by S R Ahuja
Cadwr emerged from the water, soaking wet, with steam radiating from his body. The water must be very warm, and with the air so cold, Cadwr should have been shivering, but he seemed to be at his ease, comfortable.
“Who’s this? Your boyfriend?” Cadwr asked, gesturing to Freyr.
“Do you know him?” Freyr asked, gesturing to Cadwr.
“No!” she said to both of them at once.
Unfortunately for Jade, Cadwr chimed in with, “Yes, she does,” at the same moment.
Jade looked from one boy to the other. “Ok, yes I do know him. He’s… uh… he’s in my class at school,” Jade explained hurriedly. She looked meaningfully at Cadwr who smiled sadistically at her.
“And, Cadwr, this is Freyr. He’s the son of a friend of my father’s.”
“He’s what?” Cadwr asked.
“I’m her friend,” Freyr clarified.
Jade fought the urge to roll her eyes. She would not have classified Freyr as one of her friends, but there it was, and she couldn’t take it back without making him angry, which was not worth it.
“What are you doing out here, Fraidy?” Cadwr asked mockingly. Maybe it was just her imagination, but it seemed to Jade like Cadwr was standing a little taller than he normally did.
Freyr too stood up straighter, trying to make up for the fact that Cadwr was a good three inches taller.
“My name is Freyr, and you will show me some respect, peasant.”
There was a great splash behind Cadwr, probably Channing following him into the water, but Cadwr ignored it. “Oh! So it’s a little prince we have here then, is it?” Cadwr bowed so low Jade thought his head might brush his shoes, but he was up again in an instant. “Apologies, your highness, I didn’t realize. My, are you sure you’re capable of walking on your own? You might smudge thy feet! I shall carry thee.” Cadwr moved in and grabbed Freyr’s knees, hoisting him over his shoulder so that his feet were higher than his head. “Is that better, milord?”
“Put me down, you cretin!” Freyr was shouting and pounding on Cadwr’s back with his fists, but it didn’t seem to do Cadwr any harm.
Channing was walking out of the water now, dripping and laughing.
“Put him down!” Jade shouted, trying and failing to restrain her anger. She didn’t care much about Freyr, but just the fact that Cadwr was the one teasing him made her furious. She couldn’t help remembering when he had tied to a tree against her will.
The boys all ignored her, even Hugh, who she could see hurrying down the hillside. He didn’t give her a single glance.
“CADWR!” she shouted, finally fully losing her temper. The boys all froze. “You put him down this moment!”
Perhaps because he was just stunned, perhaps because he was afraid of what Jade would do next if he didn’t listen, Cadwr set Freyr back on his feet. Freyr looked ruffled and angry but unhurt.
Jade moved in between them, putting her finger in Cadwr’s face. “Don’t you ever touch him again.”
“Okay!” Cadwr said, throwing up his hands. “I didn’t know you were so protective of your little boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Jade said furiously calm, not moving a muscle, still inches from Cadwr’s face. “And maybe it’s not that I’m protective of him. Maybe I just don’t like you.”
She turned then and, grabbing Freyr’s wrist, she started walking away. “Come on, Freyr.”
“Wait,” he said, pulling her to a stop. “We haven’t had our adventure yet.”
She stared at him in disgust. “Fine. Stay if you want, but I’m going home.”
She took off running. After just a moment, she heard Freyr’s footsteps behind her, and she slowed. Soon they were walking side by side. They didn’t talk on the way back, but she also didn’t leave him behind.
Freyr, Sylvi, and their parents left the next day. Jade and Freyr never talked about their “adventure,” but when he said goodbye to her, he shook her hand and smiled at her. He said, “I look forward to the next time we see each other.” There was earnestness in his eyes that made her feel like he really meant it. Maybe they were friends in a very weird kind of way.
Chapter XV
Adventure
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After the Winter Solstice, the days started to fly by. After being in Avalon for several months, Jade had finally gotten used to her schedule. For five days in a row, she would go to school, sit with Lilly and Audrey, and do her best to make Ms. Hastings smile, which happened. In fact, the more Jade tried, the less Ms. Hastings seemed to like her.
The sixth and seventh days were always hers to do with as she wished. It took months for the King to fully trust her again after the Lyonés incident, but eventually – when the snow had completely melted from the ground – he finally started letting her go out to explore again. More often than not, she explored on her own although there was always at least one royal guard a few feet behind her.
Every night of the week, she ate dinner in the enormous dining hall. Sometimes her father ate with her, although they never really had much to talk about. Other nights she would just sit and eat by herself. She once asked Menelwen if she would eat with her, but Menelwen just smiled and said that wasn’t how things were done in the castle.
Jade grew to treasure the only alone time she had, in bed just before she fell asleep. It was strange, but she didn’t feel quite so lonely when she actually was alone as she felt when she was surrounded by the people in the castle who never seemed to want to talk to her.
In this way, the weeks flew by: school, exploring the land, quiet dinners on her own or with her silent father, and sleep. Very rarely did she even think of the boys on the other side of the Fog Plains. Peter, Cadwr, Channing, and Hugh were frequently just a distant memory. When she did think of them, and even more rarely when she thought about trying to find them, she needed only to think of their last encounter to banish the thoughts from her head. Sir Jack had taken the fall for her once, and she could not take that choice back. She had slipped once, but she knew now that she couldn’t make the same awful choice and wind up in trouble herself. Those boys were not worth it.
She did still miss Sir Jack, and worse yet, she still felt her stomach twist itself into horrible knots of guilt every time she thought of him.
She hoped that he was doing ok in the Northmanni World. Maybe he had found Aunt Anna and they were living happily ever after. Maybe one day Jade would be allowed back into that world. When she was King, no one could stop her. And when she went back to see Aunt Anna, she’d probably find Sir Jack there too, living a wonderful life. That was the story she told herself when she thought of him. She told herself that story so many times that eventually she started to actually believe it, and the knots of guilt in her stomach slowly began to untangle themselves.
It seemed, however, that though she was trying to forget the boys, they were not trying to forget her. One night, long after the snow had melted and the last frost had passed, she was woken from a deep slumber by a sharp rapping on her bedroom window. It took her a minute to remember how to pull back her eyelids, but when she did, he was standing there silhouetted in the open window like nothing had happened between them, calmly waiting for her to invite him inside.
She sat up straight and glared at the boy in the window. “What are you doing here,” she hissed.
Peter shrugged and said lightly, “I don’t actually want to be here, but I owe someone a favor and they asked me to deliver a message to you.”
Jade stared at him, unsure whether to believe him or not. As she studied him, noticing that everything about him was exactly the same as the last time she’d seen him. He was no taller, his hair hadn’t grown any longer, and in fact it actually seemed like his hair was sticking up in exactly the same way.
The only thing that had changed was the color of the leaves that made up his clothing. When last she had seen him, the leaves had been crumpled and brown. Now they were new and green. They looked like they
had just been freshly plucked off the trees.
“Well,” Peter said, “aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“No,” Jade said decisively. It was possible she could have been in the wrong the last time she had shouted at him, but she decided it would do her no good to admit it. “You can tell me the message from there and then you can turn around and jump.”
“Fine,” he said stiffly. “This message is from a the boy they call Prince Cadwr.”
“Prince?” Jade asked. Peter nodded only and did not continue. A million thoughts ran through Jade’s head all at once, most significantly what her father had told her months ago about the evil creature that had killed her mother. Could that evil creature the King had been talking about be the Queen of Lyonés? Was that why the land was forbidden? Could Cadwr be her son? Despite the tirade of thoughts running through her mind, all Jade said was, “Well, what’s the message?”
The corners of Peter’s mouth twitched like he wanted to smile, but he didn’t. Instead he said, “The message is this: I’m sorry. Meet me at the mermaid pool, and I’ll make it up to you.”
“What? That’s it? He wants to meet now without telling me what we’re doing?” Jade asked, twisting the covers on her bed around her fingers.
“Yes, I’m to be your chariot if you wish to meet him.”
Jade was torn between her anger for both Peter and Cadwr – which still burned white hot – and her very deep curiosity not least to find out who exactly Cadwr was.
“Well, what’ll it be, Jade?” Peter pressed. “Are you coming or not? I haven’t got all night.”
Her gut was telling her not to go. These circumstances were too similar to the last time. Something horrible was bound to happen, but Cadwr had to have designed that message with her curiosity in mind. She couldn’t resist it. She had to know who he was, why he wanted to talk to her, what his plan was for making things up to her.
“Fine, but let me at least get dressed this time.”
Peter sighed heavily and slumped down so he was sitting on the windowsill looking out into the night. “You have five minutes.”
Ten minutes later, Jade and Peter were touching down at the edge of the mermaid’s lake. The full moon sparkled off the water even through the dense mist surrounding the falls. As soon as her feet touched the grass, Cadwr stepped out of the fog. Just Cadwr, no Hugh, no Channing, just him.
Without saying a word, Peter let go of Jade’s arm and pushed off into the air, leaving Jade and Cadwr alone.
As soon as Peter was gone, the hard look on Cadwr’s face seemed to melt away. “Amalthea, I know we shouldn’t have done it. I…I’m sorry.”
Jade just stared at him.
“Well, come on,” he said. “I said I’m sorry. You have to say something.”
“You tied me to a tree, Cadwr,” Jade said coldly.
“Yeah, and I just apologized for it,” Cadwr said, his always present anger rising again.
“Well, sometimes an apology isn’t good enough.” Jade crossed her arms across her chest and took a step backward away from him.
Cadwr in turn took a step closer. “No, I know,” he said, the anger slipping away once more. “That’s why I asked you to come here. I promise, this will completely make up for it. Don’t you want to know what I’m going to do to make it up to you?”
There he was appealing to her natural curiosity again. “There are a lot of things I want to know about you.”
He was the confused one now. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Jade began hotly, “is your mother the one who killed my mother?”
He was silent for a long moment before he said, “No.”
“You’re lying.”
“No,” he repeated, but when she turned away from him, he continued, “please, don’t. I’m not my mother! Just, please don’t do that!”
Jade turned back to face him. “Do what?”
“Compare me to her! I’m not her, ok?” he said, and there was desperation in his eyes that Jade had never seen before. He didn’t just want her to believe him. He needed her to believe him. She saw how deeply the thread ran into his heart, and she made the decision to stop pulling on it. Instead, she turned her curiosity toward another topic.
“How are you going to make it up to me?”
“What?” Cadwr seemed confused by her sudden change of topic.
“Tying me to a tree,” she reminded him. “How are you going to make it up to me?”
“Oh,” he shook his head slightly like he was trying to shake out the bad feelings she had just brought up for him. “Right, well, you like adventure, right?”
Jade stood up a little straighter. “Yes.”
“Well, I’ve got the best adventure planned.”
“What adventure?” Jade asked suspiciously.
“Don’t worry; it doesn’t involve you getting tied to a tree.” Cadwr smiled.
“What adventure?” she repeated.
“Up in the mountains, there’s a legend of a terrible monster. We’re going to go find it.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“The best adventures always are,” he said, smiling.
Jade shook her head. “No way am I going to go find some terrible creature just for the sake of adventure. I like adventure, but not that much.”
“Ok, fine,” he said a little too quickly. “I thought you might say that. I never really believed you.”
“What are you talking about?” Jade asked, bewildered.
“Don’t you remember? The first time we met and Channing said that girls don’t like adventure, and you said you did. I never believed you that you liked adventure. I don’t think girls can like adventure. They’re not made that way.” He turned and began walking away from her.
He was purposefully making her angry so she would fight back and go on the adventure, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Girls can too like adventure!”
“Prove it.” He turned back, standing face to face with her. His words were a challenge, but he was smiling. He lowered his voice. “Don’t you want to see what it is?”
Jade really did. “Fine. Where are Hugh and Channing?”
“Hugh is just a big scaredy cat, and Channing’s father is keeping him home tonight.” He turned away again and took off, jogging away into the fog.
“Come on!” he called back to her. “Follow me!”
Jade had no option but to follow him. She kept up with him just fine in the fog, but once they reached Lyonés and the mist cleared, he sped up, running toward the mountain straight ahead of them.
Chapter XVI
Monster
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Jade stumbled over a dried-out log and caught herself with her hands before she face-planted onto a slab of baked dirt.
“Cadwr!” she called out, “Wait! I can’t keep up with you!”
The only sound she heard was Cadwr’s feet hitting the hard dirt ahead of her. She staggered to her feet and wiped her dirty, scratched hands on her pants before taking off after him. She wasn’t going to let him prove her wrong.
Jade fell several more times as she tried to keep up. Even though nothing grew in Lyonés, there were plenty of dead plants that kept reaching out to grab at her ankles.
The ground was hard and unforgiving and by the time she reached the base of the mountain, her entire body was aching from bruises, her hands and elbows were covered in scrapes, and the knees of her cotton pants were ripped and bloody from the scratches beneath.
She barely paused to catch her breath before she ran straight up the mountain. She could no longer hear or see Cadwr, but he had to be just over the next ridge. The mountain was steep, and the dirt was dry and loose and a handful of it came away in her hands when she tried to get a grip. She felt herself sliding down until she lost her footing completely and tumbled backward, head over feet, until she landed on her back at the bottom of the mountain.
For a moment, Jade felt like she was
dying. A pain radiated from her back through her chest and she couldn’t draw in a breath of air. The tears welled in her eyes and spilled over. Then she heard the laughing. Somewhere above her head, Cadwr was laughing at her. She dragged in a ragged breath. Then another. She rolled over onto her stomach and raised her head to see Cadwr sitting in the dirt, leaning against a dead tree, shaking with laughter.
Amalthea stood shakily but with determination and hurriedly brushed the tears away, smearing dirt on her face as she did so. She glared at him fiercely, but he just continued to laugh.
Finally, he calmed down enough to speak. “What are you so excited to get to? You don’t even know where we’re going yet.”
Jade ignored his question and instead asked one of her own, “Why did you stop? I thought we were going up the mountain.”
“Yeah, we are. But I thought I would make sure you hadn’t been picked off by a vampire yet. You know, all the monsters come out during a full moon.”
She crossed her arms across her chest. “I’m fine. Let’s keep going.”
“Alright, alright.” Cadwr jumped up nimbly from his sitting position and walked toward the mountain. “The mountain is really steep, so you’re going to want to hold on with your hands as much as you use your feet. Ok? Don’t fall down again. It was hilarious when you were three feet up, but do that at thirty feet up, and you’re probably dead.” He turned around to look Jade in the eyes. He was suddenly completely serious. “This is your last chance to turn back. I mean it. You might not like what you see up there. It will probably scare you so bad you’ll puke, but once you’re up there, you got to keep it together until I can get you back down this mountain.”
“Yeah, right. Whatever. If you can handle it up there, so can I. I’m just as brave as you.” Jade pushed past him and reached for a hand hold on the cliff side.
“Just shut up, Amalthea. And let me go first. I don’t want you to fall on me.”
Jade rolled her eyes but then stepped back to allow Cadwr to start up the hill in front of her. She’d never say it out loud, but what Cadwr said actually did legitimately scare her, and she had no problem with Cadwr walking into whatever it was first.
