Not once did the fairies’ queen fall asleep in his arms. She didn’t sleep at all. Forever awake was her habit. And yet she was never tired. She didn’t want to eat, she didn’t want to drink, she didn’t want to sleep, but she encouraged the pleasures of love. Her embrace always resembled captivity. Tamlane wished to break free of it and could not.
«What is so special about me that your elves don’t have?» He asked the question so often that the words had become a fable. «Why am I so different from everyone else that you have chosen and tormented me?»
«Is it a torture? I give you all my love.»
«It is a black love,» he wanted to strangle her, but he could not, her throat seemed iron, and all the attempts to kill her were like a love game.
«You won’t get any better on earth. The love of a fairies’ queen goes only to a select few.»
«They are elves, not humans.»
«But you are my beautiful mortal, and I love you,» she ran her webbed hand over his cheek, «though you are rebellious.»
«That’s what attracted you to me in the first place. You love to tame wild dragons and harness them to your chariot.»
«And I love to tame wild elves and make them my lovers, but I like mortals better. Why? I do not know myself.»
«Let me go!»
«Why? Your old father forgot you long ago.»
«He wasn’t an old man when I left on that hunt. Or was it a fight,» he could no longer remember much himself. Medea Shai’s potions were corroding the fragile human memory. When he had forgotten, he would no longer claw his way out of her captivity, but would be an empty shell, fit only to give pleasure to the queen of the fairies. If only that moment had never come. Better to die. But she would not let him die. He had already tried. There is no escape from the captivity of the fairies’ queen, dead or alive.
Medea Shai gently stroked his forehead, as if testing when the man’s memory will be gone forever.
«I love you very much indeed, my beautiful knight. I remember when you rode your horse through the thicket at the head of your frail human troop and without your helmet. Your hair was like the sun, and I knew in that moment, as I flew over the forest road, that you must be mine.»
The wretched helmet! If it hadn’t scratched his cheek, Tamlane wouldn’t have taken it off and drawn the fairies’ queen’s attention. The unusual helmet had been given to him by a legendary warrior, his ancestor, and was kept in the castle, a rare chosen few could touch it and not cut themselves on the dragon spikes on it. Tamlane was able to take it and fight in it, but ended up hurting himself. Apparently the helmet was not meant for him. He took it off and was captured. The creepy creatures flooded the thicket and pounced on his warriors so quickly and with such ferocity that it was almost impossible to resist them. Tamlane killed many of them in battle, but they rose from the dead even more embittered, reattached their severed limbs, and raged on to attack again.
«Love is an amazing thing. When you see someone, you realize that there is no other creature in the world so beautiful. I was flying on a black dragon over the forest when I first saw you, and the dragon realized that he would never lie with me again in a bed of love, strewn with rose petals in the king’s bedroom.»
«That’s probably why he’s so angry with me,» Tamlane surmised. The dragon has been watching him forever, even now slumbering under the door of the hall, waiting for an opportunity to burn him in passing. «He hates me and wants to incinerate me.»
«That is impossible! After your nights with me you have become invulnerable to fire.»
Tamlane did not believe her. There is a fire that can strike down a magical creature as well. The supernatural fire of the flame elves, but they dance in the hills too far from here to be reached. He had already tried, but it was painful to go farther than the edge of the forest. Medea Shai’s power was pulling him back with invisible chains.
«You wanted me to spare the guilty servants. I did. They were not executed. Out of love for you, I am capable of much.»
«Then let me go back to the humans.»
«Leave me?»
«Yes.»
«Out of my kingdom?» It was as if she was playing around, asking questions.
«To the world of humans, where I was born. I am not a creature of your world, you have no right to keep me here,» he pulled her hair, but it became living snakes that hissed around his arm.
«Don’t resist! You can’t leave. You have been with me too long. Legend has it that a man who stays too long in a magic realm will grow old and die before he sets foot on mortal land again.»
«I have not been with you long enough to be an old man. I was still young, if I’d lived my life in the mortal world.»
Medea Shai sighed.
«Don’t be so torn back! There’s nothing there that I couldn’t give you either. It’s just that things are better and more magical for me.»
There’s a girl, Tamlane wanted to say, but he prudently didn’t. Medea Shai has no reason to know about his new crush. Lily, turned into a tree because of her sympathy for him, was still groaning heavily in the hallway of the magical palace. Various dwarves and trolls plucked leaves from her, hurting her. And once he caught a whole group of laughing fairies doing this. They were even breaking branches off of it. It was the same as ripping off a man’s fingers, for the tree trunk had become her body. Medea Shai had punished her like that for falling in love with Tamlane. Janet cannot be allowed to suffer the same fate.
If a fairy queen is even capable of destroying a rival he never desired for one liking, what will she do to the girl he has already managed to fall in love with?
Fairy Girlfriend
Janet felt lonely because she herself knows about the world of other creatures and others don’t know about them and can’t keep up the conversation. The maidens were playing in the garden, but she would not join them. They would not have been thrilled, either, to be approached by a girl who was branded by everyone as a lost, seduced by elves, et cetera, et cetera. People judge too superficially.
«If only I had a friend who understood me in everything,» she made a wish, looking out the window, and a tiny fairy appeared on her desk. It was as if she had been formed out of thin air. She had wings and a dress that looked like a flower. Her face and body resembled that of a grown-up girl, though she was no bigger than her little finger.
«Well, did Tamlane send you?» Janet wondered.
«Not him. I came to get you, and I decided to live here. I’m actually a garden fairy, not a forest fairy. I’m cozier here, and I can be your companion.»
«Were you the one who spoke to me yesterday and stuck a lost pin right into my pillow?»
The fairy nodded cheerfully.
«Don’t do that again,» Janet asked. «I might have pricked myself.
«But you didn’t prick on a live rose,» objected the fairy.
«I pricked oh her congeners,» said Janet, showing her scratches and wounds.
«Go to the water elves. They can heal anything with water.»
«I don’t believe it.»
«They can heal anything with water, but they can do irreparable damage, too. Water in their hands is both a cure for all diseases and a terrible weapon.»
The conversation with the little one began to take interesting turns. You can learn a lot about the magical world and its inhabitants from this little one.
«What about the fire elves?» Janet wondered. «What can they do with their fire?»
«Oh,