by S L Mason
The feeling of terror I’d been carrying around in my belly faded away as the sameness of the Fairy kingdom all continued on only to reach a gate. It was on a drawbridge, and there was a moat around this castle.
I kind of laughed to myself. The purple-eyed Fae a shot me a look.
“Little girl, I wouldn’t start laughing without a reason. People inside this building don’t take kindly to being mocked.” Whatever momentary mirth I’d been feeling, evaporated.
The portico was massive with heavy spikes on the tips. They glimmered as if razor sharp. But this was all fake and they were defended by Fomorians. Who would come here and overrun their castle? Humanity didn’t know how to get here.
Were they at war with each other? That was silly. Why would there be a war between the Fae when they made war on us?
I shook my head. I was sure I’d have plenty of time to ponder these deep thoughts of Fae politics later after they dumped me in some kind of dungeon and left me there to rot. Right now, I needed to keep my eyes open and pay attention to where I was. Perhaps I’d figure a way out of here—hopefully. Thinking would get me killed, but it might also save my life.
I was dragged into some massive room. Everything about this castle was oversized. The Fae I’d seen were taller than the average human, but it was silly. I mean who needed a ceiling that was fifty feet high. There were curved stairways that led off either direction from the main entrance. The room wasn’t sealed from the outside. It was open to the air, but the temperature was pleasant. I wasn’t cold nor hot; I just was. The room didn’t have any doors, and I didn’t see doors anywhere. Every opening was arched with interesting filigree painted or etched into the walls. I guess if it didn’t get cold, what would you need windows and doors for? The walls themselves looked like they were covered by some kind of painted ivy morning glory. Variegated greens and flowers covered everything. The wood looked as if it had grown out of the ground and been perfectly shaped into whatever form they wanted it to be. None of it looked like it was actually carved. It looked like it had grown that way. I wanted to use one of my hands to reach out and touch some of the woodwork, to see if it was real. I could tell the difference between a plant that was still growing and the wood that has been cut, carved, and was clearly dead. They had a different feel to them, almost as if I could sense the energy has disappeared.
The creature carrying me didn’t stop in the foyer but turned left. The girls followed him. We continued on into a large room. The ceilings were every bit as high, if not higher. I noticed there was a minstrel’s gallery on the back wall of the room.
Fear gripped me. There were Fae everywhere. Every one of them looked as if they’d walked out of a child’s fairytale book. Their bodies and hair draped with flowery green variegated ribbons in all kinds of natural colors. Nothing here was Day-Glo, except their faces. Their skin glowed with an opalescent and then was painted over with glow-in-the-dark paint, giving them swirly designs. Some of them almost looked as if they had tribal tattoos painted on their faces. I turned my head, only to encounter an ocean of entrancing beauty.
The creature stopped in the middle of the room to remove my bonds. The purple-eyed Fae waited a few steps in front of me. As soon as my bonds were released, I fell to the floor. I scrambled back up to my feet. Then he spoke. “These are the new recruits from which to choose.” He waved his hands toward the other girls. Fae, male and female, approached the group and chose one, leading them off by their hands. They were gentle, almost as if dealing with children. Considering the girls’ reactions, they were childlike—wide-eyed with wonder vacant of understanding, and yet trusting as a toddler.
He turned his violet eyes on me, staring me down. He pulled me by my forearm. “Now, you must choose your own master.”
I blinked at him, and of course me, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “Choose a master? Why should I? Nah, I’ll be my own master, thanks.” I twisted my arm to free it, but he held firm.
His jaw locked down, and he ground his teeth together.
“Choose. You can resist, therefore no one can choose you. You must choose for yourself.” I didn’t get it. So, if I was capable of resisting their music, they couldn’t choose me. I had to choose someone. It didn’t make any sense.
“I don’t choose to be enslaved to anyone. I’d rather die than be one of your slaves.” I put my hands over my mouth after I realized what I’d said.
He reached behind his back, and with one fell swoop he pulled his sword out and pressed it to my neck. I felt the cold blade a breadth away from slicing me open. The crowd erupted.
“If you only wish for death, I can provide it for you, but if you wish to live and become something more than a stupid human, you will choose.” His eyes lost the angry, benevolent look that he’d been carrying. They softened and opened wider as his eyebrows came down. He was pleading with me to choose.
If I didn’t choose, he’d be forced to kill me, and he didn’t want to do it. I could tell.
Out of the corner of my eye, I glanced around the room. They were all beautiful, yet evil, violent murderers; even if they weren’t wielding the swords and crossbows themselves.
They knew what was going on. They were complicit and guilty, all of them.
“It doesn’t matter who I choose. I’ll be a slave one way or another.”
He said they’d be my master. I suppose one master was as good as the next when you were a prisoner. I closed my eyes and waved my hand around, pirouetting in position. I pointed my index finger, and I opened my eyes.
“That will be my new master. Since it doesn’t matter who it is, I want it to be him.”
I had chosen a man seated on a small platform.
The room erupted with murmuring. The Fae gracefully stood, lowering his hand slowly. The noise disappeared. He strode across the room to me. Eyes locked on my every move, and he wanted a better look at me. I examined him in return.
He stared me down, unblinking. I matched his gaze, allowing his green eyes, surrounded with dark lashes, to bore into me.
“Take her. Get her dressed and fed, and then bring her to me tomorrow.” Hands gripped my arms and dragged me off in a different direction and under an arched doorway. I turned to continue looking at him, but he stared after me as they dragged me away.
He returned to his seat, and the murmuring filled the hall again. My arm was held by a pink-haired Fae. Her pointy ears shot into the sky as her celadon eyes, surrounded by pink eyelashes, stared me down.
“You are a brave girl. I was told humans are weak and cowardly. But I guess there’s always an exception to the rule, isn’t there?” She whistled as she walked and cocked her head to the side.
I didn’t respond. I didn’t know how to respond. They’d said take her, as in me, but not to the dungeon that I was expecting.
CHAPTER 9
The walls in the corridor were carved in lifelike flowers and leaves. The pink-haired Fae pulled me along past arched doorways, leading to other rooms and even longer corridors. After a dizzying amount of turns and halls, we came to an arched stairwell. It wound its way up with the wedged steps following the curve in the tower wall. I lost count of the steps after 362. Instead, I began counting archways. Lack of sleep, along with the adrenaline streaming through my veins, made my muscles shake with the effort. I was ready to sit down for a break when we came to the seventh archway. She pushed me through. I stumbled over the uneven stonework, landing on my hands and knees.
The stairwell continued up, turning away and out of sight from the tower wall. I couldn’t imagine how many floors there were or the daily walk up and down all of them. No wonder the Fae were thin. Who could gain weight running up and down the stairs all the time?
With their ability to control things with sound and music, I would’ve thought they’d like to have an elevator just to whistle them to the next floor.
The dim, narrow hallway branched off, but this was the main thoroughfare for the floor. We came to the end and made a 90° turn. I s
topped counting doors. The place was massive. Did all the Fae live here?
Finally, I faced a set of double doors. My pink friend opened one side and led me in. She closed the door behind us. Her voice rose in song, and the latch caught inside the door. She’d locked us in.
It wasn’t just a room. It was a suite with a large bed, alongside a sitting area adjoined by a small desk and a large wardrobe.
Everything about the place looked medieval so I figured the bathroom would too like the toilet being nothing more than a hole in the wall with your business sliding out the side of the building, or maybe a chamber pot I could throw out my window.
That could be fun, even from seven stories up.
Thank god none of these ideas were accurate. It was a modern-style bathroom with interior plumbing and some kind of bathtub look-alike. It had spigots for hot and cold, along with a vine-looking shower wand. Why were they so antiquated about some things and high-tech about others? In the medieval world, indoor plumbing was like futuristic sci-fi stuff.
Pinky turned one of the spigots on, and steam rose.
The only things curiously missing from the suite, were mirrors. There were neither mirrors or anything shiny. The glass in the windows resembled crystal. I went and gazed out into the dim world now part of my life. There were globes floating up in the sky, some too far away to make out what they were. The light was dim, not bright and warm like the sun. The words of the purple-eyed Fae rang in my mind—my last look, the sun I’d never see it again.
Was this what they told prisoners as they let them across the Bridge of Sighs in Venice before they locked them in the dungeon, imprisoning them forever? They sighed because it was their last vision of freedom. Only one person ever escaped from that prison, and he had to crawl through tunnels of shit to get out.
How much shit will I have to go through to get out of here? If I get out of here.
“Your bath is ready; you must be clean. His Grace wouldn’t be happy if he knew I hadn’t fulfilled my duties in their entirety.” Pinky twitched her nose and wiggled her ears.
“His Grace?” I pulled myself away from the window and its dizzying height.
“Yes, your master.” She crossed her arms while tapping a foot.
“Don’t you mean slave owner? That is what I am here, isn’t it?” Though these would’ve been the nicest digs a slave had ever seen, being imprisoned still makes you a prisoner or a slave one way or another. My feet found their way back to the bathroom.
“You’re not a slave, nor a prisoner.” Her eyes hardened as she bit down with her jaw.
“Yeah, I’m not a prisoner. That’s why you locked the door?” I waved my hand at the door and gazed back out the window.
Her pink eyelashes fluttered down demurely at the floor. I wasn’t buying it. I knew the Fae were tricksters. I’d read enough before they stole me away to know they played games. It was what they did best. All the stories said they lived forever. No wonder they get bored and fucked with humans.
“If I hadn’t locked the door, would you not be trying to leave?” She nodded toward the tub dismissively.
“Where would I go? How would I get out of here? This place is a maze.”
She briskly turned and headed to the tub. She expected me to follow her as if I was some kind of child like the rest of the humans with their toddler version of life. A life with their free will stripped away. I did follow, though. I was filthy, and it felt disgusting. I had dirt all over me. I probably looked like a monster myself. Being surrounded by all these beautiful creatures, the least I could do was try to look my best. They already thought I was some stupid, ugly human.
She took up sentinel at the bathroom door, hovering.
“Um, are you gonna stand there?” Biting my lip, I tried to run my fingers through my hair only to run into a tangle.
Her jaw set, and she crossed her arms. She expected me to undress right in front of her. I wasn’t in the habit of showing off my all-together’s. But she didn’t look away, didn’t blanch, nor did she smile. She tightened, her muscles waiting.
I turned away and pulled the grimy shirt over my head. I picked out the knot in the drawstring, allowing the sweatpants to sink to the floor.
Hard to believe not long ago, I was clean. Being clean was overrated. It lost me Arty.
A divine scent wafted up from the water. I didn’t know if it was an oil or some kind of fairy bath bomb. It dredged up visions of vanilla ice cream, chocolate chip cookies, and sleep all rolled into one. There was a touch of lavender in the background. Come to think of it, the lavender scent was everywhere.
I entered the water, and she sang something. Whatever she sang, it wasn’t for me. It was tonal—notes, no words. But it did something to the water—a subtle change in the temperature. The water didn’t move, but somehow it was massaging my muscles, easing every tension in my body. I submerged my head, wetting my hair and face. The warm water filled my ears, blocking out the sounds from this foreign world. For a minute, I pretended I was home in my bathtub, taking a regular bath and at any moment my mother would knock on the door, telling me it was time to get out because dinner was ready.
A knot formed in my throat, and heat hit my eyelids.
I closed my eyes and allowed the warm water to envelop me, floating me away to that dream world.
From far away through the water, I heard her voice. “Sarah, it’s time.”
I opened my eyes to the reality of the Fae world.
Pinky had taken up a position by the tub. I would ask her name, but what did it matter; she was just another one of my oppressors.
My life is over. I’ve been abducted by fairies. It sounded so absurd.
She poured something on my head and worked it into my hair, all the while singing a low, soothing song. I wasn’t sure if it was meant to affect me, but it didn’t. I enjoyed the tonal quality of the melody played against the harmony, painting a beautiful image. Somehow, every knot in my hair fell out without a brush.
A nifty trick. I wish I knew that one.
“What were you just singing?”
“Oh, the song of washing. If you sing, everything easily comes clean. Your face is no longer covered in soil, and your skin should be nice and soft. We Fae pride ourselves on being the fair folk. The only way to truly be fair is to be clean.”
I reached back and ran my fingers through my hair. It was wet but gloriously soft like I’d come from a hair salon. It was still a dull dark brown. There was nothing special about my hair, and there was nothing special about me other than my lack of reaction to their music.
“What’s your name?” I didn’t know why I asked since I’d told myself it didn’t matter. But manners win out.
“My name is Lyra. I am named after Lyra, the fourth queen.” Pride swelled in her voice.
“You mean the Fairy Queen?” I shifted in the tub, causing water to slosh over the edge.
“Yes, the fourth queen Lyra of Fae,” Lyra said, stating the title as if repeating a line she’d learned for a play.
“I thought the fairy queen’s name was Danu or Mab; something like that?” It was a stupid question. Everything humanity knew about Fae was wrong. The fact they didn’t have wings should’ve told me that.
“Fae queens have had both of those names. Danu first, Mab was third.” Her voice took on the bored quality of one who’d repeated a lesson too many times. She heaved a deep sigh.
“What happened to them? I thought the fair folk lived forever.” Did they kill their queens? Now, I was interested.
“Many of the Fae live forever. Sometimes they become sad or bored with their lives, and they’ll sing the song of forgetfulness to start a new one and become someone else. The queens can’t do that. Queens live as they are until they don’t. They don’t die; they simply fade away.” Her voice trailed away with her words.
I did feel the power of her loss along with the loss of her voice.
“You mean they disappear, like become invisible?” My breathing shuttered.
“That is a story for another time. For now, you simply need to be clean and to eat. Then you rest and prepare yourself for the morning. You will be presented to His Grace and must look your best, such as is possible for humans.”
I loved the little dig, implying that humans were automatically uglier than anything Fae.
There was no point in arguing with her. Lyra had her own ideas, and seeing as she’d seen me naked, I guess she was allowed to make whatever opinions she wanted.
I climbed out of the bath, and she wrapped me in some kind of sheet. In the main part of the suite, she sat me down at the vanity, the vanity with no mirror, and brushed my hair until it was dry. Lyra offered me some form of a nightgown, which looked like a see-through dress. Creepy. I wanted to put my panties back on, but she had taken everything while I was in the tub.
She probably threw them on the fire. Thanks, Lyra.
She didn’t offer me underclothing so see-through nightgown it was. A tray of food sat on the bed.
“When you’re finished eating, put your tray off to the side and then go to sleep. Someone will come in the morning.” She turned to leave and snapped the door closed behind her. I heard the lock sent home.
I sat in the room, looking at the four walls. Was this supposed to be the rest of my life? Stuck inside of some kind of twisted fairyland? If the Fae could get out, I should be able to do it as well. There had to be a way. The stories said at one time they lived on the surface. But then they were beaten and told that their share of the land was underground.
Sounds like a lot of the stories we’d been told may have only been half true.
They went underground. Was that where I was? Maybe we moved from the surface to a cave. Could I dig my way out?
I let out a dry laugh. I’d be digging for the next thousand years. I couldn’t even see the ceiling of this place. That was it! These must be the Hollow Hills of Ireland? But I’d been in Texas for god’s sake. How do you get from Texas to Ireland?
