Elkhana
He is both more beautiful and more terrifying than I had remembered. Just a glimpse and I am reminded that he is not human. While those around me have aged, he remains exactly the same. Undaunted. Unchanging. Heart-fracturingly beautiful.
I hope I don’t look too awful with insects crawling all over me. Oh, what’s the use of hoping. I’m sure I’m a hideous sight. No one looks good covered in bugs. I’m despairing over it and then he opens his hand to offer me his gift and his beauty shatters and so do thoughts of myself.
A small yellow bird turns its innocent eye on me.
All I see is that someone has caged him, too.
Someone has plucked him from his life and forced him into a cage. Fury fills me – deep and heavy and full. That the fae lord would offer me this – this poor creature – well, I must have been wrong about the compassion I thought I felt in him. Perhaps the fae have no compassion. Perhaps our people are wise to fear them if this is the offering they would give.
But this moment is not about him. It’s about this little life. A life I have the power to spare, as I wish someone could have spared me. I fight against a wave of bitterness. Now that the shock of duty has passed, and with it the lives of my family who I was trying to spare with my acceptance, bitterness comes more frequently.
I lift the latch with trembling fingers and set the tiny bird free.
He’s impossibly beautiful when he flies – a speck of yellow in the cold whites and greys of this place. Joy pricks my eyes and lifts my heart until I feel light enough that I could fly after him off into the distance and another future.
A single feather flutters down and I pluck it from the air before it is blown away. The silkiness of it is all I feel as hot tears blind my eyes.
It takes me a moment to remember the strange fae lord. Furious as I am, I remember my duty. I gesture to him to kneel. It is not in my power to turn anyone away and there is none who come here who haven’t caged something, whether it is a little yellow bird or a woman of their own blood.
I must simply brace myself as I do with all of them and endure the memories that will rise.
But when he opens himself to me, I’m surprised all over again. The compassion is still there. And there is fierce bravery there, too.
“Can you hear me, fae lord?” I ask in my mind and it seems as if he could almost hear me if he only tried a little harder, but he does not respond.
Visions of what will not be between us dance before him and I see them, too. I see him hold me tenderly and draw me into his embrace. I see him open this cage and set me free, kissing me as if I am life itself. I see him building a lonely home in the mountains and gazing up at the bright eye of the sun and I see myself entering the same home as he watches me with joyful eyes.
What does it hurt to let him see these things, too? He won’t be able to keep them. There is only one memory he can keep to take with him – the memory he came for.
So, I let him see all he wants, and I show him more. I show him my life when I was young, before I was caged, and I show him how I felt as I ran across the plains, the wind blowing in my hair. I had been free, free, free in a way I can’t even remember anymore – even with the visions to help – in a way that little bird will be now.
I’m shocked when he shows me something in return. A younger version of him sobbing himself to sleep. A woman with pointed ears and a pinched mouth leaving him. Their fingers slipping from each other’s grasp. And then more – beatings in a huge hall of stalactite ice before a jeering crowd. Him, strapped to a golden wheel that spins, dunking him under ice water when his head is at the lowest point. He’s left there, until bubbles rise to the surface and then cease, and then the wheel is turned just in time to revive him before they do it again – and always with an audience. Always with terrible visages surrounding him drinking wine and entwined in each other’s arms and laughing with cruel eyes and vicious smiles. They’re horned and winged and hooved – they’re like beautiful devils come to life.
Being in a cage is a mercy compared to that. I feel no pain, no hunger, no humiliation. I am honored and revered among those who made me like a goddess to them. And while I am stripped of my will, my freedom, my humanity, I am not their broken plaything.
He is just as caged as I am. He is just as shattered inside as I am.
I reach to him with my spirit and feel him cling to me like he hopes I can save him from all of this. But I can’t. I can’t save anyone. I can’t even save myself.
Pain fills my heart and with a gasp, I shove him toward what he’s come for. It’s all I can give him. It’s not freedom. It’s not hope. It’s only an answer.
But never has it been like this between me and a supplicant. I feel like he can see it all – like he’ll remember these things, too, and the thought that he might both terrifies me and fills me with excitement.
Maybe he will come back. Maybe I will see him again and this time he’ll have escaped his bonds. I do not dream in this world because I do not truly sleep – I only drift from one thing to the next – but if I could dream, I would dream of that for him and wish that at least one of us could escape our fate.
