Vines yielded to crystal formations resembling sugar clinging to little white sticks. I expected to find a giant boiler vat and a man in a purple tuxedo waiting around every bend in the halls.
“Whatever you do, Harriet, don’t eat his candy walls.” I spoke under my breath without thinking.
“What was that, Harriet?”
My cheeks caught fire and I shook my head. “I was just remarking how lovely these walls are.”
“I am glad you like them. They are essential in keeping the rampant energies of the forges from leaking into the rest of the ship.”
“Are the forges that dangerous?”
Yierie squeezed my arm. “Not as long as the dissipation crystals remain intact.” She swept her arm in a circle. “The crystals lining the walls are technically decorative. They are part of a redundant system.”
“There are larger crystals, or like a bank of them somewhere?” Curiosity drove me. I was naturally curious anyway, but whatever Madame Renrara had done to me had stoked that tendency into a great blazing inferno.
“Indeed, but we do not discuss the details of those systems.” Yierie smiled at me and blinked slowly with both eyes.
“You mean with outsiders?”
Yierie shrugged. “The only reason I know about their function is because I have spent time working in the runeforges.”
“Like building stuff?”
“Indeed. My talents are similar to a priest’s though I am not nearly as proficient at healing as most.” Yierie paused in the hallway as if considering her next words carefully. She flourished her free hand in the air before us and the tip of her finger lit with a fine red light. Moving quickly, she traced a rune in the air. It looked like one of the runes Amanda had taught me, mashed up with a dozen other runes. When she completed the drawing, the rune flared in midair and folded in on itself. When it collapsed, it shrank down to a dot and burst into a white flash.
In place of the rune, a fluttering crystalline bird appeared. It flapped its clear wings, whistled at us and landed on my shoulder. “Pretty!” I raised my finger to its beak and the bird nibbled on it with a soft grasp.
“You are surprisingly brave.” Yierie clicked her tongue and the bird hopped off my shoulder and alighted onto hers. “Many would have grown frightened at its appearance. None of those I’ve met would have touched it.”
“So? Is that bird special?” It didn’t look like a raptor or any kind of predatory bird, it looked more like a sparrow.
“Not at all, but even among the People, magical constructions are treated wth a certain amount of wary suspicion.”
“That makes me sound, I don’t know, naive?” I was pretty sure Yierie wasn’t mocking me, but I had a sudden urge to confirm it.
“Perhaps, but I prefer my own wording. Brave.” She nodded her head, clicked her tongue again and the bird flew off of her shoulder and back to mine. At the same time, Yierie proceeded down the hall.
The temperature rose and I pondered a group of people who could build a ship like this, live on it, and still grow to fear magical constructions. In a way it made more sense the longer I thought about it. Elves would know more about the full dangers and risks of magic than someone who knew nothing. The thought made me realize exactly how dangerous I was with my small amount of knowledge.
A large set of double doors ended our progress. Black wrought iron bands held the dark coffee-colored wooden slats together and made for a formidable barrier. No handle, lock, or other means of opening the two doors appeared. In fact, both doors were entirely uniform and bereft of decoration or embellishment.
Yierie laid her hand at the seam between the two doors and spoke in her native tongue. Lilting syllables flowed from her mouth and hovered in the air. At first I thought she’d uttered the spell that opened the door. But when it didn’t yield at first, I’d decided she had just rang the doorbell.
My speculations ended when the two wooden doors slid back into the walls and a squat figure covered in shocking blue and green hair appeared in the doorway.
“Yierie! It’s been an age, girl. And you’ve brought me another hummie? Oh joy!” The swarthy complected man, who looked to be adorned entirely in thick tufts of green and blue sprang from the doorway before Yierie could answer. He poked me in the belly like he was examining a cut of meat. “This one ain’t wearing any skivvies. Something wrong with her head?” At his question, the short man’s feet glowed and the soles of his feet split open and exposed screws in the bottoms of his feet that ratcheted him up to my height. He stared at my eyes and looked back at Yierie, who’d covered her mouth. “She looks fine, maybe a bit strung out from whatever magic somebody cast on her. What’s going on?”
Yierie gave her cackling mouth-covered laugh. “I don’t know, Sedge. You haven’t given me a chance to speak yet.”
He rolled his eyes and walked awkwardly over to Yierie. “Like that ever stopped you. Now spill the bolts about your new hummie. I want to know if you brought me another fixer-upper.”
Yierie rotated her hand as she gestured to me, moving her arm in the usual circle. “Sedge Yofessin, this Harriet Yeshe. Harriet, this is one of my oldest friends: Sedge. Forgive his manners, for he utterly lacks any.”
“Pah, I had that bundle of nonsense extracted and replaced with a math processor.” He tapped his head and eyed me. “Harriet you said? Alaric’s Harriet?”
At once, Sedge had drawn the entirety of my attention. “You know Alaric? How?”
“Eh, the boy’s my current project.” The screws at the bottom of Sedge’s feet retracted as he turned back into the doorway from whence he’d come. “Get on in here, maybe you can convince the boy to let me add a few bits to his arm and brain. I think he’d enjoy aerial navigation, and I just perfected the cranial implants.”
When Yierie said “runeforge” I’d been expecting some smokey, dark rooms with the sounds of hammers striking anvils. But beyond the crystalline walls lay rooms with stark white metal. They were clean and free of any kind of mess or soot. It reminded me more of a hospital or one of those clean room microchip processing facilities where everyone had to wear full body gear to keep dust out of the machinery.
Sedge defied that particular image entirely. He wore nothing but his fur, which covered him better than my shawl covered me. We passed several doors with large glass windows on the front. A few of them showed other figures, covered by fur like Sedge was, hunched over benches working. Some of them showed the occupants aiming devices at walls and firing them. From the angle of the windows, I couldn’t tell what effect those weapons had on their targets.
Looking back over his shoulder, Sedge kept an eye on the two of us as he trundled down the hall. “You and Alaric are natives here, right?”
“Um, yeah.” Though he kept looking back at me, he spoke while he had his head turned away.
“Seen any Beyonders?” Sedge’s question slowed my walk and caught my attention.
“I have.”
Both Yierie and Sedge stared at me now. Sedge spoke first. “What kind, girl? Anything interesting?”
Too late to beg off, I described the tentacled monster that ate the school where I met up with Tia. Until I described it, I’d missed how much the portals and monsters seemed to hate centers of learning. After I described the tentacle monster, I added a description of the titan who destroyed my university.
We started walking again before I finished explaining how I’d encountered the Beyonder. Neither Sedge nor Yierie commented on my story. Both of them waited patiently for me to finish before they spoke. Sedge said, “Titans are a huge pain in the arse, but their sinew and hair make for some of the best actuators in the ‘verse. It was smart to run from that foul Beyonder. Or lucky I suppose.”
I turned to Yierie and said, “What were you fighting when you found me?”
Yierie shivered next to me. “Infernal giant.”
Sedge spat in the corner of the hall. “May their joints rot and their innards consume them. Those kinds of monsters aren’t even useful for their parts.”
I didn’t have anything to say. I nodded at Sedge hoping I looked dignified as he opened a simple white door. This one had a glass pane in it, but I hadn’t seen anyone on the other side.
“Sedge, is that you? Goddamnit if this is another prank, I am gonna shave you with this fucking arm you gave me!” Alaric sat on a bench on the side of the wall adjacent to the hallway. The room he sat in was as large as the workshop and testing rooms we’d seen before. Next to Alaric was a stack of carved figurines. A few of them looked like a woman with long straight hair surrounded by a swirl of cloth or a ribbon. “Holly shit, Harriet!” Alaric jumped off the bench. His chest was covered by a golden breast plate that moved with his skin like a shirt. As close as we stood, I could make out the tiny scales on the plate that comprised the bulk of it. Growing as if organically connected to the plate, was a fine silver arm attached at Alaric’s shoulder. It resembled a normal human arm complete with carved veins. The scales that covered the arm were even smaller and more delicate-looking than those of the breastplate.
I hugged him and he squeezed me tighter than I expected. “Hey Alaric, it’s good to see you too man.”
“Holy shit! I’ve been worried, I mean Sedge over there said you were fine, but I wasn’t allowed to come visit!” Alaric pushed himself away with his hands on my shoulders. The left hand felt warmer than the metal looked, almost as warm as his right. He noticed me staring at it. “Isn’t this cool? They made me a new hand. It’s better than my old one by a huge margin, I can even feel stuff with it like it’s real!”
Alaric drew away from me and flexed his new hand, moving each of the fingers in sequence. “That’s amazing. Tia’s safe by the way.”
“Right, Sedge mentioned she was with you. But we’re not supposed to say you-know-who’s name.”
On instinct, I assumed he referred to Malia. The way I’d been growing closer to Yierie drove a spike of regret into my heart. I wanted to find Malia, to make sure she was okay. And in truth, I felt guilty about leaving her behind, not that I had much of a choice about it. I put her out of my mind because she wasn’t the person Alaric was talking about, he was talking about Kain. “Yeah, Tia’s good, we’re learning Elvish. They’ve been really nice to us so far.” I motioned to Yierie and Sedge, who both waved at us, but stayed back in the wings as if to avoid interfering.
“You look really good, Harriet.” Alaric ran his right hand through his hair. “Like they’re clearly feeding you enough and taking care of you.”
I took the moment to examine Alaric. He hadn’t lost any weight and from our conversation so far, he seemed to be in much better spirits. “They totally are!” I stared at him to see if he’d been trying to pass some subtle message to me, but his grin looked sincere.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“All right you two kids, I had told Yierie to bring you down here girl cause I was done workin’ on him.” Sedge slapped Alaric on the arm and my cousin beamed. “Now it’s time to send him back up among the weeds so’s he can make hisself useful.”
I looked back at Yierie, who nodded. “Now that Alaric has recovered, Sedge is correct. It’s time for him to join us.”
The way she said it, with her eyes lowered to the floor made me suspicious. Something had prevented Alaric from coming up here in the first place, but I couldn’t say what.
Sedge tried to get us to stay back and “check out some of his new creations,” but Yierie was firm in her refusals, multiple refusals. Sedge did extract a promise from me and Alaric to come visit him again once we were settled.
When we left the white metal halls of the workshop area, I asked Yierie what he meant. Her expression darkened even further. “It’s time for the three of you to receive your personal accommodations. As Alaric has agreed to work for the Crystal Orchid, his service will provide for the rest of you.”
“What does that mean?” I didn’t stop us in the middle of the hallway, but I slowed and broke out of Yierie’s grip. “Are we beholden to you now or something?”
Yierie looked like I’d slapped her, bringing her hand up to cover her mouth as I spoke. “No. I did not make myself clear. There are rules about living aboard the Orchid. Service guarantees a room among us. Alaric has fulfilled that primary requirement with his oath, but he will be called upon to aid in the functioning of the ship.”
“What about me? What about Tia?” I felt hostile, not because they expected us to work for our food and shelter, but because the terms had not been clear until now.”
“Tia is a child and you are not yet fit to serve. When that changes, you may choose the terms of your service.” Yierie opened her hands before her like she presented me a book between them. “I did not mean to mislead you, you shall be my guests until you decide otherwise.”
“Okay.” I didn’t add, “I guess,” because I didn’t want to hurt Yierie’s feelings. But I did feel a little blindsided by the news.
Yierie led us to Alaric’s chambers. Like her own, these were chased with wood-carved vines with a planked hardwood floor. Unlike her room, Alaric’s was less than a fifth of the size. And his bed would barely fit him, much less Tia and me. After my outburst, I’d have to depend on Yierie’s charity.
Alaric didn’t seem to mind this new room in the least. “This is fantastic! It’s smaller than the workshop, but warmer and I won’t have to wake up to Sedge’s breath every morning.”
At the mention of it, I sniffed the air. To my complete surprise, the room smelled like cologne, men’s cologne with a hint of moss and musk to it. Did the ship tailor its environment to the occupant?
We left Alaric behind, without even mentioning the possibility of Tia and I living with him. Yierie walked off to my side, without touching me. I sighed and said, “I’m sorry about my shock earlier. You mentioned service and stuff before, on the day we met, right?”
“Indeed.” Yierie closed the gap between us at the apparent opening. “I did not mean to make you feel as though I were trapping you. That is the last thing I intended. You are free to remain with me as long as you like, I am more than happy to…”
I grabbed her hand and pulled her close to me. “You’re attracted to me, aren’t you?” Yierie raised her hand to cover her mouth and I stopped her. “I’m attracted to you too…”
Before I could finish, we closed the distance between each other, both of us moving as if shoved from behind. I couldn’t say who kissed whom, or who acted first. But I knew we both acted from shared desire. Her soft skin pressed against my own and my shawl unraveled to surround her and press me into Yierie’s body. She tasted like fruits, like kiwi and strawberries, or cherries and melon. As if a cornucopia of flavors resided in her mouth, I explored her as thoroughly as I could there in the hallways alone.
After minutes passed, a sound in the distance drove Yierie away from me with her back to the wall. She scanned either end of the hallway with fear on her face as the ends of Roo fluttered away from her.
“What’s wrong?”
Yierie shook her head for a moment and then sighed. “There is nothing wrong, I am happier than I could have imagined.”
“But you look frightened.” I wasn’t letting this go.
“It would be best I think for us to return to my room quickly. There is nothing for you to be worried about.” Yierie approached me and kissed me again, drawing me to her and into her embrace. But the kiss lasted for far too little time as she drew away and twirled out of my grasp. She spun back to grab my arm into the crook of her own and grinned at me. “Let us return to my room before your sister tires of playing with her new friends.”
Back in Yierie’s room, I found myself upon her lap while she sat on her bed. I plucked locks of her crimson hair off of her shoulder and ran them through my fingers. Their color was so bright I expected the strands to leave trails of ink in their wakes. She pressed her hand into my back and warmed me as if I sat by a fire.
Our kisses were brief and passionate, one or the other pulling away after a few seconds to gaze into each other’s eyes. After several minutes of this, I finally broke the silence with my own inner turmoil. “You know who… what I am, right?”
Yierie’s grin widened as her eye fluttered. “Beautiful, intelligent, compassionate?”
“No, I mean what kind of…” I didn’t want to say thing. That was a word that would be used against me, to belittle me.
Yierie glided the knuckles of her fingers against my cheek. “You are an Ancient one. Born with a soul from times immemorial. This does not concern me.”
“I used to be a man.” I spat the word out though I didn’t think it was entirely true anymore. “I mean I was born a man…”
“Please, love. I do not care. More than half of the Ancients like yourself are thus afflicted. Do not let it concern you.”
She’d called me the label at least twice before my brain finally snapped and my magically amplified curiosity demanded an answer. “What do you mean, an Ancient?”
“Humans of your world only gain magic like your own through two methods: pacts with extraplanar beings or by being Ancients, born of an Ancient soul. You are… I do not know the right word for you. You were reborn into your former body with knowledge from long ago. When the portals emerged, the soul came to the forefront.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“Not in the least. Your magic will be potent, you will know secrets from a time far before you were born. You say you were not born with your present body, that means you surrendered that body to your ancient soul. There is no stigma in this, the transformation makes you as feminine as I.” She pointed to my breasts and down into my lap.
“You don’t mind?”
Yierie blushed and shook her head. “I am…” She dropped her eyes away from mine and let them wander the room.
“What?”
“The People view your kind as sacred, holier even than most of the People.”
I pulled her face to mine and looked her in the eyes. “Please tell me what makes you so nervous?”
“The People see humans as lesser. In truth my People view all non-elves as lesser. But Ancients hold a special place, regardless of what race they belong to. Sedge is one such Ancient and there are others aboard the Orchid.” Yierie swallowed and acted as though she would drop her eyes again. But she took a deep breath and bit her lips. “But there are already questions and whispers about me sharing me bed with a human even if you are an Ancient. And those who do not hold such a low opinion, will look down on me for choosing to tarry with an Ancient.”
“So this is the standard prejudice. That sucks.”
Yierie covered her mouth and released one of her honest laughs, tittering as she did. “You are endearing in your opinions.”
“Well, mine is the good one. And I don’t care if you are the daughter of the queen of the elves or the poop sweeper. I am happy you chose me.” I pulled her head to mine and kissed her. After a moment, I pulled away and whispered. “Let them laugh. With enough magic, I can shrink their clothes of they insist on being jerks.”
The door swung open at that moment and I hopped off of Yierie’s lap with speed. Tia flew in like a winter storm, her head covered with twigs, flower petals, and leaves. “Oh my god, I had so much fun today, we played the best game of hide and seek EVER! And I won! I won-y won won! Woooo!”
Tia flapped her hands as she ran about the room depositing detritus from her hair in the process. When we finally managed to settle her, we discovered that she was covered with dirt and grime. The only place she wasn’t a complete mess was the face, which was why I’d noticed the hair-mess first.
“Holy wombats, someone needs a bath.”
“Not me, I’m as sweet as a rose! Bethany said so!” Tia shook her hands and slipped out of my grip as she continued around the room.
Yierie stood back and laughed at the two of us until I finally managed to capture Tia for real, hefting her up with both arms and swinging her about. “Nope, you stink of dirt and soil. It’s the baths for you!”
At that point, Yierie stood up and waved her hands about in the air. I’d never seen that particular set of runes before, but I noted them as best as I could. They flared and flew into the side of her wall, which retracted and exposed a massive pink stone room. Every surface of the room was covered in rough stucco, and the salmon color made it look like a grotto in the American Southwest.
Steam poured out of that room, which drew me in with misty fingers. They beckoned me deeper into the room where I found several small waterfalls and large pools. Some of them steamed as I watched, while others had ice collecting on the edges. Each one of them had airy clear water that let me see deep into the pool.
“What is this?” My mouth opened and spoke on it’s own.
When I turned to look at Yierie with my question fresh off my lips, she’d already disrobed. Her red nipples had scrunched up on her chest and I wanted to know the taste of them. If not for the squirming seven-year-old in my arms, I would have taken Yierie into them and plumbed the depths of her. I loved my sister, but in that moment I wanted to kick her out of the rooms for a week.
“Let me down, I want to play in the water!” I snickered at Tia’s insistence, so I set her down and turned my eyes as she tore her clothing off. I might be a woman now, but I was born a man. And that meant I was something of an easily embarrassed idiot.
Fortunately, Yierie lacked my aversion. When we’d traveled together, Malia had helped me with this part of having a kid sister. Now Yierie helped scrub my wiggling, squealing sister down until the pool they’d chosen had been darkened by the mud from her body.
Once Tia was clean, the three of us found sets of swimsuits and a warm pool to soak in.
Tia laid her hands on the flat stone at the edge of the pool in a mimickry of Yierie and me. “Can I sleep here tonight?”
“No, you’d shrivel into a prune and we’d come back to find this tiny little Tia here.” I pressed my fingers together and shook my head. “Besides, you’d get bored of being wet eventually and crave a warm bed.”
“Bah, maybe I’d turn into a fish!”
Yierie swam to the center of the pool. “We have a legend related to that. In the ancient times, before the People developed magic to craft flying ships, we lived off the land like wild beasts. The People were savage in those times, hunted by strong monsters and enemies with powerful magics.
“Because of this we had strong tribal ties and were wary of outsiders even if they were the People too. One day, while hunting for food, a young man named Kariath came upon a crystalline brook in the wild. The other pools the people took water from ran swiftly, were too cloudy with mud to trust, or harbored dangerous monsters within.
“But in the surface of the pool, Kariath found a strange elf he had never seen before. His hair was tinted green and thick as a bramble. His eyes glowed with the innate magic of the People though, so Kariath knew him to be an elf too.
“Kariath issued countless challenges and threats to the strange elf within the pool. But not once did the foreigner answer him. When his rage grew too strong, Kariath struck out the stranger in the pool with his spear, trying to draw him out. But the stranger proved immune to all of Kariath’s provocations.
“In a panic, he fled to find the elders of his tribe, the wisest among his people. Though they did not believe his story of the mystical elf who danced upon the waters, they sent a delegation to find this rogue and punish Kariath if it was discovered he’d been lying.
“When they came upon the still waters, each of the elders perceived the same elf Kariath had, his twin. Likewise each of them found their own twin in the waters. These phantom elves refused to entreat with the elders. In a panic, they retreated back to their village to report their findings.
“As a result, the whole of Kariath’s village turned out to find the magical, ephemeral elves who dared challenge the wisest among their tribe. The same as before, each elf found their twin within the waters. Some swore vengeance against the army of silent elves. Others fell enamored with the images they saw upon the waters.
“Only a lone child, the youngest among those permitted to leave the village, suggested the truth, that these were reflections, nothing more than semblances cast upon the waters. The elders, their pride having been wounded by the squeaking of a babe, refused to the acknowledge the truth before them.
“Some demanded the tribe go to war with the water elves. Others insisted their tribe join them in the waters, for their silence suggested the waters held great peace within their depths. Still others demanded the tribe dive in and steal the secrets of such wisdom from the water elves. Only a small group, the youngest among them and a few others near them in age, refused to engage with the water any further.
“The elders and the war-like elves remained behind with those who’d fallen in love with their own images. They never returned to their village. Some say they fought amongst themselves and none survived. Some that the elves dove into the waters to meet with their lovers or enemies on their turf. And still others suggest that the waters themselves had been ensorcelled, charmed to bring about the end of those who perceived themselves in the depths. Only the wisdom of a child allowed a few to resist the lure and return to their villages. But in time, the warlike nature and narcissism of the People faded, perhaps because those first few elves died without issue.”
“That’s like a Greek story from my world.” I told Yierie the story of Narcissus.
“I liked Yierie’s story better, Harriet, you have to practice.” Tia leaned her head back against the pool and yawned. “I’m hungry.”
With that announcement, we left the pool and dried off. Yierie helped Tia change into new clothes while I let Roo hang dry from my shoulders. It was dry before Tia and Yierie emerged. Tia wore a blue robe dotted with pearls and topped with a Mandarin collar.
Yierie wore a red robe cut down to her navel that exposed the sides of her breasts. It parted high on her thighs, threatening to expose her body with every step. I found myself staring after Yierie, trying to catch a glimpse of her as she walked. She noticed and glowed at my attention.
We ate in her room that evening. After our kiss and the proclamation of our mutual attraction, I’d forgotten about Alaric again. I hadn’t even mentioned him to Tia.