Embedded Files
"My name is Laoghaire MacKenzie." The image shimmered, revealing a woman with a shock of brilliant red hair. "I am the daughter o' James MacKenzie, a council member in Siren from 3189 to 3218." The woman looked beyond the camera, beyond her audience, and she took a deep breath before she began her story. "I helped him from the years 3201 to 3205."
"My father made it his goal to eliminate corruption in the council, as our society has had to do several times in the past. The problem, ye ken, is that many of the corrupt officials knew what 'e was after. He had reached an impasse. He could do no more. My sisters and I wanted to help, and I made the suggestion that perhaps we could go to work for the various council members my father was trying to bring to justice. He refused us, quite steadfastly, since we would be recognizable to any of the council members...but we eventually wore him down by showin' him the disguises we created. We cut our hair, bound our chests, and presented ourselves as men. We looked utterly different from how we used to." She chuckled. "My father finally agreed to let us go."
"I came to work for council member John Gray, a particularly old and particularly corrupt official, who was helpin' the human trade industry and also pushed black market artificial organs. The rumors were that Gray would get whatever you wanted legalized for the right price." Laoghaire made a face at that, giving a shake of her head. "When I went to work for him, I had an entirely new identity constructed, with fake credentials that checked out all right and everythin'."
"I started workin' as a low level intern, but over the course of two years I built up to Gray's inner circle. Durin' that two years, I thought I'd be found out only once. Ye ken, Gray's wife had a pair o' wanderin' eyes. Gray didn't care if she slept around, just so long as the media ne'er got hold o' it. And durin' my time workin' under him, she set her eyes on me." Laoghaire shuddered. The image flickered briefly when she did. "Ye cannae understand the sheer terror o' bein' chased by a woman who willnae take no for an answer, and who verrah nearly ripped the shirt straight off'a me."
"Eventually she gave me up as a lost cause, supposin' I was interested in other men rather than women. But there were several times she came verrah close to exposin' me for a woman." Laoghaire shook her head.
"When I did reach Gray's inner circle o' trust, I eventually began to learn about his dirty secrets. Discreetly, I started sending the evidence to my father, whom I had not contacted in all my time under cover. Things went well until Gray asked me to do his dirty work for him. Specifically, he wanted me to kidnap a foreign emissary's son for blackmail purposes."
"I knew I couldnae do it. I would falter in the end, and so I contacted my father, let him know that I would be ending my service for Gray in the coming days. I knew I had to warn the emissary, Yusef Darsha, and his son, Nassir, so I decided to pretend I was going ahead with the plan. I took a team of Gray's men to the emissary's residence. I conveniently separated myself from them and tracked down Nassir and Yusef. I took only as much time as I dared to explain the situation, and fortunately Yusef believed me."
"I gave him the locations of the team that had come with me, and then took Nassir to safety in my father's home. He remained there, in secret, while my father brought council member John Gray and others to trial for their crimes. The process took a year and a half."
"I do not intend t' pursue my father's path as a council member, but Nassir has implied I may be good at it." She smirked, and the image clicked off.
The little girl watched for a moment, then looked around at the tour guide, her lips pursed. "Can I come back when you're working again? You know where all the cool stuff is," she said excitedly, getting to her feet as her mother approached.
The tour guide laughed. "Just come by on the weekends. I'll be around."
The little girl smiled brightly, and then looked up at her mom. "I've been learning about some of Siren's most powerful and influential women!"
"So I saw," her mother replied. She looked to the tour guide with a smile, and the tour guide merely grinned and ducked his head.
"Now folks, if you'll follow me, I'll take you on into the next room," he called, stepping away from the little girl and her mother to resume the tour. The little girl glanced at her mother, grinning from ear to ear.
"I'm gonna be just like them, Mom!"
Author's Note: This story is a retelling of The Girl Who Pretended to Be A Boy. The original story has a lot of different elements to it. It is difficult to summarize, since so many elements seem very important to the story. The most basic summary is that the youngest daughter of an emperor dresses as a boy and uses her father's best and oldest war horse (a magic, talking horse) to travel to another emperor's palace on her father's behalf. She faces many trials and tribulations along the way, frankly too numerous to list. One of her final tasks is to find a beautiful princess, famous across the land, and bring her back to the emperor that Fret-Fruners serves. This entails doing several more tasks, but eventually Fret-Fruners succeeds, and brings the woman back to the emperor. Instead of handing her over and letting the emperor marry her, however, Fret-Fruners is turned into an actual boy, and marries her himself.
I changed a lot of the story, and also left out a lot of Fret-Fruners' tasks and encounters (or quickly summed them up as "errands"), mostly because it would have been a very long story otherwise! Laoghaire pretends to be a boy, and she works for one of her father's peers (representing the other emperor). The encounter with Gray's wife echoes an incident in the original story where a genius's mother tries to reveal Fret-Fruners as being female so that she will marry the genius. I kept the kidnapping/bringing-a-person-back-to-the-emperor theme, but instead had Laoghaire take the target back to her home to keep him safe. Initially I wanted to allude to a romance between Nassir and Laoghaire, but it just really didn't make any sense in this particular story, so I left it out.
I also wanted to ensure I wrapped up my frame tale with a pretty quick and concise progression from watching the holograms to continuing the rest of the tour.
Story Title: The Girl Who Pretended to Be a Boy
Book Title: The Violet Fairy Book
Book Author: Andrew Lang
Year Published: 1901
Web Source: Myth & Folklore
Images:
Razor Blade, Web Source: Trissa's Deviant Art
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