Page 10 of Till Kingdom Come

He looked up at me in horror. The curse of a dying man was considered to be a very serious thing, even if I wasn’t dying just yet. I laughed again—a little maniacally, I knew, just for show. But I wasn’t entirely acting either. It had hit me as I was threatening him that I really was about to die, and I wasn’t anywhere near ready for that. I was feeling crazy and out of control. I meant every word of my threat to haunt everyone concerned if I could, and I fully intended to do it. It would be the first matter I’d take up with the angel of death when I saw him.

“Enough of all that,” Bracca said, as if he was sensing my dark thoughts. He took my arm and pulled me along with him.

I gave up then and let him take me. He had come to take me as his recompense, as his sacrifice—as whatever he wanted me to be for whatever twisted Fairy reason he had. And I could see now that my rabbit fur had indeed looked cheap and tawdry next to the rich minks of Bracca’s Fairies, anyway.

I didn’t fight Bracca as he led me toward that strange rip in the fabric of the air that he’d first appeared through. I knew it was useless. I went along with him and looked back long enough to shake my fist one last time at Ellien. He blanched with fear, and I threw back my head and laughed. My theatrics didn’t last long, though. Bracca yanked on my arm, and I was pulled through the rip and into the coldest, blackest night I had ever experienced. And I prayed to a God I had mostly ignored all my life that He would have mercy on my soul.

Chapter Three

I started shivering immediately, the frigid air seeping through my clothing and my skin and gnawing at the marrow of my bones like a wild animal. It was literally hard to breathe, and around me, everywhere I looked, was a strange and frightening world. Trees I didn’t even recognize hung heavy with frozen leaves that shivered in the strong wind that blew unceasingly through the trees. They trembled as if they wanted to rustle and sway with the wind like normal trees but were far too weighed down to even try. I knew the feeling.

I was being allowed to walk on my own, though Bracca was in front of me and one of his soldiers right behind, prodding me with his sword when I went too slowly.

The first things I noticed were the legendary Ice Poles. While I was with the Solarians, I’d heard the men say that the Poles marked the border between the Elves and the Dark Fairies. The poles were far larger than I’d ever imagined. The light Elves’ territory was known as Quendi land, and the Ice Poles were looming, narrow towers of solid ice, famous and legendary. But judging by the cold, we were somewhere in the far frozen north, and nowhere near Kent anymore. As far as I knew we were hundreds of miles away from everything I’d ever known, and I had no idea if I’d ever see England again.

The Poles lined the broad trail that led back into the forest for at least a kilometer or more. No one knew for sure how they had come to be, because they were so ancient, but the Solarians had told me they were all that was left of the old Ice Giants who had come there one frigid Samhain night to observe the celebration of the end of the autumnal equinox and the beginning of the winter solstice. They had miscalculated the cold and frozen in place there as they cast their circle and spoke of their deceased ancestors, held hands and chanted prayers through the night. That was the legend anyway.

This marked the Elves southern border, and though I wasn’t exactly sure where we were in the mysterious Liminal, I knew from the climate alone that we had somehow been magically transported to a place miles and miles away from Solaria. We had come through the rift in the air and been transported there by Bracca’s powerful magic. The Dark prince immediately turned and walked in the opposite direction of the Poles, and I trailed disconsolately after him, into the black and frozen night, until we had left the Poles and everyone else I’d ever known far behind us.

I was freezing now, and my feet didn’t even feel like a part of me, as I was wearing only my thick woolen stockings and had foolishly left my boots behind with my clothes—I’d thrown them at the Fairy lord, more accurately—at the time, I’d figured I’d be dead soon anyway and wouldn’t need them anymore. Perhaps I’d die in parts, slowly freezing to death from the feet up.

Thankfully, we hadn’t gone more than a few dozen steps before we came upon a small herd of huge deer stags that belonged to the Fairies. All the Fairies and the Elves rode these deer instead of horses, and they were almost as large as a small horse, standing perhaps three and a half to four feet tall at the shoulders—much larger than any kind of deer in the mortal world. This herd obviously belonged to Bracca’s men and served as their mounts.

I could hear the soldiers begin to make clicking noises with their tongues, calling softly to them. Ice hung off the hair on the deer stags’ chins like white beards, and they all had the tell-tale bells, beads and feathered jewelry strung all over their huge racks of antlers, too, which was a sure sign of ownership by a Fairy or an Elf, or so the legends said. I never thought I’d ever see one of these beasts in real life.

The beads and jewelry dangled and danced in the wind, making little musical sounds as they clinked together. I’d hunted deer many times and had never cared much for the wild stags, as they could be unpredictable beasts, who might decide to turn and charge you, using those antlers as weapons. Old adages existed for a reason, and my old nurse had taught me the one about how you could put lipstick on a pig, but it would still just be a pig. I thought that definitely applied here.

I couldn’t imagine riding one of the things, though I could understand the wisdom of using the stags in this climate. Still, I’d almost as soon saddle up a wild boar, as get on the back of one of the creatures.

My father had mentioned to me once that most deer had brown eyes, but the eyes of the stags that belonged to the Fae stayed blue all year round. I noticed one that Prince Bracca was petting and speaking softly to. The beast rolled his strangely pale blue eyes over at me and made a snorting sound deep in his throat.

The same toyou, I thought to myself, glaring at him.

Bracca’s stag had an impressive rack of antlers, typically strung with gaudy jewels, although for all I knew those jewels might be real. There were also little sprigs of holly and silver bells that jingled as he moved around on the snow-crusted ground. The stag was so tall that even Bracca had to raise up his arm to pet the top of the beast’s head.

The Fairies gave them silly names too, in my opinion, like Buttercup or Snowflake or Acorn. I couldn’t imagine the beasts answering to their names, though they seemed to be following the soldiers around, like my father’s hounds always followed him from room to room. Maybe there was some intelligence and affection there after all.

The prince, along with his twelve soldiers, had gone to the herd right away, leaving me on the trail, not sure of what to do. My feet were numb by then, probably mostly frozen as I’d lost all feeling in them, so I just leaned against a tree and watched them with dull eyes. They had begun digging out saddles they’d hidden in the brush by the trail, brushing off snow, so they could get the stags saddled again and ready to ride. And did I mention the fact that I thought they were only taking me off somewhere to kill me? So I didn’t offer any help, because why would I? Why should I aid them in any way?

I was just standing there, sunk in misery and contemplating my fate, when my knees suddenly buckled, and I collapsed, pitching forward and falling face down in the snow, getting covered in it in the process.

I was so exhausted and heartsick after all I’d been through that I just lay there. Maybe my body had simply given up the ghost or come close to it anyway. I was freezing and had almost no energy left, and I no longer seemed to care. Once we’d passed into this snowy, ice-covered world, wherever it was, everything had changed, and I thought I had somehow slipped time. I had a distinct feeling it was now late afternoon and not early morning. I felt it in my bones, though I didn’t know how that was possible either.

I was wondering what would happen if I just lay there and let the snow simply cover me up as it fell. Would they eventually retrieve my body or simply step over me and leave me lying there since they were going to kill me anyway? I’d heard that freezing to death was peaceful and probably better than what the prince had planned for me.

My question was answered a second or two later when Bracca himself scooped me up like I weighed nothing much at all and shook the snow off me, quite literally. It wasn’t the first time he’d shaken me like a rag doll, and I decided I really didn’t like it all that much. I gave him a weak punch on the shoulder, which he ignored. He carried me over to a nearby stag and shoved me up on top of the beast, surprising me so much that I almost fell off it again, but he pushed me back upright, growling something at me in his Fairy language, which had always sounded to me like totally incomprehensible gibberish, none of which I knew a word. It was probably a form of Gaelic but could have been Greek for all I knew. I didn’t think he was talking to me anyway, so I didn’t bother to answer. He grabbed my feet and stuck them in the stirrups and gazed up at me.

“Hang on a minute, boy,” he said then in his heavily accented voice. “Here—take the reins and hold the pommel and try not to fall off if you feel yourself fainting again.”

“I never faint,” I said, my voice weak as I swayed in the saddle. I was surprised to hear my voice sound so reedy and thin.

He made a rude noise and stalked off, leaving me alone with the stag, who looked back at me over his shoulder at me, like he, too, thought that what I’d said was foolish. He shook his antlers at me to let me know how thoroughly unimpressed he was by me, and I stuck out my tongue at him.

I held the leather reins Bracca had given me tightly in my hands and clutched the pommel so I wouldn’t slide off his back and land on the snow again in a little heap, since I’d assured the prince that I would never do such a thing. He went to the stag in front of us—the one I thought was his own big beast—and dug around through his packs. He pulled out some black boots that he handed to me. He growled something to me in that strange language again, and I realized he was probably telling me to put the boots on, but my fingers were far too numb. They felt like fat sausages someone had attached to my hands and wrists. In the end, he shook his head and raised my feet to help me pull off my snow-coated socks. He looked down at my foot in his hand, which was a decided shade of blue with the toes turning a little more of an interesting navy color, and he huffed out a breath before pulling off his gloves and chafing my toes between his hands until they began to burn and tingle.

“W-what are you d-doing?” I said, around chattering teeth.

“Making sure your toes don’t fall off.” He gave my other foot the same treatment, and when he was finally done, he shoved my bare feet back inside the black boots which were thickly lined with soft, blessedly warm fur. They were way too big, but they felt so nice I actually felt a little faint and moaned out loud, earning myself another odd glance from the prince. Next, he pulled out a voluminous, soft mink blanket from one of the packs on the stag I was riding and wrapped it around me. It was huge, so I hugged it to me and hunched down into it, covering the top of my head and even my face with its furry warmth. It was so warm, in fact, that I began to feel tingly and dizzy all over and decided I might live a while longer after all. Until it was time for my execution, that is. The reminder made my shoulders slump again.

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