Splenndrosia

A Short Story by Emily E. Finke

The flowers were changing colors. A single tear ran down Anne’s cheek. As she knelt in the field, once a vibrant sea of pink roses, she thought about how her father would tell her bedtime stories of the “legend of the magical flowers” as a little girl. Not more than a myth to the people of the kingdom, “little Anne” knew she would find the field of magical, pink roses some day. And find it she did.

Splenndrosia, as she had come to call this place in recent years, was more than a field of pink roses. The flowers had become her friends, her allies, and she had let them down. She had let her kingdom down. As she tenderly reached out to stroke the velvet petals of the colorless flowers, the call of the royal trumpets sounded from the distant hills. Time was running out.

“I’m sorry,” Anne whispered through her tears. “I’m so sorry.” She picked an ashy rose out of the ground and stood up. A sudden wind from the east snatched the rose from her hand, scattering the petals in the wind. “Goodbye,” she breathed as one last tear fell from her eye. The trumpets’ final note rang across the valley.

“Perhaps now is the time I discover who I am, what I am made of,” she spoke with rising determination. “Too long I have hidden behind false strength and power. Though I can never begin to heal the hurt that I have allowed to be inflicted on my kingdom, though I can never begin to restore what has been lost, it is time that I do what I should have done so long ago.”

A dark fog was now creeping across the valley. Anne knew they were coming. They were coming for her. As Anne mounted her white stallion, the crippling fear that had been creeping into her body suddenly vanished, replaced with an indifference that gave her strength. The thought of her imminent death no longer scared her. For the first time since her coronation and possibly in her life, she felt confident. She felt like a Queen.

“And now is the time that I act like the Queen that I am,” she cried, her royal steed galloping away from the lifeless roses toward the fog covered hills.

Death would be her fate. Its victory was assured. But death has no sting, indeed death has no victory when faced with courage and peace through duty.

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