Chapter 17: In Search of Fairies

The Genie refused to grant such a wish. The princess was already spoiled enough, the stupid man didn’t have to add to it.

Still, her magic reared up in her, summoned by his desire.

“No,” she said a second time, clenching her teeth.

He just looked at her. Not angry. Maybe a little bit surprised. But he hadn’t slept more than a wink for the past three days, after all. Probably hardly registered that she had spoken.

“No,” she said again when the magic pressed against the underside of her skin. “Wish me away, wish me back to hell, but do not make me do such a thing.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” he said.

“Well you do! You’ve made a wish and now one has to be done! Change your mind!”

“But anything I wish—“

“That’s why I said make it about me!” she all but screeched, panic taking hold. “I’m already dead! What more can be done?”

The first sign of emotion widened his eyes. Light had begun to outline her hands, where it crawled up her arms. “Genie, I can’t hurt you.”

“Then wish for your damn family! I’ll give you a doozy of one, with a whore wife and brat children with snot always dripping out of their noses!”

The light had taken hold, turning her bronze skin gold and filling the dingy inn room with sunlight.

A rare flash of anger tensed his body. “Can’t you be nice to me just once? What have I ever done to you besides put up with you?”

And pushed to the brink, burning to death with magic, the chained doors to the Genie’s desert heart finally burst open.

“Why couldn’t you be there to put up with me when I actually needed it!”

He raised his hand against the now blinding light. “Genie—”

“WISH!!”

“I wish you had a family!”

In her shock, the magic burst forth.

***

The desert woman danced before her, long red hair following her turns in shining ribbons. A new instrument had joined the music, something like a violin, but with swooping notes that slid up and down from one another.

Kyanna felt as much as saw the woman’s smile in the way she arched her arms and twisted her fingers above her.

“Come, sweetheart. Let’s try again.”

Quivering, Kyanna stepped forward, the sand licking up between her toes. Though her eyes didn’t burn here as they had before she had fallen asleep, she still had the heavy pain behind her collarbone and the deep-seated frustration in her hips, which she more than eagerly attempted to shake out with her first try at a hip shimmy. Her pale skin shone out brighter and whiter than the golden sand about them, revealed by the matching pants and simple wrap about her breasts, just like the Soan besides her.

“That’s right,” the desert woman’s voice purred. “It’s all about falling into the natural wave of a woman’s walk. You already know how to do it. Shoulders back.”

They turned. Kyanna felt her long, free-flowing blond hairbrush against the other woman. Satin ran along her back.

The horns keened. Kyanna twisted. Reached for the sky. That beautiful, untouchable blue sky.

The same color as Einar’s eyes.

“I’m disgusting,” she found herself saying.

“Everyone is disgusting,” said the Soan, her voice regaining that all too familiar laugh. “Digestion, illness, mucous, sex—“

“That’s not what I meant,” Kyanna snapped her arms down.

The woman didn’t so much as flinch. She even reached out to fold Kyanna’s fists flat and out at her sides, as though to mimic a skirt.

“Like pot handles at the hips,” she said. “Then lift the pot above your head and reverse the turn, all while holding the natural swing of your hips, like walking.”

Tired of thinking about it anyways, Kyanna allowed the woman to move her into the next move and tried to let the music fill up her brain.

But the other didn’t let it be.

As the woman helped keep Kyanna’s back straight as she bent forward in a part of breast-following swoop, all while keeping her ankles twisted, she said, “It’s going to be frustrating when you’re this close.”

“Close to what?”

The woman just smiled, her golden, almond eyes sparkling. “What is it that you want?”

Kyanna groaned and straightened. “Isn’t it more what you want me to want?”

“More like a trick question to make you reflect.” She nudged Kyanna’s hip. “Keep up the sway.”

Kyanna shimmied instead, aggravation built up in every joint in a tension ready to snap.

She thought it was done with that, but the woman just asked again, “What do you desire?”

With a closed-mouth shout, Kyanna stepped out of her reach and stomped her foot into the sand.

“What do you want me to say? Why does it matter what I want? It’s not going to change that I’ve found out I’m one of those flimsy girls who jump from one love to another just because they’re cute or treat me nice.”

The desert woman cocked her head, even the one movement coming out like a dance and sending her red hair into ripples of shine.

“Still so much care about silly men?” The woman turned her head, giving Kyanna a look from the side and beneath her lashes that was both coy and wry. “Oh dear. Who is it this time?”

The tension within Kyanna finally snapped.

“You know what? I’ll want whatever I damn please!”

“Even if it’s pathetic and short lived?”

The new string instrument crawled up in pitch, warbling and wailing like a bird, and yet somehow grinding with anger despite it. The horns petered out, as though alarmed, and the zills and drums backed down.

“Damn right,” said Kyanna. “What I want is who I am! I want him to run, I want to climb trees, I want to bake the best apple pie in the world, and I want him back! I want him safe; I want him! And I’m done feeling guilty about it! He’s my damn husband for Fivar’s sake and I’m a gods damn princess! I don’t have to cater to anyone just because they say they love me!” She stomped her foot again, kicking sand up to her knee.

The dancer’s gold eyes were dancing like the surface of the water under the sun. “Oh? So if you want him, what are you going to do about it?”

“Whatever I damn please!”

Kyanna’s righteous indignation faltered as the woman cracked a broad, toothy smile.

“Now that,” said the dancer, “is the right answer.”

Kyanna woke sitting up with her feet already on the floor. The gray light filtering through the curtains only hinted at dawn. Her muscles hummed and tensed, as though already feeling the curves of the dance.

She looked at the empty bed she sat in.

“He better come back,” she found herself growling. “Or I’m making him into a pie, stupid, idiot Apple King.”

The new fire in her chest filled up her senses as she went through the motions of readying for the day. She ate her breakfast, allowed the ladies in waiting to help her dress and do her hair. By the time she came to a full awareness of her surroundings she stood before a worn, but well cared for, oak door. She knew the smooth grain well from the many times as a child her fingers came to it for comfort. It was her father’s study. Perhaps now, without the obsession of getting with Jeremy in her head, she was reawakened to the childish want to be with daddy.

Her fingers lit upon the cool metal of the doorknob.

He sat as she usually remembered him: in his favorite armchair, sporting a roll of parchment filled with accounts for the kingdom and a quill. He looked up as she entered with her hands folded behind her back. A bright smile shone through his beard like the sun between clouds.

“Ah! My little girl has come to visit her old dad at last. It’s good to know I’m not forgotten. Come sit. Come sit.”

The edges of her mouth twitched. “Father, I’m a grown woman now. Why do you insist on calling me your little girl?”

“You’ll always be my little girl, no matter how old you get.” At her incredulous look he added, “Wait till you have children of your own. Then you’ll understand. Now come!” he patted the arm of another, smaller armchair beside him. It used to be her mother’s. “Your seat’s still here, same as always. I haven’t seen much of you the past few days. What have you been up to? Naturally, married life, I won’t ask for any gory details, but what do you think of Einar? Getting along fair enough?”

“Yes. He likes to tell stories.”

The King laughed. “That he does. His superiors and fellows all had one story or another of him wandering off to find some old local to harass or pulling some anecdote out of his hat. I imagine he’s told you a few.”

Kyanna smiled. “That he has.”

“Granted, it was only to his friends, what few he had,” said the King. “Not much of one for crowds, that one. But neither am I, so I can relate.”

Kyanna snorted. “Who was wearing my father’s clothes at my wedding then? Drinks all around? Fivar, you were embarrassing.”

“It was a wedding! Don’t give me that look…oh, perhaps I just fancied myself to be cool and aloof. The boy does pull it off quite well.”

“I wouldn’t say he does it entirely…”

“Oh?” her father leaned over his armrest towards her conspiratorially. “Do tell.”

At her wrinkled nose, he laughed deep and loud.

“Well, I’m happy to hear that you don’t outright hate him. You were so reluctant when I brought him up, I did worry.” Her father put his hand over hers, rubbing and warming it at once. “I only wanted the absolute best for you, and I would have given you to no one less.”

“I know.” And the proof was that she had actually let it happen.

The look in her father’s eyes told her he knew that as well, and that he was grateful for her faith in him. Which made her wonder if she had always known, in her heart, that Jeremy would not have been good for her, even as she had known her father wouldn’t have approved of him.

But…she still wondered.

“Father, did you…” she hesitated. “Did you only pick him because he won the war? Or because he told stories?”

As she partly expected, her father scoffed. “A man is more than what he can do with a sword or how well he entertains.” He sat back with a creak of leather, a thumb and forefinger to his beard. “Well, I must say at first I did have my apprehensions. I was willing to give him anything for what his deeds, but he came into my office with that fire to his eyes that all young men have when they’re out for trouble. And despite having earned himself prestige and no short amount of money, he dressed like a pauper, but not like he could help that, I think. They were well made, but I don’t know if he has a lick of care for fashion. Still, rather careless if you’re trying to impress the father of the woman you wish to marry, even if you just saved the country.” He paused, and his whiskers rose with his faint smile. “But then we got talking and he told me the most…remarkable story. Quite remarkable.”

Kyanna wanted to slap her forehead. She should have known. “What story did he tell you? Did it have a genie in it?”

His eyebrows rose. “I don’t recall any genies. No. It was about an orphan boy who fell in love with a little lost princess he found in the forest by his home.”

A great shock, unlike any Kyanna had ever known, shot through her body, making her bolt upright in her chair. Her father looked far too smug at her reaction.

“Apparently, the little princess had wandered away from a royal picnic nearby that his grandfather was hosting in search of fairies. When he found her, she was covered in scratches and dirt, her skirts nearly torn off, but not in the least bit frightened. She even refused to admit that she was lost, even though it was obvious that she was. Sound familiar?”

It did. In her defense, she had many escape episodes as a child. The little boy that rose to her mind had been one of many strangers she often met on these adventures. Though she couldn’t quite remember his face, she could remember the apples on the trees behind him. They had popped out with their red coloring, and through the leaves of the forest she had mistaken them for fairies themselves. Once she found it was just apples, her next conclusion was equally spurred by her imagination: she thought the poor little boy, poor because of how pale his skin had looked against his dark hair, a denizen of the forest and dragged him away with her to hunt for fairies. He had said very little, she recalled. He had been a shy boy. Looking back, however, she wondered if it was because he was too stunned at being pulled away by a ragged princess than shy.

“He told me that she kept them out all night and into the morning telling him about some kind of creature in the sky with stars for eyes and all sorts of silly things. Eventually they were found by the boy’s grandfather, who was in quite a fury. But I imagine so, as it looked quite bad on a baron to have the sole heir to the kingdom bedraggled and dirty and led about by his grandson.” He shook his head. “Goodness, you couldn’t be called uninteresting as a child, that’s for sure.”

“That can’t be all.” She protested, wondering why she suddenly felt so alarmed. “He can’t have…are you saying that…” but she lost whatever she was about to say. How could Einar know so much about her after only one night? Even enough to fall in love as deeply as he professed? Especially a night over ten years ago?

Her father seemed to read her mind, however, and said, “He was so intrigued by the princess that whenever he came to the palace to deliver his grandfather’s crops, he’d often peek into the kitchens where he knew her nursemaid, the cook, was. This and that happened, but he can tell you the details when he’s well and ready.” The king brought up his roll of parchment to his face once more. “It was all very cute. I’m surprised you didn’t recognize him with how much you haunted that place. But mainly it was all the reports of his character I heard from the others. Meeting him and the story just solidified it. No one could hear that man talk about you and not think he loved you.”

But she was remembering further. There had been a boy who delivered apples. She knew because apple desserts were some of her favorite to make and she’d wait for him at the door. But the boy she remembered had been scrawny, pale, and had dark brown hair. He hadn’t held himself up like a baron’s son at all. She had just thought him another servant and talked with him like such. They had been friendly, but not enough for her to ever ask for his name. He’d always just been ‘the apple boy.’

But when had he stopped delivering apples? When had he stopped being so shy? When had he decided to take up his sword?

As she wrestled with her own obliviousness and wrung her memory for more of Einar, a loud knock came at her father’s study door. At a barked ‘enter’ from the king, a gangly boy dressed in the royal livery of a messenger entered, slightly breathless.

“The party sent to Latan Village after the crowned prince is approaching the castle, your majesty.”

“What? Already?”

“That is all I know of it, Sire.” And the boy bowed low. The front flaps of his purple vest nearly touched the floor. “That is the end of my message.”

The King excused the boy, lower lip jutted out with consternation.

But Kyanna’s heart had leapt. Einar? He had returned? She jumped to her feet, her hands feeling for her head and dress.

Her father’s heavy hand stopped her from rushing out the door.

“What? Not even going to excuse yourself?”

“Oh,” she curtsied. “May I be excused, Father?”

She didn’t like how smug he looked just then that she had actually listened. It reminded her too much of the thought she had had about him purposely marrying her to a boy who held so little to decorum.

“Before you leave, I just remembered I have something for you. You know me and my memory. Drove your mother crazy, I daresay.”

She fidgeted impatiently despite her curiosity as he made his way to one of the bookshelves. He took down an old, uninteresting tome and opened it. Inside the pages had been hollowed out to make a square box of velvet. From this he took out a ragged, leather bag. Returning the book façade to the shelf he walked back to her while shaking out the contents of the bag into his hand.

A strange, bronze little hook came out.

“Your husband,” he said, “gave this to me during our meeting yesterday. He said he had meant to give it to you on your wedding night so you could open your wedding pendent. I’m not sure what purpose he had in giving it to me, but I feel no reason not to give it to you myself.” The King shook his furry head wearily. “I don’t understand why he didn’t just give it to you on your wedding day. You could have opened it up during the ceremony.”

Kyanna tugged up the heavy locket from between her breasts, warmed from her skin. She pinched the long, bronze hook, almost like some kind of key, and wedged the thin end against the crack of the locket doors. After some wiggling, it slid in, and once she’d run it down the entire circumference, stopping at the hinges, the door finally popped free.

She gasped. Even her father made a high noise of surprise.

An opal the size of a chicken egg and smooth as a rain drop literally glowed from within, as though filled with starlight. Rainbows flickered about it and into the air, where they played along the walls and bookshelves.

“By the gods,” breathed her father.

“Is it magic?”

“Must be. I have never seen a jewel shine quite like that.”

Rainbows that had reached the small chandelier on the ceiling reproduced, spraying the molding behind it in scales of luminescent color.

“If he had shown this during the ceremony.” The king shook his head. “I can’t begin to fathom why he changed his mind about letting you see it. But then, he can be shy about the strangest things. It was like pulling a stubborn mule to get him to admit he’d done all those amazing things during the war and been the cause of so many victories.”

“No kidding. Do you know where he got this?”

“Dear one, I’ve never even heard of it.

After a few more minutes of admiring it, Kyanna closed the locket, finding that the thin, wire-like hook curled into the crack and around the hoop of the pendant where the chain ran through perfectly.

A knock came at the door. The same messenger boy burst in, eyes wide. Following right behind him was a worn and dirty soldier wearing the emblems of a colonel, his helmet tucked beneath his arm. The brown-haired man bowed hastily, appearing flustered and road-ragged.

“Your majesty, I’m sorry for interrupting at a time like this. I felt like I should report to you first.”

“Which I appreciate that you did. Report.”

The man grimaced. “The village is safe. The brigands have left. We suffered no casualties.”

Kyanna peeked over his shoulder in hopes of seeing Einar. All she saw, however, was the messenger boy to the side, whose face seemed paler than he had been the last time.

Frozen lead dropped into her stomach.

The king frowned. “And the prince?”

Kyanna hated how the colonel’s eyes flickered to her before falling to the floor.

“He…he was taken, your majesty. Into the desert. Taken down by some sort of sedative gas. If he hadn’t gone alone, sir…even if the ransom letter said to go alone, we could have sent some of the Shadows with him, at least.”

The heavy cold pasted atop her skin. Kyanna hugged herself, pressing the opal against her chest.

“Idiot,” she breathed.

All eyes turned to her. The colonel’s professional façade gave way to pity.

“Forgive me, Princess,” he put a closed fist over his heart and bowed his head low. “We left the moment you gave us word.”

“Which is why it’s my fault.”

She didn’t want to see the look on her father’s face. Instead, she hugged herself tighter, digging the pendant even closer.

“You can share the blame,” he said, any good humor from before gone. “This was a shoddy job done all around. Though I say the boy has the majority of the blame. He’s too used to doing things on his own and getting away with it.”

Kyanna snorted. “He saved a whole nation doing it that way.”

“But the army got him to the point where he could. Everyone but me seems to forget that, but I understand it is more romantic to think of it else wise.” There was a rustle of paper before the creak of the chair as the king stood. “Guess we have no choice but to fetch the idiot. Forgive me, daughter. Here I was just telling you how I thought I had made such a good choice and he runs out on you.”

“He was trying to save an entire town, Father, stop making it sound like he cheated on me.”

“I will very well make it sound like he cheated on you. His first priority should be you. I am still king, which makes it my responsibility to keep this country and its citizen’s safe.” The king growled in his throat. “Should have taught him more before…but that was then, this is now.”

Kyanna, who had thought much the same thing as her father concerning training Einar more before marriage, sighed.

The colonel who had listened to this exchange solemnly cleared his throat.

“Your majesty, I assumed you would wish to pursue so I left the majority of the men at the village and had two members of the Shadow Core following after him. We should have a messenger bird by the time we are ready to set off.”

“Excellent. That should speed things up. Will you depart immediately?”

The colonel nodded. “My men are switching for fresh horses as we speak.”

With that, the king excused the colonel and put a heavy hand on Kyanna’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry. They just captured him, not killed him.”

Kyanna put her clammy fingers to her brow. “Can I leave? I…don’t feel much like company anymore.”

Her father’s hand gave her a gentle squeeze before letting her go.

The door clicked behind her, and her slippered feet set off without her, her mind trapped by the heavy chill making it hard to breathe.

This is what I should have been feeling after my wedding, she thought, recalling the numbness that had her in the carriage. She wished for it now, not fully understanding why she felt so horrible, or, at least, wishing she didn’t understand. Because the laughing gold eyes of her dreams and the memory of hot sun on her bare skin reminded her of her screamed desire: a desire for sky eyes, a desire for the tender thing of a smile, and a desire for the clear voice telling her the stories.

She found herself imaging she could feel his calloused fingertips brushing past hers.

Kyanna...

She sighed. “I never wanted to be like this.”

Her hands pressed against a door, filling the hallway behind her with burning noonday light.

The sound of horses and men floated over.

“...but we can’t go that way…”

“—stupid, half-price bootstraps.”

Without meaning to, she had come to the front stables, where used horses for the army and messengers were received and switched out for fresh ones. The stable she favored, near the south gate, was in the opposite direction and more for holding horses of those stationed or living in the castle.

She drew near, slipping behind the building and finding a place to hide and listen in a corner with some hay and barrels. Bits of half rotten straw poked through her skirts.

“Just because they went towards it didn’t mean they did. They were men. Men don’t enter Soan territory unless they want to be robbed or worse.”

“But thems all desert folk. Politics coulda changed since then. And it ain’t like they got nowhere else to go, we got stations everywhere else.”

“A station ain’t a military base.”

“But it’d be the perfect place to hide, and Hrathbern’s by there. I’ve heard stories, perhaps they—“

“Stop talking. You ain’t know nothing.”

“Still, post-war is always Soan time. Too many women, not enough men, loads of widows and all that. My brother-in-law married a desert woman. Says Soan are like a plague whenever a war ends, come to see if they can clear out the men or enslave them once and for all.”

The other man snorted. “You afraid of a bunch of women with swords more than men?”

“You’d be stupid not to. There’s a reason women don’t naturally take ta war like men. It’s ’cause if they do…”

“Just get the stupid oats.”

Strong and burning, the image of the dancer of her dreams forced her way into Kyanna’s mind. Slowly, deliberately, the desert woman raised her naked arm to the sun-bleached sky in the first curve of a dance.

Then, real as the wood of the barrel pressed against her knee, a soft hand brushed against her cheek.

With a startled squeak Kyanna turned around, only to see nothing, though the image in her head pressed harder, through her thoughts, till she could almost see it like a living night dream: the dancer, the Soan, gazing with bright gold eyes, her cinnamon lips moving.

If you want him, you should go. If you don’t, he will die.

Kyanna rubbed her eyes hard, but it only brought the sight of the Soan out clearer.

“What the hell…” she pressed the balls of her hand till stars burst through her head. “I’ve—I’ve gone mad, I’m—“

Sweetheart, you’re almost there. This is your chance.

“My chance for—what could I do to save him that a platoon of knights can’t?”

In answer, the woman just smiled, hanging a hand off her wide hips.

No. What can you do that a bunch of men can’t?

“Are you saying…the Soan? They’re going to have to deal with Soan to get to him?”

The Soan jerked her chin up in a haughty affirmative before the image and feeling of burning sunlight vanished, leaving Kyanna with the dark black and red view of her squashed and smarting eyes. She dropped her hands, blinking hard to return her sight.

For a long moment, she stared at the palms of her hands. Then she tugged out the heavy, ugly gold locket and pulled out the wire key to pop it open once more.

More rainbows than ever filled the shadows behind the shed. Diamonds danced over the mud and stone, like dancing shoes upon a polished ballroom floor.

For not the first time, she wondered if the opal were the same one from the story of the genie. And if it were, could that mean the genie had been real? It was already quite obvious the dreams of the dancing Soan weren’t ordinary dreams, but when had she started to have them? Wasn’t it the night of her wedding, after she had received the opal? Or had it been because she’d heard the story?

Either or, it didn’t matter. Rolling her lips beneath her teeth, she snapped the pendant shut, returning the darkness to her corner.

“Fine,” she stood up, shaking dirt and straw off her skirts. “I’ve always wanted to go on an adventure anyways.”