The Candle Princess

by Raine Hughes

  She peered around the near vacant building. “This is the only animal you have? You said you are coming to feed the animals.”

  “Force of habit; at the moment, Jersey is the only one I have.” Her look prompted him to explain. “This is a new barn. The old one burned down. Unfortunately, the animals were killed, all except this cow.”

  Jasmine gasped, her eyes large and expressive, indicating she was as sad as he was that the livestock had perished. He hadn’t expected that. Her sorrowful gaze was mesmerizing. Noah felt like he was being drawn into those eyes like an ill-fated moth to light. He jerked involuntarily, succeeding in startling everyone, Jersey included.

  “Well, I’m finished in here!” he said with forced gaiety. “Shall we go out to the road and locate your car or maybe you have a little pick-up truck or some such vehicle?”

  “Vehicle? I came here in my special glass urn!”

  For a moment Noah stared at her nonplussed then he brushed past her. Once outside he sucked in several deep breaths. Snow or no snow, he had to send this lady on her way. He was very definitely drawn to her and he didn’t want to be. Not to a kooky, bewitchingly beautiful lady with woeful eyes and Jersey hair who thought she was a Djinni!

  Any minute now she’ll start telling me she has a magic carpet that can carry us away. He shook his head to clear the ridiculous notion. Then he snatched up a large scoop shovel that leaned against the barn wall, slung it over his shoulder, and set off down the drifted laneway at a determined gait.

  His guest struggled to keep up with him. He was halfway down the drive before he relented and slowed his pace so that she could walk beside him. He was very much aware of her panting alongside, her hands clenched with cold.

  He yanked his mitts off and handed them to her without a word. When she didn’t put them on immediately, he growled, “My hands are hot. Go ahead. Warm up.” He was relieved when she drew them over her hands.

  When they got to the gate he looked left and right without seeing anything except blowing snow forming new drifts on the county road. He frowned. “Where did you leave your, ah, conveyance?”

  His unwanted guest was also scrutinizing the scenery in both directions. She glanced back at the buildings behind them before she moved to the right, breaking into a run. She looked at the high banks on either side of her, and wailed in a dismayed voice, “This is like being lost in the desert, only the sand dunes are snow.”

  Noah bumped into the back of her when she stopped. “Well?” he asked impatiently, seeming unable to stop his ill humor and at once didn’t like himself.

  Jasmine remained silent, her face awed as if the sight of nothing but shifting white landscape was new to her. “It, my urn, is here somewhere. I released myself and a big yellow monster with a huge mouth came.” She flung her arms wide in imitation. “It made me fly into the snow. When I get up, it, my home, it is gone!” She gulped like she was drowning. “It is then much too cold for me to look for it so I used my powers to transport to your house, only it was not as I intend, I am so cold. I collide with your little roof and fall off into the snow. Cold, so cold.”

  Noah bit back a sharp retort. Did he look that gullible? Landed on his roof, indeed! How did she get there? Fly? “Come along to the house.”

  He turned and marched back the way they’d come. Someone must have dumped her off at his gate. He could understand why. He’d just as gladly get rid of her! Unfortunately he’d have to wait for the storm to stop.

  I might be stuck with her for days!

  It was only when he reached the driveway that he turned to be sure she was following. She wasn’t. She stood in the middle of the road but something worked furiously along the roadside. Snow flew in all directions so that he couldn’t see what it was.

  A glance revealed that the woman was running crazily back and forth, now.

  He refocused on the commotion and staggered backwards with a gasp as the thing worked its way closer to him, heaving snow from one place to another, then it shifted and worked farther into the ditch. He stood rooted to the spot as a huge section of the ditch was cleared. A face full of snow barely registered. What he was seeing was real! It was a huge shovel that was making its way through the snow without benefit of anyone holding it! There was just no way that was possible and yet he was witness to it!

  Djinni. She was a Djinni, or at least she was something totally foreign to everything he believed in. The idea was just so far fetched. Then the impact of the entire situation hit him like a punch to the gut, leaving him struggling to get his breath.

  He’d found a Djinni! A Djinni without a home. She was looking for her bottle, no, that was an urn as she’d kept emphasizing, but the container could be just about anywhere. The force exerted by what he now realized had been the snowplow he’d watched earlier, would have thrown it a great distance. She didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in Hell of finding one small urn.

  Finally she was standing still while the snow flew about her. Tears coursed down her face. Noah took long strides to cover the distance between them.

  “It’s impossible to find it in all this snow, Djinni… Jasmine,” he said gently, and she looked at him with those changeable green-flecked, liquid brown eyes that shimmered with tears and infinite sadness. “Don’t cry,” he pleaded, feeling helpless.

  “My ho-o-ome is gggggone.”

  “We’ll find it in the spring, when the snow melts. My home is your home till then. You can stay with me and we’ll find it come spring.” What am I saying? The last thing I want is this supernatural woman in my home! “Don’t worry, and please stop crying.” He wiped ineffectively at her face with his hand. “You’ll freeze your face.”

  She cried harder and on impulse, Noah tried the only thing he thought might draw her attention away from her predicament. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her—hard.

  At first she resisted, maybe not so much against the embrace but against his hold. Then she responded, kissing him back, her lips growing pliant. He gentled his embrace to enjoy the kiss, until he realized what he was doing. Shocked, he lifted his mouth and pulled her against his chest, sheltering her wet face from the wind. “Shush. You’ll freeze your face if you cry.”

  Even through their combined bulky winter gear, she felt small and fragile, and a fierce urge to protect her swamped him. The feeling left him shaken and not altogether unafraid as he held her tight, not knowing what else to do.

  When she finally became quiet, he eased away. She looked at him again with those questioning, big expressive eyes. He was a sucker for creatures with beautiful liquid eyes like spaniels, Jersey cows, and now a homeless Djinni, apparently.

  “Sorry,” he said with a gulp, once more trying to wipe the wetness from her reddened cheeks. “Kissing you was the only thing I could think of to get you to stop crying. You can’t cry outside in the winter.”

  She continued to regard him with that woeful look, obviously still in shock, although he didn’t know if it was her situation that stilled her, his actions, or her response to him, if she even realized that she’d kissed him back.

  His own heart still hadn’t calmed and he felt like he was in shock himself. Was that because of the kiss he’d pressed on her or her reaction? He guessed that they were both dazed. He drew in several deep breaths to ease the thumping in his chest as he tried to gather his wits about him.

  “Come.” He guided her back to his house, the home that they would somehow share until spring, if he didn’t wake up and discover he’d been dreaming.

  Wasn’t it just last night that he’d dragged out the tattered old book, Arabian Nights, and read it until he’d fallen asleep? Dreaming, a reasonable explanation.

  He glanced over to the woman walking beside him. She was still there. Maybe he wasn’t dreaming.

  Or maybe he wasn’t awake yet.

  Chapter 2

  Her new master did not say anything for a long time after they returned to the farmhouse. Jasmine felt his gaze on her as she paced back and
forth, unsettled after failing to find the bright green translucent urn. She felt like a gem without a setting, a camel without a desert, a candle without a wick, that last too real because inside her urn she could have kept cozy warm between any jobs she might have to perform for her new master.

  New master. Those two words never failed to instill a sense of foreboding. She was without the protection of her urn, this time. The urn was an integral part of her life, especially while she was in the command of a mortal being. It was her safe haven. She had been forced to seek its protection more than once from previous masters either intent on harming her or on taking advantage of her body. The memory sent a shiver through her.

  But that was for those previous mortals. Masters normally were arrogant, demanding, and domineering. Her first impression was that Master Noah was none of those things, despite the kiss. That unexpected embrace and the reason for taking the liberty indicated that he was a caring man. His eyes, bright with truth and perhaps a bit of fear, had left her equally shaken, but it was because of her response. She had never kissed a mortal before; more importantly she had never found any Djinn male embrace the least bit enticing.

  She was not the least bit afraid of being harmed by Master Noah, not physically anyway.

  It was her vulnerability that kept her wary this time, because this unimpeded exposure to a mortal was totally alien. She was not certain if she should be looking forward to interacting with him or not, but in truth, she was, despite how much closer to her inner being he could become because she could not escape his scrutiny. She shivered again, not a fear reaction, but rather a realization that she was vulnerable to him as a woman to a man and she had no experience with that.

  “Sorry about the cold,” Noah said behind her, moving to add wood to what he called an ancient cook stove. “I favor this over conventional electric or gas ranges, especially during the winter.” He told her how it served as emergency back-up heat in the event of power failure. “But I use it all the time. I like the smell of wood smoke and the steady heat. I’ll turn the furnace thermostat up, too. You can regulate it however is necessary. If you come from a hot climate, you must feel the cold right down to your bones.”

  “Much gratitude to thee, Master Noah,” Jasmine said after only a slight pause to get her thoughts in hand. Seeing that he expected it, she moved closer to the stove.

  “Just call me Noah.”

  “But, Master—“

  “That’s my command,” Noah broke in harshly then rammed his fingers through his hair in obvious agitation. He appeared to resent his own order.

  She did not have time to dwell on that before she heard him talking to himself again. Possibly mortals had poor hearing, so that he thought she couldn’t hear him either. She had the exceptional hearing of a Djinni, an ability that had served her well in the past and allowed her to escape an uncertain fate more than once. She listened without shame.

  “Lordy, if someone dropped in and overheard us... Master and Djinni, Princess, thee, thy. Lord help me!”

  Each word was punctuated with a negative shake of his head until he said, louder, “Sorry, Princess, but I’ll have to simply call you Jasmine. Our situation is…” He shrugged and frowned simultaneously, as if not knowing what else to say.

  Most masters never bothered to remember her name and were even less interested in calling her anything but Djinni to denote what she was, not who she was. She liked that Master Noah cared. Besides, she was in disgrace with her people, and therefore could not in all honesty counter his demand to give her the respect demanded of her royalty by calling her Princess Jasmine.

  “There is no need to use my royal title. Jasmine is fine, as thee… as you wish, Ma… Noah.” She would also try to remember to put two words together into one the way he did though so far the reason for all of the combinations he used eluded her.

  They eyed each other over the polished black stovetop until Noah stepped back looking flushed. “Where exactly did you come from, Jasmine?”

  His voice and tone had changed, softened; she sensed a subtle change in his manner. The way he said her name in a throaty, almost gruff voice, created delightful goosebumps along Jasmine’s arms, as had his desperate embrace earlier. No mere mortal had ever kissed her before, and being a royal princess had kept her off limits to all but a select few Djinn males, including subordinate princes.

  Inexplicably she wondered what Master Noah’s kiss would be like if he actually wanted to kiss her. She sensed it would be like nothing she had ever experienced. Before she could dwell on the pleasant possibilities, she forced her thoughts back to where they should be, to the command of answering his questions, unsettling though they were.

  “My father, Prince Jafar, summoned my presence to our home at Mt. Kaf, which has ties to Arabia. He is very upset with me. I am… was, to marry a man I do not wish to marry. My father is furious when the marriage is called off.” She was stumbling through the words and getting her tenses all mixed up, but she could not, couldn’t, think properly, upset as she always was on this subject. “Our parents looked on this as a desirable union, with a rise into a higher level of royalty for me and greater privileges for my family.”

  She took a deep breath and fell silent, reliving that awful scene. “I did not like Prince Rasoul but Father was insistent I honor the marriage. It was arranged when I was but a small child!”

  At Noah’s almost imperceptible wince, Jasmine realize her voice had become shrill. She could understand her father’s upset because to call off such union was to disgrace the family. In the end, it had not been about her resistance but something even worse in the eyes of her father.

  “Whyyyy?” Noah broke into her memories with just one drawn-out word, as if his question was any one of several that must be running through his mind.

  Jasmine breathed a dispirited sigh. “Prince Rasoul refused to marry a Djinni who bungles even the simplest tasks. My magic is flawed. My service does not always go as I intend. My last master is so upset he wished me vanished before terms of our agreement are met.” Oh, dear, she was jumbling her words again but she forged on.

  “I had no recourse but to return home. Commanded to disappear while still in the service of a mortal and ordered never to come back is worst command a Djinni can be given. It is especially disgracing for one of royal blood.”

  She dropped her gaze under his piercing look. Probably he was rethinking his invitation. She could not have told an untruth to shield herself. If Noah asked her to leave, it would be humiliating to admit that she could not do so without her specially equipped urn. If she called upon her father for help, the Djinni King would know about it and she could lose her title and privileges immediately. Her father had had no choice but to send her back out into the world to at least try to salvage her worthiness. The prospect of an unsuccessful service this third time was chilling, considering the unpredictability of her powers in the cold climate.

  While she was Djinn by birth, she was also the great-granddaughter of a mortal woman, a Christian, sometimes looked down on by some Islamic followers, though among the Djinn, that had seldom been the case. But, it was the diluting of her Djinni blood that was responsible for the misfortunes of her flawed magic, or so her father always said with a mixture of disappointment in Jasmine and irritability with his wife’s family ancestry. Secretly, Jasmine thought there was more to her inability to do magic. She suspected, within her, was some other shortcoming that had nothing to do with her mortal blood. She needed to discover what it was; somehow she just knew the insight would be depressing.

  Even the prospect of understanding her mortal side more clearly, did not cheer her.

  * * *

  Noah watched the way his guest wilted before him as she admitted her shortcomings with deteriorating grammar. The air around her seemed to lose light, too. He hadn’t noticed the brightness that surrounded her until it began to fade, but of course that had to be his imagination, considering the colorful costume she wore.

  Th
e urge to comfort her gave him pause. He knew it wouldn’t be wise to do so. Noah suspected that further touching Jasmine, the Djinni Princess, would be a mistake. But for some reason he seemed to have no power over his thoughts and actions around this mysterious woman and it terrified him, especially since he now knew this was no ordinary female that he’d given refuge to.

  He tried to remain optimistic at her explanation. How bad could it be? “I have no idea what a Djinni is supposed to do. Besides, I don’t want anything. You can just be yourself.”

  “But being a Djinni is being myself,” Jasmine countered, wringing her hands. “I am thee’s… yours to command.” With a last sniff she bowed in a manner of one submissive to a higher authority.

  “I don’t have any wishes and I don’t want any slave to do everything for me!” Jasmine’s eyes widened with mortification and her hands stilled, at once making him sorry for his outburst. There was no need to be angry with her. His reaction to her subservient manner had to do with someone else.

  The fire inside the stove crackled. The tension in the room was palpable. Apparently eye contact was just as riveting for her as it was for him, only he didn’t like the terrified look she regarded him with.

  He dropped his gaze to break her fearful concentration and softened his tone as he spoke. “So, you’re just here to prove that you are a good Djinni?”

  “No.”

  Noah waited for her to explain. When she didn’t he prompted, “Then, why are you here?”

  Jasmine’s gaze faltered and she heaved a resigned sigh. “My father suspects that I may not be worthy of the title of Princess, that King Solomon will return me to common status. My father declared I may not be fit for a Djinni husband, that only a dull and unimaginative mortal will not be concerned with my botched powers. He himself flung my urn into the wind, to ride the air currents wherever I would go, to find such mortal man to experience.”