Fairy Queens: Books 5-7

by Amber Argyle

  “I’ve had worse,” he said lightly. “Listen, Elly, I need to get out of here.” She opened her mouth to tell him that was impossible—he was still shivering violently and hurt—when the palace bells pealed. “What’s that?” he asked in alarm.

  She glanced toward the tunnel. Her mother and her court had been spotted. It was a day Elice had both longed for and dreaded since Ilyenna had left six months ago, but now . . . Elice passed a hand over her mouth, studying Adar. If her mother found him, he’d be dead and Elice would wish she was. Why did his ship have to come today of all days? Why couldn’t he have shown up a week ago?

  She could turn him over to her mother. Elice would be punished, but it would be bearable. Yet at the thought of the life draining from this man’s—Adar’s—eyes, she shuddered. “You have to stay here, and you have to stay quiet.” She pushed to her feet, hurried past him, and put more wood for the fire within his reach.

  She snatched an armful of sealskins from the floor and piled them on top of him, wondering if it would be enough to protect him from the cold. She wasn’t sure, but it was the best she could do. “The Winter Queen is coming. She will kill you if she finds you here. And she may kill me if she finds out I helped you.”

  He took a sharp breath. “Then this is the Winter Palace?”

  “How could you not know?” Surely mortals knew never to trespass this deep into her mother’s queendom.

  “It’s known that the palace is somewhere in Svassheim. But not even the Svass know where.”

  Elice knew of the Svass people, of course. Though she had never seen them, her mother insisted she speak the language of the neighboring highmen, who resided firmly inside the elastic border of the Winter Queendom.

  Adar started to sit up again. “I have to go. There’s another ship out there. I have to warn them.”

  Elice held him down. It was surprisingly easy, considering his size. “You go out there now and you’re dead. You’re safest here. They don’t come into this cave—the fairies hate being trapped underground almost as much as they hate smoke.” Her mother included. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Try to rest.”

  She started to stand, but Adar grabbed her arm. “Are you their servant?”

  Elice hesitated. “I am the queen’s ward,” she lied. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  After donning a crumpled overdress from a corner of the floor, she buckled her clan belt around her waist, grabbed one of her old capes, and swung it around her shoulders. All her finery had been left in her rooms in the palace, and there was no time to retrieve them now.

  She hurried, running so no one would get annoyed enough to come looking for her and discover her new patient. She cleared the mouth of the cave and skidded to a stop. Her mother and grandfather stood at the edge of the ice forest a couple dozen steps away, her mother’s arms crossed impatiently. Hundreds of thousands of fairies fluttered at her back.

  Trying to compose herself, Elice continued at a statelier pace. At first glance, mother and daughter looked very similar—both had black hair and fair skin. But where Ilyenna’s eyes were a deep brown, Elice’s were hazel. She had her father’s fuller bottom lip and more rounded nose, too.

  “See, Ilyenna,” her grandfather said. “I told you she’d be along.” His hooded eyes twinkled as he leaned on his cane, his white beard trailing nearly to his waist. His bald scalp shone in the sun. He wore clansmen clothing—a belted overshirt and undershirt, simple trousers, and boots.

  Elice stopped just before her mother and bowed. Ilyenna reached out to draw in the cold from her daughter’s frozen hair. It flopped against her back, and her underdress was damp and sagging again. “Why are you not properly dressed? Where is your headdress?” Before Elice could answer, her mother sniffed. “You reek of smoke.”

  Elice’s shoulders sagged. “I was trying to dry my hair.”

  “You can turn the water to snow and shake it out easily enough,” her mother said, then did just that.

  Feeling the sting from her mother’s fingernails, Elice dropped her gaze to her bare feet. “I like the warmth. And snow never works as well as the fire.”

  Her mother pressed her full lips into a thin line. “Did you forget that today was the beginning of Winter’s End?”

  On the first day of Winter’s End, they exchanged gifts and shared a special breakfast together before the formal ceremony with the fairies. Then followed two weeks of gifts—often simple things like stories and homemade presents given sometime throughout the day. On the third day, Elice’s mother always provided them a feast with the fruits of summer.

  And before it had even started, Elice had shown up in her swimming underdress and thrown the entire routine behind schedule. “No, Mother,” she said finally.

  Ilyenna took a deep breath and held it, as if calling upon her patience. “Don’t let it happen again.” She motioned to one of the fairies. “On this, the first day of Winter’s End, I gift my father a book of Luathan history. And you, my daughter” —the fairies came forward, carrying a single bunch of frozen flowers between them— “I bring you lilac flowers.”

  Elice took the bouquet. They were clusters of star-shaped flowers in a cone form. It was hard to tell with the dusting of frost, but she thought they might be a pale purple. She felt herself softening a fraction. “Thank you, Mother.”

  Otec gave his daughter a carving of a frog with beady eyes. Then he said, “Elice, I’ll need your to help to fetch your gift from my rooms.”

  She forced a smile. “My gift for both of you is on the other side of the ice forest.” Without another word, her mother pivoted on her heel and passed under the icy branches.

  “Has the war gone that badly?” Elice softly asked her grandfather.

  Otec’s gaze flicked to the fairies with their cold, unfeeling eyes. “We’ll discuss it later.”

  “We’re behind schedule as is,” her mother’s disembodied voice called back to them.

  Elice took a deep breath, opening her connection to winter, though not to use it. She just wanted the comfort her magic gave her. She slipped her arm through her grandfather’s to help him keep his balance and stepped into her ice forest. This section of the forest held new trees and creations she’d made since her mother left for the battle front. Ilyenna barely glanced at them as she walked purposefully through the forest.

  Elice touched each one as they passed—a curling tree with clear-as-glass branches that cradled perfectly formed, opaque air bubbles instead of leaves. An enormous tree with glass drops dripping from its boughs instead of leaves.

  “This one is rather . . . unusual,” her mother said dryly. “Have you not studied the books I bring for you? The leaves are not in the shapes of raindrops.”

  Elice’s shoulders tightened. “Grandfather told me a story of sitting under a tree long after the rain had stopped, yet the drops continued to plop on his head.” It was one of the stories that filled her during the vast dark of midwinter, when the sun and its light would completely disappear for nearly six months, leaving them in perpetual night. “Besides, this one isn’t your gift.”

  Her mother made a noncommittal sound in her throat. She paused before the likeness of a deer. It was all angles, from the sweeping antlers to the pointed nose and feet. “I’m certain I gave you a book about deer, too.”

  Elice stared at the creation that had taken her days to get right. She remembered the way she’d felt as she’d formed it—like she was all sharp angles. “Grandfather told me that animals adapt to their environment. I thought, what if a deer could actually survive here? What would it look like?”

  Her grandfather reached out with a liver-spotted hand to touch one of the razor-sharp antlers. “I think it would look exactly like this.” He hadn’t seen this one before—hadn’t seen most of what Elice had made over the long winter. It was a long walk from the palace, and he had come out less and less over the last year.

  “I shall have more books brought in for you instead of flowers,” Elice’s mothe
r said. “That way, perhaps, you will understand the subject better.” She snapped her fingers, and one of her fairies flew off toward the palace to do her queen’s bidding.

  Elice balled her hands into fists. “My gift is this way,” she said to her grandfather, ignoring her mother altogether. She strode through the forest, then climbed the steep glacier at the tip of the peninsula and winding up to where the pinnacle jutted out over the sea. There, standing alone was a solitary tree, this too was all sharp angles. She’d tinted the trunk black. The twigs hung like long streamers with crystal-clear prisms instead of leaves tinkling in the wind. A weeping willow. She’d liked the name. Though it wept, its leaves trailing like frozen tears down its branches, it was beautiful.

  Her mother only sighed at the gift.

  “My queen,” said an ice fairy with clear-as-glass wings. “Lowl wishes to meet with you before her address. She said it is of vital importance.” Lowl was her mother’s general. Elice hated her.

  Her mother arched her back. Purple and green wings, the color and shape of an aurora, burst from her shoulders and stretched to fill the horizon. “Come, Father, we’re already behind schedule.” She pumped her wings and shot into the sky, the fairies trailing after her.

  Elice watched her go. She was glad of it. Glad to be alone with her grandfather. Guilt immediately followed. But anger shoved that guilt aside.

  Her grandfather rested a hand on her shoulder. “She’s your mother and she loves you. She just doesn’t see the world the same way.” Elice folded her arms over her chest and looked out across the sea without actually seeing anything. Her grandfather sighed and pulled her around to face him. “Where Ilyenna sees facts, you see possibilities. Someday she will understand that your way of seeing the world is a gift and not a burden.”

  The bells at the palace pealed again. The Winter’s End ceremony would begin shortly. Elice gritted her teeth as she watched her mother disappear into the open-air throne room without a backward glance, the details of her lost to the distance. “Lowl gives that speech every year. And it’s always the same. Every year, we get closer to winning. But we never really do. I hate it.”

  “Elice,” her grandfather softly reprimanded. She dropped her head. He brushed the crook of his gnarled finger down her cheek and then stepped into the net her mother had left behind—only one net, not two. It took a few thousand fairies to carry her grandfather, and they were all waiting, their movements erratic with their impatience. “You best hurry. The ceremony starts soon and your mother hates it when you’re late.”

  Elice debated telling him that her gift wasn’t finished yet. When the light hit the tree . . . but she turned away instead. “You go. I’ll be along later.” He hesitated, and she knew he was deliberating whether or not to push the issue. But then he nodded to the fairies, who lifted him up and toward the palace.

  Elice simply waited. She’d started this project the year before, marking exactly where the light crossed the pinnacle of the glacier and hit the spot where she stood. Alone, she watched the tree as the sun crept into view, bathing the tree with a rosy light. One by one, each of the thousands of prisms inside the tree lit up in smoky sparks, shooting fractured light all across the newly fallen frost, which she’d laid down last night. It glittered like the dusting of a thousand diamonds.

  Elice slipped into her cave and found Adar asleep under a pile of sealskins next to the fire, snoring loudly. The tincture—laced with a bit of opium—had worked. She tossed a few more logs on the fire and checked on Picca, running her hand down the back of her head as the pup arched into the touch. The octopus wouldn’t be enough; Elice would soon have to find more food for the seal. At least she was finally starting to fill out. The seals in the wild seemed to get thinner every year.

  With a sigh, Elice crossed to the opposite side of the cave to stand before an ice relief that looked like a great tree with snowflake-shaped leaves. She took hold of one of the boughs and pulled. The hidden door swung inward, revealing a narrow staircase she’d created herself from densely packed snow. She slipped through the door and shut it soundlessly behind her. Already behind schedule, she rushed up the stairs. At the top, she paused to glance out the glass peephole before opening a door exactly like the one at the bottom of the stairs. It swung open soundlessly, and she entered her room on the third floor of the palace.

  Her feet shushed softly across the clear ice floor, dusted with just enough snow to give traction. Frozen beneath the perfectly clear ice were layers of an elaborate snow fractal that gave the room a feeling of depth and delicate texture. The walls were made of opaque ice in grand arches with lacy pinnacles. Between these arches were more high reliefs, some more primitive than others, but Elice’s grandfather had made her promise to leave a few of her more childish efforts. She yearned to fill them with the colors that hollowed her with longing, but all the skill in the world couldn’t make her materials into something they were not.

  She had made and remade the walls over the years, trying to match the picture in her head. High mountains capped by glaciers and rimmed by a thick texture of conifers took up three walls. The reliefs opposite Elice’s bed showed steep hills full of wavering grass. If you looked closely, you could see a man swinging a sickle in one. In another was a flock of sheep, the animals herded by a young man—she’d added that more because of her grandfather’s stories than to try to match the picture in her head.

  And there, in the center relief, was a distant village, the walls made of round river stones, the roofs of split shingles. It was the village her grandfather and mother had grown up in—Shyleholm. Her grandfather had described it in perfect detail so many times that Elice swore she could taste the fresh-cut hay, could feel the sunshine, heavy and golden and filled to the brim with laughter. In her imagination she was always running toward something. But she never reached it.

  She shook herself. Now was not the time for silly fantasies. She shut the door behind her and strode to a long table filled with vases of flowers. Elice quickly formed another vase and settled the frozen flowers inside. She hurried to her trunk and pulled out her nicest underdress and her overdress trimmed in white fur and embroidered with silver thread. She pulled on the underdress and then the overdress, which was shaped like a long thin blanket with a hole for her head. She secured it with the clan belt her mother had made for her years before, stitching the story that was Elice’s life in the knots of the belt and adding a hidden leather pocket for her clan knife.

  Elice felt the sensation of someone watching her. A few moments later, a tiny knock sounded at the door. She started guiltily, remembering the man in her cave, and the rules she was breaking by helping him. “Come in.”

  Set inside the door, a small fairy door opened. Chriel flew into the room. “Oh, I’m glad it’s you,” Elice said in relief. Chriel was a rabbit fairy, her furry wings pure white. She had bulbous pink eyes and a round face. Though all fairies were immortal, Chriel had an unusual aura of age and wisdom.

  She smiled—a completely foreign expression for fairies, but Chriel had long ago figured out that it put humans at ease. The fairy landed on Elice’s shoulder and settled down, her soft wings brushing Elice’s cheek. “The books your mother brought are stacked in the library.”

  Chriel was the keeper of the histories. She’d insisted that Elice have books—that she learn to read and write and speak many of the languages of the world. Chriel had taught her everything herself. Such interest in a human, and a child at that, was unheard of among the fairies. Elice didn’t dare bring attention to the oddity by questioning it. Chriel was, after all, the closest thing she had to a friend.

  The fairy left her perch on silent wings. Elice bent down to slip on her soft leather boots, then stood over a short table topped with a silver bowl. With one touch, she melted the water. Then she glanced at her reflection—her wavy hair was a mess of salty tangles. She doggedly attacked it with her gold comb but gave up halfway through and wove it into a messy braid, which she tied off with a
lime-green ribbon Chriel handed her.

  “Anything special this year?” Elice asked, holding her breath.

  Chriel hovered in front of her. “The usual. Books on plants and animals. Another on the Balance.” She grinned a little, revealing pointed rodent teeth. “And an atlas.”

  Elice nearly went cross-eyed trying to focus on the too-close fairy. “Really? Oh, Chriel, you did it! You convinced her!” Elice would finally, finally know what the world looked like.

  Chriel landed on Elice’s head. “Actually you did it, by offering to make a dimensional replica of the world in the floor of the throne room.”

  Elice wanted to run straight to the library and memorize the atlas, lose herself in the world she would never see. “Maybe they won’t notice if I don’t come to the Winter’s End ceremony this year.”

  Chriel didn’t answer, and Elice glanced into her reflection. The fairy stared out the window, her wings stiff, her expression almost . . . sad? Fairies were never sad. Angry, gleeful, cruel, but never sad. “Chriel? What’s wrong?”

  “Can you feel it?” the fairy whispered, meeting Elice’s gaze in the water’s reflection. “The magic teeters on the precipice of change.”

  Frowning, Elice opened herself to winter, as she had done a thousand times before. The power was there, raging as always. But it did seem a little off, like too-thin ice beneath her feet. She cocked her head to the side questioningly.

  Chriel’s wings quivered. “The ice is already melting, breaking up. It shouldn’t do that for another month, at least. The snow isn’t as deep. The bears, the seals, the birds—they suffer for it.”

  Elice had been treating sick animals all her life. It was impossible to miss that there were fewer of them. More died every year; Picca was proof of that. “Mother says it’s because of the Summer Queen’s attacks.”