PHI'S POV
"Time flows differently in my father's land," I explained to Agamet one day. "When the leader crosses the shield, what seems like an hour can be seconds, minutes, or weeks."
I wanted to emphasize the hurry to take action against Wotan, so that my people would not suffer any longer.
Wotan is going to kill them one by one. How many had died already?
I didn't know how long it had been in the Hidden Land, but here, it had been nearly a month. A month since I'd been living among the First Creatures. A month of convincing and discussing, of kissing and seducing, and I was not any closer to saving my people.
"Do you know a thunder spirit called Feyn?" I asked Eskain, an old woman with teeth like those of a rodent.
Of all the people in the thunder spirits' village, she was the only one who was openly nice to me. And I spent most of my time with her unless Agamet asked me to sit with him during meals or other occasions. She reminded me a little of Grannie in that she, too, liked to tell stories.
"He lives with his mother in a human village," said the old woman replied. "Some thunder spirits, like his mother, prefer to live among non-magical folks."
This concept made little sense to me. "Why would Feyn prefer to live with humans than with people like him?"
"He and his father don't get along," explained another woman, eavesdropping on our conversation. "His father remains with us and Feyn lives with his mother. He only visits occasionally, to receive Yasik's blessing."
I was intrigued.
What was the disagreement all about anyway?
I kept myself from asking any more questions, however. I feared that the other woman would not appreciate me inquiring. I was an outsider and not yet trust-worthy to them. If I asked too many questions about Feyn, it would have raised their suspicions and reached Agamet's ears.
Agamet cannot know how I feel about Feyn. I might get busted, and then my plan will be destroyed.
The chief of the thunder spirits was only starting to give more values to my pleas. Although the value he gave to them was closely linked with the prospect of me sharing his bed. I reckoned that was the idea that seduced himâthe fact I was an untouched runaway bride who came to him for safety.
The idea was driving me up the wall. I told him that I would only agree to that once he granted me my people's safety. Meanwhile, I still agreed to let him kiss me, touch me. That was what I needed to do to seduce him.
And as much as I wanted to see Feyn, it was perhaps better I didn't. It would make things much harder for me. How could I kiss Agamet with Feyn watching?
I needed to play the game until the chief of the thunder spirits fulfilled his part of the bargain.
"Bury the carcasses here," Eskain told me, pulling me out of my reverie.
She was pointing at the parts of rotten fish and eels I held in a basket. I obeyed and emptied the slimy mixture onto the soil.
I wanted to take my mind off Feyn and the horrifying prospect of sharing Agamet's bed. Talking about their way of life would get me less into trouble. Plus, learning the First Creatures' ways and taking part in them could only be beneficial. I wanted them to eventually consider me as one of their own if I were to marry their leader. And maybe if I adopted their culture they would be less against my people; they would not fear we were to overthrow their customs as much.
"Is there other ways to make the soil more fruitful?" I asked, trying to start a conversation.
"There is," she said. "We sometimes burn down lands and fertilize the soil with the ashes."
"That explains the number of treeless meadows I see from the sky when I fly," I said.
She grinned, showing all of her teeth.
By the Mother, she looks like a groundhog!
"That's good enough," she said after I had tilled the soil. "We should head back and help the other women prepare the evening meal."
*
Geh-Ah came to the village that evening and sat beside Agamet around the fire. I came to know that, although he preferred to live in a cave with bears, he sometimes enjoyed the thunder spirits' company and was a close friend of their chief. The same went for the giant spider and the other creatures I had seen in mydream at at the battle scene: they all lived with the people of their kind. Different tribes.
The light of the flames danced on their skin. The air was filled with the smell of fresh corn bread and vegetable and bean soup. I approached Agamet, a bowl in my hands, unsure if I should sit with him while he talked with his friend.
I felt awkward just standing there. The disapproving glances the other members of the tribe of thunder spirits paid me did not make me feel any better.
"Sit here," the chief ordered me, designating the place on his side opposite to that occupied by Geh-Ah..
He gave me a smile, flashing his perfectly white teeth. A way to say I had nothing to fear, but I was not so sure.
I obeyed in silence, almost sticking my nose in my bowl to avoid looking at the bear spirit. If the villagers were relunctant to my presence, they at least never said anything to my face. Geh-Ah, on the other hand, was a lot more blatant in his dislike of me.
"She shouldn't be here," he said, gritting his teeth.
Agamet's chewing slowed down as his piercing eyes stared at him. "She should be where I please," he said.
I tried to ignore the bear master some more but my bowl of soup was by then empty. I welcomed some tea a passing woman offered me.
"Thank you," I whispered before lowering my head back. I didn't want to draw any more attention.
I wouldn't succeed. While I ate, I felt as if my strength was leaving me. The world began to spin.
"You seem uneasy," Agamet said, leaning over to catch me. "Is something the matter?"
"My powers," I said. "They are leaving me. My father must have somehow managed to regain them."
As I spoke, a light transcended my chest. I regurgitated it. It broke free. It traveled through the forest, faster than lightning.
Agamet looked at me, puzzled.
I had understood during my stay that powers did not work the same way among the First Creatures. To them, powers were inherited, and they stayed with you even after you died. Hence their interest in eating some of their enemies' flesh after a battle; they hoped to retain some of his or her powers by doing so.
"I thought the only way to get a fairy's power was by taking their life or marrying them," the thunder spirit said.
"Yes," I replied. "Or killing their offspring after you deprive them of one of their handsâthe source of power."
"Then why hasn't he killed you?"
My heart pumped with excitement. He was finally asking me what I had longed to tell him. He was finally asking about our condition, about the reason I needed his help. I told him everything. About the Evil King's plan to marry me since my father first fled, about him slicing off my father's hand, his attempt to kill me and the oracle's prevention of it. The most absolute truth.
"Because the oracle said we were to marry," I went on, "Wotan had to let me live. Only, he had no reason to wait any longer, and he married me the next day. When I did not fall under his control, I fled and came here."
Agamet listened without interrupting. He searched for my eyes while I spoke. I avoided his. I did not want him to read the toll it had on me. Instead, I stared in front of me. At nothing.
"You consider this Evil King all powerful," Agamet began after a long silence. "Since you married him, you took in some of his powers; and he took some of yours."
His affirmation sounded more like a question, so I answered. "Yes . . . I didn't have red eyes before . . ."
I had almost forgotten about my eyes, since I don't see myself everyday. And it seemed that in the thunder spirits' presence, I was not so affected by evil thoughts. I was almost myself.
"And if he dies, will his powers go to you?"
"To me and whoever kills him."
Geh-Ah became agitated as Agamet reflected on this new knowledge. He started wringing his hands and bit his lip. I, for once, was hopeful he would finally agree to help my people.
"Don't be seduced by the thought of power," the great bear master warned.
But the chief paid no heed to his words.
"Marry me," the latter said, locking eyes with me. "We will rule this land together and I will help you defeat your enemy."
All of the villagers' gazes fixed on me. All thirty something women, and almost as many men and children. I was unsettled. It was more than my sharing of his bed he wanted. What he wanted was yet another marriage request. Another marriage of convenience. The irony.
"You don't need to be more powerful than you already are," Geh-Ah continued saying. "More power will only mean more sorrows."
Agamet still ignored him, just as he was ignoring the apprehensive audience. His eyes rested so intensely on me I realized that he did have some feelings for me, although I was unsure whether it was a budding love or simply lust.
I took the chief's hand in mine. "I will marry you," I told him. "But only after the Evil King is dead."
I was boiling with anger inside while on the outside I looked like a tranquil river.
"It's only fair," he replied with a smile. He held my hand up in the air and addressed the crowd around the crackling fire. "This creature has just agreed to become my wife. To solidify this bond, I promised her we will kill her enemy."
I heard murmurs. Their faces read shock. None were smiling. I felt Geh-Ah's icy look on me.
The bear master led my soon-to-be husband away from the fire, to talk to him without anyone listening. To argue not to do such thing, not to marry me. At least, I guessed as much.
I was left alone in front of an unaccepting crowd. That's when I saw himâa familiar face standing out from the horde and hitting like a lightning bolt.
Feyn. A rush of emotions overcame me.
I had dreamed of meeting up with him again. I had imagined a life with him, instead of all of this. I had fallen in love with him, fast and deep, although I barely knew him.
It was a fairy thing. Although I am not sure I should consider it a blessing or a curse. Fairies, or nymphs, or mermaidsâmost creaturesâfall in love with passion and irrationality. A love that is absolute, with a total lack of in between, and that never fades.
Sometimes, one is lucky and your love is requited; sometimes one is not, and suffers the worst kinds of despair. I thought of Halia.
Am I lucky or unlucky? Does he feel the same for me?
I studied his face. His eyes went from surprised to hostile.
He turned around and left the mass. I wanted to stop him. To tell him to come back. I raised a hand in his direction, but let it fall.
What is the use? I have to marry Agamet and I can't make him angry.
That was, of course, what my head was telling me. My heart thought otherwise. There was a perpetual war between the two. What I wanted and what I needed to do.
He was so close and yet, because of the way he looked at me, I risked never seeing him again.
For once, couldn't I do something for me instead of the others?
I walked over to Agamet and interrupted his heated conversation with the great bear master.
"I need to be alone for a while," I said nervously to my future husband while glancing over at the crowd, whose cold eyes were still on me.
The chief nodded, understanding the hint that I was uncomfortable with his people's reaction to the news.
I left the mass to walk in a dim area of the village, a part where the light of the fire did not reach, and where I had seen the young thunder spirit disappear.
A figure followed me as I passed a hut. I turned around abruptly, my heart pounding hard.
Will a villager, upset with my soon-to-be marriage, going to creep up on me and kill me?
I forced my eyes to see in the dark. A man came out of the darkness between two habitations. It was him. With hair as dark as night.
"Do you remember me?" I asked him, hesitant because of the bitterness I still read on his face.
"How could I not?" he answered.
I should have been relieved, happy that our meeting in the woods had left a mark in his memory, but I was not. He walked past me and entered the hut closest to him. It was as if he didn't want to be anywhere near me.
"Are you not happy I came to live among your people?" I asked, following him through the door he had just entered.
The one-room habitation was illuminated with a fire that burned in the middleâa bit like the room I was kept in in Wotan's fortress. It brought painful flashbacks back to my mind.
It's different, though, I tried to tell myself. The wall of embracing twigs had a different hand work. The barks covering it were of a different kind. And, most of all, Feynwas standing in front of me. Something I could not have happened of in the fortress' dreary room.
Feyn took a bow and arrow that lay near a bed, as if he was ready to leave, to go to the woods. He avoided my gaze.
This was torture! He had haunted my dreams for so long.
He did not answer.
"I have to admit that, coming here, I was hoping to see you again," I continued. "I asked about you, but they said you don't live here; you live with your mother."
The thunder spirit's eyes met mine. They no longer were bitter. Instead, they were filled with surprise.
"I stay with the humans, in their village," he replied. "My mother lives among them."
"Yes," I said. "That's what the women here told me."
"You asked about me?" he repeated.
Slowly, one of his hands made its way to my cheek and rested there. I shivered under his touch.
"I was disappointed you were not here," I replied. Gutted, actually.
I looked at his hands, wondering if they were mine to hold. I so desperately wanted to reach out to him. My gaze moved upward. His strong arms, broad shoulders, perfect jawline and prominent cheekbones. I settled to stare into his eyes, as bright as a morning star.
A cloud passed in the night of his eyes and cast a shadow in his stare.
"What happened to you?" he asked. "Your eyesâ"
I broke away from his touch, suddenly embarrassed. I did not want him to look at my eyes, a constant reminder of the evil I now had in me. The evil that was dormant now but that risked to erupt at any time.
Will I ever want to hurt him?
The idea seemed impossible. I felt too much. Hurting him would be worst than hurting me.
"I had to do many things I did not wish to do," I said. "To survive and save my people."
He studied my face.
"The Evil King," he said. "Is that why you came here? You only want Agamet's protection?"
"And to see you," I replied, taking one of his hands in mine.
"It's not right," he said. "You shouldn't have to marry someone just to have his protection."
I ignored his remark. He was right. It was not fair. But I didn't want to think of that right now. "Teach me about your culture," I said instead. "About the differences between you and me. How you feel aboutâ
I didn't finish my sentence. His lips were on mines. He kissed me softly, with a taste for despair. The same despair that now never left my heart. I clang to him, his hands held me close. I didn't want him to let me go.
I knotted my fingers in his hair and pulled him closer. I felt tingling in my fingers, and a burning feeling that ran under my skin to the root of my hair. At this moment, I forgot that anything else in the world existed. It was only himâand the love I had for him.
"Why didn't you come to me sooner?" he said while moving on to kiss my neck. "Why go to my father?"
"Your father?" I asked, my stomach dropping.
He broke off our embrace.
"I am Feyn," he said. "Agamet's son. Didn't you know?"
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