Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
I wake up with the blinding morning sunlight of late Spring illuminating my bed. One of the maids is standing by the window, fastening back the curtains. She notices me stir and addresses me politely: "Good morning young master. Sorry to wake you but the Queen has requested your attendance in her bedchamber, it seems she has something to tell you." I groan and roll out of bed, ordering the maid to dress me. She picks out a blue tunic from my wardrobe and dresses me as I stand on the cold hardwood flooring of my bedchamber looking out of the window at the bustling castle courtyard below. The royal guard are all lined up in formation in full dress practicing some sort of ceremony, and the butler is supervising the restocking of the winecellar in his usual vigorous manner. Once dressed I step out of my room and head along the corridor towards the Lady's Suite where my Mother, the Queen, lives. Usually I'm shooed out from this part of the castle by Mother's overzealous maids-in-waiting, but today there doesn't seem to be soul about. The sole exception is the portly round figure of Puss the cat, curled up on a cushioned seat. He doesn't even stir as I pass by, but that lazy cat never does. I reach Mother's bedchamber without seeing so much as a parlour-maid and rap thrice on the door; a muffled voice beckons me in.
"Good morning Mother, I heard you had something to tell me." The curtains are still shut in her bedchamber, a single crack of light between them illuminating the room with a dark, red glow. The figure of my Mother is sitting on her bed, playing with one of her odd stringed instruments. She finishes her soft tune before addressing me with a vacant look in her eyes, "Today you'll need to follow me. We have an important journey to make."
"Where are we going?" I ask, confused. She doesn't respond and looks back down at her lyre.
"You can't be leaving the castle anyway Mother, you're too poorly," I say, trying to bring her attention back to me.
She looks back at me sharply. "We're leaving in half an hour," she says matter of fact, "I'll be leaving through the dairy gate. You are to follow me thirty feet behind. Do not tell anyone." Her face glistens with sweat as she stares at me, her tone is assertive but her eyes say she's pleading with me. "Do you understand?"
"Yes Mother," I say, knowing no good would come of further interrogation, she's probably just confused. She starts again to pluck at her little instrument, and I take this as my cue to leave.
Half an hour later I emerge out of the Dairy Gate, a small back entrance used by the dairy maids to restock the pantry every morning. Its a warm day and the sun is rather blinding. Squinting through it I see the thin figure of my mother, wrapped up with a shawl over her head and walking away down the path towards town. I follow after her, obediently leaving a gap of thirty feet between us. The path winds around the back of the main castle gates and eventually out onto the high street. The high street lies along the bottom of the Valley of Lilies, leading straight from the main castle gate to the town square. The shallow sides of the valley roll up and away on either side, dotted with countless houses and farms. The bustle of the town hardly heeds our passing. I know that they haven't seen the Queen in quite a while now, but I'm surprised she isn't recognised by anyone at all. I take care not to lose the slight frame of Mother in the crowds, and before we reach the main square she takes an abrupt left turn and disappears up one of the winding stairways that lead up and out of town.
As we climb, the denser buildings of the town give way to flowery little cottages and gardens, all green with the first fruits of the year. A little old lady is stooped down picking weeds and gives me a curtsy as I pass by. I nod in return. My Mother's pace seems oddly to be picking up now, her strides becoming longer and longer. Soon enough I find myself nearly jogging after the impossibly fast woman. Our powerwalk takes us up past the rice paddies and the onion fields, the farmers in their straw hats being too engrossed in their fieldwork to heed us. In twenty minutes we reach the shoulder of the hill where the shimmering expanse of the sea is revealed before us, Mother doesn't stop for a second and takes a rough track ducking down toward the coastal path. The grass here grows much shorter as the soil is very thin, and there are no farms here either: only grazing sheep and the occasional shepherd asleep in the shade of a tree. We soon reach the coastal path that follows the seacliff-edge for many miles in either direction. Turning left we follow it with the sea over our right shoulders.
The path worsens as we get further from civilisation, but despite this Mother seems to be speeding up even further. Patches of shady trees provide me with a bit of respite from the day's heat but soon the distance between us gets so great I can only see her on the occasions where the path runs straight enough to see a while ahead. As we enter a wooded area I hear the mewing of a cat behind me. Standing on the path is that fat cat Puss, who somehow followed us out all this way. I've never seen that lazy cat even leave the castle let alone the valley, so you can imagine my surprise. Puss struts forward and passes me without recognition, and since its too late now to take him back home I decide I'll keep an eye on him as he follows us along. The path through the woods is unmanaged, with fallen trees and boulders obstructing the path more and more frequently, further slowing my progress. I can't see Mother at all now, so I try to pick up the pace and carry on.
After a mile or so the wood ends, and I stop to catch my breath in an open grassy field. My efforts to catch up have been in vain, but no other paths have branched off so I must still be on the right route. As I sit on a grassy knoll I hear two men's loud voices from somewhere further along the track. Their tone is rough and they sound like they're arguing, but I can't make out their words clearly. I tentatively jog up the path towards them, hoping to scout them out. I soon see their backs: they're two dark and tall men, well-built and dressed in black garb. One of them is holding some object in his hand... I squint... a knife! The glint of the metal gives it away and my curiosity quickly jumps to fear. Then I overhear them: "She has to have come this way. This is the only path."
Horror builds inside me, I have to guess they are talking about Mother, who I know is just minutes up the track.
"I hope you're right," says the other one, "I'm starving. In fact I'm stopping here to eat some of this cornbread." He grunt and sits down right in the path, rustling around in his pockets. "Fine" says the other, promptly perching himself on a nearby rock, "You've got five minutes."
I backtrack a little and then run full pelt up the slope, my heart racing. I need to overtake them otherwise my Mother will be killed. I manage to find a pig-track further up that hopefully will let me overtake them, and for twenty minutes I run until I meet back up with the coastal cliff path, still no Mother in sight, but hopefully a good distance now in front of the pursuers. The coast edge now bends round to the right before me, creating a bay. The cliffs slowly fall away too, falling away into rocky scree and then a pebble beach. Across the bay sits a headland sticking out into the sea, which, as I make my way down the rocky path with Puss by my side, reveals more and more of itself. A strange structure also comes into view, maybe half a mile offshore from the headland. A large, squat tower rising directly out from the sea. It's made from a heavy black stone in the shape of a cylinder, topped by a shallowly inclined spire. As I get closer, I can make out no further features on its surface, no windows nor openings at all, except for one small archway built at its base: so low that waves are lapping in and out of it with the movement of the sea. Inside is as dark as pitch.
As I finally reach the pebble beach a change comes over the world, a sudden chill whips through the air as the sky darkens an ominous cloud. Puss and I stand at the shore as the waves build up into white horses, foaming as they break onto the pebble shore. There's nowhere to go now, the path seems to end with this headland. Still very aware of the approaching pursuers, panic starts to rise within me once again. I look about and see an old wooden boat, tied up high on the beach. Cutting through the rope with my penknife, I drag the weathered but sturdy vessel down to the water's edge. Puss jumps in and I push it out over the breakers, the seabed dropping away very gradually. Once properly afloat I jump in too. Looking back I can just see the silhouettes of the two men reach the beach, but before I can worry about that I feel an unnatural surge beneath me. The boat pushes itself forwards under some phantom force, pulling the vessel out to sea. For the life of me I cannot comprehend what is happening, so I take the same approach as Puss and hunker down in the vessel, just as a drizzle starts to set in. As we get closer to that dark tower, the winds and rain pick up and soon we are engulfed in a raging storm. The pace of the boat slows as it is battered away by current and wind, stuck in a silent battle against nature for many minutes on end. As I am just about to scream out, we are suddenly bathed in a bright white light; looking up I see that it emanates out from the pinnacle of the black tower, a beam of impossibly bright light panning across the sea surface like a lighthouse. Another, red light shines from the tower's top, blinking intermittently at me in some pattern. The beam tracks directly onto me, and as it does so the sea seems to calm itself, providing a bubble of calm water all around us. My boat takes no hesitation to use this opening, and thrusts us forward toward the tower at good pace. As we close-in the light beam seems to expand, enveloping more and more of the sea: wherever it touches the sea abates, until the whole sea shimmers with the beam of light and is totally becalmed.
The last few minutes of the voyage are calm, Puss and I soaked through and shocked, but alive. However as we do reach the tower I notice that the archway, once open to the elements, has now sealed up: the entranceway now flush with the rest of the smooth black stone as if it had never been there in the first place. I understand that we're too late. The way forward is sealed shut. The boat seems to understand this too and slows its pace, eventually softly butting into the wall of the tower and coming to a stop. I lie back in the boat, the sunny and pleasant disposition of the sky returning as I do so. I know that I won't be seeing Mother again any time soon, but I hope she's doing well.
