But first, I had to find Star. The foolish girl had stolen my motorcycle and gone back to the city. No one had heard her move about in the early morning hours. When I discovered that she’d left, I knew she would get into a mess of trouble.
I went after her, but I was too late. Her parents informed me of her imprisonment in the president’s mansion. She was to marry Glass. The poor girl. They had given up hope of ever seeing her again, and I’d had to shake some sense into them.
“How dare you give up on Star? She came back for you!”
Their empty eyes had me leaving in a huff, but I’d begun to plan a way to rescue her from Glass’s greasy clutches. It’d been weeks since she was abducted, though, and I was no closer to getting to her than before. I made it to the roof of the safe house and stared across the city toward his mansion. I couldn’t quite see it from there. Smoke stacks filled my vision.
“Hold on, Star,” I whispered. “I’m coming.”
* * *
Star
The days dragged on as I sat in the glass globe which was now my home. It was my punishment for rejecting Farlan Glass. I hated knowing that I was probably being watched every second of every day.
I pressed down a lump of crinoline, straightening out my dress. My wardrobe was princess dresses, gorgeous shoes, diamond tiaras, and necklaces. But I’d give it all away for my freedom.
Silent tears dripped down my cheeks, leaving tiny wet stains on my dress. I had learned early that sobbing only brought more dancing. I’d been forced to dance until my feet felt like they’d fall off.
There’d be days I wasn’t bothered, then hours of nothing but being poked until I danced. The music box was no longer comforting; it meant I had to perform for whoever may be watching. My only recourse was that President Glass used me for entertainment, not as a bed buddy.
Where was Clyde? I wished he’d show up and rescue me like he had when the governor’s mansion had collapsed. I wasn’t sure he was even looking for me. I’d betrayed his trust, his generosity.
“Clyde,” I whispered, hoping only he could hear me, and not the watchers who scolded me if I didn’t do as I was told. “Where are you?”
I dropped down onto the massive pink satin bed and let my tears flow in the darkened globe. Whoever watched during the night shift didn’t appear to have much interest in me. I often wondered if I was alone in this massive room. I couldn’t see anything beyond the frosted globe, especially with stage lights beaming up at me while I performed.
As the night dragged on, I let my despair and regret fill my heart. Maybe if I hadn’t shunned Farlan, I wouldn’t be here. Maybe if I hadn’t defied Clyde, I’d be better off. My head was full of what ifs, but my gut reminded me that I gotten everything I deserved, even this endless loneliness.
The nights lasted an eternity but weren’t much better than the days. I flipped a page of a book I’d been given. I’d read it dozens of times by now. All the books were just props, but they had words inside them that helped me pass the time. A tapping began to irritate me as I read my book. I peered around the darkened surroundings of my globe. Nothing. Not even a light. I was probably imagining things.
Tap, tap, tap.
What was that? I stood and looked around, reaching to turn off my bedside lamp in case it was a guard. Listening, I heard it again and jumped from my bed and began to walk the perimeter.
A face pressed against the base of the globe and waved at me. I gasped.
“Who—what? Clyde?” I ran and pressed my hands to the cold glass. “Clyde, is it really you?”
He nodded and pointed to something in his hands then motioned for me to step back. I did and watched as he cut the glass, creating an opening he could crawl through.
“Star, let’s go!”
I stepped away, clutching my arms, rubbing them. “Where will we go? My parents—”
“I have them. They’re safe. Get some shoes on. We gotta go.”
I peered down at the crimson dress I was wearing. It was a dancing dress, and I hadn’t felt like changing out of it for bed. I nodded, turning to grab the most practical dancing shoes they’d provided me with.
“Okay, I’m set. This is all I have to wear.”
Clyde eyed me up and down, surprised. “Okay, that’s interesting. Come on.”
He crawled back through the tiny opening and held his arms out for me. I took them, smiling widely at my hero.
“I didn’t know if you’d come.”
He turned and took my face into his hands, his blue eyes reflecting the tiny bit of light entering from the window high above us. “I’ll always come for you, even when you call me a thrush beard.”
My eyes widened, and my mouth dropped open. I let him pull me along as my shock abated. “You’re Lord Thrushbeard? VanWright?”
“Yep.”
“You let me call you that and you—you let me think you were someone else?”
He pulled me to his chest, warm and scented of cedar. His lips brushed against mine, igniting a candle in darkness of my soul.
“Would you have come with me if I was still Lord Thrushbeard? You rejected him, so I thought maybe you’d like me without the beard, as a new suitor.”
My eyes shined with tears. “You want to be my suitor?”
“Yes. I’ve always loved you from afar, even when you never noticed me. If it takes rescuing you again and again, then so be it. I’m your man.”
“More like my hero. Thank you for coming for me, Clyde.”
“I’ll always come back for you,” he said as we crept away from my prison, leading me down into the tunnels below the mansion.
I knew he always would.
* * *
Author’s Note
I chose the story of King Thrushbeard because I read it when I was younger and found it fascinating. It was an obscure tale about a spoiled rotten princess who basically used up her chances to marry a prestigious king. I loved the fact that she was humbled by being tossed into a situation she never expected. She discovered life was more than one’s own desires, but working hard brought its own rewards. I wrote The Glass Sky based on this Brother’s Grimm tale because it left me enchanted. To toss such a privileged girl into a situation of being poor like so many others in this world and being humbled by it and then appreciating the better things in life even more, that was something I could relate to. With my background of writing fantasy for young adults, I thought it was the perfect story to throw a twist of magic, romance, and intrigue into it.
I hope you enjoy my fairytale retelling of King Thrushbeard.
Alexia Purdy
Alexia currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada–Sin City! She loves to spend every free moment writing or playing with her four rambunctious kids. Writing has always been her dream, and she has been writing ever since she can remember. She loves writing paranormal fantasy and poetry and devours books daily. Alexia also enjoys watching movies, dancing, singing loudly in the car and eating Italian food.
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Rush - C. Gockel
Misogyny is a beast.
When the incarnation of Creation gets angry at Rush for innocently stating his opinion, she curses him to find true love in two weeks … or else.
Chapter 1
The gunshot cracks through the cavernous, gray, marble-ensconced, Sovietesque hotel lobby. There is a collective intake of breath, a woman screams, and then a child cries. Far back in the crowd, Rush can’t see who was shot, but he catches the familiar odors of gunpowder and blood. The child’s cries rise in volume, and he hears snatches of, “Mommy, Daddy!”
Hands on the back of his head, Rush feels rage bubbling up within him. Who bring
s a child to North Korea for a fucking tour?
Another gunshot fires. Rush hears it impact high on the marble wall above him and the scattering of bits of stone on the floor near his heels. Through the throng of hostages, he sees a North Korean soldier begin to shout. Rush has never seen him before, but the ribbons on his chest identify him as the North Korean equivalent of a major. At first the words are a jumble, but Rush lets the words wash through him, and tries to understand. He hears a sort of music … he always hears music when there’s magic about; this time it’s like a kindergartner tuning a trumpet, but in the trumpet’s blare he feels the words, “We know there is a spy among you! You will turn yourself in or we will execute every last one of you!” The child’s wail rises again.
Rush tears at his hair. Fucking Hung Sun Ahn, she betrayed them! He should have known.
He hears a far off flute … more magic in the air … and beside him, his buddy Park, a bona fide native speaker of Korean, and also a former Navy SEAL just like Rush, translates the major’s words. Rush feels a thrill, realizing he got it mostly right. Somehow the men in uniforms behind them don’t hear Park. Park’s bona fide magical talent is making words do what he wants them to do. He probably willed those words only to be heard by Rush.
Rush doesn’t have a real talent. With great effort Rush can create a little fire or ice. He’s stronger and faster than he used to be, and sometimes he understands things in different languages … but everyone on their team who survived Ragnarok is like that now; a few, like Park, have special skills on top.
At the front of the room, a man whose uniform identifies him as the equivalent of a junior lieutenant shakily translates the major’s words into English and Chinese.
Rush hears that trumpet again, and feels the major’s meaning when he shouts, “You will all die if the spies do not come forward.”
No one moves. As the lieutenant translates this, a woman sobs and the child sniffles.
Rush really wants to not care about the damn tourists in the room. Going to North Korea is practically treason. You’re just putting money into the pockets of the enemies of the free world, but the kid’s sniffles … kids shouldn’t suffer for the stupidity of their parents.
“Let’s turn ourselves in,” Rush says.
He hears the sound like an oboe, and behind him, someone barks in Korean, “Shut up!”
Park says, “He said—”
“I know what he said,” Rush snaps, and then to the lobby at large, he shouts, “Yooo-hoo, it’s usssss …” in as annoying a voice as he can muster to divert their attention from the civilians and the kid.
In a rush of murmurs, the throng parts like the Red Sea, and Rush and Park are staring at the major and the lieutenant at the end. The major’s face is so red he looks like he’s about to self-combust. Hands trembling, the lieutenant looks scared out of his gourd.
“Got any plans?” Park asks as they walk forward.
“Use your pretty words,” Rush says, experimentally lowering his hands. That antic gets him poked in the ribs with the business end of a PPS sub-machine gun—a thing he’d only learned about in history class—and he feels it through the dress shirt he’s wearing. Training and magic would probably make him fast enough to avoid being shot while ripping it out of the guy’s hands, but someone else might take the bullet, and the whole point of surrendering is to keep that from happening. He puts his hands back in the air.
They pass the kid that’s been crying—a little boy who’s either Korean or Chinese—and Rush tries to give him a reassuring smile, but the kid just sucks in a breath, turns, and buries his face in his mother’s skirt. A few steps later they pass the body of a middle-aged Caucasian male with a doughy middle and thinning hair. He’s wearing a business suit; there is a woman also in a suit not two feet away, mascara running down her face, hand to her mouth. Figures it would be a man who’d be shot first. Women say they want equality, but they really don’t—even in places as messed up as North Korea, it’s always the men that get shot first.
Rush hears the soft melodious notes of a flute. In Korean, Park says, “You should—”
“Silence!” the major says. The trumpet in Rush’s brain screams, but the flute rises above it.
“Take us outside,” Park finishes.
“Take them outside!” the major screams and Rush isn’t sure if Park’s Jedi mind trick worked, or if that’s what was going to happen to them to begin with. He hears a rush of footsteps, and counts six pairs of feet behind, five more on each side. He hears the major barking orders into a phone. Outside he hears the approaching roar of helicopters.
“Think it’s time to call for backup?” Park asks.
Rush looks at him sideways. They have no weapons, and they’re dressed in suits and ties. North Korean security has become even tougher since Ragnarok—and the weapon detectors are magical. The plan had been that they would acquire weapons on arrival, rendezvous with North Korean scientist Hung Sun Ahn and a few ‘items of interest,’ and get her out. The weapons weren’t at the drop off point, and Hung Sun hadn’t shown up, either.
Rush only raises an eyebrow at him.
Park gives him a sort of cornball grin, and Rush knows he understands that of course they need backup. They’ve fought together for years, across worlds. Rush has never had a real brother, but he thinks that brothers-in-arms might be more tightly bound.
Park whispers into the air, “We need backup.” The words are soft, but it’s like they have an entire wind section behind them, and Rush knows they can be heard across the Nine Realms.
They’re only about three meters from the exit doors held open by men with rifles. Outside the late January North Korean night is misty and snowy, helicopters are getting closer, and he hears engines—by the sound of them, four GAZ Tigers—the Soviet version of humvees. It’s hard to see much beyond the doorway; the light from the GAZ’s headlights is so bright. Someone shoves the two of them in the back, and a few steps later, they’re out the double doors and the night hits him like an incredibly cold, wet blanket. It’s more than misty, it’s raining, the worst kind of rain—the kind that with just a half degree less would be snow. Shouts are rising everywhere. On the right are the all-terrain vehicles, on the left there are at least sixteen men, armed and ready, and four helicopters are hovering nearby, but that isn’t what makes his heart stop. What makes his heart stop is the small white van in front of them, side door open, and interior with magic-blocking Promethean Wire. If they get in, they won’t be helpless—Park and Rush don’t need magic to be deadly, they were born unmagical and they trained unmagical—but their magical friends won’t be able to find them. A technician near the van holds a device like a Geiger counter that is emitting a soft beeping.
His eyes slide to Park, and his buddy’s eyes are already on him. He feels that connection between them again, that brotherhood that doesn’t need words. They’ll die fighting before they get in that van.
Park’s eyes dart forward. “I think we might need Patel for this one.” Again the words carry the power of an entire wind section. The guy with the Geiger counter thing's eyes get wide as it starts to chirp—it’s a magic detector and Park just used a lot of magic.
Rush’s head jerks to his partner. “It’s not that bad!” And wasn’t Patel in India, off to see family or something?
A man behind them screams at them in Korean, and they’re shoved roughly toward the van’s open door. The magic detector begins beeping wildly.
Rush feels magic melding with the roar of the helicopters. The magic is soft, thrumming, but intense, like the opening of Vivaldi's Winter when the strings start out quiet, but you know they’re about to erupt in a cascade of sound.
“Patel,” Park whispers.
There is a gust of wind, and a mad orchestra rises around them—Vivaldi’s Winter played on electric sitars by demons if Rush had to describe it. The magic detector’s beep is now a solid wail.
“Patel,” Rush confirms, just a step from the van. Someone tries
to shove him inside, but Rush shouts, “Now!” just as the magic detector bursts into flame, every single GAZ headlight pops in a flash of sparks, and the lights in the lobby go dark. Rush closes his eyes and feels the scene around him. He spins to the beat of the demon orchestra, and rips the ancient rifle from the man behind him. Rush hears the sound of a flute, and knows Park is doing the same. Cracking a skull with the butt of the rifle, he raises it, aims, hears gunshots in the night and screams from the pitch black lobby. A gurgling rises at his feet and feels at once that it comes from Park. Rush fires off a round from the rifle and hears a scream before dropping to his knees beside his friend.
And then the only sounds he hears are the mad magical orchestra and the helicopters. He can’t feel the men in the armored vehicles or the ones on the ground, and explosions above and behind him bathe the scene in fire.
Park is lying on his back, eyes wide open. His breathing is labored with a sick sucking sound. A punctured lung, Rush would guess. Park is also clutching his stomach. Leaning over Park, trying to protect him from the rain, Rush whispers, “Buddy, Park, talk to me.” Park doesn’t look at him. A humming noise rises in Rush’s chest and finally Park blinks.
“Shit, I’m going to die again, aren’t I?” Park mutters, and gives Rush a smile that drips with blood. Frigid rain is pouring down Rush’s face now. Rush has taken a bullet to the gut before. He knows what it is costing Park to make that joke.
“Keep quiet while I get you out of here,” he whispers, when he really means, don’t make it hurt more.
“No one ... can hear me,” Park gurgles.
That’s when Rush realizes that there are no more sounds of gunfire or shouts. He looks up. No one is standing in the driveway outside the hotel. The drivers in the GAZ Tiger’s are slumped over. The men opposite the GAZ are stretched out on the ground—from the looks of it, shot in the back.
Once Upon A Kiss: Seventeen Romantic Faerie Tales Page 32