The Fairy Letters: A FROST Series(TM) Novel (4 page)

“It
wouldn't be so bad,” my father joked. “Having an odious wife didn't work out so
badly for me!” He gave my mother a wink as he took her hand; her moon-white
skin showed the faintest hint of color.

Yes,
my mother's weakness for my father was at once her greatest happiness and her
greatest regret. In her love for him, she knew, she could never be like the
Queen Tamara of old, who had never loved any man, and whose powers were – as a
result – more powerful than any queen seen since. Yet, even as she regretted
that she was unable to be as bravely unselfish as the queens of old, nothing
could bring a smile to her face as quickly as a remark – loving, sweet, patient
– of my father's. How I miss that mother of mine now – the mother whose
enduring love, that tiny remaining part of her, gave her the warmth to be a
kind mother as well as a great warrior.

Perhaps
I have inherited from my mother her great weakness, then. For just as her love
for my father, she felt, weakened her – so too does my love for you outstrip
all my other, nobler desires. I want only to feel your skin upon mine once
again, to wrap my arms around you and pretend that we are once again in our
fairy orchard, eating star-fruits and letting the nectar flow down our fingers,
safe from the world, safe from its cruelty and its hardships.

Writing
this to you, Breena, I feel that much closer to you. The distance of miles and
treaties and borders that separates us feels like nothing compared to the love
this missive bears towards you. I will furl up the letter like a scroll and tie
it around the horn of a winged unicorn – bearing the standard of peace – and I
will send the letter forth to your Summer Palace. When you read this letter, go
– if it has sufficiently stirred your memory – find our secret orchard, and sit
there a while. Let the taste of star fruit linger on your tongue and there, if
you can bear it, think of me. If my letter has restored to you that one memory
– sweeter than star fruit itself! - then it will have been a success.

Your loving,

Kian

Letter 4

My Dearest Breena,

There
are so many gaps in your memory that I must now fill! I know that it was
necessary for Flametail to wipe your memory when you left Feyland – how could
anyone live in the Land Beyond the Crystal River still longing with such a
shuddering ache for the beauty of Feyland? I know such a longing would consume
me alive! - and yet I regret that you are unable to share with me those happy
memories of our childhood together, a love that, while far more innocent than
(I confess – if you will pardon my boldness and weakness for your beauty) my
love is now, was no less pronounced. I admit that I was somewhat of an anomaly
among the other boys at the Winter Court. Quite a few of them were engaged,
too, having been promised in similarly political marriages to minor members of
the Spring and Autumn courts, but it was the fashion among these boys to scoff
and jeer at the young Duchesses and Countesses to which their hearts and hands
had been entrusted. Never mind that few among them had even seen their intended
brides! They made a contest of insisting that their betrothed was the ugliest,
the meanest, the most slovenly, and the stupidest in all of Feyland – one swore
up and down that he was being forced to marry a Spring Duchess who was not
really a fairy at all, but really a noxious toad able of glamouring into human
form (a form, he insisted, that was not at all convincing and in fact still
bore the distinct remnant of toadiness). Another, equally insistent, told us
that his intended had three legs, one of which was withered like a rotten log,
and had tiny red eyes and breath that smelled like lightlizard dung. It was
something of a badge of pride for these boys to consider themselves brave and
strong enough to face these horrendous creatures – no less than if they were
gearing up to stare them down in battle.

But
you will be happy to know, Breena darling, that I was not one of these boys.
While young Berrythorn was bemoaning his engagement to Peachblossom the Pungent
and even your old nemesis Flynn was lamenting being yoked to Helena the
Horrific-Looking (who was, as I later discovered, in fact heralded as the
prettiest maiden in the Autumn Kingdom), I was more than pleased with my
parents' choice of my intended. Indeed, I may even have bragged once or twice
about how much cleverer my intended was to poor old Peachblossom. Luckily I had
my princely status about me, or else I wager I would hardly have expected quite
a beating from my comrades for my refusal to take part in their competition of
maladies. But they knew my rank well enough not to engage me in any rancor, and
while I did get a fair boyish share of teasing at my refusal to insult or
bemoan my intended, it was far more restrained than it might have been. I felt
no shame nor regret at being betrothed – for I remembered you well, and the
image of your shining eyes had been so well burned in my heart that it felt as
if you were mine already, and I yours: the engagement, that upon which my
mother and your father had decided, was a mere formality: I already felt, deep
within my bones, that you and I were already betrothed. You and I already
shared that bond that, as I grew older, I would learn to identify as love.

The
next year, you arrived to pay a similar visit at the Winter Court, accompanied
(much to my mother's disdain) by your mother Raine. The official stated reason
for your visit was to give the Winter Court a chance to reciprocate the
generosity that your family had shown to mine, but – as my mother pointed out –
it was far more likely that the real reason for your visit was Redleaf's anger
at Raine, who still remained in the royal court, beloved of your father.
“Imagine,” my mother said, “us playing host to the king's concubine!”

Yet
when your mother arrived with you in tow, flanked by a royal retinue of maids
and valets, her natural gaiety and frank smile were more than a match for my
mother's wariness. If my mother had been contemptuous of Flametail and Redleaf,
she had no sooner met your mother than she began to take a more generous stance
towards the mocked “concubine.” The two of them would be obliged to sit
watching us as we made snow angels and mountains of frost down which to sled,
and – in that sitting – they developed something akin to a friendship.

I
remember overhearing their conversation one day that summer. “How do you do
it?” your mother asked. “Balance it – being a queen and being a mother? I spend
my days in the palace, trying to find some role for myself, and it's all I can
do to protect Breena from the plots and anger against her – even her father...”
Raine sighed. “Frank – Flametail's – a good man, and I love him, but he can be
so blind to how dangerous the court can be, how dangerous...some people can
be.”

“You
speak of Redleaf,” my mother said.

Raine
blushed. “Yes,” she said. “I know my presence is not wanted in the Summer
Court. I know I've made a few mistakes in my life. When I met Frank – in the
human world – I didn't know any of this. I didn't know that he was a king, that
he was (for goodness's sake!) a fairy, that he was (and here she blushed)
already betrothed to another. Even if it is just a political marriage,” she
added hurriedly. “I just thought he was the man that I fell in love with.”

“Love
is a dangerous thing,” my mother said wryly.

“And
yet I can't regret it.” Raine looked out to where you were burrowing into the
snow, creating a little house of ice and frost. You called me over to play, but
I was engrossed in the conversation – I got so little insight into the workings
of the adult world that to hear my mother and yours talk so seemed like a rare
chance to learn of all those mysterious concepts - “love,” “danger,” “passion,”
about which my mother always spoke in such hushed tones. “I can regret falling
in love with Frank; I can regret coming to Feyland, even, as beautiful as it is
here. But I can't regret my daughter. There isn't a thing in the world I
wouldn't do for her.”

She
looked up at my mother and their eyes met and, for a moment, I saw in my
mother's eyes a fierce, protective love – not her dispassionate patriotism, her
love of Feyland, but a specific, tiger-like love for me, her son. “I know
exactly what you mean,” she said softly.

“I
just feel...” Raine laughed. “I'm sorry – I shouldn't be burdening you with
this. You're a Queen – you have affairs of state to deal with – you don't care
about...”

To my
surprise, my mother took Raine's hand. “I talk politics and strategies with my
husband. With my ladies-in-waiting too I recount stories of the kings and
queens of old, and discuss fairy politics. There is not one woman or man in all
of Feyland with whom I discuss my child. It is good to hear – from another
mother. I won't lie – I believe you were foolish to come here. You were foolish
to get embroiled in fairy passion. But your foolishness was the foolishness of
all your race – you know, here in Feyland love was once called the “human
sickness?””

Raine
sighed. “Indeed,” she whispered. “And yet are you not sick, too? For your
husband? For your son? For your daughter Shasta?”

My
mother looked down. “It is my duty not to be.” But her expression softened. “It
is hard,” she said. “I know that if one day my son or my husband were in
battle, and it fell to me to give the order to send them on a mission on which
they would surely be killed, and if that mission could save our land – it would
be my duty to do it. It would be my duty to give that order and let them die –
for the good of the land. But could I do it?”

Raine
shook her head. “Listening to you talk,” she said, “makes me glad I'm not a
fairy. I know I couldn't.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Every day at the Summer
Court...I have to worry, have to look behind me. Is one of Redleaf's servants –
like her advisor, Wort – is one of them going to poison me, or worse – poison
Bree? I have to have all our food tested. I sneak out of my bedchamber – the
official Concubine's Residence, which has come to feel like a cage to me – and
tiptoe down to the nursery and sleep on the floor beside Breena's bed. Just in
case. Just in case some angry Autumn courtier decides it would be so easy to
just pick her up and let her fall...she's so small.”

“I've
heard the tale of the kelpie,” said my mother. “Great magic – your daughter is
lucky to possess it. If she can repel one of those, my dear, she can repel any
fairy plot.”

“It's
still so strange to me,” said Raine. “My daughter isn't like me – she isn't
human
.
Not really, anyway. This little girl – not more than four years old and already
she looks eight or nine at least. Already she walks and talks and plays like a
girl twice or three times her age – and your boy, too. They're so old for their
age. I know fairies grow faster than humans – I was told what to expect – but
there's something rather frightening in seeing her grow up so fast.”

“It
will settle,” said my mother. “They shoot up until they're about Kian's age,
nine – and then their adolescence lasts all the way until they are sixteen or
thereabouts. She won't look like an old crone before she's fifteen – I promise
you that! Although Shasta!” My mother sighed. Shasta was taller than I was –
though some years younger, she had the strength and vigor of a fairy four or
five times her age and experience in fighting. She had insisted on learning all
the traditional boys' lessons – fencing and fighting and, most scandalously,
cooking. Hunting – the taking of life and the renewal of life as food – was
seen in the kingdom as a uniquely male provenance, even as the forging of
weapons – the act of creation – was that of women. (I understand, Breena, that
in your world the situation is somewhat different), and although my mother and
father alike tried to dissuade her we often found Shasta sneaking into the
palace kitchens, her gaze fixed upon the burly men chopping and roasting and
braising the meats of Feyland.

Yet
cooking did not interest me – nor did it interest you, as far as I recall.
Rather, we shared one particular love among all the fairy accomplishments: that
of art. You displayed, I remember, a talent that far outshone your age. You
knew how to mix the paints – glimmering magical pots of color and light – and
apply them delicately to stone walls or to canvases.

The
greatest fairy artists, they say, are able to do far more than depict life – they
are able to create it. The beauty of their images is so strong, so clear and
bright, that they are able to create doorways between the world of art and the
world of life – between the world in which they stand and the worlds they paint
and imagine. Indeed, legend says that the famous crossing Beyond the Crystal
River is not a doorway at all, but rather a painting painted by a master artist
– a painting of the human world, crafted in memory of a human woman he adored.
His love and passion were so strong, his desire so great, that in his
brush-strokes he wielded a great and sacred magic, a magic that broke apart the
boundaries between the two worlds and allowed those who knew where to find the
portrait to pass safely from one land into another. While I was never so great,
I found that my magic painting too did, if not break, then nevertheless weaken
the divide between our two worlds. Long after you had gone, I painted your
face, and at times – at night – that face would seem to move and change –
smile, laugh, cry, and even grow as you were growing in the human world. It was
not a mere static image but a living one: three-dimensional, filled with flesh
and blood, a true connection to the beloved whom it depicted.