The Careless Queen, Fionnuala Ó Cathaláin By Suzanne Lavallee
In the distance, between twiny trunks of wood, balls of light flicker between mossy trees. Like fireflies at first, they can be seen sparking brightly and fading out. Fionnuala, without a place to be, stumbled after them futilely.
Lost in the woods for several hours now, the sun had gone down, casting the trees into a shadowy blanket of night. Foolishly, the grisly queen had stumbled away from the campsite and now was lost within the enchanted forest.
It was miles and miles of lush green woodland, fallen tree trunks overgrown with moss and vegetation, plants and ferns, and sunlight trickling through the leaves. But now as the sun has gone out, stupidly, Fionnuala chases after them.
Rather than search for a way back to the path or a road home, she stumbles after balls of light within the trees. Ask her about that night and she will tell you, I heard them calling my name.
Whispers circled her ears, chasing her into the woods and trees.
Queen Fionnuala, are you coming? Are you going to play with us?
The Queen of Gwenlend, an idiot if I ever saw one, chased after the voices in the woods. She tramped through the dirt and vegetation, muddying her hems, and dirtying her silk bottoms.
She claims the lights in the distance glowed louder and louder, beckoning her in until she was under a great oak tree.
There she beheld the sight of the faerie circle. Inside were creatures whose faces blended into the trees and leaves, more forest than faerie. Some wore crowns of spiders perched on their spritish heads. As she peered through the underbrush there were rings made of human teeth on each of their fingers. There was a great tall lady, pale like moonlight with long curling lashes. On her head she wore a red and white mushroom cap, her pretty features shielded from the overgrowth. When she caught eyes with the lovely lady she beckoned the queen closer with long fingers.
The foolish queen stumbled forward, falling into the circle itself.
As the legends often go, the queen was forced to dance within the mushroom ring as the giggling lights twirled with her. Through the mist and haze of the bright faerie lights, she felt herself growing intoxicated… Before she could take a sip of faerie wine, the woman with the mushroom cap placed a slender hand over the goblet that seemed to materialize out of thin air.
Without words, the gentle sprite held the eyes of the Careless Queen of Gwenlend. The mushroom lady, her pupils bright and clear, could see past her unbecoming face straight inside of her heart, to what she truly wanted.
And what Fionnuala wanted was to be beautiful.
She wanted smooth unblemished skin and fiery red hair to capture the spirit of the setting sun… Eyes as gold as amber that holds a thousand secrets of years passed; alluring enough to be stared into for hours on end…
What would you give?
The red and white capped lady’s eyes seemed to ask.
And Queen Fionnuala’s responded.
Anything, I would give anything as long as I was so beautiful my husband would never look at another woman… No, rather, so beautiful I am all he can stare at.
But the lady in white didn’t want just anything… She was a faerie and narrators and readers alike know what the Fae want.
The life of someone innocent. Someone you don’t even know.
‘Twas a perfect deal… The life of someone Fionnuala did not even know. She would not suffer or feel pain. And with a blink of an eye, the mushroom circle was gone and Fionnuala was laying in the dirt, her eyes shuddered like a sleeping princess.
The mystery of the night before was forgotten, she herself wondered if it was a dream and she had simply gotten lost… But when her husband, the king’s head rose over the hump of moss and tree roots separating her from the level ground, she knew it was not.
When his eyes first laid on her, they widened with admiration and swelled with emotion…
“Fionnuala, is it you?”
“My king…” The thoughtless queen whispered. When the morning rays caught on her flame red hair, a halo of light was reflected around her flawless skin.
And true to the lady in white’s deal, her husband stared into her amber bright eyes and never broke her gaze once. Not even as he carried her out of the mossy woods and onto the back of his gentle silky mare to the castle…
Like a crown jewel, he placed Fionnuala inside of a reflective corridor, a hall filled with mirrors and glass that reflected her at every turn so that wherever he may be within the hallways, he shall be able to gaze on her beauty.
Like the dull fool she was, Fionnuala believed this was the love she always craved… To be on a pedestal made of gold and deer bones, watched from every angle as she lazily naps or brushes a finger through her hair.
Word of her beauty traipsed through the neighboring kingdoms. The kings of all the regions sent letters asking for the magnificent beauty’s hand in marriage. And each and every suitor she turned aside, swearing to only love her husband.
Shortly thereafter, Fionnuala Ó Cathaláin was with child… Her womb swelled and grew with the promise of an heir while her king stared at his abundant wife. Whatever child she were to produce would become the heir to the throne of Gwenlend.
As one may imagine, the love sick queen and king were far too enthralled in each other and the coming pregnancy to notice the mounting tensions across borders. Even as advisers warned the king to do something, he could not tear his eyes away from his wife long enough for concern…
But within the stone castle walls, the sleeping monarch’s lives are put at risk when assassins attempted to take the life of the doting king. The tensions thickened like soup in a pot until there were attacks on either side… To defend his wife and child’s honor, the valiant king left her side to go to war, his eyes nearly bleeding from the pain of looking at something other than her radiance.
As fate should have it, Fionnuala went into labor as her husband defended Gwenlend on the Western border… Laying in sheets, she wept and tangled her hands in the cotton as midwives lay between her open legs, praying to the gods that her child may survive.
As she fought for the life of her king’s heir, he fought for her honor and watched as his men were felled to the earth with bloody arrows and sharpened steel. His defenses were destroyed and all that was left was to return to the castle to kiss his beautiful wife goodbye, for another king would surely want to make her his.
In the birthing room, Fionnuala moaned and struggled, the pain greater than anything she’d ever experienced. Even I could not put into words the pain our queen felt that fateful evening. In the last moments, the final push, the midwife perched between her open legs caught the squealing babe with open arms.
“A prince!”
The relief of Fionnuala was as heady as a drink of wine or a cool water over a burn… She laid back in the pillows, her impeccable face christened with the fruits of her labor. Before she could breathe that sigh of relief, the skies darkened and the windows closed.
The midwives screamed and hit beneath the bed as Fionnuala clutched her prince to her breast. In the farthest corner of the room stood the lady in white, her mushroom red cap glowing.
A life you never knew…
Fionnuala was a fool. In her arms she held the heir to the kingdom of Gwenlend. To give him would be to give the key to the kingdom, but there was no choice. She stared into the woman’s pale skin as she extended her ghostly arms to take the child from the weary queen.
Once again, foolish Fionnuala clutched the child to her breast and rolled off the bed. With a snap and flash of light the woman in white was gone… But the sounds of a thousand footfalls crept nearer… The war for her beauty was lost. Among the marching was the heavy persistent buzzing of wings from above.
When she opened her eyes, both windows were open as creatures swarmed inside. Little humans with three fingers and tulip hats, their eyes glowing yellow like a cat crawled across the ceiling. There were beasts with horns, made from tree trunks and children with the wings and eyes of a fly…
Fionnuala screamed and clutched the wailing child into herself, curling over.
But the deal was made. Their hands clawed the child from her arms and vanished with no witnesses but shrieking midwives below the bed…
The kingdom fell within the day and Queen Fionnuala, the most beautiful woman lost her heir, her husband, and her freedom all because she was careless enough to stumble in the forest with the sprites and fae and offer her hand in bargain.
Queens should know better than to go stumbling through the woods making deals with things in mushroom caps.
The punishment outweighs the promise.
“I wrote the Careless Queen at the beginning of June and spent the whole summer submitting it… It got rejected so many times, I decided I was done trying…even though it is one of my favorite short stories! I decided to submit it to Trash to Treasure Lit as a last attempt to get it out there before retiring it permanently.”
Suzanne Lavallee (She/Her) is an eighteen year old writer based in a small town in New England. She is the co-founder of The Limelight Review, an online literary magazine for disabled & neurodivergent voices as well as a volunteer for The Authors of Tomorrow. She can be found writing, listening to Lana Del Rey, or on social media: @suzannelvwrites & IG: @suzanneofthebooks