Once upon a time there was a beautiful but very unusual kingdom, secluded away between four mountains, the existence of which
My Boosh fairy tale! Eeee, aren't you excited? Because I am.
I might be a bit sad.
But I like fairy tales. Muchly. And I want to give Hattie something to read when she gets back.
But I'm dedicating this to Adele, who I mentioned this to first. Luv ya huni :-D
Not enormously fairy talish in this first chapter, but it gets more magical in the next. Rated for later chapters.
Btw, do y'all agree that Bainbridge would be the most horrible person to be married to in the Booshverse? If you can think of anyone worse, let me know.
Disclaimer: Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding actually come from this world and they gave us the Mighty Boosh. I didn't create nothing. I am merely their adoring slave.
Once Upon a Boosh
Once upon a time there was a beautiful but very unusual kingdom, secluded away between four mountains, the existence of which was well-known, but sometimes only with the status of legend, and though there were some who claimed to have met it's inhabitants, usually people of various degrees of royalty, who were invited fairly often, there were others who refused to believe that it existed at all. The kingdom was wealthy and happy and beautiful and generally lovely, but it was also very volatile, and violence on the streets was becoming an increasingly urgent problem.
The kingdom was ruled by the large and powerful family of Moon, who had come to power only twenty-one years before. They had once been the second-most important noble family of the kingdom, as several members claimed to have links to the Old Kings, and insisted that they were the rightful rulers. Recently, they had decided to act on them. Which naturally didn't please the royal family at the time.
The family they had replaced was that of Noir, generally very regal and extravagant people, who were understandably pissed off that the throne that had been theirs for over two thousand years had been taken by the Moons, of all people. There hadn't been much love between the two families at any point in history. The Moons felt that the Noirs were terrible rulers and squandered the kingdom's wealth on their own personal whims, and the Noirs thought the Moons were pedantic and ineffectual.
The Moons changed a lot when they came to power, and, admittedly, a lot of it was for the benefit of the kingdom. Certainly more money went into public services and less into Princess Monique's wardrobe. Unfortunately, jazz clubs began to spring up everywhere, which most people, under the influence of the Noirs, had come to regard as demonic squealing. Even more unfortunately, it gave large groups of angry Noirs a place to hide in the shadows, guaranteed a sizeable group of Moons to pounce on. Then the problems arose that the Moons were in general considerably bigger built than the Noirs, and many Noirs developed a penchant for beautifully designed but potentially lethal knuckledusters.
But it was another change brought about by the Moons that really shocked the Noirs to the core: Exile. Whatever could be said about the Noirs, things that included that they tiled their rooms with mirrors, that they might stab your eyes out if you saw them on a bad hair day, and that they thought poverty was a venereal disease, it also had to be said that they loved their kingdom. And for them, being exiled from that kingdom was too terrible a punishment, even for someone who cut off someone else's face; this being something that had never actually happened, but which most of the little Noirs had had nightmares about at some point.
It seemed at first that exile was simply an empty threat, as for many years nothing was heard of it. Then one of the Moons' own sons was exiled for dissenting. The Noirs had immediately declared that if that man ever returned to the kingdom, he would be more than welcome in the House of Noir.
But this wasn't likely to happen, so the Noirs concentrated on elevating themselves back to royal status. And the best way they could think of just happened to be one of their favourite pastimes- marriage.
The former Queen had been blessed with only one child. And she didn't think she had been blessed at all. Princess Vince Noir was, quite frankly, brainless. And, worse than that, he was choosy. Though she would have liked her only child to have something up in his mindbox to make him into something more than a walking mannequin, the Queen might have been happy if Vince could be appeased with outfits and makeup and shiny things until a suitable royal match could be found for him, and then could be sent away to restore the family glory, father or, as was more likely, adopt lots of children, and be someone else's problem. But somehow the pretty young princess had gotten the idea into his head that twelve minutes of knowing someone was not long enough to consider proposing marriage. And by twelve minutes, most of the people invited to meet the princess had either decided that he was an insufferable airhead or realised that he wasn't actually a girl.
Despite his head being filled with glitter, his title often confused the young princess.
"Mama," he would ask whenever he wanted the answer reaffirming, which was quite often and drove his mother insane, "why am I a princess instead of a prince?"
"Because none of your suitors ever believe you're a boy," was the most common answer.
"Why not?" Vince asked one day.
His mother just stared at him and pointed out the obvious. "You're wearing a dress."
"I've got trousers on underneath," Vince reasoned.
His reward was an exasperated smack round the head.
At the time, the Queen was rather put out that her feminine son had driven away yet another potential husband. The prince of a kingdom pleasingly far away had been invited over to meet him, and they had actually taken to each other quite quickly. The Queen was enthusiastic about the match. The prince was very handsome, and seemed patient and tolerant, which you needed to be if you were going to live with Princess Vince. But it turned out there was one thing he wasn't tolerant of.
The thought of spending one night, let alone the rest of his life, with another male disgusted him.
And, like so many others, when he had found out before the engagement had been made official that Vince wasn't a young lady, he had ran.
The Queen stalked off, wondering when her son was finally going to get his act together and accept one of his suitors, or when she'd be able to find someone who didn't mind marrying an impossibly feminine walking glitterball and who wasn't a straight man or a lesbian.
Howard looked to the sky, where that strange glittering purple vapour was circling above him yet again. He had been there for years, watching it go, off and on, sometimes there, light, insubstantial and mystifying, sometimes not. The sky seemed empty without it. It wasn't blue. It was white, always white, too white. Sometimes it turned a little silvery, and then it was difficult to differentiate the sky from the ice against which he lay.
Ice, ice, everywhere, the ground, the mountains, the ledges. Cracks in the floor, all made of ice thousands of feet deep. Tall pillars and towers of ice, sticking up like tombstones or worn-down fangs. He didn't know how they formed or why they were there, but sometimes at night he thought he could see them glowing.
He leant back against the column and thought, as he had been since he came there. Surely this place should be colder, he thought. But it never had been. Sometimes, in a fit of rebellion against the no one else who was there, he would walk around naked for days, and the ice and the wind never bothered him. He sat on bare ice and leaned against more of it, and it had no ill effect.
He sighed. What was this place? How could this ice be natural? And if there was no one there, then why could he hear chimes, always, through the days and nights, now, tinkling softly through the chill, so ever-present and calm they were almost part of the air.