by Gow, Kailin
And yet I digress. For it is only when we arrived at the Summer Court, scented with bergamot and gleaming before us – its great golden dome like another Feyland sun – that my story really begins. For there it was that I first caught sight of a bassinet – piled high with gold and lilac and lavender silks, so ornately bejeweled that I at first had to shield my eyes from the light. Before me I saw, decked out in all his majesty, Flametail your father, wearing a cloak of bright phoenix feathers, his gold chain mail lustrous in the noonday sun. I gasped with admiration. My own court was beautiful, in its way, but it was cold, silvery, as misty as moonlight. This place was bright and shining, full of life. The warm sun on my face, so much more pleasing to my skin than the wintry sun of my own court, brought a smile to my face.
My smile faded when Flametail's companion came forth. This must have been Redleaf – every inch of her lithe body, her hair – a warm chestnut mix of blonde, brown, and reddish strands – her striking green eyes – suggested royalty. But her face was dour, and at the edges of her cheeks I could see a faint pink blush: the telltale sign of her humiliation. She said nothing, of course, and greeted us with a smile at once force and false, but I could tell that she took no particular pleasure in the event. I was too young to understand much about concubines, but even I noticed the decided glare she shot at a young woman standing at the back of the room – a young woman with soft eyes, shifting in color as the light hit them in various ways. Eyes I now know so very well. The woman at the back, with long dark hair and an elfin grin, was craning her neck towards the bassinet, evidently trying her hardest to see the mystery contained within. Whenever Redleaf turned to the mysterious woman, however, she cast her gaze downwards and retreated back into the shadows.
“Is that the baby?” I said – too loudly for politeness. “She doesn't really look like much.”
My mother gave me a stern pinch on the shoulder. “Hush,” she whispered.
I tiptoed closer towards the bassinet. A small, pink, round face peered out at me. At first you seemed like just a typical baby – just like Shasta – tiny and infinitely breakable and capable of emitting wails as loud as the screeches of the Nordic Banshees. But then you opened your eyes – those same eyes, shifting in color yet always so filled with light – and looked straight at me.
And I felt something. I can't say that it was yet love – we were too young to even think of love in the way that I know and understanding it now – and yet when your soft and inquiring gaze met mine I felt a sudden shake deep within my soul, a stirring of the magic deep within me. There was magic all around us – all at once! - yours and mine and the magic of Winter and Summer, all pulsating through the room, at first slowly and then faster and faster until the energy felt as if it were ricocheting off the walls and into my body, into my soul – as if it would consume me.
I stumbled back, overwhelmed. You continued looking at me with that same unblinking stare.
“Don't get too close,” hissed Redleaf. “The little princess was able to repel a kelpie last week –(don't ask me how! Goodness me!) and she managed to send it packing. Maybe she'll do the same to you, little boy.” Her gaze was cold and, as Flametail turned his head towards her, I could see a frown furrow on his face. How, after all, had a kelpie managed to get that close to his daughter? She was constantly attended to by a stream of attendants, watched by his very own royal knights.
My mother curtseyed deeply before Redleaf, her aquamarine and silver silks spreading like an ice-storm across the red-tiled floor, the colors striking in their contrast. “You must both be very proud,” she said to the Summer King and Queen. “What a beautiful little girl. A wonderful addition to your family.”
“Perhaps she'll have a brother next,” Flametail smiled, catching the eye of the young woman across the room, who turned crimson as a smile blossomed over her face.
“I doubt it highly,” said Redleaf, her voice high-pitched and strangled. “There will be no more children.”
Not even I could mistake her intent. The warm blush on the young woman's face vanished, and instead there flushed the scarlet hue of humiliation. She swallowed hard and, turning on her heel, ran from the room.
A stagnant pause followed.
“Maids!” Redleaf laughed – an unnatural, cruel laugh – that shook the walls of the Grand Chamber. “So emotional!”
“But I thought she was a....” I cut in.
“Hush!” My mother came down upon me with another sharp pinch. Flametail was looking with intense concentration at the floor, doing his best to pretend that he had heard or witnessed none of the preceding conflict.
The carriage ride home was a somber one. My mother and my father both seemed to be embarrassed by what had occurred between Flametail, Redleaf, and Flametail's concubine.
“Really,” my mother said, “he should be ashamed of himself – running about on his wife like that – and keeping a concubine in the same room! No wonder Redleaf is...what she is.”
“I wouldn't be so sympathetic if I were you,” said my father. “It was a political match – nothing more. Redleaf has more power as Summer Queen than ever she did as an Autumn Princess. And she is, after all, infertile – the country needed an heir.”
“But the humiliation!”
“It would have been better if he had taken an Autumn concubine?” my father asked.
“One that she agreed upon, yes,” my mother sighed.
“But he loves her...” My father smiled and took my mother's hand. “Not all of us were lucky enough to be able to make a love-match.”
“I don't know...” My mother gazed at him with searching eyes. “Is love really worth the risks that Flametail is taking – with Autumn? With Spring? With us?”
My father stroked her cheek. “I wouldn't turn it down.”
My mother turned away. “They say that in the days of the great heroes – queens like Queen Tamara – there was no love in Feyland. The magic that the heroes of old possessed was so great, so powerful, that they could not risk falling in love, or being ruled by emotions. They were ruled by other priorities – honor, duty, order. And thus their magic was great – and their reign greater still. If we still held to some of those values of old...”
“Outdated!” my father scoffed. “Everybody knows love isn't dangerous anymore. Certainly we figured that one out for ourselves.” He squeezed her hand once more and she reluctantly looked up at him, unable to resist a smile.
How strange that such a recollection would come to me now! How strange to think of my mother – my mother the woman who outlawed love in the Winter Kingdom, and imprisoned those who dared let it rule their lives. My mother who thought even love for her son was a sign of weakness and danger – she had once been in a love-match with my father. She had once allowed herself to succumb.
And then he had died on the battlefield – in a war that Flametail's passions and Redleaf's jealousy had all helped start – and my mother, in her mourning, decided that she would never love again. That nobody would ever love again.
And I listened to my father and my mother that night, and wondered what love meant – this strange thing talked about in such hushed tones, that had so hurt Redleaf, so frightened my mother.
And I thought once again of your eyes, and the power of that magic that sent me reeling. And then, for the first time in my life, I had a glimmering of what that love might be.
Letter 3
My Dearest Breena,
So my first meeting with you coincided – fate, is it not? - with my first encounter with the dangers and the beauties of love alike. But of course I was too young to understand love. Love came a few years later – you were but three (but you grew, as fairy children grew, into a creature of great agility – you could walk and talk and chatter!) and I was eight, and already (if I may say so myself) a reasonably strapping sort of lad. The tensions after the first Spring Rebellion had subsided, and Summer and Winter seemed to be in a much less tenuous position – at least for the time. Contact betw
een our two regions was far more frequent, and as a gesture of good-will I was invited as a guest of honor to spend the summer at the Summer Court.
Thus began our first conversation. Perhaps you remember this – perhaps you have dreamed it in a dream. I know that your family did their best to make you forget this time in your life – perhaps you tucked this memory away somewhere deep within your soul. If so, I hope that my words can remind you of that idyllic time – when we were children, wandering the bowers and trellises and grassy mazes of the palace grounds. We had so many simple pleasures in those days – games that we learned just as we learned new words. Your mother and Redleaf may have been at loggerheads, struggling with each other for ascendancy – your father Flametail may have been absent from the throne as he resolved these questions of romance (much, it must be admitted, to my mother's distaste – when I departed for my summer at the Court she adjusted my chain mail and sighed that “such ribald revelry is distinctively mortal. That's what comes of having humans in the Court, I suppose – the great heroes of old, like Queen Tamara, would never have stood for it!) Yet you and I knew none of this. We did not know of wars, or tensions, or sectarian strife. We knew only that there was nothing in the world more beautiful than those vast and leafy gardens, where you and I indulged in all our sylvan fantasies. We used to play a game of tag – for, while your legs had just learned walking, your magic carried you at great speed, and my wings had not yet come in to give me an advantage.
We played all sorts of games – games, I imagine, not dissimilar to the ones you would have had played if you had grown up like a normal, human child. We played hide-and-seek in the rose-garden, often bringing the servant children into our games (much to the displeasure of the older, more serious household staff). We even engaged in a bit of rough-housing; although I must admit I was far easier on you than I now know was necessary, for I was still convinced that no fairy girl could ever beat a boy “fair and square.” But the game I remember most vividly of all was a game that was reserved for us alone, one that we never shared with the other children amusing themselves at Court.
It all began one day with a joke. We had decided to sneak away from the other children – a shared smile was all it took for us to establish that for some, unnamed reason, we wished to be alone – and during one of our customary games of hide-and-seek we vanished through one of the maze-like hedges into a secret recess you and I had discovered only a few days before. Everywhere on the palace grounds was beautiful, but this place surpassed them all. Rich fruits, their nectar scented and glistening upon the ripened skins, filled the air with an intoxicating fragrance; bright flowers of red and orange and gold made the courtyard resemble nothing so much as an impassioned sunset.
“I want a fruit!” you cried, jumping upwards and stumbling to the ground. “Not fair – haven't got wings...”
Neither had I, I must admit, but at eight years of age I was well able to stand upon my toes and reach one of the lower-hanging fruits.
“Which one have you got?” you asked me, craning your neck to see.
Feeling (I must confess) rather mischievous, I hid the fruit behind my back, feeling its nectar stain my palms. “Guess,” I said. “If you guess right, you get the fruit. If not...” I licked my lips in mock appetite.
You fixed me with a penetrating stare that your small stature did little to alleviate. “Fine,” you said, pursing your rosy lips. “It's a....star fruit.”
My eyes opened wide. “Right you are!” I said, handing you the ripe star fruit. You smiled and snapped the fruit in two, offering me half. (“But I still won!” you were sure to remind me.)
Having displayed mastery of the game, you decided that I would have to earn my keep likewise. “Close your eyes and lift me up,” you demanded, with such certainty that even a mortal would be able to tell that you had the bearing and make of a queen. I complied, and you picked a fruit of your choosing from the branch, bidding me to make the same guess.
I guessed correctly, and thus our game of wits began. For days thereafter, we made a habit of stealing away to the various orchards and gardens of the Feyland gardens, making each other guess as to which flower, which fruit, which precious stone we were holding. We were not always correct (and I was, I am proud to say, right quite a bit more of the time – I was, after all, an older and more developed fairy), but we often were, and it was when our minds met – when you were able to read my thoughts and I yours, that the game was the most fun.
I did not know at the time what our connection signified. Our game was our secret – and it was just as well – for had I told my parents what you and I were able to do they would have known immediately that the bond we shared was not mere childhood friendship, but the nascent buddings of true love. For, Breena, only true lovers are able to join in this way, to hear each other's thoughts with such simplicity and ease. And while my father would, perhaps, have been overjoyed to hear that I had forged such a bond with the princess who was to become (unbeknownst to me), my intended, and my mother would have been far more wary. After all, she knew – a political match and a love match were two very different things, and while when the two combined (as they had with her and my father) they could be wonderful, they could also be dangerous. Perhaps better, then, that she did not know. For when at last the time came for me to hear the news that my mother and father had been whispering about behind my back – the autumn after the summer I spent at your Court – my mother and father had no idea that the information that they were about to recount to me would cause me anything more serious than curiosity – for what does an eight-year-old boy know of love and marriage?
I knew that the day upon which our engagement was to be announced to me was not like other days. My fencing-master's services, so often engaged early in the morning, had been unexpectedly canceled, and instead I was invited to breakfast with my parents, an occurrence so rare that I could remember only one previous instance – that of the birth of Shasta. My serving-woman and valet dressed me in the most formal regalia they could find in my tiny wardrobe – stiff and rather uncomfortable starched fabrics that gave me the restrained bearing of a toy soldier – and escorted me (bowing and curtesying all the way) to the Great Hall in which my mother and father sat dining.
The Hall, enormous when full of foreign dignitaries, seemed positively cavernous when it held no inhabitants other than my father and my mother, each of whom sat at one end of a long wooden dining table clearly intended for at least sixty. My footsteps echoed throughout the hall as I – nervous and thoroughly itchy from my formal attire – proceeded towards them.
“Sit, son,” my father said jovially, motioning to a chair equidistant from that of my mother and my father. The valet pulled out the chair for me and I sat, looking back and forth from my mother to my father (each of whom seemed miles away from me), waiting for someone to explain what all this was about.
My mother's normally placid face revealed a smile, one that was echoed and transformed into a beam upon the face of my father. “We have some exciting news for you, young fellow,” he said. “You might not find it exciting now – little roguish scamp that you are – but I promise you, in good time you'll realize quite how exciting it all is.”
“Come now,” said my mother, “don't intimidate the boy!” But her face betrayed her pleasure.
“Not much of a boy anymore, is he?” said my father. “Not after this.”
My mother gave a small sigh. “And to think – he's only eight years old.”
And then my mother did something that – Breena – I confess is indeed the most surprising thing she has ever done in the whole of her life. She stood up, impulsively, from the narrow-backed chair on which she sat, and rushed across the length of the table towards me, enveloping me in her arms. “My boy!” her lips released far more emotion than I had hitherto known from her – and more emotion than, with the exception of my father's death, I have seen from her since. My father too – surprised but pleased by my mother's uncharacteristic o
utburst – strode over to me and wrapped his great, ursine arms around my frame.
“But what is it?” I asked, increasingly desirous of learning what on earth had caused this mysterious change of behavior in my family. “What has happened?”
“You remember your time at the Summer Court, do you not?” my mother asked. “And of the children you played with there?”
“You remember the Princess Breena?” my father cut in.
“Yes,” I said, and my mind flickered back to those idyllic days in our secret orchard.
“You liked her, did you not?” my father asked. “As a playmate – she did not perturb you?”
“No,” I said. “Not at all – in fact...” But I stopped my sentence short. I knew from my mother's reaction to Raine and Redleaf that she was none too keen on special affection between women and men – her own weakness for my father to the contrary. “She's quite nice,” I finished my statement neatly.
“Well, I'm certainly glad you think so,” said my father. “Because you'll be seeing a lot more of her from now on.”
“Is she coming to visit?” I tried to conceal my excitement.
“Not exactly,” said my mother. “Rather, my dear, I am proud to say that we have managed to make a most excellent royal match – one that will do proud the houses of Summer and Winter alike!”
“A match?” I furrowed my brow. “You mean, like a...”
“A marriage!” My father could contain his excitement no longer. “A real royal marriage. We have made the necessary arrangements with the Summer Court, and they believe that the most strategic way to ensure peace between our two kingdoms is to have their heiress marry you – uniting our kingdoms. The two of you will be brave and strong – you will rule equally an undivided kingdom, just as it was in the oldest fairy days, when Winter and Summer and Spring and Autumn were one single united Feyland, and there was peace throughout the land.”
