Episode 40 - Next
(Music fades in)
Welcome back to the podcast. Welcome back to the… well, they're not aimless ramblings, and this is not a story without a point. But it’s a carefully veiled rhyme and rhythm that I have deliberately hidden and have to hide. And I keep saying it like that. I keep implying that there’s some sort moral imperative to it all. But there really isn’t. In fact, the opposite might be true. There might be more of an imperative for me to divulge what I know in clear and explicit terms than dancing around it like I do. They say the truth will set you free, but even if it doesn’t, this isn’t the sort of situation where I should care if I am set free by the truth. This isn’t about me. It can’t be about me. It’s about other people and their families. Then again, I can tell myself that that is exactly why I’ve kept this to myself for so long. It is about them. It’s about the ensuing public trial their loved ones will face as the larger world pick apart this case, a trial they are not alive to defend themselves in. I know how callous those true crime lovers can be, and if I hold it in just a little longer, maybe the social current will change. Maybe things will be better. I just have to wait it out, right?
But how long is that going to take, you think?
(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)
Princess Eathebel could not speak. She sat in her brother’s presence, motionless, as his words lingered in the air around her. It was a poison that made the space almost entirely uninhabitable. It was slowly killing her. She wondered if she would not have rathered have a quicker demise. Would it be better to go against his wishes and be tried for treason or to suffer in a loveless marriage? The former was quick though drastic, but the latter might have been a softer pain, even it involved so many different barbs.
No, she thought, with a small shake of her head. It wasn’t like that.
“You were already looking?” she asked.
The king stopped his quill. “Not looking, per say, but I could not ignore this opportunity when it came up. It is a good match for you”
“How can you say that? I don’t know him,” she snapped.
“And I did not know the queen when I married her,” the king replied.
The princess shut her eyes. The movement broke her free of her trance, and she turned away from him as if he had struck her. It wasn’t the same thing, she knew. It could never be. He didn’t understand. He never understood her.
As if he could hear her thoughts he proved her point and said, “It’s a good, dignified match for you. He’s a duke. By some standards, he does uprank you.”
“Not by a standard I care about,” she snapped again.
King Ezin shot her a malicious glare, one that was not unlike their father’s. It was a divine decree that there would be no moving this conversation forward. The king was done. His word was law.
Princess Eathebel bit her tongue and held back the rest of the message that she had brought into the room. After all, there was no need to reveal the rest of her hand. It would come in handy later.
(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)
You see, I think it’s going to take a while. Quite a while for that social shift to happen. There’s some resistance. A lot of it is out of defensiveness, and I know about defensiveness. There’s something instinctual about it. We see something that causes us offense or possesses some sort of threat to us, even if it is just a social threat, and we try to respond appropriately. We build up our walls because we think that’s what we have to do to survive. Even if it is just to survive socially. We need other people, right? That’s, like, part of our thing.
The other part is that we’re a lot more delicate than we want to admit that we are. We are not steady. We aspire to be, but there are so many ways we could crumble. So many gusts of wind that with one puff could blow us away.
And sometimes we need to come apart, right? It means we can build a better version of ourselves out of the ashes of our former shelves. Maybe it means we can better sympathize with the suffering of people so far removed from us. Maybe it means we can stop playing with destructive fantasies and see the evils of the world for what they are: closer than we would like and something we need to work to vanquish.
(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)
The young princess ran around her mother’s quarters while Queen Evanora paced about the room. The queen could see the head of now straightened curls as they moved about the chambers, as the child tempted danger again. She always did so. It was in her nature. As if the princess had known that she had defied her death once and now believed that death had no dominion over her. And perhaps it did not. Perhaps Queen Evanora had truly broken the string that death would one day have used to pull the young girl into its arms. That seemed impossible, but Queen Evanora could not say for sure. She had never heard of someone casting the spell that she had used. And protection spells could be a dangerous game.
The king sat in the corner, more immune to his daughter’s hijinks than his wife was. He should not have been, he suspected. He suspected that he should have been paying better attention to her. After all, the servants were not around. There was no one to watch her too carefully. Her parents would have to do it. But they were too immersed in their own conversation.
The king shook his head. “I can’t, Wife.”
The queen stopped. “Can’t what? Can’t stop this?”
“I can’t let her think she can always get her way. I can’t normalize her antics.”
“Her murders,” the queen corrected coldly. “Those are hardly antics.”
The king did not answer.
“You know that’s what the problem is,” the queen insisted. “She had been a loyal, faithful servant to you. And you still treat her this way, knowing what can happen.”
Her voice rose, but the king did not rise to meet it. He raised his hand in a gesture to bid his wife to be silent. Reluctantly, she obeyed. She knew she had no choice. And she could see in his eyes that neither did he.
“I have told you,” he said. “Of how delicate things are for us here at court. How we need everyone there more than they need us. I need the duke’s allegiance. I cannot risk it now. You can tell me I should not have made my promise. But the fact remains I did. I cannot back down from it now.”
(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)
But while I wait for this grand social change, what happens to me? Can you tell me that? In between episodes, you obsess about the details, you pour yourself into your research project of yours about true crime content and where I fit into this, so I can’t help but assume you know. Or at least have some sort of idea about what happens to me while I keep myself in this limbo, the place where I need to get this story out but also can’t bring myself to say it. There’s a chance you might know what is happening to me. You might suspect something. You might have some sort of lead I have no chance of finding on my own.
You also might not. That’s a possibility that I am willing to fully and properly acknowledge. And it’s okay if you can’t. Really. I understand. I don’t… I don’t want you to feel guilty if you can’t help me. But I have to ask. I’m desperate.
(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)
The duke stared down at the jewelry laid out before him. The colors blended together in his eyes. He sighed.
“If you say these are the fashions of the time, sir, I will have to believe you,” the duke replied. “I want my bride to have nice things, but I am afraid I do not know what that means.”
The old man in the corner nodded. “Perhaps, your grace, I can work with the new duchess on material more to her liking after the wedding.”
The duke reached down and fingered a large emerald on a thick, gold chain. “Yes. It would be for the best.” The duke sighed. “Far be it from me to have an unhappy wife. That is the sort of pursuit I will leave to a lesser man.”
(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)
I’m desperate because it feels like I’m coming apart, I’m decaying or something is literally eating me from the inside out. And I’m sure you want to just call that guilt, right? That’s how we were taught to visualize guilt: it is this thing that gnaws away at us. Gnawing and eating are related words. Synonyms, yes, but not identical twins but cousins of the same generational line. Gnawing is the smaller of the two. It has a less significant bite. But I’m not being gnawed at. I’m being eaten. It’s worse.
And should I find comfort that I know what this thing is? Maybe. But what is that comfort worth if I’m the only one who knows what this is?
And that last question is painfully relevant right now. Your first question was why I started this podcast. I started it when my health started to decline. And any person of science would say that the two are not related. That the traumas of my childhood are not what is killing me now. But the doctors can’t find a source or cause for the problem. I know what it is, but I can’t tell them. Even to them, I can’t say it. And maybe that’s fair or fitting somehow. But I’m sure if I release that idea into the air, you will be quick to dispute it or jump in somehow. That’s the instinct. You have grown fond of me. Parasocial relationships and all that. But you don’t know the full story. I can only give you the vague details. They haven’t been all that helpful, have they? Although I will give you credit for getting so much farther than most.
(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)
Royal duties never ended, or so it seemed. Queen Evanora could not remember feeling a moment of true rest since she had arrived in the kingdom. The closest perhaps had come when her daughter was born, but even then, her body was working to recover from the hardship and her mind was working on some sort of plan and the spell that would protect her daughter with a high sacrifice attached.
Queen Evanora stood at attention next to the king and his sister as a show of welcome to the duke who had come to wed Princess Eathebel. Duke Jemes was not an attractive man, the queen realized, and the king was right: the duke had kind eyes. He looked at his bride with a better than expected fondness. The queen felt a smile pull at her lips, but she held it at bay. She was the least important person in the greeting line of three: she was not the monarch nor the bride. But she also was the least somber of the lot. Hope lingered within her. After all, the princess had stayed silent thus far. She had offered no complaints and made no threats. But there was a silent rage coming off of her.
The duke dropped from his horse and bowed before the king who greeted him as if he were an old friend. In embracing the duke, the king left the princess and queen alone together.
Seizing the moment, the Princess Eathebel leaned into her sister's ear and asked, “Tell me. Who becomes regent if the king should die?”
The queen did not answer. She did not need to answer. It was not a question but a threat.
(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)
No one is innocent in this story. Some might be more guilty than others, but you can’t say that anyone is really innocent. But you could say that it was just about survival, right? That’s what my mother used to tell me. She used to say that we just did what we had to in the name of survival. And all of us–the four of us anyway–made it through. We did what we needed to do. We survived. She used to tell me all the time that she just wanted me to have a good life, and the underlying premise of that was that I be alive. If I weren’t ,I couldn't have any sort of life at all. So no, I can’t even say I’m innocent. Because so much of what happened was because of me.
(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)
Queen Evanora rose late in the night. Her ladies slept in their usual cots, but their sleep was deeper than usual. It was not a spell that kept them bound to their beds but a simple herb. Magic was not always the solution, the queen knew. Magic can often have unforeseen consequences and even the seen ones do not always go as one might expect. There was no room for error in this. If the princess did love her hired sword, then this really was their only hope.
(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)
My mom likes fixing things. That was always her personality. Dad too, but by the time I came along, he didn’t have the same sort of moral compass Mom did. He only knew loyalty. Familial loyalty, specifically. He did not know how to judge it, how to gauge when it was right, or how to relinquish it into the winds when the time did come. Because it was going to come. It always comes. That’s just how people work, I suppose.
Before I was born, Mom would have done better, I know. I’ve heard how she was. But I can’t follow that line of thought fully. I have before, I often take it too far, and nothing good comes of it.
(Music gradually fades out)
Aishi Online is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, produced, performed, and edited by MJ Bailey with music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. If you like the show, please leave a review, tell a friend, or donate to the show’s Ko-Fi account.