Here is Chapter 8 of Gene Turnbow’s novel in progress, “Hero Interrupted”, provided as an exclusive perk for our generous patrons on Patreon. Enjoy.
The corridors of the royal palace were opulent, unlike the simple, functional medieval kitchen from which she had just come. There should be huge, masterpiece paintings on the walls, thought Megan, and the world shifted slightly around Megan as she passed, and suddenly there they were, portraits of what must have been kings and queens from a dozen generations. This was going to take some getting used to. Elegantly dressed servants in silk embroidered waistcoats and breeches with shiny black shoes carried large covered dishes as they walked in tandem down the corridor. Megan guessed that they were heading for wherever it was that royalty ate – the King’s dinner, she supposed. Out of sheer curiosity, she fell in behind them.
One of the elegantly attired footmen noticed her and turned his head to address her. “You’re just in time,” he said, “but you’ll have to change into something more proper if you’re going to be serving.” Megan looked down at her hot pink kilt, and suddenly it was a silk waistcoat and breeches, the same as what the servants were wearing.
It would all have matched exactly were it not still hot pink, and paradoxically, she still had both her necklace its locket, and the sporran.
Megan was only moderately surprised. Not a whole lot made direct linear sense in this world unless one actively chose to see it that way. That didn’t stop her from taking a moment to wonder about the mechanism that made things like this happen here.
“Much better,” said the footman, who was apparently as color blind as everyone else they passed in the corridor.
She looked at the faces of the people they passed as they walked to see if anybody noticed she was dressed in a hot pink servant’s uniform, but she found the faces of those around her difficult to read, including the serving staff in whose company she was. It’s not that it was dark, or that they were avoiding her gaze — it was just that their faces were nondescript in every case, and somewhat vacant. The harder Megan looked, the blurrier the faces became. After a bit, she stopped trying. It was feeling distinctly more like a dream, and less real with each encounter.
“So where are we going, exactly?”
The footman glanced sideways at her, and Juniper got the feeling that if he had bothered to turn his head, he would be looking down the length of his nose at her. “The King’s banquet. You’re new, so just do as we do, and don’t talk to anyone.”
They rounded a corner, and there was another set of double doors. They opened – by what means, Megan could not deduce. The pair strode forward into the great banquet hall.
“Well?” The footman who had been advising her spoke again. “Are you coming in, or not?”
Megan closed her eyes, and with a near superhuman effort, tried to wake up. When she opened them again, she fully expected to be treated to a close view of her coffee cup resting on her desk next to her mouse pad, with a pile of inventory printouts stacked up beside it, the whole scene tilted at an approximate ninety degree angle. Instead, she saw an elegantly dressed servant carrying a silver tray laden with scrumptious looking roast goose on a bed of the kind of garnish nobody actually eats, on his way to the grand ballroom. He was closely followed by a lady in waiting carrying a basket of wildflowers. Then another waiter, then another, then another lady with another basket of flowers, and so forth.
“My god, how many roast geese and bushels of flowers can they possibly need?” Megan said aloud. The servants nearest her stopped to stare at her, blank expressions on their soulless uniform faces.
“Sorry,” said Megan with a distracted wave. “Carry on.” As one, they turned their noses forward, and resumed their steady gliding gait. Megan joined one of the man servants, walking at his elbow.
“So I’m here in this fantasy dream world,” she said to him. She looked for some indication that he had heard her, but if he did, he gave no sign. “I’ve tried waking up, but I can’t, so there’s something wrong. I’m injured, or I’m really sick and I’ve fallen into a coma, or I’ve been drugged. Obviously any of those choices suck.”
The manservant said nothing.
“So – what if – what if there’s a fourth option?” She looked at the servant to see if he was paying attention. “What’s your name? Do you have one? You look exactly like all the other servants. Don’t you think that’s weird?” A lady in waiting with her basket of flowers passed them by, and Megan took a bachelor button from the basket. The lady took no notice of the casual theft, and kept walking. She tucked the flower into the servant’s lapel. “There,” she said, “I hereby dub thee Clarence. Now I can tell you apart from the other servants. How does it feel to be unique, Clarence?”
Clarence stopped in his tracks, his mouth open in surprise. He turned to stare at Megan, then looked down at the tray he was holding, then back at Megan.
“Celestia!” Clarence’s first words as a sentient being were of surprise. “Why did I say that? And after that, who am I?”
“Who’s Celestia?” Her eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you know you you are?”
“My apologies. A moment ago I didn’t know anything,” said Clarence, running his fingers through his own hair and being surprised by the experience. Surprised by the sensation, he stopped and held his hand in front of his face, and looked at his fingers as though he’d never seen them before. Which he hadn’t. “And now I’m — alive? I think I’m alive.”
“If you think you are, then that’s good enough for me,” said Megan, who at this point was unsurprised by anything that happened in this unreasonable place.
“Thank you for my name, I think I should say,” said Clarence. He paused and turned his attention inward. “How would I know to say that?” he said to himself.
“Can you tell me where I am and why I can’t wake up?”
“You’re in the Alterwhere, and you don’t appear to be asleep to me,” offered Clarence. “And don’t ask me how I know that, because I don’t know.”
“What’s the Alterwhere?”
“Sorry,” said Clarence, “that’s all I have.”
“You don’t know a lot more than I do, do you?”
Again, Clarence shrugged. “I’ve only just been born so far as I know,” he offered apologetically.
“All right then,” said Megan, “I want my flower back.” And with that she removed the flower from Clarence’s lapel. The light of self-awareness that had only a moment ago graced Clarence’s gaze vanish, and Clarence became Not Clarence. Without another word, he picked up his tray from where it had fallen.
“Oh,” said Megan. “I won’t do that again. That feels like committing a murder.” She pondered the flower in her hand. “Okay then. Magic daisy flower thing. Whatever you call these. I wonder if you can all do that, or if it’s just you.” She put it carefully in her sporran. Until she got her hands on more of them and figured out more about their apparently magical nature, she would have to take special care of this one. She followed Not Clarence to the great hall.
When they arrived, Megan took a moment to take it all in. The great hall matched her every expectation. There were windows five or six times her own height on the two lengthwise opposing walls. Elegant banners hung from the support columns, with heraldry symbolic of she wasn’t sure what. She wandered along with the constant stream of servers as they walked from table to table with their trays, observing the attendees and listening in to their conversations without being to overtly obvious about it. She tried to keep an eye on Not Clarence as well, but as he was largely indistinguishable from the other servants except for his now slightly tousled hair, she periodically lost track of him.
Megan knew that the symbolism on medieval coats of arms and badges were all supposed to mean something. This was the graphical language of heraldry, from a time in history where literacy was rare, but everybody could understand painted symbols. That was what made the banners hanging from the rafters and draped over some of the chair backs hard to look at. Some made sense from a heraldic standpoint, but others looked like they’d been copied from the cover of some claptrap fantasy novel, where the artist hadn’t any idea what heraldry even was, and had just made something up. Even with the properly emblazoned coats of arms, though, Megan couldn’t even guess at what any of it meant.
“This would all make sense to a local,” she told herself. Getting one to talk to her, though, might be a less certain proposition, given what had just happened with the servant in the corridor. Megan cast her gaze around the room looking for him. There he was – Not Clarence with his tousled hair was serving roast beef to what looked like the king and queen, judging by the shiny pointy metal hats they both wore – that and their exclusivity, engaging in conversation only with one another and generally ignoring anyone else around them who wasn’t similarly decorated.
A small battalion of food servers bearing various platters of food burst through the double doors and fanned out in half a dozen different directions, each headed to a different table with tempting victuals. Right behind them, entering the room just as the double doors closed again, were Seth and Juniper. Megan noted their arrival, and decided that if she was going to make a move, she had better do it before they realized she was up to something. She scanned the room and assessed her tactical options. She had to know what was going on, and using her newfound power seemed to be the best way to do it, but the best chance she’d have would involve talking to somebody in charge.
Out of the corner of her eye, Megan saw Glenford. He was quite some distance away, near the furthest wall from where Megan was standing. In fact, Glenford appeared to be actually leaning against that wall, doing his best to be invisible as he scoped out the room himself. He needn’t have bothered. Unless one was titled and known to everyone else, attention was hard earned. Megan watched him for a while to see what he would do, while at the same time trying her best to avoid his notice. He was spending an inordinate amount of time gazing at woman’s chests – no wait. Not their chests. At their necks, that was odd. Usually boys look at women’s chests first.
Ah, there it is, he’s holding up a locket or something, Megan thought. Glenford was; the amulet he was lifting up to the light was twirling and swinging round, seemingly of its own accord.
Megan remembered a Glenford at the office. She hadn’t met him very many times, and this Glenford more or less resembled him, but it would be a Glenford minus about fifteen or twenty years of lifetime. This Glenford seemed unfinished, or perhaps half baked, or perhaps both. The resemblance was too far off the mark not to be a red herring, but too close to be accidental. This bore investigation, but not now. Now, the best thing for the moment was to put as much distance between herself and this Glenford as she could. She didn’t know why. It was just a feeling, and not a pleasant one. Something was about to happen that she thought she might not appreciate.
Megan turned to put some distance between her and Glenford, which served the double purpose of moving her closer to the royal table where the King and Queen would be sitting when they arrived. She returned her attention to the nobility milling slowly around her.
It was one thing to read about kings, queens and courtesans, but historians were usually people who collected written descriptions of wars between kingdoms and the sometimes conflicting paperwork from everybody involved to try to figure out exactly what happened, and usually tossing in some propaganda while they were about it. They didn’t usually have the opportunity now presenting itself to Megan, which was the chance to just walk up and eavesdrop. Maybe even just talk to them and ask them questions, why not? If they were story characters like Clarence/Not Clarence, they might just spill whatever beans they had if they were under the influence of Megan’s apparently magical flower.
Either way, there was no way that even a casual conversation between the two royals was going to happen without Megan finding out what it was all about. She was dying of curiosity. After all, if they really were story characters, she might be able to learn a great deal very quickly if she could get one or both of them under the influence. But first, there was a vital experiment that needed performing. From the basket of one of the passing flower girls, she selected a gaudy looking orange and red bloom, and deftly inserted it into her hair just over the left ear.
“There you are.”
A gentle golden glow, almost imperceptible, rippled across the visage of the girl. She gasped, as though she had just been awoken from a sound sleep by a sudden loud noise.
“Good,” said Megan, “I suspected this might work.” She smiled sweetly at the flower girl. “Welcome to the world.”
She was suddenly conscious, almost certainly for the first time. Her face went from the same porcelain mask all the servants wore, to being one vibrant with the blush of life. The mindless glaze left her eyes, and her mouth fell open in surprise. Megan reached out and gently closed it for her with a fingertip under the chin.
“Hi,” she said. “Can you get me close to the royal table?”
-30-
