Free Swans Over the Moon by Forrest Aguirre Page B

to accelerate your growth into the responsibility of
ruler-ship, a responsibility that I now see you cannot uphold. Back
when I pushed that pillar as the gong sounded in the royal gardens,
late, late at night.”
    “You?” He stood up, dumbfounded. “Y . .
.you!” A hint of fight swelled up within him, pushing up through
the sadness that threatened to crush his heart. He fled from that
scene in his mind's eye's past to root himself in the present,
where he could make a stand on more stable temporal ground. It was
an amazing emotional feat, a victory, of sorts, and he felt his
strength and will begin to return.
    “And what now is stopping me, Selene, from
casting you to the ground from this place?”
    She reached into the folds of her dress and
drew out two small scrolls. “Only a pair of agreements. One between
me and the leaders of the Scaramouche that I will establish
friendly, peaceful relations with them and help them to rebuild
their shattered infrastructure. And another between me and Euler
that I will not only allow free interchange and trade, but that the
Knights of Procellarium will protect all trade routes between
Euler, the Scaramouche, and our glorious nation. Agreements not
with Procellarium, mind you, but with me personally. Kill me and
they will surely destroy this nation that you love.”
    He looked out over the almost completely
black surface of the moon, a tiny wedge of light about to disappear
on the northeastern horizon.
    “Then the die is cast.”
    “Not quite,” Selene admitted, her honesty
catching him off guard. “I suppose you could kill me out of spite
or revenge, but it will do you little good. The poisons I have
slowly been administering to you over several years in your drinks
are almost ready to take their final hold. You might live long
enough to see Procellarium fall into total anarchy and the opposing
armies overrun what remains of the city; the spread of slaughter
and rapine through the populace. Or,” she held out a vial of black
liquid, “you can die honorably, at your own hand, assured that I
will maintain order in the kingdom. A lasting order that shall not
ossify and become arthritic with outdated tradition, as the old
order has.”
    He considered for a moment, then took the
vial with a trembling hand. He looked at her, wishing he could see
her eyes through her goggles, to read her true expression. Then, as
quickly as he could, he quaffed the vial's contents. The strength
of the contents knocked him immediately to the floor, the world
swirling about in a vortex of color and texture, as if everything
were filled with and exuded all the colors of the rainbow at
once.
    The shadow of the blue planet fell completely
over their world. Selene removed her goggles as the sun, behind the
hills, could not now blind her. She wanted him to see her face as
he lay dying. She watched him push himself up to his hands and
knees, then she carefully removed his goggles.
    Through the chromatic whirlwind he saw her
face – saw it more clearly than he ever had before, as if his past
views of her had been through a distorting glass that had now been
removed. Her countenance shone, an iridescent aura enveloping her
white hair, casting lambent rainbows into the churning
prism-vortex.
    A glimmer of revelation sparkled in his eyes,
then a full-fledged sun broke over his clouded mind. “I know now,”
he wheezed his last, failing breaths. “You are not alive, you are
dead.”
    She laughed, an honest laugh, not malicious,
like the sounding of a million tiny silver cymbals.
    “Oh, father, how silly you are! Did mother
not tell you of her pregnancy before the fall? I am not dead. How
can that die, which was never born?”
    Selene, Queen Selene Pelevin, reached down to
close her father's eyelids with ghostly hands. The vortex
dissipated, along with her beautiful face, the face of one never
born, never alive, never dead, everlastingly never, into the
void.
     
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    Forrest