From My Book

Appropriately titled "Wicked", simply from the beginning.....

“She’s ugly.” Cora stared coldly at the ruddy baby in her arms. She couldn’t stand to look at her. She wanted to give her back.
Jasper looked at his wife with pointed sadness. “She’s our daughter, Cora. She’s the newest princess.”
“We cannot have an ugly child, never mind an ugly princess, in this castle, Jasper. I won’t have it!” Cora dismissively passed the silent child to Milo, the court’s officially recognized sage. He looked down at the child’s red wiry hair and dull rheumy eyes; they were just like her father’s. Her skin was blotchy and red, her mouth nearly non-existent lines, and her nose was pointy and small. She looked like a sick bird, thin, pale and without energy.
At first sight, she was repulsive and outlandishly freakish. Her chin was too sharp and her arms were much too long for her emaciated body. Her neck was paper thin, her body ill proportioned. She was not the beauty that her older sister was.
Milo was drawn to the ugly child. He felt something special emanating from her observant eyes and was overwhelmed by the feeling that she understood she was being rejected. Cora drew his attention from the child’s face as she began to weep into her golden silk pillow.
“Let’s give her away,” she whispered. Her voice picked up intensity as she continued, “We cannot have such an ugly daughter representing this kingdom!!! There hasn’t been an unattractive baby in this lineage and we cannot start now, so she needs to go elsewhere. Give her to a loving home, where her appearance is not going to be a factor in her upbringing. She should go to a barren, childless woman…. someone who will appreciate her despite her homeliness.” Cora wailed desperately. She was quick to be rid of her new, less comely daughter.
Milo looked away and then down at the squirmy baby in his arms.
Jasper would have none of it. “I refuse to give away this child, Cora. Our child.” He took the infant from Milo and cradled the little redhead in his gray-downed arms. She wasn’t fussy or noisy. She just seemed attentive and quite aware of her surroundings.
Cora’s head snapped up cruelly, her desperate and teary demeanor instantly gone, as if about to say something unthinkable but she stopped when another woman entered the room, cradling a sleeping toddler in her arms. Mona, Milo’s wife and the palace nanny, held the future queen tightly to her breast. At Mona’s prodding, the girl rubbed her eyes tiredly and peeked over Jasper’s arm to look at her new little sister. The toddler was breathtaking, with glowing emerald eyes and soft pink cheeks. Little bouncy curls sprung from atop her head and wrapped perfectly behind her ears. She was lively, sweet and loving. Every single maid, slave, nanny, villager and palace guard adored her. After she had been born, Cora had been so taken by her beauty that she decided to name her just that. Beauty was anointed the future queen, for in their hierarchy, only the women ascended the throne. The fathers would serve as kings until the Queen chose a husband. If the father died before the princess was crowned, she would rule the kingdom herself, with the aid of a small, carefully chosen group of advisors.
Now only two years later, Queen Cora held yet another daughter in her arms, but this one was waifish, spindly and ugly. The unnamed child yawned, and her mouth stretched open to unnatural proportions. Jasper and Milo laughed and cooed at her; Cora scoffed. “She looks like a baby bird begging its mother for worms.” She glared disdainfully into the face of the girl.
Milo smiled graciously at Cora. “Surely, you don’t mean to feed her insects.” The company laughed heartily, but Cora was not amused. Milo handed her the child, but she grimaced, and as if to sense her mother’s displeasure, the newborn girl stiffened in her arms.
“I cannot present her to the people as the newest princess, Jasper, I simply cannot!! Our village prides itself on being beautiful, of aesthetic perfection. This child is not a proper representation of her parents! We will be perceived as weak rulers, who create common offspring. I will not allow her to be a member of nobility.” Cora hissed at her husband.
Milo looked down sadly as he waited for Jasper to defend the tiny, defenseless baby, but he did not.
It had been tradition to proudly introduce the royal children to the village. What Cora was suggesting was unprecedented and inexplicable.
Jasper always seemed to fall to Cora’s will. Milo was afraid that this child would be abandoned, perhaps banished and sent to the caves to be brought up on the outskirts of the town by criminals and bandits, or even worse, the gypsies. He shuddered at the thought. His mind started to fade into a long buried memory, but he shook it out quickly and looked sternly at the queen.
“We will consult the oracle. It is wise. It will tell us which direction to follow,” Milo’s voice seemed deafening in the silent room. He knew that Cora’s biggest weakness was her belief in the supernatural, in prophecies. For the sake of the child’s future and welfare, he hoped that the oracle would deliver good tidings.
Beauty suddenly stirred in Mona’s arms and looked over toward her mother’s arms, glared down at her little sister.
“Sparrow,” Cora muttered mockingly. “You look like a bird, so you will have a bird’s name.”
The baby was immediately resentful of her newly acquired appellation and spit up gray phlegm onto her mother’s chin.
Jasper looked at his wife and then at their newborn daughter. Addressing the room, he quietly asked that he be left alone with his family. Everyone obliged and single-filed out the door, and as Mona bent to release Beauty so she could join her parents and sister, Jasper asked that Beauty be taken outside too. Mona’s brow furrowed but she did as the king asked and closed the door softly behind her.
The others stood outside the door awkwardly, waiting to be allowed back inside. Minutes ticked past but it felt like days. No one uttered one single word. Milo wondered if it was because they didn’t know what to say or if they were hoping to catch bits of the conversation in the other room. After what seemed like eternity, the door opened and everyone ushered back into the room. The difference in the air was palpable. Cora sat with her mouth slightly ajar, looking pale and shocked. Jasper smiled and put his arm around his wife and their baby, who sat uncomfortable in her mother’s less than welcoming arms.
Milo couldn’t help but feel a bit of relief. Perhaps Jasper had scolded his wife after all, but after a few moments of observing Cora handle little Sparrow, he knew that whatever Jasper had said to his wife hadn’t changed her feelings toward the baby. He stepped outside for a moment and sent a messenger to call for the oracle.
Beauty, a healthy two years old, was becoming heavy so Mona put her down and she shot over to Cora’s bedside and with a little support from Milo, climbed up to where her mother lay, looking tired and unusually subdued. Beauty leaned her face forward and kissed her mother’s cheek.
The lovely child glowered upon Sparrow, who looked upward as if she sensed the animosity, directly into the emerald eyes of Beauty, and upon just a glance, Beauty was screeching and trying to retreat from her fire-haired sister.
The difference in the two girls was blatant. Beauty was like a shimmering ray of sunshine, her eyes sparkling like stained glass, her lips like a ruby heart, her hair cascading in sweet brown waves. On the contrary, Sparrow was reminiscent of a fading star, like a shadowy murk; her blue eyes were listless, her mouth thin and straight, and her fiery hair wiry and wild. Her eyes were watery, and her skin pallid. Beauty’s skin was like pale pink porcelain.
Jasper looked at them both, sizing them up in his fatherly eye, trying to determine the definition of beauty. He knew that Beauty was certainly more accepting to the eye, but Sparrow had something…he could feel it. It made him uneasy.
Oddly enough, she captivated the attention of the room with her banality. He flicked her nose with his fingertip. She glared at him, as if to figure out if he was friend or foe.
“Oh Cora, they are different, but they each offer a special spark.” In response, the queen bent her head. She felt shamed by this child.
“We’d have to hide her away, Jasper. I don’t want to hear the whispers or the taunts! I don’t want to be ridiculed. I’ve reigned as a prosperous queen, and I don’t want to be the only one in our lineage who produced the most repulsive princess known in our history.” It was as if the queen was bargaining with her husband. They could keep the child, but she could never be in the limelight.
Cora eventually agreed to raise their daughter, but she insisted that Sparrow not be presented to the congregation as a princess. She hoped the village would accept Sparrow eventually, she’d uttered, without pomp or circumstance.
Only an hour after Milo had sent a messenger to summon the old woman that protected and housed the oracle, the sound of hooves echoed outside the castle and through the front gate.
It was not long ago that the royal family, as well as the villagers, looked down upon the power of the oracle, considering it to be a form of witchcraft. Cora, however, believed in magic and the advantage it could present to a kingdom and its ruler. Her father, once the general of their army, believed in using all of the tools presented to them in a beneficial way.
As they all waited tensely for the arrival of the prophetic seer, Jasper tried to coax Cora into feeding her infant daughter, but the Queen refused. Instead, she handed the baby to Mona who gave Sparrow her bottle, and pulled Beauty up next to her in the bed. The message did not go unnoticed. Beauty was the real princess, and Sparrow would never be considered Cora’s daughter.
“Move aside! Outta the way! Coming through!” An obese elderly woman with a steely gray bun elbowed her way through the cluster of humans. The woman looked quite common despite her honored occupation, like one of the old crones selling their goods in the marketplace. Although she didn’t look powerful, she was a mystical sage bestowed with intense gifts. She clutched a small black velvet drawstring bag to her chest protectively.
The bodies parted the way respectfully, bowing their heads to the old lady and her bag. She made a showy display of clearing off the dolly that had held Cora’s dinner and then, in an equally flashy presentation, she untied the strings of the bag, and stuck her wrinkled hands inside the illuminated purse, and pulled out a marble statue of two intertwined figures: one male, the other female. They shone together in flawless magical brilliance and pulsated like a heartbeat. Everyone in the room with the exception of the bedridden Cora dropped to their knees in reverence. The old lady looked about ominously, and then declared, “Who claims responsibility for this family?
Milo, as an elder and a scholar, was the only one present that could. The oracle knighted very few men or women to stand before them and communicate. Milo had automatically been given the honor upon being named the oldest of their village. Sometimes, he blended the idea of being the oldest with also being the wisest. He stepped forward.
“I am Milo. I am the oldest living man of this tribe. I speak for the royal family, if the oracle deems me suitable.” He bowed his head as he awaited the oracle’s reply.
The statue flickered with light. The old lady kept still, listening to the deafening silence. After a few moments, she looked up.
To Milo, she said, “The oracle will grant you two questions. Make your inquisitions important, Milo, for the oracle has graciously granted your search for guidance.”
No one, including Milo, knew how the oracle had come into existence. Several thousand years ago, the royal family had been granted, as a gift from a gypsy whose life had been saved by the Queen, the ability to ask the oracle for advice. Since that moment, whenever the realm was uncertain, they would summon the guide that cared for the oracle. No one actually knew the guide’s name, and she eventually gained the nickname Old Woman Who Cares for the Oracle. Like most legacies, the oracle was passed down to the strongest descendants in the family that protected visionary effigy. No other person had the gift to hear the oracle speak.
“What will be the purpose of the two daughters?” Milo bellowed loudly, unsure if the oracle could hear him. The oracle pulsated in brilliant colors. The old lady nodded and then, once the oracle had dulled, told Milo and the family the answer to the question.
“They say this: One shall be light as day and the other as dark as night. One shall be gracious and pure, and the other wicked and spiteful. One will face danger and difficulty, and shall walk a difficult course faced with many choices. These choices will darken her, and bring out a very compelling force from within. The other faces a much simpler road, but she shall be the one that succumbs to a very different power. The law of balances deems that opposites must exist in order for the polar to exist until itself. What is proven true will be a cryptic lie. Do you know beauty without ugliness? These girls fulfill two very different, but necessary, destinies.”
Cora sucked in her breath harshly, inwardly convinced that Sparrow would be the bane of her kingdom. She’d set her hearing into selective mode, so the only words she’d actually heard were dark, wicked, spiteful, power and ugliness. She gnawed on her lower lip, wondering how bad a mistake it was to keep Sparrow as her daughter. She saw Jasper looking at her sharply, as if to read her thoughts.
“What if she is evil?” She murmured quietly to her husband.
He gave his wife’s hand a squeeze and murmured confidently, “A child is the product of her parents, dear. We teach evil; the child does not acquire it from innocence, but from the influences that surround her.”
The old lady cleared her throat as if to remind them that there was another matter at hand. She then looked at Milo, who appeared immersed in deep thought. He rubbed his chin and then asked the oracle, “What shall be their destinies?” Unlike the first question, his voice had lowered to almost a whisper. Everyone leaned forward to try to catch his question, except for the old lady. Her hearing was unaffected by her age.
Cora grimaced. She’d hoped that Milo would’ve asked something different, something more definitive, like should she keep Sparrow or send her off to another family that could care for her. Now the questions were all used up.
The oracle again flashed with purpose.
The old lady looked up. “The eyes are closed underwater. Beware the legacy. Fire under the crown.”
The statue darkened upon the delivery of the prophecy. She tenderly lifted the oracle and placed it back inside the protective shroud, and left as quickly as she’d come, leaving them all to deliberate the meaning of the oracle’s words.
“What did it mean?” They asked each other with confused tones. “Fire under the crown?”
Milo stood silent, trying to make sense of the foretelling. The words hung in the air, and played on everyone’s tongue. The eyes are closed underwater. Beware the legacy. Fire under the crown.
Jasper and Cora also tried to make sense of it. They looked down at the future queen, who smiled brilliantly as if to assure them that all would be well. Sparrow, in turn, sneezed and miserably squirmed in her Mona’s arms. She tried to find comfort where there was none.