Three Narratives From My Imaginary Country, excerpted in "A History of Voledads," the most widely-read schoolbook in Voledads.

Three Narratives from Voledads

Svitak, Adora



Before you Read:

An excerpt from Me: or, a True Tale of Voledads’ Little Princess, by Maisie Clayton (Stage and Screen, pg. 144)

Key Terms
Retain
Roaad’s Point
Bustling
Pageant
Flannels
Chenille
Debutante
Sanitarium
Formidable
Faux
Reticule


It was a cold morning when I was born, the midwife said, and indeed the first thing I remembered in my life was a cold sort of chill, if I could remember much; for I was probably only three years when I began retaining information conveniently.
We were common folk. My father owned a small parcel of land ten miles from Roaad’s Point. Every month our father and my two older brothers would go to Roaad’s Point and barter things at market: sheep, pigs, goats, and geese, jugs of the creamy milk of Bellatine the cow, and my mother’s fine woolen garments. My mother was the best dressmaker about. If us girls—my elder sister Therese and my two little sisters Louise and Lora—were good and did all that our mother bid us, we could come along as well in our father’s rattling wagon, bundled up tightly in our veils and flannels for the cold part of the year.
The market was a bustling place full of novelties that we country girls found the most amazing. I remember that upon seeing a printing press, I, for a great length, begged my father to buy me one. He, of course, had better things to do than listen to my silly pleas, and so disposed of me conveniently by bringing me to the market pageant. It was at the market pageant that I first saw the greatest inspirations in my acting career.
I was dazzled by the damsels in distress, blinded by knights in shining armor, and drunken with the rum of rasping pirates. At the time ladies on the stage were considered “fast.” This meant, as far as I knew, that we girls were supposed to keep a good distance away from them and not get any bad ideas. But rather than avoid them and hurry away like my prudent sisters, I stayed and watched respectfully as my idol, the olive-skinned, black-haired Mia Gardenioff, swept off the stage in her signature yellow chenille. It would be long before I got my chenille. But then again, it would be long before I would get on the stage.
When I became a young debutante I received a green chenille with matching chiffon about the waist—but enough of the clothes, for my coming-out was more important. I was said to be the “belle of the ball,” but can I tell you! Eighteen-year-old girls are more apt to think themselves scrawny, ungainly, and hopelessly ugly. As such an eighteen-year-old, I was very much surprised when I overheard a remark about my being a good candidate for a role in the new play, Bella Sanitarium. It was said to be quite a comedy, but one of the understudies had broken a leg—in the literal sense, that is—and the original player of the role had backed out citing religious reasons.
Sanitarium was touring through Tiola, and as it happened, my formidable Aunt Aurelia wanted me to visit her in Tiola, I wanted to go abroad like the rest of my “set,” and it was our family’s tradition for the girls to finish at the Mount Bauxite Women’s College in Tiola. The director of Sanitarium contacted me by letter later in the year, inviting me to sign on to the playacting set. I agreed at once, packed my belongings and schoolbooks in my worn little faux-leather satchel, tucked my tickets for the Mount Bauxite train and the Elvern-to-Tiola steamboat into my reticule, and set off. --------------------


An excerpt from the 1919 Labor Reports:

Being the eleventh boy in a poor family that got to make money somehow doesn’t do much for your education except physical. All of us got to work when we can, what we can, and how we can. In our fashion we mined coal and my sisters did what they could to help our ma with the washing and sewing for the rich folks. My ma, she washed so hard that her hands got reddish like. None of us kids knew what rightly to do about it, cause we were just kids.
My ma was from a high sorts of family at first, and got proper schooling, and taught us how to write and add sums when she could if she wasn’t too busy with the washing. Her da was a merchant but lost his ships at sea, and so his rank doesn’t have much influence on us now. My brothers worked in the mine with our da and the youngsters got our water and tools and food.
Being a coal miner requires exercise. At the end of the day our knees are all sore from going down the tunnel, stop and go. Our shoulders and arms are sore from hacking away at the coal, our necks are sore from craning them to try to see above our heads (there be some nasty accidents in the mines from above), and our feet are sore from being pinched in our boots. We can’t afford to buy new ones so our toes stick out and, well, too bad if anything falls on them. Our whole bodies are sore from pulling up the carts of coal. The mine owners wouldn’t buy a mouse to pull those things. They harness us to the carts with yokes like oxen, whip us like we’re horses, and say they’re going to throw us out if we complain about pulling the cart in the dark when the rain is dripping and you’re really supposed to have a rest. Does a miner really ever have a rest? I don’t think that the number of rests I’ve gotten would be enough time to say “Mine’s crashing in!” That’s quite fast. I know from the number of times I’ve heard the unfortunate man shout it over from the tunnel twenty feet over. The mine owners don’t honestly care. They cover up and threaten to make mincemeat of us if we tell the constable that a tunnel crashed in and that they didn’t open their fat purses to pay for some men to go and find the poor soul. Oh well, we get our pay and that’s enough to feed the girls at home. That’s some comfort, even though my blisters are hurting like anything. What I would really like right now would be some toffee, but all I’m getting is bitter coffee with coal shavings in it. Fact that I made a rhyme—toffee and coffee, that is—doesn’t do much to lift my spirits, cause I’ll be working overtime.------------------



My name is Sylvius Junius Jacquelle van Bartholemeo-Nottlewood [Note to the reader: Nottlewood was Sylvius’s wife’s father’s surname, van Bartholemeo her mother’s. Junius was Sylvius’s father’s surname, and thus the most prominent, while Jacquelle was his mother’s surname. Voledadian monarchial names were very complicated, if not excessively so], and I am the fifth Sylvius Junius of Junius House, in Voledads. My life has been an uneventful fusion of fame, diet, and drink. I am particularly fond of the cognac of my mother’s countrymen, the Carmellans.
This day in 1520 I came upon a strange desire to record some of the happenings these years, as I know that even young kings so fair-of-face as me may be cut down by a stray arrow or sickened by plagues or killed in battle. Therefore I wish to leave some imprint on the world beyond my laws, which could be overturned as easily by the next king, oligarchy, or whatever the easily impressionable people of Voledads fancy for themselves, as a feather could be blown away.
I was born noonday in the month of August. The astrologists had predicted a girl and thus it was that, my mother having great faith in astrology, I was not found to be a boy until I was brought to christening and my voluminous silken robes were unwrapped. It is inauspicious to look at a baby before he or she is fully wrapped, and so it was only at my naming, when I was doused in holy Trinansitic water, that the court discovered my gender. Or a story something along these lines.
Before the time of my birth, the house of my father, Junius, was at war with the Jacquelles. While typically Voledadian and Carmellan families have feuds between each other, the two houses’ constant social battle ballooned out so alarmingly that both houses were quite weak when the Nottlewoods attacked. The Junius and Jacquelle houses found it necessary to ally themselves through the marriage of my father (a Junius) to my mother (a Jacquelle), and fought against the Nottlewoods. When I reached sixteen years, this fight began to die down, and I was betrothed to the valiant Canerle van Bartholomeo-Nottlewood to end the feud more conveniently. This Canerle, my wife now, is a virago of sorts, and once threw the Minister of Finance out the window by his ear. Thankfully it was the first floor, but the good Minister landed in a thorn bush and needed a great deal of fixing up. There is no one in the kingdom who can tell Canerle what to do. My father, the eminent former king, tried to hint that Canerle’s ways were too forward, but Canerle tossed her hair and rode off to her country estate. Nevertheless, Canerle rallies, disciplines, and fights alongside the soldiers, so she has garnered the title of Lance Majoress (a word of my own making) for herself. Canerle will continue the historical area of this narrative in the event of my death. I hope that she will not turn my noble writings into a smear campaign against me. It seems like something Canerle would do, considering that I just cut her budget for weaponry. --------------