by Dawn Steele
They made awkward but sweet love into the night, and when they woke up with the morning sun’s rays on their bodies, they made love again. He was tender and gentle, frightened and solicitous, unsure and yet questing.
Afterward, they lay in each other’s arms. Snow White had never experienced intimacy on such a scale. She found it exhilarating, as though she were a gull coasting on a cloud, and yet all too frightening, because somehow, she knew this would end. There were too many question marks about Aein and what would happen to all of them.
Her thoughts darkened with images of Eastern armies overrunning her kingdom. The faces of Hanna and Tom Cherry cried out in the carnage. Aein tried to stave his own armies off, but he was one and they were many. In the end, his own handsome brothers, godlike upon their white chargers, put him to the sword.
She turned away from his sleeping form. Her body was drenched in sweat.
In the evening, they dressed and went out to the deck to see the dolphins frolic and splash upon the waves. Against the red ball of the setting sun, birds wheeled.
“What if you fail to convince your brothers?” she said.
“I must not. They are reasonable beings. They will listen to me.”
“Let me come with you.”
“No, it might be dangerous. I will see you safely to Lapland’s capital first. Wait for me there. I will come back for you.”
“I suppose that’s a promise,” she said bitterly.
“One I intend to keep. This is my bargaining stone.” Aein delved into his pants pocket to bring out something small, irregularly-shaped and light brown.
Snow White stared at the crystalline structure on his palm. “What is it?”
“Something Nevue gave me. The future of both our worlds may rest on what I make out of it.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Their newfound happiness obvious to everyone on board, Aein and Snow White spent their days enraptured with each other. The Bambenga were respectful at first, then teasing. The crew still could not take their eyes off Snow White, but this time, Aein saw it as a verification of her physical beauty, which he still could not discern, but was justifiably proud of.
When the port of Ursk dawned on the horizon, the lovers stared out at the sprawling docks and distant hills.
“Lapland,” Snow White murmured. Her hand crept to Aein’s. “It was what I chiefly wanted for the past few weeks, but now that I’m here, I feel . . . strange. Like it’s not really what I wanted after all.”
“We are not going to be parted, Snow White. We had diverging paths before, but now we want the same thing.”
“I’m scared.”
Aein thought of the odds against them succeeding, and agreed. “No matter what, I will always treasure our time together.”
“Don’t say that. You make it sound like we’ll never see each other again. In which case, I don’t want to go to Lapland’s capital. I’m going wherever you go.”
“But – ” Aein began.
“I don’t care what the plan is,” Snow White declared heatedly. “I’m not going to sit in some freezing Lapland castle waiting for you. If my kingdom is going to war against yours, I might as well die doing something useful.”
“Don’t say that.”
What Snow White said was true, of course. Their combined talents should be concentrated on turning his brothers’ votes. But his secret dread lurked like a sore that wouldn’t heal. He was having nightmares of Snow White finding out what species he really was, and find out she most certainly would if she came along.
He had been content to coast along these last few days, delighting in her love, but he knew he was deluding himself. Gnomica once told him that a relationship based on lies was worse than having no relationship at all.
Aein had listened bitterly, thinking of Dimynedon’s many vices. But Dimynedon never hid any of his shortcomings with Gnomica. It was an arranged betrothal, but one that they went in with both eyes open.
Something he hadn’t managed yet with Snow White.
The anxiety swarmed him again in little pinpricks. She’s going to find out sooner or later. He’d rather it be later. He hadn’t figured out yet how he would break it to her, only that right now, there was too much else to think about. Coward. As far as he knew, no coward he ever knew came to a good end.
Snow White’s hair lifted in the breeze. Her cheeks were pink, the very picture of health, such a contrast from her previous pallor. This had to be a good thing, right? Or was he deluding himself again? He thought uneasily of his Sporadean blood pulsing through her arteries. So far nothing had happened. Yet. But she was alive, and he prayed that it was all that mattered.
“I hate to interrupt you two lovebirds,” Ravanne said, coming from behind them, “but we will be disembarking soon.” She was once again sheathed in the long black cape and face veil, and she straddled the shoulders of an unseen sister. All at once, she seemed unusually tall and imperious. She jingled a small bag of the brown stones. “To pay for our passage.”
A short distance away, Ivar stood watching the doubled Ravanne amid the bustle of the crew. Aein noted the way Ivar’s mouth twisted into a barely concealed sneer.
The ship docked, and a flurry of activity ensued. Ivar helped the Ravanne combination figure onto the quay.
“When will you be back?” he asked solicitously.
“Within the day. Wait for us at the pier.”
“Aye aye, my lord and mistress.” Ivar doffed his cap with mock politeness.
As Aein passed, Ivar flashed him a look of dislike.
The Bambenga had arranged themselves into three tall figures and a small one, all clad in their customary black. The Lapp people on the docks did not seem unfriendly. They mashed around the visitors, hauling crates and baskets of produce. When Maise spoke to them in Finnish, they helpfully pointed the way.
Snow White wore Maise’s longest white robe. She resembled an angel. Aein envisioned gossamer wings veined with purple sprouting from her shoulders, and another pang of guilt shot through him.
The City of Joy was a short distance away from Ursk, though the term ‘city’ was too generous. It was twilight when the unlikely band of travelers approached the cluster of brick houses that made up the little village. Plaster and mortar sediments clung to the unpainted walls. Every house was shrouded in darkness.
“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” Snow White said.
“That’s what the locals say,” Maise replied.
“I don’t see people dancing in the streets and playing tambourines. Unless ‘joy’ is defined differently in Lapland.” Snow White’s tone was mildly peevish.
Aein chalked it up to stress. They all had a lot on their minds.
Maise was saved from having to answer by the approach of several villagers. In the dusk, the villagers were barely noticeable against the shadow-strewn, semi-barren landscape. They carried ewers of water and baskets of grain on their heads. Aein thought they moved oddly. Every step they took was extremely careful, as though they were measuring paces to a hidden treasure spot.
“Greetings,” said a woman with a striped red-and-green scarf on her head. One of her shoes was pink, the other brown. She spoke halting German. “Do you come in peace, travelers?”
Aein frowned. He hadn’t expected a Laplander to speak German.
“We do,” Nevue replied. “We seek someone called Chiva.”
“Yes. She spoke to us of your arrival. Come with me. I should warn you, Mother Chiva has the ability to see through your hearts. I hope you are well prepared to listen to what she has to say.”
Unease burrowed beneath Aein’s skin. Would this Chiva expose him?
“And we are expecting nine of you, not six,” the woman continued. “In the City of Joy, there is no need to hide your true selves.”
She turned to walk to the village. After a moment’s hesitation, the Bambenga reluctantly threw off their black cloaks and separated themselves.
“I have a feeling this Chiva i
s going to tell all of us something we won’t like,” Ravanne murmured.
Aein said nothing. The north wind chilled his ears.
The houses in the village were more unfinished than they looked from a distance. More villagers came into view. Men and women of all ages, some very old, avoiding one another in the narrow pathways. Not a word of greeting was spoken, merely frosty silence. The sound of the wind whistling through the alleys was broken only by the tread of slow feet on dirt paths.
The windows in each house held no lamps. Occasionally, Aein caught a glimpse of a hearth fire.
In a dirt yard, two dozen tin mugs were strung on a rope above the ground. Now and then, an arrow would strike one of them – clink, clink, clink. Aein took stock of the archers – men and women notching their bows methodically forty feet away. Four arrows let fly, and four clinks ensued. One of the archers turned his face to Aein. Only the whites of his eyes showed.
Aein took a step back, startled.
Their guide turned. Her pupils rested on a point beyond Aein’s ear.
“So now you see that we do not. This is a village of the blind. Were you not warned before you came?”
“We were told that this is a City of Joy.” Snow White’s voice was strained.
“And so it is. Each day, we celebrate our gifts of sound, smell, taste and touch. The people who live here may have once been sighted but are now blind. Weavers forced to toil at the loom until their eyes turn to milk. Minstrels, storytellers, masseuses, beggars. We have all flocked to this village.”
A strange feeling stirred within Aein. He reconciled it as a mix of guilt and admiration, and yet, he could not shrug off the foreboding that this village instilled in him.
“Leave your weapons here, please,” their guide said. “None shall be drawn in the presence of Chiva.”
They next stopped at a square where bronze gongs were placed vertically in a large circle. A young woman in a red smock stood in the middle. Her hand clasped a dagger. The breeze sent tendrils of her hair into her unseeing blue eyes. An old man in a yellow robe stood behind one of the gongs.
He threw a glass marble at a gong, and it reverberated with a loud clang. The young woman immediately turned to spike her dagger into that very gong. The old man repeated this with another gong. Unerringly, the young woman struck it again. Then the old man flung a fistful of marbles and they flew wide, scattering against several gongs with a rapid clatter. The last marble dropped at his left foot.
A look of wonder came over Snow White’s face.
When the noise subsided, the girl opened the left side of her jacket. Inside, decked like a row of medals, were more than twenty daggers. Swiftly, she withdrew one and whisked it at the gong where the first marble had struck, followed by the second and third. The final dagger somersaulted to spike the ground at the old man’s foot where the last marble lay, a mere half inch from amputating his toe.
“Wow.” Snow White’s eyes lit up.
“And you are in training for – ?” Aein asked the guide.
“Defense of the village,” she replied. “There are also many who would hire a blind assassin. Come. You would want to catch Chiva before she breaks bread.”
Now and then on their walk through the village, their guide paused to sweep her palm against the bricks. Aein noticed a pattern to the sediment, a series of dots and slashes that must have taken mastery to make them seem so random.
The guide bid them enter a nondescript house. Inside, a fire glowed at the hearth upon which a copper kettle was laid. Shelves displaying many types of rocks and crystals ran the length of an entire wall. A child of perhaps eight sat cross-legged upon a threadbare carpet. In place of eyes, a pair of sparkling rubies glinted in her skull sockets.
Snow White drew in a sharp breath.
“Mother Chiva.” The guide bowed to the child and, moving backwards, left through the door.
Aein turned back to the child.
“Mother?” he said curiously.
“They refer to me as Mother not because of my age,” Chiva said in a surprisingly adult voice, “but because I am a reincarnation of their revered Mother who was their oracle. She was burned at the stake for witchcraft.”
“Are you a reincarnation?” Nevue asked.
“If I am, I cannot remember my past life. When I started seeing the visions, they burned my eyes out with a hot poker to make them stop. But the visions only became stronger. They brought me here soon after and made me the oracle.” The little girl gestured to the carpet before her. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. I know what it is each of you seeks, and I will grant all of you individual audiences. But first, I require a token.”
Ravanne brought out the bag of brown stones. “These are uncut diamonds from the Rift Valley in Afrique. They are worth a king’s ransom. We will pay you a diamond for every one of us – nine altogether.”
Chiva smiled. “You are well informed about our customs. The payments help fund our little village.”
Ravanne emptied the stones onto the carpet. Instead of diamonds, common pebbles spilled out in front of Chiva’s folded legs.
Everyone recoiled in shock.
“Trickery!” Ravanne cried. Her shaking hand picked up a pebble. It was the kind one found in a riverbed.
“It was Ivar, I am sure of it,” Aein said. He removed from his pockets the solitary diamond that Nevue had given him. He displayed it to Chiva. “I hope this is enough to pay for our collective debt.”
“Aein – ” Snow White cautioned.
“The diamond is a symbol, nothing more, for the trade that I would propose to my brothers. Trade with other nations is a long forgotten concept for my people. It is time I gave them the idea to revisit it.”
Snow White shot him a grateful look, one which the Bambenga did not miss.
Chiva examined the diamond with her ruby eyes. When she opened her mouth to bite it, Aein saw that her teeth had been filed into sharp points.
“Very well,” Chiva said. “Given the circumstances, I will accept this. Now I will speak to each of you alone.” She turned to Nevue. “I will start with you while the rest of you wait outside.”
In the narrow street outside, Aein shifted on his feet. Wild thoughts scrambled in his head. The foreboding he experienced upon entering the City intensified. The people here were dignified and noble and he knew they meant him no harm, but that only served to show him up for the impostor he was.
He felt unworthy, diseased.
Nevue came out with a look of triumph. “We have the place!” she announced. “The mountain is to the east of Rova, Lapland’s capital in the north.”
Any moment now, Aein expected her to turn to him and exclaim, “Liar!” His elation at finally finding out the mountain’s location was tempered by everything else.
“And what else did Chiva tell you to fill you with such glee?” Ravanne said evenly. “That you would have leadership of the Elderhood?”
Aein was aware of an undercurrent between the two sisters. There was a rivalry here that he failed to notice earlier, being so wrapped up in his own problems.
Nevue eyed her sister. “You should be careful of your jewelry before aspiring to such heights.”
Ravanne stalked into the house without another word.
“Aein,” Snow White said in a low voice, “you intend to propose a trade between your people and mine. Our trees for your gold. People are seldom ruled by logic when they think they can have it all. What if your brothers don’t accept this?”
Aein shook his head. “I have to convince them.”
Snow White’s restlessness mirrored how he felt. “Then why do I get the feeling that we haven’t covered all that we should? There’s something else we should be doing. Something more.”
“Why don't you tell me what is on your mind?”
But Snow White turned away from him. “I have to think it through. Until then . . . think nothing of it, please.”
One by one, the Bambenga filed in. Some were smiling
when they came out, others thoughtful. The tiniest and youngest of them all, Flyx, exited on a dark cloud.
“Your turn,” she told Aein curtly.
Wondering what terrible thing she had been told, and if it had something to do with him, Aein entered Chiva’s quarters. He was being paranoid again, he told himself. He seated himself before Chiva, his knees feeling like bended weeds.
“Stranger from a strange land,” Chiva said, “you’ve had to make a terrible choice. The death of the one you love against the curious life you will now bring her. How will she react when she finds out, do you think?”
So she knew.
“Why don’t you tell me?” Aein buried both his fists under his knees.
“Unfortunately, that is something I cannot see. I do see great turmoil in your immediate future however. Much death, destruction, and bloodshed. It is a terrible path you have to take.” The ruby eyes regarded him soullessly.
Aein felt his tongue turn to leather. “I intend to prevent that from happening.”
“Things, however well-orchestrated, rarely go as planned. I sense much goodness in you even though your people might consider you a traitor, man from another world.”
“I’m a patriot to the true cause – to save my dying planet with as little loss of life as possible.”
“No need to explain to me. I am not your judge.” Chiva held up her hand. Aein noted that her nails were smudged and bitten. “Go with my blessings, alien. You are one, but those who will be against you are many. Just remember, the most obvious route is not the easiest. Sometimes, there is a back way.”
Chiva’s lids closed over the rubies. Her face withdrew into itself, as though she entered a trance. His session was over.
It was Snow White’s turn.
Aein waited on pins and needles outside, envisioning all sorts of awful revelations about himself. He wished he could have stopped her from going in. If only he was more prepared. He turned to finger the plaster whorls on the brick, wishing he could melt them to hear what was being said. Would Snow White want to see him again after this? The agony shredded through him like knife cuts. He should have told her. Coward. He felt like slamming his fist against the wall.
