The Picnic
Rinka
Smoke poured off of the red dragon sitting in the middle of the drive before the manor house in thin wisps that filled the air with the smell of brimstone.
He was sitting upright like a cat, his forearms reaching the ground where great claws at the ends of his talons scratched deep grooves in the gravel. In this position, he was only a couple of feet taller than in his human form, but the draconic body that stretched behind him was at least twice as long, and the tail that swept the gravel side to side was longer still.
He held his wings close to his body, but the left wing did not seem to fold all the way in to mirror the right. The Curse of the Air, Rinka thought.
Perhaps the most peculiar thing of all was his clothes, which were still on him, stretched and adapted to his new figure. At some angles, they seemed to be less visible, the shiny red scales visible beneath. His magic, Rinka realized. The same magic that he used to stretch the coin beyond its usual shape.
The footman bowed and backed away, stumbling as he went. “Your royal highness. I’m te-te-terribly sorry, sir.”
Idris huffed, a cloud of thick black smoke coming from his mouth.
“I’ll fetch the others. We’ll get your rooms ready at once. Please, sir. Right this way,” said the footman. He remained bent at the waist, unwilling or unable to look Idris into his eyes.
Rinka was not frightened of him. Perhaps she should have been, but what she felt was more a sense of awe than fear.
He turned towards her, and she instinctively reached out for him. She pulled her arm back, unsure, but he held one of his scaled forearms out to her to touch.
She stroked the red scales. They were smoother than she’d expected, polished like river rock, with many bumps that felt like the sequins on a fine dress.
“Incredible,” she whispered. She traced the line of his forearm over his ragged shirt and onto his back, where his broken wing emerged.
It was smoother still, stretched like satin over bones that weren’t quite in the right configuration. It was a terrible thing, what had been done to him as a child.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He leaned his long neck towards her, nuzzling his head against her shoulder. Then he gently pushed her back, and there was another loud crack as he returned to his ordinary form.
“After you,” he said to her, gesturing for her to follow behind the footman.
“Your highness,” said the footman. “May I inquire about the young lady accompanying you? Will she be joining us as well?”
“This is the Lady Rinka, heiress to an earldom in the principality of Paistos. We met on the ferry when we were besieged by pirates. She’ll be staying for the summer as well. She’s had to send her lady’s maid home early, but I’m sure a house as fine as this one has one to spare to attend her.”
Rinka had never heard of Paistos. Did they speak the common tongue there? Did they have an accent?
“How do you do?” she said, affecting her voice just slightly to mask the recognizable accent of the working class in Arcas Dyrne. She curtsied to the footman and then immediately realized her mistake.
The footman looked at Idris, puzzled.
She wasn’t meant to curtsy to the servants, only her superiors, including royalty and the highest-ranking nobles. “Are you not the duke?” she asked, feigning ignorance. “In my land, it is customary for the head of the house to greet guests.”
The footman laughed. “I’m afraid not, my lady. The duke is away receiving more of our visitors. He’ll be sorry to have missed the opportunity to greet you.”
When the footman turned his back, Idris winked at Rinka.
Perhaps all those hours spent watching picture shows had been good for something after all, despite what her mother said.
The footman led Rinka and Idris through a great wooden door into the entrance hall. It was two stories high, with magnificent paintings lining the walls all the way up to the ceilings, which were themselves painted with scenes of humans and elves in dramatic poses and ancient attire. At the end of the room, a grand marble staircase with gilded railings led up into the house beyond.
The footman pressed something on the wall, and somewhere deep within the house, a bell rang. A pair of humans emerged from separate doors, one of them which had looked like a section of wall until it opened.
The butler was a severe man with salt-and-pepper hair and an impeccably tailored coat and tails. An older woman in a black dress and white apron joined him. They spoke quietly with the footman, and then they pressed a different lever on the wall, which rang a different bell.
“Your royal highness,” said the butler, bowing to Idris. “My lady,” he said, bowing to Rinka. “Welcome to Weldan House. I’m sorry we weren’t able to greet you. We’ll have your rooms ready at once. Would you like to take a tour of the home while you wait?”
Rinka didn’t know why he was apologizing—it wasn’t as though they had been expected.
“Yes, thank you,” said Idris. “A tour would be nice.”
Another woman in a maid’s uniform arrived through yet another door. She curtsied to them and then spoke to the housekeeper.
The housekeeper brought her over to Rinka. “My lady, this is Ms. Murray. She will attend you while you stay.”
“Right this way, your royal highness. My lady. We’ll start in the drawing room.”
Ms. Murray was young, barely more than a teenager, and human. Her hair was nearly concealed by her white bonnet, but it was red like Rinka’s, and Rinka felt a kinship with her immediately. She, too, had been a young woman working in service, although she had cleaned offices, not houses.
But Rinka remembered what Idris had said, and not wanting to get her in trouble, she kept quiet and followed Ms. Murray as she led them through room after extraordinary room. First was a series of rooms used for entertaining: a drawing room with a number of plush couches and chairs arranged for conversation, a game room with tables set up for cards and a large billiards table, and a music room with a grand pianoforte. Next, they visited a pair of galleries with portraits and busts of previous dukes and duchesses alongside art collected from all over Loegria and the continent. Then they entered the library. It took up an entire wing of the house.
“There are over twenty-thousand volumes here,” said Ms. Murray.
“Quite a collection,” said Idris.
“Yes, your highness. The Marquess has a particular love of books.”
“That sounds like him,” said Idris. “Keir,” he whispered to Rinka.
Ms. Murray led them then into the gardens. There were formal gardens with elaborate hedges arranged in a symmetrical design, casual gardens with tables meant for dining al fresco, and a great green lawn that sloped all the way to the river. There were dozens of people there erecting a great white tent on its banks, undoubtedly for the upcoming festival.
“We’ll take our tea out here,” said Idris. “Picnic style, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Of course, your highness.”
“Oh, and can you have someone send into town for the tailor? Our trunks were absconded by pirates. Lady Rinka and I have need of new wardrobes.”
“Yes, your highness. Right away, your highness.”
Once she was out of earshot, Rinka turned to Idris and curtsied. “Yes, your highness,” she said. “Whatever you say, your highness. Don’t you ever get tired of hearing it?”
“I’ve heard it all my life,” he said. “I barely notice it at all.”
He led her to a flat bit of lawn in the shade of an oak that was as wide around as a rail-wheeler car. “This will do,” he said.
A group of servants came over to them with a quilted blanket and several trays of sandwiches, bowls of fruit, and a beautiful tea set made from delicate porcelain. They laid it all out for them, even pouring the tea.
Rinka had to stop herself before she thanked them. Idris told her it wasn’t necessary—she’d have to thank them dozens of times a day, and that would get tedious in a way that hearing “your highness” apparently did not.
“Well,” said Idris. “What do you think?” He sat down on the blanket, lounging back to lean his head into the sun.
Rinka joined him, tucking her legs to the side in a way she hoped looked elegant. “It’s beautiful, and it makes me feel a little sick,” she said.
He leaned towards her and took her hand, concerned. “Are you alright? Should I send for…well, I suppose Keir’s the doctor around here.”
“No, I’m not physically ill.” Apart from her racing heart now that he was holding her hand. “But seeing all of this and knowing how people live in Arcas Dyrne. How I lived in Arcas Dyrne. Well, it’s just a bit depressing.”
“Oh, that,” he said. “Like I said. A monument to human arrogance. Not that this house is unique by any means. And compared to the castle, well, it’s positively provincial. Although I don’t think Father ever bothered to add a billiards table; I’ll admit I’m envious of that.”
“Doesn’t it bother you?” asked Rinka. Idris had started eating a sandwich that had been cut into a neat triangle, and he looked frankly unbothered by anything at all. “Don’t you feel any guilt for living this way while others struggle?”
“I don’t live this way,” said Idris. “There are staff at the University who take care of things there, but not nearly as many, and I only have a handful of rooms there.”
Rinka frowned and sat her teacup down.
“Rinka, this is the way the world is. It’s unfortunate, but there isn’t anything I can do to change it.”
“That’s not true at all,” she said. “You will be king. You could change all of it if you wanted to.”
“First off, as I explained to you, I have no intention of being king. And second, do you know what happens to kings that take away the rights and privileges of their subjects? They don’t tend to keep their heads attached to their bodies very long.”
She leaned away from him, looking out at the workers below. “I’m not talking about taking something away, but rather giving people the opportunity to rise above their birth.”
“Oh, I’m all for that,” said Idris. “It’s one of the reasons I work at the University. Education is power.”
“I suppose it’s one path,” said Rinka, although she had further questions about how people were given access to education in the first place. Her parents were unable to send her to university, after all. “I just don’t know how you could be born as one of the few people in the world who could actually change it and then turn away from that possibility so easily.”
He sighed. “I’m not opposed to changing the world, and I’m not opposed to using my station to do it. Come on now, you haven’t even been part of society for a day. I’ve spent a lifetime with these people. I’m not trying to be callous, but I know the rules. I know what can be done.”
“Didn’t you say something about the fun of breaking the rules?”
Idris smiled wryly. “Well, if you’re just going to use all my words against me, I suppose I’ll have to be more careful what I say. You know, you’re rather charming when you’re indignant. The line that forms beside your nose—just there,” he said, touching the spot. “It’s rather becoming.”
Rinka was dubious. “You find a line on my face attractive? Are you trying to distract me, your highness?”
“Don’t you ‘your highness’ me,” said Idris, and he reached to her sides and tickled her.
Rinka shrieked and rose to her feet. “What are you doing?”
“I’m breaking a rule,” he said. “Isn’t that what you wanted, my lady?”
Rinka giggled and ran for it.
Idris chased her across the lawn. The warm summer breeze lifted her hair, and the sun warmed her grey skin as she ran from him, laughing all the while.
She flew past the formal gardens and a large fountain, past an orchard and the stables, and kept going until she reached an outbuilding of some kind near the woods, running around the back of it as he finally caught up to her.
He grabbed her hand and shot an arm out in front of her, trapping her. “Got you,” he said.
She wiggled and tried to escape from the other side, but he held his other arm out and walked her back to the wall, pinning her there with no way out.
She squeezed her arms tightly to her sides, trying to conceal the ticklish bits from him. “Mercy!” she cried.
“Mercy?” he asked. “Are you sure?”
He darted one hand into the space between her arm and her side, tickling his fingers against the sensitive spot there.
She squealed. “Mercy!” She was panting from both the laughter and the run, barely able to breathe the word out.
“Mercy?” he said again. His chest was heaving too from the exertion, and Rinka thought for a moment that he might go for her other side, but instead he lifted his fingers to her cheek.
He stroked her jaw, and then her chin, and then her lips, brushing them exactly the same way he had in the tent.
She trembled. He was so close to her she could feel the pull of his gasping breath on their shared air, could smell the sunlight on his skin.
“Mercy,” he whispered. “Gods know I’ll need it.”
Then he kissed her, grabbing her hands and pinning them up over her head against the wall, their bodies rising and falling in time with each other as they regained their breath and then lost it once more.
Summer fun, indeed.