The Ghost of Crystal Castle

Who we found imprisoned in the Waste and Wilder-Lands

Recap: Our narrator is a young maiden, unable to say her own name and cursed to wander the fairy woods until the spell on her is broken. She is followed by a talking fox (also cursed), and they are making their way north, hoping to find a way to break their spells.

It was the glitter that caught my eye.

Days after taking leave of the river people, Fox and I had crossed the threshold to the waste and the wilder-lands, attempting to find a solution for the spells cast upon us both.

I’d heard a rumor about a potion-master near the Enchanted Lake.

Fox said he knew of a magician who lived somewhere in the Void.

Either way, we decided it was best to head into the mysterious North, leaving the Deep Wood behind us.

As we ventured northwest toward the Void, a glimmer of light caused me to blink. I looked; the sun’s light reflected against a structure on a nearby hilltop.

“That must be the Glass Castle,” said Fox. “Once the seat of the great queen of the marbled hills and wild horse valleys. It’s been abandoned for a long time now.”

“Why?” I asked.

“The line died out after her granddaughter took power,” said Fox. “They say the castle’s haunted by the granddaughter’s ghost.”

“That’s just faerie nonsense,” I said. “But if it’s abandoned, we need a place to stay the night. We can make it there before sunset.”

“You just want to see the castle,” said Fox. “So like a peasant.”

“You don’t have to come,” I said. “I bet you’re afraid of ghosts.”

“Certainly not!” he exclaimed, his ears slanting backward.

I’d never seen anything more beautiful in my life.

The castle was alight with a thousand colors in the beams of the sinking sun. The facade was layered with panels of perfectly clear glass that protected the perfectly shaped and fitted stones underneath.

The lawn was long overgrown, but the sheer variety of flowers and exotic plants revealed that it had once been an exquisite garden. The brush nearly obscured a set of gravestones.

I wondered how such a structure could ever be left empty. I thought of what it would be like to be queen of this castle and the surrounding lands.

In that spirit, I marched up to the wooden gate, cracked and rotten with age, and attempted to pull it open. The big door jarred loose, revealing a grand-looking reception room with high ceilings and time-worn tapestries. Cold, stale air wafted from the opening, carrying a slightly dank smell.

I went inside, mesmerized by the size of the room, the manifold doors and corridors, and the staring eyes of long-forgotten unicorns in the artwork. I turned to see that Fox would not enter.

“Come on, what’s the matter?” I asked.

He crouched and emitted a low growl, which was strange, because he never growled at me.

I turned to see an ethereal figure, draped in an ornate gown, piercing me through with unblinking eyes as she floated several feet above me. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

She made a terrible shrieking sound.

I think I would’ve run, but something held me there. She was so beautiful and noble. Once a queen, surrounded by courtiers and subjects. Now totally alone, suspended between life and death.

I was sad for her — so sad that I was completely transfixed.

Her eyes transmitted surprise and fury when she saw I had not moved.

“Who are you?” she boomed. “Why are you here? Get out!”

“Your highness,” I said in a voice barely above a whisper. “How have you come to be so alone?”

She hesitated, then drifted down to the ground.

“I am terrible, that is why I am alone,” she said in a quieter voice. “I banished my sisters to the wilder-lands. I cut off my cousins, who became paupers, and I made them tend my garden. I taxed my people till they were barefoot and sick, till their children begged at my gates. On my deathbed, the doctor would not tend to me. I overheard him calling me the tyrant queen. I had sought to become a greater queen than my grandmother. But in so doing, I drove my kingdom to ruin.

“So I called my sisters to me, and my cousins, before my demise. I told them all how sorry I was, how I regretted everything. I also pleaded for forgiveness from my people, sending out a decree to give them whatever recompense I could from the royal treasury, to the last coin. I did everything I could in those hours before my passing. But I had so little time.

“Then I found myself in this living death, watching my kingdom disperse. My ghostly form frightened my people; they were afraid to bury my body and put it out to sea instead. I hid, but I could see all that happened. Everyone was happier without me. So too my sisters and cousins. They left this place forever. But I remained.

“I live with the pain that I caused to others every day. I deserve it. I am terrible, that is why I am alone.”

“Your majesty,” I ventured, “it’s true that you did terrible things. You can’t change what you did. But you repented. You tried to make things right, even though you didn’t have much time. You gave what was left of your kingdom away; that’s why they dispersed. If all is forgiven, who remains to judge you?”

“Me!” cried the ghost queen. “I must judge myself!”

“But for how long?” I asked.

“Maybe forever!” she sputtered.

“You won’t rest with your mother and father, your sisters and cousins?” I said, thinking of the gravestones in the garden. “It is your grief that keeps you here, my lady. Regret is your living death. Haven’t you already mended fences? There is no more work to do, no more recompense to make. Shouldn’t you also be at rest?”

“But my regret is mine,” said the queen, visibly upset. “It is all I have left to control!”

I looked at her sadly. “Let it go, your majesty, and your kingdom will finally be free.”

Something changed in her face then; her expression relaxed. She looked at me for a long, silent moment, then turned away and faded into the darkness of the castle.

Fox and I spent the night in the entryway, making a nest from the old tapestries. I explored the whole castle the next day. I called everywhere for the queen.

I never saw her again.

When we left, Fox and I set up a headstone in the garden among the others. I scratched an epitaph on it with another rock: Here Lies the Last Queen of Crystal Castle and its Free Kingdom.