by Gow, Kailin
Now I have become its slave.
Letter 18
Your Royal Highness,
I am writing to inform you that you will see me once again, and once more. News of the coming Peace Treaty that is to be signed has reached my ears – it is my duty as the Crown Prince to accompany my mother on the long journey to the Winter Court, and to sign my name alongside hers on this long-awaited document. I cannot avoid the pilgrimage, although its prospect is not – as you might imagine – not so sweet as it once was. I once awaited this day so eagerly, seeing it as the culmination of our promised hopes, our promised romance – but no. I can see from the very absence of your letters that such talk bores you, and I have no intention or desire of wearying you in that manner. No, I will keep this letter formal and precise. You have succeeded in your endeavors, your Majesty, and for this I congratulate you. The borders of the Spring lands have been successfully delineated, and I hear that the negotiations between our ambassadors and yours proved surprisingly smooth, and that you were a charming hostess. Of course, your charm is not in doubt – have I not learned already that you are able to convince any man at all of your love and allegiance with a single smile from your trembling, rosy lips? Such charm says little about the heart within. A woman can feign love so easily, so effortlessly, that she deceives even the one with the power to read into her heart, see what is in her mind. Such a power as this exceeds all the magic of all the fairies in Feyland.
And so I congratulate you, madam. You have truly become a greater fairy than I could have ever thought possible – this power of deceit of yours is legendary! But no matter. Fear not, madam – I will not disturb you in your connubial bliss with that Wolf whom onlookers say has so captivated you. I will not challenge him to a duel, nor will I kick his hide like the flea-bitten cur he is, deserves. I will behave impeccably and with restraint, as is the fairy way. When I sign the peace treaty, my hand will not tremble. Though this day was so long-awaited, though I ached and agonized for a time, all that is over. I will feel no joy at the end of this war – not for myself – but only relief on behalf of the people I represent. Perhaps I will catch your eye, perhaps not. Perhaps shame will at last cloud that rosy face of yours and you will look down before I catch a glimpse of the treachery in your eyes. Perhaps you will try to speak to me – to explain – or perhaps you will be silent, as you have been these many months.
But you will not see me again. Once the treaty has signed, I will go alone into the great wilderness – trek alone beyond Mount Malum and Mount Eberim, to distant lands no fairy has gone before. There I will encounter creatures so terrible that they turn onlookers to stone – there I encounter magic so dangerous no fairy can withstand it. And I will challenge all these primal beasts, one by one, and dare them to kill me. But what of my immortality, you ask? That snowflake pendant that guarantees my physical safety but does not safeguard my sanity or my heart? The moment that treaty is signed and peace is assured I will shatter it upon the marble floor of your palace.
I once thought I would give it to you as a gift. I fingered the smooth glass and recalled how my father had given it to my mother and I planned to do likewise. But now I wish only to destroy it – destroy the life that has become so hateful to me by your duplicity. Do you think I want to live for thousands of years, playing your lies over and over again in my head, trying to distinguish them – to separate out the reality from the falsehood? When you said you would wait for me forever – that was a lie. When you said that you would love me forever – that was a lie. When you said that I was your intended – you lied then, too. But what about the other times? When you said you loved me – was that merely a ploy, designed to affect my weakness so that this treaty could be signed? Did you mean to ensnare me – ensnare all of us: my mother and Shasta and me – so that you could settle peace with terms more favorable to the Summer Kingdom, for it is on account of my love for you and the persistence with which I have fought for you that has led peace to happen the way it has. Are you content with your holdings, my Queen – with the result? You have shattered the necessary hearts, executed the necessary maneuvers, and now you have your peace, your crown, and your new husband!
I hear the wedding is in a month's time – I regret to inform you I shall be unable to attend. While you make those solemn vows of magic to that traitorous Wolf, I will be in the wilds beyond Feyland, drenching myself in the blood of beasts and dragons, until at last I find one of them strong enough to bring me down, to overcome my royal magic and strike the killing blow, piercing my armor and letting me forget at last of the useless life I led. But none of them – I promise you this, my Queen – shall have overcome me as thoroughly, and as treacherously, as you did once.
Forgive me, your Highness. I forgot my purpose in writing you this letter. I mean only to confirm – with the utmost formality and the most cordial regards – that I shall indeed be attending the Peace Treaty proceedings one week from now.
Sometimes, in my more foolish hours, I feel a tugging on my heart – a single beating power that suggests to me in my idiocy that you still feel something for me, that you still love me, that this is all some terrible mistake. I feel remnants of the love for you that once kept me alive – without with which my life is nothing.
But I would do better to forget them, as you yourself have forgotten. If only I could forget everything. If only I can forget you. For although my mind forgets, my soul would not.
Shasta’s Letter 1
Rodney, Darling,
It's been too long! A few weeks and already I start to get nervous – I start pacing the walls of my room and tugging at my hair and fidgeting. I've re-arranged all the swords on my wall and I've re-catalogued all the books in my library (even the cooking-texts, which I've hidden beneath the floorboard where you and I once shared our love letters). But nothing doing, Rodney – I can't distract myself. Not when you're out there, outside this prison of a palace (Mother doesn't trust me to leave the grounds – she has those blasted guards watching me like phoenixes everywhere I go!), and I'm stuck with Kian (who hasn't stopped moping in days – he's no conversation) and my mother (who uses every chance she gets to tell me what a failure I am as a Queen.) What do you think of that? I spent my whole childhood trying to be Queen, trying to prove that I was better than Kian, and now – even when he's gone all moony for Breena, I'm the disappointment? Poor Mother – no matter what Kian does, he'll still be the apple of her eye, and I'll still be second-best.
But I was never that way with you, Rodney! When it all gets too terrible, and I think I can't bear it a moment longer (or else I'll have to rush to the top of the Observatory, where nobody will hear me, and scream into the night!) I think of you – of how we met, and of the taste of that first (awful!) spaghetti Bolognese we made together in Gregory (we sure got better, didn't we?) and of the way the tomato sauce got on my nose and in your hair and the way the microwave exploded (how was I supposed to know metal doesn't go in there?) and how we burned the meat and got sick for days! Wasn't it wonderful?
Oh, I was so high-and-mighty and pleased with myself when I managed to get to Gregory. Sneaking in through one of Kian's paintings of Breena – wasn't that ingenious? Even he didn't know he'd created a portal – but I could spot it! And good thing, too – if I hadn't gotten into the Land Beyond the Crystal River through there, I wouldn't have ended up in Gregory (for my money, I wanted to go to Paris to cook properly, since I hear they have powerful cooking magic there!) and found you! (“Looking after Breena” my foot – everybody knows you just wanted to learn to cook mortal food!)
Of course, I was twenty minutes late to the first lesson. Gregory Community College wasn't as impressive as I thought it would be – it doesn't have any spires or magic archways or moats like our Feyland universities – and I completely missed it the first two times I walked by! But then I remember scrambling in and demanding that we start again from scratch since I'd missed the beginning. I was a Princess, I figured, and I'd have my way.
Unfortunately, none of those people in the class knew I was a Princess, and so they all just thought I had the temper of a dragon (not that any of them had seen a dragon, mind you! They've got a couple of scaly things in zoos but they don't breathe fire or fly or do anything interesting.) So they refused – flat out – and I decided I'd use a little telepathy to set them straight. And I tried to enchant the lot of them, making them think that the class was just starting – and weren't you sweet to play along and pretend I'd enchanted you too? (Of course, I could have enchanted you if I really wanted, but I thought you were all just humans, so I didn't try that hard!)
Oh, that was wonderful – that first class! Finally doing what boys got to do while I was stuck forging stupid swords – smelling the roasting meats and vegetables, chopping the tomatoes into little pieces. I felt so powerful – I was in control of the very stuff that makes life happen – think about that! You men don't know how thrilling a feeling that is – you're used to cooking. And I started to notice you – and think you weren't half bad (as far as humans went), and then we got to talking and cooking and suddenly we were cooking together, and fighting over whether we should add more basil or more oregano, and then you sneaked a bit of elf-wheat into the sauce and I tasted it and that' s when I knew something was up.
I can always sniff out elf-wheat.
Well, I'm sorry for the big bruise I gave you. (It healed awfully quickly, didn't it?) I thought you were one of Mother's guards following me to report back about how naughty I was being. But you promised not to squeal, didn't you – and then you told me that you thought women and men should both be allowed to cook (and forge weapons too, although I don't see why anyone would want to do that!) and then I remember that we left the class to wash the tomato sauce off our clothes and got to walking in that “fairy wood” (why they call it that is beyond me – there's no fairies there but us!) and before I knew it it was dawn, and you were holding my hand, and I'd met the first person in my life who truly understood me. Nobody telling me I was second-best. Nobody telling me I couldn't do what I wanted. Just someone else who thought all this rigmarole about war and status and fairy rules was silly and wanted Feyland to move forward a few millennia.
I know I lied and told you I'd kissed loads of boys before – I didn't want you to think I was going to get hung up on you or anything – but I want you to know now that you were my very first kiss. And that I'm awfully hung up on you. But you probably knew that, didn't you? Sometimes, when you're far away, I think I can hear your thoughts. And I know that sometimes you've heard mine – I feel you, like a presence, in my head.
Now, I'm not going to say we're “soul mates,” because Kian hasn't stopped talking about how he and Breena are soul mates and, while I may be second-best at ruling, I'm not going to come second in matters of romance. But if there were such a thing as soul mates, that's what we would be – and I'll be damned if we're not more of “soul mates” than the two of them! Just because I'm no good at all the sentimental talk doesn't mean I don't spend every day that's gone by missing you.
I love you, Rodney – I love you and your messy ginger hair and I love the stupid burned tomato sauce we made together and I love the walks we took in Feyland and I even love that little ugly brick building where we met. So what if we weren't intended for each other at birth – the way Kian and Breena were? So what if the universe didn't wake up and magically bind us – I picked you. I said to myself “Shasta, that's the boy you're going to marry, and nothing's going to get in your way.” I didn't wait for the universe to tell me who to marry – I decided myself.
I know Kian and Breena love each other – and I know it's been hard for them (believe me, I have to sit with Kian at breakfast every morning), but sometimes it feels like at least their love matters to people. Mother likes Breena, and listens to her and Kian much more than she ever listens to me. I don't matter – I'm just the daughter, the second-born, the second-best.
But I don't care anymore. I don't care if I can't be Queen. I just want to run away with you to the Land Beyond the Crystal River, and wear human clothes and buy a house with a big kitchen and leave all the rules and regulations of Feyland behind me – just me and you and a whole lot of cookie dough.
(Only sometimes we'd have to go back to get elf-wheat).
I love you, Rodney, and don't you dare even think about forgetting about me – because if you do, I'll give you a bruise ten times bigger than the one I gave you the night we met!
All my love!
Shasta
Shasta’s Letter 2
Darling Rodney,
It's all gone horribly wrong here! Everything's mixed up and topsy turvy and I swear, Rodney, I don't know what to think. Breena's gone and gotten engaged to that Wolf Logan and now Kian's gone so completely mad about her that we've had to lock him up in the dungeon in case his magic starts going haywire and striking down servants. Already we've got one servant girl that fell down the stairs after he accidentally teleported an enormous silver vase onto her – and had to spend a whole day with the alchemist getting her wounds healed! The Peace Treaty's being signed in ten days' time, and Mother doesn't know what we'll do if we haven't calmed Kian down by then. She says – with this look in her eyes that makes me feel like the biggest disappointment in the world – that if Kian can't regain control over his magic, I'll have to rule!
I don't know what to think. All my life, I dreamed of being Queen, of my mother choosing me over Kian to hold the snowflake pendant and wear the crown of the Winter Court, of protecting Feyland the way brave Queen Tamara did! And now that the option is before me, all I want to do is run away from this horrible place, this horrible Court, and be with you! When I was little, I thought I'd be the best, bravest fairy ever – but now I don't want to be a fairy at all! I don't want to be tied down, forced into these crazy wars and ridiculous obligations, just because I was born a Princess and a woman and so I'm not allowed to cook or fall in love or do anything at all except stand in Kian's shadow!
No, I won't let this happen. I've spent my whole life doing what my mother wanted, letting Kian's choices dictate my own. Not this time. Once the Peace Treaty is signed, I'm going to run away with you. We'll go beyond the Crystal River – not to Gregory this time but to Paris, like we always dreamed about! We'll cook coq au vin and chicken cordon bleu and start our own restaurant together – our way. We won't even have to use magic (except to fix all the microwaves I break) – we'll just live our own lives, at last. Free of other people. Free of interference. Who would have thought it – the only way to stop this world from clipping my wings is to cut them off altogether?
I know they'll miss us – and we'll miss them. Your sister Rose will be scandalized, no doubt – and as much as I complain about him, it pains me to think I'll never see Kian again. He is my big brother, after all, and it's not his fault Mother likes him best. I'll even miss Mother. One day she'll realize what I did – and she won't be angry any longer. She'll be proud – proud that a daughter of hers grew up to be as strong and stubborn as she is!
But not for a while yet.
Listen, Rodney – I've hatched a plan. A plan that will be able to cause enough of a distraction to let me slip away unnoticed, so I can escape to the Land Beyond the Crystal River properly! It'll be a long journey – Mother's boarded up all of Kian's paintings so I can't get there from the castle – but it'll be worth it.
The only thing is, for my plan to work, I'll need to do some pretty risky things. I know mother told me that pixies aren't to be trusted, but these are desperate times, Rodney. I've got the perfect plan for us to be together.
And I only need one pixie to pull it off...
*****************
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