The Sapphiri

by R Gene Curtis

  I don’t remember trying blood and saliva with dirt before. How did she think of it? When did she practice?

  She doesn’t stop. With an ample supply of blood from her bleeding hand, she keeps going, and she still has spit left.

  There is nothing to do but watch as Lydia saves us.

  Another of Quint’s men goes down on the side, and I jump almost without thinking into his place. I manage to grab his shield before his body tumbles off the bridge, and I draw my sword and get ready for contact. It’s time for me to wake up and start fighting for our lives. Lydia needs more time. She has to cover each part of the forming wall with her saliva/blood mixture, and she has to keep the dirt in the air to do it. I put my sword through an attacking man and hold him in a position that blocks others from passing the barricade. Eventually he gets pushed off the bridge. I duck from a man’s punch and push a woman off the bridge. And the attackers keep coming.

  And then Lydia is at my side, and she pushes herself against me as she works, and the wall starts to form in front of me. The people on the other side hit it with hammers and swords, but it continues to grow. I push them away from Lydia with my sword, and she keeps waving her arms. After a few seconds the barricade is complete. Lydia’s sealed us off from the invading army by building a solid wall across the entire bridge. The mob bangs on the wall from the other side, but it holds for now and they have no way to get around or over it. Lydia wipes sweat off her forehead.

  “Lift me up,” she says.

  I do, without questioning. As she rises, Lydia wipes the sweat of her brow with her bleeding hand and then flicks the blood/sweat mixture over the wall. I hold her in the air, and she keeps flicking. The shouts near the barricade quiet and then I realize what she is doing. Each person who is hit by a mixture of sweat and blood will lose all emotion, including the desire to fight.

  She won’t hit all the people, though, and there are plenty of fresh, angry people to push the emotionless ones aside and get to the front of the crowd.

  “Let me down,” Lydia yells. “We’re leaving!”

  The knife shower has temporarily abated, but we sprint as we leave the barricade and rush into the castle.

  “Where are we going?” Quint yells. “There’s no way out.”

  “Yes, there is,” Lydia says. “We’ll all escape. Follow me!”

  “We can’t leave without Somrusee,” I say. “She’s in the servant’s quarters.” She better be, anyway.

  “I would never ask you to do that, Karl,” Lydia says, her voice sharp. She runs past me and leads the way through the castle; Quint and his men stay right behind us. We find Somrusee where I left her, and she’s been joined by two other women. I don’t think there is anyone left in the castle, not that we could look for them if there was. Lydia takes us over the bridge to Wynn’s tower, and then she uses the same saliva/blood/dirt trick to build a skinny, rocky bridge across the moat and away from the castle. It’s hard to walk on, but we manage to make it across without anyone slipping and falling to their death.

  The mob isn’t over here—they clearly weren’t expecting Lydia to build her own escape route on the other side of the castle.

  “My queen, I’m impressed,” Quint says as we reach the end of the bridge and run into the city.

  Lydia doesn’t say anything in response until we’ve run more than a mile through the deserted streets of Sattah.

  “A couple weeks ago, I realized all I knew was healing and long incubation magic,” she says. “So I started experimenting. I came up with a few things I thought might prove useful, though you saw how inefficient I am at them.”

  “I’d say you were efficient enough,” I interject.

  Lydia shakes her head. “I’m sure there are other things I could do that would work better if I knew how. If it had been windy tonight, all the dirt would have blown away before I could have done anything.”

  “You saved our lives,” Quint says, and I grunt my appreciation in response. So do the other men.

  “Too many lives were lost,” Lydia says sadly. “We came here to help people, but I’m afraid we ended up killing more people than we helped.”

  “The men who died tonight were heroes, my Queen,” Quint says.

  “You don’t need to call me queen anymore,” Lydia says. “Lydia or Ria is fine.”

  Quint shakes his head and smiles ruefully. “You will always be my queen. At one time, I thought I would die trying to gain Wynn’s trust and murder him, but despite all the connections I found in the city and all the headway I made in the guard, I never succeeded. But you did kill him, and you’re the leader Wynn should have been. I consider it one of the most fortunate events of my life that you found me and invited me to be your guard. And I will serve you for the rest of my life.”

  Lydia stops running and ducks into an alleyway. We all stop and catch our breaths, listening intently for the footsteps we don’t hear. When we are breathing normally again, Lydia motions for Quint to lead the way.

  We spend the next few hours sneaking out of the city the same way we came in months ago. Quint leads us out of the city, and then Somrusee takes the lead. We leave Sattah, the castle, and the people. We leave it all behind. We start towards the only other place we know—the mountains.

  The city is lost. We spent months there. We tried to figure out how to save it, how to turn it into a democracy. We worked hard. And now the fruits of our labors, and most of the people we met there, are gone.

  18 Ancients

  Lydia

  I’m not wearing a gown, and I’m not stuck inside a castle. I haven’t bathed in nearly a week, and I’m loving it.

  My bare feet sink into the soft ground as we step up the ridge into the Eastern Mountains. The barrier that was once here is gone, but I know this place well. The wind rustles the trees. I close my eyes and feel the breeze against my skin. My lungs fill with the fresh pine scent. The castle was so cramped and so old. The forest is new. It’s alive.

  In just a few minutes we’ll get to the cave. The cave was the end of a long journey before, and now it’s the end of a long journey again. This time I went to Sattah and tried to rule. I hid from enemies who would stop at nothing to kill me. Now they’ve won and I’m here.

  I feel like I’ve come home. Maybe it’s naïve, but it’s what I feel. I’m home.

  I don’t know what’s next. Karl might want to go to our real home now, or he might want to settle down and marry Somrusee. Maybe we can hide up here and start a mountain village like Dee did. We could live off the land, keep things simple. I could hide away from the drama and maybe some of Quint’s men can marry the two other women Somrusee brought with her.

  Maybe we could live happily ever after.

  The fairy tale in my brain lasts only as long as the hike up to the cave. When I see it there, empty, I remember the people I’ve lost.

  Ler to Earth. Ziru, dead. Dynd to the Western Hills. Sharue, dead. Mara to the Western Hills. The city, fallen. All of Quint’s men, dead.

  The mountains won’t be the same without them.

  Besides, Arujan probably controls the mountains. As much as I worried that he was fighting against us in Sattah, I know that he will fight against us here.

  I sigh and walk into the cave. I open the door to the back of the cave and find the books still there—the coin that holds the memory of my biological parents is still sitting in the corner of the room.

  Karl follows me into the room instead of staying back with Somrusee. He doesn’t have to protect me anymore, but I appreciate his concern. I will miss it—having him be my shadow and guard.

  “You okay?” he asks. “You haven’t said much since we got here.” He sounds worried about me, but he should be worried about Somrusee. She’s been really quiet, too.

  “I’m okay. So much has happened since we were here last.”

  “Yeah.” He looks around awkwardly as if he’s not sure what he should say. We don’t have a lot of awkward moments together, so it’s a little strange.


  “Let’s go outside and get something to eat,” I say to break the moment. I walk up to him to push past him, noticing his arm and remembering how it felt to have it around me when I was building the wall that kept the mob from getting to us back at the castle.

  He steps away and I don’t brush him as I walk by. Just as well.

  He’s not mine. He’s my friend. He knows the worst in me—I heard it when he gasped after I told him I put copper around the city. He worries I might become like Wynn.

  But then, I also felt his determination to die instead of telling me to kill all those people. He could have used me to save himself, but he isn’t like Wynn. I have to think that means I don’t have to be like Wynn, either.

  I wouldn’t have made it through that experience without Karl. I would have died there, standing in the line of fire, not sure if I wanted to die or kill my enemies. But, we helped each other. We relied on each other. That’s what friends do.

  Somrusee takes Karl’s hand as we come out of the cave. I make up a plan for dinner, and I tell everyone what I think we should eat. They still think I’m queen enough to do the preparation jobs I suggest, and no one complains. I help gather wood for a fire and food for dinner. I’m not sure why I’m still in charge, but I am. No one else wants to take charge.

  I don’t want to be in charge. I tried my hand at leading a nation. I would be okay if it never happens again.

  * * *

  The next day we split up. Karl and the men head out to figure out what is happening in Keeper. I take the women with me to Watch.

  It’s late summer in the mountains, which means we don’t have a lot of time to get settled before the winter starts. Maybe a month, maybe two. I’m not sure, but the day is still hot, and we are exhausted by the time we arrive in Watch.

  What used to be Watch.

  But nothing is left. All the houses have been burned down. What once was a populated settlement is only winding trails along the cliffs.

  “Things looked a lot different when Karu and I were here last year,” Somrusee says. “It looks like Arujan burned it to the ground before he left.”

  “Let’s go back to the cave,” I say, and turn away. I think about the mountain meadow, another half-day’s journey up the trail. I could go home, but to what? There’s nothing for me there. Brit and Maria, maybe, but they’ve moved on by now. Would I go back to college after all this? Start a life?

  “Ria,” one of the girls says as we start down the trail. I’m glad she’s stopped calling me “Queen.”

  “Ria,” she says again. Her name is Po, and she was brought in to help with the cooking shortly after I was made queen. She’s a shy girl, but she has a lot of energy. “Can you tell us a story about the world you came from?”

  As if I would feel like talking after seeing an entire village burned to the ground. I start to say no, but then I think better of it. Conversation would probably help take our minds off things like burned out cities and destroyed lives.

  “What do you want to know?” I ask.

  “Everything!” she says.

  “Yes, please tell us,” the other girl says. She’s Po’s sister. Her name is Tavi. She’s generally more reserved than Po. She was assigned to help me get dressed and to fill my bath water when we were at the castle. She did well, though I tried to avoid needing her help most of the time.

  “Well,” I start, trying to think of what I can say. There are so many things I could talk about. Democracy, airplanes, boats, electricity, writing, soccer, plumbing. Everything in my world is different than it is here.

  But, maybe not everything. There are some things that are the same.

  Instead of focusing on what is different, I opt to tell them about Arches National Park. I tell them I went there with my friend to visit and see the natural beauty. I tell them about meeting Karl and about the blue light that surrounded us and how we ended up in the mountain meadow in this world.

  “So, all you had to do was touch each other and you were transported here?” Tavi asks.

  “Yeah. When we got here it was a little earlier in the season. The meadow was full of flowers and insects. It was humming with life that day.”

  “That’s romantic,” Po says. “You’ll always remember that first touch.”

  I look away to hide my blush. I can’t believe she’d say something like that with Somrusee here.

  “Did Karu like you as much then?” Tavi asks.

  “What are you talking about?” I look worriedly at Somrusee, but she doesn’t say anything to correct the girls. Instead, she seems strangely interested in a pretty purple flower at the edge of the pathway.

  “You would have to be blind not to notice the way he looks at you,” Po says. “The entire trip to the mountains he’s hovered near you. At the castle his step always slowed whenever he saw you in the corridors. You two are together all the time. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

  “I don’t think it’s what you think it is,” I tell her, glancing nervously at Somrusee. “We’re just really good friends.”

  Po and Tavi laugh.

  “What?” I ask. Haven’t they seen Karl with Somrusee just as much?

  “If a man like that was into me, there’s no way I would push him away,” Po remarks.

  Me? Pushing him away? No way. I look back at Somrusee, but she brushes past me before I can see her face. She is walking fast, looking out over the valley, the small purple flower clutched in her hand. She loves him, and she’s my friend.

  She didn’t stand up for their relationship, though. Does that mean something? Do I want it to mean something?

  * * *

  Keeper is much farther away from the cave than Watch, which means we have a long wait until the men get back. That gives us a few days to gather food and try to figure out what we’re going to do when winter comes. We work hard all day, and each evening we build a fire and cook a warm meal. Tavi and Po spend all their free time talking and giggling. Often I join them. Sometimes Somrusee joins us, but more often she eats quietly and then leaves. She’s out of her element here, but when I try to talk to her about it, she just waves me off.

  I wonder if it’s something about what the girls said on the trail about Karl. I try to think of how to bridge the subject, but every time I think better of it.

  When I’m not talking to Po and Tavi, I read.

  I’m still terrible at it, but Somrusee gave me enough of a foundation that I can pick out words and make progress on the books from the cave.

  The latest book I’ve been reading is called Legends of Sapphriana. It’s a lot simpler than many of the other books—I think it might be a children’s book. It tells the story of a prince with glowing blue eyes who led people through a portal to this world. The prince was meant to rule, but he never did. Only his daughter ever came through the portal and stayed.

  A man named Tahvo brought a small army through the portal. He destroyed the portal and assumed a place as king. However, when the people didn’t follow him Tahvo was banished, and he disappeared for ten years. But, after the ten years, he came back. He had discovered that he had the powers of the elements; apparently, he was the first Azurean.

  When Tahvo took his place as king, he hunted the girl with the glowing eyes, but she fled and stayed hidden from him. One day, this glowing-blue-eyed girl went to the stream to get a drink. After she had drunk all she needed, she looked forlornly into the current, her eyes sparkling bright blue in her reflection. In that moment, the water changed, and she saw another reflection in the water. The reflection showed Tahvo’s kin and her kin, and she understood that the war between them would last as long as they were enemies. If the day came when the Sapphiri were fully reconciled with the Azureans, the portal would reopen, the Azureans would disappear, and the Sapphiri would have the power to restore peace and protect the people.

  And that’s where the book ends. Given how Wynn treated Sapphiri, I assume the war never ended.

  It’s a weird book, but some
thing about the child’s tale feels magical, and so I keep reading it again and again. In all the thousands of years since the people arrived in the land, this world has known nothing but war, and so that part of the story rings true. But, that may be silly because almost all people have experienced war throughout history. Isn’t the American dream only a recent thing? A pause in the conquest of nations taking over other nations?

  Yet something inside me whispers that the story might be true. Has the world been in commotion for millennia, just waiting for the day when the Sapphiri would be reconciled with the Azureans? It sounds a little like the nonsense Dynd and Somrusee talked about before we left the Western Hills to Sattah.

  But…What if a certain Sapphiri fell in love with me? Would we be reconciled then?

  I blush and look up from my book, forcing the smile off my face when Somrusee glances at me.

  Is that why I like this book? Because even though it portrays me as the descendant of a monster, it says I can still save the world? Is that still what I’m hoping to do?

  As each day passes, I become more anxious about Karl’s return. I shouldn’t let what Po and Tavi say affect me, but it does. What will I say to Karl when he gets here? What if he reads this book? Why do I get butterflies in my stomach when I think of seeing him again? I was with him all the time in the castle, why should now be any different?

  I find a hidden corner, and I slip the book into it. Time to forget about it.

  * * *

  The next afternoon I’m carrying a large basket of food to the cave when I see them approaching. Butterflies leap into my stomach, and I nearly drop the basket.

  Nothing has changed between me and Karl. A couple of gossiping girls doesn’t change anything.

  Then his face lights up when he sees me, and I do drop the basket.

  I blush and bend over to pick it up, looking around for Somrusee. She isn’t anywhere around here. That look was for me. Has it been there all along? While we were hanging out, trying to rule, becoming friends, did it turn into something more?