Flash Fiction Magic: January 20th "What Lies Beneath"

This flash fiction prompt came from Emily Barnett, on Instagram @embarnettauthor. The prompt this week is my excuse to flesh out an idea for another story I should not be focusing on...

Baí Rel, the massive, sprawling city over which Coursand dor Maartan, whose very name brought forth fear that sent chills into the bones of his subjects, ruled with both ruthlessness and oblivion, had been renamed nearly two decades ago. Its citizens, however, had no memory of the change.

Those who had lived long enough in their formerly named city, who still sometimes vaguely remembered - but only briefly, in quiet rooms behind thick closed doors, and only late at night, when they were sure the city was mostly asleep - they speculated that they barely remembered because of the seemingly endless fields of poison hemlock that surrounded the city’s borders to the North, West, and South. Fields that went as far as the eye could see, if one could even get close to the city’s edge without passing out. Those older citizens never tried, just jawed on about the distant, fading memories until they felt more like fairytales than histories. More ridiculous than possible. So they stopped telling them.

After all, this new version of the city made it the most modern metropolis on the entire continent, and, they thought, in the entire world. That’s what they were told, and when the citizens of Baí Rel were told to believe, they did so with easy acceptance. Its glimmering towers of glass and polished steel rose towards incessantly cloudless skies. Immaculate roadways and sidewalks were covered in perfectly smooth silvery enamel that allowed the city’s residents to admire their never-aging reflections at any time. Which they did, gladly, rarely even noticing that others also walked silently by, mindless smiles glued to their faces at the blessing of persistent youth.

Baí Rel translated to City of Glitter, and all of its residents certainly enjoyed living within the enchanting gleam of its perfection.

All of its residents, except one. A child who, at the age of five, was brought by her own mother to an audience in front of the Regent because of her insistence that she saw no reflection, no gleaming, shining towers, no cloudless sky.

The mother, understanding that such a discrepancy could spell her own demise, had decided to bring forth this disappointing child, rather bearing the loss of her youngest than losing her own life.

The child’s name was Secelia, meaning one who does not see, and the mother planned to leverage this distinction in her audience with the regent. If asked why the child was so disillusioned, she’d be able to say it was cursed upon her at birth, relieving the mother of any personal responsibility for the failure.

It was just a day ago, on yet another perfectly bright, cloudless afternoon that the child had approached her mother with the abhorrent question. The family was idling under the shade of a perfectly rounded apple tree in perpetual spring, its blossoms pristinely white and full, unless one asked the tree for an apple, at which point a perfectly reddened apple would mature before their eyes, ready to be bitten.

The child had been fidgeting. For an hour. Irritation so rarely buzzed under the mother’s skin - she could count only a handful of times when she’d felt the mood - but when she spent too much time near her youngest, it threatened to surface through every pore on her skin.

She’d given the child a saccharine smile, and through perfectly straight teeth, had said, “Sit still, Secelia. You are causing a scene.”

But the child had simply continued staring, breathing shallow breaths, her knees bouncing, eyes wide with an emotion that barely registered with the mother. Whatever it was, it disturbed her, and she very much disliked being disturbed.

Then, suddenly, the child had whispered, almost too quietly for the mother to hear, “What lies beneath the Regent’s Manor, Mama?”

Although something icy seemed to slice through the mother’s mind then, she narrowed her eyes, now feeling the irritation beginning to escape her perfectly serene exterior. “There is nothing beneath the Regent’s Manor, child. Now be quiet.”

The child gratefully went silent, and eventually, her fidgeting stopped. But the mother could not shake the question from her mind. For the rest of the day, she felt… tense - a feeling that did not suit her at all, and one she was keen to dispel. It seemed as though everyone they passed on their pleasantly paced stroll back to their building in the city’s A-block was deliberately putting distance between them. Her entire purpose then became to protect herself from the feeling, and from any repercussions should anyone find out that her own child had posed such a ridiculous - dangerous - question.

Thus, she felt relief when she presented the child to the Regent the next day. As he entered the room, the very air surrounding him seemed to glitter with beautiful, elegant power, and the mother smiled, folding her body into a deep bow which she held until she heard the soft hiss of the Regent taking his seat upon a deep blue velvet cushion.

Only then did she raise her head, and begin her explanation of her requested audience. The Regent was not known to receive citizens, ever, however the mother had described the previous day’s situation to the Manor’s Head of Patrol, who had made her wait less than five minutes before escorting her and the child inside.

She was careful to intersperse lavish compliments between her story, when she arrived at the part where she’d told her youngest child to stop fidgeting. To her surprise, the child interrupted with a voice small, but not timid.

“I asked my mother, what lies beneath your manor, Your Highness.”

That ice again shot through the mother’s mind, and this time filled her veins as well. It gripped her chest, and sent her eyes flashing between her child and the Regent.

The Regent simply smiled, bored. His eyes, his whole face gave no indication that the child speaking out of turn had disturbed him. Instead, he repeated what the mother had told her child the day before. “Nothing lies beneath my manor, child.”

He glared at the child a moment longer, then continued with authority accentuating every word, “Your mother was right to bring you in front of me. It is not appropriate for children of Baí Rel, our beautiful city, to ask such questions.” Then, he turned to the woman who seemed to suddenly appear at his left side, her face veiled by a shimmering, pale silver hooded cloak.

“Take this child to the Reformatory.” An order.

An order which the woman hesitated to follow. Then, she raised a hand, pale and white as the blossoms on the apple trees.

In an instant, the child was back in her bed, at home, woken from a dream in which she was playing on a grassy hill under bright, warm sunlight.

In her dream, a woman in a beautiful silvery cloak that shimmered with every movement had approached her. The child felt no fear, only something that made her very warm inside, and… as though her chest was expanding with the feeling she got when she saw baby animals in the videos she watched with other children. The child could not see her face as the woman knelt beside her and said, “Don’t forget to take your medicine, Secelia.”

When she awoke in the dark room, gazing out through the window to the stars that sparkled so brightly in the black velvet sky, her attention caught on a white bottle, set atop a white piece of paper, folded in half. Secelia sat up in bed and reached for the bottle. It sounded empty. She twisted the cap and was surprised when it easily came off, revealing hundreds - thousands - of little white pellets, no larger than a sesame seed. She lifted the bottle away from under her nose to observe how such a small bottle could fit so many pills.

My medicine, she thought, and reached a finger inside to scrape one of the pellets with her nail. She popped it in her mouth and swallowed, and swiftly went back to sleep, completely forgetting about the note that was still in her hand.