To the Eternal (Away From Whipplethorn Book Five)

by Hartoin, A. W.

  “Are you kidding? Not after Venice. They’re really nice, but now they think you’re…you’re something bad,” she said, whispering like it made any difference to me.

  “A kindler?” I asked. That was pretty bad to most wood fairies, although these fairies lived in stone.

  “That’s not bad, Matilda, I mean, Your Highness.”

  “You should call me Matilda or they’re going to find out who I am,” I said. “So what do they think I am?”

  “A drug addict.”

  I laughed. “Is that all?”

  “That’s terrible, Matilda,” said Leanna.

  “No, it means they think I’m weak. That’s great. I like it.” I looked around. “Where is everyone?”

  “Having breakfast. I told them not to say anything about anything.”

  “Rickard’s eating?” I asked.

  “No. They took him somewhere called medica.”

  I swung my legs and winced at the pain in my wing. “Sounds like they took him to the hospital.” I plucked at the nightgown I was wearing. The nightie felt fabulous against my skin. It was fine linen and had embroidery of vines and bougainvillea down the front. “Please tell me that you put this on me.”

  “Gledit wanted to, but I wouldn’t let him,” said Leanna.

  “What is his problem?”

  “He’s your master secretary.”

  “You act like that explains something.”

  “Well, in your manual—”

  I held up my hand. “No more protocol. Where are my clothes?”

  Leanna got them out of an intricately-carved wardrobe of cherry wood. My dad would’ve loved it. I hoped that wherever he was, he had wood around him. I knew how he missed our mantel.

  “Are you okay?” asked Leanna, handing me my dress.

  “Just thinking about my dad.”

  “Is he nice?”

  I’d never thought about that before. Was my dad nice? I didn’t know. He was Dad.

  “He’s a dad. He always thinks he knows best,” I said.

  Leanna didn’t say anything. She helped me get my wings through the wing slits and put on my stockings. I got a strange feeling off her. It made me think of Gerald, but I didn’t know why. “What’s your dad like?”

  She turned around and got a comb off a beautiful dressing table made of a substance I didn’t recognize.

  “Leanna?” I took the comb and then took her hand. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “My parents are dead,” she said, her face hard and unemotional. “It happened when I was a baby. I didn’t know them at all.”

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  She shrugged. “It’s okay. I’m an orphan. I’ve always been one.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Sometimes, it seemed like it would be nice to be an orphan, but I never seriously thought about it. No parents. No, ‘I’m your mother. I’m in charge.’ Weird and kind of lonely.

  Leanna hugged me. I should’ve been the one to hug her. Sometimes I stink.

  “You’re up.” Iris rushed over to the door. It would be so nice to hear someone coming, for once. “Come have breakfast. It’s amazing.”

  Amazing yogurt. This I had to see. Iris tugged me out the door and down a grand hall covered in ancient shields, weapons, and armor.

  “Where are we? A castle?” I asked.

  “Castelvecchio. Isn’t it cool?”

  “Sure. It’s nice.”

  “It’s a castle and the Montagues are so sweet.” Iris directed me into a banquet hall with silk banners on the walls and a gleaming wood trestle table that had to be at least two feet long in the center. The dragons were on the left. Percy feasted on spices. There was a cloud of cinnamon around his head as he gorged. Penelope was curled up next to him, asleep and looking more bloated than ever. I hoped that they hadn’t fed her poison. I didn’t want her getting any slower.

  Ovid wasn’t close to asleep. He gulped down something else. He was a Celtic Stoorworm, not a Moroccan spice dragon, so he ate other stuff. I’d never thought to ask what.

  Just then, Ovid belched. You have to see a dragon belch to believe it. They belch and then if they’re not careful, they set the belch on fire. Ovid wasn’t careful. He almost never was. A fiery explosion went off over his head, causing everyone to duck under the table. We gagged because it blew the rest of the spices into the air. I put my arm over my face and my eyes streamed. Cinnamon stings. “Ovid!”

  He eyed me defiantly for a second and then tucked his head under his wing.

  “I can still see you.”

  The green dragon hunkered down. I think he really thought if he couldn’t see me, I couldn’t see him, like an ostrich.

  “Go outside and suck this mess out of the window,” I said between coughs.

  He peeked at me.

  “I’m serious. Do it. We’re guests here and you made a mess.”

  Ovid untucked, assumed a regal posture, and sauntered to the end of the hall to a dragon-sized door. A minute later, he was out at the row of windows on the other side of the hall. He had the spice cleared in a minute by inhaling through one of the windows. There was a concussion that I felt in my chest. He must’ve belched again, but at least it was outside.

  Everyone got to their feet, wiping their eyes and coughing. A slim wood fairy straightened up and came over. His clothes were the same style as the Venice fae, but made of the lightest green silk with lots of embroidery of feathers and flowers. On him it seemed manly, but I can’t explain how. It suited him with his broad shoulders and dark, wavy hair. He draped his blue and silver wings over his shoulders like a cape and extended his hand. “Signorina Matilda, I presume.”

  I offered my hand and he bent low to kiss it. “Hi,” I said like a dufus.

  “I am Ruffiano Montague, at your service.”

  At your service. The last fairy to say that to me was Krust Nuget, Horc’s brother. Like Krust, I sensed his intentions weren’t exactly good or bad. He could go either way. I would’ve left right then if I could’ve. “Nice to meet you. I’m sorry I wasn’t feeling well earlier.”

  “I understand completely.” He was nice about my supposed drug use, but I think I saw a hint of a smirk.

  “Thank you,” I said. “These things happen.”

  “Indeed they do. Would you like some breakfast?” Ruffiano led me to a velvet-padded bench. “We are honored to have such esteemed guests.”

  “Esteemed?”

  Ruffiano ignored that and offered me platters of fruit that we’d never have in Austria at that time of year. There were bits of mangos, lemons, pomegranates, dates, and figs. I could have any kind of bread. Some were studded with chocolate or fruit. There were six kinds of juice and lots of teas. And that was just the wood fairy food. Horc sat on the table with his head in a deep bowl. Gerald’s face held a look of deep revulsion, so I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what Horc was eating. Rufus had his favorite, raw chilies. Fidelé lapped up honey from a silver dish. His one tooth was a sweet tooth. Gledit had a glass of cloudy water in front of him. He smoothed his leaves and said, “Your…you’re feeling better…Matilda?”

  I chose some pomegranate and pineapple juice. “Yeah, I’m good.” I gave him a look. “How’s everything with you?”

  He perked up and said, “Very well. Horc and I got baths and Rickard’s in the hospital.”

  I couldn’t smell the dragon pee anymore. That was some strong soap. “How is Rickard?”

  “Well, I assume.”

  “Assuming is like expecting. It doesn’t work out very often,” I said.

  Gledit frowned. “Your…you’re right. Yes. We should check on him.” He sucked some of the cloudy water through the bristly things in his mouth and smiled at me. Everyone seemed pretty happy, even Leanna, who thought we’d been captured. She was talking with an extremely slender wood fairy with long blond hair.

  No, that wasn’t quite true. Gerald kept giving me sly looks. He wasn’t so happy and it wasn’t just because Horc
came up from his bowl with a brown stinkbug leg sticking out of his mouth. The Montagues had thought of everything.

  Horc fished something out of the bowl and held it out to me. “I have the most delicious stink bug, an Italian variety roasted in olive oil.”

  I didn’t know what he had in his moss-colored hand. It could’ve been an eyeball. I threw up in my mouth a little and shook my head. I couldn’t answer. I was afraid of what might come up.

  “Suit yourself,” said Horc. “More for me.”

  Gerald raised an eyebrow at me.

  “What?” I mouthed.

  Ruffiano was looking, so we couldn’t say more. I ate as much as I could possibly pack in my stomach. The way our luck was running, we might not eat again for days.

  A servant cleared my place and a woman about my mom’s age came over. She wore a gorgeous silk dress in the Venetian style, but it was so light, it seemed to float around her. “Good morning. I’m Ruffiano’s wife, Lorena. Have you finished?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Ruffiano would like to take you on a tour of the ramparts. Are you up to it?”

  “Sure.” I needed to get an idea of where we were.

  Ruffiano came over and pulled out my bench. “Shall we?”

  I took his offered arm. Lorena whispered something in his ear and they both smiled, nodding in the direction of Leanna. Then Ruffiano and I left with Iris and Gerald in tow. No one else was interested in leaving. The dragons were too bloated to move and Leanna and Gledit were still talking to the beautiful fairies. Leanna kept twisting a lock of hair around her finger while smiling at the slender fairy. The girl talking to Gledit took his hand and he got all poufy. Maybe that’s considered attractive in a phylliid.

  Ruffiano walked me through a maze of corridors to a set of meandering stairs that led up to the ramparts. He said Rickard was still alive and their healers were treating him. I felt nothing but good intentions when he talked about Rickard. I was still uneasy though. We had to leave, but I wasn’t sure how to do it. If I told them who I was, they might try to keep us like the bissabova.

  Ruffiano stopped at a plain wall. He tapped a complicated rhythm on the stone and a door-sized space melted open. “After you,” he said, waving me through. There really were ramparts. They looked like the castles in Gerald’s books, all stone with a gapped tooth design from the middle ages. We came out on top of one tooth and had a nice view. The ramparts made a bridge over a slow-moving, murky river.

  “What river is this?”

  He hesitated, but then said, “The Adige. My people have lived here since 859.”

  “But not in wood?”

  “Why would we live in wood?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

  “Aren’t you wood fairies?” I asked.

  He laughed and held out his arm. The sleeve slid up to show an odd mottling on his wrist. I looked closer. It looked like grey stone. “We’re scogliera.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “In English, we are cliff fairies.”

  “You live in cliffs?”

  “We did many generations ago. Our stone was taken here to make the Castelvecchio.”

  “Oh like our tree,” I said. “It was cut down and made into a fireplace mantel.”

  He touched my hand and looked at my wrist. “You have no tattoo.”

  “Yours is a tattoo? I’ve met an angelo di pietro. It’s not a tattoo on them.”

  “They are a different species, yes?”

  “Of course. I didn’t know fairies got tattoos.”

  “Only scogliera. Do you miss your mantel?” he asked. I felt only good intentions, coming off of him.

  “It’s like a headache in my chest.”

  Ruffiano shook his head sadly. “My children would be devastated to leave their stone.”

  “How many children do you have?” I asked.

  “Five. They are my life.” He hesitated and then asked, “Where are your parents?”

  I considered telling him the whole story. He was a dad. Dad’s are a pain, but they liked to protect kids. My dad did, even though he was kinda useless at it. Woodworking didn’t prepare him for much other than sweeping. “They’re in France,” I said.

  Gerald rushed up behind Ruffiano and shook his head violently.

  “They…um…are on vacation.”

  “Without their children. What about Horc’s parents and the little phalanx’s? He’s very young to be without his troop,” said Ruffiano.

  I tried to keep my face blank as Gerald mouthed something.

  Hotfoots and Macelroys? What is that supposed to mean?

  “Victory’s special,” I said.

  By special, I mean a pain in my wings.

  “He speaks a lot of languages.”

  Ruffiano raised an eyebrow. “How many?”

  “I lost count.” I glanced at Gerald and he mouthed, “Hotfoots and Macelroys.”

  So not helpful.

  “What do you think of our Verona?” asked Ruffiano.

  “It’s beautiful. I’ve seen a city like it,” I said.

  He leaned over to me and whispered, “Better than Venice?

  I froze and then forced myself to breathe. “It’s different. I don’t miss the fish smell.”

  “We agree on fish. I’m not a fan,” he said. “You never answered my question.”

  I was hoping you’d forget that.

  “Which question?” I asked.

  “Where are the spriggan’s parents and Victory’s?”

  I didn’t like lying to him. Ruffiano was nice. He’d fed us and we had dragons. They ate a lot. “They’re in France, too. Leanna and Gledit are in charge of us.”

  “They don’t seem like they’re in charge.”

  “That’s because they’re so nice. We’re going to Rome to see something.” I glanced at Gerald and did as he said. “The Colosseum.”

  Ruffiano grinned from ear to ear. “You should see our Arena. It is not as large as Rome’s Colosseum, but—”

  Gerald rushed up. “I know. I know. I know. The arena was built in the first century. It has seventy-two arches on the outside and”—Gerald sucked in a breath—“forty-four rows of seats inside.”

  Ruffiano looked at me and I shrugged. “He likes to know things and tell you that he knows things.”

  Gerald’s small face crumpled. “You make it sound bad.”

  “It’s not bad.” It’s annoying. “It’s kinda useful.” I hugged him and he smiled up at me. He was still little. Somehow, he could make me forget that. “I bet Ruffiano knows things that you didn’t learn from your books.”

  He stuck his pointy nose in the air. “Books know everything.”

  Ruffiano bent over him. “Did your books tell you that my ancestor, the first Ruffiano Montague, was seen and his human designed the hydraulic system with him?”

  Gerald went up on his toes. “Schematics?”

  “I may have the plan, if someone would appreciate it.”

  “I would. I would.”

  Iris rolled her eyes so hard, they must’ve hurt.

  “I would be honored to show them to you,” said Ruffiano.

  “That’s awesome,” said Gerald.

  “Can I go to the hospital?” I asked. “I’d like to see Rickard.”

  Ruffiano nodded. “Who is this Rickard to you? He’s Austrian, is he not?”

  “He’s my dad’s friend and yeah, he’s Austrian. He’s supposed to be teaching us German, but we aren’t studying much.” I managed to look contrite to Ruffiano’s approval.

  “German is a harsh language. You should study Italian. My language is the language of joy. You will feel it in your soul and it will make you feel light.”

  I could use some lightness.

  “You make it sound wonderful.”

  “Italia vi darà la dolce vita,” said Ruffiano with a fatherly smile.

  I tried to keep my guard up, but it was so hard. He reminded me of Soren Maple. It wasn’t a physical thing. It was a generosity thing. Sor
en once carried me when I was too tired to move. I had the strongest feeling that Ruffiano was the same. “I don’t know what that means, but it sounds nice.”

  “It is nice.” He led me to the wall, where the door had reformed again on its own. He repeated the same tapping and ushered us through. We walked through a maze of corridors and grand hallways to a pair of large double doors carved with plants, flowers, and roots.

  Iris and I ran our fingers over the fine grain and elegant carvings.

  “I miss Dad,” said Iris.

  “Me, too.”

  The right door swung open and a galen with her nose in a thick collection of parchments walked out. She wore the typical toga of the galen with scarves around her waist to hold pouches of remedies and potions. Her hair was tied up in a silver net on the back of her head. The fine tendrils that had escaped waved and curled with a life all their own. Galen hair was the coolest thing. The galen nearly walked away, but Ruffiano touched her arm. “Allura?”

  The galen started and dropped the parchments. We helped her gather them and I snuck a peek. They appeared to be recipes, but they were in Italian, French, Chinese, and some other languages I didn’t recognize. I handed them back and Ruffiano said, “I’ve brought our visitors to see their injured comrade.” He glanced at me.

  “Rickard,” I said.

  “Ah, yes. Rickard. An odd name. Is he well enough to receive visitors?”

  Allura smiled. “I believe he’s a little better. And you are?”

  I introduced Iris and myself. A lovely feeling of good intentions came off her like Lucien Galen and the Great Healer. I liked her instantly. I couldn’t help it. Maybe it’s a healer thing.

  Allura touched my arm softly. “You’re injured, though you hide it well. You must come in immediately.”

  “Injured?” asked Ruffiano. “Where?

  “My wing. It’s okay.”

  “It is not. You are unable to fly and in constant pain,” said Allura.

  Iris’s eyes were wide and impressed. “You’re good.”

  “I’m a galen. Come this way,” she said, ushering us through the open door.

  I stopped on the threshold and Iris bumped into my back. The hospital was packed. I don’t just mean that the long rows of beds in the enormous hall were filled. There were pallets on the floor, tightly wedged together so that there were only narrow strips of floor visible. The patients were bloody and bandaged heavily. Some were missing limbs and others had severe burns.