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, they’re not to be messed with,» the fairy said. «They burned my flowers long ago. Cannes. They grew by the waterfall. They called me Canna, too, after the flowers I lived in. So it’s nice to meet you.»
«I am glad to meet you too!» Janet wanted to ask the little girl a lot of things, but she hesitated.
«Are you in love with Tamlane?» The fairy shamelessly inquired.
Janet nodded.
«It’s dangerous!»
«So what is of it?» Janet was getting tired of everyone warning her about the danger coming from him or anyone else holding him captive.
But the fairy, as it turned out, had something else entirely in mind.
«Your father would not approve of this choice. He himself once stole a mortal from her husband and now, as a sign of remorse, tries to dissuade others from repeating his daring deed. Ridiculous! He did it himself, and he tells others that mortals and immortals must no longer make love.»
«You’re confused,» Janet interrupted her. «My father is a mere mortal and so is my mother. None of them are fairies or elves. We are human. It’s Tamlane who looks like an elf. Well, at least in part.»
«I’m not confused,» the fairy frowned. «I’ve been around a lot longer than you, and I know a lot more. But you only know what you’ve been told. That’s all you know. How could you know who your parents were? You weren’t smart when you were born, but I’ve seen it all and understood it all. And I’ve seen your parents on secret dates, too.»
«That’s enough,» Janet didn’t like hearing lies. Even if a fairy liked to make up all sorts of stories, she shouldn’t pass them off as truth. It wouldn’t make the conversation any more interesting.
«By the way, your friends are coming to get you. A knight named Ambrose has persuaded them to take you to the village to see an old hag who is an illegal witch, and often gets in our way. He thinks it is time to rid you of the child you conceived by an elf, who may well be born a monster, or at any rate a creature with unusual and dangerous powers for mankind. I myself have seen such children from the union of humans and elves, they are capable of destroying entire cities with their spells, and they do not understand why they do it themselves. They are driven by instinct, which is why they are called monsters in both our worlds and yours. But sometimes they can be very beautiful.»
Janet’s ears perked up from her babble. Soon Nyssa and Latonia actually came after her and began to persuade her to go to the village with them. It was as if they had unexpectedly gone there themselves to see some kind of celebration. They did not mention that Ambrose had sent them. Janet thought it was nice to have a fairy friend who could fly over and spy on everything and report back to her. So getting to know the tiny creature seemed useful.
All the way to the village, Latonia tried to hide her face, which was swollen and puffy, as if its features were being washed away by water. She hid all her other previously naked body parts: arms, shoulders, even her fingers, under her long, wide-sleeved outfit, buttoned up to her ears. She would also do well to put a veil over her face, so that no one would notice that her skin had turned a watery color, and her ears and eyebrows resembled the curves of seashells. Had the water elves bewitched her? Janet looked at her with apprehension and sympathy.
Nyssa, on the other hand, had been looking in the mirror she’d once bought from Quentin the whole way. Was that unusual, too? She’d never been so narcissistic that she couldn’t tear herself away from her own reflection for even a moment. She even seemed to talk to it. Her whisper, addressed to the mirror, could be heard all the way. How could you talk to your own reflection?
