Native Kingdom

This story may or may not appall you, the reader. I do not know for sure because I do not know if I actually met you yet. Then again, you do not know if you met me either. I guess it would be hard to tell given that this story takes place a little out of my normal time. Just in case we have not met, I suppose I should introduce myself. I am a philosopher of sorts. I spend a lot of time thinking, some would say dreaming, of things to come and events long past. I do not think anything else about me matters. My story should be the same no matter what gender or age or other visible characteristics you care to project on me. I will leave that to your own imagination. This could be another reason that you might not know if you have met me. I suppose that is not why you are reading this anyway. You want to read my tale. Very well, let us begin.

At some point in time I found myself on the northern seaboard of a fortified island nation. I cannot recall if I was on a mission or if I was on a vacation. The coastline was unimpressive. It was covered in your typical sand and salt water. There were no sparkling blues or greens in the ocean. The sand did not shimmer or glimmer with pure white granules or anything like that. It was not even remarkably dirty. There were no homeless resting upon the beaches, no malcontents or rabble rousers trying to incite violence. No, this island looked like one of many other nameless islands one finds in that particular part of the world. At least the weather was pleasant during my stay there. It was comparable to any uneventful early summer day you might come across in any number of locations. Regardless of what brought me to this particular coast on the north of this particular island, I soon found myself with something to do; I suppose my reputation caught up with me somehow.

As I sat on a porch behind my hotel, looking out at the waves in a thoughtful mood, I sensed two people walk behind my table. Their shadows falling across the journal on the table told me that, though they appeared polite, they would not wait long for me to acknowledge them. I released an audible sigh as I turned my head to gaze at first the short blonde man with the moderate build wearing a dark purple suit and then the tall, dark-skinned, wide woman with auburn hair sporting a midnight blue suit. If they meant to intimidate me by their demeanor, then perhaps not enough of my reputation preceded me.

“What can I do for you?” I said as I nodded for them to sit. “Or, rather,” I continued, “what can I do for your employer?”

“My name is Agent Alanna Cattell,” the women intoned. “And this is my partner Jake Parker. We were sent by the imperial magistrate himself to ask you for your help on a delicate matter of state.” They both presented what seemed to be authentic enough credentials as she spoke.

“So, somebody in the fortress thinks they know who I am and why I do. Are they sure it is me that they want?” I asked.

They both nodded with great vigor. I had to clarify again.

“My expertise is rather very specific. Just whom am I to speak to and what could the problem be that calls for me over a dozen other professionals?” I queried.

Agent Cattell replied, “As I said, Dr. Felis, we come at the request of the imperial magistrate. Our royal court is currently tied up with a very sensitive investigation. It was suggested that your expertise could help unravel it for us.”

“Very well,” I responded, “I suppose I do not have much else to do at the moment. I shall accompany you.” We left the hotel, Agent Cattell in front of me and Agent Parker behind me. I held fast to my journal as a precaution against its confiscation. It is not that I had anything in there of a sensitive nature, but my journal has travelled with me through all my adventures. Even if I do not write down my thoughts, it collects them for me so that I may have something to reflect upon during my down times.

The scene at the palace was actually a bit comical to me. People in all colors and cuts of clothing ran around asking questions of everyone else. As one person answered a query, another person raced to someone else to get more information. It almost looked like a game and I was ready to laugh until I laid eyes on the imperial magistrate. I know that in most countries a magistrate is a pretty low level judge, but on this island nation, this position was not only the highest judge in the land, they also acted as the primary advisor to the royal court—king, queen, princes, etc. This particular magistrate stood at just under five feet tall and was half as wide. She had a bearing, though, that created an invisible barrier between herself and the rushing chaos around her. I looked into her orange eyes and felt that she had already judged my past, present and future sins, an impressive feat given how I tend to hop around the dimensional time stream. It is all part of my status as a “special” investigator, I promise you.

“Dr. Felis,” the magistrate intoned. “I am Magistrate Raynoles. I presume you are here to assist us.” She may have meant it as a question, but it came out as an unquestionable command.

I nodded my head and waited patiently for my briefing.

Magistrate Raynoles motioned me to a small room on the side of the open chaos. She began, “The stability of our nation is threatened. A very serious accusation has been laid at the feet of our royal family and we need an impartial party to help us unravel the situation before our country unravels itself.”

I listened as first the magistrate and then various other individuals came to tell me the circumstances that led to my recruitment. It seems that, although most of the island inhabitants were content with the imperial system of government, a small percentage of the population, a group known as the Swing Bats, was stirring up trouble in an attempt to pull down the royal family. Their allegation was that the royal family did not descend from the original inhabitants as they claimed, and as was required by the nation’s charter, but were frauds. The Swing Bats began spreading rumors that the king was the great-grandson of a notorious bandit. This bandit was supposedly responsible for the slaughter of the original king and his family, taking the crown on false pretenses; he claimed to be the last living relative of the dead king. Official records of the day state that the king and his family contracted an unknown illness that killed about a quarter of the new island nation. The Swing Bats claim that those documents were forged by the bandit to cover his deeds. My job was to find the truth using my unique abilities. Luckily, the original bed chamber of the first king was supposed to be haunted by any number of lost souls. The magistrate wanted me to see if I could find the right soul to get to the truth of the matter.

Maybe I should explain just what my expertise is. I am a dimensional traveler. I shift through time, space, and other dimensions, going where and when I happen to be needed. I do not always travel by my own conscious choice. Sometimes fate decides that I my skills are required and I find myself there and then. As a result of all of my travels, I have to keep my very special journal in order to keep everything straight. Others had the same calling as I did, but those who did not keep a record of their journeys eventually lost their sanity and slipped into a no-man’s land between destinations. Another consequence of my wayfaring is that I can find and communicate with others who are trapped between dimensions. A ghost is essentially part of a person, call it the soul or consciousness or whatever you like, that got trapped between two realms or times when the body stopped functioning. More sensitive living people can sometimes sense these ghosts. I not only see them, but I can interact with them the same way I can with any other person in any other plane. Thankfully, this does not grant the ghost the faculty to do any harm to me. They can only communicate. That is usually what they want anyway. Most hauntings are just the spirit’s attempt to get someone’s attention to help them get out of their trap.

Agent Parker escorted me to the north wing of the palace. We entered a large dimly-lit room with only a minimum of furniture—a large bed, a nightstand with an oil lamp, and a chest. I knew right away that there was someone else in the room with us. Actually, there were five other entities in the room. As Agent Parker stood at the door to ensure no one interrupted my work. I sat on the edge of the bed and waited for the first spirit to approach me. They knew I could see them when I looked directly in their eyes and nodded my head. The first spirit was a small girl.

“Sir, why are we here?” she asked me.

I replied, “You are stuck between dimensions. If we can unravel your story, then we might be able to find a portal through which you can travel to the other side. I need to know all about you to help.”

She responded, “I do not know much. I was six when everything stopped being what it was. I remember mamma being sick and standing over me. Then I found myself here.”

I nodded and motioned for the next spirit to come forth. He was about eight years old when he passed. He, too remembers his mother being sick, but it was his father that stood over him before he died. The third spirit was the physician of the royal family. This woman told me that the sickness began with the blood. While the body appeared to be flawless, inside the blood would move the wrong nutrients to the wrong parts, contaminating areas and shutting things down. The king and his family were the first to be struck down. They do not know exactly when they contracted the illness because it did not show outward signs of anything being wrong until just before the moment of death. The queen was next to tell me her story. She was tending to the king when she felt something was odd with him and within her. At first she thought he might be stressed about the mysterious visitor that arrived on the island a few days before. She thought her oddness may have been from her concern for the king or she suspected she might have been in the early stages of a third pregnancy. The illness took her within a day of the strange sensations. Finally, the king came forward.

“I have a confession to make, one that not even my wife knows, not even in death.” He began. “I am not a native to this island.”

I nodded my head and told him to continue.

“One night a stranger came to the palace. Some now claim he was a bandit. He was not. I was the criminal.”

I once again nodded so that he would continue.

“I came to this island as a small child and was adopted by the village. I worked my way around the island, planting the idea of a nation in the hearts and minds of the people. To make sure that no other strangers would be able to take my throne, I decreed in our charter that the royal family, at least the king or the queen, had to be a native of this island. Neither myself nor my queen were born here. She was an emissary from a neighboring kingdom. We married to forge an alliance. What I did not know was that I created my own undoing by not taking a native bride. The stranger appeared when I had been on the throne for ten years. He was a true native of this island. We treated him as a welcome guest, but something did not feel right. He gave us a gift of native fruits, plants that we were well aware of and had no reason to distrust. They had a special property, though. When consumed by someone not of this island, they rewrote the body in an attempt to turn it into a native. Unfortunately, the rewriting process actually turns the body against itself and creates a disease that seeks to find others who are not native. We died because we are not from here. The stranger took the throne as a true native.”

The other ghosts were shocked by the king spirit’s revelation, which opened a portal above the chest in the room. One by one the other spirits walked through the portal, disappearing to their appointed dimensions. The king faded away last, hanging his head in shame, but with a decidedly lighter load on his shoulders.

I made my report to the magistrate. The Swing Bats presented a kernel of truth—the original king and his family were killed by the strange visitor. Yet, the current king was descended from a true native, so he and his family still had the right to rule.

 
[Copy write Christina Guardino 2014 (c)]