The Price [ CLOSED ]

[Elemental Son]

Far from the south, galloped a rider. He rode across barren plains and empty forests, through bare fields and across bridges joining the banks of empty streams. The hooves of his mount crushed dead grass and empty burrows, the hallmarks of a starving land. After weeks, he crossed into a small village on the Kingdom’s very northern fringe. No palisade barred his entry; no watchman demanded that he halt. The rider – decked in worn King’s livery, faded blues and golds - slowed his horse to a walk, and set about finding a blacksmith.


His passage went on unknown to Aquilan.


Hammer ringing as he struck red-hot iron, Aquilan paused to wipe the sweat out of grey-green eyes, for what momentarily relief it would give him. His concentration was absolute – shaping bands for a barrel required nothing less. He was so absorbed in his work, he did not hear the door open. The roar of the furnace, however, exposed to a flow of fresh air, caught his attention.


The rider yelled to him over the song of the hammer.


“Y’ th’ smith?”


Aquilan regarded him a moment, and continued working. “His apprentice.”


“I require a nail and yer ‘ammer – I’ve an edict from th’ King t' post.”


Sparks flew as cold metal met hot, one slowly shaping the other. Aquilan was reluctant to comply; iron was rare and valuable, and a Herald of King Aeban could requisition goods without offering a compensatory price.


“I said, I requi-”


“I heard you well enough. There’s a mallet on the rack by the door. Take that and one of the wooden pegs out of the barrel, there.”


The Herald glared. “I’ll not be ‘angin’ an edict usin’ wood. It’s not proper.”


Aquilan finally set his tools down. Clearly, the man would not leave him alone to focus. In turn, the rider stared at him, assessing. The apprentice, though a young man, was well muscled. Perhaps it was the shadows cast by the forge, or the way his short black hair gave a set of hardness to his eyes, but the Herald felt that a physical confrontation would not end in his favour.


Slightly subdued, he fell back on the protection of the King to get his way. “Lend me ‘ammer and nail, else be charged wi’ contempt o’ th’ Crown.” A serious offence. Aquilan could not afford the consequences of such.


“Fine. But you will pay for the iron.”


The rider grudgingly pulled a few coppers from a crown-emblazoned purse. Less than the metal was worth, but as Aquilan reasoned, better than nothing. As the Herald drew a nail from one of the buckets of completed wares, Aquilan decided he could forgive the man’s intrusion long enough to inquire. He set the band of iron he had been working on back into the forge, knowing it was not hot enough to distort the metal too badly.


“What does the King want known?”


The Herald grunted in response, considering refusing to answer – the apprentice had been difficult. But it was his duty to do so, so eventually, he spoke as he walked back out into the village, past his hobbled horse, and to the gathering place in the village centre. Aquilan followed.


“’S the bounty on Fae. ‘Is Majesty decrees th’ two gold sovereigns will go t’ any man who brings the ‘ead of one t’ one ‘f the Royal ‘untsmen.”

 

[Rabbit]

The song of water tricked hollowly against slick stone, and the chamber he had found himself in stood adorned with shadows and drifting mist cloaks. Within each crevice and blackened corner, the elves danced, or peeked out with their beady black eyes at the recent arrival; the scruffy, dark-eyed faerie their mother had summoned, a creature of the caverns, no doubt, but Oh, with all too much a mark of sun. Their curiosity all but beamed at him for this, but he did not shift his gaze in their favour. Not from She who glowed silver, She who had woven him out of her own blood, and sentenced his eyes to be neither coal nor lavender; his hair to be neither raven nor the colours of the fields, but to be both, indecisive, constantly, of what he was, and thus eternally caught between seasons.


"Phailin."


Her voice was like the echo of time itself, a gentle reminder of a distant Spring; the beginning he had all but forgotten. "Sing me a song."


A smile crept into the addressed faerie's voice, as he replied, "You know I cannot hold a tune." A giggle rang out amongst the smallish creatures, which sprung from their hidden places as if on cue, grinning up at him with needle teeth. Their eyes now shone like jewels. He looked down at them, and the instant he let Her out of his sight, she was by his side.


Her words tickled his ear without warning and he fought hard to keep a shiver at bay. It was unforgivable to show fear, or even to allow it the chance to sink in; for She indeed would have been able to taste it. "You will learn to sing, little half-child. You will learn to sing more beautifully than the others ever did. For my red-hand children, you will sing of great battles, of those you have savaged and slain. Those with green eyes will listen keenly to the pain that you have felt, all but the burn of iron. And to the broken, you will sing sweet stories..." She was drifting off into the tunnels swept in the very deepest of shadows. He was not to follow her. The melody of his Queen's honeyvelvet voice rose and fell like ripples within a still, deep river. He didn't try hard to make out what had been lost in her leaving him; he understood.


When dawn broke over his skin, he felt almost tired, as though the effort of moving between worlds had drained him. The forest lay almost in silence; despite this being the halcyon time for the flighted ones to begin their chorus. Phailin took in a shaky breath and steadied himself before wandering down the moss-choked boulders, along one of his most familiar routes towards the closest human settlement. He didn't bother to walk in silence. His wings dragged in the forest floor and snagged on brambles and young trees; causing small faces, at times, to glare up at him. This odd, broken thing did not walk like a faerie, made too much noise and adopted too often a human face. It formed as he walked... the wash of pallid blues and greys left his skin, his wings curled in on themselves and sunk within the safety of his flesh, leaving only scars behind; the ones Rone had given him. His hair hung in its usual form, down to the small of his back and riddled with split ends and fragmented leaves. The natural streaks of lighter and markedly darker colours were rare amongst man, but not unheard of. Last his pointed teeth altered themselves under the glamour, becoming almost, human, and just before the village came into view again - for the third time that season - he paused at the old little hollow by the dried-up stream where he had hidden his stolen human clothes, retrieved them, slipped them over the silken shadows he wore otherwise - and continued on his way.


~


Amongst them he appeared, in a maiden's hooded cloak; the pretty young girl they knew as the local medic, who at times traded herbal remedies for small instruments; pipes and whistles, and taught the children how to dance in Spring.


The atmosphere here had often been - perhaps not warm, but tolerable - and now he felt only a frightened chill creep through the crowd as he wandered. Whatever it was they had gathered here for, he was almost certain, however, that She had known about it.
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