We always said she was an unusual one, but the memory issues were the end of the leaf. How do you contradict the Fairy Queen when she insists that she got the bowl of the Great Dragon Jehoseph just yesterday? None of us could, and so the Little People had to curse her, we just had to.
Her Majesty isn't fit for the throne anyway, and she never was. She was born in the edge of the White Sea, for one thing, and everyone knows people from there are insane. It's all of those white chalky cliffs, that hang over the edge of the white beaches that are of powder from the chalk when it erodes plus some sand and dirt - they sparkle in the sunlight, and you're very much blinded if you go there, let alone just live in that region. And there are the sea horses that steal maidens every year! We all said she was batty when she decided to rise up and take over the throne with that spell that turned everyone into mermaids for a bit and would keep them that way if they didn't do her will and let her have the kingdom.
"Our Globe-land needs not have such a person ruling!" the head Advisor muttered to me in one of our castle's small,dark hallways one day. Her Majesty had been queen for ten weeks yet, and I'd had headache after headache, with more and more fairies applying for transfer spells out past the glass barrier that protected us. Most didn't care where they went, they just wanted to get anywhere but here. "She must be stopped! My stomach cannot handle much more oyster stews, nor can the seaside continue to produce the creatures at such a rate."
I sighed mightily, scratching my wing-nubs. I'd shed for wintertime and wouldn't grow new wings till midsummer when the biggest festival of the Little People happened, but the darn things were already starting to grow in. "You're the third person come to me of rank about this," I told him. "I even had a few commoners suggest she be given to the Monster in Room-land to crush in his stupidity." (He'd do it too, I knew; the children of Big People were notoriously stupid in their curiosity, and didn't know how to hold a thing they were inspecting, with care). "But I'm not sure what to do."
"As head spell-soother of the kingdom, it's your job." I knew he was right; I was working on the problem. But what he said next floored me: "Why not get one of the knights to kill a dragon? We could make something out of its scales, and trick the queen somehow. That's what my wife suggested last night." It wasn't a bad idea, actually.
"I'll think on it," I told him and marched off. Miley, Durago, Atom, Jehoseph - yes, I thought, Jehoseph was the ticket! He was just crazy enough and arrogant enough to want to do something like this.
When I told Sir Owen what to do, he was thrilled. Owen's not very bright, but he hated the queen as much as the rest of us. "She's insisted on us knights spending all our time looking for sparklies for her," he whined to me. "And she's got rid of the food for people, just wants 'em eating oysters all the time so she can get the pearls! And she won't let the wizards make other food - I miss artychokes, and watermelons, and fruit! But she won't, won't, won't!"
"Owen, m'boy," I told him, before he started on a rant, "you can have all the artichokes you want if you kill this dragon and tell him first what the idea is. Remember: tell him we're going to use the skin you're saving to make a bowl that'll destroy the queen's memory."
He brightened at that, and went duly off to his job.
Actually, the thought of a queen being completely confused because of a bowl made from his scales tickled him to turn pink. That's what Sir Owen told me when he came back a month later. By that time there had been two thousand more applications to leave Globe-land, and I wasn't sure how we were going to come up with enough fairy-dust if they all left, for the next time the Monster shook the Globe and made it sparkle. So I was relieved when Owen returned, you can imagine! And I really only half heard the knight's story.
"Your Majesty," I said as I presented the bowl to her, " a gift from one of the folk of your home -" it was only half a myth since Sir Owen's great-grand-fairy had come from White Bay which is on the edge of the worst area over there "- Sir Owen sends this!" For his deed, we'd given Sir Owen an exile to the shop of some shoemaker of the Big People in some seedy town of theirs. He's written me from there twice by now, says he's never been so happy in his life.
Her Majesty, meanwhile, was thrilled. She always loved sparklies, just like any of us Fae, and would climb a tree to steal from a raven's nest if she'd not been queen. "Smashed the dragon, did he?" she said with glee, holding the bowl in manicured fingers that had once shucked oysters for a living. How she'd gotten that spell I'll never know. "Oh, it is wonderful!" She wiped her nose on her long sleeve, like any commoner would do.
The spell took a few days to take effect, and she is now as you see her: a half-shell of herself. She spends her days staring out at the land of the Room wherein sits our Globe-land which the monster shakes every so often. But she doesn't care about things like that. Nor does she care that I could get her out of the Globe with a flick of my wrist - if I liked her.
But I don't.
The kingdom has gone back to the way it was run before she came, because I and my fellow wizards have resurrected the old ideas of her predecessor, who she locked in a dungeon somewhere. We're looking for him, currently; that's the only problem with the curse.
She literally can't remember where she locked the good king. She just wanders the halls of the castle like a dunce, fingering her strings of pearls and looking out the windows.
END