Chapter XXIII - Defending Love
The Legend of Leanna Page: Vol. I
You’re reading The Legend of Leanna Page, the page-turning mythopoetic queer literary fantasy. *Click here for the Table of Contents and start of Volume I*
Previously: Leanna has been both welcomed and shunned by the fairies of Alquroria in near equal degrees, with only a handle of close friends - plus Kennedy of course - making her feel at home. Queen Okalani is happy to have her among them and is using the fact of Leanna’s ability to gain military intelligence to combat the concerns of the conservative Elders. When we left her, Leanna had just nearly been killed by a sudden storm in the Forest meadow. Was it aiming for her? Will Isolda and Guiomar find her at Anwansi? Will the Elders force her out and into the human monarch’s hands? Read on!
For some time, Leanna thought of the storm every day, every hour. She imagined Guiomar must have sent it with the Jewel of Nebulous, but in order to do so, in that moment, he must have known her location. If he could trace it on a map, surely his armies would have descended on the meadow, but he knew nothing so precisely. So, how had he found her? And would he be able to find her again?
Stormless month by stormless month went by until at last it had been a stormless year. A year passed again without significant incident beyond the occasionally wondrous military success and all at Anwansi nearly forgot about the sudden storm, or Leanna’s remarkable fortune within it. Even Leanna, at last feeling securely hidden from her enemy’s eyes, largely allowed it to pass from her mind. Still, when thought of it did occur to her, she shuddered with trepidation, desperate to persuade herself that the storm was an end, or somehow a coincidence, anything other than a beginning.
Kennedy, in the meanwhile, had entered her final and most tiresome season of schooling: an imperious cultural history curriculum consisting of private sessions in the Elder’s Gwahanu Rotunda, reserved strictly for the queen’s heir when she came of age. The longevity and frequency of these sessions were determined by the Elders based on the heir’s progress and rate of retention, beginning with a single, multi-hour session on the eve of each new moon. Prior to the introductory session, Okalani called Kennedy to the throne room for a word.
“Good day, my heir. It pleases me to see you well,” she said as Kennedy entered.
“Well as I can be,” Kennedy said, bowing slight with her reply. “I shall admit an anxiety I feel regarding tomorrow’s meeting with the Elders.”
The queen nodded somberly. “It is this I have asked you hither to speak of.”
“I welcome any word of wisdom, although I have been well informed it is forbidden for us to discuss the matter in depth. ‘A destructive breach of protocol,’ I believe Cassius said it would be.”
Okalani laughed. “I would believe that as well.”
“Might I take it then we are to dispense with protocol?”
“Not entirely, young one.” Okalani sighed, remembering. “It has been such time since my own installment of the same you are now to undergo that I cannot be certain the details would do you any good. Instead there is a separate tradition which I shall continue with you today, one of which the Elders have no awareness.”
A spark flew from Kennedy’s wings as she attempted to suppress a smile at the thought, and Okalani mirrored the cunning countenance which she had come to so admire.
“You hold all my rapt attention, your highness,” Kennedy assured her. Okalani stepped from her throne and began to pace as she recalled years past.
“I did not have such a candor with my predecessor as you have with me; for, regretfully, I had not given my instructors the cause to march me before her so often as have you. So it was that we had not been so much as introduced until I was gifted Anwansi’s wings, and even then we had very infrequent contact. It was the time when the Great Winds had been attacking, for the first several years at least, and she had neither the time – nor interest, it seemed – in advising me in the duties of our role. Such responsibility, she had told me, was in the Elder’s domain, and they were quite keen to take it up. I would not say I truly knew her, not even by the day she died when I took her place, and I entirely expected my relationship with my own heir to be the same. Thankfully, you were far too persistently disobedient to allow me to be similarly neglectful.” The two shared another smile before Okalani continued on. “I had one meaningful conversation with my Queen Rosaline, the same I then came to understand she had had with her Queen Alyssa, which was the same she had had with hers, and the same until the beginning. Through these discourses between queen and queen, and queen, a story has survived, one which the Elders of ago would rather have obliterated. I know the story must be truth, for I believe only truth is so important to have survived in this whispered fashion for all these ages.
“It is said to have begun with the First Queen. At the time, the entirety of the Woods around the World Within was populated by our kind, all hues living and loving with one another. There were villages and tribes and small states, all with unique knowledge and history which has been lost. It isn’t known precisely when the first Elders banded, for so many of the details have been washed away, but they came together – these various old Nachovy men from different places in the Woods – to declare a single nation of our people to be governed under their decided laws. They convinced enough others to fight for their state and Alquoria began to be established. It was then, in response to this movement, that Anwansi chose its first queen, and that queen went on to rebel against the new Elder’s nation which sought to divide the people into classes.”
“But—” Kennedy shook her head. “—we were told the Elders created themselves to rein in the wildness of an already active queen. Do you tell me they have lied so blatantly all this time?”
“I would not say anyone has lied, for they all believe they speak truth.”
“But they are wrong.”
“I believe so, yes.”
“Has queen after queen told the Elders what is right?” Kennedy’s heart began to pound, and her brow furrowed in anger.
“Many of us have tried, young one, including myself, but they do not wish to hear it and we have nothing to prove it with.”
“Perhaps if—”
“Wait, Kennedy, allow me to complete the tale. You have yet to hear of what matters the most.”
“Tell me,” Kennedy demanded.
“As you know, a great war broke out between those who supported the First Elders and those who supported the First Queen, although they since have named it a matter of peaceful order overcoming ruthless riot. They have told us that those Elders invited the First Queen to truce negotiations in their ancient Rotunda and that through these talks they came to an understanding, building the structures of Alquoria as we know them today and relocating the remaining fairy population to our Anwansi Pool for ease of looking after. It is in the memory of these peace talks that the Elders maintain the tradition of their lectures with the heir. Similarly, it is with memory of the truth that queen after queen has secretly counseled her heir prior to these sessions.
“You see, Kennedy, the First Elders made no invitation to the First Queen but rather captured her and held her in the Rotunda with force until she would submit to their plan of governance. This aspect of the truth is indeed one of which even today’s Elders are aware, and they hold great respect for the maintenance of that tradition. I beg you, young one, do not aggravate them in these sessions, despite how assuredly they shall aggravate you. If you can manage it, speak not a single word and let it all be done with so you might live out the rest of your heirship unbothered until the time arrives for you to take the throne.
“With that warning provided, I ask of you now something new, not typically asked in one of these queen’s counsels. You see, the last piece of the hidden story is that, the day before receiving her new wings, the First Queen was gifted a dream from the Gwahanu – a vision of our creation. We have all been told for so long, even she, the First!, that fairies were created in phases, first the Zils, then Kesks, then Nachovy, each to further appease a yet unsatisfied River, but it is not true. In her dream, queens have told, the River taught our first predecessor how it created us all as one kind, each differing hue and different spirit merely a natural variation on a single form, none lesser than another, creating us all at once in perfect balance with one another. Only later when we fought, and spun new tales, and made new words for ourselves, did we begin believing the Gwahanu would have separated us so. Unifying the harmony of our kind’s many different songs is the singular mission Anwansi gives to its queen. You understood this from the start, but I give you this knowledge now so it can guard your heart in this final test of courage before you. You must not submit to the Elders, Kennedy, as I did, and all those before me. If anyone is to bring about a change in the way we live, I know it shall be you, young one. Hold true to yourself, you must promise me. Do you swear it?”
Kennedy sternly took herself to her knee and bowed, declaring, “By the River and Sky, I do.”
She utilized Okalani’s advice of silence for over half a year, enduring seven speechless sessions in the Rotunda, each of the Elders in turns lecturing on the history of the fairies, Anwansi’s first queen, her recklessness, the formation of the first group of Elders, and the necessity of their purpose in maintaining order. Kennedy would nod and smile, but her high spirits and countenance of interest were maintained solely through focusing on the trout and otter who swam amongst the riverweed outside the dome. Still, she could not help but hear the Elders remark with complete sincerity on the inherent violence of the Kesks who must be kept in check, or the lesser intelligence of the Zils who must be provided for but not taken great heed of. It required every effort for Kennedy not to scoff at their suggestion that Nachovy fairies of their own color were the necessary leaders due to their inherent talent for compassion.
“I begin to despise my own kind!” She told Leanna after returning from a particularly agitating session. “Wherefore had I to be born like this? Fairies of my visage have only the wicked wish for power, and they care not for what harm it brings. Am I to be as horrid as they by the end of this?”
Leanna shook her head. “It is impossible, my love. Thou dost not truthfully believe such a sentiment can be so easily showered upon all of a certain kind. Think of Amicus, if thy own goodness cannot persuade thee. Perhaps an aptitude for leadership is neither good nor evil. Think of power as but the tool; what thou makest with it defines thy worth. Thou wilt make good as Queen, for thou art the incarnate of goodness herself. It cannot be denied.”
Despite Leanna’s encouragement, Kennedy grew increasingly irritable over these months, angering at every reminder of the harm caused by the Elders forcing their traditional lies onto their people. Without herself among them to challenge instruction, fairylings were once again playing in separate coteries, no color interacting with another; Zils were continuously delegated to agricultural work and craftship, withheld from official honor or recognition for their varied skills; even some among the Nachovy – those less eager to perform instructional or administrative duties in government, regardless of its accompanying status – were largely prevented from integrating with the rest of society to pursue what alternative interests they may hold. Most personal to Kennedy was the children she saw, however rare, who were torn from differently visaged parents in the destruction of families who stood too great a danger to the institutional myths to be allowed to prevail. More, Kennedy would now and then pass Stoman or Alizren in a hall of warriors, repeatedly devastated at their inability to look their royal daughter in the eye, lest her unlawful childhood be more largely discovered.
To worsen matters, the monarchs of Masor and Pavoline had begun to grow toward a cold cordiality, enacting a synchronous ceasefire in their war against the Wood. While the warriors relaxed, Leanna grew ever more vigilant. All the thoughts and communications of Isolda and Guiomar seemed to surround the construction of the wall – each side now almost a quarter complete – but Leanna was certain the tranquility was temporary and dreaded the idea that she had missed one relevant thought, or let slip some small billet, that explained the altered behavior. Despite her concern, from the Elders’ perspective she was losing her usefulness, and in each session with them Kennedy could see their pool of patience for the strange human’s presence in their capital was running dry.
It was Kennedy’s eighth session in the Gwahanu Rotunda when the fragile peace betwixt she and the Elders was broken.
“As our queen,” Chief Elder Salvatore began, “it shall fall upon you to encourage the maintenance of these vital traditions we have hither detailed. Your childhood, beginning with years whose content is still unknown to our court, was greatly dissimilar to one we would have wished for our queen. As a result, you have continued to fraternize with those so dearly unlike yourself, whether they be blue, green, or brown,” – Elder Cassius snarled at the reference to Leanna, but Elder Salvatore continued – “and, in your youth, we have allowed it, but you now approach your twentieth year. It is time you wholly accept your place and remove the tarnish you have begotten for your position. We demand you leave these childish relationships behind, and sever your contact with those who do not deserve the friendship of a Fairy Queen,” he said.
Kennedy said no.
“That is unwise,” warned Cassius.
“Wreak havoc upon me them. Revoke my crown!” She rejoined. “How shall it seem to your people that you would deny the will of Anwansi? Even those foolish – or selfish – enough to believe what you have hither endeavored to ‘teach’ me, maintain an ultimate respect for the strength of the Gwahanu and our very hollow. If it came to the eight of us, my wings would place me above each of you.”
“We have no intention to revoke your claim to the crown,” quoth Elder Arbor, sitting second from the left and speaking for the others who still cringed at the heir’s words. “We only mean to persuade the mind which that crown shall be sat upon.”
“On this matter, it cannot be done,” Kennedy assured them.
“You do not understand,” Chief Elder Salvatore continued. “This purpose is the sole objective of our session today, and we shall not be finished until it is achieved.”
Kennedy thought of the guards who secured the only entrance to the Rotunda, and she anxiously sat taller upon her chair.
Late that night, Leanna sat alone on the half-empty bed which, on a usual night by this hour, she shared with Kennedy. She sent Kennedy a concerned thought but received no response. Hesitant to intrude upon Kennedy’s private session with the Elders, Leanna lay recumbent on her pillow and coerced herself into an anxious repose. When she awoke similarly alone early the following morning, the glow from the gems being dim but indicating the passage of a sufficiently troubling number of hours, she instantly sat up, pinched her eyes shut, and sought the world for Kennedy. Opening her eyes, and looking though Kennedy’s, she now saw the beauteous reverse-aquarium of the Gwahanu Rotunda and the semicircle of thrones each holding a tired yet composed Elder. She could feel Kennedy’s heart pound as Elder Salvatore said, “Forget them, Kennedy. Join us!” Leanna moved to watch through his perspective and at last brought Kennedy into view.
Wet, thick riverweeds had sprung up from the ground and wound themselves around Kennedy’s limbs, securing her to the seat. Her head hung low and wings drooped around shoulders which rose and fell with each heavy breath. She slowly lifted her gaze.
“No,” she said again, and Cassius – the one Elder designated to carry a bolt-spear – shot a spark at the ground near Kennedy’s feet. The vines which held her lit up with the lightning and she seized, every vein in her wings igniting in pain. When the current was gone, the paroxysm left Kennedy stooped and contracted, the light in her wings having grown visibly dim.
Leanna, horrified, was stunned into stillness until, at last, she pulled her consciousness to its true surroundings and bounded out of their apartment, charging through the castle halls, and around bends until she ran into the hold of Warrior Evander who now prevented her from banging down the Rotunda door. Struggling now with both the guards, she sent out a plea to Okalani, and the queen flew into the hall after but moment, ordering that the guards release Leanna. Already apologetic at their task, the warriors swiftly obeyed the queen. The four then charged into the Rotunda, Okalani at their lead.
Chief Elder Salvatore rose from his throne in dismay.
“Queen Okalani, remove yourself from the chamber at once!” he barked.
“And that human…” Cassius snarled.
“No, Salvatore,” the queen declared, looking to her heir bound senseless in the Elders’ chair. “How could you mean to continue this?”
“If we must discuss this, let it be in private,” Elder Raply said, glaring towards Leanna and the warriors from his seat on the far right.
“No more closed doors! There is has been far enough pain.”
“Calm, Queen,” quoth Elder Arbor. “We do no worse with she than we have with any other who have denied us. We would have done the same with you if you had not been more wise.”
“I remember only too well what was threatened in my time here,” she groaned. “My single regret is that, then, and since, I have not had the strength to forbid it being ever enacted again, but I have the strength now. Evander,” she ordered the warrior. “Break these vines and take Kennedy to the healers at once.” Evander did so with celerity, and Leanna watched with a quaking heart as he lifted Kennedy, unconscious, from the seat, and flew from the chamber. Leanna yearned to follow but could not leave Okalani to face the Elders unsupported.
“Order her return, Okalani. Our work with the heir remains unfinished,” said Salvatore.
“Any work of the kind you speak is, from here on forth, forever finished,” she declared.
“You have not the authority,” Cassius condescended.
“I speak for Anwansi!” The queen boomed. “It has been ever disregarded that Anwansi’s choice reflects the heart of our people, but their voice has been silenced long enough. I care not for your delegations of authority. Hither, you have mercilessly tortured the young heir to our nation’s throne, all in the name of prejudiced ordinances that bring only further grief and separation.”
“You speak of what maintains our way of life,” quoth Arbor.
“Yes! A way of life that suits only you. Anwansi shall tolerate no more of it.”
“Shall we ask the people what they believe? I am certain a great many disagree with you, Queen,” quoth Cassius.
“That great many believeth what you have told them. Another great many hath learned to think for themselves,” rejoined the queen.
“You would break our nation into pieces,” Raply warned.
“No, I mean to rejoin us where we have been long broken,” Okalani said, new hope encircling her heart.
“There would be chaos,” Salvatore declared.
Okalani shook her head. “I wish for the stability of our people, as do you. I know you fear for your place in our nation, but understand, I believe you, Elders, are a necessary element in the stability I speak of. I implore you, let us – you and I – come together against these ways we have too long endured, put in place by Elders of a different time. You must know it is right. This needn’t divide us.”
“Absurd!” Elder Cassius began, but as he took a great inhale to continue his lamentations, the aged Elder Oorweg spoke from his place to the left of Salvatore.
“Perhaps it is time we consider what Anwansi has been trying to make us hear for many years,” he said, earning a fiery glare from the Chief Elder before the same made a grinding turn to again face the queen.
“If we refuse?” Salvatore inquired.
Okalani looked to him with regretful surety. “I have the trust of our famously trained warriors. Give me not the cause to utilize it.”
Late that day, after signing new ordinances, drafting their individual opinions, and calling for all able fairies to assemble, the Elders stood on the rainbow bridge before the Gwahanu waterfall as Chief Elder Salvatore read out the new order: in summary, all ordinances restricting activities on the basis of a fairy’s color were to be disbanded. Warriors could be of any hue. Friendships would be allowed between fairylings of any colors. The odd child born with a countenance different from that of their parents could now be raised by those who had birthed them.
Many on the pool erupted into cheers and applause. Some, feeling with the majority of Elders, were displeased and grumbled away into private laments. Most, however, were merely struck confounded. Life was changing, and not all were certain what that would entail. On the whole, fairies returned that night to the same bed they had awoken in that morn, but something in every room felt shifted. Despite their differing thoughts, all went to sleep fascinated by what the next day would bring.
For Leanna, it brought a day of sitting beside Kennedy as she lay on her bed in the Healing House, embracing and conversing with Stoman and Alizren who were now able to stand openly by their daughter’s side. Several of Leanna and Kennedy’s warrior friends stood guard in the halls, ensuring none of those angered by the former day’s changes to their nation’s law could emerge into Kennedy’s chamber and wreak more havoc on the two lovers than was already done. Kennedy’s parents had warrior duties to attend to most of the day, but whenever possible they would visit the Healing House to see Leanna and Kennedy, both of whom they still lovingly considered their little girls.
The next day brought much the same, as did many days and weeks to follow. In that time, those who had been shocked into fury at the new ordinances began to lessen their show of it, and the sentiments of those who had cheered at the announcement began to win sufficient favor in the public court. Although she had soon awoke, it took time for Kennedy to regain her full faculties, and then still she required further care to see that her wings returned to their former strength. Throughout, the healers also tended to the spiraling burns that wrapped her shins and forearms where the vines had gripped her. Leanna often implored Kennedy to drink her vial filled with the magic of the Aldorian Waterfall which Leanna still, as promised, wore daily underneath her tunic, but Kennedy did not wish to consume the precious gift that was meant for Leanna alone. Leanna reminded her they could simply refill it, but Kennedy vehemently refused, explaining that the location of the mythic Aldorian Pool remained unknown to anyone beside Leanna – for fairies had heard legend of its mention but none had yet discovered it and Madrick would not be capable of finding it a second time on his own – thus the place remained unpillaged, and she wished not to alter that. She assured Leanna, on the word of her healers, that she would be well in time.
On a day when Kennedy rested, Leanna left the Healing House in hopes that the fresh Forest air might ease her mind. After climbing the long rope ladder that had been graciously attached to the cliffside in her aid, she entered the Trees of the Infinite Wood and allowed destination to fall aside, walking whithersoever her feet desired. In her wandering, she strode haphazardly toward the border of the kingdoms, and now came across an immense structure of rough, gray stone. Each stone stretched just beyond the width of her shoulders and was as tall as two of her hands. She counted at least a score of them spanning the structure’s width and, when searching for where the stack ended in height, she lost it among the branches of the Trees.
Leanna walked beside it, running her fingers against the rock, and used her visions to look into the stones and see the interior of the structure. She found nothing but darkness, with stone after stone placed in the highest density of formations. She stopped, knowing around the structure’s corner that Masor began only a few paces beyond, and she rested a palm on the massive wall – still only one-fourth constructed – which she had so often seen from afar in her visions and meditations. Being so near it now, she felt a new sadness come upon her, feeling sympathy for the wall itself. What it must be, she thought, to be created in the image of enmity, to have no purpose but to divide, no fate but to watch people see you and only wonder what further sight you prevented them from.
Creeping around the corner of the wall, Leanna now saw a singular vine, encircled in ivy, scaling the stones. Curiosity struck her as she placed a hand around the thick, sturdy vine, and she was then gripped with determination. She reached her hand high above her and leaped, grasping the vine and allowing it to hold her as she steadied her feet against the wall. Then Leanna climbed, glaring upward toward her destination, placing one hand above the other, moving faster, and faster, goading the wall to attempt to prevent her from reaching its peak, never daring to cease lest the fatigue in her arms overcome her. Even the vine’s end only pushed her to grab hold of a nearby Tree branch, the sibling branches of which she continued to climb until at last she saw the summit. She inched out to the edge of a branch and, allowing herself to drop, fell upon the top of the wall.
She remained kneeling there for some time, gazing upon the stone beneath her, attempting to catch a breath that insisted on running, both from exertion and, in equal parts, excitement and fear. She lifted her gaze and saw the pattern of stones she stood upon stretch out into the horizon, taking up all her sight except what her periphery could detect of the surrounding countryside. Finally standing, she walked some paces forward, lifting her chest and letting her shoulders down as she confidently strode upon the border of the two kingdoms. Stepping to the wall’s edge on her left, she peered over it and found the Gwahanu River raging directly beneath. Looking up, all of Masor was laid bare before her. The outlying villages which she had never had the opportunity to enter were closer than they had ever been, and still indefinitely out of reach. Nearer, just on the opposite riverbed, she could make out the unique rocky landscape that housed the abandoned ruins of the ancient city of Pavoline that the Oxbiens of Masor had overtaken all those centuries ago. At this she turned to her right, taking in the villages of Pavoline’s current kingdom. Massive plains of grain were scattered with homes and vegetable gardens, a web of tawny dirt paths tethering one to the next, all connecting to the same central road which ran from the Gwahanu straight to the Pavoline castle. Leanna looked again to her left, knowing an identical path could be followed from thence to the citadel of Masor. Laying aside some differences in architecture and landscape, each kingdom seemed, from her present vantage, to be so much alike, that it felt strange to think of them as two when, as was evident to her now, they so easily could have been one.
She sighed and ambled back toward the Infinite Wood, hopping along, playing with the cracks in the stone. When she was again under the shade of the Treetops, she turned back toward the kingdoms and sat upon their wall, relaxing into her meditative position. She closed her eyes and saw, in greater detail, every inch of Masor and Pavoline. She saw the seamstresses mending their neighbors’ clothes, jewelers taking their wares to their citadel markets, and children gamboling amongst them, here being lifted by their parent so they could pick an apple from a tall tree, and here accepting a sweet tart from a village baker. Although Leanna knew which sight was from which kingdom, it hardly mattered to her now as all the World Within the Wood flooded at once into her mind.
The images vanished, and the eyes of Guiomar Ranzentine assailed Leanna’s vision in their place. His maniacal laugh began in her ears.
I have found thee, she heard him say.
Her magical vision faded and her sight returned to find the environing Sky had darkened and strong winds were circling the clouds. Leanna pinched her eyes against the wind but remained steadfast, watching as the darkness ahead gathered speed. Directly above the Gwahanu, the clouds began to twist into a point, traveling downward and ever closer to where she sat. Leanna took her hands from her knees and placed them upon the wall, leaning forward to steady herself against the wind, scowling at the tornado as it touched the top of the wall and began to race in her direction. As she had been in the storm those years before, Leanna was confounded to feel a certain consciousness seep into her from the winds. There was no question now that Guiomar had sent the storm using the Jewel of Nebulous, but how was it that Guiomar’s storm – sent with the certain intention of ending her life – could offer her the simultaneous suggestion that she need only to remain still to remain safe. The Jewel wanted her, she recalled. It seemed then, it wanted her alive. With her mouth set hard in defiance, she held her place against the storm.
“Leanna!” came a call from the Trees. Leanna gasped, startled out of her conviction, and turned round to see the purple sparks of Amicus fluttering amidst the winds.
“Go back!” she called to them, reaching behind her in a gesture of warning and falling onto her forearm. Despite her calls, Amicus flew towards her, determined they could save her from the approaching storm. Leanna watched helplessly as the tornado leaped over her and picked up Amicus in its winds, hurtling them in spirals through the Trees.
“Release them!” Leanna pleaded, and in the following instant Amicus was flung from the storm and into the nearest Tree, wings and bones fractured on impact, left to fall powerless through the branches and down to the ground. Leanna thought of Kennedy’s healer and sent her a call for aid, then jumped into the Tree she had climbed and began her descent.
When the healer arrived, she found Leanna halfway down the vine and flew her the remainder of the way to the Forest floor where Leanna brought her to Amicus who lay in pain, recumbent against the bottom of a Tree. At Leanna’s own encouragement, the healer left her behind, carrying Amicus back to the Anwansi Healing House. Leanna watched them until they were out of sight and then looked tempestuously up at the Sky, but the winds had dissipated, and the tornado was gone. With a final glance, promising challenge to the wall, Leanna stumbled her way back to Anwansi.
The next day, Kennedy and Leanna sat by Amicus’ bed in the Healing House.
“I was patrolling the woods. I wanted to see if I could be warrior,” they explained. “I’d be permitted now if the queen wished to accept me in her forces, but I suppose I would be hopeless.”
“Amicus, if you had not put yourself in Leanna’s way, she might have been killed. You saved a life! That alone puts you in the ranks of our best warriors.” Kennedy took Leanna’s hand, and Leanna smiled, nodding for Amicus’ sake, hiding what she knew to be true, and Amicus thanked her with an uncertain grin. Shortly thereafter, Leanna begged their forgiveness and took her leave, justifying her departure with a need to detail the incident to Queen Okalani. Though she did intend to speak with the queen, she feared to disclose the discussion’s true purpose in the public space.
Leanna arrived at the throne room and Okalani happily bid her enter. At Leanna’s involuntary glance toward the guards, the queen motioned for their exit and the guards congeed, taking their leave.
“Thou dost seem troubled, Leanna,” the queen said. “I have heard tell of thine ordeal, and I am sorry for it, but I sense there is something further clouding thy mind. Do Kennedy and Amicus continue to improve?”
Leanna nodded. “Kennedy is doing well, and Amicus shall so in time. I come to you now for my own sake, if I may.”
“Certainly!” said the queen. “Do go on.”
Leanna took a breath. “I have heard that the Jewel of Nebulous is present in the old legends of Alquoria. Could you tell me its story?”
The queen sat back. “I fear the legend tells of little more than the Jewel’s mere existence, and its power,” Okalani began. “Until it was unearthed by thine own parents, there was no certainty that stories of it were even true.”
“But what do the stories say?” Leanna urged.
“Well, they speak of a deep envy the Gwahanu River felt for the Sky, with all Its varied abilities and colors. Legend suggests that the River wished for the power to control the Sky, same as the Sky had always held charge over the visage of the River, ever reflecting Itself upon the other’s surface. If tales speak truth, then the Gwahanu reached into the lowest depths of Itself to forge the Jewel and soon regretted it, thus hiding it away where it could never be found.”
“It is malevolent, then,” Leanna said.
“It seemeth so,” the queen agreed. “Thou hast spoken thyself of the grief it brought to the lands before the human monarchs allied. Tell me, Leanna, wherefore dost thou inquire of it?”
Leanna looked to the floor. “I have not been entirely forthcoming, your highness. Guiomar and Isolda did not only send forces to the Wood for the purposes of expansion, but – perhaps more so in the last of them – they sought specifically my destruction, understanding my abilities and wishing to exterminate them from the world.”
“My goodness, Leanna! Whyever didst thou hide such a circumstance? I might have assigned thee a closer guard.”
“I did not wish to be any more trouble than I was already, your majesty; still, I confess that the idea has caused me particular distress of late.”
“Of late? Do they not appear to have abandoned their aim?”
“I fear the traditional attacks having ceased merely tells us their strategy has shifted.”
Okalani’s eyes grew wide with understanding. “The storms.”
“Yes, your majesty.”
“Then we must be ever cautious to keep thee where vicious winds cannot reach.”
“That is not my chief concern, your highness.” Leanna looked down again.
“What is it, young one?”
She hesitated, finding the appropriate words. “The Jewel’s storm heeded my word.” Okalani’s countenance made her puzzlement evident, so Leanna specified, “I asked the storm to release Amicus from its grasp, and it obeyed me. I am certain.”
“I see,” the queen remarked.
Although her voice felt near shattered, Leanna asked her deepest query, one whose answer she had been conscious of dreading for longer than she dared admit. “Why would an instrument of evil answer to me?”
Leanna could see in the queen an utter absence of certainty, but Okalani hastened to hide it. At the queen’s request, Leanna consented to be examined, and the royal fairy flew from her throne, placing her palms upon Leanna’s back. Leanna could see the chamber grow brighter as Okalani’s wings glowed at the absorption of energy caused by her touch. The queen then removed her hands and Leanna spun to face her, Okalani unable to hide her expression of amazement with sufficient swiftness.
“There is great power within you, Leanna,” Okalani began, slowly deciding upon her careful words. “The immense magic of the Gwahanu swims freely in your veins. It is the same magic utilized by the fairies, but we are mere conductors of it. You are a source. The small magic held in a fairy’s wings permits us to live a hundred, a hundred twenty years. You might survive through several centuries, young one.” Leanna’s eyes widened and brow furrowed at the prospect, as well as the queen’s new deference to her. “If anything was created direct through the magic of the Gwahanu,” the queen went on, “you are certain to be counted among them. Perhaps the Jewel knows this, and it wishes to combine its power with yours, taking you for its controller.”
“Me?” Leanna said. “With the power to hurl lightning, muster storms, create droughts! I could never take control of such a thing.”
“The wishes of such elemental magic as this can be incredibly difficult to defy,” Okalani confessed.
“No.” Leanna cried, stepping back from a silent, sympathetic queen. “No! I shall never wield the Jewel of Nebulous!” She ran from the throne room, leaving Okalani bewildered in her wake. As she ran, throwing aside the stone doors of the hall, she failed to notice Elder Cassius who had stepped aside and out of her path, having just heard all that had gone on within. He stepped into view from the doorframe and Okalani caught his glare as the chamber door shut in front of him.
Leanna spoke neither of the Jewel, nor her meeting with Okalani, to anyone for the waxing and waning of many moons. She tried to smile for Kennedy and insist all was well, but beneath the false pleasantries Leanna’s spirit was crumbling. She could no longer glimpse her own reflection in the pool without imagining the terror which could befall the world at her own hand. Kennedy looked at her every day with such adoration. Leanna could not imagine anyone being able to maintain that if they knew what she really was, and she neither wished to break Kennedy’s heart with the truth, nor of course to break her own by having to watch Kennedy’s looks of adoration turn to horrified disgust.
With the ceasefire of the kingdoms making her unneeded in the planning of defense, Leanna knew only too well that the Elders would be seeking her removal and she felt their glares upon her during every entrance and exit from the palace caves. She decided to forgo even imagining the diatribes Queen Okalani was enduring in defense of her. The Queen made many attempts to speak with the powerful wingless one, hoping to help her find some comfort, but Leanna refused and evaded her every sympathy. If she could simply avoid looking in the queen’s eyes, or in her own, Leanna could nearly pretend nothing had changed at all.
As Kennedy shadowed the queen for further instruction, Leanna, to fill her days, began participating in what she could of the warriors’ training, a now more colorful display, proving soon rather adept in the skills of combat and defense. When training took to the Skies, Leanna would aid the carpenters with village repairs, or tend to the citadel fruit gardens; she would act as Nientz’s assistant as the inventor worked on new creations, and she would picnic in the Treetops with Kennedy when both were unoccupied and whistle along with the birdsong; however, every cloud Leanna saw in the Sky colored her increasingly morose until she was unable to pretend to Kennedy that there was naught upsetting her.
They sat in the Forest meadow on a cloudless day in Spring when Leanna confessed to Kennedy all she had experienced in the storm, and all that had been said betwixt herself and the queen.
“I fear I shall become a monster, and one that shall refuse to die!” She concluded.
“Never say so of thyself,” Kennedy commanded. “Thou art the farthest from a monster, and the longer thou art in the world the better the world will be for it.”
“No, think on it, love: a world where the whims of a near-immortal being controls our Skies. It is not one I would seek to live in.”
“Thou needest not acquire the Jewel,” Kennedy offered.
“But what if Okalani is right, and it becomes impossible to resist its call? What am I to do with that power?” Leanna’s mind began racing as she finally spoke her fears aloud.
Kennedy attempted to calm her. “Was it not thee who said power is but a tool? If such a day was to come, would not thou still be the arbiter of how such power was wielded?”
Leanna shook her head. “The Jewel hath its own intentions, and the murals our mothers have spoken of on its cavern depict nothing of goodness in its desired wielder. Perhaps the Jewel itself would be capable of persuading its supposed master toward malignancy; and consider, then, my natural abilities in addition. I can walk in people’s dreams! What if I am induced to misuse such powers? The world would be helpless against me! I would become the ultimate—”
“Thou art not a monster,” Kennedy repeated. “And thou shalt never become one. It is impossible.” Kennedy smiled and Leanna turned away, unsure. The fairy became stern. “Think not a moment more on this, Leanna. We shall always protect each other, that has been our oath. The Jewel will never reach thy hand, not while I might hold it in its place.”
Leanna faced her with a sad smile. “If I am to survive centuries beyond thee, how am I to bear the years?”
“I shall deliver my love into the years that succeed me. As long as thou dost live, I shall be in thy heart.”
They kissed, and when they held back, brow touching brow, Kennedy whispered softly to Leanna’s ear.
“Marry me?” she asked.
*****
The next year was filled with gaiety and jubilation, despite the recurrences of certain irritations and strife. Much of the Alquorian population sought to aid in preparations for the wedding, but another many of the fairies sought to prevent it, the Elders at their forefront. The Elders, united in purpose, reminded Kennedy that royal-born fairies were never married without the Elders as their officiants, and not a single Elder would dream of officiating such an atrocity as this marriage would be. This matter did not concern Kennedy in the slightest, as she had no intentions of having the Elders in her wedding; however, Elder Oorweg, having been the least vocal of all, at last, broke form with his fellows and requested to be part of the ceremony. At this, much of the population’s resistance fell away, and, with the support of the queen and an Elder combined, the remaining court had little power to forbid the event from taking place, and the preparations went on in full force, fairies from every part of Anwansi coming together to glorify the celebration. Throughout the year, Elder Cassius continued his pontifications (“a Fairy Queen to marry– And with a human!”), but most no longer paid him any heed, least of all Queen Okalani who was perhaps the most enraptured of all by the engagement. Leanna and Kennedy happily left the preparations to Amicus who had insisted upon taking the lead of decorating the Anwansi marketplace for the grand affair.
They were to have the traditional Anwansi wedding, always an exuberant occasion for all in the community. Merchants would fold up their shops, and the floating cottages would be pushed aside to create a sizable, rounded amphitheater adjoining the Gwahanu fall and its rainbow bridge. Six lengths of wooden deck would be placed in radial symmetry around a circle composed of planks decorated with colorful flowers, this central place being the location of the Inner Circle.
For the marriages of warriors or royal fairies, the Elders would traditionally compose the Inner Circle, but “common” fairies, for whom the Elders would not deign to officiate, would make the request of their dearest family and friends to act as their Inner Circle, and the ceremony would continue on, in all else, the same. The remaining guests – forming an outer circle – would hover over the water between the outstretched, radial docks and offer their brightest glow to the starlit occasion, leaving the surplus population of the capital to watch happily from the casements of their adjoining cottages, atop the rainbow bridge, or from perches amidst the roots of the cliffside Trees.
Now, on the night of Leanna and Kennedy’s nuptials, all was set for the beautiful occasion. The docks were in place and guests were gathered around. Forming their chosen Inner Circle stood Nientz, Phidia, Innogen, Amicus, Queen Okalani, Elder Oorweg, and Stoman and Alizren. It was the first Inner Circle in Alquorian history to be multi-hued, and even many who had been against the marriage could not help but smile at the sight.
The soft, sylvan singing began as the two lovers appeared at their alternate sides of the dock. The members of the Inner Circle stepped back so the beloved might gaze upon each other as they walked; and so they did, Leanna sighing in her good fortune, seeing Kennedy’s vibrant violet tresses falling around her shoulders, Kennedy smiling at Leanna’s exquisite gown – designed by Amicus – ornamented with pale turquoise and lavender sashes around the bodice, Leanna awing Kennedy with her dashing, forest-green cape flowing in her wake, three-parted to frame her glowing wings, and Kennedy sighing, stupefied by the beauteous eyes which looked back at her, surrounded by tight curls elegantly lifted together with shining, silver pins. Kennedy’s tear; Leanna’s smile; her sparking wings, and her eager heart; Kennedy taking Leanna’s left hand, and Leanna taking Kennedy’s right as, together, they stepped into their endearing circle.
Kennedy and Leanna looked round to their friends and loved ones, all of whom returned to them with smiles and restrained tears as they swelled with emotion. Okalani took in a staggering breath, preparing to begin the circle of remarks, then swiftly released it in laughter, wiping aside a tear. She began again, taking in a deep breath, but suddenly the attention of all present was taken up to the Sky as thunder began to rumble in the clouds which gathered above. Leanna pulled sharply away from Kennedy’s hands, now seeing the eyes of Guiomar Ranzentine flash amidst the lightning which developed over her head. She watched, feeling as though the passing of time slowed to a steady pulse, as a bolt erupted, splintering the air, carving a path directly toward her. She tried to shield herself but looked not away as the lightning twisted and turned in its descent, now straying from its intention, falling asudden on the chest of Queen Okalani. Even with the dissipating clouds, the darkness which followed the flash was nearly insurmountable; still, in the fainter glow, no one could miss the body of their queen who, darkened, lay dead at their feet.
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