Messy Make-Believe
Gregory K.
Messy Make-Believe
By
Gregory K.
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Messy Make-Believe
Copyright 2012 by Gregory Koprowski
For other stories by me and for project updates please visit my weblog:
www.gregoryk.net
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Table of Contents
Section 1 – Chandra the Messy Adventuress
Section 2 – A Mess of Bandits
Section 3 – Ghosts Made of Messes
Section 4 – The Sorceress Queen and her Messy Dragon
Section 5 – The Sorceress Queen Washed Clean
A Note From the Author
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Chandra the Messy Adventuress
In a lonely corner of the woods on a patch of grass the trees had not yet swallowed up there stood a cottage. So many vines clung to the sides of it, so many weeds grew out of the roof, so much moss gathered in the shadows of the house that it looked as if it belonged more to the forest than to any proper person. But two people did live there, a mother and her little daughter Chandra. The mother was not yet old and she worked very hard to gather up all the forest had to offer her so that she and her daughter might continue to eat and live in their seclusion. She was quick and quiet as she went about her work, managing herself as carefully as if she was being watched by a strict overseer. On the other hand Chandra’s exuberance filled the little cottage quite full and spilled out into the clearing and flowed on into the woods. She would often run down one forest path and up another with her dark black hair streaming out free behind her. All the while she would chatter and laugh to herself and then her voice would turn stern and solid and then melt back again into girlish giggles as if she were playing many parts in one conversation. In her hand she would carry her very best friend and only playmate Beruka, a rag doll of some fearsome reputation in the imaginary stories that Chandra would make up for the two of them. With red yarn hair frazzled at the ends and two different button eyes the doll had quite a lopsided appearance. For Chandra though this just added to Beruka’s personality. She imagined the doll into something of a roguish lady who loped her way into trouble and out of it again keeping her opponents off balance and all her friends safe.
All day long Chandra would play out all sorts of imaginary stories. She might pretend she was a princess out to free her prince from one ridiculous curse or another (her poor prince always seemed to be turning into all sorts of things like a stone or a sparrow). Or she might believe herself to be a good thief like Robin Hood skulking around woody paths trying to find some nobleman overburdened with gold. Or she might setup a house right in the middle of the woods using sticks and stones for furniture. She would scrape together all the lichen of the forest and form it into the likeness of a chair or a bed and then she would have a polite tea party with her dearest friend Beruka all the while imagining what life would be like in a proper town far away from her mother’s cottage in that boringly familiar wood.
Chandra’s mother though had her own stresses. For all of her imaginative games Chandra was rather thoughtless. With every new story that she acted out she would leave a mess behind her whether it be the scraps of cloth from a newly stitched costume or a stack of firewood toppled over to make a little fort for Beruka to hide in. Chandra’s mother had no salt to make soups and no sugar to make cakes because Chandra would sneak into the kitchen and snatch it all up for pixie dust. For Chandra’s poor prince had gotten himself turned into a tree again and Chandra could not quite remember which tree he was. So she pitched her magic dust against every tree and bush and weed she saw until there was a frosty layer of white all around the cottage.
It was not that Chandra was a bad girl. It was only that she became very wrapped up in all of her games, picking up one story to play out just as another was becoming boring, and then away she would go without remembering for a moment that she had hidden all the spoons and forks in the whole house (so as not to offend a fairy who had very peculiar tastes). But Chandra’s mother was not so free as that. Uncertain little fears often wriggled in her chest and they wriggled a little harder whenever she happened to find a mess made by the playful little Chandra. No matter what she was doing Chandra’s mother had to stop and set right everything that Chandra had disturbed. Chandra’s mother could not go on with all the chores of the day if she spotted even one thing laid out of place. And so with every game and with every mess Chandra’s mother became angrier and angrier until one day it seemed only something wicked could come of it.
