by Lynn Red
Arad smiled again. He seemed to do that when he was either nervous, or plotting something. In this case, it was both. “I’m not the sort of person who asks for things very often, as you might guess.”
“No,” Papa said. “I imagine not. Royalty doesn’t often have to ask for things.”
There was a bit of bristle in the old man’s voice. Arad was stunned a bit, but he understood. “My father,” Arad began, “is a good man. Was a good man. Whichever, he was always a good person. A bad king maybe, but a good person.”
“I know only what became of our farm and our family,” the old man said. “I never met the man; I’d not deign to pass judgment on his person.”
Arad nodded. “And that, I can appreciate. He was a good man caught up in bad times, and without much desire to make them better – I’ll grant you that. He stuck to old rules, kept up old traditions because they were easier. It made the nobles happy, it kept the revenue coming in. But I’ll say this… and I only say it now because of the things that have happened.”
Papa took a drink of his coffee and narrowed his eyes at the young, brash prince. “Meaning?”
“Meaning those traditions have changed. I changed them, as did my parliament. It’s a new era, friend—can I call you that?”
The old man nodded.
“I’d like to call you more than that, too.”
“Meaning?” the old man asked for the second time. “You’re asking me something but not saying what it is. I know better than to agree to things that aren’t clear. If I haven’t learned anything else in my years of life, I’ve learned that.”
“You asked me why,” Arad said. “Asked me why you. Asked me why Helena. Yes?”
The old man nodded. “And I’m still waiting for an answer.”
In the back of the house, there was more giggling, more laughter, as all seven girls were up and about. Someone said something about finding a husband at the palace, and another of them made a dirty joke about finding something better than a husband, and more temporary.
“The first time I saw her, she was at the palace, serving drinks, and wearing a veil. I saw her eyes, and a little curl of hair that had escaped from her scarf, but nothing else. I could tell she was smiling at me from across the room because of the way her cheeks lifted and her eyes twinkled and…”
“She’s always been able to do that to people,” Papa said with a smile. “I remember when she wasn’t yet a year old and was already charming my friends.”
It was only a few seconds, but it felt like it was an hour. “Yes,” Arad said. “It didn’t take three seconds before she had my heart. From then, I knew I had to do whatever it took to have her. She was new in the harem, she was pure and perfect and… I couldn’t get my mind off her. My father tried everything to keep me from having her, as he thought it was insane.”
“Maybe it is,” Papa said. “To change everything just for love?”
Arad laughed. “What else is worth changing the world for? Power? Money? No, those things are here one day and gone the next. When I’m lying in a bed, dying of being old and sick, I don’t want to hold my money, or a crown. I want to hold your daughter’s hand. I want her to look in my eyes and tell me that she’ll be with me until the end. I want nothing more; I never have, not once in my life.”
“What is it you’re asking, exactly, young man?” Papa asked with a smile that stretched from ear to ear. “Just come out and say what you mean.”
Arad flashed another of his grins. “What I’m asking,” he said. “Is for your daughter’s hand in marriage. I want her to be beside me, I want her to be my one and only – my queen, my love, my soul. Can I do that, and have your blessing? I’ll not have it any other way. I want to do this right.”
For a long moment, the old man stared at Arad, studying his face. “You’ve done this right. If it’s her hand you want, I can tell that she’s as in love with you as you are with her. And I couldn’t possibly ask more for my daughter than a man willing to change the country for her love.”
Arad nodded. “Not just the country,” he said. “If I had to, I’d change the world.”
Just then, the gaggle of sisters all emerged from the back of the house, tittering and laughing. They all stared at Arad, spellbound and grinning, at him.
“Thank you,” Arad said to Papa, as the girls looked on, confused. “I’ll see you at the palace?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” the old man said, grinning.
Turning to his unknowing bride-to-be, Arad introduced himself to all the sisters, all while holding tight to Helena’s hand, refusing to let her go, even for a second. It was like he was making sure she couldn’t go away again, like he was trying his best to hold onto her, to make sure he didn’t have to be without her again.
When the introductions were finally over, he asked them all if he was going to see them at the palace. To a girl, they all said they’d see him there, and one by one, filed out to gather their things.
“We’ve got a ride to take,” Arad said to Helena, staring dead into her eyes. “Are you ready?”
“I’ve been ready since the first time I saw you,” she whispered, kissing him one more time. When she realized they were alone in the living room, and were about to make their way off, into destiny, she took one last look around. “Wait,” she said. “There’s something I need to do.”
She stooped over, unlatched the belt on her bag, and began rooting around in it until she let out a triumphant yelp. “Here we are,” she said. Pulling an intricately decorated, beautifully crafted hand mirror out of the satchel, she looked at it for a long, long time before situating the looking glass on the mantle above the hardly-used fireplace. “This is where it belongs.”
“Are you sure?” Arad asked. “Why not keep it with you?”
“Because,” she said, taking his hand. “For a long time, that mirror kept me company. It made me feel safe and loved and cared for. But…” she trailed off, and turned to Arad. She turned her head upward, staring into his burning eyes. “But I don’t need those things anymore.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because you’re my comfort now. You make me feel safe, you make me feel like I’m home. It’ll take a while for me to get used to palace life, but… wherever you are? That’s home to me.”
Taking her up in his arms, Arad looked at the girl who’d stolen his heart, he stared at the woman who captured his spirit. “That’s a word I haven’t felt in a long, long time,” he said. “It’s time to go, though.” He paused, kissing her again. “Let’s go home.”
-10-
“Is this real?” Helena heard herself ask. Her voice echoed in her mind like an image cascading down a hall of mirrors. She heard the words, she felt the emotions of seeing a great city on fire and knowing it was done for her, so that she and her prince could be together. “It’s so, everyone is…”
“Not hiding.” The ibex prince turned his great head toward her, she ducked a horn, and he stared straight into her soul. “For better or worse, the world is just going to have to accept what we are. Or they won’t. It’s up to them, really. We’re fairly closed off anyway so I don’t think too much will come of it.”
In the streets of Salomana, the capital city, goats pranced, rams stood on buildings and jackals stood proudly in the open. “Are these all…?”
“People?” the prince asked. He nodded with a laugh. “Many old secrets, as they say.”
“How did it happen so fast? There was only a week of fighting, a week of fires and, well, terror. From my sisters at least. I knew you’d come out on top.”
“My father didn’t have a lot of will for the war. He was more interested in, well, it doesn’t matter. I can’t say I blame him at any rate. Love is a funny thing.”
The prince lowered his head so Helena could slide off. She did, and as soon as she felt her toes crunch onto the cobblestone street, she felt Arad transform behind her. A blink of an eye later, she felt the warmth of his hand slide around h
er middle and pull her backwards against him.
“The UN might not notice more goats and sheep in town, but they’re certainly going to notice everyone wandering around naked when they stop being animals,” Helena said with a giggle.
“No need for that,” Arad said. “If we wear furs all the time, no one will know the difference.”
Sure enough, when she turned back to face him again, the prince was wearing buckskin type trousers and a vest made of some kind of fur. “And anyway,” he said, “it’s just the people with some sort of royal blood in their veins that do the shifting. Of course, around these parts, we’ve had some pretty limited breeding stock for a while, apparently.”
The two of them laughed as a billy goat lunged at a nanny, who evaded his lusty grip. “Not first cousins, I hope,” Helena said as Arad kissed her neck.
“Oh I’m sure they’re distant. We’ve been around so long there’s no telling how many people have vague relations to the royal line. Do you want to see the palace?”
“I’m a little frightened, to be honest. All those fires. I’m sure the place is in shambles.”
He shook his head quickly from side to side. “Not at all. We have the best construction team on the planet. And also there wasn’t much damage in the first place. Most of the fighting was done in the streets, what little of it there was.”
“How?” she asked. “How did you just… take power like this?”
Arad laughed again, his eyes catching the noon sun and glimmering like liquid metal. “I met with my father, in secret of course. He was tired.”
“Of fighting?”
“No, just in general. You know how when an older person says that they’re tired, it means more than when you or I say it? We mean we want to go to sleep. They mean that life has worn them down.” He took a deep breath and squeezed her sides in a massaging grip. “We made a deal. He left in secret, I said he’d been killed in battle. One of my lieutenants made the claim, I backed it, and so did his side. That was that. No more fighting. Hell, there wasn’t really much fighting in the first place.”
Helena nodded. “That’s good,” she said. “I guess. I understand though, about the tired thing. You hear the same when you talk to farmers. The ragged sort of tone. You’d hear it if you talked to my father. Or to me, when I still lived at home.”
Arad studied her face for a long moment. “Well hopefully he won’t be so tired anymore. I’ve got positions for him and for all of your sisters, at the palace. If they accept of course.”
“Thank you,” Helena said, her eyes full of tears and her lip quivering so much that she had to bite it to calm the trembling. “I… I can’t say I understand why you’re doing all this, but… thank you nonetheless.”
“Like I said about my father, love does funny things.”
“Where is he?” Helena asked, accepting his answer with another soft kiss. “Your father I mean? Oh!” she got very excited. “What about Maret? I’d love to see her. I need to thank her for everything she’s done.”
“He’s… around,” Arad said, looking past Helena into the distance. When she followed his gaze, she saw a pair of beautiful ibexes with their necks entwined, staring back. “And she knows. You’ll see her at the wedding though. Father, I’m afraid, has to keep on pretending at being dead, for the good of the kingdom. And for his nerves. He should have stepped down a long time ago. His doctors always said he was killing himself by staying in power, but… well, what can you do?”
Helena watched the two ibexes for a moment, smiling like a fool despite her best efforts.
“Arad?” she asked. “I think I’m ready to see the palace now.”
Arad took Helena’s hand, letting his palm warm her to the core.
“You make me feel safe,” she said in a small, almost childlike voice. “It’s like I don’t have to worry about anything as long as I’ve got you, if that makes any sense. The last time I felt this way, I was a little girl, and my father made me feel secure. But that was before…”
His eyes, which had been in the distance, watching something over her shoulder, snapped back to Helena’s. “You are,” he said. “And you don’t have to worry about a single thing. “I’m no king.”
“Wait, but I thought—”
He put his hand up to quiet her. “Yes, I did take over, and yes, my father did abdicate for me. But… Well, Crane is so much better at this sort of thing. I’ve asked him and a handful of others I trust to put together a parliament.”
“A parliament? So there won’t be a king anymore?”
“Ah,” Arad smiled. “There will, but it’ll just be a figurehead thing. They’ll do all the work and I’ll show up on all the talk shows.”
“You’re a piece of work,” she said with a grin. “Well okay then, let’s go. I want to see everyone.”
Smiling, he led on, for ten steps and then suddenly froze, right in front of a jasmine bush that was in full bloom. Bees buzzed around, going about their work eagerly, and for a moment, Helena thought they’d stopped just to admire the flowering bush.
“There’s one other thing,” Arad said. There was some tentative affect in his voice. Something, Helena knew, was either up or wrong. And seeing as how happy he’d been moments before, it probably wasn’t that he was sad about anything.
“What is it?” she asked when he said nothing else.
He stayed silent, just watching her face. His eyes entranced her, catching her attention and refusing to let go. She stared back for a time, and then when she thought he’d either gone comatose or forgotten who he was, she squeezed his hand.
“Oh! Sorry,” he said. “I was just admiring the most incredible woman I’ve ever known. Don’t mind me.”
A deep, crimson flush crept down Helena’s cheeks, her neck, and her chest. She touched her throat with a couple of fingers, smiling warmly despite the embarrassment she felt. “If you’re trying to flatter your way into my heart, there’s no need,” she said. “You’ve already got the whole of it. I can’t imagine what else you’d take.”
He dropped to a knee, and her heart just about stopped.
“There is one thing,” he said. “Will you make me the happiest man on earth?”
Onto her finger, he slid a diamond that sparkled radiantly in the overhead sun, like a chandelier with just the perfect amount of flame licking the crystals. As she stared into the gem, she found herself trembling. She saw her fingers shaking just a little. “I, uh,” she choked, and then sputtered briefly before swallowing.
“Yes! Of course I will!”
“Good,” he said. “Then now we can go into the palace. If you’d said no, I’d be really embarrassed.”
“Why?”
“Because everyone’s already here.”
*
“Papa! Maret!” Helena called when she saw them. The two were seated next to each other on a high-backed couch near the front of the palace’s ceremony hall. Only the most important guests had these luxurious seats; the rest of the large audience sat on long benches. The entire place had been lavishly decorated with massive tapestries normally kept back in the vaults for safety. Some of them were over a thousand years old and yet the stitching was just as it had been when they were created.
The palace had a very, very good flock of art restoration specialists.
“Alara!”
Her favorite nemesis headed off an entire row dedicated to sisters. Even her brother bothered to come, which was a bit surprising. “He came?” she asked Alara.
“He heard there were jobs for the family in the royal palace and somehow, he brought himself down to showing up. He’s changed a lot though,” her sister whispered. “I think maybe he’s come down about fourteen pegs in the ego department. But that’s enough about all that. I guess I was wrong about the whole prince thing, huh?”
“I’d just about given up too,” Helena said. “But… yeah, I guess in the end, hope won out.”
“It always does, child,” Maret said. “I told you not to lose faith.”
The old woman looked ten years younger than when Helena had last seen her. There was a glow about her face, her cheeks were pink and flushed. It was very, very hard for Helena to keep her mouth shut, but remembering the promise she’d made to Arad about doing that very thing, she managed. “It worked for me,” she finally said, with tears running down her cheeks. “Looks like it worked for you too.”
“Where’s the lucky groom-to-be?” her father asked, breaking the tearful reunion. “I haven’t seen him since he swept by to pluck you from the house last night.”
“You know,” she answered, “in all the hubbub I kind of lost track of him. And to be honest with you, I don’t have any idea what’s happening. We came to town this morning, and on the way into the palace, he dropped down on one knee and proposed to me.”
“Sounds like my son!” Maret said. “For all his strange quibbles, he’s got the heart of a romantic. I gave him that, you know,” she said to Helena’s father, “that’s where he got all his good traits. His father is a lump of an ibex.”
There was a lot of snickering and a lot of smiling, and then before she knew what was going on, really, all the lights in the ceremonial hall – which was almost the size of a football field, with magnificent stained glass framing either end, and a tiered dais on one end – where everyone’s attention was turned, dropped out completely.
The only light in the entire place was the multicolored disco-ball of dancing light from the stained glass with enough torches behind it to make the whole thing shine like an acid trip music video. Helena’s head swam, just a little bit, from the combination of the lights and the incense that met her nose. It was sweet-smelling, but not cloying; spicy but not overwhelming. There was frankincense in there, she thought, and maybe a touch of patchouli in the background. Fixating on dissection of the smell kept her from falling too far into her own head.
I’m marrying a prince. No! He’s the king. I’m marrying a king! What the hell is going on? Two weeks ago I was a harem girl failing totally at the harp and now I’m marrying a king? Oh goodness.
“Queen?”
