"Bright days to you, star child. How does the rain find you?"
"Wow, hello," Sada breathed. Her breath rustled the small woman's bright blonde hair, and she brushed it out of her face with a tiny hand, waving the other one dramatically.
"Mind where you're blowing!" she whined. Then with a giggle, "I'll bet the dust on my wings that you'll never hear a boy say that, oh-my-oh-no." The little woman then pinned her wings flat together so as not to catch a draft and be pushed away. "Wow, your eyes are amazing."
"Oh dear—I didn't mean to blow on you!" Sada exclaimed. At this, the woman clapped her tiny hands over her tinier mouth and erupted in fits of giggles. "I've...never spoken to someone so...small."
"That doesn't surprise me the bittiest, oh-no-oh-no! You smell all about mortals, and only you Faery people are curious enough—and reckless enough, shall we be honest?—to search out the humans. And your people don't visit here. Still." She sighed dramatically. "But I won't be a bitter-butt. How did you get to the mortal world? Well, you must have used the Seam, but how did you get past the guards? Oh, you must tell...me...?"
Trailing off, the little woman moved out of her view and began playing with her hair by her ear.
"That tickles!" Sada cried, giggling.
"Kindreds above—round ears? You weren't just visiting the humans, you are one!" She heard a soft whisper like the pages of a book scraping together, then the barely-noticeable weight of the woman disappeared from her shoulder. She reappeared in the air in front of Sada, her wings vibrating so quickly they were just a blur of yellow-green. "How did you come here? When did you come here? You are from the human realm, right? I thought Caprius's men would have stopped you, since...you know."
The barrage of questions left Sada feeling as stunned as when her tutors surprised her with a quiz. Yet she smiled nonetheless—she hadn't had the good fortune to meet someone so talkative in years!
"I must confess, I am not entirely certain as to how I came to be here. I was in the forest in my world, um, traveling to a festival, and I fell. Then when I stood, I found myself not in the wood where I fell, but in this strange and lovely world. It's a longer story than that, but that's the essence of it."
"Mmm. Mhmm...Yet you are a human, right? Red-blood, fleshling, mortal, child of death, bringer of war and destruction?" She blinked sweetly, petal-pink eyes wide and curious.
"Pardon?" Sada asked. "I am a human, yes, though I do not claim to be all the rest of that!"
The tiny woman seemed not to care for Sada's objections. "Amazing," she breathed. "It's been years upon years since a human foot has stepped in these forests, oh I say. Oh, how I wish my brothers were here to see this! They won't believe me if I tell them I met a fleshling—in the flesh—" she giggled, then continued brightly, "I must bring them proof, that's what I'll do! Proof by name. What do the other red-bloods call you, dear doe?"
Sada was grinning. She stood, then curtsied as she introduced herself, fanning her wet and dirty skirts out as gracefully as possible. "I am Lady Sada Solares, first daughter of Darius Solares, the Duke of Altamira and Commander of the Kingsguard of Abel Castellor, the King of Califia. It is unfortunate that we have no chaperone here to make our introductions properly...yet might I inquire as to your name and lineage?"
"Whew. Titles o' titles, a sure sign you're talking to one of the Valley—or a human too, so it seems!"
The winged woman had been flying in loops in the air, dodging the rain drops which were becoming scarce again. Now she settled on Sada's knee and sketched what looked like a ballerina's arabesque—wings splayed out—and what must have been her form of a curtsey.
"I have no lineage to speak of—my paterwing flew off with some blue-winged skimpsy soon after he saw I had no twists in my hair—but the name's Cidinen Everdance, and I'm your local Pixie! Of course, most Pixies here are local. But I've lived here the longest, and if Trea Woodsworth tells you any differently, don't believe her. You can't trust a Pixie with dull wings." She fanned hers out in demonstration to the contrary, displaying their brilliant colors.
"Oh joy! I've never met a true fairy!" Sada exclaimed, thinking of the fairytales and bedtime stories her nurses had fed her dreams with; Governess Brown would be so shocked to see she had been wrong, calling them make believe and—
"Not a Faery! A Pixie!" Cidinen cried, looking incredulous. She clutched at her bosom as though she'd been pierced there by an arrow. "Don't wound me so, new friend."
"I beg your pardon! I knew not the difference. Then it is an honor to make your acquaintance, Miss Cidinen, Pixie of Elt."
Cidinen was nodding appreciatively. "The same to you, bright days, bright days! Though just Cidinen will do fine. It's so pleasing to the ear, don't ye say? Oh—this is how we say, 'nice to meet you' in the way of the Pixie." Cidinen crossed her legs then bent to the side at the waist, displaying her wings. She made them shiver, sending the light playing across them and that crushed starlight dropping weightlessly to Sada's shoulder.
"Ooh, wonderful!" Delighted, Sada gave a little clap.
"The pleasure is my own."
"I must say, after meeting the Trolls I expected other people of this world to speak in a similarly archaic fashion. Yet your own speech is very modern."
"Archaic...as in old?"
Sada nodded emphatically. "'Thee,' 'thou,' 'art,' and such."
"Oh sure, sure. To call that old is to speak true; we haven't spoken in such a manner in many o' many a century. But the Trolls think it makes them sound smarter. More refined, I think Avidi said. Nobody wants to tell them it isn't so. Or, that it doth art not so, as they might say." The winged woman tried and failed to trap a giggle behind her hands.
"I must admit, it was difficult to understand upon our initial meeting. The common people of my world talk more similarly to you than the clan, and even in my lessons of courtly mannerisms I believe my tutors only spent one day on archaicism."
"Are there Trolls in your world, then?" she asked, eyes wide. "Oh, I can't believe humans are real! I'd thought you all to be legends! We all wondered what happened to you after the second war, anyway."
"Which war do you speak of?" The Elves had mentioned something similar. "Do you know our histories?"
"Ahh...never mind, never mind dear. You were telling me about the Trolls in your world?"
"Oh, ok. Unfortunately we do not have Trolls in Califia, or anywhere in the Americas so far as I know. Nothing so exciting as them. It's simply that my people once talked in a similar fashion, and learning the ways of history is important," Sada explained.
"Oh. Why?
"Well..." She frowned. Why was history so important? She wasn't quite sure, and so she regurgitated what Governess Brown had told her when Sada had asked why she needed to know the customs of her absent mother's people. "Oh—to do away with the bad and imitate the good."
Cidinen nodded along thoughtfully then smiled, and Sada did the same. The explanation sounded fair to both sets of ears.
"I can't say I see why you'd want Trolls in your world. Pixies, sure, we're nice to look at and talk to, but...the waddlers? Humans are strangelings, strangelings as you are fleshlings."
Sada nodded in agreement. "To be sure. Yet Om' Modir and her clan were very kind to me. Every kingdom and city can do with kindness, no matter the realm."
"That may be so, but..." Cidinen had been flitting merrily in the air, now free of rain, but she suddenly dropped to a dead hover in front of Sada and her pretty face grew sober. "This place is dangerous for your kind, maiden. Lots o' Beasts waiting to gobble those purty eyes right out o' that fleshy skull of yours. You shouldn't stay here any longer than you must."
"I thank you, Miss— I mean, Cidinen. I've been told this by another, yet I must say that I have begun to wonder as to why. Above all, I wish to know what this place you call home truly is. The Elves have named it Elt, but I confess this did me no good other than to give a label to the object of my thoughts."
Cidinen blinked, her wings even pausing in their fluttering for a moment. "Say you what? You've met the Elves already?" Sada nodded. "And you still managed to come through the Seam without being cast back onto your side like a stone into the pond?"
Sada nodded again. "I wish they had cast me back onto my side...but, alas. I met them quite a distance away from the Seam."
"Yet still you met them. And still you wander around out here like a lost fawn, dear?" Sada nodded sheepishly again, and Cidinen let out a loud breath. She began to flit around again, feet pacing as she flew. "Which kind of Elves did you meet? Well, you're in the forest, of course you met the leaf lovers. Don't be dumb, Cidinen. But which leaf lovers? The Elves of the Wood are as different from each other as a hippogryph is from a griffin."
Sada didn't know what to make of that, only that it sounded similar to something Om' Modir had said. "Hippogryph? The king only said he ruled over the Elves of the Wood, but the Trolls—"
"You met the kingling and he let you go? I thought you just ran into some leaf-loving limp-ears!" To demonstrate, Cidinen put her hands up to her ears and bent them at the wrists in imitation of a dog's floppy ears.
Sada didn't know what that meant either. Were leaf-lovers like some of the priests in her world who refused to eat meat? And what were lim p-ears? Did people here truly have ears like those of a dog?
"His Majesty's ears did not look limp to me; they were extraordinarily pointy! Though Miss Cidinen, what did you mean, 'which kind of Elf?' Om' Modir said something similar...How many varieties are there?"
Cidinen rolled her eyes. "They're the only Spiritkin that have different races within their race. Sharp-ears are so tedious. Really, it's the fault of the Mother Elf; they say she was quite promiscuous, if you follow where I'm flying." She winked.
First 'limp-ears,' now 'sharp-ears,' and that word 'Spiritkin' again.
"What is a Spiritkin?" Sada asked.
Cidinen blinked at her.
"The mortals really are as ignorant as the stories say. Tales be true, for they both begin with 'T,'" she murmured. "Spiritkin is a name for all of the smart beings in Elt. You red-bloods have a similar term, don't you? Persons? People? Something of the P-variety?"
Sada giggled. "Yes, we are all people. Are you not? I know that you aren't human, but the word 'person' seems more widely applicable, doesn't it?"
"Do you say? I never learned word history, so I cannot. I believe we let your folk lay claim to the term...among other things. Well, see you may: in the human world it's told that you live among humans and animals. Here in Elt, we have Spiritkin, animals, and Beasts.
"Spiritkin were born from human women joining with immortal beings of some sort, thousands of centuries ago. It was so long ago we don't even know what beings the Grandsires were anymore, but many believe they were angels—do you know what those are? Oh, jolly, I wouldn't have been able to explain. Well, our human Granddams birthed the Mothers and then the Mothers birthed us. So the word Spiritkin is just a way to distinguish us from the mindless Beasts of this world who just want to eat, fuck, and kill."
"Oh!" was all Sada could say.
"Whew! I feel like a priestess from all that teaching!"
Sada had heard of angels and humans having children that grew to such gigantic stature they were named for their size, but their race had died off long ago. To be in a world where not only they, but many other distant offspring of those heavenly beings existed made the fairytale-loving parts of her scream in childish delight.
"Then you are partly human?" she asked the Pixie.
Cidinen laughed at that, loud (for her size) and clear. "No, not at all, not the bittiest! The Mother Pixie was half human, and that's how Pixies were created. But that was centuries ago. Now I'm just a Pixie."
"Then not a human, but you have spirits like us? The name suggests you do...Are you all kindred spirits?"
Cidinen frowned. "What is that?" Sada was opening her mouth to explain, but before more than a syllable could come out, the Pixie's face had lit up and she was chattering excitedly again. "Human, person, Spiritkin. Doe, fawn, deer. Maybe you have the right of it, and we are distant kin! Maybe you're my mother! No...that wouldn't work. I heard that humans only live to be a couple hundred years, and I'm nearing my fourth century. But I could be your mother, sure, little fawn."
"Your fourth century?" Sada whispered. Her eyes were so wide she could feel the strain of them bulging. When she realized what she'd implied, she threw her hands over her mouth. "I don't wish to be rude! Certainly, you look as young as a maiden."
Cidinen giggled. "You're in a world of immortals, youngling, where wisdom and magick grow with age. That is not the insult you seem to think it is."
Sada laughed again, simply because of the incredulity of it all. She couldn't even comprehend a lifespan so long that one still looked young after living for centuries. The little woman hovering in front of her could have been Gabriel's age, yet here she was claiming to be over ten times as old as he. She really shouldn't be accepting these things as easily as she was, but what else could she do? Everything she learned here defied all she knew before, and yet what could she trust if not the eyes in her face and the ears on her head? Reality was being re-defined right in front of her, and Sada was simply an observer.
"Oh—you were asking about the Elves! I got us so sidetracked; I always do that."
"That's ok," Sada said with a smile. "I'm just the same. And I appreciate the knowledge!" Even though it made her head hurt.
"Oh joy! Ode to the brightest of days! My brothers never let me talk this long. Now listen up, hear me well little dear. There are the Elves of the Wood, with whom you've made an acquaintance—however strange that may be—then the Elves of the Deep. They live, you guessed it, in the ocean; there are the Elves of the Pinnacle, though I'm beginning to wonder if they're really just legend, I've never met one; and then there are the Blood Elves." Cidinen's eyes darked at the last name.
"Blood Elves?" Sada murmured.
When Cidinen stilled her fluttering and landed on Sada's knee, something like fear was sketched on her face, and her fair skin was raised in tiny goosebumps.
"They're as dreadful as they sound. You'll want to stay far away from them; bad, bad fellows I say, worse than dull wings, worse than the Titians even. I would have warned you to stay away from any of the kingdoms, yet it sounds as though you tickled King Caprius's fancy. As a norm, he and his people don't tolerate outsiders."
She thought of the way the king's fiery gaze had scoured her from head to toe; how he had leaned in close to her neck, smelling of the forest, to breathe her scent. Heat brushed her cheeks.
"They did make an effort to send me back," Sada said quickly. "Back to my own world, that is. Which was kind, for I had been eager to return myself."
Cidinen laughed again, and it sounded like someone had played a few keys of the piano Sada seemed unable to master. "And yet you're still here. Did those bare-chested chaps enchant your mortal eyes and render you unwilling to go? You know what they say about the Kid King's fancies. Well, you don't, but I do." She popped into the air again to fly in close to Sada's face.
"No!" Sada blushed furiously. "Nothing of the sort! I did try to leave as we both wished, and yet it simply...didn't work."
Cidinen frowned, and her fluttering wings slowed, though she did not fall. "What do you mean it didn't work?"
"I'm not certain. I followed the Elves' instruction, yet when I jumped into the portal—the Seam—it just turned into a regular puddle."
"What was it before?" Cidinen whispered.
"Something beautiful...It was silver and sparkling and hypnotizing, like starlight taken from the heavens and molten into liquid. But now..." Sada sighed. "I only hope the Elves don't grow angry with me. I'm trying to find them now to once again request their aid. I was told that King Caprius holds guardianship of the Seam, and that he will know its new location, or else have the ability to find it."
Cidinen did not chime in as she usually did, and Sada saw that all the color had drained from the little Pixie's face. Her brilliant eyes were fixed on the hem of Sada's skirt; the place where the liquid of the portal had hardened into a silver web on the fabric of her dress. She flew down to the ground beside it. Sada suddenly felt the great urge to hide it or run, but she let her fingers find her hair instead.
"The Seam," Cidinen whispered, sounding distant. She reached out with a miniature hand and touched one of the veins of glittering silver, looking almost like she was in a trance. Then she seemed to snap back to reality and her wings began to flutter so fast that Sada couldn't see more than a bright blur behind her. "I must go. The ones of old were right in banishing your kind from our wonderful world. Only pain comes with your wretched visits. You never should have come to this world, you of the cursed flesh." Cidinen glared at her so sharply that Sada flinched, then the Pixie flew away before she could respond.
The rain began to fall again, first sparingly and quietly, but it quickly began to pound on her skin. She hardly noticed, and she certainly didn't care. She deserved the discomfort.
. . .
Sada was left with the company of the trees, fingers in her hair and teeth digging harshly into her lip. Something had shifted in Cidinen as soon as Sada mentioned the Seam and its change. Sada had known something was wrong with the portal and that worried her for her own sake, but the Pixie woman had looked truly panicked. Scared. And the way she'd snapped at Sada...it made tears threaten her eyes.
The horribly metallic taste of blood was on her lips and tongue now, but it distracted from the more horrible feeling crushing her chest: guilt. She tried not to let herself feel bad for making Cidinen so terrified; she hadn't purposefully done anything to the puddle that was the portal between their worlds. And if what Om' Modir said was true, then she and King Caprius simply had to find its new location. She had just been present for one of its naturally-occurring relocations, that was all. It was nothing more than unfortunate timing.
Yet now all she felt was worry prickling sharply at her forehead and stirring up bubbles in her belly. If the Seam really was broken and not merely in a new location, how would she get home now? The thought had her chest beginning to seize up, and she took a few breaths to calm it, pushing the worry from her mind before her count of heartbeats became necessary. If the portal really was damaged, there was certainly nothing she could do to fix it. She of the 'cursed flesh.' She was better off continuing on her quest to find the Elf king and allow he and the other immortal people—the Spiritkin—of this world to work out a way to send her home.
If what Cidinen had said of humans was true, and if the Elves behaved in the same manner they had the first time they found her in their woods, they should be more than happy to.
Sada considered climbing the Pixie's tree again, but all she'd seen the first time was more sprawling forest, and the rain was now a torrent that made the steps look wet, slick, and dangerous. Instead, she looked to the sky, so dark it was almost colorless, and began walking in the direction she had been going.
Or so she thought.