At the base of a stout fir tree was a small clay pot sitting in a larger, shallower dish of water. She drifted to it, buzzing in the air over the dish of water, which was strangely warm. The pot was a bit taller than she was, and it was strong with the scent she was after. Just inside the lid was a thick row of bristles with a small gap between it and the wall. She touched the bristles. They were fairly soft, and gave easily enough. At the tip of the bristles an amber substance glistened in the moonlight. The stuff was sticky, but certainly the source of the aroma. Before she could stop herself she licked her finger. It was a symphony of flavor. The most glorious thing she'd ever tasted. The stuff put all of the other nectars she'd tasted to shame. So much sweeter, so much heartier and thicker. She peered down into the jar. At the bottom was a thick layer. Enough to eat her fill and come back to do it again for days. It would be a tight squeeze, but she could certainly slip past the brush to climb inside. A tug at the bristles confirmed that it would be simple enough to push past in either direction.
Out of habit and caution, she decided to be sure that there was nothing about. A slow scan of the surroundings with her eyes didn't turn up anything, but she knew better than to trust her eyes alone, especially at night. She opened her mind to the motion of the breeze. The forest around her was even more still that it usually was. Even the usual squirrels, mice, and birds were quite far away. But there was one group of creatures. They were large, breathing slow and steady. The group of them hidden in a cluster of bushes a fair distance away, near a crackling, smoky flame.
The presence of these strange creatures terrified Ayna. She made ready to bolt for her home, but the rumble of her stomach and the lingering flavor on her lips made her pause. She'd seen deer, fox, wolves, and the like. All of them were quite fast, but she knew she was faster. The only thing that could catch her without surprising her was a hawk or an owl, and the creatures in the bushes certainly weren't birds of prey... she would keep her mind open, continue to read the breeze, and the instant they drew closer, she would fly away. There would be no catching her. The sticky stuff was so lovely and thick, it wouldn't take more than a few mouthfuls to set her hunger to rest and give her the first well-fed night's sleep in far too long.
She buzzed up to the edge of the jar and carefully slid herself over the rim, easing along its smooth inner wall and feeling the sticky bristles smear themselves over her back and wings. It left a gooey layer that she made special note to wash away before she slept, lest her parents grow suspicious. Suddenly her legs slipped and she slid the rest of the way into the jar. Her hands sunk wrist-deep into the stuff before touching the bottom beneath it. It was beautifully warm, oozing between her fingers as she slid her legs down to the side to plant her feet in it.
Her mouth already watering, she took a double scoop of the golden syrup and stuffed it into her mouth, letting it glue her jaw shut for a few delightful seconds while she savored it. The joy of tasting it was still buzzing in her mind when she realized the breathing she felt was quickening. And now it was drawing closer.
She stood and reached past the bristles to the edge, stickily grabbing it and hauling her feet out of the clutching grip of the goo. The bristles dragged a second coat of the stuff across her back as she hauled herself up, and the breathing was quite close now. She grinned. If this was as fast as these creatures could run, she would lose them the moment she was in the air. She stood on the rim and fluttered her wings to life... but they waved ponderously through the air. They weren't moving fast enough for her to take flight.
A hot knife of fear cut through her as she realized her mistake. The stuff that had coated her wings was too heavy. She frantically tried to shake it free but the syrup that had been so beautifully thick and hearty sliding down her throat was clinging tight, only tiny blobs of it flicking off with each flap of her wings. Behind her she could hear the heavy thud of footsteps as the creatures grew nearer.
Ayna knew she had to escape, and if she couldn't fly that meant she'd have to run. She tried to leap clear of the dish, but unused to doing so without her wings to assist she fell short and splashed into the warm water. After floundering for a second she reached the edge and pulled herself out. The water drenching her body loosened and thinned the stuff sticking to her, and with a mighty effort she was able to work her wings fast enough to fling some of it off and just barely get airborne, but her wings still felt stiff and heavy. Her flight was a drunken and slow, lurching through the air and bouncing across the ground. Fear drove her wings faster than they'd ever moved before, launching free streamers of the stuff and gradually returning her proper agility. At that moment, she felt something enormous and billowy rushing through the air, flapping almost like the wings of an eagle. There couldn't have been an eagle! She couldn't have missed that!
She shut her eyes and forced herself forward, but something soft and giving struck her from behind and forced her downward before pulling tight around her. The world toppled and twirled. She tried to free herself, but whatever was entangling her was far too strong, like some sort of thick spider web. Panic seized her mind and her heart fluttered in her chest as she looked through the strands of web at the beast who had captured her.
It almost seemed to her that her captor was an enormous fairy, though it was dressed in rougher clothing and had no wings. The thing was breathless, grinning at her as two others caught up.
"Please! No! Please! Let me go! I didn't mean to steal your food!" Ayna squealed.
The creatures replied, though their booming voices spoke in a language she couldn't understand. By their expressions they seemed quite happy to have caught her, smiling at one another as their booming voices echoed in her ears. The tone was so deep and the words so coarse, most of what they said was little more than noise to her. She may as well be listening to thunder bouncing between the clouds. Some words came again and again--words like "honey" and "trap"--but before long Ayna had to pin her hands over her ears to block out the terrible sounds.
She struggled and fluttered against the web of threads. This seemed to make them happier. The word "feisty" joined the handful that she could understand before they paused in their thunderous conversation to draw a clear glass jar from his bag. Her captor clutched her body tight in his grip, wadding up the web around her. His fingers squeezed, not painfully, but firmly enough that she couldn't move at all. He lowered the wooden frame to which the web was attached, pulling back the mesh of threads until Ayna's head was clear of it, then upended the jar over her and flipped the web upside down. When she was dangling into the jar he released her, sending her tumbling down into the glass container. She flapped her wings for all she was worth and darted upward, but he was too fast, sliding a cork in place and pounding it home.
Instantly Ayna felt something she'd never felt before. The wind was silent. She couldn't feel it, couldn't hear it. The world had been reduced to little more than the inside of a jar barely tall enough to stand in. It was a horrid, maddening sensation. Being cut off from the wind was like having a sense taken away, being struck blind or deaf. Only it was worse, because she was a fairy. The wind was a part of her. They may as well have taken a piece of her soul.
Ayna rattled against the jar, a second and deeper fear gripping her. Never before had she not been free to move about as she pleased. She may have felt the tree was not large enough to give her room to explore, but at least it was large enough to spread her wings. This prison was tiny, restrictive in a way she'd never imagined. She wanted out. She needed out.
Her tiny hands hammered and pounded at the glass and she screamed for freedom, but they simply grinned at her, talking each other in voices muffled by the glass. The captor held her up to eye-level to give her a final look over. Grinning wide. Anya had just enough of her wits about her to notice his ears. His long, pointed ears... she'd finally seen an elf. And now she understood why her father had spoken so viciously of them.
Words like "price" and "gold" were tossed back and forth between the men, each of the
m widening their smile. Amid enthusiastic nods they pulled open a sack and tossed her jar inside, exposing her to one final surge of fear as the darkness closed in around her.
"No! Please! Please!" she cried.
They paid her no mind, and before long she was rattling around the jar, clinking against the cold glass walls with each step. She curled into a ball, pulling her knees to her chest and sliding to the corner of the jar, tears streaming down her face.
What had she done...
#
Ayna awoke to another miserable day. After bumping and clinking about in her tiny jar for a few hours, the elf who had captured her had transferred her to a strange glass tube. It was about twice as tall as she was, and wide enough for her to lay down if she curled up a bit. Both the top and bottom were made of a wire mesh that she could fit her arms and legs through, but try as she might she couldn't squeeze her body through. After three hungry days, they fed her. The meal was a few drops of sugary water drizzled down a thread hanging into the tube. Her new prison was terrible, but at least it was better than the jar. The mesh let the air through. That was a tremendous mercy. If she'd been bottled up for much longer she wasn't certain her mind could have recovered. To take away the wind was to take away the world.
The fairy hunters had placed her on a shelf in a carriage stuffed with harsh-smelling herbs and assorted curious animals and birds. Some she recognized as beasts of Ravenwood, others she'd never seen before. All looked as distraught and frightened as she. There, among the other captive beasts and plant samples, she'd remained for what may have only been days but felt like an eternity.
She wiped the fitful sleep from her eyes and gazed at the crack beneath the door. Its glow was the only indication of day and night anymore. Her heart and mind were still seized with anxiety, but as the days had worn on, the boredom and uncertainty became the most daunting. None of the other creatures locked away with her were intelligent--or, at least, if they were, they didn't understand her. It left nothing to occupy her mind but the thoughts of what would be come of her, and why they were taking her.
Strangely, she seldom thought of her home. A part of her knew that each day she was among them but couldn't venture out to forage, she was a weight for them to carry. Life in Ravenwood was difficult even for a healthy fairy family. She'd not been happy in her tree, and they'd not been happy with the effort it took to keep her. Perhaps if she'd managed to pluck the leaf, she might have felt differently, but she'd all but given up on ever achieving such a thing. That meant the best life she could hope for at home was a few years within the tree, watching her brothers and sisters grow strong and start their own families. The only merciful part of such a life was its length. Fairies who could not conjure the breeze always seemed to wither and die more quickly than the rest...
Though she was sorry to have lost her family and her home, she knew deep down that they were probably better off without another useless mouth to feed.
Her eyes were still focused on the door when the carriage lurched to a stop, knocking her against the glass and nearly sliding her tube from the shelf. After righting herself she peered through the glass. She squinted at the sudden brightness of the sun pouring through door as it open. They had come to a place crowded with more of the things that had captured her.
Ayna cursed every moment she'd been curious about these horrid beasts. In the mumbled words she heard through the carriage walls during the trip she'd heard terms which might have been those her grandfather had used in his stories. Words like "human" and "dwarf." He'd claimed they were creatures like elves, with differences which at the time hadn't been important to her. In this place, she realized, there were examples of each. Seeing dozens of them in one place, a place that lurked just beyond the border of her forest home, made her shudder. What would become of the fairies that lived in places such as this. Or what had become of them.
Her eyes had yet to fully adjust when the elf who caught her snatched her tube from the shelf and threw it into a basket with a roll of scaly hide and a few bundles of dried flowers and herbs. One of the humans he worked with snatched a cage with an odd, six-legged brown bundle of ragged fur inside, and another grabbed an oversize fox tail from within a chest.
The group hopped down from the carriage and hauled their goods into the building. Ayna braced herself against the glass, staring up at her captor and trying to make out to what sort of place she'd been taken. Only the ceiling was visible through the top of the basket, with a few brief glimpses at crowded shelves high along one wall. Then an older, fatter human came into view, and the two began to converse in their horrid, thundering language.
Ayna had, at least, become more accustomed to the deep, powerful tone with which these creatures spoke. It helped her to recognize a handful of new words, though puzzling out their meanings was a different matter altogether.
The fat man seemed happy to see the others, and gestured to the brown creature the elf had brought. He and her captor discussed the beast for a time, and in their discussion she heard the word "olo" often enough to believe that such was their name for the beast. Again "price" and "gold" were mentioned. Both were words that seemed very interesting to both men. They discussed them endlessly.
Steadily the conversation moved to the other items the elf had brought. If she'd heard correctly, the fox tail was called a "malthrope," or at least had something to do with a malthrope. There were some harsh-sounding words hurled back and forth regarding it, then they moved one by one through the herbs and the hide, muttering about "silver" and "cure" and "buyer" as they did.
She'd been so deeply focusing on their words she'd not noticed that she was the only item left. The elf plucked up her tube and handed it over to the fat man, who held her close to his face. Ayna was tempted to once again beg for her freedom. The others had ignored her or failed to understand, but perhaps this man might feel differently. A close look at the face of the man as he scrutinized her made her abandon the thought. His was anything but a compassionate face. He didn't even have the face of a predator, no hunger or instinct in his eyes as he twisted her prison this way and that. His was an expression of appraisal, of consideration. There was little indication that he even noticed that Ayna was a living thing. If none of the others had listened to her pleas, there was no reason to imagine that his one might. The man shook her tube until she had to brace herself. He hefted it, and thus her, in his hand.
Now his expression was disapproving. He said words like "small" and "weak" as he glared at the elf. He gave the tube another good hard shake, continuing to do so until her grip slipped and she clinked painfully from one side of the glass to the other. Another creature might had been badly injured by the force of the impacts, but along with their tolerance to temperatures, fairies were rather more durable than they appeared. When he was through shaking, he added the word "powerless" to his disapproving appraisal.
For better than ten minutes, the fat man and the elf spoke, hurling statements at one another that mostly seemed to circle around this "gold" that was so important to each. The fat man gestured frequently with his hands, rattling Ayna about as he did. After far too long, the elf and man nodded and shook hands with one more mention of "price."
They plopped Ayna back into the basket and took her to a dark, stuffy room farther into the building. It was stuffed full of other jars and bins, rustling cages and splashing buckets. In the dim light, she could see fish in a bucket against the floor. Another bucket was swimming with long black creatures. The air was choked with spicy, bitter smells.
After few minutes of talking that concluded with the jingling of coins, the fat man came into the room. She tried to back away, flattening herself against the glass. She didn't know what he had in store for her, but it seemed each new face she saw made her situation worse. He sorted through the rest of the goods, hanging and stowing them in the appropriate locations, then casually snatched her tube and carried it out to the main room.
A clear view of the place didn't make her f
eel any better. It was well-lit, but the air had the same stinging quality of strange plants and awful liquids. He placed her on a shelf behind a counter on the wall opposite the door, between a jar of dried frogs and a jar of filmy wings she dearly hoped had come from dragonflies.
With her properly situated, the fat man quickly went about his business, ignoring her as though she was nothing more than another one of his many wares... which, of course, she was.
CHAPTER TWO
Days passed, and Ayna became steadily numbed to the fear. She still felt it to her core, but she couldn't summon the will to fret any longer. Her world was this tube. No amount of struggling or pulling budged any of the wires enough for her to escape. Each morning, she was fed a splash of sugar water. Each night, a servant girl would pick up the tube to wipe it and brush out beneath it so that it would remain presentable, then back on the shelf for a long, lonely night. It was humiliating to have no choice but to tend to her most private needs in full view of others, but in truth, that wasn’t the worst part. Humans walked in and out of the store during the daylight hours, joined rarely by an elf or dwarf. Most never even looked in her direction. That was what stung her most, what churned her stomach and withered her spirit. She was a thing to them, and not even an interesting one.
Had she been able to keep a proper count, she would have known that it was three weeks to the day since her capture that a tall, lean man in heavy, finely tailored robes stepped through the door. Ayna looked to him and listened to his words, as any change from the tedium of waiting and worrying was welcome. The fat man started the conversation in the same way he always did.
The Book of Deacon Anthology Page 197
