The Heart Denied

by Wulf, Linda Anne

  “Oh, yes, well, I’ve heard the Duke’s son - from the southern Corveantes of Nymphia-is coming, too. He is a good sort, they say, but I do not know if he is coming or not; it’s just a rumor. That might be something you want to look into, you know.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Well, I think it’d be a splendid match! Guardians, girl, don’t you ever brush this hair?”

  “I don’t think any of the warriors care how great my hair looks; and I do, actually.”

  “Well, you need to maintain a good image. Who cares what the common warriors think! Royalty look at things like this, dear, and the royalty are the ones that matter! I just wish you cared more about this! I feel like you don’t.”

  Andraste sighed as Ebhlin pulled back sharply on her hair. The elf fiddled with a golden swirl embroidered on her dress. She had to give Ebhlin that; she could embroider with the best of them. Her tapestries were hanging on at least half a dozen walls in the palace, and they were usually what guests first noticed about the palace. “Hm. Embroidery is a lovely skill for a young lady to have,” Ebhlin remarked, looking briefly over Andraste’s shoulder.

  “What did they say at the war council this morning?” Andraste asked suddenly.

  “Not much,” Ebhlin sighed. “Of course, there’s not much to say anymore. This winter will make five hundred years of war. The Sharae match us in numbers and strength presently. Queen Xandrina expects they’ll launch another campaign this spring… but you shouldn’t worry about that tonight!”

  Andraste winced as Ebhlin pulled back a strand of her hair. “Now we’re almost done. Just don’t move! I’m going to get something to pin this last part of your hair up; I have an idea. I think this will work…”

  Andraste listened to the elf rummaging through something behind her, and, against Ebhlin’s instructions not to move, the elf looked around at her reflection in a mirror. She leaned her head to one side and turned back around. She leaned her head to another side and smiled. It is a nice dress. I really wouldn’t mind wearing it if it weren’t for this blasted skirt. It’s so hard to walk. I’m not even sure I can sit in this-not in a chair, anyway; it’s so big!

  The elf glanced down at her left hand, tracing a scar across her palm with her right. “Aw, this is perfect!” Ebhlin said. “You look … ravishing!”

  Andraste stood and looked in the looking glass once more. I’m not as pretty as Radiance. She may have that one eye, but she’s beautiful. Brilliance is, too. I suppose I look fair enough, although it’s hard not to look nice in this. It is a nice color on me. Heh, I could hide a horse under this skirt, though.

  “What are you thinking?” Ebhlin asked, interrupting her musings.

  “I was thinking… I actually look kind of pretty,” Andraste admitted, not daring to repeat her thoughts about the horse. Ebhlin wouldn’t take that kindly at all.

  “You should. Your mother was gorgeous, and your father was fair enough himself. Although, your mother was much more ladylike,” the elf said with some disapproval. “Still, your parents were fair enough, and so are you. You should think you’re pretty because you are.”

  Ebhlin opened the door and Andraste stepped outside. A few moments later, Radiance joined her, her red hair gathered on her head, with a section of bangs covering her bad eye. Ironically, Andraste thought Radiance looked more like a princess than she, herself, did. The first Warrior Queen was said to have thick, red hair that went to her waist, and Radiance definitely had that. Radiance may have one blind eye, but the eye not hidden by her hair was a warm, brown-green, the color of the forest between summer and autumn. “Andraste, you look so beautiful!” Radiance exclaimed, in her high, very friendly voice.

  “And you think you don’t look beautiful?” Andraste asked.

  “Of course I’m beautiful!” Radiance laughed. “Except for my eye… but I think I covered it well enough.”

  “You look fine.”

  “Well, come on!” Radiance said, linking arms with Andraste. “It’s almost evening! There’s such a lovely sunset outside.”

  The elves walked outside into the palace gardens. The grass sparkled from ground up mica that glittered in the grass. The entire place sparkled, giving the gardens a magical atmosphere. Columns wrapped in blue and silver matched the imported silk linens spread over the tables, and the trees sparkled from the colored glass orbs suspended from their branches. A fire was burning in a clearing on the courtyard, and elves began stacking wood near it. The carnations and roses in the gardens glowed and sparkled in all different colors like a miniature rainbow on the ground.

  Andraste was astonished. “How did she do all this without magic?” Andraste whispered in her awe.

  “Is it glass?” Radiance asked.

  “No, it’s like the flower just… sparkles,” Andraste said, stroking a rose petal. “It doesn’t even feel different.”

  “Queen Xandrina went all out for this party,” Radiance muttered. “This place looks beautiful…beyond beautiful! I suppose she hired some magicians to work on it, but it’s just…gorgeous! It’s…unbelievable!”

  “It… really does. It looks magical.”

  Radiance pulled Andraste aside as more people entered the garden. “Look what she did to the gates!”

  Andraste turned her attention to the gates of the garden. Normally wrought iron, the slender bars of the gate looked like they were made of something close to pearl.

  “There are so many people here!” Radiance exclaimed.

  “I hadn’t noticed,” Andraste said sarcastically, turning her attention back to the garden, trying to take in everything at once.

  “Well, I’m going back into the palace until it gets darker. That’s when the party really starts. Do you want to come?”

  “Sure,” replied Andraste.

  “Yes!” Radiance exclaimed. “I have this necklace I meant to put on, but I forgot it in my room.”

  “Wonderful.” Andraste sighed and following her friend, thinking of all the people that were coming. It’s going to be a long night.

  Bridgeworld by Travis McBee

  Prologue

  On a day like many others, born into the world with skies of morose gray and docile temperature, two people were preparing to act on the biggest decision either would ever make. Those two people were a pair of newlyweds, Barbara and Steven Haynes, who had a desire to move, and not a short move by any stretch of the imagination. Their families had tried to convince them to reconsider, Barbara’s mother going so far as to cry at her feet the previous day, but their decisions had been made and they were indeed moving from the only home they had ever known. They had chosen a place most people they knew laughed at. Words like ‘Alien’ and ‘Backwards’ were often used to describe it. The proper name for that place was much kinder: Earth.

  You see, if there was only one fact that would be important to know about the Haynes, it would be that they weren’t Earthlings. Barbara and Steven had grown up on the small planet of Broglio. It was a dull, dreary place that had the color variety of a box of sawdust. The soil was dusty and devoid of the tiniest hope of vegetation, and the sky managed to be insolently gray, even if the large red sun was shining bright enough to blind anyone who dared to glance away from the powdery soil. The man-made artifices lacked any spice of character as well, each one, while monolithic, seemed to be terrified to venture away from the comfortable brown color which every surface was made of. It was a world that Barbara in particular thought would be inhumanly possible to love, or even stand. Oh, yes don’t be mistaken, while the Haynes were definitely not from Earth, they were in every way shape and form, human.

  Steven would not look
out of place on Earth; he was a tall man with intelligent green eyes. His hair sat in tight black curls on his head and, even though he claimed to never fix it, there was never so much as a single strand out of place. He did not have an athlete’s body, yet his trim figure hinted at the exuberant energy that lay quietly below the surface of his pale skin. The ink on his professional certification in medicine was still wet, and he was genuinely interested in saving lives and found himself disinterested in the glory that becomes associated with doctors, no matter what planet they call home.

  If Steven had had a custom made bride fabricated, Barbara would have been it. She was adorably short with a curtain of blond hair that tickled her shoulders when she laughed, and her eyes were breathtakingly blue. Those eyes, which instantly drew attention from new acquaintances, didn’t just sit idly on her face; instead they sparkled like a sea of diamonds and radiated joy when her warm laughter filled a room. Her skin was soaked brown from the ancient sun that beat Broglio relentlessly, but instead of looking like dried leather, her skin seemed vivid amongst the monotony of the planet.

  So the day had come for this wonderful young couple, fresh from their teens, to set out on an intergalactic expedition. They met their families at the local space port and kissed them farewell as they hefted their bags onto one of the hovercarts that could be rented with a casual wave of a card and a single Pom disappearing from their account. The belongings that they piled onto the small platform were remarkably inconsiderable in number even though they were everything that the Haynes had acquired during their two decades of life. They pushed this sparse collection of belongings through the spaceport and through gate fifteen.

  An elderly man dressed in a crisp uniform welcomed them aboard while directing several teenage boys to put the Haynes’s luggage in the cargo hold. A startling beautiful girl awaited them inside the ship and showed them to their seats. As they settled into the gray, overstuffed seats Steven returned the broad smile of the stewardess and earned a hard pinch on his side from Barbara. He laughed aloud at her sudden display of jealousy and returned the pinch with a flurry of playful tickling and in less than a minute they both dissolved into hysterical laughter that bemused the seven other people that shared the craft with them.

  The emotions radiating from the Haynes were as hard to read as a textbook on Quantum Mechanics written in ancient Greek. Fear, excitement, sorrow, joy, and uncertainty fought viciously for dominance inside of both of them. They were leaving the only home they had ever known, yet it was a home they both despised. For them it would be analogous to a terrible tooth ache, when all you want is for the pain to stop but once it does you find your tongue probing, almost longingly, for the aching tooth out of habit.

  The wait for takeoff was brief and within ten minutes of their boarding the doors to the ship slid smoothly closed sealing them off from Broglio for the last time. The ship they were in was one of the largest available. It was capable of seating several hundred people comfortably but on that day it had less than three dozen occupants. Earth was not a place Broglians often voyaged to, and those who went seldom intended to live there. On that day the Haynes had become what they had intended, unique.

  The floor began to rumble softly as the sleek, black, chariot of escape awoke from its nap and prepared for the exodus from the gray world of Broglio. As the ship ascended from the concrete pad which had supported it Steven felt a vague since of nostalgia overtake him. He was leaving his home world after all, and through all of the complaints and jokes made at that gray world’s expense, he had always fostered an acute sense of love for all of the things he found so odious.

  He would have become lost in a dark maze of paradoxical brooding if Barbara hadn’t chosen that moment to lay her head on his shoulder and whisper softly into the crisp air of the shuttle,

  “Off we go, for better or for worse, but we will always have each other.”

  He turned his head and stared into those wondrously blue eyes. “Yes my dear, yes we will.”

  His thoughts changed course to more relevant questions that had meandered into his mind. One of the thoughts decided to mine his brain for attention behind his right eye and his left hand rose automatically to try and soothe the budding headache that he feared would follow. The pain increased as well it should; after all it was a very important point, one which should not have been overlooked as it had.

  How exactly were they supposed to pass as Earthlings?

  *

  It was a dark, quiet night, and once again Jacob Kenderson found himself sitting at his station. He hated his job with a passion. His detestable duty was to handle night shift in the control tower at the little airport that was situated outside of Pleasant Valley, Alabama.

  To understand why Jacob felt such animosity towards his job you must first understand the town. There are thousands, perhaps millions of towns like Pleasant Valley sprinkled across the country. It was the type of town that was never the backdrop of anything more exciting than a high school football game or a school play. Located in southern Alabama, it was unbearably hot in the summer and people only dreamed of having a mere chance of a white Christmas. None the less, like it’s name hinted, it was a exceptionally pleasant place to live and few people born there ever bothered to move away. The entire town was as amiable and tight knit as a flock of geese, while rumors spread faster than a kid could run once the bell rang in Pleasant Valley Elementary.

  Jokes managed to spread faster than any other gossip and when an airport had been built on the outskirts of the town three years ago, the residents of Pleasant Valley instantly adopted it as the new focal point for their humor. They would abuse the airport relentlessly on every occasion possible until even a professional comedian would be unable to find a new line to throw in. The most popular joke that made its way through almost every mouth in Pleasant Valley was to say that it was the only thing in town emptier than Old Coach Hinge’s head and they were quite right to say so.

  The airport was a miniature replica of the town, tiny and uneventful. On a busy day they would be lucky to see three planes touch their tires on the still shiny black runway. During the night shift the runway was as likely to see the wheels of a plane as the feet of a dinosaur and to Jacob, neither seemed likely. So he sat miserably in the tower with his mind wandering aimlessly in a world far away as instruments whirred their voices into the darkness.

  Jacob leaned back in his chair and sipped on his hot coffee, a grimace flowered onto his miserable face as he tasted the stale coffee. He began to mutter to himself about his favorite point of complaint, work, but before his complaints could simmer into a fully fledged rant a sudden beeping noise caught his attention.

  On the radar was a small blip that had not been there a second before. He stared transfixed at the screen, maybe it was a glitch. He had been trained to allow the radar three scans of the sky before assuming that the object was not a figment of his imagination or a minor glitch in the hardware. He waited impatiently for the small line to circle around again. The green line seemed to move more slowly just to mock his impatience but when it finally slid around the blip was still present, only it was now near the center of the pale green interface when it had been near the edge only moments before. It had moved an impossible distance between the sweeps of the radar and it was heading straight toward the sleepy little town and moving incredibly fast.

  The blood raced in Jacob’s veins, while beads of sweat began to break out all over his body, sweat that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room or the coffee. As much as he complained about it, Jacob loved the mundane routine of his life and this deviation from the status quo, however brief, was as unwelcome as a fly in a glass of milk. He ran to the radio at the far side of the small tower and fumbled with the microphone in his haste. Once he had finally straightened himself out enough to raise the microphone to his face he attempted to hail the plane. At least, he hoped it was a plane.

  “This is Pleasant Valley ai
rport please identify yourself,” he bellowed nervously into the radio.

  He held the receiver in his hand but all that resonated from it was the dull static of an empty radio frequency. He held the mike to his lips again and clicked the narrow button into place.

  “This is Pleasant Valley Airport please identify yourself,” He uttered into the plastic device

  Once again static floated throughout the room. He put the mike back in its cradle and walked back to the radar screen. The green display glowed up at him; it was completely devoid of any shape.

  He sat down into his chair with a heavy sigh. For once on his job he had a decision to consider that was more important than what to add to his coffee. He had seen a strange object, but he had also not followed regulation to see if it was there for three passes. He strained his ears willing the sounds of the world around him to come peacefully to them. The dull whir of machinery mixed with the gentle beeping of various other apparatus was all that was made available to his ears. The breath that left his mouth in a deep sigh almost felt debilitating. He was going to catch it from his boss no matter what. He reached towards the phone which glinted up at him and picked up his coffee which sat beside it.

  *

  It turned out that Steven didn’t have to worry about a thing. Tucked away in a cozy crater on the dark side of the moon was a quaint little outpost of entrepreneurs called the ERA; the Earth Relocation Agency. For a substantial fee of twenty thousand Comae, Steven’s entire life savings, they undertook all the work required to set up the Haynes life on Earth. They provided a background story for them, created fake documents and entered them into Earth’s computer records, and finally gave them the necessary supplies to move into the new house that they had picked out from a slide-show of pictures.

  So they found themselves on a large cargo shuttle with a dumpy old U-haul filled with a plethora of sundry items. A rusty old toaster sat atop a television that was even nastier than the old coffee pot that sat stained next to it. Slid up against the TV was a dusty old couch that reeked of cat pee and cheap perfume. On the couch sat a dresser covered in intricate carvings and radiating the sour tang of furniture polish. The drawers of the dresser were crammed full of crisp clothes that had only recently parted ways with their tags and were the only new items on board.