Hello, everyone: as a special benefit for paid subscribers, I introduce you to one of my favorite characters I ever created, Catrina, Princess of Shmirmingard, who first came to life on Wordpress and will now make her home here. [There’s a reason for the name: I’ll explain later]. I was growing into my mad wholesome style at the time, you might say. I’m sending this out with a free preview to everyone: if you upgrade to a paid subscription you can keep right on getting them!
Once upon a time, in a far away land, there lived a princess. As princesses in these sorts of stories are wont to do, she went out riding every day through the bustling villages and sleepy farms of her kingdom, accompanied by her faithful bodyguard, Colin the Mime-Assassin. (He had actually washed out of mime school some years ago, but fortunately discovered that he had an inordinate talent for throwing very sharp knives.) As she rode through the streets, her people always cheered and waved to her, for she had a very high approval rating in all the latest kingdom polls. The princess always waved back, with that little “Thank you for being here today” sort of half-wave often used by royal persons. But, though she waved and waved until her hand hurt from the exertion, she never smiled.
Then, one day, she saw a knight in clouded grey armor standing by the side of the road. He didn’t cheer, or wave, but only bowed politely. Then he straightened, looked up at her, smiled, and then stepped back and vanished into the bustling crowd. Day after day this scene repeated itself, until day thirty-two, when for the first time the princess smiled back. It was a slow, almost half-smile, that spread across her face and lit her green eyes like candles. Later, after the knight had returned home, he found a note stuck on his doorpost with a pin. Though he didn’t know it, the note had been stealthily placed there by Colin the Mime-Assassin only moments before. Colin was even at that moment hiding behind a nearby shrubbery, taking careful note of the knight’s reaction. He found the knight’s behavior most interesting indeed.
Now, that day happened to be a Tuesday, and on Tuesday nights the princess usually played a rousing game of chess with her father the king. They kept a running tally of games won or lost, and so far the score was 32 to 27 in the princess’s favor. On that particular Tuesday night, however, the princess asked if she might be excused, on the grounds that she had a headache. The king understood what she meant, and agreed felicitously that they could have their game another time. The princess gratefully retired to her bedroom, but not before she had made a small detour to a little door in the castle wall, which she quietly unlocked and left standing just slightly ajar. Then she went to her bedroom on the top of an otherwise unoccupied tower in her castle’s east wing, and waited.
The sun outside slowly dropped below the horizon, and night fell across the kingdom. It began to rain, a hard, cold rain that pattered noisily about the castle rooftops. The princess had hoped to wait with her window open, looking out dreamily at the moon, but instead she had to settle for huddling in a blanket by her fireplace. Then she heard a surreptitious knock on the door.
Quickly she ran to open it. The knight in grey armor stood there, although now he was wearing a plain dark cloak to keep out the rain. He stepped hastily inside the room, and she shut the door after him. Then they turned to look at each other. She had that same slow half-smile on her face as she had worn early that day.
“You know, my lady,” he began, making a polite bow, “I am not even sure that I know your name.”
“Caitlin,” she said. “And yours?”
“Charles,” he replied. “Isn’t that odd; both our names begin with C.”
The princess considered briefly, and nodded. “So they do. It can’t be a coincidence.”
At that moment, a violin started somewhere on the castle grounds, its thin, plaintive tones rising to meet them. “That’s my brother, Edmund,” she said shyly. “He’s very good. They say he’ll enter the music competition at the Christmas festival this year.”
“My lady Caitlin,” Charles said, stepping closer. “While I’m sure your brother Edmund is extraordinarily gifted, if you’ll pardon me for saying so, I didn’t come here tonight to talk about him.”
Princess Caitlin flushed demurely. “Of course. How silly of me. I do apologize.”
“A lady so lovely as yourself should never apologize for anything,” Charles said. “I should be the one apologizing. All this time and I haven’t yet inquired about your health.”
“My health?” Caitlin repeated quizzically. “Why should you inquire about my health?”
“Well, heaven is a very long fall from here.”
Caitlin’s left eyebrow arched. “Oh my. I have heard many things from my various suitors, but I can assure you no one has ever said something as...interesting...as that.”
“Do you want me to go on?” he whispered.
“Oh, yes, please. It’s all very interesting. Though you don’t have to whisper, you know. There’s no one else in this tower at all, and very few people even in the east wing. There isn’t the slightest chance that anyone will hear us.”
Charles gave an altogether different sort of smile just then, and suddenly cold steel flashed in his hand. “Perfect. Then no one will hear you shriek for mercy before I kill you.”
“No!” Caitlin squeaked, backing away towards the window, a look of astonished fright on her face. “You...you can’t mean...but, why?“
Now, Charles was a reasonably competent assassin, and he had been training for this particular mission for several years. He had so far done everything he should have; his plan, as far as he knew, was perfect. What he did next, therefore, was completely inexcusable. Instead of simply slicing Princess Caitlin through the throat and leaving to make good his escape, he did the worst thing any assassin or master criminal could do. He began to deliver a monologue.
“Well,” he began, “I suppose there’s no harm in my telling you. It’s a brilliant plan, really. In fact, you’re only a small part of it. Your role was to get me into the castle, which you’ve done admirably. Next I kill you so you can’t spread the alarm, then I go and find your king and kill him. After that, I set fire to the castle. In the confusion, I make my escape, go to the house of your best general, and then I kill him as well. Your country’s political and military leadership will be decimated, your army thrown into chaos, and thus your little kingdom will be no match for the army of Vladimir the Marauder when he storms across your northern border a week from now. All this has been worked out years in advance, and so you see there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop me.” He attempted to punctuate his last remark with a traditional evil laugh, but unfortunately evil laughter was the one thing he hadn’t practiced in his training for the assassination, and as a result it didn’t come out very well.
“You sound like a duck being strangled,” Caitlin remarked.
“Oh yeah?” Charles snapped. “Well I wouldn’t be making smart remarks just now if I were you, considering I’m about to cut your throat!”
Caitlin had kept on backing up throughout Charles’s monologue, until she bumped up against her wardrobe that stood with its doors hanging open just to the right of her tower window. Her left hand moved softly behind the door. “So what’s stopping you?” she asked.
Charles swore angrily, forgetting that it was most rude to use such language in the presence of a princess. Then he started towards her, his sword raised. Caitlin’s hand flashed out again from behind the wardrobe door, and now she had a small sword of her own. She held it balanced easily in one hand, in a pose that should have been a dire warning to her would-be assassin, if he had been at all familiar with classical forms of swordplay. Unfortunately for him, he hadn’t read any of the right books.
“Ooh, you’ve got a sword!” Charles mocked. “Shiny!” Despite his words, however, Charles was beginning to feel upset. He had the vague sense that something was going amiss, but he wasn’t sure just what it was. All the same, he decided to change his strategy. He had been intending to finish Caitlin off with a simple yet elegant slice across her throat; now he decided to take a more aggressive approach. Charles raised his sword above his head in a two-handed grip, wielding it like a club, then lurched forward with a roar. He brought his blade down upon Caitlin with a tremendous blow, which probably would have split her head open, if her head had still been there. It wasn’t, and neither was the rest of her. Charles paused in confusion. “What?”
It was the last thing he ever said.
The next day, Caitlin played her father in another chess game. Her queen lanced across the board, slicing in behind the king’s defenses and elegantly delivering checkmate. And as Caitlin watched her father tip the king over onto its side in defeat, she smiled.
Closing notes:
I wrote this in response to a prompt hosted on a website which is now no longer active; the prompt, as I recall, was the phrase “the truth behind the smile”. Exactly why I made that into a princess assassin story I’m still not entirely sure. Also, fair warning, it gets weirder from here on out.
You probably noticed that the heroine’s name is Caitlin, yet this purports to be from a series called the Catrina Chronicles. There is an in-universe and a real-life explanation for this. The in-universe explanation will come along in good time: the real-world reason is that I wrote this in January 2011, while I was a senior in college. In August of that year I started law school, and one of my colleagues happened also to be named Caitlin. I was (and still remain, honestly) a little paranoid about naming characters after people I’m even mildly acquainted with, so Caitlin flipped her name to Catrina, and there you are. It seemed to suit her better anyway.
Note the reference to her brother Edmund. I promptly forgot about him after I wrote him. He’ll turn up later though. He will also not be the last character who shares a name with one of the Pevensie children, although Catrinaworld is anything but Narnia. You’ll see why shortly.
Be sure and tune in next Friday for Episode 2: A Bit of Magic!