February 21, 2024

The Perfect Homogeny
by Hana Carolina

Part of Fairy Godmother by Sarah S. Stilwell Webber

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.


Our Queen came from the longest and purest royal bloodline in history—her many titles and multi-hyphenated name, which she herself struggled to recall, were a testament to that. 

A triumph amongst her siblings, out of the twelve children her mother had birthed, she was the only one to survive into adulthood. Most went still in the womb, some relented within the first months, a few lasted until their early childhood, all leaving behind tiny graves—sweet marble babies fast asleep underneath granite duvets, the deformities that killed them nowhere to be found. Only the Queen wore her dynasty’s signature face long enough for others to remember. Persistent and tenacious as she was, she almost made it to twenty.

In her palace the curtains were always drawn, and the only sources of light were the fireplaces and scattered candles, amber chandeliers reflecting flickers they weren’t allowed to produce. All servants wore soft shoes and spoke in hushed tones—dismissed for making any noise, they tried their hardest to maintain the death-like quiet, until even the creaks of the wooden floor seemed muffled. Still lifes and painted faces lurked from every shadow, the same features repeating themselves endlessly—the Queen’s long face and pointed chin, her glassy, bulging, half-closed eyes—frozen at various stages of development, adorned most walls and reflected in shimmering crystal mirrors. The original, bedridden and locked in, was rarely seen outside of her chambers, a shadow of the glorious Queen reigning within golden frames.

The final painting, finished after her death, showed the young Queen in her prime on a black stallion, back straight, chest puffed, and chin raised. The image sat in a thick gilded wooden frame carved into elegant floral shapes, sharp leaves and thin stalks extending towards the Stately Dining Room, as if they were reaching out to grab onto something. In reality, the Queen posed on an arm of a sofa, arched at an uncomfortable angle, held up by three servants, until she began to wail from the discomfort of it—the face contorted and no longer serviceable as a model, hands slapping the heads and shoulders boxing her in. In the end, her diamond ring cut through the cheek of her chambermaid, smearing blood all over the ruffled cuffs, screams intensifying, saliva dripping onto the layers upon layers of silk, on and on until the Queen’s breath ran too short for her to continue.

The portrait, which informed the marriage negotiations, posed particular challenges. The attempts to make her beautiful rendered the likeness unrecognisable, defeating the purpose of the endeavour. Her painted cheeks were bright and rosy, a striking contrast to her real face which resembled a jellyfish washed out of the sea—transparent and milky, with dark veins peeking through, a blood-filled net suspended in gooey tissue. Her balding head was disguised by a stunning wig made of some woman’s real tresses, teeth painted in, and jaw straightened allowing her to welcome her future partner with a closed-lip smile. He, however, did not need to be introduced to her features, familiar despite never meeting her, on account of being her second cousin and a man quite fond of his own reflection, regardless of how it repelled others. 

As a married woman, the Queen made the effort to dine outside of her bedroom and visit the gardens at least once per week. Her tongue was so swollen she struggled to eat or speak, and her long jaw clicked, the protruded row of teeth failing to meet the one above. Ravenous, she swallowed the food whole, choking often, her bug like eyes searching the room for servants who remained at her side at all times—feeding her, supporting her as she walked, interpreting her ravings, seeking sense in her hallucinations, and more accustomed to the sound of her wet snores and the screech of her teeth grinding in the night than the King ever was.

Those close to the newlyweds plotted and made decisions while the Queen and the King nodded without understanding. Their signatures always looked different, which wasn’t really surprising considering the frequent epileptic attacks and all the shaking. The court was thriving under their reign, all expectations fulfilled but for one. Barren, unable to bear either the children of her husband, or their chief military adviser, whom she was always too weak to push off, the Queen kept failing to deliver an heir. The production of the future king, a grim necessity to all involved, was approached with absolute dedication and cruel persistence, but to no effect.

By the time she reached the age of seventeen, the Queen’s elongated heart began to struggle, shrouding the world with a shimmering curtain of green and blue each time she moved. Her bed was made presentable with expensive silks and embroidery, and became crowded by the world’s best doctors at all times. Her skin was cut, blood spilled into golden bowls every morning and evening, pale arms and legs covered with leeches and blooming in shades of yellow and purple around swollen incisions until the sight made her gag, and the servants had to catch her vomit in a precious Chinese porcelain vase standing on the bedside table. The specialists added small doses of arsenic to her food, made her swallow powdered diamonds, fed her silver and precious stones, covering every inch of the bed in glimmering riches, until her chamber resembled an Egyptian tomb, her face remaining the only colourless object in view. 

She lived on for over a year in a feverish haze, the rot setting in, the rustling of whispers and prayers persisting even in her dreams. The wise men, the astronomers, the scientists and the prophets, the Pope himself and the heads of multiple kingdoms, her subjects and slaves begged the stars, the gods, and fate to save her, but her heart, a delicate meaty contraption, paid them no heed, and stopped all the same. So instead, they opened her up with a sharp, silver knife and removed her blackened womb and shaped a boy, the perfect heir, not recoiling at the smell of the decaying flesh, sculpting in the softness of the flaking tissue, and waited. And waited.

After two days and nights of prayer, the unimaginable happened—the baby screamed. His cry echoed against the marble walls and the ceiling almost ten metres high, building into a piercing cacophony of despair, a sound so saturated with pain, it seemed to contain the wail of his dying mother, the sobs of those who lost their children on blood-soaked battlefields, the lament of those subjected to years stretched into decades and lifetimes of servitude, the sound of skin torn with steel and burned with red hot metal. The cry carried on and on, until it left the palace through one of the seven hundred and twenty windows, and reached the crowd. 

It was a miracle. The nation was saved, and the people rejoiced.

                                                                    💀💀💀


Hana Carolina is a pseudonym of an Edinburgh-based creative and academic writer. Born in Poland, she moved to Scotland and studied literature, film and television for many years. Since then, she has been working as a tutor, interpreter, and researcher, and publishing academically while writing dark stories about horrible people. Her work has been published in Every Day Fiction, Crow & Cross Keys, Five on the Fifth, the Chamber Magazine, BRUISER, The Horror Tree, Black Sheep Magazine, and others. You can find her on X/Twitter @HanaCarolinaSCO and BlueSky @hanacarolina.bsky.social.

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