He smiled gently at me, ‘I know you are more than capable of doing so.’
‘Why am I not included in this equation, King Thäro? I didn’t hear my name at any point in the meeting’ Harry asked beside me.
‘I asked Dad not to Harry, for your own protection. You are not like us, or Jaron and Kenton, or even Aiolos – despite him being a lot like you, you don’t have the speed to escape if you are cornered. Harry, I don’t want to lose you…if I do this time it won’t be because you’ve moved away.’
The annoyed expression disappeared as soon as it had come; his eyes softening as he held up a large warm hand and cupped my cheek, softly wiping his thumb under my eye to wipe away a solitary tear. ‘I guess I’ll just have to be content with watching from the palace’ he replied with a smile, and then slid his hand around the back of my neck and inclined his head to kiss me.
We pulled away from each other to a few low whistles from Jaron and Aiolos.
‘I guess they’re going public with it now’ Kenton said, and I turned to see him with a genuine smile on his face as he caught Harry’s eye and gave him a nod, before casting his eyes over to me and winking.
‘Okay guys, battle meeting over. Get some sword practice in before we out our plan into action’ my father said, then left the room followed by the others.
‘Harry, will you be my practice partner?’ I asked, turning to him.
He grinned at me, ‘you know I will.’
***
Night had fallen, and everyone was in position, waiting for Harry; our lookout from the top most balcony of the palace, protected by two of my father’s most trusted guards to give the signal that the Uaea Kiana were here and heading our way, with a torch.
I was on my own, perched in one of the trees lining the road leading to and from the capital lying in wait for Ascevos to come strutting cockily towards the palace and, this may shock you a little, I was in the form of one of my favourite birds of prey, a Red Kite. Oh yes, not only could I interact with animals, I could also shape-shift into them, and I’d only discovered this while I was training with Harry. He’d swung at me with his sword, and when I jumped out of the way, I’d suddenly become a white wolf and even my eye-colour had changed. Not only that, but barely five seconds later Harry had gasped and said he couldn’t see me for several moments. It seems I can also turn myself invisible, so that’s four of the six gifts developed. I wonder what my last two will be?
Anyway, getting back to the matter at hand.
I had shifted into the form of a Red Kite, so that if Ascevos looked up as he passed he’d just see a large bird perched on a tree branch minding its own business. Once we had passed me I would touch on my gift of invisibility, shifting back into my normal form before addressing him.
The minutes leading up to my revenge on the Being who’d scared my parents into sending me into the human world slowly dragged on, until I saw the torch move in an arc at the top of the palace. In a matter of minutes, Ascevos would come into my field of vision, and I would make my move.
I had been waiting almost half an hour and almost fallen asleep twice by the time I spotted Ascevos’ tall shadow in the moonlight. When he was about six metres away, I flew to the ground and shifted back into my Avadorae self before speaking.
‘Hello, Ascevos.’
Ascevos’ Demise
He stopped dead in his tracks, and slowly turned around as I drew the two swords my father had especially made for me, from the criss-crossed sheaths attached to leather straps secured around my waist against my back, like a belt over a grey “battle suit” my mother had somehow started and finished, while I was training with Harry only hours ago.
Ascevos must have heard the scraping of my blades as I unsheathed them, because his skin turned a paler grey than I thought possible, and a terrified expression spread over his features.
‘What’s wrong Ascevos? You look like you’ve seen a ghost’ I chuckled, allowing myself to become visible to him.
‘Th-this can’t be possible. You’re supposed to be dead’ he stammered, taking a step back.
‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ I replied, walking towards him slowly, ‘but I’m sure you’ll be more disappointed, to hear that your joint plan with the other kingdom leaders has failed.’
He frowned, feigning ignorance, and asked me what I was talking about.
‘When you hold a “secret meeting” you should always post guards outside the building so no one can appear and eavesdrop on you. If you’d done that, I wouldn’t have found out about the plan to massacre my people and those of my uncles, Relcior of Idanei and Midir of Rendor before killing the royal families of all three kingdoms, so you and your own people could take over the mainland. I relayed the information back to my father, who at this very moment, along with my brother and a lot of knights and soldiers has probably taken care of all of your men.’
His eyes widened, his already ugly face contorting in anger ‘how dare you interfere with our plan!’ he roared, his grey face turning a light shade of purple as he took a run at me.
I smiled and leapt over him, spinning in mid-air so I was facing him once more as I landed.
‘Shouldn’t you be wondering why I’m not dead?’
He stopped mid-sprint, and almost fell over.
I had to force myself not to laugh as he righted himself. ‘I can either tell you why, or I can tell you who is dead first. Pick one’ I didn’t move from where I stood as I spoke, and simply watched him.
‘…I can already guess who’s dead. Neliki must have died trying to kill you – but I doubt you’d have been able to take out the rest of those soldiers on your own,’ he answered, then started stroking his hairless chin ‘how you’re not dead, I can’t quite figure out.’
The corners of my mouth pulled up into a small smile, and I slowly started towards him again as I spoke. ‘Neliki didn’t die trying to kill me. He died killing me.’
Ascevos stood rooted to the spot, looking quite flabbergasted and unable to say a word as I continued to advance on him.
‘Neliki stabbed me with his sword – which I let him do, by the way – and it passed harmlessly through me; a bloody patch spreading over his own dirty tunic mere seconds later, and he – well, you know without me telling you what happened next.’
Ascevos gulped as I slowed to a stop, less than three feet from him, and reflexively took two steps back.
‘You, your army, and your allies never stood a chance against me and my family, for one simple reason.’
He suddenly seemed to realise what was about to happen, because he tried to turn and make a break for it – but I was faster.
In less than five seconds, one sword had pierced him between the ribs, the other through the abdomen.
‘We can’t die.’
I whispered into his oddly shaped ear, not caring whether he was still alive or not to hear me. Pushing him away from me I turned around as he fell, flicking his disgusting blood from my swords I sheathed them, and unfurling my wings to fly back home.
Cookie Cutters
As I landed in the garden beside the maple tree, a pair of strong arms that were bare up to the elbow suddenly wrapped around my waist from behind, and I smiled.
‘Hey, Harry.’
I heard him chuckle behind me and, turning around in his arms, looped my own around his middle as he inclined his head for a kiss.
‘You did great today’ I told him as he pulled away.
He let out a deep, throaty chuckle ‘come on, all I did was wave a torch over my head when I saw the enemy approaching.’
‘Without that signal we wouldn’t have known when they were coming, and a lot of civilian lives would have been lost if they’d found their way into our tunnels’ I replied.
‘That may be, but the real hero is you babe’ he responded, a soft smile playing on his lips.
‘Babe? I like the sound of that.’ I grinned, and then realised the others hadn’t come to greet me. ‘Say Harry, where are the others?’
‘Oh, they came back a while ago through a secret passage hidden behind a section of bookcase in the library - it seems, that there are a few of those in the palace - and are all asleep in bed. You look hungry, do you want to go and see if Herian is still up?’
I shook my head, pulled my arms away from him and then took his hand, ‘it’s all right, he said I could use the kitchen any time I wanted, and I know exactly what I want to make.’
Five minutes or so later Harry and I stepped into the moonlit kitchen, and I used my gift of fire to light the candles of chandelier hanging over the large table in the middle of the room, and the candelabras on the three large kitchen windowsills .
‘So, what are we baking?’ Harry asked me as I went about the gathering various ingredients and depositing them on the table.
‘The chocolate and banana E and H biscuits, we used to make’ I replied as I brought over the final four ingredients; two bananas and two bars of different coloured chocolate.
‘Great! But, what are we going to use for cutting out the letters?’ he asked, coming over as I started mixing the ingredients together in a large metal bowel.
‘We can just draw the letters and cut around them - but we can worry about that later. Oh, while I do this, can you get the fire underneath the oven going? I would happily use my gift again to do it, but I can’t do two things at once.’
‘Sure’ he replied and went over to the log basket next to the oven to prepare the fire.
I finished mixing the ingredients into a dough, and then took it out of the bowl and used a rolling pin to roll it out into a flat rectangle a few inches thick before getting some paper to draw the E and H on.
It was then, that my fifth gift was revealed.
I had just drawn out the E template, and was about to start on the H, when my E began to shimmer and then, in the blink of an eye, it popped out of the paper…as a cookie cutter.
I blinked at my new shiny cookie cutter as Harry appeared behind me.
‘Whoa! Where’d that come from?’ he asked, casually wrapping his arms around my waist.
‘I-I drew the template for the Es and it…shimmered, and popped out of the paper.’
‘Really? That’s some gift you’ve got’ he replied, leaning down and resting his chin on my shoulder.
‘Yeah, it is,’ I answered as my H popped out of the paper ‘now let me go sweetie. There’ll be plenty of time for this later, but right now we need to get these biscuits in the oven, and get started on the icing.’
‘Yes ma’am!’
Half an hour later, our 12 biscuits had been laid out on cooling racks, and iced in three different colours (deep blue, red, and purple).
‘Man, I forgot how good these are - especially since you’ve always been the one that did most of the work’ Harry told me through a mouthful of biscuit.
I giggled, leaning back against the table. ‘I remember when we used to make them at the beginning of every other month. You’d always help me prep the ingredients, but for some reason you never wanted to help with the actual making of the biscuits.’
Harry’s cheeks suddenly flushed rosy pink and he bashfully scratched his cheek.
‘Well, you-you always looked so happy I didn’t want to butt in, and was content with simply watching you - oh, gosh that sounded really creepy, didn’t it?’
I smiled softly at him. ‘No, I think it’s sweet- but you’re going to have to learn to bake in time. I’ll teach you.’
‘Really?!’ he exclaimed happily.
‘Mhm - but, not right now, I think the two of us need some sleep’ I replied and, taking his hand after making sure the biscuits were well covered, we headed upstairs.
Setting Off for a Forgotten Kingdom
Later that same day (by the time me and Harry had finished baking it was already two in the morning) I was sitting on my window-seat reading The Elf Kingdom of Feldar and Its Short History, when I came across an illustration captioned “The last known picture of the royal palace, and city” and on the opposite page, was a passage talking about it.
“This picture of Feldar’s royal palace and the kingdom’s capital, along with a few more found overleaf, is one of the last documentations of the kingdom and its people and, according to the leading historians and archaeologists of Elandrea and its kingdoms, is over five hundred years old. This is an interesting fact, as it has also been just over five hundred years since the royal family and Feldar’s citizens were last seen, but no one to date has ever discovered the reason. Could they have all been murdered in a Uaea Beiht or Ki rampage all those years ago? Or did they simply distance themselves from the rest of Elandrea?”
Some of the pictures overleaf were of beautiful women, children, and handsome men who had similar features to me – apart from the eyes; none of them seemed to have eyes even remotely like my own; violet-grey ones…maybe it was just Avadorae who had eyes of mixed colour. All of them wore clothes of moss and dark green, grey and brown, and were similar in style to some of the elves of the Lord of The Rings trilogy I read when I was younger.
Another was of Feldar’s royal family. The king and queen sat on tall pearly white thrones with two children stood either side; two young boys to the right of their father, and a young girl, and a boy who must have been the eldest of the four because he was taller and looked about fifteen, to the left of their mother.
I wonder what happened to them.
Closing the book, I looked out of the window and up at the sky. In that one moment, I decided I was going to be the one to find out what had become of the royal family and their subjects, and bring them back into the knowledge of everyone in Elandrea – if I manage to find them, for despite the kingdom being marked on even the most recent Elandrean map, its inhabitants may have “moved house”, and could have built a brand new kingdom somewhere else of the same name, and that’s why there’s been no more books written about the kingdom or first-hand drawings and paintings.
And with the idea firmly lodged in my mind, I planned how I’d leave the palace grounds unnoticed by the guards, and within ten minutes, I was done. I would be leaving tonight at twilight, flying until I passed over the border before shape-shifting into a speedy land animal after I’d crossed the Iona River.
Now, having thoroughly looked over, and memorised the map all I had to do, was wait.
***
I waited in my room until I knew for sure that everyone else had gone to bed, and then slipped out of my room and upstairs to the top-most balcony where I unfurled my wings and flew towards the tall oak, which according to the map marked the edge of Ledoran’s borders. Discovering it had taken half the time it did on horseback as I landed beside the tree and, after pulling in my wings I shape-shifted into a cheetah, and set off at full speed for Feldar hoping with all my heart, that its royal family, and citizens, remained somewhere within.
The Sixth Gift
I had been sprinting for around three hours, slowing to a “cheetah trot” every so often to ensure my paws wouldn’t overheat, when I finally stopped in front of the eastern entrance carved out of the dense forest surrounding Feldar. Leading to a tall forever mossy archway it would have been guarded in shifts 24/7 by the kingdom’s strongest warriors, clad in armour the colour of aquamarine and made from a metal not unlike Titanium back in the human world - only much stronger and shinier. These soldiers would also have been holding nine-foot-long spears of combined Thraxin and Alexandrite, sharp tips of iron infused bronze, if the illustrations and information in my book were anything to go by.
Shifting back into my Avadorae self, I drew in a deep breath and began the walk to Feldar’s entrance.
I had been walking for less than two hours when I spotted the unguarded archway ahead of me.
‘You can’t turn back now’ I told myself as I reached the archway and, passing under it, continued down the path as a small but beautiful bird flew up to me from a tree up ahead and perched on my shoulder.
A humming-bird. A bird species I’d o
nly ever seen on TV.
‘Hello, little one’ I murmured, not slowing down as I spoke. ‘What brings you to perch on my shoulder?’
It has been quite some time since anyone has been through that archway from the outside, Your Highness.
The bird, who turned out to be male, answered as the path took a left.
‘I see – wait, how do you know I’m a princess? I’m not wearing my tiara, or royal attire.’ I gave the bird a sideways glance.
He cocked his head to the side and, I might have imagined this, but I could have sworn he winked at me as he answered.
Ah, now that’s a secret you’ll have to figure out for yourself.
I chuckled as I took a right and gasped at the sight that met my eyes.
Tall trees, with stairs set into their trunks leading up to tree-houses dark green in colour with gorgeous window panes of translucent blue, moss green or turquoise, dotted the forest floor – but, they all looked old. The windows of every tree-house were faded with age and the stairs, banisters, and balustrades of each one were cracked and splintering. Some of the balconies were even leaning so far forward, that they were in danger of falling.
‘Where is everyone?’
I thought aloud, and reached out to run my hand along the banister of a nearby tree-house, my heart and mind full of emotions and questions, when a shower of glittering particles cascaded from my palm and the tips of my fingers, and settled onto a section of the banisters like a blanket, and spread outward and upwards; covering the entire tree-house before the shimmering mass lifted and disappeared, leaving behind a tree-house that looked brand new.
‘That must be my last gift – but, what is its name?’ I asked, looking at the humming bird still sat on my shoulder close to my ear, out of the corner of my eye.
Maybe it’s some sort of healing gift? he suggested.
Descendants of Erodis Page 11
