Story Magic

by Beth Ball

  “This one, Your Majesty?” Juliet’s enlarged renard ears twisted toward the courtyard below as she peered over the silver terrace of the fae queen’s receiving room. Surrounded by enraptured fae children, a saudad storyteller conjured frosty trees from the mist.

  Her tail swished, catching crisp air as she turned to face the queen. To journey beyond the misty sanctuary of Apollo’s domain, Juliet and her vulpine sisters had to take physical form. In the fae realms, they favored the figures of the renard, an embodiment of their own foxlike spirit. For this trip, her fur was the color of smoke, and her silky apparel bore the tales of the constellations. “Why would she leave her family and people?” Despite their affinity—or curse—for travel, most saudad remained with their musters throughout the entirety of their lives.

  Queen Mab’s silver eyes flared. “Why indeed, Juliet Evenstar? Tell me this: Of all the vulpine in Apollo’s court, why is it he sent you to my side?”

  Answers sparked to life in Juliet’s mind as she slowly returned to stand before the braided branches of the white throne. Because I’m not afraid of you. Because the others resist interaction with the world outside, not understanding that it makes them strong. Because—

  The queen smirked, and Juliet’s list fizzled out. “Then perhaps you understand the storyteller in my courtyard better than you first believed.” Queen Mab waved silver fingers through the air, dismissing Juliet and her questions. A flock of feathered fae approached the white throne from behind her to beg for the sovereign’s favor and blessings.

  “Psst.” A green ash dryad beckoned Juliet closer.

  Juliet bowed to the queen and scurried across the marble floor to the dryad’s side.

  “Meet me on the eastern terrace,” the dryad whispered.

  The music of her voice calmed Juliet’s racing heartbeat, and she nearly missed the fae’s exit in a whirl of shimmering branches.

  Juliet exhaled, inviting calm into her spirit before finding her new acquaintance. She tugged at the shoulder of her gown, yanking it back into place. They had no need of such frippery in Apollo’s court, clad as they were in their ethereal forms. But here, among the fae, their essence had to take physical shape. She bunched the gown beneath her fists and slid through the crowd assembled around the queen’s audience chamber. Her furry tail swished behind her, the one aspect of the renard form she enjoyed.

  Chapter 6

  Persephonie awoke in a cold sweat. Once again she’d dreamt about her mother being trapped in a market, surrounded by fire, with no way to get out.

  She pressed her fingertips to her temples. Dreams had many meanings and interpretations, but each night, this one felt more and more real.

  Persephonie pulled her blanket up to her chest and reached over for the deck of cards with the gray-green backs, her favorite for dreams and times of trouble. “When faced with darkness,” the elderly saudad woman who had made the deck said, “instead of shutting your eyes, blow out your torch. Then, the stars will allow you to see clearly the world around you.”

  A single card slipped from the stack and landed on the violet quilt spread out before her. Death.

  She jolted back away from it.

  Without looking at the card again, Persephonie tugged a shawl from her bag and crawled out of her tent.

  Datha’s snores rippled out of the wagon next to her, accentuated by Stefan’s soft breathing. On her other side, a trail of dark footprints had broken the covering of dew leading from Velkan and Felix’s tent. Velkan, most likely. Felix was not one to rise with the dawn.

  Persephonie tugged the shawl tighter and slipped into her boots. The glittering white of the birch forest waited for her. Perhaps the trees held the answers she sought.

  As she walked, Persephonie murmured prayers to Cassandra, beseeching her goddess’s help in discerning the best path forward.

  She settled at the base of one of the larger birches, the bark a crisp bite against her back. These could be the offspring of that first birch forest she’d spoken of a few days before. Persephonie sighed and hugged her arms around her waist. Staring at the forest, she recalled one of Mara’s favorite musings: “The trick to finding answers from the trees is being willing to wait.”

  Surrounded by darkness and birches, by the glittering blue glow of frost without the cold, wet melt, she readied herself to be patient.

  Cautiously, Persephonie pulled at the edges of her dream, drawing it back toward herself. There had been three silhouettes moving near Mama, picking their way through the flames. One was thin with long, flowing hair; another broad-shouldered and strong; and the third, a head and shoulders taller even than Datha, with great, swooping wings.

  A shape stirred among the trunks in front of her. Persephonie sprang away, preparing to run, but stopped as a familiar voice called to her.

  “Velkan, you scared me.” She placed her hand on her heart and leaned back against the tree, trying to slow her breathing.

  His dark eyes turned to the ground. “Forgive me, Persephonie. I was out walking, and then I saw you. I did not mean to venture so close as to disturb you.” At her invitation, Velkan sat beside her and rested against the birch’s trunk. “You are lost in deep thoughts this morning?”

  “I am.” The glittering silver branches spread in intricate, intersecting patterns overhead. Before coming to the winter court, she might have thought a sky that changed from black to muted gray and back again would have been depressing. But as the sun rose and cast her glittering rays across the vast birch forest, the earth glowed a pale blue in the dawn light.

  The winter forest gave her new eyes for her morning’s reading. Death did not necessarily spell an end. Sometimes, it meant a new beginning.

  Velkan leaned closer beside her and pressed his shoulder against hers. “Is there any chance you will share them with me?”

  Persephonie smiled. “Soon, but not yet.”

  She would speak with Datha first. The muster did not need her at present. They would spend several more weeks here at least before traveling on. He could spare her for a visit with Mama, long enough for Persephonie to find her in Andel-ce Hevra and ensure that she was alright.

  Chapter 7

  “THE DRAGON AND THE SIREN QUEEN”

  As Cassandra taught us, there was once a powerful green dragon who dwelled on an island in the middle of the sea. There he lived, and there he ruled, until he met the siren queen.

  After she acquired all the riches and power the sea could offer her, the siren set her sights on land, on the hoard of the dragon king. This dragon did not amass riches of gold or gems, but power through a store of magic. It was said that the dragon’s power was so great, he could turn the wheels of time and fate.

  The siren bid the waves to announce her coming. They crashed against the dragon’s island, and a storm swelled in the offshore deep. The queen spread wide her webbed, sapphire hands, and her shimmering fins sent her up, up, up to the surface of the sea.

  She stilled the waves and calmed the sea. For what came next, she would need the salty breeze. The staccato crash of wave upon rock rolled across her emerald tongue. “Lord of land and lord of air,” the siren called the dragon forth, to meet her where the land kissed the sea. The haunting lullaby of distant dreams rose with the tide of her voice, drawing sleepless hearts closer, closer, to better hear the queen of the sea. She dropped her song to the barest whisper, a caress of breath against the ear. “I request an audience with thee.”

  The siren’s call thrummed across the island. Her power, the unanswered question of her song, provoked the curiosity of the king. It’s not every day that a siren queen appears, even to a powerful dragon, and he was intrigued. The dragon stepped out of his lair and transformed himself from a great hulking beast to the form of a man with smatterings of green scales across his olive skin and a head of thick black hair. He strode over sun-warmed rocks and approached the siren who waited, half-submerged, beyond the shoreline. Sea-swept hair clung to the siren’s scaly form. Her bare body glimm
ered, sunlight caught at the crest of a wave. Her gray eyes tugged him closer, inviting him to sail upon a storm-tossed sea. “What is it you would ask of me, siren queen?”

  For a moment, the siren faltered. She had never laid eyes on one so striking, save perhaps herself, across land, air, or sea. “I wish to share in your power, to change the weave of fate,” she answered. “For this, what would you ask of me?”

  The sea harmonized her every word, luring the dragon toward the queen. He calmed the echoing melody of his own heart, the inexorable tug of land toward the sea. “The magical spell of your voice will not work on me,” he said, and the queen’s eyes widened in surprise. Were he bound to land alone, her call would have awakened a desperate longing, a sleeping dragon of its own. But the sea and the air have a more intimate understanding, pressed together in a dance over wind and waves. “Would you offer me riches? Renown? I have all this and more.” The dragon stepped nearer and reached out his hand for hers. “Offer me something I do not yet possess, and what you desire shall be yours.”

  The siren’s eyes narrowed. “As you wish, mighty king.” She bowed her head, and the tide returned with her to the sea. “I will think upon your offer and return within the year.”

  She arced over the water and dove beneath the waves, her form rippling like salt upon the breeze. The dragon’s breath caught in his throat as he watched her swim away. He smiled to himself. Such a long time, my siren queen.

  The queen thought long and hard. She consulted the wisest in her court beneath the sea. “We know not the treasure of which the dragon speaks, dearest queen.”

  She adapted her form, fashioning legs from her fins, so that she might travel the realms of land beyond the sea. The queen consulted with scholars and elves, but they had not the answers she had journeyed to seek. “Visit the ancient fae,” they suggested. “Those of Brightlands and Shadow, they have lived long enough to solve the dragon’s riddle.”

  The four Brightlands queens gathered for the first time in an age. “We can answer the dragon’s riddle,” Queen Mab said with a grin. Wintery frost glittered behind her dark eyes. “But I fear such an offering will not please you, fellow queen.” The fae’s gaze turned from her sister-rulers to the siren. “Would you grant him your gifts over the sea? The music of your voice that bends mortal knees?”

  “No,” the siren queen sighed, “these powers I would not concede.” She clutched her webbing-less fingers into fists and thanked her four hosts. The siren put the magic-kissed lands behind her. “There is one final realm I’ve yet to see.”

  She journeyed through the first of the worlds’ trees, through deep-set roots and into the Shadowlands. The siren shivered. How long had she been away from the sea?

  The queen walked the dark plane, visiting vast forests and castle grounds that stretched as far as eyes could see. She spoke with rulers and hermits. The siren sang away the horrors that lurched across this land, dark and deep.

  I cannot grant the dragon what he has asked of me, she thought. Yes, doing so would change fate’s weave, but that is not the alteration I wish to see.

  “And what is it you wish?” A low voice rose from the shadows around her. The dark coalesced, and a cloaked mage appeared before the queen. He chuckled low in his throat. Bone-white fingers extended toward her. “There are two trinkets you might offer this dragon that he does not currently possess,” the mage said. “But what will you give me in exchange for my aid?”

  A night and a day passed as they set their terms, and finally, they reached an accord: In three days’ time, the siren queen would speak with the dragon, and the prince of shadow would arrive to claim his reward.

  The dragon grinned as the siren queen returned to his lair. He had watched with anxious heart as each season turned across the year. Surely one so clever will perceive how to turn the wheel of fate, he thought. Love alone possesses power so dear.

  His smile faltered as he took in the siren’s altered form. The sapphire glow of her glorious scales had faded. Shadows clung to the hollows beneath her eyes, her lips, her collarbone. He could not speak above a whisper. “You are here to make me my answer, are you not, my queen?”

  “I am,” she sang, her melody ringing across minor tones, “though you may think me a fool that I did not see it sooner.”

  His heart fluttered, his hidden wings unfurling on the breeze. “We are all prone to foolishness when the right prize crosses before us,” the dragon answered. “Come, speak to me of what I seek.”

  “I give you my heart,” the siren queen said to the dragon.

  How fervently he had wished to hear those words one year before. He raised a scaled eyebrow. “The heart of a siren queen is not easily possessed,” the dragon answered in return.

  “Do you accept that which you do not yet possess?” Her eyes sparkled with the light of the sea.

  The shadow prince had told her, “Love and betrayal are the key. Offer him your heart, a gift thrilling to any lucky enough to win your regard, but deception is the true gift, and one the dragon has yet to receive. Three nights from now, I will meet you on his island upon the sea. There, I will strip the dragon of his power and grant it to you. In return, you will serve me—and your own whims—till such a time as I see fit. Serve me faithfully, my dear, and in the mortal realms, your power will be rivaled by none save mine alone. I have no desire to limit you, siren queen.”

  The power of the dragon was more bountiful than the siren queen had bargained for. She had seen his great hoard, but his wisdom of spirit, his abundance of magic, was the prize she longed to possess. With them, fate’s wheel was hers to command.

  The dragon’s eyes softened at the bewitching figure before him. “If only you had reached this conclusion on your own, beautiful siren, I would have granted you riches beyond your wildest dreams. But you have been won by power alone, and in this, you have spelled your doom. I will not unweave that which you have set upon the loom, avaricious queen. Indirectly, the shadow prince who waits to subdue me will do the same to you. Wait and see.”

  The shadow prince appeared before them and cast his spell on the dragon great and green. The amber eyes of the dragon bore into those of the siren queen, and his magic wove itself around her, intertwined so long as she lived upon land or sea.

  As the ritual neared its end, the dragon fell to his knees before the dark mage and the siren queen. He groaned, “Remember what I have said, my queen. Power is not always what it seems.”

  The prince of darkness grimaced as his spell was nearly complete. Despite the intricate ties he devised, the edges of the dragon’s soul slipped further and further away. He glared down at the dragon on bended knees. “What is this magic by which you resist my binding?”

  With a chuckle, the dragon shook his head. “There is much you do not know.” His spirit burst forth from the body he had wrought to woo the siren queen. A great winged beast emerged instead, covered over in scales of bright copper and green. The dragon’s spirit flew off and away, hidden beneath his island where the queen and the mage could never find it.

  All power has its limitations, as the siren soon discovered. She collapsed into the arms of the shadow prince, and he carried her from the island shore. For her treachery, she cannot bear to walk the hallowed ground where the dragon laced a spell of his own. With nearness to the sacred soil, the hole in her heart grows too vast, the result of her pledge to the dragon king.

  Still he dwells there out of sight, where his spirit found its home. There he offers rest, respite, for all who wander, desperate or alone. But the dragon’s favorite travelers, as the saudad know well, are those who ask, but do not yet know, the path of their own fate. “There are questions we all must ask,” he says to the travelers he shelters inside his home, offering wisdom where he can. But late at night, he asks his own: “Will lost loves return to us? Do second chances await upon fate’s loom?”

  The siren’s legend instructs us all to be careful what we leave behind. But still she holds the dragon’s heart,
as fate and love decreed. Across the lands blessed by the dragon’s magic await the same promise he made the queen—Seek out the true desire of your heart and there find destiny at its deepest weave.

  Chapter 8

  The vulpine spirits whispered to Apollo. A long-absent ally approached. Many times he had wondered how long it would be before Yvayne returned to cast her shadow upon his doorstep. Behind his mask, he pursed his lips at her approach. Ravenna’s daughter had inherited all of her mother’s self-assurance, though Yvayne carried the burden of her experiences with her always. Her mother had cast the weight off.

  For dramatic effect, Apollo allowed his wings to swish across the smooth stone floor as he approached where she stood waiting. “The one who travels through mist has come to see me at last.” He clasped his hands behind his back.

  Yvayne stared up at him, her gaze already challenging his own despite how deep she had descended into his domain. The greatest concentration of his power lay here. Most so mighty as Yvayne avoided spaces that made their opponent more powerful than they would be in a neutral environment, one where the very air could not be turned against them. But Yvayne did enjoy breaking expectations.

  Her voice was crisp and cold when she spoke, exactly as he remembered. “Certainly you know why I am here.”

  With a twirl of his fingers, the entryway vanished behind her. No sense in keeping such a reassuring passage visibly present during her visit. From the edges of the circular chamber, the vulpine spirits whispered. He, too, had been unprepared for her return. “I had expected you to come sooner,” he lied. Tell me why you have come now, Yvayne.