Pastoral Kingdom Name Generator

The story

Avel put the ring in a sugar bowl because nobody ever opened the proper ring box without immediately knowing what was happening. The bowl had blue birds around its rim. She had bought the ring herself, out of money saved before she became queen, and its little green stone looked extremely persuasive against the white sugar. She practiced saying Ren, I have something to ask you. Then she practiced saying it without sounding as though she intended to ask for a ladder. Outside her window the valley was doing its best impression of a place in which everybody else knew exactly what to do next.

Clovermere had become hers three weeks earlier, along with a crown that pinched and the obligations her father had found easy to mention and difficult to remember. The terrace farms above the village depended on maintained water gates. Each household supplied its stated share of the seasonal work, and the royal household had a share too. Inheriting the title had not moved one stone. Bess, who kept the upper gates, had assigned Avel an afternoon labor slot before the planting crews went through. Bess had put her name between two other households on the afternoon list.

She arrived an hour late. Bess had sent the other workers on with their own scheduled strips instead of asking them to stand about admiring an empty royal place. Returning to Avel’s unfinished section pushed the planting team against the end of its paid day. The last short row would now need a separate visit with the planting cart tomorrow. Bess named the extra hire charge. Avel said she would pay it from her own purse. Bess nodded and handed her a basket of replacement stones. Paying for tomorrow did not carry today’s basket up the slope.

Ren was leaving at dawn to open a sign-painting shop in another town. He had rented the shop, packed his brushes and booked his seat before she bought the ring. They had been friends since the summer he painted a magnificent horse on her first riding box, then admitted he had used the same horse for a cheese merchant. Avel treasured the box anyway. She also treasured the way he laughed when she was trying not to be grand. In the privacy of her head, these things had developed into a marriage whose only missing part was the question.

The stones were heavier than the speech. She carried them while Bess and the other keepers worked their separate sections. They fitted the ordinary repairs, checked the gates and prepared the water approach for the coming planting. Avel’s glove split at one thumb. At first she held the torn edge out of the mud because she thought Ren might notice. Then the basket tilted, and she used both hands. By the time the work was finished, her cuff was wet and her opening sentence had become something she could not remember without moving her lips.

Ren found her at the lower gate carrying the sign he had finished for Bess’s shed. It said Seeds and Tools in pleasantly uneven letters, with no royal beast anywhere. He had already taken his luggage to the coach office. Avel asked whether he had time to walk past the ornamental pond before going to his lodging. He looked at the sun, said ten minutes would be easy, and put the sign inside the shed. Bess stayed to clear the tools. The lamp against the shed wall was not lit yet. She still had all the daylight she had been hoping for.

The pond was shallow, lined with flat stones and inhabited by a bullfrog with the voice of a much larger animal. Avel had imagined the green ring catching the last light. In fact she had to brush two sugar crystals off its setting. Ren smiled when he saw it, then stopped smiling. She said, quite clearly this time, that she wanted him to marry her. She offered the ring in the palm with the split glove. For the first time all day, she did not improve the question before letting it leave her mouth.

He said, “No, Avel.” Then, because the first word had reached her more quickly than anything following it, he waited. She could hear Bess putting a spade against the shed wall. Ren said he cared for her and had never imagined marrying her. He wanted the shop he had arranged and the life he was going to try there. Avel asked whether he was afraid of the crown. It would have been a more useful obstacle than what he had actually said. He looked at the little ring and answered that the crown was not the reason.

She almost told him that he should have made this clearer. Instead she remembered how carefully she had avoided asking anything that might supply the wrong answer. They had talked about his shop for months. She had recommended a color for its door. He had not hidden a destination from her; she had placed herself inside it without consulting him. This understanding did not feel noble. It felt hot and embarrassing, and she would have preferred to be angry with somebody whose fault was easier to explain.

At the path junction he asked whether she wanted to keep walking. She said she wanted to be alone. He said goodbye and went toward the coach office, where his luggage and ordinary booking remained. She watched him until the hedge interrupted the view. Then she turned, threw the ring into the pond and said a word that would have caused her father to discuss the decline of royal manners. The ring made a small, satisfying plop. It was an excellent gesture for approximately one heartbeat. Then she remembered how long she had saved to buy it.

Bess came around the shed with the lamp. Avel asked whether she could hold it over the water. Bess looked at the empty glove, then at the pond. “Both things?” she asked. “The same evening?” Avel said yes. Bess set down the tool basket and agreed to hold the lamp until the last work bell. She did not say a queen ought to preserve her dignity. She did say that if Avel found the shed’s small spoon, it had been missing since spring. Avel removed her boots and went into the mud.

The first bright thing was a bent pin. The second was a spoon large enough to belong to a different household. Her skirt floated around her knees, then acquired enough water to stop floating. Every time she thought she had found the green stone, a weed moved. The frog sat on its flat rock with the expression of a creature attending a performance it had not paid for. Avel found the small spoon just before the work bell. Bess asked whether she wanted another minute. She said yes, and this time the thing between her fingers really was the ring.

Ren left at dawn. Avel heard the coach from her room while she was fastening a dry sleeve. She did not send a page to stop it. On her table the ring stood in an ordinary empty mug beside the bill for the planting cart’s separate return. The gate repairs were finished; the delayed row still cost what it cost. She paid the bill after breakfast and tried to rehearse the short announcement she owed the village that morning. Through the open window the bullfrog supplied a tremendous, perfectly timed answer. She laughed once, cried again, and began the announcement from the beginning.