by Gow, Kailin
My mother may have been wary of yours, at first – although the friendship they developed was, if unexpected, nevertheless a powerful one. But I never was. From the first time I met your mother at the Summer Court – the happy, bright woman who – despite the sadness that sometimes clouded her eyes at the mention of the Summer King – showered you in such love and affection – I knew that she was a truly special creature indeed. And so she must have been, if it meant giving birth to an extraordinary being like yourself.
Was your mother wrong to go with your father? Certainly, there are many in Feyland who would say so. Your father was a kind and good man – but he was not the more responsible of kings (but then again – in a world where love is so frowned upon, was he not merely the most-human king in a world in which human attributes are shown no hospitality?). But your mother, even more – was a brave woman! For how brave must she have been to leave behind all that she knew, all that mattered to her – her home, her country, her land, and follow the man she loved to strange and distant shores? No, Breena, it was not weakness that motivated your mother so but strength – the strength to follow her heart where it led! Your mother was willing to stand upon the shores of this brave new world and start a new life here, with you.
And I think even my mother knew that. Her prejudices against humans and love aside, I remember that she always treated your mother with a respect she showed to few fairies, let alone to mortals. Your mother had true strength, true spirit, and even my mother was able to pick up on that. With Raine my mother was able to speak out about her love for her children, her fears for them – not as heirs but as her son and daughter – in a way that she could not even speak about with her own husband. Raine brought out a strange kindness, softness – even tenderness – in my mother, qualities that while unfamiliar to me and to many who know her, I know now my mother possesses deep down. It was little surprise to me then to find that, only recently, it was my mother who gave yours hospitality and protection. Their friendship had once flowered – and even now it flowers again. Of course, much has changed in between. My mother grew so much colder and harder after my father's death – would she, I wonder, been as able to forge Raine's friendship had she met Raine after that tragic event?
Ah, Breena – how difficult it is to talk of our parents! Their stories, their loves and desires and pain and ambitions, have shaped us – we cannot escape them. And yet when we look at our reflections, we see their faces staring back at us. Will we make the choices they have made – or forge new paths?
Letter 9
My Dearest Breena,
In my last missive to you I spoke of our mothers – the Winter Queen and Raine Malloy, two women who could not be more different. And yet, since I have penned that letter, my thoughts have turned rather to my father – and to yours – to the other halves of that strange equation that brought us both into being. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for you to grow up without knowledge of your own. For me, the absence of my father, his death, is like a black line severing my past from my presence, my childhood from this cold, hard world of men. I still think about him often – not only about my father but about the world he represented – the world before the war, the world before the pain.
There is one memory of my father that particularly stands out – amid the blur of memories I have of him: his gruff voice, his silver beard, his long furs that smelled of pine and fir, that kept him at once regal and warm in the heart of the freezing tundra. It was a few months after your departure, and while the war had begun, it was hardly as dangerous as it would come to be after the Winter Massacre that spelled the beginning of the end for peace-time. My father wished to lead an expedition out to one of our Spring outposts, a small village called Juniper that, while in the Spring territories, was inhabited by a mix of Winter and Spring Fey, many of whom had intermarried over the years. “We want to fortify the place,” said my father. “If the Summer Fairies attack here, the good people of Juniper could be in very great danger. Summer isn't too happy with Winter at the moment – and the Spring fairies still loyal to Summer look upon the residents of Juniper as traitors. I want to send a regiment of troops down there to keep watch – and build an extra ring of fortifications around the area. And son,” he clapped me on the shoulder. “I want you to do it with me.”
It was my first real mission. I had done practice-fighting before – and trained until my muscles and limbs ached with the exertion – but I had not yet embarked upon a military campaign. I felt a subtle thrill at the promise of leaving the palace grounds – the boyish desire for adventure rose up in me, and I beamed with pride at my father's trust in me.
“You're getting big now,” he said. “A strapping lad like you is ready to see some real action!” Yet as we rode through the snowy drifts his tone grew more somber. “Yet don't forget, my boy,” he said, kicking his heels into the side of the horse, “this is no game. These are real fairies we'll be fighting, flesh and blood – we must never lose sight of that. This is nothing to make sport of. You may have won against your fellow lads in fencing – but this is different. There is a sacred magic in killing – solemn and deep, and not to be made light of. Can you remember that, my boy?”
I nodded. Listening to my father – his gravelly voice, his noble countenance, made me feel braver, somehow – stronger. Watching him ride across the snowdrifts, his back straight and his gaze straight and sure, I felt that I was watching not a mere fairy, but rather the ideal of a fairy warrior – everything a fairy ought to be. He was brave and sure of himself, but unlike knights like Flynn, whose skill in battle is matched by a vicious love for killing, he never sought to kill in vain. War was serious business, he told me – never forget that. It is a lesson I cannot forget, not when he is gone from me now, and my only memories of him are tinged with such pain and bitterness.
We reached Juniper by nightfall, and the sky blushed crimson and yellow. “See that sky,” my father said, pointing upwards. “Is that not a beautiful sky?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
He smiled. “That's what we're fighting for, Kian, my boy. We're fighting to protect it – that gorgeous sunset that you can see only in the Winter lands, that pink, that gold. We're fighting to protect all the beauty around us – the snow that's so white it shines when the light hits it, and the scent of the fir-trees all through the forest, and for the kindly, noble wolves that live in the forest. We're fighting for our frozen lakes and the right to skate across them – we're fighting for the juniper berries that surround this very village – can't you smell them?” He gave a deep sigh. “I love this land, Kian, and I hate to see it torn apart by war. But Summer's hold on the Spring lands has gone on long enough – they're ours by history, and most Spring fairies would say so too. These are our lands. Our people. Be proud of them, Kian, for they are a part of you.”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “For they, Kian, are proud of you. You have grown into a brave young man now, and everything of which I have spoken – all this land – looks to you to protect it. The leaves whisper your name, and rustle when you pass them by. The snow glimmers brighter under your feet. The wolves howl as you pass. They are all counting on you, my boy. And they are all proud – as proud as I am. Knowing what you can accomplish. Knowing all that you can be.”
He later trusted me with another task – to lead in the rebuilding of some of the Spring outposts that Summer fairies had destroyed. I spent three months in the Spring lands under my father's command, leading not war but construction – supervising the rebuilding of military fortifications alongside houses for those refugees whose homes had been destroyed in the war. I think my father assigned me to that post for a reason. He knew, as my mother did, that I would one day be called upon to be a great warrior. But he wanted more for me than bloodshed. He wanted to spare me that as long as he could – he wanted to call upon me to be a hero in other ways, in ways that perhaps were more suited to my temperament (before anger, hate, and bitterness froze my heart against s
uch desires for mercy). He wanted to show me that a good king does not only tear down, he also rebuilds. It is this lesson that has stuck with me the most, and it is this lesson that inspires me to think that one day, you and I can carry out his great work – rebuilding this land that we both love so dearly, building homes for the dispossessed, schools for the children who have been orphaned, farms for those with no means of sustenance. Just as my father taught me to do.
To write thus of my father now brings tears to my eyes. How I miss him – even now – how I long for that sure, steady man who made me feel that I was strong enough to bear the burden of this war. He was right, of course. Right about my love for the land – a love he and my mother and I and Shasta all share. I cannot pass the snow without taking in my breath at its beauty. I close my eyes in the forests to take in the intoxicating scent of the pine trees. But my love for the Winter lands is mixed with my love of Summer – love of the bright fruits and the ripe nectars and the purple flowers and the ivy and vines that trail up and down the sun-dappled rocks. I feel almost as much as a call for the land that you love – rich and fertile and burning with life – as I do for my own. It is my love for you, Breena, that calls me thus. It calls me to the land that you love, for I cannot look upon Summer as an enemy – look upon its lands and rotten and base – when I see them through your eyes. I see the land's beauty and I dream of a day when Summer and Winter are united once again in a single land of unsurpassed loveliness, when the smell of fir trees and the smell of bougainvillea flowers mingle in the single fragrance of peace.
I have, once or twice, gone up against your father in war – he would lead a regiment against one of mine. And I am grateful every day that neither of us was the clear victor in these battles – that both of us were able to escape alive. For although I was angry with Summer – and although I bore particular rancor against Flametail for his role, however inadvertent, in exacerbating the war – I nevertheless know what it is like...the pain of losing a father. I could not bear to make you shoulder that burden, too.
Letter 10
My Dearest Breena,
Since my last letter, you have been on my mind constantly. I have thought of little but those attributes which so attracted me to you at first – your incomparable beauty, your inflexible strength, your courage and love for this country which has become your own. In you I see the best of Winter and Summer alike – the power and willingness to sacrifice that I saw and admired in my mother, and the power and willingness to love that I saw and admired in your father. You, Breena, are the best of both worlds – the culmination of all fairy traditions. The warmth of Summer and the cool of Winter – the passions of humanity and the power of Feydom – all this do I think of when I think of you. Who but you could be so lovely, so strong? Who but one such as you could be my bride?
And yet, thinking back to the stories that Raine once told my mother of the Summer Court – I fear for you. I remember what she said of its intrigues, its terror. Wort or no Wort, I know that there are several courtiers whom I imagine wish to do you harm, for surely not all of those fairies have renounced their loyalty to Redleaf and her treacherous ways! How can a place of such great beauty be a place of such great danger? Do the two go hand in hand, do you think – must all good things be twinned with bad? And, if that is the way of the world, then I hope and will that the bad – our parting – will at last be twinned with the good: this peace for which we both so tirelessly work.
Yet I find myself strangely grateful, thinking of you at the Summer Court without me, for the presence of Logan the Wolf. Now I will not deny it, he and I have had our differences. How could he resist, after all? Your beauty, your kindness, the magic about you – how could anybody fail to fall in love with you at first sight, let alone over a course of years spent together in the bounds of friendship?
I have perhaps not served Logan well. What else can you expect, my dearest Breena? He may be a good and strong Wolf Prince – in my less jealous hours I find myself unable to deny that he is one of the bravest princes ever seen in the Wolf clans of the North, able to live both in our world and in the human world with incredible skill and intelligence. But simply because I acknowledge his good qualities – indeed, precisely because I do acknowledge them – I cannot forgive him the love he bears you, although I do understand it. I fear, sometimes, that he will take you away from me – that your warm friendship, your unhurried bond, forged over time together, will one day prove more attractive to you than the torment and the turmoil that seems to characterize our time together. Perhaps I am wrong – I hope I am! But I cannot, in my jealous, loving way, turn back that fear from my heart.
Tell me I am wrong, Breena! Tell me I have nothing to fear – that your heart belongs to me and is mine alone! Such joy that this would give me is beyond the bounds of thought; indeed, I alone would hardly be able to bear such rapture!
Yet despite my rancor against him, I am also grateful for him. Many times when you were in danger (and once, as I well recall, when I was in danger), Logan has risked the fur off his lupine back to protect you and those you loved. He is a steadfast friend – as dependable in those labyrinthine chambers of the Summer Court, with all its mysteries, as he once was on the battlefield. While at times the thought of him so close to you – able to smell the swell, intoxicating perfume of your flesh, able to touch the smooth skin of your shoulder, close enough to feel your breath upon his lips – drives me to tormenting distraction – at other times I feel a vast sense of relief that you are not alone in that faraway place, that you have somebody to protect you, to look after you, somebody in whom you can confide your secrets, even if that somebody is not me.
I remember when Logan and I first met – we were both young lads, arrogant and proud, and he had just returned from spending time with you in the human world, and he was with his father, The Wolf King. When he heard I was curious about you, every aspect about you, he grew wary of me and protective of you.
“What makes you so curious?” he asked me. “Do you intend to go after her, seduce her like you fairy princes do to humans, Snow Prince?”
“Of course not,” I heard myself scoff, with all the pride and arrogance of a young fairy soldier. “She is nothing to me! But I am curious as to the goings-on of this strange land beyond the Crystal River. Likewise, I am concerned with her safety – for as long as she is alive, she may yet grow to challenge Redleaf's power, and Redleaf's reign – and perhaps then peace might be affected.”
Logan looked soulful. “I cannot imagine,” he said darkly, “that Breena is nothing to anyone.”
I remember feeling slightly a pang of jealousy like a lightning-bolt in my heart – but I composed myself and hid my feelings. Did this Wolf – I could not help feeling – intend to make my bride his own? Our engagement was long-broken, by the code of Feyland, and yet I could not help but think that you were mine – that he had no right to you, no right to love you, not when that magic I so tried to deny still bound us. I could not have explained my melancholy to myself, but I remember that the night after meeting Logan, I felt for the first time the sense that I could very well lose you, Breena, and not to the mortal world, but to someone else.
Letter 11
Dear Breena,
I have trained over twenty years to be a great fairy. I have been well-versed in the various Fey arts required of me. I learned to fight both with natural weapons and with magical ones, to harness my strength such that – when dueling with an enemy – I could seemingly slow down time well enough to choreograph my next move. I could make the sword clatter from an enemy's hand and fall to the barren earth simply by wielding my magic. I could read minds – not the telepathy that I exchanged with you, my beloved – but a kind of eavesdropping on weaker fairies. I could glamour – though not as well as Shasta – and although it took considerable effort I could even glamour and hide my wings, as I was forced to do on occasion when masquerading as a particularly tall elf on one espionage-expedition to find out about the proposed elf
-Summer alliance. I worked day and night to forge these skills, beneath the twin suns of Feyland. After your departure, and after my father's death, I gave up all my leisure activities, all that had once given me joy. The few paintings I made of you and of Feyland – those you saw hanging upon my hunting lodge walls – I gave up after my father was laid in the earth. I stopped playing music, and no longer did the traditional fairy waltz to which we once danced within the walls of the palace. No more walks in the countryside, breathing in the fresh pine air of my kingdom – for I even forgot my father's maxim, his directive that I never forget the love that underpinned my hatred, the desire to protect that underpinned my desire to kill. I forgot even how I loved the feel of the snow powdery in my fingers, the sweet smell of cinnamon that pervaded the winter air – in short, I forgot all that I had once known and once loved. I did not know what I was fighting for when I went out to war.
I was fighting for hate. I was fighting for anger. I was fighting for vengeance. And in this single-minded fury that made me into the fairy I am today I thought that I was growing into my destined status as heir to the throne, that I was becoming a true fairy Prince. I thought that my coldness, my cruelty, my ruthlessness in battle – that they were all hallmarks of what I should have done and been. They made me a great fairy.
But I was wrong, Breena – and I did not know how wrong I was until I met you. For when I saw how you – a girl of sixteen who had all her memories of Feyland enchanted out of her – learned to come into your own, to become the fairy you were always meant to be, I learned that it is not cruelty and coldness that makes a fairy, but kindness and love. I have watched you over these many months, watched you learn to command your magic, watched you learn to fight and to protect yourself, learn to harness the golden rush of power within you. I have watched you overcome great obstacles, and display a greater strength of character, a greater courage in the face of danger, than I could have ever thought possible.
