English Assignment

A Sprig Of Nochnine

Far away, not too long ago, the king of the city of Graves longed for a child; having spent all of his younger years studying the arts of magic and clockwork, he had never taken the time to find a wife. As his hairs grew gray and his bones frail, he began to search the city crypts for fresh parts, linking the sinews and muscle into one body, stretching it over a bone and metal frame, weaving skin and stitching it to the body; before he knew it, he had put together two girls, or rather, most of two girls. 

However, although he had searched long and hard for hearts and brains, he could only find one of each fresh enough to give the girls. He gave the heart to one, giving her a clockwork brain, naming her Madrienne, while the other, named Reneva, received the real brain and a clockwork heart. With a click of the fingers, the hearts began to beat and the brains began to think.

The princesses grew into quite different young women. While Madrienne would dream her days out in the woods, reading sonnets to the world, giving her jewels to her servants and traveling the city giving the poor the money to buy food, Reneva would study logic, reading treatises on science, magic, and the arts, handling matters of state with her ailing father. However, despite Reneva making good decisions for the people of Graves, the state and the king far preferred Madrienne, for her warmth and kindness, even if she had no interest in the matters of the state.

One day, the king’s physicians discovered that their supplies of nochnine, the plant that so soothed the king’s passage into death, were running out, with only a leaf and a half left in the medicine cabinet. The king decided to set his daughters on a quest, to go all the way up the mountains of silver to pluck a sprig of nochnine, believing that Madrienne, far more concerned for his comfort than Reneva, would return with the leaves.

However, as the two traveled up the base of the mountains of silver, Madrienne heard the sound of a beggar-child, calling for a copper coin or five.

“Madrienne, surely you can put copper in all beggar-children’s pockets if you return with nochnine, when you become queen,” Reneva said, as her sister ran off the path to drop an entire purse of copper into the beggar-child’s cup. Reneva, seeing that her sister was far too preoccupied with the urchin, continued on her way up the mountain. Madrienne soon caught up with her, as they walked up the mountain together, never quite outpacing each other.

Soon after, they came upon a maiden, weeping by her little puff-dog, caught in a forester’s trap. While Reneva offered advice to perhaps push down the spring in order to open the trap, and kept on her journey, Madrienne immediately ran to the girl’s side, pushing down the springs to release the little puff-dog. By the time the dog was free, running in circles and yip-yip-yapping, the sun, once high in the sky, had sunk to the trees’ level.

Reneva, on the other hand, had ignored every beggar, any who asked her to take her time off her task to start on another, and had reached the mountain-top, her metal joints click-clacking as she shook from the cold. There, in the white, white snow, a sprig of the nochnine stood out, shimmering silver, glimmering gold, every color imaginable, and some that aren’t, given a sheen to its stalk. Her click-clacking fingers took a hold of the bottom of the beautiful plant, and plucked it.

She returned home without trouble, while Madrienne reached the top of the mountain to be greeted by nothing but the white, white snow. She too returned home, in time for her father’s funeral and sister’s coronation; taking pity on the girl, Reneva made her the Secretary of The Welfare of the Poor, a position she maintained far more happily than being a true leader. And the city prospered under Reneva, the Queen of Graves.