The Summer Prince

by Carol Oates

with the truth you have always accepted so easily, you try to con­vince yourself that you are deranged?” Disappointment was evident in his voice, and he shook his head but kept his gaze lowered. “I expected more.”

  “You’re not real.” I forced the words out. Ice flowed through my veins beneath skin that prickled with perspiration. “You can’t be real.”

  “My name is Regan.” He turned toward me again. “I am the Summer Prince, but you already knew that, didn’t you?” His eyes were back to that same startling blue that had peered across the field.

  Even in the darkness they were radiant…he was radiant, and it made me laugh. I didn’t expect the sound to come from my mouth, and so I couldn’t blame Regan’s startled confusion. His straight black eyebrows drew down in a scowl, and in one flowing movement he bounded the trunk and landed without a sound only two feet away from me. He was ethereal. Incomprehensibly, I experienced a deep desire to touch him and prove he was real. It would have only taken one tiny movement, and the fingertips of my right hand shook, fighting the ridiculous urge.

  I was too slow, and he acted first. The laughter died in my throat, and I recoiled when he reached to take my hand. Without conscious decision, my body veered left with some profound animal instinct to save myself. He was faster and blocked me, so I darted forward the other way. He was there too. He was everywhere — every direction I turned he was there before me, looking at me with an expression of profound sadness. Finally I dropped to my knees so hard the vibrations trembled through my bones. Even when I squeezed my eyes shut, all I saw was him.

  “Kill me then,” I demanded bitterly. If this was real, I wanted it over. If I was insane, my challenge didn’t matter, since I was alone, crumpled on the forest floor with my arms wrapped around myself. I desperately tried to ignore the searing pain renewed in my hand and kept my fists clenched.

  I began to think about my father and how Sally was right about him. We had never been particularly close, but we got by together. When I left the house tonight, he had been sitting in his armchair by the empty stone hearth in our living room, a tumbler of malt whiskey clutched in his hand, mourning the night of my birth. It was how he spent every Beltaine. He never took part in the celebration. I thought he would try to stop me. He had spent my entire life warning me about the Fae, saying they would come back for me one day. But he didn’t stop me, and he said goodbye. That should have alerted me. My father never said goodbye…ever. He’d say good luck, see you later, take care — never goodbye, since it was bad luck. It implied the person leaving would never return. He didn’t expect to see me come home, and suddenly I was very frightened.

  Several moments later I was still shaking, though Regan had made no move to attack as far as I could tell. I opened my eyes and blinked repeatedly, adjusting to the darkness again. He was kneeling, leaning back on his heels in front of me, his hands lightly resting on his thighs. With his sharp jaw strained and his entire body tensed, he appeared like a living, breathing monument to beauty. That sadness was still evident in his eyes. If I didn’t know better, I would have guessed he was worried. But I did know better, because the Fae were mischievous. They lured humans in like fish to a beautiful fly-hook; once they were hooked, the Fae reeled them in and left them dying…suffocating. He was playing with me.

  “You’re bleeding,” he said, but he didn’t look at my hand. His gaze stayed fixed on mine. “May I?”

  I tried to think rationally and ponder the ways I could use his stalling to my own advantage. How could I keep this strange being, who looked like a boy but wasn’t, from killing me? I had already antagonized him, and I was probably lucky he didn’t kill me when I demanded it of him. It could only mean one thing: he wanted something.

  I held my breath and hesitantly offered my injured hand. It floated in the air between us while he continued to look at me, only it wasn’t simply looking. He was staring hard, almost like he was committing everything about me to his memory. His eyes flickered to my mouth, and his own lips twitched. Out of nowhere, butterflies flew somersaults inside my stomach. I was sure it wasn’t an appropriate reaction to a being that would probably end my life before the night was out.

  He blinked, and the spell was broken. His eyes lowered as he care­fully took my hand in his. My initial reaction was surprise at the softness of his skin and the gentleness of his touch when he tentatively inspected the wound. I winced and instinctively attempted to pull my hand back. He held it steady as if he expected that response.

  “We should clean and bandage this wound.”

  “Why?” I asked. I didn’t mean to, although it seemed a reasonable ques­tion. He was one of the Fae, of the royal court no less, and he had revealed himself. I doubted he planned to patch me up and send me on my way.

  He raised he eyes to me, and once again I was trapped by him as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the atmosphere and I needed his gaze to prevent me from floating away. Puzzled, his eyes narrowed and his head dipped to the side.

  “I think it is deep, but I can’t tell with the dried blood and dirt. You’ve lost a lot of blood. I would tend to this for you if you will allow me?” he asked.

  Allow him? “Okay.” It was because of my own bewilderment more than anything else.

  Regan smiled, and this time the butterflies were accompanied by a full rush of heat flooding my body and tightening in my chest. His smile wasn’t perfect. It started on one side of his lips, pulling up at the corner before the other side joined in, revealing two dimples below diamond-cut cheek bones, but it remained almost indiscernibly uneven. It made me feel like I did on spring mornings, waking to find the sun coming up through the mist, burning it away to reveal the beauty of the day. His smile brought on an almost unbearable sense of familiarity and safety, accompanied by another fleeting emotion that I didn’t have time to place before it was gone.

  Regan positioned his other hand under my elbow and helped me to stand. When he was sure I had my balance, he escorted me over to the tree that had fallen, and I noticed something reflective on the surface. Once I was sitting, Regan released my hand and caught hold of the end of his shirt. He pulled it over his head without unbuttoning it, and I had to mentally slap myself when I realized I was ogling the very taut and very pale flesh of his stomach and carved hipbones that was exposed between the band of his dark trousers and the undershirt that had ridden up. Heat blossomed across my cheeks, and I had to remind myself this was not a boy — this was a creature that should only exist in fantasy and imagination. Not something that should be living, breathing, walking around, and tearing off strips of his shirt to clean my wound.

  He dipped a piece of fabric into a small puddle of water trapped in a moss-lined hole in the trunk. I watched as he wiped blood and dirt from my hand to reveal the deep laceration still slowly seeping blood. I tried very hard to hold still, but it hurt. I didn’t want to be a baby about it since I was probably going to die soon anyway. It was difficult when he was being so caring and treating me so tenderly. He held my hand as if it was a fragile eggshell that would break apart under the flimsiest pressure. When his fingers lightly traced a line from my wrist to the end of my middle finger, I shivered all over.

  “Are you cold?” he asked, peeking up at me through thick, black eye­lashes that seemed to gleam in the sliver of moonlight illuminating us through the trees.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure? You’ve lost blood. Do you feel dizzy, ill…?” he pressed, keeping his eyes on my face, perhaps to gauge my honesty.

  “It’s stings a little, but I’m okay, really.” Now it was my turn to be confused — why should he care? Everything I had been told about the Fae warned me not to trust him. Yet a huge part of me wanted to do just the opposite. I actively ignored that part and turned my attention to something that would keep my distrust firmly in place.

  “Why didn’t you help me?”

  “I am helping you.”

  “I think you know what I mean.”

  He s
ighed and continued to diligently wrap a long piece of his shirt around my hand. “I didn’t want her to see me. I was worried she would panic and hurt you before I could get you to follow me.”

  “Who? Sally?”

  “My sister,” he replied flatly, tying off the bandage.

  His sister? Sally? No, it can’t be. That would mean Sally was a faery, and that wasn’t possible. She was my best friend. I had known her all my life. I would have known if she wasn’t human, wouldn’t I? But then her behavior tonight was so bizarre. She wanted to hurt me. Maybe I didn’t know her at all…maybe I didn’t know anything. After all, I had somehow managed to land myself in a tug of war between siblings — faery siblings, no less. I desperately wanted to believe this was all a trick: Someone had put this beautiful human boy up to taunting me, and I would be the butt of jokes in the village for the rest of the summer. It would still mean Sally was a part of it, but at least she would be human.

  “Shush,” he whispered harshly, holding his hand up, his palm right in front of my face. His wide eyes took in our surroundings.

  I flinched back and opened my mouth to scream; the hair on my arms rose, reacting to sudden static in the air around us. It appeared as if our small patch of forest had abruptly gone pitch