The Summer Prince

by Carol Oates

legs under me again. My in­stinct was to move closer to him, to offer some kind of solace when I saw him wince. He was right. I did love him…or at least part of me did. It was the part that was his spring princess, the part of me holding onto a lifetime of memories of this boy.

  He nodded briefly. “Yes, my parents tried to appease her by offering her the crown of the Unseelie. But she was blinded by rage. She went to your naming ceremony, and when the time came to bestow gifts, she cursed you to die on the sunrise of your sixteenth birthday. For this she was banished from the spring court and the summer court.

  “No one could lift the curse, and both kingdoms were beside them­selves with grief. Eventually one came forward, and although she couldn’t lift the curse completely, she was able to alter it. Instead of dying at sixteen, on your hundredth birthday we were to be parted for sixteen years. In this time Morgana would have her chance with you. If she could trick you into your death, it would all be over for us. If not, you would be returned to me.” He closed his eyes and smiled wistfully. “We grew together and fell in love.”

  I longed to see the memories he was playing out because I knew what Regan wanted with me. He wanted me to love him like she had. My heart thumped loudly inside my chest and clenched again. There was one memory I recalled so clearly I could have been watching it through a pane of glass.

  “On the day I turned sixteen, we performed the binding ceremony. It was by a lake. I remember.”

  “And on the eve you turned one hundred, you went to sleep and never awoke. I was mad with grief, but I knew to get you back we must separate. So I personally took you to the human realm. When we crossed through the veil you were transformed to a human child. I placed you in the care of a man who had lost his wife and child during birth that very night. I told him my story and begged him to take care of you. I stayed away for sixteen years, only keeping tabs on you through a trusted friend of the court. Word reached me that Morgana was desperate. She wants you dead whatever the cost, and I can’t let that happen. I can’t make her stop; all I can do is hide you, and that’s what I’ve done. At sunrise, this will all be over. You will remember everything and be returned to me once more.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  He opened his eyes, and they were no longer shining. The blue had faded to a dull gray. “You will.”

  “The salt is having no effect on me, and I’ve been away a long time. I’ve apparently aged, and you haven’t. What if I’m not the same person? What if I don’t want to be the same person? What if I want to stay just where I’ve lived for sixteen years?”

  His confidence faltered briefly. He didn’t expect an argument. Maybe he thought I would simply fall back into his arms?

  “We age as mortals in the human realm while remaining ageless in our own, even though time passes the same in both. You are right. You are not the same person, but then neither am I. Sixteen years have passed without you by my side. Let me ask you something.”

  He maneuvered himself to sit up straighter. It took a great deal of effort. “Do you care for me? Not only because of your memories, but because of the last several hours we’ve spent together.”

  Because of my fear, it would be easy to lie and say I felt nothing. The words were on the tip of my tongue. I knew Regan would see straight through me. His question wasn’t so much for himself as for me, to help me work though my chaotic thoughts. It would be easy to dismiss my in­stincts and say that I didn’t know him. It was much harder to admit I had gotten to know things about him — his kindness in how he had treated me, his bravery in risking his own life for my protection, his stubbornness in refusing to give up on the girl he loved, his patience in waiting sixteen years. When I combined this with the phantom memories of my previous incarnation, I couldn’t deny that I did feel for Regan. Given more time, I could see those feelings deepening.

  “Yes. I do care,” I told him and reached out one hand to trace my fingertips down the side of his pale face.

  His skin was damp and icy to touch. There was none of the heat that radiated from him previously. Regan grabbed my hand, and even with his movements slower than they had been, it still surprised me. He turned his face to kiss my palm, and then opened his eyes to me. I gasped. His irises were black and dull. Regan was deathly ill.

  “We have to get you out of here now.” Queasiness settled in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to lose Regan. The idea made my entire body shudder. I pulled my hand away and went to help him stand. I could no sooner have moved a stone wall.

  “Wait, wait,” he implored as if the movement caused him pain. He coughed harshly with a sound that echoed off the walls of the cave. Finally he settled back and smiled faintly. He was truly exquisite — nothing about his weakness lessened his beauty. “It’s too late. I don’t have the strength to go back.”

  “No,” I argued, pulling him by his shirt with both my hands.

  Regan’s fingers wound limply around my wrist, stopping me. My eyes burned with tears. I should have been worried about being stuck here alone after he died. My first priority should have been to save my own skin. It wasn’t.

  In my head I saw us at sunset with the last golden streaks of light disap­pearing along the horizon. I saw myself encircled in his arms as he shushed me and stroked my hair. I felt the desperation of the girl in my memory not to leave and the warm tears falling on her skin. I quickly realized this memory was the last night. I was crying then because I was afraid to lose Regan, just as I was afraid to lose him now.

  Regan lowered my hands and wiped away my tears with his cold fingers before he very gently unwound the bandage from around my hand. My mouth went slack. I hadn’t noticed that my hand no longer hurt. The deep gash had completely healed, not even leaving a scar as evidence it had ever happened.

  “How…” I started but couldn’t find the words to express the strange realization this forced upon me. Apparently I had been clinging to the sliver of doubt that Regan was wrong about me.

  “Your body has begun to remember who you are.”

  I turned my hand this way and that, bringing it near my face and examining it from far away. That was when I noticed my vision blurring.

  “Look at your feet,” he said.

  I pulled my legs out from under me without hesitation and was shocked to see the angry-looking spotty rash developing where I had dipped my feet in the sea. It itched but I had been too distracted to notice until now.

  “You have to leave.” There was finality to his words and an underlying urgency. “It will get worse quickly. I only have the strength to send you through to the human realm, but even that won’t last long.”

  “I’m not going without you,” I insisted. “I will not leave you here to die.” My inappropriate laugh almost made another appearance. Several hours ago I would have jumped at the chance to get away. I pressed my hand to my mouth to stifle the sound.

  It came out more of a muted yelp, which Regan mistook for a sound of distress. He took my hand in his, squeezing it with what little strength he had.

  “I will be fine. I can return to our world with much less strength than this and will recover quickly there.”

  “Why can’t I go with you now? Why do I have to go back?” The words came from my mouth, but I was sure I couldn’t possibly be suggesting them. The idea of separating from Regan made panic well up inside my chest. I didn’t yet understand who I was. I was myself, the fiercely independent tomboy, but I was also someone else who didn’t know a world beyond Regan and needed him to help me remember.

  He nodded, and the grayish color of his skin deepened while a tiny bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face. “You can’t return until sunrise in the human realm. You are still part human until then. It is almost that now.”

  I opened my lips to plead again, but he cut me off. “I love you, Niamh. I believe in you. You are so much more than the Spring Princess now. At sunrise on the first day of summer, you will return to me.”

  “What if I don’t know how to
find you and if I still don’t want to go to your world?” I needed to say it out loud. Even as I did, I knew it was pointless. The other girl inside me had made her decision. She wanted to return to her prince; she missed her home. I imagined such a wondrous place that she was tied to — so much more than I was to my home — not only by Regan, but by her birth parents and her friends, her life, and the future that was ripped away from her. It would be an adventure, and one my entire being itched to be part of.

  “If you love me, I will be with you anywhere,” he said.

  “You would give up your home for me?”

  “I would do no less for you than you would for me. If I have to.” His voice strained and broke. He was in visible pain, wincing at the slightest movement, and my vision was growing poorer by the second. My limbs ached, and my stomach gurgled with acid. I realized my queasiness was an effect of the salt.

  Without another word, I knelt up and pressed my lips to Regan’s. It seemed to take him a moment to register exactly what I was doing. My fingers slid over the smooth cold skin of his neck and sank into his luscious hair. His hands moved to my waist and held me lightly, and his mouth opened, deepening the kiss. Gradually I felt the heat between us grow­ing, like shoots of flames springing from a smoldering fire, and his fingers tightened. I could taste the spicy