Searchterm Entry #7: A Silly Tale of Little-To-No Consequence

The seventh entry’s title says it all: this is a whimsical, amusing entry.

For details of the challenge, and to see other entries, click here. Voting for stories will begin once all entries have been posted online.

The author of this story is Tama Wise, who blogs and publishes fiction at Letters from Silent Hill.

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A Silly Tale of Little-To-No Consequence

or, How one little upstart attempted to knock off Queen Merrilee’s crown

Caveat; Although our players of this little story may appear familiar, their likenesses are possibly nothing like those from which they borrow their names from.

Dramatise personae

Queen Merrilee, the Queen of the Fairest Land
Princess Cassie, a visiting Princess from Another Land
Princess Lauren, daughter of Cassie, and a toddler
Woodcutter Ruzkin, trusted woodcutter, visiting from the forests
Jester Tama, resident court fool
Dumbus, an idiot
An array of retainers
Faceless masses

“Those cupcakes,” exclaimed Queen Merrilee to her retainer, while pointing obstinately at the platter on the plinth. “Give one to me. And for goodness sakes, will someone stop that child!”

The collected court turned their attention in unison towards the offending toddler, the  Princess Lauren. She sat in the prettiest of purple, brocaded dresses, which had since been added too by streaks of unseemly pink icing. She was making good work of mashing the remains of her cupcake into the plush red carpet, hammering at it with the spoon.

“You know she can’t abide a dirty house,” one of the retainers said, by way of apology. Princess Cassie, one of the many who had gathered for the challenge, gave a wane smile. The retainer looked as if he might snatch Lauren from her work, but was distracted again by Merrilee’s call.

“Cupcakes!”

“Yes, ma’am. At once, ma’am.”

“I’m just sitting here, by the way,” she remarked, frank. The rest of the packed court stared back at her, gormless in expression. “I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here, but anyone who has any intention of knocking off my crown had best do it now. Although the competition runs the length of the day, I feel I shall close it early to catch the last suns rays on the south gardens …”

Cassie considered the fact that it was a fruitless competition. How one could knock the crown off the Queen when two previous attempts at this task had met with failure seemed impossible. Still, as per tradition, Merrilee had made the offer. Now it was just up to one of them to somehow work it out. She smoothed off her gown, a shade darker than the Princess Laurens, peering at the gathered court through thin spectacles.

“Extra sex!” came a nearby bellow. Merrilee regarded the idiot Dumbus with a disapproving stare, halfway through her honey treacle cupcake. It was decorated nearly as resplendent as herself, in fair yellows and golds.

Dumbus would not be the one to complete the challenge, Cassie thought. She looked at the two men she had fallen in with. Either one of them stood to stand a good chance, she figured.

“It’s a dumb competition anyway,” said Ruzkin. He was a woodcutter dressed in the most comically stereotyped of ways, right down to the plaid red shirt. Stout in build, he looked cut out for that sort of work, but why the court let him wander about with that axe was beyond Cassie. “Knock the crown off her head, without actually touching her. You know what that leaves us with?”

“Not a lot.”

The reply came from a tall, gangly gentleman in harlequin attire. He bit on a nail, idly, trying to worry away an edge of it. Tama, the court jester, complete with bells, although no whistles. He seemed to be doing a good job of staying in on place, so not to set them off, about his ankles and many tailed hat.

“We have to give it our best shot,” Cassie replied. She could see the sunlight streaming in through the cloistered windows, but the shadows were getting longer. “This is the third time. She’s won the last two times…”

“Short of throwing something at her head…”

“We can’t do that!” said Cassie. She noticed the wry smile Tama gave. He looked the unlikely sort for a jester, but then Ruzkin barely looked the part as woodcutter. Like someone had thrust the roles on them for the purpose of things. “Throwing stuff at the Queen isn’t that great an idea.”

“What do the rules say about pushing it off with something else?”

“The goal of the puzzle is to knock the crown from Queen Merrilee’s head,” Tama remarked, as if quoting verbatim. Indeed he was, merely intoning from the last two times the rules had been stipulated. “One may not touch her person to do so.”

Ruzkin looked encouraged. “Her person says nothing about pushing it off her head. No ones tried that.”

“It’s not like anyone’s actually WANTED to go and shove it off,” Cassie remarked. Lauren had well and truly killed the cupcake now. Cassie considered moving a little to hide the cupcake corpse beneath the hem of her gown. “I mean, it’s rude. She IS the Queen.”

“Therein lies the challenge,” said Tama. He jingled his funny headed scepter at Lauren, but she was too interested in what she was doing. “Maybe it’s just no ones had the nuts to challenge her.”

“Come ON,” Merrilee called. She had finished her cupcake and was now just waiting on anyone foolish enough to approach. Despite the packed court of many colors, no one stood forward. “I could have sat through the creation of yet another play by Shakespeare by now! And he writes longhand!”

“Stillborn!”

“Someone shut him up,” scowled Merrilee. “Please.”

The retainers hurried about, gathering up Dumbus and pulling him away from the court main. He quickly vanishing into the press. Cassie noticed that Tama was eying the plinth of cupcakes, stroking at a short and unkept chin of hair.

“Sorry,” remarked the same retainer that had attempted to divorce Lauren from her cupcake. “Old Dumbus hasn’t been the same since he lost his wife. Tragic. Truly tragic …”

“There’s a short story in there somewhere,” Tama remarked, with another of his wry smiles. Cassie felt compelled to give him a whack in the arm.

“Concentrate! We have to do something. She’s not even going to wait until sundown now. If any of us are going to get that crown off her head …”

Ruzkin regarded the Queen with a careful eye. Cassie figured if anyone, he looked up to the task. He had the look of someone with a plan in mind, and moments later, it appeared that he had one. He walked passed Cassie, and muttered to her as he slowed there.

“Talk to her. Keep her busy.”

“Huzzah!” Tama remarked, smiling. He encouraged Cassie on as she stood forward, and Ruzkin disappeared into the crowd. The eyes of the court, and the eyes of Queen Merrilee turned on Cassie like a series of tank cannons finally getting a firing solution.

Cassie felt strangely exposed.

“So, ummm … longhand, huh?” she started. Cassie tried to find sign of Ruzkin, but he had vanished. Hopefully he hadn’t fled the scene. “Do you read, your Majesty? I have a collection of eight short stories that might interest you…”

“Short stories? Is this really the best you all have to offer?”

Queen Merrilee stood, and she cut an imposing presence atop the dais. It was at that moment then Cassie wondered the viability of the whole challenge. Sure, Merrilee put out the offer as part of the closing days of the Spring Celebrations, but really, could anyone actually knock her crown off? Would anyone really be as presumptuous to try, without touching her?

“You mentioned Shakespeare… have you read Hamlet?”

“If I remember it ended in a court full of dead people,” Merrilee remarked, frankly. Cassie noticed it, and then realized that Merrilee herself noticed too. Probably the way that the eyes of the court were staring to her right. Ruzkin was standing dais left, the long heft of his axe out wide to try and push the crown off the Queen’s head.

“Good grief, man! What the heck are you trying to do?”

“The challenge,” he remarked, but way of feeble response. Cassie figured he didn’t seem so sensible, making at the Queen with an axe, even if handle first. “Erm… to knock the crown?”

“Someone get that man out of my sight,” Merrilee said, tossing a cupcake at the apologetic Ruzkin. It bounced off a shoulder, and rolled down a few steps like a tiny head separated from tiny shoulders. “And someone pick up that damn cupcake! Hurry up now!”

“Oh, screw this,” Ruzkin muttered. A group of retainers were already advancing on him. “I’m going home…”

“Enough from you and your bellowing bastard brothers!”

“I only have one,” remarked Ruzkin, incredulously. “And he’s not even here!” He threw his hands up in disgust. Cassie looked after him as he left, harried by retainers who weren’t involved in removing yet another cupcake from the floor. She quickly took one step left to cover the mashed remains of Laurens.

“Not sure why he became a woodsman anyway,” Tama commented, quietly. Cassie nodded, agreeing. “I always figured he was better at back flips and such. I guess it’s just what the tale called for…”

“This is useless,” Cassie said. She eyed the last rays of sun cutting through the stained glass cloisters, cutting patterns of blue and green and orange across the nervous court. “Maybe we just wait until the next challenge. It looks as if she’s kept the crown again.”

“Maybe not…”

Cassie frowned, as Tama stepped forward in a flourish and a cacophony of bells. Merrilee shot him a disapproving stare as he mounted the steps, and dipped into a bow. “Queen Merrilee… I come, respectfully, for your crown… If I may?”

Tama rose from the bow, sweeping his arm wide in gesture. Merrilee watched with doubt, obviously seeing how this particular challenger would go. Tama bought his arm up, knocking the plinth with his funny headed scepter. With a crash and and almighty bang, the plinth fell over, sending the bowl and myriad of cupcakes tumbling to the ground.

“Oh dear. So sorry.”

“Idiot! Good grief! Clean up this mess!”

Cassie watched, smiling quietly at the genius of the plan, as retainers scattered in as many directions as cupcakes has fallen, and still there were many. Merrilee looked horrified at the mess, something that even the scrambling number of men couldn’t clean quickly enough. She bent to pick up one that had come to a rest at the hem of her goal.

‘Just slightly more…’ Cassie thought, daring to hope.

Merrilee bent forward more.

The crown toppled and bounced down the steps, amongst the chaos. Tama turned with a flourish, smiled to the court, but more to Cassie and the Princess Lauren. Lauren tossed aside her spoon and took up the crown, a brand new toy to play with. Merrilee groped at her head in horror, making the connection between the child and the absence above.

“And that,” Tama remarked, wry. “Is how you knock the crown from Merrilee’s head. I think now I shall return to the city streets, and continue to spin more sideshow fables…”

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