Page 14 of The Pastel Prince

I sat up, grinning, and pushed at the heel of my right boot with the toes of my left. A swim would wash away the grit of the past few days, and even, perhaps, launder away the ceaseless yearning for Beirach growing more and more undeniable within me.

As one boot came free, I worked on yanking my shirt free from my trousers.

“Last one in is a fetid pus ball on a troll’s nut sack!” Tezen shouted as she dove into the pond.

A huge shadow leaped over me, landing on the edge of the pond. Four long legs planted deeply into the soft soil as I looked up at the elk, its coat golden-red and brown in the sun, antlers wide as a delivery wagon. Its celestial blue eyes found me just as Tezen impacted into its side like a bumblebee drunk on fallen apples. The elk snorted at us. Twin blasts of hot air shook the wispy grasses and fluffy pods. A clear warning that was backed up by Beirach stamping the ground with a hoof as large as a plow horse’s hoof.

I darted to my feet, lurching out to snap Tezen out of the air before she fell to the ground and was stepped on. She hit my hand hard, her little naked body stretched out over my palm. “Ow, you fracking moldy, pointy-eared, son of a pissy—”

I stepped around the elk, my one hand on its strong chest, the other clasping a dazed, nude, angry pixie. A log lay on the water, half in and half out, its needles long ago fallen into the water. Still shaken by the arrival of Beirach in his elk form, I found a foursome of turtles sunning themselves on the log. They didn’t turn to look at us or hustle off into the water. They simply sat there. Unmoving, unblinking, their heads and legs gray with cracked granite.

“The turtles are stone,” I croaked out, my joy at seeing the pond erased by the visage before us. “How?” I whispered as my companion, uncaring that her tats were out, sat up in my hand, hair in her face, and gaped in terror. “Why?”

“By the ancient one,” she whispered as she shimmied to my fingertips to stare down at the turtles. Lifeless gray eyes gazed up at us, their shells dull but still with exquisite details under the suffocating coating of stone. “Do you think the sickness is in the water?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. I prayed not for if it was, then thousands would fall ill as the underground springs in this area spread far and wide, feeding into untold numbers of streams that fed wells in the farmlands. “I’ve never seen such a thing.”

Beirach lowered his head, nudging us back from the water’s edge with his antlers, ever gentle but insistent.

“We should go,” she softly said, her wings drooping down to tickle my hand.

“Yes, we should go now.”

A red-winged dragonfly darted past us, lighting the still water’s surface to drink. We stood silently, watching, until the insect took off.

“It didn’t turn to stone,” Tezen said aloud, her gaze moving to find mine. “That’s good, yeah?”

I shrugged, feeling small and incompetent.

We left the pond at a dead run back to the horses waiting in the shade. My worry compounded now that I had seen that which I had begged Danubia to save this forest from. Proof of the sickness this close to my homelands filled me with dread.

Beirach pushed through the thickets, moving his head this way and that to avoid getting his rack caught in low boughs, his hooves sinking into the dirt. I placed my hands on his neck, his blue eyes framed with dark red lashes, and buried my face in histhroat. He smelled of fur, sun, and cinnamon from our clumpy morning oats.

“Thank you,” I whispered into his fur. Clinging to him in this form was less puzzling. “We would have leaped in and…”

A primal, resonant sound like a bass drum being played in a deep cave rose from within his chest. A soothing sound, to me at least, as I dug my fingers into his pelt. He was relieved now, that emotion swallowing up the lingering traces of fright.

Tezen buzzed past my ear. I pulled back to find her seated on a bright white antler tine as long as my arm. She was dressed now. Mostly. Her breastplate was missing still but her breasts were covered with an undershirt.

“I’m not going to lie. That was one of the most unsettling things I’ve ever seen,” she admitted, for once forgoing her usual raunch and bravado. I nodded as my fingers moved through the thick ruff along Beirach’s neck. “You said your mother’s people are nearby?”

I couldn’t quite bring myself to speak, my throat growing tight even thinking about what we might find, so I merely inclined my head.

“Shit, Minty Fresh,” Tezen whispered, then flittered down to snuggle into my neck.

We all took a moment in the shade to hold each other close for what we might discover in the village past the tainted pond might be the stuff that fed little elven boy’s night terrors.

What we found at my aunt’s village was a nightmare beyond description.

We took the shortest route through the woods, a thin, rough path that proved too difficult for Beirach in elk form to navigate. Seated upon Atriel, Tezen perched between the mare’sears as always, we watched elk shift back to man. Bones popped as Beirach’s body reformed into his human shape. Fur melted away, antlers fell off, and the man appeared enveloped amid a cloud of dark blue. He remained on all fours for several minutes, panting, working through the pain of the transformation.

“Damn,” Tezen whispered when Beirach finally rose, his hand resting on the withers of his horse. I wasn’t sure if she was stunned at the agony a druid endures to become a beast or at the sight of the man nude. Both were reason enough to be awed. “I never realized it was so draining to shift.”

“It is a process that takes as much as it gives. Much like all of nature,” he replied as he rummaged into his saddlebag to find clothes. “Forgive my lack of clothing, Lady Tezen. I would not usually show my attributes to a member of the fey court after such a short friendship but the shift came over me quickly.”

I pulled my sight from his broad back to the pixie enjoying the view a bit too much for my liking. I wondered if she truly was regal or if Beirach was simply being courteous.

“Please, don’t fret about a little skin,” she said, giving me a wink. I reached out to shield her eyes behind my hand. “Hey!”

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