The Shadow Kingdom Below

Tick. Tick. Tick. Dong. 

The clock’s chime rang across the vast hollow room, waves dancing along the walls until they swiftly glided under the sills of sandy tinted glass panes, out into the quiescent dusk. 

Standing at the edge of her bed, without the turn of a head, Clara already knew. 10:31. Without fail, each passing of the orbit, at precisely 10:31 pm on October 31st–Clara’s birthday–the clock would chime. No other minute of the year does the old grandfather clock hanging at the cross section of her staircase chime. As the final resonation of the strike melds into the still air, the floor beneath her feet seemed to soften, yielding like the deep lucid water beneath a gentle fall. 

The familiar mundane configuration of her room blurred. The chestnut wardrobe, pale floral wallpaper, and the warm glow of her overhead light, melting into the thin lines of gold, dissolving into a galaxy of colors. Clara expressed no reaction. She did not gasp or desperately reach for an appliance that no longer existed. She simply closed her eyes, calmed her tensed muscles and exhaled the heated air of her twenty-seventh year of living, letting her body slowly meld with the slow dissipation of her room. 

When her eyes fluttered open, the warm, heated air from her room was replaced by a crisp cold breeze, a slap to her face. The crisp, rich smell of damp pine and the brisk cold air. She was laying gently on the balcony of moss filled white marble, suspended high above the calm town of Sapphire Bay. 

The kingdom born from her mind twenty years ago in the soothing silence beneath her twin bed frames, drowning out arguing voices bouncing off the kitchen walls downstairs. Back then, it had been a fortress of escape, assembled from broken crayons, stray buttons, candy wrappers and her imagination, in a desperate attempt to escape from her reality. But here, all these years later, inside the sacred sanctuary her mind had founded, Sapphire Bay existed as an expansive monument to all the necessities for her mental escape from reality. 

Sapphire Bay, named after Clara’s most precious stone, the one outlier of the miscellaneous articles that had founded this kingdom, stood a breathtaking city. With towering spires stretching into the clouds, carved from translucent stone, connected by arching bridges woven together by silver wire, sparkling in the glowing sunlight. Stretching beyond the city stood the bay–the golden glowing sand along the shore of the glistening sapphire ocean. 

“Right on time, your grace,” a voice chimed from behind her.

2 

Clara cautiously turned around. Standing at the peak of the marble staircase stood the Sapphire Lord–a slender, tall soul in armor made from pale bark and silver. His face is hidden by a woven thin veil, slightly torn over his left eye from an accident years ago when a real-world object had fallen onto him. 

The Sapphire Lord bowed low, placing one gloved hand over his chest in honor. “The seasons do not pass when you are gone, your honor,” the Lord declared. 

Clara rose from her position, brushing the damp moss from her newly attained attire; a voluminous skirt, held up by thin rings woven to the fabric, along with a neatly trimmed lace collar sitting upon her collar bones. She glanced down at herself, feeling the light soothing spirit fill her being, unburdening the usual heavy restraints of the real world above. 

“What has changed in anticipation of my return?” Clara questions as she softly steps upwards towards the Lord. As she steps up the marble stairs, the golden dust activates after months of ignorance, sticking to the hem of her skirt. 

“The Northern bay has begun expansion,” the Lord replied, “we’ve received many more imports since you’ve last visited, so many in fact we have run out of space to store excess resources,” the Lord gestured to the storage lands in the distant, piling with paper scraps that have fallen under her bed from the real-world. 

Above them, the sky fully concentrated with clouds, the warm sun penetrating in, Clara could faintly see the rectangular shape of her bedroom window. Behind another cloud was the faint outline of the grandfather clock hanging on the wall where her staircases met. The second hand held almost still from their perspective, the faint resemblance of the clock hands meeting the midpoint between ten and eleven, six and seven. 

“Show me the way, my Lord,” Clara said calmly, stepping towards the courtyard as the marble stairs lifted both of them towards their destination. 

Together, they walked along their newly built foundations. Around them, the city began to awaken and emerge from their homes in news of the queen’s arrival. Lanterns began to crackle awake as they passed, even in the daytime. 

They reached the lands of Clara’s archives, a massive dome filled with shelves upon shelves of stories formed from Clara’s childhood imagination; a whole new kingdom constructed from her mind, providing all these artifacts a home for eternity.

3 

A soft smile spread across Clara’s face, the pink tint from her cheeks traveling to her heart as genuine warmth spread through her chest. 

High above, the glowing rectangle began to dim, then the invisible strings began to tug at her ankles, signifying the end of her connection with her kingdom. The faint outline of the minute hand of grandfather clock was approaching the next index, 10:32 was nearing. 

Clara turned towards her Lord and took his woven hand into hers. “Keep this kingdom lit, my Lord. I will be back in the next orbit.” 

“Always, your honor,” the Sapphire Lord bowed. 

As the world of sapphire and silver began dissolving into a mist, the warm golden streaks of light began forming back into the overhead light of her bedroom, her chestnut wardrobe reappeared, the walls repainting themselves with pale floral patterns. Soon, Clara breathed one last breath of the pine and crisp air of her kingdom, transported back into the waking world with only the memory of her own imaginary world.