Izabelle and the Skulls of Elsinore

One of the last things Izabelle was expecting on her 9th birthday was a square glass box, a jewellery box yes, but not a museum display box and especially not a museum type display box with two mounted skulls and adorning a small brass plaque with the word Elsinore engraved in a cursive script.

Ripping the paper off with in-audible screams of excitement, giddy, girlie bounces at receiving such a large parcel delivered to her on her birthday with her name on the packaging.  Everyone crowded around the parcel as the paper flew in the air, and in side was more paper, not wrapping paper but the sort of paper a very old person would wrap things in, brown paper.  She ripped that off and the giddiness disappeared and the amplitude of the bounces decreased as under the brown paper was plain white paper like you get from a stationers and put in your bubble jet to get a perfect print out.  The main difference is now the paper was covered in the scribbling’s of a mad woman.  Almost every inch of the  white paper was covered in light grey pencils sketches, maps, descriptive text and in black heavy type were the words with love on your 10th birthday Granny.

Izabelle’s parents unwrapped this paper from the present inside very carefully to see if they could keep this intact, besides Izabelle had got bored with the unwrapping and her attention drifted elsewhere.  “Izabelle it is off” they shouted almost in unison, and the sudden sound of stampeding feet echoed throughout the house, until, the ear piercing scream as Izabelle’s initial shock erupted involuntarily from her.  Everyone looked at the contents and they all found a Glass museum style case with two mounted skulls, a small brass plaque with the cursive script Elsinore on it.  On the base of the case were two more words, one in front of each skull.  “Jorik” in front of one, “Horatio” in front of the other.

Sitting at the dining table it was Izabelle’s mother who realised that not everything written on the white paper was mad and some of it wasn’t even from her old mother in-law either and as she looked at the different sections she realised there was a pattern to the madness.  Carefully tearing the paper in pieces she ended up with seventeen different pieces and using certain reference points on the pieces she could reassemble the pieces back together.  They made a map on one side and a whole story on the other.

Whilst she was putting all of this together Izabelle and her father had been playing Fifa 2014 on the Playbox and both fallen asleep on the sofa.  How long had she been at this, but curiosity took over and when she had put the last piece in place she scanned it, turning it over and reading the text on the reverse side.

The text jumble on the other side gave reference to kings, queens the poetry of the sage of Elsinore and his companions.  Some of the text was in a different language, an elder language one that could be Latin if only latin was that old.  Izabelle's mum just sat at the table twiddle a pencil between her fingers, and said to the sleeping party, "Your mother is crazy! old man, she is a loopy fruit cake. Wait until I get my hands on her."

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