Heartless

“The Far World,” he whispered as he gazed upon things he had thought existed only in tales. Strange mountains jutted like teeth across a hazy horizon while a river, sinuous as a snake, cut through miles upon miles of forest.

He’d seen mountains before, of course, and forests and groves and rivers. In fact, he’d seen these very same mountains, these very same forests, this very same river, for they were the Northern Mountains, Goldstone Wood, Goldstone River. But he stood now in the Far World of Faerie, and everything was different here – bigger and stranger, more wild and more beautiful. Felix leaned heavily against a white sapling that felt strangely like marble under his hand. He looked at it but could not tell if he supported himself against a column or a tree. He shook his head, which was clouded and uncertain. His knees shook, whether from weakness or from fear he could not guess.

“Your fever has broken at last.”

Felix turned, looking over his shoulder. The woman with whom he had spoken a few times now stepped through a leafy curtain, bearing a silver tray that held a tiny silver bowl and a thin silver pitcher. She wore a long lavender tunic and billowy trousers of light green beneath, after an old and foreign style that Felix had never before seen. A filmy scarf draped over her hair, which was black, and her eyes were blacker still.

As she came closer, Felix frowned. At first he had thought her not much older than Una, but now he guessed that she must surely be far older, though her dark features were smooth and soft like a girl’s.

Dame Imraldera smiled and set the tray down on a small white table beside his bed, then poured water from the pitcher into the bowl. “Are you thirsty?”

Felix shook his head but after a moment’s thought changed his mind and nodded. He reached out for the bowl she offered and looked at it. “Will it . . . do anything to me?” he asked.

She laughed. “If you’re afraid it will doom you to an eternity as my slave or something along those lines, no, it will not. It is water, nothing more.”

He sipped it and found that it was water, but the woman was wrong to say it was nothing more. It was light and clear, like nothing he’d ever tasted – perhaps most like the drops of honeydew he and Una used to suck from honeysuckle flowers. He downed it greedily, but when he reached the end felt that it was enough and did not ask for more. He handed the silver bowl back to the woman. “Are you a Faerie?” he asked.

She shook her head, still smiling. He liked her smile, he decided. Her teeth, he noticed with some surprise, were just the tiniest bit imperfect. Were Faeries allowed to have crooked teeth, even if it made them somehow more beautiful? “Mortals cannot see Faeries within the Wood,” she said.

“I can see you,” he said.

“But you cannot see the Faerie attendants around you.”

Felix blinked. He looked quickly over his shoulder, as though he might catch a glimpse of some winged creature if he were fast enough. And while he thought for half a moment that something flashed in the corner of his eye, the room, for all he could see, was empty except for him and the woman. “Then you are not a Faerie,” he said. “But you can see them?”

“I can.”

“Then you’re not mortal?”

She smiled, flashing those white, slightly crooked teeth. “Will you allow me to check your wounds, Prince Felix? You have been sick with fever these last many days, and I’m not sure I should even allow you up. But I will as long as you won’t fuss as I check your bandages. Agreed?”

Felix hesitated and glanced back across the wide view he had been observing before she entered. He blinked. Then he cried out in alarm and leapt back.

The vista of mountains and vast expanses was gone. His view was now simply of trees and more trees, close and surrounding him. “What in the name of Iubdan’s sin-black beard – ”

The dame touched his shoulder, making shushing noises. “Prince Felix,” she said, “come away from that window. The sight will only distress you.”

“But . . . but I saw . . .” He struggled to find the words to express himself. “I was up on a mountain, and I saw all the Far World. . . .”

“Hardly all the Far World, young one!” the woman said, chuckling quietly. “I’m sorry, Prince Felix. This Haven, you must understand, rests in the Halflight Realm between your world and Faerie. Sometimes it will show you the world beyond; sometimes it will not. It is strange and uncomfortable, I understand. . . . Long, long ago I once saw as you see. But please trust me when I tell you, you are safe. You are safe in the Prince’s Haven, and you are safe in my keeping.”

Felix turned to her and saw that her eyes were kind and, he thought, sincere. He went to sit on the edge of his bed, which was softer than goose down, and the woman peeled back his shirt and – clucking like Nurse and shaking her head – decided to change the bandage on his shoulder.

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