ELEVEN

Leander’s foot brushed up against something. What was it? His leg was next to something warm–long and warm. What was it? Where was he?

He blinked his eyes in the morning sunlight.

He put out his hand and touched what felt like a knee. That jerked him awake.

Faydra was sitting up in the balloon. She was holding the helmet with the slug in it and staring curiously at Leander, her eyes as wondrous as peepholes behind the curtain of life and death. “You could have asked me to marry you before you spirited me away.”

He scoffed and scratched his chest. It was slimy. Had the slug been sleeping on him? Maybe he didn’t want a slug as a pet after all.

“Ah… I didn’t ask you to marry me. Nor will I,” he said, quite loath to admit the truth.

“Then what are we doing here?” She lowered her eyelids to half-mast and glared at him.

“The dress was killing you. The Mistress requested a knight from the King to take you away. Castle Travista pays their taxes well so the King was obliged to grant their wish. I was sent to kidnap you.”

“That isn’t a very smart plan. They could have asked any of the men that were there to kidnap me in my sleep and they could have done it as easily as you. Far easier actually, because they wouldn’t have had to travel to the castle in the first place. Why you?”

Leander had taken it for granted that he was called because none of the men in Castle Travista could do what he could do, but when Faydra put it like that, he began questioning it as well.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted easily. “You lived there. You wouldn’t take off the dress. Why do you think they couldn’t get one of those boys to fly away with you?”

She looked smug. “Because they weren’t my fated lover. You are.”

Leander laughed. “Uh… I think not. I’m not anyone’s fated lover, or husband, or whatever. I’m a knight and I–”

“If you’re a knight, where’s your sword?” she asked abruptly.

“Uh… It got eaten by the shrapnel moat,” he admitted with an unpleasant tang in his mouth.

“Where’s your armor?” she persisted, haughty as a princess.

“Well, it got eaten by the moat as well, but my helmet is right there,” he pointed out, feeling like he had scored a point.

She stretched out her hand and dropped it, slug and all, over the side of the basket.

He leaped to the side to see where it landed, and it landed back in the Spiknit Forest. A few branches broke its fall, and then Leander heard the splunk of it landing in water. He wasn’t sure if his pet slug had landed well.

Leander pulled away from the edge of the basket and stared at her incredulously. No words at all on his tongue.

“Forget all that stuff. Nothing is more important than us being together. Now, let’s get that guck off you. You can’t be my lover if you’re filthy,” she said, pulling a square of cloth from her sleeve and dabbing at his chest.

He touched her elbow and felt the bones beneath. He hadn’t imagined touching her knee earlier. Being out of the dress had healed her, bringing her back to life and limb.

“Look,” he said, putting his hand on her other elbow and putting her away from him with both hands. “They couldn’t have one of the boys from the castle take you away. Things had gotten too far out of hand. They would have discovered that the red dress was the property of a dead woman and that wearing it, and the key too, was taking your lifeforce and giving it to the Mistress. If that young man found that situation less acceptable than I do, he would probably rebel and find some way to destroy the system. They needed an outsider to do the job because they needed a man to take you away who followed orders. I follow orders. All the men think you and I have left under the correct terms of the castle. All is well with them, but you are the one who broke their rules.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“I did no such thing,” she said hotly, much hotter than she had been when she wore the life-sapping red dress. “They promised me a man. I wasn’t supposed to be with any of those men. Our match came about differently than expected, but that proves all the more that you and I are meant to be together.”

Leander objected, “I’m meant to be a knight. Knights are away from home. They don’t take their women with them. It’s better for a knight to meet someone new in each and every town and form a bond there than to always be thinking about one woman far from him. I can’t marry you or anyone.”

Faydra shook his hands off her and looked around the outside of the basket like she was looking for a place for him to drop her off. “There,” she said, pointing. “Do you see that cross on that building? It’s a church. Take me there.”

“Certainly. I hear they’re always looking for nuns,” he said sourly as he pointed the balloon toward the church.

They hovered above a crossroads and Leander stopped to read the sign. One way led to the town, another way led to the church, another way led to the capital (where Leander should be reporting for duty), and the last one led toward the mountains.

“I’ll get out here,” Faydra said crossly as she dropped down from the balloon as gracefully as a bird alighting on the grass.

He leaned over. “I don’t like you going like this. Get back in the balloon. I’ll take you all the way to the church.”

“Don’t bother,” she said, grabbing his collar and pulling him down far enough for her lips to touch his.

The kiss was enough to drive a man mad. She was so soft, so warm, so angry, so close to slipping from the reach of his fingers.

“If you’re my one and only, like I think you are, then it doesn’t matter where you go today or any other day. We’ll meet again and maybe then, you’ll know what you really want. Goodbye.” She gave him one last look in her eyes like scrying pools before she turned on her heel and walked barefoot along the path.

“Let me take you. You don’t even have shoes!” he called anxiously.

“I’m wearing a wedding dress, so I’m all ready for my wedding,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m sure I’ll find a groom along the way.”

“Wait!” he hollered in anger, the balloon coming up behind her. “I thought you were going to wait for me.”

“Yes, but I need a man to care for me today. I think I can find one. I'll marry someone today, and you can take the chance that I'll be a widow when you've come to your senses. Or maybe we'll miss each other entirely in this life and we’ll get together as ghosts after we've died. What color of vapor would you like to be?”

He groaned as the balloon followed after her like a scolded dog.

Leander got up on his feet, leaned over the basket in the opposite direction, and stared at the sign on the roadside that marked the way to the capital. He determined within himself that he would go to the capital, deliver the balloon to the King and get himself new equipment in exchange for it. That’s what he would do.

But the balloon didn’t turn. It didn’t change directions. It just kept following Faydra.

He dropped to his knees and hung both his arms and his head over the side of the balloon. He damned himself, damned the balloon, and damned her internally before urging the balloon to speed up. The balloon followed his heart and after Leander had held her heart in his hand the night before, he couldn’t give her heart up. He wasn’t thinking of her with another man. He was merely thinking of her being away from him. That was unthinkable. She was his now.

He caught her around the waist and pulled her aboard.

“What was written on that horrid paper the Wizard swallowed?” he spat.

“What are you doing?” Faydra asked in alarm as she was placed on her bum on the basket floor.

“I can’t leave you alone.”

“So you’ll marry me?” she asked, a bright smile beaming on her face.

“Let’s not talk about it. I’m the worst husband you could ask for. I don’t know how to do anything but be a hero. You really would have been better off with a blacksmith or a carpenter. I don’t have a home other than with the other knights and I have a very serious suspicion I’m going to lose all my teeth much younger than other men. The fact that I’ve kept them this long is a wonder.”

She pulled her cheek and showed him that she was missing a few teeth in the back.

He looked at her. “Let’s get to that church. You’ve got a dress that needs undoing.”

Leander pulled Faydra into his arms and remembered to forget all the important things he’d learned from Blueleg, from the Mistress, from Stocking, from the slug, from the King, and from the Wizard, which was a good thing for that moment because Faydra wanted all his attention.

However, far in the distance, the academics who inhabited the Wizard’s guts pulled the scroll he swallowed apart and read the last prerequisite of the knight they were to send to Castle Travista.

“Send someone whose line of fate is about to turn.”

The academics dropped the note into a pot of boiling acid and the Wizard hiccupped.

“Farewell, Sir Leander. Have at least eight sons and raise them to be knights as strong as you. There’s a war coming that’s bigger than the ones you’ve fought in.”

“What did you say, sir?” asked the knight that had taken Leander’s place as the Wizard’s bodyguard.

“I was just telling the glow worms that you’ll never get a woman with those scrawny arms. Leander had arms like tree trunks. Build muscle if you’re just going to stand there.” Then he chuckled to himself and went back to the book he was reading.

THE END