FOUR
"But I repeat, what are you?", asked the Queen of 'Nar-nee-uh'. "Are you a Daughter of the Lamppost?"
Both of Jadis' eyebrows were raised now. This dream was really starting to go South, but she thought she'd better continue playing along, regardless. So, she answered,
"No, Your Majesty. I am the daughter of a woman."
"A woman! Do you mean you're a Daughter of Eve?"
Jadis didn't know if she should answer yes, no or even maybe by that time, so she decided not to answer at all.
"I see that your appearance is similar to the lamppost, whatever manner of being you are.", the queen continued. "Now, answer me, 'Daughter'. Are you human?"
Jadis was extremely close to answering, "Well, I'm most certainly not an animal!", but she thought better of it. Instead, she answered,
"Yes, Your Majesty. I am human, and so was my mother. So, I couldn't look anything like a lamppost."
"Peculiar … ", murmured the queen with a distant expression. She looked down at Ginarrbrik the Dwarf, who looked at Jadis in turn with a grin that made his cruel, bearded face look even more twisted.
"Not as peculiar as your 'Daughter of the Lamppost and Eve' foolishness.", Jadis thought angrily. "That's it. I'm going to put a stop to this nonsense, once and for all!"
"If you would permit me to ask a question, Your Majesty. What do you mean?"
The queen lifted her staff. Jadis thought she was about to aim it at her, but she pointed it toward the opposite side of the clearing and said,
"Look. Over yonder."
"O-kay.", Jadis thought in exasperation. "I don't know what you expect me to see 'over yonder', but I'll go ahead and look, just to prove to myself there's nothing there." So, she turned and looked where the queen indicated.
"Do you see that light?"
To Jadis' utter surprise, she DID see a light! There, nestled within what looked like the thickest, darkest area of the trees.
After taking a moment to refocus her eyes, she saw, even from the far distance where she stood, that the light wasn't the steady, fluorescent glow of the halogen bulb atop the silver modern-day street light near the modest 1950s style home where she grew up.
No, the light was a flickering, bright burn of a flame atop a black olden-time lamppost that looked like it belonged near a row of grand townhouses from the 1900s!
Jadis quietly took the sight in with her analytical eyes and brain, trying to ponder how the lamppost had ever come to be there. The illogical thought of it growing from a seed in the ground had just entered her mind when the queen's voice broke through the absurd notion.
Jadis was actually thankful for that, despite her increasing dislike for the seven-foot-tall Christmas ornament and her ice shard of a tongue, until she said,
"Human or not, your visage and that of the lamppost are nearly identical."
Upon hearing that comment, Jadis slowly turned and looked at the queen. If she meant what Jadis thought she meant or the way she meant it, she wanted to make sure her ears hadn't deceived her.
"Let me get this straight, Your Majesty. You think that I'm a child of that light over yonder because we're the same color?"
"Indeed, my sunless-tinted human.", the queen reiterated with what seemed to Jadis like a mixture of amusement, fascination and repulsion. "Why, I have never before seen one such as you in this world or in the world of my birth!", she concluded with another look at Ginarrbrik, who issued a dry-leafy chuckle.
Jadis went completely silent. Now, she would've let that remark slide considering her predicament, but she decided right then and there that she would respond with one or two "remarks" of her own. True, she wasn't born and raised in a great palace overflowing with power, wealth, courtiers, servants and all the other royal trappings. But she was every bit the product of an environment that always encouraged her to be proud of what and of who she is. To love the skin she's in, no matter what anyone else said to the contrary. Most importantly, she was taught that respect was a two-way street.
Therefore, if the Queen of Narnia planned for Jadis to know her delusional "plural entities" better hereafter, she would make sure they would know her better hereafter, too!
She had no idea what the aftermath would be. She might wake up in her own bed, or she might be blown up in the middle of the wood. Whatever the outcome, she knew for certain that she would have stood tall on her acceptance of herself.
So, Jadis lifted her head, placed her hand on her hip and gave the queen the same hard look that she received when they first crossed paths. With her finger pointed at herself, she boldly stated,
"You're absolutely right, Your Majesty. I'm practically as sunless as strong, ebony wrought iron. I love it, and no one in any world, solar system, galaxy or universe will EVER change that." Then, pointing her finger at the queen, Jadis finished with,
"Especially a weak, brittle ivory tusk like you and all your other selves!"
A flush of color came into the queen's face, and she bowed ever so slightly. Jadis' dialect couldn't have been more different than her own, but she still understood that she had just been matched in the act of getting owned!
She suddenly rose from her seat on the sledge and raised her staff high in the air like a javelin.
There was no doubt about the queen's intended target this time. Jadis slowly backed away with an outwardly fearful expression, but with inward fearlessness she thought, "If you plan to run me through, you're gonna have a serious tussle on your hands, 'lady', and your little whipping boy, too!"
As if on cue from that very thought, Ginarrbrik stood, raised his whip as high as his short arm would allow and rasped,
"How dare you mock the Queen of Narnia!"
As Ginarrbrik jumped down from his seat, the queen lowered her staff and retook her own. With a superior flourish, she unfastened her brooch and removed her fur mantle.
Ginarrbrik hop-skipped toward Jadis and cracked the whip at her to coil it around her ankles and to pull her feet out from under her, but she side-stepped to her left, just as the whip cut a deep groove in the snow.
Jadis hadn't known it, but if she had moved a second later, Ginarrbrik would have jumped onto her chest as she lay face-up in the snow and held his jewel-encrusted dagger to her throat, so the queen could step in and finish the job with her staff!
From her on the sledge, the queen looked on, a scowl beginning to appear on her face.
"I do not tolerate failure, Ginarrbrik.", she proclaimed in a dangerously calm voice. "Slay her."
The dwarf obeyed without question. Simple-minded though he was, he had enough comprehension to maintain his undying obedience to his mistress, as opposed to dying by her hand for failing to carry out his task!
Ginarrbrik withdrew the whip and hopped a few steps back with a series of growling noises. Jadis however, stayed put. She raised her hands, palms forward and bent at her knees down to his level. Feet spread apart, she watched his next move with a silent stare.
She had some bold hand-to-hand combat moves up her sleeve to swat this annoying little gnat away good and proper, but she had only one chance to pull them off.
Could she do it? There was only one way to find out!
With a dwarf-ish battle cry, Ginarrbrik did another hop-skip toward Jadis and cracked the whip a second time to coil it around her left ankle. With perfect timing, Jadis took two steps forward and dropped to her left knee. With outstretched arms, she made a determined grab for the end of the whip and caught it with both hands as it sailed through the air. She held on tight and gave the whip a good tug with a twisting motion.
Holding fast to the handle of the whip, the stubborn Ginarrbrik was dragged through the snow in the process, which was exactly what Jadis wanted to happen. With another good tug, she yanked the whip from his stubby hands and threw it aside as far as she could. He was left fuming hot enough to melt the snow beneath him, but with one less weapon!
"Smite the human woman at once, fool!", rang the queen's voice, rising in anger.
Ginarrbrik quickly got to his feet with more growling noises and knocked his cap off his head while dusting some of the snow off his beard and clothing. Jadis slowly stood and quietly reassumed her combat position.
Ginarrbrik drew his dagger and rushed at Jadis with the fiercest battle cry he could muster. She dropped to both of her knees and grabbed his wrist with one hand, just as the blade was about to find its mark in her chest. She twisted his arm and squeezed hard. He reacted with a hoarse yelp.
As Ginarrbrik's dagger dropped from his hand, Jadis struck him on his forehead with the palm of her other hand. He clumsily stumbled back against the side of the and received another blow to the back of his head during the impact. He lost consciousness and slid down into the snow.
The queen, still sitting on the sledge, was beside herself with fury, but with calculated restraint, she decided not to show it. Not yet.
She quietly stepped down from the sledge in a casual manner, staff held in both hands and looked upon her incapacitated little man. If she could've killed Ginarrbrik with her disapproving eyes, then he would save her the trouble. He slumped over to one side like a dead rag doll.
Suddenly, a sound unheard of by the queen during the 100 years of her reign filled the air throughout the clearing. A sound she had completely suppressed when she crushed all rebellion through brutal violence and mass murder to become current ruler of this realm of snow and ice.
She instinctively looked up; staff raised and turned toward the sound's source.
"Uh-oh. I think I just totaled your 'brick', Your Majesty.", Jadis confessed between gales of riotous laughter. "It looks like you'll have to buy yourself a new one!"
The queen glared at Jadis as if she willed shards of ice to start flying from her eyes.
In dramatic mock fear and contrition, Jadis placed her hands across her chest to protect her heart from the stabbing.
"Oops. My bad!", she quipped.
Jadis' witty play on words may have gone over the queen's head, but the raucous mirth at her expense most certainly hadn't.
Without uttering a word, the queen switched her staff from her left to her right hand and aimed it to her left. From what Jadis observed, she looked as if she was activating it.
She then turned back toward Ginarrbrik and thrust the staff in a graceful downward arc. The staff's tip barely touched him before it emitted a flash of crackling blue ice-fire that gradually washed over him until his entire body, garments and all, were completely entombed in grayish-black stone.
Jadis hardly had time to believe, let alone discover that magic (dark, no less) from a wand was afoot before the queen began to lunge at her with it, howling with rage.
"You shall pay for your effrontery, impudent human woman! YOU SHALL PAY DEARLY!"
Without a second or even a first thought, Jadis quickly took several steps back, stretched her right arm out at the queen and made a fist.
Something that looked like a multi-colored flower sprouted from the opaque, black ring on her finger with a clicking, buzzing sound. Its petals bloomed open in a clockwise motion.
A red dot appeared in the center of the "flower". It shape-shifted into a thin, straight line and traveled the short distance between Jadis and the queen at eye level, growing longer in length until it reached the middle of the queen's forehead. She felt a feathery touch there, which only meant from many an experience with magic that a mental infiltration was at work by the human woman!
She had always been more proficient than most at clearing her thoughts and emotions to prevent the access and use of them against her. She even prided herself on the proficiency, but the application of the invisible cloak over her mind and her face somehow seemed to fail her now. Her eyes and mouth opened like gaping holes as a lightness began to overtake her brain.
Jadis' own brain seemed like it had just caught up with her arm in a race. She acted with her signature self-defense move before she thought about what would (or wouldn't) come of it. She couldn't contact her teammates with her vest com-link, so she was afraid they were either out of range, in danger or dead.
But now that she had just seen that things worked differently here in Nar-nee-uh than she'd ever imagined that they do anywhere else, she assumed that her vest com-link didn't work at all.
Therefore, her ring shouldn't be working at all either. In her mind, she shouldn't even be alive to see the Queen of Nar-nee-uh standing across from her, as still as a statue because of her ring. She should be a statue like the dwarf because of the queen's wand!
But that turned out not to be the case. Whether by light magic or by some other means, Jadis herself was still standing, as the impudent human woman with the so-far working ring in addition to her effrontery. The realization prompted her arm and her brain to get her head back in the game, so she could finish it.
The queen looked as though she'd just been planted where she stood, as she was completely immobile. Her wand dropped from her hand to the snow as the lengthened line shape-shifted again into a box with smaller boxes inside that surrounded her entire head, from the points of her crown to her chin. Then it panned downwards from her neck to the hem of her gown; a cage unlike any she'd ever seen before!
She had never been fearful of anyone or anything since the birth of this world about a thousand years ago, but for the first time since then, she began to feel sheer terror.
She was trapped; that was certain, but she didn't feel the frigid, yet scorching static energy render her rock-solid as it did Ginarrbrik. In, fact, she didn't feel any physical discomfort at all. What she felt was a pulsating sensation that vibrated through every fiber in her being, as if the cage was searching for something deep within her.
This strangest of anomalies was unlike any kind of magic that she was familiar with; dark, light or otherwise, which meant it was something much worse, as she didn't know how to conquer it. And with the fear presently coursing through her veins, taking possession of it so she could learn how to wield it was the furthest thing from her mind!
The box disappeared almost as sudden as the line appeared. With another buzz and a click, the flower petals around the ring rotated counterclockwise. Then they floated upwards, where they were scattered and blown away on an audible, visible gust of wind until they disappeared as well. Although the cage had set her free, she was still immobilized and imprisoned by the terror from her ordeal.
For all the queen could surmise, this "sunless-tinted human" that had entered her dominions was also a 'queen' who was just as evil as herself (or a queen who was good, depending on your point of view, readers) with a magic wand that was more powerful than her own. And she came from a world beyond all the vast gulfs with a more powerful Djinn, or some other Being most powerful that had just broken and entered her body and mind like the cleverest of thieves and stole her arcane knowledge, her immortality, everything that flowed through her. Not only that, but she also brought with her some signs that would surely bring about the end of Winter. Her beautiful, eternal Winter!
If this queen also possessed a Secret of Secrets more deadly than the Deplorable Word, there was no doubt that she would use it to destroy her, just as she destroyed her people eons ago!
Before she had the opportunity to fully process this, she noticed that something else was beginning to make its presence known from within the other queen's wand.
The same words that the queen said in a voice of terrible calmness during her stint in the Nothingness before the Dawn of Time flashed through her mind at that moment.
"My doom has come upon me …"
A 4D Image of a Great Cat leapt forth from the ring amid a huge, golden sunburst with a Spatial Audio roar, ready to pounce on His prey with bared teeth and extended claws!
The Cat's prey screamed like a banshee and stumbled back toward the sledge like the dwarf she turned into a statue had done earlier and almost fell on her backside.
Once the queen regained her balance, she gathered up her gown and petticoats and ran away from the Cat as fast as her high-heeled boots could carry her, screaming all the way.
Jadis erupted into an unbridled fit of giggles as she watched the Queen of Nowhere clumsily disappear over the horizon, leaving behind her sledge, reindeer, dwarf statue, fur mantle and her wand!
Once Jadis composed herself, she stared up at the place where she saw the jaw-dropping image and did a double-take. The Cat's body was no more, but its head was suspended in the air, still looking as golden as the sun itself, until it dematerialized like a slowly dying ember until it vanished.
After what seemed like an eternity of staring up, Jadis finally looked down, lifted her hand and stretched out her fingers to inspect her tech device, completely bewildered about what she just saw.
"Oh. My. Bleep. My Holographic Display Ring both worked AND discovered that great lady's worst fear.", she thought aloud in awe. "But I never thought her worst fear would be a lion. And if I didn't know better, I'd swear I saw the lion's head look down, smile and wink its eye at me as it dematerialized. Man! If only the guys …"
"Jadis!", chimed a chorus of male voices in the distance. "Jadis, is that you?"
She looked up, startled and turned her head, her concentration torn from her train of thought.
The voices called her name again. "Guys?", she answered excitedly. "Yes, it me. I'm over here, in the middle of the wood!"
She turned and sprinted toward their voices, while directing them toward hers.
The four men appeared from among the trees, armed with their own tech devices.
"Are you alright, luv?", asked the one named Kelbo in a British accent. "We heard quite a hullabaloo a few moments ago."
"Yes, I'm alright, Kel.", answered Jadis. "I wasn't after we got separated during the blizzard, believe me. But I am now that you're all here."
"What happened?", asked Servesh in his sing-song accent.
"I'd like to know where how we all ended up here and where 'here' is, mi amigos.", said Manuel. "This isn't the Canadian Rockies!"
"If I was to tell you that you're right, you'd think I'd lost my marbles, Manny!", replied Jadis.
"Oh, we four certainly thought we'd lost our marbles, Jadis.", said Hiro. "With all the strange things we've seen around here!"
"What did you all see?", asked Jadis, beginning to feel relieved that she hadn't been the only one. The men glanced at one another awkwardly as if wondering, "Should we tell her?"
It's alright, guys. You can tell me.", she urged. "I'm sure nothing could be as strange as the things I've seen around here!"
"We saw talking woodland animals!"
"Mythological creatures!"
"Moving trees …"
"… and the beginnings of Spring!", the four of them said at once.
"I believe you. One thousand percent.", Jadis confirmed with an air of certainty. "Now that you mention it, the snow and ice is starting to melt right here!"
The four surveyed the immediate area. Sure enough, there really was a Winter thaw taking place, with snow falling from the branches of the trees in which a family of Robins and a squirrel or two were making their appearance. There were also different sized patches of brown and green on the ground, with the odd flower starting to bloom here and there.
They began to express their agreement with Jadis, until Servesh said,
"Look everyone. There's something over there!"
"What do you see, Sam?", asked Kelbo, speaking for Manuel and Hiro. Jadis looked on at them silently while they turned and looked where Servesh was pointing, with a knowing smile beginning to form on her face.
"Hey, I see something, too.", said Manuel. "On the horizon. You can't really miss it, with the sun rays shining on it."
"And it's moving. I think it's another animal, or more than one", said Hiro. "And ... oh, did you all hear that? It sounded like bells."
"What do you reckon, Jadis?", asked Kelbo, turning back toward her.
"Well, I 'reckon' you'd have to see and hear those animals up close, to believe that they're real, as wonderful and … Wintry as they are. I can even tell you the name of this place, although I can't tell you if it's real or not!", she said with an air of finality and a wink of her eye.
The men reacted with childlike curiosity, bursting with inquiries of "Really? You saw the animals? What are they? Are they from the woods or from a myth? and "What is this place called?", with another "What happened?" from Servesh.
"Uhhh …" Jadis answered hesitantly, wondering how to even begin to explain.
"Please, do share with us, luv.", urged Kelbo. "Nothing that you say would surprise us. Would it, mates?", he asked, glancing at the other three.
Servesh, Manuel and Hiro responded with shaking heads and an enthusiastic "No, mate!", with an imploring look at Jadis, like three puppy dogs with the eyes to match.
"Alright, you kiss-ups!", Jadis answered, raising her hands in a comically defeated tone. "I surrender. But I think it's best if I start at the beginning while I take us there. Come on, let's go."
So, all five of them got started, Jadis leading the way back to the middle of the woods, as she launched into the tale of her meeting there with a Great Lady, not too far from a snowy area with an ever-burning light.
"Well, after we made it into the stand of pine trees, I found myself alone in a shadow of thick, dark fir trees, and …"
... and there you have it, readers!
'Queen' Jadis Goldsworthy had quite an adventure, didn't she?
Only she was none the wiser that she, a member of the Carson City S.T.E.A.M. Team had faced off against Her Imperial Majesty, Queen Jadis (or the White Witch) of Narnia with some boss combative skills, a wicked cool tech device and some rib-tickling humor!
But she couldn't have done it without Aslan the Great Lion!
THE END