The Lost Queen

by Frewin Jones

  “That is so,” Eden agreed. “But it is not on the wind that I sense the peril. It lies closer to hand.” She frowned. “I reach for it and reach for it, but my fingers close on nothing.”

  “Because there is nothing there to grasp,” Zara said. “Come, what manner of welcome is this for our dear sister? I shall play a merry air and we shall speak no more of impending doom!”

  She began to sing:

  There is no way of ending

  no thought of descending

  this dream will continue forever

  for there is always the sun in the sky

  We dance in the evening

  to firelight gleaming

  this dream will continue forever

  for there is always the moon in the sky

  Though leaves are still falling

  and echoes are calling

  this dream will continue forever

  for there are always the stars in the sky.

  Sancha slipped her hand under Tania’s arm and drew her to sit on a couch. The other sisters gathered around, Hopie to one side, Cordelia to the other, and Sancha on a padded stool at her feet. Eden stood behind the couch, glancing every now and then out of the window as if she expected to see something sinister riding across the night sky.

  “You spoke of a disagreement with your mortal parents,” Sancha said to Tania. “Speak to us of your troubles, and by sharing, so diminish them.”

  “My mum and dad won’t let me see Edric,” Tania admitted. “They blame him for my disappearing—when I was here before, I mean.” She looked into Sancha’s intelligent eyes, comforted by the presence of her sisters. “I haven’t told them the truth about what happened but I’m beginning to think I should.”

  Hopie patted her knee. “I shall mix you a draught of myrtle and pennyroyal,” she said. “It will balance your humors and it will be an aid to clear thought.” She stood up and walked to a dark-wood cabinet lined with drawers.

  Zara joined them, taking Hopie’s place beside Tania.

  “Should I tell them the truth?” Tania asked.

  “Why would you do so?” said Sancha. “To ease your heart, or to give ease to theirs?”

  Tania frowned. She hadn’t thought about that. “To make things easier for me, I suppose,” she said at last. “At the moment they just think I’m some idiot girl with a crush on a boy at school. And so long as they think that, they’re going to assume I’ll get over it if they can keep me apart from Edric. But if I tell them the truth?” She shook her head. “That will change everything forever. There’s no going back once they know that stuff—even if they believe me in the first place.”

  Hopie stooped over her, holding out a brown pottery cup. “It will cause them pain, this knowledge?” she asked as Tania took the cup from her.

  “What, that I’m actually a princess of Faerie with a whole other family? I should think so,” Tania said.

  “Drink,” Hopie urged. “The potency of the infusion fades swiftly.”

  Tania looked into the cup. The liquid was swirling as if stirred by an invisible spoon. It was a deep, deep blue and smelled like cold, clear mountain air. She brought the cup to her lips. It felt as though she was drinking the night sky. Starlight seemed to flow down her throat, neither warm nor cold, sweet nor bitter, but as the vapors filled her head, she felt a quiet calm sweep through her.

  “Can you keep them ignorant of the truth forever?” Sancha asked.

  “I can try,” Tania said, handing back the cup to Hopie. “I don’t have the faintest idea how I’d even start to try and explain. ‘Hey, Mum, Dad, guess what? I have a second life in a parallel world—and that includes a totally different mum and dad and a big bunch of sisters. What do you think of that?’”

  “So once your quest for our mother is done and you come to live with us here, will you just depart without a word of explanation?” Cordelia asked.

  Tania was dumbfounded for a moment. It had never occurred to her that her sisters took it for granted that she’d want to live permanently in Faerie. “I haven’t really thought about it properly,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “’Twould be unfair to leave them so,” Zara said. “’Twere best to tell them the truth before you depart, however hard that may be for you to tell and for them to hear.”

  Sancha reached out and took Tania’s hands. “I think you maybe do not see fully into our dear sister’s heart, Zara,” she said gently. “It is not the telling of her mortal parents that confounds her, it is the choice she must make.”

  Tania felt Eden’s long slender hands rest on her shoulders. “Sancha sees more clearly than others in this,” Eden murmured, leaning over and touching her lips for a moment against the top of Tania’s head. “Our sweet sister has not returned to us as that same girl who disappeared all those centuries ago. Her spirit has dwelt in over sixty human forms since that day.”

  Tania tilted her head to look into her sister’s face. “That many?”

  “Aye, the human called Anita Palmer is the sixty-third reincarnation of your Faerie Spirit,” Eden said. “Threads and remnants of those past lives lie still within you—I sense them—and each new human form has left its imprint on your soul.”

  “What does that mean exactly?”

  “It means, my love, that you are now half Faerie and half human,” Eden said. “And in that dilemma lies the agony of your choice.”

  Zara grasped Tania’s arm with both hands. “No! No!” she cried. “Tania is our sister; she belongs with us.” She stared up at Eden and there was a wild, frightened look in her eyes. “You cannot think she would wish to remain in the Mortal World?”

  “That would be a grievous choice,” Sancha said. “There is an age-old rhyme, a foretelling by the blind poet Draco Sinister of Talebolion:

  When Faerie soul in mortal lies

  it burns too bright, and swift the mortal dies

  but if it dwells for sixteen years

  the choice is there to make—for joy or tears

  If Faerie turns to Faerie true

  then Faerie soul is born anew

  If Faerie lives ’neath mortal sky

  then Faerie soul shall fade and die.”

  A heavy silence followed Sancha’s words. Tania looked around at her sisters, seeing fear and anxiety and sympathy in their faces.

  “So I have to choose?” she said. “I have to make up my mind whether I want to be here or in the Mortal World?”

  “If I have interpreted the text correctly, then that is so,” Sancha said.

  “But my gift is the ability to move from one world to the other,” Tania pointed out. “What kind of sense does that make if I have to choose between them?”

  “You may travel from world to world,” Eden said. “But you can have only one home, and it must be the choice of your heart.”

  “How quickly do I have to decide?”

  “That I do not know,” Sancha admitted.

  “But it could be soon, could it not?” Cordelia said. “The perils of the Mortal World are legion, and if Tania dies there, she will not be reborn this time. Is that the true meaning behind the old rhyme?”

  Sancha nodded.

  “Fear not, sweetheart,” Eden said, leaning close over Tania again. “Anita Palmer has a strong spirit in her body, else that mortal life would already be done. Confusion reigns in your soul for now but mayhap time will show you your true path.”

  “Or maybe it won’t,” Tania said bleakly.

  “Would you really choose to live in the Mortal World?” Zara asked, her eyes wide.

  Tania looked at her in silence for a few moments. “I love my mum and dad,” she said.

  Zara cocked her head. “But they will die, Tania, they are but mortals. What then?”

  “I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.”

  “But—”

  “Peace, Zara,” said Hopie. “You would grind away the very mountains with your endless questions.”

  “Yes,” Tania
said, sitting up and forcing herself to smile at her sisters. “Let’s not talk about me anymore. It’s wearing me out.” She looked up at Eden. “Is there any news of Rathina?”

  “Silence surrounds her as a cloak of mist,” Eden said. “I can neither see her nor feel her presence anywhere in the Realm.”

  “Our father frets over her,” Cordelia said. “I have asked the animals for news, I have sent birds to scour the land, but they have seen nothing.”

  “The last news we have of her was when she took Maddalena and headed north as though the unicorns of Caer Liel were at her heels,” Hopie added. “But I for one have no wish to see her again. The King pities her but I do not. The evils she performed, the great harm she would have done to Tania, they were not the result of a broken mind. They were the acts of a cruel and heartless child!”

  “No, Hopie,” Eden said. “Do not meet dark deeds with dark thoughts. I, too, pity the poor child. Mayhap had her gift revealed itself, then her feet may have been set on a true course.”

  “That is true enough,” added Sancha. “She spoke little of it, but I know that she brooded betimes over the fact that her gift never manifested itself.”

  “She was but seventeen when the Great Twilight fell,” Hopie said. “My gift of healing did not come to me in a moment upon the dawn of my sixteenth year. Instead it grew as grows a tree or a garden, by slow degrees and nurtured always by diligence and effort. Rathina expected her gift to fall out of the sky into her lap.”

  “Like mine did, you mean?” Tania said.

  “Your gift was prophesied,” Eden said. “You are the seventh daughter spoken of old. As Hopie says, it was different for us. Our gifts grew slowly. Rathina’s gift would have shown itself, had she given it time and patience.”

  “Patience was never among her virtues,” Zara said. She glanced at Hopie. “And yet I pity her also, so lorn and forsaken out there in the wildlands.”

  Tania looked at Eden. “But if you can’t sense her, does that means she’s not in Faerie anymore? Where could she have gone?”

  “I know not,” Eden said. “What ship would bear her over the sea to another land? How would we not hear tell of it?” She shook her head. “She is veiled from me and I can do nothing to help her. She must return or not, in her own time and in her own way.”

  Tania looked at her watch. It showed one minute to ten, the hands frozen at the exact time that she had stepped out of her bedroom. “I have to get back,” she said. She looked at Cordelia. “I don’t suppose you have another stag on standby?”

  “We will find a smoother ride to take you back to the Brown Tower,” Sancha said.

  It was heart-wrenching for Tania to have to say good-bye so soon to her sisters and to leave Faerie after so short a time, but she felt an urgent need to get back home.

  Home? She still thought of the Mortal World as home.

  And yet when she was here, didn’t she also think of this as home?

  How would she ever be able to choose between her two worlds—between her two selves?

  Sancha flicked the reins and the pony cart came to a jingling halt among the aspen trees.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Tania said. “I loved the stag but it’s a bit rough on the backside.” She climbed down.

  “Your troubles swarm around your head like angry wasps, I know,” Sancha said. “But remember this, Tania: Even in the Mortal World, you are Princess Tania of the Royal House of Faerie.” Her dark eyes flashed. “Behave accordingly!”

  Tania smiled at her. “I’ll try,” she promised.

  “Farewell, beloved sister,” Sancha called as she touched the reins and set the pony trotting. “May angels of mercy defend you till we meet again.”

  “Thanks,” Tania called, waving as the cart jogged off through the trees.

  Her bedroom was dark and quiet. She listened for a moment, standing in the middle of the room where her side step had delivered her. She could faintly hear the sound of the television from downstairs. She glanced at the digital display on her bedside clock. It was a quarter past eleven. She had been in Faerie for a little over an hour.

  She opened her bedroom door, feeling curiously calm. She adjusted her wristwatch as she descended the stairs, spinning the hands to make up the time that had been lost in her other home.

  Sancha’s parting words rang in her ears.

  You are Princess Tania of the Royal House of Faerie. Behave accordingly!

  Sancha was right. Tania couldn’t pout and yell and stamp about the place and then expect to be treated like an adult. If she was going to make things right with her parents, then she would need to “behave accordingly.” And that meant sitting down with them and discussing their problems coolly and without anger.

  She opened the living room door.

  Her parents were in their usual places: Dad in his armchair, Mum on the couch with her legs curled under her. Their faces turned to her as she walked into the room. There was a kind of wary anticipation in their eyes.

  “Can we talk, please?” Tania asked.

  “Of course,” said her mother. Her father reached for the remote and muted the television.

  Tania took a deep breath. “I’m sorry for the way I behaved earlier,” she said. “I know you’re only thinking of me, and I do understand your concerns about—about Evan. I really do. And I know I’ve done things recently that mean I have to earn your trust again. I’m determined to show you that I can be trusted, and I’ll try my utmost never to hurt you again. But there’s something you really need to understand. Evan means a lot to me, and he isn’t to blame for anything I’ve done.”

  “I don’t think—” her mother began.

  “Mary! Let her finish,” her father said.

  “I don’t want to be separated from Evan over the holidays,” Tania said. “I’d like you to change your minds about our seeing each other. He cares about me, and you’re punishing him for something he didn’t do. Let me start earning back your trust. Trust me to be with Evan—and trust him to be with me.” There was an odd silence once she had finished. She gave a weak smile and spread her hands. “That’s it,” she said. “I’m done.”

  Her mother looked piercingly at her. “He means that much to you?”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “First love is always very intense,” her mother said. “But it rarely lasts. You realize that?”

  Tania nodded. She wanted to tell her parents that the love between her and Edric was special—unbreakable—but she didn’t. In millions of homes all over the world she knew that millions of teenagers were telling millions of parents that their love was special—and millions of times they were wrong. How could she prove to her parents that the bond between her and Edric really was exceptional, without telling them how and why?

  “If we’re going to treat you as an adult, then you must act like one,” her mother continued. “You’re still under curfew, and we want you to do other things as well as seeing Evan. Balance your life out; don’t spend all your time with him. See other people. Do other things.”

  “And work hard at your summer assignments for school,” added her father.

  “I’ll do all those things,” Tania promised. “I’ll do everything you want. Does that mean I can see him?”

  “I suppose it does,” her mother said. “But not today! The curfew stands.”

  “Thank you! Thank you so much!” Tania bounded up the stairs, eager to phone Edric with the good news. No more having to sneak around behind her parents’ backs. No more having to lie about where she would be, who she was with.

  She ran into her room.

  It was like running into an exploding bomb.

  A wall of burning, pitch-black force smashed into her—as powerful as a gigantic punching fist—lifting her off her feet and sending her flying backward through the air.

  She gasped, the breath knocked out of her as she came crashing to the carpet. The blackness surged over her like an avalanche, crushing her into the floor, blinding her, clogg
ing her ears and nose and mouth, sending out tendrils of amber light to fry her eyes and sear her mind.

  And then she had the sensation of falling—falling—falling through darkness into a bottomless black pit.

  And then…nothing.

  X

  Tania woke up feeling strangely clear-headed. She wondered why she was lying flat on her back on her bedroom carpet. The door was open and although the room was unlit, a wedge of light was streaming in from the landing. She sat up and blinked around her. What was she doing on the floor? And what was that horrible taste in her mouth?

  It was like…like rusty iron. Yuck!

  She got up. Her watch showed eleven twenty-five. It had been a quarter past eleven when she had stepped back from Faerie. She had gone down to speak with her parents, and then she had come running up here to call Edric with the good news.

  And then she had woken up on the floor….

  Strange. She must have fainted.

  She made a face. The taste of iron was still in her mouth. She switched the light on and closed her door. She found a pack of mints in the front pouch of her shoulder bag. Sucking one, she took out her phone and went over to the window. She gazed out at the dull gray-blue of the cloudy night sky as she speed-dialed Edric’s number.

  By the time she heard his voice the mint had completely overpowered the taste of iron in her mouth.

  It was the following morning.

  The rain flailed down the long curve of George Street, bouncing high off the pavements, gathering in dancing and spitting puddles, swirling in the gargling gutters. It ricocheted off cars and vans and umbrellas, sending pedestrians running for cover in shop doorways.

  Tania wasn’t bothered by the downpour. She and Edric ran hand-in-hand down the pavement, kicking up curved fins of rainwater as they went.

  “Rain all you like!” she shouted. “Nothing’s going to upset me today!”

  “You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout!” Edric howled into the sky, “Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks…That make ingrateful man!”