The Barrier
an excerpt

For many years after it was all over, the Scholar would remain convinced that it was he who had set everything in motion. Eventually, after finding eyewitnesses, including one still very angry young lady, he learned that the Page was more to blame. Even later, he would trace the Incident to someone else, but that is a story for another time.
Within the hierarchy of the Castle, the three lowest ranked people were the Maid, the Servant, and the Page. The Maid was responsible for cleaning the Castle, a tedious chore for one person that she detested. Her misery was shared by all other inhabitants, who had to endure her frequent, high-pitched complaints and almost constant cruel mockery of people ranked so high above her that they could find obscure justification for ordering her immediate execution. But that never happened in the Kingdom.
The Servant, whose status was roughly equal to that of the Maid, delivered food. He also cooked the meals when the Cook was on one of his extended vacations, ironed the laundry, beat the rugs, and completed every other menial chore the Maid “forgot” and the Page bungled. He rarely complained, and people generally considered him to have a severely lacking personality.
And on the very bottom of the pecking order, so low even the Dog, in his mute and condescending way, looked down on him, was the Page.
When one thinks of a page, if one does not immediately call to mind images of paper, one usually thinks of a future knight, a child from another house being raised in the ways of chivalry. Unfortunately, for the most part in the Kingdom, chivalry, as well as social betterment and noble families with children, was sorely lacking. When anyone wondered about the Page’s origins, which rarely happened, they usually related him to the Duke, despite the Duke’s obvious lack of children, not to mention lack of love for anything that did not have a reflective surface.
The Page’s job amounted to delivering things from one part of the Castle to another, often for no particular reason, and often to disastrous results and failures. As well as being the bottom rung of the Castle, the Page was also looked down upon for his nearly miraculous clumsiness.
On the day the Incident began, the Maid was cleaning (and grumbling, but that was usually a constant), the Servant was preparing dessert for the Queen (two fistfuls of strawberry ice cream, despite the fact that ice cream did not technically exist in the Kingdom), and the Page was delivering a magic potion to the King. The potion, a greenish stick of hardened gel that not only had no container but was not in any way an actual potion, possessed the strange power of, upon touching one’s armpits, making unpleasant odors vanish. It was the opinion of most the inhabitants of the Castle that it would take much more than magic to cure the King of his body odor, but no one actually said that out loud (except the Queen).
The Page walked past the steps into the Castle’s basement, where, rather than the traditional dungeons, the Scholar lived, studying whatever it was he studied, which often meant nothing other than methods of vanquishing beings of evil, methods which frequent failed. As the Page walked, careful not to allow the potion to fall off its platter, he happened to see the Maid, busily dusting a large portrait of the King and muttering under her breath.
It is worth noting that the Page, in the way of prepubescent boys riddled with hormones, was infatuated with the Maid. She had several years on him, as well as large doses of scorn, especially for him, and she had never shown anything resembling affection for him, but the Page’s crush, devoid of rationality, persisted.
That day, the Page felt confident enough to approach the Maid. He started by addressing her from the top of the aforementioned stairs, carefully remaining several feet away from her. He then proceeded to formulate the perfect pick-up line. The Maid eventually noticed him. Scowling, she said “What are you doing? Is fly-catching your new duty? Or are you a coat rack?”
The Page blinked, closing his mouth and lowering his arm, which he had extended toward her in what he had considered a dashing pose.
After another moment of silence, the Maid sighed. “Well? What is it?” she said.
The Page swallowed, then smiled and said “The weather is… agreeable?”
The Maid glared at him. “Why are you asking me?”
“Oh I- I meant…” he cleared his throat, “I meant… what do you think of the… weather?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve been stuck in here cleaning all day.”
The Page gaped for a moment, then quickly walked away, completely forgetting about the abandoned deodorizing potion stick. The Maid rolled her eyes and went back to dusting and loathing the painting.
All of these events may have seemed like unique occurrences, or perhaps they seemed like boring filler content that would eventually lead up to something interesting. No matter how they may seem to outside observers, to the people of the Kingdom, everything and every event was painfully and dully routine. The Page, it seemed to him, had flirted with the Maid four hundred and ninety-nine times before, and had been rejected four hundred and ninety-nine times before. The Maid had dusted that same portrait four hundred and ninety-nine times, and had commented rudely on the King’s weight at the time of the portrait, not to mention the present, four hundred and ninety-nine times.
That day, however, the Page did something he had not done four hundred and ninety-nine times. As he walked away from the Maid, he tripped. That is, he tripped twice. The first time was routine, and expected, though the Maid snickered anyway. As one may have guessed, that fall had happened four hundred and ninety-nine times. The second time he tripped, as he rounded the corner, was unusual.
When the Page saw what had tripped him, he screamed in horror.
It was a bowler hat, slightly dented from the Page’s foot. After screaming, the Page promptly began to wonder why he had screamed at all. The hat was not atrociously ugly; in fact, it was actually rather appealing. The Page immediately wanted to show it to the Maid, in the hopes that she would change her mind about loathing him. As the Page donned the bowler hat, the Servant, bearing a platter of ice cream, gingerly stepped over the fallen potion. At that moment, the Page, proudly wearing his new hat, stepped around the corner to see the Maid. As soon as the Servant, glancing up from the floor, saw the hat, he screamed in horror and backed away. He stepped on the deodorizing potion and slipped, landing on his back. The platter flew from his hands down the stairwell.
The Maid, hearing the commotion, turned to see the Page in the bowler hat, helping the Servant to his feet. She, too, screamed in horror, grabbing the oversized portrait and accidentally pulling it to the ground with her, and cause a tremendous crash.

The platter bounced off the last stair, and the two fistfuls of strawberry ice cream, perfectly measured in the Servant’s own expertly if not entirely hygienic hands, flew away through the open door into the study of the Scholar.
The two scoops landed with a soft plot on the floor by a shelf of papers, unnoticed by the Scholar until he stepped on one. Unlike the Servant, he happened to be moving slowly enough to avoid slipping. With a sigh, the Scholar called up the stairs for the Maid to come down and clean the mess.
After a very long period of waiting, the Maid finally came, her faced flushed red with fury. “What was that crash upstairs?” the Scholar asked when she kneeled to wipe up the dairy product with a cloth.
“The idiot having his head bashed against the wall,” she said.
The Scholar stroked his moustache. “I did not realize the Page’s head was so hard.”
“Well, something is wrong with it. Going around in that ridiculous hat, making people fall and ruining that picture of the King when he was fatter…”
“You should not speak of the King so,” the Scholar said in a warning tone, “I am completely willing to report you.” It did not particularly matter that he, in fact, wasn’t.
The Maid sniffed, and said nothing else. As she stood to leave, though, she jutted out an elbow and knocked several papers off the shelf and onto the floor, which was still sticky from frozen dessert. She left before the Scholar could say anything.
Once it was clear she was not going to return to clean up her mess, the Scholar kneeled to examine the misplaced documents, scanning their contents to decide where to file them. He paused for a moment on a report on milk and beef production, a report he had never noticed before. Gears turned in the Scholar’s head, and for the first time in a long time, the Scholar thought of things that he had thought of four hundred and ninety-nine times before.
This is when the Incident began.