©2024 SammyC

I looked at my reflection in the two-and-a-half-meter tall burnished bronze mirror set into the wall of my bed chamber. I had to angle my head to counterbalance the convex nature of the image. In doing so, my newly coiffed hairdo of blonde curls fell across my face, defeating the effort. I swept my hands down the smooth flanks of my gown, made from the threads of cocoons containing unfortunate silkworms. My fingernails were covered in a pearly white polish. I examined them more closely by fanning out my fingers, palms away from me.

“You look lovely, my child. When you make your grand entrance in the royal court of The Western Kingdom, your tiara will be the pièce de resistance,” declared my tutor and Royal Astronomer, Merlyn, who was standing behind me.

“And what exactly is a piece of resistance, Merlyn?” I asked, annoyed that she seemed to enjoy confusing me with nonsensical words and phrases.

“It’s not important, dear child. Just a phrase from a dead language spoken on our home world.”

“Well, I wish you’d just stick to the language we use here and now on this home world. Do I have to wear these blasted high heels as well? The gown covers everything to my tippy-toes, Merlyn.”

“Yes, you do. Custom and ritual dress is very important. Now that you will be the Queen of both kingdoms—”

“That reminds me, Merlyn. Be sure to pack my favorite dagger. The one made from the meteoric iron. There are so many folds in these damned gowns, no one will know I’m carrying. Just in case my bridegroom gets any smart ideas—”

“Hardly, Rani. The boy is pre-pubescent, barely 9 years old in the measure of our home world.”

“That doesn’t mean he won’t try. After all, they’re under the ludicrous impression that I’m actually a girl—”

“We’ve explained this to you over and over again. It’s a necessary charade. Unlike the few others and I in the scientific estate in both kingdoms, people are creatures of superstition and primal fear.” Merlyn brushed the obfuscating ringlets from my eyes and gently held my shoulders, thankfully covered by the modest top of my gown. No plunging neckline since I had no bust to speak of. “Now, I’ll be with you at all times or as much as I can. And the rest of our traveling party, including Amos, your royal bodyguard, will make sure you are treated respectfully. After all, you’re the most important element in this entire primitive ritual.”

“Help me with these ribbons and buttons, Merlyn. I’m tired of looking at my reflection in this silly costume.”

“Wash off your makeup and go to bed, Rani. We leave for The Western Kingdom early in the morning.”

I wrapped a blanket around myself as I stepped out onto the balcony. I looked to the West, to the horizon beyond the rolling hills, in the direction where my small party of Easterners would be traveling in a few hours when day emerged from black night. Right now, other than a few naphtha burning torches on the grounds, the only source of light came from the larger of our two moons. I raised my eyes to the canopy of stars above and tried to spot the Dagger of Heaven that had just recently resolved itself to the naked eye. There it was, little more than a twinkling pinpoint in the middle of the constellation of the snake. But Merlyn assured everyone that it was moving with deliberate speed and headed straight for our world. Triangulating its position in the sky, she calculated its time of arrival to be less than a month from now. Merlyn let me look through a contraption she called a telescope and it did look like a giant dagger, its metallic skin glinting in the wash of solar light. It was Lydia, the royal astronomer of The Western Kingdom, who gave it it’s name, The Dagger of Heaven. Although Merlyn tells me she spotted it first and wanted to call it Heaven’s Dagger.

“Darned iambic pentameter, Rani. The dagger of heaven at the end of time. It scans: da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM. Lydia’s grandmother a dozen generations past was a poet on our home world.” Merlyn would walk away, shaking her head of gray hair, waving her hand dejectedly.

The Dagger of Heaven was the reason I was being sent to The Western Kingdom. The belief held by both kingdoms was that The Gods were angry that their chosen people had waged internecine war and split into two divergent, alienated factions, living at the far ends of the single large continent on our planet. We had forsaken the original mission that had brought us here from our home world and our punishment was to be exterminated by this Dagger.

By marrying Prince Kelvin, the aforementioned 9-year-old, I would become his Queen and unite both kingdoms under our collaborative rule. With the kingdoms once again unified and no longer offending the Gods above, we would avoid destruction by The Dagger of Heaven, or so they all believe. Also by the whim of the Gods, it turns out that Kelvin has no siblings and my older sister is already wed. So, ask not what your kingdom can do for you, ask what you can do for your kingdom.

“You’re so much more a girl than a boy, anyway, Rani. You’re the smartest student I’ve ever had and, frankly, you’re far prettier than your sister. I’ve always considered you a girl,” Merlyn routinely told me, even as she made sure to feed me special snacks several times a day.

“Is that why you make me eat all those flax seeds, soybeans, peaches, and drink red wine?”

“No, child, boiled soybeans are just delicious. Don’t you think?”

“But why go to all that effort to thwart what The Gods intended me to be?”

“Not to pat myself on the back but, quite possibly, I anticipated an eventuality where the planet would need a woman to secure the future of our society on this forsaken planet. And you, my dear, are that woman.” She proceeded then to pat herself on the back. I had to rub her shoulder as she groaned in pain.

As Merlyn was their most trusted advisor, a wise, even sagacious woman possessed of knowledge only passed down through generations of wizard-like Royal Astronomers, my parents, King Harold and Queen Hortense acceded to all her recommendations about my upbringing and education. Unlike other noble boys of my age, I spent more time studying and learning music and arts than playing sports or training in martial combat. I often looked up from the turgid books Merlyn forced me to read and gazed longingly at the playing fields outside my chambers, where boys were running and jumping about, shouting and cheering on each other whenever their side would score. My best friend Amos, now my Royal Bodyguard, caught me more than once in his arms when I leapt from my window to kick a ball around with him on the pitch after school was dismissed. Then, one day, my sister snitched on me to my mother and the Queen scolded Merlyn for not keeping a vigilant eye on me. No more kicking the ball around after that.

The good thing about Merlyn’s ponderous reading assignments was the door it opened to the history of our presence on this planet, the original mission we were dispatched across interstellar space to accomplish, and a snippet or two about our home world. I learned things no one else, even my parents and family, knew. Merlyn had shared all this knowledge with me, perhaps to prepare me for my future as the savior of our divided race. Or maybe she was just being a cranky old lady.

The story of our people, we humans who live on Randall’s Planet, begins over 500 years ago as measured on our home world (Merlyn is not certain of the name of our home world). It was the brainchild of a man named Percival Randall, one of the wealthiest men of his time. Astronomers had determined that the fourth planet out from our sun, a yellow dwarf similar to our home world’s sun, had an oxygen-rich atmosphere and was a veritable treasure chest of rare metals like platinum, palladium, osmium, rhodium, and iridium in concentrations of 10 times more than anywhere in the home system. Randall had a generation starship built that would carry a colony of 100 miners in suspended animation on a century-long journey to this planet, traveling at a maximum velocity of 3% of light-speed. Randall would not live long enough to see the return on his investment but his two adult daughters led the expedition, enthusiastically accepting their father’s mission.

The ship arrived on time, a century later, and immediately started mining operations. They worked diligently for the decade it would take for the news of their successful disembarkation to reach home. They waited and waited and waited. After another century passed with no word received or starship appearing, the colony gave up hope. By that time, Randall’s daughters and their heirs had passed away, as had all of the original expedition force. The surviving colonists, who had already stopped actively mining for decades, now faced the certainty that they and their descendants would live out their existence on this rock, more than 10 light years from home.

Despite the similar atmosphere, relative size of the planet, and “goldilocks” distance from their star, they had discovered very early on that most of the animals or plants native to the planet tasted awful. Nor, of course, did any of the predatory animals find them tasty either. So they began to refit and convert mining machinery and systems to serve agricultural and animal husbandry uses. Generations came and went. Each iteration of human society seemed to revert to more elementary social systems. Ultimately, the colony decided on an agrarian monarchy resembling the high middle ages minus the feudalism. Merlyn says our society resembles the Vikings. Whomever they were.

After about 8 generations or around 300 years on Randall’s Planet, factions developed and two major civil wars were waged with swords, cross-bows, and catapults. Since the planet only had one large continent that covered maybe a quarter of its surface, the remainder being ocean, two geographically separate kingdoms were finally established. At the far edges of the continent. The Eastern and The Western Kingdoms.

The wholesale destruction that was wrought in the two wars effectively buried not only the history of our tenure on this planet but most of the advanced technology brought here on the generation starship. Real knowledge of any meaningful sort was now possessed by people in both kingdoms like Merlyn and their predecessors. And that knowledge was a patchwork of various surviving sources. There were some books and maybe a handful of machines that could read media. The circle of people in both kingdoms who had access to these items was probably less than two dozen in number. Despite all the deprivations pushed upon us, there were still tens of thousands of humans between the two kingdoms. Merlyn tells me that by percentage our society is probably at a lower level of literacy and intellectual development than Ancient Egyptian society. Of course, she was just regurgitating facts she had gleaned from the fragments she had been able to read. I have no idea who the Ancient Egyptians were.

And that is how we have arrived at where we are today. A people trying to appease Gods who have dispatched The Dagger of Heaven to dispatch us, a race of people who have lost their way in the grand plan of creation.

“Rani, it’s chilly out there. Come inside now and go to bed. You’ll be leaving quite early in the morning. Merlyn says they mean to start out soon after the rooster crows.” My mother had her arms extended, beckoning me. I stepped back into the room and embraced her.

“Oh, Mother, this is going to be a ludicrous failure. How can I hope to impersonate a woman?”

“You’ve done a fine job of it for most of your life. Most people in our kingdom still think you’re my youngest daughter.”

“The Westerners won’t be convinced. Prince Kelvin will blurt out, ‘Mother, why is that man dressed like a girl?’”

“That boy hasn’t even reached puberty yet. He’ll be happy to have someone to play hacky-sack with…”

“What happens if I’m found out, Mother?”

“Well, if by marrying Prince Kelvin, you prevent the complete annihilation of the planet, I think, all things being equal, they’ll be ecstatic. After all, that’s the whole reason for this ritual, isn’t it?”

“And what happens if it doesn’t stop the Dagger from striking the planet?”

“Oh, Rani, that’s an easy answer. We’ll all be dead and it won’t matter a wit.” She kissed my forehead and gave me a wan smile before leaving the room.

As I carried my oil lamp to my bedstand, I caught my reflection in the mirror and sighed. I made a mental note to remind myself to pack my own dagger before leaving in the morning. It was much, much smaller than The Dagger of Heaven but it might come in handy.