The Princess of Barsoom — a promising piece of Fan Fiction

I came across this earlier tonight and have spent a few fitful hours trying to figure out who the author is. She goes by Jojo4 and posts on a fan fiction site, and says she’s a member of the Back to Barsoom John Carter Sequel Group on Facebook. Anyway, I’m hoping she’ll materialize. I’ve tracked her down (I think) to the UK, but that’s where the trail goes cold.

Her fan fiction is based on the movie and told from Dejah Thoris point of view. It’s very readable and I would like to see more. Check it out. You can start reading it below or just go straight to FanFiction.net

Helium

Dejah Thoris threw open the tall black doors to her laboratory chamber and stepped within to survey the massive nest of papers, diagrams, and replica models that for the past 200 years had been the sole focus of her life. The force of her entry caused a momentary draft that blew some of the papers sitting on the high table to the door’s right onto the floor. They floated gently on the air, the thin paper quivering until it came to rest before her, just brushing her sandaled feet.

It was a diagram of eighth-ray light refraction. The red lines parted at a precise point in the middle of the page and diverted into eight segments darting at all angles across the yellowed paper. She had only set it down last week, after using it to explain something to one of the Academy’s eager young novices. Dejah bent low and picked it up with a shaking hand. She felt threatening tears form around her eyes, a dispiriting tightness around her throat. Don’t cry, she ordered herself. Crying is weakness, and you cannot give in to weakness. A hot and defiant tear escaped her eyes, dropping onto the thin diagram and causing the ink with which she had drawn those careful lines to bleed across the page’s thin fiber.

Dejah recalled with bitterness the dark and long hours she had spent in this most beloved of rooms, and of the sleepless nights when she had refused food and drink lest it disturb her and her colleagues’ planning sessions. The machine she had abandoned in her father’s throne room had represented the last push of a decade’s work. In her excitement over the possible discovery, she had not eaten a proper meal for three weeks.

What was it all for?

Dejah Thoris had met Sab Than before, many years ago when he had been just a boy and his visionary father had summoned all the greater and lesser Jeddaks to conclude a truce on the battered hull of Zodanga. He had been present at the signing, but Dejah had 100 years on him, was already in the first flush of womanhood, whereas he was barely out of the nursery. As a scowling, angry little boy standing by his father on the dais, Sab Than had generated no more notice from her than if he had been an insect buzzing at her ear. Subsequent events, however, had called upon her to examine the memory with greater scrutiny. For his father had been assassinated by his generals not two months after the truce was concluded. And they said that when Sab Than found out, he had cut the liver from the corpse and eaten it. There were also less flattering reports that said it had been something else . . .

Yet that man was to be her husband. That man was to lead her into the wedding bed.

With a trembling, shaking fist Dejah crumpled the diagram she still held and pressed it tightly to her chest against her beating heart. She shut her eyes against her tears. It was all for Helium, she told herself. All for Helium, all for Helium . . . and everything I now do is still for Helium.

Dejah Thoris opened her eyes. She knew what she must do.

“I heard you had your entire library burnt just before I arrived.”

Dejah was in the Royal Atrium with Sab Than, “getting to know him better,” and thus far it was going very badly on both sides. He had been as unimpressed with her as he had with the herb beds so carefully cultivated by her father’s gardeners. The last bastion of the ancient plants of Barsoom, and he did not even care to look or ask after their upkeep. Dejah hated him. His breath smelled like rotting meat, and his little mouth was haughty and cruel. Like so many men, he stared at her hungrily, possessively, but without any interest in the words leaving her mouth.

“Really, Princess, what do I care for your books and diagrams? I have all the power I need already at hand.”

“It was not all light rays and airships, my lord,” said Dejah, with a detached coolness that belied her indignation. “There were also discourses on horticuIture. If you weren’t so narrow-minded, you might have found them useful.”

“Ah, you mean I might have had to abandon 500 of my people in the desert to make room for your ridiculous grass specimens.” He callously plucked a budding flower from a nearby stock and rolled it between his fingers until it popped. Then he threw the wasted remains onto the cold stone floor.

Dejah chose to ignore his rudeness. “These plants represent what kept all of Barsoom alive for vast millennia, and their disappearance is the reason it dies now.”

He waved at the air, as if smacking away the words as they came towards him. “What’s past should stay past. Helium expends too much time and money on these futile ideas,” he spat. “If you think to introduce them when you come to Zodanga, think again Princess.”

“And if I did?” Ever resourceful, Dejah tried a new tactic. With a coy smile, she stepped in front of him, slowly reaching over to inspect the damaged plant and exposing the enticing curve of her backside to his view. Before she had quite managed it, Sab Than seized her forearm roughly in his hands and twisted until her flesh burned.

When she neither cried out nor winced in pain, Sab Than wrenched her closer, so his face was directly before hers, their eyes staring into each other’s. Dejah’s mouth twitched in anger. Her blue eyes flashed with naked hatred for him. The violence of her anger seemed to impress him, as nothing else she had said or tried had yet done.

Read the rest at FanFiction.net