Secrets of the Fae

11

There was just enough light to see vague shapes in the distance, provided by several cave openings high above my head. As I surveyed the lake I noticed it had a small current of its own which I began to follow. It eventually led to a small trickle of a stream that seemed to flood a small cave on its way out. I entered the shallow waters, letting the current help to push me along the cave, it was mostly smooth rock, only a few places of mud or debris along the way. Just a few pulls in the light was gone from the main cavern, and I was alone in this darkness, pulling myself forever forward. I slept again in that small cave, twice, before I finally noticed that I could make out shapes again. This renewed my strength, perhaps I was finally nearing the end, finally I could be out in the world, find my home and be whole again. But when I reached the opening that led to daylight, there was nothing around but trees and brush. I crawled out hoping that something would be familiar when I could see it all. Nothing, nothing but forest and the stream. Exhausted, filled with despair and pain, I tried to let out my wings, thinking I could fly away. But I have no magik, and it takes magik for a Fae to fly. So I fell into the water that delivered me and wept, wrapping myself in my useless wings until I slipped into unconsciousness. The next thing I remember is your voice, soothing me, begging me to stay, and the wind on my skin like I was flying though I couldn’t figure out how at the time. I remember thinking that if this is death, than at least he is kind enough to let me fly one last time. Then it was dark again, painful, and you were another healer, preparing me for the Dark Lord again. You were so careful with me, and your healing ways were different than what I had come to expect from the healers the Dark Lord held. You know the rest, you felt me when I felt you, I trusted then that you were not only a different type of healer, but one not held captive by the Dark Lord. It took a little more time for me to believe he wouldn’t find me here, not easily anyway.”

I stayed quiet for several moments, trying to understand what she had described. I couldn’t prod for more information just yet, I could tell that she started at the end of her tale because she hadn’t fully processed the beginning or the middle. So she told me details of only how she came to be at the place I found her. I understood her injuries now, and my assumptions were not too far off. I didn’t know who the Dark Lord was, and certainly did not want to, but if he was making demands of Sadie, than he would come looking for her as soon as he knew she was gone. I was grateful now for my protective instincts that drove me to erect the magical barrier around my home. It would keep him and his like out of my clearing, and with some glamour and skill perhaps I could hide the clearing from the sky as well.

I put aside those thoughts and tried to express my feelings in words, “I wish I could have done more,” i said, the words still seeming inadequate as I looked into her eyes, hoping to convey more this way. She nodded in response, more in understanding my lack of words than in acceptance of them. She did not want or need my pity, only my understanding and acceptance of her broken self. She held my eyes with hers as she took my hands. She would not let me look away as she unfurled her wings slowly, finding the slits in the tunic that allowed their exposure. Holding my sight and my touch she drew me closer, and with deliberate moves placed my hands around her waist. She put her hands around my ribs and felt high along my shoulder blades where my wings were sheathed. I let my wings out as well, and traced my hands up her body to her wings, hovering gently beneath them, not quite touching them.

She encouraged me without words, and together we touched each other’s wings. That same feeling of being complete, of being whole for the second time was nearly overwhelming. It took us both a few moments of quick shallow breathing to break through the surprise, the sudden desire, and the emotional onslaught of each other. Once we were through that overwhelming first contact, we could see each other, in a double vision of what our eyes could see, and what our souls sought out in one another. Her pale cream skin against my deep-set green, and then her strong oak soul against my wispy willow, we were opposites in both visions yet we complimented each other well, balancing out in different ways.

As I adored and wondered at her, she inspected and probed at me, asking silent questions and gaining immediate answers, nothing could be hidden here. There was no privacy or secrets or lies or omissions in this connected space. I didn't ask anything of her, I was too absorbed in my wonder, and in listening to her questions. She discovered secrets I didn't realize I kept, and knowledge I had long thought forgotten, emotions I had been suppressing since I found her. All of it on display now, even memories of mine, long dismissed and forgotten were suddenly on display. She was focused on one now, tainted with my relative hate for Fae and their vanity, I was leaving the kingdom again, with no intent to return to it. I had only been back in it for a few days, thinking that my travels and my new abundant knowledge could be put to some good use within the kingdom. I had been wrong, there was no need for me in Fae, and as much as part of me want to be with my kin, most of me wanted away from it all. To live as I believed Mother Nature had intended.

I was leaving the main city when the bells of the palace began ringing and shouting began in the street. I had paid no attention to it at the time, it was another festival or celebration of some sort, a calendar I never adhered to. Sadie wasn’t focused on the memory of my thoughts though, she was focused on the words being sung throughout the city. Princess! Princess! Princess! The cries continued until the city gate was well behind me, growing muffled as my steps continued.

“How long ago was this?” She asked in a strange doubled voice, which I realized was her speaking aloud as well as in our connected space. I shook my head in marveled confusion even as my soul answered her, “28 years ago.” Her soul seemed to crumble a bit under the weight of that answer, “3 years,” she whispered, “3 years I survived in that cage, 3 years of torture, of breaking.” I watched as the vision of her true self fell to its knees, and curled in on itself. Then again as her hands fell away from me and our connection became a little less. I could still hear and feel her, but I could not see her anymore. I blinked a few times, trying to clear my mind of the double vision until her physical features, wracked with pain a defeat, made themselves apparent to my eyes. I dropped my hands then, and she fell into me. The sudden loss of connection is hard to bear but she needed my physical support just now. I would find a way to give her soul the support it also needed after I got her back into bed.

I scooped her up in my arms, her wings barely brushing my forearms and sending tendrils of connection into me. It was easy enough to ignore, and may have helped to keep me upright, having that small spark of connection apparent. I laid her across the mattress and sat beside her. She curled around me, tears streaming silently down her face. I positioned my wings, longer than most Fae, to lay gently along her length. Almost holding her to me, and keeping that tingle of connection available. Her wings were pressed together and lying behind her, like a strange butterfly paused before flight. With her settled and safe from falling to the ground, I set brushed my fingers lightly along the edge of her wings. Knowing better what to expect now from this connection, I found myself able to stroke her wings while maintaining the connection.

It is a pleasant feeling, to have her so close to me, and I can feel the comfort she gains from my slow strokes on her wings. Inside our connected space I find myself lying next to her, holding her in my arms as she tries to sort through her knowledge and emotions to accept her ordeal, and find a way to live with it. I can not do this for her, so I simply witness it instead. The flashes of memory from her time captive. The various healers in that time and what the tried and failed to do for her. All of them Fae with my affinity, none of them with much power, none of them with any knowledge of true healing, all of them killed by the Dark Lord. Visions of the Dark Lord too, his skin a golden brown, his hair teak and amber, his eyes a molten brass. He was radiant, like a god of some ancient human pantheon. He most resembled human in his size and figure, but I could see the shape of his wings and concluded he must be Fae. The rest must have been glamour but it is hard to know the truth of it from only Sadie’s memories. He always looked the same, and his expression was always a twisted smile that took pleasure in her pain. Only rarely could she look at him while he beat her, making his demands of her, promising an end to the pain if only she would comply. “Give me your gifts,” he would say, “Give me your wings,” would be his next demand, “Give me your power,” came his third, and always ending with, “Give me your soul, and be my bride.”

It made no sense to me, why would he think she could give him a part of her inherent nature. Wouldn’t he already have it as a Fae himself? And what would marriage do? A binding contract, blessed by the Mother would give him nothing but the right to claim Sadie as his mate. But such a contract could not be forced on either party. Nothing else was ever gained from such contracts, not unless one of the parties were royalty, but even that only gained you a kingdom of vain Fae who could not be commanded.

Sadie caught my line of thought and pulled me in a new direction, back to my memory, where I left the Fae Kingdom permanently. “This is my birthday, I remember my parents’ stories about the streets filled with Fae and their cries stretching for miles outside the city. The festival went on for days and they talked about the celebration for years. I am the first royal birth in almost 2 centuries. My parents had given up, thinking Mother must have believed they were doing too good a job to give them an heir to take over. They went on to believe that I was their reward for great service and that they were being allowed to retire after all. I found out later that the Dark Lord has been stealing away the royal children the entire time, and I am simply the first mistake he made. I am also the last one. There will be no more children for my parents, the royal gardens were torched, turned to charcoal a few weeks after my birth.”