by Kami Bryant
Beau climbed up the ropes to the warship deck and walked up to Juniper. “Stop!” he shouted. “Please, stop!” Juniper could hear Emberlyn still screaming. One of Juniper’s tentacles grew larger and larger and wrapped around Em’s screaming form. A portal opened behind the screaming Emberlyn.
“Juniper!!! Please!!” shouted Beau. Another tentacle wrapped around Beau’s legs and torso. The first tentacle holding Emberlyn threw her screaming into the open portal and then Beau after her. He never stopped shouting for her to stop as he flew through the portal opening and then the portal snapped closed.
Juniper opened a portal to Traetan and those standing on the battlefield frozen in terror began running through the portal. Juniper kept swallowing ogre after ogre. Some of the ogres were still wearing their obsidian shard glamour, others showing their true green and warted forms.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Emberlyn screamed as the memories flowed through her mind one after another. She remembered when she had first met Beau. She remembered when her mother died and the pain she went through. She wrapped herself in her arms, in a tight fetal position.
She saw herself as a child holding her mother’s hand as they walked down the halls of the castle. She remembered smiling up at her beautiful mother as the queen looked down on her. She remembered being wrapped in her mother’s warm arms as she held her closely to her chest. She remembered her mother’s smell. She could hear her mother’s voice singing to her.
A tiny turned up nose.
Two cheeks just like a rose.
So sweet from head to toe
That little girl of mine.
She’s all the world to me.
She climbs upon my knee.
To me she’ll always be
That little girl of mine.
Two eyes that shine so bright
Two lips to kiss good night
Two arms to hold me tight
That little girl of mine
No one will know, ever know, ever know
Just what her coming has meant
Because I love her so,
She’s something Heaven has sent.
She’s all the world to me.
To me she’ll always be
That little girl of mine
Emberlyn screamed with the pain that she was feeling and then she heard Juniper speak in her head, “You have to face it. Feel your pain and feel your love also. Remember all the happy times. You can’t push it away or ignore it. Work through it and accept it.”
Emberlyn shook her head back and forth. It was too much. She needed her mother at her side. She couldn’t go on without her. “You can, and you will,” answered Juniper’s voice ringing in her head. “She would want you to be happy. She wouldn’t want to see you in so much pain. Beau loves you. He needs you.”
Emberlyn sat up on her heels and saw Juniper swallowing Mormorant whole and Beau fighting his way to monster that Juniper had become. Emberlyn sat frozen in her grief. Mormorant was the one who had taken her mother from her. Mormorant was the one who had taken Beau from her.
Then Emberlyn thought of all the cruelties that she had wrought on her people and she started crying again with shame. ‘I don’t deserve to be happy!’ she thought to herself. ‘I don’t deserve love. I am a horrible person.’
“But you’ve changed,” said Juniper’s voice. “Don’t make all that has happened, all the sacrifices all the pain worthless. I gave my happy life to change into a monster for Beau so that he could make his way to you.”
“I don’t deserve him,” said Emberlyn aloud. “I am the monster, not you!”
“Maybe you don’t,” said Juniper’s voice. “But it doesn’t matter. He loves you. Now, stop fucking around and change your fucking self so that you do deserve his love.”
And with that a black tentacle wrapped itself around Emberlyn’s body and legs. Emberlyn didn’t struggle. She allowed the shadowy tentacle to lift her off the ground. Then a golden light glowed behind her and Emberlyn saw the portal opening. Emberlyn closed her eyes as she floated through the portal and felt herself tossed into the air. Then Emberlyn landed with a pfump on a huge feather bed. Emberlyn picked herself off of the bed and then Beau fell through the portal and landed beside her on the bed screaming.
“JUNIPER!!!! JUNIPER!!!” screamed Beau and the tears continued to flow down Em’s cheeks.
EPILOGUE
Beau had been sitting on the warm grass in front of the cabin for the last three days. He stared into the setting sun as it went down behind the horizon.
Emberlyn came out of the cabin and stood behind him. “Beau, will you please come inside?”
“No,” he answered.
“At least eat something. There is plenty of food in the cupboards.” Emberlyn sat behind him on the grass and looked out at the ocean. “I don’t think she is coming back,” whispered Emberlyn.
“She will,” said Beau sadly. “She will come back.”
Emberlyn sighed and pulled out a piece of paper from the pocket in the pants that she wore. “I found a note addressed to you.” Beau sat quietly looking out at the horizon. “Do you want to see it?” asked Em handing the note to him. He ignored it and didn’t move. “Beau. I know you are in pain. Please, don’t shut me out,” she whispered. When Beau said nothing, Emberlyn sighed and she smoothed out the paper on her leg and then started reading,
Dear Beau,
I’m sorry that I couldn’t leave with you. This world has lots of food and other resources for you and Em. The indigenous people are kind and gentle. I thought maybe you would like this cliff that looks out on the ocean. The weather there is warm and moderate. There are fish in the sea that are good to eat and there are crops of vegetables and fruit.
I want you and Em to live your lives. I love you very much. I want you to be safe and I feel that the only way to be sure of that is that I stay behind and eliminate Mormorant. I know that you didn’t want me to do this. I know that you are worried how this will change me, and I agree with you. That is another reason that I can’t stay with you. I have to keep you safe.
Goodbye, My Love
Your Juniper
Beau ducked his head to his knees and started to cry into his hands. Emberlyn reached over and wrapped her arms around him and he turned to her, burying his face into her chest. Emberlyn held him as he cried as the sun set behind the horizon.
NOT THE END
PART TWO
VENTRICLES
JUNIPER
CHAPTER ONE
I was born in Traetan to my parents, Drake and Indigo Mapleshadow. Father was strict, and Mother was very gentle. We lived in our tiny stone and thatched roof house in a clearing in Traetan. My life was pretty ordinary and boring until I met Beau.
A typical day for me was to go out and gather berries and insects for dinner and bring them back to Mother, who would prepare that day’s meal. Father would go out to set and check the Gravemorph traps. Then that all changed when the demon Braxen Xarraz and Myrinth and Aminth started to organize. Then Father and Mother would have whispered conversations that would abruptly end as soon as I walked into the room.
“Mother?” I began one day, trying to understand. “What is happening?”
“I am sorry, my dear Juniper,” said Mother. “But it is time to begin your training.”
“Training for what, Mother?”
“For war,” she answered. She then led me out of our little stone home and into the clearing. She handed me a sharp hatchet. “First we hunt Gravemorphs. I want you to learn how to throw a hatchet.”
“But, Mother….” I began.
“Stop,” said Mother grabbing my jaw tightly in her hand. That was the first time that I ever found myself afraid of my mother. She pulled me closer to her, looked me in the eye and said, “This is war and we are part of the resistance and you need to learn to fight. We will begin with hatchet throwing and then we will continue with archery.”
“Why?”
“Are you not listening?
This is war!!”
“But why teach me to fight? Where is Father?”
“Your father is weak; he doesn’t know anything. He thinks that if he calmly goes on with life and bury his head in the sand, nothing will come for us. We are the last of the dragonfly fairies!! Aminth and Myrinth have wiped out our race. They have rounded us up and eaten us!!!” I gasped in terror at that. “Do you want to be eaten?!!” she screamed at me.
“No, Mother,” I whispered in terror. “No.”
“Then you will learn how to fight. Come! We hunt Gravemorphs.”
Gravemorphs are nasty rat-like creatures with three rows of razor-sharp teeth and clawed little five-fingered hands. I must have thrown that hatchet a hundred times that day, until my shoulder screamed in anger and my palms bled and not once did I hit a Gravemorph. Days became weeks and weeks became months. My bleeding blistered palms started to heal. And my shoulder muscles grew. And finally, I hit a Gravemorph. I only wounded the thing that day cutting off its tail with the throw and it just scurried away bleeding from its wound, screeching its nail on a chalkboard screech.
“Finally,” said Mother. During this training Father would sit in the living area of our little home. He never came with us to train. He made his displeasure known quite frequently and he and Mother fought violently every day. Mother and Father typically slept in their enormous bed and I slept on the trundle bed on the floor but during those months, Father always slept on the couch by the cooking kiln.
I tried to talk to him, but Mother would just slap me across the face and drag me away from him. “He is a coward!” she insisted. “Don’t be like him.” When I failed Mother during my training she would always say, “Don’t be weak like your father. Don’t be like your coward father.”
The day Father disappeared, was the day that I learned to shoot a Gravemorph straight in the eye with my bow and I could decapitate one with one throw of my hatchet. Father left that morning and still hadn’t returned that night.
“Has Father been eaten?” I asked my mother that night.
“Probably,” she answered. “Probably.”
“What can we do?” I asked her.
“You will stay here and continue your training. I will go to Aminth and Myrinth’s castle and find him.”
“I want to come with you, please?” I begged
“No,” she said. And the next night she pulled out a box from somewhere deep in the back of the wardrobe and pulled out a gleaming sword and brass armor. And then she left, and I never saw my parents again. I never gave up hope that they were still alive. But deep down, I knew that they were dead and that I was an orphan. It was a scary time for me. I had never been alone before. I had no one. No friends and no family. And then Beau showed up and for the first time in so many, many years, I had a family again.
I found him in a puddle of Bonelich secretions. He was bloody and bruised and manacled with iron chains. He was flopping around in the puddle of snot and who knows what else, fighting with the chains.
“You do know that you are sitting in the excretions of a Bonelich?” I said.
“Of course, I am,” he said as he struggled with the iron manacles.
“Do you know from what part of a Bonelich’s body the excretions come from?” I asked him.
I had never seen a human before. He was so amazingly tall. His hair was golden, and his eyes were blue. And I fell in love with him right then and there. I loved our time together and I was so jealous of Queen Emberlyn but I wanted him to be happy. It was an obsession. And that is why I left him in my home and went after Dhuklai. She wasn’t too hard to find, that human/demon hybrid daughter of Braxen Xarraz. I found her drunk at a cantina whining about her father. She didn’t even see me when I sat down beside her on the bench. When she finally acknowledged me, she blinked at me confusedly.
“Do you remember me?” I asked her.
“Should I?” she asked as she emptied the tankard of ale sitting in front of her.
“My human friend and I brought you the Arachnite egg, after retrieving it from a dragon.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” she slurred. “The dragonfly fairy.”
“What did you do with the Arachnite egg?”
“I was going to swallow it,” she answered.
“Why?” I asked her in shock. “Why would you do that?”
“So, I can become powerful of course, so then my father will be proud of me. Imagine the power that I would possess as an Arachnite symbiotic demon/human hybrid? Can you imagine?”
“Not really, no. I came here to ask you how to open a portal to Mirovia like your father does.”
“A symbiotic Arachnite could absorb knowledge and power from all that they eat, like father sucks out the life force to increase his magical power, imagine if I could possess others’ abilities?”
“Who?”
“The mage council for one. Really anyone,” she said resting her head on the table.
“Why haven’t you, then?” I asked her.
“Because I am scared.”
I sat with her for an hour until she passed out and then it was easy to retrieve the Arachnite egg from her knapsack. I then returned to Beau and I kept the egg in a little box, shoved in the back of my wardrobe. I was scared too. What would I be if I was an Arachnite Symbiote, dragonfly fairy hybrid? What would that even be?
But then the day came when I swallowed it and I found Dhuklai once again drunk at a cantina. And I swallowed her and absorbed all her memories of her father. Then I went to the mage council and swallowed all four of them and absorbed their powers and opened the portal to Mirovia for Beau. He was terrified when I told him what I had done and what I had become. It was terrifying for me too, but I also loved the power. It was very addicting. The little dragonfly fairy had become something much different.
When I found that world that I threw Beau and Emberlyn in, I had all intention of leaving them there and forgetting all about them, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop loving Beau, no matter how hard I tried. I would travel there from time to time watch them. I would watch their love making and I watched as Emberlyn’s belly started to swell with Beau’s child and that’s when I made my presence known. Emberlyn was singing a gentle lullaby to her round belly.
A tiny turned up nose.
Two cheeks just like a rose.
So sweet from head to toe
That little girl of mine.
“What if Beau’s child is a boy?” I asked her.
Emberlyn looked up and around the room, alerted by my voice ringing in her head. “Juniper?” she asked.
“What if the child is a boy child?” I asked her again.
“What is happening?” she asked me. “Where are you? Beau hasn’t been the same since you left us here. He has been so worried about you. Where are you?” she asked again.
“I am in Mirovia, sitting in your old throne room.”
“You are ruling over Mirovia now?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said in her head. “I am.”
“And Traetan?”
“Yes, I am ruling over them too. I opened a portal between the two worlds and left it open. All the people are mingling, and I rule over them all.”
“Would you please talk to Beau? He misses you so much.”
“Are you taking good enough care of yourself and Beau’s offspring?” asked Juniper.
“Of course, I am,” she answered.
“Maybe, I should send in an automaton to check on you,” I said to her.
“Juniper, you should either come here and speak with Beau or bring us over there.”
“That might be a good idea,” I said to her. I opened a portal into her room and sent one of my long black tentacles through it and wrapped it around her midsection. I was very gentle not to damage the child.
“JUNIPER!!!” screamed Emberlyn as I pulled her gently through the portal. “What are you doing?” I placed her back in to her old queen’s chambers and sent an automaton up to care for her. I locked her doors so that she
couldn’t get out and only opened them to let the automatons in and out. Then I waited and kept an eye on Beau. He was really upset when he came back from fishing in the ocean and couldn’t find the pregnant Emberlyn anywhere. He screamed for her and searched the entire cliff where their home sat. Then he went back down to the ocean shore and searched for her there. It took him a week of screaming and searching for her before he figured it out.
“Juniper?” he called out. I watched him as the uncertainty washed over him and then he called out again with more confidence, “Juniper!! Did you take Emberlyn?”
“Yes,” I answered in Beau’s head.
Beau’s breath whooshed out with his relief. “Juniper, thank God. I need to see Emberlyn now and make sure she is okay.”
“She is fine,” I answered.
“Juniper, please,” he said. “I need to see her. I need to see you too. I have been so worried. How are you?” he asked sitting on the bed. “Are you okay? Please. I need to see you and check on Emberlyn.”
“You don’t care about me,” I growled. “You only care about Emberlyn and your spawn.”
“No, Juniper!” he said jumping to his feet. “I have been so worried about you. Why would you send us here without a single word?”
“I thought that I could stay away but I couldn’t,” I whispered and then I opened up a portal and he walked through appearing at the foot of the dais. He looked up at me sitting on the Mirovian throne.
He grinned his crooked grin as he looked up at me. “It has been six months since I have seen you, Juniper!” and then he ran up the stairs and swung me up in his arms. “How are you?” he asked me as I breathed in his scent and soaked up the warmth of his body. And then he ruined it all by asking, “Where is Em? I need to see her.”