Idle, She Sat

In the garden

Thawing was not what Attolia expected it to be. She had assumed, naively as if she were once again a teenager who had hoped to rule with adoration, that perhaps love would cure the barrenness of her inner landscape.

And yet she knew love now, but the barrenness had given way to something more overwhelming: cold rolling waters of loneliness, deep trenches of self-loathing, thorny fields of guilt. And far, far beyond her, in the horizon she could see only if she squinted, were bright hills of joy. Everything was starker, hyperbolic, and sometimes she longed painfully for her drought again.

There were times she woke drowning in feelings she had not felt for a long time, on the verge of insanity because she did not know what to do with them.

-o-

After dinner

She was fine. What other option could there be? You could not be queen and not be fine at the same time, because that would not be fair. Not to her people, some who did back-breaking work just so they could feed their families; some who had lost those very same families to the wars she had waged; and many who succumbed to hunger pangs and mild illnesses, things that could never threaten her. How could she look at them and say, "I wasn't doing my duties because I was sad?"

That was if she was lucky enough to even know what she was feeling. Most of the time, there were just no words.

So when her king brushed her cheek with his hand, and he asked her what was wrong, her mind screeched to a halt, grasping for vocabulary she had never needed before.

My king, my heart is heavy and I don't know how to tell you.

It wasn't fair to him either. How could she complain of a heavy heart to someone whose heart she had burdened so much?

So she told him, "Nothing. I'm fine." What other option could there be?

-o-

In the training yard

One of the worst things was the contradiction.

Envy was familiar to her, so she should have recognized it when it dug its seedy clutches in her chest. But it had taken her a while to realize that was what she felt when she watched her king spar with two guards in the training yard. Agile and graceful, he dodged the wooden swords that came at him with no visible effort. Then with one quick thrust, he disarmed one of them, sending the wooden sword flying across the court.

It was difficult to miss the admiration that flashed in the guard's eyes, quickly eclipsing the surprise that had been there moments before. Somewhere on the other side of the court, she heard Teleus laugh with amusement and tease his man. Since challenging the Queen's Guard, Eugenides had been in better terms with its captain.

Four months. That was how long it had taken her king to subdue the resentment of dozens of men who had opposed him. And he had not spent a single coin in her treasury to do it. He had not threatened and bribed and punished.

You wanted him to be king, she reminded herself.

It was funny how emotions could defy the strongest of logic. That was why she disliked them so much. Still she could only marvel at how brightly her inadequacies shone now that she had a king.

You love him, she told herself.

Could people not envy those they loved?

You chose a good king, she consoled herself. You should be happy. You should be proud.

Eugenides caught her eyes, and he beamed at her. She nodded in acknowledgement, but could not quite bring herself to smile back.

-o-

By the bed

Now the worst thing was the circuitousness. The feelings about feelings. Sometimes feelings about those. It made her dizzy.

She was irritated by her own despondency. She feared her pride. She felt guilty about being happy. Ironically, she also felt guilty about being sad.

"Are you not going to sleep yet?" her king asked. He was already tucked under the sheets, which was a first. She usually went to sleep before him. As a matter of fact, she rarely ever saw him fall asleep. She would just go to bed alone, then wake up in the middle of the night to find him with her. This time however, a loophole in one of her military reforms kept her up, and she was trying to find a way to fix it.

"I will soon," she replied.

"I love you," he said, yawning and rolling to his side, away from the light of the candle on her table.

"I love you too," she said, but did not tell him how terrified she was of doing so.