earth or up into the heavens. Running up and down in the fringe of soft grass, the shepherd’s wife called over and over again, “Niles, Giles, where are you?” But no responding wails drew her in one direction or the other.

“You’ve wasted enough time bleating for them like a sickly ewe,” the shepherd snarled. “Not only will I return with our sons, but I will bring you the monster’s pelt. Now go home and start my dinner.” With a grim set of his jaw, he held his flaying knife before him and entered the woods.

* * *                                                         

By dusk, the shepherd’s wife was frantic. Where could they be? What could have happened? Pacing from one end of the cottage to the other, she stopped every few minutes to stare out the casement windows into the gathering violet gloom. As the hue of the sky deepened to indigo with a sprinkling of stars and a rising full moon, she could bear it no longer and ran outside.

For an instant her heart stopped. Had her husband been killed by the ram to drift home as a ghost to sprawl in forlorn guilt on the grass? No, it was the sheepskin he’d spread for the twins. Shivering from the evening’s chill, she snatched it up, flung it about her shoulders, and ran into the woods with no fear for herself. All that mattered to her was finding her children alive and well.

As she ran, the trees thinned out. The forest became less dense. She sensed that there was a clearing ahead. Now she walked cautiously to avoid snapping a twig or branch that would reveal her presence. Sure enough, a grassy circle the size of a small pond revealed itself by the light of the moon. And in the middle of it, rising like a small dark island, lay the ram. It was snoring mightily with her precious infants still imprisoned within the great curling horns. They neither wept nor stirred, and terror rose in her breast that they were dead.

Dashing forward, she tripped first over an unyielding root and then something slightly soft and giving. “Husband,” she gasped, for it was he. Oh, how white his face, how ghastly the open eyes staring up at her unblinkingly. From the center of his chest the hilt of the great flaying knife protruded. Grief at his failed effort to find the twins turned to fury. “You did this to yourself, you clumsy oaf,” she hissed, “and good riddance to you.”

It took all her might to wrest the knife from his breast, but when she’d accomplished this, she shrugged off the sheepskin and threw it over him as a shroud. Then she marched forward into the moonlit circle to awaken the ram. “Give me back my sons,” she commanded, holding the bloody blade high, “and I will spare your life.”

At the sound of her voice, the ram leapt up and trotted toward her to kneel at her feet with a soft, “Ma-a-a-a.” Both boys began to wail. Smiling through her tears, she plucked first Niles and then Giles from the cradling horns. Crushing them to her bosom, she kissed one and then the other over and over again. Finally, she bent and kissed the ram on its broad forehead. “Thank you.”

* * *

Freed from the tyranny of her marriage, the shepherd’s widow ran her farm exceedingly well. In no time at all she was providing woolen clothing not just for her growing boys but for most of the families on the isle.

As word spread of her weaving skill, demand grew. Eventually one single bolt of her exquisitely woven cloth reached the distant mainland. The queen’s mistress of the wardrobe, who was out browsing in the marketplace, purchased it with glee. She knew that it would raise the queen’s spirits to have a uniquely eye-catching outfit to wear, even though no one would ever actually see her in it.

The royal marriage, while magical to outsiders, was actually a dismal affair because the king was not just dim-witted, bad-tempered and selfish, but exceedingly vain and more than a bit of a clotheshorse. His last three wives had been executed for committing the mortal sin of outshining him. The first consistently beat him at checkers, the second hit the bull’s eye during a royal archery exhibition while his arrow soared into the crowd killing a candlestick maker, and the third merely had thicker hair which did her absolutely no good as she laid her head on the chopping block.

Swearing the stall owner to secrecy, the mistress of the wardrobe ordered the bolt to be wrapped in plain brown paper and delivered to the queen’s private chambers. There the queen’s mantua maker set to work immediately. After nine days, the outfit was complete down to the last eyelet. Deciding she simply had to wear such a magnificent gown out in public, or at least down to dinner, the queen began to scheme with her loyal women-in-waiting. “How can I pull the wool over his eyes?” she wondered, “and keep my own head while I’m about it?”

Finally her lady-of-the-privy-stool snapped her fingers. “I know just the thing. All we have to do is pander to his vanity, stroke his sense of entitlement, and ensure that all the toadying, groveling, brown-nosed twits in his cabinet see the same thing he does, to wit, the world’s biggest idiot in the flesh and nothing but the flesh.”

“Yes,” the queen said thoughtfully, “that would be most satisfying. But how?”

“Leave the tedious details to me, your majesty,” the lady-of-the-privy-stool responded, and promptly dispatched a short note outlining her needs to her two favorite cousins residing on the other side of the city asking them to report to the queen’s chambers at dawn the next morning. “ ‘Remember,’” she wrote, “ ‘you must convince He-Who-Shan’t-Be-Named that your work is so brilliant that only people of like brilliance can see it. I leave the details, of course, to you.’”

Now, these cousins being actors with a traveling troupe the more highly regarded the farther from home they got, had been trained to convince their willing audiences that up was down, black was white, and poor was rich. Upon reading the requirements of their next performance, they put their heads together and sat up all night creating their characters and practicing the lines they’d try first on the lady-of-the-privy-stool.

Being admitted with no difficulty into the palace at cock’s crow by a drowsy guard, the two cousins climbed the winding staircase to the tower where the queen, surrounded by her ladies, awaited them in her new finery. “Ah, ‘tis a thing of beauty,” one of the cousins said, pressing a hand to his breast. “You must show the king at once,” the other cousin said. “What?” the queen gasped, growing pale. “Trust us,” the cousins said in unison.

* * *                                                            

“Good heavens, is that a new frock?” The king eyed his fourth wife as if she were a dessert he was about to stuff into his mouth with both hands, for he was a glutton, too. “The color doesn’t suit you, nor the cut. But the fabric’s passable, I suppose, although far too manly for you, all tweedy, and, oh, I don’t know. What you must do is burn that ugly thing you’re wearing at once. But send the weaver to me. He has potential.”

In unison the cousins stepped forward to make sweeping bows. “We are the weavers, your majesty.”

“Hah. Well, you made a grave error putting my wife in a tasteless disaster like that. Shameful, disgraceful, really.” The king tapped his chin with a bejeweled forefinger. “But, as I say, you do have potential. I wonder, shall I hire you, or have you beheaded?”

“Your majesty,” the cousins said as one, falling to their knees, “we wish to garb you in raiment of such glory that all who behold you will be struck by your brilliance. And that brilliance will be reflected back onto your magnificent presence.”

“It does sound intriguing.” The king clapped his hands. “Arise, weavers, and set about making me these wondrous garments. My ministers, while they’re nowhere near as brilliant as I am, will oversee your work and report your progress to me.”

“Yes, sire.” Standing and making one last bow, the cousins said in unison, “We will need thread of silver and thread of gold, and silk, and satin, and lace and pearls and—”

“Yes, yes.” The king waved his hand. “Just tell my ministers and they will provide you with your every need. Now, get cracking.”

“Thank you, your majesty. Your wish is our command.” Bowing and scraping, the cousins backed toward the door and vanished into the corridor, where they clapped their hands over their mouths to keep from laughing aloud.

The king turned his piggy eyes on the queen. “Dismissed.” As the queen began to back toward the door, curtseying all the way, he said, “Oh, by the way, don’t burn that rag you’re wearing. I see that it suits you now.”

As she crossed the threshold, the queen said, “Sire, in all truth I cannot wait to see you in all your glory. I’m sure the world will never have seen the like.”

“I fear you’re in for a disappointment, then.” With a shake of his head and a pitying smile, he said, “To truly see me in all my magnificence depends on your being brilliant. And, sadly, we both know that isn’t the case.”

“Sad, indeed,” the queen sighed, and turned away so that he couldn’t see the smile she was wearing in honor of his doom.

Nancy Brewka-Clark grew up in the woods of New Hampshire where fairies inhabited the foot of every towering oak. Her poetry, short fiction and drama have been published in the U.S. and abroad.

Art by: Amanda Bergloff