Chapter 9—The Man in Love with the Sun

It was after the sand dragon had nearly roasted him within an inch of his life when the Genie asked how a girl who asked him to go through all this just to prove his love could be worth it, let alone a good idea.

“Insecurity like that will make her high maintenance,” she said. “Can’t you just find someone else? Are you really content to sink so low?”

As always, he answered in his quiet way. It was only ever because she never talked with anyone else that she even heard him.

“Quite the opposite. I’m only content with going so high. Of course it’s going to be a long climb when you’re on earth and you’re trying to reach the sun.”

The Genie scoffed at that. “She might as well be on the sun.”

***

Einar could only do so much while following her from above, and her already scraped feet had failed her near the bottom. Despite the pain, she had managed to swim back across the river and get her clothes on before admitting she needed his help getting back to the horses. She had kept her face over his shoulder as he had carried her and inevitably held her across his lap as he rode them back to the manor. Fortunately, he had stayed quiet the rest of the way, probably sensing she wasn’t up to talking.

Hope, however, was not so tactful. It didn’t help that she had plenty of time to chatter while helping Kyanna bathe and wrap up her ankle. Once Kyanna mentioned something about climbing a tree, the cook’s eyes threatened to pop free of her head.

“Have you gone mad? Regressing to childhood? You could have very well died, falling from—” She lost her words to an angry puff and had to restart. “I’m having a word with your father about this. I’m having very stern words; I just can’t believe—you are a married woman now! Forget princess and all the responsibility and need this country has for your life, you are an adult and very well must act like one! And that poor man, it’s not like he can say no to you if you start climbing a tree, he’s not even used to the idea that he is a prince let alone a husband! And how delicate your relationship already is—”

“I get it.”

“You most certainly do not, if this purple ankle of yours is anything to go off of.”

“Then don’t believe me, fine, but I’m still a princess and can kick you out if I want to, Hope, so please, for the love of Fivar, shut up. I feel horrible enough about it as it is.”

Cook left her soon after that, lips pursed so tightly Kyanna wondered if they’d ever be the same again.

Eventually, a maid came knocking at the door to invite Kyanna to supper, but she stayed put where Hope had left her on the sofa, bundled up in a mass of quilts. But not too long after, the door creaked open, and Einar stepped in holding a tray laden with food. He kicked the door closed behind him and came around to set the tray on the coffee table. He stood for a quiet moment, considering her as she avoided meeting his eye, then went around to the fireplace and restarted the fire.

Einar brushed ash from his hands as he turned back to her.

“Are…are you doing any better, Princess?” he asked.

She grunted.

He took a napkin from the tray to wipe his hands off before coming to sit by her on the couch. Then he flattened a little island in her sea of blankets to set the tray in her lap.

“Thank you,” she said. “You can leave now.”

But he didn’t, only looked at her. The blue of his eyes once more reminded her of the sky. She turned her attention to the bowl of stew on her lap so she wouldn’t have to look at him.

“Princess,” he said, adjusting to face her more fully, “I hope you don’t think that...that I think any less of you for being upset by all this or for...if you were embarrassed by that all, there really isn’t…” he sighed heavily. “If it’s because I didn’t stop you from getting hurt or because you regret going swimming—”

“The swimming was fun,” she cut across, lifting up a spoonful of stew. “And you can’t save me from my own stupidity.” She blew, momentarily banishing the beef scented steam.

“I can sure try,” he said, his tone lighter with relief now that she was talking to him. “Besides, some of the best fun in the world is just being stupid. I had crazy amounts of fun with you.”

She doubted that. After all he had seen and done? What could sheltered little her ever show him?

“How’s the stew?” he asked.

“Alright,” but then it hit her. “The pie! I was going to make pie!”

“Never fear, Princess. I put the cook on it.”

“But I wanted to make the pie!”

He wilted at her pout. “Oh, uh...I thought…”

“You assumed.” She took a noisy slurp of her stew, but, to herself, she admitted that he had been trying. “But...since you’re dead set on becoming the Apple King, I suppose I’ll have another chance to make apple pie in the future.”

A relaxed quiet fell between them as she ate, and he stared into the fire with an arm stretched out on the back of the sofa. Outside, the last of day slunk back, taking its long shadows with it. At some point Einar got up to light the lamps and feed more wood to the fire. As he did so, she took advantage of his turned back to limp to her bed, having dressed in her nightgown after her bath. She still wasn’t sure she wanted to encourage him coming close to her bed, but even as she thought that, her hands and knees deep in the downy of her mattress and covers, she wondered at herself. Why did she resist? She didn’t want him, true, and her heart still stubbornly ached for Jeremy...but would it be so dishonest to allow him to have what the Hero had been promised?

And yet, she couldn’t shake away the words of Jeremy’s letters from her mind. To give in to him would leave a hole where a belief of magic had been. Even as she thought that, her chest clenched and she pulled her blankets up to her eyes, wishing she could hide away, disgusted with herself.

In the dark behind her eyelids, she listened to Einar’s boots slipping from his feet and the sound of his clothes being pulled off. When his weight dipped the mattress at her feet, she involuntarily flinched.

“Would you like a bedtime story?” he asked.

Wary she must look silly hiding behind the covers like a child, she lowered them to her lap. As she did so, the warm scent of leather and sweet lemongrass wafted up to her, catching her off guard. It only occurred to her then that he had bathed as well after their fun in the river, and she didn’t quite understand why that made her toes tingle.

“That—that would be nice.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Are you okay?”

She waved him off, reassuring him. It wasn’t like he was doing anything even remotely threatening, sitting there at the end of the bed with his hands in his lap, dressed in his nightshirt and pants.

And she was nowhere near ready to tell him his scent had given her shivers.

Even as she thought that, snuggling down into the fluff, she took a deep breath of him.

With his gentle smile, he pulled his legs onto the bed to fold them beneath him and began.

“There was once a man named Tall Stone who fell in love with the daughter of the Sun. He never beheld her face or form, for no man can look directly into the Sun, but he could see the work of her hands. She was the soft touch of morning light that spread open flowers and broke the sleep of night. As she followed her father into the daytime, her soft warmth vanished within his overbearing fire until the drawing of evening, in which she used the sky as her pastel to give warning to shepherds of the storms that may be coming.”

“When night came and her mother, Lady Moon, would rise, he knew it was her presence that made the stars sparkle. He could see the edges of her night robes her mother would dress her in, as it spread in a deep purple behind those same stars, and he could just smell her skin wafting over the twilight dew on the grass.

“Tall Stone desired to see her. His desire soon become so that he could not sleep or eat, so he turned to his tribal leader for wisdom. The old woman told him that if he ever wished to see the maiden or to have her for his own, he must speak to her father, as any honorable man would. The problem was, no one could even look at the Sun let alone approach him to speak. So the leader suggested he go to the much softer and cooler mother of the daughter of the Sun, Lady Moon. To reach her, he had to climb to the peak of the eastern mountains to catch her as she rose from the edge of the land. Without any hesitation, Tall Stone packed supplies and headed for the eastern mountains.”

Einar paused long enough to stretch himself out half on the foot of the bed and half in the empty space besides Kyanna. She did her best to ignore the space between them.

“He made it after much toil to the top of the mountain just in time to reach the rise of mother moon. As she rose, beautiful and alluring with all her splendid silver robes wrapped around her, she turned to him with a knowing smile.”

“Wait, did he see the daughter of the moon?”

He blinked. “Uh…”

“You said at night she was with her mom, right?”

“She was hidden in her night clothes. The purple ones. And probably doing whatever business with the stars.”

She smirked at him from across her pillow. “Sounds like a last-minute excuse.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m a warrior and the Apple King, not a bard.”

She snorted. “Could have fooled me, and I’ve listened to the best bards of the land.”

“Compliment accepted. Some soldiers had their alcohol, some had their women, a few an unhealthy obsession with goats. I had my stories.” He propped his head onto his hand. “Anyways—”

“No wait, hold on, what’s this obsession with goats?”

“Another story for another time, Princess.” He poked her through the comforter, smiling. “You keep distracting me. I’m going to lose my place. There’s a rhythm to storytelling you got to keep up with. Works the nuance and tone and all that.”

“Fine, fine. ’Scuse me.”

He cleared his throat. “Anyways. Tall Stone gave his request to Lady Moon, who was very gracious in her reply. She knew of him, having watched him through the night, and was pleased that he came all this way for her daughter’s hand. She could sense that he had the potential to truly love her daughter when he explained his reasoning. So, with her approval, she gave him a magical cloak to wear to visit the Sun. She instructed him to climb the neighboring peak to greet the Sun as he rose the next day, for the Sun was in his best mood in the morning. ‘But,’ she said, ‘the moment you sense his light you must continue on with the cloak over your face, for although it will protect you from his heat, it will not protect you from his light. You must keep your eyes closed until you’ve made your way down this mountain, or you will be blinded.’

“So Tall Stone donned the cloak and accepted the resting place provided by the Moon. As she rose higher into the sky, she awoke him in time to begin his hike to the next peek. When the Sun began to rise, he quickly covered his eyes with the hood of the cloak. Usually, the Sun wouldn’t have even noticed the mortal, but he recognized the soft darkness of his wife’s cloak and demanded to know how Tall Stone had obtained it. When Tall Stone explained his love for his daughter and the wish for her hand, the Sun laughed. ‘But you’ve never seen the girl!’ he cried, ‘What if she is horribly disfigured and unattractive? And you’ve never met her! What if she’s a shrew or a whore?’ But Tall Stone just confessed he loved her and explained the beauty he had seen at her hands. He knew that she was kind, loving, friendly, loyal, and her fingers only knew how to weave beauty. If she was disfigured, he didn’t care. He only wished to make her happy as the beauty of her sunrises and sunsets had made him. The Sun, though strong and hard, was appeased by this and brought his daughter’s hand into his. With his blessing the Sun pointed Tall Stone down the mountain and sent him stumbling off, barely able to keep himself from flinging off his hood to see his love at long last.”

“Romantic,” mumbled Kyanna. Behind her closed eyes, she envisioned a flaming beauty, not unlike the Soan of her dreams, being led by the dark, hunched form of the man.

“Is it up to your standards then?” Einar asked.

“Mmhmm.”

“You almost asleep? Should I stop?”

“No!” she forced her eyes open. “I want to hear them get together.”

“But they are already together.”

“Noooo. They have to kiss or something. Then they’ll be together.”

He gave a breathy laugh. “Alright, if that’s how it works. Don’t try so hard to keep those eyes open, though.”

She pulled out her arm from the blankets to nudge him to continue. His warmth reached her through the fine material of his nightshirt sleeve.

“The journey down the mountain was more perilous with his eyes closed. He clung to the warm hand of his beloved who helped him as much as she could, though her soft voice only tempted him more to lift up his hood to see her. But he remembered the warning of the Moon and knew, as a blind man, he would never be able to be a proper husband, protector, or provider for her. With that in mind he was able to wearily make it to the foot of the mountain. His feet were lacerated, his body bruised, but his heart triumphant.”

Half formed dreams were playing in her mind. She saw the dancing Soan again, except this time she couldn’t focus on her, and soon she was looking up at stars that shifted into bright birds of diamond. Einar’s voice came to her from across the expanse of night sky.

“He threw off his hood at last. Though weary with fatigue beyond belief, he looked upon his new bride to behold that she was more beautiful than he could’ve imagined. She held the pride and glory of the Sun, yet was soft to look up on like the Moon. When he recognized the beauty of the dawn and dusk in her smile and the glitter of the stars in her eyes, he leaned over to her…”

A puff of warmth across Kyanna’s face called her from her unborn dreams. Warm. She could hear his voice as a close, low rumble of a whisper.

“And then he kissed her. And they were together forever.”

She thought she could feel the press of his lips against the corner of her mouth. But she wasn’t with him, but back in the golden desert, watching a long banner of red hair sweep past swaying hips dressed in white linen. Golden almond eyes glittered at her, burning hotter than the sun above them.

“Come on,” the woman spun round to face her, hands outstretched. “You did so well today. Let me teach you more.”

Kyanna hesitated. The keening horns and thrum of the drums unnerved her, even as they called to the beat of her heart. She couldn’t help but fear what she would look like next to such brazen beauty. And out here, under so much heat, and half naked at best. Their curves were out for all to see behind simple wraps about their breasts and billowing white pants.

“You’re thinking too much, sweetheart. What is it that you want?”

The woman no longer danced from a distance, but close, her dark bronze fingers lifting up Kyanna’s, which seemed the color of bone in comparison.

“Jeremy…?” she whispered.

The woman tugged her hand. Kyanna’s step forward sunk into sand.

“It’s okay if you want him,” said the woman. “Even if it is a waste. But lust can muddle your true desires and there is no freedom in dishonesty and defying laws. Freedom of choice is not freedom of consequence.”

The bronze hand left to rise above her head, fingers bent into beautiful shapes to decorate the bend of the woman’s curves to the song. Her words no longer came to Kyanna as spoken sounds, but in the moves of her dance.

Come, come, what is it you desire? Is it to fly? Is it to live for an eternity? To be young forever? To dance, to run, to leap?

Longing gripped Kyanna, filling her with something like hunger. She lifted her arms to her sides and awkwardly tried to spin.

The sound of zills followed her heel as it left the ground.

She halted.

“This is stupid,” she said.

The music stopped. So did the dancer, whose blazing features had wilted with disappointment.

“Oh, sweetheart.”

The endearment breathed across Kyanna like a breeze, taking her to other dreams far more appropriate for sleep.