Kaleala
KALEALA
The night Michelle’s father brought her to Bracefalls she looked out her bedroom window and saw a figure in a dirty old white gown running barefoot by the river’s edge. Michelle could make out that it was a girl just a few years older than herself. The girl stopped, looked up, caught Michelle’s eye, then turned and ran into the dark woods. Michelle would not see her again until early August.
Michelle lay back in her bed and took in the yellowed wallpaper of her unfamiliar room. She slid the one record she owned on to the turntable her father bought earlier that evening from the “this and that” store below their apartment. The needle fumbled for the grooves until the speakers sang.
She prided herself on being the only ten year old she knew that listened to Sam Cook, but she didn’t know that many ten year olds, a symptom of moving six times in four years. She nuzzled a framed picture of her mother and drifted off.
By the time July had finally yawned and rolled over into August, Michelle had given up trying to make new friends at the playground. Instead she lounged thoughtlessly on the rocks that peppered the river just east of town. Maybe friends will come easier when school starts she hoped, but until September it’s the lazy creek, fish and the frogs.
One particularly handsome afternoon Michelle spent the majority of the day leaning over a flat rock, alternating dipping the tips of her brown pigtails in the shallow black water, overseeing the minnows. As she admired her rippled reflection a white flower petal floated past her face. Moments later another floated on by. Michelle turned her head upstream and saw the continuous parade of white petals marching in a straight line like ants. She popped up and splashed her way, tracking the white tufts. A few feet up, the river bent into the woods and Michelle followed in.
She had been warned by Mr. Fleet (the nice man who owned the “this and that” shop she lived above) to never go into those woods, a warning she had obeyed all summer, but she was not thinking of that now, no, her mind hypnotically followed the flower petals. By the time she had entered into the cool shade of the massive firs the water became deep and she had to stick to the banks, avoiding twigs and wishing she had brought her shoes. Michelle was so engaged with the petals she didn’t notice the figure standing on a rock, picking flowers from an over hanging branch.
“What are you doing here?”
Michelle jumped so high that when she landed the mud gave out under her. She scrambled backwards until the steep embankment wouldn’t let her go any further. The girl in the gown loomed over and cocked her head.
The girl’s hair was wild and matted; dirt smeared her cheeks and caked her fingernails. She seemed too thin, but despite all this she was beautiful. Her blue eyes glowed from the small spot of sun that escaped the giants above them.
“What are you doing here?”
Michelle could only stare.
“Well?”
“The flowers.” She mustered. The girl flew from the rock, landing inches from Michelle.
“Well it took you long enough.”
When the girl shot out her fist Michelle flinched. She unfurled her fingers into an inviting hand. After what seemed like years of deliberation Michelle accepted and propped herself back to her feet.
“Come on, were not safe here.”
On that the girl darted further upstream. Despite her better judgment, Michelle found herself trying to keep up.
The river forked and split, a labyrinth of endless possibilities, but the girl in the gown knew this river by rote. Finally they arrived at a deep black pool fed by a misting falls. By the edge of the water was an old pick-up. Michelle guessed the rusted hulk had been there for countless years, as it was no model she had ever seen. A slender tree had fought its way from where the engine had been.
“My name is Kaleala, and I’m a princess.” Michelle remained mute. “You must bow when you meet a princess.” Michelle nervously obliged.
Kaleala stepped gracefully, a far cry from the manic chase from moments ago. She leaned up against the car. Michelle noticed a sleeping bag drooping from the backseat.
“Do you live here?”
“I’ve been banished. You see, I am from a far away land that was ruled by an evil King.” This was so matter of fact that Michelle couldn’t help but accept it as true. Kaleala explained that the king’s knights wanted to lock her up in the tower, so she tamed a dragon and flew here.
“Where’s your dragon now?”
“Gone, but she’ll come back, and when she does I’ll fly home and become queen. But for now I must build my castle. A princess must live in a castle, do you agree?”
Michelle nodded her head. “Then it’s settled, and in return for your help I will make you a princess too.”
Kaleala decreed that they would meet again tomorrow, and that Michelle must bring some food and anything she could find to help start construction. The princess drew a map in the mud explaining how to get back. Michelle studied it and took off.
The next day Michelle brought sandwiches and some old sheets she found in her closet from the previous tenants. As they foraged the woods for logs, river stones and any garbage that would make for good castle walls, Kaleala spoke lyrically of the most wonderful tales from the kingdom from which she was banished. Great adventures, like how she swam into a giant fishes’ mouth to save a baby or how she beat twenty knights at once by tricking them into falling into a bottomless pit. Michelle loved every second of it.
As the weeks moved on their castle had become a great maze of boards and sheets with different rooms you’d have to crawl to, but once you were in, they were tall enough to stand. Michelle had found a lawn chair, which made for a perfect throne.
It wasn’t all work. Kaleala taught Michelle how to fence using long twigs and many afternoons were spent swimming in the pool looking for gems or just sitting on the gentle falls letting the water rush around them.
#
Kaleala had just wrapped up an animated retelling of the time she dueled a wizard because he had foolishly attempted to steal her dragon. She had a long branch in her hand and she reenacted all the swordplay, culminating in a wild pounce. She thrust her sword into a mound of dirt; which was playing the part of the wizard. Michelle laughed and applauded as Kaleala turned her sword to further the wound. Kaleala stabbed the earth again and again with escalating fury and ecstasy. The branch broke and the stump that remained became a dagger. The mud splashed up onto her locked teeth and seething eyes. Kaleala stopped, out of breath and bent on all fours. Her eyes softened and filled with embarrassment. She looked up to Michelle who had backed off. The entire forest was silent, nervous.
“You’d be upset too if a wizard had tried to steal your dragon.” Kaleala panted. Michelle felt something in the pit of her stomach. The feeling climbed up to her face and burst out as a wild laugh.
#
One evening when the sky had turned pink, Kaleala led Michelle up a large hill on top of which was a clearing with tall wild grass. They ran up, giggling, pretending to be chased by ogres. When they reached the top they fell down exasperated. Indigo fireflies erupted from the grass and encircled the girls. Kaleala pointed to the horizon and said. “There’s my kingdom, right there.” Michelle looked out as far as she could and faintly saw the tall spires.
#
A week before September, Michelle made her way over to the post office to pick up a package for her father. She realized that her father’s request to go to the post office was the most he had spoken to her all summer. Michelle waited in the queue, anxious to get back to the castle as Kaleala had promised to take her on an expedition of a cave she had found. She had only been in line a few moments when she noticed it. Tacked onto the corkboard was a sheet of paper with the words “Have you seen this girl?” underneath was a picture of Kaleala, although her hair was clean and in pigtails much like hers. She was wearing a t-shirt, one like any kid would wear and she had a toothy smile. Underneath the picture it read “Kelly Moss, missing since June 28th” followed by “Please contact the authorities.”
Ugly thoughts in her mind came up for air. Thoughts of her crumby yellowed bedroom walls, of her father who spent his days locked in his room, of her mother she will never see again, and of loneliness. Her first instinct was to run away, but she convinced herself that this must be another girl, the girl on the poster was so ordinary, so like her. It couldn’t be Kaleala, the banished princess. Maybe the evil king was trying to trick her? A desperate ploy to find her and lock her up, Michelle reasoned.
She ran as fast as she could to tell Kaleala what that dastardly king had done. When she arrived she saw that castle was gone. What Michelle saw was an old truck with some sheets, boards, and a lawn chair; the work of children making a fort. The magical pool was gone too, now there was just a bog. Nothing had moved yet everything had changed. Picking weedy flowers was not Princess Kaleala, but Kelly Moss; a girl a few years older than herself in dirty white rags.
“Well, well. Where were you all morning?” Kaleala hummed.
“I want you to tell me a story.”
“Which one? Did I tell you about the time I turned into a mouse?”
“Tell me again how you were banished.”
Kaleala grew quiet and gave Michelle a look that was as frightening as it was frightened.
Kaleala stepped slowly towards Michelle and whispered the story of how she was banished and why and what happened to the King. Her other stories were told in a colorful voice, but this one was hissed. She finished the story inches from Michelle’s face with the words “I had too.”
Michelle ran back to her home leaving tears in her wake. She woke her father, and told him everything. After that everything happened quickly. Within a second she was re-telling the story to the police, after a minute she was leading them through the river labyrinth, and an instant from when Kaleala had said “I had too.” she was watching Kelly Moss scream and flail hysterically as men restrained her, ripping her from her castle.
Kaleala’s eyes fell on Michelle once more, this time with horrible betrayal. Her mouth let out a bellow, a tone too low for a girl that young, a deepness that came from the shattering of Princess Kaleala. Then she was gone and so were the fireflies.