Desiree - Evidence Exibit A.1

This next piece is part of my creative thesis for school. I'm posting it in hopes that I can get some feedback. It is not a stand alone piece, so here's what you need to know: Desiree (or "Re") is the young queen of a land called Caiseal. She has been accused of crimes against her kingdom, her race, and all mortals. The evidence provided is a collection of excerpts from her diary regarding a discovery made by Desiree and her sister-in-law, Eavan. Entries are labled with letters; parts of entries are labled with consecutive numbers (so Exhibit B.6 would be the sixth part of the second entry). I'll leave it to Desiree to tell you the rest.

Eavan and I discovered a secret today. No one can know. No one would believe us. Even our husbands, dear as they are, could not imagine the full truth of it.

As a child I’d heard rumors of the great beings who lived beyond the oceans’ horizons; I dreamed I’d seen the tall shadows who rule the Wilds. I never imagined I could fully believe the stories. Something in my heart knew they were true, and today that part of me was freed beyond any liberty I’ve previously known.

The Foreign Archive room in the Hall of the Slaters holds the secrets of our greater past. Hundreds of thousands of books, written in unintelligible script, line the walls. Our great scholars spent years attempting to decipher the language; all they know is that it is all written in the same alien tongue. No one even bothers trying to decode it anymore. The numbers of Slaters have decreased since the Kingdom split, and our palatial library struggles by under the toil of the few Slaters who have remained loyal to Caiseal. Eavan and I so desperately wish to be of service to their tasks, but Cuinn insists that women have been kept from the guild for good reason. Eavan – my saintly minx of a sister – wouldn’t let him sleep until he offered some consolation for the disappointment. In his frustration, Cuinn assigned us the arduous task of dusting the Foreign Archive. Eavan and I were – needless to say – miffed that dusting was the best task he could devise, but we happily agreed, hoping that one task could lead to other, preferable ones.

When he opened the great doors, my breath caught in my throat. Knowing the room exists barely touches the awe at witnessing it. I felt the tears well in my eyes at the thought of the forgotten knowledge hidden beneath the covers of each tome. Eavan caught my hand and held it tight; she felt the tragedy of the loss and the hope of discovery as ardently as I did. Cuinn handed us rags, said something about us being foolish girls, and left us to our work.

The work is hardly worth mentioning; dusting is no pleasant task, especially when no one has bothered stepping into the room in years. It only took us minutes to begin opening the tomes we were dusting. Some were locked, others were rusted solid. A few were easy to open, however, and we marveled at the beautiful calligraphy, the exquisite ornamentation. Some were too large for only one of us to lift, encrusted with priceless jewels and often perfumed with the seductive scent of the finest leather and ink; others were only a few pages thick, hand-sewn with homespun thread. Some books were aged to the point of falling apart, but we managed to carefully maneuver around them. As we got deeper and deeper into the collection, more and more volumes appeared that looked as if they’d been printed yesterday. According to Cuinn, the Foreign Archive existed before the Slaters kept records so closely, and no one can date the true age of the books inside. Needless to say, Eavan and I began imagining the manifold mysteries that the books concealed, both between their covers and in their very existence. We giggled as we imagined the archive as a dastardly cover-up for merciless mass murder in one case, and an elaborate royal hoax in another. It’s been ages since Eavan and I have been able to act like the girls I know we still are. Marriage may have made us stately wives, but we will always be the crib-sisters divided merely by the blood of our parents. I cannot imagine discovering the secret with anyone else in the world.

I keep mentioning the secret, dearest diary, and have yet to tell you what it is. As I dusted a high shelf, one book caught my eye. The spine glimmered, for a moment, with my name. Not my royal name, either; it sparkled “Rē” in what I can only describe as quiet a silver gloss. I picked it up, and I turned the spine back and forth in the dim light; the foreign runes glimmered brightly, and then died to reveal my name again and again. I hurried down the ladder and called Eavan. I didn’t bother finding a seat at one of the majestic tables and sat unceremoniously in the warm glow beneath one of the great windows. The spine kept flashing over and over again with my name. Something as cold as panic ran through me, but I couldn’t taste fear. Only excitement. I couldn’t see a lock on the flap that held the covers together, but try as I could, there was no prying the leather strap away. I looked again and again for a small switch, a button, anything. “Frustration” cannot begin describing my emotion.

“Maybe it’s enchanted,” I said, glumly.

“Could there be such a thing?” Eavan wondered delicately fingering the sinewy leather that would not break at my ferocious insistence.

We studied the book carefully, marveling at how steadily the runes changed to such familiar writing. The leather itself was dark brown, not aged but not new. The pages looked hand cut and fairly unworn, as if it hadn’t been used a great deal before it came to sit on the Archive shelf. The hinges were solid brass; no screws or pins would slip free to let us into the books secrets. Nothing adorned the front cover, not a jewel or crest or letter. Except for a small metal imprint on the strap securing it shut. I cleaned it out with a corner of my dust rag and held it up into the light. In the dark metal, I could vaguely make out the engraved letters “M.O.H” – Maurene Ophiua Hajna, my nurse. I knew the symbol well, and I felt again the rush of excitement. Eavan’s eyes also glittered as she recognized the crest imbedded in the ring I’d worn since our dear nurse’s death. I had loved it as dearly as Eavan had loved the crone’s medallion, and she left them in our hands as we slept the night she passed into the world we do not know. Curious to see how close the craftsman ship came, I pressed the face of the ring into the cold metal circle.

I cannot describe what I felt next. The chill circulating through me seemed to draw me firmly towards the book; I could not have pulled away if I’d wanted to. My very breath was pulled out of me as my vision swam. If the earth had crumbled beneath me, I believe the book would have held itself and me in the very position in which we seemed locked. Eavan says it lasted a mere moment, but I cannot help but feel like a year of my life passed through me before my hand fell away. The book, in that very moment, opened itself to the first elaborately crafted page.

Inside, my name was clearly written as if by my own hand – “Desiree Eliane Aingeal” – followed by pages and pages of endless runes I could not make out. I turned back to the first page, expecting something to have changed. I looked up at Eavan in disbelief. Always the calmer one, she took my hands in hers.

“There’s an explanation.” Her big brown eyes were intent on mine with all the sanity she had in her. I felt myself relax, and only after I felt my pulse calm again did I look back at the first page.

My name still stood out like a rose among brambles. I ran my finger over it and felt some latent power stir beneath my skin. There was meaning somewhere…somewhere…

(Want More? Go to Part Two)