by J. A. Curtis
When he reached me, he rose up, shining and beautiful. He held something in his hands.
“For you, m’lady,” he said. “A sign that I am forever yours.”
He held an upside-down crown made of iron poles. Draped across the iron crown lay a necklace made of jewels. Four jewels, each a different color, and five casings. The last casing lay empty.
The expression on Arius’s face changed to curiosity and surprise as he looked down on the gift he was offering me. “What’s this?” he said. Except he no longer sounded like Arius. He spoke with Nuada’s voice. “You are having visions.”
I laughed as I picked up the necklace and put it on. “I’ve always been having visions.”
16
Disagreements
“You will push, and others will push back. What you need to figure out is when to fight and when to make the sacrifice.”
MY FINGERS WORKED THE blue and purple strings over my knuckles. The threads dragged over the thickest part of my hand as if in protest. I scrunched the bracelet in my hand before shoving it under the mattress. With a sigh, I rubbed my bare wrist, drew on my gauntlet, and hastily exited my room.
I wasn’t ready to leave. If I went home, I wouldn’t be able to come back to griffins and golems and magic and faeries. Being here with the faeries felt... nice, like the earth realigned with its proper orbit.
And so, I left my family and friends in their pain, believing I was dead. I was certain that made me a terrible person.
Arius had doubled the number of faeries in the rotation to stand watch at night since I arrived. Everyone was sleep deprived because of me. So, doing my due diligence, I insisted I take a watch. At first, I thought Arius would fight me on it, but he agreed to meet me on the roof of the manor at eight.
Arius explained the basics. Rotate sides of the manor but not in a predictable pattern. If I saw anything amiss, I should blow the horn. The horn was simple, long, and brass. The number of times I blew it would signal to the faeries what I wanted them to do.
“You don’t need to stay,” I said. “I got this.”
Arius stretched out on the rooftop, tucking his hands behind his head. “Wake me if anything happens, before you blow the horn.”
I let out a long sigh. “When are you going to trust me?”
He lay there with his eyes closed, not even acknowledging my last statement. I squeezed the binoculars in my hands.
“I said when are you—”
“You’re already distracted,” Arius interrupted without opening his eyes. I huffed, wanting him to hear my displeasure but turned the binoculars out into the night and practiced focusing them on the tree line around the manor.
I hadn’t mentioned my most recent visions to Nuada or Arius. The necklace vision seemed unimportant, while the one about the monster with the upside-down metal crown growing out of his head I didn’t want to think about, let alone recant to anyone. I really wanted it to be a dream.
I was almost certain that the Arius-as-Poseidon one was a dream, and even if I was wrong—No, I wasn’t wrong.
“What are you thinking about?” Arius asked.
I nearly dropped the binoculars. “Um, uh—"
He cracked an eyelid. “When you are on watch, you shouldn’t think of other things. Clear your mind. You need to focus on nothing else but your task, no matter how mundane it may seem.”
“Right.” I forced the image of bare-chested trident-wielding Arius aside.
Arius relaxed back onto the roof, and I stared out into the darkness. Two hours passed, and I had mostly kept my mind clear of any distracting thoughts, rotating to different sides of the manor at random as Arius had instructed. If he were awake, he would be proud... then again, probably not. Arius proud of me for doing for a couple hours what he did for half the night every night?
I was changing my position from the east side to look out over the north side of the manor when a motion caught my eye. I crawled over to the south side of the manor. A figure was working its way away from the manor toward the scattered tree line. I raised the binoculars to my eyes and focused them on the night prowler, but even with Luchta’s altered binoculars, all I confirmed was that the figure moving away from me was humanoid.
I needed a higher focus lens.
“Arius,” I said.
He was awake and next to me in an instant. I wondered if he had been asleep at all. I pointed toward the figure hurrying across the lawn away from me toward the ravine.
“Iris,” he said. “Let’s get him.” He grabbed the horn.
Iris? What was he doing here? I released my faerie guardian onto the roof of the manor. The great bird’s head shook, and it ruffled its feathers in anticipation. Arius was already climbing onto its back. He reached down to offer me his free hand, the trumpet clutched in the other. I took his hand, and he pulled me up in front of him, then wrapped his free arm around me.
“I’m trusting you,” he said. My body warmed, and a tingle of pleasure slid down my spine.
Come on, focus, I thought, Stop Iris. Don’t dump yourselves off.
I looked toward the ravine. Iris’s small form disappeared into the shallow gap. I gripped the neck of my griffin and squeezed my legs as it spread its wings and launched us off the roof of the manor.
We came upon the ravine within seconds. The griffin’s wings flapped steady as we soared over it. Iris was making his way down into the rocky bottom. The ravine was too shallow and too narrow to land where it started but opened up farther out. If we hurried, we would trap Iris. Arius put the horn to his lips and blew three long blasts as we circled back around, having overshot Iris in an attempt to find a spot to land.
“Hold on, it will be tight,” I said as we dove into the ravine. Arius’s other arm wrapped around me, the horn across my waist like a seat belt.
We were coming in so steep, I worried we’d fall off the front. But if we were going to land in the narrow space, we didn’t have any choice. Arius leaned back, his arms and horn pulling me with him. I squeezed with my thighs and said a silent prayer I hadn’t misjudged the landing. I felt the jolt of the griffin touching down on rough stone and breathed.
“Well done,” Arius said.
I turned to look at him, my eyes wide. “That’s the first compliment you’ve given me.”
He opened his lips to respond but grew serious as his eyes focused past me.
“You’re trapped, Iris. Give yourself up,” he said.
I turned to face Iris, who was standing on a boulder about twenty feet away. My griffin blocked the way deeper into the ravine.
“Not as trapped as you think, brother,” Iris said.
A giant orange and red bird appeared in front of him. It swirled for a moment and then rushed with a fiery intensity toward us. Arius shoved me off the griffin. I landed hard onto the rocks as the firebird plowed into my griffin with Arius still on its back.
My griffin reared back to deflect the blow. Arius dove off the griffin’s back and ended up at its feet on the opposite side of the ravine from me. It caught the fiery bird in her talons, but the force rolled it back against the side of the ravine. Arius hurried away from the griffin’s large lion paws, but the ravine was still too narrow to move far. He took refuge under a small thin ledge. My griffin used its weight and grip on the phoenix to throw it into the opposite side of the ravine. I crawled back as a ball of fire burst a few feet to my left. Sparks singed my skin and burned into my leather armor.
The phoenix recovered and launched itself back at the griffin. It scrabbled against the wall to get in a position to face the smaller phoenix. Its claws pulled chunks of rock and dirt loose. A large stone tumbled from the side of the ravine and pressed down on the ledge where Arius huddled. Dirt and rocks rained down, adding to the pressure. The small ledge groaned, then collapsed, covering Arius in a layer of dirt and stone.
I rose to my feet, hands in my hair. I waited for Arius to burst out from under the landslide, but he didn’t. My griffin and Iris’s bird foug
ht right over Arius’s burial site.
A hand clamped onto my arm, and I was jerked backward, shoved up against the side of the ravine, the edge of a sword pressed to my throat.
“Don’t you know not to turn your back on an enemy?” Iris said.
I swallowed. The point of a rock dug into my side. Still, all I thought about was Arius laying under that pile of rocks. “Are you my enemy?” I asked. “Please, Arius might be hurt. He needs help.”
Iris scowled. “Call back your griffin and let me pass.”
I wanted to know what he was doing here and why, but every second I wasted, Arius went without help. I pulled my griffin back on my arm.
“Go save your precious Arius,” he said.
He sheathed his sword and jumped from rock to rock, going deeper into the ravine. His phoenix swept down, and he reached up, grabbed hold of its claws and rose into the air. I scrambled to the other side of the ravine where the pile of rocks covered Arius’s body and began to dig with my hands.
“Mina!” the shout came from outside the ravine. A flying figure shot over my position, high above, heading toward Iris’s ascending form.
“Down here!” I shouted. “Arius is trapped.”
As I moved some smaller rocks, I noticed two boulders so large I wouldn’t be able to lift them on my own. What if Arius’s body lay crushed under the boulders? I got Arius’s face uncovered first, I brushed dirt from his eyelashes and lips. He lay unmoving but his eyes opened and regarded me. I breathed a temporary sigh of relief until I saw the monstrous boulder pressing down onto his chest. He was pinned, and it looked like most of the weight of the boulder rested on his body.
“Did you catch Iris?” he whispered.
I shook my head. He was asking about this while a boulder was crushing his chest. He could be bleeding internally. Could he die from this? What happened to faeries who had their bodies crushed? If they didn’t fall, and they couldn’t die, did they live forever in excruciating pain? Or would he fall unconscious and remain that way until someone chopped off his head or ripped out his heart?
“I had to let him go. You were buried under a rockslide,” I said.
Arius’s breath came out in wheezes, and he gasped for air as he struggled to breathe. I bit my lip to keep from screaming in frustration.
“You—shouldn’t have,” he said between gasps. “The faeries will—see this—as a failure.”
Did he just say that?
“I should have left you here under the crushing rock? You are not invincible, Arius, warrior of thunder. Do you think I am some monster to leave you here in serious trouble while I run off to secure my place as leader? YOU’RE AN IDIOT!”
A hand touched my shoulder, and I spun around. Caelm and Palon stood on the rock behind me. Thaya and Docina were coming back up the ravine with Iris in tow, and I made out the dark figures of more faeries standing up on the cliff of the ravine.
“We’re here to help, my lady,” Caelm said.
I stepped aside onto another rock. Great, everyone had just watched me lose it with an injured, lung-collapsing Arius. I took several deep breaths. Palon reached forward and all too easily lifted the rock I couldn’t budge off Arius’s chest and tossed it aside. Caelm knelt next to Arius and placed his hands on his chest. Arius stopped gasping and wheezing.
“We have Iris,” Thaya shouted up to us.
“Take him to the dungeons,” Arius called back, then started hacking so hard his body shook.
“You will need more healing,” Caelm said. “You have a lot of damage.”
Caelm released his yeti, and it scooped Arius up and cradled him in one arm. Caelm climbed onto the monster’s back, and the beast used its ape-like legs to scramble up the side of the ravine. I noticed a flash of brass mixed in with the dark stone and dug out the horn that Arius had been clutching when the ledge collapsed. Palon and I climbed back to the mouth of the ravine. After pulling myself out, I sat at the lip of the ravine, rolling the horn between my hands, and stared back down the way we had come.
“I should go to my post and—” Palon started.
“Thank you, Palon,” I said. “Without you and Caelm, Arius would be in a lot worse condition.”
“He will be all right,” he said. “Caelm has healed Arius from worse than this.”
I remembered how he had admitted to sending Arius off to Caelm often after sword fighting with him.
I stood and faced him. “Thank you again.”
“A superior need not thank a subordinate for doing his duty,” he said.
“I guess I’m not much of a superior.”
He bowed. “I must go.” He turned and ran off.
I AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING to a relentless scraping noise that sounded as if it were coming from right outside my window. With a moan, I rolled over and threw my bedspread over my head, trying to ignore the sound. I had been up half the night on watch until Thaya spelled my group. After a brief check on Arius in the medical room to find he was already sitting up and looking like his old self, I had gone to my room and collapsed in blessed slumber. It was far too early for whatever was going on outside.
But the scraping went on and on. There was no way I was going back to sleep, so with another moan, I rolled out of bed. I shuffled over to the window, undid the latch, and looked down. Someone—from the shape and build I assumed it was Arius—was sitting on a stool in the grass below my window, holding his sword against a spinning stone wheel.
“Hey!” I shouted, but the scraping continued. “Hey!” I shouted louder, and the person stopped and looked up. Arius. “What’s going on?”
“Just following orders,” Arius said before going back to what he had been doing. The grating sound of metal on stone continued.
I hadn’t given any orders. “Whose—” Oh yeah, Nuada. I pulled the latch shut on the window and quickly changed into my armor. If Arius sharpening a sword was following orders... Well, I’d better go find out what was happening.
Not one faerie child lingered in the manor’s rooms or halls. Hammer on wood soon added to the sound of Arius’s sword on stone. I came to the front of the manor and moved into the rec room to peer out the front window. Faeries stood at attention in a line. Not everyone, though. I assumed some were still on watch. But other than that, there were the five-year-olds, Luchta, Earlana, Veran, and most of the older faeries. Palon held a large wooden post as if it were nothing while his faerie guardian pounded it into the grass close to where Arius still sharpened his sword.
What would they need a wooden post and a sharp sword for?
They had propped the front door to the manor open. I walked down the front steps and across the grass to the line of faeries. I realized Iris was already outside, being held at the head of the line by Thaya and Docina.
“What is going on here?” I asked.
No one answered. I looked up and down the line, every faerie staring straight ahead, not making eye contact. Some looked uncertain, like they wanted to answer me but felt conflicted over the matter. I scowled. Were they just going to ignore me?
My lady, it’s me. We have been ordered to stand in silence. I looked to Earlana. Nuada commanded Arius to remove Iris’s ears.
Say what? I took in the scene again as queasiness built in me. Arius sharpening the sword, Palon pounding in the post, Iris held at the ready. You don’t remove someone’s ears the way you take off your shoes.
Had Nuada gone mad?
I marched over to where Arius was still intent on making the edge of his sword as sharp as possible. Instead of shouting, this time I opted for tapping him on the shoulder. The stone wheel stopped spinning, and he turned. The punishment died on his lips as he realized I was not one of his underlings disobeying his command to silent attention in the rising morning sun.
“I can’t believe I have to say this, but you can’t just cut off someone’s ears. Besides, he’s your brother,” I said.
Arius scowled in Earlana’s direction before answering, “He’s a traitor. And this i
sn’t about hurting anyone for fun. His ears are a liability. He can hear everything we say. It’s not safe to keep him here and leave his ears intact. Nuada agrees.” He held the sword up and, satisfied with its sharpness, turned toward those standing at the front of the manor. “Bring the prisoner. Bind him to the post,” he said.
Thaya and Docina marched Iris to the post, taking his arms and tying them back around it.
“Think about what you are doing,” I said, “If you cut off his ears, you will bring Dramian’s wrath down upon us. You will put us all at risk, anyway. Maybe,” I lowered my voice. “Maybe it would be better for everyone to let him go.”
Arius shook his head. “I do not fear Dramian. Iris has been caught on enemy soil. We are well within our rights to do what we will with him.”
He stepped around me, his sword glinting in the morning sun as he walked toward Iris, who was bound to the pole, a stoic expression on his face.
“Stop this,” I said. “I order you to stop this.”
Arius stopped in front of Iris without looking back. “You can’t stop me from protecting the faeries, Mina.”
He raised the sword. I rushed forward, grabbed his raised hand, and jerked backward, using my weight to pull him off balance. He stumbled back a few steps, and while he recovered his balance, I drew my sword.
“I gave you an order, soldier,” I said.
I held my sword at the ready. I knew I was no match for Arius, and after last night, the last thing I could do was inflict pain on him. The question would be whether he would forgo his duty to defy me.
His eyes narrowed. “Who are you? Until you can answer that question, you hold no authority here.”
He turned away from me toward Iris and again raised his sword. I ran forward and met his blade with mine as it started to descend.
“I won’t let you do this,” I said through gritted teeth, our faces inches from each other.
“Arius, Mina. Wait.” Nuada stepped down the front steps of the manor and across the front lawn toward us.
