Psi Tales: The Rounds, a St. Lenny Tale

The Queen required stimulation

Previously: The Queen reigned over the Renaissance Faire…until it burned down.

○ Opening Era: Spring, 2026, Upstate New York

The Queen was not in a good mood. In fact, she was in quite a sour mood. Some stimulation––that’s what she required.

“Bard! Bard come here!” she called out to the night air. No one appeared. “Herald,” she said to the man lying at the base of her throne, smiling up at her sweetly, with his face cupped in his brown hands.

“Yas, my Queen?”

“What is this ‘yas’ business?”

“Your wish is my command.”

“My wish is for you to find my minstrel.”

“Alas…”

“What now?”

“Your minstrel has gone mad with all the rest of them. He left your kingdom one month ago.” Her herald lowered his head.

“Right…. I suppose you think I’ve gone mad as well.”

The crickets trilled, in a silence that lasted longer than she pleased.

“Your highness, if I may, it’s…not an easy time for your archetype. At least not in this archaic form…the lands belonging not so much to royalty anymore as to…real estate moguls, and so forth.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It is no easy thing for a Queen to lose her kingdom.”

“I have not lost my kingdom. I am merely…rebuilding.” The Queen gestured grandly over the tents and campfires scattered under the stars across the charred fairegrounds. “Could you believe that impudent man in the strange vest yesterday? Telling me that I am trespassing on ‘private property?’ In my own kingdom?” She nodded to herself. “It is good we had him jailed. He shall not escape my wrath,” she said, thinking of the two witches who had gotten away those months ago. The Queen scratched a wart on her nose. As if she should be scratching her own nose! “Yes, I am in a sour mood. I require stimulation. If there shall be no minstrel, do fetch my jester.”

“Right away, your majesty.”

Her herald stood up and went behind a red curtain on the other side of her campfire. Then her jester emerged, grinning from ear to ear, hat full of bells. Well that was quick. How queer it was that her jester and her herald shared a face.

“We are brothers!” said her jester, as if reading her mind. Perhaps her jester too was a witch. No matter, she did quite love him very much so yes.

“St. Lenny!” she clapped to herself. “Yes you are here now. Tell me a story.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a trick?”

“Why not both?”

“Ah, my specialty.” St. Lenny rubbed his hands together then cracked his fingers. “Right then. Shall I tell it orally or shall I take thee to the mythic realms?”

Orally, hm? Perhaps she might broaden the range of stimulation. What if she asked her jester to tell a story straight into her––

“Your grace?” St. Lenny winked mischievously.

No, not now, not with all her subjects watching and with her private tent having fallen in on itself. “You shall take me to the land of legends,” she stated.

“Ah,” said her jester, closing his eyes, “I must warn, my Queen, the realms have gotten stranger as of late. More…chaotic.”

“Enough!” she huffed. “I do demand that you take me to the land of legends post-haste!”

“Right away, your majesty!”

And with that the unusual nausea arose as they spiraled into the land of legends, where…

Once upon a time, the son of a farmhand came across an axe growing out of a lillypad. The toads lurched apart as he treaded into the pond, bare feet squicking through the mud and silt. As the boy hefted the axe into his grasp, it immediately drew him out of the pond and through the woods, as if made of lodestone, until the boy arrived at a gnarled tree.

Chop me, the tree seemed to whisper, without any discernible sound. Chop me hard and fast. Sever my limbs. I’m tired of them. It is so exhausting to grow under the sun. I’d rather shrivel and fall.

And so the young lad raised the axe and cleaved a branch in one fell swing.

Immediately the branch transformed into a small, shriveled babe; who grew into a lad; who grew into a hunchbacked, bucktoothed man. “Ughhhh! Ughhhhh!” said the man. A small clover sprouted from his scalp.

“I don’t understand,” said the boy, “But I shall take thee to the druid.”

And so he did, for the druid was known to commune with trees and shrubs and moss.

“What say he, druid?” asked the lad, his farmhand father standing disapprovingly with his arms crossed in the corner of the hut.

The druid looked troubled and scratched his beard. “He desires flesh. Meat. He desires meat and a buxom wench.”

At this, the farmhand seemed to wake from his grumble. “Oh ho ho!” the farmhand bellowed, remembering his wild adolescence for the first time from across the misty decades. He clapped the hunchback on the bulb of his aft and said, “Son, go home. I am to show this strange man a fantastical lugubrious time. Haha!”

“Wait,” the Queen held her hand up in the matter-world. “What does lugubrious mean?”

“Drenched in olive oil,” said her jester.

“I understand, please proceed,” she commanded.

“Ah,” said the jester, “Your majesty, this story is not under my control. The tales proceed on their own now. Let us see….”

They closed their eyes once more, endured the brief nausea, and now the treeborn hunchback and the farmhand were dancing, spinning on a table at the local inn, their elbows intertwined, the wood of the table splintering which each of their footfalls, the townsfolk clapping along. The barmaid held out a turkey leg, and on each of the hunchback’s spins around the table, he took a gargantuan bite out of it and swallowed the meat without chewing.

With his mouth full of meat, the hunchback sang full-throated through guttural moans. The druid translated reluctantly:

Ooooh what would I do with a buxom wench?
Eye ’er, swive ‘er, pick ‘er up ‘nd wife her!
I’ve got a thirst that a wench might quench
All the live-long––

“Jester!” said the Queen, popping out. “I do not like this song. Can you make the treeborn man sing a different song?”

“These entities have minds of their own, your majesty. Oh! Do tune back in! You’re missing the best part.”