by E A Comiskey
"Swings," she said. "Children's play things."The doors opened, and children poured down the steps, miniature versions of the adults we'd seen. One of the boys carried a brown leather ball, and he led the others to an open area between the school and the first shop next door--a lumber yard, so far as I could tell. The girls raced to the yard, the fastest few getting to the swings first and launching themselves into the air. I couldn't help but smile. I wanted to swing. It looked like fun!
As suggested, we found the blacksmith sitting in the shade outside his shop, eating a sandwich.
Hala greeted him with the same respectful bow he'd given the man in the wagon, but this one did not return the greeting.
"You have no reason to be among holy people, demon," the man said.
My heart sank. In one town Risa was hated for her heritage. In another, Hala was targeted. In all the wide world, were there so few places where people were welcomed and trusted? How could Hala have thought his city was a failure? It seemed a paradise of trust and kindness compared to these other places.
Hala held his hands out in front of him; a man with nothing to hide. "Would you judge a man by the sins of his father?"
"Judgement is The Lord's alone," the blacksmith answered.
"My wife and I, and our good friend, are passing through. We are on a journey from Tower City to New Faerie, but we've heard rumors of war. Perhaps you would be willing to trade for information?"
The blacksmith took a bite of his sandwich, chewing it thoroughly before answering. "I'll not trade with you. The Lord has provided. These people and I have all we could need, and I'm not in much position for information. We trade with New Faerie for copper and salt. Sometimes they have spices from their seaport that we purchase. Tower City is far from here, a red dot on a map."
"Do the Fae speak of war?" Risa asked.
The blacksmith's eyes remained on Hala, as though he didn't see Risa or me at all. "It is well known that we have no part of anyone's war. The Fae have no more use for technology than we do. In that, we have a common ground. If they quarrel with someone, it is not us." He popped the last bit of sandwich in his mouth and stood, brushing crumbs from his heavy black clothes. "I'll thank you to move on, demon, but I'll share with you what I know, and mind you, it isn't much. A thousand years ago our ancestors shunned the modern world. For that, they were mocked and ridiculed, but when the modern world fell to pieces around us, we remained untouched. When war shook the earth, our people worked under the sun in fields of plenty.
"For a time, the women to the north lived in similar fashion, but they began once more to bow to technology, trusting in their own understanding to conquer a world created within a Divine plan. Now they find themselves afraid of war. What else could be expected? We live within God's plan, or we die under the weight of our own desires."
"Do people here not die?" Hala asked. "Your old-fashioned way of life has not granted you immortality, so far as I know."
"Our old-fashioned life has granted us connection with our Heavenly Father. That connection is a bridge to life everlasting." He picked up the basket that had presumably held his lunch and nodded to Hala. "Godspeed, Demon. May you find your redemption." Turning away to enter his shop, he left us standing on the dirt road. In the distance, the children laughed and played. A group of young women hurried by, baskets over their arms, eyes turned away from us.
"Why did we come here?" Risa asked. "Didn’t you know they would refuse to welcome us?"
Hala nodded. "I suspected as much."
"Then why did you bring us here, just to be humiliated?"
A deep frown creased his brow. "Humiliated? In what way? Because you weren't welcomed like a queen? The world is wide, and we are not known everywhere."
"The places we are known despise us. The places we are not despise everyone who is not like them. We were fools to leave our home." She stalked away, heading south once more.
Hala offered me a small, sad shrug, and we followed her back into the wilderness.
Eleven
In time, we left the wetlands behind us and began to climb among richly green, gently rolling hills. I found myself dreaming of winter. Not the brutal, bone-crushing cold of my childhood home, but the brisk, clean, barrenness of the winter I'd spent in Hala's city. I thought of the crisp, crunchy feeling of snow beneath my feet, the biting kiss of cold air on my cheeks. I was looking forward to it. The sheer scale of life in this too-warm land overwhelmed me. There was a sterility to the cold that part of me missed, even while marveling at the beauty around me.
We came across a circle of tall stones set atop a hill.
Risa stopped abruptly, dropped her pack, and raced to the center of the circle. Hala held my arm and pulled me back a few steps. "We're near her home now. Give her some space. You have known her as a human woman but, in this place, she is fully Fae."
With tears glistening in her eyes, Risa stretched her arms wide and tipped her head back to the sun. She called out in words that my eyes could not interpret, and a sudden wind whipped my hair around my face and sent leaves swirling into the air around the edges of the circle. All around us, flowers burst into bloom. As I gazed upon Risa, she appeared to be a beautiful flower, a bronze-colored lily stretching toward the sky, declaring the splendor of creation.
She lowered her arms and beamed. "I am home," she said.
Her resplendence so captivated me, I missed the first part of Hala's response. When I finally turned to him, I saw the words forming on his lips. "…never our final destination. Keep your mind upon the future."
Risa's eyes narrowed on him. She made no response, stepped out of the circle, picked up her pack, and began walking again
That night, we built our fire big, bright, and smoky. "We don't want anyone to feel we're sneaking up on them," Hala explained.
"They are my people, Hala. They'll give us no trouble."
"They are a people on the brink of war. It is wise to give them no excuse to be suspicious of us."
Hala sat to my left, Risa to my right. It was the first time Hala had not been in the center of our little group. I refused to dwell on what that might mean, and I focused my attention on the wolf puppy instead. Unwinding the bandage, I found that his leg was nearly healed, with no sign of deformity or infection. In a few more weeks, it would be up to him to be brave enough to put weight on it again.
"Are you going to give that thing a name?" Hala asked. "You've made him your baby in every other way."
I suspected he was teasing again, but I'd already thought of the question while we had walked. "I think naming means taking dominion over something. I've been powerless among the strong, most of my life. I won't do that to him. I won't name him. I'll just call him 'Wolf.'"
Risa reached out to scratch behind the pup's ears. "Most people would have been crushed under the pain of the life you've lived, but you're like a piece of coal, transformed to a diamond by extraordinary pressure."
Heat rose to my cheeks. "That life is gone. That girl died in a blizzard. I have been given a new life. I will do better this time." The boldness of my own words woke a snake of anxiety in my belly.
That night I dreamed of war. I dreamed of my father standing over Risa with a bloody sword, and in my dream, I killed him to save her, laughing as the blade sliced through his flesh.
I woke early and stared at the smooth black sky. I vowed I would never kill again, but could there ever be a circumstance where killing was the right thing to do? Would it be OK to kill if there was no other way to save the people I loved?
Turning on my side, I curled my body around the warm softness of Wolf's little body. Maybe some questions had no answer.
~*~
Soldiers surrounded our camp, standing silent as dawn broke. They wore soft clothing that mimicked the colors of the earth around us. Two, a man and a woman, were as tall as Hala with swords in hand and bows across their back. Three of them were more average in height, though one was as thick as a bear with claws on the tips of his
fingers. Two tiny creatures, no bigger than my hand, hovered in the air, borne on wings like those of dragonflies.
Hala rose from his bed slowly, with open hands. He showed no surprise at their presence. Risa followed his lead.
"Who are you? And why are you with these others?" the tall woman asked her.
I couldn't look away from them long enough to see Risa's answer.
The woman glanced at me for a split second, but her focus was on Hala. There was no doubt he was the most powerful and potentially dangerous.
"You expect us to believe this demon is your brother?" one of the shorter soldiers asked. Her hair was tied up in a knot on the top of her head, making her rather large, pointed ears her most prominent feature.
Surely my face showed my complete surprise, but no one was focused on me. I turned in time to see Risa raise an eyebrow at the other woman. "Did I not tell you I am the daughter of Eglantine? My father is not Fae. Can you not see the resemblance in our height and dark skin?"
"Your father is human?" she asked Hala.
He inclined his head to one side. "My mother was a shape-shifter; a half-demon."
The game of half-truths and outright lies they were playing baffled me. I chewed on my lip, waiting for some clue about what was happening, frightened that someone would ask me a question I had no proper answer for.
I watched as Hala scratched his nose and, as he returned his hand to his side, he turned his palm down and spread his fingers in a "Y" shape, moving them slightly forward before resting his hand by his thigh. "Stay," he had said. I sat still on my bed on the ground.
"A demon half-breed?" snarled the bear-man.
Risa stepped forward, still holding her hands out. "He shares blood with me, and I am Fae of your clan. That makes him your kin, like it or not. Will you allow your kin passage into the city? Or have you become so ruled by fear you would turn away your own?"
One of them must have said something Hala and Risa accepted as consent, because Risa beckoned for me to stand. As quickly as possible, we cleaned up our camp. The soldiers neither left us nor offered to help. I began to gesture to Hala, and he gave a tiny shake of his head. For some reason, he didn't want me to "speak" in front of the others.
I rolled my blanket and strapped it to my bag, slung the whole pack over my back, and lifted Wolf into the sling across my chest. With the winged ones leading the way, the two tall soldiers began walking. Risa followed them, and Hala gestured for meet go next. I fell into step behind her. Hala and the others brought up the rear.
When the city came into view, it stole my breath away. The dust sparkled and danced in sunlight that seemed more concentrated over the walled fortress atop the next hill. Flowering vines covered the earthen walls, making it appear as though the immensity of the place had sprung up from the ground.
We were led through a gate made of carved wood as thick as I was tall. I could have spent a week studying the flowers and leaves, faces and animals that covered the massive door. A wide stone path curved between the houses of the city and led to a towered structure taller again by half than any of those in the city we'd come from.
As we passed through the city, all eyes were on us, but once inside the glorious, spired central building it seemed we were nearly alone. We walked the length of a hall lit by torches, climbed a flight of stone steps, and finally went through another set of elaborate doors, a smaller version of the pair outside.
In this large room, a man as tall as Risa, with skin as fair as mine and hair the color of snow, sat on a throne of polished silver and wood. He wore the same soft green and brown clothing as the others, but a crown of silver circled his head. Light streamed through the window and lay upon his thin, elegant form as though he were calling it to himself.
The guards moved to either side of the aisle before the throne and bowed on one knee. Risa remained in the middle, but did the same. Hala's hand pressed on my shoulder and I knelt next to him, behind Risa.
When she rose, we stood behind her, which meant I could see only the fairy king's half of the conversation. His mouth turned up in a crooked smile. "Daughter of Eglantine, you've come home. You've been gone too long."
She bowed her head and made some reply. His smile grew even wider. Hala's back stiffened, but he said nothing and made no move.
"And you are even more beautiful and charming than your extraordinary mother. My guards tell me this is your brother and your servant girl. Will you vouch for their loyalty? We are under attack from the humans, you know, and the demons have never been our allies."
Sadness crept over his features as he listened to her. "You've been gone a long time. There's a lot that's changed since the days when your mother lived here. Dine with me this night, and we'll catch up on the time we've missed."
He let Risa speak for a moment longer and then motioned to the tall female guard who'd brought us into the city. "Take them to the visitor's quarters in the south wing. See to it they have everything they need." Looking at Risa once more, the smile returned. "We are happy to have you home, Risa. Very happy, indeed."
A tiny winged woman, as green as Hala's eyes, led us through yet another maze of corridors to a room with a large glass window that looked out over the city and the valley below. The little woman left us with a polite nod of her head, a significant change having come over our reception after the king's warm acceptance of Risa. When the door closed, I grabbed Risa's arm and forced her to look at me. "Will you please tell me what's going on?"
Hala touched my shoulder to get my attention. I looked at him, felt the intentional flow of his Gift, and resisted it. "Don't do that!" My gestures sliced through the air as I spoke.
"Don't be angry. We didn't try to keep anything from you. We only talked about it last night after you were asleep. There was no time this morning to explain," he said.
I turned my glare on Risa. "You denied him as your match!"
"It was our best chance, Jax. You don't understand. With the trouble that exists between the humans and the Fae, neither of you would be let into the city. If he is my blood relative he's… not Fae, but the next closest thing. He’s kin."
"Why was it so important for us to come into this city? What is here that we need? It seems to me just another place we're going to pass through, hoping no one kills us in the night."
Her eyes pleaded with me to understand, but my heart raced in anger at her deception. "This is my home. I have been gone a long time."
"I thought we were your home. Now I am… what did you tell them? Your servant?"
"It is a title they understand and accept. You know we don't really feel that way," she said.
I spun toward Hala. "You're totally OK with all of this?"
He lifted his chin, pressed his lips together in a thin line. "I trust Risa," he said, not really answering the question.
I shook my head and stomped away from them both to attend to the feeding Wolf. I trust Risa, he had said. Did I? I would have said yes without hesitation, but that was before I watched her boldly disown us before the handsome, smiling fairy king. I'd seen a man look at a woman like that before, and it wasn't because he was speaking to one he considered to be nothing more than kin.
~*~
Someone appeared at our door as the sun set in the west. He brought food for Hala and me and offered an escort for Risa. A servant or a guard? Were we guests or prisoners? The more I thought about it, the less sure I was. Not knowing made me edgy.
Risa left, and Hala stayed on the bench built into the wall beneath the window. He gazed out at the sky, watching darkness stretch over the valley. Along the roads that led from the forests, torches were lit, creating little paths of light through the night.
I picked at the food, set aside a bit of venison for Wolf, and poured some water in his bowl. Hala's eyes were on me. I could feel the weight of his gaze. When I'd gathered my emotions, I faced him.
"Are you still angry?" he asked.
I sat on the floor near him, curling my feet under me. Wo
lf climbed into my lap and tried to lick my face. I pushed him down so my hands would be free to answer. "I don't know. I feel…" I didn't know how I felt. I had so many words now, but no word for this.
He nodded, as though he understood perfectly what I could not say, and then turned his gaze out the window once more. I scratched Wolf's ears until he settled down in the safe circle of my legs.
After a time, Hala turned so I could see his face clearly once again. "When a couple first meets, there is fire in their hearts that threatens to consume them. No one could live like that forever so, in time, it changes into the smolder of love. Sometimes even the hottest fires flicker and die in time. Sometimes the fire flares back after that. Sometimes it is gone, forever." The light in his eyes glowed as he spoke, a strange contrast to his words.
"You and Risa are my family," I said. "My home."
"We will always be your family, no matter what comes."
I struggled to read the meaning that existed in the space between his words. They'd committed to one another for centuries. Were they really considering breaking their vows now? The vows Puah had spoken of so passionately? "Is it the fairy king that comes between you?"
He laid his head back against the wall. "No."
A terrible, icy fear gripped me. With trembling hands, I asked, "Is it me?"
"Of course not!" he exclaimed, sitting upright again. As though the motion were exhausting, he heaved an immense sigh. "It's me, Jax. I think I'm doing the right thing, and it always turns out to be wrong. Everything I touch gets destroyed. I think I hear the whisper of my Creator in my heart, but maybe the voice I hear comes from somewhere else entirely."
"Puah says you have always been a great leader."
He laughed, but the smile did not touch his eyes. "I thought it was best to build a tower. A tower my people died in."
"Everyone makes mistakes," I said, desperate to take away his pain.
"A hundred years ago I told Risa I had a vision of a baby boy that would be born to us; a beautiful, powerful child who would rise up to be a great leader. I promised her that child."