Authors: Johanna Frappier
One night, Saffron had a dream about a woman who was to marry. The bride and the groom were both of patrician families and proud of their upper-class standing in society.
H
is
family knew Caesar! She was already rubbing elbows with dignitaries! She was content in this knowledge, knowing that their relationship with political powers would fortify her marriage.
Her step was light as she passed the formal gardens and geometrically-arranged hedges of his parent’s property. She knocked on the sea-weathered door, drew her hand back and gingerly fingered her exposed collarbone with soft fingers.
She was a pleasant looking girl with strong facial features delicately balanced by fine, heart-shaped lips. Her obsidian hair flowed thick down her back, bound loosely by a few golden cords given to her by her love as a token of his affection. She was a bit tall and angular for the fashion of the time, but this did not seem to bother her betrothed. He loved her anyway, he always assured her. She was filled with giddy anticipation for this visit. She had decided to give herself to him
before
the wedding. He had been so patient with her these past few months. He had begged for her acquiescence on only a few occasions and with only a little anger.
He did not answer the door. She knocked again and waited, shivering with nervous, sexual energy. No answer. She waited. Should she search him out? Maybe he wasn’t home. She decided to enter, just to make sure. She pushed the heavy wood door open and stood in the cool alcove. After a beat, she heard the squeals and giggles of several female voices. She stopped. These were not the voices of his sisters. Not the voice of his mother. And what was the strange smell in the air? She walked slowly, her fine-tooled sandals making not a sound on the stone floor. The liquid heat of anticipation melted away and left her with a sodden chill, chasing the warmth of the day right out of her bones. She frowned. She couldn’t figure for the life of her who those women might be.
She walked past several doorways of luxurious rooms awash with vividly painted frescoes. His family’s home was typical of the upper class, consisting of many rooms designed around an atrium open to the heavens above. She padded silently along the tiled floor patterned with the swirling blues of the ocean and sky.
Another giggle. A sigh. The voice of her love growling like a bear. She stopped again, frozen in time. Her hand flew to her throat and an icy dread crawled across her body like fouled trough water.
Leave!
She stood motionless except for kneading the skin at her throat.
Move! Find out!
She walked forward, toward the sound of the joyful voices, toward the bedchamber of her love. She adjusted her flowing, white robes, stood up straight, and rounded the corner.
There they were. Bodies. She couldn’t count how many. Female bodies. They were jumping on his bed, rolling around in his bed, rolling around
him.
Flashes of twisted limbs and dark hair on snow-white skin. Him, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as if he were a slobbering glutton. The stink of hot, perfumed skin and that something else.
His dark blue eyes flashed under his long lashes before he slapped the naked rump of one of them. She was small, beautiful, and curvaceous. She turned on him like a ravaged animal, bit his cheek, and left a mark. All the while, they writhed.
The woman pulled her head from the doorway. She stood off to the side and backed herself up to the cool, stone wall. With wretched little choking sounds, she tried to catch her breath. She raised her hand to her mouth as if to stop an outpouring of bile. No one had seen her.
“
No,” it escaped her lips as a moan. She clamped both hands to her mouth and pressed with all her might. She began to heave and sob beneath her hands while the players continued to laugh and moan, drowning out what little noises escaped her.
The dream melted to black and Saffron almost woke, but not quite.
She didn’t hear the sounds of the fairies tapping on her window. They giggled as they willed the panes to open and hushed each other as they flew to her bed, a thick, chill fog trailing after them. “Up, up, up! Open your mind to us and we’ll fly you away.”
Saffron sat up and opened her eyes. Heat flared and grew within her. A great force filled her with such rapture she almost fell back, but instead she was separated. Her soul levitated to the ceiling; her body crumpled on the mattress. Air currents moved her ghostly form through the open panes.
Her mother, snoring on a cot beside her bed, never moved. And, later in the night, when Audrey stumbled to the bathroom to pee, she paid no mind to Saffron, whose body was sprawled open-mouthed on the bed.
Saffron was hazy-minded throughout the ride, but every once in a while, a dim smile lit her face as she watched the shadowy night beauty all around her. They touched down in the center of the clearing. Tonight, small flames flickered in place of the great bon fire that had blustered at the previous party. Her entourage kissed her cheeks and lips and smoothed her hair. The veins under their skin and other innards rippled with pleasure, their pupils soaked her into their black depths before they suddenly departed in a flurry of wings and iridescence.
Slowly, strength and awareness returned to her limbs. She walked to the fire. There was snow here, but she wasn’t cold. Just when she started to feel silly, standing there all alone, Li emerged smiling from the dark of the trees.
“
I have had reason to retrieve you.”
Through Saffron’s mind, there flashed a picture of a golden retriever nosing in a marsh clotted with cattails, mouthing a duck with a lolling neck.
Retrieve?
She literally shook her head at the image, as if rattling her brains would clear her head. She smiled sheepishly at the fairy as a child to her mother, when she is unsure of her mother’s mood. Li moved right up to Saffron and took a length of Saffron’s dark red hair between her fingers. Her nostrils flared as she strained for the smell of human girl.
“
You are disappointed to see me…it is Ny you were hoping to meet.”
Saffron’s smile faltered, and here, the child in her knew for certain that her mother’s mood was tottering. She attempted to stutter around a response. But she had nothing to say and quickly closed her mouth.
“
Do not look so worried, Saffron! Of course you wish to see him.” But Li’s lips pressed in disapproval, only for a moment. She reached for Saffron again, to run her thumbs along Saffron’s cheeks. Under her own skin, Li’s cheekbones were visible.
Saffron closed her eyes and breathed in the fragrance of the fairy’s white hair and white skin. Pine and milk, honey and rain.
Li laughed. “Aren’t we a pair? Sniffing each other like animals that cannot smell! Come with me.” Li tugged Saffron’s hand. “Today, we are working.” She led Saffron out of the fire-lit glade and into a bright world full of lush, green foliage and the song of a thousand birds.
“
Working? Why?”
“
For pride.”
“
Why don’t you just zap things to be the way you want them?”
Li laughed at this and shook her head. Finally, the fairy seemed to be relaxing, so Saffron did too.
“
What would it all mean without accomplishment? Should we sit around all day and do nothing but zap, as you say, our lives away. It is intrinsic. There is no life where there is not the ritual of effort. Do I wish my friend to visit? Pow! Whether she likes it or not, she is in the chair at my table. Do we want to share tea? Bling! The pot is steaming before us. Are we too lazy to swallow our treats? Bam! It is already in our stomachs. We may as well skip straight to Kapow. Now we do not exist because we did nothing anyway.”
“
Oh.” Saffron looked away, embarrassed.
“
Come along, curious one. I will show you the work we do around here.”
They turned right, through a copse of fragrant citrus trees and moved down a narrow lane crowded on both sides with swirling vines and hot pink flowers the size of Saffron’s head, big hair and all. Every once in a while, the lane opened up to a yard. As they went along, the seasons changed, fading in and out at the edges of unseen boundaries. In one yard, it was spring in the morning. Down the road, it was fall at dusk. And though some had snow in their yards, it wasn’t cold.
“
It’s not cold.” Saffron realized she was hugging herself for no good reason and forced her palms down to the sides of her cotton pajama bottoms.
“
Goodness no, we are fairies, not martyrs!” screamed a high-pitched voice from behind her.
Saffron spun around and there stood a stunning fairy with black, waterfall hair. The fairy dipped forward and pressed kisses all over Saffron’s forehead. Her hair thundered and sprinkled water on Saffron’s face and clothes. Saffron giggled and wanted to stick her finger in the waterfall hair.
“
Go ahead,” chimed the fairy as she took Saffron’s wrist and made Saffron poke her finger into the torrent.
Li smiled her utmost patience smile and removed Saffron’s wrist from the other fairy’s grip. Li held Saffron’s hand as she spoke, as they walked. “We do choose to work here, it is true, but we prefer not to suffer!”
“
I’ve noticed that everyone is touchy-feely, too.” With her palm, Saffron sluiced water from her face and shoulders.
Ny came strolling up the path, rolling a wheelbarrow, and looking like a god. His upper body rippled with muscle and sinew below his skin. Saffron frowned hard when she realized she was actually salivating.
He dropped the wheelbarrow, and with big strides closed the space between them. He held her with his eyes, challenging her in a hold of unblinking wills. He stopped so near she could feel his breath.
Saffron was confused. He looked younger than before, his skin changing even now until it was opaque, more human, so she didn’t quite see the veins working underneath. The black orbs of his eyes were tamer too, showing more cerulean around the rim than she remembered. She swallowed hard and suffered through the dual sensation of wanting to fall before him so he could take her in the path and furtively searching for a tool with which to gut him.
“
Ny.” Li murmured, “I can see you have something pressing to tell our friend. I will leave you for a moment.”
Saffron saw the warning glance Li gave Ny as she moved away - a glance Ny met with his own smirking lips and simpering eyes. Li turned her head, pretending she hadn’t noticed.
Ny widened his eyes, narrowed his pupils, and stood staring down at Saffron from under his long dark lashes. He reached up with one big hand to comb the flopping waves back from his forehead. When he brought his hand slowly back to his side, the hair sprung forward, right back into his eyes. “And when will you come here in body?”
An intense heat swept through Saffron, flew up her neck, and singed her ears. She was so flustered she became angry. “I have to go now,” she mumbled.
He made no sign of having heard her. She crossed her arms and studied a rock just off to his right. He didn’t look away. His smile of complete confidence didn’t dim. Saffron’s muddle-headedness grew as he took several long moments to stand there, letting his eyes peruse her body.
She mumbled again. “I have a boyfriend at home, you know.”
This caused a howl of laughter to explode from him and he threw his head back with glee. “What a little liar you are. Boyfriend, my foot.” He grabbed a big handful of her rusty red curls and pulled her to him.
She stumbled, her face flushing in waves. Her entire body froze, her jaw clenched shut, and her mind screamed for him to stop touching her. Something about the possessive way he grabbed her hair stirred up a hornets’ nest within her.
He released her hair and spoke low, “My joy at seeing you again, it is immeasurable.” His eyes softened as if he were about to cry.
Saffron clamped her bottom lip with her teeth. She scratched the side of her neck. What was going on here? Why was he so freakin’ dramatic? He couldn’t have missed her
that
much since the night of the fairy party.
He bent at the waist and swept his hand through a profusion of roses that grew along the dirt roadside. He just reached down, grabbed, and pulled. Thorns pierced and sliced up through his skin like a whetted blade through ham. The blood ran down his wrist and onto the stems as he handed the bunch to her. “Here.”
She sucked breath through her teeth as she watched his blood drip.
As if he only just realized what was happening, he looked down at his blood and simply said, “Oh.” Then just as suddenly as the blood was there, it was gone from his hand, his wrist, and the stems. He took a rose from the bunch, filed its thorns with his thumbnail, and tucked it behind her ear. As soon as his knuckle grazed the skin behind her ear, her eyes closed and she tottered at the heady smell of the rose and the hot, dry touch of him. When she opened her eyes, he was gone.
There before her stood Li. She was not smiling. “Did he torture you too much?”
“
Why does he do that?” Saffron’s voice was rough, as if her throat had been brandy-soaked and massaged on a cheese grater.
“
Ny has a great need to be the center of every universe. You do not have to succumb to his act. Do not look into his eyes when he calls for you, even if he begs. Maybe then you will find it easier to retain some self-control. And with that, some self-respect, I daresay. It is best you do not play his game. Eventually, he will tire and try someone else.”