"See? You've never had the time of day for any of the young men," Rozlin said. "But talk about your Nixie, and you glow. You loved those magic lands, and the Nixie was very kind to you, wasn't she?"
"She was, yes, but... I've only ever wanted to be here. With my family," Ida protested. "That's all I've ever wanted. I missed you all so much."
"Oh, my Ida." Rozlin shook her head, a soft smile on her lips. She cupped Ida's cheek with her own work-rough hand. "Everyone grows up someday. You can make your own family, and you can always come back to visit, can't you?"
Ida could only shake her head in answer, and thankfully Rozlin let the subject drop.
Winter deepened, cold and quiet, with the nights long and the sun low and faint on the horizon. Ida was glad of her fine wool cloak to keep her warm. She was never chilled when she wore it, no matter how cold it was. It must be some spell of Elfreda's, worked into the fabric. Even after the coldest nights, the well remained clear of ice. There was never the faintest film to break through when Ida carried the water for the day. Ida could not help but wonder if that was Elfreda's power, too, looking after her.
Ida hoped that Elfreda was doing well. That she, also, could rest in the winter and wouldn't be as busy as she had been during the summer. She hoped that River Wolf and Nan were being cared for—but they had done fine before Ida fell down into Elfreda's lands. They would be doing fine now, of course. Just as Ida was, at home where she belonged.
On one particularly bitter cold midwinter morning, Ida drew the buckets up from the well only to find that the water in them was murky. It tasted of salt when Ida tried it. The village well had always been very reliable, and they were far from the ocean for it to be tainted. Ida poured the buckets out, in case they had somehow gotten salt in them overnight, and drew a fresh bucket. It tasted the same, and Ida's heart fell. It would be a far harder winter for the whole village if they had to melt snow or walk all the way to the river for water every day.
"I think something's wrong with the well," Ida said, bringing in the buckets. The water would be useful for cleaning, even if they couldn't drink it.
"Oh dear, let's see," Rozlin said, setting aside her rolling pin. She shook her head over the look of the water, but shrugged when she dipped a finger in to taste it. "It tastes all right, anyway," she said.
"But it tastes of salt!" Ida protested.
Rozlin took a whole cup of it and had a good drink. "It's as sweet as ever," she said. Linza was up now, too, and she said the same when she tasted it. But when Ida drank from the very same cup, the water was as bitter as tears.
Tears in the well. Elfreda.
"Oh no, the Nixie!" Ida gasped. On her finger, the little pearl ring was suddenly tarnished and dim, and Ida's heart clenched. She headed blindly out the door, pushing out into the cold and snow.
"But what are you going to do?" Linza called after Ida from the front step, her bright blue eyes wide and frightened.
"I need to check on the Nixie, make sure she's all right," Ida called back.
"God speed, my love!" Rozlin hugged Linza from behind, both of them shivering in the cold as they watched her go. Ida blew them both a kiss, and then she was at the well. The village had installed a ladder into it, after Ida had fallen in, to make sure no one else would be lost in it.
Ida turned the little pearl ring on her finger, praying that it really would protect her from all harm in water, and began climbing down and down into the dark.
"To the Nixie's lands," Ida whispered. "Take me to the Nixie's lands."
The well was not a deep one, but Ida never reached the water. Or, if she did, she never felt it. Ida climbed down, alone, for what felt like an age before she was suddenly stepping out into a sodden field of rotting reeds. Fish darted furtively between clumps of grasses, and a slow, cold drizzle rained down on everything.
It was the same field Ida had landed in to begin with, but the land was changed. The plants drooped, the light was dim and gray, and the rain, when a drop of it fell on Ida's lips, tasted of tears.
"Oh, no," Ida breathed. "Oh, no, no..." She all but ran down the field to the path, and when she reached it, she ran down the path toward Elfreda's cottage, heedless of the puddles she splashed through and the mud that gathered on her skirts. There were more important things to worry about.
"Little apple tree, what happened here?" Ida asked, when she reached the first thing that had spoken to her in these lands the first time. The apple tree was sad and bare now, its few leaves all turned to black and its branches drooping under the rain.
"Miss Ida!" The tree's branches straightened up slightly, relief clear in its creaky voice. "Oh, it's bad, Miss Ida. Hurry. Hurry, my mistress needs you."
Ida did not wait and chat any longer and ran on.
"Miss Ida," the whisper traveled ahead of her on the trees. "Our Miss Ida is back. Run, Miss Ida. Run."
"Nan!" Ida called out, when she was in sight of the goat's field. "Nan, what's going on? What happened?"
Nan jumped clear over her fence when she saw Ida. There was moss growing from her horns, and her thick, white fur was matted down with water.
"Miss Ida!" Nan bleated desperately. "You have to do something. Help her. It's been bad since you left. Hurry." She all but butted Ida to hurry her along, and Ida did not slow. At the cottage, all the bushes were overgrown and weedy with clumps of moss, and there was no smoke leaving the chimney.
"Miss Ida, thank the moon!" River Wolf dove down from the cottage roof. "Hurry. She's inside." He thwacked the cottage door open with his tail and darted around Ida to push her bodily inside.
The water that ran around the kitchen was overflowing its trough, pouring down the walls so there were inches of water soaking the reed mats on the floor. It did not look as though any food had been cooked in some time. The bread on the table was moldy, and a scummy pot that might have once held soup was lying in the middle of the floor. Elfreda was not in the kitchen, and Ida made her way through with the water sloshing around her ankles.
"Elfreda?" she called, but there was no answer, and Ida splashed deeper into the house with her stomach knotting in fear.
Elfreda was in the living room, an indistinct lump beneath her heavy moss cloak and her snarled hair. Water seeped down the walls, dripped from the ceiling onto her. Her breath was hoarse with sobbing, her entire body shaking with it.
"Oh, Elfreda," Ida breathed, throwing herself to the ground before Elfreda, heedless of the water that soaked her skirts. She brushed the tangled hair away from Elfreda's lumpy gray face, her boggling green eyes that looked up at Ida as if she could not understand through her tears. "Are you hurt?"
"No, I... Why are you back?" Elfreda asked, reaching up to catch Ida's hand against her cheek. "How are you back?"
"There were tears in the well, so I climbed down it," Ida answered. "Something's wrong, and everything will only say that you need me? What do you need?"
Elfreda turned her face away to hide it against Ida's palm. "Ah, I should have known you would sense it. But do not let my creatures worry you. I am not so weak I would die of a broken heart." She closed her eyes, and two more tears squeezed out of her lashes against Ida's fingers.
It cut right into Ida's heart to see Elfreda so sad. If there was any way she could fix this, she wanted to, more than anything. "You shouldn't have to cry for me, either," Ida whispered. She wiped the tears from Elfreda's cheeks. Her skin was so soft and so warm, even when she was gray and knobbled.
Ida held Elfreda's face between her hands, and very gently pressed her mouth to Elfreda's trembling lips in a kiss.
Elfreda gasped, eyes flying open. She reached up hesitantly, touched Ida's cheek, searching her face. "What?" she asked. "What do you mean?"
"I think I would like to live here, with you, if I can still visit my family sometimes," Ida said. "I missed these lands. I missed you."
Elfreda laughed as bright and happy as any girl, the transformation into her beautiful form passing over her in a wave.
Outside, a pale winter sun broke through the rain, lighting the entire world in sparkling diamond drops. Elfreda surged up, tackling Ida to the floor.
Ida had a moment to notice that the floor was no longer covered in water, before she was being kissed and had much sweeter things to pay attention to. Elfreda's heavy moss cloak spread over them, thick and warm and soft, cocooning them in a world all their own.
All that escaped was their laughter.
*~*~*
Once there was a family. The younger daughter, Linza, was bright and lively and brought joy to everyone she met. She was never short of friends, but her favorite friend was always her elder sister, Ida.
Ida lived in a magic land and married a nixie, but she never forgot her family. She visited often, carrying gifts of things lost to the waters of the Nixie's land, but to her family, the greatest gift was always her company. Sometimes, her wife, the Nixie, would accompany her. She seemed almost human, save that the bottom hem of her dress was always wet. The Nixie was a stately woman as elegant as a queen, but Ida's family could see how she melted around Ida, and how happy Ida was with her.
Her parents had only ever wanted Ida to be happy and welcomed the Nixie into their family with open arms. In turn, their small land holdings were never damaged by flood or plagued by drought, and their well was always sweet and clear.
Once there was a family that grew and changed shape the way families do, and they loved each other just the same.
The Sky Hunter and the Princess
Althea Claire Duffy
Atop her swift-winged fenyara, Ilaka, Neneya pursued the terrek ahead. With her left hand, she gripped the reins; with her right, she poised one tethered harpoon. Neneya was almost within range, almost―just a little closer. She nudged Ilaka hard with her heels, and Ilaka shot forward. She had only to line up her throw and―
The wily terrek banked and dodged behind a small island of floatstone hanging in the sky to the right, forcing Neneya to careen around the obstacle to follow. Terreks were difficult, dangerous game, but delicious. A butcher would pay a fine price, and Neneya was down to her last coin.
Again, she urged Ilaka on, but Ilaka was sweating foam that blew down her vast leathery wings. Neneya stroked Ilaka's neck and called out encouragement, hoping the wind would not swallow her voice. Ahead, the terrek climbed steeply and Ilaka followed, slicing upward into the air with pointed nose and wings. Neneya, tied into a saddle fastened with multiple reinforced straps, felt a hum of excitement radiating through her from the center out, leaving her fingers and toes buzzing.
Few of the floatstone islands were inhabited in this region, high up where the air was thin and the wind sharp, but a child on a homestead below called out "Fenyara!" with delight. Neneya shouted back, a whoop of thrill as she and Ilaka gained ground on the terrek. It swooped behind another island to the left and wove among a scattering of smaller ones, and Neneya had to slow abruptly and follow. Rock whistled by Ilaka's left wing, her right, her left again, and Neneya gripped the reins, chilly with sweat and wind.
At last the terrek reached open sky again, climbing toward a larger island far ahead. "We're almost there, Ilaka," Neneya shouted. "You can make it."
A swift upward climb later, they were nearly to the bottom of the floatstone island, a small inverted mountain furred with skymoss that grew only on the underside. The terrek nearly collided with stone, but angled downward at the last moment, as if to trick Neneya and Ilaka into doing the same. But Ilaka had the sense to turn well short and follow it at a horizontal, until it curled upward around the rim of the island and was lost to view.
Neneya cursed and pursued it.
On the top side, she spotted the terrek, diving into a canyon too narrow for her to follow.
She motioned Ilaka to dive as quickly as she could and held on, heart racing and harpoon raised again. She narrowed her focus to the terrek twisting and winging on below, and imagined she could feel herself connected to it by an invisible thread. There was her and the terrek and the point of her harpoon and her arm driving it, and nothing else but wind. The wind was blowing left, so she threw the harpoon just a little to the right to compensate.
It pierced the terrek through the chest.
Neneya shouted with triumph, then braced herself as she slowed Ilaka. The tether went taut, the dying bird jerking on the end like a fish on a line. Neneya waited for its struggles to cease, and for it to lighten a little as it bled into the canyon, then hauled it up hand over hand. Ilaka slowed, glided until she was over land, then descended gently as Neneya yanked the terrek over the edge of the canyon. She finally settled on crumbly soil, huffing and blowing, her wings drawing in.
"Nice throw, hunter," someone shouted from the ground.
Startled, Neneya jerked her head toward the sound.
Sun glinted off a harpoon point trained on her chest.
*~*~*
Princess Tekelei, youngest and last unmarried child of King Yenok of Kilibara, had the best seat at the banquet table tonight: a seat where she could look out the window beside her.
A vivid blue bird flashed by, and Tekelei had a sudden image of what that bird might see: scattered islands and clouds, miles and miles of them in all directions, all the flying and drifting creatures of the sky, and far beneath the gray-brown waste of the Land Below that her ancestors had fled when the earth began to shake and the Great Worms came to devour all within their grasp. She wanted to see it. She wanted to see the next island—and the next and the next as far as the Floating Lands extended—so much it hurt her throat.
She pretended to a hunger she could satisfy and nibbled her poached umbellifruit in properly ladylike fashion. This was the between-sweet; five courses before it, and five more to go.
Across the table, Prince Darim of Talakar, fourth in line to the throne of one of the other five small island kingdoms of the Upper Air, had been butting into conversation with her all evening. She'd smiled and nodded just enough to fall short of rudeness. Someone else, probably someone who did not know him, would have thought him handsome: tawny-gold skin, glossy brown waves of hair, and perfect features. Tekelei wished he had pimples, or maybe a nice large wart.
"Talakar has done well of late," Darim said. "Fanakira ceded the Ulofa Islands to us a little over a month ago. I'd like to think it was my skill at negotiating, but I suppose after eighty years of conflict over them they'd had enough." He looked back at Tekelei and smiled again, with what was no doubt a deliberate deployment of his dimple.
"Excellent work, most excellent!" King Yenok, Tekelei's father, nodded excitedly at Darim, as if he hadn't been entertaining a Fanakiran prince just a few days before.
"Something interesting going on outside, my lovely Princess?" Darim said to her, in a tone far too oily and familiar.
I'd rather look at the wall than you, she thought, but smiled and tilted her head slightly. She was an ornament, a pretty flower without thoughts, nodding in the wind. "Nothing in particular but a pleasant view."
Darim's smug smile and tone of practiced seduction made her wish dinner was over even more. He'd chosen to mistake her comment for flirtation. She returned the look as coldly as she dared.
Lanisa, last of her siblings to marry, had left for the nearby island kingdom of Kunaka only a turn of the largest moon ago. Tekelei caught herself glancing at where Lanisa had always sat, wanting to share a secret look. They'd long had a language without words to convey things unsuitable to let slip before their father, such as disdain for a visitor.
King Yenok continued to discuss matters of state and abet Darim's boasting. He seldom looked at Tekelei. He seldom had, since she'd passed age eight or so and started looking too much like her Aunt Feneka, the traitor who'd joined a conspiracy to overthrow Tekelei's grandfather. Nannies and tutors had doted on her, and she'd never lacked for anything, but she was always aware that she was an afterthought at best and an embarrassment or threat at worst.
When no one was doing more than picking at the last of the fruit
, Darim extended his ankle so that a serving girl, coming to remove the dessert plates, lurched into his lap. He exclaimed as if surprised, and someone else might have thought it an accident, but Tekelei doubted it―especially since he "accidentally" brushed his hand against the girl's breasts as he was setting her back on her feet. The girl's face went stiff, but Tekelei could see the fear and humiliation in her eyes.
Tekelei "accidentally" knocked over her wineglass in Darim's direction, hoping to distract everyone. Red liquid seeped across the table, past a newly placed platter of songbirds' wings and sourberry sauce. A tiny bit dripped into Darim's lap, onto his fine white coat. Alas, only a tiny bit.
"So sorry," Tekelei said, allowing a deniable hint of mockery into her voice.
The unfortunate girl hurried to wipe up the spilled wine. Tekelei met her eyes with what she hoped was silent apology. It was typical of Darim to do this even in front of her, and his obvious unwelcome lechery was probably one of the reasons he was still unmarried. Neither noble girls nor their parents appreciated it. Tekelei had never had a suitor she truly wanted, the way she'd dreamed at fourteen of her short-haired, lean-muscled fencing mistress, but she hoped at least for one she could tolerate.
It was going to be a long night.
*~*~*
Neneya froze.
A broad man, with light brown skin, rough-cropped straight hair, and a seamed scar across one missing eye, held the harpoon aimed at Neneya's heart. Two other men sat at a campfire behind him, under a rock overhang. All three were in ragged, much-mended clothes with thick leather vests and wicked knives and pistols at their belts. Two more harpoons, presumably belonging to the other men, lay on the ground, and a long musket beside them.
All three wore the torcs of the Falcon Brotherhood. Sworn to a bandit lord in a high cave somewhere above the Six Lesser Kingdoms, the Falcon Brotherhood was a menace to this region of the sky. When she'd been Akafu Greencoat's apprentice, she and her master had evaded several and killed two more. But those times she hadn't been pinned down before she realized the bandits were there, and it hadn't been three against one.
Fairytales Slashed: Volume 8 Page 19