The hillocks and grassy plains in this world hold many things, though perhaps none as simple, deceptively so, as the fairy rings. Stories that humans have told describe them to be of small smooth round stones, flowers, or mushrooms. Of course, most of them didn't know that mushrooms tended to grow in that pattern but the near perfect geometry captured the whimsy of superstitious humans.
On the night of the full moon, so stories say, a person can come quietly upon such a ring to find the unrestrained revelry of the fey and their woodland friends. Those who were caught spying could be cursed into the form of some animal though others may be welcomed into the celebration, dancing away years in one night. Associations with the fey never leave on unmarked.
For some, those blessed or cursed with the knowledge, the rings are the doorways to the mysterious twilight realm of the fairies. They know which ones have the power and what to say or do to call that power. Why do they know such things? Perhaps they rendered a great service to the fey and are now counted as a friend.
Such was the thought one particular young fey held in her mind, nearly falling out of the tree branch on which she was resting when someone passed through one of the mystical gates. It was not usually in her nature to sit quietly at the interruption, but then, she wasn't supposed to be out here.
But if he came through the gate, he must have permission to be here. Still, can't let him get away completely unscathed. A little trick, ice down his back or something, to 'convince' him not to use this particular ring again. I like having my hiding spots undisturbed.
"Emiri!" The voice rang clearly like a tinkle of chimes from a fairy whose long purple hair flowed from the hair clip meant to hold it back. Unlike Emiri who wore only a short tunic over a pair of shorts, the newcomer wore a white sleeveless dress over a pale rose one. "There you are! Do you have any idea how long I've been looking for you? You know how things have been! Mother was so worried she was actually unable to - "
Emiri quickly flew to clamp a hand over her sister's mouth, a bit too quickly since the momentum of their collision sent them into a leafy bush. The human paused, looking around for the mischievous fairy, waiting for the expected prank. When nothing came, he continued, albeit cautiously. The trick may not be an immediate thing.
In this case though, he worried for naught. Emiri's little trick had fallen into little bits of stardust, broken by her twin sister's sudden arrival. The short hair blonde let out a sigh of disappointment, Kashandra was always spoiling her fun. She glared at her twin, finally noticing the frantic arm swinging and interesting shade of blue Kashie, as Emiri liked to call her, had turned.
"Oops. Sorry about that, Kashie," she apologized letting go. "Guess I held on a bit too long."
"I thought I was going to die!!" Kashandra gasped, her prim and proper face falling as she gulped in the sweet air again. "Were you trying to kill me?!"
"Oh come on, sis. Kill my nearest and dearest sister?"
"Your only sister, twin, and elder by two minutes," Kashandra said primly, brushing back her long purple bangs and made sure her robes were falling in the correct folds. "What did you think you were doing, silencing me like that?"
"That human would have noticed us," Emiri said glibly, hoping her sister wouldn't press her for more. Unfortunately, Kashandra's narrowed blue eyes said she was. Perhaps the wide-eyed innocent look might deter her.
"Emiri," Kashandra started, crossing her arms for lecturing mode. "You weren't going to play a prank on that human were you? Only fairy friends or fairy servants can pass through into this realm unescorted. You can get into a lot of trouble with the human's sponsor or master by playing tricks on him."
"You're no fun at all, Kashie." The blond rolled her purple eyes. "It wasn't going to be something harmful or permanent or more than an instant's annoyance. If he's here, he must have developed a sense of humor."
"Not during times like these! He might have thought he was being attacked! And if he had attacked you, then...then..." She was at a loss for words to describe the vague dire consequences.
"What are you talking about? Even if he was an indentured servant, they tend to be the bitter ones, he wouldn't dare strike at a fey. The Queen would make his servitude before seem like a summer's breeze!"
"Emiri, Emiri. Don't you know about anything that's been happening?" Kashandra sighed as her younger twin shook her head. How typical, Emiri only concerned herself with things that affected or interested her. Anything else could fly away like a dandelion seed. "Come on, I'll tell you a story as we get back home. It's one our mother has told us but what I'm going to tell you goes on."
As many years as nights have passed, things change, others remain the same. The king that had ruled Emaar six years ago still ruled now, though King Eldran of Saillune had passed away and left his kingdom in the hands of his son, Philionel el Saillune. What happened at Sairaag became a faded memory, the Mazoku, worries of only the rulers, had slipped back into the comforts of stories. Peace reigned with a strong fist but gentle hand across the land.
Still, some did not feel that ease of the heart, pulled by strings unknowingly forged in the past. One such person had gone again, as he had gone every year for the last sixteen years, to a marker of that past. For what reason he continued such a custom, he will not say.
Seasons come, seasons go, but nothing can remain as it is forever. Not hopes, not dreams, not fears, not peace. With peace comes a type of idleness, that, as the king of Emaar knew well, would only lead to trouble.
At the country estate of the second prince of Emaar, the servants were well on their way with taking care of the day's work. Despite the absence of the caretaker of their master's estate or perhaps because of it, they were all the more eager to do get about it. There was not one person among them who didn't have some story or piece of gossip of where the seneschal went that night, though most could agree that it had to be for a special lady. Some thought he should stop the silliness already and just propose to her.
"Shala! Has anyone seen where Shala is?" called a boy just entering puberty. Unlike other youths of his age, he was not gangly with hands and feet larger than the rest of his body. In fact, he was slim and almost delicate, due to poor health when he was younger, and as several ladies-in-waiting noted, looked a bit more feminine than masculine. The haphazard way his priest robes hung off of his frame didn't help the image. "Ceiphied's eyes, where is she?"
"Her highness is in the courtyard with the swordmaster," one of the manservants informed his young master, bowing in respect even over the load of bedsheets he was carrying.
"Again?" the young master huffed, brushing back some of the yellow strands that in his rush had fallen out despite the long, painstaking process he had undergone each morning to make them stay combed back. At least when they were combed back, he didn't look quite so similar to a girl. "What are her suitors going to think when they see the princess sweating like a pig?"
With a speed not hindered by his voluminous robes, the boy ran downstairs and outside to the courtyard where the ringing of steel echoed. As the servant had said, his older sister was there, garbed in leather training armor, inside the flashes of silver from the two blades she wielded.
"Shala! Shala...I have some important...news..." he said, gasping for breath, winded from the physical exertion. Though the long bout of illness that kept him under the special care of a doctor in the milder climate to the south had been over for several years, he was still not very hardy as a normal child.
The continued sounds of metal crossing metal told him that she hadn't heard a word, or at least wasn't intent on stopping. It was so strange, how different his sister was when she was practicing with her swords and when she wasn't. Outside, she was a kind and friendly person, though with a bit of a mean streak when she was unfairly slighted. With her swords, she seemed to disappear into another world.
"SHALA!! I just saw a vision!!!"
A blade the swordmaster didn't notice swung in and swept aside his own, followed quickly by a shapely leg that planted itself firmly in his gut. The swordmaster reflected he wasn't getting paid enough for this before he was sent flying back off of his feet. The victor of the duel let out a long breath, rolling her shoulders to ease the knots she could feel forming. Well, she had been practicing since sun up.
"Is that any way for a prince to behave?" Shala asked, giving her younger brother an exasperated look. Several strands of her dark hair clung to her neck and rosy cheeks but most of it was tied back to fall down behind her. "Especially one who is training to be a priest of Ceiphied."
"And I take it that you're behaving like a typical princess?" he retorted, his mouth turned down in a pout reminiscent of his childhood. "At least, I'm dressed respectably."
"You mean like a naughty choir boy. Silk gowns and pearl necklaces are hardly suitable for sword play," Shala shrugged, searching for a clean cloth to wipe down her blades. She may have gained her mother's looks but her skill with blades came all from her father. "So what is it? You came all the way down here, making more noise than if a pack of evil fey were after you, for a reason that had better be important enough to interrupt my sparring session."
"Didn't you hear? I had a vision!"
She raised an eyebrow, her blue eyes finally showing some interest. "Really? Congratulations. I'm sure the head priest isn't regretting his decision to allow you to apprentice."
Few people were able to divine things accurately, fewer still that could actually receive visions. Such people were hoarded carefully, usually by the churches. Their mother, strong as she was in the divine magic, had never received a vision.
"Now if that's all..." Shala looked hopefully toward the swordmaster but he was already sneaking away. Feeling the weight of her stare, he guiltily turned around and bowed, excusing himself. Oh well.
"No! I think this one is important. Remember all of those stories you told me about mother's friend? The one who fought against the Mazoku that destroyed Sairaag?"
"Lina Inverse you mean? What about her?"
"I think I saw her. In my vision."
Shala looked at him, trying to gauge if he was serious or setting up for a big joke. But there was no hidden amusement in his green eyes. Still, he had never seen Lina Inverse before so how could he know? She said as much to him.
"It was her," he insisted stoutly, crossing his arms. "At least, I'm pretty sure it was her. The person I saw did have red hair."
"Vandanes, do you have any idea how many people have red hair?" Shala asked with a sigh. "Are you sure it wasn't just part of some youthful fantasy young boys have when they're beginning to become interested in the opposite gender?"
"Shala! Fine, if you won't believe me, then I'll tell mother about it. She'll know if it was Lina Inverse I saw or not!"
"Vandanes, don't you dare! Mother has never forgiven herself about what happened to Lina and I'm not letting you give her false hope like this."
"Then I'll tell Zelgadiss when he gets back!"
"That might be even worse...actually, that might be a good idea. Could finally convince him to leave and look for her." Shala contemplated the idea. Zelgadiss was like an uncle, a doting uncle, to the two of them and his loyalty and friendship to their father was almost beyond reproach. Shala used 'almost' because she felt their 'uncle', and seneschal to their prince father, used that friendship as an excuse to not do what he should have done years before. "Good idea. Let's tell him the minute he gets back."
"Tell me what the minute I get back?" asked a tired but amused voice. The two royal siblings turned as one to see Zelgadiss, blue-skinned and all, looking at them. He was wearing his old court uniform, as was revealed by half of the silvery cloak swept back over his shoulder, and the knees showed the grass stains from kneeling in one place all night. It looked like he had just returned from his vigil.
Shala looked at Vandanes. Vandanes looked back at her. Being the elder, the princess had to take the responsibility of starting. Taking a deep breath, she plunged in.
"Vandanes had a vision about Lina Inverse," she said quickly, and then added, "Or so he thinks."
Her brother scowled at her and her implied disbelief.
"A vision about...Lina?"
Vandanes squirmed under Zelgadiss's sharp gaze. "Ye-yes sir."
"What did you see?"
"She's alive but..."
"But?"
"I'm not sure but, it looked like someone had captured her," Vandanes said to the ground. He liked Zelgadiss, after he got over his initial fright. Unlike Shala who had always known him, the young prince only met the seneschal two years ago when he was pronounced healthly enough to live with his family. Sometimes, the chimera still scared him.
"Everything around her was black and twisted, even the flowers bouquets. There was this black stone that was cold, really cold, as if it was pulling in all of the heat..."
"And Lina? Are you sure it's her?"
"Weeell, I've never seen her but I'm pretty sure it's her." The young prince knew this was the weakest part of his argument and plowed through, never looking at the seneschal. "She had long red hair and she didn't look that old, maybe about Shala's age. She was just laying there - "
"Awake? Alive? Or..."
"She...could be sleeping I guess. I didn't see her for very long. Just because she wasn't moving I don't think she's dead-Itai!" Vandanes rubbed his elbow where his older sister had struck it with her sword pommel. She had to know that hitting the funny bone stung. "What?"
Shala didn't say anything but with a brief, brusque nod with her head gestured to Zelgadiss. Vandanes quickly looked up but there was only an impassive stone mask. He swallowed.
"I have to work on the books. Perhaps you should speak with the head priest about your visions, your highness. The interpretation of them are as important and perhaps even more difficult than the ability to receive them."
The royal siblings stood quietly in the courtyard as Zelgadiss left, making his way to his chambers to change before sequestering himself as always into the crowded office. Shala let out a disappointed sigh, she had been hoping that the news would give him a kick to actually go searching for her. But Vandanes had to make that slip.
"I...shouldn't have said anything about her being dead should I?"
"No, you shouldn't. Though he may be the first to admit that he doesn't believe Lina is dead, I think there's a part of him that knows it's a possiblity and accepts it as fact as to soften the blow later. But it was strange, I don't think he was paying full attention to you."
Zelgadiss closed and locked the door to his dark, solitary chamber. As the seneschal, he was in charge of the money flow in and out of the estate. If he so desired, he could have embezzeled a tidy sum every year without anyone ever the wiser. But he never coveted material wealth, even the bitterness he felt toward his father had faded away to indifference, ensconced as he was in Gourry's household.
With a word and a gesture, the enchanted lights illuminated as one, basking the plain room, well-made and expensive true but still plain, in a rosy glow. He didn't need it in order to make his way around his room but...
From beneath his cloak, Zelgadiss brought out his arm, his hidden hand in which something was tightly gripped. A bouquet of flowers whose stems had almost been crushed to a green pulp by his grip the long ride back...home?
Was this place home? It was the only place where he felt he had a place, a reason to belong. Gourry and Sylphiel welcomed him into their family, Shala and Vandanes always looked up to him, the servants respected and liked him. It was a haven from the fear his appearance aroused in strangers, the disbelief that he was the son of his legendary father. Was it only...a place to escape?
"Have I only been hiding all of these years? Lina." He wasn't speaking to thin air but the picture in a silver metal frame sitting on his desk. The year after the treaty's signing, he made a solitary journey to Saillune. He met a waitress at one of the towns, who told him of a marker for Lina Inverse. At the time, he hadn't known he was speaking to her sister, nor did he quite understand why, after revealing who she was, she gave him this picture.
Every year he went to that stone marker, not a grave marker since nothing had ever been found to make a grave for. He didn't completely understand why he went, and it was an odd custom to keep when they had barely known each other for two days. Somehow, he knew when the day was coming around and he would get the estate accounts settled earlier to cover his one-day absence. And each year, he would bring a bouquet of flowers, the reason for that he never quite understood either, and every year, it had vanished by the time the dawn's rays touched his eyes.
But not this year.
Why? What had happened? Had something happened to Lina, her ghost, whatever it was that spirited away the annual offering? Or was a mischievous fey tired of playing with him and decided to finally dash the unspoken hope that she still lived, somehow, on the cold stones. Or was it that she, for some reason accepting the gift all these years, now tired of them and him. Had he been following a ghost these past sixteen years?
"Can you tell me, Lina? Are you dead? Did you die sixteen years ago and have I been only chasing a phantom of you for all this time?" Zelgadiss chuckled bitterly, throwing off his cape and kicking off his boots in an unusual disregard for tidiness. He sat down on the edge of his bed, looking at his clasped hands. "Are you laughing at me? Wherever it is you are. At least you died doing something. I'll probably live out my life as Gourry's caretaker. Too scared of people's reactions to this face to leave this ivory tower. Too scared of my own weakness to try to find a way to break this curse. Too scared to even try to establish a normal life that I ended up creating a one-sided relationship based on a two-day acquaintance with someone whose is probably dead and I resort to talking to her picture."
Someone chuckled. "You're right. You do have a rather pathetic existence. Not that I can claim to know whether she would laugh, as I hardly know her better than you, but who wouldn't laugh?"
There was a sound of a 'whonk' and then broken glass as something flew out of Zelgadiss's now broken mirror, whizzed by him, and smacked loudly into the wooden headboard. It kind of slid down the oak like a wet paper towel scrunched into a ball.
"Heartless, soulless, piece of trash," muttered someone, sounding as if she was stuck in something and trying to pull herself out. "We're here to get his help. Not to make him even more dejected! Now if we had done like I suggested, this would never have happened."
"Now now," said the first one who had gotten 'whonked'. He, as it apparently appeared to be, shook himself to get the kinks from the collision with the headboard out. "You know as well as I that it was too dangerous to bring him in or her out. For the latter, well, I think we already know what the consequences for that is. In the case of the former, he'd probably want to take her out or if he was reasonable, as very few humans are anyway, he would have demanded either daily visitation rights or permanent abode until she could leave. The Queen would have thrown a tempest."
"You mean a tantrum," Zel corrected absently, still processing that there were two extremely short people, with wings mind you, in his room. Seeing as he had been on his way to a major period of depression, his mind was running only a few degrees higher than Gourry. Something in the back of his mind tickled as he tried to remember why they were familiar.
"No, I mean a tempest. The Queen always goes all out. That's what I like about her. You always know where you stand even if that is on the other side of the glade from her," smiled the purple hair man, if you can call someone only about six inches high a man. "Now, are you going to be a typical human and rant and scream about evil spirits then call your local exorcist to come and smoke out the place or are you going to sit there calmly and let us explain our reason for being here?"
"You two..." Zelgadiss almost had it but it slipped from his mental fingers. Where had he seen them???
"Oh dear, it seems that the forgetfulness has already settled in."
"What did you think, Namagomi?" huffed the female fairy. "Humans aren't supposed to remember us, especially fairy godmothers."
"And godfathers."
"You're the only one still doing it. Lecherous, old pervert."
The male fairy ignored that one. "But if he doesn't remember, he may not believe us. I think the Queen will understand the necessity to remove the veil of forgetfulness."
"Leave that to me."
The last thing Zelgadiss saw was the male fairy shaking his head, covering his eyes so he didn't have to see what was going to happen. Then something large and dense whacked him on the back of the head, enough so that even he could feel it through his stone skin, and he fell into oblivion.
"Emiri! Thank the Queen you're alright!" wailed Emiri's mother, grabbing her daughter in a fairy's equivalent of a bear hug. "I was so worried that the Unseelie may have caught you and killed you or tortured you or brainwashed you into becoming one of them."
"Uh, mom, I was still inside the Seelie Court," Emiri smiled weakly, trying to extricate herself from her mother's arms. "I'm not a little feykin now, I can take care of myself."
"That's right, our two girls are quite grown up now and know to be careful without our telling them. Isn't that right, girls?" the twin's father winked at them as he deftly pulled his younger daughter from her mother's iron embrace. "Now, there's a call for the entire Court's assembly as important news has come from outside. Let's hurry along. The Queen doesn't enjoy being kept waiting."
"Important news?" Emiri whispered to her sister as they flew along behind their parents toward the center of the mystical grove. Other faeries and the woodland creatures that were given permission to live here were also coming from all directions to one place, the floating court of the ruler of the Seelie Court. "It couldn't be that human we saw..."
"Maybe. None of the faeries have been allowed to leave the glade," Kashandra admitted worriedly. "Perhaps the Queen has had to rely on the human friends and servants of the Court to keep us informed on the activities of the Unseelie."
"The Unseelie are always up to something. And we never do anything about it. Ne, can you keep telling me that story? Sounds interesting now that two fairies have shown up."
"That's the only thing that caught your attention wasn't it?" The violet haired fairy shook her head at her sister's simple criteria for what to listen to. "If you had paid any attention to what's been happening outside, you would know this already."
"Yeah yeah, whatever. If you're not going to tell me, I'll just find a nice shaded branch to sit on and fall asleep during court."
"Emiri, you wouldn't!" But knowing her twin as well as herself, Kashandra held little doubt that Emiri would carry out her word. But the blonde fairy didn't dare talk in the Queen's Court, especially when not called upon and not about the topic in discussion. She hoped whatever news it was would be enough to keep Emiri awake and away from the wrath of the Queen.