Becoming rose

If you threw me out of a window, I would fall like a rock. I would not float gracefully down like a feather, my gossamer dress swirling around me as I fell safely into the arms of the hero below. In fact, I have never even owned a gossamer dress, and no hero would catch me. I’m not a fair maiden, I don’t have hair the color of ripened grain, I can’t embroider and I don’t sing like a song bird while I play the harp.
In fact, I’m short, stocky and my hair is approximately the color of mud. I don’t embroider, but I can darn socks. And when I sing it’s more of a deep, raspy sound that works very well for old folk songs, but I do not have what one would call “dulcet tones”. There’s not usually a happily ever after for people like me.
And do you know why that is? Because I am what we in the realm of fantasy call a normal person. The only time someone like me gets mentioned is in those big scenes where a king is making a royal announcement which is followed by “and the peasants rejoiced”.
I am the epitome of pedestrian. It’s not a bad life really. I don’t have riches, or beauty, or a house of my own, or a fairy godmother or, you know, true love or something. But I do have a constant supply of potatoes. Those can be hard to come by.
So, I’m sure that you’re wondering what this story is all about since we’ve already established that I am a thoroughly un-special individual. Really, it’s a funny story.
I have known from the time that I was quite young that I lived in a world that you who are reading this would call fictional. It’s a land filled with princesses and dragons, dashing knights and wizards, goblins, witches, enchanted princess, oracles, that sort of thing. I remember I found out I was, for all intents and purposes, fictional one day at one of those royal announcements when I was seven years old.
I was standing in the crowd with my father watching the fair princess Marigold bat her eyelashes at a striking young prince. He had apparently just rescued her from a dragon and they were about to be wed. At some point when there was a lull in all the rejoicing I turned to my father and asked why the prince had slain the dragon. I had just heard at the last royal announcement that dragons were noble, wise creatures who were good protectors.
My father looked into my plain seven year old eyes and said “because it makes a better story.”
“What do you mean papa?” I asked.
“Well, if the princess had just been visiting the dragon for tea time and the prince came to give her a ride home on his horse, it wouldn’t have been very entertaining. The history of our land is never consistent. It wouldn’t be much fun. It’s all about a good story.”
“Do you mean they lied about what happened papa?” I asked, gesturing to the prince and princess.
“Oh no, they didn’t lie. I’m sure that they were telling the truth.”
“Then who’s telling the story?” I asked, thoroughly confused.
“Oh,” said my father looking up at the sky, “them.”
I looked up at the sky too. I didn’t see a them anyplace up there.
“The clouds?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” he responded. “The writers.”
“What’s a writer?” I asked.
“They’re the ones who decide what’s going on here in our kingdom. They decide everything that’s going to happen. They created everything here. Even you”
“You mean God?” I asked.
“No. They aren’t even close to God. They work for him though.”
At that point there was another bout of rejoicing and I didn’t have a chance to ask my father anymore about it.
I didn’t fully comprehend what he was talking about with the writers until a couple of weeks later. I had a friend named Thomas; most of us called him Topps. Topps was a few year older than me, but was always exceptionally kind. Suddenly Topps started acting funny. He started displaying magical abilities, he stopped hanging around the swarthy children like me, and the grown ups all started talking about how he was going to live some great destiny. Topps started acting like he was under someone else’s control. After a while I understood, it wasn’t Topps’ fault, it was the writers.
Topps later ended up saving a kingdom in some far off land and married a princess. He now goes by Sir Thomas and is on his way to the crown. No one calls him Topps.
Topps was your basic UHWHP, unknown hero with hidden potential. There are lots of those around here. As well as your UWHWHG’s, unwilling heroes with hearts of gold, PID’s, princesses in disguise, and your EEH’s, evilly enchanted heroes. Believe me, they aren’t as uncommon as you would think. Believe me, I should know.
I happen to work for a secret organization known as The Quill Guard. The Quill Guard is an elite group of us fictional normal people who keep all of the characters people write in line. There are many sections of the guard. I work in the magical kingdom sector. We are the ones who prevent villains from winning, heroes from backing out of their quests and princesses from getting fat and pimply. We are unseen, unheard and unnoticed. We are the background fillers, the rejoicing peasants, the people at market. We get in, do our job, and get out. And most importantly we keep the fact that we are fictional a secret. People don’t want to know and people shouldn’t know. Because as soon as you realize that you aren’t real, reality ceases to matter and you can do anything. More than one story has been hijacked by a character realizing he’s a figment of the imagination. It’s a very real situation.
I got pulled into the guard quite literally and quite on accident. I was 18. I had been fetching some milk from market when I was pulled into a black carriage. They had seen me walking and believed that I was an evil empress in disguise who had just discovered the presence of her writer. She had run away to find accomplices who would help her stage a coup.
It took some convincing before they realized I wasn’t an evil empress; that in fact I wasn’t anyone at all. But, I did have a good head on my shoulders. So, they decided to keep me on and instead of being a no one, I became a member of The Quill Guard.
As I said, the guard works in secret. It fills plot holes, helps heroes and stops renegade characters all without being noticed by the main characters of the story or the audience who is reading and especially without being noticed by the writer.
You see, when a writer creates a world or a kingdom they create all of the people who live in it. They don’t pay attention to the peripheral characters, they are just filler. One day a famous writer by the name of Geoffrey Chaucer noticed all of these filler people walking around, living their lives. He thought this was a mite strange, so he decided to ask one of the extras what was going on. He chose a miller. Chaucer met the miller, the miller met Chaucer. The miller couldn’t very well go back to being a regular nobody now that he’d met a writer, so he and Chaucer came up with the Quill Guard. It would be a place for those ordinary folks like the miller to go and an organization that would help young writers develop their craft. Again, all in secret.
However, there are accidents. And an accident is what took me from being an anonymous member of the guard to being a girl named Rose.
I had been working a case in a kingdom called Venedil. The story was full of plot holes and two dimensional characters and a whole other myriad of problems. The writer was young and inexperienced and a lot of things needed fixing. It was your basic plot. A UHWHP was on a quest to save a princess who had been captured by a clever dragon. I had been working my tail end off trying to make sure that side kicks showed up, magical objects were given and advice was administered.
I had been doing rather well, but I was starting to get noticed. The two dimensional hero of the tale started to notice that I showed up every time something important happened or, especially, right before trouble started.
Our dashing hero, Conrad had been a stable boy at the palace when one night he saw the beautiful Princess Cicely trying to run away from the palace. Using his good looks and his considerable charm he was able to discover that Cicely had been running away because her father was going to marry her off to the miserable Lord Marcel. Within moments they swore their eternal, undying love for each other. But, before Conrad could help her escape the members of the royal guard took her back to the palace.
On the day of the wedding, instead of taking his bride-to-be to the alter, he offered her to the evil dragon Magnus who could only be defeated through the use of a magical lantern that could only be found in the far off mountains of Crecia by the pure of heart.
I had gotten him a charming side kick by the name of Darian, found him a wise mentor who was marked for the grave named Cadmus and provided him with a magical sword. Everything had been going swimmingly. Lord Marcel had found out that Conrad was planning to overthrow the evil dragon Magnus; Cadmus had given Conrad crucial pieces of information which included a map to the lost lantern. It was time for Cadmus to kick the bucket. I was subtly leading Lord Marcel and his villainous group of miscreants to Conrad’s hideout when Conrad saw me and recognized me from previous incidences.
I was in trouble. Conrad grabbed me and put me up against a wall, his sword blade to my throat.
“Who are you?” Conrad cried.
I was speechless. Not only because I had been caught, but because he asked my name. I had never needed a name before. I had never really been in a story before, and there I was, being confronted by a main character. I was in the spot light. I was in trouble.
“Who are you?” he again demanded.
I looked around in desperation. I had to say something. I saw a girl out on the street selling flowers.
“Rose,” I cried. “My name is Rose.”
“You aren’t one of Lord Marcel’s people, why are you helping them. Why don’t you want me to save the Princess?”
I was flabbergasted. Put on the spot like that, I just blurted.
“I’m just trying to help along the story.”
“What does that mean?” Conrad asked.
“It means that I was just supposed to help everyone get from point A to point B. I was just supposed to help the story along, but I’m a part of it now.”
Something very strange happens when the writer becomes aware of you. Suddenly everything you say becomes significant and all of your features become more attractive. I was still short, but less stocky. My hair became the color of chestnuts and my complexion became olive instead of swarthy. I still wasn’t a gossamer gown wearing feather weight, but I was much easier on the eyes. It was a terrifying experience.
Conrad jumped back when he noticed the change.
“What just happened?” he asked.
I sighed and shook my head. I was very frustrated.
“I’m part of the story. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“I’m very confused,” Conrad said..
“Well, I’m going to have to explain it to you now,” I said. “Come on. We need to get out of here before Lord Marcel comes. He’s bringing a villainous group of miscreants this way.”
“What?”
“Come on, move it,” I said, pulling him with me. Now that I was part of the story I knew that I was constantly in danger of being noticed. I did not want to be noticed by Lord Marcel.
I was now in a very awkward position.
Because I wasn’t supposed to be in the story I had to explain to the author and the characters who I was and why I was there because, frankly, there was nothing else for me to do.
“Look,” I told Conrad, Darian and Cadmus, “you are fictional characters being written in a story by what is called a writer. The writer is who decided to make you all the way you are. That’s also why your princess has been kidnapped by a dragon by the way, because of the writer. We are all characters living in a fictional universe created by the thoughts of someone else. The writer of your story was struggling so I came in to help the story run more smoothly. The story was supposed to play out in a classic manner. Boy meets girl, boy saves girl, boy marries girl. I may have been exposed to the plot, but that’s what this story is going to do, alright. No deviating from the plan alright?”
The characters stared at me with open mouths.
“Alright,” I said. “What we need to do now is go questing to find that magical lantern.”
They continued to stare at me. Then I was fortunate enough to be helped by having the support of the author.
“Yes,” cried Cadmus, “we must complete our quest.”
I think Cadmus was just surprised at his own dialogue, but, being the wizened figure of the story did his best not to show it.
We had to face many trials together. They story became new and original. The clichés it had started to fall victim to were moving aside as the characters came to terms with their position in life. Darian settled within himself that he was the comic relief of the story and not the hero while we traveled through the White Fields of Camaran. Cadmus who did not die, had to admit that he didn’t know as mush as he thought he did when we crossed the bridge of Sacamar. He started to develop a sense of humor. Most characters in his position don’t live that long. And Conrad started to realize that he didn’t know very much about the princess to whom he had sworn his undying love.
And I, for the first time was part of a story. I had a name and character. I wasn’t a peasant rejoicing, I was an important figure. I discovered I could juggle in a very bizarre incident with griffin eggs. I sang folk songs and told jokes I’d never heard before. I was Rose. For a little while I felt real. And soon, greatly against my will I started to become the love interest of the story. And worse than that, I was interested in love.
It started simply at first. Conrad and I would bicker, I usually won. I would darn his socks after they started to ware on our long journey, a friendly gesture. Then we would have deep discussions about what it was to be a character and coming to terms with it. I tried to offer as much comfort as I could. Had I not been so young when I made the discovery, I would have been very put out. I saw members of The Quill Guard moving in the shadows, but I could do nothing to help them and they could do nothing to help me. I was stuck as Rose, and I loved it.
I didn’t realize how much that meant to me until we had actually retrieved the lantern and were on our way to save the princess from the evil dragon Magnus. It suddenly occurred to me that they story was drawing to a close and I was going to loose Conrad and even more frightening, loose myself. I no longer wanted to be anonymous, a member of the guard. I wanted to stay Rose. She’s spunky and comfortable with herself.
I knew that I had developed feelings for Conrad, and I thought he had developed them for me, but I just didn’t see how he was going to save the princess and still end up with me. I thought about staging a coup, making the story my very own. After all, if I thought about it, I could do anything, but I knew that wasn’t fair to the characters that had been created for this story. I was just along for the ride. The last night before the climax of the tale I spent as much time being Rose as possible. I told my best jokes, darned everyone’s socks, juggled eggs (this time they were chicken eggs) and sang the very best songs I knew.
The next day dawned far too early. I woke up prepared to leave behind my life as Rose.
We climbed towards the dragon’s lair as secretly as we possibly could. The only way to defeat the dragon was to capture some of its fire in the lantern and aim its light directly at the dragon’s heart. Don’t ask me how it works, I didn’t get it either.
Magnus was sleeping when we entered the cave. His hoard was strewn about and in a prominent position was a golden cage wherein say Princess Cicely who was singing in dulcet tones a mournful ballad. Of course she was. As soon as she saw us she stopped singing.
Conrad made a move towards her, his sword in one hand, lantern in the other.
And then the dragon woke up.
Magnus gave a mighty swish of his tale and we were all flattened. Conrad made a fast recovery. He was on his feet again and running for the dragon. Magnus shot a burst of flame at him, but Conrad was able to catch it in his lantern. Before he could direct its light however he was met with another flick of Magnus’s tail and rendered unconscious.
I ran over to his side.
“Conrad, get up,” I pleaded. “You need to finish the story.” He remained unconscious. I was terribly confused. I could not understand why the story was turning out this way. It shouldn’t be like that. That’s not the way this story was supposed to go.
And then I realized: this story hadn’t gone the way it was supposed to go since I got there. Everything had changed. I picked up the lantern.
“Darian,” I called. I tossed the lantern to him. “Here’s your chance to be the hero,” I said.
Without missing a beat Darian aimed the lantern at Magnus’s heart. A beam of light shot out and seemed to penetrate his thick skin. Within seconds Magnus was defeated.
Darian looked in shock at what he had just done. I smiled at him.
“I was wrong. It looks like you weren’t the comic relief. You were the hero all along.”
Conrad groaned from his position on the floor. “Rose?” he called.
“I’m here,” I said, taking his hand.
Conrad looked around and saw the deceased dragon.
“Who did that?” he asked.
“Darian did,” I said.
Conrad gave a week smile. “I thought you said I was the hero.”
I shrugged. “I guess I was wrong.”
“Does that mean I don’t have to marry Princess Cicely?”
“Not if you don’t want to. You can do whatever you want.”
“Great,” he said, squeezing my hand. “That sounds great.”
“But, what about princess Cicely?” Darian asked.
I looked over at princess Cicely who was still standing in her cage. She was staring at Darian.
“You’re the real hero, remember. I think that one is up to you.”
Darian smiled and rushed over to the caged princess.
“How about it?” he asked her.
Princess Cicely’s face brightened.
“To you I would pledge my undying love.”
Darian let her out of the cage and they embraced.
“Well, now, what do I do?” asked Cadmus who should have died long ago.
“Anything you want.”
“Oh,” said Cadmus.
Because this is that sort of story, in spite of m y interference everyone lived “happily ever after.”
Darian married the princess and is on his way to becoming king.
Cadmus left the kingdom of Venedil and became a teacher.
Conrad and I got married. I still darn his socks and Conrad is fortunately very fond of potatoes.
And I am still Rose. Not a Gossamer clad maiden, just Rose. I’m a normal person with normal talents and features, but it’s amazing how grateful I am to be ordinary, to be anyone at all. Ordinary people do great things in the real world every day. We may not be princesses but, really, no one is un-special.
The writer of our little tale actually did improve and is currently a best selling novelist. She works very closely with The Quill Guard. We all really did live Happily Ever After.
And the Peasants rejoiced.