Gravity
The version they don't tell you in school
Stories in the Tiny Worlds Sketchbook are like a pencil sketch with words; loose, unrefined and not wholly a thing. But I like them and think there’s something here you might like, too.
Gravity
Charleen wailed to the sky as her love lay dying. She wept freely, but the blood spread on its own, darkening the mossy, loose stones. His head—like Charleen’s heart—had shattered into a thousand scattered pieces. For all the gallantry in the kingdom, no spell, no magic could reverse time and put him right.
Yet, quietly—beneath the soft crow of blackbirds in the orchard, beneath the buzzing of honeybees—she whispered in his ear and lied.
In her heart—buried beneath regal wares and a padded corset that lifted her small breasts into something more—that pea-sized coal she called a heart, she knew he was dead. It panged only as much as she allowed.
"If he hadn’t been such a daredevil," she thought—the blame a knee-jerk distraction, a missive from her darker, protective subconscious. But wasn’t it pride she was shielding? Or was it?
Perhaps not.
As she watched his shape grow cold, his body twisted and uneven on the ground, she remembered how they’d met. Here. At this very spot, deep in the woods, where chance had first drawn them together.
Her horse, tired from a morning run, drank from the nearby stream as she wandered the orchard's edge. Beyond the stone wall, she heard the tapping of footsteps along the boundary.
A warbling, tangier-like whistle brought her eyes up. And there he was—dressed in his finest outdoor attire, the gap in his wide smile beaming down. He was far too young for a walking cane, too young to possess such riches. And yet, there he stood.
It was there, with him perched atop that wall, that she had set to wooing him—not the other way around. And now, watching him, she recalled her first prediction: that, in time, he’d tumble down a flight of stairs or be found dead, a half-masticated piece of chicken lodged in his throat.
And then she’d be free to do… well, whatever she pleased.
So, she flirted. They walked, he atop the wall, she below. First, a few stolen minutes together. Then, hours lost along the boundaries of their respective kingdoms. She’d tuck sweets into her saddlebags, and he’d pick fruit from the treetops. But they had never touched. That would come only when retreat was no longer an option for him. After all, free milk meant never being indebted to the cow.
Not until now. Not until she wiped the blood from her hands after his fall.
"Listen for hoofbeats," she said. "They're coming. All the King’s horses, and all the King’s men…”
Backstory
You know the nursery rhyme:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
This story has been stuck in my craw for longer than I care to admit. And did you know there’s not a mention of Humpty Dumpty looking like an egg until Lewis Carroll? Even then, it wasn’t Carroll who made him one—it was John Tenniel’s illustration in Through the Looking-Glass (1871) that created the iconic character.
But, if he wasn’t originally an egg, perhaps something (or someone) dastardly came into his life. Enter: Charleen.
Excellent! I love that ending. And this is exactly what I was talking about. You are a master of throwing the reader right into the story in the very best of ways. If that bothers some readers they need to go back to school and learn this is the essence of cleverly good writing--in all formats, actually, but definitely in the short story format.
Cherchez la femme, Mr Curtis! Cherchez la femme!
I guessed we were talking about Humpty with this line. " His head had shattered into a thousand scattered pieces." and that no spell or magic could put him to right. It cracked me up that you had him eating chicken. Ha ha ha.