AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Thanks, found it…usually?”
Tir’s eyes sparkled under uncanny half-known starlight. “Fairyland. Home. It likes to play tricks. Keeping you on your toes. When I was younger one of the Court games used to involve getting deliberately lost in the wilder gardens and trying to navigate back first. I won a lot, but not every time.”
“You never talk about—wait, how old were you?” Tir had been twelve upon arrival; Ollie couldn’t picture his own mother setting him or his siblings loose in Fairy-tricky wild gardens, and expecting them to find their own way home, at that age. Also: Court, Tir’d said. One more puzzle-piece, not a surprise, but confirmed.
“Oh, five or six. It’s a children’s game, that one. Although it does come in handy if you’re me and you need to—” Tir bit his lip. Visibly rearranged the end of that sentence. “It can be useful, is all. Testing your magic-sense. Reading skills, you versus the sky. My cousin Istrael used to bring bread and bribe the garden birds to tell her the way back, but of course you could do that too, it’s sort of acceptable cheating, as long as it’s some form of magic in play…she was good at that. That sneaky way of thinking. I imagine she still is.”
Oliver found himself afraid to break this particular enchantment—might be the closeness to home, might be the quiet of the night, but Tir in an expansive sharing mood had only rarely happened before. He thought about that years-ago birthday night again, tipsy confessions of a mysterious mission that might not be so hard in the end.
He went with, “I didn’t know you had cousins,” which was ideally safe enough: no outright demands for more information or inching closer to forbidden topics.
“Many.” Tir waved a hand; the mock-grand gesture flashed bandage-white through fire gleam. “Hordes. Well, seventeen. That’re more or less my age. Cousin isn’t exactly the right word, but it’s close enough. I’m an only child, though, didn’t I ever tell you at least that much? Or…” His smile looked brighter, shyer, younger: “I was. Until your family.”
This plainly both made Tir happy and diverted the conversation: back to human realms, Oliver’s family, their life. He agreed, “And now you’ve ended up with us. Sorry.”
“Oh no. Not about that.” A heartbeat, and then, “Even when Cedric decides to put on amateur theatricals in the great hall and asks me to play the sinister villain.”
“You got to stab him, at least.” They’d been in part humoring his little brother, but it’d turned out amazingly fun.
“So I did.” Tir had stayed sitting next to him; their shoulders touched. Constellations bathed in fairy-mist spun and twirled overhead. “And you painted his backdrops. And here we are now.”
“On a real Quest.” Not a play. Not a musical. No mock-deceased villains getting up to take a bow at the end. “Wouldn’t be here with anyone else.”
“No,” Tir said, “you wouldn’t, because you would’ve forgotten your socks or your saddlebags or something…but, no, Oliver, you would. Because it’s for your country. Your tradition. What your firstborn heirs do, where they’re supposed to go, the people they’re supposed to find and love…you’d be here because you wouldn’t walk away from all that, or even from some prince or princess you don’t know but who needs you. You’d be here for them. With or without me.”
Oliver stared at him.
“Anyway that’s what I think,” his fairy finished rapidly, and dove for the adventures of the unfortunate Lady Henrietta again, a shield. “Forget I said anything. Pretend I made fun of you for forgetting about acid sand. How did you manage not to look where you were going?”
Tir thought about him like—
Like a hero. Like the main character in Cedric’s homegrown theatrical: courageous, self-sacrificing, instantly kind to people he’d not even met. Oliver, who hung out in village taverns and traded sketches for local gossip over mugs of ale and reluctantly put on formal shoes for official audiences and could never find the Crown Prince’s coronet before state dinners—
But he would be here. Because despite all those points, he couldn’t imagine saying no, running from that responsibility, knowing the possible ramifications of this Quest. And Tirian knew that. Tir had known that even before Ollie himself had fully understood it.
He watched his fairy turn a page. Tir’s hair was long enough to hide behind, and this was currently the case, but after a second he obviously forgot and tucked it absentmindedly behind an ear, getting lost in the story.
He cleared his throat. “Would you, um, still want to share it with me? The book.”
Tir’s head came up, eyes wide and dark; he might’ve been braced for some other comment, but only relaxed and offered, “Yes, if you’d like? Want me to start from the beginning?”
“Nah, you’ve summarized enough. Are the ravenous wolves chasing her yet?”
“No, only ravenous bandits…oh, wait. One page too soon. Wolves and bears.”
“Really?”
“Inarguably. Here, I’ll just read you this part…”
Tir’s flexible voice flowed into the night. The North and improbable melodrama and quests and desires mixed together, forming stories, the backbone of their life.
Tirian offered to stand watch just in case. Ollie agreed, talked him into taking the second shift, and didn’t wake him. In the morning, Tir told him off for this in language borrowed from some of Ollie’s art-student friends when compositions were going badly, reminded the universe at large that this was Oliver’s Quest and as such Ollie needed to be in the best shape out of the two of them, and as a last resort kicked a pebble at his ankle as an example of dangers on the road.
“Why’re you grinning?”
“No reason,” Oliver said hastily. “Just…we’re almost there. This morning’s hike, you said.”
“I did.” Tir eyed him suspiciously. “A few hours. At least by midday. If you don’t stumble into something else hazardous.”
