From the journals of Queen Gwendolyn Edgewood

Year 4188, Tel-Allal | Planet Bain

An Introduction

All medium serves the primordial essence and space of the deepest heart. That service pulls us deeper into reality as we are able to accept our place within it. I am learning that every step of the way, that that has all life has ever been about, sweet discoveries, unveiling our true depth.

Whether this was written in the private chambers in the New Capital Palace, by the Queen of the Sister Worlds herself, or by a pauper in the streets, the space of the heart opens and a new depth of reality welcomes us in. We walk our patterns, each of them seemingly different, with values and prejudices assigned and suffered, only to find that story and meaning was merely wrapping paper, obscuring the real gift— the reality that we are divine.

I’m laughing at all the jokes played on me. It took God herself, making me Queen, (such a gaudy wrapping) the last thing I ever wanted, and the path I resisted most. It was thrusted upon me in order to teach me humor, and strangely to teach humility, to focus the inner eye, steady the breath, and to catch a glimpse of my own homecoming, deep in Her bright heart! What a trick of the light.

Yesterday, a young fidgety fellow was brought to my study, a Herbert Truetell, or something like that. Apparently I had hired someone, unbeknownst to myself, to write my life’s story! Imagine that, the first Queen of the Bainish Empire, now of the Sister Worlds, the very centerpiece in a coup to make it so, and still those close to me don’t trust me to write my own damned story!

The young fidgety man, Henry, Herman, Hugo, oh… something, did not take it wrong when I sent him out. “Ha! Not in your life, buster!” I think I said. No I definitely did say that. Sigh.

So much for humility. I shall have to call for him. After being vexed, and prodded into doing exactly what my precious grandmother said  needed doing decades ago, I think yesterday I might have shot the messenger sent from Vo-Ma’s grave!   Upon reflection, I see it is time, but still;  I’ll not have someone write and sell my story. I will account for it, entirely. I will however work with this writer, whatever his name is. I must admit,  In my anger, I failed to see certain signs, of something greater than “my story.” Harland in his gentle way showed me this.

“A Queen indeed allows others to serve her, in her own time of course. I hope you’ll reconsider speaking with the man.”

After putting Harland and my staff on blast, Harland played his metaphorical paan flute, sounding the right notes to stop the bull from kicking. Notes of intrigue floated in the air, details in a soft spoken story, such as where this fellow, oh damn it, Hector, Harry, came from. As it turns, ole…  Hue, yes, Hue Truetell had for a number years lived on planet Banx, and stayed on the southern Antith Islands. No one really knows which one.

Apparently this young-ish journalist stayed among Nadthsade cultists, in an ashram of sorts, reformed after the holocaust, and headed up by none other than the child my invasion force helped to free several years ago.  A New Niehembreth! The plot thickens. I cannot overlook the links to the prince, Jeshibian Khoorlrhani, that one degree of separation between I and my nephew Bren whom I’ve not put eyes on for nearly five years.  There is always more to the story than the cover, more wrapping to undo. I shall send for this Hue Truetell at once. I have so many questions.

The Ten Worlds of the Banxisithine

Within the four charted sectors of our planetary system known as the Banxisithine, reside ten planets. The Heart Sector, closest to Sol, our star, contain the Planets; Quinc, and Aros. Sector One contains the sister worlds Banx, and Bain, as well as Drajaynas. Sector Two contains the planets, Surpia, Gaya, and the gas giant Petros I. It is in the 3^rd sector in which the twin gas giant Petros II, and the red water and mineral rich Arcana reside.

Trickhorn

When asked by Mr. Truetell the basic question, “What was your childhood like? Was it a good childhood?” I winced and resisted getting into the limbo of the usual autobiographical tropes. After a few hours, of chatting, off the record, and keeping it mainly about policy, and social theory, I indulged his initial question privately. I had only answered Mr. Truetell cryptically, “It was a successful childhood, as here we are.”

Privately, I recall my earliest moments as a girl, selectively bookmarked moments of distilled light, memories, where I was free, and knew somehow that it was that, perfect. What stood out the most was a memory of my love of mehras.

I always wanted one as a child. Where pictures of Mehras, in the pages of the heavy bound encyclopedias in my father’s study could be found, my fathers bellow could then be heard as he marked his discovery of the dog eared folds– my book marks– to which he’d huff, “Gwen… these are my books… not yours.”

The tribes of the main continent–Pangea– of planet Sten, had various words for these marvelous curled horned steeds. Depending on the Odan dialectic reference they were called: Miho, Mehure, and mehra. I loved everything about Sten, our most mysterious colony world, an over-big green planet of abundance from which so many of my favorite children’s story’s drew their inspiration, stories of adventure, pristine natural beauty, and the wild sharp eared and dark skinned Odan people— the Khoorlrhsni, the Mayak.

My father’s study was full of these books, those written for children as well as adults. My father, Duke Lawrence Edgewood, was a military man, descended from a great tradition of military service. His father and grandfather, and nearly all that came before them were high ranking officers in the army of our world—planet Bain.

Our histories would have one believe that Bain was the center the galaxy known as the Banxisithine as planet Bain certainly was the most dominant from a historical point of view. My father’s blood was the blood of earliest conquerors.

Still I could never imagine my father harming a fly. His blazing emblems, his red star and yellow crosses over his black uniform could not overpower the softness that I knew from that mustache beneath his fleshy nose, and the warmth in his deep brown and smoky eyes. I knew my father was a unifier, in the disguise of dictator.

I did not realize I came from wealth and privilege, not until after my eleventh birthday, my party which filled the palace with the children from great houses of Ephrasia, as well as many from Rumaria. I did not know there was a difference between these two countries, truly, and I did not know that it was my father’s softness that helped to better unify two rival nations, to unify them with a birthday party of his daughter rather than merely rule along the lines of threat my fathers post was traditionally meant to represent to the people of Ephrasia.

Our palace in Tel-Allal was vibrant with joy that summer afternoon, the lawns lined with tables with tablecloths with their perfect folds at their corners, the sky a delicious pink and orange on cool turquoise as cool breezes lifted the kites flown in contests held by all of us. I laugh now at how my greatest problem then was worrying my hand might be cut by the string as I maneuvered my red box kite high and well over the spires of our palace, our family home. I remember cursing Harland, my father’s man, for not getting me the grade of string I ‘specifically requested.’

That’s when I heard the grumbling sound of an approaching shuttle. I assumed it was a guest, late to arrive. In the distance, its red and orange beetle-like shape lowered itself onto one of the four pads that surrounded the grounds. I thought nothing of it, as my father called for us to reel our kites in, and all gather for the gift giving.

“Father! Who won though?” I kept demanding his final judgment of the kite contest.

No one cared. My father simply passed his large hand over my head, his fingers through my soft and thick brown hair, and said, “It was a victory in good fun, now come my dear.”

He said this as he shook hands with other men in uniform, and in other various costumes, multi tasking, speaking in coded jargon– no doubt settling local disputes– juggling business with pleasure and simply infuriating me for not giving me his complete attention on my birthday.

From the landing platform, I could see a large hovering carriage approaching, crossing the bridge over the deep clear water moat and passing the gates of the royal grounds. The carriage was gold, and seemed much larger as it approached along with its attendants. It had an almost obscene freak-show circus act branding to it, as if the contents were acquired by pirates. My father ran over to them to handle them.  My mother meanwhile sufficiently distracted me with the piles of presents given to me by the hundreds of guests. There were so many, delightful boxes wrapped in silver and gold. The sky seemed to dim to twilight in the hours that it took to get through them all– enough time for me to forget about the strange golden carriage.

Finally, just when I forgot myself and assumed all was done, my father called out, “There’s one more!” and everyone gasped and throngs of children parted as my father reentered, holding a set of glowing silver psi- reins, behind him a large beautiful black odan steed, a mehra!  Its large horns were curled almost like a rams. I could have feinted. In fact I remember feeling as if I were in a dream. How it could be that these creatures existed— in the flesh and bone— outside of my father’s encyclopedias, I wondered.

The animal, whom I later named Trickhorn, was captured, tamed, through the use of the reins, and brought to my father at his request, all by a subsidiary of the ancient East Ephrasia Corporation whose exploits had gone much beyond the continent of Ephrasia, — where my father commanded station– and delivered Trickhorn from an entirely new galaxy, the Diamond Region, where my new beloved playmate was from.

I learned to ride Trickhorn shortly after that day. It was my calling each morning to go to her in our stables and spend as much of my time as I was allowed. This was a sufficient plan made by my father, to keep my grubby little fingers away from the pages of his beloved hard bound books, and get me into riding, wetting my pallet for the hard training that a Rumarian princess, and only child, would receive at this age. Several summers we galloped in our fields and orchards.  And that was the perfect painting– being a child and wrapped in the splendor that I knew the world to be, unaware of what was to come.

Vo Ma, Rumaria, and House Edgewood

Vo Ma, came from the old country, from Ephros, the southernmost city of the Ephrasian continent. My mother told me that she arrived from Ephros, to here, to Tell-Allal, to House Edgewood, the very night of my birth.

I had early impressions of it, memory perhaps, impressions. I was born in the late evening. I was held at first by arms of panic, of doubt, but then shortly after, as if rescued, held by powerful, vulnerable arms, held by wise experienced hands. Vo Ma did however often say that we always reinvent our past.

“How could I not come? I would not miss the opportunity to help raise my precious grand-daughter,” she doted, a rarity, for Vo-Ma did not often gush.  I remember that day, a clear afternoon of us out on the grounds, in the sun as we reminisced, the three of us, I, my mother and Vo ma. White clouds gathered above the spires above our house. The warm colors of citrus fruit could be seen resonating beneath soft shadows, nearly hidden in the boughs of trees planted in soft beige dirt along the walkway of cobblestone.

Vo Ma then snapped back into her usual mode of deliberate and stern urgency.

“I wouldn’t allow the the Great Rumanian House to stamp their imprints on her. Never. Never,” and she glanced at my mother, with sharpened corners of her eyes.

“Mother, Gwen is better rounded than you give her credit for.”

“Is your giving her credit your way of abandoning your own responsibility to… hem… round her more?” My grandmother quipped, making round gestures with her hands. My mother sighed. I could see she was no match. Whatever fire Ephrasia lit in my mother, during her youth, was doused by years of living in our house, A Great Rumanian House, as Vo-ma put it ironically, with her emphasis on the word great weighted with tremendous sarcasm. My Grandmother did not approve of my mother marrying my father, a Rumarian, from the continent of the conquerors.

Edowina Constance Brava, my grandmother was old, even in my earliest years, ever so old. Her head shook, bobbled from side to side as she lectured from beneath the navy and gold veil of her habit. The sun glinted from off of her gold amulet strung with white prayer beads around her neck. The amulet bore the embossed image of a tree. Mother now feared the amulet, my father was offended by it. She was encouraged by my father’s staff to wear clothing more in line with Rumarian standards. She of course refused.

Edowina’s face was wrinkled and dark olive in complexion. Her eyes were a striking grey, penetrating and full of wonder. When my own eyes rested on them, unafraid, Edowina grinned her crooked smile, and nodded as if it was a kind of a reminder to herself.

Yes, she’ll be alright. This one will be alright.

“And what about that grandson of mine, Alexi. When will he ever stand still enough so that I might a get a look at him?” Vo-Ma complained.

“Alexi is doing fine.” Catherine, my mother sighed.

“Oh?! I should say not, shuttled off to be raised by tyrants, strangers!!”

“How many years at that blasted academy does one need to commit to in order to be deemed a man?”

Vo-ma did not care who heard what was on her mind. She shot straight as an arrow, which was not appreciated by the male attendants of our house, except Harland. Harland knew the kind of woman Vo-ma was, real, fiery, wise, and wonderful.

Thousands of years ago, the women of the old country of Ephrasia were the honored custodians of Bain, communing with our sister World Banx via astral travel and dreams. That was before the brutal times of the Rumarians who later stamped out all knowledge of such subtle arts.

“Mother Alexi has graduated the top of his class. He is now apart of the Fire-Wing and is stationed on the New Moon colony.” My mother defended, almost bragged.

When the Rumaria grew supremely powerful, and men developed machines, instead of their deeper selves, they gloriously proclaimed their discovery of planet Banx via space travel, ignoring what they had been told by sister Ephrasia for eons. To this day they still ignore our story of prior knowledge of our sister world. That was before I took the throne.

“Does that boy ever take a holiday, at least long enough to reacquaint himself with his sister, with his grandmother, or must the females of his family remain as mere background figures in his life?” My grandmother complained.

She always put it all on the table, my beloved Vo-ma.

Trikes

“Well, I certainly don’t see a thing.” My father, the Duke grumbled. He squinted his eye at the end of a long brass cylinder that was his telescope. Its tripod was set before the opened double glass doors that looked out beyond the white balcony of my father’s study room and up into the clear night summer sky.

“Well you would not see a thing, Larry. That telescope is neither as powerful as the Hoctoine array, nor is our planet near enough to Arcana, in our orbit of Sol, to see any vessels let alone their radiation signatures,” My mother, Catherine parsed, lectured, becoming aggravated.

They were in heated debate as I entered the room.

“It sounds like poppy-cock, all the same. Alien invaders!” My father poked– their brand of humorous warfare playing out in the symbiotic tapestry of… them, my parents, the heat of emotions burning through the masks of grins and words of affection. This was their tension.

“I did not say, Alien invaders! I merely said, activity.” Catherine, my mother shot.

“Probably some dust on their lenses,” Lawrence prodded, dismissed.

“You are so, obtuse sometimes my dear.”

“Yes, dust. A good lint free cloth might help.” my father teased. My mother turned the shade of red that signified her taking the usual kinds of delicious bait my father held out. The kind that would have her soon leaving the room to take a break from him.

“Radiation signatures that seem, dear, seem to indicate the use of a tension drive beyond sector three,” She growled. Her well studiedness did nothing but pass by my father un-noticed.

“Yes! We have colonial ships that fly all the time. All the time. In fact commercial ships from Arcana bring supplies of water that run though the pipes of this house.” A wave of his hand, a flash of white teeth, and a mischievous grin beneath his thick mustache revealed his taunting. Seeing this, Catherine took her usual deep breath that dispelled the color. My father was winning, but I knew he would pay for it later.

“My dear sweet knuckle-head of a man, these would be ships traveling well beyond the commercial routes of our own vessels. In fact, these are ships seen by our own, and whose crews report them as un-identified.”

“Im sure. Well, wake me when the invasion begins.”

“I’m leaving. I cannot talk to you when you are being coy like this.” Catherine said, and she did leave.

As she did, she looked down at me and passed an affectionate hand through my hair. Even in her anger, my mother was brilliantly poised. I admired the depth of blond in her hair which was wrapped into bun. As I entered across the deep maroon colored carpet, took in the hues of gold reflecting off from father’s wares, I passed my mother, took in the scent of her gardenia blossom perfume.

“I’ll leave you two to your usual philosophical discussions.” As she moved passed me, I took note of the deep navy fabric of her wide legged trousers, the sweeping motion of their bell shape over her white leather shoes. She left and closed the door behind her.

I sat in one of the two mahogany chairs that were across from his heavy desk made of rich Rumarian Oak. It was handed down from the first family of Edgewood settlers. My father took his chair, the usual position, behind the desk, with his patent leather boots resting on its corner of its glass top. His wooden chair creaked, the brass casters squeaking as he pushed himself more deeply into the red cushions. He sighed with telling relief.

He glanced at me over the silver rims of his round spectacles as he brought out his silver lighter and the cigar he had hidden in his uniform coat pocket.

“So that’s why you shooed her off?” I smirked accusingly at my father, “To answerer the call of your fiendish addiction?”

“You always have your eye on me, haven’t you?” Lawrence chuckled as he lit the cigar as the lighter hissed.

“On everyone. At least that’s what Harland says of me.”

“How is old Harland, today? I haven’t seen him in weeks. I see your chess game progressing on the ole board over there.” He glanced behind me.

“Yes. Harland is as difficult to beat as ever in chess, but I guess he’s doing alright otherwise. He’s been in the hangars a bit, working on that old dart from the Academy.”

“I am trying to quit.” Lawrence said, almost grumbling, almost humiliated as a cloud of smoke passed his lips.

“I did beat Harland in chest last round, you know.” I said, ignoring his feigned penance, and charging ahead.

“You don’t mind the smell?”

“Father! You know you really must learn to focus on more than what comes into your head conversationally. That’s how conversations work. Besides, how many times have I told you, ‘the smell is fine,’ and besides this is your study.” I actually liked the smell of his cigars. They were strong, exotic, and repulsive to my mother, but to me they filled me with an odd sense of feeling protected.

“Quite.” Lawrence Edgewood, the Duke of Ephrasia said, and then relaxed. It was his study.

He took a few more tastes. “So you beat the old war horse, finally heh?”

“Yes. I got him cornered with a pawn, a rook, and a sneaky little bishop I hid deep in the background.”

We were quite for a little while. Next to his boot, I saw stacks of official work on the desk surface, orders from Rumaria, I imagined, endless directives to his post. They were a testament to the creases in his forehead, and around the eyes, the gray in his wavy dark brown hair. Glancing back at the telescope.

“What kind of invaders do you think we were?”

“Hmmm?”

“I mean we invaded the planet Banx two and a half centuries ago. I mean, alien invasion did not seem like poppy-cock to the Hoctoine, when we arrived.”

“What in the world are you going on about now?” Lawrence bit down on on the fat ember, and placed his hands behind his head. He reminded me of my elder brother, Alexi when he did that. It was how Alexi patterned himself after our father, mimicked his gestures.

“Firstly. We colonized Banx a long time ago. We did not invade them.  There is a difference. Besides they’ve their independence. They are their own planet, our equal.”

“You think because I’m 11, I’m that naïve? Well, who is to say that some other species doesn’t colonize our worlds, and centuries later judge us as their equal?”

“Well first they have to get past the Black, Gold, and Red fleets, then…” My father laughed.

“Well, what if it were no problem to do so?”

“My love. You are far too young to worry about such things. Believe you me, that there has been enough interplanetary warfare among our two planets and colony worlds. Why dream of more? Why expand the imagination to include… a… Intergalactic chapter to Bain’s idiotic story?”

My father was no lover of Rumaria. That I knew.

“Because our presence in Sten makes it so. I know you don’t advocate the Rumarian dream, father. I think Catherine, knows this too.”

“Your mother.” The Duke corrected.

“I think that if what mother says is true about Arcana, and that visitations are occurring, well perhaps we’ve courted them during the course of history.”

“Manifested them into reality? Creatively visualized?” Lawrence bellowed with dramatic sarcasm.

“Exactly.”

“Well. You sound more like your grandmother now. How would we be manifesting this, my dear?”

“Vo-Ma says that our destiny could be better served by better actions, but until good actions are taken, men will only fight for scraps of bone like animals.”

“Ahhh, another Vo-Ma quote. How does it apply?” He blew out a large plume.

“Well father, if our actions as a culture have only been an animal-like thrashing about for bones, all we attract are…”

“Hmmm Yes! Other animals, yes. Perhaps a bigger animal, picking up the scent of blood, or signs of bones being fought for? I like the thrashing, bit. It calls to mind the great megalodons in the north.” More sarcasm.

I rolled my eyes.

“Good night father.”