Princess Etheria and the Battling Bucks Read online

CHAPTER 4

  RealiTea

  The loud music that Etheria had used to silence the bucks was still echoing faintly off the rock wall of the Bitterroot ridge when Etheria finally got down to work.

  To begin, she bade the bucks to move to the center of the glade, and they reluctantly acquiesced. Once there, they stood uncharacteristically silent as she walked around them in a wide circle while holding her wand out in front of her like a conductor holding a baton. She had begun to hum a tune out loud, and was bouncing her wand in time with her music. Each time the music would reach a crescendo, her humming would get louder, she would gesture with her wand, and something amazing would happen.

  This was all part of Etheria’s warm-up, and she started it by making silly hats appear out of nowhere on Cedric and Nigel. When the squire-els finally noticed the hats, Cedric tore his off immediately, while Nigel admired the profile that his shadow was now casting.

  Then, Etheria turned the entire pile of excrement by the stream into a patch of colourful wildflowers. Within seconds, an unfamiliar pleasant smell was wafting through the tiny glade and, almost immediately, bees, butterflies, and humming birds appeared seemingly from nowhere to sip from the new flowers. It was unclear whether they had been summoned by the Princess’ magic, or whether they had simply been enticed by the flowers on their own.

  The squire-els discovered another pair of ridiculous looking hats on their heads, and watched the Princess with admiration. They could see that she was enjoying herself.

  The young girl continued to walk, hum and bob her wand. Then without warning, and without missing a note of her song, Etheria turned suddenly on the bucks, pointed her wand at the antlers as if she were trying to sneak up on them, and willed them to disappear altogether.

  “Ava Cado,” she said purposefully while flicking the tip of her wand.

  The effort had absolutely no effect.

  For a moment, Etheria stood and stared in puzzlement. It was unusual for her magic to be so completely impotent. Her wand trembled slightly in her hand, as she narrowed her eyes, and frowned for a moment. But, no sooner had the frown appeared, than it was quickly transformed into a satisfied smile. She immediately began to hum again, resumed the light flicking motion of her wand, and continued her circuitous path around the bucks.

  While she was in motion, and without slowing her stride in the least, she continued to make changes to the forest glade. She re-filled the deep ruts, and transformed large patches of the dusty ground into thick, deep-green grass. She called forth leaves and new growth from the trees that bordered the glade, and she entreated the undergrowth to produce large ferns as well as flowered thistles.

  All the while, her wand bobbed lightly, and although she was now openly singing her song, it was still one that nobody could recognize (although Cedric was sure that he could hear Etheria asking somebody why they had to be so complicated).

  Once again Etheria spun unexpectedly on the bucks, and once again angled her wand at their antlers. She had assumed from her failed first attempt that she could not simply make them go away, so she had decided to see if she could change them into something less formidable. Something less solid. Something easier to work with.

  “Ava Cado,” she announced with a look of deep concentration, while she willed the antlers to turn into water. When this had no effect, she pirouetted gracefully in place, dropped to one knee, levelled her wand, and tried to turn them into jelly. When this failed as well, she leapt to her feet, took two steps along the path, jumped into the air, spun completely around, aimed her wand, and thought of soft flexible rubber.

  I don’t think it will come as much of a surprise to the reader— who can look at the thickness of this book and see that there is still quite a lot this story left—that these attempts failed as well.

  Princess Etheria lowered her wand dejectedly, but continued to circle the deer who had, almost imperceptibly, begun to hurl whispered insults at each other. She could feel the residual magical energy that hung in the air between the massive animals. A warm mist had begun to rise from the ground beneath their heads, and a heavy golden dew-like liquid was dripping thickly from the antlers. The hairs on the heads of both of the bucks was clearly standing on end as if electrified, yet they seemed completely unaware of how much power had been cast their way, with so little apparent effect.

  The squire-els sat quietly on the rock on the edge of the stream, their eyes wide in shock. They didn’t want to speak, and they tried to hide their discomfort when the Princess looked their way. They didn’t want to let Etheria see how shaken they were that her powerful magic was having absolutely no effect, so they pasted unnatural smiles on their faces and gave the Princess exaggerated “thumbs up” signals. They meant it to be encouraging, so that is how the Princess interpreted the gesture.

  If Etheria was upset, she didn’t show it. With each failure she continued to walk, sing and draw fancy shapes in the air with her wand (in fact, a few of the shapes still hung lightly in space, and eventually floated up into the sky out of the glade). It was obvious that she was still experimenting, and it was clear to everyone that she was also very deep in thought.

  With every minute, more flowers were appearing all around her (many apparently of their own accord), and more honey bees were flitting about. In addition, several birds had begun to chirp their return from the newly restored branches in the trees along the edge of the glade, and small forest animals were now occasionally peering out from beneath the newly re-grown ferns and underbrush.

  To be honest, Etheria wasn’t at all surprised that the antlers hadn’t simply disappeared on her first magical attempt. She didn’t exactly know how the antlers had persisted, but when she had realized that they were still there, it made perfect sense to her instinctively, even if she wasn’t consciously aware of the reasons why.

  She wondered what to do next, even as she convinced some nervous seeds that had been hiding in fear along the shore of the stream that it was now safe to sprout. As the seedlings leapt enthusiastically up into the sun, and flowered into animated beds of violets, Etheria noticed that larger fish had begun to splash about in the water, and that fresh cat-tails had already grown up out of the shallows and were swaying lightly in the soft Thenken breeze. Many of this miraculous re-growth wasn’t her doing she realized, and she knew that if she didn’t succeed here today, all of this new life would be once at risk of being destroyed by the buck’s senseless ancient conflict.

  Looking back at the antlers, Etheria continued to hum lightly. She was about to reach another crescendo when she had a thought. Perhaps if I turn the antlers into glass, I can smash them with a rock? So, in time with the music, she spun on the antlers again, willed this to happen, and stared flummoxed when it too failed.

  All at once, the Princess stopped walking, ceased her humming, and lowered her wand again. She looked dejectedly at her shoes, waved her wand and turned them both into pumpkins.

  Obviously, there was nothing wrong with her magic, she thought as she returned her shoes to their proper form. So what was it?

  The glade had fallen mostly silent when she had come to her sudden halt. The only sound, not surprisingly, came from the bucks who were now bickering a little louder than before. Pahweetor was going on about how he told them all that it wouldn’t work, and Thé-B’doh was telling him to shut up and hold still.

  The Princess looked over at the squire-els, to silently request suggestions, and they immediately struck awkward, casual poses that were obviously forced. When it was clear by Etheria’s raised eyebrow that she saw right through their charade, they stood up straight, assumed a natural look of concern on their faces, and shrugged their shoulders in response.

  She looked back over at the bucks and sighed deeply. Why wasn’t her magic working on these antlers?

  “Princess?” spoke Nigel to get her attention. “Perhaps some tea?”

  Etheria glanced over, and saw that Nigel and Cedric were now standing over a small earthen teapot tha
t floated in the air between them, and whose bottom crawled with orange flames. Cedric had just tossed a pawful of wildflower petals into the teapot, and was now adding an amount of sweetwater that should really have been much too generous for the tiny pot. Almost immediately, steam began to shoot out of the spout, and Etheria could hear the soft feminine voice of the pot announcing “I’m ready!”

  The Princess smiled at the thoughtfulness of the squire-els, as she hadn’t realized how thirsty she had become from her efforts. After a quick glance over her shoulder to confirm that the bucks weren’t even paying attention to her anymore, she walked over to the tiny squirrels, sat down on a low rock beside them, and reached out to take the steaming mug that Nigel had just poured for her.

  “Thank you Nigel,” Etheria offered kindly as she pulled the mug up in front of her face. She didn’t sip from it right away though, instead, she stared intently at the surface of the liquid. There were several colourful wildflower petals floating in the tea that had tinted it a deep golden purple

  This drink was what the King had dubbed realiTea (pronounced like the word reality). It infused wildflower petals and sweetwater—two of the most amazing substances in the forest—into a potent brew that not only served to quench both thirst and hunger, but amazingly also provided suggestions, solace, and insight to those in need of answers.

  Etheria only partly understood how the tea worked. She knew for instance that, because Thenken was a dream world, it was uniquely connected to the collective consciousness formed by the billions and billions of souls in the universe. She also knew that each flower that appeared in the forest represented a single individual idea from somebody within that collective consciousness. As a result, the petals in the tea acted as a direct link to those ideas. But, this was only part of the equation. The sweetwater was the real wonder, and had a history that was, quite appropriately, steeped in legend.

  First you have to understand that there are countless honey bees in the Thenken forest, and they toil endlessly gathering nectar from the wildflowers. Then the bees fly the nectar to the Great Hive that is nestled deep within the heart of the Great Maple Tree Pneumena, where they transform it into honey. If you recall, Pneumena is a tree the size of a mountain, so it stands to reason that the Great Hive would also grow to preternatural size. The Great Hive is as big as a large city, and it continues to grow to this very day.

  What’s more, since the bees had been instinctively gathering wildflower nectar for untold millennia, the Great Hive had long ago become so full of honey that it had begun to overflow. Slowly, persistently, the sweet amber liquid leaked steadily out of the endless maze of honeycombs, and seeped deep into the marrow of the Great Tree. Here, it mixed with the tree’s sap, and built up such a powerful internal pressure that a single stream eventually burst violently out of an ancient knot hole in the side of the tree. Then the stream tumbled in silent free-fall until it splashed down into the river below (if you’ll recall, this was the river that once ran through the lost city of Marmaros, and since that city was now trapped within the Great Tree, the river ran through the tree as well), instantly creating a waterfall so high that you couldn’t see the top of it while standing down below.

  Over time, the stream mixed with the natural water of the river, and flowed out into the furthest reaches of the forest. The river became known as the Sweetwater, and began its long history of nourishing every living organism that lived in the forest. The inhabitants of Thenken drank from the river, the trees soaked up the water through their roots, and all were very well fed as a result.

  When Rowan had first arrived in Thenken, he was taught how to stir up the mist on the surface of the Sweetwater to release visions. These visions took the form of tiny holographic images that flitted and danced across the surface of the water after it had been disturbed. The images might be indistinguishable from golden mist at first, but once you looked closely enough, you could see forms and shapes of people, places and things. The residents of Thenken had been stirring up the golden mist for years, but it was more for entertainment than anything else. That is, until Rowan came along, and found a way to unlock the secrets that were trapped within the sweetwater.

  Rowan discovered that, if you mix some sweetwater with a handful of petals and boil it all together, it becomes, not surprisingly, even more magical, and more responsive than ever to the needs and thoughts of the drinker. It has now become common practice in the forest to consult a cup of tea when an answer to a particularly tough question is being sought.

  In fact, the King had several different rituals and blends of tea for many different occasions. There was synchroniciTea, where you switch cups with another person halfway through drinking them so that images from the stories that you were sharing appear in the golden mist in your cups. There was serendipiTea that you shared with somebody you hadn’t seen in a long time, and had just coincidentally run into. There was virtualiTea that you shared with somebody who was at a great distance so that an image of that person would appear in your mug, and you in theirs. There was simpliciTea that you enjoyed by yourself when you wanted a quiet meditative moment, and complexiTea when you wanted to be reminded of how everything is interconnected.

  The Princess was convinced that, most of the time, her father was making up the names and rituals for his teas on the spot. One morning for example, he served her a cup of what he called eterniTea, which he claimed would impress upon her the fact that we each truly do live on forever.

  “You just made that up Dad!” she accused him good-naturedly. Yet, as she looked at her cup, she saw a solid image of herself rise up out of the swirling waters, while other objects like buildings, trees, clouds, and mountains circled around her briefly, only to be immediately swallowed again into the spinning vortex. Her own image remained, and was so solid looking that she was sure that she could have reached right into the mug to pluck it out.

  Etheria knew of course that the ingredients of realiTea were exactly the same in each of her father’s “brews” (it was always wildflower petals and boiling hot sweetwater), it was just the ritual that was unique to each one that differentiated it.

  She also well knew that the images that danced on the surface of your tea were so open to individual interpretation, that the Princess was not holding out much hope for a solution to the problem facing her today. Sure enough, as she stared into the steam in her cup, and saw that the mists that formed there weren’t assuming any distinct discernable shapes, she felt that her apprehension was vindicated. So, she surrendered to her thirst, and sipped deeply from her cup. The hot liquid was heavenly, and she felt better immediately.

  As Etheria lowered her mug, and stared reflexively into its bottom at the shallow layer of tea that remained, the tiny golden image of a woman appeared. The form shimmered lightly, but quickly took a seemingly solid form. Then the woman appeared to look right up into Etheria’s eyes for a moment, and then turned abruptly away from her, melting into the liquid below, and fading from view.

  “Mom?” said Etheria through a mouth hanging open in shock. For once, the message from her realiTea was an obvious one. She knew exactly what her tea was trying to tell her.

  Is that the answer? Could that really be possible? She wondered, not realizing that she’d physically mouthed the words.

  Although it wasn’t a memory that she particularly enjoyed revisiting, her mind was nonetheless immediately spirited away to a warm sunny afternoon last summer, when her father had told her something that had changed her world forever.

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