Brine and Bone
Page 12
“Not binds, exactly. The fay’s life becomes dependent on the human’s.”
Skepticism pulled at one corner of his mouth. “Fay and humankind are not meant to live together. That’s why any treaties between the two realms have always failed. A fay whose life becomes dependent on a human’s, for whatever reason, should accept its inevitable death. And vice versa.”
Magdalena flinched. “But why?”
He stepped the distance between them and plucked the book from her hands. With stern expression he waved it at her. The faded golden letters upon its battered cover gleamed in the lantern light. “This told you, didn’t it? When fay and humans join together, the children they produce are sterile. Such a union marks the end of their line. On a grander scale, it threatens the existence of each species. Everything in this world has its proper order. Fay belong with fay, and humans with humans. No magic is powerful enough to change that. It is a law, not a suggestion.”
She considered this declaration, her heart still in turmoil. Master Asturias set the book on his examination table and patted her shoulder. She looked up into eyes that were surprisingly full of compassion.
“Marry your prince with a conscience free of guilt, Magdalena of Ondile,” he said. “You cannot save that creature from the fate that awaits her. Brine and bone will always be brine and bone.”
Her breath caught. He turned away, picking up the book again to replace it amid its fellows on the shelf.
“You knew?” she asked.
He did not even glance at her. “I surmised. Why do you think the king and queen were so frantic to draw their son’s attention elsewhere?”
“Then the king and queen—”
“It’s no use discussing it. All any of us can say aloud is that she really is the prettiest little thing.”
He returned to his work without another word. Magdalena left the infirmary in a daze and traced the path back to her bedroom. As she neared, the strains of night music floated on the air, a lone violinist fiddling to the wind.
A hand grasped her arm and dragged her into a sheltered nook. “I hardly ever see you anymore,” the prince said, holding her close. His teasing smile instantly shifted to concern. “What’s wrong? Are you crying?”
She rested her head on his shoulder and let the gathering tears fall. “Just tell me everything will be all right.”
Finnian cradled her, his cheek against her hair. “Of course it will. Shh, don’t cry. You know I could never stand to see you cry.”
“I have to,” she said fiercely. “I have to!”
So he tucked her close and let her, whispering words of comfort all the while. Gradually the tension drained from her shoulders and the grief wrung from her heart. Tomorrow she would marry her love, and that act would cause another to die.
But stalling would not save Lili. The crown prince of Corenden could not end his family line by wedding a sea-fay, and even if he were so inclined, Magdalena could not bear to give him up.
Chapter 14
The bride, resplendent in ivory silks and satins, floated through the chapel as though carried upon a cloud. The groom received her with a smile. Onlookers young and old shed tears—some of joy, and others of despair. The couple exchanged their vows and a kiss across the altar, and the priest presented them as the crown prince and princess of Corenden.
It happened so quickly, like a dream. Only Finnian’s hand clasping her own anchored her to reality. Faces blurred amid the flower sprays that lined the chapel. At the far end of the room, a silver figure skirted out of sight.
The crowd moved from the church to the banquet hall, and then to the sheltered pavilion by the sea, where the breeze fluttered up from the ocean steps. Lili did not appear again until the bridal couple sat at the high table and the chamber orchestra began.
“We should go,” Finnian said as the silver figure twirled into the room amid the other dancers.
Magdalena shook her head, her muscles tense, her feet in agony. “I want to stay.”
His brows arched, and apprehension shot through his eyes.
She clasped his hand in quiet reassurance. “I feel as though I owe it to her to stay. Not all night, but long enough.”
He tightened his fingers around hers. Together they watched the dance, Finnian solemn and Magdalena with forced serenity. Lili leapt and spun as though she were the soul of music itself. Her grace mesmerized the crowd and the intensity of her expressions—sorrow, rapture, despair—brought tears to their eyes.
The emotional overflow masked Magdalena’s sheer agony. She freely wept, knives and daggers thrusting through her as she maintained her gentle smile.
She embraced the pain. She could not change the foundling’s fate, but she could offer penance for her own part in sealing it.
The reeling music ended, and the dancers bowed upon the floor. Their audience applauded, and for Lili most of all. She raised her head, smiling, breathing deep, until her shining eyes fell on the bride and groom and clouded over.
“Is it long enough?” Finnian asked.
Magdalena, still battling the aftermath of such acute torture, managed a silent nod.
They rose together and took their leave amid toasts from their boisterous guests. Captain Byrne gave them both a mocking salute at the doors and made no attempt to follow. Magdalena, her legs still pricked by pins-and-needles numbness, hung upon her prince’s arm all the way to his room, their bridal suite, where he promptly dismissed her maid and his manservant together.
“Do you think that’s wise?” she asked, well aware of how trussed and tied she was into her dress.
“I think we’ll manage on our own,” he said with laughing, adoring eyes. “Let down your hair, Malena. I’ve waited long enough.”
Chapter 15
Shallow grief peppered her dreams. The ladies of the court sobbed into their pillows in the early morning hours, after the party at the pavilion dissipated and the palace settled into silence.
He was supposed to belong to everyone, but if not, why her?
She shifted in her husband’s arms and drowsily pushed her sensory magic another direction.
Sister. Sister, come home.
Buoyancy bobbed her up and down, up and down. The grief here ran deep like a throbbing wound. Half a dozen creatures clotted the base of the ocean stairs where a silver-haired figure huddled in misery. Their spiky heads glistened with water droplets beneath the sprawling starlight.
Sister, we traded our hair to bring you home.
The miserable figure raised her eyes to view the cluster. Webbed fingers lifted from the water, bearing a jagged knife.
End his life and you can return to the sea. Act quickly, before the sun appears.
The figure reached a delicate hand toward the slick hilt. As she brushed against it, the glamour upon her slipped. Torn webbing flashed into view. The hand drew back in surprise.
Quickly, sister. This will mend what was broken, blood for blood.
The silver foundling looked into the eyes of her pleading kindred. Her anguished heart yearned only to live. Resolved, she grasped the jagged dagger and the glamour fell away.
Magdalena awoke with a gasp, the bridal suite dim in the faint light of approaching dawn. She lay perfectly still, her eyes fixed on the wall, her ears listening to the silence as she considered the terrifying dream. An ocean breeze caressed her cheek. Beside her, Finnian shifted in his sleep, drawing her closer. His breath ghosted across the curve of her skin where her neck met her shoulders.
All was warm and quiet.
She released her pent-up tension in a sigh and rolled to look upon her sleeping husband—and froze.
A silver shadow loomed beside him: bulbous eyes and needle-sharp teeth, with long, brittle hair atop a noseless face. The sea-fay knelt upon the mattress. Magdalena’s breath caught between her teeth as the gleam of a jagged knife flashed in the dimness.
Lili held it aloft, ready to plunge it into Finnian’s chest.
“Don’t.” The word left M
agdalena’s lips on a tattered whisper. “Please, I beg you.”
The sea-fay, terrifying in her forced silence, tipped her head to one side. Her marbled eyes regarded her human rival as though she couldn’t quite grasp what she saw. She shifted her attention back to the sleeping prince, and her grip tightened on the knife.
End his life and you can return to the sea.
Desperation clawed up Magdalena’s throat. She cast a protective arm over her husband to shield him from harm. “If it’s a life you need, take mine. Please, let him live. I can’t bear this world without him.” Beneath her touch, the prince stirred.
Lili blinked, ponderously. She contemplated first Magdalena and then the knife. Her teeth parted, but no sound emerged.
Tears pricked Magdalena’s eyes and her stomach clenched with terror. The wind blew through the open balcony doors behind the sea-fay, wafting the curtains inward and flooding the room with the scent of salt water.
End his life…
“Please,” Magdalena said again.
The prince inhaled a deep breath. “Malena,” he murmured in his fading sleep.
Lili jerked as though burned. She glanced from the prince to Magdalena and back again, water brimming in her huge eyes. A strangled, inhuman noise squeezed from her throat, and her face twisted with anguish. The knife raised high again.
Magdalena huddled against Finnian, covering his heart, exposing her own back to receive the fatal blow. She tucked her arms close and breathed the smell of his skin as she braced for death.
The inhuman noise sounded again, and agony flooded Magdalena’s senses. In her periphery, the silver creature flung the dagger away. It skittered across the marble tile to the open doors, where it spun over the balcony’s edge. For one horrifying moment, silence spread through the room. Magdalena stared into the wide, frightened eyes of the sea-fay.
In the distance, a low splash broke the trance. Half a dozen wraithlike shrieks pierced the air. The foundling’s feet hit the floor and pounded in a run, shooting phantom swords up Magdalena’s legs. Pain blossomed in spots of dancing light as Lili bolted through the balcony doors and launched herself over the balustrade.
Magdalena cried out, half-raised to follow, but a hand clamped around her wrist. She looked down in shock and met the clear gray gaze of her husband. He said not a word.
From the sea below sounded a second splash.
Her magical senses exploded. She tore from the bed and across the room into the morning wind to hang upon the balcony. Far below, a patch of ocean shimmered blood-red in the gray light. Nearby, a silver figure floated on the water, the torn and angry flesh of her makeshift legs at ease in their native element. Shadows swam from the far-off reef, arms outstretched to retrieve the tattered body.
And the first rays of the dawning sun crested the horizon.
Lili’s back arched. Her head dipped into the brine and her arms flailed out as her fingers and feet dissolved…
A sob caught in Magdalena’s throat. The phantom void ate away at her limbs.
Brine and bone. Nothing but brine and bone, and a tiny scrap of soul.
Flesh decayed into foam. The bulbous eyes closed in docile acceptance of this fate. The converging shapes in the ocean halted, and the slick heads of six sea-fay surfaced, stricken, to gape at the awful transition from life to nothingness.
From above, the wind coursed down to the undulating waters, a funnel of energy centered upon that vanishing form. A thousand slender arms reached from within the gust, desperate fingers stretched taut. The water surged, and liquid met air to strip the mortal trappings away.
In the midst of this consuming death, the grasping wind enveloped a silver scrap of soul and lifted it to safety, dancing away into the clouds above.
Magdalena’s knees buckled, her eyes fixed upon the sky as she hit the marble tile.
“It’s over,” Finnian said beside her.
She looked to him in wonder, oblivious to when he had joined her. He pulled her close and kissed her tear-streaked face.
“It’s over, Malena,” he said again. “She’s gone to her rightful realm.”
“No.” Her voice wavered, barely discernible. “She’s gone to a higher one.”
And the swirling wind around them whispered its quiet confirmation while sunrise stained the clouds a glorious rose.
Epilogue
I see so much of my husband in our son: the same gray eyes, the same charming smile. He runs through the palace with joyful abandon, the pride of Corenden and Ondile both.
And wherever he is, a whispering breeze follows.
I dream of her often, the glamoured sea-fay who spared my husband’s life not once, but twice. She dances through the clouds, her spirit exquisite in its ephemeral form, freed from mortal pain and grief. Sometimes I see her on the wind that curls around my child, amid a thousand other faces that whisper blessings as they pass. For an instant, their presence grows bright.
And then my eyes adjust and they are gone.
Master Asturias says that there are ancient tales of wind-children: neither human nor fay, but something in between. They glide the lengths of the earth seeking those good and kind souls that inhabit it, drawing strength from the goodness they find. And when they gather enough virtue to themselves, their own scrap of soul becomes complete and they continue into the next life as though they were whole and human all along.
A fanciful story, he says with his mouth at a cynical slant.
But I believe it.
When my husband wraps me in his arms, when our son plays among fluttering leaves and flowers, I believe it so strongly that my heart might burst.
The End
About the Author
Kate Stradling is the author of seven fantasy novels, including Namesake, Goldmayne: A Fairy Tale, Kingdom of Ruses, Tournament of Ruses, and The Legendary Inge. She received her BA in English from Brigham Young University and her MA in English from Arizona State. She blogs about linguistics, language use, and literary tropes at katestradling.com. She currently lives in Mesa, Arizona.
www.katestradling.com
Also by Kate Stradling
Namesake
The Legendary Inge
Goldmayne: A Fairy Tale
The Ruses Series
Kingdom of Ruses
Tournament of Ruses
The Annals of Altair
A Boy Called Hawk
A Rumor of Real Irish Tea