Isle of Wysteria: The Reluctant Queen

by Aaron Lee Yeager

  “I’m very sorry,” the man said with a bow.

  “Okay, just please promise not to fall in love with me, that would be a hassle.” Setsuna kissed her finger and placed it against his cheek. The man panicked and closed the door without ever raising his eyes.

  “What was that about?” Privet asked as they walked on.

  Setsuna gave him a sidelong glance. “I’m sure you've noticed how cute I am. Boys always flock to me; that’s why I’m always shunned by girls. It’s all such a bother, really.”

  “Uh, huh.”

  Setsuna abruptly stopped walking.

  “Whats wrong?” he asked, turning around.

  She pointed at a young man calmly sweeping out the front porch of his Matron’s house.

  “That young guy over there, he hasn’t looked at me once.”

  Privet chuckled. “The men here are taught to keep their eyes down.”

  She tilted her head to side side, making her pigtails bounce. “Really?”

  Setsuna vanished and then reappeared on the porch next to the young man. He seemed startled, but kept his eyes down as she leaned in towards him to introduce herself. A little vexed, she ported in front of another man who was trimming the verge in front of his Matron’s house, and gave him a sultry glance as she posed, showing off her toned, athletic body. When he didn’t react, she appeared before another, and then another, each time striking a more shameless pose than before in an attempt to solicit a reaction.

  Privet couldn’t help but chuckle to himself. Setsuna was many things, but most of all she was vibrant and alive. She owned herself completely. She knew exactly what she wanted, and she persued it without hesitation and without shame. She bowed to no one. He reluctantly admitted to himself that she really would make a good match for him.

  Within half a minute, the plaza was devoid of men, all of them having retreated indoors, and Setsuna reappeared next to Privet, looking disgusted.

  “Grogs, this place is frustrating. I’m wearing the cutest outfit I own and none of these guys will even look at me.”

  Privet rubbed his forehead. “The old women in charge around here consider it disrespectful.”

  Setsuna scoffed as they began walking again. “If I wanted men’s respect, I wouldn’t be wearing a micro mini-skirt.”

  “Well, what do you want from them?”

  “I want their attention.” She wrapped her hands around her waist and wiggled her hips, as if enjoying a scrumptious dessert. “I want their yummy, wanton gazes. Their hungry eyes locked onto me. I want them to notice nothing else.”

  Privet looked at her oddly. “Why would you want that?”

  “Because it’s the ultimate validation,” she said as she spun around on one toe. “It makes you feel like a rare and precious gem, something of great value...” She paused and looked him over for a moment. “You probably wouldn’t understand.”

  “No, I totally get it,” he said as he climbed up a ladder made of living wood. “You forget, I've been property most of my life. And believe me, there’s a huge downside to being considered valuable property.”

  “What’s that?” she asked as she followed.

  “When someone obtains something really valuable, they try and lock it away.”

  Privet crossed a platform and started across a bridge to the next tree over.

  Before following him, Setsuna glanced over the side. “Holy bogs, we're up high,” she shrieked.

  Privet stopped. “Don’t tell me you're afraid of heights.”

  “This isn’t heights, this is soooo much higher than heights. This is...a summit. There are mountains shorter than this.”

  “You're the one who gated us up here, what do you have to be afraid of?”

  There was a gust of wind and the tree slowly swayed to one side. Setsuna yelped and appeared next to him, clutching his arm.

  He sighed. “You just wanted an excuse to grab my arm, didn’t you?”

  “Of course not,” she denied, squeezing his large biceps with her fingers for good measure. “Holy cow, your muscles are so tight. Can you flex them for me?”

  “Come on,” he said. “I want to try and pick up some fire peppers for Hanner.”

  “I thought that was just a stereotype.”

  “Oh no, they can’t get enough of the stuff.”

  As they crossed the bridge, a dark figure peeked around a corner, keeping them in view.

  Privet was able to find an open shop in a nearby tree, run by a kindly old Matron. At first she moved to politely decline, but when she recognized Privet, she offered to serve them lunch. “If it wasn’t for you, our Queen would have never made it out of the vaults,” she said kindly, before throwing Setsuna a sharp glance.

  The branches and wood around her shop had been grown into a building in the shape of a lotus blossom, a small cafe table placed on each petal-shaped balcony. As they sat and ate their food, they looked out on the striking view afforded them of the forest valley and the cascading waterfalls rolling off the larger trees to the south.

  “Can you pass me the salt?” Privet asked as he took a bite. After basking in Alder’s cooking for so long, he was becoming a little finicky.

  “This one’s empty,” Setsuna revealed, tapping the lotus-shaped salt shaker.

  Privet looked around. “I think there’s one at the other table.”

  “I'll get it,” she asserted, grabbing his hand to keep him from rising. A small tear opened underneath the salt shaker on the other table and the shaker fell down into it. It reappeared from another tear next to her and fell down into her waiting hand.

  Privet pulled his hand out from underneath hers and took the shaker. “So, how come sometimes I can see your gates and sometimes I can’t?” he asked as he salted his food.

  “There are lots of different kinds of gates,” Setsuna explained, poking at her food. “Some you create for a bit, others are always there and you just open them. Given enough time, you can even create permanent gates if you want to. Most of them lead to places, but some don’t.”

  Privet wrinkled his nose at her.

  “Here, I'll open one you can see.”

  She moved aside the bag of lava peppers, then created a small portal in the air before them, and Privet examined it closely. The edges were ill-defined, a kind of thickening mist that swirled in the center and evaporated at the edges. It was flat, like a piece of paper, but try as he might he could not see the width of it as he moved his head around. When viewed from the side, it seemed to disappear completely. Its sister gate sat in the air alongside it.

  Setsuna took a bagel from her plate and dropped it into one of the gates. It popped up from the second gate then fell back down into it, only to pop up again from the first gate. Watching the bagel pop up and down was strangely hypnotic. It gave it the sense of being weightless somehow.

  “We are all born with two gates,” she explained. “One in our mind, and another in our heart. Most people just never learn how to open them.” Setsuna leaned forward, hooding her green eyes in a very sultry way. “Do you know where they lead?”

  Privet cleared his throat and tried to ignore the obvious advance. Cold experience had taught him to beware a beautiful face with an outstretched hand.

  “So, you can move them around, right?” he asked, spouting the first question he could think of.

  Setsuna flicked one of the gates and repositioned it. They were now directly above one another. The bagel fell out of the one on top then fell into the one on the bottom, reappearing above again and falling down again. The bagel fell faster and faster, until it was little more than a blur streaking through the space between the two gates.

  “That’s a neat trick. Does it just keep going faster?” Privet asked, amazed at the odd display.

  “It seems like things can only fall so fast,” Setsuna shared. “I think it has something to do with their shape.”

  Setsuna absentmindedly spun the top gate, and the speeding bagel shot out of it as if it had been fired out of a ca
nnon. They watched it streak away, disappearing into the canopy of another tree. A moment later, there was the sound of glass breaking and someone screaming.

  Privet and Setsuna burst out laughing, ducking down a little as if they were kids fearing to be caught.

  From another table at the cafe, a dark figure watched them as they laughed and chatted.

  Privet took the last bite of his food and noticed she had barely touched hers. “You don’t like meat pies?” he asked

  “Oh, I like the meat pies they make back home, I don’t like the ones you have here.”

  “Why’s that? Different spices or something?”

  “I think it’s because yours are made out of real meat and ours are made out of illegal immigrants or something,” she jested.

  Privet chuckled. “So how did you end up becoming...you know...a pirate lord?”

  She shrugged. “I chose it.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yeah, working is hard, and marrying some ol’ rich guy sounds easy until you realize you have to kiss those wrinkly ol’ lips every morning. Ultimately, stealing just cuts out the middle man.”

  “Uh huh.”

  Sessuna took her water glass and traced her finger along the ridge. For a moment, her armor seemed to come down and she became more serious.

  “It started out as a game, you know? My father was a good dad, but he never met a jatlat table he didn’t love, if you know what I mean. He got in debt hard; he got in debt with the kind of people you do not want to ever owe money to. When he couldn’t pay, they took my sister Sawyn.”

  Setsuna traced her finger faster, causing the crystal in the water glass to sing sweetly. “Sawyn’s not like me, she’s one of those gentle people. Too gentle for this world. She never would have survived. So, I started thieving to get her back. Along the way, I made some mistakes. Got my pretty face on a few posters, got thrown in a couple of jails.”

  “Not that they could hold you,” Privet observed.

  Setsuna chuckled. “You can break out, but they still hold you. By the time I had enough money to buy Sawyn’s freedom there wasn’t anything else I could do. You think the world would be big enough to just go somewhere else and start over, but the world’s a lot smaller than you realize.”

  “But you were a Guild Master, one of the most powerful pirates in the world.”

  Setsuna took a drink of water. “To be honest, I never really wanted to lead a whole Guild. Too much paperwork. Too much drama and gossip. But, when you are good at something, you sift your way to the top, even if you'd rather not be good at it in the first place.”

  Privet reached out and flicked her in the forehead. “Look at you, being all serious.”

  “Hey, I’m always serious,” she chuckled. “I’m probably the most serious person you've ever met.”

  “You forget, I've met Alder.”

  Setsuna picked up a cucumber chip and placed it over one eye as if it were a monocle. “I’m just trying to communicate with you,” she said with a faux academic accent. “Every relationship needs communication. You should say what you want to say, even if I don’t want to hear it.”

  Privet laughed. “You really are serious about this, aren’t you?”

  Setsuna set the chip down and turned her eyes away bashfully. “Of course I am. I mean, this is the longest relationship I've ever been in where no one got stabbed.”

  “Not for lack of trying,” Privet added with a smile.

  Setsuna smiled back and placed her hand on his. He didn’t pull away.

  Why am I overthinking this? Privet thought to himself. I mean, it’s not like there is just one person in the world I could be with. In reality, there are probably a great number of people I could be happy with, so why not just pick one? And why not this girl? I like her well enough. We could have quite the exciting life together. Sailing wherever we want, a life of adventure, thumbing our noses at authority. I would be happy enough with her.

  As if sensing his thoughts, Setsuna closed her beautiful almond-shaped eyes and leaned in, waiting for him to kiss her.

  Why am I hesitating? I’m a grown man. If you like her, just go for it and kiss her.

  Privet leaned forward, but when he closed his eyes, all he could see was Athel.

  He pulled his hand away. When Setsuna opened her eyes again, she saw him staring at his plate.

  “Not yet, huh?” she asked.

  “Yeah...I...uh...”

  “Say no more,” she bade, holding up her hand. The sincerity was gone from her voice. Her armor was back up. “You know what they say, Ayment Fortress wasn’t conquered in a day. If you’re not ready yet, I’ll just have to keep charming you until you are.”

  Privet looked up at her apologetically as she happily took a bit of carrot. “You bounce back quickly, don’t you?”

  “It’s because I know I’ll win in the end,” she grinned, giving him a little wink.

  “You know, it’s really not...”

  “I want to see a show,” she interrupted, looking around as if she expected one to appear. “What kind of shows do you guys have around here?”

  Privet took a second to catch up. “Finding an open show would be even harder than finding an open shop,” he warned.

  It took them a couple of hours, but they were finally able to find a dinner theater that was willing to put on a limited show. It helped grease the wheels that Setsuna made it sound like entertaining them was a direct order from the Queen herself.

  The show was performed in a small theater with just a handful of seats, a small and intimate setting normally reserved far in advance. The chairs were located in the center of the room facing out, with the stage surrounding them like a ring. The performer was an aging artist who wore a tight-fitting bodysuit painted with leaf and vine patterns that allowed her to blend in with the backdrop, which was made entirely of living plants.

  She played her flute while her partner narrated the story in a rich voice. Neither Privet nor Setsuna knew the old tongue, but they enjoyed the way his deep cadence meshed harmoniously with the flute. Flowers petals blossomed behind the performer, creating a white silhouette of petal in the shape of a swan behind her. Petals opened and closed in prefect timing, giving the illusion that the white swan was walking around the stage. It picked up speed, and was now flying. It was nothing more individually than blossoming petals, but taken together it truly seemed a giant swan was flying around the room.

  As she played, the performer began to dance. She spun around and bounded with an energy and flexibility surprising for her age. Brightly colored asters bloomed around the swan, twinkling like stars in the sky. The swan came to a rest and folded its wings in on itself, becoming a tall white crystal. Puffball-like alliums in various colors vibrated and buzzed about and gathered around the white crystal as if they were insects.

  Lilies braided themselves together into a long, dragon-like form which wrapped itself around the crystal to protect it, but the buzzing insects were tenacious. They tore the dragon to shreds and laid hold of the crystal for themselves.

  The stage bent and contorted, crinkling here and stretching there, as if all of creation were about to come apart. When the crystal broke, every living thing blossomed at once, creating an overload of color and life, as drooping hazel blossoms drifted to the ground like falling stars. Each insect made off jealously with their portion of the crystal. The backdrop in one place snapped shut as the jaws of an enormous flytrap, startling Setsuna with its size and speed. Another jaw snapped shut, then another, but the insects slipped through each time. The stage buckled, creating a ramp that the performer walked against, tumbling up the surface in a cartwheel while the narrator spoke.

  From her high place, the performer player her flute again and violets and veronicas grew beneath her, rolling like the seas of the ocean. One of the insects came down with its piece of crystal. When it landed, green teasels grew up in between the veronicas, creating a small green island in the sea. Privet recognized it as Falmar from its
shape. Another insect landed, creating another island, then another. One insect flew down beneath the waves without creating any island at all. More and more islands were created, seventy-seven in all, making the stage look like a large, stylized map of the world.

  Finally two insects landed together in one spot, and created the most beautiful island of all. Tiny statices grew up all over it, giving it the appearance of being covered with trees. The heavens whirled overhead, and a great sunflower grew up over it to give it light and protection.

  Privet had never seen anything like it. It wasn’t the kind of thing men were normally brought to. When the performer bowed, he applauded enthusiastically. When the next story began, he payed close attention.

  As the two of them sat in the darkness watching the stage, Setsuna kept glancing over at him. Finally, unable to bear it any longer, she leaned over. “Why are you looking at her so much?” she whispered.

  “It’s a show,” Privet answered without looking away.

  Setsuna grabbed one of her pigtails and chewed on the tip. “You like her don’t you?”

  “Who?”

  “The woman on stage.”

  Privet furrowed his brow and turned to look at her. “We're watching a show, I’m supposed to look at her.”

  “Are you supposed to burn a hole through her by staring so hard?”

  “What are you talking about? You picked out this show.”

  As the show continued, Setsuna spit out her pigtail and began biting her thumbnail. “She’s not even that pretty. She looks like someone shaved a poodle and painted it green.”

  “What? I’m supposed to go to a show and not watch? Stop being jealous.”

  Setsuna clucked her tongue. “I’m not jealous.”

  When Privet turned back to watch the show, Setsuna pulled out a little green notebook and began to write in it angrily.

  Privet noticed and his eyes grew wide. “Is that a...grudge diary?”

  “Um, no,” she denied, pulling it in closer.

  He rolled his eyes. “Please don’t tell me you are making an entry in your grudge diary.”