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Still, Salas the babe had something to his advantage against the neglect. Salas, like his mother, was a jinx. While his nature itself offered nothing to aid his survival, it did make him a curious oddity towards the other fae. Jinxes were rare sorts who looked and behaved so similarly to humans, it was difficult to tell one from the other, even amongst the fae. Jinxes were immortal, still, yet unable to draw magic, spells, and glamour of their own. Instead, they could only channel magic when others wished it of them.
For that, Salas was considered a lesser being. A servile being. In the end, there was no need to harm or kill him, as he proved to be no threat. Instead, he was an oddity that could entertain the fae in his company.
The dryads played with him first, stealing a nanny goat from his goatherd father, and allowed Salas to suckle from it until he grew to require more solid food. They made nests in their mother-trees, laughing as they watched him shoo away owls and hawks. The game changed when one particular bird of prey tried to make off with him, and the dryads shot the predator down with their spindly arrows, nearly making little Salas their target. However afterwards, when Salas would not stop crying, the dryads decided they no longer wished to take care of a screeching child.
It was then that a pooka crossed his path. When the pooka discovered Salas knew no art of speech, it attempted to teach him the skill (not with the ancient language of fae, but with a human language—Susconian—to degrade Salas). See, the shadowy pooka wanted to have someone around him to answer his riddles. Yet it was quickly apparent that Salas’ mind was slow and fumbly, and offered unintelligent solutions to even the most uncomplicated riddles imaginable. The pooka, for game, instead began to teach Salas untruths, and giddily watched as Salas’ speech developed completely backwards: a ‘tree’ was a ‘rock,’ a ‘mountain’ was an ‘ocean,’ and so on.
“You shall, and will forever be, incredibly stupid,” the pooka said, after Salas declared that the ground was raining that morning.
“Amis,” Salas denied haughtily, earning him an overwhelming laughing response from the onlooking fae as they delighted in his taught-idiocy.
Despite the fae finding entertainment in teaching the orphaned Salas all kinds of untruths, he still continued to survive and grow within the Faeland Forest. His body was changing, filling out and lengthening until passing pixies pinched his rear and commented on his growing endowment, and he fashioned himself a skirt of spider silk and fishnet to cover himself. The hair atop his head grew, too, long and blood-red. For some reason, it caused quite a stir amongst the fae.
When a boggart asked Salas to trade his hair for one of the boggart's burrows, he looked curiously at the little creature who made the offer, for he had never been offered something so valuable before.
“When?” Salas had asked.
“When what?” the boggart snapped impatiently, picking something rotten from its teeth. “Now, of course!”
Salas had frowned, realizing he had said the incorrect thing, as the question words he had been taught had been given incorrect meanings. “I mean...why?”
“Because you are a jinx!” the boggart growled, exasperated.
“I’m a jinx,” Salas repeated. “My head...no, my hair is...special?” he asked hopefully.
Instead of answering, the boggart huffed and went away.
Salas played with his hair then, brushing it the way he had seen sirens do after thunderstorm rains. Curiously, he cut some away and watched, with fascination, as the lock of hair morphed and turned into a curious red snake. It slithered up his palm lovingly until some hovering creature from a bush called, “You can use that to grant wishes, now, little one.”
Salas did not know what it meant to ‘grant wishes,’ but still he asked the unseen creature how it was done. It seemed simple enough: he was to cut his hair, allow it to take its serpent shape, and offer it to someone who desired a wish. If the snake bit, the wisher would receive no wish, and would most likely die by the venom the snake released. If the snake didnotbite, the wisher would make their wish, and Salas would grant it.
One night, during a summer solstice when a faerie court had gathered to dance under the warm moon, a lovely sprite approached him and asked for a wish to be granted.
It seemed that all festivities came to a pause to watch the exchange. Across the way, he saw the Summer Court Queen glowering, furious. This contrasted with the delighted faces of the fae, their excited gazes dripping with delight to whatever would happen next.
“All right,” Salas said—carelessly, he realized later. He cut his hair, watched the lock squirm into its serpent form, and carefully recited what he had been told, feeling bashful of his speech with all eyes on him. Still, he found that he enjoyed the attention.
The snake did not bite. The sprite was free to make her wish.
“I wish to be the Queen of the Summer Court!” the sprite squealed gleefully.
Salas had felt as the magic traveled to him: pockets of it from the deepest tree roots, from the trinkets of merfolk, from the wells beneath the earth. It came to him in a current, as though a dam had been broken and he was a bank. As though he was a magnet for all the mystic energy that flowed through the tangible and intangible world.
He used it all with one purpose in mind: to crown the sprite.
When the magic had subsided, it was as though Faerie’s energy had bent around the sprite. The trees tilted a bit towards her. All the wind wanted to caress her. She glowed with awe-inspiring illumination. She was a Queen of the Fae.
The furious, previous queen’s light dulled.
And Salas had made many enemies that night.
To avenge their queen, goblins had come after him, claiming that they wanted to paint him with his blood, so that he wasallred.
At the edge of the Faeland Forest, he was finally safe, though an outcast. And time went on.
Time was a peculiar thing in Faerie. A hundred years had passed since Salas‘ birth, though he, like many of the fae, lived in the body of a youth, and would forever. He could simply sit on the stump of a great oak and allow time to drift past him.
And so it did.
