Auntie Em's Fable

From Changeling Venue

Children? Boys and girls? Over here please, gather around. Jimmy? Over here. You can play with the toys later, I promise. It’s three o’clock, story time. There you go Jimmy. Yes, yes, there is fine. Sally, quiet down, Juliet, you too.

Now that we’re all settled I’d like to tell you a story that’s very special to me. It’s also one I don’t tell a lot. So listen closely…

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Samantha. Samantha wasn’t really pretty; she wasn’t ugly. She was just plain Samantha and she lived a very plain life with her brother James.

When they grew up James went off to a place where people learn anything they wish. Some people become wizards. Some become explorers like Dora. Others become astronauts, or movie stars, or anything else you can imagine.

Samantha stayed in her home city. She married James’ friend, Prince Henry. Henry was the most handsome man in the world, Samantha thought, and she was the happiest she’d ever been with him when they got married. They lived a very happy life ruling their land and many years after she had a little girl named Marie.

Now if Princess Samantha had been happy before, she was even more happy now. Her and Prince Henry loved their daughter very much and made sure she had everything they could afford to give her.

In this happy world a woman came to visit Samantha. She was very pretty, and when she talked all Samantha heard was the happiness of her brightest dreams. Yet what the woman said was very sad, and it scared the Princess very much. The woman said her brother James had been in a very bad accident and that Samantha had to come with her right then, and she did because she loved her brother just as much as she did her daughter and husband.

This woman ended up being very mean and bad. She had tricked Princess Samantha into coming with her and locked her up in a home of stone far below the ground. Princess Samantha couldn’t get out no matter how hard she tried. She was forced to live in the darkness and eat spoiled meat.

The evil woman would come down to her at times and beat her. Some time she’d cut the Princess and slice away pieces of flesh like she was going to make a sandwich from her with it. Other times she’d just kick her or beat her with the rocks that the Princess hadn’t eaten.

Princess Samantha could feel her mind get tired, and she started to forget where she’d come from and all the happy things she’d once had. She started to forget her brother, and her husband Prince Henry. She almost even forgot her daughter, Marie. Princess Samantha refused to forget though, and each time she found herself alone, she focused on remembering. Each time she remembered she knew she had to go back. She had to find a way to escape.

Princess Samantha didn’t know how much time had passed in that horrible place. She knew that she was changing though. Her skin was no longer soft like it had been. It was starting to feel like the stones she’d been forced to eat. The more the beatings came, the less Samantha felt them. For a small time the Princess thought maybe her new life wasn’t so bad. Once again she started to forget.

Then the evil lady came to her again, and Samantha could tell that she was no longer happy that the Princess didn’t scream. So she grabbed Samantha and yanked her out of her home, and she was sad again. As much as she didn’t like her home, it had been as much as the place she hated as a place of peace. It allowed her to remember happy times and reminded her that she’d have to get back to her real home with the Prince, her daughter, and her brother.

Sunlight hit Samantha’s eyes and it hurt to the point it made her cry. When she could dare open her eyes to look around she found her body to no longer be like yours and mine. Instead it was green and glistened like emerald. The world around them was like a place the Princess had never before seen. It wasn’t the prettiest place she’d ever seen. Yet it seemed like it could be if the world around her was allowed to blossom further. It was sort of like seeing the world right before spring. There are signs starting to show but you know in a month everything will be really nice.

The evil lady didn’t give Samantha time to enjoy this place. She told Samantha she had to move a mountain and in its place make a lake. She said if she didn’t do what she was told she would feed her to creatures that would eat Samantha. The Princess listened, because she was scared.

Samantha didn’t have time to think like she did in her dark home. She had to work on making the evil lady happy. So the Princess worked hard to make sure the mountain was moved as fast as possible. Then when that was gone, she dug down further till there was a place huge enough to put a lake.

She met other people like her, people who had been stolen from their homes. Some of them remembered what their lives had been like. Others didn’t. When Samantha tried to remember, she found it was really hard. Her head hurt, but she knew it was important. The more she forced herself to think about it, the more it started to come back.

The Princess knew that if she didn’t find a way to get out, she would be stuck in this place of possible beauty forever. The world never seemed to change. It always seemed to stay on that line of possibility. Even the lake itself seemed almost breath taking. The land itself seemed almost real. Yet the more Samantha was there, the more she started to realize that it would never really be. It would never really be as wonderful as her life had been before with her Prince, her daughter, and her brother. Of course Samantha didn’t like what she was, or what she had become but the world itself was what she thought of and what she compared often to the real world. The world she saw every day was the one thing she enjoyed about her new life.

The evil woman set her on more tasks when she’d completed the hole that made the lake. The Princess did it, but she refused to forget that she had to escape and why she had to escape. Samantha looked for places she could escape to, and she listened to the other people who had been stolen.

The Princess was moving stones from one place to another making a stone path out of stones that looked like stars when she found the moment she could escape. The evil woman had seemed to grow bored of Samantha and had made a mistake. The only place to get the stones that looked like stars was at the very edge of the evil woman’s land. So one time when Samantha had gone to get some more stones, she had just not bothered to go back. She just continued walking.

The world outside the evil woman’s land was very dangerous as well and Samantha found many others like her trying to get home. Some she made friends with, others not. Others still she watched get caught and dragged back to their Keepers. The Princess though, she refused to forget why she escaped. She had to go back and see those she loved, her Prince, her daughter, and her brother.