Bean To Bar by Samuel Barnhart

“We’re lost, Leadfoot.”

Chelayne shoved the wet, useless map back inside and swung her bag over her shoulder. The sudden shower had focused on the one thing she carried that wasn’t waterproof. Chelayne took one more look across the valley she and her horse stood above. Below the ridge was an absolute labyrinth of forests and rivers, impossible to consider navigating without the map.

She cursed at the retreating clouds and mounted her horse. “The princess is going to kill us, Leadfoot.” Chelayne guided the horse down the ridge. “I mean both of us, when I say ‘us'”, Chelayne told Leadfoot. “Princess Nanoth will hang you and me when we return with nothing but a ruined map.”

At the bottom of the ridge was the valley, extending impenetrably in every direction.

“If we return,” Chelayne corrected herself. Leadfoot snorted.

The trouble had started back during the festival. An annual celebration dedicated to the crown princess on the anniversary of her accepting the throne. Privately, the citizens celebrated surviving one more year under an unpredictable, teenaged tyrant who was suspected of poisoning her parents, siblings and even distant relatives in order to ascend.

At the far end of a banquet table which had been stacked with rich and rare foods for the princess to plow through, was a small, diamond-shaped bar of chocolate. Yet its shape was only the second most unusual thing about it.

The chocolate had been bright purple.

According to those who dared get close enough to Princess Nanoth and an open buffet, the purple chocolate hadn’t simply been delicious to her, but soothing. The princess was downright serene with her court after the banquet, didn’t even demand her daily execution of a random citizen.

Finding out where the purple chocolate originated was easy. The old sailors who hung around the docks, readily telling tales of their lives at sea, remembered a fertile grove halfway across the world where purple cocoa beans grew. One of them recalled enough details to have a map made.

Princess Nanoth may have been young and impulsive, but she wasn’t stupid. The reward she offered to whomever would take the map and seek out the source of her chocolate was colossal. And Chelayne, occasional sailor, barmaid and horse-thief, greedily agreed.

Now, after crossing three oceans, traveling a hundred miles on foot and hundreds more on a stolen horse, Chelayne was lost.

“If the Princess had a brain, she would’ve put the map on something more durable than parchment,” Chelayne grumbled. Her temporary horse merely sneezed rain from its nostrils. Finally, before the storm decided to start up again, Chelayne stuck a finger in her mouth, raised the finger overhead and closed her eyes.

She nodded and tightened her hold on the reins. “Wind goes that way, we go the other way,” Chelayne concluded. Leadfoot took off in the chosen direction, and the pair of them disappeared through the trees.

The table ran almost the complete length of the royal dining hall, and predated the castle itself. But neither size nor age prevented Princess Nanoth from flipping the table on its end, scattering its feast across the floor and damaging the antique irreparably.

Guards and servants rushed into the hall. “Are you injured, Princess?” A guard was bold enough to ask.

Princess Nanoth answered with a shapeless bellow and kicked the overturned table hard enough to splinter the wood. Her crowd of defenders backed away. The answer was right there on the floor. Absent from the pile of food some poor soul would eventually need to clean up, was the purple chocolate. The anniversary festival had arrived once more, and Chelayne failed to return.

Word spread swiftly and very soon every citizen knew that Princess Nanoth’s celebration was ruined, and they would pay for it in blood. The parade was broken up and the fireworks canceled. The castle became a hive of sleeping terror, no one dared even to whisper.

And then the crown princess took her throne. A chill went through every noble who kneeled before her. She would demand executions. Adults, children, rich or homeless, guilty or innocent, it was anybody’s guess how many deaths might satisfy her.

But just as Princess Nanoth cleared her throat, a pair of guards burst into the throne room. “We tried to stop them, Princess,” one of them gasped. More guards followed in a knot, struggling to keep what was at their center from escaping. It did anyway, a wet and filthy mass shot forward to the throne, halting just before it collided with the princess.

Chelayne came down off her horse, pulled a purple diamond from the pocket of her disintegrating tunic, and bowed. “Your chocolate, my liege.”

Princess Nanoth’s rule was by no means short. Celebration after celebration was held annually, and at each one there was chocolate. The money and title Chelayne was awarded allowed her to grow cocoa beans right there in the kingdom, refine and produce enough purple chocolate to please a hundred princesses.

And when the time came for Chelayne to go to her grave, Princess Nanoth was there, not far behind on the same road to whatever exists beyond this world.

“Give me the recipe, please, Lady Chelayne,” her princess beseeched. “Your secrets must be passed down.”

Chelayne did, in a slow voice death reached ever outward to stifle. “But there is one ingredient I never told to anyone, my liege.”

Princess Nanoth leaned in.

“Horseshit.”

The princess’s eyes widened.

“I was taught by those who grew the beans to make my first batch. When I finished, the horse I’d stolen crapped all over the liquid chocolate, before it hardened. There was no time to prepare more, and anyway, you seemed so pleased after I brought it back. I made sure there was horseshit in every bite from then on.”

Shortly after, Princess Nanoth emerged from the bedchamber. “Lady Chelayne is dead.” The princess lowered her head and those before her knelt.

To everyone’s surprise, the purple chocolate at the next annual celebration went untouched.

Samuel Barnhart’s short stories have appeared all over the Internet, occasionally in print and at least once onstage. He sometimes blogs at sambarnhart.tumblr.com, and lives in South Florida.